Tribulations - Chapter 12

The stairs seemed normal, and the basement no different than the kind of basement Buffy imagined belonging to any run-down apartment building. The floor looked a little burnt, and a little gooey-gross, as if someone had spilled tar down here, and maybe something else had molded--that was exactly what it smelled like, a combination of tar and mold. The stench made her wrinkle her nose.

"It's not..." Giles stopped, turning a slow circle in the center of the room. "Not what I expected."

"Where, precisely, do we find the Hellmouth, Rupert?" Moira looked like she was just about to pull out a compass or a tape measure or something--maybe one of those tripod thingies, like surveyors used, with the little spyglass on top.

"What do you call those things surveyors use?" Buffy asked Giles, the beam of her flashlight reflecting off his glasses as she turned to him.

"Hmn?" Giles glanced up at the ceiling, running his own light over the exposed beams. The concrete between them looked awfully crumbly. "Oh, a theodolite."

"I knew you'd know that," Buffy answered. His expression bothered her. Giles didn't look wigged, but he did look deeply, deeply concerned.

"What's up?" she asked.

Giles shuddered lightly. "I hate this place."

"I'm not very fond of it myself," Sebastian announced. He'd started prowling the room, around and around until it made Buffy nearly dizzy.

Suddenly, he stopped. "Oh."

"Found something, have you?" Giles asked, stepping closer.

"Stay back. Stay..." Seb glanced at his feet, then up again. "I--my--I seem to have gone numb from the waist down."

"When you say...?" Giles began.

"As if I've frozen. As if my legs are frozen." A little edge of panic came into Seb's voice. "Dad, it's rather painful."

"Don't touch him," Moira commanded, her own voice perfectly level and cool.

"Mum!" Sebastian called out--not like a scared kid, but like a grown man who was hurting pretty badly. "I can feel--I can feel it..."

Seb's voice choked off. The world twisted.

When Buffy could open her eyes again, she found herself curled up in a big, comfortable chair, in a cozy grandmothery room--not exactly a living room, more what she'd have called a sitting-room, or a parlor.

"'Come into my parlor,' said the spider to the fly." She could have sworn someone said that aloud, but wasn't it just a little poem her granny used to recite to her when she was a kid? It gave Buffy the creeps. It had always given her the creeps, even in granny's kind, old-lady voice.

The room had one big picture window, like a TV screen that looked out into the world. The window, or screen, whatever it was, showed snow, fat white flakes falling onto houses and trees that weren't anywhere Buffy recognized, though maybe it was the snow itself that made the place seem foreign.

Across the room, a fire burned in the fireplace. Another big, squashy chair stood next to hers, and between them was a small doilied table with a tea-tray and a big snow-globe on top.

"Oh, it's winter!" Buffy said, as if that made any sense.

"It's always winter now, Buffy," said the other chair's occupant.

She'd been about to drink from the flowered teacup in her hands when she saw who he was: Mr. Briggs, or the demon who wasn't really Mr. Briggs. The demon who'd killed Giles's good friend, the poor little librarian, so horribly. He smiled, showing his pointy teeth. "You gave me all your summer. I asked and you gave it me. Anything I wanted, you said."

That's what he wanted? My summer? Buffy thought. Score! That wasn't so bad. Nothing like what she'd expected--her first-born child, or something. This wasn't bad at all.

"Did you want to look, my dear?" the demon asked politely, holding out the snowglobe toward her. Buffy hadn't seen him shake it up, but the tiny snowflakes spun crazily under the glass. She almost saw something...almost...

She jumped, suddenly terrified, and the globe fell out of her hands, shattering on the floor.

The demon glared up at her with fiery eyes, his teeth no longer showing in a smile.

Buffy scrambled out of the chair, slamming through the room's one door and out into the corridor, racing down a maze of halls like the ones she and Moira traveled when they were looking for Giles in hell, her heart thudding madly. She ran until, at last, she reached a door, and flung herself out into the snow. She recognized nothing. The place she stood could have been Sunnydale or the moon, for all she knew.

"Please...?" she asked of no one, wrapping her arms around her chest. Her legs were bare, and since she had on only a light summer dress, the cold bit into her skin. She started to run again, her breath steaming, the frozen air like fire in her lungs.

She pelted up the steps of the first house she came to, pounding frantically on the door, but there wasn't any answer. "Please!" she cried out again, breaking the lock to let herself inside.

Buffy slammed the door behind her and stood shivering on the mat, panting, the snow melting in rivulets that ran from her hair and over her skin. In the distance, she heard a piano being played, music that grew around her with every step she took toward its source, a song so filled with longing that each note tore into her heart.

She walked a long way, until she reached a room of polished golden wood. The piano--a baby grand--stood in one corner. Its black wood had been polished to a high gloss too, but nothing reflected in it, not even the crystal vase of stark-white roses that stood on top. Celeste sat at the keyboard, her beautiful brown hands, with their long, elegant fingers moving over the black and white keys, making that wonderful, terrible music.

"Stop," Buffy wanted to beg her. "Celeste, please stop." She had no voice. Tears burned inside her, tears that for some reason could not be shed.

"Things are going to change so fast," Celeste sang softly.

All the white horses have gone ahead
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change...my dear...

"You have to stop," Buffy managed at last, in the tiniest of whispers. "It's too much. Celeste, it's too much for me."

"I can't," Celeste answered, but she lifted her hands away from the piano keys and stood to face her. She wasn't wearing her wedding ring, Buffy realized, and the front of her dress hung straight and flat.

"What do you want, Buffy?" she asked, in a cool, quiet voice. "Where did you want to go?"

"Home," Buffy sobbed, all the dammed-up tears bursting free at last. "I just want to go home!"

"Done," Celeste told her.

Buffy stood on a sidewalk outside The Bronze, buttoning up her winter coat against the frosty air. She had a weird feeling, as if she was in her own body but not in it, as if someone else was in charge, talking for her, moving her lips.

"Brrr, it's a cold one," her voice said.

"Aw, back home we'd call this sun-bathing weather," said the guy beside her, laughing.

"So, everyone's crazy in Iowa?" Buffy recognized her own flirting-voice.

He laughed a little more, not at all offended. He was a big guy, with kind of floppy, no-colored hair, and an open, good-natured face. He looked like exactly the kind of boy who came from the Midwest, and who belonged to the ROTC. Nice, good manners, the kind of guy you can take to meet your parents--but nothing exciting.

He bent down, put his arms around her and kissed Buffy's lips--and that, too, was nice enough, but equally unexciting. Her traitorous body kissed him back, not putting a whole lot into it. The guy's arm slipped across her shoulders, she put hers around his waist, and they walked that way down the street, leaning together even though it felt awkward and a little uncomfortable. She knew--or the other her knew--that she ought to be out patrolling, but pushed back the thought. Later. There was always later.

They strolled slowly back to the UC Sunnydale campus, cutting across what signs said was the faculty parking lot. Not many vehicles remained there, late as it was, except for one she knew well. Buffy could feel herself being surprised that she stopped, laying her hand down on the battered gray hood, as the real her might have laid a hand against Giles's chest to feel the comforting beat of his heart. All she felt now, though, was cold metal.

"That's a funky old car," Farmboy said.

"It's Giles's," she said, and laughed--not the nicest laugh she'd ever heard, either. "What a pile of junk. You can hear it coming from about five miles away."

Farmboy laughed too. "That's your old teacher, right? I guess he's...eccentric."

"Yes, I suppose he is," said a voice behind them, one Buffy knew as well as her own. She whirled, shame flooding through her, though the stranger in charge of her body had no idea why.

"He's dreadfully eccentric," Giles continued in a quiet, clipped voice. "And just now, his eccentricities include a strong desire to go home, if you'll excuse him. It's very late."

"Professor Giles..." Farmboy began, blushing.

Buffy herself was shocked, so shocked that the real her leaped into control. "Giles..." she said, and then couldn't say anything else. She went to him and put both arms around his waist, horrified by how little of him there was to hug--he must have been sick, really sick, for a long time to have lost that much weight. His eyes had looked red, and his skin almost gray. He felt cold under her touch, as cold as if the winter had gotten inside his blood. Of course he wasn't wearing a coat, not even a jacket--no wonder he was freezing.

"Giles," Buffy said again, putting everything she could into that word, his name, a terrible sense of loss welling inside her, making her throat ache. She held him even tighter, wanting to warm away the deep chill that clung to him with her touch, to comfort him as she guessed he needed so badly to be comforted--but then he was pushing her away, fumbling his keys out of his pants pocket, hands shaking as he tried to fit the door-key into the lock.

"Buffy..." he began, a whole world of love, longing and aching loss in his voice. For just a second, she felt hope, a belief that everything would be okay. The keys fell from Giles's hold and Buffy stooped to retrieve them, using their return as an excuse to hold on, just for a moment, to his hand.

"It's been so cold," he said to her, as his bruised-looking eyes gazed down into hers. "So cold, Buffy."

"It's winter," she answered, not sure what else to say.

"That it is," he murmured, and sighed. "This will mean nothing to you. Less than nothing. But while I understand why you did...what you felt you needed to do, I cannot help but regret it most bitterly. Most bitterly," he added in an even lower voice, his eyes locking to hers for nearly a full minute before he turned roughly away, thrusting the key home.

"I love you," she told him, filled with a horrible sense of confusion and deja vu, an actual, physical pain stabbing through her heart. "I'll always love you, Giles."

His back to her, Giles slumped against the side of the car. She could see his shoulders shaking, almost as if he might be laughing--but she knew he wasn't laughing.

"Buffy, don't," Farmboy said behind her. "It's not...not nice."

She needed Giles to turn, to look into her face and believe her. How could he think what he obviously thought--that this was all some cruel joke, a game she was playing to hurt him?

It's because of the wish, she told herself. He would rather have died before you made the wish. She raised a trembling hand, but couldn't quite bring herself to touch his back. Meaning to save him, she'd taken everything that was most important, made him watch her be with Farmboy and God knew who else, made him hear her say to him the kind of careless, thoughtless things she'd always said. People didn't die for love, maybe--but they hurt for it. Sometimes they hurt so badly that it was like a wound that would never completely heal.

I never meant to injure you, she wanted to tell him. I never meant it to be this way. Can't you turn to the others? Aren't Seb and Xander and Will looking out for you?

"Buffy, Riley, enjoy the remainder of your evening," Giles said, in that quiet, civilized voice that was so much more painful to her than if he'd snapped or yelled. The driver's-side door swung open, and Giles lowered himself inside. "I'll see you...later."

"Giles." Her hands still trembled as Buffy touched his shoulder, then clutched so hard he let out an involuntary grunt of pain. "I meant it. Every word. I meant it."

"I never thought..." Giles told the steering-wheel. "I knew you could be careless and thoughtless--even secretive. You are young, and those qualities, while perhaps not part of your better nature, are entirely understandable. I never thought, however, that you could be deliberately cruel."

"Buffy," Farmboy said in a serious voice. Riley? That was his name? First or last? Buffy wondered, inconsequentially, still in shock. "Leave the poor guy alone. Why are you doing this to him?"

"He has to see!" she cried out. "You have to see!" She grabbed the front of Giles's shirt, her fingers tearing through the thin cloth as she turned him, awkwardly, as far as she could. "Giles, sweetie, please look at me. I'm not the person you think I am. I'm your Buffy." She somehow managed to wedge herself between the steering-wheel and the seat back, no doubt squashing Giles severely in the process.

She knelt on his lap, her fingers sliding into his hair, holding him to her as she bent to kiss him with everything she had.

"I'm yours," she said, when she finally released him, touching her fingertips to his lips as the hurt and the coldness of winter slowly, slowly melted from his eyes.

The world twisted, and twisted again. Suddenly, it was warm, and somewhere out in the night, there was the smell of burning herbs, and the sound of Latin words, chanted by a tired voice--but that, somehow, seemed less important than what she felt, what she saw.

"I'm your Buffy," she said, capturing his eyes with hers. "Your Buffy, for ever and always."