Tribulations - Ch. 29

Giles slipped the fingers of both hands up beneath his glasses, rubbing his stinging eyes as he fought, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn so intense it made his jaw ache. The kids had long since succumbed to sleep, their bodies sprawled over various pieces of his furniture like some giant-child's discarded dolls. More than a score of opened cartons, resurrected from closet and store-room, spilled their contents across the carpet. He'd looked through dozens of books in the preceding hours, and knew that doubtless he would spend the coming time scanning scores more.

And yet...

And yet... Giles sighed. He doubted with sudden vehemence his own skills, his own ability to unearth a solution to the present dilemma. For centuries, the members of the Watchers' Council to which he'd lately belonged and--he supposed--now belonged again had studied little beyond demons and that ways by which one defeated them. Centuries of scholarship, endeavor, philosophy, the greater part of which might be boiled down to a very few words: that the potency of the demon drawn to a human host in the unholy act of Turning seemed, to quite a large degree, dependent on the host him--or her (he must admit that his mind shied away from the thought of HER)--self. An inferior human drew a lesser fiend, while the clever, the resourceful, the talented, the strong, seemed to attract demons of superior mettle.

His mind's eye supplied Giles with a vision of Moira, fourteen-year-old Moira--tall, fierce, indomitable Em--turning toward him. How her green eyes flashed, even in the low light of London's disused Underground.

"There's NOTHING that frightens me, Ripper," her voice rang in his ears. "There's NOTHING that will get the best of me."

"My God," Giles breathed. The voice, and the vision seemed so real, so terribly, unshakably real. His usual talent for seeing his way out of most situations, for finding patterns that another might not detect seemed to have forsaken him entirely. Giles felt used up, useless, helpless, as if the dead, demon-haunted woman who'd been his friend had somehow contained within herself the larger part of his strength.

Giles pulled off his glasses entirely, propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands, knowing he must fight back this wave of despair even as its weight and its force bowled him over. Lord, he was tired. He was frustrated.

His heart hurt him.

Another image followed the first, again of Em as a girl, tense and upright in her summer frock and oversized leather jacket. Seeing her so, it struck Giles, in an odd way (for on the surface they seemed nothing alike) how much she reminded him of Buffy, or Buffy of Em. Visions of the two women, his past lover and present love, overlay the pages as he straightened once more, trying to read crabbed, ancient script that made little sense even when one felt fresh and focused.

Now he felt only too clearly the unwavering gazes of green eyes, and blue. He owed them both. He owed them a duty, and he must not let them down.

"How could you allow this, Rupert?" Moira appeared to say. "How could you fail me so?"

But it had been Em who'd run, breaking their protective ring, bringing calamity upon them. If only she'd stayed. If only, somehow, he had managed to stop her. If...

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Giles sighed again. He'd done enough wishing in his life, and except for certain recent, seemingly miraculous occurrences, most of his wishes had come to nothing at all. To less than nothing. Often they'd seemed to twist back upon themselves, spreading poison where he'd hoped for joy. Moira, his image of her at least, appeared to understand this, and expect nothing.

Buffy, on the other hand, regarded Giles only with hope and trust, her luminous gaze telling him, "Giles, you'll make everything okay." He wondered, truly, where she'd acquired such faith in him--heaven knew he'd let her down often enough.

"Hey." A soft hand touched his shoulder and Giles startled violently, ejected abruptly from his half-dreaming state. "You look like you lost your dog and your best friend on the same day. If your dog wasn't your best friend. They were separate, I mean. You know."

"Buffy." Giles raised his face to see her smiling sleepily down at him--that familiar, plucky smile that said she was worried, weary, and yet--against all odds--determined to persevere.

"That's me," she said softly. Her hand sought his, curling round his fingers, until he turned her palm upright, bending a little to kiss the gleaming gold of Buffy's engagement band, his gift to her, then laying his cheek inside the warm hollow. "Giles, you really do look miserable. What did you find, some big letters that said, 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here?'"

Giles laughed softly. "My love, you constantly amaze me."

"What?" Buffy laughed too. "I saw it in a movie. But it's really some book-thing, right?"

"I never know WHAT you know, dearest," he answered, "When you're in earnest or when you're feigning ignorance. Sometimes I suspect that you're aware of far more than you let on."

"Ha, thought I'd fooled you." With the persistence of a stubborn kitten demanding attention, Buffy insinuated herself into his lap, the slight weight of her body curling so snugly against him Giles could not bear to put her off again. "Don't tell--I need to preserve my image as Sunnydale's number one airhead."

"My lips are sealed," Giles told her, brushing them against Buffy's own lips, the merest exhalation of her breath going into him as their soft curves parted. Her fingers stroked the back of his neck in a familiar, beloved gesture, and Giles could not help but run his own hand over the curve of her hip, down one thigh, until Buffy shivered lightly, pressing closer still. She began to giggle, stifling the sound of her laughter against his throat, the vibration of it going through him until Giles all but forgot his earlier sense of utter loss.

"What is it?" he asked, quite wanting to laugh himself--though whether because her mirth was contagious, or from near-hysteria, he could not be sure.

"My..." Buffy gasped. "My...mom's face...when you couldn't find..."

"Oh, yes, ha-ha, very amusing." Giles knew in an instant what she'd thought of, and Joyce's expression had been nearly priceless, in an almost unbearably humiliating sort of way.

"When you couldn't find your pants!" Buffy dissolved completely into her laughter, then after long moments finally controlled herself, giving Giles a look of such specious solemnity that he could not help but laugh in turn. Buffy's look changed then, and she laid a hand against his chest, regarding him as if she could not hear, but only read his emotions by touch. When at last his own chuckles subsided, Buffy's serious look had turned real.

"Buffy, what is it?" he asked.

"I'm remembering you laughing," she answered softly. "For later. In case."

Giles gave her a look, brows raised.

"Just in case," Buffy told him. "But it will be okay. You'll see. You and me--we'll find the answer, same as always."

Giles questioned the grammar of that statement, but the sentiment went straight to his heart, so much so that his throat constricted with emotion, tightening even more so as Buffy laid her head, lovingly, trustingly, upon his shoulder.

Giles could not find words to answer her at all, he could only hold her tightly in his arms, taking strength from her strength, and courage from her bravery.

"Okay, so you may think I don't have any right to talk, but it was a dumb thing to do," Joyce told the unmoving figure in the high bed in what Buffy would have called a "mom-voice"--or maybe a "mom in lecture-mode voice."

"I mean," she continued, "How does it solve things? A--it didn't work. B--here you are, worse off than before. C--I hope you don't think I'm being selfish, but you completely WRECKED my car, and I'm a single parent with a seven hundred fifty dollar insurance deductible. I bet you didn't think of that, did you?"

The figure in the bed didn't answer, not that Joyce really expected her to. It didn't even move, not so much as an eyelid-flutter. The woman was so quiet--too quiet, really, to be a living person. She looked like one of those creepy waxworks instead, something pretending to be real, but not, really. Maybe someone pretending to be sleeping, whose eyes would open suddenly and not be a person's eyes: confused, hurt, lost, but something nightmarish and horrible.

Only...

Only, she was a person, just a person. An injured person, and maybe one who'd been hurting, even before the accident (that being more of what in Buffy-speak might be called an "on purpose") more than Joyce could remember ever hurting in her life. And she'd hurt pretty badly, once or twice, last summer being the prime example.

Last summer when you didn't do anything, said a traitorous voice in her head. Last summer when you just sat back and blamed Rupert, while you let him do all the traveling and searching and hoping-against-hope.

Joyce shifted in the yellow vinyl hospital chair, trying to dislodge those disturbing thoughts from her mind. Okay, they might be true, but what had been done couldn't be undone. Not now, not ever. It couldn't even be atoned for, not really. All she could do was go on from this point with as much grace and dignity as she could pull together. What more could anyone do?

Joyce shook her head and reached out to curl her fingers around the too-still, bandaged hand, feeling the long, fine fingers even through the bulky gauze. She imagined the woman as an artist, a pianist, maybe. Maybe someone too sensitive for this world, someone who couldn't get used to slogging along through all the bad parts the way other people did.

She studied the hand, trying not to move it too much, in case its owner might somehow wake up and feel. The nails were broken off, purple in their beds, and a series of angry bruises marked the few bare sections of the woman's arms, throat, and face. They'd had to cut off her hair, and her eyes, even if she'd been conscious, were so swollen Joyce didn't think they'd have been able to open anyway.

The woman's chest rose and fell almost too slowly to see. Joyce found herself watching closely to make sure she was still breathing at all--somehow she couldn't let herself look away. It scared her to think that the breathing might suddenly stop, that she'd be left holding the hand of a corpse without even knowing it.

Which was, as Buffy might also say, just dumb. The nurses had hooked this poor woman up to monitors that kept track of everything--even her urine was measured, for God's sake, which seemed, somehow, like a final indignity.

What could it matter? She was going to die. What could such a little, personal thing matter to anyone?

"You probably didn't think that, though, did you?" Joyce said to her unmoving companion. "You just thought you'd be free--there'd be a bright light and nothing would hurt anymore."

Joyce raised her hand to lightly stroke one bruised cheek. "Honey, I'm sorry, but I don't think it works that way. And it's not worth it. Even when things hurt so bad, it's not worth it. Good things can still happen to you."

The woman's breathing faltered and began again, and a tear slipped slowly down from beneath one closed lid. They'd taped her eyes shut with whitish, transparent tape, and that, too, seemed somehow wrong to Joyce, even if it was for the patient's own good. It made her seem both more vulnerable and less human. But she had people, somewhere, who knew and loved her--or HAD known and loved her. Her personal possessions had been locked up for safekeeping, but Joyce remembered seeing a ring on her left hand, a funny, old-fashioned engagement right, the kind someone's grandmother or great-grandmother might have worn--and maybe that's who the ring once belonged to, maybe this woman really had no one left, and that's why she'd done it, because the loneliness had eaten away at her until she couldn't take any more.

Joyce felt her own loneliness sink its teeth into her heart, and before she knew it she was telling this motionless, unconscious non-woman all about her life, about Buffy and Hank and Rupert, stories that probably would have gotten her locked up in the loony bin if anyone had heard. But no one heard. The only sounds in the room were the sounds of her own voice and the faint dull hiss of the oxygen. The only light came from the monitors, and from the one small bulb above the patient's head.

They might have been the only two people left in the world.

Celeste had never liked small planes, and the puddle-jumper--or, really, desert-jumper one might say with more precision--that had flown the two of them from Los Angeles to Sunnydale was, Sebastian knew, no exception. She'd sat silent at his side for the entire distance, her posture erect, her face composed to a Madonna's thoughtfulness--that had always been one of the ways she concealed her fear.

He ought to have hired a car and driven them, Sebastian told himself, but Celeste had insisted.

"It's quickest, Bastian," she'd argued, with one of those fierce, determined expressions that brooked no argument, and so, of course, Sebastian had agreed. He'd learned from experience not to contradict his wife when she insisted upon anything--that was a fight one could not expect to win. The average Lord of Hell was infinitely more persuadable, and he himself knew of no particular spells equal to the determination of a single-minded woman.

Still, since she would not do it for herself, he'd breathed a sigh of relief on Celeste's behalf when the tiny craft set down on Sunnydale's one postage-stamp-sized runway.

The taxi-driver who'd collected them at the small terminal hadn't reacted to the sight of Sebastian's pectoral cross, an item he'd rarely worn before, except in the course of his duties. Celeste had given him a look, one eyebrow raised, but Sebastian only shook his head in response and she'd said nothing. In this town on the Hellmouth all precautions seemed prudent, no measure of caution too extreme.

Once safely on the ground, Celeste's attitude changed to one of nonchalance, but Sebastian felt his own apprehension grow. He'd heard enough from his father to make him suspicious of every face he saw, to make him distrust his own instincts of what was wholesome and what quite the reverse. Deep down, though he hesitated to admit the truth, he feared what lay beneath the guise of those smooth American faces.

"Settle down, Bastian," his wife told him with sleepy good humour as they took their places side by side in the back of the taxi. She leaned against his shoulder as the driver stowed the last of their cases in the boot, coming round to the front left door.

He was quite the blandest-looking man Sebastian had ever seen, the very innocuousness and unremarkable quality of all his features nearly enough to make Seb untrusting. He gave Celeste a questioning look and she laughed at him softly.

"You've seen too many movies, Bastian."

And perhaps that was the truth. Perhaps he had merely seen an excess of American films with mild-mannered villains. He gave is wife a non-committal smile, unable to shake off his case of apprehension.

Celeste nestled more securely against him, slipping her fine, strong hands round his arm as she called out the address of their destination. He hadn't thought she'd agreed with his plans, but maybe she was just worn out, ready to give in to this at least, to sensibly save her strength until it was truly needed. Tonight they'd sleep in the relative comfort of the Holiday Inn--once Sebastian had warded their room securely, that was--and tomorrow they'd seek out Rupert's flat.

Tomorrow would be soon enough. Sebastian sighed soundlessly, unable to quite suppress a pang of guilt. He slumped in his seat, resting his cheek against Celeste's tight, silken curls, slipping one arm behind her, whilst the other circled her chest.

He felt quite unlike himself--but then he had done since his dad and Buffy first came to London. Here on their home territory, however, it came over Sebastian how strangely innocent he was, how naive and feckless and gormless, a proverbial babe lost in the wood. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that he ought to seek out his father at once, to make his presence known and offer his aid, but the truth was he wanted to pretend, just for a little longer, that this was only another small town in America, that nothing untoward would befall them here, and that underneath their feet lay nothing but earth and stone--or possibly, at the worst, some deeply-buried faultline.

Certainly, by no stretch of the imagination, could these quiet streets with their bungalows and palm trees, pave over the mouth of hell.

"It's all right, Bastian." Celeste stroked his arm softly. Her childhood accent, liltingly musical, came out more strongly in her sleepiness--to his ears, the most enchanting sound on earth.

"It will all be quite all right, my love," she added. "You'll see."

Sebastian sighed, wishing that he possessed enough voice to agree with her aloud, no matter how he suspected that his own words to be lies.