Tribulations - Chapter 45

The silence inside the Citroen just got thicker and thicker, until Buffy almost felt as if she could see it: like one of those pea-soupy London fogs that showed up in old black-and-white movies-- just before the helpless heroine got jumped by a werewolf. Or Jack the Ripper.

Maybe she wasn't helpless, but Buffy sure wished she knew what was going on here. She certainly felt as if she'd been jumped on and caught by surprise.

"Hey, that was really something, wasn't it?" She hated the way her voice sounded, high-pitched and babbley. "The thing with Seb and Willow, I mean. Did you see that coming?

All she got from Giles was one of his über-distant "hmn" sounds. His face was turned toward the window, away from her. Sneaking a peek, she could make out his reflection in the glass, but it didn't even look like him, not really. It looked all gaunt and hollow-eyed. Skull-like. And kind of like Giles himself, it wasn't telling her anything.

"Guess we'll be doing some research, huh? Hitting the books? Figuring out what's the what?"

If anything, the quietude just got thicker. At this point, it must have been about the consistency of chocolate pudding. On the other hand, her perky act had started to feel a little watered-down.

"Buffy," Giles said, after about nine million years. "I believe it might be best for you to go home to your mother's house, for the present."

Buffy's jaw actually dropped. For a minute it seemed like a ten ton weight had dropped splat onto her head, then the meaning of what he'd said to her caught up with the words, and her eyes started stinging. No, burning. She knew she was going to cry. She knew it. But somehow she didn't.

It's happening already. It's happening! hysterical-Buffy-voice screamed in her head. Numbly, she realized her fingers were actually denting the Citroen's steering wheel. Well, he'd have that to remember her by.

"That's what you want?" She didn't even sound like herself. Her voice sounded fake--a RoboBuffy voice. "Giles, why?"

They'd already reached his building. Mechanically, Buffy found herself setting the brake, shifting to park with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else.

"Keep the car, for the present," Giles answered. His voice sounded flat, and he looked really, really tired. Worried, too.

Don't push me away, she wanted to plead with him. Tell me what's up. Tell me where I fit in. If something's happened to make us over, I deserve to know about it.

Instead, she found herself repeating, "If that's what you want."

Giles fumbled for the door handle, finding it on about the fifth try. He unfolded himself from the passenger seat--which always looked awkward, no matter how many times she'd seen him do it. She'd never quite gotten why a guy his height would buy such a teeny car. The door slammed behind him, and then Giles was gone, half-staggering toward his apartment. The way he was navigating, he looked like a drunk with a concussion. Maybe that was it, after all. Maybe he'd gotten whacked on the head for, like, the zillionth time, and for some reason he'd decided to play the strong, silent type.

She almost got out of the Citroen to follow him, but then the fear grabbed her again and she just couldn't move. All this time, she'd been thinking the price she'd have to pay for her bargain was something she herself had to give up, but maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe...

Buffy realized that the front of her shirt was all wet: she'd been crying after all, without realizing it. She knew she ought to swing by the hospital, to check on Celeste, and see how Seb was handling things. To make sure Xander was doing all right.

She couldn't, though. The impulse to go to ground was just too strong. Blindly, she drove to Revello Drive, rattled to a stop behind her mom's SUV and escaped inside through the back door.

Joyce was sitting at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and a magazine.

"Buffy!" she exclaimed, but Buffy hardly heard her. She pounded up the stairs to her old room, rushing through the door as if a pack of demons was chasing her.

Then, there wasn't anything else to do. She stood in the center of the carpet, gasping and sobbing, surrounded by a world where everything looked frilly and girly and small. A world she'd literally outgrown. She felt caught there, knowing she couldn't really go back there, but not knowing how to move forward, either. In the back of her head, she thought she heard a dry little laugh.

The best thing might be to get her stuff together, head out into the dark and kick some undead booty, working off all these doubts and fears with a couple hours of righteous pummeling. She stared at her trunk, knowing that the tools of her trade waited just beneath the top tray. Make like the Slayer, she told herself. Are you just gonna stand there sniveling?

Sniveling. How was that for a Giles word? Somehow all it took was that one little thought to make drain away the last of her momentum, leaving her with nothing but gray, squashed, hopelessness. She barely had the energy to kick off her shoes, much less do anything about her torn and dusty clothing. Despite everything, she'd been happy. Really for the first time she could remember since she was a little kid. She'd felt safe and protected and loved. No doubts. No uncertainties. Just loved.

Was that all a lie? How mentally challenged was she, that she'd believed it? What was wrong with her, that a guy she loved so much would push her away like that, the same way Angel had pushed her away?

Buffy crawled under the covers just as she was, curled up as small as she could beneath their shelter, and let the misery take her.

It's the bargain, she told herself. You promised, and this is what you get. How do you like it?

Buffy buried her face in the pillow. She'd never liked anything less.

As far as Willow could tell, she'd never felt less comfortable in her life. In ways that had nothing to do with the molded plastic torture device that Sunnydale General called a waiting-room chair.

When Oz caught her kissing Xander, that had been bad. Finding out about Xander and Faith was worth a few million tears. Awkward as those times had been, though, on a scale of things that could happen to any teenager, they pretty much rated a big yawn. Ho-hum, nothing new. That kind of stuff, or variations thereof, took place every day.

For sheer, cringeworthy weirdness, though, the events of the past few hours took the proverbial cake. It was bad enough that she couldn't even look Wesley in the face. And that she herself had morphed into some sort of Amazonian, Willow-the-Warrior-Princess goddess-type person. No, she'd had to go farther than that--no half ways for Willow Rosenberg.

She'd had smoochies with a married guy. A priest. A married priest. Yikes. If that wasn't enough, she'd made magic happen. Big bad magic. Magic that should have been so far beyond her, her head should have exploded. Or something.

Willow shuddered. The thing was, she wanted to do it again. Maybe even needed to do it again. Giles would have had something to say about that. Probably something pretty harsh, because he tended to come down on her like a ton of bricks when she tried to push the envelope on the heavier magics. Like he should talk.

She hung her head, frowning at the toes of her sneakers, trying to push the bad thoughts away. Giles he had education and training she'd barely scratched the surface of, plus he'd been through the wars, so to speak. If he tried to hold her back sometimes, she knew that it was because he'd been there, done that. He loved her and worried about her, and he didn't want her to get hurt. If we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it, and all that.

So, Giles should talk, and she should listen. But that wasn't going to happen, was it? She'd made sure of that, or at least the goddess had. Really, Willow wasn't sure which one of them was which, half the time. She'd known what was going on when the vines grew, and she knew now what it meant to taste their fruit. At the time, she'd used the little bit of free will left to her to justify it all: Giles was knowledge guy. He'd want everything that the wine could give him. She was helping him and Buffy. She was doing the right thing.

But she remembered Giles's face as she'd left him behind--hurrying, really, to go with Wes, so that she wouldn't have to see any more. He'd looked blind and lost, not that much different from the way he'd looked when the Wild Magic stripped everything away from him. He'd looked sick, too, and Willow knew that's what the wine really did: it carried a virus, a wicked strong virus, that spread everywhere through your body and somehow worked to open up a conduit, transferring arcane lore at an enormous rate from who-knew-where. Not only would Giles's body be trying to deal with that, his brain would be working desperately to process the huge load of information dumped into it.

Amazing what her LeFayeness taught her: an explanation for everything, and everything in its place. Too bad the explanation didn't have some stats to go with it--such as what happened if the virus got out of hand, or the subject's brain couldn't catch up.

Willow moaned. God, what had she done? How could she ever explain it to Buffy? Sure, she could take the easy way out and fake a case of total amnesia, pretend she hadn't had any idea what went on, make sure Buffy really knew.

Lie to her best friend. Yeah, that would be a nice, trust-building thing to do.

Willow didn't think the "It seemed like a good idea at the time" excuse was exactly going to fly, either. She moaned, wishing that she could just turn back the hands of time about thirty-six hours, and have everything semi-normal again.

"Willow?" said a lovely, civilized Gilesish voice right above her.

Willow's head jerked up, so that her neck made a nice, loud cracking sound, and she nearly spilled the paper cup of tea Sebastian was offering her. "Oh. Sorry. Seb. Hi."

Sebastian gave her a look, all sea-green eyes and one raised eyebrow, so totally Giles-like Willow wanted to cry. Instead, she took the cup from his hand. She was going to have to hide stuff from Seb, too. "How's Celeste?" she asked, stalling.

"Resting comfortably. They've had one of the plastic-surgery specialists to see her. To...er...to minimize the scar. Most likely, she'll be discharged tomorrow."

"That's good, then. Great." Willow fixed her eyes on the fire extinguished mounted on the opposite wall. "I bet... I bet, you'll hardly be able to notice. When it's healed, I mean."

God, she thought, Way to show sympathy, Will. The man's wife almost died, and you're babbling about scar tissue?

With a sigh, Sebastian lowered himself into the chair beside her, his eyes widening at the sheer lack of comfort as he squirmed around, trying to find some position that didn't either kill his back or make him feel like he was about to shoot out onto the floor.

"Give it up," Willow said. "It's hopeless."

Sebastian settled for perching on the very edge. "Willow, I... That is... Good Lord, this is difficult."

"Ditto," Willow answered. Seb gave her a different look. One that said, "Huh?"

"Er... I'm sure that what happened tonight," Sebastian tried again, talking fast. "That is, the proximity of the Hellmouth, coupled with..." He sank his head into his hands. "Coupled. Dear God."

"Didn't happen," Willow told him.

"I beg your pardon?" Seb's look of surprise, too, was exactly Gilesian.

"It didn't happen. Nothing happened. We weren't there, only those...uh...avatar people."

Turning his head, Sebastian stared at her for a long time. "Is that what you felt, Willow?"

She lowered her voice. "Seb, I think you know better."

"Ah. Yes." He sighed. "Willow, have you thought...? What if it should happen again?"

Willow bent her head, sipped, and burned her tongue on the scalding-hot tea. She didn't look up again, just let her still-semi-frizzled hair fall forward, hiding her face as much as it could. "Sebastian, you know what it's like to be one of us. LeFaye. Has it...? I mean, do you always...?"

Seb waited patiently.

Willow tried again. "I'm talking about the magic. Can you get away from it sometimes, or is it always right there?"

"Willow, I thought you wanted that power," Sebastian answered. He had a sympathetic, Giles-like frown on his face.

Of course she wanted it. At first she'd just wanted to help Buffy. No harm in that. Later, she had to admit, she'd liked the way it made her feel special, powerful and mysterious, like having a wonderful secret, a strength she could turn on and off at will. Now, though...

Now she wasn't sure if she wanted the power, or the power wanted her.

They sat there side-by-side, staring at the really-not-interesting-at-all linoleum, until a nurse came to get her. Glad of some excuse to run from her problems, Willow went.

Sebastian lingered--no loitered, he supposed, would be the more accurate term--in the hospital corridor, knowing that he ought to return to Celeste's side, but feeling so conflicted, so torn within himself that he couldn't yet face her. Willow had long since gone, seeing to Xander's overnight admittance, he believed--and for that little mercy Seb found himself grateful.

The conversation with Willow had troubled him, Sebastian had to admit. He'd meant to approach her with an apology. His behavior, however unintended, had been unacceptable, and he'd wanted nothing more than to make his peace with the lovely young woman who was his father's friend--and now, he supposed, very nearly a member of his family.

Things hadn't exactly turned out that way, had they? Even as they'd spoken, he'd felt that other self move within him, its presence stirring in him the sort of desires that made men of earlier times become hairshirt-wearing hermits who practiced self-flagellation. Oh, yes, he'd sounded quite proper, very much the elder brother admonishing his young sister, but underneath...

Dear Lord. Sebastian tried to pray, but instead of the calm, the assurance, his faith had always brought to him, he felt instead the presence of that creature, that false god, that Pan, regarding him with cruel amusement.

You're giving him too much power, Sebastian told himself firmly. You let the door open to his presence, you can bloody well shut it up again.

He feared his own weaknesses. Perhaps he had not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he had certainly been adopted with one. All his life, there had been enough: beyond-decent food, excellent clothing, a fine house in the city and another, equally fine, in the country, in whichever part of the world that country had happened to lie. A bounty of education, a wealth of experience: travel, good company, intelligent conversation and the boundless love of his adoptive parents. At school he'd been popular and personable, excelling at both games and academics. Despite the difficulties of his work, he'd been almost unfailingly successful, and taken pride in the fact. He'd gained the deep affection of his natural father, the friendship of the woman who'd given him birth. Above all, he'd had Celeste, his strong, lovely, intelligent, flawless Celeste, with whom his life gained new levels of perfection.

And now... Sebastian sighed. Those who saw him with Rupert never failed to comment on their similarity, and yet...

He knew he'd been terribly lucky in life, unlike her father, who, it sometimes seemed, had suffered reverses at every turn. Most everything he'd experienced had come to him with relative ease, and he feared, deeply feared, that he lacked the grit to combat such an adversary. A foe outside oneself was clearly defined, an enemy within...something else entirely. Until he rooted out that alien, and yet only-too-familiar presence, he could not be what he'd been sent here to be.

He could not be a priest of God, and the loss of that identity wounded him, as he had seldom been wounded before.

He sought out the rank of telephones mounted on the corridor wall and, hands trembling, fumbled the calling card from its place in his wallet. The number he knew by heart, but his vision blurred so that he could hardly read the telephone's touchpad.

Sebastian realized that he'd begun to weep, and hoped that further proof of weakness would not show in his voice when his call was answered. The rings went out along the wire, accompanied by the echoes and disembodied voices that haunted most TransAtlantic calls. He half hoped that his call could not be answered. That, if only for a little while, he might be spared this conversation.

Instead, the familliar voice answered. Quiet, deep, full of consolation, the voice of a man he loved almost as a third father, and dreaded to disappoint.

"Your Grace," Sebastian began, and then found that he could not continue, that the tears had quite overwhelmed him. "Your Grace..." Somehow, sobbing and nearly incoherent with shame and grief, he managed to stumble through his story.

At the other end, only silence answered him.

He'd left the safe, shadowy, muted comfort of the flat behind him and hung in quite another place. A place of utter darkness, let filled with light and colour, if not illumination. A place that stretched on until infinity. A place where one burned, and was blind, and yet neither the burning nor the blindness mattered. Breathing was painful, well-nigh impossible, and still he hung in ecstasy.

Not since the days of his mis-spent youth had Giles experienced such a loss of himself, and at the same time such absolute pleasure. This flight, too, was freed from Eyghon's taint: the self-disgust, the fear and shame that always lay behind the demon's possessions. He felt returned to a state of innocence, a freedom he'd not known since the time of his earliest childhood, burned by a cleansing fire, drenched in the knowledge of the universe.

In the midst of all this, it never occurred to him to wonder if he would ever get out again.