Tribulations - Chapter 47

A sensible girl with her feet on the ground--that elusive someone the late Principal Flutie had once urged Buffy to be--would have just checked to make sure all the doors were locked, then gone straight to bed. Willow suspected that she ought to have her head examined, because by any rational standard enough should have been enough. All magic and no sleep make Willow looney tunes.

Only it wasn't that easy. The whole time the taxi driver had been taking her home from the hospital, she'd been thinking about magic, craving it, the way she craved chocolate when she had PMS, only about a million times worse. When the driver finally got to her house, Willow overpaid him because she couldn't stand to wait for the change she had coming, and shot straight up the path to the front door.

Once inside, she didn't even bother to lock up behind her. In fact, she barely even glanced to make sure the door had shut all the way. Before she even knew what she was doing her hands were full of candles, and she was running up the stairs, mentally inventorying her stock of herbs on the way.

At which point she stopped. Right at the top of the stairs. With her good-girl-Willow voice clamoring in her head, "What do you think you're doing? Are you crazy?"

"Shut up and stop Jiminy Cricketing me," Willow told it, trying to put on a brave face and pretend that sounding so much like black-leather-vamp-ho-Willow didn't scare her even a little. And why should it? That wasn't her. Or she wasn't she. Something like that, anyway.

Willow giggled to herself, and found that she was kneeling in the center of her bedroom, with the candles lighted all around her. She had no memory of gathering any ingredients, or of digging in the back of her closet for the big Danish sugar cookie tin where she kept the more volatile of her magic stuff--but there everything was, burning merrily away in the nice little brazier she'd bought at The Magic Box's Vernal Equinox Clearance Sale.

Only maybe merrily wasn't exactly the word she wanted. Stinkily might be more accurate, though it was kind of neat the way the smoke started turning purple and green the minute it spilled over the brazier's patterned bronze lip. The smoke didn't disperse, either, but even though her room filled up quickly, Willow found that she could still breathe. She could breathe better, in fact, because something in the smoke made her feel wonderful. It was like breathing pure magic, like she was filling up with a power she'd never dreamed of possessing.

It was alos like watching a movie in a darkened theater: she could see something, a whole world's worth of something, in the not too distant distance. Someone waited there for her, smiling at her, welcoming her and making her feel complete in a way she'd never experienced before, or even expected to experience. She had family, sure. Friends. Good friends, even. People she loved a lot.

Not like this, though. This was just...indescribable. Whatever waited for her out there would never hurt her or ignore her or...betray her. She'd never thought of that before, but she'd been betrayed, hadn't she? Betrayed and used and held back. Still, despite that realization, she found herself smiling, reaching out into that far off place, feeling the tentative brush of something amazing against her fingertips.

Crying out in ecstasy, she reached out farther and farther, until finally, just as she'd hoped, the something caught hold of her hands.

Buffy had made it most of the way through her story before she drifted off--or at least Joyce thought she'd heard nearly the complete version. Naturally, she believed her daughter's story. She pretty much had to, given the number of similar events she'd witnessed with her own eyes over the past few years.

Sometimes, when she first woke up, she liked to pretend to herself that science had all the answers, magic didn't work and the only monsters out there were human ones, who might even be cured with the proper treatment.

Last night, she hadn't slept at all, and so she hadn't been able to fool herself even for a minute. Eventually she'd made her way down to the living room, turned on the TV to the Weather Channel for the sheer, normal monotony of the eternally droning voices, and turned the pages of a number of magazines, all of which might have been written in ancient Greek by people who didn't know how to spell, for all got out of their contents. Eventually, she got up, dressed herself without even checking to see if the outfit matched, and returned to the shelter of the couch, peering out between the blinds at the morning sunlight.

When Buffy finally put in a rumpled, puffy eyed-appearance sometime around noon, Joyce was relieved. Not so much because she'd been worried--though of course that went with the territory--but because she felt as if she hadn't had a single coherent thought in the past ten hours.

"Uhn." Buffy dropped down onto the opposite end of the sofa.

"That bad?"

Buffy gave her a look that said, fairly expressively, "Duh."

"Can I get you anything? Juice? Coffee? Toast?" Joyce caught herself smiling. "It's the mom solution: when in doubt, offer food."

Buffy gave her a different look, one that tore at Joyce's heart. Help me, it pleaded, Find me a way out of this--even though all Buffy said aloud was, "Coffee would be nice."

"Coffee it is." Joyce jumped to her feet, hurrying to the kitchen, her thoughts suddenly racing at quadruple speed, even as her hands went through the familiar, comforting motions of measuring and pouring.

Say the right thing, some perfectly rational-sounding part of her brain told her. Say the right thing and you can keep her for at least a little while longer. You'll be doing her a favor, really. She's too young for any of this. She shouldn't be making commitments, certainly not with him. Let her have fun, meet college boys, enjoy life on her own...

The Mr. Coffee burped and hissed, startling Joyce so much that she took an involuntary step back from the counter, her hands going up as if she meant to try out a few Kung Fu moves.

Oh, yes, she could try that one on Buffy, maybe even make it all sound like she meant everything for her daughter's benefit. But that wouldn't be the truth, would it? She'd be lying and manipulating, following right in her mother's footsteps, no matter how many times she'd promised herself that she'd never, never, never treat her own child that way.

Shaken, she watched the brown liquid stream into the carafe until the machine gave a final hiccup and stopped. Her hands shook as she filled two mugs, adding a little blue packet of Equal to hers and a disgusting amount of sugar to Buffy's.

When she got back to the living room, Buffy hadn't moved, though she did glance up as Joyce placed her mug on the coffee table. "Thanks," she murmured, and Joyce forced a smile.

"Nice and sticky, the way you like it."

Buffy took a cautious sip. "Whoa! That's some strong coffee, Mom."

Joyce sampled her own cup. Strong didn't begin to describe it. She set down the mug, half afraid the witch's brew might start to eat its way through the porcelain.

Buffy tried another swallow.

"Honestly, honey," Joyce assured her, "You don't have to drink it. I can try again."

"I kinda like it, actually." Buffy managed a flicker of a smile. "Though if you have any left over, I might take it with me on patrol tonight. You may have discovered a new weapon, Mom."

"Forget Holy Water!" Joyce found herself dissolving into giggles. "Try Joyce's coffee instead! The choice of Slayers everywhere."

"Yeah, we should probably inform the Watchers' Council." Buffy's breathing changed, as if she was suddenly trying very hard not to cry.

"You know..." Joyce began. "I've been thinking..."

Buffy's expression said don't clearly enough, but she didn't interrupt.

"Your dreams, visions, whatever they were..." She cleared her throat nervously. "Buffy, I noticed--that is, I think I noticed... You were always convinced that you'd done something wrong, that you'd had to give up something, and the Buffy in the vision..."

Buffy's eyes rose; her gaze sharpened.

"It seemed to me that the Buffy you told me about, the Buffy who did those things that frightened you...she didn't know."

"Know?" Buffy echoed, her voice quiet and tense.

"It just sounded as if she didn't remember, as if--maybe--the things that happened this summer hadn't happened to her." Joyce gasped, suddenly feeling as if she'd run a mile. "But G--umn, Rupert--he knew. Right? He knew?"

Buffy's entire face tightened, a clear indication that she was very close to letting her mother have it with both barrels--but then all the fight drained out of her. She sank back into the sofa cushions, seeming to become very interested in the carpet pattern. "He still sent me away," she muttered.

"Did he?"

"He told me to come here," Buffy insisted stubbornly, all the while twisting the ring on her left hand.

"And you can't think of any reason Rupert might have done that, except that he doesn't love you anymore?"

"You don't get it, Mom. Weird stuff happened. Is happening. Will happen." Buffy snatched up a throw pillow and hugged it to her chest. "You weren't there."

"No, honey, I wasn't," Joyce agreed. "But I do know it isn't like you to give up. Last night you were frightened and tired and confused. Don't you think that Rupert might sometimes have those same feelings? You told me that he just...vanished for a while. How can you be so sure about everything when you don't even know where he went to, or what happened there?"

"Well, yeah," Buffy answered. "But don't you know--he's not like that. He doesn't let things get to him like...oh, and I can't even believe I said that." Buffy smacked herself on the side of the head, apparently a little too hard--she winced and rubbed the spot. "God, Mom, if I keep on like this I'm gonna make all the stuff I'm scared of come true, and little hedgehoggy demony guy will just kinda be saying, 'Huh? What happened here?'" She put the pillow back in its place, smoothing the wrinkles in its cover. "So...tell me, Mom. Where'd you get so smart?"

"Oh, in Mom School," Joyce answered, with a straight face. She had thought she'd feel worse about doing the right thing, but she didn't. Really, it was almost as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, or as if she and Buffy had finally sailed their leaky little boat out of a storm and into calmer seas.

Buffy managed a tentative little smile. "You know, I kinda like this. Us. Talking. We might even get used to it."

"We might--although I believe we're scheduled to do a lot of fighting for the next five years or so."

Buffy sighed. "How 'bout if we just skip that part? Life's too short."

Oh, I hope not, I hope not, Joyce thought fervently--although she made herself smile. "I agree. Can I interest you in some breakfast now? Maybe some waffles?"

"Don't think I'm not tempted, but...you know... I gotta..." Buffy had already reached the door.

"Go," Joyce said, shaking her head, still holding onto her smile. "But call me, will you?"

"I'll call." She paused with her hand on the doorknob. "I really mean it, Mom. I'll call."

"Then go, for heaven's sake," Joyce told her, keeping her voice light.

Buffy had already gone, and the house felt darker without her presence, huge and echoing in a way Joyce would never have thought possible in a place she'd always thought of as snug and homey. She curled up, resting her head on the pillow Buffy had been holding, feeling small and lost and alone.

C'mon, Joyce, snap out of it, she told herself. There are things you could be doing, people you could see. Go to the gallery, there's always something to do there.

She would, she promised herself. Soon. Any minute now. Just not yet.

Buffy had no patience with the Citroen at the best of times, and right now, when she was in a tearing hurry, she could have gladly ripped it apart into its component nuts and bolts and bits of rusty metal. The thing was out to get her. It really was. The gears, cranky even when Giles was driving, whined, screeched and sometimes refused to change altogether, leaving her in the middle of the road with the evil little car bouncing up and down like the world's most pathetic lowrider.

"Junkyard," she muttered at it. "Welding torch. Crowbar." Did cars ever get possessed, like the one in that Stephen King book? If they did, the Citroen had to be a candidate.

In fact, she was so busy fighting it that she nearly drove right by Giles's place. As usual, there was a space by the entrance--Giles's building wasn't what you'd call densely populated. Either that, or he used some sort of tricky warding spell to protect his favorite parking spot.

After another five minutes of intense struggle, she even managed to get the Citroen into its space. She'd rather have fought a vampire any day. Or two. Three, even.

The nervous feeling tried to come crawling back into her stomach as she clattered up the up steps and down the down steps. The plant outside Giles's door had finally given up the ghost once and for all, every last one of its sad little shrivelly needles having littered the tile around the plant stand--she'd have to remember to toss the poor thing out, not to mention giving Giles a hard time for causing its demise.

Okay, admit it, Buffy, she said to herself. You're stalling. You know you're stalling. Just go in already.

She didn't knock--but then, she'd hardly ever knocked, and neither had any of the other Scoobies. Her key was already in her hand, but she was having the hardest time putting it into the lock. Not that it didn't fit. She was just scared. Nervous. Whatever.

"Stop it," she hissed at herself, rammed the key into the lock and turned it, pushing open the door at the same time.

Hot air gusted out at her. Oh great, Buffy muttered to herself. He's not here. He's not here and he forgot to turn the A/C on again, so it's gonna be about 900 degrees inside. Which it was. One of these days Giles was actually going to remember that he lived in California, not England, and that even an hour without air conditioning turned his place into a giant oven. At least she'd dressed for the heat in shorts and a tank top.

Buffy hurried over to the thermostat, sliding the little lever all the way down to fifty degrees. That done, she wondered what she should do for a follow up. Write a note? Wait? Write a note, then go wait in the courtyard?

She was on her way to the kitchen for the notepad and pencil that Giles always kept in the top drawer beneath the electric teakettle-thingie, when something caught at her--not physically, but a weird feeling. A not-alone feeling.

Buffy turned slowly, not sure if it was her Slayer Spidey-sense warning her of danger, or something else--but cautious anyway. In Sunnydale, it was definitely better to come down on the side of caution.

"Hello?" she called out. "Anybody there?"

No one answered, but then she'd half expected that. Danger usually came in two forms: the kind that jumped out at you and the kind that like to gloat first. Whatever had caught her attention wasn't the gloaty type, apparently.

"Yup, it's me, the Slayer," she said, making herself sound bored. "I have stuff to do, so if you're gonna attack me, could you just bring it on, like, now?"

Still no answer. Great. So, she was looking at a subgroup of type A: monsters that liked to play hide-and-seek before they jumped out at her. Well, for once she wasn't playing. It--or they--could just wait.

Until she got her weapons, anyway. She helped herself to Giles's weapons chest--an axe and a couple of stakes later, she'd started to get impatient. "Come. Out. Now," she said. "We both know how this is gonna end, so let's just get if over with, 'kay?"

With a sigh, she leaned the axe against one end of the couch, wondering if Giles had any good magazines--which was to say, had she left any good magazines behind before they went to England? Otherwise she'd be stuck leafing through the weird language and archaeology journals that Giles called light reading (though she had been amused to discover he subscribed to a motorcycle magazine--or motorbike, as Giles would say--amused and encouraged: maybe she wouldn't be stuck driving the Citroen for another ten years after all). Their research from the de-Hellmouthing project still covered everything, but she thought she spied the corner of a copy of Jane, that she'd started back in June but hadn't finished yet, poking out from beneath a pile of notes.

Buffy had just started to reach for the magazine, when she realized why she hadn't felt alone. Giles was there after all, sprawled on the carpet face down, almost as if he'd been thrown there. Her hand froze in mid-air, and her voice seemed to be frozen with it, while her brain ran busily through a list of possibilities: he was sleeping; he was passed out...

He's resting between push-ups, she told herself snidely. Right, Buffy. She wanted to panic, but she wouldn't let that happen. Instead, she forced herself to kneel beside him on the carpet. Up close, she could tell he was breathing, so that was okay, that was good. But just barely breathing. Which wasn't good at all.

"Giles," Buffy called softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. The heat of his skin struck her at once, even through his shirt--too much heat than even the un-air conditioned apartment could explain. His pulse was all over the place, too fast, too strong, too unsteady. She rolled him over to his side, his body moving limply at her touch. "Giles!" she said, louder this time. His lips moved a little, but whether it was because he'd tried to answer her, or for some other reason entirely, Buffy couldn't have said.

She rested her hand on his forehead, feeling the appalling heat again, and the dryness of his skin. Not good. None of this was good.

"You," she told him, "Are in soooo much trouble. You send me away, and this is how I find you?"

Giles gasped, and she heard a sound that might have been her name. Part of her name anyway. And something else that might have been "too much."

Buffy bent close. "I'm here," she said. "Too much what?"

Giles was struggling, shaking with effort, his eyes open to red slits. "The wine. Willow."

"What about Willow?" Buffy asked. "Can she help you? Should I bring her here?"

"Lost," Giles answered, shuddering. "All...lost."

Buffy sat back on her heels. Now, what the hell did that mean?