Tribulations - Chapter 49

Buffy's feeling of complete despair lasted a total of ten minutes, which was the amount of time that passed before Wesley's discreet and somehow British knock sounded on the door. She flew across the room, not thinking until she'd flung the door open wide that maybe taking a second to check the peephole wasn't such a bad idea, all things considered. Lucky for her the people knocking really were people: Wes and Seb, just as she'd expected.

Wesley looked, as always, neat, pressed, a little prim and not a hair out of place. Sebastian had the general appearance of someone who'd spent the past week drinking questionable substances in demon bars. On the other hand, it beat hands down seeing him look like giant goat-god-guy.

"Bad night?" Buffy couldn't help but ask. Seb gave her a very Gilesian look of exasperation.

"Er...Buffy..." Wesley gestured, indicating the open door. Buffy frowned at him in confusion: what he was waiting for, an invitation?

Oh. Yikes. Of course. Buffy felt herself blush. "Umn...Sebastian, Wesley, won't you please come in?" She hoped she'd managed a good enough save that Wes wouldn't notice her bad manners. If not that, maybe he'd excuse her as having a seriously faulty memory. Which she did. At the moment, anyway.

"Thank you," Wesley said, apparently willing to let her little faux pas slide. He stepped inside, hung his suit jacket neatly on the coat tree, and began to roll up his sleeves.

Sebastian, on the other hand, hung back.

"C'mon, Seb. You too," Buffy told him.

Sebastian finally stepped in, but didn't look happy about it. His eyes had gone a weirdish shade of green, and he moved like someone afraid of setting off a land mine. Skittish, that was the word for it.

"What?" Buffy asked.

"Nothing." Sebastian shook his head, and seemed to snap back into focus. "Nothing. I thought... I thought I heard voices, that's all."

Buffy gave him a look, which Seb returned with an expression of totally Giles-like unreadability. As she tried to explain her theory about the Hellmouth badness getting sucked out of four people and squeezed onto one, she saw him being careful to not look in the direction of the sofa.

Wesley had discovered the wobbly mountain of notes on the table, and was going through them with the expression of a kid who'd just received a huge pile of primo comics for his birthday. Apparently, the ability to read by really dim candlelight must have been one of the special qualities the Council looked for in a Watcher, because Wes dug right in without even squinting. Maybe it was a Watcher super power.

Wesley glanced up as she was rambling to her conclusion.

"So..." Buffy trailed off. "Um, did I thank you guys for coming over?"

"I can certainly see how your theory might appear valid, Buffy," Wes told her gently, "But I'm afraid the literature speaks to the contrary." He set two pieces of paper side by side, running an index finger down one as his eyes jumped back and forth from page to page. "This is very interesting work, Delacoeur." Wesley looked up again. "Yours?"

"My own contributions were fairly modest," Seb answered. "It's my dad's, for the most part. Willow helped quite a bit, as well."

"Fascinating stuff." Wesley pulled out a chair and sat, lining up three more pieces of paper. "There's been a scarcity of material about the London Hellmouth, which I've always felt deserves further study. As, of course, does the malign influence of its scar..."

Sebastian moved to Wesley's side, whiffling down the stack for a clump of pages held together with a big black clip. "Do you remember Simon Quartermass, who shared my rooms at school? He assembled the base research."

"Quartermass...? Er..." Wesley looked suddenly very absorbed in his reading.

Someone's feeling just a little guilty about something, Buffy decided.

"I can't say that I do," Wes mumbled.

Sure, Buffy thought, but she'd started to get impatient. "Guys," she said, loudly enough that both jumped a little. "Sorry to break up your class reunion, here. But--problem at hand? Focus?"

"Yes. Yes, of course." Apparently it was Seb's turn to look guilty, which he did in that very stiff-upper-lip, my-life-is forfeit-for-my-wrongdoings sort of way Buffy had seen more than a time or two on Giles's face--the first time being when he'd been ready to go face the Master all on his own. Right before she'd punched his lights out.

Buffy resumed her seat on the coffee table and, after a couple seconds, Sebastian joined her, moving aside a small stack of magazines to make himself a place. He was frowning.

"Not good, huh?" Buffy whispered--she wasn't exactly sure why; it wasn't as if she needed to worry about waking Giles up.

Seb felt his father's forehead, then his pulse, the same way she'd done. All of which was very nice, but where was it getting them?

Sebastian surprised her, though. Sometimes Buffy tended to forget how much of a magic guy he was, despite all the recent evidence. But that hadn't been Seb. It hadn't looked like Seb, and hadn't acted like him, so her mind hadn't really wanted to make the connection.

"I believe Wyndham-Price is correct in this, Buffy," he told her. "There's quite a definite flavor of magic here, but it's quite clearly not the corrupted power of a Hellmouth. This is immensely strong, but cleaner, if you take my meaning."

"Great," she answered, tired of talking. "Perfect. At least he's not gonna be killed by some nasty, unsanitary magic."

"I certainly never said it wasn't dangerous," Seb answered, sounding tired. "It's quite clearly extremely so."

"Then what are you going to do?" Buffy demanded.

Sebastian took Giles's hand between both of his. He shut his eyes, forehead furrowing with concentration, a muscle jumping at the side of his jaw. He looked stressed. And probably was, what with Celeste, and now his dad.

"You don't hear them?" Sebastian asked her. "Not at all?"

"I hear something," Wesley put in, from his place beside the table. "A low hum, rather like the murmur of voices in a distant room."

Buffy just shook her head. "Not so much the magic girl," she said.

"It's maddening." Seb appeared to concentrate even harder. "So close. I can almost make out the words, and yet..." He sat back, releasing Giles's hand at the same time. "Whatever the voices are, they want one to listen, to be taken in. Yet there's something, a catalyst, a..." He frowned. "A translator, for lack of a better term. I can't actually hear: I'm not equipped."

"And Giles is. Equipped, I mean." There was some kind of entendre there, just waiting to happen, but this certainly wasn't the time. "I mean, there's something in him, or about him, that lets him tune in to channel mind-and-body control?"

"It's the wine," Sebastian rubbed his jaw. If he'd worn glasses, he would have been cleaning them. "Remember the vines, Buffy, and their fruit? It's my understanding that, if dad ingested even a drop of the stuff, it would have been enough to infect him."

"Infect?" Buffy echoed. That did not sound good. By any stretch of the imagination, it did not sound good. "Infect him with what?"

"Ah..." Seb shot her a look, then glanced away again, over at Wesley. "With what? Only all the knowledge of the world."

"Oh." Buffy tried to let that sink in, but, really, the whole concept seemed too big to wrap her little pea brain around. "And this is a bad...?"

"I would say," Wesley put in, "That even for a man of Giles's obvious intelligence, it might well prove..." He stopped, getting suddenly very interested in the pages again.

"C'mon, Wes," Buffy said. "Spit it out. Prove? Prove what?"

"Er..." Wesley muttered at his papers. "That is... Prove, ah, very difficult to assimilate."

"You mean it's gonna fry his brain," Buffy said flatly.

"I wouldn't have put it..." Wes trailed off again. "I might well be wrong. There's very little precedent..."

"Sun Ya, 1347," Seb put in, sounding even flatter than Buffy herself. "Van Hoestein, 1620. Don Domingo Rodriguez, 1782."

"Well, yes, but as I was saying..."

"You're not putting any bets in his favor." Buffy glanced from one to another. Another time, she would have found it cute, the way both Wes and Seb looked so earnest, so sincere, so very perfect-model-of-a-modern-British-gentleman. Another time. Not this time.

"So, what are we going to do?" she asked them.

"Do?" Wesley sounded surprised.

"The thing is, Buffy," Sebastian started to explain. He'd begun to sound a little bit choked up too. "The thing is that the agent of which I spoke, the agent which translates and delivers the information is, according to previous writings... That is, it acts upon the body like a disease, a virus, perhaps, though of course the writers I mentioned would not have known that word."

"But, Buffy, please understand that, merely because there's no record of any individual..." Wes stopped himself again.

"No record of anyone surviving. Is that what you meant to say? Because if it is--" Buffy stopped herself too. What was the point? Wes and Seb didn't do this. No one did this. Well, maybe Willow, but not her Willow. Weird goddessy Willow. "Because if it is," she said wearily. "I wish you were wrong."

"Perhaps the hospital...?" Wesley suggested.

Sebastian shook his head. "There may be--might perhaps be--manifestations that could potentially harm the other patients. In fact, Buffy, I think that you ought..."

Buffy shook her head violently. "I'm not leaving him."

"He won't know," Wesley told her softly. "Very soon now, he won't know."

"But I would, wouldn't I?" Buffy muttered, staring hard at her shoes. She would not cry. She would not.

"You are a very brave young woman," Sebastian said. He reached for her hand, but Buffy shook him off.

"I'm not brave. I hate this. And how can you look so calm? How can you just accept this?" Buffy's anger blazed in her, and being who she was, she somehow couldn't help but lash out. "He's your dad, Seb. I thought you two were tight, and you were--were this god-like person down there, and now you're just gonna...you're just gonna lie there? Anyway, you ate the berries too, and so did Will. How come they're not killing you?"

"I never tasted that fruit," Seb snapped. His voice had gone tight, but really low. Obviously, he had a little temper of his own. "Whatever happened down there, whatever acts that...that creature performed within my body, I am not a god, not a demon, nothing but a man. True, there are ways in which I can, at times, manipulate the universe, but I can't reach in and..."

"Excuse me," Wesley said.

Sebastian looked up; Buffy did too.

Wes was starting to look pleased with himself. "Delacoeur--er, Sebastian--you've said you can't reach in--but what if the possibility existed that you could? What if you could somehow share the disease, or whatever it is? What's fatal for one man might not be so destructive for two." His eyes moved to Buffy. "Or three."

"What are you saying?" Buffy asked, all kinds of emotions fighting it out inside her. Somehow it hurt to hope. Tough. Giving up hurt even more.

Wesley was definitely excited. "It was your mother," he told Sebastian. "That is, I was thinking of the connection she has with her LeFaye relations, even with Willow, who'd no idea she possessed any LeFaye blood whatsoever. I know that Moira is aware of the others, that she even shares a certain...physical bond, all of which, I believe, contributes to her magical abilities. Am I correct in stating, Sebastian, that you also share that mystical connection?"

Seb nodded slowly.

"How, then, is the connection created?" Wes was obviously getting excited, his blue eyes sparkling as he waved a sheaf of papers in one hand. "Is it innate, carried by the blood and the genes? Or is it something created by a conscious act, a ritual of some sort."

Sebastian's lips moved. He looked stunned. But, finally, he managed to get the words out. "By ritual."

"And will that ritual succeed only when performed by blood relations, or could it, theoretically, be used for anyone, at any time?"

"Good Lord," Sebastian breathed.

"Which is it?" Buffy asked. "Come on, Seb."

"I--that is, it hasn't been tried. But I suppose... Yes, I believe..." Sebastian jumped to his feet, hurrying over to the kitchen bar and rooting in the little cabinet of many drawers, where Giles kept his definitely-don't-use-these-for-cooking herbs. "Buffy, candles," he called out. "Nine more, at least--three each--though we'll likely want spares."

"What are we doing?" Buffy asked him--but she also moved to obey. "What's going on?"

"We," Sebastian said, turning to her with his hands full of little packets, "Are going to save my father's life."

Over the course of the afternoon and evening, Xander left four messages on the Rosenberg's answering machine. When a couple hours had passed since the last one, he declared himself officially tired of waiting for Willow to show--even though the nurses had been really nice about not shoving him outside into the humongous lightning storm, or even into the evil chairs of the waiting room.

Enough was enough. He checked himself out and called a cab from the lobby.

Things could be worse, Xander told himself, as he waited on the chilly marble bench beside the hospital's main entrance. Luckily, the bench was under cover, although all the gutters he could see had overflowed, letting water gush across the street, and the rain now seemed to be falling up as well as down, soaking his sneakers and the legs of his jeans. Could be lots worse, really. In fact, Xander figured he had the right to feel pretty good about life in general. After all, he'd faced more vampires that you could shake the proverbial (and, preferably, sharp) stick at, and he wasn't dead. Not bad, if you'd totally expected to be. Dead, that was.

Xamder rubbed his forehead. A crew of construction workers seemed to have set up shop there, hammering away busily. Time to shut down now, guys, he thought. Give it a rest. Grab your lunchpails, hop in your pickup trucks and go home.

He definitely wanted to go home, and once there he planned to sleep for a long, long, long, long time. With no one waking him up every hour on the hour.

The question being, though, where exactly was home? These days, that one was kind of a stumper. In olden times, he'd camped out at Giles's when he couldn't go to his parents' house, but with Buffy there now, well, awkward didn't even begin to cover it. Joyce Summers would probably welcome him at her house, and without doubt would go all caring and maternal, but Xander didn't exactly feel comfortable with that, either. Joyce was a nice lady, but she wasn't his mom. It wasn't his place. Self-pity began to creep over him. He'd pretty much been planning on going back to the Rosenbergs, but now Willow wasn't returning his calls.

The taxi pulled up at the curb, a big wave of water splooshing up from its wheels to soak him even further. Great. Just great. Xander climbed in awkwardly, squelching across the vinyl seat in his soggy pants, starting to shiver immediately in the air-conditioned chill. He slumped back in his seat, feeling headachy and bruised and generally squashed all over.

"Thank you for saving our lives, Xander," he muttered under his breath, stopping when the driver gave him a "Oh no, not another nut" kind of look.

"I'm okay," Xander said aloud, trying to sound reassuring and, well, sane. "Concussion. Hit my head. On the job." He forced a smile and gave the woman Giles's address. What the hell. If Willow wasn't going to return his calls, she could just wonder what happened to him. Or not wonder, as the case might be. Maybe she didn't care. Maybe none of this even seemed like any big deal to her.

"You were real lucky to get through," the driver told him. "Phones have been up and down ever since the storm hit."

Oh. Uh. Xander felt a little ashamed of himself. Still, he didn't change his destination. Willow knew he was getting out today. She could have been there, and she wasn't, so to hell with her.

Xander leaned against the window, the glass hard and chilly beneath his cheek, kind of echoing the way he felt inside. He'd done the right thing. He hadn't been a coward. But nobody was going to notice, were they? He was just going to go on being goofy Xander to them. Xander the loser. Xander the screw-up. Do the right thing, do the wrong thing, what did it even matter in the end?

He shivered even harder. Maybe his dad had been right all along.