Tribulations - Chapter 53

Buffy knew that there were probably things she should have been worried about. Her serious lack of patrolling during the past two nights, for one. The stuff Wesley was researching for another, not to mention exactly had happened after he'd bat-outta-helled it through their door. Poor Wes, she really should be worrying about him. Moira too. And Celeste.

But why stop there? She could spend her time worrying about the whole, entire world as well. After all, she and her friends had saved it so often she kinda felt responsible. The thing was, though, that she'd worried so much in recent times that her worrier was pretty much worn out.

Besides which, she had a comfy home, the soothing sound of rain against the windows, a honey who was awake and coherent, and a ton of so-bad-it's-good Chinese food spread right out in front of her on the coffee table. She, Xander and Giles were sprawled on the couch, wielding their chopsticks (except Xander--Xander wasn't allowed chopsticks after the near eye-poking-out incident of a few weeks ago) like there was no tomorrow.

"Moo Shu pork?" Xander said, only his mouth was full, so it came out sounding like "mooshy pork" instead. Which was probably a better description, but still...

Buffy laughed and passed the carton to him.

"Mmph," Xander said, meaning "thanks," and Buffy laughed again. She caught Giles smiling at her.

"It's good to see you happy, Buffy," he said. "Happiness becomes you."

Buffy could have said the same back to him. For nearly the first time since she'd known him, Giles looked completely relaxed, contented, maybe kinda sleepy. Ever so often his non-chopstick-occupied hand would brush her shoulder, her arm, a lock of her hair, innocent little touches made erotic by what had happened between them just a short while before. Buffy's skin tingled as if charged by some pleasurable form of electricity and, anxious as she was for an encore performance of their shower scene, there was something to be said for waiting, too, letting the need build between them, anticipating its release.

So, she was happy, and she wasn't going to let anything change that. Everything felt good, everything tasted good and, for the first time in a long time, she even got to see Giles enjoy a meal--even if he did refuse to touch her favorite, the sweet and sour chicken with the funky-colored sauce. He'd said it bore too strong a resemblance to her shower gel.

Giles finished before she did--and well before Xander had even started to slow down. He leaned back into his corner of the couch, one ankle propped up on the opposite knee. Even without looking at him, Buffy could tell he was watching her: his gaze felt like sunlight on her skin. Literally. Which maybe was a little weird, but who was she to argue?

Who said weird had to equal bad?

After five more minutes of serious chowing down, Buffy had finally had enough. Probably more than enough, but even when she'd been ordering, she hadn't realized how starved she'd been. And she could put a "literally" after that one, too. Sighing with fullness and contentment, she set her chopsticks aside on a napkin, scooting backwards across the couch cushion until she'd snuggled up close to Giles, leaning against him the way she had earlier in the evening.

Giles made a small, welcoming sound and draped his arm warmly around her body, wriggling a little himself until they'd both achieved maximum fitting-togetherness.

Xander darted a quick glance their way, not saying anything--although he did look, maybe, a teeny bit uncomfortable. Or... Buffy examined her friend a little closer. Maybe more than a teeny bit something else.

"How's the head, Xander?" Giles asked him quietly. Buffy wondered if he'd noticed the look, too. What was she thinking? Of course he had. He was Giles.

"Lumpy." Xander set down a half-eaten eggroll. "I dunno. It's okay."

"So I noticed," Giles told him. "The lump, that is. You'll most likely feel a bit sleepy for a while, perhaps rather muddled as well. Never fear, that will pass."

"So says the local expert on head injuries," Xander answered in his joking voice, but he wasn't smiling. Buffy wished he would smile.

"What you did, last night..." Giles began. Buffy held up four fingers. "What? Four nights ago? Really, Buffy?"

Buffy nodded. "You may not have noticed, sleepyhead, but the rest of us did."

"Quite," Giles said, smiling, though he looked a wee bit shocked. "Then, Xander, what you did four nights ago was foolhardy in the extreme. Please don't ever attempt anything of that sort again."

Xander's head snapped up. Buffy could see that lightning flash of anger go through him, the one that scared him so much, because...

Her jaw dropped. Because of his dad. Any time he got mad it scared him. Because of his dad. And Xander got angry a lot, more than she'd ever known.

Not now, Giles, Buffy thought really loud. We're all happy here. Or, at least, okay. Don't start with a lecture, even if you think Xander deserves one.

Some current was going on between the two guys, though, that she hadn't seen coming. Xander's chin went down, then up again, and his eyes seemed to be asking for something, begging for something, really.

"Because I can't allow you to deprive me of a friend," Giles continued, seriousness and lightness all mixed up in his voice. "Not to mention a best man."

"Uh..." Apparently, it was Xander's turn to have his jaw drop. He looked down yet again, fast, giving his abandoned eggroll a quick poke with one fingertip--as if checking to see whether it was alive or dead. "I thought Sebastian would be doing that for you," he muttered. "When it's time."

"You're the first to know, Xander, but we've more or less decided that it is time," Giles told him. "And, with Buffy's approval, I rather thought I'd ask Seb to officiate. That is, unless you'd prefer for us to wait until you have taken holy orders."

Buffy felt the tension whoosh out of her. "Well, much as I love you, sweetie,I'm not gonna wait that long," she laughed. "So you'd better just agree, Xand. You're not being given a choice here."

"I'm gonna say no to the Slayer?" Xander quipped, grinning--although he looked close to tears.

"What you did for us," Giles went on, "Was courageous beyond my power to express. You might easily have forfeited your own life--in truth, were extremely lucky not to be killed--but you never turned back, never faltered..."

"Oh, there was faltering." Xander gave a shaky laugh. "Believe me, major faltering took place."

"At any rate," Giles said with another little smile. "We could not ask for a truer friend. The loss of you would have been insupportable, Xander. Do you understand that?"

Which was probably the cue for some awkward man-hugs, Buffy guessed, but the two of them just sat there, eyes locked.

"I understand," Xander said at last, in a softer, more vulnerable-sounding voice than she'd ever heard him use. "I guess... I really, really do."

Sebastian shut the bedroom door softly behind him, padding on stockinged feet to the outer room of their Holiday Inn suite. For a long while he'd lain beside Celeste as she slept, his hand on the still-slight curve of her belly. She'd been unnaturally quiet since her release from hospital, and Sebastian would catch her dark eyes, at odd moments, searching his face with a strange intensity. She hadn't grudged him the time he'd spent at his dad's, had in fact urged him to go--and yet he knew that something lay amiss between them.

Or perhaps he ought to say that something lay amiss within him, cutting him off, like a slow death, from all he believed, all he loved, even from his own sense of himself.. Perhaps Celeste saw, or at least suspected, that. To such an extent, even, that she'd lost her usual patience with him.

Sebastian knew Celeste needed to be told, to have him tell her, before his own silence and sudden bursts of melancholy drove a greater wedge between them. Who would understand him, if she did not?

And yet, he hesitated.

Sighing, Sebastian lit a pair of candles on the small table he'd chosen as a makeshift prie-dieu, arranging his silver pectoral cross between them. How many times in the past days, if not weeks, had he neglected his prayers, morning and evening? More times than he liked to count, that was certain.

He knelt, bowing his head, his hands clenched together so tightly as to be almost painful. Of all the Scriptures indicated for the beginning of this ritual, the words of St. Luke came most clearly to mind:

"I will arise, and go to my father, and I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."

Sebastian stopped, eyes burning, his breath ragged in his chest, and long moments passed before he could go on.

"Almighty and most merciful Father," he continued, at last, though quite unsteadily. "I have erred and strayed from thy ways like a lost sheep. I have followed too much the devices and desires of my own heart. I have offended against thy holy laws. I have left undone those things which I ought to have done; and I have done those things which I ought not to have done; and there is no health in me..." He found himself weeping actively now, without even knowing when he'd begun. Quite against his will, and beyond his control, the tears streamed down his cheeks, over his jaw, the great drops soaking unpleasantly into the linen fabric of his shirt.

Sebastian never heard the bedroom door open behind him, but Celeste's voice carried to him clearly, with its own quiet authority. "Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind." She moved past Sebastian, kneeling across from him with the skirts of her pale-gold peignoir pooled round her. The candlelight, alchemetically, turned her skin to a darker gold, bringing out molten depths in her lovely eyes.

"Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen," Sebastian said faintly, surprised that she'd joined him, that she even knew these words, so familiar to him, by heart--but then, she'd heard them often enough on his lips, and Celeste's memory was nothing if not prodigious. She reached out to him, wiping the tears from his face with her hands, smiling a little, although her candlelit eyes remained solemn.

In time, Celeste's touch, and her presence, calmed him, reminding Sebastian that she'd depths to her, his lovely, vivacious wife, that few were ever shown. Her voice rang out with especial fervour at The Third Collect, the prayer for Aid against Peril: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of the night; for the love of thy only son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen."

At the end, Celeste reached across the table, separating Sebastian's own now-painful hands. "You've had some trouble, haven't you, Bastian, with those perils and dangers of the night?"

Sebastian nodded wordlessly, feeling the tears threaten once more, though he fought against them with all his will.

Cupping her hand around their flames, one, then the other, Celeste blew out the first candle, and the second. Despite her injury, and the weakness that inevitably followed such loss of blood, she rose smoothly to her feet, stretching down a hand to aid Sebastian's more awkward ascent. "Have you ever thought, Bastian..." she began, with a diffidence quite unlike her usual forthrightness. "Of just giving it up?"

"I have done," he confessed, miserably. "I rang His Grace whilst you were in hospital."

Celeste favoured him with a long look, before making her way with effortless grace to the suite's rather purgatorial sofa. "And you don't think you've perhaps got things wrong way round?"

Perplexed, he sank down beside her. "I'm afraid..."

"You don't follow." Celeste sighed. "I remember, Bastian, when we first met..." She sighed again, reaching out to take his hand, her fine, strong fingers curling round his gently. "You seemed so very shy about your vocation, as if I might take you for one of those dreadful American televangelists, or some sort of figure of fun. Yet, all the while, I could see it shining out of you." Her eyes drew his, until Sebastian could not look away. "They say faith, true faith is a gift, Bastian. God knows, I've met few enough who possessed it. But you accepted that gift with love and joy, much as you accepted me, and now I must ask you--is this darkness enough to make you throw it away?"

Sebastian sat regarding her, half frozen, a million fears and doubts swirling within his brain. Hardly knowing that he meant to begin, he told her everything: about the spells, and the Hellmouth, about what had befallen him and Willow, about the business with his dad. Celeste watched him in return, nodding now and then, her hand never leaving his.

"And so, I must ask you again--" Celeste said, when he'd finally ground to a halt. "Is it so inevitable, that you go down this path? Think, Bastian, of what you're surrendering." Her voice dropped lower, as it always did when she was most passionate. "I know you want, very much, to help your dad, and you have done. But haven't you thought that perhaps you might help him most by turning your back on all this magic? Rupert loves you immensely, and wants nothing more than to see you happy. Let him have a son to be proud of, and to rely on, not as a caster of spells, but as someone he can turn to for relief from the chaos of the life he must lead?"

She paused, drawing in a deep breath. "Forgive me, Batian, for you know I love Moira, perhaps even as much as you do, but you can't argue that she is, in many ways, one of the most personally miserable people you have ever met."

"Mum isn't..." Sebastian began, but stopped himself. He knew about his mother, perhaps had always known: beneath Moira's myriad of admirable qualities existed a heart of darkness deeper than he would have the courage to plumb. She had taken him well in hand, drilling him ruthlessly on all the finer points of magic, and yet, without her spells, without her family, he wondered what kind of woman Moira might have become? Would all her strength, her brilliance, her determination still have turned upon her, and wounded her, time after time? Would she not have been happier, perhaps, as a University don or a great leader of social causes?

He would never know, because his mother was as she was. She was LeFaye. A sorceress. And she had looked too deeply into the shadowed things of the world.

Celeste nodded, as if she'd read his thoughts. "If you mean to walk away from a part of your life, Bastian, walk away from that." Her hand strayed upward, absently rubbing at the white dressings that covered her wound. "I will always love you, always care for you, but I'd very much rather not see you hurt yourself in this way."

Could he do it? Sebastian wondered. Could he just walk away from the magicks, the fear, the mystery, replacing them with the quiet life of a husband, a father, a son, a vicar--albeit a vicar on the Hellmouth, which he imagined must add a bit of drama to any proceedings?

"You needn't decide tonight," Celeste told him softly, rising once more. "Come to bed now. Lie beside me. And don't dream."

"Love," he answered, meaning any number of things, "I'm not certain that I can manage."

"You will," Celeste answered, with her own particular brand of conviction. "You will."

Wesley stood paralyzed in the open doorway to what had been Moira's room. She wasn't there. His Moira wasn't there. Slowly, his hands rose to cover his mouth, as if in a vain attempt to stifle a scream that he knew would never come.

Over by the empty bed stood a small blue cart, one of the those the Americans called by the ominous name of "crash-cart." Bits of tape, empty ampoules, crumpled shreds of paper littered the floor, and the unoccupied bed.

They'd taken him from her. Buffy and Rupert had taken him from her, and now...

Like a sleepwalker, Wesley backed out of the room, finding his way, almost by chance, to the nurses' station. A heavyset man of African ancestry looked up at his approach, shutting a heavy folder of papers upon a pen to hold his place.

"Where...?" Wesley's own voice frightened him. It required all his will to keep his countenance from changing, from becoming that which Buffy and the others called a "game face."

"Where is she?" he continued, powerless to change his tone. They had torn him away from his proper place, away from Moira's side, and now she was gone.

"Beg pardon?" the nurse inquired. He possessed quite a deep voice, one that under other circumstances would have been quite pleasant to listen to. "You're the English lady's friend, aren't you? Mr...?"

"Wyndham-Price," Wesley said abruptly.

"Mr. Wyndham-Price, would you like to sit down?" the man asked kindly. The nametag pinned over the breast of his uniform--his "scrubs," the Americans would say--read "Julius." Surname or Christian name? Wesley wondered, in a moment of vague inquisitiveness that he knew, quite well, only presaged shock. He'd a maths master at school named Julius. Marcus Julius. Or was it Julius Marcus? Why could he not remember?

In that instant all fury left him. He felt lost, terribly alone. She was dead, his Moira was dead, and nothing in the world could bring her back.

Wesley gripped at the edge of the counter, head hanging down, surprised, in some part of himself, that his reaction to profound shock so exactly duplicated a living man's.

"She was to be my wife," he said, in a soft, broken voice. "I loved her...ever so much."

"She isn't dead, sir," Julius told him, with equal softness, though the unspoken word "yet" hung heavy within his voice. "You're sure a can't get you a chair? Some water?"

"No. No." Wesley shook his head, forcing himself upright. "I'm... That is, I'll be all right. Might I... Might I see her?"

"Let me grab someone to cover the desk," the nurse told him, "And I'll walk you up myself." He removed himself to some sort of glassed-in cupboard to the rear of the station. Through the panes, Wesley watched him in rapid conference with an older, female nurse.

"Okay," Julius said, upon his return. "We're going up to nine. That's the new Critical Care unit. Once we get there, I'll hook you up with one of the docs, and they'll tell you everything you want to know." He put a hand on Wesley's arm, ushering him toward the bank of lifts on the opposite wall."

"She appeared... That is, I thought she'd begun..." Wesley attempted, as the silver door slid open before him. "She seemed so greatly improved...

Julius only gave him a look of sympathy. They both knew well enough, Wesley supposed, that the fragile perfection of the human body was not meant to sustain such injuries as Moira had suffered. As he had caused her to suffer. The body had its own wisdom, and at times that wisdom included knowing when it could no longer continue its work.

"Can you tell me, briefly..." Wesley could not go on. Every part of him shrank from hearing the words, even though he knew that he, inevitably, must.

"Your fiancee suffered a cerebral incident," Julius informed him. "What's usually called a stroke. We were able to bring her back, but..." He shrugged his massive shoulders, his dark eyes returning to Wesley with an expression of not only understanding, but outright pity. "Mr. Wyndham-Price, did Moira let you know her wishes?"

I rather imagine she would have wished not to die, Wesley thought, with a sudden little flare of anger. Except that he'd no cause to release that anger upon this well-meaning man, who was only, after all, performing one of the surely more onerous duties of his job.

"Yes," Wesley answered quietly. "Yes, I know her wishes."