Tribulations - Chapter 55

Buffy came out of the bathroom after drying her hair to find Giles standing in front of the stove with the funniest expression on his face, as if he was listening hard to something really far way.

"Sweetie?" she said, but he didn't respond, didn't even blink. "Giles," she tried again. "Pancakes. Burning."

Nothing. Buffy took the pancake-turner out of his hand, and only then did Giles seem to come to. Slowly, he reached out to turn off the burner, scooting the frying pan off the element.

"What?" she said, trying to keep her voice light, even as the feeling of scaredness moved in. "Bad Buffy, no pancakes for you?"

Giles had already started moving toward the front door. Not saying a word, he collected his keys and wallet.

"Earth to Giles!"Buffy called after him. "Come in now."

That finally made him blink. "There's been... Something..."

Xander, just coming down the stairs, stopped halfway. "Something, what, Giles?"

"We must..." He blinked again. "Good Lord..."

Xander pulled the keys out of his hand. "You're zoned, Giles. Come on, let's go." Grabbing Giles's sleeve, Buffy tagging behind, he led the way out past the fountain, up and then down again to where the Citroen waited at the curb.

At that point, Buffy decided to drag her heels. "Would someone please tell me what's going on? Because I'm not getting it."

Giles reclaimed his keys. "With that head injury, Xander, you oughtn't drive. Buffy, get in, please." Suddenly, he was all Giles again, totally there, but Buffy still didn't find herself comforted. The version of him she was getting was repressed wigging Giles, and that never added up to anything good.

Xander had apparently called shotgun. Buffy climbed in behind him, squeezing into the minuscule back seat. "What are we talking here? Demon?"

"Wesley," Giles answered, starting the engine. The Citroen jolted away from the curb at what, for it, amounted to amazing speed.

"But it's day..." Buffy began. "Wes can't..."

All of a sudden she got it. Moira. Something had happened to Moira. Something bad enough that...

Her throat tightened, and tears stung her eyes. She'd been meaning to drop by Moira's room for a visit but, what with one thing and another, hadn't gotten around to it. And now, she was really afraid, there wasn't any point. Not anymore.

"Poor Wes," Buffy breathed. "Do you think he...?"

Giles threw a quick look at her over his shoulder, one that told her something she already knew. If the ultimate bad thing really had happened to Em, Wesley wasn't going to hang in there. Why should he?

"Drive faster," she said, as if Giles hadn't already coaxed unbelievable--for the Citroen--speed from his car. They reached Sunnydale General in record time, rumbling and squealing into the loading zone.

"Go," Giles said.

"I'm gone." Buffy jumped out without even waiting for Giles to stop all the way, pelting toward the big sliding doors at top Slayer speed, and praying that she'd make it. She had to make it. She...

She rammed in to Wesley at full tilt, at the place just beyond where the first big rectangle of sunlight wavered over the floor. They went down together, skidding backwards toward the elevators, Wes's hands grappling at her arms, trying to push her off, away, his game face coming out, the long, viciously fanged teeth bared and way too near her throat for comfort.

"What are you doing?" he screamed at her, his voice pretty high up on the register, but not at all girly for all that--instead it sounded like the voice of some hunting bird, like an eagle swooping down to turn some lesser creature into prey-burgers.

"Wes. Wes," Buffy yelled in return. He was still fighting her, fighting hard, and she didn't want to have to go all Slayery in public, in front of the doctors and nurses and visitors. Which wasn't to say she wouldn't if she had to. She couldn't let him do this. She could not.

Though a part of her had to wonder, Why not?

Slowly, Wes started to calm down, his game face smoothing away. Suddenly he looked all defeated, shrunken inside his nice but crumpled suit, like a little kid who'd been punished severely for something he hadn't done.

"Wesley," Buffy said quietly, sliding off him, giving Wes her hand to help him to his feet. His weight dragged on her as if he didn't have the strength to do any of it himself. "I'm so sorry," she told him. "We're all so sorry."

She touched his shoulder, hurting for him. Wesley stood with his head bowed, one hand over his eyes. "How did you know?" he asked, in his soft, Watchery voice. Somehow all the crispness seemed to have drained out of it, leaving... Buffy didn't know what. Leaving nothing, she guessed.

"Giles...uh...wigged," Buffy answered, knowing that wasn't any kind of an answer. How had Giles known? "We got here as soon as we could," she added lamely. "Look, can I take you...?" She didn't know where. Hospitals had places, didn't they? Places where you could just go, and sit and be quiet?

"Let's go up to the chapel," she said, trying her best to make her voice gentle, calming, afraid all the time that Wesley might get it into his head to just bolt. "It's bound to be pretty quiet, and you can...uh...defuse, I guess."

"Defuse." Wes gave a tense little Wesley-smile completely empty of anything like humor. "Fortunate, isn't it, that such places are generally non-denominational?"

"Wes." Buffy curled her fingers around his arm, holding him but trying not to be obvious about it. Glancing past Wes, she saw Giles coming in through the sliding doors, and mouthed the words: "Chapel. Later." at him. Giles gave a little nod.

"Wes, let's just go there," she tried again. "I don't wanna be hauling you off through the sewers right this minute. You don't need that."

"What I need..." Wesley said, as she steered him into the elevator, "Are I number of things I shall never again possess." His voice didn't sound bitter, or angry, just deeply, deeply sad, and he didn't say anything else until they'd reached the little softly-lighted space that served Sunnydale General as a chapel. As he'd guessed, the room had pews but not much else. No altar. No holy symbols of any kind.

The two of them slipped into a pew in the second-from-the-back row, and just sat. Buffy slipped her hand around Wes's bigger, but very tidy, one, his skin icy against hers.

"Moira..." Wesley began. "That is, she had...had a stroke whilst I was with you at Giles's."

Buffy squeezed his hand a little harder. "I... Did they...?" Guilt bubbled up in her. Big fountains of guilt.

Wesley seemed to have caught something in her expression, because he shook his head. "No, Buffy, there's no reason to blame yourself. At first, I wanted very much to blame you, or Giles. But then..." He raised his other hand, wiping his eyes. "There's no one to blame, really. Unless I wish to blame myself. With such profound...with what I'd done to her...such a complication was not so very unexpected, the doctors inform me. That the cerebral accident she suffered was so severe...who can predict such things?"

"It sucks that sometimes things just happen," Buffy said softly. "I always want to have a reason."

"And when there's none, when events transpire despite anything you've done or left undone..." Wesley shook his head, then glanced at her. "I didn't think...that is, I did not expect to be stopped. I expected--" He sighed. "Expected it all to be over quite soon."

"You stopped fighting me," Buffy reminded him. "I hoped, maybe...umn...that you didn't want to, you know...?"

"Work on my tan?" Wesley said, with gentle irony.

Buffy gave a small, sad laugh. "Yeah. That." With a sudden impulse, she put her arms around him, bringing Wesley close to her, his head resting heavily on her shoulder. "I wish we could turn this back," she murmured, "And just take all of it away from you."

"Buffy," answered Wes's muffled voice, "More than you can imagine, I wish the same."

One thing the life of Watcher taught one, Giles mused, was to deal patiently with minutiae.

And so he forged through the plethora of forms and red tape that a death inevitably generated, sleepwalking through conversations and paperwork, just as he had done when Jenny died, yet not missing so much as the dotting of an "i." Later, far from here, he would allow himself to feel. For now, he wore his composure like a suit of armour.

He half wished that Xander would leave him, so as not to watch his transformation into this...Locutus of the Borg. Wasn't that what Xander had called him once? He'd not understood at the time, but now he did, and it pained him to think that his young friend would, for so much as an instant regard him as unfeeling, thoughtless, cold.

Xander did not leave, however, but wandered after him, white-faced, eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears. That Xander had been fond of Moira, Giles was well aware. That the boy had seen too many deaths, he knew as well.

At last, the final document completed, awaiting only the signatures, Xander followed him into the elevator, where Giles pushed the button for the roof. He seemed to remember a garden, of sorts, up there. Or least a few clusters of benches amidst a scattering of potted palms.

One such cluster appeared moderately shady, and so, also, somewhat secluded. He made for its sparse shelter, sinking down onto the redwood bench with the feeling that he'd been carrying a large and unwieldy burden which he could not help, now, but set down. Surges of emotion battered within him, seeking their release, any sort of release, but Giles, ruthlessly, contained them. This was not the time.

Actually, he could not help but wonder if a time would ever come in which he could give voice to this grief. It felt, to him, so enormous, so all-encompassing, so fraught with emotion and memory. To have lost one once a lover, forever a friend--and more than that, the only person who'd survived with him the terrible wreck of his youth, those mad days of fear, pain, poverty, loss. All that shared between them, and yet his last words to her had not been kind. Would, perhaps, have led to the end of, if not their friendship, then of the closeness they'd both cherished.

His eyes were so dry they stung, as if all tears, all capacity for expression had been drained from him. Giles reached out a hand, giving Xander's shoulder a brief squeeze. The boy hunched on the bench beside him, half turned away in a vain attempt to hide his own sobs, and failing miserably. Now and then he would wipe his face on one of his sleeves, apparently to little avail, the fabric surely having long since become thoroughly sodden.

Giles could guess his young friend's thoughts well enough. He'd seen Xander's palpable need for parental affection, his desire to be praised and thought well of. He'd seen, as well, Moira's gentleness toward him, a facet of her nature which Giles himself sometimes forgot she possessed.

Had possessed. Mustn't forget. That quality was gone now, vanished from the earth, along with a myriad of other qualities, all essentially Em's alone. All that skill, that intelligence, poise, strength, passion gone now, never to return. He remembered the light touch of her hand on his, a gesture of warning or comfort. Remembered sparring with her during the years of their Watcher training, neither one of them ever willing to surrender, their competitions, inevitably, ending with bruises and, after, in the chilly confines of one or the other of their rooms, a fierce, exultant lovemaking. He remembered her body curled round his in an earlier, colder room, her long, slender arms holding him tightly, her strength the only barrier, he sometimes felt, between him and utter despair.

Oh, God, he ached for her. For all the days and weeks and months, for all the rough seas they'd weathered together, and their moments of transcendent joy--less frequent, perhaps, but equally unforgettable. Giles felt as if he'd been struck through the heart, that mortal wound rendering him unable to breathe, incapable of thought, powerless to move from this place, with its hard slat bench and mangy palms.

Gradually, he became aware of Xander watching him. The boy's tears, for the present, had ceased.

"Hey, Giles," Xander said, soft-voiced. "You okay in there?"

"Rather the contrary." Giles ran a hand over his face. His voice sounded peculiar, like a recording, and not a particularly good one, at that.

"I said a lot of stuff, over the years..." Xander began, then scowled suddenly, the expression, when coupled with his pallor and the obvious signs of weeping, made him seem quite another person. A stranger in fact. Giles hardly knew what he was meant to answer.

"I said a lot of stuff, over the years," Xander continued, "And I was wrong. Really wrong. I wasn't fair to you, Giles."

"Xander..." Giles sighed. "I understood. It doesn't matter."

"Sometimes, when you were with us, did you feel really lonely?"

Giles couldn't answer, could only wonder at Xander's perceptiveness. Perhaps the boy had known all along.

"Did the things I said get to you?"

Giles found his voice at last. "At times. Often, I suppose, they were things I needed to hear, even if I didn't wish to."

"I wish..." A look of pensiveness softened Xander's features. "I'd really like to be able to help you, right now, but I don't know how. You sit there, all grown-up and under control, and I just feel..."

Giles waited for him to continue.

"Like a big crybaby. And a schlump. Like Idiot Jed to the nth degree."

"Xander--"

"And here I go again, like you need me dumping on you."

"I haven't had to be alone," Giles said softly, surprised by his own words. Xander looked equally astonished. The boy's brown eyes widened, locking with his own.

"That you were with me, Xander," he continued, "Helped me not to forget myself. There may be a time when, as Buffy might say, I can 'lose it'--but this was not that time. There were tasks that must be accomplished, and I have accomplished them, for Em. To honour her, as she would have wished me to do."

"You loved her a whole lot," Xander said.

Giles nodded.

"She was your Willow," the boy persisted. "And if I lost my Willow, for real, not just 'look at me, I'm an evil vamp from another dimension,' I don't know what I'd do."

"God forbid, but if that time should come," Giles told him, "I imagine you would act much as I have acted. You would care for her in the only way left to you."

Xander shook his head, but his face held a bleak affection. "You tell yourself that, but you really don't get it, do you, Giles? Us lesser mortals can't keep up with you. Now..." He bounced to his feet with the quick resiliency of youth. "I'm gonna find Buff, and see if she needs some Wesley-aid. And I guess you..."

"Need to speak to Sebastian." Giles rose wearily, thoroughly dreading the task. Celeste would help, at least--both with his son, and with seeing to all the particulars of what must follow. Celeste would make sure everything was done tastefully, and properly, in the manner Em would have wanted.

"Hey, that's what I was gonna say." As they returned to the elevator, Xander gave Giles's arm a quick squeeze. "You just get all the fun jobs."

"Such seems to be my lot," Giles answered, but in his heart knew that, of all the difficulties of this day, Buffy had taken on by far the most difficult. Her quickness of response, and afterwards, her clear compassion, had more than impressed him. How she had changed since he'd first known her, and what a wondrous woman she'd become. Grief-stricken as Wesley must be, and desperate, he himself would have been less than useless. Fumbling in his actions and his words, not able to supply even a cold comfort.

Bless you, my love, he thought. Be strong.

Giles only hoped that he might do as well.