Tribulations - Chapter 65

The more she thought about it, the more Buffy wished that she could have really been anywhere but where she was at the moment. The Sunnydale Funeral Home didn't rank high on her list of favorite places, anyway--it had a tendency to bring up embarrassing Owen-oriented memories for starters, which inevitably led to other cringe-worthy memories of her younger self. All of which pretty much paled to nothing when she considered what lay inside the black box in the corner. Only her mind kept wanting to say "who," as if Moira really was there with them, and might, at any moment sit up to join in with the definitely unfestive festivities.

Add to all that general funness the fact that Celeste seemed ticked off about some screw up in her master plan, that Xander had obviously been searching for Willow since the moment he walked in, that Giles and Sebastian appeared--and for all she knew, were--thoroughly haunted, and that poor Wesley hadn't made it past the doorway, but stood frozen there, looking glow-in-the-dark pale.

Which left her to...to what? Make Wes feel better? Like that was happening.

Still, she sidled across the room, through a small throng of people she didn't know and over to Wesley's side. He jumped when she touched his arm.

"Um...hi," Buffy said nervously. "Did you want some moral support?"

Wesley peered down at her like she was someone he scarcely recognized. "I brought--" He gestured with the red rose he'd held clutched in one hand. It looked home grown, not perfect like a store-bought rose, but Buffy got the feeling that it meant something to him. Maybe it had meant something to Moira, too. "This is pointless, isn't it? Regardless of what one believes...she won't know. She won't see. She's gone, absolutely gone."

How was she supposed to argue with that? Anything she said would only sound hokey, and probably make her seem like even more of an idiot than Wes already thought she was. Except...what could she do but try?

"Wesley," Buffy said, trying to make her voice soft and gentle, the way Giles would have done, instead of getting all high-pitched and nervous, the way it wanted to. "We don't know. No one knows. Maybe Moira does...um...see us. Wherever she's gone to." Slowly, carefully, she steered him to the corner where the discrete black coffin stood on its equally discrete black trestles. Someone, she noted, had set up a picture of Moira beside the box, but it wasn't any Moira she'd ever seen. Or rather, Buffy guessed that it was--only this Moira looked so happy, and so free, she'd hardly recognized her face. All the rigid control was gone, all the Watcheriness, leaving only a beautiful, contented woman behind.

Wesley reached out, tracing the line of Moira's cheek with a fingertip.

"You took that," Buffy said to him softly. "Didn't you?"

"Before she left," he answered in a hoarse voice. "Before she went back to England, and I..."

Buffy touched him, gingerly, on the back. Wesley shivered slightly, but he didn't shake off her hand.

"How's Willow progressing with your problem?" he asked her.

The sudden change of gears threw Buffy off. "I... Uh... That is..."

"That well?" Wesley gave her one of his raised-eyebrow looks. Unlike Giles, he couldn't do one brow at a time, but Buffy still had to wonder if it was something they'd been taught at Watcher School.

"What I mean is, s-she isn't," Buffy stammered. "Willow isn't."

Wesley's look didn't change. "She seemed, previously, quite willing to help. That's altered, has it?"

"Something has," Buffy muttered darkly. She found herself telling Wes, in an undertone, everything that had happened that morning, while his expression varied between well-concealed despair and barely-contained fascination. Apparently, you could take the boy out of the Watchers, but you couldn't take the Watcher out of the boy.

"Morgana LeFaye, is it? Fascinating." Wesley's eyes had brightened with interest, and it struck her that she'd never noticed how intensely blue they were before this. Also, she realized that Wes would have been willing to seize hold of anything, just to keep his mind from going back and back over the same old painful ground. To go crazy with grief would have been the easiest thing in the world, and she had to admire him for fighting that as hard as he obviously was. She wasn't sure she'd have done as well, in his place.

"It's a little less fascinating when your best friend is getting sucked away from you, and you're getting whacked with big pieces of house," Buffy answered, more bitterly than she'd intended.

"No, no, of course not. I must say I'm dreadfully..." For a moment there, he sounded like old-style Wesley, but Buffy discovered she found that awkward primness kind of endearing, rather than annoying, the way she once had.

"Most dreadfully sorry," Wes concluded softly. Shyly, as if he half-expected Buffy to push him away, he took her hand and gave it a little squeeze. "I truly am. And not merely because this seems to crush our hopes rather thoroughly."

"Giles says he'll work on it," Buffy told him, hating the flat, dead sound of her own voice.

"No doubt," Wesley answered, sounding pretty damn doubtful as well. After a long pause, he sighed. "I don't mean any insult to your friend, Mrs. Delacoeur..."

Huh? Buffy thought, but then her brain caught up. "Oh, Celeste."

"I fully appreciate that she's done all that one can do under these circumstances, that the rituals must be followed, and appearances maintained. But..." Wesley ran a hand back through his hair, rendering it almost messy. "I rather thoroughly hate this. Would it be excusable, do you think, to make an escape?"

"I think," Buffy answered, "That you should do whatever you need to do." She glanced over her shoulder, made eye contact with Giles, and gave a little jerk of her head. Giles nodded, touching Sebastian's shoulder and whispering something into his ear that made Seb nod too. A few seconds later, he joined them.

"Wes wants to take off," Buffy told him. "Think you can smooth things over with Celeste?"

"I'll take care of that, never fear," Sebastian answered, making Buffy jump. He'd come up behind her, doing that Giles silent walk thing, and she hadn't had a clue.

"Geez, Seb, I'm glad I don't have to fight you in a dark sewer. Give a little warning, why don't you?"

"Sorry," he said, sounding not particularly apologetic. He rubbed the back of his neck in a very Giles-like gesture of frustration. "This is bloody, isn't it? After one has paid one's respects, what is there left to do? I'd say the Irish have the right idea. One shouldn't have to make it through a night like this entirely sober."

To Buffy's surprise, Wesley smiled a little. "You sounded very much like your mum, just then."

"Did I?" Sebastian smiled back, somewhat ruefully, and for a minute the two men's eyes met, a thing that Buffy guessed must be understanding passing between them. "Go," he said. "Do something Moira would have approved of." Sebastian's eyes got bright for a minute, and he seemed suddenly very interested in the floor. "Go. Truly. Celeste and I will hold the fort here. Not for nothing was I raised by an ambassador."

Giles clapped his son on the shoulder, and the three of them left as surreptitiously as they could, moving down a series of anonymous corridors painted in colors that were meant to be soothing but weren't, and, finally, out into the rain-washed night air. Wesley stopped on the cobbled drive, drawing in a deep breath he wouldn't actually have needed.

"What's it like?" he asked. "Does it smell like home?"

"Not so's one would notice," Giles answered, a tinge of humour in his voice, along with a tinge of sadness. "One can smell the ocean, of course, and the bougainvillea. No, I'd say it's actually very little like England."

"That was the first sense I lost, I believe," Wesley told them. "Now I've nearly forgotten what it's like to smell anything except blood. It's no way to live."

"What would you have us do?" Giles asked him, meaning it seriously.

"Can you...?" Wes began. "That is, do you think...?"

"That I'll be able to transfer the cost of Buffy's wish? If I can, Wesley. Honestly, if I can." He reached over, clasping Wes's shoulder firmly, the same way he might have clasped Xander's, or Sebastian's. His face looked, to Buffy, very somber, but at the same time, terribly kind. "You realize, of course, the power of this creature?"

"Yes, I realize," Wes answered, meeting Giles's eyes. "If it can't be done, it can't be done." Hesitantly, he touched his fingertips to Giles's hand. "I'm very sorry, about Willow."

Giles looked away quickly, staring hard up at the starry sky in pretty much the same way Seb had stared at the floor. He was trying to get himself under control, Buffy realized--and she'd been so caught up in her own feelings that she hadn't completely understood what his must be: he'd loved Willow as a friend, the same way she had, but he'd also loved her as a daughter, and this betrayal had cut deep into his heart. "As am I," he answered, in a soft, strained voice. "We will do as you ask, Wesley, if things don't turn out. If you still desire it, once all this is through."

"Do what?" Buffy asked, feeling thick.

Giles put his arm around her, pulling her close to his warmth. "What we are called to do, my love," he told her.

"No," Buffy told him. Did he honestly expect her to just cold-bloodedly stake Wesley, for God's sake? "That's not right," she whispered, knowing even as she said the words that Giles wouldn't ever ask that of her, any more than he'd asked her to take on his mom, or her dad. It would be something between the two of them, between him and Wesley, part of their secret Code of Gentlemen, which was something she wouldn't ever understand.

"Yes, Buffy," Wesley answered. "It is right. It's absolutely right and proper. It is, in fact, your duty."

For a few minutes the two men stood looking down at her, their expressions Watchery in the extreme. Her own emotions seemed to be running on a continuous loop from fury to sadness to resignation and back again, until she just felt...she guessed "lost" was the closest she could come to the proper word. And she knew performing the act would be just as hard for Giles as it would be for her--he just had a tendency to want to spare her these things.

"Just so you know, I object," Buffy told them. "And besides, it's gonna work out with the Zeit Guy. I know it will."

Giles watched her, as if memorizing every part of her with his eyes. It came to Buffy that she'd be the one who'd have if easy, afterwards. Maybe she'd go bumbling along from one thing to another, but she wouldn't have the memories. He would. Pretty soon now, one way or another, her pain would be end.

"You know what the other Slayers told me?" Buffy asked. "Make a wish. That's all. Some help, huh?"

Wesley gave a little non-humorous laugh, glancing up at the night sky. "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight..."

"How much do I wish things were that easy?" Buffy told him.

She wanted to feel like Maleficent, sweeping into the room at Sleeping Beauty's christening, hurling curses left, right and center. But maybe that was her problem--not only didn't she have the sweeping thing down, she needed a better name. Morgana LeFaye sounded seductive, dangerous, mysterious. Willow Rosenberg made you think of Birkenstock sandals and home-packed lunches.

Only she didn't have to be Willow Rosenberg anymore, did she? Willow LeFaye definitely had a better ring to it: it sounded sly and slippery, like one of the quick little silver fish she'd tried to catch out of the river with her hands, the one time her dad had taken her camping.

A small pang hit her then, and for a minute a picture of Ira Rosenberg as he'd been popped into her head: a little man with receding curly hair and big, sad eyes exactly like her own standing in the cold river water, baggy khaki shorts billowing around his skinny, hairy legs. In his professorial suits, Ira had always seemed like someone to be taken seriously. There, so far from his natural habitat, he'd looked silly, and somehow that had made her love him more. He wasn't perfect, he didn't have all the answers, he was just her dad, who cared about her the best way he knew how. Who'd plan these ridiculous father/daughter outings during which they invariably got food poisoning, or poison ivy, or second degree sunburns.

Ira wasn't like her mom, my-word-is-law, statistic-quoting Sheila, who wrote seriously wordy books about subjects she knew nothing about, no matter how much of an expert she was supposed to be. Willow wouldn't have had any pangs at all about Sheila, who totally deserved to be on the receiving end of more than a few nasty surprises, some of which Willow already had planned. Yes, Ira interfered, when he thought of it, and maybe he'd deserved to be frozen, on a temporary basis, anyway. She shouldn't have laughed at him, though. She shouldn't have sent him away to the bad place, not when other, equally convenient dimensions stood close at hand.

Damn! there she went again. Panging. Feeling sorry about the things she did, in the best old-Willow style. No more of that. To steady herself, she summoned up a picture of Buffy flat on her face in the dirt, getting all pouty-lipped because someone had dared to oppose her. Well, hold onto your hat, Buff, because there's plenty more where that came from.

Her only real regret, at the moment, was that the Dynamic Duo seemed to be missing from this little shindig. No worries about that, though. She'd get them back soon enough, and the way to do that wasn't to pull a Maleficent, but to edge her way in, using all the protective covering she'd learned in a lifetime of mousehood, until she'd done what she came there to do.

There, for her first victim, stood Xander, all by himself against the wall. Typical, wasn't it, that they'd left him alone there, poor Zeppo Xander, stranded in a roomful of Watchers, or at least, Watcher types? Willow sidled toward him, closer and closer until they nearly touched, and only then did she speak.

"Xander. Hi."

He jumped about a foot, and Willow had to stifle her laughter. "Merciful Zeus, Will. Don't. Just don't. I wanna live to see twenty."

"I... I mean... I didn't mean to scare you." She looked up at him from under her lashes, all shy-Willow, hurt-Willow, begging him, without words, to protect her. "I'm sorry I got here late. Buffy and Giles were s'posed to pick me up. At home. I guess they forgot."

"Really?" Xander looked down at her, and for a minute Willow wanted to pull back from the real hurt in his eyes. Once upon a time she would have done anything to comfort him, now...well, things had changed. That happened. If what she meant to do gave him nightmares for a year, so be it.

Time for step one. "Xander, would you... I mean, this has so totally freaked me out. Would you...?" She stretched up her arms to him, knowing full well that Xander would never deny her. Why should he? He didn't disappoint her, either. His strong arms wrapped around her back, pulling her close to him--the cue for the trestle at the bottom of the coffin to topple. The bottom of the box itself hit the floor with a resounding thud, despite the thick red carpeting underfoot.

A simultaneous, "Oh!" went through the crowd, and Xander's arms tightened around her convulsively. And now for step two.

She'd conjured up a minor spirit, an animal one, she thought, though Willow hadn't really bothered to pay that close of attention. All that mattered was that it went where she told it, and once inside, would panic appropriately in the dark, confined space. Sure enough, she soon heard the scrabbling of nails, the tearing of cheap satin, bestial grunts and moans emerging from the inside of the box. Willow had to bury her face in Xander's shirt to hide her laughter as everyone, everyone pulled away. They'd thought themselves so smart, so sophisticated, and all it took was this little party trick to bring them to the point of panic.

Carefully, she magicked loose the catches on the coffin lid. One little push and the thing inside came out, lurching and staggering. Oh, this was better than she'd hoped! Obviously, it didn't know what to do with a two-legged body, especially one so profoundly damaged as Moira's had been. At the same time, poor little beast, it was deeply afraid, with an animal's impulse to run and hide, whatever the cost. Half-blind, it dragged itself around the room, arms flopping, face working in a way that would have been horrifying if it weren't so damn funny. Willow released her laughter in one long, shrill scream, pretending to go limp in Xander's arms, knowing he'd never let her fall. He'd lift her up as if she weighed nothing, and Willow could hide her face against him, so that no one would ever know she'd been here.

"See if you can catch my dad," she heard Sebastian say, and high heels clicked away down the tiled corridor.

Here came the hard part, the dangerous part--making her getaway before the two meddlers returned.

"Xander," Willow breathed, clinging to him hard enough to hurt as she raised her huge, frightened, brimming eyes to his. "I can't... Please, I can't... Take me out of here?"

Scared, sickened, he did exactly that, carrying her away from the scene of her crime so quickly Willow had to fight not to laugh all over again. In the safety of his car, she counterfeited faintness, lying limply on the vinyl upholstery with her head hanging over the edge of the backseat, as if she might throw up any minute. Seeing her, obviously worried about both his friend and his car's interior, Xander slid in behind the wheel, cranked up the engine and speeded off, a steady stream of mumbled curses issuing from his lips.

Every now and then Willow gave a little moan, making Xander drive all the more erratically, until at last he screeched to a stop, apparently at a light. "I don't know where to take you," he muttered. "Where can I take you?"

"Giles's?" Willow answered in a weak voice. "I feel...kinda safe there."

Xander turned in his seat, glancing at her over one shoulder before he put the car in gear again. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, me too."

And so, Willow thought, On to stage three.