Tribulations - Chapter 68

All day, he'd kept Buffy rummaging through the downstairs closet, hunting out the books he needed, or thought he might possibly want. She, in her state of chagrin, had taken willingly to the onerous task, hauling the requested cartons from their less-than-organized storage space without complaint, or even so much as a flippant comment.

Any other time, Giles might have inquired if she felt quite herself, but Buffy's face seemed to contain a barely-concealed desperation which forbade any such levity. Instead, he found himself addressing her with a soft-spoken gentleness which most likely served only to distress her further.

And so, they'd spent their day.

Now, slumping back in his seat, Giles had to wonder what use it had been. He'd researched volumes of blessings, boons and general wishes. Transmutation spells, protection spells, spells of transference. Some of them might even have worked. The truth was, however, that he could scarcely follow the words, let alone experience any resonance from the magicks recorded within. His once-infallible instinct for which spells and rituals would, in the right hands, change the order of things, and which were only bits of printed doggerel, seemed no more than a memory.

Perhaps it all was pointless, anyway. Despite Buffy's qualms, who was to say she wouldn't be better off with a different life than that which he promised her? Let her enjoy a real youth--or as much as she could have of one, given her calling. Young men of her own age to court her, to excite in her new passions, to take her down paths which he, in himself, could not offer.

"Okay, now you have doubt-face," Buffy said, emerging from the closet with a daunting stack of tomes balanced on her outstretched arms. "It's not going so great, is it?"

Giles allowed the volume in front of him to fall shut. "Honestly, love? No."

Buffy placed her teetering burden on the opposite end of the table to him, then paused to pluck a cobweb from her hair. She pulled a face at the resulting dusty strand before allowing it to drift away. "Yuck. Do I get do a girly-scream if I come out with any actual spiders?" "Yes, I would think so," Giles answered, but he could not match her levity. Buffy, too, seemed incapable of maintaining that momentary lightness. "And why is that? Lack of material?" She came up behind him. "The hall's a mess. Don't stress about it, though. I promise to clean up. You're not allowed to."

"You must be very tired," Giles said.

"Me? Nah. I could go for another ten hours. At least." Buffy stretched, shook herself, and then began to knead his shoulders, her strong fingers working painfully at the knotted muscles. "Huh. How 'bout that? I thought I'd already felt you hit your maximum level of tension. Surprise surprise. I'm gonna have to raise the bar."

"It isn't lack of material," Giles confessed. "It's bloody lack of brilliance on my part."

"Oh, lack of brilliance. That's it. Like you didn't have a hard enough night, that we should all expect you to be genius guy today?"

Giles gasped as her fingertips found a particularly painful spot, and Buffy laid her hand gently across his shoulder in apology.

"I checked on Rip Van Xander, a little while ago, you know," she told him, her voice subdued, yet brave.

God, how Giles admired her pluck, and her courage. He must do better, somehow, both in his researches and in hiding his own despair. Surely he'd the resources, somewhere within himself, not to disappoint her.

"And?" Giles leaned back against Buffy's bare midriff, breathing in her fragrance. How she managed to look, and to smell, so lovely after such a day's exertions remained one of the mysteries of the universe.

"I got him to wake up enough to drink a glass of lemonade." Giles felt her shrug. "That's progress, right? And, hey, why don't you take a break and have some too?" She came round to his side, catching hold of Giles's hand and pulling, until he was forced to rise from his seat--after which, it was only her firm grip that kept him from falling flat on his face. So much for his own good intentions.

"So..." Buffy said, forcing lightness into her tone despite the obvious worry in her expression. "How do you expect to build up that depleted life-force if you don't take breaks? Drink something. Eat something. And ya know, I hear having a nap isn't a capital crime in the State of California." She slipped her arm round Giles's waist, supporting him further. "Don't give me that look. In case you didn't know, naps are one of life's pleasures, not a sign of moral turpitude."

"Moral what?" God, he felt thick. Half of what she'd said made no sense to him.

"Turpitude. They used that one on the news the other day, and I looked it up. It means--"

"I know what it means," Giles answered, laughing weakly. Despite his previous dismal thoughts, by God how he loved her. For a moment he'd even nearly caught up with Buffy's rapid-fire stream of consciousness. He only hoped that would last--his own consciousness displayed a lamentable tendency to ebb and flow.

"So--" Buffy tugged him, relentlessly, toward the recliner by the corner bookcase, until Giles was forced to half sit, half fall into its seat. He gasped as Buffy pushed the back into its fully-reclined position and the blood rushed to his head.

"Honestly, love," he protested. "This makes me feel like someone's grandad..."

"Which you will be soon enough," she reminded him, "So get used to it. Meanwhile--" Buffy's slight body insinuated itself into the space beside him, her soft, vanilla-perfumed hair spilling in silken abundance across his chest as she laid her head upon his shoulder.

"Meanwhile, what?" Giles asked, in honest wonderment.

"Meanwhile, I worry about you. And I wanna make sure we're okay, after last night." Buffy's hand sought his, her fingers curling round his own.

"I wasn't entirely blameless," Giles confessed. "I know that I might, at times appear quite devoid of..."

"Nah, I can tell what you're feeling." Buffy shook her head emphatically. "You think you're all that good at hiding stuff? Think again, Watcher mine."

"Well. I find myself reproved." Giles lifted their joined hands, kissing the back of Buffy's, so that her wide eyes turned to his. "However, should I ever... If you feel I've not... That is, if a time should come in which I'm blind to your opinion, or if you feel unwilling to argue with a belief I've expressed..."

"Like I wouldn't tell you?" Buffy smiled up at him, although her eyes held a touch of sadness. "'Cause, I'm usually so shy about speaking my mind? Face it, Giles. If anything, things are completely otherwise. You wanna count the millions of times I was dead wrong, but you let me go my own way?"

"I argued with you about the cheerleading," Giles reminded her.

"Three years ago. And look how well that turned out for me." A quick grin lighted Buffy's face. "Only, how much did I love it when you picked me up that way, when I got whammied by the spell? And I didn't even like you then. Much." She gave a sudden, bright peal of laughter. "I was such a bratina."

Giles had to laugh too. "I thought you were lovely. Though, of course, in a completely appropriate, slightly shocked, and thoroughly dumbfounded way."

"You know, I have to say I much prefer being all grown up, and getting to chose for myself what's appropriate."

"And I worry, at times, that I've stolen your youth," he confessed.

"That I'd be better off if Mr. Zeit Guy did his business, and I went off to oblivious-land? 'Cause the only thing that's important is being with guys my own age? Since guys my age are so well known for never being dorks, or creeps, or ripping girls' hearts out? Not literally, I mean. Or maybe literally, too. This being Sunnydale. Consider my perfect track record so far."

"Which isn't to say..." Giles began.

"That I wouldn't meet Mr. Right? News flash: I've met him." Her eyes sparkled. "He's someone you might know. Tall guy, kind of a funny name, recently overcame a tragic tweed addiction?"

Giles shook his head, making himself slightly dizzy. "Love, I've a dreadful confession. I quite hate tweed. Always have. It's drab and unpleasantly scratchy--"

"Though good for blunting the impact of crossbow bolts," Buffy put in, laughing again.

"Yes, that, certainly," he agreed, smiling. "Although that may well be tweed's only positive quality. Other than that it serves one quite well, as camouflage."

"Was that it?" Buffy asked, suddenly serious. "What were you hiding from?"

"My past. Myself." Giles shrugged, his tight muscles shifting painfully. "Perhaps it's time to donate the whole lot of it to Oxfam."

Buffy gave him a look. "Which in the New World we call...?"

"Er...the Goodwill. Or perhaps the Salvation Army." Giles let his head sink back against the leather upholstery. God, he was tired. He ought to see to Xander, though. And ring Wesley, find out how he was faring. Sebastian and Celeste should be let know, as well, that Xander had been found, safe if not entirely sound.

So many "ought to's." Giles sighed. So little energy, or will. What was life-force, precisely, and why did one miss it so desperately? He could feel his eyes closing, Buffy's hand hovering, warmly, just over his heart. He'd researched prodigious numbers of threats and rarely faltered--why did he find himself failing now, with such a great deal to lose? Was he a coward, afraid to fight for that which he desired above all else?

Giles wasn't certain, exactly, when he'd succumbed to the Scylla of his own exhaustion, but before he quite understood what had happened, he found himself wandering the corridors of the Sunnydale Funeral Home. Not, however, those corridors as they appeared in reality, all mauve paint and subdued lighting, intended by its designers, no doubt, to be soothing to the recently bereaved. These dream halls were, instead, blindingly white: ceilings, walls and tile underfoot, all lighted at an intensity that caused his eyes to sting and tear.

The corridors did not terminate, either, or lead one to discrete oaken doors, but spiraled round and round, heading ever downward, until they ended, at last, in a circular white room.

There, the air smelled fresh, carrying a hint of salt and ocean waters, and the light softened, gaining something of the quality of daylight quite early on a bright summer's morning, The walls seemed to ripple slightly around him.

The chamber contained as its furniture only a white piano, with keys that rose and fell softly, depressed by invisible hands.

Mesmerized, Giles stood watching, shivering a little, his breath steaming in the air.

Gradually, a form appeared: fine, slender brown hands, an old-fashioned white gown, lustrous dark hair coiffured in a style that had not been current in a hundred years, but nonetheless had always struck him as graceful, feminine, becoming,

This apparition began to sing to him:

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing, great wonders have been revealed
They're only little tears...let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside the window, the world has gone to war
Are you the one that I've been waiting for?

Giles had heard the song before, though he could not recall when, or why it struck him as so untenably sad. The world had gone to war, hadn't it? Or, rather, for those Called, as he and Buffy were called, the war never ended, perhaps never would end.

The woman at the piano showed him her profile--Celeste's profile, actually, though he knew well enough that she was no more his daughter-in-law than she was, in actuality, a mortal woman.

"Rupert," she murmured to him, and Giles watched in silence as she rose, turning, luminous and beautiful, with an inhuman sympathy in her eyes.

"You recognize me, then, Rupert?" she said, her words echoing as if spoken by a chorus of Celestes. "I thought you might."

Giles shrugged, smiling a little. "I've realized, I suppose, the order of beings to which you must belong."

"So you needn't entertain me unawares?" she answered. "Yet, Rupert, how long have you denied us?" Her voice held no sternness, only a tone of gentle, almost playful, chiding, and her own smile became nearly too effulgent for his human eyes to regard unshielded. "Don't worry: we aren't angry. If anything, we're rather impressed you've turned out so well."

"After my inauspicious beginnings," Giles said. Despite the otherworldly brilliance before him, he found himself beginning to relax, a warmth and lightness suffusing his body, making him feel, in many ways, as if he actually conversed with familiar, much-loved Celeste, whilst, at the same moment, experiencing a joyfulness and peace far beyond any mundane comfort, sensations he never before recalled feeling, even in the earliest days of his childhood.

The being-- And why, Giles asked himself, Should I not call her Celeste, if that's the human mask she shows me, as well as her true nature?--reached out to stroke his cheek with her soft fingertips. Giles found that he'd begun to weep, silently, desperately, ashamed by his own lack of control yet unable to stop.

Before these recent weeks with Buffy, when had anyone touched him with such love, or such acceptance? Yet now, exceeding even that, he felt from this Celeste a consummate understanding of who he was, even of who he had been. He wanted to sob like a little child, to gasp out that he was sorry, he hadn't meant it, that if he could only be forgiven, he'd never do it, any of it, ever, ever again.

But he was not a child, and the ability for either childish confession or childish simplicity had long since gone from him, lost in a tangle of acts done and left undone, words spoken or unspoken. All of it, shameful deeds and good, carried away from him on a river of time that could never be made to turn and flow backward in its course.

Gently, Celeste twined her arms round his neck, drawing Giles's head down to her shoulder. For all he knew of her, her body felt warm and human against his, and the kindness she offered seemed very much like human kindness.

"We were with you on that cold Christmas night, Rupert," she whispered, her voice seeming to resonate within Giles's body. "We were with you in the tunnels beneath London, and on the night Randal died in fire and pain. We stood beside you when you gathered your weapons to fight The Master in Buffy's place, and when you climbed the stairs to find poor Jenny in your bed. We were there when Angelus thought he would break you, and when the demon's terrible venom engulfed your body."

But why? Giles wanted to implore her. Why be present for those horrors and do nothing? Where was the sense in that? Was it his punishment for having acted, so many times, in ways that had come only to cause him bitter shame?

Celeste's hand stroked the back of his hair, tenderly, still with that perfect love, perfect acceptance. "Rupert," she said, a touch of laughter in her voice. "Do you honestly believe we did nothing? And would you, truthfully, have wished us any more overt in our acts?"

Giles discovered that he was laughing with her, in hitching sobs that he found himself powerless to control. "Bloody hell," he said, when at last he could speak again, and she'd released him, looking up into his face with sparkling eyes. "I'd have been bloody terrified."

He remembered, in a sudden, vivid flash, being quite a small boy, standing beside Augustina on the moors outside Salisbury. Night had fallen, the windblown grass rippled round them like a dark sea, and the indigo sky above seemed immense, larger than he'd ever realized, and brilliant with stars.

He'd felt tiny, inconsequential. And yet it had all seemed so vast, the world around him, so wondrous and full of possibility, that he'd found himself weeping, amazed and joyous and overwhelmed.

Augustina touched him then, her grip on his shoulder nearly painful. "It's worth it," she'd said, her own voice rough with unexpressed emotion. "I've wondered. Lots of times, I've wondered. But it's worth it, for this."

At the time, he hadn't understood what she'd meant. But now he was grown, middle-aged even, he knew only too well. Why did they fight on, suffering, losing so much they held dear? Not only because it was their duty, their Calling, but because, even with pollution, and urban sprawl, and petty, selfish human beings who made their lives a misery, the fight was worthwhile. The earth in all its glories ought to be preserved, the innocents protected, because there was hope, and there was the future.

"We all act, as we must, within the order of the world," Celeste told him, with a touch of wistfulness. "You are part of that order. Buffy is part of that order." Her hand closed briefly, warmly, round Giles's own. "We have given you one another, for strength, and for comfort."

"And what God has joined together, let no man--or demon--put asunder?" Giles spoke lightly, or meant to, but his voice, despite that intent, betrayed the seriousness behind his question. He'd no faith in his own abilities, and he needed, desperately, to be reassured that this too-brief joy would not be torn away from them.

"Because you love, and are loved," Celeste answered. after a moment's thought. "You have within you all that's required."