Tribulations - Chapter 70

Seb and Celeste had been a little frosty to her on the way over, but Buffy couldn't exactly blame them for that, not after they'd seen her at her bitchy best the night before. At least they'd let her ride with them, and she'd tried her hardest to be well-behaved. Now all she could do, she guessed, was count on their basic niceness to help them thaw out again. Eventually. She hoped.

Giles treated her normally, so if she was very lucky, they'd take their cues from him and she'd be off the hook. The coolness made her want to fidget, though. which--unless you were five years old--wasn't the best way to be for a funeral. It didn't help that she'd been seated right up front, with the family. Right between Giles and Wes, in fact.

Despite the air conditioning, it felt stuffy in the bland chapel-like room they been assigned for the service. This one had a solid-looking blocklike thingy to hold the coffin, no more unfortunate "accidents" for the Sunnydale Funeral Home--no doubt to everyone's relief. Even she, magically challenged as she was, could detect the staticky zinging of wards and protection spells behind her.

Buffy wondered who'd been responsible for those. Maybe the funeral home had someone on retainer?

Yeah, right. Not even in Sunnydale. More likely that Giles and Seb had put their heads together to come up with some kind of Evil-B-Gone. When, Buffy didn't know, though she did recognize that they both looked tired. Tireder. And even more on edge than you'd expect. She hoped they hadn't needed to do it all, that some of the others behind her had maybe kept a trick or two up their sleeves as well.

Mourner-wise, the people--and Buffy used the term loosely--who'd come seemed to be a mixed bag. Aside from Scoobies and honorary Scoobies, Aunt Flora had flown over from England, as had Simon Quartermass and Angela Tremayne for the Watcher team. There was a distinguished-looking older guy named Maurice Bannister, some sort of relation of Moira's on her father's side, and a very spooked-looking Briony St. Ives, representing the Mermorgan Hall contingent. Add to that stern-looking nun from New Orleans, a French-speaking priest from Quebec, a sparse handful of scholarly-looking types, and another handful of...well, let's just say they made her Spidey-sense tingle, and leave it at that. Barring Wesley, there weren't any vampires present, ensouled or otherwise, and if a few non-human Americans wanted to honor Moira's memory, who was she to say anything?

Actually, the current turnout made Buffy a little sad: a lot of people from the wake hadn't come back, and it seemed to her that someone like Moira deserved more. Lots more. It hit her, suddenly, what Moira and Helena had done, all those terrible years, and she found herself crying for both of them.

Giles passed her one of those perfect Giles handkerchiefs, then gave her hand a little squeeze. With that touch, the force and the completeness of his love flooded into her, and Buffy found herself gasping soundlessly, fresh tears filling her eyes. What was that? Okay, she knew what it was, but...how?

Buffy wished she'd gotten more of a chance to seriously discuss what had happened during his glowy time that afternoon. She wasn't worried, not exactly--but her mind kept going back to that golden light, so strong it shone right through her hand. Was that something to do with the Underworld, a few days past? With the goddess and the wine and how close Giles had come to slipping away from her?

She still wasn't paying very close attention when Sebastian made his way to the front of the room.

"I'm here today," he said quietly, "Only as my mother's son. Not as a priest, reading prayers to which Moira certainly would not have agreed. We quarreled--" Seb gave a little smile. "Enthusiastically--about a number of things over the years, one of them being my chosen profession. Or, as I myself prefer to say, the profession for which I was chosen. Her beliefs were not my beliefs, and yet there has never been a moment in which I felt she was less than proud of me, less than accepting of me, just as I was, always, so very proud of her. That's a rare enough quality, between mother and son." His voice trembled, but Seb fought it under control again, Gileslike to the core. "All of us here, all of us who weren't frightened away by yesterday's events--we knew her, didn't we?"

A ripple of slightly-painful laughter went through the mourners, and a few nods. Meanwhile, at the back of the quasi-chapel, the doors opened. Buffy saw, with horror, that Joyce had slipped in, looking all mom-like in her navy blue dress. At least she took a seat in the back row.

This could be bad, Buffy thought. This has mega-badness potential. I wonder if Giles knows any shut-up-mom spells?

Sebastian gave another sad little smile. "Moira was never one for sentiment, or platitudes. She had a brilliant mind, now and then a sharp tongue, an unwillingness to suffer fools lightly, and, at the same time, a nearly infinite capacity for patience. Some of us called ourselves her students, others her friends, yet all of us learned from her. We knew that Moira would not back down, merely because a cause seemed impossible, and we learned from her determination. We knew that, in her work and in her life, she managed to survive the unsurvivable, and we learned from her courage." Seb took a deep breath. "Something it has taken me until now to realize is that my mother understood the fragility of life in ways most of us do not. In ways I did not. I believed we had all the time in the world, that we would come, over the years, to a true understanding of one another. I believed she would hold her granddaughter in her arms, as she'd never had the chance to hold a child of her own, and bless her. I believed that when she found Wesley, Moira discovered the joy, the love and the peace she'd been denied for her entire life. And I'd hoped--" His somber green eyes sought Wes's. "I'd honestly hoped they'd share many happy years together."

"I've never been so very sorry to be proven wrong." Sebastian's eyes teared up, and he scooted quickly back to his seat, where Celeste stroked his arm, leaning close to whisper something in Seb's ear.

Simon Quartermass got up next. He was still wearing his sling, and from the way he moved Buffy guessed that the wound wasn't healing all that well. "Moira was my teacher," he said, even more quietly than was usual for his soft Scottish voice. "My Handler, as we say. In a way, I'm glad we've chosen to remember her here, rather than back home at the Compound, because, as Sebastian has reminded us, Moira's ways were often not the recognized ways of the Watchers. Least of all were they the ways of what the Watchers had become. In many respects, she was an Outsider in a society of outsiders, set apart not so much by her family connections, or by her abilities, but by her insistence on living life absolutely by the courage of her convictions. At a time when corruption grew and spread through our ranks, she remained incorruptible, true to our purpose. Along with all the many things she taught me, I hope that I shall remember that, and be able to live my own life according to her standards. Tenax et fideles, ut quocunque paratus. I shall miss you, Your Ladyship, and all that you stood for: your kindness, your courage, your wisdom. Above all, Em, I shall miss being your friend."

The speeches went on, and Buffy had no doubt they were good speeches, heartfelt speeches. She just couldn't listen anymore. There was too much hurt there, too much emotion. She had to pull away, sitting quietly between the two men who had been her Watchers, blinking back tears that made her eyes sting and her sinuses burn.

And so, it surprised her when Giles slid out of his seat. He wasn't a public-speaking kind of guy at any time, and though a lot of his shyness seemed to have dropped away from him over the years, replaced by the quiet confidence she most often saw from him these days, Buffy just wasn't prepared for what came next.

Giles took a chair from against the wall, and set it down facing the mourners. He gave Celeste a slight smile when she brought to him, from a case over by the nearer side wall, an acoustic guitar with deep-gold wood and little mother-of-pearl inlays on the fretboard and around the soundhole. He held the instrument tenderly, as if it was something he was used to holding, and his fingertips moved easily over its strings, testing one here, tweaking a peg here.

The look on his face wasn't anything Buffy expected, either--miles from one of Ripper's expressions, but light-years removed from any way Stuffy Mr. Giles, Watcher extrordinaire would ever have looked. His fingers moved gently, calling out soft, throbbing notes from the guitar, sounds that made the hair on the back of Buffy's neck stand on end at the same time they broke her heart.

"As many of you know," Giles said, his voice soft, hypnotic. "Moira and I met when we were very young. When our lives were painful, and fearful, and fierce. In the light of yesterday's events, before present company and given the solemnity of this gathering, I can't claim that this is, in any way, an appropriate song. Yet when I first heard it, I was reminded of Em, of those times--and of later times. We loved one another, in our way. Were true to one another, in our way. To lose her has left..." Giles's eyes closed briefly.

Buffy knew what Moira's death had left in his heart--a hole about the size of Texas.

Giles didn't finish that thought. Instead, he concluded softly, "This is a song by Richard Thompson, like myself an expatriate Englishman of middle years. Em quite liked his music."

Buffy had told Xander Giles's little secret, making it a gentle teasing between them, a joke meant lovingly. She hadn't realized, though, not really, that feeling tuneful while you scrubbed the shower was one thing, hitting the right notes (not something she herself could necessarily manage) getting most of the words, all that was fine, while this...this was...

She felt like she'd put down roots into her chair. Giles's voice was low, and strong, but what it really did was tear into the heart of the song, bringing out all the loss and the pain into a place where it struck her almost too powerfully to stand.

At least we tried, Giles sang.

At least we did it right
With all our souls and all our might
Blue murder on the dance floor
French kisses in the rain
Blood wedding in the water
'Til I see you again
The ghost of you walks
The ghost of you walks right through my head
Sleepwalks at the foot of my bed
Sends old shivers over my skin

Love like that it won't let go
Got some kind of a mind of its own
I can't break out and I can't break in
At least we lived, took it all in a rush
At least we loved too much, felt too much, cared too much...
And the ghost of you walks...

Literally, Buffy said to herself--but she didn't mean that. The thought was just self-defense.

Giles rose quietly, carrying his instrument back to where Celeste had found it, nestling the guitar into the red-plush lining of its case, shutting the lid down on it, like a little black coffin for the music and the emotion he'd brought out when he played. His fingers moved carefully around the outer rim, snapping the clasps that would hold the case shut. His eyes searched for hers.

Forgive me love, they seemed to say, all at once full of pain and doubt. Buffy wished that she could take him in her arms right them, holding him tightly so that their hearts beat one against the other. Instead, when Giles sat again beside her, Buffy laid her hand lightly over his, looking for his eyes, as he'd sought hers. She'd expected to see grayness in their changeable depths, but instead found a green so vibrant it startled her.

Giles's hand turned under hers, his fingers weaving between her own.

A random thought floated through Buffy's mind: And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Okay, that so hadn't been her thought. Or else it was, and her life really was turning into English Lit 201. Not even smiling, but with something like a smile buried under his seriousness, Giles touched the index finger of his other hand lightly to her lips.

At which point Wesley got to his feet. Buffy felt confused, off balance--or maybe unbalanced. She wasn't even sure what, if anything, had happened since Giles finished his song.

Wes moved slowly, like a sleepwalker, and unlike everyone else, he didn't face his fellow mourners, but went straight to the casket itself, resting his hands on the shiny, closed lid. "Buffy came to me with a problem the other day, Em," he said, conversationally, "And I leapt into it straightaway, just as you would have wished. I believe you would have been quite proud of me, love. I was proud of myself. Only afterward, I thought of this.

"William-bloody-Wordsworth? you'd most likely say, with that raised brow and the catlike smile you'd give me, the one that always made me grin in return. For I know I'm old-fashioned, at times more than faintly ridiculous, and yet you loved me. You loved me, and that was the greatest wonder of my life. They say I'll recover, that in time this hurt will dull, perhaps even fade, eventually, into a species of pleasant nostalgia. But you see, this is what it all returns to, for me--"

Surprised by joy--impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport--O! with whom
But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Had I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore

"I'm sorry," Wesley added in a broken voice. "My love, I am so very, very sorry."

That seemed to be a cue of some sort. Giles got to his feet again, and Sebastian, and Xander, all three of them moving to join Wesley at the coffin. Simon followed after them, and so did the silver-haired man, Maurice Bannister. He was Moira's uncle, Buffy remembered now, her dad's younger brother. That's what Celeste had told her. Together, the six men shouldered the black box, moving down into the aisle, where Briony St. Ives joined them, following after with her long, dark-green robe trailing on the ground.

As the procession made its slow way, down the halls and out into the grounds, Briony began to sing--not in English, but in her own old, old language.

In Moira's old language, Buffy reminded herself. The language that gave her power. It chilled her to think that Willow had that power now.

Briony's voice was clear and high, and somehow terribly unearthly.

Cold, Buffy thought. The way space is cold. Shivers ran up and down her spine, and such a feeling of darkness washed through her that Buffy could hardly see as she made her way outside with the other mourners.

The rain had stopped at least, though the air smelled heavy, wet and a little salty. Celeste--at least she thought it was Celeste--held her hand just a little too tightly as they stumbled over the slippery grass in their high-heeled pumps.

Buffy wondered, a little irreverently, how much the good folks at the Sunnydale Funeral Home were wigging over this one. Or maybe they weren't. She probably shouldn't underestimate the amount of weirdness her hometown could throw into even the most ordinary people's lives.

By then, they'd stopped, with the open grave in front of them, and sh could see a little better. The guys were starting to lower Moira's coffin--not on one of those modern hydraulic things, but on long strips of green fabric, Briony's voice sailing up and out into the night air, the stars cold and brilliant overhead.

Buffy felt tiny and lonely, and as if she was caught in a very strange dream. One that just got stranger when Giles's and Sebastian's voices joined in with the LeFaye witch's song, their deeper pitch anchoring the music somehow, bringing it down to the earth, into the earth. heavy with grief and loss and time. She felt as if she stood outside everything now, even with all those people around her. She couldn't feel Celeste's hand in hers anymore, but what she could feel was the tickle of breath against her ear.

"What do you think, Miss Buffy?" said a prickly little voice, to her alone. "Is it time now?"

Buffy did what no self-respecting Slayer would have ever, ever done. She screamed her head off.