Tribulations - Chapter 71

Buffy had expected to be embarrassed by her own behavior, screaming like that, as if she was nothing more than some disposable blonde in a slasher movie. And she was. Embarrassed.

Only, what she saw when she really, truly looked at the thing beside her turned out to be a hundred times worse than mere embarrassment, so much worse that being ashamed or not ashamed, screaming or not screaming, hardly even mattered. There was Mr. Briggs--faux Mr. Briggs, anyway--and if she'd thought she was jaded, that she'd seen pretty much everything there was to see in the bumps and scales and horns department, she was about to learn different.

Because this one was different. The real demon, the one from Giles's book, in the picture Wesley had shown her, moved and twitched inside the see-through shell of its Briggsness. There was something unformed about it, something fetal...skinless...unspeakable. Buffy thought she'd lost her capacity to be revolted. But she hadn't. Not by a long shot.

It hadn't been Celeste, she realized, who'd brought her here from the funeral home. Not Celeste at all. This...thing had blinded her, taken her hand, led her...

It could have led her anywhere. She wouldn't have known. Her hand felt weird where the demon had touched her. Horrible, as if her skin was cracking with dryness but, at the same time, slimy. She wanted to back away, but she couldn't. Instead, she had the weirdest feeling, as if every moment of her life, past and future, was right there, a series of paper-thin slices stacked up like lunchmeat inside a Buffy-shaped package.

Something--big guess what--was stretching those slices apart, putting spaces between their perfect order, where no space was ever meant to be.

Buffy felt as if any second now she'd fly apart into a million pieces. The world moved sickeningly around her, in huge see-saw swings. One minute she was there, in reality, the next she found herself in another location, so far away from any place human beings were meant to go that she couldn't help but be terrified. What if she got stuck there? What if the pendulum never swung back?

Someone said something. Garbled words Buffy couldn't make out.

Somewhere, someone--or something--gave a giggly little laugh.

Buffy's stomach flipped over. She fell down to her knees, frantically trying to scrub that nastiness away on the damp grass, the gritty dirt, even on the gravel. She was home. At least she was home. Her stomach flipped again, and this time stayed flipped. No need to worry about dinner, or the fattening qualities of Granny Ames's grilled cheese sandwich recipe. Buffy felt like she was throwing up everything she'd eaten in the past week. Everything. Right there. In front of everyone. On the ground beside Moira's open grave.

Buffy groaned, half with extreme, miserable nausea, half with an even more extreme horror at where she'd been, what she'd seen and touched.

And could she get an extra half for the sheer joy of having absolutely and totally humiliated herself in public?

So, where was the Zeit Räuber in all this? Panting, not trusting her stomach for even so much as a second, Buffy lifted her eyes from the dirt. Nowhere, that's where he was. Absolutely nowhere to be seen.

She groaned again. Maybe she was going crazy. Stress could do that to you, right? If she went crazy, would she have to remember any of this? Could she at least fake amnesia?

Giles was kneeling there beside her, saying something soothing while he wiped her face with his backup handkerchief. How gross was it, that he had to do that?--and how sweet of him, too, to not be completely disgusted by her. Or, if he was, not to show any of it.

The world swayed, but not because she was zooming off anywhere otherworldly, or about to get sick again. Only because Giles had lifted her. The stars blurred in the dark sky overhead. Buffy remembered that: it was the last thing she saw.

The funeral director, a man by the name of Willoughby who was so short, stout and sandy-haired in appearance that he reminded one, unfortunately, of Winnie the Pooh, had kindly offered the use of his office. On the whole, Giles thought the offer exceptionally thoughtful, since he could only imagine the director, and entire staff, of the Sunnydale Funeral Home would be collectively overjoyed never again to have the kith and kin of Moira Bannister-St.Ives darken their doorway.

As it was, however, Mr. Willoughby not only allowed them into his personal sanctum, he fetched a pitcher of iced water with his own well-groomed hands and, shaking his head sympathetically at the sight of Buffy's unconscious form stretched out upon his sofa, left Giles and Sebastian to their own devices, shutting the door noiselessly behind him.

Giles wet his son's spare handkerchief from the pitcher and laid the resulting compress across Buffy's brow. Her lips moved at his touch, but she did not waken.

Seb took a seat at the opposite end of the sofa. One by one, he deftly unbuckled the straps of Buffy's shoes, slipped them from her feet and set them neatly on the floor. "Her pulse is quite strong," he commented.

"How did...?" Giles began. "Ah, yes." He gestured vaguely. "You felt it in her ankle."

Numb, drained, and hovering on the edge of hopelessness, Giles sank into Willoughby's desk-chair. He literally could not hold his head up any longer, yet to let it lie upon the little man's blotter seemed presumptuous. He compromised by propping his elbows there instead and cradling his head between his hands.

"It's been a bloody day," Seb commented, with sympathy.

"That it has," Giles answered absently. His brain seemed to insist in running aimless, repetitive patterns, like Amy the Rat in the Habitrail Willow had constructed for her. What's happened to Amy now? he wondered pointlessly. And, God, why didn't Buffy wake?

"Buffy hardly seems a girl who'd succumb to an attack of the vapours," Seb remarked.

"She isn't." Giles attempted to look up, hoping to see some sign of returning consciousness in Buffy's demeanor. He wished, with painful fervency, that she would return to him, that the terror of her experiences had not thrown her into a state of shock.

Sebastian rose to kneel beside the sofa. Gently, he brushed the hair back from Buffy's brow, laying his hand against her smooth, pale skin as if feeling for some sign of returning warmth.

"She saw him," Giles informed his son bleakly. "It. Der Zeit Räuber."

Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "Dad, we put up wards enough to stop an army of the accursed, much less..."

"Our wards were intended to block Willow's intrusion--along with the more usual of Sunnydale's denizens. We mustn't forget that this demon is owed, and the particulars of Buffy's contract with him--with it--allow this access." With what seemed the last of his strength, Giles rose, removing his jacket, draping its folds over Buffy's still form. She looked so diminished, so lost beneath the black cloth, that Giles nearly took it off again--except, when he bent to her, the muscles of his back and shoulders caught painfully.

"Dad? What is it?" Sebastian studied him with evident alarm.

"Nothing. Getting old." Giles laughed mirthlessly.

"That's not funny," Sebastian answered, rising.

Giles gave a little hiss of discomfort when Seb's hand came down squarely between his shoulder blades.

"You're bleeding,:" Sebastian said flatly, showing the redness that now stained his palm. "Did you know?"

"Then find Buffy a blanket, or something to warm her," Giles answered, disliking the stern quality that had come into his voice. Sebastian, as always kind and concerned, didn't deserve such harshness from him. "And I'll cover the evidence."

Sebastian's eyes looked dark with hurt, but, without a word, he handed Giles his jacket, then began to rummage through the cupboards.

Giles, painfully, pulled the garment on again.

"Here," Sebastian tossed a tartan bundle in his direction--Giles, with his indistinct vision, fumbled the catch badly.

"In case you weren't aware, I've just buried my mother," Seb informed him, with a low-pitched vehemence quite at odds with his usual good nature. "So, I'd appreciate being let know if I'm to bury my father as well. I might like to be well clear of it."

"Sebastian, for God's sake--"

"No." His son glared at him, and Giles could not recall previously seeing so much as a dark look on Sebastian's face. "We've come here--I've come here--to be with you, to make up for all the years lost. Only now I discover it's no bloody use. I'm not wanted." His eyes flashed, intensely green--not as Moira's had been green, but with every bit of Ripper's fury, Ripper's resentment, reminding Giles, were further proof needed, that this young man was not Clive Delacoeur's son, but his own. His own son, whom he'd betrayed and disappointed in more ways than he could begin to number.

Giles felt his jaw drop. His insides twisted painfully. He wanted to protest, to show Sebastian how wrong he was--and yet his own behavior would only serve to prove his words hollow. Already he'd allowed Willow to slip away into the darkness. How soon before the others followed? And all because he was no bloody use--no matter what putative angels might tell him in his dreams--no bloody use at all.

"You life here is hideously dangerous, and again and again I've seen..." He shook his head violently, as if that might somehow dispel those visions. "I've no idea what your masters, that Council of yours. did to you..." Sebastian's voice dropped lower still.

"No," Giles found himself replying stiffly, though he'd no desire whatsoever to show coldness to his beloved son. "You've no idea whatsoever. And much as I would like to play happy families..."

"Then why won't you try?" Sebastian shouted in return, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "Why don't any of us mean enough to you that you'll try? Because of Willow? Because you failed to foretell, or perceive, or whatever it was you're meant to do?" At that moment all the fury seemed to drain from him, and her stood with his open hands outstretched, looking young, lost, alone. "Dad, I don't understand."

"Seb, I'm not going to die," Giles said, desperately, though he'd meant to infuse some lightness into his voice. "Good heavens, I've been here three years. There are always dangers, and, as always, we face them. That hardly means..."

"You take risks," Sebastian answered. "Bloody stupid risks, at times. And, before you say it, I'm well aware that the taking of risks is all part and parcel of being a hero."

Flummoxed, Giles found himself, at a loss for any more appropriate response, teetering on the brink of laughter. "I beg your pardon, Seb? A what?"

"On the whole, I'd rather prefer to have a dad who was a bit less heroic, and actually alive to see his grandchildren born."

That did it. Giles found the laughter bubbling out of him, though in time, perhaps in the face of Sebastian's stricken expression, all the mirth seemed to drain from it, leaving, instead, a bitter sorrow. "Good God, Seb, I'm no hero. I've acted in ways..." He drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Actually, the thing was that we, as Watchers, weren't necessarily meant to act."

All the years, lost and found, seemed to weigh so heavily upon him Giles could scarcely speak, much less move or act. "We could advise, yes, but for the most part we were meant to study, to watch, and record, for the use of the next one who came along. And there was always meant to be a next one. One girl in all the world, that was it--but not one girl that I cannot bear to lose. Not sons and a daughter that I would give up my own life to protect. I wasn't prepared for any of this, and now...now, Seb, I don't know what to do." Giles sank down in the high-backed leather chair, hardly registering the pain as his torn back connected with the upholstery.

He'd no need to examine those wounds: he knew them well enough. As would Angel, he imagined. That they'd returned to him, in the place of their ghostly reminders, his healed-over scars, gave Giles a clear enough message. The Time Thief knew they sought a way to renege on his promised payment, and he, in turn, intended to punish them.

How could they possibly defeat such a demon, when Buffy's strength would not serve them, and his own magical abilities stood at an all-time low? Giles shut his eyes, weary and heartsick. He felt, rather than heard, Sebastian approach, since the young man moved as silently as he.

An image of Sebastian as he'd been when they'd first met formed inside his head. He'd seen photographs, naturally, of his son as a baby, and at all stages of boyhood--the Delacoeurs had been nothing if not enthusiastic photographers. For him, though, Sebastian was born as a young man in a black gown, standing cap-in-hand beneath an ancient oak with the wind ruffling his hair.

Sebastian said nothing, but Giles felt the young man's hands close round his, strong hands, and capable, like his own. His son spoke a few words, too softly for him to hear--a prayer most likely, and it touched Giles that Seb would pray for him.

In a moment, though, the most extraordinary feeling of well-being began to suffuse his body, as if of rain falling at last onto drought-stricken land. Only this rain...

It was magic, the essence of magic, flowing from Sebastian's body to enter his own, and he was sinking into a warmly comfortable trance-state, neither able to fight the influx of power, nor wanting to do so. This was Sebastian's birthright that he offered so freely, nothing held back, nothing begrudged. His birthright--given for what?

"Why?" Giles managed to ask after what seemed hours had gone by, as he began to sink ever deeper into the comforting darkness.

"Why?" Sebastian echoed gently. "Because it was mine to give, dad, and I couldn't think of a better person to offer it to."

Buffy knew, somehow, that a long time had passed since her graveside moment of glory. How she'd gotten to where she was, she couldn't clearly remember, and, as to the where of where she was, she had even less of an idea. All she could tell was that, at the moment, she'd found herself lying flat out on a couch in what was obviously someone's office, with her shoes off and a plaid lap-robey kind of thing spread over her--despite which, she was shivering with cold.

"N-nothing," Buffy said through chattering teeth, "L-like a dramatic end to the evening."

"It was he?" Giles asked her softly. Or maybe it was Sebastian. When she finally managed to pry her eyelids all the way open, she saw that the person leaning over her was auburn-haired.

"How are you feeling, Buffy?" he asked. "Somewhat recovered, I trust?"

"Ya know," Buffy said drowsily, "You guys have to work on getting different voices. For times like these." She forced herself to a more-or-less upright position. "But, in answer to your question--yeah, I feel better. And yes, it was him. It. And looking even better than we expected."

"I..." Seb began, then glanced away, down at the toes of his no-longer-nicely-polished shoes.

"I experienced your encounter. A bit of it, at least," a different voice said. Or, really, a not-very-different voice, which meant that it had to be Giles talking this time. He moved into her line of sight, looking--she wasn't sure. Still tired. Kind of stiff--but at the same time, a little glowy around the edges, a look she'd come to associate with magic recently or about to be performed.

"You did?" she asked, trying to get some hints about what might be going on from his expression.

"Only a portion," Giles answered, moving close enough to take her hand, feeling her pulse first, then bending lower to kiss her palm.

"Mmn, my knight in shining armor," she murmured, trying to see into his tired eyes. What she read there seemed to be mostly confusion, as if a lot of things had come down the pike while she'd been out, and Giles was still trying to sort them into some kind of working order.

"Not the most pleasant of occurrences, I'll grant you," Giles said, wearing his I'm-trying-to-think-faster-than-I-talk expression. "The creature-- The demon--that is--appeared, to me, not entirely formed. As if it's using the time it acquires through these exchanges to force itself into a maturity it might not otherwise obtain..."

"And if the little critter's this nasty now--?" Buffy gave him her own version of the raised-eyebrow look.

Giles sighed.

"Oh, great." Buffy sighed too. "So, I can't wait to see what he's like when he's all grown up. Our little personal problem just got a lot bigger, huh?"

Giles sighed again, reaching down to brush a strand of Buffy's now-thoroughly-disgusting hair back from her forehead. "Let's not think of that just now, my love," he said.

"You can't be my Giles," Buffy joked weakly, though she saw he was exactly that Giles, worn-out and worried for her.

"None other," he answered in his all-concern-all-the-time voice. "Your mum's waiting to drive us home. Feel up to giving that a try?"

"Sure. Why not?" Buffy slid her legs over the edge of the couch, planting her feet on the floor as she slowly attempted to raise her head from the cushion. The sick feeling came back to the pit of her stomach, but she decided to ignore it as long as she could. She'd never wanted to get home so badly in her life. "My mom, huh?"

"She's quite worried," Seb informed her.

"Hey, I'm just surprised you managed to keep her out of here. Usually, she'd be at the door with battering ram raised, ready to plow down whoever got in her way. Did you tell her I'm just having the major wiggins of my life, and to ignore me?" Buffy asked, leaning her head against Giles's chest once he'd helped her to her feet.

"Something of the sort. I believe Celeste used her own super-powers," he answered absently, his mind no doubt already worrying away at the current crisis. "You know, love, if you'd rather, I could carry you."

"Or I," Seb put in, with a meaningful glance at his father.

"Hey, it's the Worry Twins!" Buffy said, laughing weakly as she looked from one to the other of their sweet, concerned faces. "Sure, that would go a looong way to decreasing my mom's freakout. But look at me! Walking and talking."

And she did, although her walking involved a lot of clinging really hard to Giles's arm, and she didn't actually do any talking. She was listening too hard for the sound of a cold, whispering voice in her ear.