Tribulations - Chapter 72

Foolish as he told himself it was to tarry, Wesley lingered a long while at the graveside, unable to take, as the others had, that final step of walking away from where Moira lay. To do so would have seemed, somehow, as if he'd abandoned hope--though what hope remained to him, Wesley could not have said--and with it, abandoned his love.

He knew that Giles's daughter-in-law, Celeste Delacoeur, had arranged a veritable feast at some restaurant or another, and Wesley supposed he ought to put in an appearance. Everyone gathered there would have cared for Moira--perhaps not as he'd loved her, but sincerely enough for all that. They would wish to give their condolences. Moira herself would have been glad to see them so assembled, and urged him to take comfort in their presence. She would have seen it as an act of healing.

The thing was, though, that everything within him rebelled at the thought. Perhaps such grief was selfish, immature. So be it. There was no comfort to be had, not for him, not in company, not anywhere. Was he meant to stand up in such a gathering, pretending to enjoy food he could neither taste nor smell, swapping stories with a group of virtual strangers, all of whom would only serve to remind him how little of Moira's life he'd been allowed to share? Delacoeur had long since vanished with Buffy and Giles. In his life as a Watcher Candidate he'd avoided Angela Tremayne whenever possible. And Simon Quartermass...

Quartermass would be kind, no doubt of that, but what had they to say to one another? Should they talk of times past? Speak of mutual friends? Perhaps he ought to pour into Simon's sympathetic ear the tale of how Maria del Ciello made him a vampire, and how he, in later days, had thrust a stake into her unbeating heart, sending her earthly remains heavenward in a gout of putrid ash?

Bitterness ill becomes you, my love, Moira might have said to him--except, naturally, that she was dead, and would never, never say anything ever again. All this business of wishes and magic...was he, at last, prepared to admit it would come to nothing? When had his wishes ever come true?

He remembered a time in his boyhood, his father moving in a cloud of rage and the sharp smell of gin. That dark cupboard under the scullery stairs. The cobwebs, the musty air and the bone-dry scuttle of insects. The turning of the lock. The absence of light...

Wesley fell to his knees beside the grave, fingers tearing into the newly-turned earth. Had he been alive his heart would have pounded, his throat constricted until he could hardly breathe, just as it had so many nights, all the times at school when he'd awakened shrieking, breathless, drenched in sweat. All the nights that earned him the hated nickname of "Windy Wesley."

This was foolish. He was foolish. What did he imagine he'd do here, dig his beloved out of the darkness? None of this meant anything to her.

"It doesn't have to be like this," said a pleasant young voice quite close to his ear.

Wesley raised his head, suddenly terrified.

"It hurts a lot, doesn't it?" Something dark moved on the edge of his vision, and there was Willow, sitting primly atop a nearby gravestone, her hands folded in her lap--looking, for all the world, like a little girl in church: tiny, attentive, sweet-faced. "I'll bet it hurts more than you can stand, and what are any of them doing about it?" She slid down from her perch, moving toward Wesley soundlessly. In doing so, she no longer seemed so entirely childlike, for her figure, if slight, was womanly, and the green velvet of her gown clung, as she walked, to the ripeness of her hips and thighs.

Once, he would have found her alluring. Once, her curious mix of innocence and sensuality, untasted, would have haunted his dreams.

Now, such games held nothing to interest him. Wesley's face felt numb, his lips and tongue colder than usual. "What can be done?" he asked her. "Moira is dead and buried. How can that possibly be turned back upon itself?"

Willow gave a soft trill of laughter. "Honestly, Wes, it isn't that hard. An animal sacrifice. A few chants. An invocation of Osiris. I'm not saying it would be a walk in the park, but it's totally doable. I could show you my source materials. Oh, and this." Gently, she set a small urn--of alabaster, it appeared--on the mounded earth of Moira's grave.

"A spirit vessel," Wesley murmured.

"Gotta love that Watcher education." Willow turned her radiant smile upon him, leaf-green eyes sparkling. "Ssh, don't tell, " she said, reaching out to press her index finger to Wesley's lips, the heat of that contact spreading over his face, until he almost felt real, almost like a man again.

"Don't tell...what?" Wesley asked, aching for the warmth that left him the moment Willow removed her touch.

"That I stole it from Giles's place." She hid a brief giggle behind her hand. "Naughty, I know, but he wasn't using it. He wasn't ever going to use it. At least, not for just anyone..."

"You're telling me that Giles knew of this ritual, and possessed the means to perform it?" Wesley stated flatly.

"What can I say?" Willow's shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. "We're all a little selfish, aren't we? We want what we want. Wesley, I know that Moira was a great lady, and anyone can see you miss her so much it's killing you. It hurts me to see it. But please don't judge Giles. There's Buffy, after all. Maybe if I had anyone I loved that much, I'd be a little selfish too."

Willow stooped to retrieve the vessel, holding it cradled in the cup of her hands. "So, I have it. You don't have to decide right away, Wes. Just...don't wait too long, okay?"

She turned as if to go, and in a part of himself Wesley wanted to call after her, "Please, Willow, I've decided. Name your price, but do it now. Please, do it now."

Another, cannier, portion of his mind remembered Moira's poor, dishonoured body contorting in that horrid, shambling dance--and that part perceived, in the bit of profile showing over Willow's shoulder, a hint of watchfulness, a touch of malice, a desire, even, to divide him from himself.

He recalled, from a million years before, a snatch of song he'd heard playing in Moira's study, back at the Compound:

I'll watch you with my one green eye
And I'll hurt you 'til you need me...

The moonlight caught Willow's one visible eye and turned it to ice. Wesley felt from her the LeFaye Glamour, that indefinable something Moira had always taken such great pains to rein in, now battering upon his defenses, as the demon within him battered upon the cage of his soul. Far, now, from experiencing any sort of attraction, he felt sickened, violated, and he wished with all his heart that he'd insisted they keep the bloody Box of Gavrok when they'd had it, and left this beastly girl to her fate.

Innocents had died for her, while she'd cast off her own innocence wantonly, thrown away the goodness that Wesley knew she'd once, truly, possessed. And for what? A handful of tatty magic tricks? The power to remake reality in her own image?

He hung his head, feigning gratitude, shamming emotions so mixed and terrible they drove him to his knees. "I shall decide, Willow," he mumbled. "I shall." When Wesley glanced up again, he even managed to make his eyes brim with tears. "I t-thank you," he stammered. "Truly, I thank you."

Willow smiled down upon him, for all the world like a queen granting great favours.

"No more wakes. No more funerals. I've decided." Buffy slumped in the passenger seat of her mom's newly-repaired SUV. The body shop guys hadn't matched the paint exactly, she noticed. And all this time she'd thought forest green was just forest green. No nuances required.

"I thought it was a... nice...um...service," Joyce answered. She threw a look over her shoulder at Giles in the back seat. He was being silent-guy, gazing out the window, his thoughts obviously light-years away.

Good thing, really. Her mom's look had definitely contained a certain quality of sniffiness. No doubt about it, she hadn't liked the inappropriate song. In the Joyce Summers Book of Etiquette, French kissing was not to be mentioned at funerals. End of story.

For herself, Buffy had minded at all. For one thing, her jealous days were long gone. Mostly, anyway. For another, she understood now how things had been between Giles and Moira, all that passion and caring and feeling that somehow, sometimes, got so big it went out of control. Come to think of it, she herself was pretty much a world-class expert on how much loving the wrong person could cost you in terms of life-wreckage.

So, she'd not only appreciated the honesty of his song, she'd liked seeing that Giles had shaken off so much of his former repression he'd come right out and express what he'd felt. In front of people and everything. The words had been true for him and Moira, and if that offended some mom-type people--well, that was their problem, wasn't it?

Buffy just hoped that when she died, people would remember her by saying what they really felt, not by spouting a bunch of pablumy stuff that made her seem like someone she wasn't.

Nice image there, Buff, she told herself, and had to laugh--in a semi-uncomfortable way. Spouting. Ugh. It all came just a little too close to how she'd actually ended the evening.

Hopefully, her mom hadn't noticed the laughing, though.

"When will your car be out of the shop, Ru...Mr. Giles?" Joyce asked, in that polite tone that really meant how could you be so irresponsible?

"Hmn?" Giles shook himself. "I...er...that is..."

"His car melted, mom," Buffy told her. "It's not coming back. New car shopping's number two on the to-do list. Right after saving the world."

Joyce gave one of her patented PatientMom sighs.

"We ought to--" Giles said suddenly, then stopped. Funny how he could face down demons and perform death-defying feats of magic, but confronting her mom still wigged him.

Buffy threw him a continue, please? look.

"Joyce, I'm afraid. That is..." He took a deep breath, "We really ought to ward your house securely. Against Willow."

Joyce stared a little too hard at the stoplight ahead of her. "Your friend Willow?" she said drily. "Isn't that a little drastic, Buffy? If the two of you aren't getting along..."

Buffy suddenly felt very tired. Or tireder, and a few minutes before she would have been willing to bet that wasn't possible. "Just let Giles do his thing, mom. Okay?"

Joyce said something under her breath. Buffy wanted to yell at her. Really let-me-rip-you-a-new-one yell at her.

Instead she counted backward from ten, then said, in as calm of voice as she could muster, "Willow hurt Xander, Mom. Seriously hurt him, as in not just his feelings. She's gotten into some bad stuff, lately, and I don't want her to hurt you too, all right?"

"Bad..." Joyce's forehead wrinkled, and the two little sadness dents appeared at the corners of her mouth. "You mean drugs? Willow's gotten into drugs? Did that boyfriend of hers...?" She shook her head. "I'd always thought she was too sensible a girl to fall in with a bad element."

"Uh..." Buffy began, pretty much at a loss as to how to even start trying to scale the mighty edifice of motherly cluelessness.

Giles, lifesaver that he was, plunged to her rescue. "Very much like that, I'm afraid," he said gently. "It's true, Joyce, that Willow has fallen in with quite an undesirable companion... "

"You know, I tried to tell Sheila she should pay more attention..." Joyce's voice trailed away. She swallowed, then darted another glance over her shoulder. "And I'm more or less a complete idiot, aren't I? You're trying to tell me it's the magic."

"None of us imagined she would..." Giles slumped back in his seat, looking even sadder and further away. "That is, it never occurred to me--to any of us--that Willow would lose herself so completely in the practice of magicks." He reached forward, lightly touching Joyce's shoulder, and some spark of understanding seemed to jump between them.

"Poor Xander." Joyce shook her head, "He looked pale, I thought. At the funeral. When you say Willow hurt..." She shook her head again, violently. "No, don't say. I don't think I could really stand to know. Only, he'll be all right, won't he?" It always amazed Buffy the way one minute her mom would be annoying the hell out of her, and the next all Joyce's essential mom goodness would come bubbling to the surface, making her feel guilty for any and all exasperated thoughts. "Buffy, I've been meaning to ask you--does Xander have a place to stay? Because his parents... That is, his father... And we do have the guest room..." She threw a quick glance in Buffy's direction. "I'm afraid of hurting his pride, though. Maybe if I pretended to need some work done around the place?"

"You do need some work done. Especially since your deadbeat daughter blew off all her old chores," Buffy said. "As if I did any of them in the first place."

"That, I was kind of prepared for," Joyce answered, braking just a little too hard in front of Giles's building. "Maybe it's not the best idea, but promise me you'll think about suggesting it?"

"I promise." Buffy leaned over to kiss her mom's cheek. "You're a nice person, you know that? You deserve a better daughter."

Joyce's mouth trembled a little, but at last she made it smile. "Oh, I guess I'll keep the one I have. Try to get a good night's sleep, sweetheart. I hope you feel better in the morning,"

"I'm okay," Buffy answered, which was almost true. "G'night, mom."

"Goodnight." Joyce's hand touched Buffy's cheek softly, lingering a minute. "Sweet dreams."

"You too," It struck Buffy, suddenly, how really hard this was for Joyce. She'd known the whole empty nest thing was coming up, of course. But not yet, not this soon, not this way. Right now that nest must have been feeling like a ghost town.

"You'll take care of her for me, Rupert?"

"Always," he answered, coming around to open Buffy's door and take her hand as she slipped down from her seat. "Goodnight, Joyce, and thank you."

Her mom took off almost the minute the door closed, driving just a little too fast--not that it was that big a deal in Sunnydale, this late at night.

"And yet another evening with no patrolling," Buffy commented, as the two of them watched the MomMobile tear away. "Giles, you're slacking in your duty as a Watcher."

Giles sighed, probably taking that comment way more seriously than she'd meant it. "At the moment," he told her, "I'd be remiss if I allowed you to do anything except go to bed."

"Just don't be getting any ideas."

"At the moment, my love, I doubt..." he began, but Buffy, laughing, slipped her arm around his waist,

"Geez, Giles, one track mind, much? I meant about patrolling in my place. You're at least as beat as I am."

Giles's hand went to Buffy's shoulder, pulling her close. "Whatever possessed me to reside in a building with so many bloody stairs? At the moment, managing to climb them all, then falling into bed beside you, is the full extent of my ambitions."

Buffy groaned in mock-despair. "Ugh, I'd forgotten the damn stairs. You know, if I had half a brain, I'd have spent the night in Winnie the Pooh's office. That was one seriously comfy couch he had in there."

"I hadn't thought you'd noticed the resemblance." Giles chuckled wearily.

"Are you kidding? You missed when I said to him, 'Thank you very much for letting us use your office, Mr. Winnie'? Seb actually snickered at me." They paused at the top of the going-up-stair landing before heading down again. "Have I mentioned that I hate the person who designed your building?"

"Be comforted by the thought, then," Giles said, as the two of them staggered half-drunkenly down toward their door. "That Sunnydale being what it is, he--or she--had a better than average chance of meeting an unpleasant demise."

"Ouch." Buffy laughed. "Too many words!"

Giles finally managed to fit the right key into the lock, but he seemed to have caught her giggles. "Mr. Winnie?" he gasped, as the door swung open.

"Shut up," Buffy told him.

Somehow, they made it up the final flight of stairs to the loft, took off their outermost layers of clothing in the almost-total darkness and fell into bed. Still shaking, every now and then, with residual chuckles, Buffy snuggled up against Giles's solid warmness, relaxing further as he tucked the sheet and light summer blanket up around her.

Her last coherent thought as sleep rushed over her, was how unexpected this all was, and what a miracle: just to have someone to laugh with, at the end of one of the worst days of her life.

Please let me keep it, she thought. Please.