Tribulations - Chapter 74

The drugs in his system muddled and confused him. He needed to leave that place--not in an hour or a half-hour, but immediately, and Giles couldn't understand why these kindly-intentioned people refused to listen to him. Perhaps because he could not tell them the truths that would make them understand.

No, not so much that he could not, as that he dare not. They'd think him insane. As it was, they kept adding to his sedation, which was precisely, in Giles's opinion, what he did not need.

Actually, what he wished for most, at that moment, was to possess his unclouded, rational mind, because once he had it, he could begin the process of screening out this onslaught. Just now, to prevent himself from projecting the madness back into the world took every bit of strength he possessed. The precise nature of the goddess's gift--or curse--revealed itself to him. He wasn't, particularly, to gain the knowledge of the world as an array of facts, readily accessed--though there had been a bit of that in what she'd given him. No, what he'd truly received was not the knowledge of the world itself, but of the people in the world.

Giles did not read their thoughts, which would have soon driven him entirely mad, just as it so nearly had Buffy, a few months previously. Rather, the goddess obviously possessed some sense of irony, for he, Rupert Giles, the restrained, the repressed, frequently mocked for his lack of feeling, had received the key to human emotion. Wants, fears, hates, desires, all washed over him, and under the influence of the drugs he'd no way to shut them out.

Every small touch of the well-meaning staff only increased his difficulty--beneath her kindness, that sweet-faced young nurse hated and feared him, because he was a man, large and strong, and any strong man reminded her of her stepfather. Furthermore, Giles knew that any attempt to console her would only add to her fears. That older nurse felt an ache deep within her and suffered a wordless, nameless panic, living out the agonies of her mother's death a million times in her imagination. That man in the cubicle beside his...Giles would not go there. He would not, yet he could not help himself, and the sheer loathsomeness left him feeling sick and unclean.

Please, he prayed silently, Save me from this.

And then a soft hand was touching his face, and a mind blissfully familiar, wonderfully free of horrors brushed his. Her fears were his fears, her love was his love, and in the other parts, sorrow and shame and joy, they mirrored one another.

"Hey," Buffy said, still touching him, her other hand gripping his shoulder strongly. "Hey, I'm here. It's okay. I shouldn't have left you. I shouldn't," she said softly, then, in a louder voice, "Can I take him home now?"

The older nurse approached. "We're going to have to keep him a little longer. His vitals have been off the charts."

"Hospital. Bad associations. Honestly, just let me take him." Giles could feel her using her sunny smile, turning upon the older woman her bright, pretty, unclouded face. "I swear to you, he'll be fine."

After signing his papers and securing a small paper bag of what he assumed were painkillers, Buffy helped him to stand, albeit rather shakily, ridiculously careful of his splinted hand.

"Mmm, pretty," she said. "How much does it hurt?"

"Not in the least," Giles answered. "It's been completely anaesthetized." He'd meant to answer her in his normal, slightly acerbic tones, but even to his own ears, his voice sounded, if not frightened, at least deeply shaken. His head had begun to throb in deep, rhythmic pulses.

"So the real question is, how much is it gonna hurt tomorrow? You look horrible, you know that? And no, that wasn't a return to the Buffy of old. It was sympathetic." She took his arm, steering him from the recovery room and down the corridor at a far brisker pace than Giles might have wished, had he not desired his escape so fervently. "Oh, and hey, Wes loaned us his car. He'd have come with, but, you know, the whole sunlight thing."

And beneath her bright chatter lay the sadness, the all-but-paralyzing fear, the determination--most of all, the sympathy. Giles hadn't meant to project any of this, but it seemed obvious that he, despite all his best intentions, could not help but do so. And that Buffy, far from needing his protection, rose to support him with all the considerable strength of her character.

Even her driving, on their way home, seemed more confident--or perhaps that was merely the absence of his Citroen, which even he had found, at times, rather trying. She parked the vehicle easily, in their traditional spot.

"Home at last," Buffy said, reaching to brush his cheek with her fingertips.

"Indeed," Giles answered wearily.

"And you have some weird stuff going on with you. Only I'm not going to quiz you about it right now." She bounced around to open his door, even as Giles protested that he was fine, he could handle it.

Buffy only smiled. "Sure, sweetie. But why do you feel like you have to?" Her hand remained, tenderly, on his arm as they made their way indoors to the silence and the air-conditioned cool of his flat. Oddly, the wash of emotion seemed to recede as the door closed behind them, though whether from the wards he'd put round its walls, or because the effect of the drugs had at last begun to abate, Giles could not have said.

"It's better here, huh?" she said softly, closing the door behind them. Giles found himself leaning back against the wall, feeling, for the first time in hours, that he could breathe again.

"I've been..." he began, but then his voice broke. His knees gave way, no longer capable of bearing his weight, and he would have fallen, had not Buffy caught him.

"I know, I know," she told him in the same gentle voice. "I don't know how or why, but you've been feeling everything, haven't you? Like everybody's everything. It's been spilling over. A little." Her strong arm slipped round his waist, urging him toward the staircase. "Only a few steps now, and you can rest. It'll be okay, sweetie. Honestly, it will."

He hated to be so weak, even in front of her, whom he loved so well, or to show so much, but just at the moment he could not help himself. Besides which, when he'd undressed, with her help, and stretched out on the bed, there was a certain sweetness in watching her fuss, propping his injured hand on a pillow, fetching him tea. Sweeter still was to have her lie beside him, her softness curving against his body, her hands touching him so very tenderly, as if Buffy meant to assure herself that she'd brought him back whole.

"You're not weak," she whispered to him, as if telling a secret that could only pass between the two of them. "You're hurt, and you're scared, just like other people get. Don't you know that now?"

Giles could not answer. He could only bury his face in the satin of her hair, breathing in her perfume, her presence, the warmth of her body warming his. Without her he, literally, would have been lost.

"It's all right," Buffy told him, in the same confiding voice. "I understand. Really I do. I just wish I had the words to say everything I want to say."

"As do I, my love," he murmured, sinking ever deeper toward sleep. "As do I."

Buffy wasn't sure what woke her up, because the way she felt, she could have slept on for hours. Weirdly, her first thought, when she could think, was something along the lines of, Oh no, not again.

It wasn't light in the loft, but it was light enough. She could see the shapes of the furniture, the lines of brightness around the curtains. The clock said it was two, which must have been two in the afternoon.

She sat up, feeling weirdly chilled and apprehensive. Beside her, Giles slept on soundly, no doubt looped on all the drugs they'd given him at Sunnydale General. Much as she wanted to, she didn't touch him--his face still looked weary, troubled, and she knew that when he did wake he'd be in a lot of pain. What she felt from him--that she'd felt from him--had wigged her at first, but then she'd started thinking about what had happened to her back in the springtime, the way, with all those thoughts raging around her, his had been almost the only ones she'd been halfway able to stand.

Poor Giles. Sometimes he had such a hard time feeling his own emotions, she could only imagine how wigged he must be having everyone else's dumped on him. She could only hope it wouldn't be so bad once the drugs wore off.

"A-hem," said a voice from the end of the bed.

Buffy jumped, literally bouncing off the mattress, her body automatically switching to battle-ready. She blinked, trying to see better in the dimness, but all she could make out was a thick lump of darkness from the same spot where she'd heard the voice.

"Oh, come now," the darkness said, in Mr. Briggs's proper Watchery accent, but with something wet and sucky underneath. "Surely you recognize me, Buffy? I'm all you've thought of this past week. And, I must say, I've been quite flattered by the attention."

Buffy's chest got tight, and the only thing she could force out of her mouth was the single word, "No."

"No? I was under the impression that we'd a bargain between us, young lady. You agreed. You drank. You sealed the compact, yet now you've been seeking ways to break your word. Wouldn't you say that makes you a very naughty and deceitful girl?"

"I didn't know what I was doing," Buffy managed at last.

"I'm very sorry, my dear, but I can't accept ignorance as an excuse. A contract is still valid, even if one doesn't bother to read the fine print. As it is..." Something in the darkness moved, stretching out toward her. In some part of herself, Buffy recognized it as a hand, an obscenely long and knobbly hand. "I feel something of a need to punish you."

One finger pointed, and beneath the covers, Giles groaned, deeply, and in obvious agony. Buffy thought--much as she hoped it was all her imagination--that she'd heard bones crack.

"Please..." Buffy breathed. She didn't know what else to say.

"Please? You don't like me using poor Rupert to prove my point? You don't believe that bad girls who make promises they don't intend to keep deserve to be punished?" The demon moved closer, leaning over her. Looming over her, really. It smelled sweetish, like sugar cookies baking, but at the same time like something dusty and sourly unclean, a little like bread-mold that's gotten way out of control. Buffy could see its eyes now, brown but with a yellow glow underneath. "He's a clever one, your man. I think, in time, he might even have found a way to turn things round. No use, of course, but there we are."

Buffy fought the urge to edge away, back up against the headboard, back up against Giles, even though she knew he couldn't protect her from this. No one could.

"Why is that?" she managed to say, even though her voice didn't have shred of the confidence she'd been shooting for.

"Why? Because I don't work that way, Miss Buffy. Trade places with your undead Watcher friend, and he'd still be a tormented vampire with a soul. The LeFaye witch would still be a dead witch. All of which would make you, my willful girl, the real thief in this affair, for you'd have stolen from unfortunate Wesley the one bit of sweetness he's known in his entire, miserable life. Merely, I might add, to satisfy your own selfish ends. If you don't call that naughty, I couldn't say what is."

There was truth in that--if, in fact, this demon wasn't fibbing its lumpy head off. They'd been working on the assumption that when Mr. Demon Time Guy took a chunk of someone's life, he took the whole nine yards. Since (although Buffy couldn't help but circle back to the question of lying or not lying) that didn't seem to be the case, maybe it was better to leave things the way they were.

Better, maybe. But not easier. She'd hoped so much. They'd all hoped. And what was left, now, to hope for?

All Buffy could do was what she did. Her muscles gathered themselves, and she threw herself at the intruder, ready for the snap kick that would knock it down, the hard backhander that would nearly take its head off, moves she'd made a thousand times before, and that would, if she had even a smidgen of luck, let her get downstairs to the weapons chest.

After which, Time Robbers beware!

This time, though, she didn't get that moment of impact, that satisfying shock that let her know she was well on the way to causing grievous bodily harm. Instead, everything slowed, like an action sequence from a cheesy old Kung Fu movie. First her foot, then leg, then her entire body oozed through into something like thick, cold honey. Her heart felt like it was going to stop, but she could see. She could see perfectly.

There, below her, lay Giles, tangled in blood-darkened sheets. There was the bed where they'd loved and comforted each other, the apartment that had once seemed so completely, peculiarly Giles-like, but had somehow, since then, become her apartment too. Inside her, Buffy could feel her life dividing into slices again, and those slices stretching out further and further apart.

Buffy wanted to scream, but she was afraid of the viscous stuff that surrounded her getting into her mouth. She wanted to cry, but the comfort of tears was denied her. Her brain couldn't seem to process that this was it. They'd lost.

They never lost.

Except this time. For all their worrying and planning and hoping, this was where things ended.

She could feel, now, those pieces of time breaking out into the liquid that contained her, and the demon, horribly close, too close, and magnified by whatever the clear stuff was, bending his mouth, its blubbery lips moving, sucking out her life like some giant monster baby slurping up its formula.

She felt terrified, and sad, but more than that--most definitely more than that--offended. She'd had love, real love. She'd had comfort, joy, completeness, and for this hideous thing to be gorging itself on them as if they were nothing but psychic Enfamil...

It wasn't right. It wasn't. And if, in the future, she'd been able to remember any of this, Buffy had a feeling that nothing would ever seem right again.

Please remember me, she pleaded, with no idea in the world of Giles could still hear, or feel her, sending her thoughts to him as hard as she could--because she couldn't not do it. She needed to feel close to him for whatever few seconds they had left Please know, whatever happens, I didn't want things to be this way. It's not real. This is real. I'm your Buffy, and I'm real."

Then everything went deeply, horribly, black, and Buffy fell, all alone, a long, long way through the darkness.