Trust - Chapter 11

For some reason, Xander had expected the cave-mouth to open right into the cave itself, with a nice level floor for him to slither back onto. Instead, his legs kicked in empty space, making a cold bolt of fear shot all the way through his body. He didn't like heights. He'd never liked heights. His toes scrambled for some sort of hold on the inside wall, but there was nothing. Nothing. Maybe it was a hundred foot drop down below, and if he let go he'd squash like a grape. Right now, not knowing, it was hard to make even getting munched by monsters seem like the greater evil.

Except that, once he finally got his shoulders past the narrow crack, there wasn't anything to hold him and he was sliding, sliding, then falling, exactly the way he'd feared.

Only the drop wasn't a hundred feet, it was more like ten. In the movies, the hero probably would have managed to turn in the air and hit the ground on his feet, maybe executing a graceful shoulder-roll after landing to lessen the shock.

Xander wasn't the hero of anything. On the way down, he screamed. He slammed into the cave floor flat on his back, and the little bit of air that was actually still in his lungs whomped out of him. Stars and flashy lights spun in front of his eyes, and he could have sworn he even heard birds twitter in a circle around his head.

His vision had just begun to clear when Wesley came down, not the way he had, like a sack of wet sand, but coolly, athletically, silently. Wesley did land on his feet, and didn't even lose his sword in transit. Xander's axe, on the other hand, had flown off to God knows where. Glancing around, he couldn't see a trace of it. He was probably lucky the damn thing hadn't fallen on him and cut his head off.

Which was pretty much as far as his luck went, these days. His whole body hurt, and he had no idea how he'd ever manage to get up again. Maybe a little impromptu decapitation wouldn't have been such a bad thing after all.

Everything else aside, Xander realized he could actually see down there, which he totally hadn't expected. In fact, the cave itself was far from the inky-dark place he'd imagined, probably because something slimily phosphorescent clung to the walls in big clumps, giving off a nasty greeny-yellow glow. Xander guessed that was marginally better than being blind as the proverbial bat. Except that he didn't trust anything in this place to not be horrible. He figured the stuff probably came alive at night--whenever night was--and sucked out people's insides, or something.

Here underground, though, he could breathe a little bit better--Xander had no idea why--so maybe he actually had some possibility of escaping when the slime squoozed after him. Like maybe a one-in-ten chance, because his body felt like it had been hacked apart into at least a dozen pieces and put back together with linty duct tape.

Pain aside, confusion aside, it was probably time to think about getting up. Getting up was more conducive to staying alive, especially since little chunks of rock kept plonking down on him, making his bruises even more bruised, if such a thing was possible.

He'd just about made it up, too, except that at that point Giles dropped onto him like a ton of...well, maybe not bricks, but something pretty damn heavy. The impact knocked Xander's breath right out of him for the second time, and the stars danced again, though they did their encore, at least, without a birdy accompaniment.

The Watcher lay across him lifelessly, so completely limp that at first Xander was half afraid his friend really was dead. Only, if Giles had been killed outside, he'd still be majorly blocking the cave-mouth. As it was, having come in that way himself and barely squeezed through, Xander had no idea how Giles had managed to follow. No one bigger than, say, Buffy or Willow's size could have made it in comfortably, and for a guy with Giles's build, it must have been sheer hell. Chalk one up for British determination, or something, because Houdini himself would've called it impossible.

So Giles may not have been dead, but the phrase "dead weight" didn't began to cover his heaviness. Xander tried, really tried, to get out from under him, shoving at Giles's body, trying to wriggle out from under the weight squashing down on him. He felt a wave of panic, then another one, and before Xander knew what he was doing, he found himself whacking at the Watcher's shoulder, screaming his name in a voice that came out small and flat and wouldn't have woken anyone.

"Giles!" He hit so hard the shock of it went clear to his shoulder, despite the fact that his muscles felt like overcooked noodles. "Giles, get up! Get up! Get off me!"

Overhead, at the cave-mouth, one of the monkey-wolf-nightmare things began to ooze its way inside, horrible head and bulky shoulders, front claws already scratching at the lip of the rock, getting ready to spring.

"Giles!" Xander screamed again, but his friend only groaned, totally out of it.

Great. Just great. In about four seconds now, they'd both be Scooby snacks.

"Wes!" Xander tried again. "The thing. The monster. Get it! Or get Giles off me! Something!"

Slowly, Wes stood up, his sword swinging around, though not with a whole lot of power behind it.

"Wesley!" Xander's throat was starting to hurt from yelling.

"I...can't...can't..." Wesley blinked, suddenly not looking cool at all. Instead, for the first time since they'd come to this Godforsaken place, he looked scared.

"Can't what?" Xander struggled harder, not even caring now how much he hurt Giles, pushing with hands and feet, trying to roll, anything that would get him unpinned.

"I can't see," Wesley answered softly. "I can't see anything."

Xander said a bad word, but he'd finally gotten one foot free to the point where he could actually give a real push, and so he did. Giles groaned again.

"Sorry," he muttered, "But dammit, Giles, fall somewhere else next time." His own axe really was nowhere to be seen--he'd probably dropped it down some other crack into the bowels of hell--so Xander pried the sword out of Giles's hand, scooting backward on his butt until he was halfway clear of the Watcher's mostly-unconscious body. He didn't think he had the energy to get to his feet, but 150 pounds of demon flying down at him provided some pretty solid motivation.

Xander lurched up, and swung, and when the sword connected it cut through demon flesh like a hot knife through butter. The thing fell apart in two pieces, dead before it even hit the ground.

He looked down at the sword in wonder. Damn. No wonder Giles had logged such an impressive monster body-count. The thing's blood smoked on the metal, and the weapon gave off little silvery-blue flashes, like sparks. The hilt hummed against Xander's hand, and holding it, feeling that vibration, something like calm returned to him. He could breathe again. Not well, but he'd lost the feeling he was going to die any minute now.

Next to him, Giles had finally started to come to, making it up onto his hands and knees, though his head still hung down.

"Giles! You okay?"

Giles looked just about as far from okay as it was possible for someone to look, but he nodded. "I... Yes." He looked up. "Good Lord!"

Another monster was pushing its way inside, eyes flashing yellow in the weird light, foam dripping down from its jaws.

"Well, that is not a happy puppy." Xander shifted his grip on the sword-hilt, preparing himself, even though the terrified feeling had come back, making his vision blur and his heart beat funny. Was that something the demons did, or just further proof of his own advanced state of wussyhood? It would have been a lie to say he felt ready for anything--unless it was to wake up in bed and realize all this was nothing but a nightmare.

But he had to be ready, he had to, because the monster was crouching down, its ropy muscles bunching as it tensed to spring.

"Oh, for God's sake." Giles, on his knees now, sounded annoyed. "Fiat Lapis," he said, in that irritated tone Xander knew well from the library days--usually, it had been pointed in his direction, but he didn't think that was the case this time, because the monster in the cave-mouth turned into a big monster-dog-shaped rock, or at least something that looked as much like a rock as made no difference. Since that particular demon had been one of the bigger examples of its creepy species, that pretty much took care of the entrance.

Xander just hoped there was another exit somewhere. Not that he wanted to go back out there.

Ever.

Really, all he wanted was to go home.

"Xander, you took my sword," Giles said softly.

"Yeah...well, not so much wanting to die. And my axe went...uh...AWOL." Xander found himself grinding to a stop. Giles appeared to be smiling. Not mad. Not annoyed. Smiling. Sure, it looked scary on his haggard, blood-smeared face, but it was definitely a smile.

Maybe the strain had been too much, and Giles had finally gone over the edge. Behind his miraculously unbroken glasses, his eyes looked more than a little crazed

"Nice timing with the spell," Xander told him.

"And you, Xander. Nice...er...timing, as well." Giles took the sword when Xander passed it back to him, stripping off the remaining rags of his shirt to give the blade an awkward but thorough cleaning. Xander found he had to look away. Giles shouldn't have been standing there, shouldn't be taking care of his weapon as if nothing had happened and nothing was wrong. It must have been shock, or delayed reaction or something, because his friend was Messed Up. With capital letters. To the point that seeing it made Xander feel a kind of sick. More sick than he'd been before, anyway. And he'd have thought that was impossible.

Giles noticed Xander's expression and gave a little shrug. "See if you can locate my carryall, won't you?" he asked, cool as anything. Maybe it was Watcher training. More likely, though, it was magic, like the spells Moira had done on them all back in June, right before hell broke loose at The Factory, and Sunnydale got its interesting new park.

Strike that. Make it magic, definitely, because when Xander gave Giles a look, the Watcher gave one of his ultra-stubborn looks back, holding it until Xander had to turn away. Too confused to do anything else, he started searching around the cave for Giles's gym bag of supplies, locating it, finally, behind a big stalagmite like a half-rotted fang. To his surprise, he found his axe not far away, sticking up out of a patch of glow-in-the-dark slime.

Xander hesitated a minute before pulling the weapon free, but then he figured, what the hell? Chances were they'd meet up with something even creepier further on, and he wasn't about to go into that kind of situation unarmed. Not, he told himself, when running away wasn't an option.

When he turned back, though, Giles was just standing there, his face kind of blanked out and the sword handing down by his left side, as if he no longer had the power to lift it, not even to slide the blade back into its sheathe. When Xander looked closer, he saw the Watcher's hands were shaking badly, though whether with Giles's little shot of Vitamin M starting to wear off, or reaction, or just simple tiredness, he couldn't tell.

"Hey, Giles," Xander said, freeing the hilt, carefully, from his friend's clenched fingers. "That thing you said to me a minute ago. About timing. Was that a compliment?"

Giles's reddened eyes caught his, and Xander felt a wave of something complicated go through him, so that he had to glance away again--except that Giles's good hand was touching his face, making him look up. "Yes, Xander," he said softly, "I believe it was. I'm proud of you, son."

God, he wanted. He wanted so much...

Xander's hard did a weird little side-stepping beat and the complicated thing swept over him again, more than he could stand, until he didn't want Giles, or anyone, to see him like that, with the wetness shining in his eyes. Instead, he stared down at the sword, hefting its weight--which wasn't really heavy at all, just perfectly balanced in his hand--for a minute before he slid it home into its sheathe. Things were easier that way, though maybe they wouldn't always be. Giles gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, but Xander still couldn't do anything except let his eyes roam all over the place, and when he did, he saw Wesley crouched down a few feet away from them, the point of his own sword pointed into the dirt, and his forehead resting on the pommel.

"Hey," Xander said, his voice sounding all cracked and shaky. "Here we are underground. And Wesley can't see."

Good. A distraction. Giles turned to study the other Watcher, his hand coming off Xander's shoulder. "Is that true, Wesley?"

Wesley straightened up, clearly trying to hide his own fear--or something. Maybe it wasn't fear of the dark, or not being able to see. Maybe he was afraid that they'd come so far and now he was going to fail, that everything they'd been through would come to nothing and he'd be the weak link in the chain yet again.

Xander had meant to say something encouraging--a further distraction--but when that realization struck him, all the words just blanked out of his head. He was way too familiar with that feeling, and what could he tell Wes? What could anyone tell him? You won't fail? He'd given himself that pep-talk about a million times, and nine hundred ninety-nine thousand times he'd screwed up anyway. Wesley didn't need anyone to tell him lies.

"I'm afraid...very much afraid that it is," Wes answered, obviously trying to pull himself together. "I see shadows..." His voice trailed off as the defeated look surfaced again, and he obviously struggled to push it back. "Dim shadows," he added, quietly.

"It's okay," Xander told him. "We won't... Won't...uh...let anything happen to you." Great encouragement that was, but he meant it. And what else could they promise, really?

Giles started in on a little lecture about vampiric vision and frequencies of light, all of which probably made sense, though Xander got the feeling he was doing it more to give Wesley time to compose himself than anything else. At any rate, he found it strangely comforting himself. The sound of Giles's voice--even Giles's voice the way it sounded now--in lecture mode, explaining things, brought at least a little sense of order to his seriously screwed-up universe.

Wes looked relieved, too, when Giles put a hand on his arm to guide him. Xander took the other arm, half to steady Wes's other side, half because he was afraid of somehow getting separated from the others, of the slimy glow-lights failing, leaving him all by himself in the dark. The ground underfoot was rocky and uneven. Slippery too, and heading downward at a pretty steep slant.

And where were they going? Giles seemed to know, but Xander had no real idea where he was leading them to, what they'd find there or even what they'd do when they got to the end of the road.

"We'll continue a bit farther in," Giles said, in his quiet, calm, Giles-voice. "Then find a defensible spot and rest." He looked up, as if everything they'd come there for was hovering just a little ways over their heads. "It's quite close now. Quite close."

And what do we do then? Xander wondered. Personally, he had no idea. Get messily killed by the Time Robber, probably. Or memory-sucked, the way Buffy had been.

For extra fun, maybe the demon could reactivate some more old injuries, and stand there snickering at them while they lay groaning helplessly on the ground.

"It's all right, Xander," Giles told him. "I've a plan. Truly, you can trust me."

Sure, I can trust you, Xander thought. It's myself I can't trust. Don't you know that by now? Don't say you're proud of me yet: the thing with the demon was a fluke. Anything I do right is a fluke.

Giles looked at him as if he'd read Xander's mind. There wasn't any impatience there, or any annoyance, just an understanding so deep it hurt.

Let it go, Xander told himself. Just let it go. This is Giles, after all. Recent changes aside, Giles is someone you can lean on. If he says he has a plan, he has a plan. Accept it.

After all, what else could he do?