Trust - Chapter 20

When Xander woke up, he pretty much expected to find himself dumped by the side of the highway. After all, he had some fairly clear memories of seeing the spirits of a dead grandmother and (as far as he knew) living country singer and of freaking out worse than he ever had in his life in some poor trucker's cab. Teach the guy to give rides to strangers.

Weirdly, once he'd forced open his gummed-shut eyes, Xander thought for a minute he was back in Grandma Mahoney's house, because there over against one wall was the same old-fashioned, dark-brown upright piano, and on the wall beside it the same picture of Jesus with one hand raised and the big, bleeding heart floating a couple inches in front of his chest.

The couch he was lying on felt kind of the same too, prickly and a little too hard, with the faint smell of dust that wouldn't ever quite go away, no matter how many times you vacuumed or cleaned it. Three little black-haired kids with solemn Spanish eyes were lined up along the back, peering at him over the top.

"Mama!" the biggest of them yelled, followed by a whole string of excited Spanish, of which Xander couldn't follow a word. A short, kind of pear-shaped woman with a pretty face came into the room then. A black braid nearly as thick as his wrist hung over her shoulder, and when she leaned over to feel if he still had a fever, the ends of it tickled his arm. She said something to him softly, also in Spanish, stroking his forehead with a cool, gentle hand.

Xander wasn't sure, but he thought she'd asked him if he was thirsty, and he was, so he nodded back at her, which made the room spin around a couple times, hard and fast. He couldn't quite hold in a moan. Her brown eyes looked down on him sympathetically for a minute, and then she left him, coming back with a box of industrial-sized Band-Aids, the kind that worked best for seriously scraped knees, and a bottle of peroxide, a towel draped over her arm. Putting the towel under his head, she poured the disinfectant into his neck-wound with a liberal hand, then patted it dry and put on one of the bandages.

"Be brave," the middle kid cautioned him, "And mama will let you have a candy."

"I'll try," Xander answered, in a voice he didn't recognize as his own, but he was already drifting off to sleep.

He dreamed he was back in the cave, only this time he'd woken up and dragged thirsty Vampire-Wesley off before he'd taken so much blood, and when he started CPR, Giles had come to after a couple minutes, his green eyes looking confused but definitely there. All there. Not blank the way they'd been, like green glass. After a little while he'd even been able to get up and go on down the passage, where they fought the demon together, destroyed the eggs together. Giles had grinned at him and called him son, then spoke the wish that fixed everything and made the world make sense again. When they'd gotten home, Buffy hugged both of them and called them her heroes, and afterwards they called for pizza. Pepperoni. With extra cheese. The two of them tired and achy after their adventure, but happy, because Moira was there and Wes wasn't a demon anymore, and even Willow had dropped by, blushing, saying it was all a mistake and she was so sorry and it had been evil sorceress mind control and she'd never meant any of it, not the least little thing, could he ever, ever forgive her?

So, of course Xander kissed her and told her he could. She was his Willow. If he couldn't forgive her, who could he forgive?

He woke up crying, because what was any of it but stupid wish-fulfillment, all the things that should have been, but wouldn't ever, ever be?

He cried a long time, until he felt empty, trying to be completely quiet and feeling absolutely alone in the strange house, with the trucker's kind family sleeping around him.

They wouldn't have been kind if they knew. He didn't deserve any of it.

Xander got up in the dark and scribbled a note of thanks the best he could by the streetlights that shone in through the uncovered window. His duffel lay over by the door with his shoes beside it. He slid his feet in without bothering to untie the laces, picked up the bag and edged out into the night.

For a minute he thought of digging through the bag for one of his crosses, but he figured, why bother? This wasn't Sunnydale. Chances were, he wouldn't run into anything, and if he did, what would it matter? Buffy would just stake him someday, the way she'd staked so many Idiot Jed vampires, the wind would carry his dust out to sea and nobody would have to shed any tears.

Self-pity, Xander realized, wasn't the most attractive quality, but who was there to care? He could keep it to himself, grins of a sad person and all that. Maybe that was the way he should be in the future. Keep to himself. Not mess up other people's lives where they collided with his own. Okay, he needed to make a point of keeping the freakazoid visions to a minimum and not go batshit if he did get a few unusual visitors, but other than that...

Other than that, he walked on--shuffled on, really--and realized he'd been talking to himself. Muttering to himself. Pretty soon some concerned citizen would be calling the police on him, and he'd pretty much worn out his luck with that back in Sunnydale, with the good cop/disgusted cop duo who'd taken him to Sunnydale General. Xander straightened up and, totally dragged out as he felt, tried to walk normally. He kept his lips zipped, too, until he found himself at last in the part of town with the less-than-high-quality shops, the ones with the steel gates pulled down over their windows, and the sad-looking fast food places and, somewhere in-between, the Greyhound Station. There was a bus heading out of there in five minutes, bound for Seattle.

Xander bought himself a ticket.

Anywhere but here.

Celeste had been talking to him for quite some time, Sebastian realized, but he'd yet to acknowledge a word she'd said.

Now she'd stopped, and sat regarding him over their as-yet-uncleared supper dishes with an unreadable expression on her face, the candle on their small table turning her smooth skin into a mask of antique gold.

"Er...what was that, love?" he asked, knowing full well that the odds were stacked precariously against his being able to prevaricate his way out of this one.

"What was what?" Celeste replied, making Sebastian wonder if she'd been spending rather too much time with Buffy of late. She raised a hand, signaling the bored-looking young man who was their waiter.

"The...ah...last thing you said to me." Sebastian smiled (he hoped) ingratiatingly. "I seem to have wandered. Slightly."

"Slightly," she echoed, a certain dryness in her tone which boded ill for him. "Bastian, if you've heard a word I've said in the past half hour, I'll abandon my career and go to work as a fry-cook at the Doublemeat Palace."

"The...er...what?" He'd a continuing feeling that he would never quite catch up to this conversation.

"The...oh, never bother." Celeste shook her head again, this time laughing, although somewhat ruefully. "My mind recoils, at any rate. Did you want coffee?"

"Ah...?"

"Coffee," Celeste repeated. She'd begun to get her patient look. In the end, since Sebastian still hadn't answered, she ordered for both of them, sipping delicately from her own cup once the steaming brew arrived. "Ah. Lovely."

Sebastian also drank. He didn't really care for coffee, although this was a better variety than one generally found in restaurants, in his experience. Coffee, of whatever quality, made him tense. Then something occurred to him, "Celeste, with the baby, are you meant to...?"

"I'm allowed a cup of coffee," Celeste assured him, in a tone of loving exasperation. "It shan't cause our child to be born without hands, or anything dreadful."

Sebastian, reminded instantly of poor Wyndham-Pryce, felt an expression of misery settle over his features. He'd the most ominous feeling of being forced to chose sides in a disagreement he did not entirely understand. Yes, he was glad to have Moira back, for all the qualms, ethical and spiritual, her return caused him. He felt thankful, as well, that the man his mother loved had been restored to her. Moira deserved some happiness in this life, if anyone did.

And yet...

And yet. Sebastian sighed. Hour after hour he'd watched his father lying silently, his usual quality of quiet energy seeming strangely dampened by the blank-walled little room. During his infrequent periods of wakefulness, Rupert voiced no complaints, and said very little of what had befallen him, while Wesley, his tongue admittedly loosened by pain medicines, spoke of the events almost incessantly, obviously seeking an absolution Sebastian wasn't sure he could give to his old school-fellow. He understood Wesley was a changed man and, as he was now, the events of the hellish dimension could never again transpire.

And yet...

Moira's attitude--defensive almost to the point of belligerence, troubled him as well. He rather wanted, as one of the kids might have said, to "smack her upside the head." All Rupert had suffered, he'd suffered for her, and Sebastian couldn't help but wonder if Moira understood as much. Did she feel terribly, unbearably constrained by her own senses of guilt and obligation and thus unable to present to the world any other face but this seeming coldness? Or did she find herself too caught up in her own confused misery to show the least empathy for another?

But she'd empathy enough, hadn't she, for Wesley? And Rupert was her friend. Her oldest friend. The one she'd called to from beyond the veil. The one she'd run to when she returned.

From an off-hand remark of Buffy's, Sebastian gathered the two of them had quarreled, and, as far as he knew, Moira hadn't been to see his dad. Add to that the strangely unbalanced sensations coming to him along the LeFaye bond, and Sebastian was left feeling even more muddled than he'd been directly they arrived in Sunnydale.

"I don't know what to think," he blurted, expecting his wife to have no idea what he was on about.

Celeste, her eyes half-closed as she savoured her coffee, glanced up at him with sudden sharpness. "Pardon me, Bastian, but you know very well what to think."

I do? he wondered.

She reached across the table, her hand resting lightly on his, her thumb gently stroking his wedding band. "You think your mum's behaving like a cow."

"That's possibly a bit strong," Sebastian answered mildly. "After all..." He'd nothing to add, really, and so fell silent.

Celeste sighed again, shaking her head. "Love, you're afraid to disagree with her."

"Celeste, it's not as if she'll transform me into a toad or anything if we quarrel, it's merely that..." Again, Sebastian stopped. In truth, Celeste had hit the nail on the head: he was afraid to disagree with Moira, not for fear of magic or any arcane threat, but because she was his mother, and he, pathetic idiot that he was, had always been desperate to win her approval. Moira, after all, had been the one who'd given him away. Not Rupert. He'd always, from the moment they'd met, felt entirely sure of Rupert.

Celeste was, once more, regarding him, kindness and a species of humourous sadness in her eyes. "My poor Bastian," she said softly.

"Dad risked his life for her. Gave his life for her," he murmured, feeling confused and distraught, so much so that he couldn't have swallowed another drop of his coffee to save his life.

"Yes, love," Celeste answered in the same gentle tone, "But I'm not the one you should say those words to, am I?"

"Sebastian tells me I should feel some sense of guilt," Moira's voice said, from quite close by, awakening Giles from a dream that all the staircases in his building kept switching arbitrarily to locations quite other than those he expected, causing him, much to his chagrin, to bumble into strangers' flats at the most indelicate possible moments.

Giles startled. The last he remembered, Buffy had been reading too him, a book intended for children, he surmised, and yet he'd found it amusing, and had enjoyed the sound of her voice, even though he rather suspected he'd muddled large portions of the plot. Apparently, however, the moving staircases at Hogwarts School had stuck with him, reminding him, as they did, of his own first days at school, when every place he needed to reach seemed miles apart as well as unreachable by ordinary human means.

Buffy wasn't there at the moment, he realized, forcing open his eyes. Giles hoped she'd gone home to rest, or perhaps to eat something. No sense in her remaining at his side, hour after hour, when for the most part he found it difficult, if not impossible, to focus any sort of attention upon even her pleasantly distracting presence.

Just now, however, he felt a great need to give Em his full attention. Her tone had held a certain harshness, as if she might be spoiling for an argument, but her expression was one he knew well: he'd seen it often enough on the face of her younger self, his fourteen-year-old Madonna of the Underground. Anger and defiance seemed roll off her skin in waves. She'd dressed in one of her impeccably tailored suits, a dark grey whose colour only served to accentuate her current pallor, and she wore her glorious auburn hair skinned back far more tightly than was her usual wont, the ends of it twisted into a rather severe knot.

"Whatever for, Em?" Giles replied mildly and, when she didn't answer, added, "I'm glad to see you."

That he'd answered her kindly appeared to knock a bit of her stuffing, because Moira sank rather bonelessly into the chair Buffy more usually occupied. "I'm all at sea, Rupert," she told him, then, after a moment, "I didn't expect... I... That bloody child of yours has kept my magic."

Giles suspected that he'd thrown her off her stride, that she'd actually meant to say something else entirely, and yet, the loss of her magic would have been a dire blow for a woman like Moira, born and bred to an arcane life. To her, an existence free of magic must have felt very much like an existence free of breathing, when one's body still cried out for the oxygen.

At the moment, Giles could relate to that particular need quite easily.

"I'm not angry," he told her, "Either at you, or at Wesley." Actually, he was, in fact, rather bloody annoyed with his fellow Watcher, for all that he knew such irritation was irrational. Had Wesley, in the underground cave, been able to control his impulses, he would have done so. From what Buffy related, the unfortunate young man had now, in fact, escaped his demon-controlled half-life. He was human, and he ought to be forgiven.

No matter how hard forgiveness might be for the one who'd been wronged.

Giles found himself wanting, very much, to shy away from such thoughts. "How are you, Em?" he asked her instead. "The magic aside."

"Alive." A slow, and still somewhat tremulous smile pulled at Moira's mouth. "I've been dead, Rupert."

"As have I," Giles reminded her, but he rather felt Moira hadn't listened. Wasn't capable of listening, perhaps.

"It was all as I expected..." she began. "And yet nothing like."

When he'd first awakened, Giles's own experiences had seemed amazingly vivid, and yet they'd quickly faded, leaving him with little more now than a sense of profound stillness, and a hint of Mozart rising in the air. Not a piece he recognized, either, it struck him. The thought made Giles smile.

Cautiously, he levered himself upright, pleased to find the effort far less painful than previously. He still felt profoundly weary, but it was the weariness that proceeded the recovery of one's strength, he thought, rather than the slow draining he'd felt before. On the whole, it seemed, he was on the mend.

"Em," Giles said quietly, thinking of what he'd said to Buffy once, that one didn't forgive because the other person deserved forgiveness, but because he--or she--needed to be forgiven. He'd wished, fervently, at her funeral, that he'd been able to take back the harsh words that had passed between them, and here was his opportunity. "We parted...badly."

Moira gave a slight nod, annoyance and acceptance at war upon her face.

"There's no need for us to quarrel. Whatever it was we were actually quarreling about, which at this point, I must say, I seem to have entirely forgotten. Neither do I grudge you for sending me out upon that bloody awful quest." Giles flashed her a bit of Ripper's grin. "To the absolute worst place in the universe."

Giles reached out, waiting for Moira's hand to come to him, which at last it did, her long, cool fingers curling round his. "To see you here, now, Em," he told her, "Was worth the price."

"We're going back to England," Moira said, abruptly. "When Wesley's mended."

Giles felt what lay beneath her words, that feeling of failure in one who had so rarely failed, the shameful sense of retreat, of strength compromised and wisdom not heeded. He experienced no anger now, no reproach, only a weary affection for this woman who'd been his friend so many years. He let down his guard a bit, allowing her to feel the edges of his emotion.

"Sometimes," Moira said. "I miss Ripper. He'd at least have had the decency to be bloody furious at me."

"And I'd thought you'd appreciate my saintly forbearance," Giles answered.

She said a rude word, in Latin, under her breath, which made Giles laugh, though he could scarcely spare the air, and it started him, once more, on a coughing fit of some duration. "Ow. Em, don't make me laugh."

"Poor Rupert." Moira had laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, and even when he was still again, didn't remove it, sliding her fingertips gently down his arm instead, over his bandaged forearm and so, once again, to his hand. "My poor Rupert."

"I would do it again," Giles told her.

"I should never have asked," Moira replied. "But, do you know, when I returned..." She paused a moment, obviously working to regain her composure. "I was so very frightened, and confused, Rupert, and all I could think of to do was run to you."

"Any port in a storm," Giles said lightly.

"No," she answered, in quite a different tone. "That isn't it at all, as you're well aware. I've leaned on you, and I've been beastly to you, and now, quite frankly, I'm running away, leaving all this in your lap."

"God forbid," Giles told her, giving his old friend a different smile entirely. "That Moira Bannister-St. Ives should prove human after all. Don't you think, love, that you've fought long enough? You deserve a bit of happiness. Quartermass and the others could use your help, no doubt."

Moira laughed, even as tears brightened her eyes.

"And there is the baby to think of," Giles told her, with studied nonchalance, and was rewarded with the sight of Moira actually caught off guard, her jaw dropping to an extent that would have done her beloved proud.

After a moment, she laughed again, with genuine humour, leaning back in her almost-certainly-uncomfortable chair as the tears spilled down her cheeks.

"I shan't even ask how you knew," she told Giles at last. "Only for your discretion, for the time being."

He nodded. "Naturally. Though I must say, I quite look forward to Seb's response."

"I believe," Moira said severely, rising, "That Buffy has been rather a bad influence on you."

Giles only grinned again.

Moira paused, for a moment, in the doorway. "Sebastian gave me quite the lecture on how I've treated you. And I am sorry, Rupert."

Giles shook his head. "Honestly, Em, there's no need."

"It's easy to see why he loves you, our boy," Moira told him softly. "Why he'll always love you best."

And then she was gone, leaving Giles to wonder exactly what it was she'd meant.

Be nice, Buffy reminded herself, when she saw Moira coming out of Giles's room. Be nice be nice be nice.

Moira seemed to be going for kind of a Gwendolyn Post look that day, but she smiled at Buffy when she noticed her standing there, so Buffy smiled back. "Hi, Moira," she said. "How's Wes doing?"

"As well as one might expect," Moira answered, telling her exactly nothing. How was she supposed to answer that?

"Well...I...uh...great." Why did she always have to turn into such an incoherent goofball around Moira? "Anyway, tell him I said 'hi,'" Buffy finished lamely.

Moira nodded. "I'll do that."

"Good. Uh...good." She ducked in quickly through Giles's door before she could humiliate herself further.

Giles was sitting up in bed, gazing out the window. Or gazing out where he probably thought the window was, considering he didn't have his glasses. Buffy stopped to watch him for a minute. He looked better, she thought, and she didn't think it was just wishful thinking this time. Glasseslessness aside, he looked more focused, more in the world instead of just kind of hovering on the edges. She crossed the room and, dropping her bag under the bed, leaned over to give him a nice, deep kiss.

To her surprise, he returned it. With interest. Until she felt kind of breathless herself.

Buffy knew, then, that she should tell him about Xander. About the letter, and what had really happened, instead of the vague semi-truth she'd given him before. Like he'd even been alert enough to follow her story.

Only Giles was laughing when he finally let her up, and he was better but still not best, and she was afraid to worry him.. "Caught you by surprise, did I?"

"A little." Buffy touched his mouth, where he'd gotten a little bit of her pink lipstick on him. "I'm not complaining, though. I'd just gotten kinda used to Out of It Guy."

"I'm rather hoping he won't reappear." Giles struggled up in bed a little more, making a face as his hurt places pulled, but not going all chalky white the way he had before. They'd taken him off the oxygen, too, she was pleased to see, and his voice, though still a slightly hoarse, was sounding more like his real Giles voice, instead of a croaky stranger's.

"Mmn, me too." Buffy perched on the edge of the bed and went in for another kiss, just to make sure. "Only, once they let you out, don't think you're going right back to business as usual. I've gotten the whole sitch from your doctors, and I have Seb and Celeste and Aunt Flora on my side, so you won't be getting away with anything."

Giles muttered something that sounded like "she who must be obeyed."

"You'd better believe it. Remember, you like bossy women."

This time she got something like, "revising my opinion," but Buffy just laughed at him, so glad to seem him looking like her Giles that she felt bubbly inside. Xander could wait. How much trouble could he really get into, outside of Sunnydale? It wasn't as if the whole West Coast was completely demon-infested.

Xander would be fine. Actually, it would probably do him good to get out of here. It's what he wanted, wasn't it? He'd been talking about hitting the road all spring, after all--she'd caught at least that much between her own sulks at having to be stuck here as Miss Sunnydale. Had all that really been only four months ago?

Soon enough, she'd be willing to bet, Xander would even realize that things--his wish--had worked, and she'd be sure to give him a nice welcome home when he came back.

"No fair using your British powers of low-talking against me," Buffy told Giles. "But, hey, would you like to go outside? It's a gorgeous day, and they said it would be okay if you felt up to it." She scooted off the edge of the bed again, rooting in her bag. "Oh, and here your glasses are, so you'll actually be able to appreciate the beauty that is nature."

Buffy reached to hand him the glasses, but when their fingers brushed she felt something jump between them, something that made Giles's latest grin turn all frowny.

"Buffy..." he said, as his eyebrows drew together and his eyes changed from green to stormy gray-green, like the ocean in November.

"What?" she answered, trying to be cool, only her voice squeaked before she even got to the question mark, and she had a sudden weird feeling, half-mechanical, half-shivery, as if someone was taking x-rays of her soul.

Giles took the glasses, but he also kind of slumped back in the bed, the worried-and-in-pain look coming back to his face. "Outside..." he said.

"Maybe not, huh?" Buffy asked. "That's okay. You're tired. Another..."

A different look layered itself over the one he'd had going before, and Buffy knew the game was up.

"Buffy," Giles said in such a quiet, reasonable voice that she knew she wouldn't be able to lie to save her life. "Where is Xander? Did he come back with me?"