Trust - Chapter 22

There had been a bus, and there had been a crash. That much he knew.

And here was the thing: he wasn't dead after all. Unless being dead meant you were cold and in the dark--which, okay, it actually did, but he would have been willing to bet good money that you weren't usually aware of the fact. Add to that the fact that his head felt the approximate size and shape of Mt. Everest and his body like he'd been playing a nice game of Bumper Cars without benefit of the car.

All of which...well, he had the weirdest feeling--he wasn't sure why--that such happenings weren't exactly unusual for him. As if...

He shook his head, not exactly sure what he needed to have follow that "as if," but more than positive that he should have known. If he'd been able, that was, to remember a damn thing about the events leading up to the crash.

But, hell, he was alive!

Now if he could just figure out if that was a good or a bad.

One of the reasons, he realized, that his head felt big was that he was hanging upside down by his feet. He really, really didn't want to look for deeper meanings in that one. Or wonder why it, too, felt so familiar.

Somewhere, away from him in the dark, a kid was crying. Somewhere else, a person with a pretty extensive vocabulary was cursing, steadily and quietly.

Yet somewhere else--and this was definitely not a good--a wet, snuffling sucking sound came out of the dark, accompanied by the hitching, desperate breaths of someone who came down far, far on the positive side of the life/death question, but who wasn't being given a choice in the matter.

He listened, knowing, somehow, that he wasn't hearing a wild animal out there in the dark. He wasn't hearing anything natural, anything that should have been, there or anywhere else.

A thread of cold wormed its way up his upside-down spine. Suddenly, he wanted to live. He wanted it very, very much.

He really hoped he'd be given that option.

Giles slept on and on and on, until Buffy and Sebastian had pretty much exhausted all their conversational resources. Any minute now, they'd be staring in on a nice game of "I Spy With My Little Eye," just so they wouldn't drive each other insane. Or maybe Twenty Questions.

About halfway through their time together, Buffy had figured out one big way in which Seb differed from his dad: he was a fidgeter. Now, she had been known to do a little fidgeting herself, now and then, but she'd never realized how totally damn annoying the habit could be. As in, if she had to look at him for one more minute, she was going to have to knock Sebastian out with the nearest hard object that came to hand (her fist sprang to mind) and stash him in the bathroom just to get him out of her sight.

Except maybe a slightly less aggressive solution was called for. After all, Sebastian meant well. She guessed. He hadn't actually dropped by with the intention of driving her crazy.

"So, Seb," Buffy said. "What's Celeste up to today?"

"Looking--" She got a little eye-roll there, but at least it stopped Sebastian in his quest to pick up every single flippin' object in the entire room and tap it back down again, like some kind of crazy metronome. "At houses."

"And you didn't wanna go with?" Please, she thought. I love ya, Seb...but please.

"She makes me look in cellars," he confessed, with a little bit of a shudder. "And attics. Yet I'm never told what I'm meant to be looking for. It makes me feel as if I've failed in my duties as a husband."

Buffy barely managed to suppress a little giggle. Giles men got upset by the weirdest things. "Well...uh...leaks, I guess. Water damage. Signs of vermin?"

That got her a scowl. "Why, then, can't she search for her own bloody vermin?"

"Have you asked her that?"

"I...no." The scowl went away, replace by a look of embarrassment. "Not as such."

"Celeste probably just wants to let you feel involved." A wicked idea, fuel for much teasing, occurred to her. "Hey...you're one of those repair-impaired guys aren't you, Seb? One of the ones who looks under the hood of his car and doesn't know what all the squiggly stuff is for? Who can't change fuses or filters or mess with the pipes under the sink?"

Sebastian got a stricken look, as if she'd accused him of being a thief or a murderer, which made Buffy laugh and relent.

"It's okay. Personally, I know about a thousand ways to slay demons, but ask me to unclog a drain and I'm helpless girl. And I could barely even drive your dad's old car--not that I'm the world's greatest driver anyway."

"I'm an excellent driver," Sebastian said, looking relieved. Which he was--though saying so still made him sound like that guy Dustin Hoffman played in Rain Man. She wondered if Seb could also tell exactly how many matches if you dropped a box on the floor.

Probably. She'd seen Giles balance his checkbook in his head, without having to make any of the little crossouts or floating numbers she always had to use (and then come up with an balance that was never right anyway), jotting down a series of perfectly neat numerals faster than she could have said "Hey, maybe I should use a calculator." It was like the "I read five languages" thing.

"How many languages can you read?" she asked Sebastian.

That stopped him before he could get into fidget-mode again.

"Good Lord, I don't..." Seb ticked them off on his fingers. " Six, I suppose. I...Latin, Greek, French, German, Cornish, Chinese. Yes, six. Not exactly remarkable."

"One up on your dad?" Buffy wondered about that--no offense to Sebastian.

"Oh, good Lord, no. But he'll only count them if he reads like a native, never having to look up a word. I've yet to encounter a language in which he can't make his way along. He's..." Seb's voice trailed off, and the look he gave Giles made Buffy totally forgive him for driving her nuts all afternoon. "He's a remarkable man."

"I know," Buffy told him, and for a minute their eyes caught and held, both of them understanding the person she'd been, the person she wasn't going to be anymore.

Sebastian glanced away first. "Look...I should, actually, see if I can't locate my wife. Peer at walls and pipes and floors and such. Will you--that is, when he wakes, tell him I was here? That I left my...er...regards."

Brit-guy. Buffy shook her head. So much emotion there, and so hard for either of them to express it. "I'll do that," she told him. "Say 'hi" to Celeste for me. Be in before dark, okay?"

Sebastian gave a quick nod, and left her. Buffy didn't quite do a cheer of joy, but she came close.

After a while, Giles said to her, "The tapping's stopped."

The sound of his voice made her jump. God, but she was edgy these days. "Yup. That was your son. He's gone to look for vermin."

"Vermin?" Giles repeated. His eyelids came up to about half-mast and stopped.

"Or something." There was just barely enough room to wriggle her way onto the bed beside him. "House-hunting."

"Ah," Giles answered. He still looked worn-out and groggy but better than he had, actually, in a long time. He scooted over to give her as much room as the narrow bed would allow. "With Celeste?"

"Uh-huh. Is that as scary as it sounds?"

To Buffy's surprise, that got her a low rumble of laughter. "Celeste helped me find my London flat. It was...horrifying."

"The apartment, or the looking for?"

Giles laughed again. "It was a lovely flat, actually. As, in my opinion, were the first hundred and fifty we examined. At which point I was nearly prepared to take up residence beneath a bridge, like a troll."

Gently, Buffy rubbed his bristly jaw. "You know, I'm beginning to be able to picture that. Remind me to bring by a razor next time I visit, or pretty soon I won't be able to recognize you. Troll-guy."

Giles grinned, but pretty soon the smile began to fade away, leaving him with that little upside-down vee of lines between his eyebrows. Buffy had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking, and she feared the conversation that was bound to follow: her saying he wasn't well enough to go looking for Xander, Giles saying he'd gone looking for her. She decided to head that one off at the pass.

"Sebastian told me he's hired a detective to look for Xander. Good idea, huh?"

The thoughtful look only deepened.

"Did you have a good talk with Moira?"

Giles only shrugged, frowning a little as the gesture hurt his shoulders. Was he going to start that...whatever...up again? That search that, last time, sent him straight into comacountry? He definitely wasn't Answer Man today.

"Buffy, do you think I...?" He was starting to sit up, and now she didn't have to slightest idea what he wanted, or where he thought he was going.

"Huh?" she said, brilliantly, and it wasn't until Giles gave a meaningful look in the direction of the closed bathroom door that she finally got it. "Oh! Are you supposed to?"

Giles didn't roll his eyes, but he came close. And it wasn't until he'd struggled to slide off the opposite edge that she finally got that she was totally in his way. He was trying to look nonchalant, like walking didn't bother him in the slightest, but if he thought he was fooling her, he had a long way to go. It hurt just to watch him.

"Do you need any...um..." Buffy perched on the end of the bed, her stomach tight with sympathetic misery. "Help?"

Giles looked down at her for a just a second, stubbornness blazing--but then, unexpectedly, he gave a little nod. "Yes, actually," he answered, with a small, tight grin. He leaned on her pretty hard, too. Up until the point that he shut the bathroom door firmly in her face.

He was gone a pretty long time. Long enough that Buffy began to worry, and even to consider breaking down the door, but when he reemerged, Giles looked more together, somehow--or at least very, very determined. He'd shaved, too, and she read into that a very definite message of, "I'll let you help me, but only up to a certain point."

Well, she could accept that. Having him not be stubborn with her would have scared her more.

Still looking a little tottery, but not letting it stop him, Giles went for his bathrobe.

"You goin' somewhere?" Buffy asked.

"For a walk," he answered, glaring at his IV bag until Buffy finally had the brilliant idea of unhooking it from its pole, running it through one sleeve, then hooking it up again. "I'm certain they only keep one connected to those...things to increase one's inconvenience." Giles gave the pole an even fiercer glare.

"Yup," Buffy answered, "I'm sure that's it, sweetie. Nothing to do with wanting to give you medicine, or fluids or anything."

"Indeed." Giles gave one of his soundless laughs, shaking his head ruefully--and a little stiffly. "I'm intolerable when I'm like this. I can only commend your patience with me."

"Aw, you're not so bad," Buffy answered, as they headed out into the corridor. One of the nurses hurried toward them, obviously meaning to give Giles a scolding, but his Ripperish look seemed to make her think better of it, and she ducked into another patient's room instead. Instead of going away, the look deepened, until Buffy herself began to feel more than a little uncomfortable.

Still, she chose to let that one go by. "Do they say when you get out?" she asked. "'cause they aren't telling me."

Giles seemed to be zoning again. A thin line of sweat had started down from his hairline, up by his temple, and a muscle was jumping in his cheek. He looked, for all the world, like he was listening to something, and not exactly loving what he heard.

They stopped by the elevators, and Giles pushed a button. "Tonight," he told her.

"Tonight?" Buffy echoed. "That soon?"

"Mmn." When the doors slid open, he wrestled his IV stand onboard.

"Their idea, or yours?"

"There's no reason for me to remain here," Giles answered, pressing another button--coincidentally or not, the one that would take them to Wesley's floor. By some miracle, they had the elevator to themselves, and he leaned back against the wall, gazing down at her with a look Buffy couldn't quite read. Whatever it meant, though, it was doing exactly nothing to increase her comfort level.

"Hmn," Buffy answered, in turn. "Not that I won't be glad to have you home, but that didn't exactly answer my question. And, you did kinda lose it this morning."

"I did not, as you say, 'lose it,'" Giles snapped, but he didn't sound irritated, or cranky, really. More than anything, he sounded worried. Maybe even scared. He was shaking, too, but that probably had more to do with pain and exhaustion than anything else.

The doors slid open again to let them out. One of the stand's wheels caught in the crack, and Buffy had to lift it over the gap and out onto the carpeted floor. For just a second, Giles gave it a different kind of unreadable look, then, before she could stop him, peeled the tape off the back of his hand and yanked out the tube. Not surprisingly, it bled, but Giles didn't even seem to notice.

Anger flared up in her, mixed with confusion. "What? And what was that? I know you hate it here, Giles, but there's a limit to how far you can take the grumpy patient thing."

His expression changed again, until he was gazing down on her with a tenderness that only added to her confusion. "Oh, my love," he said softly. "Believe me, I would spare you this if I could."

"Huh?" Buffy answered. "Spare me what?"

"He's coming," Giles answered her cryptically. "She's called him back, and he's coming for you."

A feeling of dread Buffy totally didn't understand rushed through her. She wanted to argue, wanted to deny his words when she didn't even know what they meant. Who was coming? The mayor? The Master?

Only, suddenly she knew, as clearly as if Giles had spelled it out for her in Easy Reader form.

Willow. Willow-her-friend had called Angel's soul out of the Great Wherever. Willow-her-enemy, who wanted nothing more than to hurt her, could send that soul back again, and once it was gone...

Oh, God.

Angelus. Angelus was coming. Angelus would be here soon. For her.

Buffy's jaw dropped and her eyes blurred with tears. Half blind, she stared up at Giles. "No," she breathed. "It's not true. She wouldn't... I mean, it can't be true."

His look held nothing now but kindness, tenderness and concern for her. Yet here he was, trying to recover a second time from wounds he'd received at Angelus's hands, injuries that she guessed ran deeper than she'd ever know.

She needed to be strong. For him. For herself. For every innocent person here who depended on them.

"It will be different this time," she assured Giles. "I won't... That is, he won't... I mean, I'll be able to fight him this time. Not like before."

After all, she'd sent Angel--her Angel--to hell once. How hard could it be to do again?

The answer? Pretty damn hard. Love, after all, flickered out, but it didn't go away. Not just like that.

"Buffy," Giles told her softly, "I would do anything to spare you this."

"I know." Buffy put her hand on his arm. "I know, sweetie." She felt not so much tired as weary. Sick of it all. Her mind kept wanting to go back to the fact that none of this even needed to have happened, that it was her best friend who'd done it to her, but that wound hurt too much to touch. Better to stay in the moment. Better to deal with things that could be dealt with.

She made herself breathe. Made herself put on her happy face. Or, if not exactly happy, at least her confident face. None of which would fool Giles for so much as a second, but maybe she could at least fool herself a little.

"So--" Buffy began, pleased to find that her voice, at least, sounded normal. "What are we doing down here?"

As an answer, Giles steered her toward what she knew was Wesley's door. "We've two enemies," he told her. "And I can't imagine we'll be able to effectively fight one until we've dealt with the other."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning--" Giles brushed past her, into Wesley's room. "It's high time I picked up a bit of LeFaye magic."