Trust - Chapter 23

Giles had no real desire for the tea he'd asked Buffy to fetch, but she had gone on the errand willingly enough, albeit with what seemed at fair portion of unease at leaving him alone (for Em was nowhere to be seen) in the room with Wesley.

"So," Giles said, once she had gone. He heard an undertone of Ripper clearly enough in his own voice, and understood his Slayer's unease.

"So," the younger Watcher echoed, his blue eyes flashing a half-timid defiance. "I must say, Giles, you're looking..."

"Alive?" Giles interrupted, in the same deceptively soft tone. He hadn't meant to confront Wesley, not really, but once here...

Wesley said nothing.

"Have you any idea where Xander's gone?" Giles asked next, putting some effort into removing the worst of the threat from his voice. The thing was, he knew that even in his present state of decrepitude he could hurt the younger man, whether physically or emotionally, but what was the point, really? What would either action prove? He might relieve his own emotions temporarily, but in the end, he'd only be left feeling guilty, and he scarcely needed to add an additional measure of that to his already well-burdened conscience.

Wesley shook his head, shifting uneasily in his bed. He looked, at the moment, pale and worn, older than his thirty-two years and yet--at the same time--younger, with something in his eyes of a child that expects to be beaten for some crime his own imagination has already magnified all out of reason.

Sighing, Giles sank down into the bedside chair, shifting a bit in his own right. He'd forgotten how utterly devoid of comfort the damned things could be. "For God's sake, Wesley," he said, not without a touch of semi-exasperated kindness, "I'm not going to hurt you. At the moment, I scarcely imagine I'm equipped to do so, even if I wished."

"Oh, I think you could," the younger man returned softly. He added, after a moment, "If you wished."

Giles chuckled, shaking his head.

"You could," Wesley insisted. His eyes sought Giles's, desperate, despite the obvious, dulling haze of drugs for something...approval? forgiveness? Or perhaps, sadly, the abuse he no doubt felt he so richly deserved. Seeing that, Giles felt the last vestiges of his resentment melt away. Poor boy. Poor muddled boy.

"Don't pity me," Wesley said, with a certain sharpness, a stronger defiance flashing through the haze. I can't bear it, the look told him. Gibe me your anger. Give me pain. Anything but that.

"Pity, no," Giles answered, glad to hear, now, within his own voice, nothing but a species of weary kindness. "Understand...perhaps. The situation reminds me of certain events in my own past. And it's good to see you--er--alive, Wesley."

That gained him a tense flicker of a smile. "I might say the same to you, Rupert." Wesley shifted again, moving the heavily-bandaged stump of his arm up against his shoulder. Giles's own splinted hand throbbed in sympathy. Like most left-handed people, he himself was fairly ambidextrous and got on well enough with most things even with his dominant hand out of commission. He hoped that Wesley possessed similar skills.

"In response to your earlier question," the younger man said. "No, I didn't see Xander after... That is, when I returned. Granted, the Zeit Räuber kept me rather busy at the first, then... I suppose he might have been there, in the forest, but I'll confess I didn't notice. I wanted..." His voice trailed off, and Giles felt from him a mix of emotions so complex he was hard-pressed to sort one from another. He doubted greatly that Wesley understood them himself.

"Ah!" The younger Watcher glanced up at the soft tap of high heels on the lino, his face brightening immensely. "There you are, love!" Of course he'd not noticed, or thought of, Xander. His entire being had been focused upon Em.

"Here I am," Moira answered him tenderly, giving Giles a look over her beloved's head. "And how have you boys been getting along?"

The look Giles returned to her said, spare me, but he answered her civilly enough, "I've just been just asking Wesley if he knew anything of Xander's whereabouts."

Moira busied herself with locating a second chair, in which she took a seat, then with removing the top of a large vacuum flask and pouring its contents into a mug.

"It's soup," she said, wrapping the fingers of Wesley's remaining hand round the mug's handle, "And I expect you to drink up every drop."

"There's no need to mother me," Wesley returned, and yet Giles understood well enough that he loved every moment of Em's attention.

"Drink," Moira ordered, with mock severity, a gentleness in her eyes that Giles had never seen there before, even with Helena.

"Em," he said, hardly liking to interrupt. "I've come here for your help."

"There isn't much I can do...now," she answered, her gaze still intent upon Wesley's face.

"I thought you might explain to me--perhaps even teach me--some LeFaye magic."

"Best to ask Seb," Moira answered. "He..."

"No disrespect to our son," Giles interrupted, "But we both know well enough that you've forgotten more magic than Sebastian ever knew."

With seeming reluctance, Em raised her eyes to regard him. "Rupert," she said, "What do you think I can teach you in an afternoon, or a day, or a year? For the goddess's sake, what could I teach you in a decade? I know Seb's given you something of himself. I know that I awakened the LeFaye blood within your little girl, and that it's on my head, at least to some extent, that Willow has now allied herself with darkness." Moira's eyes changed, a verdant fire flickering within their normal greenness until Giles wondered whether she remained so truly powerless, or if magic might be drawn to her out of the aether, like lightning to the rod.

As soon as the thought came to him, Giles knew his intuition to be true. Moira was calling power home to herself, perhaps without the slightest notion that she did so--and being who she was, Giles wasn't sure that he felt precisely comfortable with a Moira who drew her strength directly from a Hellmouth.

Quite the opposite, actually.

"Are you saying that you will not help me?" Giles, still, could not stop himself from asking softly.

"I'm saying," Em answered, in an even lower tone, "That I can't bear to die again, Rupert. Not now. Not in this place." The fire in her gaze changed, shifted. He felt her glamour and the force of her will, and knew, beyond that, that what she said was true. If she remained here on the Hellmouth, if she fought by his side, as she'd fought so many times, either she would become something they would both abhor, or, lacking that, she would die again. In either instance, nothing would be saved, no evil defeated. Nothing he gained from her would defeat this coming menace, and if she could not bear to die, he could not bear to mourn her again.

"No, love," Wesley protested softly. "No, we must..." His voice trailed away, as if he, too, had caught at least a glimmering of the spark that passed between them. "That is, I should very much like to..."

Giles looked down at his own hands, where they lay in his lap, the one battered but whole, the other splinted and useless to him now, and he realized that he was afraid. He'd wanted her there, to fight beside him, with her magic and her strength and her practicality, and now...

He shivered, then controlled it. He was afraid now. He'd been afraid before. It didn't matter.

Giles glanced up, regarding them both. "Better to go," he said, looking from one to the other, from Wesley's young and vulnerable face, which so exactly mirrored the junior Watcher's emotions, to Moira's, adamantine in its hardness and its lack of expression. "Yes, go," he added. If you can. It...it will all begin soon. Angelus..."

"Here I am!" Buffy sang out from the doorway, with what Giles suspected was an entirely feigned cheerfulness. He wondered how much she'd heard, how much more she'd picked up from him. "Tea. Tea." She made her way into the room, setting the cups, in their pasteboard holder, upon Wesley's bedside trolley. "And--I know this will surprise you--tea."

"I've booked passage for us on the QEII," Moira said, as if Buffy hadn't spoken at all--though the slightest of smiles flickered at the corners of her mouth. "Since it will be some time before Wesley's allowed to fly." She glanced away from Giles, fixing her gaze instead upon her beloved's face. "It will be a holiday for both of us. I think we're owed a bit of a holiday."

"You're leaving? Really?" Buffy's expression of pained incredulity could not help but remind Giles how truly young she was. "Really really?" She looked ready for a fight, or perhaps one of her impassioned speeches, either of which, Giles knew, would have no effect whatsoever upon an Em who'd fixed her sights upon a clear course of action.

Buffy's eyes sought his. "But what about Willow? And the magic stuff?"

Giles gave a slight shake of his head. "No fears, love. Seb and I will simply have to put our heads together. It will be..."

"Bullshit," Buffy said succinctly.

Giles forced himself to smile at her, to give her one of his calm, reassuring and rational looks, despite the fact that his heart had begun to race and it would have taken only an unguarded moment for him to succumb to panic.

Em and Wesley, he noted, said nothing.

"Willow. Angelus." A shadow passed across Buffy's smooth young face, making her appear, in that instant, both haunted and far older than her years. "Yeah, I have to say it's really great to have friends. either they turn on you, or...they turn on you."

With that, she herself turned upon her heel and strode from the room. Giles twisted, more than somewhat painfully, to watch his beloved's passage.

"What...?" Wesley began, his voice breaking slightly on the word.

Giles found himself struggling to his feet.

"Rupert," Moira's tone, somehow, managed to mingle both warning and some lesser species of apology, one whose weakness merely served to make the situation worse, for it told him well enough that Em knew she'd be leaving them alone in dire need, and yet...

Her perfect lips had parted. In a moment she'd make excuses, explanations that would no doubt be well-reasoned, that would make sense. The Hellmouth had begun to affect her. She had, truly, suffered losses that would cause anyone to weaken. The best thing would be, truly, for Em to leave this Godforsaken place, and to take Wesley with her. In similar circumstances, his own magical integrity in question and his beloved endangered, Giles suspected that he'd be hard pressed to behave differently.

And yet. And yet.

He didn't want to listen, not to reason. Helpless to do otherwise, he turned his back upon her, shuffling from the room as quickly as he possibly could, before a single word could fall upon his suddenly too-sensitive ears.

On her way to the stairs, Buffy passed Giles's abandoned IV-pole-thingie, standing lonely and slightly off-balance in front of the elevators.

"How could they?" she demanded of the forsaken pole. "No. How could she? Big, scary, all-powerful chickenshit witch lady."

All of which, Buffy knew, made exactly no sense. But she needed to vent, and in the absence of gym equipment or scary monsters...

She aimed a kick at the unoffending piece of medical equipment. And missed. Which didn't say much for the level of her Slayer skills at exactly that moment, but was probably for the best--with the mad she had going on, the damn thing probably would have flown halfway across the hospital and skewered some unsuspecting innocent passerby.

Which wouldn't exactly have made her feel better.

"Buffy," said Giles's voice from behind her, making Buffy jump. She'd kind of half-heard his more-than-a little-bit-unsteady shuffle come out of Wes's room a few seconds before, but been too much in that rage-place to even react to it.

Great. Better give her low marks for Slayer reflexes, too.

"Buffy, love," he repeated.

Slowly, Buffy turned, the anger more or less draining out of her at the sight of Giles's face, pale and battered, but still looking down at her with all of its usual warmth.

"What should we do?" Buffy asked him, hating that her voice sounded all little-girly weak and helpless. That wasn't who she was, and she refused to be that way even one second longer. She made herself straighten, made her eyes meet Giles's squarely. "What do you want to do?"

A teeny, hardly detectable smile touched the corners of Giles's mouth. "Just now? I'd very much like to go home, to our own bed, with you."

"Okay, then," Buffy told him. "That's exactly what we'll do." She scooted over to him, and before Giles could protest, wriggled her shoulder up under his arm.

Giles looked down at her for another second, shaking his head, but then his weight shifted so that he actually was leaning on her. Maybe not as much as he needed to, but she'd take what she could get.

"There'll be papers," she warned him. "Probably lots of papers, before they let you out of here. Because they really shouldn't. You know that, right?"

Giles sighed.

"Only don't worry," Buffy added. "I'll deal with them, okay? And latter we'll deal with...other stuff."

Giles sighed again, in a way Buffy could have sworn contained a note of gratitude.

They'd worry about Angelus later.