Trust - Chapter 3

At a little past ten AM, Buffy heard voices in the entry and clumped downstairs to investigate. Figuring Mrs. Sebastian was going to be some nice English lady in a flowered dress, sweet but maybe a little plain--the image she had filed in her brain under the listing "Minister's Wife"--she hadn't exactly dressed for the occasion: shorts, spaghetti-strap top, sandals, her hair held back with a scrunchie.

When she hit the landing, though, what a appeared to be a supermodel was handing her mom a really pretty bouquet of flowers and saying something about the Saturday Market on Delahoya Green. Sebastian, as GQ as ever, had his arm around the supermodel's shoulders, and both of them were smiling, though with that same little bit of sadness in their eyes that she seemed to see everywhere these days.

Buffy began to seriously rethink her wardrobe choices. Thankful that her Slayer skills gave her the ability to sneak back upstairs without--hopefully--being noticed, she did exactly that, and dived into her closet, knowing she didn't have a prayer of finding anything to compare with the beautiful silk dress the supermodel had been wearing, but still not wanting to come across as Miss American Frump of 1999.

Only, like Old Mother Hubbard's dog-bone cupboard, her closet was bare. Really bare. As in, there were a couple outfits she hadn't worn since her sophomore year hanging all lonely down at one end, and some winter stuff up on the shelves. What in hell had happened to all her clothes?

A second later, as Buffy was standing in the closet doorway shifting from foot to foot and playing with the ring on her left hand, her mom knocked on the bedroom door.

"What?" Buffy answered, sounding grumpy even to herself. Or maybe desperate. "Mom, I have nothing to wear!"

Weirdly, Joyce was carrying a whole armload of her stuff. Besides that, she had a weird, guilty, I'm-about-to-tell-a-mom-lie-to-spare-your-feelings kind of look on her face. "I was...um...going through these. For the cleaners. To see if any of them needed to go there. To the cleaners."

Buffy gave her a look back. "This would be 'cause I just hang my dirty clothes back up in the closet? Mom, you know me. I barely even hang up my clean clothes."

"These are clean," Joyce told her, with mom-logic. "You can hang them up later." She dumped the whole big pile on Buffy's bed.

Buffy began to dig frantically. "I have no grown-up clothes. I'm gonna look like I'm twelve."

Patiently, her mom freed a light blue sleeveless sheathe from the pile. "There. Put this on. And hurry, please. It's not polite to keep the Delacoeurs waiting."

Buffy started to argue, but then it hit her that Joyce had made a pretty decent choice outfit-wise, and she really didn't want to be rude to Sebastian and his wife. She hauled off her casual attire and slipped the dress over her head, commenting, as she struggled with the zipper. "I didn't know Giles had a son. Did you know Giles had a son?"

"I hadn't," her mom answered, still with a little bit of liar-voice going on. Buffy decided to let that slide. "They came into the gallery one day, and I noticed the resemblance immediately."

"It's kinda hard to miss, huh?" The zipper had gotten caught. Buffy tugged and tugged, then decided to let Joyce make herself useful by helping out. "And Sebastian's gotta be at least thirty, so Giles must really be old. Like really, really old."

"I believe he was quite young when his son was born," Joyce answered, finally getting the zipper unstuck and gliding its way up to the top. "Buffy, please remember your manners when you talk to these people. I know you're curious, but Mr. Delacoeur lost his mother recently, and it's been a difficult week for him. Be kind."

"He's nice," Buffy said suddenly. "I like him."

"I like him too," Joyce said, with a completely different funny look on her face. "I didn't mean to, at first, but I do. I like Mr. Giles as well." She sat down on the end of the bed, looking all sad and confused again. "He was by earlier, to...um...ward up the house."

"Just ward, Mom," Buffy corrected. "Not ward up. It's not like 'board up.'"

Joyce's expression confused her.

"You didn't wake me?" Buffy plunged on. "Did Giles look okay? 'Cause I have to say, he looked like sh...uh...pretty bad last night."

Her mom's eyes kept getting bigger and sadder, and Buffy tried to tell herself that was because Joyce hated to see anyone get hurt. Only she knew better. It was driving her crazy trying to figure all this out, but at the same time she felt too scared to just ask.

Instead, Buffy did a little pirouette. "So, will I bring shame upon the family name?"

"You look lovely, sweetheart," Joyce assured her. "Have a nice time."

Clomping back down the stairs, though, Buffy didn't feel lovely. She felt very weird and hideously awkward. Of course, having the world's most perfect human being waiting for her in the living room didn't help things. Sebastian smiled at her, though, and then his wife smiled, stretching out her slim, beautiful, golden-brown arms toward Buffy, then gathering her up in the sweetest hug.

She smelled nice--like really good perfume, but she probably would have smelled just as good without any perfume at all--and her hair brushed silkily against Buffy's cheek.

"Buffy, I'm so very glad to meet you," she said, in a British accent that had something faintly musical underneath. "I'm Celeste."

"Um...nice to meet you too," Buffy mumbled. She'd never felt so shy in her life. Celeste linked arms with her, though, and the three of them headed out toward the car--not the rental from the night before, but a bran new sunshine-yellow YuppieBug with a sunroof.

"Do you like it?" Celeste asked, laughing. "I'm absolutely enamored, though I'd the greatest difficulty deciding between this yellow and a lovely green. Bastian, of course, would prefer something somber and British, but he can bloody well have that when he chooses his own car. For myself, I fully intend to go native."

Buffy laughed with her. She couldn't help herself. "I like the yellow. It's cheery."

"My thoughts exactly." Celeste gave her a secret smile. A sister-smile. Despite the supermodel looks and killer fashion-sense, Buffy found she just couldn't be shy with her, so by the time they reached the restaurant Celeste had chosen, just up the coast, the two of them were chatting like they'd known each other a million years, and they didn't shut up for five seconds straight all through brunch. Every now and then, Sebastian would add something to the conversation, but for the most part he just sat back and let it wash over him, looking amused--though not in a snooty way. More like he was crazy in love with his wife, and just liked to watch, and listen to her, and at the same time automatically liked anyone who was her friend.

Celeste, it turned out, had been like the British Martha Stewart--who she referred to as "that frosty woman with the unfortunate hair," which made Buffy giggle--back home in England, and now she was going to be filming in L.A. and, basically, it sounded like, taking over the world. Buffy had no problem with that. If Celeste ran the world, maybe polyester would finally be abolished, and everyone would serve tasty snacks.

So, she went, and had a great time--really, it was what she needed to shake off the Graduation Day blues, and all those weeks before of gloom and doom. It occurred to her though, as they were zipping back down toward Sunnydale, that she hadn't gotten a single question answered. Not one.

Then again, maybe that was the way it should be. Maybe Seb wasn't the right person to ask those questions anyway. When they were curling around the Sunnydale off-ramp, she leaned forward, and caught Celeste glancing at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Can you not take me home?" Buffy said. "I'd like... That is, I should..." Why was it so hard to say? She wanted to see Giles. What was weird about wanting to see Giles? "Could you take me to Giles's instead? I should check on him. See if he needs anything."

That time, Celeste's glance was directed toward her husband, and their eyes caught just for a moment before hers went back to the road. "Certainly, Buffy," she said kindly. "Ring us, will you, if there's anything we can do?"

Buffy nodded, glad she didn't have to explain--and how could she have explained?--that she wanted some alone time, where she didn't have to share Giles with anyone for a little bit. She still had the feeling that weirdness had happened, and if he was up to it, she wanted to hear the news from his lips.

If he wasn't up to it... Well, the crazy thing was, she missed him. Besides which, God only knew what tortures Xander was inflicting on him. Joking non-stop. Making Giles eat American junk food. It was definitely time for her to step in.

Celeste let her off at the curb with lots of goodbyes between the three of them, and Buffy started nervously up the up stairs, shaking her head at herself, playing with her ring again. Why was she nervous anyway? This was Giles she was going to see. Watcher Giles. Comfortable Giles.

Buffy tried to tell herself it was because she hated to see him in pain, but that wasn't it at all. Or it was, but that wasn't the thing that made her apprehensive.

She knocked on the door instead of walking straight in, the way she'd gotten into the habit of doing--as if Giles's apartment was the library, open to all who sought knowledge. But there wasn't any answer, so she ended up walking in anyway, the wards making her Spidey-sense zing as she crossed the threshold. Giles wasn't in the living room, or upstairs, either, because she checked and found the loft deserted, the bed neatly made. Someone was looking at a mega-sized lecture from her, that was for sure.

Buffy felt ridiculous, not being able to track him down. Giles's apartment wasn't that big. She wandered through the kitchen and down the corridor, peeking into the bathroom on her way. The place was a mess, stacks and boxes of books piled up against one wall, no doubt looking for a home since they'd been emptied, post-haste, out of the Sunnydale High Library. No Giles, though. Making her way past the book mountains to the very end of the hall, Buffy was surprised to discover an alcove she hadn't even known was there, with a narrow door inside it, propped open with a magazine.

Feeling like Lucy heading into Narnia, she slipped out onto a dark little dark stairway, and down to another door, also propped.

Nice security, Giles, she thought, a lifetime of at least semi-urban living having taught her that you don't leave apartment doors propped open. Ever. Not if you still want to find your TV and stereo when you got home. Though, come to think of it, she wasn't sure Giles even had a TV, and she knew no one would want to steal his stereo.

The second door led to an outside stair, just a few steps, leading down to a nice little Spanish-style courtyard with a fountain and a bunch of plants. Giles sat in a wrought-iron chair beside a wrought-iron table, his eyes closed, face turned up to the sun.

A pair of glasses she didn't recognize and a leather-bound book--typical--lay on the tabletop, but Giles wasn't reading. He had his splinted hand cradled up by his opposite shoulder, and he was sitting completely still, so still Buffy had to look hard to make sure he was breathing.

Somehow, she didn't want to crash in there, her usually disruptive self. She didn't really want to disturb him at all, because he looked--not exactly peaceful, it wasn't that--but... Buffy found herself frowning. She didn't know what it was, only that, if she'd been asked years later to tell someone about her Watcher, that's the picture that would have sprung first into her mind. The stillness. The sense that, for one of the first times since she'd known him, Giles wasn't wearing a mask of any sort, not the Stuffy Librarian, not the Cranky Watcher, just RealGiles. The same Giles who had told her, in the dark of his poky little car, that he didn't judge her. That he would always respect her. A wave of something strange and deep and sad washed through her, and if she'd had to name it, Buffy thought she would have surprised herself by calling it love. Love for this quiet, solitary, conflicted man, set adrift in a strange country, who she knew loved her in return.

Buffy crossed the courtyard, her sandals making no noise, despite the terra cotta tiles. She didn't want to startle Giles, didn't want to wake him up if he was sleeping, certainly didn't want to hurt him. She just felt, suddenly, the worst need to touch him, to make sure he was really there.

She laid her hand, gently as possible, against the back of his neck, feeling the warm skin, the soft hair at his nape brushing his fingers. She had the weirdest desire, all of a sudden, to cry--and then she realized that she was crying. Not sobbing, of course, but with twin tears making tracks down her cheeks. Giles's eyes opened then, looking up at her, noticing the tears the same way he always noticed that kind of thing. His uninjured hand came up to close, warmly and firmly around hers, and the next thing she knew Buffy found herself pressed against him, curled up in his lap, actually, which must have hurt like hell for him, but completely unable to drag herself away. Her arms went around his neck and her face dug into his shoulder, and then she was really crying, sobbing as hard as hard could be, with no idea of either why she'd started or how she'd found herself where she'd wound up.

She kept expecting Giles to push her away, to get all proper and British and stuttery. Only he didn't. His arms had wrapped around her body, holding her against his chest firmly and strongly and without the least sign of embarrassment. After a while, some of the desperation even seemed to leave her, and she just lay there, feeling warm, content, a little sleepy.

At that point, Giles made a small sound of protest, and it hit her that he was ripped up four ways from Sunday, and even though she was little, she wasn't so little that having her slump against him wasn't causing all kinds of agony.

"You'd kinda like me to get up now, huh?" Buffy asked, with a shaky laugh.

"No, no, not at all," Giles told her, the perfect British gentleman. Still, he couldn't quite hold back a sigh of relief--or maybe it was a gasp of pain--when she finally did slide off his lap.

Buffy stood for a minute, looking down at his face, familiar and loved and at the same time strange to her. "Now," she said, "I'm really, really confused."

"I'd imagine you are," Giles answered quietly.

"Can we go back upstairs and talk about this?"

He nodded, and with a determined look, started to get out of the chair. Buffy put a hand on his arm, wishing she knew how to help him, but Giles made it to his feet all on his own. The same way he made it all the way up the two flights of stairs back to his apartment--even though his breathing got funny about halfway up, and once inside he immediately flopped down on the couch. No ceremony there, so either he really couldn't take anymore, or things had changed between them. Maybe both.

"Do you want tea?" Buffy called to him. "I'll make tea." Okay, what she really wanted to do was regroup, but this was Giles after all, which meant tea gave her as good an excuse as any. She ducked into the kitchen, but didn't start in right away with the cups and the kettle.

Instead, she stood in the middle of the postage-stamp-sized floor, turning her ring around and around and around on her finger, wondering what had just happened, what was happening, and why this place, as familiar to her as her own home, suddenly looked strange, even a little dangerous.

Any minute she expected Giles to call out to her, wondering if she'd fallen down the drain, or run away, or even just conked out with the kettle boiling. But he didn't, and when she finally came out again with her laden tray, she found him snoring gently.

Giles being one of the quietest people she'd ever met, Buffy caught herself smiling a little. She set the tray down on the coffee table, careful not to wake him, and freed the throw--not the old, scratchy wool afghan, but a new one, of light, slippery chenille--from the foot of the couch, draping it over his sleeping body. Giles didn't move a muscle.

"Sweet dreams," Buffy told him, and sat down to wait for her Watcher to wake up again. Once or twice, in the past, she'd caught him napping, but it never lasted. She didn't expect it to last this time either.

Only it did, and she got restless. Snoopy, some might say, and not like Charlie Brown's dog, either. Everywhere she went in the apartment, there was stuff that belonged to her: her shampoo and moisturizer and everything else in the bathroom--even her toothbrush, which explained why she'd had to open a new one that morning at home. Bits and pieces of her jewelry spread over the dresser. A space in the closet obviously recently cleared, but beneath, hiding like brightly-colored toadstools under the dark columns of Giles's suits, were several pairs of her shoes. Her underwear and pajamas and stuff in the dresser drawers, mixed in with his belongings.

When she'd discovered that, Buffy went from creeped out, to confused, to knowing. To thinking she knew, anyway. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong, and everyone around her...

She ran downstairs, grabbed Giles's shoulders and shook him, not bothering to be anything like gentle. Hardly even awake, he went into a pitiful attempt at a defensive posture--but when he saw it was her, and recognized the look that Buffy knew was in her eyes, his own eyes got dark and sad again.

"Give me a moment," Giles said to her, in a voice that was strangely flat and strangely resonant, all at the same time.

She watched him struggle upright, not offering a hand, which she knew Giles wouldn't have taken anyway.

"You're been exploring," he said to her.

"Yeah," Buffy answered, her own voice equally flat, and furious, but Giles wasn't giving way to her anger any more than he ever did.

"You've a good brain, Buffy," he told her. "Use it. What did you discover?"

"That my stuff is all over your fucking apartment."

He raised an eyebrow at her language, but didn't comment. "Obviously, I've been stealing your belongings for my own twisted pleasures, is that it?"

"I've been living here," she answered. Giles looked surprised that she'd admit it--Buffy was half-surprised that she'd admit it to herself. Her voice got all thick. "With you?"

Giles lurched to his feet, crossing to the fireplace and taking a small rectangular something from a box on the mantle. He tossed it to her.

His passport? Buffy frowned at the little book a minute, then riffled the pages. There was a leaving-the-country stamp for days after what she'd assumed was today's date, and a return date a long time after that.

"You were in England?"

Giles nodded.

"Why?"

"My mum died, and after, there were...complications." He stood up straight in front of the mantle, like a man facing a firing squad.

"And I was here?" Buffy asked, all the lost days pressing in on her. She hated this. Hated it.

Giles tossed her another passport: her own. The same stamps. The same days.

"I've never been to England," Buffy protested.

"We spent the better part of the summer there," Giles told her. "And then, toward the end, you met a demon." He left the fireplace, heading toward the big table, where a blue-covered book held down what looked like a stack of notes. Giles opened it. "This demon."

Not wanting to at all, Buffy moved up beside him, looking past Giles's arm to the illustration he showed her. Ugh. It was hideous. Worse-than-usual hideous.

"That's German," she said, pointing to the words beneath the picture. "What's it say?"

"The Time Thief, or Time Robber," Giles told her, his eyes steely gray behind his glasses. "Also known as the Time Demon. The name more or less explains what the creature does."

"Steals time," Buffy stated, anger building inside her like lava bubbling inside a volcano.

Giles nodded.

"From me?"

He nodded again.

"And you let it? That's why I can't remember? You let that thing take part of my life away?"

"Bloody hell, Buffy," Giles sank down into a chair. For a second, there, he'd sounded almost Ripperesque, but by the time he went on, all that was gone, leaving his voice soft and hopeless. "If that's what you want to believe, feel free."

"No..." she answered cautiously. "But can we start with some simple things?"

"Today's date is Saturday, the twenty-first of August," he told her, not sounding any more cheerful.

"1999?" Buffy asked hopefully--which almost made Giles crack a smile.

"Yes, it is still 1999."

"And I'm still the Slayer? You're still my Watcher?"

That got her another nod.

"Good. Just checking." And she was. She'd missed out on almost her entire summer--she'd be starting college in two weeks, for God's sake. Buffy found herself playing with her ring again, twisting it around her finger like crazy--and then she looked down and discovered exactly what kind of ring it was that she was wearing.

Not a diamond, so she had about a half-second of doubt. But there were a bunches of little diamonds, and a great big sapphire in a beautiful antique setting. She'd never owned anything like it before. She'd never expected to own anything like it.

"Giles," she said, shocked and confused and wondering, "Should I even be wearing this?"

"That, Buffy," Giles answered, rising from his place at the table, "Is entirely your own choice."

Buffy watched him climb to the loft, painfully, and probably a lot more quickly than he should, leaving her alone with her own whirly thoughts and a great, big pile of notes. The thoughts she couldn't take, not then, so, by default, she began to flip, page by page, through the notes instead.

All that time, she played with the ring.

But she didn't take it off.