Trust - Chapter 8

Giles forced himself to lie still until an hour before first light, knowing his body needed the rest, even though his mind categorically refused to cooperate with the project, occupying itself, instead, with endless lists, a series of unanswerable questions and and a vague yet persistent sense of impending doom.

As the morning star appeared beyond his windows, he rose silently and began to pack the things he'd noted on the most useful of his mental lists into a nylon carryall. A change of clothing, including a warm wool pullover--there would be no predicting the weather in whatever realm contained the object of his questing. A canteen. An electric torch, almost guaranteed not to work across dimensions, and an silver emergency blanket that folded down to a size slightly less than that of a deck of cards. A packet of energy bars that promised high nutritional value, if minimal flavour. Herbs, naturally, and waterproofed matches. A small box of utility candles. Reluctantly, Giles added a supply of fresh bandages and the much-despised bottle of pills. Aware as he was of the need to keep himself clear-headed, he'd be no use to anyone, incapacitated by pain. He could scarcely believe how much it took out of him, merely to carry these sparse supplies downstairs.

The thought drew him up short. Already, Giles felt achingly exhausted, drenched in cold sweat and light-headed, his back and hand throbbing in an oddly syncopated counterpoint.

Well, it simply wasn't to be helped. Yes, he needed time--to heal, amongst other things--but as that time simply wasn't available, it remained only to soldier on until his work was done. After that, there would be time again, if time was needed. He stowed the carryall beneath the hat tree, just inside his door, leaned the sword Moira had given him against it, and began to tick off items on a second list.

Already, he'd rung the people who must be rung. Soon now, Wesley would be waiting for him. After much discussion, they'd agreed to meet at the edge of the unnatural forest Giles's rampant powers had raised from the ruins of The Factory. What better place to serve them as a gateway, after all, for what did Wild Magic do but open portals into places best left unexplored? Aunt Flora would look after Buffy as best she could, and press-gang Sebastian into service as a researcher, should his aid be needed. Seb would be angry, just as Buffy was angry--or would be, when they both learned of his unexpectedly sudden departure. He could not, however, much as he loved them, allow their anger to delay him in his mission.

If he went, it must be now.

Feeling awkward, in both the action and in the sentiments he expressed, Giles scrawled brief notes to his son and his beloved, exhorting them not to worry, assuring them that he'd return soon, and that all would be well--when, really, he'd no idea.

One thing was certain: were he to survive this adventure, Buffy would surely kill him upon his return. He could not help but imagine his love as he'd left her, golden hair spread across her pillow, soft lips parted, her face smooth and untroubled in sleep. He'd wanted so terribly to depart from her with a kiss that he could scarce contain himself, even though to do so would be to risk waking her, and waking her, he was well aware, would mean an end to his plans.

Still, Giles could not go away from her now with only a few brief, scrawled words as consolation. There was a charm he'd come across once in some random reading, and he worked it now, creating what would first appear as no more than a sphere of blown glass, a pretty, fragile thing of shifting blues and greens, sure to catch Buffy's eye.

Having formed this bauble, Giles took it tenderly between his hands, and into it poured everything he felt for her, all the loyalty and longing, all his passion and his joy, the distilled essence of his love. When she touched it, he consoled himself, were she to hold it, Buffy would feel him there, and be assured of what she meant to him. Such a small thing wasn't enough to leave her with, could never be enough, but Giles found himself strengthening the charm to ensure its permanence, using energies he could ill afford to spare. Were the worst to happen...

Enough, Giles told himself. It's excusable, perhaps, to be a sentimental fool in these circumstances, no need to add pessimism to your faults.

He left the charm as it was, floating gently in mid-air.

By the time Giles exited the flat, closing the door softly behind him, the sky had turned from inky indigo to clear deep blue. Wesley's borrowed car still sat at the kerb, and Giles started the motor with a key he'd found on the little table where he always dropped his own keys and spare pocket-change. Climbing behind the wheel was a refined form of torture, and it hurt badly him to so much as lift his arms, but Giles informed himself sternly that he must not allow mere bodily discomfort to deter him. As a Watcher, after all, he'd been taught to deal with pain, to either push it outside himself or draw it so tightly within that it might scarcely be noticed.

Truth be told, neither technique worked particularly well.

Some providence--or perhaps merely the early hour--allowed the streets to be nearly empty of other traffic, for which Giles found himself profoundly thankful. By the end of his cross-town journey, he was shaking, tendrils of icy sweat trailing down his chest, stinging beneath the dressings on his back. He couldn't concentrate. He couldn't. And yet he must, for there ahead of him lay the dark forest, where Wesley waited, as promised, a shadowy figure beneath the twisted branches of the first stand of trees.

Giles parked with unwonted care--certainly far more slowly than usual--and climbed from behind the wheel, trying not to allow any sign of his weakness to show. He locked the car, removed his carryall from the boot, then turned to face what he couldn't help but think of as his accomplice.

If Wesley noticed anything amiss, he didn't mention the fact. Instead, he asked, "Can you do what must be done?"

Giles nodded. The former Watcher seemed to take that as answer enough. Together, they moved deeper into the wood.

It was hard going--for him, at least. Already, the forest seemed to have begun taking on a life of its own. Underbrush had sprung up, of a type Giles doubted could be native to Southern California. Now and then, a faint rustling or crackling would come from beneath the foliage, sure sign that some manner of creature had established residence. Giles felt the hair on his nape stand firmly on end, and it seemed inclined to remain that way, despite all attempts to convince himself that such noises resulted from no more than the echoes of their own movements, or the passage of the wind through the branches. Everything within him knew better.

Though Wesley seemed to share his apprehension, he said nothing until they'd reached the bottom of the spiral. "Daylight's coming," he commented.

Giles never would have guessed. To him, the air continued to feel thick as treacle and nearly as dark. His heart pounded and his lungs laboured to feed oxygen into his body.

Thus occupied, Giles didn't bother to answer. The greater part of his will was taken up in trying to center himself, to slow his respiration, to still the drumming of his pulse. For some time, he thought he wouldn't manage, but then the familiar calm set it, alongside the sensation of being balanced, hundreds of feet up, on a slender tightrope.

Such feelings, far from frightening him, brought to Giles a sense of exhilaration, of absolute freedom. His own magical abilities blended so seamlessly with the power Sebastian had given him that he could not tell where one left off and the other began. Certainly, there was something there of the Wild Magic, a flavour of risk and Chaos, but even that seemed to possess a certain restraint, as of a raging stream that runs, nevertheless, within the containment of its banks.

Settling the carryall more comfortably on his shoulder, Giles removed from his pocket a length of fine silver chair, twining one end round Wesley's wrist, the other end loosely round his own. He made no attempt to fasten either end: this connection was purely symbolic, an indication that both should travel where he himself led.

Giles closed his eyes, sensing, here, the thinness of the walls between dimension and dimension, the pull of this unnatural place as it desired to send them elsewhere, anywhere. Shadows flickered on the edges of his vision, and it seemed to him that he heard voices, but now was not the time to pay them heed. Instead, Giles willed himself to silence, his mind to quiet, searching, now, through the void for some trace of the creature he'd felt so clearly in his flat, moments before the pain made him want to sink into the mattress and never come out again. He reached for the flavour of Buffy's memories, their passionate brightness in an otherwise barren wasteland, stretching and stretching his consciousness until he felt like nothing, certainly like nothing human, like no more than a series of molecules pulled out into a blurred, fragile but near-infinite line. Dimensions and possibilities flipped past him, making Giles sick and dizzy, no matter how insubstantial he might be, world upon world upon world, and none of them the right one.

Until, suddenly, his awareness lighted upon a sentience of such loathsome familiarity Giles could not have mistaken it for any other but the one he sought, lost in a place so far away it seemed to bear no connection whatsoever to human reality. Not bothering to stop himself, or think for a moment about what he might be doing, Giles gathered himself, pointed his intent, and leapt.

Never, in a life spent plumbing the ways of darkness, had Giles guessed known that darkness could be so terrible, or so utterly profound.

Buffy opened one eye at a time, peering at a clock that couldn't possibly be correct. Twelve o'clock? How could it be twelve o'clock? Maybe the noisy alarm clock had gotten tipped, so that its numbers (Roman numerals, of course--wouldn't you know?) were in the wrong place.

Yeah, right.

Face it, Buff, she told herself, You slept half the day away.

Which wasn't like her, even if she had been out half the night on patrol. When wasn't she on patrol, after all? And it wasn't like she was a little kid who needed ten hours sleep. She hated to start the day...well, so late in the day.

Yawning, Buffy climbed out of bed, knowing for absolutely certain that Giles had been up for hours, no matter how bad he felt, and was probably downstairs right now, trying not to be shocked by her slothfulness.

"I'm up," she called to him. "Just give me a minute." Yawning again, she shuffled into the bathroom, relieved herself, then started the shower. Give her about ten minutes under the spray, followed by a big glass of orange juice, and she'd be perky Buffy again. Okay, maybe orange juice and coffee this morning, but the end result would be the same. She stripped off her nightie and slipped behind the plastic curtain.

Mm, she thought, Shower good. Hot water good. Visions of ghosts who asked you big, huge favors not so good, but they could at least discuss that this morning. Afternoon. Whatever.

Buffy stretched and yawned again, ducking her head out of the spray so that she wouldn't get water in her mouth. Something was rattling around in her brain like a marble in a tin can, something she was supposed to remember, but she couldn't quite catch hold of what it was and finally just gave up. If it was that important, it would come to her. Meanwhile, she should just enjoy.

Buffy decided to take her own advice, and finally finished her shower about twenty minutes later. She spent another fifteen minutes in those little personal grooming things that even a Slayer shouldn't let slip: plucking her eyebrows, moisturizing, pushing back her cuticles, brushing, flossing, spending a good long time first drying her hair then trying to decide how she wanted to wear it that day, putting on makeup, then putting on different makeup because that what had she been thinking when she bought that lipstick and that eyeshadow?

By the time she got back into the bedroom, it was ten minutes past one.

At which point, her ever-helpful brain decided to remind her that the rattle-y marble thing she'd been puzzling about was her college orientation, scheduled to start at 1:30 that day.

"Omigawd," Buffy muttered aloud, tearing through her drawers in a desperate search for something that she could throw on in a minute and a half and still make a halfway decent impression. Not that it probably mattered, but no use looking like a geek the first time she met any of her fellow students, so she settled on a newish outfit with a turquoise top and a sand-colored and turquoise skirt--remind her not to stop by her mom's gallery while wearing that, she'd blend right into the walls. Buffy dug a pair of platform slides out from under the suits in TweedClosetLand and slipped them on, then shoved a couple pens and a spiral notebook into her bran new bookbag, along with the big packet of papers UC Sunnydale had sent to her about a million years before but she hadn't even looked through, and raced downstairs.

"Giles," she yelled, "I need a ride to..." And then she stopped. A--because it hit her that having Giles drive her anywhere right now, or even ride along with her, learner's permit girl that she was, while she drove, would be the pinnacle of selfishness on her part. And B--because all this time she'd been picturing him comfy in the recliner, but he wasn't there.

"Giles?" she said again, wondering if she'd missed something. But no, he wasn't in the living room or down the hallway or in the bathroom, and even the little door that led out to the lower courtyard was closed and locked tight. More than that, she didn't have any sense of his presence now, either inside the apartment or anywhere close by, and it hit her that she should have. She'd sensed him every minute, yesterday. Every minute she'd been here, anyway.

"So..." Buffy said to no one in particular. "Sneaked out on me, huh? You are so in trouble." Which he was. Giles wasn't the only one in this relationship who could come up with guilt-producing lectures, and she almost looked forward to trying one out on him. Why should he have all the fun? Besides which, if he spent all day out and about, he'd be feeling like nine kinds of hell when he got home, so she could follow up the lecture with some special Nurse Buffy TLC, and if he thought he'd be wriggling out tonight for any kind of little magic fest, he'd see how insistent a Slayer could be.

So... Buffy glanced at the clock again. She now had exactly twelve-and-a-half minutes to get across town to a campus located twenty minutes away and find her way to a building that she hoped was on a map somewhere in that non-looked-at packet. She had no ride, no car, no driver's licence and no way to call anyone in time to get to get to UC Sunnydale with anything like an excusable margin of tardiness.

Buffy said a bad word. She said another one, but neither made her feel better. Just when she was getting ready to see if three was the charm, someone knocked on the door. If that person had a car, she was going to kiss him. Or her.

Luck was with her at last. When Buffy opened up, the person standing outside was Celeste. "Hullo, B..." she began, but Buffy grabbed her arm and, slamming the door behind herself, started hustling Giles's daughter-in-law up the stairs.

"Orientation. College. Me," Buffy told her, sounding, even to herself, like a cavewoman in search of higher education. "Please?"

Celeste laughed and actually started to move faster than Buffy could hustle. "How late are you?"

"Get me there in five minutes, and I'll be on time," Buffy said hopefully, even though she knew Celeste was the opposite of a crazed driver.

"And how far away is the campus?" Celeste asked in return, giving her the raised eyebrow treatment as they clattered down the last of the stairs and slid into her new yellow Bug. Celeste, Buffy was amused to note, had a tasteful, yet not fussy, miniature bouquet arranged in the little vase near the steering wheel. Fresh, not plastic or silk. This was Celeste, after all.

"About twenty minutes," Buffy answered, buckling her seatbelt and giving her friend a hopeful look.

"Hmn," Celeste answered, but she made good time, zipping her little car through the streets of Sunnydale as if other traffic didn't exist, while still managing not to break any traffic laws. "Actually, I'd called to see if Rupert needed anything. I must confess, I was surprised to find you there."

"Post memory-sucking, you mean? Actually, we're okay, Giles and me," Buffy told her. "Aunt Flora did kind of a memory upload thing last night, in between cooking dinner. It was the weirdest. Did you know that she knows everything that goes on around her? I mean, everything. So I ended up getting a big chunk of the summer back, anyway."

Celeste gave a soft chuckle. "I've always suspected she did, but I suppose it's something one would rather not know. Not that, if someone short of the divine has to be aware of all one's acts, I can actually think of anyone I'd rather have it be. The Giles women are formidable, each in her own way, and it's an honor to be accepted into their ranks."

"I liked her," Buffy said, "Lots. But she kinda scared me, too. I mean, there's some stuff I'm not proud of. For example: today. I am so mentally challenged. You, on the other hand, have the best timing ever. You know you're a goddess, right?"

The Bug pulled into the UC Sunnydale parking lot. If Buffy ran now, she'd be late, but not horribly late.

"Don't mention it," Celeste told her, laughing a little. She handed over a slip of paper with a phone number on it. "Now, go! Ring me when you're ready for a ride home, and I'll come collect you."

"You're too sweet." Buffy gave her cheek a quick kiss. "Seriously. A goddess."

Celeste gave a little wave as Buffy closed her door behind her and set off across campus with the totally incomprehensible map clutched in one hand. She'd chosen really dumb shoes for running too, and her bookbag kept whacking her in the butt with every other step she took. Maybe that was punishment.

Finally, not quite twenty minutes late, she found herself in what should have been about the right part of campus, and there, on one of the winding paths between the big green lawns and the trees was a group of similarly nervous and confused looking people all her age. Apparently, she hadn't been the only tardy one, because the slightly-older guy with the clipboard who was taking attendance had only gotten as far as the R's.

"Rodall, Greta?" he called. "Greta, are you here?"

Instead of answering, the girl giggled. Nice to know they were all grownups here.

"Rose, Patrick?"

"Present," said a guy who had Future Math Major written all over him. He even wore a pocket protector in the front of his checked shirt.

"Rosenberg, Willow."

From what Giles and the others had told her, Buffy expected a big silence, but instead a totally unfamiliar voice answered, "Here."

Buffy stood on her toes, trying to see through the crowd, but the voice had come from all the way over on the other side, and no matter how she stared she couldn't make out anyone who looked like her best bud. The voice hadn't sounded right either, and as much as it stretched her imagination to believe that there might be two Willow Rosenbergs in the UC Sunnydale freshman class, she supposed stranger things had happened.

Clipboard guy read through a few more names, but Buffy was too caught up even to hear what he said. She'd believed Giles, of course she had, but Willow was her friend, her for-real best friend, and she needed, really needed to see her. Right that minute.

"Buffy Summers going twice," called clipboard guy. "Buffy Summers going..."

"Here!" she piped up. Her voice sounded weird too. Like she was about five years old, actually.

"Ah," said the guy. "Thank you for joining us, Buffy."

A few of the others laughed, and Buffy felt herself blushing, but that didn't matter. Just at the moment she'd said her own name, someone who had to be Willow moved into sight. In fact, showed up right at her side, as if she'd been there all along, and even though Buffy would have known her at once, it was still like looking at a stranger. Her eyes were black now. All the way black. No trace of green anywhere. The darkness even seemed to spill out into where the whites should have been.

"Buffy," this new, strange Willow said, in an undertone. "How are you?"