Trust - Chapter 9

They tumbled through the dense, whisper-filled darkness just long enough to make Wesley wonder if their fall might actually be endless, and then the ground--wherever that ground might truly be, rushed up to meet them, striking with something like the impact of a huge and brutal hand. Like his father's hand, when he was very young: merciless and unexpected.

If he'd needed to breathe, Wesley would have been knocked breathless. As it was, he lay on the stony surface waiting for some sense of up or down to return to him. What had someone told him once? If lost in a place where one couldn't tell--buried in a rockslide, for example, or in snow--one should spit, and the direction one's spittle dropped would indicate down.

Maria had told him that, Wesley recalled. Maria del Ciello, who'd made him what he was today. She'd possessed a rather amazing store of revolting factoids--her word for such snippets of information.

God help him, he missed Maria, crass, brash, fearless Maria. He missed gentle, wise, Simon Quartermass, and their old days at the Compound, which at the time had seemed so entirely dismal. Most of all, he missed Her Ladyship. Moira. His beloved Emmy, whom he'd buried with his ring on her hand.

As he lay upon the ground, waiting for coherent thought to return, he'd a brief vision of her: Em's lovely smile and troubled eyes, the silken curtain of her auburn hair, her fine hands and long legs and the way she would wait, so still, watchful and patient. A spear of pain went through his unbeating heart, more agonizing than any mere stake.

They must succeed in this. They must. Wesley could not entertain the alternative.

That they'd found themselves in this place was the first step on that path, wasn't it? Wherever this place might be. It wasn't earth, of that much he was certain. His vampiric senses were nothing if not acute, and everything they told him suggested otherness, though why that was he could not have put into words. Beyond that impression, he'd an odd sense that they'd landed in a heap, and had, somehow, too many arms and legs between them.

Someone groaned, the voice sounding young and-- though Wesley could not have said why that was--strangely American.

"Xander?" Giles said from somewhere beneath him, his voice a thin, rough thread. He was panting, his breathing harsh and strained. "For God's sake, Xander," he gasped, "What are you doing here?"

The boy--what was he doing there?--didn't answer, but Wesley knew well enough what his response would have been. Xander, too, seemed to have some difficulty with the air, though not to the same degree Giles apparently experienced.

Already, Wesley's own body had begun to overcome the effects of the crash. He rose to his feet--a trifle stiffly, but no worse for wear, really. The surface beneath the soles of his shoes seemed firm enough. Indeed, it felt firmer than he, at least, would have liked. He glanced up to see stars that did not twinkle overhead, only shone with a cold, steady light. Though it wasn't bitterly cold, at least so far as he could determine, the wind smelled of ice, and of some other thing that he could not identify.

"Wes, help me up?" Xander said, and his voice, in that place, sounded not only young, but small and frightened.

Wesley himself experienced a sense of the hugeness of space around them and felt daunted, even before they'd begun. How were they possibly to find a single demon in such vastness? He stretched down a hand to the boy, finding him easily, even in the dark, by his warmth, by his own, particular smell.

Xander smelled frightened, yes, and Wesley could not only hear, but feel, his heart race, the blood pounding in his veins. Whatever was wrong with the air, after the initial shock his lungs seemed to be coping well enough, his respirations quite a bit faster then usual, but forceful for all that. The odour Wesley caught from him was healthy, youthful, strong, and he knew the fall hadn't injured him beyond, at the most, a bruise or two.

Wesley realized, suddenly, exactly what it was he'd heard rustling in the bushes of the magically-grown forest, and shook his head. Really, he ought to have known. "You followed us, Xander," he said quietly.

"Well...uh...I kinda..." The boy shifted uneasily. "I grabbed the chain. I had to."

"Foolish boy," Giles told him, dismay and affection mingled beneath the roughness in his voice. Wesley could hear the older man struggling to rise, his breath continuing harsh and pained. Unlike Xander's, his scent was bitter, his blood awash with the chemicals one's body manufactured in response to pain, and with the man-made substances intended to control them. Despite all his longing for Moira, and for the return of his own life, it came to Wesley that, for Giles's own sake, he should not have let him bring them to this place.

Between them, Wesley and Xander helped the older man to rise. He stood swaying for a moment, a different bitterness, the sharp odour of magic, rising round him. "Yes," Giles said softly, obviously trying not to gasp. "Yes, I see."

"What?" Xander asked. "Or maybe I should say, what next?"

"Next?" Giles laughed softly, then coughed. "Now, Xander, we walk."

"Uh...if you don't mind me asking, walk where?"

"Through night and day and in and out of weeks...to where the Wild Things are," Giles answered.

"O-kay," Xander responded, his tone one of disbelief. "Not sure that's what I wanted to hear. Giles, are you tripping?"

"Am I?" Giles laughed and coughed again. "Quite possibly, my dear boy. But we've come to the right place. The demon's here. I know it's here."

"Great," Xander said. His trainer-shod feet scuffled nervously over the hard ground. "Umn...great, Giles."

Under his breath, too faintly for anything but vampiric senses to detect, Wesley heard him mutter, "That's it. We're doomed."

Buffy stood there with her mouth open, her heart pounding, but after a minute of the all-black weirdness, Willow's eyes looked normal again. Big and green and...well, just Willowesque, like all that darkness Buffy saw before had been nothing but a trick of the light. And maybe that was true. Maybe it hadn't been anything more than that, and she was letting Giles's mysterious warnings wig her without even letting Will tell her side of the story. Much as she loved him, and trusted his opinion--usually--she knew Giles tended to come down hard on Willow about the magic, so maybe whatever had happened was more a blowup between the two of them. Maybe it was up to her to set things right.

As for Xander...well, Willow and Xander had history, and in her experience (her mom and dad being a prime example) what that kind of past gave you, mostly, was plenty of ammunition. Nobody had told her what Will had done, after all. And how bad could it be, really? This was Willow they were talking about.

Buffy just wished she knew for sure. How was she supposed to use good judgement when she didn't have the whole story?

At the moment, Will's face was going all crumply, like she was getting ready to cry. "You're gonna side with them, aren't you?" she whispered. "With the guys, I mean. Instead of me."

"No," Buffy answered, startled. "God, Will, no. I just..."

"'Cause you know how Giles is about the magic. And, I mean, I guess I understand, only I didn't mean to hurt anyone, especially not Xander. Buffy, I love Xander, you know that. And I tried to make it up, only..." One tear did fall then, trailing down Willow's cheek. "Giles went all patriarchal on me. They just don't listen, not to me." She snuffled a little. "How can I make things right if no one will listen?"

There was a girl watching them, a taller girl with kind of mousy brown hair with a zig-zag part right down the center. Buffy gave her a do you mind? kind of glare.

"I'm listening," she whispered back. "But Will..."

"Ms. Summers, Ms. Rosenberg?" said clipboard guy, "Was there something you needed to have explained?"

They both shook their heads, and Buffy mouthed "later."

It ended up being lots later, after a tour of the campus that wound around and backtracked so many times that Buffy, who'd always prided herself on her sense of direction, knew she'd be instantly lost the next time she set foot on campus. There was a lot of stuff about libraries, computer labs, mealtickets and about a million other things, but it wasn't until she and Will were sitting across from each other on the little twin beds in what was supposed to be their dorm room that Buffy felt halfway in touch with reality again.

"I think I just flunked orientation," she told Willow. "How am I ever gonna make it through the college?" Buffy bounced a little on the mattress. "At least the bed feels okay."

Will did an experimental bounce of her own. "It does! And this room! Yay!"

"It's big," Buffy agreed. "My mom had me expecting something about the size of a hamster cage. She said she and her college roommate had steel bunkbeds--like in jail--if you can believe."

"I believe. My mom said her dorm looked like a cross between a maximum security prison and a parking garage, but this--" Willow went to the window, opened it up and leaned out. "This isn't half bad. This way isn't half bad."

Buffy joined her there. They were on the second floor, with a nice enough view of some lawns, established-looking trees, and a statue of some old, dead Spanish guy. Her Spidey-sense felt like it might be tingling, but that might have been nothing more than a acute case of pre-college nerves. Suddenly the whole higher education thing was starting to feel real--and with it, big and scary. What if her SAT scores really had been a fluke? What if she was way too dumb for this, and disappointed her mom and Giles and everyone? What if everyone thought she was a big freak?

Okay, and another wigsome what if--what if she looked at her best friend suddenly, and saw Willow's eyes go all dark again?

"I don't wanna take sides," Buffy told her softly.

"Then don't," Will answered, and they traded looks.

"So, what was the big bad you did, anyway?"

"Got Xander involved in a spell." Willow shrugged. "Like it's the first time?"

"At least you didn't make every girl in Sunnydale fall in love with him, right?" Buffy laughed. "'Cause, I don't think I could take being a rat again. Or naked. Not in the basement anyway."

"Nothing like that," Will answered, laughing too, but then her face got crumply again. "Hey, Buff, I'm sorry--I'm really, really, really sorry--about the whole memory thing. I tried to help. I tried hard. Only the demon guy was just too strong for me."

"Like it's your fault?" Buffy put her arm around her friend's shoulders, giving Willow a quick sideways hug. "I'm dealing. And Giles's psychic-friend-aunt gave me a whole bunch of stuff back, all our little England expedition, anyway." She laid her cheek against Willow's soft red hair. "That helped."

"She did?" Willow's voice went funny for a minute. "I mean, that's great. I'm glad. So you're... You and...are..."

Buffy held up her left hand, the sapphire in her ring flashed in the afternoon sun. "We are. I wish I remembered HOW we got to here, but we are. I guess that what's really not of the best-- knowing I lost some good stuff, and there's no way to get it back."

"It could be worse, though," Willow told her, in something like her old, perky voice. "At least you got the middle part, right? Even if you missed out on the beginning. And I wouldn't feel too bad about losing the last couple weeks, 'cause they kinda sucked."

"At least we're okay," Buffy said. "Same old Buffy and Will, right?"

"Yes." Glancing sideways, Buffy caught a thin crescent of Willow's smile. "Damn straight. Same old us."

"Bastian. Bastian!."

Celeste was calling to him from somewhere quite far off, and much as he knew he ought to, Sebastian could not seem to answer. Dimly, he felt the sheet of paper clutched in his hand, the good, eggshell-coloured paper with all the crispness, now, crumpled out of it. Even more dimly, he became aware that his wife had removed the note from his fist, smoothing out its creases on her lap before she read the words for herself.

You've done this, Sebastian thought. You gave your dad the magic, and now he's used it. Are you quite proud of yourself? He'd come here, to his dad's flat, to see how Rupert was getting on, to see if he needed anything, and now this...

"Oh, Bastian," Celeste said softly.

Sebastian shook himself back to awareness. Quite close by, Celeste's great dark eyes shone at him. Her hand moved to softly rest upon his.

"I know..." she began. "That is, can this be possible? Will Rupert be able to do as he says?"

"Moira--my mum's--dead. I never knew... That is, I thought..."

"That Rupert would be able to accept her death?" Celeste asked, with the same quiet sympathy. "I'm not sure we've ever understood what was between the two of them. Perhaps they scarcely understood themselves. But if this thing Rupert talks of can't be done, where has he gone to? What will become of him?"

Sebastian sighed. "There are dimensions..."

Celeste nodded impatiently. "Yes, love, I'm aware, but..."

"Dark places," he went on. "It's possible--likely, even--that dad will be able to find the demon, the Time Thief, wherever it hides."

"And then?"

"You haven't seen...haven't seen what it's done to him already." Sebastian took the paper from her lap, folding it neatly, once more, into thirds, just as he'd found it. The moment he'd done so, his hands began to shake terribly, until Celeste captured and stilled them in her own. "I'm so frightened," he murmured. "So frightened. All I said... The row we had, and it's made no difference. He's gone, and the demon will kill him."

"Bastian, you can't be sure," Celeste answered, in a tone he would normally have found quite soothing. "Rupert's a resourceful man, and he's no fool. Don't be so quick, my love, to consign him to his grave."

"My Celeste," Sebastian said to her sadly, stroking a loose tendril of silken hair back from his wife's face. "The eternal optimist."

She gave him a look, half of affection, half of exasperation. "Well, Bastian dearest, since you seem to have mislaid both your faith and your hope, someone amongst us has to be. And, for myself, I intend to remain cheerful about the outcome of this little expedition. Buffy will need that from me. And from you, my love, whatever your private misgivings may be." Celeste's expression had turned stern, and Sebastian knew far better than to argue, much as he might have wished to do so. "But on a brave face," she continued softly, "For Buffy, at least. She mustn't be allowed to despair."

"And when...?" Sebastian began, but his wife laid a finger across his lips.

"Ssh," she said. "Ssh, my love. Be still--and hope. It's what Rupert would want us to do."

Time marched on. And so did they.

And marched. And marched.

The more he thought about it, the more Xander couldn't figure out why he'd come along on this fun wilderness adventure. Okay, for Moira, maybe, even though no more than a quarter of his brain, if that, could actually wrap around the concept that she might be bring-backable. Unless you were talking zombies or vampires, which weren't the same thing at all, dead was dead in his book.

He'd understood well enough what Giles told him about necromancy. That it was the Pet Sematary kind of thing, where you got the package back, but what came inside wasn't going to be any happy birthday surprise. So, a big NO on the necromancy.

The thing was, Plan B seemed--to him anyway--equally Swiss cheesy. Wishing? Xander knew he'd wished for a lot of things in his life, and so far his days remained noticeably free of fame, fortune and Amy Yip.

What was that thing his Gramma had always said? "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride?"

Something Xander did know: when you got to the point of quoting your grandmother, you were in serious trouble. Even though Gramma Mahoney had been pretty cool, for a seventy-year-old. Which when he was seven had meant that she baked a mean pie, let him use all her pillows to build forts and would stand up to his dad for him. Gramma Mahoney was the one he looked like, and as far as he could tell, had been the only sane one in his whole freaky family. Well, maybe Cousin Charlotte, too--but she was only little. The family curse would get her soon enough.

These days, Xander definitely had to exclude himself from the category of the sane. Just looking at this place would be enough to drive anyone over the edge. Half the time it was pitch dark. No, pitchier than pitch, with those cold, still, non-light-producing stars up above. Then all of a sudden it would switch over to WayTooBrightWorld, all these over-the-top colors like something from a freaky seventies black-light poster, complete with weird, strobing blueish light to bring them to glorious life. Those times made Xander's eyeballs throb, until he was almost thankful for the dark to come down again.

Except that there were things in the dark. Rustly things. Slithery things. Things that padded after them on big, heavy feet and made Xander wish--see, more unanswered wishes there--that Giles's flashlight would work just this once.. At this point, he'd almost gotten used to having every single hair he possessed stand permanently on end--though he wasn't sure he'd ever quite handle the second, much more wigsome feeling that everything down below in the manhood department was trying to crawl back up inside him.

Xander wondered if Giles and Wesley felt that way too, or if it was just him.

Probably just him.

The other bad thing here was the air. As in, it wasn't. Not really. Sure, there was oxygen. Not as much as there should have been, maybe, but some. Enough that they didn't die instantly, even though Xander kept getting the feeling that he wouldn't have minded a few hits off Charlotte's asthma inhaler any time it was offered. His lungs were working overtime, not quite keeping up with what his body demanded, so that his head felt about a million miles away from his feet and his stomach had a weird, carsick feeling all the time. Xander knew carsick. He was the King of Carsick.

And forget rest-breaks or camping at night--whenever night was in these parts. They kept going now, not because they really had the strength to do it, but because they knew if they didn't, this place would kill them.

All except Wesley. Of course Non-Breathing-Boy just kept forging merrily ahead. None of this did anything to him. For a few days, back in the real world, Xander had started to like Wesley, but now he hated him again. Unreasonable, sure, but there it was. Wes had all that vampire strength, and he wasn't having to deal with any of this. Not the air. Not the bleahness. Not the way this place just seemed to drag and drag and drag on you until your joints ached and your muscles felt all noodley. Not the way you'd suddenly collapse without even realizing that you'd been getting ready to fall down. Not the way your gums bled and your nose bled and sometimes even your ears and eyes.

And all that after Giles had done a spell to shield him. Back when Giles could still do spells.

The demon wasn't far now, Giles had told them. Just to the mountains, and then underneath. For a long time, the mountains hadn't seemed to get any closer--not that distances were exactly easy to judge in AcidTripWorld. Now they did look close, real close, but Xander wasn't sure that made a difference anymore.

He wasn't sure anything made a difference.

Would Moira have done this for them? he wondered.

Why had he come?

Would it have made a difference to him if they'd traveled here to get Willow back? His for-real Willow, that was. Not the scary, lying witch-chick who'd ridden him and drained him as coldly as any vampire. Would that have made all this worthwhile?

Maybe.

As an aid to sanity, Xander tried to imagine her face, the Willow of the bright green eyes and the little, shy smile. The Willow of goofy hats and the rambling stories that never went anywhere but were so damn cute. The Willow whose heart was as big as the entire State of California, with Oregon and Washington thrown in to boot.

Suddenly, he didn't have any control over himself anymore, and he was crying. Sobbing, really. Only he didn't have the air for it, and his nose started to bleed again and the next minute, without even thinking, Xander just...

Gave. Up.

The well was dry. Nothing left. He flopped onto the hard, cracked, sulphur-smelling ground like a beached fish and there was nothing in the world, nothing in any world, that would make him get up again. He meant it.

The end.

Only Giles was kneeling behind him, and lifting Xander's head onto his lap, stroking back his gross, sweaty, disgusting hair. Giles's fingers were hot, and rough, and they should have felt bad on his skin, but they didn't.

After a little while, Giles helped Xander sit, and gave him a drink from the waterbottle to swish around his mouth and spit out, because they'd both discovered that actually swallowing anything made them throw up instantly, which kind of defeated the purpose. At least, this way, the water took away some of the feeling of dry, burning, soreness.

Somehow, after a while longer, he and Giles managed to lurch to their feet again, clinging to each other while Wesley stared at them, confused. Or worried, maybe. Probably wondering if the cool summer vacation they had going here could end any way but badly.

A thousand little incidents from the library days flashed through Xander's mind: the jokes, the mocking, the glares, the out-and-out arguments with Giles and him standing toe-to-toe, screaming at each other.

None of it mattered. None of it.

Xander knew why he'd come.

He'd come for Giles.