Tribulations - Chapter 35

The dockside air stank of salt and fish, and the dawn's approach brought a sick chill to Wesley's blood--ironic, really, when one considered the sun's eventual appearance could bring to him nothing more than a fiery death. He felt incapable of action, incapable, truly, of the slightest movement.

All for the best, really, Wesley supposed. Yes, all for the best.

How long 'til sunrise ended this? Hours must have passed since the three young women had left him to his misery. Not that they were women, really, Wesley reminded himself. Oddly, their scorn made him feel far more human than he'd any right to feel, reminiscent as it was of a dozen similar humiliations--cold words, cold glances, his own warm blood rushing to his cheeks as his eyes turned to the floor, to the ceiling, anywhere but to his tormentor's face.

God, why think of those times? Why? They were lost to him, for better or worse, irretrievably lost. His three personal Furies were no more women than he was a man, yet why did their mockery burn in his newly-regrown soul, reminding him that he'd now left behind forever the world of humanity, and of not only human cruelty, but human tenderness as well?

Because he wanted it back, all of it, every single sorrow and joy of his lost mortality. More than that, far more than that, Wesley wanted never to have done the things that he had done, and could not undo. The horror of those acts--like a murder of crows intent on carrion-- circled round and round in his mind.

Most horrible of all, more brutal than any blow, the memory of his penultimate encounter with Moira returned to him: the way he'd forced himself upon her, forced his cold, dead mouth upon her warm live one as he'd watched the twin demons of realization and fear came to life behind her eyes. He relived the moment in which she'd torn away from him, and how he'd stalked her, in soulless amusement, as her poor, damaged body forced itself, with superhuman effort, to flee from his touch, his presence.

She'd fled from him. His Moira. His wild, devoted, courageous Moira had fled from him, and it was only right for her to have done so: she was not for him, and he, he, could never again be for her. The thought tore at Wesley, wounded him far more deeply than he'd known a man could be wounded, until he wished only to grovel before whatever powers bestowed such agonizing blessings, pleading for them, at any cost, to take this soul away again.

But there could be, Wesley knew, no rescue from the certainty of his own damnation, no return to that state of evil innocence in which one's acts did not matter, only one's passing pleasure, whim after cruel whim feeding an appetite that could not be sated. Neither could there be a quick and final death for him, however painful, beneath the sun's rays. He had acted, and he must atone. He must, whatever the price.

Shaking, tears streaming half-unnoticed down his cheeks, Wesley managed a slow, unsteady crawl toward the nearest of the abandoned packing-cases that littered the dockside. Against its splintery side, he pulled himself upright, leaning hard until his balance returned to him. He fought to catch his breath, fought hard, until he realized that he'd no need to breathe, any more than he needed the chill, unbeating heart that lay like an aching stone within his chest.

"What fresh hell, what fresh hell," Wesley muttered to himself, quoting the newest-made and most vehement of his Furies. His eyes stung, and he rubbed them savagely, running unsteady hands down along the cold, still plains of his own face. Nothing he touched seemed familiar: his hands themselves might have belonged to another man.

"'s not so bad, ya know, mate."

Slowly, Wesley raised his head, gazing bleary-eyed at the parti-coloured being--all bleached blonde hair and long black coat-- who shared with him the previously-deserted quay.

"I mean, I understand you havin' qualms an' all, but we play the cards we're dealt, right? Nobody wins the bloody kittens all th' time."

Kittens? Wesley thought numbly.

Spike took a long drag from his newly-ignited fag. "An' don't mind the girls, they're just havin' a bit of fun with you, like. Turnabout's fair play 'n' all that."

Wesley's throat worked, his mouth filling with icy water. For a moment, dark spots swam before his eyes, but he willed them away with all his might, swallowing down his sickness. "I..." he began, cleared his throat and tried again, struggling to put some sort of firmness into his voice. "I made them."

Spike gave him a long look, one eyebrow cocked.

"No," Wesley reminded himself. "Only the one. Only the red-haired girl."

"Yeeeees," the other vampire answered, his tone, despite the Midlands accent, that of a sarcastic schoolmaster who's caught a pupil napping. "'Fraid I'm not exactly sussing out your game here, mate."

"I hurt." At last, Wesley managed a step away from the splintery crate's support. His legs trembled, but consented to hold him upright. He supposed he ought to be thankful. "It's worse than anything I ever...that is, I never thought I could feel..." His voice trailed off. He mustn't reveal himself, mustn't show this weakness, not to Spike, not to anyone.

"Yeah, mate. I know," Spike answered, with surprising sympathy. "Never saw the point of souls meself--nasty, inconvenient things. If you've got one, though, you'd best not let it get about. Me, I've got no argument with you. Live and let live. Some others, though...let's just say you made some waves around Helltown, some enemies, and some of them might even be dangerous. They see you're weak, they'll be comin' for you, and I'm not just talkin' about our three weird sisters here." He took a last drag on his fag and tossed the end into the murky water below. Oil on the surface flared briefly, then died. Spike had already turned to go.

"Er...thanks," Wesley told him. For whatever reason, the words had been meant well, he knew. What was the use of it, though? The use of any of it?

"You find you get used to it." Spike glanced once over his shoulder. "Livin', that is. Whatever way you can get it. Seems ta grow on you. Get below now, ya don't want ta fry." In a billow of black leather coat, he was gone.

Shakily, Wesley edged himself toward the pavement proper, where a grating awaited him that, lifted, would provide him access toward Sunnydale's labyrinthine sewer system.

Spike was right: one did become accustomed to living.

Perhaps it was fury that carried Giles safely to the carpark of Sunnydale General Hospital--or perhaps it was merely the extreme familiarity of the surroundings. He'd certainly felt quite as angry at his old friend as he'd managed to be at any time in their long acquaintance, and yet, at the sight of her body, bandage-swathed and sadly diminished in its narrow hospital bed, the diatribe he'd planned to deliver died on his lips.

"Good God, Em," he breathed. It seemed impossible that she should look so aged, and so utterly fragile. Giles touched the back of his hand to her cheek, a feather's touch, and her eyes opened. They looked nothing at all like Moira's eyes, and yet he knew, with certainty, that the woman in the bed was in fact she.

Memory took him back years, to the time before Buffy, to Moira in another white room, another white bed, those same eyes, green and lost and hopeless, gazing up at him. To lose Helena had nearly destroyed her, and Giles feared that the loss of this second, unhoped-for love might have ruined his old friend entirely.

"You thought I was dead." Even Moira's voice was strange, a harsh, thready whisper that sent chills up Giles's spine. "And now, perhaps, you wish that you'd been correct?"

Blindly, Giles reached out to drag a chair close to the bedside. He felt himself quite unable to stand.

"Em," he said again. Sorrow and pity overwhelmed him, and though he wished devoutly for words of comfort or sympathy, anything to lighten her burden, none would come to him.

"Is..." Moira began. "Has Willow...?"

Giles's eyes stung. He rubbed them, realizing, with very little surprise, that the ache firmly rooted in the base of his skull had started to move its way upward again. It seemed inconsequential beside the enormity of what had befallen his friend.

"Did--?" he asked hoarsely. "Did he do this to you?"

Moira laughed, a rusty, painful sound. "Oh, no, Rupert. Didn't they tell you? I did this to myself. To myself." She laughed again, horribly, and then her whole body began to shudder. Giles reached out to her, fearful that she might injure herself, but drew back from the carapace of plastic that enclosed her shoulders. From what he'd managed to glean from her doctors, she oughtn't to be alive, and he could imagine her shattered bones rattling themselves apart inside that rigid armour.

"God, Rupert, don't be so bloody sensitive," Moira told him. "I'm not going to die." Sudden tears welled in her swollen eyes. "I'm not going to die," she repeated, her voice sounding, in that instant, terribly vulnerable, terribly young, the voice of the girl he'd known thirty years before.

"Hush, love, hush." Again, softly, Giles touched her cheek. "Impossible as it seems, we do survive these things." As soon as he said them, he regretted the words: as he no longer felt himself able to live beyond the loss of his own love, how could he possibly expect her, who'd lost so much more than he, to soldier on?"

Observant as ever, Moira clearly read the regret on Giles's face. "Yes. Quite," she said, softly, but with an undertone of bitter resignation that Giles found even harder to bear than her earlier anger. He glanced away, to her thin, pale hand as it lay on the white coverlet, lost in its serpent's-nest of tubing.

"Em, I am so sorry. So very sorry."

"Wesley came for me, at the cottage," Moira told him. "Dead, utterly dead, though like a fool it took me rather a long time to notice. It took a kiss, actually." Her eyes closed wearily. "And so I ran, as I've always run. They hunted me, my Wesley and that other one. Spike. They hunted me." She paused for such a long time that Giles wondered if she'd fallen asleep, but Moira continued at last, "I ran, until I came to the bridge. Then I jumped. Just as I did in London so long ago--only of course there was no Thames below me, only a river of motors." A tear seeped out from beneath each of her closed lids. "And now I think I'd rather not speak of this any longer."

Gingerly, Giles laid his hand over hers, watching Moira's face closely for any sign of sensitivity to his touch. Her expression did not change: all the pain she felt came from deep inside her. "If it helps," he said at last, softly, "I believe...ah, that is, the task you set Willow...I believe she may have been successful. At the very least..." His voice trailed away.

"I meddled with her," Moira said in the same soft tone, but flatly, making her voice impossible to read.

"Yes," Giles answered. "Yes, you did."

"She is LeFaye. I knew she would succeed."

Giles said nothing.

"I wanted, wanted him back. Wanted to be loved. Left you all to the Hellmouth aftermath. Meddled with your little girl. Used and hurt and injured the lot of you, and for what?" Moira's eyes opened again, and this time they were sharply green, fiery green, the eyes of a sorceress. Giles met them steadily, not blinking, not allowing her to master him, until at last it was Moira who glanced away.

"You're right not to give in to me, Rupert," she said to the wall. A long silence fell between them, during which Giles felt awash with uncertainty, drowning in it, only certain, to his sorrow, that they'd come to a place, the two of them, where he could help her no more, and she would no longer help him.

"I should have died," Moira breathed at last, then: "Go home, Rupert. No good can come of your remaining."

"I wish I knew how to help you," Giles said, but his hand had already drawn away from hers. He felt pushed down, flattened with sadness.

"That's no longer possible," Moira answered.

Buffy flew to the door the moment she heard the knob turn, and flung herself at Giles so hard he staggered backwards and both of them nearly ended up in the fortunately dry fountain. "Where the hell were you?" she demanded. "And if you ever take off like that again without saying what's up, so help me, I'll hunt you down like the demon-of-the-month, and you'll wish..." Her voice faded. "I don't know what you'll wish. That you hadn't, I guess. See? I'm so wigginsed, I can't even bring the snappy banter."

"Heaven forfend," Giles answered, in that dry Giles-voice that was just so totally him, but he also looked so sad, so kind of squashed-looking that Buffy relented, and instead of going on with an uber-rant, she took his hand, pulled him inside and sat him down on one end of the couch..

"Okay, give. What made you take off so bat-out-of-hell-like?"

Giles looked up. Buffy could see him take in the crowd that had set up shop in his apartment--Seb, Celeste, shaky-looking Willow, freaked out-looking Xander--and kind of steel himself, even though his shoulders still had that slumpy, defeated look. "I--I've been..." he began, though his eyes still had an I-just-don't-wanna-deal expression that she hoped she wouldn't see again any time really soon. "I've been to visit Moira."

Xander moved in closer. "This would be not-dead Moira?"

"Xander," Willow said, sneaking a quick look at Sebastian.

"No, she's quite alive." Giles bent forward, resting his head in his hands. "Though not particularly thankful to be so."

"Dad?" Sebastian took a seat on the coffeetable, his face such a perfect mirror of worried Gilesness that Buffy was simultaneously charmed and freaked out by the sameness all over again.

"It appears that Wes--that the vampire confronted her at their cottage, just as Xander surmised. She managed to escape, but in doing so suffered a fall, from a bridge it seems..."

"And straight down onto my mom's car?" Buffy felt, literally, that she could have been knocked down by a feather. "Moira's my mom's car-lady that she's been all guilty over?" Buffy smacked herself on the side of the head--a little too hard. It hurt. "Geez, mom, you coulda said!"

Giles sighed. "Most likely, she'd no idea, Buffy. Joyce scarcely knew Moira, and she was--is--not easy to recognize, presently."

Sebastian cleared his throat. "She was hurt badly, then, Dad?"

Celeste gave Seb's shoulder a little squeeze.

"She'll live." Giles sat back, meeting his son's eyes. Buffy noticed a little spark that told her there was some definite pissedness mixed up with the general sadness going on inside there. "A fact that doesn't particularly seem to please her, presently."

"But she'll be okay, right?" Willow piped up. "I mean, now that Wesley...?" She noticed the look Giles gave her, one that definitely upped the wattage on the pissed off-o-meter, and gave a little "eep!" sound.

"Now that Wesley?" Giles echoed, in that dangerously quiet voice that always made Buffy way less than comfortable. "Yes, Willow?"

Willow gulped visibly, but then she straightened up (as far as she could--being short had its definite disadvantages in the brassing-things-out department) and returned Giles's gaze without flinching. "Giles, I did what I had to do. And I'm getting good at magic. You should be proud of me!"

"Should I?" Giles answered with that same scary mildness.

"I helped you guys out!" Willow protested. "With--you know--the apartment-spell, so you weren't all sick and everything. I don't use magic for bad stuff."

"She has the ability, Dad," Sebastian put in, still with the look of big worry. "And if she IS LeFaye, which now seems fairly clear..."

"If she is LeFaye, as you say, she has more than enough ability to hurt herself, and to make herself vulnerable to forces that haven't, necessarily, her best interests in mind."

"Forces such as my mother," Seb snapped back at his dad, doing a really good impression of Giles at his British stuffiest.

Giles got up and walked away from them all, until he stood in front of the middle window with his hands against the sides of the frame. He pretended to look out into the street--at least, Buffy was pretty sure he was pretending, because his back looked all tense and his head was hanging down just a little bit.

"Much as I care for her, Bastian, I know your mother quite terrifies me," Celeste said. She curled a hand around Seb's biceps, pulling him back toward her. "And I believe this would be our cue allow Rupert and Buffy a bit a privacy. Personally, I think we could all do with a meal and a rest just now."

"I could seriously go for the meal part, anyway," Xander chimed in.

"Yeah, 'cause it's been, like, what? Fifteen minutes since you last ate?" Willow still had the same half-mad, half-sad look, but she gave Xander's arm a little tug. "Personally, I wouldn't mind doing the nap thing, myself."

Buffy walked them, two by two, to the door, feeling like Mrs. Noah trying to sheperd a couple of pairs of the more ornery animals. Celeste gave her a reassuring smile as they headed out the door, and Xander said, "Call us," but Sebastian and Willow still looked like they wanted to put up a fight. Tough, Buffy thought, and locked up behind them. She didn't feel too guilty about it, either. It wouldn't hurt Seb to go without his voice for awhile, especially if he was shaping up for getting snarky with his dad.

After they'd gone, Buffy stood by the door for a minute, watching Giles's back to see if he'd relax. He didn't.

"It's safe now," she sang out, trying to make herself sound perky. Giles only sighed.

"We definitely need to get ourselves a bigger place. For awhile there, your apartment was starting to seem like one of those clown cars."

Giles glanced over his shoulder, with one of his "translate, please" looks on his face.

"You know, like at the circus. When they cram about 900 clowns into this little bitty car."

"Quite," Giles answered, but the tiniest hint of a smile showed at the corner of his mouth. "Buffy, you constantly amaze me."

"Yup, I'm pretty amazing, aren't I?" She crossed the room to him, wrapping her arms around his waist, soaking up the warmth and the strength of him. "We're pretty amazing."

"One of us is," Giles agreed, his arms going around her in return, while his chin nestled down on the top of her head. "At the moment, I feel quite the opposite." He stood there, breathing deeply, just holding her.

"What?" Buffy asked quietly, her voice humming against his chest.

"You always smell of sunlight." Some of the darkness had gone out of Giles's voice, and Buffy began to relax, to meld her body closer to his. "And despite all this, you give me hope."

Buffy snuggled even closer. "Ditto," she told him.