Tribulations - Chapter 64

Now, Buffy thought, If only my special Slayer abilities included the power to walk a straight line. Because she couldn't, not right then. The air pressure had changed drastically about a hundred times in the last couple minutes, leaving her ears with a definite feeling of snap, crackle, pop. Where the Rosenbergs' tidy ranch house had once stood in its neatly landscaped grounds was now...nothing. No basement, no foundation, no home. Only plowed-up-looking dirt and an odd scattering of papers and knick-knacks.

"Giles?" she called out shakily, hardly able to hear her own voice with all the ringing and sizzling in her ears. She'd lost sight of him in the storm, which might mean nothing--or might mean that he'd gotten caught in the turmoil worse than she had, and that he needed her.

"Sweetie?" Buffy called again, plaintively, stumbling over the perfectly flat and motionless ground as if it was covered with molehills--and undulating with the force of an 8.5 earthquake. Aside from feeling completely off balance physically, her emotional equilibrium was pretty much shot as well. Where had Giles gone? And what was up with Willow?

Her brain just didn't want to wrap around what had happened that morning. Only it wasn't morning anymore, was it? Judging by the sky, it looked to be at least mid-afternoon, which meant the wake would be starting in three or four hours, and poor Seb and Celeste were probably going nuts, wondering where they'd gotten to.

Buffy shivered. It was going to rain again, as well, quite apart from the wigsome storm Willow had summoned when she... When... Buffy shook her head. She could remember clouds and swirling wind, trees and flapping pale-green cloth that reminded her partly of sails, partly of sheets hanging on a line, but beyond that everything remained unclear.

Except Willow was gone, wasn't she? She'd chosen to be gone, the same way Buffy herself had chosen, the summer before, and much as she tried to separate their actions, she couldn't help but think there wasn't really that much difference between them: then, she hadn't loved the people who loved her quite enough to make a difference; now...much as she hated to admit it to herself, it looked like Will felt the same?

But more than that, Willow had lied to her, and Xander, her two best friends in the world. She'd promised something that she never even for a minute intended to follow through on, something that, without her help to get the job done, would hurt Giles as well.

And that, right there, was what set them apart. What she'd done last summer, she wasn't proud of. Buffy knew how much she'd hurt everyone--but that hurt wasn't intended, it wasn't the point of the exercise. She had run away out of her own pain and fear and feelings of worthlessness and, at the time, she'd honestly believed that was for the best, that everyone would be better off without her. Willow, on the other hand--what motivation did she have but jealousy?

"The green-eyed monster," Giles would probably say, if he was feeling Shakespearean. Who knew that particular monster was a perky redhead?

Sighing, Buffy hobbled one more time around the perimeter of the Rosenbergs' property, her balance finally starting to return to her. She ached in a lot of places where dirt and rocks and flying objets d'art had thumped her in passing, and she stung from a couple dozen nicks and scrapes, but at least her head felt clearer. Despite that, she couldn't see any sign of Giles.

After two futile circuits, she stopped to rest, peering through the now-driving rain. No one else in the neighborhood seemed to have noticed a thing--no one had called 911, or even come out to investigate the fact that the Rosenbergs' place had taken off like Dorothy's house, next stop Oz. None of the other homes even appeared to have been touched, except for a run-down place across the street that seemed to have had its front picture window blown out, so that its overgrown lawn sparkled with shards of broken glass.

Only, as she looked closer, Buffy noticed a thin woman in a blue cardigan hunched on the front steps, her arms wrapped around her body as she rocked herself. A faint moaning noise came from her mouth.

Apprehensively, Buffy crossed the street. Something about that house looked familiar, and then it hit her: that was Xander's house. Or had been Xander's house. Which meant...

"Mrs. Harris?" she called softly. The woman looked up, almost cringing as she did it, as if Buffy might suddenly haul off and slap her if she didn't say or do exactly the right thing. From the top of her ashy-brown hair, to her bruised-looking eyes, to the soles of her rattily house-slippered feet, she looked like the kind of person whose picture should show up right next to "mousy" in the dictionary.

Buffy tried again. "You're Xander's mom, right? Mrs. Harris?"

The woman's eyes weren't bruised-looking after all, they were bruised, as were the thin wrists sticking out from her linty sweater, and her throat. And it wasn't herself she was hugging, it was a bottle of something with a long neck. She smelled, as her own mom might say, like a distillery. More than that, she just plain smelled. Buffy found herself torn between pity and disgust, without the least idea of what she ought to say or do.

"Uh...I'll get back to you, okay?" she said lamely, not that Mrs. Harris gave any indication of having understood, or even heard her. She remembered, a few times, Xander calling home and having to explain to his mom, at length, exactly who he was. The horror of the situation, added to the aftermath of her encounter with her former best friend, left Buffy feeling ill.

Salvation came in the form of a low--and somehow British--moan from beneath the broken glass. Buffy hurried over to the window in time to find Giles struggling to sit upright.

"Hey," she said, "Stay down there, sweetie."

Giles gave her a look through narrowed eyes, then bent over, holding his head between his hands. They were bloody, Buffy saw, and bits of broken glass glittered in his hair.

"Hey," she said again softly, kneeling beside him. Giles glanced up at her with a look of total confusion. He seemed to be trying out a new shade of pallor, too--this one had a slightly greenish tinge. "Are you okay?" Buffy touched his cheek, which felt cold and clammy, though that might have been from the rain. "Do you want to try standing?"

"Not particularly," Giles answered, but his words sounded clear enough, and he accepted her hand to pull himself to his feet, even though the two of them followed that with what Buffy decided she was going to call the Head Injury Tango, since it mostly involved a lot of swaying and staggering.

"Steady there, big guy," Buffy told him, trying to keep her voice light, although she was worried all over again. What she really wanted was to get him someplace quiet and non-rainy, where she could properly assess the damage. Home would have been nice, but she wasn't sure he was going to make it there on his own steam, and she herself felt way too discombobulated for driving.

"I'm...ouch...quite all right," Giles answered, a thick thread of blood snaking down from his temple to add to the spreading stain on his sweater. "Bloody window fell on me."

"Looks like," Buffy said. "Mrs. Harris, could we...?" Any port in a storm, she figured, even though Xander's mom was adding exponentially to her already sizable wiggins.

Mrs. Harris's jaw dropped. Obviously, she had no idea what Buffy was asking.

She tried again. "Could we...umn...come inside for a minute?"

The woman looked at her as if she was crazy. "Bill wouldn't like that," she breathed. "He doesn't like strangers nosing around here. A man's home is his castle."

"But I'm not a stranger," Buffy protested, memories of RobotTed dancing through her head. "I'm Buffy Summers, I'm a friend of your son. Remember? I've been here before. Well, in the basement anyway." Which was always lots of fun, sitting down there between the steel shelving units and the washer and dryer. Like all the Scoobies, she tended to avoid the Harris' whenever possible. Before she'd met Mr. Harris, she'd never seen a human being actually glower. She'd found the subsequent leering less than pleasant, too.

"Sean's been gone a long, long time," Mrs. Harris informed her slurrily.

"Not Sean, Mrs. Harris. Xander. Remember Xander?" She could feel her temper bubbling to the surface, ready to explode--but just then the front door creaked open and Mr. Harris lurched out, reminding her, bizarrely, of the red-faced devil that jumped out at you on the Trip to Hell ride down at the Sunnydale Amusement Park. His face was red enough, and his eyes...ugh, instant wiggins...looked glazed and cruel and...

Evil. They looked evil, in a way that was mindless and greedy and stupid as any vampire. Without meaning to, she took a step backward, colliding with Giles.

"Mr. Harris," Giles said in that ultra-proper, ultra-British, cold-as-a-freezer voice that meant he hated the person he was speaking to with a passion.

"You," Xander's dad answered. No love lost there, either--and Buffy hadn't even known the two of them were acquainted. Mr. Harris reached down, grabbing his wife's arm, his fingers sinking so deeply into the fabric of her sweater that Buffy knew he must be bruising the arm underneath. Mrs. Harris's mouth opened in speechless pain, but she didn't try to fight his hold, not the least little bit. She didn't say anything, either, just got a more bruised-looking around the eyes.

"I think," Giles told him, "That you ought to let her go."

Mrs. Harris's eyes closed then. She shook her head silently, no.

Those flat, evil eyes stared back at Giles, narrowing a little as Mr. Harris gripped his unresisting wife's arm even tighter, giving it a little twist that raised her off the step and onto her feet.

Giles, stop, Buffy thought at him. You won't be able to help her, you'll just make things worse.

But Giles's bloody hand closed on Mr. Harris's own arm, leaving red smudges just above the wrist. "Let her go now. Or you will be sorry."

For a long, breathless moment something passed between the two men, and then, to Buffy's surprise, Mr. Harris did let go. He glared at Giles, breathing hard, the way a bull breathes just before it charges, his hands balling into fists and then relaxing again, balling and relaxing. The look Giles gave him in return was icy cold, Ripper cold, but other than that his face looked stern and ultra-calm. Something in that expression scared the hell out of her, and it wasn't until Mr. Harris finally turned his back on them with a muttered word and staggered into his house that Buffy found herself able to breathe again.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Harris was staring up at them with her wounded-deer eyes, rubbing her arm where the bruises must be.

"Is there somewhere you can go to?" Giles asked her kindly. "A neighbor's house, perhaps?"

Her mouth worked soundlessly.

"You sister's it is, then," he responded, as if she'd actually said something anyone could hear. "And the Abbotts are just here? Two doors down?"

She nodded, favoring him with a tiny, almost-hopeful smile as she floated to her feet. Giles gave her elbow one of those ultra-gentle touches Buffy knew from long experience, steering her in the direction of the sidewalk, then up the neighbor's path, while Buffy herself tagged pointlessly behind. She felt nearly as discombobulated as Mrs. Harris when the Abbotts' college-aged daughter opened the front door and listened to Giles's explanation of what needed to be done. After Xander's mom had vanished inside, she heard the bolts being shot, then watched the blinds close one-by-one.

Giles made it to the curb before he sank down in the space between two parked cars, resting his head in his hands again. His back shook as if he might be laughing or crying, but when she scrunched up beside him, she saw that neither was the case. He was just...

Actually, she didn't know what he was. Cold and shaky and pale, yes--but something else too, something that went beyond tiredness or a head injury into the realm of...

"You knew, didn't you?" Buffy asked in a low voice. "You knew the minute you saw her what was up with Willow. Just like you knew with Mrs. Harris. And Mr. Harris." A cold feeling was starting to grow in the pit of her stomach. "Giles, why did he stop like that, and go inside?"

"Buffy, love--" Gently, Giles's fingers curled around hers. When Buffy looked up, she saw that he was still pale, but seemed less fragile, more back in the here-and-now. "Let it rest. Please," he said wearily.

"I will," Buffy answered. "For now." Because she knew, really, didn't she? Mr. Harris had gone inside because Giles had made him go. The same way he'd nearly gotten Willow to turn back from whatever hell-bent path she was traveling on.

She climbed to her feet, stooping to kiss him just above the deep cut on his temple. "Just as long as you don't try to put the whammy on me. Or use The Force, or whatever that was."

"I wouldn't." Giles sighed, lurching slowly to his own feet. "I couldn't."

"Ready to go home now?" Buffy asked.

"I ought--" he glanced toward the place where Willow's house had been, then sighed again. "There's nothing to be done here at the moment. Do you think you could drive us, Buffy?"

"Hey, do you think those crazy new mystical powers of yours work to change traffic lights?"

Giles gave her a look, understanding her, too. Knowing she had to joke, to make light of all this, or else have her head explode. "No," he answered, after a moment's thought, "But I'm fairly certain of my ability to avoid a speeding ticket."

"In your car?" She slipped her arm around his waist, steering Giles toward the place, a block over, where they'd left the Citroen. "Do they ever give out driving-way-too-slow tickets?" Once they'd collected the car, it was less than a mile to Giles's apartment. Sure, she could drive.

"They very..." Giles's voice trailed off. "Good Lord."

"Double that for me," Buffy breathed, because there was their second--or was it millionth?--unpleasant surprise of the day. All that reminded of Giles's poor, cranky Citroen was a few grease-clogged bolts and a big pile of rust.

"Ah," Giles said, "I see Willow's left me something further to remember her by." It sounded like a typical bit of dry Giles humor, but underneath...

Buffy knew how he felt: betrayed, and beyond betrayed. Stupid. Foolish. Pick a word, any word. Maybe deceived would be the best way to describe it. That's certainly how she felt. To wreck Giles's car that thoroughly just kind of put the final maraschino cherry of hurt on top of the big sundae of pain they already had going. It was mean, it was spiteful, and Buffy didn't know exactly how Giles felt, but it pissed her off.

"You liked that car," she said.

"Yes," Giles answered, a little wistfully. "Yes, I did."

"So," Buffy asked, "Do we call, or do we walk?"

Giles turned in a slow circle, taking in all the closed and shuttered houses around them. "I believe we walk," he answered. "And, yes, I am quite capable."

"If you say so," Buffy told him, skeptically.

Sebastian knew he was fussing, which made him feel foolish and old-ladyish (about which term Celeste would no doubt chide him, informing him that he was being an ageist and she'd have none of it) but equally unable to stop. His heart had skipped a beat or two when Buffy and his father had shown up at their rooms looking so thoroughly battered and defeated, and it didn't seem to have caught up since.

Celeste, on the other hand, had been the picture of practicality, fetching the overabundance of first aid supplies Sebastian had acquired to dress her own injury, ordering Buffy to a seat on the sofa whilst she sent Rupert to lie down on their bed.

"Go see to your dad, will you, Bastian?" she'd finally commanded, shooting him a look which brooked no argument.

Sebastian had gone. Promptly. But Rupert hadn't been stretched out on the king-sized mattress as he'd expected. Instead, he'd been standing by the window, staring out between the slats of the blinds with an exceedingly bleak expression upon his face.

Sebastian backed out again, rapped lightly on the doorjamb, and reentered.

"I hadn't meant to drive you away, Seb," his father said softly, giving Sebastian a smile that scarcely reached his eyes.

Sebastian raised up his fistfuls of bandages and antiseptic swaps as if to excuse the intrusion. "You know I daren't leave this room until I've done my duty."

His father shrugged, a trifle stiffly, it seemed. Upon entering, he'd shed his long black coat, and now his tattered jumper and singlet followed. "Caught a bit of window-glass," Rupert said lightly, in explanation. "It's nothing."

"Nothing" looked to Sebastian utterly appalling, layers of dark bruising and a scattering of gashes that had stained Rupert's pale skin with smeared red trails. "Dad," he breathed, "Are you often hurt like this?"

"It's nothing," his father repeated, smiling in a way Sebastian was sure had been intended as comforting, but which either his own horrified state or the wretchedness of the day's events rendered far less than reassuring. Beyond that, he could not help but wonder if this was the way he, too, would appear in the future, the light hair on his chest beginning to silver, his body otherwise fit and hard. A warrior's body, and one that ought to have displayed many scars, if not for Buffy's well-intentioned though inadvisable wish.

It wasn't likely, though, that he'd ever come to resemble his father in that way. His own fitness, like that of most modern men, came to him artificially, from regular visits to the gym and a bit of tennis or cricket or football here and there. He wasn't a warrior, engaged in a constant battle with things he'd no desire to picture or even name. Without magic, would this place force him to become one, as it had forced his father? He'd an idea that his own time of innocence was soon to end.

"No need to look so despondent, Seb," Rupert told him, with a certain amount of humour--a humour which, this time, seemed less forced.

"What's that peculiar term Buffy and her friends seem so fond of?" Sebastian responded. "'Wiggins,' is it? Dad, your life gives me a wiggins."

His father laughed, a low sound, but genuinely amused. "Exactly. Though they seem to be able to derive a number of variations from that root word."

"Did...?" Sebastian gestured again with his double handful. "Did...er...you want to lie down?"

"Most passionately," Rupert answered, "Though I suspect that, were I to do so, I'd most likely find it difficult to rise again." Before Sebastian knew what was happening, his father relieved him of his burden and went into the small bathroom that opened off the bedroom, leaving the door as it was so that they could talk as he worked. "How's Celeste?" he asked. "Oh, bloody hell, that stings!"

"Would...?" Sebastian began, then, shaking his head at himself, resumed a seat on the edge of the bed. If his father had wanted his help, he would have asked.

"She seems well recovered," Rupert said to him, obviously through clenched teeth.

"She is, I think. Of course, she rarely refers to the battle--and it must have been that. Quite epic, in fact. The doctors say there shan't be much of a scar from the wound." He felt almost dizzy, thinking of his Celeste brought so close to death. "Dad," he said, fighting to steady himself, "What happened today?"

"We called on Willow," Rupert answered, and Sebastian felt something like a heavy weight within his own chest, as if of a grief almost too great to be borne. As something of an antidote, to restore to himself some measure of reality, he fetched a fresh shirt from the closet and an undershirt from the bureau drawer.

"And?" he asked, passing his father the clean clothing.

"Er..." Rupert indicated the white shirt he'd brought. "Perhaps a darker colour?" He touched his own half-bandaged chest. "Tends to seep through."

Sebastian returned to the closet for a different shirt, this one dark grey.

"Surely you've felt something through the LeFaye connection?" Rupert suggested.

Sebastian's jaw dropped--because he hadn't, hadn't felt a thing, and generally one got little pings or twitches, small, far off impulses he'd learned to scarcely pay any mind. And he ought to have, oughtn't he? For the final two weeks of Gemma Delacoeur's life, he'd scarcely left her bedside. When she'd gone on to what surely must be, for such a fine and gentle person, a far better world, he'd held her frail little hand in his. Yet for Moira, who'd given him life, who'd actually been flesh of his own arcane flesh, he'd felt nothing. They were, both of them, LeFaye, and her passage should have left a terrible gaping rip in the fabric not only of his own consciousness, but in the awareness of all who shared their bloodline. Moira, of all people, should not have passed unnoticed from the world.

Sebastian sank down, once more, to his seat on the bed. He should have felt. He should have known. To not have done so seemed, somehow, a final betrayal.

"Seb," Rupert called to him. "Sebastian." Without even knowing he'd begun, Sebastian found himself weeping bitterly, like a child that's found itself suddenly alone in the world. Quite unexpectedly, his father's hand caressed the back of his neck, drawing him closer, so that he wept against the soft cotton fabric of Rupert's shirt. Gently, his father's arms encircled him, pulling him closer still, holding him firmly, in a way they both ought to have been far too adult, or perhaps too British, to accomplish properly.

Somehow, though, Sebastian found he didn't want to pull away. He'd no desire to go stiff and awkward and destroy the moment. Instead, he found himself returning the embrace, loving the warmth of his father's chest beneath his cheek, the strength of his father's arms around him, holding, comforting, as he'd waited all his lifetime to be comforted.

"I know, I know," Rupert murmured to him, holding Sebastian closer still. "I know, son, I miss her too."

Willow did this? Willow caused this...loss? Sebastian said to himself, half in wonder, half in anger. When did she...? How could she...?

The LeFaye part of him, in all its ancient coldness, called out for vengeance, swift and simple. While the human part, feeling young, injured, unsure, could only weep, and regret, and miss his mum.

At the moment, Sebastian didn't much care for either alternative.