Bookends: Relative Pin
Title: Relative Pin
Author: il_mio_capitano
Rating: 15+
Characters Buffy/Giles. Post Chosen. Giles has a new life. Buffy won't let go.
Length 2000
Series: Bookends
Companion pieces (Chronology unclear. Please arrange in any order that works for you) Keeping in Touch : Barricades : Spread My Wings : All At Sea : Telling : Partial Derailment : Push and Pull : Morning Glory
The house Rupert Giles grew up in was old and rather sprawling in design. It was a two mile walk from the nearest town and nestled between clean pasture land to the south and west and mediaeval woods to the north. It was isolated but Giles had always felt safe in its isolation. Cities were so full of noise that it was hard to differentiate the malign, he’d always felt that the countryside was more honest in that regard. His parents and housekeeper certainly had no intention of moving anywhere else after nearly sixty years of marriage and in the latter’s case fifty years of employment, although the practicalities of maintaining the wood fires and the eccentricity of the electricity generator would someday outflank their stubbornness Giles supposed.
The party guests had arrived. The sudden downpour that had saturated the nearby arable land and threatened to turn Giles’ parents’ driveway into a river was common enough to his family and friends familiar with the area. And it wasn’t as if it didn’t always rain on his birthday; he’d grown accustomed to that, and was far from eight years old and jealous of friends with summer celebrations of their passing years. In point of fact, he rather welcomed the rain each year as part of his own private tradition and missed it keenly during his years in California. And now he was in his father’s study, surrounded by leather bound books whose spines had overawed him as a child, about to celebrate another year as if he’d never moved out.
The party, from what he could hear of the music player in the main reception room, had already begun. Giles sat awkwardly in his chair straining to hear sounds of his guests. The music was mixture CD made by Olivia and he rather wished she hadn’t chosen tracks quite so loud. His mother was indulging her of course. His mother indulged any girl he took home even if he was now on his fifty-fourth birthday and the girls could hardly be said to be girls anymore. His relationship with Olivia had improved greatly since his return to England. Away from the Hellmouth, she’d felt safer with him and been more tolerant of his Watcher’s duties. Life should have been perfect.
“Focus on the game, Rupert.” His father’s voice reminded him. “You do have quite a lot riding on the outcome.”
Giles eyed the old man before him and the chess board on the table between them.
“Knight to e2,” Giles said glumly. His head hurt where he had been struck but at least the blood had stopped running into his eye. It must have gone eight o’clock already, why couldn’t he hear more noise from the party? Some of his guests had arrived - he’d seen them before. Why hadn’t someone come to the study and asked after him by now? Not his mother, he thought with tightness in his throat, he didn’t want his mother to find them. He needed Buffy, he needed Buffy to come and see what was wrong.
The other man swooped forward and moved the white knight for him.
“You always did have romantic notions of leading with your knight,” he said.
“You used to rely on pawns too heavily,” Giles responded and stopped himself abruptly. He was not going to rehash old arguments and rivalries with this abomination.
Before the rain, the old man had taken the dogs out for a walk as dusk settled. The dogs had plenty of land for exercise really, but his father liked the routine and his doctor said it would be good for his heart. He had been a long time but Giles had been distracted as his guests had started to arrive and presents began to accumulate in the hallway. Friends joked about the rain as they shook overcoats and umbrellas and huddled off to find food and drink.
“Pawns can be promoted,” his father reminded him with irony. He looked like the man that had taken the dogs out, only he had come back without them, and with strength and vigour where there had been fragility and diminished faculties. And Giles had opened the back door and had only seen the elderly man that was prone to lapses of confusion. And Giles had taken pity that he had got so drenched in the rain and lost the dogs to boot somewhere. And Giles had said:
‘For goodness sake, Dad. Come inside and get out of those wet things.’
Careless words in the home of Watchers who should know better and Giles had compounded his mistake by turning his back on him as he entered the house.
The chair he was tied to was old and the left arm had a split near the joint. His wrists had been cuffed separately to each arm and Giles wondered if he could muster enough power to break the weakness on the left side. His legs would still be pinned but he’d perhaps gain an advantage. It was suicide but it might give him a weapon if he didn’t find any other alternative. The wood stack by the fire might as well as been in another room for all the distance it was to him. He couldn’t expect to make that without detection and the logs were probably too large. Funny to think that he and his father had cut them only two days previously. Technically he had chopped everything with the chainsaw and his father had sat and talked rambling tales with no discernible beginnings or endings of slayers of days of yore. Giles remembered the love in his mother’s eyes when she brought ‘the workers’ two steaming mugs of coffee. She worried about his dad and his continuing frailty. If Giles felt taken advantage of in finding himself tasked with all the hard labour, the gratitude in his mother’s eyes more than made up for it.
The vampire with his father’s face moved the black bishop intimidatingly across the board.
“You’ve got a lot riding on this, son,” it said.
“You are not my father. You are the thing that killed my father.”
The vampire moved swiftly, its bony hand gripped Giles throat with superhuman strength. Giles felt the pressure on his windpipe as the fingers dug in, his air supply cut. He pulled at the handcuffs desperately, pulled at the weakened chair arm but it held fast. His wrists cut and smarted with blood. The old man suddenly relaxed his grip, and smiled with fiery yellow eyes.
“And I’m the thing that’s going to kill you, boy”
Giles gasped for air, fighting an impulse to retch. The vampire perched on the table top and looked amused. “Well? What exactly did you think was going to happen next?”
“The game” Giles struggled hoarsely. “Why the game?”
“I thought you were bright. I thought you’d have guessed by now. Win, Rupert and I will only kill you. Lose, and I will turn you as well.”
The music had ended somewhere in the distance and all Giles could hear was his heart beating. It was coldly quiet in the house.
“Buffy will kill you,” he promised.
“Your Buffy isn’t here. She couldn’t even be bothered to show for your birthday party, Rupert. Slayers, they are all heartless little sluts really. Once they get their sex drive going it’s very hard to keep them focused on the job in hand. That’s why the Council has always worked to keep them young.”
“Liar.”
The older man looked amused. “They get too old and they become driven by their monstrous appetites. They go through men like a knife through butter. Has she run through you yet? Taken her pleasures?”
Giles battled disgust. It was not his father talking he repeated to himself. “I don’t think of Buffy in that way and she isn’t like that,” he affirmed.
“At your age, she’d probably kill you. Besides your Buffy has a craving for vampires. I must say, that’s an intriguing idea. Maybe she’d like you better that way.”
Giles had been taunted by vampires before but this one was too close to home.
“Buffy. Buffy!” Giles shouted as best he could with his rasping throat to the silence. No-one came running. The hairs on Giles’ arms rose and the silence engulfed him.
“The party?” he breathed in question.
“The Party’s over. I mingled as a gracious host should while you were unconscious.”
The implications of his comment were horrific.
“Buffy!” Giles shouted again. And then as revulsion gripped him he shouted more weakly, “Mum?”
The vampire smiled. “Your mother has gone on ahead of you. She didn’t know anything about it. I felt I owed her that. Generally I was quick. Like an old fox in the hen house.” He smiled. “I permitted myself a taste of the lovely Olivia though. You’ll have to forgive an old man’s fancy there.”
Giles wanted his body to shut down. He wanted the nausea to take him and be at peace. There was no reason for this vampire to lie.
The phone rang and startled him back to alertness. The man Giles knew as once his dad, pushed a gag into his mouth, and jumped gleefully across the room to answer it.
“Buffy, my dear, we were just wondering where you’d got to.”
Giles tried to shout and work the gag. His father smiled indulgently at his efforts.
Giles blinked back tears and risked a look at the left chair arm. The split in the wood was deeper now. Giles shifted to pull down surreptitiously. The metal handcuff felt like it was cutting his wrist through to the bone but he pulled on through gritted teeth. The wood creaked and he groaned to mask the noise. The vampire was too busy to notice.
“Rupert? I’m afraid I don’t see him… I think he went upstairs with Olivia somewhere.” There was a pause and then the thing giggled. “You have a one track one mind, my dear really.” He gave Giles a lascivious wink. “Oh that is good news… but another forty minutes you think? I’m sure Rupert understands something more important came up. ….We’ll be sure to look out for you. Yes, drive safely. Bye my dear.”
He hung up. “Gives us plenty of time to finish our game,” he said brightly.
Forty minutes. Giles looked at the chessboard somewhat desperately. He’d been confused and defensive when the game had been thrust at him. He hadn’t understood the stakes properly. He’d expected to die when the game ended, but he thought he was buying time for everyone else. He’d blocked and sacrificed openings to attack in order to keep the game going. He’d thought he was playing for time, playing for Buffy to come and find him. Playing to keep everyone else alive. But the game board as he looked at it, could not last another forty minutes. He was pinned to a hopeless position.
His priority was not to be turned. Forty minutes… well Buffy would kill the vampire, of that he had no doubt. Her doing so would be preferable, he thought. He didn’t want to fight his father. He didn’t want to think about having to put a stake through the frail heart of that old man. He just didn’t want to have to make Buffy kill himself as well. He must not be turned. He had one move, the weakness of the chair, the surprise in the counter attack. He might provoke the vampire to kill him and miss his chance to turn him. Or should he try to play on and hope Buffy came sooner? Bitter choices: wait for Buffy or try to stake his father and hope at least one of them died. At that point, Giles wasn’t sure he cared which.
“Seems to me, you are running out of options.” The vampire eyed the chess board with satisfaction. “Make the wrong move now and it will be checkmate in just three moves. You’ve given up too many pieces and your Queen is useless to you.” The vampire turned his back to walk towards to his seat. “I’d say your next move is critical, Rupert.”