FIC: Broken English - Part 14 - (Giles/Ethan) - R
TITLE: Broken English Part 14
PAIRING: Giles/Ethan
RATING: will eventually be R
SPOILERS: Set after 8x04 The Long Way Home (comics); set in Germany, btw
PROMPT: a vacation or roadtrip, magic, slash
WRITTEN FOR: spikendru
Sorry, unbeta'd.
PREVIOUS PARTS: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part12, Part 13
Giles’s unconsciousness has turned into a fitful sleep. Ethan can tell that Giles is dreaming.
Tempting. Where does Rupert go when he’s asleep? Is his sleep troubled? Are his dreams a source of strength? Or is his dreamspace inhabited by nightmares, with fangs and claws? What would he say if Ethan were to walk into his dreamspace, unannounced and uninvited? After all, Giles is a very private man.
Only one way to find out.
***
Ethan enters the grey and misty outskirts of Giles’s dreamspace quietly, but without disguise. Not so much like a thief in the night, but more like a wary traveller. An icy gust of wind greets him. Snow creaks underneath his shoes. Blast! Couldn’t Giles have picked Californian sunshine for his dreamspace? Miserable sod!
Stomping his feet, Ethan scans the horizon. In the distance he can make out the blurry, shimmering outline of a sprawling city that looks almost, but not quite like London.
Out here, will-o’-the-wisp images are born from stray thoughts and memories, only to die faster than a mayfly. Out here, manipulating Giles’s dream is child’s play. Ethan could catch one of these images and slip it on like a mask, to sneak through Giles’s dreamspace as though he belonged there. Or he could grow wings and fly like a magpie through this world of the subconscious, but he pulls the sprouting feathers back into his skin. Instead, he conjures himself a warm coat and a pair of well broken in seven-league winter boots, flaps up his collar and starts to walk.
It’s hard to put a finger on it, but Giles’s London has a distinct Early Eighties feel: Ethan passes small butcher shops with lamb halves hanging in the windows; a comic shop with a life-sized cardboard Judge Dredd; music shops that still sell vinyl records instead of CDs; Indian take-aways with affordable prices; off-licences stocking Liebfraumilch instead of mint flavoured beer. Ethan resists the temptation to step into one of the many cosy corner pubs for a quick pint. Instead, he heads for the nearest tube station.
First stop: British Museum. No Giles, only four mummies in the Egyptian section, playing five-card draw with live beetles for poker chips. With a dry rustle of tendons and parched skin they turn their heads to stare at him. Ethan beats a hasty retreat.
Second stop: King’s Cross. It’s only a short walk to the British Library. Giles has to be here somewhere. 18 million books make one hell of a comfort zone for an ex-librarian. Ethan searches the aisles for what seems like an eternity. No trace of Ripper.
Now what? Back at the tube station, Ethan studies the London Underground map and ponders his next move. Sunnydale? In Giles’s dreamspace the former Hellmouth is the last stop of the Piccadilly Line.
Sounds of guitar play drift up from the tunnels, riding up the deserted escalators on gusts of warm air: “…London calling to the underworld, come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls….” Ethan decides it’s an invitation of sorts.
He follows the song down countless escalators until he reaches a dead end: a deserted platform. A seemingly endless train pulls in. A single door opens - slowly, almost reluctantly. Ethan peers inside. All seats are taken-except one. Oh well. Ethan shrugs, steps on board, and claims the empty seat. The doors bang shut and he’s on his way, allowing Giles's dream train to carry him towards an unknown destination.
He finds himself surrounded by a grey gauntlet of unblinking faces. His first thought is that the other passengers are staring at him, but then he realizes that he’s facing an even row of newspapers, each with a large photograph on the front page; Hundreds of different faces, with obituaries instead of headlines. Ethan is not surprised to find Randall and Deirdre among them. Others are familiar from the stroll he took in Buffy Summers’s dreamspace, but most of the faces are unfamiliar. Unknown or no, their combined stare is disconcerting. Ethan considers closing his eyes. No! This part of Giles’s mind is too dark and creepy to risk it.
Ethan is relieved when minutes or maybe hours later, the train pulls into a gloomy station. The sign on the wall says Hackney. Ethan steps off with alacrity.
The escalators don’t work. Ethan has to climb more stairs than he can count, but his seven-league boots serve him well. Eventually, he emerges, slightly winded, not in an underground station, but right in the middle of a deserted, run-down street, that is flanked by two rows of small, identical looking brick houses. Ethan squints at the dreary neighbourhood. Snow covers every roof and every fence, and even more snow is falling from the sky, as if to obscure all signs of neglect and disrepair.
Ethan yelps, when something touches his ankles. He glances down, half expecting to find a scaly Lovecraftian creature wrapping its tentacles round his legs, but instead he discovers a cat. And not just any cat: treacle-black with a white collar, fat, and scarred, one ear slightly crooked, it’s a cat Ethan knows quite well but never expected to find here. He’s beginning to like this dream. “Crowley! Why hello, old boy! What are you doing here?” Smiling, Ethan crouches to pick the animal up, but Crowley darts out of his reach, daring him to follow. His yellow eyes glow like burning brimstone.
Ethan doesn’t need a guide. He knows this street like the back of his hand, but he follows the cat anyway. Crowley stops in front of number 13 and meows.
Home, sweet home.
***
TBC