At last the story twists one more time...and is done.
TITLE: Strange Locution, 15/15
AUTHOR: LJS (Lori)
PAIRING: Giles/Anya
RATING: Teen overall
PREVIOUS PARTS: See tag.
LENGTH THIS PART: approximately 2200 words.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Joss Whedon and Co; Messieurs Gilbert and Sullivan.
SUMMARY: Post-Chosen, AU. This part: Wherein the story is concluded.
When Giles saw her fall, touched by the ticking shadow's hands, for a moment he was back in that nightmarish Sunnydale High corridor. “Anya,” he said, as he'd said that day when he'd turned the corner and seen the Bringer's sword coming down. “Anya!”
He was already moving through smoke-shadow, already on his knees to her.
But this was now, 1880 not 2003, not 2009. His way was clear. Pale as any Pre-Raphaelite heroine, she lay not on a war-bloodied floor but on a crimson wool rug. When he put his hand to the pulse in her throat - she had a pulse there, more human than demon - her strong heart was beating. No injuries he could see.
Giles looked up. Above him hovered the shadow with the clock-face. Giles saw now that what he'd taken for his great-grandfather's initial at the twelve, three, six, and nine places were in fact clock faces themselves, on which were clock-faces....
“Chronos,” he said, and felt sick that he'd not realised before. Of course this room would have been where Great-grandfather had kept his bound demon. Chronos had watched him all afternoon.
The demon blew bitter-cold shadow at him, but Giles raised his hand and pushed it back. Where the shadow had touched, bloomed frostbite on his palm, bloomed cold inside. He pushed that away too.
“What have you done to her, Chronos?” he snapped, cradling Anya's head with his unhurt hand. “No, I don't care. Just undo it right the fuck now.”
“I cannot fully undo what you have done, man,” said the clock-shadow disapprovingly. “It is a paradox, a paradox, and I can only twist the threads so far.”
"A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox" - the lines from that Pirates of Penzance tune seemed to echo from the corners of the study. Underneath, however, the world was shuddering, a low constant rumble.
It sounded like... Motors. Cars on the street outside the house. 2009, creeping into 1880.
Anya moaned. The sound broke Giles' contemplation, and he bent over her. But she didn't wake when his lips brushed hers. He didn't dare kiss her again. Too much cold.
The chill shadow crept closer, ticking, ticking. Chronos whispered in between the sharp little sounds, “She will not wake until you leave, and then....”
“Then what?” Giles said. He looked up at the round clock-face, saw the spinning hands, decided he didn't sodding care. “I didn't change anything, for God's sake! Poor William Pratt died, just as I imagine he was fated to do. I didn't dust Angelus or Darla or Drusilla, I didn't get close enough to Great-grandmother for her to Wish--”
“You short-sighted fool, you're holding the one you've changed,” said Chronos. The clock-face darkened in a demonic glower. “You altered destiny from the moment you took her in your arms last night, Rupert Giles, and it's only got worse. Every touch, every damned exchange... twist, twist, twist.”
“Damned?” Giles said.
Tick, tick, tick. “It's an expression. I don't mean it literally. Probably.”
The distant rumble of 2009, motors and cables and fire, returned. Outside the study, footsteps, the hush of skirts - which stopped just at the door.
“John? Cousin Anya?” Great-grandmother said.
“Don't answer,” Chronos hissed, and that smoke-shadow hand came to hover over Giles' mouth.
Giles had no intention of answering, however. He wasn't the one Great-grandmother sought. Instead he closed his eyes and shifted his own hand around Anya's neck, so that his thumb rested against her pulse.
She had such a strong heart. Warmth travelled from their point of connection, up and in.
“Will she be all right?” he whispered.
“Which one of them?” Chronos said.
Distant rumble, getting louder. Great-grandmother's tears, softer as she went away.
Giles opened his eyes. “Anya,” he said, almost without thought. “Great-grandmother will be fine, eventually.” And then the blue plaque flashed into his consciousness, John Rupert Cavendish - 1860-1881, and he remembered at last his family history. Great-grandfather had not just moved from this Audley Street house: he'd died in 1881 before Grandmother was born, and Great-grandmother Amelia would go on to marry again...
“Yes, yes, yes,” Chronos said, tick, tick, tick. “Your great-grandmother, yes. Anyanka, well..." He paused, and the study went completely, utterly silent. Cold as the Poles, cold as old loves, cold as the valley in which a town lay dead and buried over a Hellmouth.
But under Giles' thumb, Anya's pulse sent warmth up and in, up and in.
“What would you give me, Rupert Giles, in order to keep your justice-demon safe?” Chronos said, and even though it couldn't have been more than five or ten minutes since Giles and Anya had come back here, now each word struck the hour of midnight, dark and deep. “You have already bled once for me -- my hand was on John Cavendish's as he cut your head. Bleed just once more, and say the words you've learnt, and I will see what I can do for you.”
Giles felt a tide of horrible yearning. If he made the connection and sacrifice, if Chronos sent him to a time where he could have Anya... Or more, if Chronos sent him to a time where some of the pain of the past ten years could be lost, could be changed, Buffy saved and the world made better, and where he could have Anya, even if only for the year before Chronos' curse killed him --
Under Giles' thumb, her pulse began to speed. It was as if her entire body said, as she'd said to him before, Don't wish, don't wish, don't wish.
No. It wouldn't be justice, after all, and that mattered to them both.
Chronos-clock kept tolling, although twelve had been struck. This wasn't time but dark magic, Giles thought, and he remembered now a candlelit room full of chaos-stink where a dead friend lay, he remembered not to trust in his own powers.
Don't wish, don't wish, don't wish.
He bent down one more time, kissed her, breathed in jasmine, loved. “I will miss you more than you will know, darling,” he whispered. “But you never think of consequences, do you.”
Chronos laughed, Giles didn't know why.
Painfully he rose and went to Great-grandfather's desk, skirting Chronos as he went. Yet the shadow reached in anyway.
Giles felt smoke-fingers brushing frost and ashes over his forehead, felt aches left behind. He ignored them. “Time to go home,” he said to himself and to Chronos, “before I say to hell with it and stay.”
The Tempus grimoire lay on top of the piles of paper he'd disarranged and rearranged during his hours here, with William Pratt's Evanescence and Innocence manuscript almost touching it. Before he put his hand on the book, however, he said, “So, er, just as a point of curiosity: why did Great-grandfather want to go to 2009?”
“You'll never know,” Chronos said over one last toll of the hour. “Twist, twist, flight of a butterfly, fall of a Watcher, paradox resolved.”
Giles rested his cold-burnt hand on the grimoire and closed his eyes so that he didn't see what he left, so that he didn't see what he wanted.
The smoke-fingers reached inside head and heart, and the world became nothing but shudder and rumble, and the smoke-fingers found his memories and and broke them, and Giles fell and fell and fell through the shards of what was and what was no longer, until the time-door slammed and --
The clock tolled the last stroke of midnight, the lamps came on, and Giles awoke to find himself lying face-down on the heirloom rug in his study.
“What the bloody hell's wrong with you, nevvy?” said Spike from the doorway.
Giles rolled onto his back and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. It didn't actually help -- “Can't remember. Just, er, fell asleep and fell over, I suppose.” He adjusted his glasses with his other hand and then glanced at Spike. “And just why are you here, Great-uncle, instead of at Brighton with the others, killing the Goii?”
Spike sauntered a little further into the study. “Slayers have already slain our mini-Godzilla. They're just cleaning up the seaside now, but then our Dawn rang with a sighting of vamps in Camden, and, well...Buffy said I could, so I came back first.” He nudged Giles's shoulder with the toe of his boot. “Also, your better half has that gift for stocking your pantry. Thought I'd take a little burba.”
“You unutterable pillock, one would think the soul would stop you from those tricks,” Giles said wearily, and pushed himself up. The crimson rug on which he sat appeared to shimmer in front of his eyes for a moment, but then he blinked himself back to now. “I hope you didn't wake my, um, better half.”
"Of course he did. The charm I placed on the burba jar rang loud as anything when he attempted his theft,” Anya said sleepily, and he looked up to see her wrapped in his towelling robe, her hair tousled from their bed. “And, honey, then there was the weirdest noise, and then boom. Which was you hitting the floor, I guess--”
She bent over, inspecting him for damage. He tried to look innocent and unharmed for her survey, but the sight of her lovely breasts almost escaping the loosely tied robe got the best of him, and instead he tumbled her down into his lap. “Darling,” he said, and nuzzled into her neck, breathed in jasmine and love.
“Oi, a little respect for your elders,” Spike said, and nudged Giles again with his boot. “Have you no dignity? No decorum?”
“Sod off,” Giles said. “Actually, go home.”
“You can take the burba,” Anya said absently, her attention and her hands currently engaged on Giles's ears. “You owe us four pounds, however.”
“You can't charge family, Mrs Giles,” Spike said grandly. “And so I bid you both goodnight.”
As Spike stalked out the door with that idiotic flutter of coat, however, Giles called, “You're still coming by tomorrow to help with the family history, yes?”
Spike's voice came at a distance. “Yes, if it's cloudy - 's long as you remember I'm not your private secretary, nevvy.”
Giles laughed, even as he returned to the more pressing business of circling the pulse in Anya's neck with his tongue, tasting her presence, honouring that strong heart of hers...
“That tickles,” she said, wriggling on his lap in a way that encouraged thoughts of bed, of his playing with her breasts, of his opening her up and sinking in. But right, she was still talking: “Did that stupid family history of yours keep you up? Make you sick? Are you all right?”
He pulled away just far enough to gaze at her. She looked as lovely now, human and starting to age, as she had when she'd first walked into his library all those years ago - a vengeance-demon posing as a history teacher, there to investigate poor lost Jenny's independent attempts at justice for her clan. Yes, she looked as lovely as she had the night Jenny was murdered, when she had walked through the police line into his Sunnydale flat and helped him get through the pain; as lovely as she had when they'd helped each other through their mutual unemployment after D'Hoffryn and Travers had punished them both for challenging the proper order of things; as lovely as she had in their Sunnydale shop, which then had been swallowed up with the rest of the town.
The consequences and reward of love, he thought privately, but didn't say it because it was so ridiculously soppy.
His hands went to her face, held her there, caressed her cheekbones. “I'm utterly fine,” he said, smiling, and then kissed her to prove it.
She kissed back, as she always did - and as she often did, pulled away without warning. “You know I don't like having sex on this rug, it itches,” she said with a delicious pout. “Desk or bed?”
“Bed.” He kissed her again before helping her up. “Let me just clear away things here first. You might get out the cuffs, though, darling.”
She beamed. “Great! But I'll wait so you can put them on me,” she said, and then took off at her usual dizzying pace.
Smiling himself, he got to his feet. The study shimmered around him one last time, then settled.
It didn't take much to put everything in order - close the curtains on the Audley Street landscape below, as he'd done ever since he'd taken over the freehold from his cousin; tidy the notes for his monograph extending Grandmother Giles's work on the Clan of Corazon, and his and Spike's partially finished draft on Cavendish history. When he went to the doorway, however, he put his hand on the light switch and then paused.
There in the corner stood that long-case clock of his great-grandfather's. Giles had seen it a thousand thousand times, but for some reason tonight smoke and shadow curled around its round face.
And he found himself humming a happy little tune, which baffled him. Was that Gilbert and Sullivan, for fuck's sake? Why would he think of that?
“Strange,” he said to himself, and turned off the light.
THE END.