Philip looked just the same. Except for the bruises. A different haircut, of course, and that ridiculous goatee, but his face hadn't changed. Not the way Giles' has, over twenty years and more
( ... )
His shoulders are slumped, his hair suspiciously flat, as if he's been pawing at it, and Giles sounds as if he's speaking through gritted teeth. Oz crunches into his apple, finally, as he rises, bag in his hand.
He chews carefully, swallows, and Giles is still waiting, frozen with his keychain clinking in his hand, not looking at him. Like a zombie or a ghost, like there's nothing inside his clothes.
"I can go," Oz says. "Looks like you could use some help, though."
The apple's mealy and pale-tasting on his tongue, and Oz keeps his eyes carefully focused on Giles' heavy door.
It takes Giles several seconds' fumbling before the key slides into the lock. He opens the door and then looks back at Oz, who's still waiting. The bitten apple in his hand is already turning brown.
"No, don't go." It's good of Oz to want to help. Even though he can't.
Inside, he drops his briefcase on the sofa and goes straight to the bathroom. After washing down the pills with water from the tap, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. No wonder Oz thought he needed help. His eyes look dark and empty.
Oz is perched on the arm of the sofa, riffling the pages of the unopened comic book. He watches as Giles pours himself a large whiskey. Giles seldom drinks when they're together. And at the moment he must seem rather desperate for it.
A question occurs to him, belatedly. "How did you know?" he asks, sitting down. He doesn't seriously believe Oz is telepathic, although it seems that way sometimes.
"Saw you leave with the cops," Oz says. "Figured you had to come home at some point."
His jaw hurts when he swallows and his back is twinging from sitting on the tiles outside, so Oz slides off the couch and stretches. The apartment's as dark as if it were midnight out there, and it occurs to him suddenly that Giles might spend entire evenings in here, in the dark, alone.
Maybe those nights he looks like he does now, both hunched and crumpled, long graceful fingers wrapped around his drink. Oz turns and wanders over to the nearest bookcase; he has a feeling Giles won't sip it in front of him. And even though his palms are itching and head throbbing to touch Giles, hold him, he doesn't. Not yet, anyway, not until the dark hum that's settled around Giles like a force-field is lowered.
"What happened?" he asks lowly. "Is it one of the kids?"
The whiskey tastes of nothing--stale water, maybe--and only the burn after Giles swallows is familiar. "No, it wasn't-" It could have been. One day it will be Buffy dead. Maybe he'll walk into school on Monday and the police will be there, asking about her.
"Someone was killed outside the school last night. He had my name and address in his pocket. Naturally, the police were curious." Another swallow and the glass is mostly empty.
"I knew him. Philip. In London. We were friends, years ago. He and I, and Diedre, and Thomas. And Ethan."
Oz turns around at that. In the dimness his features are white and smooth as a mask.
Giles finishes off the whiskey. It hasn't made any difference to the needles of ice that tickle at his spine.
Oz picks up the bottle on his way towards Giles, and there really are times when he feels like he's in someone else's movie, sliding from the dark into the bright patch by the lamp, tipping the bottle and splashing the scotch into the glass Giles is gripping hard enough to squeak.
Oz only saw pieces of what happened on Halloween, and he only has Giles' memories to go by, and his own memory of Giles' swollen knuckles after beating Ethan out of town. His own hand curls, remembering the ice pack he pressed on Giles.
When he sits on the couch, the cushion sighs louder than either of their voices.
"I'm sorry," Oz says. "About your friend. Did Ethan -?"
He doesn't even know what Ethan looks like. He's faceless and sinuous as a snake-demon Oz saw illustrated in one of Giles' books. Glittering and reflective; sometimes when Oz dreams about him, Ethan's his twin.
Giles sets the glass down. Watching Oz fill it worsened the dirty aftertaste in his throat, turned it sour and sick. The bottle looks wrong in Oz's hand.
"It wasn't Ethan. Ethan wouldn't kill with his own hands."
You've got to cut off his head, Ripper.
Afterwards, Giles made Ethan clean the blood off the sword. Randall's blood. He laughed.
The whiskey tastes awful, pond water and crematory smoke, but he drinks it anyway.
When he speaks, it's to the glass in his hands. He can't look at Oz. "Actually, it was Ethan. Indirectly. And it was me."
Giles has murdered two people now. Three, if you count Ethan.
Oz gets up again. There are itches creeping and crawling up his arms, but moving helps. He retrieves his knapsack from the coatrack by the door and digs out his bottle of grapefruit juice.
He drinks and offers it to Giles, has to hold it right in his face because Giles won't look up from his glass. Two glasses in quick succession, he's going to need all the hydration he can get.
"The demon you summoned?" he asks. Stupid. He rubs his hands over his upper arms, even though it's not cold in here, and then realizes why he's doing it - the tattoo - and stops.
"Giles," he says. Sits down again and swallows the chips of ice that suddenly fill his throat, slide through his body. "Giles. Does it want you?"
The label of the bottle Oz gave him shows a lush green orchard, with brilliant grapefruits hanging from the branches like lanterns. It's pretty. The juice is sour, and clean, and Giles drinks it all in a few long gulps. He's still thirsty. Even if he drank gallons, lakes, oceans, there'd still be bitter dust in his throat.
"Yes. It wants all of us." Eyghon owns them. They've been his property since they needled his mark into their skins.
It's been twenty-two years. Even Mephistopheles let Faustus have longer, twenty-four years, before he dragged him into hell.
"Oh god." The others. Maybe they don't know. "I've got to make some telephone calls. Diedre and Thomas-" He'll have to ring someone at the Council. The Council will know how to find them.
Move, Oz needs to move. He rubs his hands up and down his thighs as he heads for the kitchen. Bread and water, prison rations, something simple that he can do with shaking hands and teeth that want to chatter in his skull.
On the phone, Giles speaks lowly and urgently, and Oz tries not to listen, tries to drown it out by sawing and hacking at the loaf of pumpernickel he gave Giles earlier in the week and running the water as cold as he can get it.
Water and bread, and he piles the slices on a plate, fills a pint glass with water, and leaves them next to Giles on the desk. He wants to kiss Giles' bowed head as he leans over, stand behind him and hold his shoulders, but the force-field's up, dark and throbbing, pushing Giles down, into himself.
All those words Giles uses as a normal part of his conversation, peril, gravity, danger, evil, all bang around Oz's skull, piercing and bouncing. But they are always about someone else, all of humanity or just the town or Buffy; they've never been focused on Giles, on him and only him
( ... )
The pillock on the other end of the line makes Giles give two codewords and a long explanation before he agrees to look up the numbers. Then he makes Giles wait.
Giles has never seen the Council's dossier section--he doesn't have the clearance--but he imagines it vast and crammed, as arcane as the library in The Name of the Rose and as gray and dusty as something out of Kafka.
That would explain how long he waits.
When the pillock gives him the numbers, Giles puts the telephone down without a word. There's no answer at Thomas', although he lets it ring twenty times, counting each one under his breath. And there's no answer at Diedre's.
It's quite late in England. Someone should be home.
He puts his head down on his folded arms. A hand glides up his arm to his shoulder, and his realizes that Oz is standing beside him. Has been for quite a while.
"No answer," he says. "Eyghon may have already killed them."
With the side of his hand, Oz touches Giles' hair, his shoulder, his arm, as lightly as he can. It's enough to know Giles is still there, inside his clothes, still breathing.
"They could be away," he says. "Have some water. Do you know their families?"
Oz pushes the plate against Giles' arm and touches his hair again. Crinkly but soft, almost phosphorescent in the desk light.
Oz isn't stupid; what Giles does, everything he does, is dangerous. That's the whole point. He's been hurt, he could always get hurt worse. But it's the softness of his hair, the familiar smooth line of his neck, that makes Oz realize Giles has never said anything about dying. He doesn't know if Giles even thinks about that.
He strokes Giles' head, relearning the waves of his hair, and urges the water again. Simple things, water and hydration, hair and neck. Dangerous things, Giles would say, Ethan's belief in dualities, vampires' thirst for blood. Oz is still shivering.
Oz leans against the edge of the desk, his hand on Giles' arm, and all he can do is nod. Inside, glaciers break apart and torrents of water so cold it's slush pour through him, and he wonders absently if he's ever going to stop feeling cold.
"What do you usually do?" Oz says. His voice sounds croaky, then high, like he's thirteen again. "Research, then fight it. How do you kill it?"
Everything he knows about Giles' world, he's learned from Giles. From Eyghon and Ethan to Buffy and the vampires, there's an entire life and whole other reality, all filtered through Giles.
"Is Ethan making it do this?"
Giles' world is complex and huge and shadowed, but all Oz knows is Giles, and, opposing him, Ethan. Faceless Ethan, full of all the hate. Giles took all the guilt. Simple things agains, pairs and opposites, and Oz feels cold and small, far outside and helpless.
Simple, and for a moment he's angry at Oz. How can he be so stupid? So trusting?
Anger refreshes Giles, gives him water and life, and then it dries, vanishes into the parching air.
"Ethan is not controlling the demon. He can't." Giles only drinks half the water this time, so Oz won't have to go back to the kitchen yet. "When we had the demon's mark tattooed on our bodies"--the needle felt cold going in, hundreds of cold bites, and the ink pooled under his skin like water under thin ice--"we gave it power over us." Giles laughs, or something close. "Obviously, we didn't know that at the time. Because we didn't bother to learn."
Ethan practiced drawing the mark, over and over. They broke into a tattooist's in Soho to steal needles and ink. Tonight, Ripper. You'll fuck me with Eyghon in you. You'll be a god.
"Ethan can't control it. And I can't kill it. I can't send it back. When we killed Randall, we thought it was gone. But it wasn't."
As Giles drinks the rest of the water, he wonders what it's like to die.
Oz wraps his arms around his waist, bends forward a little, and stares at the toes of his boots. Scuffed and scratched, tiny in the gloom of Giles' apartment. He feels it now, whatever that thing is that deepens Giles' voice when he talks about Ethan, that powers the Slayer, that keeps Giles alive. The need to lash out and fight.
It's red and bright as sunshine but very, very cold. And Oz isn't a fighter, he's barely anything in the enormity of Giles' world, so he's still cramping up as he brings back two glasses of water and puts them on the desk.
Giles peers at him but doesn't blink. Oz crouches down, wraps his arm around Giles' hunched shoulders. Tips his head against Giles' arm and rolls it back and forth. It's the best he can do, touch and hold the body he knows, wants to know more of, give it back to Giles, snatch it from the demon.
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He chews carefully, swallows, and Giles is still waiting, frozen with his keychain clinking in his hand, not looking at him. Like a zombie or a ghost, like there's nothing inside his clothes.
"I can go," Oz says. "Looks like you could use some help, though."
The apple's mealy and pale-tasting on his tongue, and Oz keeps his eyes carefully focused on Giles' heavy door.
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"No, don't go." It's good of Oz to want to help. Even though he can't.
Inside, he drops his briefcase on the sofa and goes straight to the bathroom. After washing down the pills with water from the tap, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. No wonder Oz thought he needed help. His eyes look dark and empty.
Oz is perched on the arm of the sofa, riffling the pages of the unopened comic book. He watches as Giles pours himself a large whiskey. Giles seldom drinks when they're together. And at the moment he must seem rather desperate for it.
A question occurs to him, belatedly. "How did you know?" he asks, sitting down. He doesn't seriously believe Oz is telepathic, although it seems that way sometimes.
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His jaw hurts when he swallows and his back is twinging from sitting on the tiles outside, so Oz slides off the couch and stretches. The apartment's as dark as if it were midnight out there, and it occurs to him suddenly that Giles might spend entire evenings in here, in the dark, alone.
Maybe those nights he looks like he does now, both hunched and crumpled, long graceful fingers wrapped around his drink. Oz turns and wanders over to the nearest bookcase; he has a feeling Giles won't sip it in front of him. And even though his palms are itching and head throbbing to touch Giles, hold him, he doesn't. Not yet, anyway, not until the dark hum that's settled around Giles like a force-field is lowered.
"What happened?" he asks lowly. "Is it one of the kids?"
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"Someone was killed outside the school last night. He had my name and address in his pocket. Naturally, the police were curious." Another swallow and the glass is mostly empty.
"I knew him. Philip. In London. We were friends, years ago. He and I, and Diedre, and Thomas. And Ethan."
Oz turns around at that. In the dimness his features are white and smooth as a mask.
Giles finishes off the whiskey. It hasn't made any difference to the needles of ice that tickle at his spine.
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Oz only saw pieces of what happened on Halloween, and he only has Giles' memories to go by, and his own memory of Giles' swollen knuckles after beating Ethan out of town. His own hand curls, remembering the ice pack he pressed on Giles.
When he sits on the couch, the cushion sighs louder than either of their voices.
"I'm sorry," Oz says. "About your friend. Did Ethan -?"
He doesn't even know what Ethan looks like. He's faceless and sinuous as a snake-demon Oz saw illustrated in one of Giles' books. Glittering and reflective; sometimes when Oz dreams about him, Ethan's his twin.
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"It wasn't Ethan. Ethan wouldn't kill with his own hands."
You've got to cut off his head, Ripper.
Afterwards, Giles made Ethan clean the blood off the sword. Randall's blood. He laughed.
The whiskey tastes awful, pond water and crematory smoke, but he drinks it anyway.
When he speaks, it's to the glass in his hands. He can't look at Oz. "Actually, it was Ethan. Indirectly. And it was me."
Giles has murdered two people now. Three, if you count Ethan.
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He drinks and offers it to Giles, has to hold it right in his face because Giles won't look up from his glass. Two glasses in quick succession, he's going to need all the hydration he can get.
"The demon you summoned?" he asks. Stupid. He rubs his hands over his upper arms, even though it's not cold in here, and then realizes why he's doing it - the tattoo - and stops.
"Giles," he says. Sits down again and swallows the chips of ice that suddenly fill his throat, slide through his body. "Giles. Does it want you?"
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"Yes. It wants all of us." Eyghon owns them. They've been his property since they needled his mark into their skins.
It's been twenty-two years. Even Mephistopheles let Faustus have longer, twenty-four years, before he dragged him into hell.
"Oh god." The others. Maybe they don't know. "I've got to make some telephone calls. Diedre and Thomas-" He'll have to ring someone at the Council. The Council will know how to find them.
Reply
On the phone, Giles speaks lowly and urgently, and Oz tries not to listen, tries to drown it out by sawing and hacking at the loaf of pumpernickel he gave Giles earlier in the week and running the water as cold as he can get it.
Water and bread, and he piles the slices on a plate, fills a pint glass with water, and leaves them next to Giles on the desk. He wants to kiss Giles' bowed head as he leans over, stand behind him and hold his shoulders, but the force-field's up, dark and throbbing, pushing Giles down, into himself.
All those words Giles uses as a normal part of his conversation, peril, gravity, danger, evil, all bang around Oz's skull, piercing and bouncing. But they are always about someone else, all of humanity or just the town or Buffy; they've never been focused on Giles, on him and only him ( ... )
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Giles has never seen the Council's dossier section--he doesn't have the clearance--but he imagines it vast and crammed, as arcane as the library in The Name of the Rose and as gray and dusty as something out of Kafka.
That would explain how long he waits.
When the pillock gives him the numbers, Giles puts the telephone down without a word. There's no answer at Thomas', although he lets it ring twenty times, counting each one under his breath. And there's no answer at Diedre's.
It's quite late in England. Someone should be home.
He puts his head down on his folded arms. A hand glides up his arm to his shoulder, and his realizes that Oz is standing beside him. Has been for quite a while.
"No answer," he says. "Eyghon may have already killed them."
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"They could be away," he says. "Have some water. Do you know their families?"
Oz pushes the plate against Giles' arm and touches his hair again. Crinkly but soft, almost phosphorescent in the desk light.
Oz isn't stupid; what Giles does, everything he does, is dangerous. That's the whole point. He's been hurt, he could always get hurt worse. But it's the softness of his hair, the familiar smooth line of his neck, that makes Oz realize Giles has never said anything about dying. He doesn't know if Giles even thinks about that.
He strokes Giles' head, relearning the waves of his hair, and urges the water again. Simple things, water and hydration, hair and neck. Dangerous things, Giles would say, Ethan's belief in dualities, vampires' thirst for blood. Oz is still shivering.
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"I don't know their families. I haven't seen any of them in twenty years. Except for Ethan, who won't fucking go away."
Oz is stroking his hair. It's dimly pleasant, as though Giles were watching someone else's hair stroked, and thinking how nice it would feel.
After a while Oz pushes something else towards him. A plate, with bread.
"I'm not hungry." His mouth's still dry, though, so dry it hurts to talk. "Would you get me some more water?"
While Oz is in the kitchen, Giles remembers he ought to say please and thank you.
Oz comes back, hands him the water, and he drinks. He doesn't touch Giles' hair again. Giles would rather like him to.
"Oz. I don't know what to do."
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"What do you usually do?" Oz says. His voice sounds croaky, then high, like he's thirteen again. "Research, then fight it. How do you kill it?"
Everything he knows about Giles' world, he's learned from Giles. From Eyghon and Ethan to Buffy and the vampires, there's an entire life and whole other reality, all filtered through Giles.
"Is Ethan making it do this?"
Giles' world is complex and huge and shadowed, but all Oz knows is Giles, and, opposing him, Ethan. Faceless Ethan, full of all the hate. Giles took all the guilt. Simple things agains, pairs and opposites, and Oz feels cold and small, far outside and helpless.
"You can stop him at least."
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Simple, and for a moment he's angry at Oz. How can he be so stupid? So trusting?
Anger refreshes Giles, gives him water and life, and then it dries, vanishes into the parching air.
"Ethan is not controlling the demon. He can't." Giles only drinks half the water this time, so Oz won't have to go back to the kitchen yet. "When we had the demon's mark tattooed on our bodies"--the needle felt cold going in, hundreds of cold bites, and the ink pooled under his skin like water under thin ice--"we gave it power over us." Giles laughs, or something close. "Obviously, we didn't know that at the time. Because we didn't bother to learn."
Ethan practiced drawing the mark, over and over. They broke into a tattooist's in Soho to steal needles and ink. Tonight, Ripper. You'll fuck me with Eyghon in you. You'll be a god.
"Ethan can't control it. And I can't kill it. I can't send it back. When we killed Randall, we thought it was gone. But it wasn't."
As Giles drinks the rest of the water, he wonders what it's like to die.
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It's red and bright as sunshine but very, very cold. And Oz isn't a fighter, he's barely anything in the enormity of Giles' world, so he's still cramping up as he brings back two glasses of water and puts them on the desk.
Giles peers at him but doesn't blink. Oz crouches down, wraps his arm around Giles' hunched shoulders. Tips his head against Giles' arm and rolls it back and forth. It's the best he can do, touch and hold the body he knows, wants to know more of, give it back to Giles, snatch it from the demon.
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