New York 37/??: Cliche - Giles/Xander
New York
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@@@livejournal.com
Summary: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his Hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact... where the hell is Giles?
Rated R for sex.
Thanks to gloriana and antennapedia for incredibly helpful mid-construction betas, and lunabee for early chapters, and to huzzlewhat for final checking on the run. And gloriana again for major late-construction revisions.
The Buffy universe is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Borrowed with all due love and respect.
Please ask before archiving.
Feedback ohgodyesplease.
Full headers are on chapter one.
Wordcount this part: 3588
Sorry. Sorry. Very sorry. Here I am.
Previously, in chapter: 36
Waiting in Mary's hospital room, Xander worried about seeing Buffy, but she arrived and hugged him and made things better. Also, she brought Riley, who brought an army. Then she broke the news that they were headed down into the tunnels to wring Mary's cure out of some bad guy. Xander announced he was coming too.
Buffy and Xander had time to chat in the tunnels. Giles' claims that she was totally in favour of the Giles/Xander relationship were not exaggerated. Their happy reunion was interrupted by the news that Mary's attackers may already have a replacement, and so their descent began.
New York
chapter 37: Cliche
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Buffy stopped at the top of a stairwell. "This is our door." Their super-military flashlights didn't penetrate the hanging dust at all. The stairs were rickety woven aluminum, the sort that shook and rattled under Buffy's first couple of steps. She gave them a dubious look, and then started down into the black.
Riley went next, and Xander gestured for Giles to go after him. Xander went last, so he could keep Giles in his sights. The thunk of four pairs of feet on the stairs was like thunder.
"So much for stealth," Xander said.
Giles glanced back. "I'm sorry?"
"Exactly."
Giles looked puzzled, and then seemed to realise it didn't matter and offered a vague smile and nod.
They went down for a long time. Every flight down was one Xander's knees reminded him they were going to have to climb back up again when this was done. At the bottom Buffy paused. From a flight above and behind her, Xander could see the way she straightened, knew she was closing her eyes and reaching out with those mysterious Slayer senses. She went left.
It stank down here. Stagnant water puddled on the rough concrete floor between decaying trash and things unidentifiable. There was a splash and quiet curse every time one of the group stepped in a deeper pool their flashlights had missed. The walls were sand struck brick, older than the subway.
Xander spent all his time watching Giles' back, brown jacket and loose blue jeans. It was better than psyching himself out watching for stuff the Slayer and super-soldier couldn't see. He was thinking about Giles and thinking about Mary and thinking... well, a whole lot of things. How he liked that Giles was with them. Xander didn't have to protect him. Or, he did, but at the same time Giles was here to protect Xander. Giles knew this world better than Xander did, and it was a mutual protecting deal. There was no way Xander ever could have handled Mary coming down here.
There was more than one way Xander trusted Giles.
More stairs, more tunnels, more stairs, their waving flashlights squeezed between shadows. Old hand-formed bricks gave way to hewn rock. Xander hoped he wasn't going to have to find his own way out. It felt like no one human had ever been here.
They threaded out of the passage onto a wooden walkway running the length of another, broader tunnel, and shone their flashlights down to the ground ten feet below.
Riley moved ahead and stomped his boot a couple of times to make sure the wood was solid. "Are we seriously on a wooden walkway? This must be pre-war."
Xander shone his light up and down the balusters. "1920s." Nobody responded, and it was a few seconds before his flashlight caught the quizzical looks. "What? I'm in construction."
"Xander Harris, the Giles of twentieth century artifacts," said Buffy.
"I'll take it." That actually sounded pretty cool. "So? Which way?"
Buffy barely hesitated before pointing left. "That way."
"Your slayer senses tell you that?" asked Riley.
"Sometimes with evil, you just follow your nose." Buffy made a retching face. "My nose says evil is that way."
It did stink. Like New York distilled, which it probably was. An entire city's drunks pissing in drains, filtered through layers of Manhattan trash.
Xander was ready to get moving again, but Buffy raised her hand and they all froze. It took a couple of seconds before they could hear it. Chittering, far down the tunnel to the right.
They were armed this time, Xander reminded himself. Buffy and Riley were with them. He wasn't going to be a torn shirt on an old corpse in a lost subway tomb, and neither was Giles.
The wooden handrail creaked under Riley's weight and he eased back. They all peered into the black as the sound got louder and somehow thicker. The creatures were close and coming fast but the super-awesome military flashlights didn't seem so impressive anymore.
"Should we be maybe moving?" asked Xander.
"Give 'em a headache, Ri," said Buffy.
Riley shuffled past them all to the back of the line. There was a click as he pulled a flash-bomb from his belt.
But the chittering sound wasn't quite the same as in the tunnel above, and Xander turned to see Giles cocking his head as well. It wasn't the same. "Wait," said Xander just as Riley called "Flash!" and he shielded his eyes just in time for the crack and blaze of magnesium.
There were squeals everywhere but not the screeching of the lepti-vamp-things, and in the afterglow of the flash-bomb Xander yelled "Rats!" about half a second before everyone else. Rats were racing down the tunnel.
Rats, and Xander was no stranger to fucking enormous rats but these things were carry-your-children-away huge, need-their-own-seats-on-the-subway huge, run-for-your-lives huge.
Turned out Riley learned some bad language in the army, finishing his string of curses with, "Is this a good time to tell you how much I hate rats?"
"Where are they going?" Giles cried over the squeals.
"Same place we are!" Buffy yelled back.
But the flash had muddled them and some were tripping each other and some were climbing the walls, and team Sunnydale was about to be surrounded by ratzillas.
Buffy started swinging at rats scrambling up the wall ahead of them just as one clambered onto the walkway by Xander and hissed. Giles jumped in and kicked it back into the throng below a second before one dropped from above onto his back. Xander hit it hard with the butt of his axe and again to knock it free and hauled Giles backwards, just a moment of Giles against him and a 'thank you', and then they were both beating back at shadows of rats, half the battle lost in darkness until a scrape and hiss as Riley threw out a yellow flare that lit the swarming rats like day. Thinning out now, thank-
"Vamp!"
Xander turned and something slammed into him and wood crashed and the ground was gone. Xander was falling. A hand grabbed his and Xander cried out as his shoulder wrenched but he was dangling, not falling, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of him. Riley had him, arm bulging as he strained to hold Xander's wrist. It hurt.
Giles called his name and Xander struggled to get his attention off the burning agony in his shoulder. Because Giles was fighting a vampire and there were horror movie rats below Xander's feet. Remembering the rats gave Xander the strength to get his other hand up to the boards, just as Giles' vampire whooshed and dust drifted down.
Giles' arms were around him, hauling him onto solid-ish wood, checking him over. "Are you all right? Xander?"
Xander gritted his teeth as he rolled his shoulder. "I'm okay. Thanks, Ri-"
Riley was already on his feet for three more vampires barrelling down the walkway and Giles jumped over Xander to back him up.
Xander was still struggling to his feet when Giles was thrown against the wall and stumbled back over him, a foot on Xander's hand and the pair of them sprawled back to the deck as Riley and the vampires crashed through the railing to the rats below. Riley's cussing drowned out the indignant squeals as he came up swinging. "Could use some back-up!"
Buffy vaulted over the rail. She was fighting before she landed and it was nothing like Xander remembered. It was no cemetery punch-up; there was no dancing around, no repartee. Every blow counted, every stake found its mark. Rats hit the wall and fell still; vampires dissolved. She was ruthless, cold fire, and Riley was clear before the screams had faded.
Xander was glad there was nothing else to fight up here, because he hadn't been able to tear his eyes away.
Now he turned to Giles, who didn't seem to think climbing off Xander was any kind of priority. Xander wasn't going to rush him. "Are you okay?"
"Says the man with the bleeding face who recently was hung over the side like a sock. Are you sure you're all right?" Giles had his arm, was looking manic. "They've opened your lip again." He magicked out his handkerchief to wipe the blood from Xander's mouth. Xander hadn't noticed anything over the tearing pain in his shoulder, but he could flex his fingers. No serious damage.
Giles' fingers brushed his shoulder and then settled, gently feeling along the muscles. "You're hurt."
Xander reached up to cover his hands. "Just wrenched it. It'll keep." On a whim, he kissed the side of Giles' mouth with the side of his own mouth that wasn't cut. He liked the way that softened Giles' face. Xander sat up and looked over the broken rail. "Are you two okay down there?"
The stampede was gone. Down in the tunnel Buffy gave a little shudder before reaching down to pick up one of the bodies. "Rats? In New York? Could this be any more cliche?"
It looked like an ordinary rat, except horrifyingly enormous. She had it by the scruff of its neck above her head, and its back claws were by her thighs, tail trailing the ground.
"I suppose we ought to be glad this isn't the Florida sewers," said Giles. "We'd be dealing with fifty-foot alligators."
Riley shuddered. "I'll take the alligators."
Giles finally climbed to his feet and offered Xander a hand up, holding on for half a minute longer than he needed to. Not as long as Xander needed.
They set off again, leaving the fading flare light behind them. Xander's adrenaline levels were slipping down from 'hanging by one arm over a stream of giant rats' to merely 'walking through demon-infested tunnels towards some unknown battle to save his ex-wife.'
Kate and Jen were sitting in classrooms down in the East Village, with no idea what their father was doing, or what it was going to take to make Mary well again, and Xander didn't know if he'd hugged them hard enough this morning.
He couldn't raise them alone. Mary was the stable one, the one Jen and Kate respected, the mother they were going to need for all the teenage woman stuff. Xander was just... Xander. The same dumbass teenager he'd ever been, hiding in a thirty-seven year-old body. Jen thought he was clinically insane, and Kate was going to think the same thing when she was old enough. Xander couldn't do it without Mary. He had to get her back.
Xander and Giles stayed up on the walkway until they reached a ladder set into the wall and climbed down to join Buffy and Riley. Xander really hoped there wasn't going to be another rat-flood.
Giles dropped back to walk beside him. "How are you doing?"
"A little battered. You?"
"I'm fine. No, I meant... With all of this." Giles waved his flashlight around the tunnel. "Being down here."
"You mean this horrible nightmare I'm having where my old life is being reborn under the streets of New York City?" Somewhere above them, ten million people were working and shopping and honking their horns, and down here it was like Xander might turn the corner and there'd be Angelus or Glory.
"I'm sorry." Giles gave him a look that Xander couldn't read in the gloom, but it made Xander realise how selfish he sounded.
He sounded that way because he was. Three months ago he'd raged at Giles for dragging him in to help a stranger, but here was Giles and Buffy and Riley and an army squad, and none of them had to be dragged here. Xander glanced at Giles and away again. He wondered what Giles would think if he knew how much of Xander's brain was dedicated right now to making excuses for never doing this again. In answer to every one Xander heard Giles' chilled voice from that night: "I hope there's someone more willing if one day Kate or Jenny is in need of assistance."
Deep down, Xander was terrified that he'd find himself back on the working end of a stake just because he was too chicken to tell Giles what a chicken he was. He didn't want to know what Giles would say if he tried to walk away, and he really didn't want to know what Giles would do. Could he handle it, if Giles was too disgusted with him to stay?
"I'm glad you're with me," Xander said at last, just because it had been too long a gap and he didn't know what else to say.
"There's nowhere else I would choose to be," said Giles.
Of course there wasn't. Because Giles was one of those hero types, while Xander was the guy who cracked the lame jokes. "I've figured out one thing for sure."
Giles tipped his head, was probably raising a questioning eyebrow.
"My girls are never getting on the subway." Vampire-bats and old school vampires and giant rats all rolled up in one exciting tunnel system. And probably more. Probably everything that was evil was down here somewhere.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They'd dropped to a slow jog when Buffy stopped and they all piled into her. She lifted a finger to her lips and tipped her flashlight through a section of ripped-out bricks into a rough five foot high tunnel with claustrophobia written all over it. Great. She turned off her light and they all gathered close before copying. Xander was about as close to Giles as he could get with clothes on, and feeling a lot better for it until Riley turned off his light last and the world went dark.
Xander could hear everyone's breathing, clothes shifting, and somewhere through that tunnel, rats. There was the faint scent of burning.
"Light," whispered Riley.
There was. It should have been pitch black this deep, but as their eyes adjusted, total blindness faded to deep grey. Deep enough that Xander wasn't sure if he was seeing Giles' silhouette or just imagining it, but the light was definitely coming from that tunnel.
"Come on," whispered Buffy, and there was a soft scrape as she got moving. Xander came last, bent over to keep his head clear of the ceiling, holstering his axe so he could keep one hand on Giles' hip and one on the rough rock wall. Giles reached back to press his hand. The ground was uneven and Xander's heart skipped every time Giles stumbled a little, felt Giles still any time Xander put his own foot wrong.
A long bend to the left, and then a dip, the way growing lighter until a sudden bend to the right led the way through to-
Okay. Well, pretty sure this was their destination. Xander swallowed hard. "I don't remember seeing this on any of the Manhattan digging hazard maps."
They were looking down into an enormous natural-looking cavern carved from darkly glittering gneissic rock, like a great gothic underground Yankee stadium with rising damp instead of advertising signs. The place was lit by great piles of burning trash, each twice Xander's height or more, the ceiling lost in grey smoke that stung Xander's eyes. The place stank.
"No, seriously, guys," Riley said quietly, "I really hate rats."
"Here's your chance to kill a few," Buffy replied.
Wall-to-wall, the cavern was filled with mutant rats like the ones from the tunnel. Thousands. Grey and brown and black, crawling over each other and some pulling plastic shopping bags stuffed full.
"Why do I suddenly feel like a gingerbread soldier?" murmured Giles.
Xander felt a tug on his sleeve, and he followed the others around to a recessed spot where they could watch from out of view. The floor was thirty feet below, the swirling rats too preoccupied to notice the new arrivals.
"Let's hope the smoke is thick enough to hide our scent," said Buffy. "Riley, any radio signal from your teams, yet?"
"Nothing yet."
Off to the right, there was a raised area where four people lay unconscious on neat piles of trash. A fifth trash pile was empty.
They already had replacements ready. So how long did Mary have?
"Four people?" whispered Buffy, turning to Giles. "I thought the recipe called for one."
Giles was staring, his mouth a straight line, but Xander couldn't see more through the red firelight glinting off his glasses.
"Maybe it was their plan to collect a set all along," said Riley.
"They may be opening more than one door," said Giles, slowly like he was still figuring things out, "or simply backing up their plan with redundant extras."
"Either way, I'm not a fan," said Buffy. "Okay. You all see the wooden chest with the symbols painted all over? That's the vessel. When we go down there we have to protect that. If the one making the spell gets as far as unhooking those people's souls, they'll be safe in there until we can put them back."
The chest was in between all the unconscious people, looking old and battered like they'd pulled it off the curb on college moving day. Maybe they had.
"I think we know who's the king in town." Riley pointed to the centre where the rats were parting for a brown rat who looked exactly like them, except he was wearing a dirty blue Yankees jacket like a cape and an honest-to-god tiara. It was hard to be sure from here, but it looked like the plastic kind Jen would have begged for at Coney Island when she was little. A couple dozen vampires trailed after him in two neat lines, more rats falling in behind like a Macy's parade gone seriously wrong.
"You know," said Xander, "I don't see stuff like this anymore."
Buffy bumped their shoulders. "Is that how it is out in normal world? Is this weird?"
The rat reached the stage and swung off the jacket with a flourish to reveal fur covered in inky black smudges, like the symbols on the chest had been painted into his fur as well.
"Evil leader: yes, but she's no king," said Buffy.
Xander gave her a sideways look. "You can tell?"
"See the dark one next to her?"
They all leaned forward to see the darker rat with enormous- oh. That one was a boy-rat.
"I'm not going to ask where you learned to sex rats."
"A Slayer skill set is wide and varied. Ask me some time what I know about-"
Giles cut in. "Riley, by any chance do you have binoculars on you? Or some kind of sight?"
"Sure do."
Riley passed a one-piece like a rifle-scope to Giles, who looked through. "Damn."
Buffy peered over at the raised area Giles was examining. "Remember how I hate it when you say that?"
Giles passed the scope back to Xander and pointed. "Look at the chest."
Xander zoomed in close, and the bodies on the trash-biers became people. A guy in a tank top and jeans. A girl in a dress like she was on her way to go dancing. Now he could see the details of the knots and runes on the chest like the ones on Giles' laptop, like- He froze. "That's the symbol on Mary." Xander looked at Riley. "Tell me your guards on her bed are the awesomest you've got."
"It's worse than that," said Giles, and now Xander heard the worry in his voice. Worry on Giles was outright terror by anyone else's standards, and Xander's heart squirmed up his throat. "They've got four. They're not going to wait for her."
"That's not good?" Xander thought having the big scary magic scene with Mary at the other end of town sounded like the second best idea ever, right after not having it at all.
Giles' hand rested on Xander's back like he was trying to calm him. "They still have her symbol. She's tied to the ceremony. If they release her soul but she's too far away for it to be caught in the trunk, she'll be lost."
Xander wasn't calming. "You mean she'd be better off down there right now?"
"It had better not come to that."
"Then why are we still up here?"
Buffy put a hand on his shoulder, hard enough to remind him of her strength. "Because we don't help anyone if we get killed down here. We'll wait for back-up." She looked back over her shoulder. "Some soldiers would be good about now, Ri."
Riley checked the tricordery thing on his belt. "Nothing yet."
Giles' hand pressed Xander's back, turning him so they faced properly. "I told you, we'll have some time. The soul doesn't escape so easily, and Tara's ribbon will help to anchor her."
"But we won't have long."
"An hour? Two? I'm guessing."
Guessing wasn't reassuring, but having Giles here in his face was. Giles had asked Xander to trust him. Giles and Buffy would fix this. "Okay."
Only two days ago, Giles and Xander had been tangled on the couch, flipping through photos together and Xander's biggest worry had been hurting Giles with all his stupid insecurities. Which he did, all the time, but here Giles was anyway. Xander wished he knew how to say how much it meant to have Giles here right now, but he knew for sure he'd screw it up. After this was over, Xander would show him. He was much better at the showing than the saying.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 37
Dr Squidlove appreciates feedback. Tasty, tasty feedback. I really really really really really a thousand times really (phrasing acquired from five year-old friend) will get back to answering it. In the meantime I am cuddling it.
Just for the record, gloriana and antennapedia insisted I had to put all this plot in. They are therefore the reason Giles and Xander are fighting beasties instead of making the beast with two backs. I'm just saying, if it was up to me, they'd be naked right now, and one of them would be on his knees.
S.
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove@@@livejournal.com
Summary: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his Hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact... where the hell is Giles?
Rated R for sex.
Thanks to gloriana and antennapedia for incredibly helpful mid-construction betas, and lunabee for early chapters, and to huzzlewhat for final checking on the run. And gloriana again for major late-construction revisions.
The Buffy universe is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Borrowed with all due love and respect.
Please ask before archiving.
Feedback ohgodyesplease.
Full headers are on chapter one.
Wordcount this part: 3588
Sorry. Sorry. Very sorry. Here I am.
Previously, in chapter: 36
Waiting in Mary's hospital room, Xander worried about seeing Buffy, but she arrived and hugged him and made things better. Also, she brought Riley, who brought an army. Then she broke the news that they were headed down into the tunnels to wring Mary's cure out of some bad guy. Xander announced he was coming too.
Buffy and Xander had time to chat in the tunnels. Giles' claims that she was totally in favour of the Giles/Xander relationship were not exaggerated. Their happy reunion was interrupted by the news that Mary's attackers may already have a replacement, and so their descent began.
New York
chapter 37: Cliche
by Dr Squidlove
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Buffy stopped at the top of a stairwell. "This is our door." Their super-military flashlights didn't penetrate the hanging dust at all. The stairs were rickety woven aluminum, the sort that shook and rattled under Buffy's first couple of steps. She gave them a dubious look, and then started down into the black.
Riley went next, and Xander gestured for Giles to go after him. Xander went last, so he could keep Giles in his sights. The thunk of four pairs of feet on the stairs was like thunder.
"So much for stealth," Xander said.
Giles glanced back. "I'm sorry?"
"Exactly."
Giles looked puzzled, and then seemed to realise it didn't matter and offered a vague smile and nod.
They went down for a long time. Every flight down was one Xander's knees reminded him they were going to have to climb back up again when this was done. At the bottom Buffy paused. From a flight above and behind her, Xander could see the way she straightened, knew she was closing her eyes and reaching out with those mysterious Slayer senses. She went left.
It stank down here. Stagnant water puddled on the rough concrete floor between decaying trash and things unidentifiable. There was a splash and quiet curse every time one of the group stepped in a deeper pool their flashlights had missed. The walls were sand struck brick, older than the subway.
Xander spent all his time watching Giles' back, brown jacket and loose blue jeans. It was better than psyching himself out watching for stuff the Slayer and super-soldier couldn't see. He was thinking about Giles and thinking about Mary and thinking... well, a whole lot of things. How he liked that Giles was with them. Xander didn't have to protect him. Or, he did, but at the same time Giles was here to protect Xander. Giles knew this world better than Xander did, and it was a mutual protecting deal. There was no way Xander ever could have handled Mary coming down here.
There was more than one way Xander trusted Giles.
More stairs, more tunnels, more stairs, their waving flashlights squeezed between shadows. Old hand-formed bricks gave way to hewn rock. Xander hoped he wasn't going to have to find his own way out. It felt like no one human had ever been here.
They threaded out of the passage onto a wooden walkway running the length of another, broader tunnel, and shone their flashlights down to the ground ten feet below.
Riley moved ahead and stomped his boot a couple of times to make sure the wood was solid. "Are we seriously on a wooden walkway? This must be pre-war."
Xander shone his light up and down the balusters. "1920s." Nobody responded, and it was a few seconds before his flashlight caught the quizzical looks. "What? I'm in construction."
"Xander Harris, the Giles of twentieth century artifacts," said Buffy.
"I'll take it." That actually sounded pretty cool. "So? Which way?"
Buffy barely hesitated before pointing left. "That way."
"Your slayer senses tell you that?" asked Riley.
"Sometimes with evil, you just follow your nose." Buffy made a retching face. "My nose says evil is that way."
It did stink. Like New York distilled, which it probably was. An entire city's drunks pissing in drains, filtered through layers of Manhattan trash.
Xander was ready to get moving again, but Buffy raised her hand and they all froze. It took a couple of seconds before they could hear it. Chittering, far down the tunnel to the right.
They were armed this time, Xander reminded himself. Buffy and Riley were with them. He wasn't going to be a torn shirt on an old corpse in a lost subway tomb, and neither was Giles.
The wooden handrail creaked under Riley's weight and he eased back. They all peered into the black as the sound got louder and somehow thicker. The creatures were close and coming fast but the super-awesome military flashlights didn't seem so impressive anymore.
"Should we be maybe moving?" asked Xander.
"Give 'em a headache, Ri," said Buffy.
Riley shuffled past them all to the back of the line. There was a click as he pulled a flash-bomb from his belt.
But the chittering sound wasn't quite the same as in the tunnel above, and Xander turned to see Giles cocking his head as well. It wasn't the same. "Wait," said Xander just as Riley called "Flash!" and he shielded his eyes just in time for the crack and blaze of magnesium.
There were squeals everywhere but not the screeching of the lepti-vamp-things, and in the afterglow of the flash-bomb Xander yelled "Rats!" about half a second before everyone else. Rats were racing down the tunnel.
Rats, and Xander was no stranger to fucking enormous rats but these things were carry-your-children-away huge, need-their-own-seats-on-the-subway huge, run-for-your-lives huge.
Turned out Riley learned some bad language in the army, finishing his string of curses with, "Is this a good time to tell you how much I hate rats?"
"Where are they going?" Giles cried over the squeals.
"Same place we are!" Buffy yelled back.
But the flash had muddled them and some were tripping each other and some were climbing the walls, and team Sunnydale was about to be surrounded by ratzillas.
Buffy started swinging at rats scrambling up the wall ahead of them just as one clambered onto the walkway by Xander and hissed. Giles jumped in and kicked it back into the throng below a second before one dropped from above onto his back. Xander hit it hard with the butt of his axe and again to knock it free and hauled Giles backwards, just a moment of Giles against him and a 'thank you', and then they were both beating back at shadows of rats, half the battle lost in darkness until a scrape and hiss as Riley threw out a yellow flare that lit the swarming rats like day. Thinning out now, thank-
"Vamp!"
Xander turned and something slammed into him and wood crashed and the ground was gone. Xander was falling. A hand grabbed his and Xander cried out as his shoulder wrenched but he was dangling, not falling, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of him. Riley had him, arm bulging as he strained to hold Xander's wrist. It hurt.
Giles called his name and Xander struggled to get his attention off the burning agony in his shoulder. Because Giles was fighting a vampire and there were horror movie rats below Xander's feet. Remembering the rats gave Xander the strength to get his other hand up to the boards, just as Giles' vampire whooshed and dust drifted down.
Giles' arms were around him, hauling him onto solid-ish wood, checking him over. "Are you all right? Xander?"
Xander gritted his teeth as he rolled his shoulder. "I'm okay. Thanks, Ri-"
Riley was already on his feet for three more vampires barrelling down the walkway and Giles jumped over Xander to back him up.
Xander was still struggling to his feet when Giles was thrown against the wall and stumbled back over him, a foot on Xander's hand and the pair of them sprawled back to the deck as Riley and the vampires crashed through the railing to the rats below. Riley's cussing drowned out the indignant squeals as he came up swinging. "Could use some back-up!"
Buffy vaulted over the rail. She was fighting before she landed and it was nothing like Xander remembered. It was no cemetery punch-up; there was no dancing around, no repartee. Every blow counted, every stake found its mark. Rats hit the wall and fell still; vampires dissolved. She was ruthless, cold fire, and Riley was clear before the screams had faded.
Xander was glad there was nothing else to fight up here, because he hadn't been able to tear his eyes away.
Now he turned to Giles, who didn't seem to think climbing off Xander was any kind of priority. Xander wasn't going to rush him. "Are you okay?"
"Says the man with the bleeding face who recently was hung over the side like a sock. Are you sure you're all right?" Giles had his arm, was looking manic. "They've opened your lip again." He magicked out his handkerchief to wipe the blood from Xander's mouth. Xander hadn't noticed anything over the tearing pain in his shoulder, but he could flex his fingers. No serious damage.
Giles' fingers brushed his shoulder and then settled, gently feeling along the muscles. "You're hurt."
Xander reached up to cover his hands. "Just wrenched it. It'll keep." On a whim, he kissed the side of Giles' mouth with the side of his own mouth that wasn't cut. He liked the way that softened Giles' face. Xander sat up and looked over the broken rail. "Are you two okay down there?"
The stampede was gone. Down in the tunnel Buffy gave a little shudder before reaching down to pick up one of the bodies. "Rats? In New York? Could this be any more cliche?"
It looked like an ordinary rat, except horrifyingly enormous. She had it by the scruff of its neck above her head, and its back claws were by her thighs, tail trailing the ground.
"I suppose we ought to be glad this isn't the Florida sewers," said Giles. "We'd be dealing with fifty-foot alligators."
Riley shuddered. "I'll take the alligators."
Giles finally climbed to his feet and offered Xander a hand up, holding on for half a minute longer than he needed to. Not as long as Xander needed.
They set off again, leaving the fading flare light behind them. Xander's adrenaline levels were slipping down from 'hanging by one arm over a stream of giant rats' to merely 'walking through demon-infested tunnels towards some unknown battle to save his ex-wife.'
Kate and Jen were sitting in classrooms down in the East Village, with no idea what their father was doing, or what it was going to take to make Mary well again, and Xander didn't know if he'd hugged them hard enough this morning.
He couldn't raise them alone. Mary was the stable one, the one Jen and Kate respected, the mother they were going to need for all the teenage woman stuff. Xander was just... Xander. The same dumbass teenager he'd ever been, hiding in a thirty-seven year-old body. Jen thought he was clinically insane, and Kate was going to think the same thing when she was old enough. Xander couldn't do it without Mary. He had to get her back.
Xander and Giles stayed up on the walkway until they reached a ladder set into the wall and climbed down to join Buffy and Riley. Xander really hoped there wasn't going to be another rat-flood.
Giles dropped back to walk beside him. "How are you doing?"
"A little battered. You?"
"I'm fine. No, I meant... With all of this." Giles waved his flashlight around the tunnel. "Being down here."
"You mean this horrible nightmare I'm having where my old life is being reborn under the streets of New York City?" Somewhere above them, ten million people were working and shopping and honking their horns, and down here it was like Xander might turn the corner and there'd be Angelus or Glory.
"I'm sorry." Giles gave him a look that Xander couldn't read in the gloom, but it made Xander realise how selfish he sounded.
He sounded that way because he was. Three months ago he'd raged at Giles for dragging him in to help a stranger, but here was Giles and Buffy and Riley and an army squad, and none of them had to be dragged here. Xander glanced at Giles and away again. He wondered what Giles would think if he knew how much of Xander's brain was dedicated right now to making excuses for never doing this again. In answer to every one Xander heard Giles' chilled voice from that night: "I hope there's someone more willing if one day Kate or Jenny is in need of assistance."
Deep down, Xander was terrified that he'd find himself back on the working end of a stake just because he was too chicken to tell Giles what a chicken he was. He didn't want to know what Giles would say if he tried to walk away, and he really didn't want to know what Giles would do. Could he handle it, if Giles was too disgusted with him to stay?
"I'm glad you're with me," Xander said at last, just because it had been too long a gap and he didn't know what else to say.
"There's nowhere else I would choose to be," said Giles.
Of course there wasn't. Because Giles was one of those hero types, while Xander was the guy who cracked the lame jokes. "I've figured out one thing for sure."
Giles tipped his head, was probably raising a questioning eyebrow.
"My girls are never getting on the subway." Vampire-bats and old school vampires and giant rats all rolled up in one exciting tunnel system. And probably more. Probably everything that was evil was down here somewhere.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They'd dropped to a slow jog when Buffy stopped and they all piled into her. She lifted a finger to her lips and tipped her flashlight through a section of ripped-out bricks into a rough five foot high tunnel with claustrophobia written all over it. Great. She turned off her light and they all gathered close before copying. Xander was about as close to Giles as he could get with clothes on, and feeling a lot better for it until Riley turned off his light last and the world went dark.
Xander could hear everyone's breathing, clothes shifting, and somewhere through that tunnel, rats. There was the faint scent of burning.
"Light," whispered Riley.
There was. It should have been pitch black this deep, but as their eyes adjusted, total blindness faded to deep grey. Deep enough that Xander wasn't sure if he was seeing Giles' silhouette or just imagining it, but the light was definitely coming from that tunnel.
"Come on," whispered Buffy, and there was a soft scrape as she got moving. Xander came last, bent over to keep his head clear of the ceiling, holstering his axe so he could keep one hand on Giles' hip and one on the rough rock wall. Giles reached back to press his hand. The ground was uneven and Xander's heart skipped every time Giles stumbled a little, felt Giles still any time Xander put his own foot wrong.
A long bend to the left, and then a dip, the way growing lighter until a sudden bend to the right led the way through to-
Okay. Well, pretty sure this was their destination. Xander swallowed hard. "I don't remember seeing this on any of the Manhattan digging hazard maps."
They were looking down into an enormous natural-looking cavern carved from darkly glittering gneissic rock, like a great gothic underground Yankee stadium with rising damp instead of advertising signs. The place was lit by great piles of burning trash, each twice Xander's height or more, the ceiling lost in grey smoke that stung Xander's eyes. The place stank.
"No, seriously, guys," Riley said quietly, "I really hate rats."
"Here's your chance to kill a few," Buffy replied.
Wall-to-wall, the cavern was filled with mutant rats like the ones from the tunnel. Thousands. Grey and brown and black, crawling over each other and some pulling plastic shopping bags stuffed full.
"Why do I suddenly feel like a gingerbread soldier?" murmured Giles.
Xander felt a tug on his sleeve, and he followed the others around to a recessed spot where they could watch from out of view. The floor was thirty feet below, the swirling rats too preoccupied to notice the new arrivals.
"Let's hope the smoke is thick enough to hide our scent," said Buffy. "Riley, any radio signal from your teams, yet?"
"Nothing yet."
Off to the right, there was a raised area where four people lay unconscious on neat piles of trash. A fifth trash pile was empty.
They already had replacements ready. So how long did Mary have?
"Four people?" whispered Buffy, turning to Giles. "I thought the recipe called for one."
Giles was staring, his mouth a straight line, but Xander couldn't see more through the red firelight glinting off his glasses.
"Maybe it was their plan to collect a set all along," said Riley.
"They may be opening more than one door," said Giles, slowly like he was still figuring things out, "or simply backing up their plan with redundant extras."
"Either way, I'm not a fan," said Buffy. "Okay. You all see the wooden chest with the symbols painted all over? That's the vessel. When we go down there we have to protect that. If the one making the spell gets as far as unhooking those people's souls, they'll be safe in there until we can put them back."
The chest was in between all the unconscious people, looking old and battered like they'd pulled it off the curb on college moving day. Maybe they had.
"I think we know who's the king in town." Riley pointed to the centre where the rats were parting for a brown rat who looked exactly like them, except he was wearing a dirty blue Yankees jacket like a cape and an honest-to-god tiara. It was hard to be sure from here, but it looked like the plastic kind Jen would have begged for at Coney Island when she was little. A couple dozen vampires trailed after him in two neat lines, more rats falling in behind like a Macy's parade gone seriously wrong.
"You know," said Xander, "I don't see stuff like this anymore."
Buffy bumped their shoulders. "Is that how it is out in normal world? Is this weird?"
The rat reached the stage and swung off the jacket with a flourish to reveal fur covered in inky black smudges, like the symbols on the chest had been painted into his fur as well.
"Evil leader: yes, but she's no king," said Buffy.
Xander gave her a sideways look. "You can tell?"
"See the dark one next to her?"
They all leaned forward to see the darker rat with enormous- oh. That one was a boy-rat.
"I'm not going to ask where you learned to sex rats."
"A Slayer skill set is wide and varied. Ask me some time what I know about-"
Giles cut in. "Riley, by any chance do you have binoculars on you? Or some kind of sight?"
"Sure do."
Riley passed a one-piece like a rifle-scope to Giles, who looked through. "Damn."
Buffy peered over at the raised area Giles was examining. "Remember how I hate it when you say that?"
Giles passed the scope back to Xander and pointed. "Look at the chest."
Xander zoomed in close, and the bodies on the trash-biers became people. A guy in a tank top and jeans. A girl in a dress like she was on her way to go dancing. Now he could see the details of the knots and runes on the chest like the ones on Giles' laptop, like- He froze. "That's the symbol on Mary." Xander looked at Riley. "Tell me your guards on her bed are the awesomest you've got."
"It's worse than that," said Giles, and now Xander heard the worry in his voice. Worry on Giles was outright terror by anyone else's standards, and Xander's heart squirmed up his throat. "They've got four. They're not going to wait for her."
"That's not good?" Xander thought having the big scary magic scene with Mary at the other end of town sounded like the second best idea ever, right after not having it at all.
Giles' hand rested on Xander's back like he was trying to calm him. "They still have her symbol. She's tied to the ceremony. If they release her soul but she's too far away for it to be caught in the trunk, she'll be lost."
Xander wasn't calming. "You mean she'd be better off down there right now?"
"It had better not come to that."
"Then why are we still up here?"
Buffy put a hand on his shoulder, hard enough to remind him of her strength. "Because we don't help anyone if we get killed down here. We'll wait for back-up." She looked back over her shoulder. "Some soldiers would be good about now, Ri."
Riley checked the tricordery thing on his belt. "Nothing yet."
Giles' hand pressed Xander's back, turning him so they faced properly. "I told you, we'll have some time. The soul doesn't escape so easily, and Tara's ribbon will help to anchor her."
"But we won't have long."
"An hour? Two? I'm guessing."
Guessing wasn't reassuring, but having Giles here in his face was. Giles had asked Xander to trust him. Giles and Buffy would fix this. "Okay."
Only two days ago, Giles and Xander had been tangled on the couch, flipping through photos together and Xander's biggest worry had been hurting Giles with all his stupid insecurities. Which he did, all the time, but here Giles was anyway. Xander wished he knew how to say how much it meant to have Giles here right now, but he knew for sure he'd screw it up. After this was over, Xander would show him. He was much better at the showing than the saying.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 37
Dr Squidlove appreciates feedback. Tasty, tasty feedback. I really really really really really a thousand times really (phrasing acquired from five year-old friend) will get back to answering it. In the meantime I am cuddling it.
Just for the record, gloriana and antennapedia insisted I had to put all this plot in. They are therefore the reason Giles and Xander are fighting beasties instead of making the beast with two backs. I'm just saying, if it was up to me, they'd be naked right now, and one of them would be on his knees.
S.