ljs
in
gilesanya_fic
Of the Corvidae, by Lori
This fic is written for the Giles Hurt/Comfort Ficathon.
TITLE: Of the Corvidae
AUTHOR: Lori
PAIRING: Giles/Anya
RATING: Anybody, really.
LENGTH: 5700 words
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. The kind heron_pose provided further prompt-suggestions; the wonderful headrush100 and stateless82 read early drafts and reassured: my thanks to all.
NOTES and SUMMARY: My official prompt in the H/C Ficathon was "Giles/Anya, Anya's attempt to comfort Giles." The fic goes AU just before the end of Season Six "Hell's Bells."
The ravens' wings flash again, and now they're in the air, shimmering as if enchanted. He thinks of the old phrase for a multitude of these birds - an unkindness - and he takes a step back into the shadows.
OF THE CORVIDAE
11:00, the numbers on the mobile's screen flash.
Giles sits in his car, parked under a spreading tree on a moonlit lane, and calculates the time-shift. Eleven at night in Devon, three in the afternoon in Sunnydale. Anya should be marrying Xander just about... now.
He closes his eyes so that he can't see the numbers any more. He's been dreading this day - knowing that she loves Xander, hoping she would just bloody wake up to the mistake she's making, hating himself for that hope. No guarantee she'd choose him even if she did wake up, world-shaking amnesiac kisses and emotional connection notwithstanding.
Then he opens his eyes. He has work to do.
But when he checks his contacts on speed-dial, he sees her name first on the list - ANYA, Magic Box; home-- and he's hit by another wave of longing. She's only a click away. No, he tells himself, she's a continent away, and a lifetime, and a one-and-a-half-page single-spaced accounting of reasons why he can't say anything. He's in another sodding world.
He scrolls down to his colleague Mark Robson's name. When Robson answers the call, Giles tells him that he's arrived at the ruin known as the Tower of Ravens, ready to investigate the demon-sightings of which a new, college-age contact has informed the Council outpost in Bath and which they passed on to him. He fingers the eighteenth-century volume of West Country legends which the contact passed on as well. The book's out of period, rather out of time. He doesn't entirely believe it's accurate.
After all, he grew up twenty miles away from here, in a house he now lets to the Westbury coven, and he's never heard of any bloody Tower of Ravens before. He's only found one ambiguous corroborating reference in the literature, too. Nevertheless, he might as well investigate, get his mind off all he's lost, try to solidify his new place in the Field section of the Council.
As he gets out of his Audi, phone in one hand and small-sword in the other, he says, “I'm sure you'll see my car, Robson. The ruin is right here, I can just see something over the treetops... Er, anyway, I'll survey the outside and check for any dropped scales before you arrive.”
“Sorry I'm late. It's all the bleating sheep on the road, you'd think it was a plot,” Robson says for the third time.
"No matter." Even as unhappy as he is, Giles can't repress a smile. He goes deeper into chiaroscuro night. A light breeze stirs the budding tree branches overhead, rustle and shadow and unease accompanying him.
Then he says quietly into the mobile, “I'm walking down the path. 's wooded here -- two more beeches, and the ruin's just there through another bend in the path,” and he steps into a circle of beaten grass.
He lifts his sword into moonglow, then lowers it. He looks again at the estranging light poured over the ruin before him. The old stone shimmers as if it's alive.
Then black wings glitter: one bird, two, three, more, all rustles and living shadows, settling in the cool blue light. “Right, I see what looks to be a good dozen ravens perching on and around the old tower. No demons as yet, but the book says the Corvidae will be in the tower proper.”
Robson's voice says faintly, “Such a stupid confusing name for demons who are seen with actual specimens of the genus Corvidae, and also, Giles, do stop playing David Attenborough. I'll be there in a bit, just-”
The signal fades. The phone dies.
The ravens' wings flash again, and now they're in the air, shimmering as if enchanted. He thinks of the old phrase for a multitude of these birds - an unkindness - and he takes a step back into the shadows.
But one raven darts at Giles - more colours in its indigo feathers, he notes dazedly, and the oddest semblance of a crown on its head. It is silent. The whole night is silent. There is only the beating of its wings as it covers the waxing gibbous moon.
Out of the wingbeats come a single, commanding word, then a kiss on the forehead.
Giles' mobile and sword drop from his hand, and his world goes dark.
......................................
"Anyanka," D'Hoffryn says, "come," and he shows Anya the amulet. It looks ugly and out of place in this empty room at the Sunnydale Bisons' Lodge. She wonders numbly, again, what the deal is with naming the joint after an animal who doesn't belong so much in coastal California.
She can't cry any more. She can't stay here, either, where everyone watched her walk down the aisle alone after Xander left her. Alone...
She tripped on her hem on her way back up the aisle, and now she slides her heel over the trailing fabric, takes a deep shuddering breath, and tears it off the rest of the way. It doesn't help.
“Come on, sweetie,” Halfrek says. “Come back to the ones who care for you.”
Somehow Anya doesn't believe this statement, even though the evidence is wearing robes and solicitous looks in front of her.
Does it matter what she chooses? She thinks it might, but it hurts too much to think.
Instead, she picks up a flower she took from one of the arrangements Giles had sent from England. It smells of this world, which she's grown to love again, with its good work and ruggedly handsome business partners and money and chocolate and out-of-place bison and... lots of things. She wants to stay in this world, except she's alone again, just like before.
She brushes her cheek with soft petals. She's been missing Giles so much since the day of Willow's spell. She's enjoyed having the shop to herself, of course, but she didn't have anyone to talk to except Tara occasionally, and Dawn even less. No, she's missed him, not just his informational or kind or sometimes deeply irritating conversation, which anyway she's had on the telephone. He's called a lot, actually, and kept asking her if she was all right.
For the past months she's kept waking herself up with dreams about him. She knows they're about him, that is, but she doesn't remember the specifics. She couldn't let herself remember the specifics when she was engaged to Xander.
“Come on, sweetie,” Halfrek says, and “Come on,” D'Hoffryn echoes, and the amulet swings in a circle, human to demon to human to--
In her tote bag, her cell phone rings. She knows it's not Xander even before she looks, it's -- “Giles!” she says, when she sees the number on the screen, and then, “Oh, Giles,” she says into the phone.
A strange male English male answers her. “Um, no, I'm not Giles, but I have his phone with me, and, well... is this Anya?”
“Yes, this is Anya Jenkins,” she says, and D'Hoffryn rustles his robes and frowns.
“Right. Um...” He sounds distracted and distraught. “Robson here. Watcher. You're first on Giles' call list, so, um, if you could tell the other folk in Sunnydale he's been hurt--”
“What?” Anya's already halfway out of her chair.
“Demon-attack, I think. I just found him on patrol, he was unconscious. We're at the coven - his old home?-- in Westbury now.”
She doesn't feel numb any more. In a voice she knows is too piercing: “Is he okay? Is he going to be okay?”
Robson doesn't answer for a long, long breath, and that's answer enough.
“Westbury coven, Devon, right. I know where it is, I'll be there tomorrow. Probably late, because of stupid time zones,” she says, then cuts off Robson's spluttering with a decisive click.
The amulet in D'Hoffryn's hand tempts her for a moment. If she had her old power, she could be at Giles' side right now with just a wish and a teleportation spell. Human to demon to human, swinging in a circle....
Then she rushes forward, catching D'Hoffryn and Hallie in fleeting hugs, saying, “Thank you so much for coming, thank you for supporting me, but I have to go. I have to do something. It's Giles, you see.” Then, “Please take your wedding gift back, too, I think it'll die while I'm gone and the tentacles will get all nasty.”
Over their protests and questions she catches up her bag, kicks away the strip of torn wedding-dress fabric, and runs. The flower he sent is still in her hand.
She carries it with her onto the plane.
...............................
Sunlight - well, he thinks it's sunlight - is yellow-warm on Giles' closed eyelids. Waves hiss nearby.
He can't move.
Cautiously he opens his eyes. Closes them again, because clearly he's still asleep and dreaming. Opens them to the same scene.
He appears to be buried on a rocky Devon beach - his head and neck free from the fine pebble-sand, a stone for a pillow, his body encased. It's strangely comfortable to be so trapped, he finds. Or rather, it would be if there were any assurance he'd ever get out of here. The rocks keep away the pain he somehow knows he's feeling.
He can't actually see the ocean, but the brine-tang is unmistakable. And yes, the sun is shining.
In fact, the rays seems to pour over the feathers of a bloody enormous raven, perched on a rock where Giles thinks his own chest should be. An odd semblance of a crown gleams on the raven's head.
“Right, I've gone mad,” Giles says to himself, and shuts his eyes.
“No, you haven't,” says a croaky female voice.
When he opens his eyes again, the raven is surveying him. “Hullo, Rupert Giles,” she says, all merriment and inquiring cocked head.
“Hullo,” he says. “Er, where am I?”
“My country.” The raven flutters and twists, and he sees that the crown is as real as anything else in this strange place. “I've brought you here for a reason, Watcher.”
“And what would that reason be? Um, sorry, don't know your name.”
She glides forward in a most unbirdlike motion, then with one wing touches his face. He feels the oddest shock - pain coming, closer now, closer - before she says, “You may call me ... Princess. Yes, I'd like that.” Another feather-brush, another shock. “I won't tell you the reason yet. You believe in secrets, don't you?”
Dizzily he thinks of so much hidden in his life - an old tattoo, an old nickname, handcuffs in a woman's stolen coat, a Council ritual which briefly took Buffy's power, a man dying under his hand, a desire for flight. Then black wing moves down across his cheekbone, and he thinks of, longs for, Anya. He can still taste her if he presses hard enough on memory.
“Some secrets, yes... er, Princess.”
The Raven Princess laughs, wild and low. “So wise, Rupert Giles! And yet not. Not yet!”
She leaps into the sun, raven not-raven raven, and the sound of her wings beats like a cold wave, and the pain washes over him so fast that he loses what he almost knows.
“You're in my country now,” she says, and he closes his eyes against the agony and sunlight.
...............................
It's raining when Anya arrives, slightly worse for wear, in Westbury the next evening. Teleportation would have been easier, she's thought several times - but over the Atlantic she also worked out the real cost of accepting D'Hoffryn's offer. Easier, but much too expensive.
Giles' colleague Robson picks her up at the train station. He's a soft-edged, middle-aged man, pleasant and sort of vague, which makes her realize just how unlike that superficial appearance Giles really is. On the way he tells her how he found Giles lying unconscious on the grass in front of this Tower of Ravens. There hadn't been any birds around, Robson says, but something possibly demonic had been stirring inside the ruin.
Anya asks, “What kind of demon was it?” The name might make a difference.
Robson says that Giles called it Corvidae, which isn't a demon Anya knows. Anyhow, Giles was working from a specific volume which Robson hasn't examined, even though he plans to read through it at his home tonight. Anya says she'd like to see the book, she might be able to help if she knew what specific thing went after Giles, and Robson promises he'll bring it tomorrow.
The windshield wipers sweep from side to side, click swoosh click swoosh. Anya thinks they kind of sound like birds' wings battering the air.
The place belonging to Giles but occupied by the coven is grey and solid. A blue-and-gold sign set in a tangle of irises announces it as Spyglass House. Funny name for a Watcher's home, she thinks. Funny way to hide in plain sight, but that's Giles all over.
Grace Harkness and Rowena the coven's healer meet Anya at the door. They're really nice to her - putting her stuff in a small dressing-room next to Giles' second-floor bedroom, giving her a cup of tea, telling her that they're glad Giles has someone of his own to help take care of him. He's mentioned her several times, they say, which stills her instinctive protest that she only wishes she were someone of his own. Except she doesn't wish any more, of course.
When they take her into Giles' room, however, she has to stomp on a dark Wish with both feet (metaphorically). Who dared hurt Giles like this, she thinks in a surge of fury, and falls to her knees beside his bed and takes his hand.
His skin is cold, and he lies unnaturally still. The bedside candles Rowena has lit - Anya recognizes the scents of healing - soften that drawn, handsome face, but Anya can tell. Wherever he is, he's in pain.
Rowena touches Anya's shoulder. “We don't know what's wrong, exactly. He's not been bitten, as far as we can determine, although there's this.” The healer leans over Giles and brushes back the hair from his high forehead. At his temple there's a small red mark, more than a bruise. “It's... something.”
Anya can't stand inaction, but, “If we don't know what's wrong with him, what can we do? Because he can't drink tisanes, and we can't do a spell if we don't know the purpose, and...”
Rowena says gently, “Just talk to him, Anya.”
When Grace and Rowena leave her alone with him, she brings his hand to her cheek and rubs it for warmth.
“Hi, Giles, it's Anya,” she says, just a bit louder than the rain against the windows. “I'm here to take care of you. Even if I'm not sure it'll help since we don't know what we're fighting.”
................................
For Giles, pain has retreated - for the moment, anyway. Faintly he hears a familiar wonderful voice; distantly he feels a sweet touch on his buried self.
“That's Anya,” he says to himself, “which is insane, mate. It's just dream heaped upon dream.” He opens his eyes.
The Raven Princess sits several feet away, her head raised to the sun.
Beyond her, however, he can see further than before. The sea is indeed nearby, too close perhaps for a man buried on a beach. In that choppy blue-grey sea rises a stone arch - a Durdle Door even in the ravens' country, he thinks. And through the arch --
Through the arch, through mist and sea spray, he sees his old bedroom at Spyglass House. He sees candleflame all around, he sees himself lying motionless on his bed, he sees Anya brushing her mouth over his palm.
He hears her soft, “--you've got a long lifeline, Giles, and I think--” but then her voice fades out, a lost signal.
"Anya!" His voice doesn't carry. He's trapped, and the hurt is coming back.
The Raven Princess looks up. With a lift of gleaming wing she blocks his view of the arch. “Pay attention, Rupert Giles,” she says. “Remember you're in my world now.”
“What? Wait.” He can't think clearly. “Is that... is that just a dream? Anya can't be in Westbury, she's on her honeymoon...”
He loses his voice at that. Stupid.
The Raven Princess seems to agree. Her other wing passes in front of her eyes, almost as if she were pinching the bridge of a nonexistent nose. “Oh, Watcher, don't pretend to be an idiot.” She flies forward, a dart of black under sun. “Maybe this Anya-woman is in your England, maybe she isn't. That's not at all important.”
“No, Anya's important to me--”
His words die in a storm of feathers, and the pain rushes back like cold sharp seawater. But he can still hear the Raven Princess say, “Rupert Giles, let us deal fairly here. I will let you go if you promise to stay.”
He closes his eyes before a stray feather-blade cuts him. In the dark, Anya's touch seems stronger.
...............................
Near the candles, but not too near, Anya sets a small green vase in which stands a couple of irises. After a break for cheese and fruit and more tea, she went out in the soft evening rain to pick them from the Spyglass House garden. Maybe the flowers will bring him back.
Also, when Anya asked, Rowena gave her some lotion. When she opens the bottle, Anya identifies lemon balm for healing, and other herbs she can't place. It's okay, though -- she's sure that good faith lives in this house.
“Not that I'm apparently a great judge of character,” she says to Giles as she climbs onto the bed next to him. “I mean, I thought Xander was my best friend as well as lover. But I'm pretty sure that a best friend doesn't leave the other best friend at the altar to tell the world she's been dumped. Of course there's the actual dumping as well. One sharp yank, and we're broken beyond repair.” She pauses, thinking of her last months of doubt and unhappiness and longing. “But we were already broken. I just hadn't admitted it.”
Saying the truth aloud hurts. But the ache passes quickly, washed away by rain on the window and by her need to make Giles feel better. Helping others helps herself... she used to tell herself that when she did vengeance, but this time she knows it's truth.
Sitting crosslegged on the bed, she takes Giles' right hand and puts its strong, motionless weight on her thigh. Then she pours some of the potion in his cupped palm. Once she's put the bottle away, she begins to smooth the potion into his hand. Palm first, then around to the back of his hand, then each finger in turn: she passes her slick fingers over his skin, warming him; she traces lifelife and loveline; she finds tension-points, she digs, she untangles; she counts his good long bones.
As she smooths and warms, untangles and counts, she talks. She tells him how much she has missed him - him, Giles who likes both good scotch and Earl Grey tea, dirty filthy blues music and tidy reports, swords and sarcasm. To her he's not just the Watcher-guy or paperwork type or fellow businessperson. She tells him she's free to say how much she's longed for him, now that she's no longer tied to Xander. Then she tells him that she's increased Magic Box profit by at least ten per cent each month, and when he wakes up he'd better admit he was wrong about the new section of charms she's put in, she doesn't want to say she told him so except she totally did.
“Giles, you do have to wake up,” she whispers when she finishes that hand. “Please.”
He doesn't move, even when she tries to imagine he does. But his skin is warmer to the touch.
She repeats the process more slowly with his left hand - it's his dominant one, she knows. Palm, back of hand, each finger in turn: she smooths, warms, untangles, counts. He's got more old damage on this hand, and she takes more care with him.
She ignores her own shocks of desire, the sex-warmth swirling down her spine.
This time she tells him about waking up under Willow's spell. She tells him about how she wanted this tall, ruggedly attractive man -- “you,” she clarifies in an aside, in case he's listening; mystical stasis can confuse a person -- how she'd been annoyed and delighted by him at the same time. She tells him about how virile he looked, all cross yet competent, duelling that sword-fighting skeleton she'd accidentally conjured. She tells him how his kiss tasted. If she presses on memory, she says, she can still taste him.
This time when she finishes, she kisses the tips of his fingers. “Please wake up for me,” she whispers.
He doesn't move. Except... except his lips, once, as if he's trying to say something.
Grace Harkness comes in shortly thereafter, and much as Anya wants to protest she can stay up, she's been socked by jetlag and sadness. She tells Grace she'll take over again in the morning.
In the small room next to Giles -- which smells of him, leather and good lime soap and herbs from the garden -- Anya sleeps at last.
..................................
Giles hears everything she says. He feels her touch clear as anything, strong and kind, on his buried skin. He sees her candlelit beauty, smiling-sad, through the arch.
The longer Anya speaks, the deeper she touches him, the closer his home seems.
“I need to go back,” he tells the Raven Princess when the scene through the arch darkens and fades away. “That's my... that's Anya, who needs me.”
“Many people have needed you, Rupert Giles. Have you always gone back to them?” She cocks her black head, then playfully tickles his nose with a tip of wing.
He thinks of Randall long ago, Jenny, Buffy just a few months past. “No. That's why it's even more vital now, to make up for what's lost. And...” Truth comes more easily to him in this world. “I need Anya, too. So much.”
When the Raven Princess huffs, feathers fly everywhere. “But that's not the way it works, it's not the bargain I've offered,” she croaks, and the sea resounds bargain as it crashes against the rocks. “Promise you'll stay with me, and I'll let you go. The end.”
“Not much of a bargain, really,” he says.
The Raven Princess croaks something he's just as glad he can't interpret. Then, from across the sea come two more raven-calls, deeper and wilder. She shivers at the sound, black wings drawing down darkness to blanket her world.
“Think, think, think,” she says peremptorily. “I'll ask you again in the morning, Rupert Giles.”
She disappears into starless indigo. In her absence, waves crash against stone, move through empty space. Tide's coming in.
Despite pain and fear, Rupert Giles is thinking indeed. And under the rocks which hold him fast, his hands can now move.
................................
“Giles, I've been thinking about you,” Anya says to his still form the next morning. “Well, I've been dreaming of you, and okay, in a sexual way but I won't elaborate in case you consider that creepy - but also thinking.”
She looks around. Morning rainlight comes through the uncurtained windows, revealing not just the bed and nightstands and the big armoire in the corner but also a floor-to-ceiling wall of books. “Maybe you'll come back if I remind you of things you love, like your childhood reading material!”
He doesn't respond, but then she doesn't exactly expect him to. He didn't move a few minutes ago when she dabbed his lips with a cloth soaked in his favourite breakfast tea. More, he didn't move when, obeying impulse, she put her mouth to the small red mark at his temple and kissed away the strange wild taint that lingered on his skin. When she washed her mouth out afterward, she spat blood.
Pushing away her fear for him, she runs her finger along the spines of the books: lots of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson; some H.P. Lovecraft (which makes her frown, as she detests people who get it wrong, and hello, she's seen Cthulhu in his proper dimension); English boys' adventure books; Lord Dunsany. None of these seems right.
“I don't know what... oh. Oh, hey!” she says, upon seeing the perfect choice. It's factual - he likes facts, just as she does - and also potentially stimulating and/or useful.
She slides the heavy book out of its place, then goes to him. Again she sits crosslegged on the bed beside him; again she takes his strong, motionless hand and rests it on her thigh, so his fingertips can touch the open book.
Her own fingertips dance over his arm, seeking her own comfort more than his, before she bends her head toward the printed words. “Okay, Giles. This morning we're reading from the Concise Oxford Dictionary. I've opened it at random to the latter pages of E, which is a very nice letter.”
Rainlight is tricky, she thinks. For a moment it almost looks like he smiles.
She caresses his forearm one more time, then begins. "'Eustasy. Noun. A change of sea level throughout the world....'"
..................................
Giles gazes at the stone curve, a perfect frame for Anya's curves of body and wit, and smiles. She's even closer to him now, although not quite close enough to touch.
During the long night in the Raven Princess's world, he's spent time in thought, and even in his prison-bed of rock, he's able to move more - just a fraction, but a start. It's as if the night's tide has begun to eat away at his bonds. Eustasy, indeed.
And when Anya's lips touched him, he felt the most incredible rush of clarity - poison drawn out, mist burning away - and his wound closed over.
From above comes a flutter and downward rush in the sunlight. The Raven Princess has returned.
“So, Rupert Giles,” she begins without preamble, “are you ready to make a deal?”
“No, Princess,” he says. “I have a few questions first.”
>Her wings beat, once, twice, in glittering annoyance.
He says, “Am I right in thinking that ravens are creatures of great insight? Er, persons, who value wisdom?”
She smiles. “You are right indeed, Watcher. A little teaching, and you'll be a person of wisdom too.”
He looks through the arch at Anya, reading. He can't hear her now, but he does see the door in his own world open: she looks up at Robson, who's entering the room with a book in his hand.
Giles remembers the volume which led him to the Tower of Ravens in the first place. He moves his hands surreptitiously under the rock, and whispers a small spell to barricade this Durdle Door from any stray sound getting through, just in case. In this world he seems to have at least that much power.
Only then does he say, “Princess, person of insight... is there any such thing as a Corvidae demon? Or are you something quite different?”
Her laugh is raucous, louder than the sea.
..................................
Anya is at first slightly annoyed to have to stop reading - the dictionary is surprisingly fascinating and she has only just scratched the surface of F- but then she sees what Robson carries, and she's up and off the bed.
"The strangest thing," Robson repeats. "This book, well..."
She grabs it out of his hands before he can finish.
The volume seems to vibrate with uncanny power. She's fairly sure what the thing is after a quick scan - each turn of the pages a rustle of feather and a burst of sea-air, the letters seeming to fly off the thin leaves of paper. “Robson, who gave him this book?”
“Same new contact who reported the Tower of Ravens whatsit. A young woman, don't recall her name - but although she asked for him, Giles didn't meet her.”
“So the Council deals with shape-shifting, totally unreliable representatives of Faerie now?” Anya says sharply. “Are you people stupid or something?”
She turns to caress Giles' forehead, saying more quietly, “Not you, Giles. I mean, yes, we all remember the embarrassing retail incident with Glory, but... you're smart. Occasionally absent-minded, but smart, and handsome, and good. Who could blame anybody for wanting to steal you?”
Over Robson's stumbling protest-questions, she then goes to the door of the room and shouts for Grace, Rowena, anybody with a little spellcasting power and some big damn object made of iron.
..............................................
Giles' captor leaps into the sky, raven not-raven raven, and then drifts down as an impish, dark-eyed young woman with a shock of black feathery hair. She lands softly, then sits, crosses her legs, leans forward. “Well, then, Rupert Giles,” she says in her familiar croaky voice. “You guessed it.”
The ocean's rising, and saltwater begins to rush into his hidden bed of rock. He doesn't know if the Raven Princess is planning to let him drown in this faerie sea, in his new knowledge. “Hullo, Princess,” he says, playing for just a bit more time.
She touches his face with one talon-finger - which, oddly, makes him think of Anya's touch and her utterly human quality, unlike the Raven Princess's uncanny being. “Are you willing to deal now that you know, Watcher?”
“Er, not exactly. Always a question or two more.... How did you choose me?”
“I heard you.” She leans even closer to him -- his nose itches with the brush of black feathery hair. “Walking in faerie woods not too long ago? Talking to yourself?”
Bloody hell. At once he recalls the Sunday twilight ramble through a small pocket of ancient oaks - yes, not that far from the Tower of Ravens -- his muttering to himself about his longing for Anya, his worry about Buffy and Willow and the others, his dissatisfaction with his job.
The Raven Princess smiles. “I see that you remember walking on the borders of my family's land, Rupert Giles. I was just trying to help you - and, yes, have a Watcher of my own.”
“Yes, er, thank you, Princess. But, much as I appreciate your offer, I'd prefer to go home.”
She shifts in the light, raven not-raven, feathers transmuting into hair. “Do you even have a home, Rupert Giles? Your stupid Council's charms mean I can't pull you right into my Corvidae world - my father told me this too late -- but on the other hand, what's left for you in that one?” Her smile changes too, insight into predation. “If I send you back, you know, you're going to hurt.”
Tide's rising, bed's filling, pain's coming. He gazes at her as steadily as he can. “I accept the hurt. I do.”
The Raven Princess shrugs, changes form, grows. “Sorry, that's not the bargain. You'll stay here and die.”
Indigo wings lift to block the sky, and from somewhere overhead comes that deeper, wilder raven-cry -- it's her father on his way to help her kill him, Giles thinks. She answers in her own language, croak become song, and then turns her attention back to him. Raven-eyes go dark, pitch-dark, and the sharp beak comes closer.
The closed faerie-wound on his forehead starts to eat into him, infection from a kiss. Although Anya's protected him with her better one, perhaps it's not enough.
But then, suddenly, in his hands a ring of iron to hold onto, Anya's fingers guiding his - and he is pulled, bleeding and aching, through the fabric of the worlds, and --
And he's lying on his bed in Spyglass House, bleeding and aching. He's safe, surrounded by friends, held in Anya's strong grasp.
“Giles, honey!” she says, then, “Rowena, Grace, enough with the chanting. I think he's back.” Then, her mouth close to his, she says, “You are back, aren't you?”
“Yes, Anya, yes.” Despite shaking arms he's able to pull her further into him, feel her warmth and soft edges blanketing his battered self. She's here, and so is he.
....................................
“What time is it?” he says idly.
Anya makes a production of lifting his arm - still a little bruised from the passage between worlds - and reading the watch on his wrist. He's struck by how lovely she is in the blue light of the moon, even when making that face. “Eleven o'clock, more or less,” she says. “Hour from midnight.”
He smiles at her. “And what world is it?”
She wants to roll her eyes at him, he knows. But she answers with only the tiniest sigh, “Our world. Not the faeries', thank you very much.”
When his smile deepens, with a huff of annoyance she rearranges herself so her back is to his chest, his slightly sore arm draped over her shoulder. He kisses her hair. “Are you all right?”
“Yep. Are you?”
He thinks about the question seriously. In the week since his misadventure, there have been calls back and forth between Sunnydale and Westbury, transatlantic interventions in burgeoning Willow-disasters and Buffy-pain, and Anya's final difficult conversation with Xander; there have been Giles' long talks with Anya, and healing, and evening wine and mock-arguments in the folly in the rain-soaked Spyglass House gardens. Anya's even made her first trip to see his flat in Bath, of which she approves.
Rowena has told Giles that Anya's still healing too, that he must take this gently. He's trying, Christ knows.
“Yes.” He kisses her hair again - he allows himself that much expression of his feelings. “You awake as well?”
“Yes yes yes,” she says, weary and resigned. “To recap -- we're both here, we're fine, we're awake.”
“Thank God,” he murmurs.
There on the blanket under the beeches, she takes his hand. Even without potion, her fingers slide easily on his skin. She smooths, she warms, she digs and untangles, she counts, she comforts.
And with his mouth in her hair, his other hand fast on the iron ring protecting them both, he watches the Corvidae come again to their ruined tower: all rustles and living shadows, glittering black in the estranging moonlight.
TITLE: Of the Corvidae
AUTHOR: Lori
PAIRING: Giles/Anya
RATING: Anybody, really.
LENGTH: 5700 words
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. The kind heron_pose provided further prompt-suggestions; the wonderful headrush100 and stateless82 read early drafts and reassured: my thanks to all.
NOTES and SUMMARY: My official prompt in the H/C Ficathon was "Giles/Anya, Anya's attempt to comfort Giles." The fic goes AU just before the end of Season Six "Hell's Bells."
The ravens' wings flash again, and now they're in the air, shimmering as if enchanted. He thinks of the old phrase for a multitude of these birds - an unkindness - and he takes a step back into the shadows.
OF THE CORVIDAE
11:00, the numbers on the mobile's screen flash.
Giles sits in his car, parked under a spreading tree on a moonlit lane, and calculates the time-shift. Eleven at night in Devon, three in the afternoon in Sunnydale. Anya should be marrying Xander just about... now.
He closes his eyes so that he can't see the numbers any more. He's been dreading this day - knowing that she loves Xander, hoping she would just bloody wake up to the mistake she's making, hating himself for that hope. No guarantee she'd choose him even if she did wake up, world-shaking amnesiac kisses and emotional connection notwithstanding.
Then he opens his eyes. He has work to do.
But when he checks his contacts on speed-dial, he sees her name first on the list - ANYA, Magic Box; home-- and he's hit by another wave of longing. She's only a click away. No, he tells himself, she's a continent away, and a lifetime, and a one-and-a-half-page single-spaced accounting of reasons why he can't say anything. He's in another sodding world.
He scrolls down to his colleague Mark Robson's name. When Robson answers the call, Giles tells him that he's arrived at the ruin known as the Tower of Ravens, ready to investigate the demon-sightings of which a new, college-age contact has informed the Council outpost in Bath and which they passed on to him. He fingers the eighteenth-century volume of West Country legends which the contact passed on as well. The book's out of period, rather out of time. He doesn't entirely believe it's accurate.
After all, he grew up twenty miles away from here, in a house he now lets to the Westbury coven, and he's never heard of any bloody Tower of Ravens before. He's only found one ambiguous corroborating reference in the literature, too. Nevertheless, he might as well investigate, get his mind off all he's lost, try to solidify his new place in the Field section of the Council.
As he gets out of his Audi, phone in one hand and small-sword in the other, he says, “I'm sure you'll see my car, Robson. The ruin is right here, I can just see something over the treetops... Er, anyway, I'll survey the outside and check for any dropped scales before you arrive.”
“Sorry I'm late. It's all the bleating sheep on the road, you'd think it was a plot,” Robson says for the third time.
"No matter." Even as unhappy as he is, Giles can't repress a smile. He goes deeper into chiaroscuro night. A light breeze stirs the budding tree branches overhead, rustle and shadow and unease accompanying him.
Then he says quietly into the mobile, “I'm walking down the path. 's wooded here -- two more beeches, and the ruin's just there through another bend in the path,” and he steps into a circle of beaten grass.
He lifts his sword into moonglow, then lowers it. He looks again at the estranging light poured over the ruin before him. The old stone shimmers as if it's alive.
Then black wings glitter: one bird, two, three, more, all rustles and living shadows, settling in the cool blue light. “Right, I see what looks to be a good dozen ravens perching on and around the old tower. No demons as yet, but the book says the Corvidae will be in the tower proper.”
Robson's voice says faintly, “Such a stupid confusing name for demons who are seen with actual specimens of the genus Corvidae, and also, Giles, do stop playing David Attenborough. I'll be there in a bit, just-”
The signal fades. The phone dies.
The ravens' wings flash again, and now they're in the air, shimmering as if enchanted. He thinks of the old phrase for a multitude of these birds - an unkindness - and he takes a step back into the shadows.
But one raven darts at Giles - more colours in its indigo feathers, he notes dazedly, and the oddest semblance of a crown on its head. It is silent. The whole night is silent. There is only the beating of its wings as it covers the waxing gibbous moon.
Out of the wingbeats come a single, commanding word, then a kiss on the forehead.
Giles' mobile and sword drop from his hand, and his world goes dark.
......................................
"Anyanka," D'Hoffryn says, "come," and he shows Anya the amulet. It looks ugly and out of place in this empty room at the Sunnydale Bisons' Lodge. She wonders numbly, again, what the deal is with naming the joint after an animal who doesn't belong so much in coastal California.
She can't cry any more. She can't stay here, either, where everyone watched her walk down the aisle alone after Xander left her. Alone...
She tripped on her hem on her way back up the aisle, and now she slides her heel over the trailing fabric, takes a deep shuddering breath, and tears it off the rest of the way. It doesn't help.
“Come on, sweetie,” Halfrek says. “Come back to the ones who care for you.”
Somehow Anya doesn't believe this statement, even though the evidence is wearing robes and solicitous looks in front of her.
Does it matter what she chooses? She thinks it might, but it hurts too much to think.
Instead, she picks up a flower she took from one of the arrangements Giles had sent from England. It smells of this world, which she's grown to love again, with its good work and ruggedly handsome business partners and money and chocolate and out-of-place bison and... lots of things. She wants to stay in this world, except she's alone again, just like before.
She brushes her cheek with soft petals. She's been missing Giles so much since the day of Willow's spell. She's enjoyed having the shop to herself, of course, but she didn't have anyone to talk to except Tara occasionally, and Dawn even less. No, she's missed him, not just his informational or kind or sometimes deeply irritating conversation, which anyway she's had on the telephone. He's called a lot, actually, and kept asking her if she was all right.
For the past months she's kept waking herself up with dreams about him. She knows they're about him, that is, but she doesn't remember the specifics. She couldn't let herself remember the specifics when she was engaged to Xander.
“Come on, sweetie,” Halfrek says, and “Come on,” D'Hoffryn echoes, and the amulet swings in a circle, human to demon to human to--
In her tote bag, her cell phone rings. She knows it's not Xander even before she looks, it's -- “Giles!” she says, when she sees the number on the screen, and then, “Oh, Giles,” she says into the phone.
A strange male English male answers her. “Um, no, I'm not Giles, but I have his phone with me, and, well... is this Anya?”
“Yes, this is Anya Jenkins,” she says, and D'Hoffryn rustles his robes and frowns.
“Right. Um...” He sounds distracted and distraught. “Robson here. Watcher. You're first on Giles' call list, so, um, if you could tell the other folk in Sunnydale he's been hurt--”
“What?” Anya's already halfway out of her chair.
“Demon-attack, I think. I just found him on patrol, he was unconscious. We're at the coven - his old home?-- in Westbury now.”
She doesn't feel numb any more. In a voice she knows is too piercing: “Is he okay? Is he going to be okay?”
Robson doesn't answer for a long, long breath, and that's answer enough.
“Westbury coven, Devon, right. I know where it is, I'll be there tomorrow. Probably late, because of stupid time zones,” she says, then cuts off Robson's spluttering with a decisive click.
The amulet in D'Hoffryn's hand tempts her for a moment. If she had her old power, she could be at Giles' side right now with just a wish and a teleportation spell. Human to demon to human, swinging in a circle....
Then she rushes forward, catching D'Hoffryn and Hallie in fleeting hugs, saying, “Thank you so much for coming, thank you for supporting me, but I have to go. I have to do something. It's Giles, you see.” Then, “Please take your wedding gift back, too, I think it'll die while I'm gone and the tentacles will get all nasty.”
Over their protests and questions she catches up her bag, kicks away the strip of torn wedding-dress fabric, and runs. The flower he sent is still in her hand.
She carries it with her onto the plane.
...............................
Sunlight - well, he thinks it's sunlight - is yellow-warm on Giles' closed eyelids. Waves hiss nearby.
He can't move.
Cautiously he opens his eyes. Closes them again, because clearly he's still asleep and dreaming. Opens them to the same scene.
He appears to be buried on a rocky Devon beach - his head and neck free from the fine pebble-sand, a stone for a pillow, his body encased. It's strangely comfortable to be so trapped, he finds. Or rather, it would be if there were any assurance he'd ever get out of here. The rocks keep away the pain he somehow knows he's feeling.
He can't actually see the ocean, but the brine-tang is unmistakable. And yes, the sun is shining.
In fact, the rays seems to pour over the feathers of a bloody enormous raven, perched on a rock where Giles thinks his own chest should be. An odd semblance of a crown gleams on the raven's head.
“Right, I've gone mad,” Giles says to himself, and shuts his eyes.
“No, you haven't,” says a croaky female voice.
When he opens his eyes again, the raven is surveying him. “Hullo, Rupert Giles,” she says, all merriment and inquiring cocked head.
“Hullo,” he says. “Er, where am I?”
“My country.” The raven flutters and twists, and he sees that the crown is as real as anything else in this strange place. “I've brought you here for a reason, Watcher.”
“And what would that reason be? Um, sorry, don't know your name.”
She glides forward in a most unbirdlike motion, then with one wing touches his face. He feels the oddest shock - pain coming, closer now, closer - before she says, “You may call me ... Princess. Yes, I'd like that.” Another feather-brush, another shock. “I won't tell you the reason yet. You believe in secrets, don't you?”
Dizzily he thinks of so much hidden in his life - an old tattoo, an old nickname, handcuffs in a woman's stolen coat, a Council ritual which briefly took Buffy's power, a man dying under his hand, a desire for flight. Then black wing moves down across his cheekbone, and he thinks of, longs for, Anya. He can still taste her if he presses hard enough on memory.
“Some secrets, yes... er, Princess.”
The Raven Princess laughs, wild and low. “So wise, Rupert Giles! And yet not. Not yet!”
She leaps into the sun, raven not-raven raven, and the sound of her wings beats like a cold wave, and the pain washes over him so fast that he loses what he almost knows.
“You're in my country now,” she says, and he closes his eyes against the agony and sunlight.
...............................
It's raining when Anya arrives, slightly worse for wear, in Westbury the next evening. Teleportation would have been easier, she's thought several times - but over the Atlantic she also worked out the real cost of accepting D'Hoffryn's offer. Easier, but much too expensive.
Giles' colleague Robson picks her up at the train station. He's a soft-edged, middle-aged man, pleasant and sort of vague, which makes her realize just how unlike that superficial appearance Giles really is. On the way he tells her how he found Giles lying unconscious on the grass in front of this Tower of Ravens. There hadn't been any birds around, Robson says, but something possibly demonic had been stirring inside the ruin.
Anya asks, “What kind of demon was it?” The name might make a difference.
Robson says that Giles called it Corvidae, which isn't a demon Anya knows. Anyhow, Giles was working from a specific volume which Robson hasn't examined, even though he plans to read through it at his home tonight. Anya says she'd like to see the book, she might be able to help if she knew what specific thing went after Giles, and Robson promises he'll bring it tomorrow.
The windshield wipers sweep from side to side, click swoosh click swoosh. Anya thinks they kind of sound like birds' wings battering the air.
The place belonging to Giles but occupied by the coven is grey and solid. A blue-and-gold sign set in a tangle of irises announces it as Spyglass House. Funny name for a Watcher's home, she thinks. Funny way to hide in plain sight, but that's Giles all over.
Grace Harkness and Rowena the coven's healer meet Anya at the door. They're really nice to her - putting her stuff in a small dressing-room next to Giles' second-floor bedroom, giving her a cup of tea, telling her that they're glad Giles has someone of his own to help take care of him. He's mentioned her several times, they say, which stills her instinctive protest that she only wishes she were someone of his own. Except she doesn't wish any more, of course.
When they take her into Giles' room, however, she has to stomp on a dark Wish with both feet (metaphorically). Who dared hurt Giles like this, she thinks in a surge of fury, and falls to her knees beside his bed and takes his hand.
His skin is cold, and he lies unnaturally still. The bedside candles Rowena has lit - Anya recognizes the scents of healing - soften that drawn, handsome face, but Anya can tell. Wherever he is, he's in pain.
Rowena touches Anya's shoulder. “We don't know what's wrong, exactly. He's not been bitten, as far as we can determine, although there's this.” The healer leans over Giles and brushes back the hair from his high forehead. At his temple there's a small red mark, more than a bruise. “It's... something.”
Anya can't stand inaction, but, “If we don't know what's wrong with him, what can we do? Because he can't drink tisanes, and we can't do a spell if we don't know the purpose, and...”
Rowena says gently, “Just talk to him, Anya.”
When Grace and Rowena leave her alone with him, she brings his hand to her cheek and rubs it for warmth.
“Hi, Giles, it's Anya,” she says, just a bit louder than the rain against the windows. “I'm here to take care of you. Even if I'm not sure it'll help since we don't know what we're fighting.”
................................
For Giles, pain has retreated - for the moment, anyway. Faintly he hears a familiar wonderful voice; distantly he feels a sweet touch on his buried self.
“That's Anya,” he says to himself, “which is insane, mate. It's just dream heaped upon dream.” He opens his eyes.
The Raven Princess sits several feet away, her head raised to the sun.
Beyond her, however, he can see further than before. The sea is indeed nearby, too close perhaps for a man buried on a beach. In that choppy blue-grey sea rises a stone arch - a Durdle Door even in the ravens' country, he thinks. And through the arch --
Through the arch, through mist and sea spray, he sees his old bedroom at Spyglass House. He sees candleflame all around, he sees himself lying motionless on his bed, he sees Anya brushing her mouth over his palm.
He hears her soft, “--you've got a long lifeline, Giles, and I think--” but then her voice fades out, a lost signal.
"Anya!" His voice doesn't carry. He's trapped, and the hurt is coming back.
The Raven Princess looks up. With a lift of gleaming wing she blocks his view of the arch. “Pay attention, Rupert Giles,” she says. “Remember you're in my world now.”
“What? Wait.” He can't think clearly. “Is that... is that just a dream? Anya can't be in Westbury, she's on her honeymoon...”
He loses his voice at that. Stupid.
The Raven Princess seems to agree. Her other wing passes in front of her eyes, almost as if she were pinching the bridge of a nonexistent nose. “Oh, Watcher, don't pretend to be an idiot.” She flies forward, a dart of black under sun. “Maybe this Anya-woman is in your England, maybe she isn't. That's not at all important.”
“No, Anya's important to me--”
His words die in a storm of feathers, and the pain rushes back like cold sharp seawater. But he can still hear the Raven Princess say, “Rupert Giles, let us deal fairly here. I will let you go if you promise to stay.”
He closes his eyes before a stray feather-blade cuts him. In the dark, Anya's touch seems stronger.
...............................
Near the candles, but not too near, Anya sets a small green vase in which stands a couple of irises. After a break for cheese and fruit and more tea, she went out in the soft evening rain to pick them from the Spyglass House garden. Maybe the flowers will bring him back.
Also, when Anya asked, Rowena gave her some lotion. When she opens the bottle, Anya identifies lemon balm for healing, and other herbs she can't place. It's okay, though -- she's sure that good faith lives in this house.
“Not that I'm apparently a great judge of character,” she says to Giles as she climbs onto the bed next to him. “I mean, I thought Xander was my best friend as well as lover. But I'm pretty sure that a best friend doesn't leave the other best friend at the altar to tell the world she's been dumped. Of course there's the actual dumping as well. One sharp yank, and we're broken beyond repair.” She pauses, thinking of her last months of doubt and unhappiness and longing. “But we were already broken. I just hadn't admitted it.”
Saying the truth aloud hurts. But the ache passes quickly, washed away by rain on the window and by her need to make Giles feel better. Helping others helps herself... she used to tell herself that when she did vengeance, but this time she knows it's truth.
Sitting crosslegged on the bed, she takes Giles' right hand and puts its strong, motionless weight on her thigh. Then she pours some of the potion in his cupped palm. Once she's put the bottle away, she begins to smooth the potion into his hand. Palm first, then around to the back of his hand, then each finger in turn: she passes her slick fingers over his skin, warming him; she traces lifelife and loveline; she finds tension-points, she digs, she untangles; she counts his good long bones.
As she smooths and warms, untangles and counts, she talks. She tells him how much she has missed him - him, Giles who likes both good scotch and Earl Grey tea, dirty filthy blues music and tidy reports, swords and sarcasm. To her he's not just the Watcher-guy or paperwork type or fellow businessperson. She tells him she's free to say how much she's longed for him, now that she's no longer tied to Xander. Then she tells him that she's increased Magic Box profit by at least ten per cent each month, and when he wakes up he'd better admit he was wrong about the new section of charms she's put in, she doesn't want to say she told him so except she totally did.
“Giles, you do have to wake up,” she whispers when she finishes that hand. “Please.”
He doesn't move, even when she tries to imagine he does. But his skin is warmer to the touch.
She repeats the process more slowly with his left hand - it's his dominant one, she knows. Palm, back of hand, each finger in turn: she smooths, warms, untangles, counts. He's got more old damage on this hand, and she takes more care with him.
She ignores her own shocks of desire, the sex-warmth swirling down her spine.
This time she tells him about waking up under Willow's spell. She tells him about how she wanted this tall, ruggedly attractive man -- “you,” she clarifies in an aside, in case he's listening; mystical stasis can confuse a person -- how she'd been annoyed and delighted by him at the same time. She tells him about how virile he looked, all cross yet competent, duelling that sword-fighting skeleton she'd accidentally conjured. She tells him how his kiss tasted. If she presses on memory, she says, she can still taste him.
This time when she finishes, she kisses the tips of his fingers. “Please wake up for me,” she whispers.
He doesn't move. Except... except his lips, once, as if he's trying to say something.
Grace Harkness comes in shortly thereafter, and much as Anya wants to protest she can stay up, she's been socked by jetlag and sadness. She tells Grace she'll take over again in the morning.
In the small room next to Giles -- which smells of him, leather and good lime soap and herbs from the garden -- Anya sleeps at last.
..................................
Giles hears everything she says. He feels her touch clear as anything, strong and kind, on his buried skin. He sees her candlelit beauty, smiling-sad, through the arch.
The longer Anya speaks, the deeper she touches him, the closer his home seems.
“I need to go back,” he tells the Raven Princess when the scene through the arch darkens and fades away. “That's my... that's Anya, who needs me.”
“Many people have needed you, Rupert Giles. Have you always gone back to them?” She cocks her black head, then playfully tickles his nose with a tip of wing.
He thinks of Randall long ago, Jenny, Buffy just a few months past. “No. That's why it's even more vital now, to make up for what's lost. And...” Truth comes more easily to him in this world. “I need Anya, too. So much.”
When the Raven Princess huffs, feathers fly everywhere. “But that's not the way it works, it's not the bargain I've offered,” she croaks, and the sea resounds bargain as it crashes against the rocks. “Promise you'll stay with me, and I'll let you go. The end.”
“Not much of a bargain, really,” he says.
The Raven Princess croaks something he's just as glad he can't interpret. Then, from across the sea come two more raven-calls, deeper and wilder. She shivers at the sound, black wings drawing down darkness to blanket her world.
“Think, think, think,” she says peremptorily. “I'll ask you again in the morning, Rupert Giles.”
She disappears into starless indigo. In her absence, waves crash against stone, move through empty space. Tide's coming in.
Despite pain and fear, Rupert Giles is thinking indeed. And under the rocks which hold him fast, his hands can now move.
................................
“Giles, I've been thinking about you,” Anya says to his still form the next morning. “Well, I've been dreaming of you, and okay, in a sexual way but I won't elaborate in case you consider that creepy - but also thinking.”
She looks around. Morning rainlight comes through the uncurtained windows, revealing not just the bed and nightstands and the big armoire in the corner but also a floor-to-ceiling wall of books. “Maybe you'll come back if I remind you of things you love, like your childhood reading material!”
He doesn't respond, but then she doesn't exactly expect him to. He didn't move a few minutes ago when she dabbed his lips with a cloth soaked in his favourite breakfast tea. More, he didn't move when, obeying impulse, she put her mouth to the small red mark at his temple and kissed away the strange wild taint that lingered on his skin. When she washed her mouth out afterward, she spat blood.
Pushing away her fear for him, she runs her finger along the spines of the books: lots of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson; some H.P. Lovecraft (which makes her frown, as she detests people who get it wrong, and hello, she's seen Cthulhu in his proper dimension); English boys' adventure books; Lord Dunsany. None of these seems right.
“I don't know what... oh. Oh, hey!” she says, upon seeing the perfect choice. It's factual - he likes facts, just as she does - and also potentially stimulating and/or useful.
She slides the heavy book out of its place, then goes to him. Again she sits crosslegged on the bed beside him; again she takes his strong, motionless hand and rests it on her thigh, so his fingertips can touch the open book.
Her own fingertips dance over his arm, seeking her own comfort more than his, before she bends her head toward the printed words. “Okay, Giles. This morning we're reading from the Concise Oxford Dictionary. I've opened it at random to the latter pages of E, which is a very nice letter.”
Rainlight is tricky, she thinks. For a moment it almost looks like he smiles.
She caresses his forearm one more time, then begins. "'Eustasy. Noun. A change of sea level throughout the world....'"
..................................
Giles gazes at the stone curve, a perfect frame for Anya's curves of body and wit, and smiles. She's even closer to him now, although not quite close enough to touch.
During the long night in the Raven Princess's world, he's spent time in thought, and even in his prison-bed of rock, he's able to move more - just a fraction, but a start. It's as if the night's tide has begun to eat away at his bonds. Eustasy, indeed.
And when Anya's lips touched him, he felt the most incredible rush of clarity - poison drawn out, mist burning away - and his wound closed over.
From above comes a flutter and downward rush in the sunlight. The Raven Princess has returned.
“So, Rupert Giles,” she begins without preamble, “are you ready to make a deal?”
“No, Princess,” he says. “I have a few questions first.”
>Her wings beat, once, twice, in glittering annoyance.
He says, “Am I right in thinking that ravens are creatures of great insight? Er, persons, who value wisdom?”
She smiles. “You are right indeed, Watcher. A little teaching, and you'll be a person of wisdom too.”
He looks through the arch at Anya, reading. He can't hear her now, but he does see the door in his own world open: she looks up at Robson, who's entering the room with a book in his hand.
Giles remembers the volume which led him to the Tower of Ravens in the first place. He moves his hands surreptitiously under the rock, and whispers a small spell to barricade this Durdle Door from any stray sound getting through, just in case. In this world he seems to have at least that much power.
Only then does he say, “Princess, person of insight... is there any such thing as a Corvidae demon? Or are you something quite different?”
Her laugh is raucous, louder than the sea.
..................................
Anya is at first slightly annoyed to have to stop reading - the dictionary is surprisingly fascinating and she has only just scratched the surface of F- but then she sees what Robson carries, and she's up and off the bed.
"The strangest thing," Robson repeats. "This book, well..."
She grabs it out of his hands before he can finish.
The volume seems to vibrate with uncanny power. She's fairly sure what the thing is after a quick scan - each turn of the pages a rustle of feather and a burst of sea-air, the letters seeming to fly off the thin leaves of paper. “Robson, who gave him this book?”
“Same new contact who reported the Tower of Ravens whatsit. A young woman, don't recall her name - but although she asked for him, Giles didn't meet her.”
“So the Council deals with shape-shifting, totally unreliable representatives of Faerie now?” Anya says sharply. “Are you people stupid or something?”
She turns to caress Giles' forehead, saying more quietly, “Not you, Giles. I mean, yes, we all remember the embarrassing retail incident with Glory, but... you're smart. Occasionally absent-minded, but smart, and handsome, and good. Who could blame anybody for wanting to steal you?”
Over Robson's stumbling protest-questions, she then goes to the door of the room and shouts for Grace, Rowena, anybody with a little spellcasting power and some big damn object made of iron.
..............................................
Giles' captor leaps into the sky, raven not-raven raven, and then drifts down as an impish, dark-eyed young woman with a shock of black feathery hair. She lands softly, then sits, crosses her legs, leans forward. “Well, then, Rupert Giles,” she says in her familiar croaky voice. “You guessed it.”
The ocean's rising, and saltwater begins to rush into his hidden bed of rock. He doesn't know if the Raven Princess is planning to let him drown in this faerie sea, in his new knowledge. “Hullo, Princess,” he says, playing for just a bit more time.
She touches his face with one talon-finger - which, oddly, makes him think of Anya's touch and her utterly human quality, unlike the Raven Princess's uncanny being. “Are you willing to deal now that you know, Watcher?”
“Er, not exactly. Always a question or two more.... How did you choose me?”
“I heard you.” She leans even closer to him -- his nose itches with the brush of black feathery hair. “Walking in faerie woods not too long ago? Talking to yourself?”
Bloody hell. At once he recalls the Sunday twilight ramble through a small pocket of ancient oaks - yes, not that far from the Tower of Ravens -- his muttering to himself about his longing for Anya, his worry about Buffy and Willow and the others, his dissatisfaction with his job.
The Raven Princess smiles. “I see that you remember walking on the borders of my family's land, Rupert Giles. I was just trying to help you - and, yes, have a Watcher of my own.”
“Yes, er, thank you, Princess. But, much as I appreciate your offer, I'd prefer to go home.”
She shifts in the light, raven not-raven, feathers transmuting into hair. “Do you even have a home, Rupert Giles? Your stupid Council's charms mean I can't pull you right into my Corvidae world - my father told me this too late -- but on the other hand, what's left for you in that one?” Her smile changes too, insight into predation. “If I send you back, you know, you're going to hurt.”
Tide's rising, bed's filling, pain's coming. He gazes at her as steadily as he can. “I accept the hurt. I do.”
The Raven Princess shrugs, changes form, grows. “Sorry, that's not the bargain. You'll stay here and die.”
Indigo wings lift to block the sky, and from somewhere overhead comes that deeper, wilder raven-cry -- it's her father on his way to help her kill him, Giles thinks. She answers in her own language, croak become song, and then turns her attention back to him. Raven-eyes go dark, pitch-dark, and the sharp beak comes closer.
The closed faerie-wound on his forehead starts to eat into him, infection from a kiss. Although Anya's protected him with her better one, perhaps it's not enough.
But then, suddenly, in his hands a ring of iron to hold onto, Anya's fingers guiding his - and he is pulled, bleeding and aching, through the fabric of the worlds, and --
And he's lying on his bed in Spyglass House, bleeding and aching. He's safe, surrounded by friends, held in Anya's strong grasp.
“Giles, honey!” she says, then, “Rowena, Grace, enough with the chanting. I think he's back.” Then, her mouth close to his, she says, “You are back, aren't you?”
“Yes, Anya, yes.” Despite shaking arms he's able to pull her further into him, feel her warmth and soft edges blanketing his battered self. She's here, and so is he.
....................................
“What time is it?” he says idly.
Anya makes a production of lifting his arm - still a little bruised from the passage between worlds - and reading the watch on his wrist. He's struck by how lovely she is in the blue light of the moon, even when making that face. “Eleven o'clock, more or less,” she says. “Hour from midnight.”
He smiles at her. “And what world is it?”
She wants to roll her eyes at him, he knows. But she answers with only the tiniest sigh, “Our world. Not the faeries', thank you very much.”
When his smile deepens, with a huff of annoyance she rearranges herself so her back is to his chest, his slightly sore arm draped over her shoulder. He kisses her hair. “Are you all right?”
“Yep. Are you?”
He thinks about the question seriously. In the week since his misadventure, there have been calls back and forth between Sunnydale and Westbury, transatlantic interventions in burgeoning Willow-disasters and Buffy-pain, and Anya's final difficult conversation with Xander; there have been Giles' long talks with Anya, and healing, and evening wine and mock-arguments in the folly in the rain-soaked Spyglass House gardens. Anya's even made her first trip to see his flat in Bath, of which she approves.
Rowena has told Giles that Anya's still healing too, that he must take this gently. He's trying, Christ knows.
“Yes.” He kisses her hair again - he allows himself that much expression of his feelings. “You awake as well?”
“Yes yes yes,” she says, weary and resigned. “To recap -- we're both here, we're fine, we're awake.”
“Thank God,” he murmurs.
There on the blanket under the beeches, she takes his hand. Even without potion, her fingers slide easily on his skin. She smooths, she warms, she digs and untangles, she counts, she comforts.
And with his mouth in her hair, his other hand fast on the iron ring protecting them both, he watches the Corvidae come again to their ruined tower: all rustles and living shadows, glittering black in the estranging moonlight.