Another Fine Mess . . .
This story actually started coming to me last June as I attempted to make sense of the blooming, buzzing confusion of China; 'cuz, you know, Season 7 Giles seemed to have gone there, so . . .
I dunno, it made sense at the time. (It's entirely possible that canon tells us Giles merely met Chao An at an airport or train station in not-China. But I don't have my DVDs here, and I don't care if that's canon. This is *my* story, except for all the parts of it that belong to someone else.) It's embarrassing how long it's lain fallow; nevertheless, it is here now.
It definitely diverges from written canon with regard to the spelling of Chao An's name, but based on my exceedingly brief study of pinyin, this is the spelling that makes sense to me.
It's all about me, you see.
Post-"Chosen", and not; Not Lori-safe, I'm afraid. Otherwise, suitable for all ages and rather sadly gen. Also, it's for kivrin and headrush100 (to whom I give thanks for the beta, so long ago) . . . which might excuse its indulg-y nature.
Let's see if I remember how to cut tag, shall we?
Giles in China
Rupert Giles doesn’t recall very much about his last trip to China, in that time of the world ending, and everyone dying. Giles then seemed always to be en route: traveling a great distance on little more than the hope of a young woman waiting for him -- waiting to be rescued, only to realise that she’d been taken from a very dangerous frying pan to an insanely more dangerous fire. Of course, said dangerous fire also included an American shopping mall (until it shut, for lack of customers or employees), American snack foods, and other young people who understood one’s peculiar circumstances. Nevertheless, he felt half mad the entire time, and China, in particular, was left a rather smelly blur in his memory due to the fact that he spent his entire time there in the grips of a very virulent strain of influenza.
He does remember that his landing at the Shangai airport went rather smoothly, and he was able to clear customs through the simple expedient of going through the Green Line -- declaring nothing, and enspelling everything. He even cast a glamour on his passport, to obscure the number of entry and exit stamps he’d obtained in recent months. Not that the Chinese would have particularly cared about his propensity to globe trot, but the Americans were, understandably, very touchy in those days, and he'd got into the habit.
Emerging from the Shanghai airport, he’d managed, with broken Mandarin, to find a licensed taxi and, thus, a ride to the train station. He’d booked a soft berth ahead of time, or thought he had, and was able to match the proper written characters on the signs overhead with those in his Lonely Planet guide, to find the right waiting room. It was there, in the several hours before the train’s departure, that the first bit of uneasiness struck him. He realized he was unaccountably chilly in the warm southern spring, and more dizzy than jet lag would account for.
So now, in Bloomsbury, on his way to a meeting of some experts in mystical weaponry at University College library, he considers pausing for a moment inside of Blackwell’s. The chills and dizziness remind him of Shanghai, and he would rather not have a good faint in the august presence of Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon, if he can avoid it.
He nearly stumbles on his way down the stairs to the coffee bar; the age-polished wood banister receives his devout, if unspoken, thanks, and he manages to keep his feet all the way to the bottom of the steps.
The walls on the lower level haven’t been painted since approximately 1977, he thinks; orange and fuschia nevertheless comfort him, and he orders an Earl Grey and takes a seat in a quiet alcove. Sipping his tea and watching the others in the fairly gloomy rooms study, chat, and read all around him makes him feel steadier, and after a quick trip to the loo to splash water on his face, he’s prepared to continue on to the library; nevertheless, he fishes the mobile phone from his coat pocket as a frigid wind takes his breath away. It’s a comfort to be home again and have people who will take care of him, and of the work that needs doing. His success in China, he knows, is attributable entirely to his own good luck, and the resourcefulness of several Cantonese families, many of whom he never met, and never will meet.
***
The railway station in Guangzhou was teeming with people, goods, and, if Giles were any judge, demons. He considered his perceptions to be slightly suspect, however, given that the chills and dizziness that had begun in Shanghai had blossomed, despite more than twelve hours of sleep on the train, into one of the most severe bouts of ‘flu he’d ever known. His lack of Cantonese was, therefore, not the only handicap he faced in traveling to Chao An’s village, but he hoped that his Shanghai connections (such as they were) had been able to arrange for transport. Even if he hadn’t lost friends and relations in the destruction of the Council, he’d be sorry to have lost the - for a moment, he had to stand still and think of the word he wanted. Finally, he managed to coax it out of his increasingly muzzy mind: infrastructure. The Council, even in its profound general imbecility, had had an infrastructure that MI-5 would envy. Now, a huge blast and several murders had made those resources virtually inaccessible to him - to anyone, so far as he knew. A real pity, as a Council-vetted safehouse in Guangzhou would have been useful.
He wove his way through virtually solid masses of humanity, the heat and odors making him reel, trying to spot any sign of someone who might be trying to spot him. When he reached the kerb, he found donkey carts rubbing shoulders with Mercedes-Benz taxi cabs, but despite the advantage his height provided in allowing him to see up and down the street, there was no one in any sort of conveyance, or even on foot, who seemed awaiting his arrival.
Not that he had a single idea what such a person might look like, in this crowed. There were several very well-dressed young men and women about, holding up little tour-guide flags that shouted the names of their designated parties in various languages, but there was no flag bearing either his name or that of his Shanghai contacts - not that he was sure he’d recognize their names in Chinese characters, in any case. The English names were not familiar ones, but he considered passing as a Mr. Richardson if it would get him a taxi.
Whether or not he was missing his contact, getting away from the noise and crowds was becoming quite imperative. He was able to form the notion that he might find a hotel in which to sleep off the illness, and thus staggered down the crowded street in the direction of tall, well-lit buildings that held the promise of a solid bed and a European toilet -- he tried not to think what voiding his stomach into a malodorous squat would be like. He reached the end of the block, and as he stepped off the kerb to cross, he realized he couldn’t possibly carry his two bags any longer. In the seconds during which he muzzily considered whether to shift bags or step back onto the kerb first, a tiny beige Audi swerved to avoid him, and he fell back onto his arse, a pile of baggage and misery.
A group formed around him, several grannies pointing and laughing at his pratfall, while he gathered his strength to stand. In his mortification, perhaps, he stood too quickly, and found himself falling then into a deep, deep pit.
***
After the meeting, a cab is waiting for him in Great Russell - just as he has requested, and his approach is noted from within. Buffy jumps out, all waving hands and outrage, and hustles him into the taxi with dire threats and gentle hands.
As the car pulls away and heads up Gower Street, the City moves by him as if he’s dreaming. He sags against the high seat back and closes his eyes. Buffy murmurs “poor flu-y Giles” as she lowers her cool hand from his forehead and pats his arm. He smiles to humour her, and sinks more deeply into the cushioned seats and the warm, dark space behind his eyelids.
He feels the cab slow as it approaches their destination, and he begins to fumble inside his coat for his wallet, but Buffy only pats his hand and tells him not to worry. She slides gracefully out of the backseat and gives him a hand up onto the kerb, and then twists them both gracefully away from Andrew, who has launched himself down the front steps to hand folded bills to the driver.
Giles cringes, expecting to be smothered by Andrew’s heavy-handed concern, but the young man only reports to Buffy - “It’s all taken care of, Commandante,” and then takes Giles’s notebook away for transcription. He’s a good man, really - still overenthused, but reliable; nearly painfully so.
With a light hand at his elbow, Buffy leads him up her front steps and into her flat - her and Dawn’s, and Giles wonders how he has failed to recognise where the cab has deposited them til now - and into her front lounge, where she parks him on the couch with a cup of tea and a throw rug. She passes him a packet of Lemsip and heads for the kitchen at the back of the flat. It’s possible that she calls back to him, but he fades into sleep without finding out.
***
Giles awoke from his dead faint in Guangzhou on a narrow cot; his head was splitting and he shook so hard with chills that he found it difficult to move with intention. His delirium was not so advanced, however, as to preclude him from recognizing that his bed was placed in the large front window of a store, and that in the dim light of sunrise he could see passersby stopping to stare at him, gesturing to one another at the sight of an unwashed Englishman scrambling - in the slowest and clumsiest possible fashion -- from a narrow cot.
He pulled the scratchy blanket tighter round his shoulders and finally managed to stand, working his way down a narrow hall toward what he hoped was a real bedroom. His hopes were shattered as he emerged into a dimly lit and cluttered room; with no further plan, he stood trembling and blinking in the doorway. At his appearance, two young children fled from the rickety card table at which they had been slurping up noodles to stand behind an older woman near a great cauldron just outside the back door. From Giles’s right, a man in a sweatshirt approached, making shooing motions, apparently trying to encourage him to return to the cot up front.
Giles could not overcome his befuddlement to to pull together any sentence in Mandarin - let alone a useful one. His dismay at this was short-lived, however, as he was immediately forced to deal with the mortification of having vomited all over his shoes and the hallway floor. Whatever the smaller man was saying, it was loud, and Giles was happy to return to the cot if it meant an end to the shouting.
He turned his back toward the curious crowd and pulled the blanket over his head, wondering if he ought to try to send word to Buffy, letting her know of his location, and that if he failed to appear within the month . . . but he was unable to complete the thought before the shouting man returned with one of the young children in tow. An elderly tin bucket was placed next to the cot with some shouting and gesturing from the man toward the boy, who in return stated loudly: “You. To be Sick. At here! Please!”
Giles nodded his understanding, and accepted a bottle of water from the man. Further words in Cantonese were transmitted to the boy, who shook his head vigourously. Then, in what Giles recognized as Mandarin, the man and the boy pointed to him, and used a combination of English and Mandarin that seemed to indicate that he was a white man. This he knew already, but nodded miserably anyway, in order to be polite. As he felt himself fading, he heard the boy shouting with confidence, “Not having of medical. You. To rest. Two of day.”
While the precise meaning was vague, Giles’s sleepy mind reckoned that the boy was much better at English than he himself was at Mandarin. He tried to thank his hosts, and was answered with giggling.
***
When he wakes in the darkness, he discovers that Buffy has covered him with a heavy blanket and lit the electric fire. He remembers how she complained about it when she first took the flat: Didn’t you people invent fireplaces, or something? Why would you want this feeble electric light instead of real flames for warmth? Are English people mostly vampires,Giles?
It hadn’t been up to her usual level of wit, but those early days had been strained for all of them. Giles hates to leave the warmth of his cocoon, but his disorientation spurs him to find his slayer. He wanders into the kitchen, where Buffy sits with a cup of coffee and some file folders. Her chin is propped in her hand, and just before she meets his eyes, he sees that she seems to be gazing into the distance: daydreaming.
“Oh, hey, sleepy-watcher-guy; you don’t look so good.”
She rises from the table and advances on him, clearly ready to palm his forehead and, possibly, make him stick out his tongue. He retreats, slightly, leaning against the hallway wall and wracked by shivering.
“Yes, Buffy, I’m sorry to trouble you, but -“
“Say no more. We made up the guest room for you. Isn’t that grown-up? We have a guest room!”
She takes him by the arm, in a gesture that’s becoming equal parts annoying and endearing, and chatters about how she hadn’t expected him to pass out quite so quickly, and that they’d had chicken soup all prepared for him, but he’d missed out, but she’d be happy to zap it into the micro if he’d like -
“Please, no, Buffy,” he blurts out, and his stomach begins to roil, “thanks, but, I really think it’s best if I just sleep some more.”
“OK, but Dawn’s going to make you have some juice and aspirin anyway, and that’s some heavy-duty shivering you’ve got going on there, Giles.” She points him at the welcoming bed as she grumps, but her attitude is belied by lovely, crisp sheets already turned down. He sits, and tries with his hand to push back some of the pain threatening to burst open his forehead.
“I appreciate the, er, the thought, Buffy, but -- water, perhaps, and paracetamol, if you have any - I’m afraid that anything else will only wind up on these lovely bedclothes.”
“Oh, ish, Giles, but okay. Dawn!” she shouts down the hall, and he curls himself up into a shivering, miserable ball, “Get the supreme Watcher some water and tylenol!”
“Oh, oops,” she continues more quietly, and he hears her footsteps approach, “Sorry about that, but the walls are thick, here.”
“You know, I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Buffy,” he mutters between chattering teeth, as she removes his shoes and tugs out the blankets in order to cover him.
“Giles, do you really want to wear all of your clothes to bed? Do you need some help?”
Buffy sounds more tentative than she has in some time, and he rallies to smile and begin fumbling with his buttons.
“No, Buffy, thank you. I think I can manage.”
He is grateful, however, that his business today made a suit and tie appropriate, as he has a T-shirt in which to take refuge, along with his underpants. He tries not to think about whether woozily stripping to his underwear in front of this young woman is something about which he should be more uncomfortable; his misery is as much as he can currently manage.
“Andrew did actually leave some pajamas for you, and some sweats, if you’d rather -“
“No, ‘s fine,” he mumbles, and pulls the blankets up as far as they will go, as he continues to shiver and chatter away.
Dawn’s arrival is heralded by boot clomps and her announcement, “Got it. Hey Giles - wow, um, you don’t look good.”
He is beyond commenting that the gene for tact must be recessive; he holds out his hand for the pills, and Buffy helps support his head so that he can swallow some water. Her hands are cool and infinitely gentle as they ease his splitting head back onto the pillows. It is more difficult than he wants to acknowledge to swallow a whimper.
“I’m going to be out patrolling tonight, but Dawn’s gonna be just down the hall. Call her if you need anything, okay?”
They stand, side-by-side, with nearly identical expressions of worry, and he wants to reassure them, but he can barely think over the pounding in his head.
“Fine. Please don’t worry,” he adds, and he’s considering how to thank them when sleep overtakes him again.
***
Giles spent thirty-six hours in Guangzhou, as delirious as he could ever recall being, and trying, during lucid moments, not to vomit or, alternatively, to aim at the tin can. Dark moments seemed to stretch into hours, but in the end, the time passed very quickly, and he ended up even more confused about days and times than jet travel normally made him.
A British ex-pat dropped by as Giles was prostrate with post-fever lethargy, and pronounced him on the mend. When he learned that the man had been a large-animal veterinarian, he was less than comforted, but as the fellow had only confirmed his own conclusion, he raised no objection. Rather sooner than he would have thought advisable, the elderly couple - the Lis, he learned; Li Peng and Li Wei - were urging bottles of local beer on him, but he found that the pale liquid was easier to take than the still water, and certainly preferable to whatever was coming out of the pipes. The older child made some attempts to practice his English on the dozy foreigner, but as Giles lacked the energy to worry whether he was being polite, the boy finally gave up. The littler one remained entirely out of his sight, except for occasional glimpses -- she sometimes appeared, clutching the leg of her grandmother or grandfather when they came in to tend to his needs. He was distantly sorry that the girl was so anxious of him.
His listless curiosity over his makeshift sickroom was never resolved, as he lacked sufficient incentive to raise the energy that would have been required to gain useful information. As best he could tell, the family bought and sold junk, and sometimes made use of a relatively fine bicycle to carry messages hither and yon, including into the countryside. The storefront doubled as the old couple’s bedroom and the service counter - he tried not to feel too guilty over the obstacle he created for them, and thought at least that he might be able to offer them payment in a way that would not cause insult. In the fading light of sunset, he considered making use of their services to try to contact the family of the potential he’d come to collect; surely they would not object to payment in that case. He hoped that the morning would bring him renewed strength, as well as facility with schoolboy-level Mandarin.
By some miracle or other, the morning brought him the potential herself. It went without saying that the lucky turn would be accompanied by a fair amount of shame: he had just convinced himself he was well enough to engage in some washing-up, and was bent, shirtless, over a zinc tub and trying to scrub himself clean of travel dust and more than two days’ worth of perspiration when a donkey cart pulled into the narrow alleyway behind his host’s home and shop. The driver of the cart was an elderly woman - though he reminded himself that here, life was hard enough to make one elderly at the ripe old age of fifty - and when she stopped the cart, a bundle of textiles in the cart behind her began to shift. Just when Giles had convinced himself that he was hallucinating, a teenage girl emerged from the pile of fabric. She leapt gracefully from the cart, and approached him tentatively.
“Ni hao. Nin gui xing? Wo jiao Chao An. Ni shi wa-chir? Ni shi jai els?”
She seemed to speak very rapidly, but when he finally recognized her name, and his own, among the sounds she made, he began smiling and nodding like a great, half-naked, water-logged loon. His relief was palpable, despite his discomfort at having his “bath” interrupted - but then, the Chinese concept of privacy - if they had one, he grumbled to himself - ever had evaded him.
The girl and her auntie were welcomed into the store that had been his sanctuary and convalescent hospital; somehow his presence and his identity had been communicated to the right people, saving him the trip to Chao An’s family’s farm. As quickly as he recognized his good fortune, he knew that he and the girl had to leave. The odds that only friendly beings were able to connect his presence with her identity were so low as to barely register.
***
He thrashes off the covers, feeling as if he’s roasting, but his limbs are too heavy and uncooperative to get him off the bed. The bed, he realizes, has replaced the rickety cot, and somehow the huge window has been walled over. This must be an improvement for all of them, he thinks. He wonders where the Lis found the money.
Someone is speaking American-accented English, very close to the bed. When did the Yank come to Guangzhou?
“I think we should get him to the hospital. His fever’s really high --”
Poor dear - she must be so lost, here. She sounds beside herself. He worries; he knows that there are some excellent hospitals in this province, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to recognize whether he’s in one.
“No - he’s shaking a lot, and mumbling . . . I’ve never seen anyone with flu this bad.”
Here now, he knows this voice -
“Dawn, I’m sorry, dearheart, but they won’t understand you.”
His vision has blurred - the light is searing his eyes - and his voice is no more than a pained gasp.
“Giles, you know who I am? Who won’t understand?”
“The - they don’t speak English, Dawn. You know better. Li Xiao,” he calls out, feebly, “duibuqi, wo de pengyou -- bu shui shuo Putonghua.”
He’s certain that his Mandarin is incomprehensible to the little boy, but perhaps Dawn can make herself understood to the child, since he has some slight English.
“No - I don’t know - he’s speaking some other language; it might be Chinese?”
He shakes his head. To whom is she speaking? And what in bloody hell is she doing here? Not that he doesn’t appreciate having a familiar person about, but now he feels an added weight of responsibility: how will he get Dawn home safely, along with Chao An?
“Wait, I think that’s Buffy coming in. Buffy!”
Now Giles is certain he’s beyond delirium - he’s hallucinating that his slayer has come to rescue him in far away China. How sodding convenient. Poor Chao An . . . he supposes she’ll be found by Bringers and murdered, just like so many others.
There’s murmuring near the door; he’d prefer to pass into unconsciousness again, rather than face hallucinations or the weary consternation of the Li family, trying to see him through this fever with little medicine and even less cash. He’s sorry to have brought this burden to their house.
The blankets are back, and as he tries to push them off, implausibly tiny, impossibly strong hands catch his.
“Hey, Giles, take it easy, shhh. Dawn’s calling an ambulance. I had no idea you were this sick, or we wouldn’t have left you alone. I’m sorry.”
The hallucination is more than convincing - the voice, the small, cool hand on his brow. He stops struggling for a moment and tries to coax his aching eyes into revealing a face, any face, but he’s so tired. Beyond tired.
“Buffy, I - no, no. I know it’s not Buffy, I’m speaking to an hallucination!” He begins to giggle madly. This will never do. He wants to thank the Lis, apologize for their trouble, but he can no longer remember enough words. He wants to thank Buffy, and apologize to her, too, but he’d rather not give in again to the hallucination, if he can help it. And what if it’s not an hallucination? What if it’s something worse? He’s well aware of what the First can do with the faces and voices of those who have . . .
To his intense humiliation, he begins to weep softly; he’s frustrated and exhausted and has completely lost control of himself just when he most needs that much-vaunted Giles family self-control.
Those small hands soothe him; a damp flannel is drawn over his forehead, and catches the tears now streaming over his nose as he tries to hide his face in the pillow.
“Aw, Giles, don’t - just hang on. You’re going to feel better any minute now, I promise.”
It’s not fair that Buffy - or anyone - should be so comforting to him as part of an hallucination, ten thousand miles from home.
“Duibuqi, duibuqi,” he murmurs, with all the breath he has left to him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he adds, just in case.
***
They had left Guangzhou before midnight; Giles could barely propel himself along the train platform, and Chao An had to carry their little bit of baggage as well as support part of his weight as they reached their soft berth. He was lucky that Chao An’s auntie was able to take them to the station and negotiate tickets on the night train - she had plenty of guanxi, Chao An explained, even from back before the Revolution; in his fugue state, he couldn't tell if the girl was proud of or embarrassed by her aunt's connections.
By the time they reached Shanghai, he felt marginally better, and between his credit cards and her imperfect Mandarin they obtained two days in separate rooms at the Shanghai Marriott. Chao An spent both days wandering the city with cash for which he had changed all of his remaining travellers’ cheques, but he was not sorry for two days of rest and safe water. He hadn’t dared contact anyone, for fear the Bringers would suss out Chao An’s location, but he had to hope that the First Evil hadn’t yet learned to trace the bank card transactions of one Rupert Giles. He shuddered to think about it, and resolved to fund his future missions with cash. After all, they simply had no idea of the extent of the First’s powers yet, and while he might not be able to save every potential slayer, he’d die before he caused the death of one.
Chao An returned early on the second day, and he was able to give her their flight information, and - he hoped - ask her to knock him up in the morning in time for the trip to the airport. She had obtained for him some very foul-smelling herbs meant to strengthen the qi, or some such. He nodded his thanks as she left his room, bowing awkwardly and giggling.
***
“Please, Chao An, that’s enough tea. Please!”
His own voice wakes him, but he fears that his vision has failed him again, as the surroundings seem rather dingy - not the warm, dark wood of the Shanghai Marriott.
“See, I told you it was Chinese! He was hallucinating China!”
The voice comes from his right, and is unmistakably Dawn Summers, again. Buffy is standing next to her, her expression gentle and somber in equal measures.
“Giles? Are you there?”
He clears his throat, slightly, and croaks out, “I seem to be.”
Dawn engulfs her sister in a long-armed hug and pats his arm, then twirls away, calling softly, “I’ll get the doctor.”
Buffy apparently recognizes his bewilderment and comes to take his hand, carefully, as it is currently impaled with an i.v. needle attached to plastic tubing.
“OK, I really think you should have told us that you were planning to bring home exotic diseases.”
“What?” he tries to ask, but his throat is hopeless and the result is less than a croak.
She pours him a plastic tumbler of water and helps him to drink it, and he can see real worry in her eyes.
“Malaria, Giles, you have malaria - they’re not sure which kind, yet, so you’re on some different drugs and some IV fluids. At first they thought it was just a really bad strain of flu, but -“
She stops when a doctor comes through the door, but Giles can read her all too well, even when he feels like death. She’s angry, or upset, and not just about his illness, although he can well imagine how difficult it’s been for her to spend hours in hospital, even a British hospital, given her mother’s illness and death.
The doctor has various questions for him, but allows Buffy and Dawn to remain in the room as he is interrogated about his travels. When it comes to it, he has a difficult time remembering just when he had been where, but they manage to date his return from China together, and he can then date the prior, failed trip to Guatemala easily. At that point, the doctor has heard enough, and begins to berate him - very gently - about public health warnings and state department warnings and prophylaxis until his head is spinning. Buffy manages to step in and hint at difficult personal business, as well as the Sunnydale tragedy, and the doctor writes some notes, gathers his minions, and departs.
“Why didn’t you tell us you got sick in China?”
Buffy’s tone reveals just how upset she is, but Giles finds himself too worn out to take offense.
“Didn’t seem important at the time?” he offers, without even the faintest hope that his feeble quip will end the conversation.
“Well, it was, Giles. I mean, I know it was a rough year for everyone, but still . . . you’re supposed to be recording all of this stuff, aren’t you? Isn’t that a Watcher’s job?”
She seems to understand that she has crossed a line, here, when his eyes light on her face. He wonders just how much of his anger and grief are showing; the illness has left him more volatile than he would like, and he waits until he is certain he can speak steadily, surprised that she lets the silence last as long as it does.
“A Watcher’s job?” he enunciates carefully, with only the slightest trace of a waver. “At the time, I wasn’t very interested in doing a Watcher’s job, Buffy. As it seemed chiefly to involve being blown up or shouted down.”
He is immediately ashamed of voicing such pathetic shit, and as she begins to stammer out some sort of apology, he holds up one weary, trembling hand.
“No, Buffy, I’m sorry - that wasn’t, wasn’t worthy. Please, can we forget I said it? I do understand that there is quite a bit of work to do, to record that last year, when . . .” but he’s not certain how to continue.
Buffy is examining her feet rather diligently, but flinches slightly as Dawn steps forward.
“We called Xander this morning, to let him know how sick you were. He was the one who thought that you might have picked up something while you were, um, globetrotting last year. He said, he figured you must have been pretty lonely. And you didn’t really get a chance to tell us what it was like, when you got back.”
Well, between the three of them they’ve certainly jumped to some reasonable conclusions. But he’s rather tired now; too tired to hold on to past slights, however keenly felt.
“Yes, well, that was a long time ago now; please, don’t fuss. Just, now that we know what’s wrong, might I be leaving here soon?”
Buffy rubs his shoulder, gently, and promises to find the doctor and learn how to spring him as soon as she can manage. As she leaves, Dawn sits down and holds his hand in her long, graceful one.
“She’s really sorry, Giles. But don’t tell her I told you that. She pretty wigged, but she’s still Buffy.” Dawn’s voice is gentle, recognizing and forgiving her older sister’s lapses in one breath.
“I cannot imagine what you mean, young Dawn,” he offers, with as much dryness as he can manage, “and thank you.”
Her answering smile is such an echo of Buffy’s younger, simpler days that it is all he can do not to dissolve into tears once more. Instead, he rather feebly squeezes the hand that holds his, and drifts off into sleep.
***
Blood having been analyzed and tiny, vicious parasites identified, Giles is discharged that afternoon. The price of freedom is a week’s worth of foul-tasting medication and bed-rest; he is told very sternly that he must finish all of the prescribed medicine so as not to relapse, and increase the prevalence of drug-resistant malaria. He grouses over it, mostly for Dawn’s sake; in truth, it’s far from the bitterest thing he’s ever had to swallow.
The Summers sisters insist that he remain at their flat, under their close observation, at least until he regains his strength. This is not as great a burden as he lets them believe.
He has his first uninterrupted sleep the night they bring him home, and he finally wakes near noon feeling somewhat less like death. After a hearty breakfast of instant oatmeal and an overwhelming selection of Patisserie Valerie pastries, Buffy and Dawn take his dishes away, then return with tea and a heavy package wrapped in brown paper.
“What’s this?” He gazes in wonder at three sturdy leather notebooks that emerge from the wrapping.
Buffy seems close to tears.
“Your Watcher’s Diaries - I mean, they will be, when you’ve written in them -- for the time you were traveling, finding the, the Potentials. We want - we want the girls that you found, and the ones that you couldn’t save - we want them all to have a history, a record. I know you have notes scribbled down somewhere, but it’s important to have a record of those girls - and of what you did, too. We - we care about what happened to you, Giles.”
“Me especially,” Dawn puts in, rolling her eyes - kindly - at her sister’s less-than-graceful show of emotion. “If I’m going to be a watcher, I need to learn how from the best. Um, that’s you,” she finishes, rather awkward herself.
Giles is overwhelmed, for a moment; they are correct that his diaries from those days are sketchy at best, and leave out some of the most harrowing days, as there’s been no time to set things down in an orderly fashion. If he can find his notes and piece them together, he has some hope of creating a lasting record of the girls who died, and of the Bringers’ crimes.
“Yes, well, I - I suppose this, er, forced convalescence does give me time to catch up on some things . . .” He manages, barely, to tear his eyes from the volumes before him.
Dawn is smiling and, as usual, presently in motion.
“I’ll tell Andrew he has to hold down the fort for a while!”
Giles’s answering groan helps to break the solemn cast in the room.
Buffy lights gently on the side of the bed.
“I mean it, Giles, we do care what happened -- I care, it’s just -“
“Buffy, please, you were busy stopping one apocalypse and then trying to rebuild some sort of organization for dealing with future ones. It’s not as if we’ve had very much time for, er, sharing . . .” he grimaces slightly, so that she’ll smile, and when she does, he continues.
“In any case, I feel compelled to point out that, since we’re all sharing in the rebuilding of the Council, the obligation to record events is now also one that should be shared. And I did miss a great deal that happened, to all of you, during that last year.”
With that, he hands her one of the notebooks.
“But please allow Dawn to do the actual writing - she has much better penmanship.”
***
Rupert Giles doesn’t recall very much about his last trip to China, in that time of the world nearly ending, and too many people dying, but he does remember enough to piece together a sensible narrative of what happened to him there. With Dawn’s assistance, he gathers his notes from that trip, and the other journeys he made, in often hopeless attempts at rescue. As a young watcher, she is aching to delve into the notes, to ask him everything, to live the experience vicariously through him; he recognizes that look in her eye, he knows the feeling. As it happens, though, she has learnt at least something about tact: she knows he is not yet quite ready to share all of this with others, and - another pleasant surprise - she refrains from commenting on the need for haste, or her facility for organization, and leaves him to his scrambled notes.
As he reviews what he could only laughingly call “his records” of that year, he realizes that the really remarkable happenings often involved persons who would seem totally unremarkable under normal circumstances: a Chinese merchant who, once upon a time, nursed an ailing foreigner in desperate straits; a network of peasants who somehow got word to an extraordinary girl without alerting the agents bent on her destruction, and the aged aunt who traveled with her to the metropolis twenty miles and several lifetimes away; the small collection of 20-year-olds in a dying town sheltering a much larger collection of teenagers against the end of the world.
When he has fully recovered, he will make another long trip with Chao An, to thank those who helped to save the two of them, and the world. Between the assaults of the Bringers, and the frenetic pace of China’s economic development, he does not know whether her home or family yet survive, or even whether they will be able to find the tiny storefront that belonged to the Li family. He owes them the effort, nevertheless. He knows what it is to risk everything, and lose nearly that much, and wonder whether anyone has taken notice. If the Watchers are never good for another fucking thing, they -- he -- can be good for this: they can record - for an often blind posterity - the modest efforts of modest people, and what they sacrificed for the sake of the future. It may be all that he can do, but it will be enough.
I dunno, it made sense at the time. (It's entirely possible that canon tells us Giles merely met Chao An at an airport or train station in not-China. But I don't have my DVDs here, and I don't care if that's canon. This is *my* story, except for all the parts of it that belong to someone else.) It's embarrassing how long it's lain fallow; nevertheless, it is here now.
It definitely diverges from written canon with regard to the spelling of Chao An's name, but based on my exceedingly brief study of pinyin, this is the spelling that makes sense to me.
It's all about me, you see.
Post-"Chosen", and not; Not Lori-safe, I'm afraid. Otherwise, suitable for all ages and rather sadly gen. Also, it's for kivrin and headrush100 (to whom I give thanks for the beta, so long ago) . . . which might excuse its indulg-y nature.
Let's see if I remember how to cut tag, shall we?
Giles in China
Rupert Giles doesn’t recall very much about his last trip to China, in that time of the world ending, and everyone dying. Giles then seemed always to be en route: traveling a great distance on little more than the hope of a young woman waiting for him -- waiting to be rescued, only to realise that she’d been taken from a very dangerous frying pan to an insanely more dangerous fire. Of course, said dangerous fire also included an American shopping mall (until it shut, for lack of customers or employees), American snack foods, and other young people who understood one’s peculiar circumstances. Nevertheless, he felt half mad the entire time, and China, in particular, was left a rather smelly blur in his memory due to the fact that he spent his entire time there in the grips of a very virulent strain of influenza.
He does remember that his landing at the Shangai airport went rather smoothly, and he was able to clear customs through the simple expedient of going through the Green Line -- declaring nothing, and enspelling everything. He even cast a glamour on his passport, to obscure the number of entry and exit stamps he’d obtained in recent months. Not that the Chinese would have particularly cared about his propensity to globe trot, but the Americans were, understandably, very touchy in those days, and he'd got into the habit.
Emerging from the Shanghai airport, he’d managed, with broken Mandarin, to find a licensed taxi and, thus, a ride to the train station. He’d booked a soft berth ahead of time, or thought he had, and was able to match the proper written characters on the signs overhead with those in his Lonely Planet guide, to find the right waiting room. It was there, in the several hours before the train’s departure, that the first bit of uneasiness struck him. He realized he was unaccountably chilly in the warm southern spring, and more dizzy than jet lag would account for.
So now, in Bloomsbury, on his way to a meeting of some experts in mystical weaponry at University College library, he considers pausing for a moment inside of Blackwell’s. The chills and dizziness remind him of Shanghai, and he would rather not have a good faint in the august presence of Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon, if he can avoid it.
He nearly stumbles on his way down the stairs to the coffee bar; the age-polished wood banister receives his devout, if unspoken, thanks, and he manages to keep his feet all the way to the bottom of the steps.
The walls on the lower level haven’t been painted since approximately 1977, he thinks; orange and fuschia nevertheless comfort him, and he orders an Earl Grey and takes a seat in a quiet alcove. Sipping his tea and watching the others in the fairly gloomy rooms study, chat, and read all around him makes him feel steadier, and after a quick trip to the loo to splash water on his face, he’s prepared to continue on to the library; nevertheless, he fishes the mobile phone from his coat pocket as a frigid wind takes his breath away. It’s a comfort to be home again and have people who will take care of him, and of the work that needs doing. His success in China, he knows, is attributable entirely to his own good luck, and the resourcefulness of several Cantonese families, many of whom he never met, and never will meet.
***
The railway station in Guangzhou was teeming with people, goods, and, if Giles were any judge, demons. He considered his perceptions to be slightly suspect, however, given that the chills and dizziness that had begun in Shanghai had blossomed, despite more than twelve hours of sleep on the train, into one of the most severe bouts of ‘flu he’d ever known. His lack of Cantonese was, therefore, not the only handicap he faced in traveling to Chao An’s village, but he hoped that his Shanghai connections (such as they were) had been able to arrange for transport. Even if he hadn’t lost friends and relations in the destruction of the Council, he’d be sorry to have lost the - for a moment, he had to stand still and think of the word he wanted. Finally, he managed to coax it out of his increasingly muzzy mind: infrastructure. The Council, even in its profound general imbecility, had had an infrastructure that MI-5 would envy. Now, a huge blast and several murders had made those resources virtually inaccessible to him - to anyone, so far as he knew. A real pity, as a Council-vetted safehouse in Guangzhou would have been useful.
He wove his way through virtually solid masses of humanity, the heat and odors making him reel, trying to spot any sign of someone who might be trying to spot him. When he reached the kerb, he found donkey carts rubbing shoulders with Mercedes-Benz taxi cabs, but despite the advantage his height provided in allowing him to see up and down the street, there was no one in any sort of conveyance, or even on foot, who seemed awaiting his arrival.
Not that he had a single idea what such a person might look like, in this crowed. There were several very well-dressed young men and women about, holding up little tour-guide flags that shouted the names of their designated parties in various languages, but there was no flag bearing either his name or that of his Shanghai contacts - not that he was sure he’d recognize their names in Chinese characters, in any case. The English names were not familiar ones, but he considered passing as a Mr. Richardson if it would get him a taxi.
Whether or not he was missing his contact, getting away from the noise and crowds was becoming quite imperative. He was able to form the notion that he might find a hotel in which to sleep off the illness, and thus staggered down the crowded street in the direction of tall, well-lit buildings that held the promise of a solid bed and a European toilet -- he tried not to think what voiding his stomach into a malodorous squat would be like. He reached the end of the block, and as he stepped off the kerb to cross, he realized he couldn’t possibly carry his two bags any longer. In the seconds during which he muzzily considered whether to shift bags or step back onto the kerb first, a tiny beige Audi swerved to avoid him, and he fell back onto his arse, a pile of baggage and misery.
A group formed around him, several grannies pointing and laughing at his pratfall, while he gathered his strength to stand. In his mortification, perhaps, he stood too quickly, and found himself falling then into a deep, deep pit.
***
After the meeting, a cab is waiting for him in Great Russell - just as he has requested, and his approach is noted from within. Buffy jumps out, all waving hands and outrage, and hustles him into the taxi with dire threats and gentle hands.
As the car pulls away and heads up Gower Street, the City moves by him as if he’s dreaming. He sags against the high seat back and closes his eyes. Buffy murmurs “poor flu-y Giles” as she lowers her cool hand from his forehead and pats his arm. He smiles to humour her, and sinks more deeply into the cushioned seats and the warm, dark space behind his eyelids.
He feels the cab slow as it approaches their destination, and he begins to fumble inside his coat for his wallet, but Buffy only pats his hand and tells him not to worry. She slides gracefully out of the backseat and gives him a hand up onto the kerb, and then twists them both gracefully away from Andrew, who has launched himself down the front steps to hand folded bills to the driver.
Giles cringes, expecting to be smothered by Andrew’s heavy-handed concern, but the young man only reports to Buffy - “It’s all taken care of, Commandante,” and then takes Giles’s notebook away for transcription. He’s a good man, really - still overenthused, but reliable; nearly painfully so.
With a light hand at his elbow, Buffy leads him up her front steps and into her flat - her and Dawn’s, and Giles wonders how he has failed to recognise where the cab has deposited them til now - and into her front lounge, where she parks him on the couch with a cup of tea and a throw rug. She passes him a packet of Lemsip and heads for the kitchen at the back of the flat. It’s possible that she calls back to him, but he fades into sleep without finding out.
***
Giles awoke from his dead faint in Guangzhou on a narrow cot; his head was splitting and he shook so hard with chills that he found it difficult to move with intention. His delirium was not so advanced, however, as to preclude him from recognizing that his bed was placed in the large front window of a store, and that in the dim light of sunrise he could see passersby stopping to stare at him, gesturing to one another at the sight of an unwashed Englishman scrambling - in the slowest and clumsiest possible fashion -- from a narrow cot.
He pulled the scratchy blanket tighter round his shoulders and finally managed to stand, working his way down a narrow hall toward what he hoped was a real bedroom. His hopes were shattered as he emerged into a dimly lit and cluttered room; with no further plan, he stood trembling and blinking in the doorway. At his appearance, two young children fled from the rickety card table at which they had been slurping up noodles to stand behind an older woman near a great cauldron just outside the back door. From Giles’s right, a man in a sweatshirt approached, making shooing motions, apparently trying to encourage him to return to the cot up front.
Giles could not overcome his befuddlement to to pull together any sentence in Mandarin - let alone a useful one. His dismay at this was short-lived, however, as he was immediately forced to deal with the mortification of having vomited all over his shoes and the hallway floor. Whatever the smaller man was saying, it was loud, and Giles was happy to return to the cot if it meant an end to the shouting.
He turned his back toward the curious crowd and pulled the blanket over his head, wondering if he ought to try to send word to Buffy, letting her know of his location, and that if he failed to appear within the month . . . but he was unable to complete the thought before the shouting man returned with one of the young children in tow. An elderly tin bucket was placed next to the cot with some shouting and gesturing from the man toward the boy, who in return stated loudly: “You. To be Sick. At here! Please!”
Giles nodded his understanding, and accepted a bottle of water from the man. Further words in Cantonese were transmitted to the boy, who shook his head vigourously. Then, in what Giles recognized as Mandarin, the man and the boy pointed to him, and used a combination of English and Mandarin that seemed to indicate that he was a white man. This he knew already, but nodded miserably anyway, in order to be polite. As he felt himself fading, he heard the boy shouting with confidence, “Not having of medical. You. To rest. Two of day.”
While the precise meaning was vague, Giles’s sleepy mind reckoned that the boy was much better at English than he himself was at Mandarin. He tried to thank his hosts, and was answered with giggling.
***
When he wakes in the darkness, he discovers that Buffy has covered him with a heavy blanket and lit the electric fire. He remembers how she complained about it when she first took the flat: Didn’t you people invent fireplaces, or something? Why would you want this feeble electric light instead of real flames for warmth? Are English people mostly vampires,Giles?
It hadn’t been up to her usual level of wit, but those early days had been strained for all of them. Giles hates to leave the warmth of his cocoon, but his disorientation spurs him to find his slayer. He wanders into the kitchen, where Buffy sits with a cup of coffee and some file folders. Her chin is propped in her hand, and just before she meets his eyes, he sees that she seems to be gazing into the distance: daydreaming.
“Oh, hey, sleepy-watcher-guy; you don’t look so good.”
She rises from the table and advances on him, clearly ready to palm his forehead and, possibly, make him stick out his tongue. He retreats, slightly, leaning against the hallway wall and wracked by shivering.
“Yes, Buffy, I’m sorry to trouble you, but -“
“Say no more. We made up the guest room for you. Isn’t that grown-up? We have a guest room!”
She takes him by the arm, in a gesture that’s becoming equal parts annoying and endearing, and chatters about how she hadn’t expected him to pass out quite so quickly, and that they’d had chicken soup all prepared for him, but he’d missed out, but she’d be happy to zap it into the micro if he’d like -
“Please, no, Buffy,” he blurts out, and his stomach begins to roil, “thanks, but, I really think it’s best if I just sleep some more.”
“OK, but Dawn’s going to make you have some juice and aspirin anyway, and that’s some heavy-duty shivering you’ve got going on there, Giles.” She points him at the welcoming bed as she grumps, but her attitude is belied by lovely, crisp sheets already turned down. He sits, and tries with his hand to push back some of the pain threatening to burst open his forehead.
“I appreciate the, er, the thought, Buffy, but -- water, perhaps, and paracetamol, if you have any - I’m afraid that anything else will only wind up on these lovely bedclothes.”
“Oh, ish, Giles, but okay. Dawn!” she shouts down the hall, and he curls himself up into a shivering, miserable ball, “Get the supreme Watcher some water and tylenol!”
“Oh, oops,” she continues more quietly, and he hears her footsteps approach, “Sorry about that, but the walls are thick, here.”
“You know, I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Buffy,” he mutters between chattering teeth, as she removes his shoes and tugs out the blankets in order to cover him.
“Giles, do you really want to wear all of your clothes to bed? Do you need some help?”
Buffy sounds more tentative than she has in some time, and he rallies to smile and begin fumbling with his buttons.
“No, Buffy, thank you. I think I can manage.”
He is grateful, however, that his business today made a suit and tie appropriate, as he has a T-shirt in which to take refuge, along with his underpants. He tries not to think about whether woozily stripping to his underwear in front of this young woman is something about which he should be more uncomfortable; his misery is as much as he can currently manage.
“Andrew did actually leave some pajamas for you, and some sweats, if you’d rather -“
“No, ‘s fine,” he mumbles, and pulls the blankets up as far as they will go, as he continues to shiver and chatter away.
Dawn’s arrival is heralded by boot clomps and her announcement, “Got it. Hey Giles - wow, um, you don’t look good.”
He is beyond commenting that the gene for tact must be recessive; he holds out his hand for the pills, and Buffy helps support his head so that he can swallow some water. Her hands are cool and infinitely gentle as they ease his splitting head back onto the pillows. It is more difficult than he wants to acknowledge to swallow a whimper.
“I’m going to be out patrolling tonight, but Dawn’s gonna be just down the hall. Call her if you need anything, okay?”
They stand, side-by-side, with nearly identical expressions of worry, and he wants to reassure them, but he can barely think over the pounding in his head.
“Fine. Please don’t worry,” he adds, and he’s considering how to thank them when sleep overtakes him again.
***
Giles spent thirty-six hours in Guangzhou, as delirious as he could ever recall being, and trying, during lucid moments, not to vomit or, alternatively, to aim at the tin can. Dark moments seemed to stretch into hours, but in the end, the time passed very quickly, and he ended up even more confused about days and times than jet travel normally made him.
A British ex-pat dropped by as Giles was prostrate with post-fever lethargy, and pronounced him on the mend. When he learned that the man had been a large-animal veterinarian, he was less than comforted, but as the fellow had only confirmed his own conclusion, he raised no objection. Rather sooner than he would have thought advisable, the elderly couple - the Lis, he learned; Li Peng and Li Wei - were urging bottles of local beer on him, but he found that the pale liquid was easier to take than the still water, and certainly preferable to whatever was coming out of the pipes. The older child made some attempts to practice his English on the dozy foreigner, but as Giles lacked the energy to worry whether he was being polite, the boy finally gave up. The littler one remained entirely out of his sight, except for occasional glimpses -- she sometimes appeared, clutching the leg of her grandmother or grandfather when they came in to tend to his needs. He was distantly sorry that the girl was so anxious of him.
His listless curiosity over his makeshift sickroom was never resolved, as he lacked sufficient incentive to raise the energy that would have been required to gain useful information. As best he could tell, the family bought and sold junk, and sometimes made use of a relatively fine bicycle to carry messages hither and yon, including into the countryside. The storefront doubled as the old couple’s bedroom and the service counter - he tried not to feel too guilty over the obstacle he created for them, and thought at least that he might be able to offer them payment in a way that would not cause insult. In the fading light of sunset, he considered making use of their services to try to contact the family of the potential he’d come to collect; surely they would not object to payment in that case. He hoped that the morning would bring him renewed strength, as well as facility with schoolboy-level Mandarin.
By some miracle or other, the morning brought him the potential herself. It went without saying that the lucky turn would be accompanied by a fair amount of shame: he had just convinced himself he was well enough to engage in some washing-up, and was bent, shirtless, over a zinc tub and trying to scrub himself clean of travel dust and more than two days’ worth of perspiration when a donkey cart pulled into the narrow alleyway behind his host’s home and shop. The driver of the cart was an elderly woman - though he reminded himself that here, life was hard enough to make one elderly at the ripe old age of fifty - and when she stopped the cart, a bundle of textiles in the cart behind her began to shift. Just when Giles had convinced himself that he was hallucinating, a teenage girl emerged from the pile of fabric. She leapt gracefully from the cart, and approached him tentatively.
“Ni hao. Nin gui xing? Wo jiao Chao An. Ni shi wa-chir? Ni shi jai els?”
She seemed to speak very rapidly, but when he finally recognized her name, and his own, among the sounds she made, he began smiling and nodding like a great, half-naked, water-logged loon. His relief was palpable, despite his discomfort at having his “bath” interrupted - but then, the Chinese concept of privacy - if they had one, he grumbled to himself - ever had evaded him.
The girl and her auntie were welcomed into the store that had been his sanctuary and convalescent hospital; somehow his presence and his identity had been communicated to the right people, saving him the trip to Chao An’s family’s farm. As quickly as he recognized his good fortune, he knew that he and the girl had to leave. The odds that only friendly beings were able to connect his presence with her identity were so low as to barely register.
***
He thrashes off the covers, feeling as if he’s roasting, but his limbs are too heavy and uncooperative to get him off the bed. The bed, he realizes, has replaced the rickety cot, and somehow the huge window has been walled over. This must be an improvement for all of them, he thinks. He wonders where the Lis found the money.
Someone is speaking American-accented English, very close to the bed. When did the Yank come to Guangzhou?
“I think we should get him to the hospital. His fever’s really high --”
Poor dear - she must be so lost, here. She sounds beside herself. He worries; he knows that there are some excellent hospitals in this province, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to recognize whether he’s in one.
“No - he’s shaking a lot, and mumbling . . . I’ve never seen anyone with flu this bad.”
Here now, he knows this voice -
“Dawn, I’m sorry, dearheart, but they won’t understand you.”
His vision has blurred - the light is searing his eyes - and his voice is no more than a pained gasp.
“Giles, you know who I am? Who won’t understand?”
“The - they don’t speak English, Dawn. You know better. Li Xiao,” he calls out, feebly, “duibuqi, wo de pengyou -- bu shui shuo Putonghua.”
He’s certain that his Mandarin is incomprehensible to the little boy, but perhaps Dawn can make herself understood to the child, since he has some slight English.
“No - I don’t know - he’s speaking some other language; it might be Chinese?”
He shakes his head. To whom is she speaking? And what in bloody hell is she doing here? Not that he doesn’t appreciate having a familiar person about, but now he feels an added weight of responsibility: how will he get Dawn home safely, along with Chao An?
“Wait, I think that’s Buffy coming in. Buffy!”
Now Giles is certain he’s beyond delirium - he’s hallucinating that his slayer has come to rescue him in far away China. How sodding convenient. Poor Chao An . . . he supposes she’ll be found by Bringers and murdered, just like so many others.
There’s murmuring near the door; he’d prefer to pass into unconsciousness again, rather than face hallucinations or the weary consternation of the Li family, trying to see him through this fever with little medicine and even less cash. He’s sorry to have brought this burden to their house.
The blankets are back, and as he tries to push them off, implausibly tiny, impossibly strong hands catch his.
“Hey, Giles, take it easy, shhh. Dawn’s calling an ambulance. I had no idea you were this sick, or we wouldn’t have left you alone. I’m sorry.”
The hallucination is more than convincing - the voice, the small, cool hand on his brow. He stops struggling for a moment and tries to coax his aching eyes into revealing a face, any face, but he’s so tired. Beyond tired.
“Buffy, I - no, no. I know it’s not Buffy, I’m speaking to an hallucination!” He begins to giggle madly. This will never do. He wants to thank the Lis, apologize for their trouble, but he can no longer remember enough words. He wants to thank Buffy, and apologize to her, too, but he’d rather not give in again to the hallucination, if he can help it. And what if it’s not an hallucination? What if it’s something worse? He’s well aware of what the First can do with the faces and voices of those who have . . .
To his intense humiliation, he begins to weep softly; he’s frustrated and exhausted and has completely lost control of himself just when he most needs that much-vaunted Giles family self-control.
Those small hands soothe him; a damp flannel is drawn over his forehead, and catches the tears now streaming over his nose as he tries to hide his face in the pillow.
“Aw, Giles, don’t - just hang on. You’re going to feel better any minute now, I promise.”
It’s not fair that Buffy - or anyone - should be so comforting to him as part of an hallucination, ten thousand miles from home.
“Duibuqi, duibuqi,” he murmurs, with all the breath he has left to him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he adds, just in case.
***
They had left Guangzhou before midnight; Giles could barely propel himself along the train platform, and Chao An had to carry their little bit of baggage as well as support part of his weight as they reached their soft berth. He was lucky that Chao An’s auntie was able to take them to the station and negotiate tickets on the night train - she had plenty of guanxi, Chao An explained, even from back before the Revolution; in his fugue state, he couldn't tell if the girl was proud of or embarrassed by her aunt's connections.
By the time they reached Shanghai, he felt marginally better, and between his credit cards and her imperfect Mandarin they obtained two days in separate rooms at the Shanghai Marriott. Chao An spent both days wandering the city with cash for which he had changed all of his remaining travellers’ cheques, but he was not sorry for two days of rest and safe water. He hadn’t dared contact anyone, for fear the Bringers would suss out Chao An’s location, but he had to hope that the First Evil hadn’t yet learned to trace the bank card transactions of one Rupert Giles. He shuddered to think about it, and resolved to fund his future missions with cash. After all, they simply had no idea of the extent of the First’s powers yet, and while he might not be able to save every potential slayer, he’d die before he caused the death of one.
Chao An returned early on the second day, and he was able to give her their flight information, and - he hoped - ask her to knock him up in the morning in time for the trip to the airport. She had obtained for him some very foul-smelling herbs meant to strengthen the qi, or some such. He nodded his thanks as she left his room, bowing awkwardly and giggling.
***
“Please, Chao An, that’s enough tea. Please!”
His own voice wakes him, but he fears that his vision has failed him again, as the surroundings seem rather dingy - not the warm, dark wood of the Shanghai Marriott.
“See, I told you it was Chinese! He was hallucinating China!”
The voice comes from his right, and is unmistakably Dawn Summers, again. Buffy is standing next to her, her expression gentle and somber in equal measures.
“Giles? Are you there?”
He clears his throat, slightly, and croaks out, “I seem to be.”
Dawn engulfs her sister in a long-armed hug and pats his arm, then twirls away, calling softly, “I’ll get the doctor.”
Buffy apparently recognizes his bewilderment and comes to take his hand, carefully, as it is currently impaled with an i.v. needle attached to plastic tubing.
“OK, I really think you should have told us that you were planning to bring home exotic diseases.”
“What?” he tries to ask, but his throat is hopeless and the result is less than a croak.
She pours him a plastic tumbler of water and helps him to drink it, and he can see real worry in her eyes.
“Malaria, Giles, you have malaria - they’re not sure which kind, yet, so you’re on some different drugs and some IV fluids. At first they thought it was just a really bad strain of flu, but -“
She stops when a doctor comes through the door, but Giles can read her all too well, even when he feels like death. She’s angry, or upset, and not just about his illness, although he can well imagine how difficult it’s been for her to spend hours in hospital, even a British hospital, given her mother’s illness and death.
The doctor has various questions for him, but allows Buffy and Dawn to remain in the room as he is interrogated about his travels. When it comes to it, he has a difficult time remembering just when he had been where, but they manage to date his return from China together, and he can then date the prior, failed trip to Guatemala easily. At that point, the doctor has heard enough, and begins to berate him - very gently - about public health warnings and state department warnings and prophylaxis until his head is spinning. Buffy manages to step in and hint at difficult personal business, as well as the Sunnydale tragedy, and the doctor writes some notes, gathers his minions, and departs.
“Why didn’t you tell us you got sick in China?”
Buffy’s tone reveals just how upset she is, but Giles finds himself too worn out to take offense.
“Didn’t seem important at the time?” he offers, without even the faintest hope that his feeble quip will end the conversation.
“Well, it was, Giles. I mean, I know it was a rough year for everyone, but still . . . you’re supposed to be recording all of this stuff, aren’t you? Isn’t that a Watcher’s job?”
She seems to understand that she has crossed a line, here, when his eyes light on her face. He wonders just how much of his anger and grief are showing; the illness has left him more volatile than he would like, and he waits until he is certain he can speak steadily, surprised that she lets the silence last as long as it does.
“A Watcher’s job?” he enunciates carefully, with only the slightest trace of a waver. “At the time, I wasn’t very interested in doing a Watcher’s job, Buffy. As it seemed chiefly to involve being blown up or shouted down.”
He is immediately ashamed of voicing such pathetic shit, and as she begins to stammer out some sort of apology, he holds up one weary, trembling hand.
“No, Buffy, I’m sorry - that wasn’t, wasn’t worthy. Please, can we forget I said it? I do understand that there is quite a bit of work to do, to record that last year, when . . .” but he’s not certain how to continue.
Buffy is examining her feet rather diligently, but flinches slightly as Dawn steps forward.
“We called Xander this morning, to let him know how sick you were. He was the one who thought that you might have picked up something while you were, um, globetrotting last year. He said, he figured you must have been pretty lonely. And you didn’t really get a chance to tell us what it was like, when you got back.”
Well, between the three of them they’ve certainly jumped to some reasonable conclusions. But he’s rather tired now; too tired to hold on to past slights, however keenly felt.
“Yes, well, that was a long time ago now; please, don’t fuss. Just, now that we know what’s wrong, might I be leaving here soon?”
Buffy rubs his shoulder, gently, and promises to find the doctor and learn how to spring him as soon as she can manage. As she leaves, Dawn sits down and holds his hand in her long, graceful one.
“She’s really sorry, Giles. But don’t tell her I told you that. She pretty wigged, but she’s still Buffy.” Dawn’s voice is gentle, recognizing and forgiving her older sister’s lapses in one breath.
“I cannot imagine what you mean, young Dawn,” he offers, with as much dryness as he can manage, “and thank you.”
Her answering smile is such an echo of Buffy’s younger, simpler days that it is all he can do not to dissolve into tears once more. Instead, he rather feebly squeezes the hand that holds his, and drifts off into sleep.
***
Blood having been analyzed and tiny, vicious parasites identified, Giles is discharged that afternoon. The price of freedom is a week’s worth of foul-tasting medication and bed-rest; he is told very sternly that he must finish all of the prescribed medicine so as not to relapse, and increase the prevalence of drug-resistant malaria. He grouses over it, mostly for Dawn’s sake; in truth, it’s far from the bitterest thing he’s ever had to swallow.
The Summers sisters insist that he remain at their flat, under their close observation, at least until he regains his strength. This is not as great a burden as he lets them believe.
He has his first uninterrupted sleep the night they bring him home, and he finally wakes near noon feeling somewhat less like death. After a hearty breakfast of instant oatmeal and an overwhelming selection of Patisserie Valerie pastries, Buffy and Dawn take his dishes away, then return with tea and a heavy package wrapped in brown paper.
“What’s this?” He gazes in wonder at three sturdy leather notebooks that emerge from the wrapping.
Buffy seems close to tears.
“Your Watcher’s Diaries - I mean, they will be, when you’ve written in them -- for the time you were traveling, finding the, the Potentials. We want - we want the girls that you found, and the ones that you couldn’t save - we want them all to have a history, a record. I know you have notes scribbled down somewhere, but it’s important to have a record of those girls - and of what you did, too. We - we care about what happened to you, Giles.”
“Me especially,” Dawn puts in, rolling her eyes - kindly - at her sister’s less-than-graceful show of emotion. “If I’m going to be a watcher, I need to learn how from the best. Um, that’s you,” she finishes, rather awkward herself.
Giles is overwhelmed, for a moment; they are correct that his diaries from those days are sketchy at best, and leave out some of the most harrowing days, as there’s been no time to set things down in an orderly fashion. If he can find his notes and piece them together, he has some hope of creating a lasting record of the girls who died, and of the Bringers’ crimes.
“Yes, well, I - I suppose this, er, forced convalescence does give me time to catch up on some things . . .” He manages, barely, to tear his eyes from the volumes before him.
Dawn is smiling and, as usual, presently in motion.
“I’ll tell Andrew he has to hold down the fort for a while!”
Giles’s answering groan helps to break the solemn cast in the room.
Buffy lights gently on the side of the bed.
“I mean it, Giles, we do care what happened -- I care, it’s just -“
“Buffy, please, you were busy stopping one apocalypse and then trying to rebuild some sort of organization for dealing with future ones. It’s not as if we’ve had very much time for, er, sharing . . .” he grimaces slightly, so that she’ll smile, and when she does, he continues.
“In any case, I feel compelled to point out that, since we’re all sharing in the rebuilding of the Council, the obligation to record events is now also one that should be shared. And I did miss a great deal that happened, to all of you, during that last year.”
With that, he hands her one of the notebooks.
“But please allow Dawn to do the actual writing - she has much better penmanship.”
***
Rupert Giles doesn’t recall very much about his last trip to China, in that time of the world nearly ending, and too many people dying, but he does remember enough to piece together a sensible narrative of what happened to him there. With Dawn’s assistance, he gathers his notes from that trip, and the other journeys he made, in often hopeless attempts at rescue. As a young watcher, she is aching to delve into the notes, to ask him everything, to live the experience vicariously through him; he recognizes that look in her eye, he knows the feeling. As it happens, though, she has learnt at least something about tact: she knows he is not yet quite ready to share all of this with others, and - another pleasant surprise - she refrains from commenting on the need for haste, or her facility for organization, and leaves him to his scrambled notes.
As he reviews what he could only laughingly call “his records” of that year, he realizes that the really remarkable happenings often involved persons who would seem totally unremarkable under normal circumstances: a Chinese merchant who, once upon a time, nursed an ailing foreigner in desperate straits; a network of peasants who somehow got word to an extraordinary girl without alerting the agents bent on her destruction, and the aged aunt who traveled with her to the metropolis twenty miles and several lifetimes away; the small collection of 20-year-olds in a dying town sheltering a much larger collection of teenagers against the end of the world.
When he has fully recovered, he will make another long trip with Chao An, to thank those who helped to save the two of them, and the world. Between the assaults of the Bringers, and the frenetic pace of China’s economic development, he does not know whether her home or family yet survive, or even whether they will be able to find the tiny storefront that belonged to the Li family. He owes them the effort, nevertheless. He knows what it is to risk everything, and lose nearly that much, and wonder whether anyone has taken notice. If the Watchers are never good for another fucking thing, they -- he -- can be good for this: they can record - for an often blind posterity - the modest efforts of modest people, and what they sacrificed for the sake of the future. It may be all that he can do, but it will be enough.