Fic: "Fade to Black", Buffy/Giles, chapter 6/10, STRONG ANGST! UNHAPPY ENDING!
When she finished the chant and found herself in front of the door once more, she smiled and ran her hand along the ornate surface, greeting it like the old friend it was. The instant she opened the door and walked through it, however, Buffy could feel the knot in her stomach. Something was horribly wrong. This time the door to his apartment had led to-his dimly lit apartment, but an odd feeling hung in the air as the strains of “La Boheme” played in the background. It wasn’t until she saw the candles and rose petals leading up the stairs, however, that she knew for sure where she was.
Before the horror of what was going on even had a chance to fully settle, she found herself bolting up the stairs, knowing only that she had to get to him. At the top of the stairs, however, she froze, seeing the scene he had come upon so long ago, with one exception. The body in the bed was arranged in a farce of passion, rose petals covering all, limbs posed naked in the sheets, face serene and facing her, eyes open. But it wasn’t Jenny. Buffy stared directly into her own eyes, saw her own hair splayed on the pillow.
When she could again move, she forced herself to walk through the door and into the room, instinctively knowing that to turn away from this would only lead her farther from wherever he currently was. She never made it into the room, however; the scene that met her instead was far worse.
They were in the basement of the mansion and Giles was perched on the chair, remaining there only due to the tension of the ropes securing him to its frame. Angel-or Angelus, she knew-drew a finger down his naked chest as he slumped forward, breath shallow.
“Come on, Watcher. It doesn’t need to be like this you know. We could-” He never got to finish his sentence as the stake plunged through his chest and his dust blew forward, coating Giles’ unresponsive form with a fine layer of grit.
“Oh God, oh God,” Buffy repeated as she frantically clawed at his restraints, dismantling the chair in the process. This was something she’d only imagined in her worst nightmares, but what she’d known of the actual fact of it was vague. Now she was seeing it in person.
The seemingly senseless form that was her Watcher cried out as she jostled his right hand freeing it from the chair, and she looked down at the mangled mess that greeted her. Each finger had been snapped, the bones displaced, pushing up the skin grotesquely, and the inevitable swelling just beginning. Buffy had known…but she’d seen the end product, set and healed, even if not entirely properly. This was far worse.
The sharp pain seemed to cut through his haze a bit though, and he began to fight the restraints, even as Buffy renewed her efforts. “Giles! Giles, I need you to hold still.”
His movements quieted slightly, and the Slayer kept a running dialogue going, telling him it would be all right, and reassuring him that she was there and Angelus was gone. Finally, she freed him, and he moaned as he slid bonelessly off the chair and into her waiting embrace.
Buffy knelt with him on the floor, its cold surface permeating through her clothes and chilling her as she attempted to cradle him the best she could. With horror she found herself realizing more and more of how it had been…how it was. With his shirt open, she had seen the bruises and the slight lumps under the skin that told of broken ribs, but now she could feel them as well. Far worse in her mind, however, was the sticky feel she noticed as she touched the back of his shirt where he’d been bound cruelly against the chair. Her hand came away red with his blood and she could tell that most of his back was covered in it. Surely the hidden wounds underneath had to mark him still, the scars remaining to tell the story of what she was reliving with him now.
Mentally she fought with herself. This was something she SHOULD see, something she SHOULD know about. After all, in a way, she had caused it. But it was also such a breathtaking invasion of his privacy, and worse yet, though it made her sick with herself, Buffy knew that really, she hadn’t wanted to know and still didn’t. Her own pain over the years-the killing, the deaths, the losses of friends and loved ones, the failures, the betrayals, her resurrection, and the fruits of her own withdrawal from life afterwards-had been enough; too much, certainly. Nevertheless, now she was being asked to deal with his as well, and she forced herself to do so.
As she held him to herself as well as she could manage, one arm around him, trying not to injure him further while drawing him as close as possible, and the other hand doing its best to massage the circulation back into his arms, she felt him begin to respond to her slightly, relaxing into her warmth as the sobs of his ordeal began to come silently. Was this how it had been for Xander, when he found him? she wondered. How much worse had it gotten than what she was witnessing now?
Buffy hadn’t even realized that her vocal monologue had ended until he finally spoke. “I didn’t say. I didn’t tell him. Tell Buffy, I didn’t tell him. I won’t tell him,” he gasped into her shirt, horrifying her both with the fact he didn’t seem to realize who it was that held him or even that it was definitely over. Then suddenly, he seemed to remember that, in the end, he had told. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, didn’t know it wasn’t...” Buffy didn’t know what had finally broken him, nor did she want to-it was a secret of his she would not willingly take from him.
“Giles, quiet. It’s Buffy.” He seemed to hear her, and she could feel him tense and start to draw away, but she held him in place, even though she knew the physicality of doing so hurt him slightly. “No, don’t talk; just listen. This happened. It really did happen, but you did good. I’m proud of you, Giles. But it’s not real; not now. We aren’t really here now. This…this is just a really bad memory, but now we’re safe…both of us,” she added, recalling what she’d seen on the bed, which was certainly not merely a memory, “and I’m here.”
He didn’t move, but remained in her embrace, the moisture of his tears-something so unfamiliar to her that it hurt-wetting the fabric covering her chest as he became perfectly still in her arms. “It’s alright Giles. The mansion is gone, Angelus is…gone. This is over.” He sagged slightly as he began to relax more, easing some of the tension, and he tried to speak again. Buffy knew he still wasn’t fully with her, and, shushing him once more, began to rock with him slightly, back and forth.
“This is in your mind, Giles. But now you’re strong and healthy. We’re both strong and healthy,” she told him, hating the lie as she knew that in the real world, the words were certainly not true for him. “This isn’t real. The scars have healed. They’re still there, but that’s all they are-scars.” The only way out of this was to talk him out of it, she knew, so Buffy dug in and began to try, knowing she had his full attention. “Most of the time you can’t even feel them; you forget they’re there. Your fingers. They’re good now. They healed and you can use them-to hold weapons, to fight me, whatever. Your ribs too. You can breath easy. I’ve seen you run, and I know you can sing. Willow said you’re great, and I’d really like the chance to find out sometime if she’s right. And…and the rest of it. You’re good now. You’re healed and you can move and everything just fine. You can laugh now Giles, and make sarcastic comments, and everything. What he did to you was bad, but you’re stronger than him, and it turned out okay. In the years after this, we faced a lot worse than him, and you did well. We did okay with all that, too.” Buffy held back her own tears, trying not to choke on the relief that filled her as her babbled words began to take affect and the evidence of his ordeal, his blood and his injuries began to fade, as they had with time in the real world. He remained motionless, but she continued to speak to him, knowing she was helping him to break free of what she had entered into.
“Giles, you’re listening to me, I can tell, and that’s good. Keep doing that, and just concentrate on me, okay? We aren’t really here, this isn’t real,” she repeated again. “We’re…we’re at the beach,” Buffy said, scrambling for an image with which to replace the mansion and grasping desperately at the first that came to mind. Not the ideal setting, perhaps, but now that she’d chosen it, she felt obliged to push onward as the walls of the mansion began to waver and melt. “Just you and me. It’s warm here, and we can feel the sun. But it’s not hot, just nice. And we can hear the waves coming in, gently against the beach, and the birds calling out…” As Buffy talked, the picture she painted verbally began to manifest around them-or at least Giles’ interpretation of her words. Certainly, the scene forming was like nothing she’d seen in California, though it certainly fit her description. The trees edging the beach were different and the sand itself was darker. Instead, her words were only shaping what was there, playing with a construct he must have already had in his mind.
Without even realizing what she was doing, Buffy let her hand find its way to let the fingers bury themselves in his hair, massaging his scalp and his hairline, soothing him further as she continued her monologue, erasing all traces of the horror in which she had found him. Everything was so responsive to her verbal command, that she was again forced to be startled at the reality of being within his mind. It also astounded her to realize how completely he had opened himself up to her now, trusting her to guide him, and letting her take control of his mind entirely. The scene was nearly complete when she recalled his near constant complaint, and grinned to herself as she set about trying to temporarily do something about it.
“And it’s a picnic. There’s chicken-roasted, not fried, with the lemon pepper stuff, and jelly donuts, mostly raspberry, but a few blueberry and lemon as well. Then really thick and juicy hamburgers with everything…including cheese, so they’re cheeseburgers I guess, and, um, chocolate cake and Jaffa cakes, whatever the heck those are…” she babbled, calling forth everything she could think of, including just about every British item she could name…even if she wasn’t entirely sure what exactly names like ‘bangers and mash’ might translate into.
Finally, the amount of food she’d called forth seemed staggering even to her and she let herself trail off. She looked down at his head still leaning against her chest, his breathing shallow and trancelike, and realized her thumb was still caressing the back of his neck. If only it were so easy to convince him to follow her back to the real world. She shook her head to clear that thought, knowing that if he was to be repelled again, letting it happen when he was so vulnerable to suggestion like this could result in letting what plagued him push him so far back in his mind that she might lose him for quite some time.
“Giles? Um, Giles, you can come back to me now. We’re here and safe…and happy. The badness is gone, and it’s alright now.” She continued to talk to him, knowing it wasn’t so much what she was saying anymore, as it was the sound of her voice, urging him back. He started to stir and he opened his eyes to find himself in a rather compromising position. Buffy let him go as he carefully extracted himself and sat up.
“Alright?” she asked him, suddenly shy.
He nodded, not able to meet her eyes as he seemed to pull himself away from her, remembering what she’d just seen, and self-conscious about what she’d done.
“Buffy…I-”
She waived him off. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Still…thank you. You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.”
“As much as I didn’t want to see that, I wish I could be around every time to pull you out,” Buffy told him honestly.
Giles looked around uncomfortably, until something caught his eye. “Er, Buffy? What is all this?” he asked, indicating the virtual mountain of food spread out in various dishes on top of the cloth that had been lain out over the ground.
She grinned. “You always said the only way you could get non-cardboardy food is to trick yourself into it; so this time I tricked you instead. I thought you’d like it.”
He laughed, and gave her shoulders a squeeze in appreciation. “I don’t even know where to start, honestly!”
“Um, yeah. I did kinda order the whole all-you-can-eat buffet, didn’t I?” Spying the roast chicken, she grabbed off a leg for herself, figuring she might as well, and passed the other to him. “Try this, then.”
“Chicken?”
She shrugged, then said with perfect Buffy logic, “Sure. Everything tastes like chicken, right? So if you’re looking for something to taste…”
He took a bite, savoring its juices before he spied a blue box with orange lettering in the pile, and quickly forgot the chicken. “Oh! Jaffa cakes!”
He continued to explore her choices, explaining to her what some of the more foreign foods consisted of, as he dug in heartily. Buffy, encouraged by the fact that he couldn’t possibly even begin to eat it all before she left and he ‘lost’ himself again, did likewise.
Finally, she knew that time was drawing to end once more, and she brought up the topic they’d been avoiding since she’d brought him out of the nightmare scene he’d been in. “It’s getting worse and worse all the time, isn’t it?”
He nodded, once again deciding he owed her the truth.
“I’m sorry. I’m guessing what I saw back there? Not even the worst of it.” It wasn’t a question and he didn’t answer it. They were silent for a bit until she spoke again. “What happens if…if we don’t get you out, and it wins?”
He shrugged, and continued to pick at the shepherd’s pie, grateful that he could at least conjure up his own silverware, since Buffy had clearly neglected to think about that tiny detail. “Truly? I don’t know. But I rather suspect I’d be permanently trapped in whatever state it wishes me to be. It’s a parasite, Buffy. At least I believe so at this point, and I’m merely its host.”
“God.” True hell, she realized, by anyone’s definition. The very worst machinations the human mind was capable of, endured endlessly forever-worse yet, the very worst Giles’ mind was capable of. She swallowed hard. “Giles, if it gets bad enough…it would only take moving the right tube or unplugging the right machine. I could, if you want.”
He was startled as he realized the gift she was offering, one which hadn’t even occurred to him, since every time he managed to die in his mind, he was always miraculously resurrected in the next scene. But the thought of being free of it all, versus being trapped… “Buffy, I can’t ask you-”
“Yeah, you can,” she cut him off. “I’m offering. Besides it would hurt more to know that you…” Buffy trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
“I…thank you,” he whispered. “In that case, I would accept. If it gets to that point, I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll need to talk to Willow, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Giles responded by pulling her into his embrace, awkward due to their sitting positions, but manageable nonetheless.
Buffy leaned her head onto his chest, letting herself take in the familiar smell that smelled nothing at all like the hospital and very much like the man she remembered, as she listened to the comforting heartbeat that bespoke the very life she might be asked to terminate, all to save the man it sustained.
After a minute, she pulled away. “I have to go, but I’ll be back.”
He smiled at the familiar words and nodded, bracing himself as she called up the way out.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Willow looked at her in shock, eyes widening. “You want to what? But that’d kill him!”
Buffy mentally refused to deal with the issue, and snapped back impatiently, “Yeah, I know.”
“But it’s Giles! You can’t just fix this by slaying him like you do everything else. It’s…it’s wrong.”
“Willow, he’s trapped in something as bad as any hell dimension. If we don’t figure this out and I can save him from that…I need to know. Besides, he asked me to,” she admitted, her voice catching. “I offered first, but he wanted it.”
The witch’s eyes flickered to the figure in the bed, still uncertain, but she felt herself caving in. If Giles had asked… “Oh.”
“All I want to know is what would happen to him if we…if I did it.”
“Um, hang on, I’ll check.”
Buffy waited while Willow tested the fields of mystical energy surrounding him yet one more time. She could clearly feel the second presence now, announcing itself ever more strongly. Her stomach dropped when the witch shook her head.
“No, it wouldn’t matter, Buffy. This thing doesn’t need his body. It’s after his mind…his soul; if it takes him, it’ll either destroy him entirely, so no afterlife, or else it’ll completely master him, uh, indefinitely really.”
“Giles,” Buffy squeaked, hugging herself as the pain settled deep in her chest and pricked her throat.
“Yeah,” Willow agreed. Then the first sob racked through her.
The two girls held each other close, rocking together. Willow started to cry in earnest for the man who was her friend, but for Buffy, there was only shocked silence as the tears refused to come.
Chapter 7
Before the horror of what was going on even had a chance to fully settle, she found herself bolting up the stairs, knowing only that she had to get to him. At the top of the stairs, however, she froze, seeing the scene he had come upon so long ago, with one exception. The body in the bed was arranged in a farce of passion, rose petals covering all, limbs posed naked in the sheets, face serene and facing her, eyes open. But it wasn’t Jenny. Buffy stared directly into her own eyes, saw her own hair splayed on the pillow.
When she could again move, she forced herself to walk through the door and into the room, instinctively knowing that to turn away from this would only lead her farther from wherever he currently was. She never made it into the room, however; the scene that met her instead was far worse.
They were in the basement of the mansion and Giles was perched on the chair, remaining there only due to the tension of the ropes securing him to its frame. Angel-or Angelus, she knew-drew a finger down his naked chest as he slumped forward, breath shallow.
“Come on, Watcher. It doesn’t need to be like this you know. We could-” He never got to finish his sentence as the stake plunged through his chest and his dust blew forward, coating Giles’ unresponsive form with a fine layer of grit.
“Oh God, oh God,” Buffy repeated as she frantically clawed at his restraints, dismantling the chair in the process. This was something she’d only imagined in her worst nightmares, but what she’d known of the actual fact of it was vague. Now she was seeing it in person.
The seemingly senseless form that was her Watcher cried out as she jostled his right hand freeing it from the chair, and she looked down at the mangled mess that greeted her. Each finger had been snapped, the bones displaced, pushing up the skin grotesquely, and the inevitable swelling just beginning. Buffy had known…but she’d seen the end product, set and healed, even if not entirely properly. This was far worse.
The sharp pain seemed to cut through his haze a bit though, and he began to fight the restraints, even as Buffy renewed her efforts. “Giles! Giles, I need you to hold still.”
His movements quieted slightly, and the Slayer kept a running dialogue going, telling him it would be all right, and reassuring him that she was there and Angelus was gone. Finally, she freed him, and he moaned as he slid bonelessly off the chair and into her waiting embrace.
Buffy knelt with him on the floor, its cold surface permeating through her clothes and chilling her as she attempted to cradle him the best she could. With horror she found herself realizing more and more of how it had been…how it was. With his shirt open, she had seen the bruises and the slight lumps under the skin that told of broken ribs, but now she could feel them as well. Far worse in her mind, however, was the sticky feel she noticed as she touched the back of his shirt where he’d been bound cruelly against the chair. Her hand came away red with his blood and she could tell that most of his back was covered in it. Surely the hidden wounds underneath had to mark him still, the scars remaining to tell the story of what she was reliving with him now.
Mentally she fought with herself. This was something she SHOULD see, something she SHOULD know about. After all, in a way, she had caused it. But it was also such a breathtaking invasion of his privacy, and worse yet, though it made her sick with herself, Buffy knew that really, she hadn’t wanted to know and still didn’t. Her own pain over the years-the killing, the deaths, the losses of friends and loved ones, the failures, the betrayals, her resurrection, and the fruits of her own withdrawal from life afterwards-had been enough; too much, certainly. Nevertheless, now she was being asked to deal with his as well, and she forced herself to do so.
As she held him to herself as well as she could manage, one arm around him, trying not to injure him further while drawing him as close as possible, and the other hand doing its best to massage the circulation back into his arms, she felt him begin to respond to her slightly, relaxing into her warmth as the sobs of his ordeal began to come silently. Was this how it had been for Xander, when he found him? she wondered. How much worse had it gotten than what she was witnessing now?
Buffy hadn’t even realized that her vocal monologue had ended until he finally spoke. “I didn’t say. I didn’t tell him. Tell Buffy, I didn’t tell him. I won’t tell him,” he gasped into her shirt, horrifying her both with the fact he didn’t seem to realize who it was that held him or even that it was definitely over. Then suddenly, he seemed to remember that, in the end, he had told. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, didn’t know it wasn’t...” Buffy didn’t know what had finally broken him, nor did she want to-it was a secret of his she would not willingly take from him.
“Giles, quiet. It’s Buffy.” He seemed to hear her, and she could feel him tense and start to draw away, but she held him in place, even though she knew the physicality of doing so hurt him slightly. “No, don’t talk; just listen. This happened. It really did happen, but you did good. I’m proud of you, Giles. But it’s not real; not now. We aren’t really here now. This…this is just a really bad memory, but now we’re safe…both of us,” she added, recalling what she’d seen on the bed, which was certainly not merely a memory, “and I’m here.”
He didn’t move, but remained in her embrace, the moisture of his tears-something so unfamiliar to her that it hurt-wetting the fabric covering her chest as he became perfectly still in her arms. “It’s alright Giles. The mansion is gone, Angelus is…gone. This is over.” He sagged slightly as he began to relax more, easing some of the tension, and he tried to speak again. Buffy knew he still wasn’t fully with her, and, shushing him once more, began to rock with him slightly, back and forth.
“This is in your mind, Giles. But now you’re strong and healthy. We’re both strong and healthy,” she told him, hating the lie as she knew that in the real world, the words were certainly not true for him. “This isn’t real. The scars have healed. They’re still there, but that’s all they are-scars.” The only way out of this was to talk him out of it, she knew, so Buffy dug in and began to try, knowing she had his full attention. “Most of the time you can’t even feel them; you forget they’re there. Your fingers. They’re good now. They healed and you can use them-to hold weapons, to fight me, whatever. Your ribs too. You can breath easy. I’ve seen you run, and I know you can sing. Willow said you’re great, and I’d really like the chance to find out sometime if she’s right. And…and the rest of it. You’re good now. You’re healed and you can move and everything just fine. You can laugh now Giles, and make sarcastic comments, and everything. What he did to you was bad, but you’re stronger than him, and it turned out okay. In the years after this, we faced a lot worse than him, and you did well. We did okay with all that, too.” Buffy held back her own tears, trying not to choke on the relief that filled her as her babbled words began to take affect and the evidence of his ordeal, his blood and his injuries began to fade, as they had with time in the real world. He remained motionless, but she continued to speak to him, knowing she was helping him to break free of what she had entered into.
“Giles, you’re listening to me, I can tell, and that’s good. Keep doing that, and just concentrate on me, okay? We aren’t really here, this isn’t real,” she repeated again. “We’re…we’re at the beach,” Buffy said, scrambling for an image with which to replace the mansion and grasping desperately at the first that came to mind. Not the ideal setting, perhaps, but now that she’d chosen it, she felt obliged to push onward as the walls of the mansion began to waver and melt. “Just you and me. It’s warm here, and we can feel the sun. But it’s not hot, just nice. And we can hear the waves coming in, gently against the beach, and the birds calling out…” As Buffy talked, the picture she painted verbally began to manifest around them-or at least Giles’ interpretation of her words. Certainly, the scene forming was like nothing she’d seen in California, though it certainly fit her description. The trees edging the beach were different and the sand itself was darker. Instead, her words were only shaping what was there, playing with a construct he must have already had in his mind.
Without even realizing what she was doing, Buffy let her hand find its way to let the fingers bury themselves in his hair, massaging his scalp and his hairline, soothing him further as she continued her monologue, erasing all traces of the horror in which she had found him. Everything was so responsive to her verbal command, that she was again forced to be startled at the reality of being within his mind. It also astounded her to realize how completely he had opened himself up to her now, trusting her to guide him, and letting her take control of his mind entirely. The scene was nearly complete when she recalled his near constant complaint, and grinned to herself as she set about trying to temporarily do something about it.
“And it’s a picnic. There’s chicken-roasted, not fried, with the lemon pepper stuff, and jelly donuts, mostly raspberry, but a few blueberry and lemon as well. Then really thick and juicy hamburgers with everything…including cheese, so they’re cheeseburgers I guess, and, um, chocolate cake and Jaffa cakes, whatever the heck those are…” she babbled, calling forth everything she could think of, including just about every British item she could name…even if she wasn’t entirely sure what exactly names like ‘bangers and mash’ might translate into.
Finally, the amount of food she’d called forth seemed staggering even to her and she let herself trail off. She looked down at his head still leaning against her chest, his breathing shallow and trancelike, and realized her thumb was still caressing the back of his neck. If only it were so easy to convince him to follow her back to the real world. She shook her head to clear that thought, knowing that if he was to be repelled again, letting it happen when he was so vulnerable to suggestion like this could result in letting what plagued him push him so far back in his mind that she might lose him for quite some time.
“Giles? Um, Giles, you can come back to me now. We’re here and safe…and happy. The badness is gone, and it’s alright now.” She continued to talk to him, knowing it wasn’t so much what she was saying anymore, as it was the sound of her voice, urging him back. He started to stir and he opened his eyes to find himself in a rather compromising position. Buffy let him go as he carefully extracted himself and sat up.
“Alright?” she asked him, suddenly shy.
He nodded, not able to meet her eyes as he seemed to pull himself away from her, remembering what she’d just seen, and self-conscious about what she’d done.
“Buffy…I-”
She waived him off. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Still…thank you. You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.”
“As much as I didn’t want to see that, I wish I could be around every time to pull you out,” Buffy told him honestly.
Giles looked around uncomfortably, until something caught his eye. “Er, Buffy? What is all this?” he asked, indicating the virtual mountain of food spread out in various dishes on top of the cloth that had been lain out over the ground.
She grinned. “You always said the only way you could get non-cardboardy food is to trick yourself into it; so this time I tricked you instead. I thought you’d like it.”
He laughed, and gave her shoulders a squeeze in appreciation. “I don’t even know where to start, honestly!”
“Um, yeah. I did kinda order the whole all-you-can-eat buffet, didn’t I?” Spying the roast chicken, she grabbed off a leg for herself, figuring she might as well, and passed the other to him. “Try this, then.”
“Chicken?”
She shrugged, then said with perfect Buffy logic, “Sure. Everything tastes like chicken, right? So if you’re looking for something to taste…”
He took a bite, savoring its juices before he spied a blue box with orange lettering in the pile, and quickly forgot the chicken. “Oh! Jaffa cakes!”
He continued to explore her choices, explaining to her what some of the more foreign foods consisted of, as he dug in heartily. Buffy, encouraged by the fact that he couldn’t possibly even begin to eat it all before she left and he ‘lost’ himself again, did likewise.
Finally, she knew that time was drawing to end once more, and she brought up the topic they’d been avoiding since she’d brought him out of the nightmare scene he’d been in. “It’s getting worse and worse all the time, isn’t it?”
He nodded, once again deciding he owed her the truth.
“I’m sorry. I’m guessing what I saw back there? Not even the worst of it.” It wasn’t a question and he didn’t answer it. They were silent for a bit until she spoke again. “What happens if…if we don’t get you out, and it wins?”
He shrugged, and continued to pick at the shepherd’s pie, grateful that he could at least conjure up his own silverware, since Buffy had clearly neglected to think about that tiny detail. “Truly? I don’t know. But I rather suspect I’d be permanently trapped in whatever state it wishes me to be. It’s a parasite, Buffy. At least I believe so at this point, and I’m merely its host.”
“God.” True hell, she realized, by anyone’s definition. The very worst machinations the human mind was capable of, endured endlessly forever-worse yet, the very worst Giles’ mind was capable of. She swallowed hard. “Giles, if it gets bad enough…it would only take moving the right tube or unplugging the right machine. I could, if you want.”
He was startled as he realized the gift she was offering, one which hadn’t even occurred to him, since every time he managed to die in his mind, he was always miraculously resurrected in the next scene. But the thought of being free of it all, versus being trapped… “Buffy, I can’t ask you-”
“Yeah, you can,” she cut him off. “I’m offering. Besides it would hurt more to know that you…” Buffy trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
“I…thank you,” he whispered. “In that case, I would accept. If it gets to that point, I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll need to talk to Willow, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Giles responded by pulling her into his embrace, awkward due to their sitting positions, but manageable nonetheless.
Buffy leaned her head onto his chest, letting herself take in the familiar smell that smelled nothing at all like the hospital and very much like the man she remembered, as she listened to the comforting heartbeat that bespoke the very life she might be asked to terminate, all to save the man it sustained.
After a minute, she pulled away. “I have to go, but I’ll be back.”
He smiled at the familiar words and nodded, bracing himself as she called up the way out.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Willow looked at her in shock, eyes widening. “You want to what? But that’d kill him!”
Buffy mentally refused to deal with the issue, and snapped back impatiently, “Yeah, I know.”
“But it’s Giles! You can’t just fix this by slaying him like you do everything else. It’s…it’s wrong.”
“Willow, he’s trapped in something as bad as any hell dimension. If we don’t figure this out and I can save him from that…I need to know. Besides, he asked me to,” she admitted, her voice catching. “I offered first, but he wanted it.”
The witch’s eyes flickered to the figure in the bed, still uncertain, but she felt herself caving in. If Giles had asked… “Oh.”
“All I want to know is what would happen to him if we…if I did it.”
“Um, hang on, I’ll check.”
Buffy waited while Willow tested the fields of mystical energy surrounding him yet one more time. She could clearly feel the second presence now, announcing itself ever more strongly. Her stomach dropped when the witch shook her head.
“No, it wouldn’t matter, Buffy. This thing doesn’t need his body. It’s after his mind…his soul; if it takes him, it’ll either destroy him entirely, so no afterlife, or else it’ll completely master him, uh, indefinitely really.”
“Giles,” Buffy squeaked, hugging herself as the pain settled deep in her chest and pricked her throat.
“Yeah,” Willow agreed. Then the first sob racked through her.
The two girls held each other close, rocking together. Willow started to cry in earnest for the man who was her friend, but for Buffy, there was only shocked silence as the tears refused to come.
Chapter 7