nano novel, continued
Nov. 29th, 2006 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Here's the past couple of days of this. As always, comments welcome.
Giles retreated to his office soon thereafter, “to let you get settled,” and with a promise to return for dinner. But once there, he was getting no actual work done. Unless pacing and worrying had been added to the definition of productive work. Willow could feel his nervous restlessness six floors away. She made her own excuses and left Andrew and a couple of Slayers finishing up the placement of furniture and bringing in belongings brought from the Brownings’ home after it had been checked out earlier in the day, and made her way back upstairs to Giles office.
“Hey, Giles.”
Giles glanced up as she appeared in the doorway, then turned back to the papers he had just begun sorting through on his desk, for perhaps the fifth time. “Willow. Um. I’m very busy just now, so....”
“... Rupert.”
He flinched a little as she spoke the name, and she remembered the only other time she’d called him by his given name. Not her best day, nor his. But there was only gentleness in the tone now, and she felt him relax and sigh, then toss his pen onto the desk on top of the abandoned paperwork. He leaned back, rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses, and sighed again.
“Breathing’s good, Giles. You should do more of it,” Willow observed as she came in.
“Thank you, Doctor Rosenberg” he said with a tired bleakness. “Now, if you will excuse me...” He reached for a random report on his desk.
“Hear you’ve got a date tonight,” Willow said abruptly.
“It’s not...” he began heatedly, the report forgotten. Then he sighed again and met her eyes. “I don’t know what it is,” he admitted, casting his eyes down once again.
“Do you still love her?”
He frowned. “That’s a hard question,” he replied slowly. “I’m not sure I even know her anymore. I care about her, certainly. But so much of our relationship was based on a lie.” He tried to mask his bitterness as he added, “And it definitely didn’t survive the truth.”
Willow came around the desk to lay her hand on his shoulder. “That’s why you argued so hard against Buffy telling her mom, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “Of course,” he added with a sad smile, “Joyce turned out to be made of stronger stuff than any of us would have guessed.”
“Yeah.” Willow smiled at the memory too. Then she said tentatively, “Lillian might be strong too. In time.”
“I’m not sure I want her to be,” Giles said. “What if she had come to America with me? She and Ellen might both have been the object of Angelus’ tender mercies....” He shuddered a bit.
Not a trail of thought Willow wanted to travel down. “But, Giles, that’s not what’s bothering you now, is it?”
Giles frowned a little petulantly. “I do wish you would let me keep some of my thoughts to myself,” he said.
“I’m doing my best, Giles. But it’s kind of hard, as loud as you’re broadcasting them. You knew Lillian once-- she may have changed with the years, just like you did, but deep down she’s still the woman who was your friend, at least, all those years ago. And Ellen really is a neat kid. I think you’ll be surprised how much you two have in common.”
“Really?” Giles smiled a little at that.
“Really,” Willow said. “Give yourself a chance to just be with them. You don’t have to make them like you-- in fact, she’s going to hit an age soon where she probably won’t like either of you, a lot of the time. Especially when you’re placing limits on her, to keep her safe.”
Giles looked bleak again at that. “But that’s the rub, isn’t it? I can’t keep her safe. And if she chooses to take the Slayer power when her time comes, I’ll have even less ability to protect her. I might even...” he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then finished quietly, “I might even be responsible for sending her to her death.”
Willow didn’t have anything she could say to that. So she just hugged him close instead. Then she pulled back and said, “Well, you’ve gotta go down there. Want me to come with you?”
Giles looked tempted, but shook his head firmly. “No. Thank you, Willow, but I think I can manage.”
Half an hour later, he was desperately wishing he’d taken Willow up on that offer.
****
Ethan Rayne gazed around the chaos which was his study-- books piled haphazardly on the desk, the couch, the coffee table-- along with several parchment scrolls, and even some ancient clay tablets with cuneiform markings on them. He sniffed disdainfully. Research, as far as he was concerned, was at best a necessary evil. But it did have occasional rewards. He glanced down at the acid burn on his arm, where he had once borne the Mark of Eyghon. He wasn’t sure that had been a reward, exactly, though it had had its moments. But all the unpredictable chaos which had come from those late nights doing research, and other things, with Ripper-- well, it had pleased his eventual deity, at any rate. Just as he hoped this new venture would.
He let his eyes wander over the various surfaces and shelves, making an automatic invocation to Janos not unlike the “St. Anthony” prayer he’d learned in childhood for finding lost objects, but without the annoying doggerel.
And then, his eyes just happened to light on a particular book on a low shelf. He crossed the room, knelt, and pulled it from its place, dislodging quite a large quantity of dust in the process. Housekeeping which involved any effort on his part didn’t even rate the necessary part of “necessary evil.” A slow smile spread across his angular features. Something artistic, was it? This should definitely serve.
***
The meal started innocuously enough. The Chinese take-out was spread out on the table between them, Lillian in the anchor seat at the end of the table, Ellen to her right, Giles directly across from her on Lillian’s left. He tried not to stare, to make her uncomfortable. He asked some stammering open ended questions about her school, her interests, her friends, and found that articulate self expression was not one of this child’s problems. She answered the first questions a little shyly, but once she found she had two adults’ undivided attention, she was off. Giles caught Lillian’s eye and gave a small smile, and was warmed in an odd way when she returned it.
A lot of her talk was joyously incomprehensible to him, but then, that had been true of Dawn and Buffy and her friends for almost a decade now. It should have made him feel old, but the glimpse into an innocent, reasonably carefree, or at least, monster-free, life, was like a balm in his soul. This is what they had been fighting for, and he had to hide how much it moved him.
But then, quite suddenly, Ellen stopped in the middle of her recitation of the merits of her favorite boy band and looked hard at him. “Mr. Giles, what is a Slayer?”
Giles froze with the chopsticks halfway to his lips. He replaced them on his plastic plate slowly, then wiped his lips with the napkin in his lap, more to buy a little time to think than anything else. “Where did you hear that term?” he asked quietly.
Ellen replied, oblivious to the mounting tension in the room from the two adults, “Jenna and Sara were joking around with Andrew in the hall. And Jenna said,” she paused, trying to get it right. “She said, ‘I’m a Slayer, not a babysitter.’ And Sara said ‘When I signed up, I didn’t expect to be moving furniture. Except, in an...’ apocalypse? Mum, is that even a word?”
Giles’ face had gone a little pale, and he retreated back into the emotionally cold place he’d been using, to keep the panic of his calling at bay for at least the past two years. Smoothly, he intercepted the question before Lillian could formulate an answer.
“Ellen. You ask some very good questions. Can we make a deal?” She nodded, her face serious, matching his own. Giles continued, “I have some friends coming to help find out about these people who attacked you. When they get here, we will have the answers to a lot of your questions.” Here he indicated both Ellen and her mother. “Until they do get here and we’ve had a chance to look at everything, I want to hold off on answering any questions about Slayers, or what I do at my job. But after we have good answers for you, I promise you, I will tell you anything you want to know. All right?”
She studied him more shrewdly than he would have believed possible. “Okay,” she said finally. But there was a mistrust which hadn’t been present earlier. Lillian looked relieved and sick at the same time. And Giles found he had quite lost his appetite. They finished the meal in near silence.
****
Willow was washing up after her own meal while Giles came back through his door. He stomped past her, laid his satchel on the table and began loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.
Willow looked up at him as she turned the faucet off. “So? How did it go?”
Giles gave her a black look and pulled a glass tumbler out of the cupboard, then stomped back down the hall to the study, where he kept a well stocked liquor cabinet Willow followed, and watched him expectantly as he poured a generous two fingers of scotch into his glass. He caught her expression over the rim of his glass and sighed.
“The words ‘unmitigated disaster’ leap to mind,” he replied bleakly. He continued the motion he had arrested to answer her and swallowed, savoring the burn as it traveled down his throat.
That good, huh?” Willow said it sympathetically. “Considering the pretty major shocks all three of you have suffered over the past 24 hours, I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.”
Giles tossed back another gulp of the amber liquid and sighed.
“So, what went wrong? In Particular?” Willow asked.
“Before or after Ellen asked me what a Slayer was?” Giles asked rhetorically, taking another sip. He sank down on the couch and focussed his gaze on the glass in his two hands, resting on his knees.
“Oh,” Willow said in a small voice.
“And she wanted to know ... if ‘apocalypse’ was even a word.” Tears were spilling down his cheeks now, and he made no effort to wipe them away. “My God, Willow....”
Willow came over to him, cleared a space across from him on the coffee table, and took the glass from his hands as she sat down. Laying it aside, she took his hands in hers.
“Oh Giles,” she sighed. “What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her?”
There was nothing else to be said to this, so Willow didn’t try. They sat for a long while instead, just facing each other, holding hands. Nothing romantic in it. Just two old friends, there for each other. The gradual peace which had settled over them was shattered by Giles’ cell phone, beeping from his inside coat pocket. He disengaged his right hand and pulled it out, thumbing the button as he raised it to his ear. “Giles here.”
Willow gripped his hand a little tighter, then felt him relax as he heard the caller’s voice. “Lillian,” he said. He gave a slight smile, listening. Willow thought to let him go and give him some privacy, but he grasped her hand a little tighter and said “No, I understand. In fact, a friend of mine,” here he met Willow’s eyes and gave a faint grin, “was only now reminding me, that we’ve all been through rather a lot in the past few days.”
Willow concentrated on Giles’ fingers in hers, not dead and cold as they had been at the recent funeral. It felt good, his wanting her here with him. Like they were friends again.
“Yes, we’ll be by tomorrow,” Giles was saying. “My Slayer, Buffy is flying in from Rome in the morning. I’d like her to be party to any discussions we have about this situation, if that’s all right with you....” He paused, listening, then said, “ I’m sure we can persuade Andrew to occupy Ellen while we....” He chuckled. “Yes, I will speak to him about being a little more circumspect about his choice of conversation topics.... Right. Well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. You too. Sleep well.” He thumbed the phone off and replaced it in his pocket, then gathered both of Willow’s hands again in his own and took a deep breath.
“See Giles? Breathing. Works wonders.”
He laughed then, the first real laugh she’d heard from him in... a very long time. He stood up, and she stood with him. He released her hands, gave her a quick one armed hug. “Thank you, Willow,” he said quietly. He gave her a fatherly kiss on the crown of her head. Then he released her and turned toward his desk, as if a little embarrassed at the unaccustomed display of affection.
He began sorting through the mail piled on his desk. “What time does Buffy’s plane get in, again?” he asked casually.
Willow suppressed a smile. As if he didn’t have it all memorized down to the second, along with the flight and terminal numbers, airline, and baggage claim. “Ten-thirty,” she answered aloud.
He nodded absently, looking now at the package he’d drawn from its place at the bottom of the pile. “Wonder what this is,” he mused aloud. He peered at it more closely, noting, as Willow had, the lack of return address on it. He glanced over at her as if to see what she made of it.
“I was sort of hoping it might be chocolate, but it seemed a little too solid and heavy for that,” she replied.
Giles was cutting the string binding and tearing open the brown parcel paper beneath. “But oh, what a surprise,” she continued, looking over his shoulder as he pulled the red leather bound volume from the wrapping. “It’s a book.”
Giles shot her a dark look, but there was that old hint of amusement flickering behind his expressive eyes, too. Another thing she hadn’t realized how deeply she’d missed, until that moment, getting it back. She blinked back the sudden emotion. She wondered how much of this change was seeing Lillian again, and meeting Ellen, and how much was the fact that Buffy would be here by this time tomorrow.
Giles retreated to his office soon thereafter, “to let you get settled,” and with a promise to return for dinner. But once there, he was getting no actual work done. Unless pacing and worrying had been added to the definition of productive work. Willow could feel his nervous restlessness six floors away. She made her own excuses and left Andrew and a couple of Slayers finishing up the placement of furniture and bringing in belongings brought from the Brownings’ home after it had been checked out earlier in the day, and made her way back upstairs to Giles office.
“Hey, Giles.”
Giles glanced up as she appeared in the doorway, then turned back to the papers he had just begun sorting through on his desk, for perhaps the fifth time. “Willow. Um. I’m very busy just now, so....”
“... Rupert.”
He flinched a little as she spoke the name, and she remembered the only other time she’d called him by his given name. Not her best day, nor his. But there was only gentleness in the tone now, and she felt him relax and sigh, then toss his pen onto the desk on top of the abandoned paperwork. He leaned back, rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses, and sighed again.
“Breathing’s good, Giles. You should do more of it,” Willow observed as she came in.
“Thank you, Doctor Rosenberg” he said with a tired bleakness. “Now, if you will excuse me...” He reached for a random report on his desk.
“Hear you’ve got a date tonight,” Willow said abruptly.
“It’s not...” he began heatedly, the report forgotten. Then he sighed again and met her eyes. “I don’t know what it is,” he admitted, casting his eyes down once again.
“Do you still love her?”
He frowned. “That’s a hard question,” he replied slowly. “I’m not sure I even know her anymore. I care about her, certainly. But so much of our relationship was based on a lie.” He tried to mask his bitterness as he added, “And it definitely didn’t survive the truth.”
Willow came around the desk to lay her hand on his shoulder. “That’s why you argued so hard against Buffy telling her mom, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “Of course,” he added with a sad smile, “Joyce turned out to be made of stronger stuff than any of us would have guessed.”
“Yeah.” Willow smiled at the memory too. Then she said tentatively, “Lillian might be strong too. In time.”
“I’m not sure I want her to be,” Giles said. “What if she had come to America with me? She and Ellen might both have been the object of Angelus’ tender mercies....” He shuddered a bit.
Not a trail of thought Willow wanted to travel down. “But, Giles, that’s not what’s bothering you now, is it?”
Giles frowned a little petulantly. “I do wish you would let me keep some of my thoughts to myself,” he said.
“I’m doing my best, Giles. But it’s kind of hard, as loud as you’re broadcasting them. You knew Lillian once-- she may have changed with the years, just like you did, but deep down she’s still the woman who was your friend, at least, all those years ago. And Ellen really is a neat kid. I think you’ll be surprised how much you two have in common.”
“Really?” Giles smiled a little at that.
“Really,” Willow said. “Give yourself a chance to just be with them. You don’t have to make them like you-- in fact, she’s going to hit an age soon where she probably won’t like either of you, a lot of the time. Especially when you’re placing limits on her, to keep her safe.”
Giles looked bleak again at that. “But that’s the rub, isn’t it? I can’t keep her safe. And if she chooses to take the Slayer power when her time comes, I’ll have even less ability to protect her. I might even...” he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then finished quietly, “I might even be responsible for sending her to her death.”
Willow didn’t have anything she could say to that. So she just hugged him close instead. Then she pulled back and said, “Well, you’ve gotta go down there. Want me to come with you?”
Giles looked tempted, but shook his head firmly. “No. Thank you, Willow, but I think I can manage.”
Half an hour later, he was desperately wishing he’d taken Willow up on that offer.
****
Ethan Rayne gazed around the chaos which was his study-- books piled haphazardly on the desk, the couch, the coffee table-- along with several parchment scrolls, and even some ancient clay tablets with cuneiform markings on them. He sniffed disdainfully. Research, as far as he was concerned, was at best a necessary evil. But it did have occasional rewards. He glanced down at the acid burn on his arm, where he had once borne the Mark of Eyghon. He wasn’t sure that had been a reward, exactly, though it had had its moments. But all the unpredictable chaos which had come from those late nights doing research, and other things, with Ripper-- well, it had pleased his eventual deity, at any rate. Just as he hoped this new venture would.
He let his eyes wander over the various surfaces and shelves, making an automatic invocation to Janos not unlike the “St. Anthony” prayer he’d learned in childhood for finding lost objects, but without the annoying doggerel.
And then, his eyes just happened to light on a particular book on a low shelf. He crossed the room, knelt, and pulled it from its place, dislodging quite a large quantity of dust in the process. Housekeeping which involved any effort on his part didn’t even rate the necessary part of “necessary evil.” A slow smile spread across his angular features. Something artistic, was it? This should definitely serve.
***
The meal started innocuously enough. The Chinese take-out was spread out on the table between them, Lillian in the anchor seat at the end of the table, Ellen to her right, Giles directly across from her on Lillian’s left. He tried not to stare, to make her uncomfortable. He asked some stammering open ended questions about her school, her interests, her friends, and found that articulate self expression was not one of this child’s problems. She answered the first questions a little shyly, but once she found she had two adults’ undivided attention, she was off. Giles caught Lillian’s eye and gave a small smile, and was warmed in an odd way when she returned it.
A lot of her talk was joyously incomprehensible to him, but then, that had been true of Dawn and Buffy and her friends for almost a decade now. It should have made him feel old, but the glimpse into an innocent, reasonably carefree, or at least, monster-free, life, was like a balm in his soul. This is what they had been fighting for, and he had to hide how much it moved him.
But then, quite suddenly, Ellen stopped in the middle of her recitation of the merits of her favorite boy band and looked hard at him. “Mr. Giles, what is a Slayer?”
Giles froze with the chopsticks halfway to his lips. He replaced them on his plastic plate slowly, then wiped his lips with the napkin in his lap, more to buy a little time to think than anything else. “Where did you hear that term?” he asked quietly.
Ellen replied, oblivious to the mounting tension in the room from the two adults, “Jenna and Sara were joking around with Andrew in the hall. And Jenna said,” she paused, trying to get it right. “She said, ‘I’m a Slayer, not a babysitter.’ And Sara said ‘When I signed up, I didn’t expect to be moving furniture. Except, in an...’ apocalypse? Mum, is that even a word?”
Giles’ face had gone a little pale, and he retreated back into the emotionally cold place he’d been using, to keep the panic of his calling at bay for at least the past two years. Smoothly, he intercepted the question before Lillian could formulate an answer.
“Ellen. You ask some very good questions. Can we make a deal?” She nodded, her face serious, matching his own. Giles continued, “I have some friends coming to help find out about these people who attacked you. When they get here, we will have the answers to a lot of your questions.” Here he indicated both Ellen and her mother. “Until they do get here and we’ve had a chance to look at everything, I want to hold off on answering any questions about Slayers, or what I do at my job. But after we have good answers for you, I promise you, I will tell you anything you want to know. All right?”
She studied him more shrewdly than he would have believed possible. “Okay,” she said finally. But there was a mistrust which hadn’t been present earlier. Lillian looked relieved and sick at the same time. And Giles found he had quite lost his appetite. They finished the meal in near silence.
****
Willow was washing up after her own meal while Giles came back through his door. He stomped past her, laid his satchel on the table and began loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.
Willow looked up at him as she turned the faucet off. “So? How did it go?”
Giles gave her a black look and pulled a glass tumbler out of the cupboard, then stomped back down the hall to the study, where he kept a well stocked liquor cabinet Willow followed, and watched him expectantly as he poured a generous two fingers of scotch into his glass. He caught her expression over the rim of his glass and sighed.
“The words ‘unmitigated disaster’ leap to mind,” he replied bleakly. He continued the motion he had arrested to answer her and swallowed, savoring the burn as it traveled down his throat.
That good, huh?” Willow said it sympathetically. “Considering the pretty major shocks all three of you have suffered over the past 24 hours, I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.”
Giles tossed back another gulp of the amber liquid and sighed.
“So, what went wrong? In Particular?” Willow asked.
“Before or after Ellen asked me what a Slayer was?” Giles asked rhetorically, taking another sip. He sank down on the couch and focussed his gaze on the glass in his two hands, resting on his knees.
“Oh,” Willow said in a small voice.
“And she wanted to know ... if ‘apocalypse’ was even a word.” Tears were spilling down his cheeks now, and he made no effort to wipe them away. “My God, Willow....”
Willow came over to him, cleared a space across from him on the coffee table, and took the glass from his hands as she sat down. Laying it aside, she took his hands in hers.
“Oh Giles,” she sighed. “What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her?”
There was nothing else to be said to this, so Willow didn’t try. They sat for a long while instead, just facing each other, holding hands. Nothing romantic in it. Just two old friends, there for each other. The gradual peace which had settled over them was shattered by Giles’ cell phone, beeping from his inside coat pocket. He disengaged his right hand and pulled it out, thumbing the button as he raised it to his ear. “Giles here.”
Willow gripped his hand a little tighter, then felt him relax as he heard the caller’s voice. “Lillian,” he said. He gave a slight smile, listening. Willow thought to let him go and give him some privacy, but he grasped her hand a little tighter and said “No, I understand. In fact, a friend of mine,” here he met Willow’s eyes and gave a faint grin, “was only now reminding me, that we’ve all been through rather a lot in the past few days.”
Willow concentrated on Giles’ fingers in hers, not dead and cold as they had been at the recent funeral. It felt good, his wanting her here with him. Like they were friends again.
“Yes, we’ll be by tomorrow,” Giles was saying. “My Slayer, Buffy is flying in from Rome in the morning. I’d like her to be party to any discussions we have about this situation, if that’s all right with you....” He paused, listening, then said, “ I’m sure we can persuade Andrew to occupy Ellen while we....” He chuckled. “Yes, I will speak to him about being a little more circumspect about his choice of conversation topics.... Right. Well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. You too. Sleep well.” He thumbed the phone off and replaced it in his pocket, then gathered both of Willow’s hands again in his own and took a deep breath.
“See Giles? Breathing. Works wonders.”
He laughed then, the first real laugh she’d heard from him in... a very long time. He stood up, and she stood with him. He released her hands, gave her a quick one armed hug. “Thank you, Willow,” he said quietly. He gave her a fatherly kiss on the crown of her head. Then he released her and turned toward his desk, as if a little embarrassed at the unaccustomed display of affection.
He began sorting through the mail piled on his desk. “What time does Buffy’s plane get in, again?” he asked casually.
Willow suppressed a smile. As if he didn’t have it all memorized down to the second, along with the flight and terminal numbers, airline, and baggage claim. “Ten-thirty,” she answered aloud.
He nodded absently, looking now at the package he’d drawn from its place at the bottom of the pile. “Wonder what this is,” he mused aloud. He peered at it more closely, noting, as Willow had, the lack of return address on it. He glanced over at her as if to see what she made of it.
“I was sort of hoping it might be chocolate, but it seemed a little too solid and heavy for that,” she replied.
Giles was cutting the string binding and tearing open the brown parcel paper beneath. “But oh, what a surprise,” she continued, looking over his shoulder as he pulled the red leather bound volume from the wrapping. “It’s a book.”
Giles shot her a dark look, but there was that old hint of amusement flickering behind his expressive eyes, too. Another thing she hadn’t realized how deeply she’d missed, until that moment, getting it back. She blinked back the sudden emotion. She wondered how much of this change was seeing Lillian again, and meeting Ellen, and how much was the fact that Buffy would be here by this time tomorrow.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 06:26 pm (UTC)I'm a little concerned about Giles having streaming tears and Willow holding his hands. I don't know if Giles would cry so openly and make no attempt to hid it. If he did, I picture Willow racing to embrace him.
But that's a minor opinion difference over a long piece of very good writing. Thanks for sharing this. Looking forward to Buffy's arrival.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-30 11:07 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed it. I'll keep plugging away at it, even after midnight tonight, when I will fall about 24K words short. Unless some miracle happens between now and then. And even so, I'm not sure I can type That fast.
Hob