Fic: Summer 5/9 - Growing Up
Dec. 9th, 2006 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnPrevious Parts here:
Summer 1 - Where Do We Go from Here?
Summer 2 - Preparations and Farewells
Summer 3- Muddling Through
Summer 4 - The Business of Living
Summer
Part 5/9 - Growing Up
DISCLAIMER: See full disclaimer on Part 1 - Short version is, I own Nothing in the Buffyverse. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I mean no harm and intend no copyright infringement. Still want to sue me? Knock yourself out.
***
A few days later, Xander looked up in irritation as Dawn returned to the Summers living room from checking the back door for at least the fifth time since dusk. She was in a truly foul mood, and making her displeasure with them all as evident as possible. He sighed and turned to a new, but equally boring page in the dusty tome on his lap and said, “For Pete’s sake, Dawn, give it a rest, already. He’ll be here.” *He* being Spike, of course. The only one of them she was Not mad at, at the moment.
Xander didn’t know how to feel about having lost his place in Dawn’s heart, as crush or big brother, much less about having lost to… that creature. Nor did he get how she could feel anything positive for Spike at all. I mean, yes, very impressive, getting himself thrown off a tower and all, but Spike himself would be the first to admit that act had gotten Dawn’s sister killed. Xander shook his head in disgust–at the blindness of Summers women, at himself for so petty a thought. Even if it happened to be true.
Dawn just rolled her eyes. “If you guys would let me do anything useful, like Researching, maybe I wouldn’t be such a distraction to you….”
Giles cleared his throat and looked over the top of his glasses at her. “No, then you would be wanting an explanation of some of the pictures–or worse, you’d be explaining them to Me.” Ignoring Xander’s snicker, Giles continued, more gently, even as he turned his eyes back to the volume in his lap. “How’s that History essay of yours coming?” They had gotten her assignments, and the most formidable seemed to be a term paper in her least favorite of subjects. Dawn grinned wickedly in response.
“Just waiting for you to have time to proof it,” she replied sweetly. She didn’t add that she had chosen a topic sure to give her an interesting time seeing just how many shades of embarrassed red and purple Giles’ face was capable of turning. She couldn’t wait to watch him read it. Too young for research, indeed.
Willow and Tara looked up from their books, and Dawn’s wicked smile shifted to innocent and angelic in a single beat. Giles missed it as he glanced up a second too late. “Ah. Well, that’s good,” he replied absently, as something on the page before him attracted his attention again. The two witches traded a wry glance and turned back to their own books without a word.
Dawn wandered restlessly back towards the kitchen, pausing until Anya’s back was turned, then slipping past her to the relative safety of the back porch before the former vengeance demon could press her into domestic service, and Dawn gave her a Reason to take up her former trade again. She was so not putting up with any crap from these people tonight.
Outside, the night was clear and cool. Dawn sat down on the top step and drew her knees toward her chest. Resting her chin on her knees, she scowled.
“Well, aren’t you a sight,” a familiar voice drawled. Spike stepped out of the shadows, taking a last drag on his cigarette before tossing it aside and striding across the lawn towards the girl. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, be careful, or your face might freeze like that?”
She turned a more baleful eye on him. “I am Not a child! Why does everyone keep treating me like one?”
Spike stopped and raised both hands in mock truce. “Whoa, Nibblet. What’s got your knickers in such a twist tonight, then?”
She glared back towards the house for a moment, then burst out, “They want to have a Scooby meeting tomorrow night at the shop, and they want me to stay here–with a Babysitter! I’m almost fifteen years old! And I’m not any mystical whatchamajigger anymore, and….” She was crying now, in rage and frustration and even she knew, deep down, that her reaction was way out of proportion to the slights she had suffered. Though those were pretty serious, as far as she was concerned. And, not making such a good case for not being a baby, she thought ruefully, as the tears dripped through her fingers.
Spike sat down beside her and pulled her into his cold arms, and the smell of smoke and leather calmed her a little. After she had cried herself mostly out, Spike said in her ear, “I’ve got a wicked idea.”
Tear stained eyes pulled back to look into his face. Spike always had wicked ideas, but he seldom shared them with her.
“What do you reckon would piss those wankers off more–if I came by and scared some other poor sitter bird half to death, so that nobody would ever agree to sit with you again, or if I offered to keep you company myself?”
Dawn grinned a little, in spite of herself. “You’d do that for me?”
“In a heartbeat. If I had one, that is.”
“But don’t you have to be at this super special Scooby meeting? It’s not like You’re too young for it. No offense.”
Spike snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, ‘Bit, I’m not exactly a member of their little Scooby Gang. And I don’t want to be. Bugger the lot of them.” His sardonic grin faded a little, and he said, more quietly, “You’re the only one I ever promised anyone I’d look after.” His eyes grew sad for a moment, but then he seemed to recollect where he was, and he grinned again. "Besides, I haven’t seen old Rupert good and snarked off in days. He’ll get all soft if I’m not around to keep his blood pressure up.”
Dawn gave a conspiratorial grin. “They haven’t figured out who to get yet. Maybe you could volunteer. We could watch movies. And order pizza.”
Spike nodded, seeming to grow in enthusiasm for the idea. “And some of those spicy buffalo wings?” he added hopefully.
Dawn began to giggle. “And Giles and Xander really will flip out.”
Spike slapped her knee. “Tell you what, you’ve talked me into it. I’ll just go in and tell them right now.”
Actually, the whole thing had been his idea. More or less. When Tara had told him about the Scooby meeting and their intention to find Dawn an elsewhere to be, Spike had suggested, with unusual insight, that Dawn was feeling a little helpless, and he knew just the way to perk her up again. Though Tara hadn’t liked the deceptions involved, she had agreed to let him handle it in his own way, and not to tell anyone else about their conversation.
It was a win-win situation, as far as he was concerned. Being able to manipulate and generally jerk around several different groups of people at once–he hadn’t had this much fun since that fiasco with Adam. And when Dawn did, of course, catch on to what he’d done a couple of weeks later, he just gave her a proud grin and said approvingly, “Knew you’d figure it out.” She’d tried to scold him, but she was only half serious, and he’d only raised an eyebrow and reminded her, “Hey. Evil undead vampire here.” Then he’d grinned more broadly and said, “Besides, did you see the Whelp’s face?”
At the moment, Spike was sauntering into the living room. Dawn followed, scarcely able to contain her glee. “Think I can help you with your little problem, Rupert,” he announced.
Giles glanced up from his book, with his most proper British ‘I beg your pardon’ expression on his face. “My p-problem?” he repeated, a bit baffled.
Spike grinned. “Your Scooby meeting?” he prompted with raised eyebrows. “Someone to watch Dawn?” he added, as if to someone not quite bright.
Giles looked both offended at the tone and distinctly uncomfortable. But he asked anyway, “You know a babysi–I mean” he amended, catching the murderous expression on the teenager’s face, “someone who could stay here with Dawn?”
“Nah. For the right price, I’ll do it myself.”
“Now wait just a damned minute,” Xander began loudly. It was one thing for him to be alone with Spike in a cemetery patolling. It was another to leave Dawn alone with the bastard. Willow and Tara jumped into the breach with their words of reason and reconciliation. Giles stayed very still and fixed the vampire with a penetrating glare.
Though he had not been so observant of late, Giles was well aware, now, that he was being played. But behind the vampire’s arrogantly mocking grin, Giles saw the guilt, the haunted expression of one determined never to repeat some act or omission. Through the cacophony around them, Giles said quietly, dangerously, “If anything happens to her, I’ll stake you myself.”
Spike’s eyes didn’t flinch from his. “I’ll hand you the stake,” he agreed, just as quietly. “If there’s enough left of me to dust.” But as a silent understanding passed between them, they both knew there wouldn’t be.
Giles nodded imperceptibly to any but the vampire. “Done,” he said simply. And so the matter was settled.
***
The gang assembled at the Magic Box after supper the following night. That hadn’t all been there together since the night they had buried Buffy, and on that night, most of them had stayed in the training room, avoiding the storefront itself. The last time they had all been gathered around the research table had been two nights before that. Willow glanced around, noticing how each one of them was in pretty much the same spot they’d been that night.
Xander broke the silence before it grew any more oppressive. Clapping his hands and rubbing them together, he pasted on a grin and said, “Well Giles, we’re all here. Whatcha got for us?”
Giles shook his head. “I actually did not call this meeting.” He inclined his head toward Willow and gave her an encouraging smile. She returned it, trying to quell some of the butterflies in her stomach, and cleared her throat.
“I, uh, I wanted to let you know how the repair work is coming….” Willow took in the variety of uncomfortable expressions which greeted this announcement, but carried on. “It’s going to be a while before the ‘bot is going to be walking, much less patrolling, so….”
“But that’s okay, isn’t it?” Anya spoke up. “After all, we’ve got Spike taking care of things for now, don’t we?”
“Not just Spike,” muttered Xander darkly. Anya patted his hand as if placating a small child, but something about Willow made her keep her own eyes on the witch. Willow nodded.
“Yeah, and the Council is sending some help too,” Willow continued, gesturing towards Giles, who was studying his folded hands and refusing to meet anyone’s sympathetic gaze. Willow continued, “But we don’t want them staying long. It might make people, uh, demons, wondering things we don’t want them wondering about.”
“Indeed,” Giles agreed, without looking up. “We’ve never needed Council operatives to patrol during the summer before, even when Buffy…” he faltered a bit, but recovered. “Even when Buffy was away.”
Willow nodded again. “We need to make it look like we’re all pitching in, just like we normally do. But we also need to be a little smarter and more organized about it than we’ve been in the past.”
“How much more organized can you get than radios and code names?” Xander quipped, the attempt at levity painfully forced.
Willow continued, ignoring the interruption, “We’re all–we’re still recovering. From everything. But we’ve also just come out of a fight where we–all of us–did a lot more than we ever thought we could. All the adrenaline, and all that, um….”
Xander cut to the chase. “You think we might get sloppy,” he finished for her flatly.
Willow shook her head. “I think we need a Watcher for Us.” Giles looked up, startled. There was both hurt and anger in his eyes as he looked at Willow–they’d already had this conversation, and he’d already made his feelings on the matter quite clear.
“Willow,” he began in a soft, dangerous voice. “We’ve been over this….”
Willow used the puppy dog eyes and pout that had always gotten her her way in the past, with just about everyone, and said, “Giles, we need you.”
Giles shook his head, wondering how he had never noticed before how manipulative Willow could be. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?” His voice grew in intensity but not volume as he went on. “I’ve agreed to stay and help you program your damned robot. But I will not stay one second beyond that. You’re all bloody well old enough to look after yourselves. If you need simple physical training, I suggest you ask Spike, as I’m sure he would be more than willing to ….”
Giles ran a tired hand under his glasses and across his closed eyes and stopped himself before he unleashed the anger bottled up inside him. In an even quieter voice, he said, “I have given you my reasons why I cannot be your Watcher. I’m sorry you do not respect them, or me.” Breathing hard, he rose, shaking his head. “I can’t–I can’t do this right now.” He began striding toward the back door of the shop. Over his shoulder he said, “Anya, I trust you can lock up?” He disappeared through the door without waiting for a reply; a few seconds later they heard the back door into the alley slam closed.
There was a stunned silence. “Uh, Way to go, Will,” Xander said, finally.
Tara came over and took her girlfriend’s hand, patted it comfortingly. “He’s just tired, and in pain. He didn’t mean it.”
Willow looked up at her, eyes red with tears. “Yes, he did. We talked about it a couple of days ago.” She drew a shuddering breath, blew it out, and released Tara’s hand, turning to face them all again. “I think he’ll calm down in a day or so. He knows I’m right. But right now, maybe it’s better if he’s gone. We have something else to worry about.”
They all looked at her as if she’d grown an extra head. Anya asked tentatively, “You mean, something other than our Watcher and my boss telling us all to go to hell and walking out on us?”
Willow nodded solemnly. “I’ve been doing some reading up on dimensional portals. It’s not good.”
“Kinda got that, Will,” Xander said slowly. “We were all there for the live demonstration.”
Anya’s eyes had narrowed. “You read the Book of Sobek, didn’t you?” she accused. “The one Giles told you to ‘stay out of on peril of my everlasting displeasure’?
Willow flushed, but continued, “It corroborated what my other sources said–that when someone dies in the doorway of a dimensional portal, the soul can get trapped in a kind of limbo between dimensions, or in one of the dimensions on either side.”
Tara gasped. “You think that happened to Buffy?”
Willow sighed, “We don’t really know what happened. But I think we need to find out.”
Anya said quietly, “I recognized some of the dimensions that portal was opening on. Willow’s right–they’re not good places.”
Willow added, “And if what I’ve been reading is right, Buffy could be in any one of them.”
“Then we have to help her,” Xander said, rising to pace the floor as if hyperactive nervous energy alone could accomplish the task.
Willow nodded. “I think so, too. But we need to know more. More about dimensions and portals, and more about ways we could help her from here. And obviously,” she gestured towards the door to the back room where they had last seen Giles, “not everyone is going to be up to dealing with what we might find. So…” she trailed off meaningfully.
“Keep it a secret,” Xander finished for her, his eyes wide. “You want us to keep it a secret–from Giles?” He sat back down heavily, stunned.
“And Spike, and Dawn.” Willow looked at each of them in turn, her expression more serious than they had ever seen it. “They all need time to heal, and to focus on what is now, not what might be. We might find out Buffy’s somewhere terrible, but that there’s nothing we can do.” She paused, giving them time to absorb her words. “Or,” she continued, “we might find a way to get her out, or even bring her back. We don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up, and then have it not work. It would be too … cruel.”
“But not too cruel, to do it to ourselves?” Xander made no effort to hide the tears glistening in his eyes.
Willow took his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes. “We’re her friends. Whatever it takes, whatever we have to suffer, we have to try. To be sure she’s ok, or to help her if she’s not.” Willow paused, then added in a whisper, “She’d do it for us.”
Xander pulled himself together and nodded. “She did do it for us,” he agreed. But his resolution faltered a bit as he remembered, “But… not tell Giles?”
Willow shook her head emphatically. “No. You saw him tonight. He can’t take it. Not now. We have to do this for him, too. He’s right. We are old enough to take care of ourselves.”
Xander nodded again, more resolutely. “Being a grown up really sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” He sighed heavily. “Ok. Where do we start?”
Summer 6 - Making Sense
Summer 1 - Where Do We Go from Here?
Summer 2 - Preparations and Farewells
Summer 3- Muddling Through
Summer 4 - The Business of Living
Summer
Part 5/9 - Growing Up
DISCLAIMER: See full disclaimer on Part 1 - Short version is, I own Nothing in the Buffyverse. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I mean no harm and intend no copyright infringement. Still want to sue me? Knock yourself out.
***
A few days later, Xander looked up in irritation as Dawn returned to the Summers living room from checking the back door for at least the fifth time since dusk. She was in a truly foul mood, and making her displeasure with them all as evident as possible. He sighed and turned to a new, but equally boring page in the dusty tome on his lap and said, “For Pete’s sake, Dawn, give it a rest, already. He’ll be here.” *He* being Spike, of course. The only one of them she was Not mad at, at the moment.
Xander didn’t know how to feel about having lost his place in Dawn’s heart, as crush or big brother, much less about having lost to… that creature. Nor did he get how she could feel anything positive for Spike at all. I mean, yes, very impressive, getting himself thrown off a tower and all, but Spike himself would be the first to admit that act had gotten Dawn’s sister killed. Xander shook his head in disgust–at the blindness of Summers women, at himself for so petty a thought. Even if it happened to be true.
Dawn just rolled her eyes. “If you guys would let me do anything useful, like Researching, maybe I wouldn’t be such a distraction to you….”
Giles cleared his throat and looked over the top of his glasses at her. “No, then you would be wanting an explanation of some of the pictures–or worse, you’d be explaining them to Me.” Ignoring Xander’s snicker, Giles continued, more gently, even as he turned his eyes back to the volume in his lap. “How’s that History essay of yours coming?” They had gotten her assignments, and the most formidable seemed to be a term paper in her least favorite of subjects. Dawn grinned wickedly in response.
“Just waiting for you to have time to proof it,” she replied sweetly. She didn’t add that she had chosen a topic sure to give her an interesting time seeing just how many shades of embarrassed red and purple Giles’ face was capable of turning. She couldn’t wait to watch him read it. Too young for research, indeed.
Willow and Tara looked up from their books, and Dawn’s wicked smile shifted to innocent and angelic in a single beat. Giles missed it as he glanced up a second too late. “Ah. Well, that’s good,” he replied absently, as something on the page before him attracted his attention again. The two witches traded a wry glance and turned back to their own books without a word.
Dawn wandered restlessly back towards the kitchen, pausing until Anya’s back was turned, then slipping past her to the relative safety of the back porch before the former vengeance demon could press her into domestic service, and Dawn gave her a Reason to take up her former trade again. She was so not putting up with any crap from these people tonight.
Outside, the night was clear and cool. Dawn sat down on the top step and drew her knees toward her chest. Resting her chin on her knees, she scowled.
“Well, aren’t you a sight,” a familiar voice drawled. Spike stepped out of the shadows, taking a last drag on his cigarette before tossing it aside and striding across the lawn towards the girl. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, be careful, or your face might freeze like that?”
She turned a more baleful eye on him. “I am Not a child! Why does everyone keep treating me like one?”
Spike stopped and raised both hands in mock truce. “Whoa, Nibblet. What’s got your knickers in such a twist tonight, then?”
She glared back towards the house for a moment, then burst out, “They want to have a Scooby meeting tomorrow night at the shop, and they want me to stay here–with a Babysitter! I’m almost fifteen years old! And I’m not any mystical whatchamajigger anymore, and….” She was crying now, in rage and frustration and even she knew, deep down, that her reaction was way out of proportion to the slights she had suffered. Though those were pretty serious, as far as she was concerned. And, not making such a good case for not being a baby, she thought ruefully, as the tears dripped through her fingers.
Spike sat down beside her and pulled her into his cold arms, and the smell of smoke and leather calmed her a little. After she had cried herself mostly out, Spike said in her ear, “I’ve got a wicked idea.”
Tear stained eyes pulled back to look into his face. Spike always had wicked ideas, but he seldom shared them with her.
“What do you reckon would piss those wankers off more–if I came by and scared some other poor sitter bird half to death, so that nobody would ever agree to sit with you again, or if I offered to keep you company myself?”
Dawn grinned a little, in spite of herself. “You’d do that for me?”
“In a heartbeat. If I had one, that is.”
“But don’t you have to be at this super special Scooby meeting? It’s not like You’re too young for it. No offense.”
Spike snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, ‘Bit, I’m not exactly a member of their little Scooby Gang. And I don’t want to be. Bugger the lot of them.” His sardonic grin faded a little, and he said, more quietly, “You’re the only one I ever promised anyone I’d look after.” His eyes grew sad for a moment, but then he seemed to recollect where he was, and he grinned again. "Besides, I haven’t seen old Rupert good and snarked off in days. He’ll get all soft if I’m not around to keep his blood pressure up.”
Dawn gave a conspiratorial grin. “They haven’t figured out who to get yet. Maybe you could volunteer. We could watch movies. And order pizza.”
Spike nodded, seeming to grow in enthusiasm for the idea. “And some of those spicy buffalo wings?” he added hopefully.
Dawn began to giggle. “And Giles and Xander really will flip out.”
Spike slapped her knee. “Tell you what, you’ve talked me into it. I’ll just go in and tell them right now.”
Actually, the whole thing had been his idea. More or less. When Tara had told him about the Scooby meeting and their intention to find Dawn an elsewhere to be, Spike had suggested, with unusual insight, that Dawn was feeling a little helpless, and he knew just the way to perk her up again. Though Tara hadn’t liked the deceptions involved, she had agreed to let him handle it in his own way, and not to tell anyone else about their conversation.
It was a win-win situation, as far as he was concerned. Being able to manipulate and generally jerk around several different groups of people at once–he hadn’t had this much fun since that fiasco with Adam. And when Dawn did, of course, catch on to what he’d done a couple of weeks later, he just gave her a proud grin and said approvingly, “Knew you’d figure it out.” She’d tried to scold him, but she was only half serious, and he’d only raised an eyebrow and reminded her, “Hey. Evil undead vampire here.” Then he’d grinned more broadly and said, “Besides, did you see the Whelp’s face?”
At the moment, Spike was sauntering into the living room. Dawn followed, scarcely able to contain her glee. “Think I can help you with your little problem, Rupert,” he announced.
Giles glanced up from his book, with his most proper British ‘I beg your pardon’ expression on his face. “My p-problem?” he repeated, a bit baffled.
Spike grinned. “Your Scooby meeting?” he prompted with raised eyebrows. “Someone to watch Dawn?” he added, as if to someone not quite bright.
Giles looked both offended at the tone and distinctly uncomfortable. But he asked anyway, “You know a babysi–I mean” he amended, catching the murderous expression on the teenager’s face, “someone who could stay here with Dawn?”
“Nah. For the right price, I’ll do it myself.”
“Now wait just a damned minute,” Xander began loudly. It was one thing for him to be alone with Spike in a cemetery patolling. It was another to leave Dawn alone with the bastard. Willow and Tara jumped into the breach with their words of reason and reconciliation. Giles stayed very still and fixed the vampire with a penetrating glare.
Though he had not been so observant of late, Giles was well aware, now, that he was being played. But behind the vampire’s arrogantly mocking grin, Giles saw the guilt, the haunted expression of one determined never to repeat some act or omission. Through the cacophony around them, Giles said quietly, dangerously, “If anything happens to her, I’ll stake you myself.”
Spike’s eyes didn’t flinch from his. “I’ll hand you the stake,” he agreed, just as quietly. “If there’s enough left of me to dust.” But as a silent understanding passed between them, they both knew there wouldn’t be.
Giles nodded imperceptibly to any but the vampire. “Done,” he said simply. And so the matter was settled.
***
The gang assembled at the Magic Box after supper the following night. That hadn’t all been there together since the night they had buried Buffy, and on that night, most of them had stayed in the training room, avoiding the storefront itself. The last time they had all been gathered around the research table had been two nights before that. Willow glanced around, noticing how each one of them was in pretty much the same spot they’d been that night.
Xander broke the silence before it grew any more oppressive. Clapping his hands and rubbing them together, he pasted on a grin and said, “Well Giles, we’re all here. Whatcha got for us?”
Giles shook his head. “I actually did not call this meeting.” He inclined his head toward Willow and gave her an encouraging smile. She returned it, trying to quell some of the butterflies in her stomach, and cleared her throat.
“I, uh, I wanted to let you know how the repair work is coming….” Willow took in the variety of uncomfortable expressions which greeted this announcement, but carried on. “It’s going to be a while before the ‘bot is going to be walking, much less patrolling, so….”
“But that’s okay, isn’t it?” Anya spoke up. “After all, we’ve got Spike taking care of things for now, don’t we?”
“Not just Spike,” muttered Xander darkly. Anya patted his hand as if placating a small child, but something about Willow made her keep her own eyes on the witch. Willow nodded.
“Yeah, and the Council is sending some help too,” Willow continued, gesturing towards Giles, who was studying his folded hands and refusing to meet anyone’s sympathetic gaze. Willow continued, “But we don’t want them staying long. It might make people, uh, demons, wondering things we don’t want them wondering about.”
“Indeed,” Giles agreed, without looking up. “We’ve never needed Council operatives to patrol during the summer before, even when Buffy…” he faltered a bit, but recovered. “Even when Buffy was away.”
Willow nodded again. “We need to make it look like we’re all pitching in, just like we normally do. But we also need to be a little smarter and more organized about it than we’ve been in the past.”
“How much more organized can you get than radios and code names?” Xander quipped, the attempt at levity painfully forced.
Willow continued, ignoring the interruption, “We’re all–we’re still recovering. From everything. But we’ve also just come out of a fight where we–all of us–did a lot more than we ever thought we could. All the adrenaline, and all that, um….”
Xander cut to the chase. “You think we might get sloppy,” he finished for her flatly.
Willow shook her head. “I think we need a Watcher for Us.” Giles looked up, startled. There was both hurt and anger in his eyes as he looked at Willow–they’d already had this conversation, and he’d already made his feelings on the matter quite clear.
“Willow,” he began in a soft, dangerous voice. “We’ve been over this….”
Willow used the puppy dog eyes and pout that had always gotten her her way in the past, with just about everyone, and said, “Giles, we need you.”
Giles shook his head, wondering how he had never noticed before how manipulative Willow could be. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?” His voice grew in intensity but not volume as he went on. “I’ve agreed to stay and help you program your damned robot. But I will not stay one second beyond that. You’re all bloody well old enough to look after yourselves. If you need simple physical training, I suggest you ask Spike, as I’m sure he would be more than willing to ….”
Giles ran a tired hand under his glasses and across his closed eyes and stopped himself before he unleashed the anger bottled up inside him. In an even quieter voice, he said, “I have given you my reasons why I cannot be your Watcher. I’m sorry you do not respect them, or me.” Breathing hard, he rose, shaking his head. “I can’t–I can’t do this right now.” He began striding toward the back door of the shop. Over his shoulder he said, “Anya, I trust you can lock up?” He disappeared through the door without waiting for a reply; a few seconds later they heard the back door into the alley slam closed.
There was a stunned silence. “Uh, Way to go, Will,” Xander said, finally.
Tara came over and took her girlfriend’s hand, patted it comfortingly. “He’s just tired, and in pain. He didn’t mean it.”
Willow looked up at her, eyes red with tears. “Yes, he did. We talked about it a couple of days ago.” She drew a shuddering breath, blew it out, and released Tara’s hand, turning to face them all again. “I think he’ll calm down in a day or so. He knows I’m right. But right now, maybe it’s better if he’s gone. We have something else to worry about.”
They all looked at her as if she’d grown an extra head. Anya asked tentatively, “You mean, something other than our Watcher and my boss telling us all to go to hell and walking out on us?”
Willow nodded solemnly. “I’ve been doing some reading up on dimensional portals. It’s not good.”
“Kinda got that, Will,” Xander said slowly. “We were all there for the live demonstration.”
Anya’s eyes had narrowed. “You read the Book of Sobek, didn’t you?” she accused. “The one Giles told you to ‘stay out of on peril of my everlasting displeasure’?
Willow flushed, but continued, “It corroborated what my other sources said–that when someone dies in the doorway of a dimensional portal, the soul can get trapped in a kind of limbo between dimensions, or in one of the dimensions on either side.”
Tara gasped. “You think that happened to Buffy?”
Willow sighed, “We don’t really know what happened. But I think we need to find out.”
Anya said quietly, “I recognized some of the dimensions that portal was opening on. Willow’s right–they’re not good places.”
Willow added, “And if what I’ve been reading is right, Buffy could be in any one of them.”
“Then we have to help her,” Xander said, rising to pace the floor as if hyperactive nervous energy alone could accomplish the task.
Willow nodded. “I think so, too. But we need to know more. More about dimensions and portals, and more about ways we could help her from here. And obviously,” she gestured towards the door to the back room where they had last seen Giles, “not everyone is going to be up to dealing with what we might find. So…” she trailed off meaningfully.
“Keep it a secret,” Xander finished for her, his eyes wide. “You want us to keep it a secret–from Giles?” He sat back down heavily, stunned.
“And Spike, and Dawn.” Willow looked at each of them in turn, her expression more serious than they had ever seen it. “They all need time to heal, and to focus on what is now, not what might be. We might find out Buffy’s somewhere terrible, but that there’s nothing we can do.” She paused, giving them time to absorb her words. “Or,” she continued, “we might find a way to get her out, or even bring her back. We don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up, and then have it not work. It would be too … cruel.”
“But not too cruel, to do it to ourselves?” Xander made no effort to hide the tears glistening in his eyes.
Willow took his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes. “We’re her friends. Whatever it takes, whatever we have to suffer, we have to try. To be sure she’s ok, or to help her if she’s not.” Willow paused, then added in a whisper, “She’d do it for us.”
Xander pulled himself together and nodded. “She did do it for us,” he agreed. But his resolution faltered a bit as he remembered, “But… not tell Giles?”
Willow shook her head emphatically. “No. You saw him tonight. He can’t take it. Not now. We have to do this for him, too. He’s right. We are old enough to take care of ourselves.”
Xander nodded again, more resolutely. “Being a grown up really sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” He sighed heavily. “Ok. Where do we start?”
Summer 6 - Making Sense
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Date: 2007-01-07 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 07:00 pm (UTC)And so what do I do for my current story? Start out 2 years post "Chosen" with Willow as the narrative voice. She's still hard to write, but she's come a long way. I like to believe that as manipulative as she is here, she gets better later. And really, in as out of control a world as she lives in, it makes sense that she would become like this, to cope. To have some power against the darkness.
Thanks so much for reading, and commenting.