Darkish fic
Title: In Shadows
Rating: FRT
Pairing: B/G
Disclaimers: Buffy & Co. belong to Joss Whedon, Kazui, Fox, etc.
Spoilers: somewhere mid-season six
Feedback: makes me write faster.
Distribution/Archive: Ask first.
Summary: Giles gets a telephone call from Buffy. Somewhat inspired by Gileswench’s Monday Mini Challenge #59 and by the Evanescence song “My Last Breath”.
Warning: Dark.

He jumped slightly as a sound seemed to echo though his empty flat, his head snapping up from the book he was perusing as his eyes darted all around the living room. He shook his head in disgust. He certainly wasn’t going to be hearing her voice here, was he? She was thousands of miles away in Sunnydale, and he was in Bath, and she wasn’t taking his calls. Rupert Giles gave a slight snort of annoyance, then stood and stretched. His back popped once or twice, reminding him that he wasn’t twenty-five or even thirty-five any more, and that sitting all day could cause kinks. With an expression of world-weariness, he made his way into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea and tried to rid himself of her echo as he did so.

He leaned against the counter and watched the kettle as it heated, out of habit: once when he was a child, he had set out to prove that a watched pot really would boil, and ever since then he had somewhat enjoyed doing so over and over again. The kettle whistled and he took it off the burner, pouring the water into the pot and setting the leaves to steep for a bit. It was just as he was putting the kettle into the sink that the telephone rang.

“Hello?” he asked, wondering who could be calling.

“Giles.” Her voice was calm and even, and made his heart jump in his chest.

“Buffy?”

“The one and only.” She paused, and then asked him how he was.

“As well as can be expected, I imagine,” he replied. “And yourself?”

“About the same,” she answered. “You have to come back, Giles.”

He sighed. “Buffy, I would like nothing more than to return to Sunnydale, but I truly don’t feel that you’re ready – ”

“The hell with that, Giles,” she interrupted him. “I’m not asking for me. I don’t matter any more. It’s Willow. She’s out of control and she’s gonna do something stupid. Stupider. She has to be stopped, Giles, and you’re the only one who can do that.”

“What’s she doing, Buffy?”

There was a slight pause. “Nothing. Yet. But she’s out of control. The magic… she uses it for everything. You know that. But it’s gotten even more so. And…” there was another pause, longer this time, and he wondered what she wasn’t telling him. “We need you, Giles. It’s bad.”

Giles weighed his instinct to go to her against his vow to force her to stand on her own, factoring in the intense emotional strain she must be under to call him now, when she had refused even to speak to him when he called for the last two months. “All right, Buffy,” he finally said. “I’ll be on the next flight.”

“Thank you.” Her relief was palpable, but she wasn’t done speaking yet. “Giles, I have to know something.” There was another odd pause, and then she almost whispered, “Giles, do you still love me?”

“Of course I do, Buffy!” he exclaimed. “You must always know that I do. Everything I have done over the last several years has been done out of love for you. Even when it was wrong.”

She sighed. “I thought so. But I needed to hear it from you.” There was another pause, longer now, and something about the pauses began to ring an alarm bell in Giles’s head. “I love you, too, you know,” she continued suddenly. “Even though I was angry at you for leaving. I needed you so much, Giles.” For the first time, the calm in her voice seemed to falter. “I needed you so bad, and you weren’t there.”

“Buffy, I – ”

“Don’t.” She cut him off. “It’s over now, and I’ve let it go. I forgive you, Giles. I’m not angry any more. We need you too much for me to hold that grudge.” She paused again, and then said something that brought him up short. “You know, if things had gone differently with Glory… I think we might have ended up as lovers.”

The shadows in the corners of the kitchen seemed to darken and elongate, standing out in sharp contrast as his head spun. His instinct was to hide from it, but her voice demanded the truth from him and he would give it. “Yes,” he agreed softly, “we might have.”

There was a certain satisfaction in her voice once he had admitted this. “I knew it,” she said quietly without gloating. “I have to go, Giles. But promise me you’re coming as fast as you can. Promise, and I won’t be afraid.”

“I promise,” he replied. “The first flight.”

“Okay.” She swallowed audibly. “I love you, Giles,” she said, and then the line went dead.

He managed to find a faster trip than a flight; six hours later he stood in the dark of midnight on Buffy’s front porch, his head reeling a bit from the translocation spell. When he’d got his balance back, he moved to the door and knocked.

Dawn answered, stared at him for a moment with a stricken and tear-streaked face, and then hurled herself at him, sobbing. He went inside with her, sat on the sofa, calmed her down and made her explain her distress. Her words ran him cold.

Six and a half hours ago, Buffy had gone out to patrol. She had forgotten her cellular telephone, so Dawn and Xander went out to track her down and give it to her. It took them about half an hour to find her, but when they did, it was already too late. She was dead just inside the gates of Restfield Cemetery, the sheer number of bite marks on her body indicating that she’d been ambushed by a large gang of vampires as she began her patrol. They carried her home and laid her on her bed, and when Willow learned of the Slayer’s death, she went crazy. She had placed a stasis spell on the room and shielded it heavily to prevent entry, then got in her car and headed down the highway to L.A. with the intention of obtaining an Orb of Thessulah.

Giles’s head reeled. Six hours. She had been lying dead on the ground of Restfield Cemetery while he talked to her dead spirit on the telephone. He wanted to weep and rage, but there was time for that later. He stood, looking down at Dawn. “Stay here, Dawn,” he said softly. Then he turned and started up the stairs.

Three steps from the door to her bedroom, he encountered the magical barrier. He laid his hands on it and with three thunderous words blasted it out of existence. Another step inward and he encountered the edge of the time distortion that was the stasis spell, preventing Buffy from rising, if she had indeed been turned, by freezing time around her. With another explosion of words, Giles wrenched the fabric of Time back into place. There was the sensation of wind as the area affected by Willow’s spell doubled its speed in order to catch up with the rest of the world. And then he stood just outside the door and listened.

A moment or two later, Giles heard the sound he had dreaded to hear: that of a light-footed young woman rising from a bed she had no business rising from. He reached into his overcoat pocket, pulled out a stake, and pushed the door open.

She looked up at him with brilliant viridian eyes from the center of the room where she stood, still in her bloody and torn clothing.

He swallowed hard, moving slowly toward her.

She did not move, staring up at him with those eyes, so full of trust and love, and she smiled gently.

He stopped in front of her and raised his stake. “I’m sorry, Buffy,” he said softly, his eyes filling with tears.

Her smile slowly turned into a smirk. “I’m not,” she replied in a cold, deadly voice. And then she struck.

--End--