FIC The Futility of Grand Gestures (2/10) (BUFFY)

[blairprovence]

Title:  The Futility of Grand Gestures
Author:  blairprovence
Rating:  PG
Character(s)/Pairing(s):  Buffy, Giles
Warnings:  Season 3, Serious Angst
Disclaimer:  All things Buffy belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, et al.
Summary:   Buffy would do absolutely anything for the people she loves.  That's a good thing, right?
Author Notes:   Completed at long last for my scheduled day on summer_of_giles  2008.  Apologies to my flist for the mass posting.  Set after the events of Graduation, Part 1.

Part 1

Wesley’s simple statement was all it took to bring the images rushing back - everything, from the moment Oz and Willow revealed the information about the cure to her to the final darkening of her vision as Angel pinned her down and drank from her.  She relived her own decision to hunt Faith down, Xander's concerned commentary as she chose her weapons, the brutal violent fury of her battle with the other Slayer...the way that horrible Klingon knife had slid into Faith's belly, easy as pie.  She saw the bitter soulless emptiness in Faith's eyes as, even in her last moments, she'd chosen to hinder instead of help, to follow the darkness down off the roof of her building instead of trying to atone.

 

You think she should have been oh-so-thrilled to be Angel's afternoon snack? some dark part of Buffy wondered sarcastically. 'Cause the whole experience really gave you such a happy, right?

 

She flinched and reached for the bandage on the side of her neck, her fingers tightening convulsively over the gauze as she remembered the horrible slurping sounds of Angel sucking out her life's blood.

 

"He drained you," Wesley told her quietly when she failed to reply to his words.  "You died...again, though the paramedics were able to revive you once Angel brought you to hospital. The trauma was severe, however; you went into a coma after receiving massive transfusions of blood."

 

"And woke up here three days later."  She licked her dry lips.  "B-but...Angel's all right, then?"

 

Wesley's face tightened.  "As far as I know, he's fine," he answered in a clipped tone.  "He survived the battle at graduation, at any rate.  I haven't seen him since then.  I do believe your mother banned him from the hospital once she found out what he'd done."

 

Buffy wondered why that news didn't irritate her the way she would have expected it to do.  But she could see her mother's point all too clearly - once again Buffy's vampire boyfriend had nearly cost her daughter her life.  Buffy had nearly died...and Cordelia had died.  Buffy's shoulders slumped.

 

"I can't believe Cordy's gone..." she mumbled in a hoarse, teary voice.  Her eyes met Wesley's, and she could clearly see the pain within.  "I'm sorry, Wes."

 

His back stiffened.  "Yes, well...that isn't why I wished to speak to you, actually."  He ran a hand through his unruly hair and straightened his tie, clearly willing himself back into Watcher-mode. "I have some... rather distressing news to deliver. Do you recall what you said to me in Angel's mansion directly before you left?"

 

She regarded him with wide, uncertain eyes.  "I...when I quit the Council?"

 

"Indeed," he agreed, clearing his throat. "I did, of course, report your statement to them immediately."  He cleared his throat again, looking slightly abashed.  "Perhaps it would have been better to wait, but I thought it might persuade them to..."  He sighed and shook his head.  "It hardly matters now.   But you must realize, Buffy, that the Council cannot accept such insubordination. A Slayer must-"

 

"-do whatever the hell the Council wants," Buffy finished bitterly.  "I know the drill, Wes.  But I don't agree with it, and I'm not gonna do it anymore."  She scowled at him, adding, "Giles backs me up, too, so don't even try to talk me out of it."

 

Wesley froze momentarily at the mention of Giles's name, then frowned at her.  "I wouldn't dream of it," he told her in his chilliest tone.  "It's gone too far past that, at any rate.  I shouldn't even be speaking to you of this, but I feel somehow...obligated to do so.  So here it is: the Council is sending a tribunal here to Sunnydale, to try you for various crimes and pronounce sentence upon you.  As an action this extreme has been undertaken only five times in all our recorded history, I feel it necessary to warn you that in essence the sentence has already been decided, and you will be found guilty."

 

"I will?"  She blinked at him.  "Guilty of what?"

 

"Gross negligence," he replied promptly.  "Dereliction of duty, er...manslaughter, and-"

 

Her jaw dropped.  "Mansl-...I- is Faith dead, then?"

 

He shook his head, averting his gaze.  "No.  At the moment the charge against you in her case is attempted murder, as she hasn't yet succumbed to her injuries, though the doctors here apparently expect that to happen very soon.  Some time in the next two days, I believe they said, though of course they have little experience with Slayer healing."

 

Buffy swallowed hard again, feeling numb.  The decision to go after Faith - a decision that had seemed so clear-cut and simple at the time she'd made it - now felt like part of some kind of horrible nightmare. She'd hunted down another human being, someone who had once been a friend, in order to feed her to a vampire....

 

Her hand came up to cover her mouth and she moaned low in her throat.  "Oh, God..."

 

Wesley regarded her uncomfortably.  "Yes, well, an argument can be made to defend your actions in Faith's case, I believe, even if your motives were somewhat suspect.  Clearly the Council were ineffective in dealing with her - reining in a rogue Slayer is their responsibility, after all.  I myself bear much of the blame for the situation with Faith, as I probably didn't convey the true seriousness of her betrayal in my reports.  I wanted to clean up my own mess, so to speak, and only succeeded in bungling things rather badly.  But clearly the Council have decided to act quite differently in regard to you."

 

A sour smile ghosted across her lips.  "So I'm a rogue Slayer, too, now, huh?"

 

"The Council considers you as such, yes," Wesley replied.

 

"Well, to hell with them," Buffy snapped.  "Useless bunch of-...The only thing they ever did for me was give me Giles, and then they tried to take him away!  We don't need the Council to do our jobs.  It's not like they've been a heaping lot of help fighting the evil anyway."

 

"That decision isn't yours to make," Wesley told her gently.

 

"The hell it isn't!  I'm the Slayer.  The whole system's pretty much pointless without me.  I mean, without me, all the stuffy Watchers have got no one to watch, right?"  

 

Wesley would not meet her gaze - and suddenly that made Buffy very nervous.  "Right?  What aren't you telling me, Wes?"

 

"The system is pointless without a Slayer, yes," he agreed in a low voice.

 

"A Slayer," she repeated, frowning.  "What do you mean, a Slayer?"  She tilted her head to one side and regarded him suspiciously.  "Just what kind of sentence are they thinking about pronouncing here?"  A lead ball of foreboding uncurled in her stomach when he did not immediately answer.  "Wes?"

 

His eyes were glued to the scuffed linoleum.  "You have to understand, Buffy - the crimes of which you stand accused are among the most serious with which a Slayer can be charged..."

 

Insight came to her on a lightning bolt.  "They want to kill me?"  Her voice rose in distress. "They're gonna sentence me to death?  Is that what you're saying?"

 

His fists clenched, and he didn't raise his head.  "I-...B-buffy..."  His shoulders slumped as he nodded.  "Yes."

 

"They-they can't do that!" she sputtered.

 

"They can and they will!" he retorted.  "Do you still not understand, Buffy?  Your situation was precarious enough after Mr. Giles interfered in the Cruciamentum.  Then you made the decision to sacrifice the box of Gavrok, which was clearly a key element in Mayor Wilkins' plans for his transformation, in order to keep your friend alive, and now you've allowed your love for a vampire to take precedence over saving the lives of everyone in Sunnydale from a demonic ascension!  A Slayer cannot-"

 

"Stop saying that!" she cried.  "I'm not just a Slayer - I'm a person!  I'm me!  Buffy!  You can't just-"

 

"I warned you!" he interrupted heatedly.  "I told you that there would be consequences to your actions.  You chose not to listen - you always choose not to listen-"

 

"I couldn't let him die," she retorted.  "Can't you understand that? If it was in my power to stop it, I couldn't let him die."

 

Silence fell as they stared at one another, color suffusing their cheeks.

 

"He's already dead, Buffy," Wesley replied stiffly after a long, tense few minutes.  "His is a life that should have ended long ago.  Those who died at graduation, Miss Chase and-" he paused and cleared his throat, "-er, all the rest – they deserved your consideration.  They are the ones that deserved your protection."

 

Buffy swiped at her brimming eyes.  "You don't understand."

 

"No, I do not."

 

Something in his emphatic tone made her look up at him.  She studied his set expression and came to an unwelcome realization.  "You...you agree with them, don't you?  You think they're right about me.  You think they're right to want to kill me."

 

He compressed his lips and shook his head slightly.  "I think...I think their assessment of your actions is fair.  I think that you did neglect your duty and put innocents in needless peril.  But to sentence you to-"  He closed his eyes and shook his head again.  "Emotions are running high in Council, and those we might have depended upon to keep a level head are understandably distressed."  He opened his eyes and looked at her.  "They aren't all of Quentin Travers' ilk, you know.  A very vocal minority protested Mr. Giles's dismissal as your Watcher - he'd a great many admirers."

 

Giles!  Her mind seized on him as the answer to all her prayers.  Yes, Giles...Giles could fix this. Giles could fix anything.  Suddenly Buffy felt much better.  "He won't let this happen, you know," she chided Wesley confidently.  "Giles'll stop it, you'll see."

 

"No." Wesley inhaled deeply and slowly let out his breath. "He won't."

 

Icy fear clutched at her chest as the horrible suspicions she'd been desperately trying to hold at bay threatened to overwhelm her.  But she could no longer ignore the obvious:  Giles was always by her side when she awakened from Slaying-induced injuries; he was always there to comfort her, to explain things, to be exposition-guy when she asked what had happened - but not this time.  Giles hadn't been there, and Xander was so angry, and Willow was so devastated...and her mother hadn't wanted to stay in the room, hadn't wanted to hear....

 

Her hand came up to cover her mouth again.  "No..."

 

"I'm sorry, Buffy."

 

She shook her head.  "No.  It's not true.  NO!"

 

"He died in the explosion, Buffy.  He-"

 

"NO!" she shouted, scooting back against the wall, glaring at him fiercely.  "You're wrong!  It's not true - it isn't!"

 

"Buffy-"

 

"NO! HE wouldn't leave me! He said he'd never leave me. You're wrong! You’re WRONG!"

 

"He didn't want to leave you," Wesley assured her, looking slightly panicked by the extremity of her reaction.  He glanced back over his shoulder at the door, as if worried that her shouting would attract attention.  "He thought he'd have time to get clear of the blast radius before he triggered the remote to set off the explosives in the library.  But the Mayor moved very quickly in his demon form, and Mr. Giles didn't quite have time enough to get full away before he had to-"

 

"*NO*!" she shouted, shaking her head wildly, words tumbling from her mouth in a panicked torrent.  "It didn't happen!  It couldn't have happened.  He would have gotten away - he would have made it!  He's so fast, the fastest one of all of us, except for-"   She froze and her eyes widened in shocked horror, tears spilling over.

 

"Except for you," Wesley finished softly.  "But you weren't there, so-"

 

"Oh, God!" Buffy keened, doubling over, shaking with the strength of her grief.  The IV ripped from her arm, trailing drops of blood.  "Oh, no no nononononoooo..."

 

He stumbled forward, landing awkwardly on the edge of the mattress.  "Buffy!  Buffy, you must listen to me!"

 

But she was beyond hearing. She clasped her arms over her stomach and curled into a ball, rocking back and forth.  "Nooooo...oh, God, please, nooo..."  He reached for her, but she flung his hand away.

 

Wesley grabbed hold of her shoulder. "Buffy, listen!" he said, glancing over at the open doorway.  "Your mother will be back any moment, you must listen to me!"  He squeezed her arm, hard.

 

She turned wild eyes toward him.  Tears streaked her cheeks, and her face was flushed, her breath coming hard and fast.  "I'm sorry, Buffy," he said again, his tone softening.  "I know you c-cared for him, and he for you."

 

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and buried her head against her knees, sobbing.

 

"It's because of that...bond between you that I must say these things to you.  I didn't understand him - I won't pretend that I did, but I know that you were the most important thing in the world to him."  Her shoulders began to shake with increased violence.  "I know that he would have been willing to sacrifice his life, if only to see you safe.  He would have deemed it a fair trade."

 

"It's not," came her reply in a raw, aching voice.

 

"Be that as it may," Wesley replied gently.  "And you're right - he would have done whatever was necessary to fix this, to keep you safe from the Council.  Unfortunately, his enemies have found common ground with his allies in this instance.  They cite your actions as proof of your unfitness to be the Slayer, and his friends believe you betrayed him for a vampire.  Perhaps in time, they would change their minds...but time isn't a luxury we have at the moment, I'm afraid.  They're calling for your blood."

 

She raised head to look at him, her blue eyes swimming in tears.  "The charges...the m-manslaughter?  They're saying I k-killed him?"

 

Wesley found he couldn't lie to her, much as he might want to.  "Yes."

 

She regarded him steadily.  "And you agree with them?"

 

His answer - whatever it was - lodged in his throat, and he could only stare back at her silently.

 

A tiny, miserable smile curled her lip.  "'S'okay, Wes. When you're right, you're right."

 

"He wouldn't ever want you punished like this – especially not in his name," Wesley said positively.  "The Council's representatives won't be here until late tomorrow night, and the doctor has indicated you should be recovered sufficiently to check out of here in the morning. That should afford you enough time to find Angel and leave town before their arrival."

 

She blinked at him. "L-leave?"

 

He looked as though he wanted to shake her. "Yes! Buffy, you must leave. They'll kill you!"

 

All the remaining life and fire seemed to drain out of her. She closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders in misery, more tears escaping to streak down her cheeks. "So?"

 

"Buffy, please," he begged, surprising her with the intensity of his plea.  “Faith will succumb to her injuries quite soon, or she will recover under the aegis of the Council. There will be another Slayer – the Council will have to be satisfied with that. You have suffered enough. Take my warning, and my advice, and leave town with your vampire, for whom you’ve sacrificed so much!”

 

She closed her eyes and turned her head away. 

 

"Buffy, please," Wesley said again, gripping her shoulder even harder.  "You must go! It's what he would want for you, you know that!"

 

She removed his hand, finger by finger, with careful but considerable force. "He can't want anything now, can he, Wes?" she pointed out quietly. "That's sort of the whole point, isn't it?"

 

He reached out to cup her cheek with his palm. Some part of her noted that it was the first time he'd ever touched her with any kind of affection. "He wouldn't begrudge you a moment of life and you know it, Buffy," he told her tenderly. "Your safety and happiness meant everything to him. He would only be disappointed in you if you stopped fighting."

 

She said nothing in reply.

 

A moment later Joyce Summers reappeared, hovering anxiously in the doorway. "Buffy?" Wesley snatched his hand away as though he'd been caught doing something he oughtn't.

 

Buffy wrenched her gaze from Wesley's face and looked toward her mother, who rushed inside the room to embrace her daughter.  "Oh, honey. Oh, honey, I'm so sorry."

 

Buffy's face crumpled as she clutched her mother tightly.  "Giles is gone, Mom," she sobbed as her tears began again. "He's gone."

 

"I know, baby." Joyce smoothed her daughter's rumpled hair as she rocked them back and forth. "I know."

 

Wesley stood up from the bed, awkwardly maneuvering on his crutches. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it.  Sighing, he turned toward the door.

 

Buffy's eyes caught his as he took one last look over his shoulder. "Goodbye, Buffy," he told her softly. She nodded once, then buried her face in her mother's neck. The sounds of her sobbing followed him out into the corridor. 

***

 

It took a good half-hour of argument before Buffy could convince her mother to leave the hospital that night. Joyce didn't want to leave her daughter alone for even a moment after receiving such devastating news, but Buffy finally managed to make it clear that she wanted a little time by herself to process things. Joyce departed with a kiss and a pledge to be back bright and early the next morning to take Buffy home. The doctor had been astounded by the speed of her recovery once she had awakened, and had promised that she would be as good as new in a matter of days.

 

So I'll be a healthy corpse, Buffy had thought wearily, but she had managed to bite back the words, though only barely.  She hadn't been able to find the courage to tell her mother of the Council's plans for her, nor of the extent her own culpability in Giles's death. She'd sworn to keep no more secrets about the Slaying gig, but telling her mother that the so-called 'good-guys' had sentenced her to die at their hands?  And that it was more than a little bit deserved? There was no way.

 

After Joyce left Buffy began crying again, and sobbed for a good long while before drifting off into an exhausted slumber.  Odd, troubling dreams dogged her sleep, culminating in a nightmare extravaganza in which Faith and Giles took turns berating her for their murders while Angelus lurked behind them and laughed and laughed. Faith stood before her with the knife still embedded in her stomach, pointing accusingly at Buffy with fingers covered in blood. Giles's angry green eyes capped an expression of heartrending betrayal, and though Buffy tried to plead with him, to tell both of them that she had never truly meant to cause them harm, they wouldn't listen to her. And then Faith vanished, and Giles backed away from her, shaking his head when she made as if to follow him. Her feet were glued to the ground, holding her fast to one spot no matter how hard she tried to move, and she watched in horror as he disappeared from sight.  

 

Leaving her behind.  Alone.

 

"No!" she shouted as she awakened. "No! Giles!"

 

She nearly had a heart attack when a voice from the darkness answered her call.

 

"Yes?"

Part 3