blairprovence | FIC The Futility of Grand Gestures (6/10) (BUFFY)

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
Previous Part

The last time Buffy awakened, the lengthening shadows of early twilight filled the bedroom, and she was alone.

She sat up slowly in the bed, blinking blearily as she tried to clear her mind. Her eyelids felt heavy and she ached a bit all over, though she felt the healthiest she had since awakening in the hospital.

The hospital, Buffy thought fuzzily. Mom...Wes... Her eyes widened as the memories came flooding back. Ripper...Giles! She scanned the room frantically for any sign of her companion, but he wasn't in sight. She opened her mouth to call out to him...but something stopped her.

The events of the afternoon were jumbled in her mind, with the kind of Dada-esque quality typical of an interrupted dream. Her recollections were a hazy, jumbled morass of taste, sound, and the feel of skin on skin. By her accounting they'd made love three times in the afternoon's lengthening shadows. They'd been one person in every sense of the word, the way they'd never had a chance to be in life - joined by a love the likes of which she'd scarcely even dreamed of finding.

She hadn't dreamed....

Until now.

Her breath caught. No. Oh, no... She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

But once the possibility had again occurred to her, she couldn't seem to banish it away.

Perhaps it all had been a dream. Perhaps Giles's ghost had been a figment born in her subconscious, a product of her incredible need to see him, to be with him...to make amends.

No! she retorted, leaping from the bed and turning toward the door, determined to prove somehow that he had truly been there with her. Her headlong rush was halted when she tripped over something lying on the shadowed floor.

Clothing of some kind.

Clothing! Buffy bent down to pick up the scattered garments, realizing as she did so that she herself was naked, bereft of the shirt of Giles's that she recalled selecting for pajamas. She jumped back on the bed and reached for the bedside light, which illuminated the room and revealed that the clothes in her hands were a charcoal sweater, a white t-shirt, and a pair of slacks.

The charcoal sweater - the one Giles had worn that last day in the library.

She glanced over at the armchair, her brow furrowed in puzzlement. Hadn't those clothes been stacked on top of the chair when she'd first come up to check the room? And where was the Bilious Celadon shirt? She lifted up the rumpled duvet and searched the sheets underneath - her efforts were rewarded when her fingers found a sleeve. She pulled the shirt out and inspected it thoroughly - all the buttons were intact, and the pocket still held the two pictures she had placed there.

Buffy shook her head in confusion and raked her fingers through her hair. What had really happened? Her body felt as though she'd been thoroughly loved by someone with a great deal of talent for it - but she was also clean, as fresh as though she'd just stepped from the tub, and sex was nothing if not messy.

Evidence against....

Then again, the shirt she'd worn to sleep in had somehow ended up at the foot of the bed - and the clothes her dreamGiles had been wearing had somehow migrated to the floor.

Evidence for....

But the buttons of the B.C. shirt were intact.

And she'd never, ever heard anything before about ghosts being able to make love.

Buffy closed her eyes and shook her head. Nothing made sense.

She drew the shirt around her shoulders, lost in thought. It took a moment for her to realize that someone was banging on the front door downstairs - loud, impatient, demanding knocks, with no pauses in between to wait for an answer. She took one last look around the room and headed down the steps, her fingers nimbly doing up the buttons of the shirt. Her mind was still entirely preoccupied with the question of what might have happened in the bedroom, so she opened the door without looking through the peephole, or even registering the fact that she was naked except for Giles's shirt.

The person on the front stoop pursed his lips in a soundless whistle and gave her an appreciative once-over, one scarred eyebrow raised in sardonic delight. "'Ello, ducks," Spike said, smirking, the old-fashioned pistol in his right hand pointed directly at her chest.

"Nice legs."

***

Buffy stared at Spike blankly for a few long moments as her mind tried to process the reality of his presence on Giles's doorstep, standing big as death and twice as cocky in the deepening twilight. She knew it was rather nonsensical to be so nonplussed by his appearance - after all, she'd placed the call to Willie hoping for this exact result.

I guess I never believed it would actually happen, she concluded. Spike responding to a request for help from the Slayer? Buffy actually making the request in the first place? The idea was so crazy that she was almost positive it would never occur to the demon that now occupied Giles's body - and it might therefore give her the edge she needed to defeat him.

"Isn't that cheating?" Buffy finally offered, tilting an eyebrow toward the pistol. Her voice was steady - and she was mildly surprised to realize she didn't feel the least bit apprehensive that Spike would shoot her. Talk about having nothing left to lose....

"Only if I use it, pet," Spike replied, his smirk still firmly in place. "Thought I'd bring it along to provide a bit of insurance, you might say. While we're coming to terms, so t’speak."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Whatever makes you feel more manly, Spike." She stepped back from the door and waved a hand toward the living room. "Come on in." She nearly laughed aloud at the way his jaw dropped - clearly she could have said nothing to surprise him more.

He entered warily, his cold blue eyes scanning the room for hidden traps. "That Watcher-bloke won't be thanking you for this, Slayer. 'Preciate the invite."

She winced and glanced away. "Willie didn't tell you...?"

"Willie told me sod-all," Spike retorted as he prowled around the couch. "He was pissed off his arse and whinging something awful by the time I got to the bar. Said something about you 'killing all his clientele' or some such. Only one vampire in the entire place - and he said the Mayor bought it two days ago and took half the bloody underground with him." He turned to eye her appraisingly. "You killed him?"

Buffy swallowed guiltily, but managed to meet his gaze head on. "Giles did."

Spike's eyebrow shot up. "The toff?" He cocked his head to the side thoughtfully. "Makes sense."

Buffy wondered what he meant by that. "Huh?"

"'He's a stubborn bugger, that one," Spike told her, finally returning his gaze to her face, apparently satisfied that the room held no hidden dangers. His fingers relaxed around the pistol, though he didn't lower it just yet. "'Held off bloody Angelus for longer than most vampires could've done. Drove the demented wanker daft, it did." His expression turned to a sneer as his attention caught on her scanty attire once again. "Seems t'be a lot going on under all that tweed of his - but I'm guessing you know that, right? Does the poof know you're knockin' boots w-"

"He's dead," Buffy cut him off, hating the vampire's insulting tone.

He blinked at her. "Angel?"

She turned her back on him and stalked toward the downstairs utility closet. "Angel," she confirmed in a tremulous voice. "Willow, Oz..." She wrenched the door open. "Giles..."

Spike whistled appreciatively. "Cor, I miss all the bloody fun."

Abruptly furious, she grabbed blindly for an object from the upper shelf and whirled on him, throwing the missile at the vampire with all her strength. He ducked, narrowly avoiding a concussion, and the object shattered against the wall behind him, raining yellow shards of porcelain down on the carpet. Buffy's anguished gaze caught on one large piece, where the word 'KISS' was writ large in red letters--and she realized that the object had been the 'KISS THE LIBRARIAN' coffee mug she and Willow had purchased for Giles last year in celebration of National Library Month. She remembered the embarrassed grin he had worn when he opened the box - and how quickly the mug had disappeared from the library after Ms. Marsden had tried to take him up on the offer. They had wondered what he had done with it....

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut against the pain of the memories. "Shut up!" she snapped.

Spike waved the gun in a vaguely threatening manner, though his brow seemed to be furrowed more in puzzlement than anger. "You don't expect me to care, do you, ducks? A few Happy Meals, more or less..."

"I said SHUT UP!" Buffy yelled, swiping angrily at her tears. She hated herself for breaking down in front of him. It shouldn't matter what he said, or what he thought, only that she somehow convince him to do what she needed him to do. And in order to do that she needed to be strong.

Spike regarded her silently for a moment. Then: "Angel's dead?"

Buffy couldn't be sure, but she thought she heard a hint of regret in his tone. She nodded slowly. "G-...Giles killed him."

He considered that briefly. "Can't say as I blame him, really."

She shook her head and turned back to the closet, extracting her emergency clothes - a pair of sweatpants, a t-shirt, and running shoes. "Don't you care? He was your Sire!"

"Ancient history, pet," Spike returned. "Or did you forget that I tried to do him in on several occasions myself. A bad job the Watcher beat me to it, in fact. If the bloke weren't already dead I might be inclined to make him pay for that."

"It wasn't Giles," she murmured, pulling the sweatpants on up under Giles's shirt. Immediately she felt a little better as she turned to face Spike again - she found it much easier to stare down evil vampires when she wasn't half-naked.

Spike made a sarcastic little moue of disappointment, but didn't comment otherwise on her changed attire, clearly more concerned with her words. "But you said--"

She glared at him. "It wasn't him, okay? Not..." she swallowed with difficulty, "not really."

Spike regarded Buffy blankly. She waited silently for comprehension to dawn, watching with interest as an expression of what could only be described as sheer horror bloomed on his face. "Someone bloody Turned him?" he asked, aghast.

She nodded.

"What kind of sodding idiot went and did that? Christ, how bloody stupid-"

She cut him off. "I thought the point for all you big bad vampires was to kill off my friends and family."

"Yeah, and put 'em in the bloody ground," he returned. "Permanently! Not Turning him so that he could go spare! Any vampire with half a brain would know that changing the Watcher was a damn stupid thing to do-"

"How?" she interrupted curiously. "I thought no one could tell what kind of vamp a person would be beforehand."

"Most people you can't," he agreed. "You could as soon Turn a sheep. But there's some anyone should know better than to taste - like your Watcher, or the little Witch. She'd rave worse'n Dru, any idiot could see that - and the Watcher-" He shook his head. "Even that nutter Angelus wasn't stupid enough to Turn him - and not just because the bugger'd be more'n likely to want a bit of revenge for the torture." He eyed her speculatively. "Got Angel right off, did 'e? And the Witch and the Wolf-boy, too, I assume?"

"And his Sire," she confirmed, swallowing hard. "And God knows how many others."

He seemed to pale further, if possible. "Killed his Sire...how long?"

She frowned in confusion.

"'Ow bloody long before he offed his Sire, Slayer?" Spike repeated impatiently, his accent thickening with frustration.

"Directly upon rising, he said," she replied, shivering a little at the memory of Ripper's cold, cold eyes.

Spike shook his head. "Bleedin' Christ," he muttered.

"I have to stop him," she said. "And I don't have a lot of time."

He raised an eyebrow.

"The Watchers Council's coming for me," she elaborated. "They've sentenced me to death for...well, for conduct unbecoming, basically. I've only got tonight to take out the Ripper demon wearing Giles's body before they find me and kill me."

Spike seemed a bit nonplussed by the matter-of-fact tone with which she discussed her own death. "You'd be better off leaving him for them to face, then," he observed after a moment. "That'd thin the ranks a bit, no question. What'd you do to tick the nancy-boys off?"

Buffy thought for a moment, wondering what the actual answer to that question really was. True, she had rejected all the Watchers' little rules and regulations, thrown over Wesley in favor of Giles, and repudiated the Council for Angel - but she couldn't help but think that mainly they hated her just for not dying before she'd grown her own brain.

Not that Spike would care about that. "I let Angel drink me," she finally said, meeting his gaze squarely.

Spike closed his eyes. "Bollocks," he muttered. "You're bloody daft, you know that? What'd you go and do something that effing stupid for? And why'd the poof go along with it?"

"He needed...he was sick, and he needed a Slayer's blood to get better." The horror of those dark moments came rushing back to her as the images replayed in her mind. She looked away and shook her head. "It doesn't matter now. What matters is, I let him drain me the day before the Ascension, and then I spent all of graduation lying nice and safe in a bed in the hospital while everybody I love risked their lives defeating the Mayor. Giles got hurt, then got Turned, and the Watchers think it's all my fault."

"Sounds like they're right," Spike remarked pointedly.

"I didn't say they weren't," Buffy returned in an even tone. "Witness me being here and not halfway to Vegas by now. But I made a promise to Giles that I intend to keep. I swore that I'd stop Ripper." She paused and took a deep breath, hating her next words before she even uttered them. "But I only have a few hours...and I need your help to do it."

Spike laughed for four or five seconds before her set expression clued him in to the fact that she wasn't actually joking. "You really are a daft bitch," he told her, still snickering. "You're barmy t'think I'd ever help you."

"Am I?" she retorted. "It's not like we haven't teamed up before. Ripper killed Angel, Spike. Your Sire. And didn't you just get through telling me you had claimed that privilege?"

His expression darkened momentarily, then cleared. "Ah, well. 'E'd the most right of anyone else to off the tosser, prob'ly."

She glared at him. "Well, how about this, then - what about what you would get out of it? What kind of a happy would it give Dru if you offed the vamp who killed her precious Daddy? No need to kill Angel yourself, but you get all the rewards anyway? She'd probably drop her chaos demon faster than you could say, 'Crazy Ho Vamp'."

"Cute," he told her sourly, but she could tell her words had gotten to him, at least a little bit. Say what you would about Spike, he really loved his Dru.

Well, whatever passed for love among vampires anyway.

"Think about it, Spike," Buffy cajoled him. "You supposedly dust Angel's killer - and I won't tell anyone I was even there, I swear it - thus becoming King Vamp of the Hellmouth, and Dru'll be all over you like gum on a sneaker. C'mon," she wheedled, "You know I'm right."

She could see the slightest trace of agreement in his face as he considered her words, but before she could press her momentary advantage, there was a knock on the door. They both froze.

Spike growled at her, a betrayed expression accompanying the morph into his demon features. "Slayer, if this is a trap it's a damned stupid one," he hissed, raising his gun.

"It isn't," she hissed back. "It's probably the Watchers here early. Go hide in the kitchen and I'll take care of it." Their gazes met, slid down to the gun simultaneously, then moved back up to meet again. Buffy glanced over at the door, her fists clenching.

"Not bloody likely, pet," Spike told her, crossing over toward the alcove that held Giles's kitchen, gun still in hand.

Buffy watched the weapon depart with real regret - not that she honestly wanted to shoot the Watchers in cold blood (any of the ones besides Travers, anyway), but the gun would have been useful in bluffing her way free of a determined assault. If they took her now, she'd never be able to fulfill her promise to Giles.

She moved to the door and peeked out of the peephole, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw it was only Wesley.

"It's okay," she whispered back toward Spike as she opened the door. "Wes. What are you doing here?"

The dark-haired Watcher shifted on his crutches and glanced nervously over his shoulder into the deepening twilight. "What am I doing here? Buffy, what are you doing here? I thought I told you to leave town immediately."

"Yeah, well, since when do I do what you say?" Buffy replied, but kindly, genuinely touched by his concern. "You shouldn't be here, Wes - I'm pretty sure Travers wouldn't like it."

"Sod Travers," Wesley replied sharply, craning his neck to scan down the shadowed street. "Did you think I wasn't serious, Buffy? They will kill you."

"No, I didn't think you weren't serious," she sighed. "Even humor-impaired you wouldn't think something like that was a funny." She watched as he hobbled back off the porch and peered through the courtyard in the other direction. "Paranoid much? If you're so worried they're gonna see you, just go already. I'll be all right."

He turned back to her. "I can't," he told her miserably. "I thought I would be able to, but I can't. Your life is at stake, Buffy." He shifted from one crutch to the other and threw another worried glance over his shoulder.

Buffy sighed again. Clearly, it was going to be a lot harder to get rid of him than she had anticipated. And, now that she thought about it, sending him out into the night alone with a broken leg wouldn't exactly be doing him a favor, anyway - better to somehow trap him inside the apartment until the fireworks were over. The Watchers would definitely be coming for Giles's book collection sooner rather than later, and they could free Wesley should she fail to return from her mission. "Come in then," she told him, "before the neighbors call the cops on us. I didn't exactly use a key to get in here."

Immense relief bloomed on his face, restoring his usual eager-puppy mien. "Thank you."

Buffy turned back toward the living room, hoping against hope that Spike would have the good sense stay hidden in the kitchen so she wouldn't have to deal with a round of Wesley-hysterics. "How did you know I'd be here, anyway?" she asked as she scanned the room for any tell-tale evidence of the blond vampire's presence. "I-"

There wasn't even a second of warning - just the briefest whisper of cloth on cloth, then the feel of something hard striking the base of her skull. Darkness rushed up to meet her as she collapsed to the floor.

Part 7