blairprovence | FIC The Futility of Grand Gestures (7/10) (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

Buffy woke up with a queasy stomach and a pounding headache, and vowed then and there never to tease Giles again about his propensity for being knocked out. Returning to consciousness after being whacked over the head was a much less pleasant experience than he'd ever let on.

A moment later she was fully awake, and remembered that she'd never have a chance to tease Giles about anything ever again.

Groaning, she braced her hand against the floor and levered herself up to a sitting position, falling back against Giles's couch as another wave of pain swam through her head. "What hit me?" she muttered.

"Some RP ponce," came Spike's cutting tones. "How you managed to last three bloody years as the Slayer is beyond me, pet. Inviting me in was one thing, but-"

Buffy glanced around the room and discovered a duster-clad Spike lounging against the fireplace mantle, gun still firmly in hand. "Where is he?" she demanded. "If you've hurt him--"

"If I've hurt him!" Spike retorted, snorting with laughter. "Damn straight I bloody hurt him. I killed 'im but good!"

"You-" Buffy growled, stumbling to her feet, but then his words penetrated her fogged mind, "...killed him?" She fell back onto the cushions with a thump. Oh God...my fault, my fault myfault myfaultmyfault... Another death to lay at her feet. If she hadn't brought Spike back to Sunnydale, hadn't invited him into Giles's home, then Wesley would still be... Oh, God.

"You shouldn't have..." she told him numbly. "He was only trying to do his duty..."

Spike snorted again. "Clapping you over the head with a crutch?"

She looked away from Spike, considering the evident reality of what Wesley had done to her. She had believed he was trying to protect her.... No, he had tried, she truly did believe that - but she hadn't left town like he had wanted. Could she blame him for coming for her now, knowing how ruthless the Council could be to those they considered traitors? No, Wesley was not at fault. "The Council," she whispered, closing her eyes. Damn them, anyway. "He was supposed to bring me before the Council."

"Council's working with vampires now, is it?" Spike retorted derisively. "And they claim to be the bleedin' White Hats. Bollocks!"

It took a moment for the implication of his words to penetrate her fogged brain. She blinked up at Spike. "He was a vampire?"

"D'you see a corpse layin' around, Slayer?" he sneered, waving the gun to encompass the room. "Guess your Watcher really was the brains of the outfit."

Buffy winced as she fingered the knot on the back of her head, her gaze riveted on what she could now see was a pile of dust on the patterned rug. The end of one crutch peeked out from under the back of the couch. "You saved my life," she whispered - and then the incongruity of her own words became clear. She looked up at Spike skeptically. "And didn't drain me while I was unconscious? You saved me?"

He scowled at her. "Not on purpose, ducks. But I want t'know what the bloody 'ell is going on around here, and I didn't have time to hang about for your Rising. Not to mention that you'd probably be a raving looney as a vampire, too - most Slayers are, y'know."

"No, I didn't know," she replied absently as her gaze returned to the dust pile, the remains of her wanna-be Watcher. She had found him irritating, true, and resented his presence mightily. And she didn't think she should have had to apologize for that, either - the Council had fired Giles for 'caring too much', which had meant, in a de facto sort of way, that his replacement wouldn't care at all. And the Council had expected her to trust him? But Wesley hadn't been that bad - had, in fact, clearly done his best, though his best hadn't been anything to write home about, really. Still, he'd deserved a better end than dying at fangpoint.

At Giles's fangpoint.

Buffy pressed her index finger into the pile of dust. "I can't believe Wesley was a vampire," she murmured.

"Wesley? That 'is name?"

"Yeah." She sighed. "He was a Watcher - the replacement one they sent after they fired Giles. I didn't like him, thought he was a major jerk, in fact...but he tried to warn me yesterday about what the Council was gonna do to me." And that hadn't been all he had tried to do, even though she had never failed to ignore him. She swallowed guiltily. "And he told me to concentrate on the Ascension instead of Angel when Angel was sick."

"Like talking to a bloody wall, that," Spike observed, then paused. "You talked to him yesterday? Pre-fangs?"

She nodded.

"Bloody 'ell."

She blinked at him. "What?"

Spike pointed the gun toward the dustpile. "'He rose in less than a day, and came up in fighting form. Your Watcher Turned 'im fast - too damn fast - faster than any three-day-old vampire's s'posed to be able to."

Buffy swallowed. "You mean...”

"I mean your bloody Watcher's a damned unnatural vampire, Slayer. Fledglings are s'posed to obey their sires without question and spend at least the first six months of their lives just feeding like wild animals. Turning other vampires comes much later, and even then it should take the new ones days to Rise. Turning someone so they Rise within hours takes discipline - can't drink more'n just enough, then feed 'em just the right amount of your own. It's rough going even for a Master. And your Ripper sired this one and made 'im functional in less than twenty-four hours."

"Damn," Buffy breathed, and Spike nodded his agreement as he straightened up and headed for the door.

"You're on your own, Slayer," he threw over his shoulder. "I'll get Dru back in my own sweet time."

"Wait," she burst out, jumping up from the couch. He turned to regard her impatiently. "Aren't you worried?" she asked, slightly panicked. Spike wasn't much of an ally, true, but having him at her side was a vast improvement over having no one at all, and she felt more than a little desperate to keep him from leaving. "He's gotten just about everyone here already - he's gonna be branching out soon if he's not stopped. Don't you think you're gonna be right at the top of his hit list?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "I don't think he's done with you by a long shot, Slayer. Unless I miss my guess, you've got months of torture to look forward to and I'll be long gone by the time he's done. There's nothing you've offered me worth me risking my hide trying to fight that."

She swallowed, slowly straightening to her full height and squaring her shoulders. "Maybe not," she replied in a strong, clear voice. "But I'm not done offering yet."

***

Buffy had never before considered what the interior of Spike's beat-up classic car would look like, though she had once commented that from the outside the vehicle seemed to suit Spike's personality perfectly. She found, to her surprise, that the inside resembled Xander's Uncle Rory's car more than anything else--with old-fashioned chrome knobs and levers, leather seats, and loose Twinkie wrappers and empty liquor bottles on the floorboards. Spike had set the radio station to some god-awful heavy metal station and was singing along to the music, paying very little attention to tune. They hadn't spoken since they'd loaded the car with weapons and gotten underway.

Sighing, she turned her head toward the window and attempted to peer out through the smeary black shoe polish that presumably blocked the sun's rays - but it was dark, and she couldn't tell the polish from the inky sky. There was really nothing to see, anyway, but she knew all too well what - who - was out there, and that knowledge threatened a return of the chill that had enveloped her since her hospital awakening. She squeezed her eyes shut and cast her mind back to Giles's bedroom, clutching the warmth of those memories to her to ward off the cold. Her fingers crept up to the front pocket of Giles's shirt, which she wore over her sweats and t-shirt. The pocket still held the two pictures of her friends, to which she had added Willow's Pez dispenser and Angel's Claddagh ring.

She had left behind, on Giles’s kitchen table, two hastily scribbled notes to Xander and her mother.

"I still don't see how you can know this is where he'll be, Slayer," Spike muttered querulously after his last solo had mercifully ended.

Glad for the excuse to do so, she reached forward and switched off the radio. "I just know," she said, though she herself wasn't sure how she did. "Just trust me."

"Oh, right," Spike snorted. "I'll get right on that. It makes no sense, Slayer. Why would he want to go back there, even as a demon? I'd think it would be the last place he'd want to be."

Buffy turned to look at him. "Huh? Why?"

Spike rolled his eyes as he turned the steering wheel. "Does the word 'torture' ring a bell, pet? You're a thick one, aren't you?"

Buffy blinked, stunned by his words - and by the fact that his conclusion was both completely obvious, and something she'd never before considered. That Angel's home was the site of Giles's greatest pain and suffering, the torture chamber in which he'd endured hour upon hour of sheerest hell. "He's...been back there already," she told Spike unsteadily as her mind replayed the memories in her head. The mansion had, in fact, been the last place she'd ever seen Giles alive just over four days ago.

She'd been frantic over Angel, incensed at the Watchers Council's refusal to help him, and desperate to find something, anything, to do. She'd felt as though remaining cooped up in that mansion was going to drive her mad, and so she'd left Angel in Giles's custody - left Giles to care for his torturer in his torture chamber, and she'd never even given it a thought.

Drive me mad? And I never considered how it must have been for him... She could remember their conversation so clearly. She had dismissed Wesley, his concerns, and his Council, and then turned to Giles, confident, as always, of his support.

"Giles, I can't stay here any longer. I'm gonna see if I can help the others."

I can't stay, an angry voice in her mind repeated derisively. But, sure, let Giles do it, 'cause I bet it was just a great big barrel of laughs for him...

But all he'd said was, "Of course," in that kind Giles-way of his, without a hint of condemnation in his tone or in his look. Because that was Giles.

Why didn't I see?

She felt fresh tears spill over and roll down her cheeks.

Why didn't I ever see?

She hadn't. All she had said in return was, "You'll watch him?" It hadn't really even been a question, or an entreaty - but an assumption.

A terrible, selfish assumption that Giles had allowed her to make without demur - he'd simply promised to call her if there was any change in the vampire's condition. She had left Giles there, without even a goodbye, and run off to commit murder to save her Angel.

She hadn't even said goodbye.

Buffy choked back a sob and turned her face toward the window, so Spike wouldn't see her tears.

But she hadn't taken into account vampire hearing.

"If you're going to dissolve into a blob of sniveling human, this is never going t'work, Slayer." Spike's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. "It took you months to find the stones to kill Angelus - if you're not up for this, tell me now. I don't want to die because you've stopped mid-fight to brood a bit."

"I can do it," Buffy told him in a hollow tone. "I'm going to do it. I promised him I would. It won't be like before." She closed her eyes and swallowed. "I'm going to do it."

Spike didn't reply as he steered the car off of the road into a vacant lot located two streets north of the mansion. They'd agreed that stealth was of paramount importance, as they had no idea how many other unlucky people Ripper had managed to Turn in his four days of un-life. Spike had posited it was unlikely there would be more than two or three, though he was unwilling to wager on it - clearly, he didn't put much past the capabilities of VampireGiles. Buffy was forced to agree with him, so they had decided to proceed under the expectation that there would be a number of guards surrounding the mansion.

Armed with stakes and swords, the two of them set out through the woods to approach the mansion from behind. Their progress was stealthy, but slow, and though Buffy kept every one of her senses on high alert, the silence between them allowed far too much time for her own thoughts to torment her.

They were going to Angel's house - and whatever that place had meant to Giles, whatever it meant to Spike (and she was certain his memories weren't good ones, judging by the look in his eyes) - to her, it had been a refuge. Odd, that, given that she'd been forced to send Angel to hell from there, but it had been their place, where she and her soulful vampire had gone to be alone, where - since Angel's return - they'd passed the majority of their hours together.

And now Angel was dead.

Really dead this time. She'd believed it utterly from the moment Ripper had produced the Claddagh ring. But in the time since then, she hadn't had a moment to really process the information. The loss of Giles had been too immediate, too painful, and with the presence of his vampiric doppelganger, all too scarily real. His loss had filled her whole heart, and thoughts of him had filled her whole mind. She hadn't had a chance to mourn Angel, or Cordy, or Oz, or Wes...or Willow, who'd been her very best friend almost since the first moment they'd met. Willow, with her quirky, endearing grin, her innocent bravado, her heart as big as Texas - she deserved better than to be an afterthought, simply a dull, aching grief underneath more pressing concerns. She deserved so much better. They all did.

But Buffy didn't have time. And though she knew that they, of all people, would have understood that, she still felt guilty about it.

The attack came from her left, and she was surprised near to disaster by the swift competence of it, heralded as it was only by the merest whisper of leaves. Her vampire foe managed to knock her into a large tree almost immediately, and she rapped her head sharply against the bark, losing her sword in the process. He was big, but awkward, and fought with rather more brute power than style or grace. It took her a few moments to identify him as Xander's sometime-friend Larry, the misogynist jock turned preppy gay crusader. He growled at her, his eyes glowing ferally, and she wondered if he recognized her.

As she clocked him across the face she wondered further if Ripper had even sired him - how many of her fellow students had been Turned by the Mayor's vampire mob after she'd deserted them on Graduation Day?

And where the hell was Spike? He'd disappeared off to her right just as Larry had attacked her, and as she grimly fought off her former classmate, she was forced to face the fact that her new ally might be even less reliable than she'd assumed. Though it was possible he was engaged in his own battle - she heard a muffled shout and caught a flash of blonde between the trees that was too curly and not quite peroxide-y enough to be his.

She finally managed to push Larry far enough away to extract a stake from her waistband. "Sorry, Larry," she muttered as she forced it home, and her former not-friend dissolved into a shower of dust. But she didn't actually feel regretful, to her surprise, nor sad or guilty.

Guess my emotion-circuits have finally hit overload, she thought. The sheer enormity of the deaths of most everyone she held dear in the world left little room to mourn much else.

Spike emerged from the foliage, dusting off his hands. "Got 'im, did you?" he inquired, as if asking about the weather.

"Yup," she replied, raising an eyebrow, "And where the hell were you?"

He rolled his eyes, averting his gaze to scan the forest around them. "Answering the call of nature, pet," he drawled. "What do you think?"

"Anyone I knew?" she asked as she bent to gather her weapons. Something about his manner struck her as odd, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

"Trust me, Slayer, you don’t want t’know," Spike muttered as he set out through the trees again, sword at the ready.

She considered his words for a moment, then sighed and decided not to press him. Perhaps she was better off not knowing.

They met up with no one else on their approach to the mansion, and found themselves outside the side entrance in short order. Spike appeared, if it were possible, even tenser than he had been in the car, and she could see that whatever memories were haunting him, they were almost enough to make him leave without venturing inside. "How many more, do you think?" she asked by way of distraction, though it was a pointless question, really. He wouldn't have any better of an idea than she did.

"Too bloody many," he snapped. "Are you coming or not?"

She gestured toward the door with her sword, and he reached for the ornate brass knob and turned it. Somewhat to her surprise, it opened easily, and they exchanged a confused glance. Come in to my parlor, said the spider to the fly... Buffy thought automatically. But even if it was a trap, she had no choice but to go forward.

She preceded Spike into the dimly lit corridor, every sense on alert, but the dark hallway was empty. They crept along the passage silently, making their way toward the front of the mansion and the usable rooms. She stayed just far enough in front of the vampire to keep his presence a secret, should anyone catch sight of her, but they encountered no one - no one at all.

It made her extremely nervous, which she suspected was the point. Ripper knew her too well, knew that she'd rather fight and get it over with than endure a nerve-wracking wait. She forced herself to calm down.

A few long, tense minutes later she emerged into the stone foyer, blinking rapidly in the far brighter lighting of the room. It, too, was deserted - empty at least of living beings, though a small, crumpled form lay sprawled carelessly against the far wall. Buffy waved Spike back into the hallway and swallowed nervously as she made her way toward the body. With trembling fingers, she reached out to turn it over.

It was Oz.

She drew in a sharp, pained breath. It was Oz, and he was, without a doubt, unquestionably, irrevocably dead. No fang marks marred his still features, and his lips and fingers were pasty blue, his eyes wide, blank and unseeing. Buffy blinked back tears and futilely attempted to close his eyelids, murmuring a silent prayer for the gentle soul of the werewolf who had been her friend.

"Oh, damn," she breathed, her voice hitching. "Oh, damn it, Oz, I'm sorry."

"Well, that just makes it all better, doesn't it?" drawled a sarcastic voice from the entryway to the living room, and Buffy jumped and whirled about to face its owner, her mouth dropping open in shock.

Xander stood in front of her, dressed in what her sharp eye recognized as Angel's leather pants, white shirt and jacket, a bitter sneer marring his overly pale face. He lounged against the stone doorjamb indolently, predatory grace screaming from every line of his body, and she felt her spidey-sense go crazy.

Vampire! Vampire!

The sword fell from her numb fingers to clatter to the floor. "Xand?" she whispered fearfully. "Oh, no, Xander. No..."

Part 8