Chapter Text
London, U.K., Monday, April 20, 1998
Heavy, somber organ music filled the church. Buffy felt self-conscious taking up a place so near the front, directly behind the four rows reserved for family. This spot should have been filled by an honest mourner. There were other funerals they should have been at, or Giles should have anyway, of people he actually cared for, or at least, didn't hate. For her part, Buffy had barely met Micheal Dunstan, and yet he had been a bitter enemy. He had died fighting to destroy their happiness. And now here she was at his funeral, standing between his murderer's son and the son of a woman he had helped to murder. Standing out of respect, as the family were ushered in. Respect she did not feel. Not even a tiny little bit. The man was a piece of shit.
And someone who thought that should not get a seat so close to the front, probably shouldn't be here at all, in fact. It wasn't right. But it was appropriate. It was politic. It was bullshit. But it was bullshit that mattered to the Council and therefore to Giles. Buffy felt a stab of something oddly like guilt at the realization of just how deeply she resented the Council and it's bullshit still mattering so much to Giles. She felt as if she wasn't being loyal enough or understanding enough or something. There he stood on his crutches, still injured, still hurting, still ruffled and red in the face from having to vigorously insist upon being released from the hospital at the crack of dawn to be here. Still tense as a bag of wet cats from having to stand next to his father and not kill him.
At least the 'Grand Old Man' had shown up sober, which Buffy guessed was a concession to the dignity of the occasion rather than a sign of any actual respect for the dead, though he was certainly committing to his role as a great big stoic, appropriate, politic chunk of granite. Regardless, under the circumstance, Giles needed her support, Buffy firmly reminded herself, not her judgment. But Buffy couldn't help feeling just a little bit judgey, surrounded as she was by smug, self-important hypocrites and killers who still thought they had a right to punish her, who still thought they had a right to punish Giles, who were planning a meeting tonight do just that. Yes, Buffy judged them. And why shouldn't she? After all, dealing out judgment, punishment was what Slayers did best. And Watchers too apparently.
But Giles had made it more than clear that she was to restrain herself today, even verbally. In fact, she shouldn't even glare. She had to take whatever these people dished out and be polite about it, even if they weren't. “I’ve seen enough of vengeance for one lifetime,” Giles had said at the hospital the night before, when she'd tried to bring up the subject of his mother's murder and what, if anything, they could do about it. “I have given and received at least my share of punishment in this world. I don’t want ‘justice’; I want peace.” Buffy had said nothing in response. What was there to say? She was trying to take his words at face value. She'd been trying all night and all morning. He seemed sincere enough. And, as mentioned, he needed her love and support. And it was his mother, not hers.
Besides, anyone could see that the Council was dangerously unstable already from the sheer fact that there didn't seem to be a lot of mourning going on at this funeral, at least not for the guest of honor. The faces were grim enough overall, but actual tears were few and far between, and most of those were in the eyes of people who'd lost someone else in Friday's massacre. Sly, calculating looks and hurried, electrified whispers, on the other hand, were not so rare. Everyone seemed to be working a plan or an angle of some kind, or at least gossiping breathlessly about what everyone else must be planning. In fact, about the only people not acting like they were working the crowd at the last pep rally before the voting closed on Homecoming Queen were the Equals and Heirs themselves. At that level, it was all about holding your rightful position, literally as well as figuratively. Which was why the dregs and therefore technically heirs of the House of Weregelder had no choice but to sit together, very near the front, lest order be overthrown into chaos and the heavens fall. See above re moral support needed to stand next to Andrew Giles.
But as she stood at her husband's side among all those rows and rows of carefully arranged ladies and gentlemen (all so jealous and conscious of their ranks and positions, whatever the circumstances) Buffy couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the Watchers were circling the wagons. Closing ranks against the outside world. And that there was no place inside that circle for savages like Buffy Summers. Or like Dahlia Harrow.
*****
The night before the first day of her more-or-less senior year of high school, Willow sat up in her bunk, studying. Sort of. She was pouring over tomes of magical and arcane lore. Trying to unravel a mystery. To her intense surprise, her Computer Science final had been written just for her based on Ms. Calendar's notes of what she could actually do, which for a double credit advanced tutorial probably made sense, but it had taken a chunk out of her Saturday, leaving her only a couple of hours of free time in the lab. Hours she had tried to put to good use by emailing Xander, only to find that not only did the JDC computers lack any sort of email client software, but access to webmail was actually blocked. Of course, it was nothing she couldn't hack, but the way it was set up, it seemed like it could take more than a couple of hours. It would have to wait until Monday, Willow had decided.
But the connection and browser were working fine, and with a tiny glamor to make it appear that she was still finishing up her test, Willow had set about looking into things she felt she really needed to know. She had started with the back issues of the local papers, researching the history of the Mayor’s office. Everyone knew, of course, that the Mayor had always been a Wilkins. The town’s Founder, Richard Wilkins Sr., had been elected on the very day that the town charter was signed in 1899 and he or his son or grandson every seven years thereafter right up to last year, usually unopposed.
Usually but not always. In ninety-nine years, only three people had thrown their hats into the ring against an incumbent Mayor of Sunnydale. By election day, each and every one of them had been dead. They were Ananias Gleaves (in 1906), Kasper Randolph (in 1941) and Sarah Levine-Grossman in 1962. The first two campaigns had been extensively covered. To judge by the Times, Gleaves had been the devil himself, while the Sun held him out to be little short of the second coming. Neither had had anything very nice to say about Randolph, whom they agreed was a Nazi sympathizer, but the Sun had made ugly though vague insinuations about the manner of his death. Shortly before the editor’s widow was forced to sell out to the Times.
But in Sarah’s case the consolidated publication had been eerily silent. There had been a few vague references to ‘forces of instability even here in Sunnydale’ in the Fall and Winter of 1961, references that seemed to suggest without saying that there were Communists in town. In fact there had been a brief mention in the spring of ’62 of a ‘Leftist’ who had filed for the office but would be 'no match' for The Mayor. On July 5th, it had been reported that the ‘Leftist Gathering’ that had been broken up the day before, had, despite rumors to the contrary, involved only ‘professional dissenters,’ almost none of them locals, certainly no Christian locals.
The reports of the Mayor’s death had made no mention of who his supposed killers were at all except to darkly suggest that everyone already knew. Then there had been the July 21st piece, the one that called all of the Levines murderers and their fiery deaths a miracle of divine vengeance. No mention of the election. In fact, no one could have learned from the Sun-Times that Sarah had ever run for anything if it hadn't been for the reprint of an AP story: “Dead Candidates Face Off In Small Town Contest”. Wilkins’s votes had been counted for his son as if by right of primogenitor. There had been no mention of what would have happened if Sarah had won. Both the fire and the death of the previous Mayor Wilkins had been referred to as ‘accidents’.
Willow was still trying to absorb the fact that her ancestors had been mass murdered over a small town election. Even in a place like Sunnydale, it made so little sense. There had to be more to it. Didn't there? Of course, she had reasoned with herself, it made more sense than enslaving and violating your only child to become a cheerleader, or killing people you barely knew to become a hyena. At least the Mayors office held a little power. And in a place that was so much it's own world as Sunnydale was... maybe it felt like a lot. Maybe. But whether any of that made sense or not, Willow had had no time to sit and process. With less than an hour of lab time left, she had swallowed her anger and confusion and kept digging.
A quick search had found no indication of what had become of Sunnydale’s first mayor. Where the Sun and the Times separately had referred to the Mayor simply as Richard Wilkins, the Sun-Times referred to Richard Wilkins Jr., and that was that. Then Willow had found an old tintype photograph of the Founder from 1899. He had been the same age that the current Mayor was now. The resemblance between them was more than remarkable, it was unbelievable. They looked like exactly the same man. She'd found another photo of him from 1913 and one from 1918 and another, and another, right up to the election of 1941. In each of these photos, he had been the same age that the current Mayor was now. The resemblance between them was more than remarkable, it was unbelievable. They looked like exactly the same man.
Willow didn't know exactly what it all meant, but it meant something. If Mayor Wilkins was something other than human, then his wholesale slaughter of the Levines had to be about more than who had control over fixing streetlamps and putting in sewer lines. Willow had barely survived spending Sunday away from the computer lab, unable to follow up. Other than the thirty minutes she'd actually gotten to spend with Ms. Waddle, talking about next to nothing, she'd been forced to spend most of the day outside in the tiny 'play yard' watching other girls play volley-ball without the benefit of knowing any rules.
She'd spent her time snacking and cat napping, being actively unobtrusive. And becoming more and more certain that her not-much-need-for-sleep spell was wearing off. Now here she sat, ignoring her still grumbling, roiling, inexplicably underfed stomach as she painstakingly paged through infinite volumes of mystical texts looking for an explanation as to what kind of man or beast could wear the same, unchanging, human face for a century yet never fear the light of day.
Finally, Willow broke down and opened yet another packet of those odd tasting, pretzelly textured snack crackers Ms. Waddle had brought her this morning. She'd resisted for two reasons, having nothing to do with the fact that a salted paper bag probably would have tasted better. First off, if she kept eating them at this rate, she'd run out long before Sunday came again. Secondly, they made her sleepy. And if there was one thing she didn't need any more of, it was sleep. Besides, Willow just felt... weird about the crackers. Ms. Waddle had said they would 'help keep her strength up', but then when Willow had told her that she needed exactly that because she was 'sleeping a lot more efficiently' thanks to some 'mutual friends', the Witch had suddenly seemed to become nervous about giving them to her, warning her not to eat too many at once.
Nevertheless, Willow was hungry. She took one cracker out, gingerly took a bite. Soon she had devoured the whole package. Six packs gone of the fourteen that were meant to last a week. And as soon as she had eaten them, she felt an overwhelming desire to lay her book down, close her eyes, and sleep. As she drifted off she thought, how strange that Ms. Waddle should know to bring her these extra-nutritious snacks. She hadn't know of any particular reason why Willow would need to 'keep her strength up' when she had packed them to come here. Had she?
*****
In the same row as Buffy and Giles, just on the other side of Peter and Elaine Travers, stood Phillip Robson, looking polite and dignified. Robson's wife, Lilith, was at his side, looking pained and strained as always. Their sons and daughters were seated further back, among the mass of Watcher Folk. Milton Crowne and Laura Sterling (together) rounded out the row. Laura's daughter, Penny Hunt, stood directly behind her, sharing a row with Evan and Jacob Crowne, as if it had just happened to work out that way. There was a whole subcaste of speculators devoted to discussing the issue of whether or not Jacob had squeezed Penny's hand in a way that seemed slightly more than friendly and co-miserable at Jane Crowne's funeral yesterday and what it might mean that they were standing near each other yet again. Across the isle from Milton (seated directly behind yet more of Micheal Dunstan's innumerable descendants, siblings, nieces, nephews and in-laws) Adam Davison and his wife shared a bench with the sons, daughters-in-law and ex-wife of the late Virgil Gaudencio, who was to be the first of many buried tomorrow. All of the most important funerals were being held earliest each day so that the greatest dignitaries could attend them and then get back to work. All the rest of the Ezarians sat in a little clump behind Davidson.
Though there were a large number of Hippolytons seated in the next several rows on both sides, their leader, Julian Wyndam-Pryce, was conspicuous by his absence. It was understood; however, that this was not a slight to the Flavians but a necessary distancing from the entire Council for the sake of outside appearances. Julian's son, Wesley, was among a select few still being held by the police pending the filing of formal charges for assaulting and battering a number of police officers. Though it went carefully unstated by official sources, he was still being investigated for any links to the 'hostage takers' that hundreds of witnesses steadfastly swore had attacked the gathering and fled before police arrived. It didn't help at all that said witnesses couldn't agree upon whether their attackers had been Arab Muslims, Irish Republicans, Chinese Gang Members, Maldivian Communists or shape shifting aliens from outer-space.
That was certainly more than scandal enough without creating opportunities for the Deputy Minister himself to be seen and photographed with others who were present at that mysterious and ugly event. That most especially included Buffy Summers-Giles, who was still facing charges and further investigation herself and was free (if you could call being let out of a cage on the condition that you surrender your passport and agree not to leave an island half the size of California 'free') only because the Council had dropped a metric crap-ton of cash to make it so. Although it would have happened anyway, it was a relief that she had been let go so soon. Because apparently, there might have been a whole new kind of trouble if she wasn't. Buffy had been shocked to hear through Morrison how quickly her family had united and rallied to the cause of her freedom.
Apparently, no one, not even Aunt Darlene, had suggested that Buffy probably was responsible for any massacres that had happened when she was around or that behind bars might be where she really belonged. No one had thrown up their hands and said 'what can we do?' even. By the time the dust had settled on Saturday, Grampa Wallace, with the support of both her mother and her father, had apparently called Julian Wyndam-Pryce himself threatening a full-scale Summers invasion of Britain (sure to include both legal action and extensive press coverage) if she were not released at once. The old man had apparently pulled out all the stops, even suggesting that he knew more than anyone wanted to read in the newspaper about why the Deputy Minister was just the man to see to Buffy's release. Even now, with her release secured, both Joyce and Hank were making plans to fly to London (together even) before the end of the week, just to 'make sure she was alright.' Buffy didn't know quite what to make of all that, but with everything that was so wrong in this dark, cold, scheming, whispering, universe that was her husband's family, Buffy decided to count it as one thing going right.
As for the Watcher Clan, at least their actual, literal whispering died down a little when the chief mourners were seated and the ritual finally began. Oliver Dunstan, Micheal’s oldest son, seemed genuinely distraught if no one else did. In fact, he seemed lost, broken. Emma, his wife, was at his side, leading him by the hand, looking tired but strong. Dignified. Stoic. Like Andrew. Whom Buffy tried not to think of as her brother, or her anything else. To have looked at the pair of them, husband and wife, no one would have guessed which of them had just left the hospital against medical advice with deep, life-threatening wounds that were merely covered, not healed.
Of course, even Emma and Oliver had more to mourn than just the violent passing of Michael Dunstan. They had also lost their only son. Graham. His body remained unburied, one of a backlog waiting to be autopsied. Buffy ran the fingers of her left hand half-consciously along the knuckles of her right. The very slightly tender not-quite-bruises where her fist had made contact with Graham's face were gone now. But she knew exactly were they had been. Maybe an hour later he had died in battle at least metaphorically at her side, almost under her command. And yet now, her family and his, laced together as they were, remained as much enemies as anything. It was all so messed up. So exhausting. There were too many sides.
And that made her think of Cordelia. What could she be thinking, feeling? Should Buffy try to call her, to find out if she was okay? Probably not a good idea considering that there was no way that call was going to start with, 'to hell with Willow and Xander, I'm going to help you get through this,' which was all she would have wanted to hear in Cordelia's place. Still, it seemed wrong to say nothing, to act as if it were all okay. There was more to it than the fact of a heart getting broken, though Buffy knew from experience that that was enough. As much as she hated to admit it, Buffy sympathized with what it must be like to have fallen from the heights that Cordelia had, to have made that sacrifice for love, only to be dumped for a Willow Rosenberg. In Cordelia's cosmology, which Buffy had pretty much shared until a year or so ago, Willow was a 4-F, a noncombatant. It was like Juliet getting as far as Mantua only to be told that Romeo liked her nurse better and to run along home and see if Paris was still available. Cordelia wasn't going to take that lying down. Something was going to happen.
Which pretty much summed up the overall uneasy feeling that Buffy had being stuck in a room full of these Council people knowing everything that she now knew about them and realizing just how much there logically had to be that she still didn't know. This kind of a cauldron of betrayal and lies and emotions and pride couldn't just be. It wouldn't just sit there and be okay, because it wasn't okay. It was cancerous. It was festering. Something was going to happen.
*****
For the fourth night in a row, Xander closed the store at midnight exactly and drove straight to Willow’s house. Angel's forehead exploded. For the third night in a row, he parked in her driveway and came in through the front door, cross in hand, rather than availing himself of the relative safety of the garage. Angel's forehead exploded. He just wasn’t up to going in there. Not yet.
In his mind, Xander went through a checklist of everything he needed to do. Angel's forehead exploded. He didn't have to get the mail or the newspaper. That happened in the mornings. Because he was keeping the store open eighteen hours a day with no help, his two daily trips to Willow's were only six hours apart, but going eighteen hours between two pairs of visits still seemed like a better plan than leaving the rats alone for twenty-four hours at a time. This trip he needed to feed Amy, refill her water bottle, clean both cages and put in new bedding. Then he could check his email. Angel's forehead exploded. He would check his email, see that there was still no reply from Cordelia, and go home and sleep for five hours. This time he was probably tired enough to do it.
The door was unlocked. Angel's forehead exploded. Xander had not left the door unlocked. He never left the door unlocked. Willow had trusted him with the key. In that much, at least, he had kept her trust. He stood perfectly still, barely able to see or hear, let alone think, his heart was beating so fast. Blood pounded in his ears. Angel’s forehead exploded. There was a sound of furtive movement in the kitchen. A light shown under the door. With a noise that was both a grunt of challenge and a scream terror, Xander burst into the kitchen, cross held high. It was Angel! ...for the very tiny fraction of a second that it took his brain to understand the fact that he had a strange woman in her late thirties cornered, remarkably calmly, between his cross and the side of the refrigerator.
“Blesséd be,” the woman greeted him just a little nervously. The strange greeting sounded as natural on her lips as ‘good morning.’ Because she was as used to saying it. Because she was a witch.
“Ms. Waddle?” The woman smiled and nodded.
“You must be Xander,” she seemed to explain. It was his turn to nod. Angel's forehead exploded.
Xander's relief gave way to sheepishness. “I didn’t realize you had a key,” he apologized.
“I just… she asked me to look in on the house tonight, make sure everything was still okay,” she explained.
“Oh, right,” said the boy, realizing his thoughtlessness. “Sunday. Visiting day.” Willow must have explained to him that the first day of the week was reserved for 'parents' to see their 'children' at JDC and that Ms. Waddle, in the guise of Sheila Rosenberg, would be taking full advantage of that opportunity to give Willow a lifeline to the outside world. “How is she?” he asked, with heartbreaking concern. But Ms. Waddle's heart didn't break that easily. The last thing Willow needed was this boy getting any more involved in her affairs or even staying as involved as he was.
“She’s… holding up,” Ms. Waddle assured him, choosing her words for believability. “I’m sure it’s not that she doubts you’re looking after things here…” she added after a pause, though he had expressed no such concern. “I’m sure she just…” Ms. Waddle let her words trail off, choosing her guilty, placating tone for lack of believability.
Xander’s shoulders slumped just a little. He gawked at her awkwardly, embarrassed. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have to go feed—”
“Oh don’t worry,” Ms. Waddle cut him off, smiling benignly. “I took care of it. I took care of everything.”
*****
The night was black. The wind screamed. The vault of heaven had been ripped open. The flood gushed forth upon the Earth like the wrath of an anguished god. Like Demeter weeping for her missing daughter. Willow stood beneath the dark , churning sky, arms up-stretched, screaming in anguish. Lightning blasted all around, but it didn’t dare to strike Her. The strobing flashes of electricity distorted Her emaciated features, giving Her the appearance of a gnarled old woman, or possibly an ancient tree. ...
“Heads up Rosenberg!” a guard shouted, waking Willow from a long, restless night’s sleep filled with vague, half remembered dreams. Dreams of dread. Dreams of pain. Dreams from which she awoke with an overwhelming sense of guilt and despair. “Finally got you a roommate,” he half explained. Willow sat up and looked around. How long had she been asleep? There was probably more than one answer to that, she realized, but however you counted, it was still dark, not yet Monday morning. It seemed like an odd time to be bringing in a new prisoner. This wasn't the place they usually brought you in the middle of the night until they could do something about you in the morning.
“Hey, Willow,” the girl said with gloomy indifference. It was Sheila Zucker. Willow was shocked. Then she was terrified. She forced herself to try to remain calm. A vampire. She was about to be locked in a six by eight foot cell with a vampire. One who was bound to be in a hurry to feed and run. She had to escape before sunrise, after all. There was a window in the cell, too small to climb out of, but plenty big enough to fill the cramped space with sunlight.
“Sick!” Willow shouted with sudden inspiration. If she was sick they would have to put her somewhere else. Somewhere for people who were sick! “I… I’m sick!” The guard looked startled, then annoyed. Sheila gave her a wary, close-mouthed smirk. It was a look that said, ‘I know you, I’ve known you all your life, I see what you’re doing, I see why you’re doing it, I admire you for trying to lie; but you know you’re just not any good at it.’
The guard sighed. “You’re sick, huh?” Willow nodded vigorously. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked impatiently. She began speaking rapidly at an ever increasing pitch and volume, describing a variety of symptoms, which she was dimly aware didn’t really connect with each other, but she could barely hear the steady stream of confused, panicked verbiage that issued from her lips, let alone control it. What if it didn’t work?! What if she couldn’t convince him?! What if it didn’t matter what she said at all because Sheila being here wasn’t a coincidence but a plot by the Mayor and his minions to kill her and rid Sunnydale of the descendants of Johanna Levine once and for all!?!
“Fine,” the guard grumbled, pulling her out of the cell by the arm and locking Sheila in. “Come on and see the nurse.”
“Well I can tell you what you don’t have,” the nurse said snidely, after half an hour of questioning and prodding. “You don’t have a fever, chills, sneezing, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, a convincing cough, ear, nose, throat, or sinus infection, strep throat, mumps, measles or anything involving swelling or spots. You also don’t have a chance in hell of switching roommates. This is the JDC, not a college dorm. Now I’m going to send you back to get some sleep. Breakfast is in four hours.”
“No, please!” Willow begged. “You can’t send me back, I’ll die!”
“You’re not sick,” the nurse repeated, “Guard!”
“No, you don’t understand,” Willow tried again, “It’s Sheila, she’s a… she’s um… crazy! She’ll kill me! Please! You have to move her! I’ll be dead by sunrise!” The nurse and the guard looked at each other. Either she was truly desperate or she had suddenly become a much better liar. The nurse shrugged and the guard sighed. Pain in the ass though she was, the last thing they needed was for a bright, upper-middle-class kid with straight white teeth to be found dead in her cell on a damned misdemeanor detention. And they had both known the joy of dealing with Sheila Zucker.
But there had to be a reason, for the paperwork. Nobody had done anything to warrant a disciplinary and there wasn’t a form for roommate requests. This was the JDC, not a collage dorm. “We could put her in the suicide watch cell,” the nurse suggested, “for what's left of tonight anyway.”
“I did hear her say she’d be dead by morning,” the guard agreed hopefully. They both looked at Willow.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, averting her eyes, acutely uncomfortable in the knowledge that she was about to have ‘a documented history of suicidal ideation.’ “I did say that.” Having a ‘mental health history’ could be a serious problem on college applications, but it was better than being dead.
*****
This was the hard part. It was like the receiving line at a wedding. Except instead of having to kiss the bride and make happy talk, hands or shoulders had to be squeezed while everyone thought of something appropriately sad and vaguely comforting to say. Buffy settled for looking grave and sympathetic. At least she was going for grave and sympathetic. The way everyone kept asking if she was sure she was alright and if she needed anything, she probably just looked queasy. But however it looked, the look was the best she could do. She had nothing to say to these people.
The Eulogy had been a long one (seemingly meant to give the impression that everyone honestly thought the dead man had been the second coming of sliced bread) and now everyone, especially the Dunstans, seemed tired out by the long-winded pretense. Buffy shuffled along the line of family just behind Andrew, with Giles leaning on her for support. At least having a hobbling husband attached to her hip seemed to make people not want to keep her long, and the way they were positioned gave the Dunstan clan a clearly welcome excuse not to speak to Giles himself.
The hardest part, really, was having to witness Andrew's stiff, formal interactions with everyone. Especially when the stiffness and the formality didn't seem to come so easily. Andrew had been moving long the line at a brisk pace, until he got to Emma. Then he stopped. His gaze shifted away from her face and back again. He looked as if he wanted to say something important but couldn't decide what. She looked him firmly in the eye. Someone with an active imagination could have seen a challenge in that look. At last, he returned her gaze just as firmly. “Mr. Giles,” she said with a stiff curt nod, in a way that could have been taken as either polite or quietly angry, either respectful or dismissive.
“Mrs. Dunstan,” he replied in exactly the same tone, nodding just as stiffly. With another nod and an equally terse exchange of greetings to Oliver, Andrew reached the head of the line at last. He cast no more than a quick, obligatory glance at the shell of the man who'd caused him such misery before moving briskly forward, out of everyone's way. Buffy and Giles followed, nearly matching his pace. Buffy noticed a slightly relieved uptick in conversation as they moved away. Peter did not keep pace. He and Emma seemed to be sharing a moment of comparatively warm and genuine commiseration. Buffy didn't catch her Watcher's quiet words of concern, only Mrs. Dustan's unconvincingly cavalier response, “...Well, perhaps I'm merely tired of London.”
Andrew was waiting for Buffy and Giles outside the church. They tried to walk past him without speaking, but it didn't work. “Rupert,” he insisted, stepping into their path, “I'd like a word.”
Buffy opened her mouth to object, but Giles waved her to silence. “What is there to say?” he asked stiffly.
“I... don't like the thought of your staying in a hotel in your condition,” Andrew said, sounding like he was compromising between what he wanted to say and what he hoped he could get away with. Buffy stared. Did he actually think they would sleep under his roof, that that would be a good idea?
“I do have some experience at it,” Giles pointed out, though what he meant by that, Buffy wasn't exactly sure until he added, with a slight squeeze to her arm, “and if somehow we should fail to manage, we have an excellent second line of defense. She's already killed very nearly every vampire in London anyway.”
“It isn't... just that,” Andrew finally admitted, sounding a bit frustrated, looking a bit less stoic. “It's just... Rupert, please... can't we... discuss things somewhere less...” he cast an eye about the crowd exiting this church and let the sentence die.
“'Discuss things',” Giles repeated, his voice slightly bitter, almost mocking, “Humph,” he snorted, followed by a short chuckle, shaking his head. Buffy gripped his arm a little tighter in a way she hoped was supportive. She shot a dark, warning glance at Andrew, who looked more defensive than chastened in return. His eyes were still half begging, half insisting that he ought to be given a chance to be heard. Could he honestly not see that Giles was on the verge of collapse? Could he not see what it was costing him just to stand next to his father and say nothing about the pain he was still in, had been in for over forty years? Did he honestly think they were about to kiss and make up, that he would be told all was forgiven? 'Gee, Son, I'm sorry I killed your mom and buried her in the back yard like a stray cat.' 'Gosh, Dad, don't worry about it. Everybody makes mistakes.' Did he think he had a right to ask that? Already? Could a human being be that selfish?
“Look,” Buffy said, when it seemed to be taking Giles so long to find his tongue that she was afraid Andrew might speak again, “Send it in a letter. We're done here.”
Andrew opened his mouth to respond, but it snapped shut pretty quickly when Giles looked up at him at last, steady if not calm and affirmed. “Yes. We are. We're done.” Then he smiled in a way that Buffy didn't like at all and added, his tone chillingly polite, even pleasant, “I shall look forward to seeing you at the meeting this evening, Mr. Giles.” Andrew's eyes widened just a little before he nodded stiffly and turned away. And that was that.
*****
At two a.m., Xander suddenly realized that he was awake. Angel's forehead exploded. In his bed in his parent's basement, not standing behind the counter at the Quick Mart. Angel's forehead exploded. Xander's heart was pounding. Angel's forehead exploded. He was sick with the realization that, whatever Willow or Ms. Waddle thought, there was something at Willow's house that he did have to deal with, that no one else could possibly 'have covered'. Angel's forehead exploded. He had to get rid of the body.
All things being equal, the dead of night seemed like the right time to be moving bodies around, actually. At least it was traditional. Not that that made a safe thing to do in Sunnydale. Not that it was actually ever a safe thing to do in daylight anywhere. It didn't matter. It could have been noon. Angel's forehead exploded. Panic had set in. Evidence that could get him life in prison, or death for that matter, was locked in a garage to which someone else, someone he barely knew and certainly didn't trust, had at least as good of access as he did. There was no way he would be able to rest, let alone sleep, until he did something about it.