Ch-ch-changes - Part One
SUMMARY AND NOTES: A Giles&Spike-centric story and alternate-end-of- Season 6; this fic builds on my 'Going Underground' fic. Spike's got a 'conscience' (he won't say the "s" word); Giles has been depressed and longing for Anya. When we last saw them, the boys were on their way to Sunnydale....
Hurled out by the vortex of unmastered magic spinning in front of the ruined Sunnydale High, Spike thudded against the hood of the DeSoto. "Oh bloody--"
"--Hell!" Giles grunted as he landed on the car roof.
Spike slid off the car, then helped Giles drop painfully to the ground. "Good thing we caught that earlier flight, Rupes." And he charged back into the energy tornado.
Giles took two stabbing breaths. "So. Very. Glad." He looked up, saw a nasty whip of black energy detach itself from the cyclone and lash at Anya's wrist, and sprang back into the action.
Willow levitated and whirled, out of control, near dissolution, at the heart of the windstorm she had called up in her rage and pain. Xander struggled to get to her, while Anya tried to anchor him. Spike and Buffy fought against the snake-like bursts of energy threatening the others and themselves.
But Giles knew that it would be he who would have to still the storm. He would have to call on whom he had been. Time for another kind of magic.
"Join hands and circle her!" he shouted. Spike's quirked eyebrow indicated his skepticism, but he grabbed Buffy's hand. She started to pull away, then clutched Spike tighter and reached for Xander, who already was barely holding onto Anya. Giles battled to the other side of her, and she laced her fingers through his. He extended his other hand and caught hold of Spike, who held firm. The circle was complete.
Bruised by the storm yet bolstered by love and friendship surrounding him, Giles cast his mind deep. He went past his surface exhaustion, past the depression so recently lifted, past those five years of playing the tweed-bound father figure, past lost loves, past the hum of chaos which still called to him. He centered.
In the sudden stillness, he was joined by another spirit. White light glowed green around the edges, and he knew--"Tara?" The affirmation came without words. And then words did ring forth from her, from him, chiming together perfect chords. "Calm. Rest. Winds, depart. Calm. Rest. Winds, depart." Around him he could hear the voices of the circle echo, "Calm. Rest. Winds, depart."
The wind died. Willow fell to the ground.
"Willow!" Xander cried, running to her still form. Buffy was right behind him.
And Giles's legs buckled, the only things saving him from an ignominious tumble being Spike's strong hand and Anya's swift move to throw her arms around his waist. He was too tired not to lean on her slim, fragrant strength, and he was too smart to catch Spike's eye. Soppy romantic git probably would be grinning maniacally.
Spike let go his hand, at any rate. "Bloody hell, Giles, you're a sodding great wizard! Would have been much less nervous all those years ago when you were trying truth spells and what all, had I known."
"Thanks, mate," Giles mumbled. He happily would have stayed cradled in Anya's arms for an hour, possibly several months, eternity not out of the question, but he hadn't counted on the Slayer. Within seconds he had a Buffy-hug around his middle, squeezing tightly and dislodging Anya in the process.
"Giles, you came back in time! You came back!" she said. There had been no time for greetings before. He and Spike had collected the DeSoto at the airport (as telephonically arranged with Clem), thrown their bags in the back seat, and driven at unsafe speed toward the Hellmouth. They had arrived just as Willow cast the cyclone. In time, as Buffy said.
Then Buffy looked quizzically at him. "Giles, you said 'mate.' To Spike."
"Yes I did." He pulled himself out of Slayer-strength, cracked his back painfully, then stood as straight as he could. Spike was stepping back, those blue eyes distressed yet oddly unsurprised at Buffy's marked lack of greeting to him-- was she always like this, Giles wondered. "We traveled together from London, wouldn't have arrived without his help."
"Really." Buffy turned slowly, so slowly, to face Spike, and the two gazed at each other. It was painful to watch the spark, the intimacy like lightning from cloud to cloud, then see Buffy reject it and ice over. She once more looked up, a heart-strike; looked away, ice. Spike's face was open with love and anguish, and Giles couldn't watch any more.
He turned his eyes to where they wanted to go anyway. Anya stood a few feet away where Buffy's enthusiasm had-- surely by accident-- pushed her. She looked down, but at Giles's indrawn breath, she raised her head (hair all golden-brown, he noticed, one of his very favourite of her many colouring choices). "Hello, Giles," she whispered.
"Anya. Come back here, dear." He opened his arms to her, but she didn't move.
"Giles. You didn't know... you won't want to touch me again. I'm changed, I'm not... I--" She gave up her attempt to explain and reverted to her vengeance-demon face. He kept his arms open. She paused in disbelief, then resumed her human guise and bolted toward him. He caught her and held her close. "Where were you, I needed you, it was horrible, I even closed the shop and I left you messages..."
He dropped his head on her hair as she burrowed close. "So sorry, Anya, so sorry. But I'm here now." He opened his eyes to see Xander's hostile face staring at him from where he crouched by Willow.
Buffy crossed to Willow too. The witch was stirring. "I think we need to get her home, take care of her," Buffy said.
"Right. We have Spike's car, can everyone fit?"
"Oh, I won't be welcome with them." Anya said it matter-of-factly as she moved out of Giles's arms. "Demons can't be Scoobies."
"Yeah, I've heard that somewhere too." Spike had pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, and he lit it with a theatrical gesture that, had vampires been able to see themselves in mirrors, Giles would have bet a thousand pounds had been scrutinized and refined to its full effect. Spike exhaled smoke in a long, dragonish rush. "We're useful though, pet."
"Still not welcome." Anya looked at Giles for the briefest of moments, said "I'll find you tomorrow, since we have to talk about the shop. And thank you for hugging me, even though I'm a demon again," and disapparated. Gone.
"Giles!" Xander said sharply, and he realized he was staring blankly at the space where Anya had stood. "A little help here. With Willow, you remember her."
Giles set his teeth at Xander's sarcasm but didn't reply. He walked forward to where Willow lay so pale and unmoving. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Giles thought: she had been trying still to impose her will, whether as charm or threat, and he didn't fool himself that one calming spell would have changed that. But she had been a sweet, brilliant, chattering girl, and he still cared for her. "Do you want me to--"
Xander gathered her up and stood. "Just show me to the car."
Spike had already gotten there and was transferring their bags to the boot. He had the guitar case in his hand, and Giles involuntarily smiled. "Be careful, tosser, I've just gotten it tuned properly."
"Might be helpful to remind you, old man, that it's not bloody yours, even if you did hog it last. And if it can survive a Shrod demon AND a British Airways baggage crew, it can survive me." Spike put it in with the other luggage, then turned. His eyes met Buffy's again, and Giles sighed at the almost audible harmony of connection. He had once said that it was poetic, in a maudlin sort of way, for Buffy and that utter pillock Angel to be in love. Buffy and Spike together were not poetry but opera, all crashing chords and soaring notes and the occasional comic interlude.
He wouldn't have confessed to anyone that opera (especially the stormy Italian ones, by Puccini or Verdi) made his head hurt. Too much drama, too much beauty, too many bad memories. And if he thought about all these two had been through and would likely face, his head hurt even more.
So instead he opened the back car door for Xander and Willow, helping the boy-- no, man, Xander didn't look like a boy any more-- settle in with his burden. Then he hesitated. Where was his place?
Buffy stood by, terribly quiet, watching Xander and Willow. She now was pointedly not watching Spike, who hovered near the driver's door before sliding in. Giles probably should have gone to her, hugged her as she had hugged him, but he felt a new chill from her direction. Not wholly forgiven, then.
Spike stuck his head out of the window. "You two ridin' or walkin'?"
"There's not really much room back here," Xander's voice came. This was a falsehood, Giles knew; the back seat alone could comfortably seat a family of four.
"All right then, Buffy. You and I will take the front seat-- you can sit next to Spike, though, I won't fit." Two heads, one platinum and one blonde, whipped round to stare at him.
Everything and everyone had changed in the past year, and old roles, old expectations, would just have to change too. Even with his emotional and physical aches, Giles inwardly laughed. He vowed that there was going to be a little less tweed and a little more fun around here.
***
The DeSoto, finally loaded with its passengers, pulled away.
The crescent moon shone down on the now deserted ruin of Sunnydale High. The night was hushed. And then a breeze started. It whirled through the debris at what once had been the entry door, and raised a dust-devil in the place Willow had lain. The dust-devil grew rapidly, huge, misshapen.
Out of the dust-devil stalked two demons. One flickered around the edges, its red skin marked with white lesions; the other, red lesions on white, moved slow and heavy, a boom in every step. The demons paused, then clasped hands.
The sky above them lit with electricity, and a thunderclap resounded through the ruin. The two looked at each other. "Let's go grab something to eat," one said, and they strode off toward the heart of town.