Fortress Around Your Heart - Part Four
DISCLAIMER: The title of this fic belongs to Sting, and the song makes an appearance in this chapter. Also referenced are Lewis Carroll's *Through the Looking Glass* and a classic Propellerheads song.
NOTES AND SUMMARY: Still the sequel to *Waiting on a Friend,* set in December 2007. When last we saw Our Heroes: Dawn got to hug everybody hello; Wesley brooded; Giles and Spike started to talk about the threat against them, but got distracted by sentiment; the demon in Burberry, accompanied by revenant strangler, arrived at Giles's hospital, where Rupert was waiting for his release alone. We start where we left off.
20 DECEMBER 2007. LONDON. LATE MORNING, EARLY AFTERNOON..
The demon in Burberry drifted through the hospital corridor. Behind him the revenant clomped. How distressing to embody a centuries-old murderer's spirit and then find he had lost all sense of stealth, the Nullat thought. They were close to their goal, however. Just a few rooms down was the open door to Rupert Giles's private accommodation. He pointed out the room, and the assassin growled, "There, is it."
"There," he agreed.
The creature grinned, exposing half-rotted teeth. He cracked his blood-stained knuckles and walked into the room. After retrieving his personal digital organizer so he could record the manner of the victory, the Nullat followed.
Rupert Giles lay on the bed, his hands crossed over his chest in a traditional dead-man's pose. As if he knew we were coming, the demon thought.
The murderer moved in. One step, then another. His hands went out to Giles's throat-
And the Watcher's knee went hard into the murderer's genitals.
"'sblood," the assassin coughed out. His hands went forward, an automatic strangling motion, to Giles's throat. Or rather, to where Giles's throat would be if he had remained on the bed.
Burberry moved back toward the door, out of the line of potentially flying furniture.
Giles had rolled on to the opposite side of the hospital bed, then disappeared. It was only the crack of bone and the revenant's stagger, pitching forward on the bed, that signaled what the human had done: roll under the bed, then kick hard against the creature's shins.
The Watcher emerged on the same side of the bed as the revenant. When he began to speak an incantation, however, Giles stopped-in pain, judging from the hand to the forehead. Burberry duly noted the information.
The assassin regained his feet, then reached out with those unnaturally long arms. The strong fingers went round the Watcher's neck and started to squeeze.
Coughing, Giles hit out at the assassin's elbows. When the creature's grip weakened, he shoved his fist upward, driving the revenant's nose hard.
The assassin choked on a scream. Yet his hands went back around the Watcher's throat. He couldn't seem to grip as he usually would have, but those preternaturally strong fingers were enough. Giles certainly was struggling less and less.
"What's going on here?" a white-coated figure said from the doorway. The doctor, the Nullat deduced. Several other figures, including nurses and a hospital security officer, appeared behind the doctor.
Giles managed to gasp, "Attacked-" at which the security officer pushed his way in.
Burberry sighed. Disheartening to be bowled out so soon, but his employers had strictly charged him not to involve civilians in the project. Well, at least until he had reinforcements and could kill all of the observers. Unfortunately, too, his instrument wouldn't stop once he started.
Softly, in a voice no one else but the assassin would hear, the demon said, "Return to hell, creature of evil."
The revenant turned to stare wildly, viciously at the demon. "You promised me killing!" he growled. Then his solid form wavered, edges blurring. With one last effort, the murderer spat at Giles- then disappeared in a burst of flame, his howl lingering in the air like smoke.
Giles slowly passed his hand over his face. The move left bloody ash smeared over cheek and palm.
The Watcher sagged to the floor.
As the medical attendants rushed to the fallen figure, Burberry slipped out into the corridor. He entered the data of the botched mission into his digital assistant, then frowned. Clearly the one-on-one approach to destruction was unhelpful; why, the revenant had three times the Watcher's strength, yet Giles still lived. Only part of it could be put down to luck.
As he drifted back toward the lift, he could hear the doctor saying, "I'm sorry, sir, naturally we'll have to inform your wife about this mysterious attack on your person. And the way the criminal disappeared."
"Oh dear Lord, no!" The Watcher's raspy voice was filled with panic. After struggling for breath, he continued, "You can't tell her. You have no idea how much trouble I'd be in!"
***
It was going to be far too much trouble to unpack all this now, Dawn decided, as she looked around her rooms in the Slayer/ Watcher House o' Fun.
Anya had dropped her off on the way to hospital; Spike and Buffy were with Lizzie. Thus, Dawn got to survey her mess by herself. Her box of books and files (teleported by Willow, bless) spilled over the carpet. She'd have to go through it and then send the course information to her college, to get the transfer credit for her degree program. All make-work, but necessary.
Man, she was tired.
Dawn collapsed on her bed and looked up at the ceiling. He was up there, she knew it. She could feel him.
Another clue to his presence, of course, was that she had her luggage. When she'd come home she'd found her oversized bag at the bottom of their communal stairs, even though she'd never taken it out of Wesley's car this morning. As always he'd been thinking of her. However, apparently he no longer could trust himself to cross the threshold of her private space.
She knew her Wes, oh how she knew him. One mind-blowing, portal-opening kiss, and he'd wigged: Spike had said Wes hardly had come home in three months. Even now he was no doubt freaking out again in the old self-loathing pattern. She bet he thought he was too old for her, too dark and tortured, not good enough, blah blah blah.
Luckily, she didn't have the same view of him. Or the same scruples about his space.
She kicked off her shoes first. Then she ran to her bathroom and made sure that all was fresh and clean, including a special brush of her hair and the use of two kinds of mouthwash. Because she could hope, couldn't she?
Then she went out of her second-floor room and to the locked door leading out to the communal stairs. Locks didn't mean much to the Key, naturally, and she opened the door with just a touch. Soft-footed, she went up the last flight of stairs and laid her hand on the wooden barrier.
It opened like a exhaled breath: release, the readiness to begin again.
Somehow Dawn knew she shouldn't call his name. Instead she walked in, hearing his favourite Sting mix-CD click on in the stereo. The sound of rain through the speakers made her look up at the skylight she had designed for him, years ago: her first architecture project, her first attempt to bring light into his life. The window was streaked with real rain too, after the sunny beginning to the day.
It threw a grey dappled pattern over Wesley's sleeping form.
Dawn gazed at him, her heart filled with overwhelming love. She hadn't gotten to look at him really after that first moment this morning. He was worn out, poor sweetheart, with lines etched around his eyes and mouth. He'd been taking care of everyone else for hours, no one thinking of him.
But that was over now. She was here. She padded to the couch and brushed his hair back from his forehead. "Dawn," he murmured in his sleep, and she had to swallow tears.
On the stereo Sting was well into the chorus of Wesley's favourite song, singing, "Let me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm, and let me set the battlements on fire." Dawn could almost hear Spike saying that it was sodding ridiculous to live one's life based on crap pop lyrics, but she decided to ignore the mental echo of her brother-in-law's words.
Her life's business would be to open and to build, right? She'd just start with Wes, that's all.
There was enough room on the couch for her. Careful not to wake him, she crawled onto the space beside him. He muttered her name again, then rolled to face the back of the sofa. And he took the throw with him. She smiled: yeah, you go ahead and be difficult now, big guy, 'cause you have no idea what you're going to be dealing with when you finally wake up.
She spooned up behind him, working her arm under the cover, draping the woolen stuff loosely over both of them and clasping his waist. There was still room on his cushion, and she snuggled her head close to his. Plenty of room.
Comforted by the fragrance of wood-smoke and sex, Dawn slept.
***
"I don't want to go to sleep," Lizzie protested through a yawn.
"'Course you don't, Lizzie-love," Spike said as he dropped her on her bed. "Naps are only for big girls. You're not big enough to take a nap."
"Uncle Will, you're trying to trick me," she said. However, she also laid down and snuggled against Wesley Bear, so Spike thought he'd done well in the first round.
"I know one big girl who's ready for some sleep," his Queen said softly from the doorway. Spike turned to see her sagging a bit against the doorframe. Poor love, she was desperate for some rest.
"Do you mean me, Aunt Buffy?"
"I mean me and you both, sweetie." Buffy's eyes drooped for a second.
Spike couldn't stand it. "You stay there for half a mo, Lizzie. I'll come back and read to you, right?" Then he pulled Buffy out into the hall.
"What's up, Spike?" Buffy said, leaning her head wearily against his shoulder. "I was busy watching your magic touch with cranky little girls."
"Years of practice with you, love." But he heard the key word. She did watch him obsessively whenever he interacted with Lizzie. He never asked her why: he couldn't imagine an answer that wouldn't be hurtful, or deserved. Either she didn't trust him because of his years of evil, or she watched him with the child because they couldn't have one (since she'd been fool enough to choose a dead man for a husband). He preferred not to know in which way he had failed her- bugger, she was talking again, sort of.
"You saying I'm cranky, you jerk?" she mumbled into his chest. Apparently she had confused his body with their bed, because she was burrowing. Trying to wrap herself in his jumper, she was.
"Buffy, I'm saying you need to go home before you fall on your, er, face." He gently turned her away and headed her toward the staircase. It was a measure of just how tired she was that she actually went. "You have your car keys, right? Or should I ring for a mini-cab?"
She jibbed at the top of the flight of stairs, skidding back a bit and knocking against his wrist. It was healing rapidly, but still, Jesus. He blinked away his pain just in time to hear her say, "You have to have the car, honey. Even if it IS raining, you should have the tinted windows. Good grief, you keep forgetting you're a vampire."
"No." No, he bloody well didn't, he thought. He was a Beast forever, no matter how much he played at domesticity. But his Beauty seemed to accept him anyway. He wished he could forget what he was sometimes.
He also wished he hadn't allowed himself to watch that sodding Disney cartoon with Lizzie, 'cause the damn thing had rotted his brain.
"No, what?" Big sleepy eyes blinked at him, and he couldn't stop himself from kissing her. She melted against him, then made a snuffling sound. Fabulous. His touch put his wife to sleep.
"No, let's not have this conversation right now. You need to get home, love."
"When will you get some rest? You're supposed to work tonight," she asked, face planted in his shirt again.
"When Rupes and Anya get back, I'll go."
She knocked her head against his chest, then stepped back. "Okay. I'll just stay with you, we'll go home together. Can't trust you on your own-you fall off balconies and stuff. Or was it one of the circles?"
"Uncle Will! Uncle Will! Are you going to read to me?" Lizzie called from her room. There was a definite hint of vengeance in her child-soprano.
Spike wanted to growl at both of them, but with a crack of his neck, he managed to subdue his irritation. "Coming!" he called, then started back toward her room. Buffy followed in his wake-he felt like a bloody tugboat.
Lizzie was standing on her bed, an ominous prelude to bad demon-girl behaviour. When she saw him, however, she plopped right back down and held out a book. "Chapter Two. You were at Chapter Two last time."
"What a memory, Lizzie-love," he said dryly. He'd been at Chapter Four, actually, but a certain little one had dozed through much of the reading.
He sat down on the floor beside Lizzie's bed. Buffy hesitated, swaying a bit, then dropped onto the rug too. With "Oh look, here's a nice denim pillow," she laid down with her head on his thigh. Hell, at least she might get some rest there, he thought.
Lizzie stretched out on her bed, looking as bland as possible. That look he recognized from her father. "Now start where I point," she said. Her finger struck on a paragraph, and she nodded.
Sighing, he began, "'Well in OUR country,' Alice said, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else- if you ran very fast for a very long time, as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country,' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that-'"
"You read as nice as Daddy," Lizzie interrupted. She scooted up and curled her fingers gently around his injured hand, which he had balanced on the bed. "But your hands are colder."
"Always will be, pet." Cold as the bloody grave, no matter how fast he ran.
***
Cold. Arctic. Frigid. Freezing. Frosty. Chilling. Er, Antarctic.
Drumming his fingers on the armrest, Giles mentally listed adjectives which would describe the atmosphere icing down the interior of his vehicle. His wife was at the wheel, and she was more than a bit peeved. Whenever Anyanka got truly angry, the temperature dropped fast enough to crack glass.
It wasn't helping that she had to drive the new Land-Rover, which she hated.
"Darling, are you sure you wouldn't like me to-" he began to rasp, then stopped as soon as she turned brown eyes toward him. Oh dear. Veins.
"Giles." Buggering bollocky hell, he thought, stealing one of Will's favourite phrases- her use of his last name was more terrifying than the vengeance-demon aspect. "I'd like you to sit quietly and safely in the passenger seat, while I drive us home."
Right then. God, he hurt all over. But he couldn't help himself: "You know, Anyanka, it's hardly my fault that a crazed thing appeared in my hospital room and tried to strangle me."
"Isn't it?" she said, as she started the car.
"No, it bloody well isn't!"
"From what Will said, you were led into a trap last night. That means you all were targets. Did you happen to tell Imran that?" She snapped on the CD player, and Giles inwardly groaned. It was that vile techno-lounge collection-dear Lord, she was punishing him already.
Focus, Rupert. 'Tell Imran': "Yes, I told him we had been targeted."
"And?"
"Darling, I don't follow."
"Apparently there's nothing more I can do to protect you. What is he- are you- going to do about it? To reduce the risk of your being hurt again or killed?"
***
The limousine was hellishly warm, the Nullat in Burberry thought, but he wouldn't risk complain about working conditions.
When he finished his report, the project supervisor nodded. "Nothing we can do about attacking them individually. Your revenants must work together."
"Well, later perhaps. Remember they're solely for killing; we can't control them enough to use for less, er, terminal activities. Didn't you suggest that we kidnap Wyndham-Pryce first?"
Fingernails scraped on leather as the supervisor gripped at the seat. "Yes, let's implement that tonight. But how will you do it?"
Burberry leaned forward to get a drink from the limousine's stock. As he poured, he said, "Our preliminary research indicates that both the Giles home and the Slayer/ Watcher house are fully warded. However, there's usually a patrol at night- my brother might station himself, perhaps with a few of your mercenaries, outside the latter house. We'll follow Wyndham-Pryce, then pick him up at some convenient location, away from the Slayer."
The supervisor said, "Wise. I appreciate your looking out for our interests."
***
"Look out for that parked limousine, darling-"
"I see it, Rupert." The veins were a bit more pronounced.
The music, some bizarre concoction of Shirley Bassey singing a James Bond-like tune over syncopated bass, made his head hurt. He lowered his window just a bit, to feel the December rain. It was warmer than inside, to be frank.
Shirley Bassey purred, "They say the next big thing is here, That the revolution's near-" Giles took a deep breath. Strange: a smell of blood and ash underlay the rain-freshness. He looked at his hand, seeing in his mind's eye the blood and ash spat out by the assassin.
"It's all just a little bit of history repeating..." Shirley sang as the Land-Rover passed the limousine. A little too close, he thought, not that he was going to say anything.
***
As the Land-Rover pulled away, the limousine's passenger window rolled down. The project supervisor looked out into the Fulham Road and inhaled the faint scent of smoke and death that lingered in the air like a howl.
And Lilah Morgan smiled.