Title: All We Need of Hell
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Rating: PG, Giles/Willow
Word Count: 4600
Disclaimer: Not mine! Joss's! Mutant Enemy's!
Summary: Takes place shortly after "Bring on the Night" in S7. Giles is exhausted. Willow offers him cocoa. Which makes it sound a lot lighter than it is.
Author's Notes: Prompt at the end this time, for various reasons, though I'll say it was for one of my own in the Giles H/C Ficathon. Thanks to fuzzyboo03 for the beta. Oh, and as a side-note: the title of this one and the title of my Giles-Buffy fic from Sunday are from the same Emily Dickinson poem, but the fics aren't related in any way.
All We Need of Hell
The Summers' kitchen was the last room in the house, discounting the bathrooms, that didn't have anyone sleeping in it. Giles sat at the kitchen table, head in his hands, and wondered where he was supposed to fit. He was bungling this and he knew it. He was putting far too much pressure on Buffy, he was frightening the potentials, and he couldn't stop. He was too tired to stop. Too tired to keep going.
The underground pub was dark and smoky, the pint of bitter warm in his hand, the cigarette comforting between his fingers. Lung cancer seemed a suddenly rather nebulous risk, considering his probable fate. There were things to do, potentials to gather, planes back to Sunnydale to catch - and yet all he wanted to do was get very, very drunk.
Through the haze, a figure threaded its way towards him. Thin, too thin, but still handsome. Familiar. Ethan slid into the chair across from him.
"Hello, Ripper."
"Giles."
Giles jerked awake, reaching up to grab hold of whoever had woken him. He gripped hard, exploiting the pressure point in the wrist. "Ow, Giles," Willow gasped, "you're hurting me."
He let go instantly. "Oh, God, Willow, I'm sorry." She took a step back, cradling her wrist against her chest. "Sorry, sorry, I was asleep and - I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said, though she rubbed her wrist and eyed him rather warily. "I, uh, couldn't sleep. I was gonna make some cocoa. Want some?"
He managed a smile. "Yes, that sounds nice, thank you." He watched her get the mugs down, and the can of cocoa powder as well. He rubbed his eyes wearily and leaned his head on his hand. A sleeping bag in the corner of the living room had sounded unbearable to him only hours ago; now it was beginning to gain some appeal. He should have taken up Xander's offer of his sofa, he thought, but with Buffy so badly injured he hadn't wanted to leave. Not that she'd appreciated or even noticed the gesture.
There was a patch of white skin showing between the band of Willow's pajama pants and the hem of her top. Giles's eyes tracked it wearily as she moved back and forth between the counter and the stove. She'd gone pale over the summer, even though they had spent a lot of time outdoors. The horses had been skittish around her, so they had walked for miles together across the fields and sat, sometimes meditating, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting. Sometimes touching, his arm around her shoulders or her head in his lap. It had been a difficult summer in many ways, but in others it had been . . . restful. Healing. Exactly what they'd both needed.
He felt the last ten days had unraveled all of that and he had no idea if he could get it back.
"Ethan, what the hell are you -"
"I can't say hello to an old friend?" Ethan smiled, cradling his own pint of bitter in his hands. "C'mon, Ripper, don't tell me you're still pissed off about that whole Fyarl incident?"
Giles found he couldn't be, somehow. Perhaps due to the pint and a half of beer he had in him, or perhaps because three quarters of the people he knew in the world had died that week. Still, he felt obliged to point out, "I did get a silver-plated letter opener stuck through my sternum. By my own slayer."
Ethan's smile widened, of course. "Ah, those were the days, weren't they? But admit it. Part of you enjoyed giving in to the demon. You always have had a core of violence in you."
Giles stared down into his pint glass. "No."
"Don't lie to yourself. You know it's true."
Giles took a long swallow of beer. Ethan had always seen right through him. "Perhaps."
"Not perhaps. I know you, Ripper." Ethan leaned in. "Better than you know yourself. The violence in you, the demon - the spell wouldn't have worked otherwise. You can't manifest something that isn't already there." Giles looked up sharply. Ethan took a long pull of ale and set it down with a contented sigh. "S'true," he said, leaning back again. "Basic law of magic, isn't it?"
He managed not to startle so badly this time when Willow woke him. At least he didn't hurt her, though he did almost knock the cocoa out of her hand. She either didn't notice or pretended not to, merely set his mug down and took the seat beside him. She'd topped the cocoa off with marshmallows. He blew across the surface and, after nearly a minute of silence, realized he needed to say something. "Er - I - I haven't had the chance yet to ask you how you are," he said at last. "I know you got off to a rough start here, with the - the -"
"Skin flaying demon?" she suggested, grimacing. "Plus my fun little 'I can't see you, you can't see me' spell. Yeah, rough is one word for it. I dunno, Giles." She sipped her cocoa. "I thought I was doing okay, but the other day I tried to do this spell, just a simple locator spell to find the Bringers and it went . . ." She squeezed her eyes shut. "It went bad."
"Bad how?" he asked, grateful for something else to think about. Willow's problems were complicated and serious, but in light of everything else they seemed remarkably manageable.
"Kerblewy," she said, gesturing. "The First . . ." She swallowed. "It came through me, Giles. It, it took me out of myself and it came through me and - and -" She shook her head. "I have all this power and I can't use it. I can't, I just don't trust myself. It's bigger than I am."
Giles nodded. He wrapped his hands around his mug, mostly to warm them. The kitchen didn't heat as well as the rest of the house, and even in Sunnydale December tended to be chilly. "It is. It's good to remember that."
"Not much chance I'll forget," she muttered. "Not after -" She stopped. "I won't forget," she finished at last. She fidgeted, tracing patterns in the grain of the table top. Giles sipped his cocoa, feeling it warm him. His eyelids felt as though they had weights attached to them, he was so deeply exhausted. He hadn't slept since the plane, three or four hours sitting upright in the middle seat with Kennedy on one side and poor Annabelle on the other. Annabelle. She should have been safe with him, he should have protected her. He couldn't protect any of them. No one was safe anymore, not even the watchers in their warded offices. Anya had thought he'd been responsible. No one had asked him - it hadn't occurred to any of them that he had lost people.
"Heard about your council," Ethan said, leaning back in his chair. "Big loss that was. Lot less tweed in the world now. You had an uncle in it, didn't you? And a cousin? And a nephew? They make it out?"
Giles shook his head. "No, they - they were all there. Hardly anyone wasn't, just Robson and a handful of others. The Bringers almost got him afterwards - and me. I . . ." His gaze dropped down to the deep, dark depths of his pint glass. "Ethan, I don't know what to do. The First. It can't be defeated. We've never had to try before, just maintain the, the balance."
"I remember, old man. The council was keen on the balance, wasn't it?" Ethan smiled. "Look where it got them, though. Blown up. Almost poetic."
Giles squeezed his eyes shut. "How can you say that? How can you be so -" Callous , he wanted to say, but didn't. This was Ethan and that was ridiculous. "Without the council, without their library and their lore, I'm afraid it's simply a losing battle." He frowned at Ethan over the lip of his pint glass. "And even you don't want to live in a world where the First has won."
"That's true," Ethan allowed. "And now we come to the crux of the matter. I realize your pretty red-headed protege is quite the wicca now, but I thought you might be in need of a chaos mage all the same. We could blow up a few things ourselves, maybe. I think I still have it in me."
"What?" Giles said, blinking. "I'm sorry, Willow, what did you say?"
She smiled weakly. "It's okay, Giles, you're obviously totally wiped -"
"No, no," he said quickly. "Well, yes, I am," he admitted at her skeptical look. "But, Willow, if there's anything I can do for you, please - please tell me."
She nodded, turning her half-empty cocoa mug around in her fingers - two turns to the left and then to the right. Giles sipped his own and found it had grown cold. "I guess someone probably told you about the other night, what happened. The ghosts. Or, or not-ghosts, I guess."
Giles nodded. "Dawn told me some of it. Though I think she left out quite a bit."
Willow nodded. "I had one, too."
He touched her lightly on the back of her hand. "Tara?"
She shook her head, pressing her lips together. "No, no. It came as - as someone else. And it told me - Giles, it was trying to get me to kill myself, and I know - I know it was all lies, but I can't forget the things it said. It said that I was going to kill everyone, that if I did so much as a single spell I was going to, to - I know it was lying, but I can't forget it, and then the other day with that spell, it felt like there was something right here," Willow pressed her hand to her stomach, just below her ribcage, "burning, this dark, acidy hole. And I thought, it's going to eat me from the inside if I - if I try again." She shook her head, wiping tears away with the heel of her hand. "Giles, I'm not ready for this, I'm not -"
"Shh," he said, stroking her hair. "Willow. It was lying."
"I know that, I do, but I - I can't -"
"I know," Giles said softly. "I know. And no one is asking you to, not yet, at least. You should have had another six months with the coven, learning how to control your power and use it safely. Please, give yourself some time."
"Time," she said with a hollow laugh. "Time, when Buffy looks like she got run over and the house is full of scared girls with more on the way and you're talking about how this is it and you don't know what to do - not like an uber powerful wicca would be helpful or anything. And I'm supposed to give myself time?"
"Yes," Giles said firmly. "Because the alternative -"
"Is badness," she finished. "Believe me, that part I get." She fell silent. Giles finished his cocoa and sat, enjoying the sudden quiet in his head. As upset as Willow was, as badly as he felt watching her silently leak tears over her cocoa, as much as he knew she was right - in some ways, this was so much easier than everything else. If only he could go through life like this, dispensing advice when they needed it and not have to come bearing dire news and the weight of the world to thrust onto Buffy's shoulders. But they were long past such days and he was too tired to help carry the burden just now. All he wanted was a bed, any bed. Sleep.
"Ethan." Giles eyed him with suspicion. "What sort of game are you playing at?"
Ethan shrugged. "You know me as well as I know you, Ripper. I love chaos and mayhem just as much as any disciple of the two-faced god. But ending the world?" He shook his head. "That's for the extremists. Blokes who are into apocalypse for the aesthetic experience - no, thank you. I like the world. And honestly, Ripper, I prefer a world with you in it to one where you're not." He spread his hands. "So here I am."
Giles stared. This was the last thing he'd expected from Ethan, always so self-serving, always so willing to look away, pretend he hadn't seen the apocalypse on the horizon, and trust to someone else to deal with it. Giles, for instance.
And yet part of him wanted so badly to believe that Ethan was telling the truth. Even after everything - mutual betrayal, mutual misunderstanding, years of hurt and heartache - Ethan was right. He could hardly imagine a world without him in it, even if they were on opposite sides of it and rarely saw each other - or wanted to see each other. To have Ethan with him in this would be a boon, and not only because of his magical prowess. "Christ, Ethan, are you serious?" Giles asked, almost in a whisper.
"Deadly."
"Giles." Willow's touch was light, light enough that he didn't jerk awake this time. The dream lingered, though, as an ache in his chest, his heart. There were tears prickling at the back of his eyes and he found himself holding onto Willow's hand. "Hey now," she said, stroking his hair back from his forehead with her free hand. "You all right?"
It was the first time anyone had bothered to ask since he'd arrived, but Giles found he couldn't bring himself to tell the truth. "Yes, of course. Just exhausted."
"Yeah, the jet-lag is killer. When was the last time you slept? Not counting two second power naps at the table."
Giles shook his head. "I can't remember. England."
"Jeez, Giles. Come on, then," she stood and tugged at his hand, "time for me to tuck you in."
Giles laughed briefly. "Where?"
"Well." Willow hesitated, biting her lip. "The other half of my bed is - is free."
Giles raised his eyebrows. "I rather thought Kennedy had laid claim to it."
Willow made a face - not much of one, but enough for Giles to raise his eyebrows even further. "I, uh, managed to wriggle my way out of that one. It was just a lot more confusion than I was looking for, you know? But you, you're -" She paused. Giles was aware his eyebrows were still up. "Pretty much exactly the right amount of confusion."
"Oh." What on Earth was he supposed to make of that? She pulled him to his feet - he had to put out a hand to steady himself on the counter when his head swam - and steered him out of the kitchen and up the stairs, grabbing his duffel off the catch-all bench in the living room on the way. He probably wouldn't have made it without her guiding him; the house was dark and he was truly exhausted, dizzy and faintly ill with it. He let himself be prodded into Willow's bedroom, where she flicked on the light. "Go ahead and change. I'll be back in a sec." She disappeared, closing the door behind her.
Giles changed into sweats and a t-shirt, considered the merits of brushing his teeth, and decided he'd probably fall asleep at the sink. He crawled into bed and lay there, tense and blinking at the ceiling. These were the moments the First came calling, he'd found - when he was alone and so tired that dream and reality began to blur. That was a line it liked to toe.
But the room stayed quiet and empty until Willow returned. She shut the door behind her. "Sorry in advance for the cold feet," she said, tugging the blankets back and sliding beneath them.
"Somehow I don't think they'll bother me," he said, yawning so hard his jaw gave an audible pop .
"Warm enough?"
He wasn't, not quite, but he would be. Sharing a bed, even platonically - he'd forgotten what it was like. Warm, mostly. He shifted closer despite himself. She looked down at him and smiled. "C'mere," she said, and slid down. She made him roll over so he lay on his side, his back to her chest. She slipped an arm over his waist and murmured in his ear, "Just go to sleep. Everything will be look better in the morning once you've slept."
He knew she was wrong - an apocalypse was an apocalypse no matter how many hours of sleep one had, and dead friends were still dead even in the morning - but it was so easy to let himself believe her for now. He closed his eyes and let her breathing guide his into a deep, even tempo.
"Then yes," Giles said. "Oh God, Ethan, yes." He reached for Ethan's hand across the table.
His fingers closed on air.
Giles looked up, mouth open, just in time to see Ethan smile at him. No. Not Ethan.
Giles pressed himself back against the wall of the pub. "No, no, no -"
The smile thinned. "Did you think the Initiative put me to bed every night with a hot water bottle and a story? Or did you think at all, when you turned me over to them?"
"No," Giles repeated, more loudly.
"Oh, yes." It changed suddenly, shrunk - Ethan's cheeks hollowed, his hair grew sparse and gray, his clothing went from his usual garish attire to white, threadbare, shapeless pajamas. His eyes glittered with pain. "They sucked out my magic, Ripper. They ripped it out of me and threw me in a cell and left me there to waste away. And you never came. Did you even think of me? Did you ever once think of what you had done when you turned me over to those bastards?"
Giles shook his head. "No," he said in a hoarse whisper. "You aren't him."
He - it shrugged. "No, I'm not. But really, does it matter?" It smiled. "He's still dead. And you killed him. Ripper."
Giles jerked awake, gasping. He found himself on his back, Willow leaning over him "Giles, Giles, it's okay," she murmured, stroking his face, his hair. "Just a dream."
Giles shook his head and shoved himself up. "Is it here?"
"Is what here?"
"The First. Is it here?" He looked around, peering myopically into the dark corners of the room untouched by the yellow light thrown by the lamp Willow flicked on. But they were empty. Of course. It wouldn't come when he expected it.
"I - I don't think so," Willow said, letting him cling to her. God, this was humiliating, but he had to know she was real, had to know he could touch her. "Giles, what happened to you?"
He shook his head. "Not me. Ethan. Oh God, Ethan." His throat ached. He'd not wept at the time. The thing had vanished. He'd stood, walked out of the pub and into the street. That evening he'd picked up Kennedy from her parents' home in Sussex and started making his way here, trying not to think about any of it. He'd pushed himself past the point of endurance trying not to think about it. The council, gone. Ethan, dead. He didn't know what his life was without them, or what it could be. Foolish to worry about it; he doubted he'd survive this one. That any of them would.
"Ethan?" Willow said, looking down at him. "Ethan Rayne? Chaos-worshipping, bad magic candy guy? Turned you into a demon?"
Giles nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. "The night that - I imagine it was the same night it came to all of you, actually. I was in a pub in London, I'd just received news of the council and I was in, in a bit of a state of shock, I think. And Ethan came in. Only -"
"It wasn't Ethan," she said softly.
He nodded again. "I didn't know. I didn't - it was the first I'd heard, I spoke to him like he was my, my - like he was Ethan." He swallowed. "Oh God, Willow, it was the Initiative, they killed him, sucked out his magic -"
"Shh, Giles." She stroked his hair just as he had hers earlier that evening. "You don't know that for sure. The First lies. You told me that yourself."
"I know," Giles said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. Rough. Hollow. "But I don't think it was lying, this time. I think he died there, wherever they had him, and I - I put him there. My oldest friend. My dearest enemy." His lover, more times than Giles could count. He swallowed. "Oh, Ethan, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He broke down almost silently, huddling in her arms. She kissed his forehead and stroked his hair while he wept into the crook of her neck. He thought he would never get that image out of his head: Ethan, old before his time and ruined, utterly ruined. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on Willow's voice, even if he had no idea what she was saying.
It took him a long time to bring himself under control. Embarrassingly long. "I'm sorry," he managed at last, this time to her.
"Don't be." She reached over and retrieved a box of tissues from the bedside table, plunked it down beside them on the bed and offered him one. "Consider it me returning the favor from all the times you let me cry all over you this summer."
He nodded, accepting the tissue. He blew his nose and leaned his head back. Willow was curled around him, cradling him against her. Giles was suddenly aware enough to be uncomfortable. They'd grown close this summer, close enough that he could be affectionate with her in ways he wasn't with the others, not even Buffy. But this was different. This was the two of them in a bed, holding each other.
Willow was sniffling, very quietly, he realized. He turned in her arms and pulled her head down to his shoulder. "Sorry," she sniffled. "I just - just thought . . . if this thing can take the form of anyone who's died, I think we're in trouble. So many people, Giles. Gone. Why are we still here?"
He sighed. "Because - because we are," he said. "By the grace of whoever or whatever. We're here."
"Sometimes I'm not sure I want to be," she whispered.
"Me neither. But that doesn't change anything." A world without Ethan. The First had known what it was doing. It could have come to him as Jenny, as Buffy, as Randall. But no, it had known exactly how to twist the knife. He'd learned to live in a world where those three were gone, but Ethan - somehow he'd never thought about Ethan dying, though all things considered it was shocking he'd lasted as long as he had. But now there was a terrible, aching emptiness in the tiny dark corner of his heart where Ethan had lived and Giles would have to learn to live without him. He was neither so young nor so foolish to believe it was impossible, but he didn't believe it would be easy, either.
Or that leaning up, closing the distance between himself and Willow, and pressing his lips to hers would be the way to do it.
The temptation was strong. He'd felt it before at times over the summer and suspected she had as well. It would be an easy pattern to fall into, especially now, when they both needed something to hang onto, when they were both mourning dead lovers. It was almost clichéd.
"She is a lovely young thing, isn't she?" Ethan's voice said, from over by the door. "I bet she tastes of strawberries."
Giles felt his desire vanish. He shuddered. "Giles?" Willow said.
"It's here," he managed. He squeezed his eyes shut.
"Come on, Ripper. What are you waiting for? She's all wrapped around you. You think she doesn't know you're half hard already? She hasn't been with a man since her werewolf left her, you know. Imagine how tight she must be."
" Stop ," Giles said, desperately.
"If you're worried that it's vaguely Oedipal and obscene," Ethan's voice went on, "well, it is. But don't let that stop you."
Giles gritted his teeth. " Go. Away. "
Ethan's familiar laugh echoed, low and dark. "What makes you think I'm ever gone?"
Giles refrained from answering. When the silence had stretched for a minute and a half by his mental count, he raised his head. The room was empty save for Willow looking down at him, her eyes troubled and dark. "Is it gone?" she asked.
He pulled away and sat up. "It seems to be." He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing the last of the tears into his skin. "Willow," he began, and then stopped. Anything he said would have to acknowledge what he felt, and he couldn't quite bring himself to do that, even if he suspected she felt it as well. He sighed and wondered if he'd be able to sleep now that he'd dreamt the dream through to the end. Or if it would circle back to the beginning in an endless loop.
"I - I could -" Willow drew a deep breath. "There's a spell that would let you sleep without dreaming. You'd wake in eight hours, or whenever your body was ready. It's nothing too, um, too difficult."
"I'm aware of it," he said. God, but that sounded like heaven. "Do you feel able?"
She nodded, hesitantly. "I - I think so. If you trust me to try. It shouldn't - it's not complicated and doesn't have anything to do with the First. If I'm ever gonna, you know, get back on the mystical horse . . ." She swallowed.
He hardly felt he had any other choice. He could not go on like this; soon he wouldn't know what was the First and what was his own mind's sleep-deprived hallucinations. Perhaps tomorrow he would know what to do about Willow. Her hand rested lightly on his stomach, warm through the fabric of his pajamas. It would be so easy, he thought, and it would feel so good. He could not remember the last time anything had felt good - weeks ago, at least. Perhaps not since her return to Sunnydale. He sighed and nodded his consent.
Her hands trembled slightly as she placed them on his temples. Her touch was soft, gentle. He closed his eyes, listened to her murmur the words, her voice steady even if her hands were not. Latin, a request for peace and rest. Willow's accent had improved in her time at the coven, her pronunciation grown more precise. The cadences were comforting and the spell wrapped him up like a goose-down blanket, warm and thick.
But he did dream, at least in the few moments before the spell pulled him under, of the brush of her lips against his. Then he slipped below and knew nothing more until it allowed him to surface and wake, alone in Willow's bed in a sun-dappled room, some eleven hours later.
Fin.
Written for my own prompt: Character of your choice helps Giles cope after he learns of Ethan's death.