Title: Intransigence
Author: Kivrin
Characters: Giles, Wesley, various Scoobies, the First Evil.
Rating: PG-13
Setting: BtVS S7, just before “Lies My Parents Told Me” and around AtS “Apocalypse, Nowish.”
Summary: On his way back to Sunnydale with the Prokaryote stone, Giles breaks his journey in L.A., and tries to hold out against flu, exhaustion, and the First.
Note: comments and concrit welcome.
Length: approx. 10,000 words

ETA: Thanks to the brave souls who offered comments during the long gestation of this piece: headrush100, heron_pose, tx_cronopio, and glimmergirl.


Giles woke to a hand on his face, and he struck out before fully opening his eyes. Despite the darkness his attacker blocked the blow easily, catching his wrist and pressing it down to the mattress.

"Hush," someone said, softly, close by.

His head was throbbing, and his body ached, and he couldn't throw off the grip. "Incendere..." he began, but his voice was only a wisp.

Another hand clamped over his mouth. "Giles! It's me. I’m not trying to hurt you. You're in Los Angeles." A pause. "Please don't finish that combustion charm."

He twisted his arm. This couldn't be Los Angeles; he was freezing. And he was not confused enough to believe the vague assurance that no harm was meant.

The hand over his face relaxed enough to let him breathe. "Do you remember? Are you awake now?"

Not a Bringer, and not the First.... unless, of course, it was a Bringer touching him while the First spoke these deceptively soothing words in his ear. Giles squinted against the dark and the pain that gripped his temples. There must have been a fight. And probably, God help him, another concussion.

"Giles." The voice was masculine, a bit annoyed, and not entirely unfamiliar. "I'm going to put on the light. Please don't do anything until I do."

His wrist was released first, then his mouth. The sudden yellow glare from a bulb near his head made him recoil, but after an instant he forced his eyes open. A pale ceiling, deep blue walls, a window framing the night with white Venetian blinds and a curtain.

"Giles..." A hand came into view, moving towards his temple.

Giles gasped and lurched towards the far side of the bed, away from the light and the threatened touch. Bedclothes tangled around his limbs, dragging when he sat up. The figure leaned in, face in shadow with the lamp behind him. Giles pulled back again. "What are you?" The words barely broke the silence.

The man sank into a crouch beside the bed, and at last the lamplight fell across his face. "Wesley," he said. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. You're at my flat in Los Angeles. Don’t you remember?"

Shuddering, Giles hitched himself up against the headboard. Surely not Los Angeles. Even American air-conditioning was never this arctic. But it did appear to be Wesley, albeit a strange, unshaven, dangerous-looking version of him. Surely the First would assume a more familiar guise. "Pryce?" he repeated.

"Yes, it's me." Wesley tugged the coverlet free where it had caught under Giles' hip.

Giles relaxed slightly when he felt the movement. "Did... was I fighting you?" He tried to clear his throat, but his voice remained rough and feeble.

"You were dreaming. I think your fever's up." He cautiously put out his hand to touch Giles’ forehead, then nodded. “Mm.”

"Fever," Giles said stupidly. "But there was... I..."

"There's been fighting, I'm sure, but probably not in the past day or two." Wesley rose to sit on the edge of the bed. "You rang from the airport and asked if I could look at an artifact. We met in a pub but you collapsed before we could get much beyond 'hello.'" He frowned. “You still don’t remember?”

It did begin to seem distantly familiar. Giles could remember the airport in Lima, the relief of hearing even an American accent after days of trying to communicate in Spanish or pidgin church Latin, the familiar torture of a middle seat on an international flight. He remembered stumbling through LAX in search of a pay phone, remembered squinting against sunlight and an unnaturally sudden headache. "And... and that was..."

"This afternoon." Wesley glanced at the clock. "Yesterday afternoon."

This time when Giles tried to speak something hitched in his chest and he hunched over coughing. "...cursed?" he managed.

"I don't think so. I think it's flu. Unless it's one of those frightening diseases beloved of tabloid news programs that's indistinguishable from the common cold until one goes into respiratory arrest." Wesley offered him a bottle of water.

Giles fumbled with the cap. "You seem to take that possibility with remarkable equanimity." The water was cold enough to make him shiver more than ever, but it felt wonderful on his throat, and he gulped down half the bottle without stopping.

"Worrying about it would hardly do any good." Wesley drank from his own bottle, a dark glass one. "And I'm fairly confident in my primary diagnosis."

Giles realized, suddenly, that he was wearing an unfamiliar pair of loose cotton trousers and a t-shirt. "I, ah..." He plucked at the pajamas, groping for the thread of events. There’d been a cab. A dark pub, the air smoky and stagnant, hard to breathe. Wesley’s face swimming in the gloom. And then what? "I don't remember putting these on."

"That part doesn’t surprise me. Your temperature was over a hundred and two, and that's after I got you changed and into bed. Drink that up; I'll bring you some medicine."

Temperature. Changed and into bed. That must have taken... Giles glanced at the window again. Still dark. Less than twelve hours, then, but still too long. He pushed the covers back. "Thank you, but I... if you could just give me some painkillers, I should really..."

Wesley turned in the doorway. "What?”

"Sunnydale... I must, as soon as possible..." Damn it, he was getting out of breath just climbing off the bed, and if he wasn't careful he'd be coughing again in a minute.

"It's four in the fucking morning, Giles, and you're half delirious. Lie down." Wesley took another swallow of beer and stared until Giles sank back against the headboard. He vanished into the shadows beyond the bedroom door.

Slowly Giles pulled the comforter up to his chest. Sweat prickled on the back of his neck, but he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling together as he tried to gather his wits. He remembered the shaman in Peru. He remembered the airplane, remembered the cab and the pub and the Prokaryote stone. Oh, god, the stone. He pushed himself up, breath suddenly rough in his throat, and looked wildly around the room in search of his gray duffel. The vise around his head tightened at the movement, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, trying to ease the pain, trying to keep his balance as the bed seemed to lurch under him like a small airplane landing in heavy wind.

"Poor Watcher. So much work, and sod all to show for it."

"Spike?" he gasped, squinting into the shadows. Glasses, he needed his glasses. Another long, painful cough scraped through his chest and throat.

A snigger. "You sound like a dying seal." Spike swaggered up to the bed, his duster swinging, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, heavy boots eerily silent on the floor. "Pathetic. And now you've lost your magic doodad. All kinds of dangerous, you are. I’m quite terrified. May wet myself."

Giles coughed again. “You’re not here,” he muttered.

“Oho! And, let’s see, your next will be ‘nyah nyah, vampire pants on fire!’ And then I can say something about how at least I get mine off once in a while. And not with young Percy here, but with a young, nubile, not-so-very-innocent girl. Blonde bird, maybe you know her?”

“You’re not Spike. You’re not anything.” He knew better than to try plugging his ears – the utter lack of effect was almost more disturbing than listening to the taunts.

“I’ll tell you a secret, Rupert, old man, seeing as we shared digs that one time.” Spike’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s the sex. Makes her yours forever. You may have noticed that with Angel.”

He eased himself down on the pillow and stared at the wall, resolutely not looking at the apparition.

“Might be a Slayer thing. Hey! If it is, funny you lot never caught on. Being all-wise and all-knowing and, oh! now very nearly all dead.”

“You’re not…” he whispered, reminding himself again. “I know what you are.”

“Do you?” came another voice, feminine, seductive.

Giles shut his eyes, refusing to be drawn. “Yes.” It liked to be Jenny for him; he thought, not for the first time, that soon he'd have spent as many hours with the image as he'd passed with Jenny herself.

“Do you know anything?” She was laughing at him. Before the First, he'd forgotten how that particular sly smile crept into her voice. It gutted him. “That pretty Englishman who’s gone to get you aspirin -- do you know what he is? He’s been working with Angel a long time.”

“No,” Giles muttered. The sound of a footfall made him start.

“Sorry.” Wesley crossed the room, arms laden with small bottles and boxes, as if he'd turned out his entire medicine cabinet. “You can sleep again as soon as you've had some of this.”

“N-no...” Giles tried to reassure himself with that footstep and the remembered brush of Wesley’s hand over his forehead, but it all seemed too slight, too easy to dismiss. "Pryce,” he said awkwardly. “Wesley. I need to touch you."

Wesley stopped at the foot of the bed, eying him warily.

"I'm sorry. Not what I meant.” This time Giles sat up slowly, and the bed stayed steady, though his head spun. “But you see, it's incorporeal. Can take the form of anyone dead. Who's died. And, and..."

"Shh." Wesley set down his load of medicine on the bedside table, then extended a hand. "A shapeshifter, then? This demon?"

His hand was solid, cool to the touch. Giles gripped it hard, willing his heart to stop pounding. "N-not a demon... the First."

"But the others are? Giles... I need my hand."

Giles blinked, then released him. "Oh. Sorry."

"It's all right." Wesley murmured. He studied Giles for a moment with unreadable eyes, then looked away. "The others are?"

"The others?" He wrapped his hands around the edge of the coverlet to keep from grabbing at Wesley again. He knew the threat was false, and yet his pulse refused to slow, the pressure in his chest wouldn't ease. It hurt to move his eyes, but he couldn't stop checking the corners for someone else who couldn't possibly be there.

"You said the first one's not a demon." Wesley shook the thermometer down. "Are the others demons?"

"No. No, not the first one. The First Evil. The source of all... it was before, and it will always be." A shudder went through him, not entirely from the chills. "It's moving against the Slayer line. Against the Council. Picking off Slayers-in-waiting and their Watchers in the field as well. Even potentials not yet identified, it finds them. Its servants chase them. Gut them. One by one.” His breath was coming too fast, and his knees shook visibly beneath the bedclothes with the effort of pressing him back against the pillows hard enough that he could feel the slats in the headboard.

"Good god," Wesley murmured.

"They're everywhere. Not quite sure how they do it - it has all the benefits of incorporeality, of course, but they're mortal and must receive their intelligence somehow. Not important, though. Not the intelligence we need. The coven can find them. Not bloody fast enough, though..." The ghastly appropriateness of his word choice struck him after the fact, and he snorted a bitter laugh. "Bloody. Yes."

Wesley had his face averted to study the thermometer in his hand. "Shh. Giles.” He turned to face him. “Here. Open your mouth."

"My bag." Idiot, he thought. What are you doing? "Yes," he nodded when Wesley started to speak. "Yes, all right, but my bag? Did I have it?"

"It's in the sitting room, I'll get it. Can you keep that under your tongue? Good. Won't be a minute."

The bedclothes were damp in Giles' hands. He forced his fists open and smoothed first the sheet, then the blanket over his lap. Breathing through his nose took effort, but at least he could breathe. Wesley would bring his duffel, with the stone safe in its box inside, and paracetamol for the fever, and he would sleep, and be on his way in the morning. The unworthy thought came that he'd been lucky the flu caught up with him here, rather than back in Sunnydale where his bedroll waited on the dining-room floor, Spike waited in the basement, and Buffy... He drew the coverlet up to his chest and carefully leaned back on the pillows, letting his eyes close, trying to relax, trying not to think.

"Hey. Rupert."

His whole body tensed at the voice, lips thinning around the thermometer. He knew he shouldn't look, but his head was already turning.

"Hey," Angel said again. He stood in the shadows near the door. Had Wesley closed the door? Giles couldn't remember. "Don't worry, you don't have to say anything."

Holding himself stiff, he watched Angel approach. If it was Angel.

"This is pretty amazing. Kind of beautiful – two fallen watchers, together, here at the end of the world. An Englishman in need thrown on the charity of another. Sort of a dinner jackets in the jungle thing. English civilization comes through. Of course, I never saw a lot of English civilization myself."

Giles began to shake.

"But two Watchers, with so much in common, despite their differences. And, well, despite not being Watchers. The care, the trust. It's beautiful. If, you know, you like that sort of thing." He smiled. His hands hung empty at his sides, very white against his black trousers. "For me, it’s just kind of sickening, unless I remember that Wesley's like me, now. That gives it a little spice. That special something."

No, he thought. Wesley was never worse than a prat. No.

"Oh, yeah, there was that little problem last spring. But we can work together, even if I'm never, ever, ever going to forgive him. You know how that goes, right, Rupert?" One large pale hand closed around the fingers of the other. "What you can put aside for a good cause?" The smile got wider.

"No," he whispered. He felt the thermometer under his tongue, and the whole room swam for a moment. He shut his eyes tightly, but it seemed he could still see those huge, terrible hands against the blackness, and the laughter rang in his ears.

"He’s not on your side anymore. You know that. He’s on mine. On ours."

At ours his mind flew to the face of a Bringer. His body jerked and he woke fully, suddenly aware of Wesley on the bed beside him, one hand out to take the thermometer.

"Steady." Wesley took the thermometer and laid his other hand on Giles arm. "It's me."

Giles’ gasp started a fit of coughing, and it was all he could do to remember that the touch meant safety, that his worst fears were not realized. Yet.

"Giles. Rupert. It's all right."

"Angel," he choked out, before the cough cut him off again.

"What?" The hand tightened, then relaxed. "He's not here. I promise you. You're dreaming."

"You... he said you..."

"Shh. Can you sit up? Here..."

A wiry arm slid under his shoulders and hauled him fully upright. All the lights were burning; he groaned and closed his eyes against the brightness and a rush of vertigo.

"No. Giles. Stay awake."

He squinted at Wesley. "Shut up."

"If you sleep you'll be right back in the nightmare. Come on." Water sloshed nearby, and a wet flannel passed over his face. "Damn. Let's get your shirt off."

"It's cold."

"No, you're having chills. Lift your arms."

Tell me when it hurts...

"Wesley?" Giles demanded.

Wesley eased Giles’s shirt up, hesitantly at first, then briskly when he met with no resistance. "Yes, Rupert." He started sponging Giles’ chest with the flannel.

"Did you hear...?"

"Wasn't much to hear. You were thrashing, not screaming, though from the sound of it your throat might feel differently."

"N-no... Angel."

"Angel's not here. That was the dream."

"Not... not necessarily.”

“I’ve warded the flat. If he entered, I’d know.” He ran the damp cloth around the back of Giles’ neck and down one arm. “You were dreaming.”

“Or it was the First.” Or you’re lying. The thought was as irresistible as it was unwelcome. Giles tried to push it away.

“Most likely I’d know if anyone or anything entered.” A pause. “I think, however, that as your temperature’s nearly a hundred and three, Occam’s razor would strongly support the dream hypothesis.”

“That can’t be right. And you don’t, you don’t know the First, you don’t…”

“Then tell me.” Wesley wrung the cloth out in a bowl on the nightstand, then resumed the sponging. “Start with the literature. What’s the lore on this ‘First?’”

“Oh.” So simple, so reasonable. “There’s very little, it… it’s another one of those irritating entities that predates the written word. Indeed, predates… language entirely…” He broke off to cough.

“A corollary to the comparatively benevolent Powers that Be,” Wesley murmured. He pressed a cup into Giles’ hand. “Drink this. And it wants to eliminate the Slayer?” Laying the flannel aside, he started looking at medicine labels.

“No. Not just Buffy.” He sipped. Apple juice. “Every Slayer. Every force ever massed against it. That’s why it destroyed the Council.”

Wesley froze in the act of shaking pills into his palm. “It… Giles, what?”

“The Council. It…” The cough racked him again. “The explosion… that was the Bringers, or some other agent…”

“Explosion.” Wesley’s hand closed around Giles’ wrist. “When? How much damage? Giles!” He shook him.

Giles tried to think. “Six weeks? No less than that... possibly longer. You didn’t…?”

“I didn’t. That would explain… though of course he didn’t.” Wesley let out a breath. “I ought to have known it would take an apocalypse.” His thin lips quirked in a joyless smile, and he let Giles’ hand drop. “This is tylenol; would you rather advil?” He started picking up pills.

“Explain…?”

“I had an unexpected telephone call at about that time.” He lined up the medicine bottles with unnecessary precision. “At least one senior Watcher escaped.” He turned to meet Giles’ gaze, then looked away again. “Perhaps only one, I gather.”

Giles licked his lips. They felt dry, and the lower one, he found, had split. “The destruction was total,” he said. His throat ached fiercely, quite apart from the rawness left by the cough. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “Somehow I expected you’d know.”

“I’m not a Watcher.” With a steady hand Wesley offered two capsules. “Swallow these.”

“I’m sorry,” Giles repeated, when he’d drained the glass of juice.

“Don’t. Please.” He reached for the flannel again. “How did you hear?” he asked, softly.

The memory came over him with the force of an hallucination – the crush of puzzled commuters at the tube station, the whiff of something wrong that resolved when he fought his way out to the street into a searing smell of hot stone and high explosive, the sky bigger than it should be overhead, shreds of charred parchment on the wind. “I… was there shortly afterwards.” He swallowed against nausea, closing his eyes as Wesley sponged his face. “There was nothing left. Your father...?”

“He cast a few aspersions on America generally and expatriate Britons in particular. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

In the darkness behind his own closed eyes, Giles saw the rubble again. “So he's all right?” He searched Wesley's expression.

“Mm. Not exactly. He called, which is hardly a sign of being his usual self, but aside from that aberration...”

“He survived, I mean.” There were few Watcher families as venerable as the Wyndam-Pryces, and Wesley’s father had held a prominent research position for more than twenty years. On any given day, he was almost as likely as Travers to be at the home office. “How did he ever survive?”

“Ooh,” Angel winced theatrically from behind Wesley. “I was hoping you wouldn't ask that one. Not before Wes got a little more information out of you. But you gotta hand it to him, Rupert, he's a good little double agent. After the daddy issues, everything else is secondary.”

Giles swallowed hard.

“I don't know. He didn't tell me anything about it. Giles?” Wesley frowned.

“It was so damn easy. Ol' Roger – he's smart, but pretty paranoid. All I had to do to convince him the Council'd been corrupted was point out that Travers rehired you, and he was out buying nitro before the next Potential...”Angel stabbed the air with a finger, turning his wrist sharply as he curled his lips around an ugly noise that vividly suggested a blade in soft flesh.

“Giles. What are you looking at?”

Angel pulled a face. “Oh... sorry, was that insensitive?”

“Shut up.” Giles pressed his palms over his eyes, trying to breathe through the uncontrollable shaking. “Shut up. I know what you're doing. Shut up. Shut up. Save your strength. I won't listen.”

“My strength?” Angel laughed nastily.

Giles dug his nails into his scalp, trying not to be sick.

“And what, exactly, am I doing?” Wesley asked.

“Not you...” Giles whispered. He lowered his hand to check the corners of the room. Not you, he repeated in his mind, but the questions remained, tightening his chest, shortening his breath. How could Roger Wyndam-Pryce have survived? Why would Wesley question him about the First? Tell me what to do, the First would ask, in Jenny’s voice, before she melted into Drusilla. He shuddered and looked into Wesley's shadowed, unreadable eyes. “What did he want?”

“Who?”

“Your father! Did he tell you to ask me? Did he tell you to take the stone?” He flinched away when Wesley tried to touch his forehead. “Did he?” He covered his shaking left hand with his right and clutched it against his bare chest, but it still hurt, everything hurt. Dear god, it hurt.

Wesley drew back. He hauled Giles’ duffel bag up from the floor and dropped it across his legs on the bed. “Here. I only touched it to put your coat inside. Look for yourself.”

It had to be a trick. He’d snatch the stone as soon as Giles found it, and his face would become Angel’s, and he would laugh and laugh. But no – Giles touched the bag – Wesley was solid, Wesley was corporeal. He might be Angel’s pawn, but he couldn’t be Angel himself. He might be his father's pawn, or the First's, but he himself was flesh. Giles pulled back the zipper and plunged a hand in, groping past jumpers and his shaving kit to the dirty sock he’d wrapped around the clean sock wrapped around the little wooden box. Drawing it out, he turned his body to block Wesley’s gaze and opened the lid.

The stone stared up at him, inert, unassuming. Giles closed the box and held it, then pressed one hand to his forehead. "I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“It’s all right.” Water sloshed in the bowl, then the flannel came lightly to rest on the back of his neck. “Your distrust is refreshingly unambivalent, compared…” He broke off at the ring of a mobile phone. “Excuse me, I need to take this… Pryce here.”

Giles moved the flannel and leaned back, awkwardly pushing the pillows into place with his elbows. Get a hold of yourself, he thought. You’ve got to keep your head. What if it had been a civilian who picked you up when you keeled over? You’d be in a strait jacket now, in a locked ward. With your own room and your own bed and no responsibility even to shave.

“How many? Right. No, I concur, fire has a better chance of… indeed.” Wesley’s end of the conversation turned to monosyllables as he pulled a book from a low shelf and paged rapidly through it.

Fire. A fire? Fire demons? A clutch of fire-demons, perhaps, nice corporeal demons that couldn’t read thoughts and wear the faces of dead enemies and friends?

“How many blocks away? No, that doesn’t seem likely. No. And to the west as well? ”

Giles drew breath to ask about the demons, then swallowed the question, then swallowed again to quell the urge to cough. He couldn’t let Los Angeles become a concern. All the known Potentials there were dead; that made it a non-place, even if it became the center of a separate apocalypse. It would be absurd to envy Wesley the fire demons and anything they might represent. Absurd. The back of his throat itched fiercely, and he choked back a cough, his eyes watering. Absurd, he repeated, but it was hard not to think with longing of that strait jacket.

"Sorry." Wesley put the mobile down. "Business." He wrung the flannel out in the bowl.

"Angel?"

"No. My employees. May I...?" He waited for the nod before stroking the cloth over Giles' arms and chest.

"Oh." Suddenly very tired, Giles rested his head against the bed, though he kept the stone tight clenched in his fist. It had been a long time since he'd been touched like this - indeed, since he'd been touched at all, aside from that melee in the desert. "Employees?"

"Yes." Wesley checked the warmth of Giles' forehead, first with his fingers, then the inside of his wrist. "After leaving the organization, I found it expedient to hire some... muscle."

"Expedient. Yes. You could find people... open to the realities?"

"There are more of them than you and I were led to believe. I think the Hellmouth fosters denial; in the city, there’s only the usual self-absorption to be overcome."

"Ah." He closed his eyes. This time no nightmare images leapt to his mind. The damp cloth was soothing on his skin.

"I'm going to put your bag at the foot of the bed," Wesley said gently. "Do you want anything else from it before I do?"

Giles started to shake his head, then thought better of it and murmured "No."

"Can I put that box back in the bag, or do you want to hide it somewhere?" His voice held a note of sarcastic amusement.

"No." Giles opened his eyes. "This is what I wanted your help with, actually." He held the box out. “Under the lining there’s a rubbing of the associated tablet with the relevant incantation… the dialect is a bit beyond me, and as I was coming through LA…”

Wesley eyed the box, and Giles, warily before accepting it. "Indeed."

"Though… I didn’t plan…” Giles sighed. “Pryce, I’m so sorry. You’ve… it must be five in the morning, you’ve put me in your bed… why on earth didn’t you throw me into an ambulance and have done?”

“Most ambulances in that part of town don’t deliver to hospitals,” Wesley said dryly. “Not lately. There’s been a takeover by a gang of vampires.”

“Well, so much for my fantasy of a restful holiday in the care of the state. Never mind,” Giles added quickly, when Wesley frowned at him. “You’re being more than generous. Thank you.”

“It looks like you’ve been through the wars.”

Giles had to look down at his own chest before he realized what Wesley was staring at. “Oh.” He rubbed the odd, livid scar where, in a different nightmare lifetime, Willow had sucked out his life along with the borrowed magic. “That, that’s not part of the current problem.”

“Perhaps you could tell me more about that, in a few hours.”

“Have you been up all night looking after me?”

“No. Waiting for that phone call.” Wesley straightened the blankets. “I may have looked in a few times.”

“Thank you.” Giles’ voice was oddly weak; he coughed to clear his throat, then kept coughing, his eyes watering. “Damn…”

Wesley fiddled again with things on the nightstand, then pushed a glass at Giles. “Here. Drink this. I haven’t got any cough mix, I’m sorry,” he went on, when Giles was quiet.

“You’ve got…” Giles squinted into the glass, then at the table. “’Pediatric electrolyte replacement fluid’ but no bloody Beecham’s?”

“Your gratitude is overwhelming. Finish that, it should help at least a bit.”

“Sorry. I…”

“It’s all right. Shh.” He took the glass from Giles. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Thank you,” Giles said again, sliding down in the bed. From habit he tensed when he closed his eyes, but the only sound in the darkness was Wesley’s footsteps. Of course, it won’t come until he goes, Giles thought, and then he was asleep.

***

He dreamed of London in the blitz: a tube station full of frightened, half-dressed girls and angry parents, a field telephone that wouldn't work, Xander on the stairs saying "If they're firebombing, it must be Dresden. Or maybe Hiroshima." The coughing woke him repeatedly, and once Wesley made him sit up to swallow more pills and an enormous glass of water. Yet every time it seemed he only had to turn his face to a cool spot on the pillow and he slipped away again to find the Underground connected to shopping malls or supermarkets or the Ashmolean, which were all overrun with tins of sardines or mushy peas, and sleeping babies and people with blessedly unfamiliar faces. Even the wakeful moments, when he rolled over and saw sunlight on the wall and Wesley drowsing in an armchair, seemed part of the dim dream-world.

When he drifted to full awareness, he was alone, and the sun had moved away from the window, though the patch of sky visible through it was still bright. The bed had finally become comfortably warm, and though his mouth felt arid, as long as he kept still the aching of his head and body was tolerable. He stared at the sky for some time in an almost-pleasant daze, until the protests of his bladder broke through the lassitude of the fever.

Sitting up brought him sharply back to reality. The First, the potentials, Buffy, Spike – his mind shuddered under the memory as his body shook with a spasm of coughing. The room yawed when he stood up, and he had to hang on to the bed until things steadied. After a moment the floor stopped tilting, but the headache seemed unlikely to abate. Cursing inwardly, Giles crossed the room, trying to put his feet down as softly as possible. It didn’t really help; each step still jolted every aching bone.

Damn First, he thought bitterly. Damn potentials, damn dead council, damn coven. Damn air travel and influenza and stupid blind sheeplike civilians blithely going about their futile business. Damn Spike and his damn trigger, soul, and chip – oh, yes, that’s right, space where a chip used to be. He planted a steadying hand on the wall as he opened a door, then blinked at a row of Wesley’s shirts and blazers poking between steel bars that joined the floor and ceiling.

He stared for a moment, then let the door swing shut as he shuffled over to try the other one before he could hallucinate anything more disturbing. In a striking bit of luck, it did, in fact, give on to the hallway, and the door to the bathroom was conveniently open. As he crept in his own sallow, shadow-eyed face shocked him from the mirror.

He had to sit down on the loo. The porcelain was cold against his skin, but he felt such relief at being still that he stayed there, elbows on his knees, head hanging down.

“Oh… y-you really don’t look good,” Tara said, from somewhere near the sink.

Giles started and fumbled with his pants.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I have brothers. Well. Had.”

He risked a glance towards the voice, and she gave him that sweet lopsided smile. She wore blue: a long paisley skirt, a jersey blouse, a familiar peacock necklace.

“I’m not listening,” Giles grunted. He knew much better than to tell it to go away.

“But it’s important. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have teased. Do you want me to turn around for a second? I wouldn’t bother you, but it’s important. Tell Willow…”

“Leave her alone.”

The gentle voice went hard. “That’s sort of your role, isn’t it? For all of us?”

Giles stood with an effort, then pushed the lever on the commode with unnecessary force.

“Good job, Giles.” Buffy now, from somewhere near his elbow. “You show the bad toilet.”

He flinched and couldn’t entirely choke back a groan when the movement hurt all over. Resolutely not looking, he turned to the sink and washed his hands with compulsive attention.

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” She dropped her voice, mocking him. “You all must stand on your own now.” One slender hand with pink-varnished nails flapped before his eyes. “Hey! Earth to Giles! Listen to me!”

Wesley had laid out a set of neatly folded towels, mismatched but clean. Giles ran the flannel under hot water and pressed it to his face.

“So, you sit tight with Wesley, okay? I’ve got a handle on things. Spike’s helping. He’s really good with the girls.”

“I’m sure,” Giles grunted.

“Hey. You’re the one who let Dawn hang out with him while I was dead. The second time.”

“Yes, well, if you had seen fit to leave us with some instructions more specific than ‘live in the world’ I daresay we could have carried out your wishes a bit better.” The words spilled out before he could remember to ignore her. It. He leaned against the washstand so he’d stop swaying on his feet and tried to sponge off the worst of the dried sweat.

Buffy leaned against the wall beside the mirror and cocked her head at a skeptical angle, making her long hair fall forward over one white-clad shoulder. “You do know it’s kind of inconsistent for the guy who sent me out to fight for my life every single night to be so pissed that I found a meaningful way to die, right?”

“You…” He swallowed hard, then turned on the cold tap to drink from his hand.

“Should I not mention that you look gross? Spike is much hotter with his shirt off.”

“Are you trying to be Buffy or the sodding robot?” He curled in on himself with a string of harsh coughs.

“And again with the ew.”

“Now you sound like Cordelia,” Giles rasped. “You really don’t know Buffy at all.”

“Idiot,” she said coldly. “It’s not that I don’t know her.” She changed, her cheeks growing rounder, her hair shorter and darker and half pulled back, her face contorted with tears. “There’s just too much to choose from,” she spat.

He stumbled back as she tore the heavy silver cross from her neck.

“Read the signs!” she shrieked. “Tell me my fortune!”

Giles crashed against the bathroom door, which swung open at the impact, dumping him on the floor. He skittered crabwise until his back met the wall, and there he stayed, trembling and panting, waiting for a new face – or, worse, the same one – to appear.

“Giles?”

He shuddered and closed his eyes.

“Giles? Rupert?”

Wesley's voice. He relaxed ever so slightly and managed to get his legs under him. “Fine,” he called out, his voice stronger than he'd feared.

A kettle whistled somewhere in the apartment, then stopped. Giles got up leaning on the wall, kept still for a long moment to let the headache die down again, then shuffled towards the noise.

In the kitchen, Wesley greeted him with an appraising glance, then a nod. "Hello. I was going to bring you breakfast. Well," he glanced at the window. “Tea, maybe.”

"Not really hungry." Giles lowered himself carefully into a chair at the table.

"I didn't say I was going to ask if you wanted it." Wesley took a small cardboard tray from the microwave and put it on a plate in front of Giles.

"What in god's name is that?" Giles turned away to cough. "Oh, bloody hell..." he groaned, at the end of the spasm,

"It's more appetizing than anything I could assemble from the available raw ingredients, I assure you.” He plucked the cozy off a blue willow teapot that matched the cup and saucer already on the table. “And there's tea. Made in the pot, from leaves."

"Oh... please?" Giles lifted the cup with both hands and drank eagerly, looking without enthusiasm at two anemic-looking narrow American sausages and a slice of what was apparently supposed to be French toast. When he’d finished the cup of tea he cut a piece of each and chewed carefully.

“I’ve a book for you.” Wesley sat down across the table. “Latin translation of the glyphs relating to the stone, and a transliteration. I’d suggest using the transliteration, rather than the Latin. If the subject understands the incantation, there might be increased resistance.” He pushed the volume towards Giles, then poured more tea.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve a duplicate stone as well, and that I might as well have come here as gone to Peru.” Giles took another small bite of sausage. It didn’t taste like much, but it was hot, and his stomach welcomed it.

“No. No duplicates.” Wesley placed the box on the table, then two white drugstore boxes. “I got some cough syrup and antiviral medicine for you as well.”

“Oh. Splendid.” He ate a bit more, then squinted at Wesley. “Antiviral?”

“Mm. Keeps the virus from multiplying. Supposedly it'll help speed you back on your feet.”

“Doesn't one...” he coughed and quickly swallowed more tea. “Doesn't one need a prescription for those sorts of things?”

“Traditionally, one also needs to buy them from a pharmacist. They're not stolen,” he added. “It was a favor.”

“Wasn't going to ask.”

“Of course not. You were just going to glare at me.”

Giles felt his mouth curve into a wry smile. He glanced at the transliteration, but without his glasses it made little sense, and he returned his attention to cutting small pieces of sausage and chewing them slowly. Amazing, that this place could exist, only a few hours from Sunnydale. A tidy kitchen, empty chairs, quiet.

He didn't realize he was dozing until Wesley took the plate away. “Come on,” Wesley said gently, helping him up. “Hold on to the Prokaryote stone.”

"What are we doing?" Giles meant Wesley's arm around his waist, but his own hoarse voice and the stone in his hand made the question portentous.

Wesley, fortunately, seemed disinclined to philosophy. "Getting you back to bed, where you will remain for the next fifteen hours, while I handle some business and organize you a car to take to Sunnydale."

The assurance jarred him all over. It felt like the shock of finding level floor underfoot when one had prepared for a step down. "Oh." He fumbled briefly for the objections he surely should raise, but only managed another, softer "oh." He let Wesley guide him to the bathroom and then back to bed, where he obediently swallowed the different medicines for cough and fever and the virus before gratefully slipping under the covers.

***

He could hear the girls talking close by, but they sounded calm, and so he allowed himself, not quite to sleep again, but to put off reaching for his glasses. When someone sat down on the bed, though, he turned and squinted to bring her into focus.

“Hey, Giles,” Willow said. “Look who’s all wakey-wakey.” She grinned, though worry was in her voice and the firm touch of her fingers to his pulse. “Feeling a little less 1918?”

“Better,” he assured her. His voice sounded thin and strained in his own ears, but she must have understood because she smiled more broadly.

“Good! That’s good. D’you want some soup or anything? Dawn got chicken and stars.” She held out a glass of water, steadying the orange plastic straw with her free hand so he could take it into his mouth. “She says it cures everything.”

“All right,” he said, even though pasta stars were the last thing he wanted to eat, and was rewarded with another brilliant smile.

“You can have tea, too. Tea too!” Willow giggled. “I’ll get that soup, and you can nap some more.”

Buffy replaced Willow at the bedside, and offered him the water again. “Warm enough?” she asked.

“Buffy. I'm all right.”

“Yeah, no thanks to us.” She stared down at the bold African print of Joyce's bedspread. “I'm sorry. Not for this, I mean, I am, but. About everything. About Spike.” When she looked at him her face came sharply into focus, the eyes smudged with weariness or weeping, the skin uniformly pale without her usual lipstick. “About Spike... going. You're right. He's not safe. I get it now.” She planted her hands on her knees. “But I'm gonna need your help.”

“You'll have it. I promise you, Buffy.”

She almost-laughed, ducking her head again. “Will you have to leave if I tell you how grateful I am?” she asked.

He smiled and put a hand on her arm. “No.”

“I'm so sorry I didn't listen. You deserve better than being brushed off.” Buffy raised her eyes again. “In a very grown-up way I really do need some occasional, possibly long-distance, back-up Watchering.”

“I think that can be arranged.”

“I promise not to be clingy. Or kick you in the kidney.”

“My kidneys would appreciate that.”

Buffy nodded and stood up. “Thanks, Giles,” she said very quietly, smoothing the bedclothes. “Now, get some rest, okay?” She patted his knee through the covers. “You look like you've been trying to save the world or something.”

He laughed. It made him cough, and the room blurred as his eyes teared. He squinted and blinked, trying to find the glass of water, but his vision wouldn't clear.

Giles blinked again and woke up to the cold reality of Wesley's apartment, Wesley's hotel-neutral furnishings, Wesley's bed, and city sirens howling outside the window. From the dream, only the cough remained. The cough, and Buffy standing beside the bed.

“Wesley left you more of the pedialyte stuff.” She pointed to the nightstand. When he stared, she gave him the broad facile smile of Spike's robot. "You look like you've been trying to save the world or something,” she repeated.

"No." He tried to sit up, but he was too dizzy. His whole body prickled, hot and cold at once. “Was dreaming. You're...”

"Didn't you like it? I mean, that's what you want, isn't it? All the little Scoobies to take care of you for a change? Gather around and bring you a glass of water when you need it, instead of sucking your life out through your sternum? Or kicking you in the kidneys in the name of good exercise?” She shrugged. “God. There is no pleasing some people. I thought it was nice."

"That wasn't you. You... you can't..." He covered his knee with one hand.

"Maybe. Maybe I just haven't been.” She turned. “Now, get some rest, okay? Big day tomorrow.” She walked towards the door. For a horrifying moment he thought he saw the knob move under her hand before she vanished in a flicker of light.

***

Though he would not have believed it possible, Giles slept again, an uneasy feverish doze full of fitful dreams about lost dictionaries and faulty concordances and Buffy's inscrutable face. It was a relief when Wesley woke him with a steady touch to his shoulder, another set of pills, a fresh cup of tea, and the offer of the shower.

Giles still felt weak and shaky, but the medicine had taken enough effect that he could shower and shave without stopping to rest until he returned to the bedroom. Then it was all he could do not to crawl back under the covers and pull them over his aching head, but he went for his duffel instead. As he dressed, Giles tried to take comfort in the harassment he had drawn from the First, telling himself it was a confirmation that the stone would – could – remove Spike's trigger. The First wouldn’t bother to dissuade him unless he were trying something that could trouble it.

He tasted an echo of relief in the split second before his tired mind poked the obvious holes in that argument. The First’s reasons for anything were far more subtle. It might want him using the stone, to keep him distracted from hunting potentials, or from training them. The encouragement to stay in Los Angeles could have been a reverse-psychology ploy, and he'd fallen for it. Or a reverse-reverse psychology campaign to keep him there, drawing Wesley further into the First’s net and laying the city open to fire-demons and lawyers. Or… no. Giles paused again and gave himself a shake. That way lay madness. He had to return to Sunnydale, and that path was not markedly more dangerous than any other. Using the Prokaryote stone could only increase their knowledge, not lay them open to new attacks, as long as he could convince Buffy to convince Spike to cooperate.

If he could convince Buffy. That was the crux, indeed. How to reach beyond the barren facts of he's killing people and he has a soul that they had thrown at each other so often that the words had lost all meaning? Perhaps if he could get her alone, away from the incessant demands of the girls, away from Spike, they would talk better, but he had no assurance that it would be so.

A knock on the bedroom door startled him from his reverie and made him cough. “Ready?” Wesley called.

“All right,” Giles answered.

***

Wesley kept a remarkably neat car for a demon-hunter. The plush seats of the SUV looked showroom-new, though the exterior had enough dents and dust to draw no attention on even the ugly streets they traversed. Giles kept his eyes closed, glancing only briefly at the storefront grilles, the graffiti and litter. He told himself he was storing up strength for the drive, but he knew he was simply avoiding the thought that he'd rather be going to any of the burned-out apartments or bunker-like bars than back to Sunnydale.

“Giles?” Wesley asked.

He opened his eyes a slit, than fully when he saw how tightly Wesley gripped the gearshift. “What?”

“There... there's not a baby crying in the backseat. Is there?”

Heart sinking, Giles looked. “No.”

“Thought so.”

“I'm sorry,”

“Don't. You've more important things to worry about.” Wesley shifted in his seat. “I don't think that's even the right age of baby to stand in for how old... well. Never mind.”

After a minute, Giles closed his eyes again. He didn't open them until Wesley shut off the car and opened the door. With his duffel in hand, he followed Wesley down an overgrown slope to where a battered Honda sedan seemed to crouch in the shadow of a freeway overpass.

Wesley pulled a screwdriver out of his coat pocket. “My contact didn't have the keys, but if you...”

“I do know how to hotwire a car, Wesley.”

“Ah.” Wesley handed over the tool. “It's bespelled to draw little attention, but don't push things. And, a word of advice... don't use the trunk.”

“Wh- no. I'm quite sure I don't want to know.” Giles looked at the rear seat before he put his bag there, then fit himself in behind the steering wheel. The previous driver had been very short and inordinately fond of sunflower seeds in the shell. Giles coaxed the seat back, grimacing when the effort sharpened his headache and the persistent dull pain in his muscles. The engine responded better; it started on the first try.

“Good.” Wesley nodded and pulled out his mobile. “Pryce. Pay him.”

“Thank you,” Giles said, very low, when Wesley put the phone away.

Suddenly awkward, Wesley picked at the gasket on the door. “If there's anything else I can do, to help with the battle...”

“You have your own fight, I think.”

“It's not as significant.”

“They're all significant. That's the devil of it.” Giles fingered the gear shift and sighed, then coughed. It hurt. He leaned back, staring dully at the litter in the high grass, feeling Wesley's eyes on him. “I'd better be off.”

Wesley nodded and shut the door, then passed him a bottle of water through the open window. “You should probably lose the car as soon as you can once you're there.”

Giles nodded.

Wesley dug in his pocket and held out a flat foil-wrapped packet. “Take this tonight.”

It was a Lemsip blackcurrant sachet, battered and creased as if Wesley had been carrying it since he left England.

“It's the kind I...” Wesley shrugged. “Well.”

“Wesley, this...”

“Oh, god, do you hate blackcurrant?”

“No.” Giles' throat felt tight. “Thank you,” he said again, tucking the sachet carefully into his jacket pocket beside the stone.

Their eyes met briefly, then Wesley turned away. “Ring again,” he said abruptly, then stepped back and headed up the slope. In the rearview mirror Giles saw him pull out his mobile.

“Right,” Spike said, from the passenger seat. He wore goggles and gloves, just as when they fled Glory. “The radio work in this piece of junk? Or do we need to sing?” He smiled. “I can't wait to hear you sing, Rupert.”

***

Spike winked out soon after he left the car, and it was Joyce who trailed him through a patch of woods, past the tired little strip mall of dollar store-pizza joint-nail salon-Chinese takeaway, all the way down Hadley to Revello. “Is this really the safest option?” she asked. “All those girls, crammed into the house? Is Dawn even going to school, Rupert? When does she have time to do her homework? And Buffy – is she ever going back to college?”

He ignored her, focusing instead on the bite of his duffel strap into his shoulder, the faint shimmer that headache and lingering fever made at the edges of his vision, the effort of popping an antiviral through the foil backing of the blister sheet. Finally, just as he reached the house, she vanished as well. Giles allowed himself a sigh of relief as he climbed the steps.

"Giles!" Anya beamed at him from the lounge when he came through the front door. "You have a car."

"N-not... currently." He squinted in the shadowy foyer. The air was close and stale. He could hear the shower running upstairs, a hum of conversation from the kitchen and an argument in an upstairs bedroom.

"Oh." She sighed. "Well, can you help us carry things, then? It's amazing how these girls go through underwear. And sheets. And somebody's always menstruating."

"Carry... oh." He stepped out of the way as Willow came down the stairs with an overflowing laundry basket.

"Heavy," she panted, dropping the basket and plopping herself down on the bottom step. "Hey, Giles. Feeling manly and helpful?"

"I did tell you the sleeping bag was going to get heavy if you soaked it." Anya dragged another basket to the door.

"Well, the blood won't come out otherwise."

"It still won't come out. It looks like she had a miscarriage, not just..."

"Stop!" Giles pulled off his glasses to rub his eyes. "Where's Buffy?" He tried to remember when he'd last had a dose of paracetamol.

"At work," Anya said. "Why do Slayers menstruate?"

Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. "What?"

"It seems like it would make more sense for them to be sterile, or at least to have very light uterine linings, but these girls... bleed, bleed, bleed! It's like a vampire buffet!"

"Vampires aren't attracted to menstrual fluid. There are too many non-blood components. To desire it is usually considered deviant, as, as if a human were to eat chalk. Or, uh, bones.” He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “When does she get back?"

"Who?" Willow asked.

"Buffy."

"Lunchtime, I think?"

"I'll go meet her."

"Hey..."

He steeled himself, internally practicing I'm fine, just tired, just headache.

"Aren't you gonna leave your bag?"

"Ah. Yes.”

He dropped the duffel beside his bedroll in the corner of the dining room. It was as if he'd never left.

***

The Espresso Pump had changed hands almost as many times as the magic shop, but with less interior redecoration. Giles stopped inside, then found a bench in the sun and sipped his coffee between halfhearted bites of a tomato-mozzarella sandwich. Eventually he closed his eyes and turned his face up to the light, waiting without much confidence for the caffeine and calories to work their alchemy inside him.

"Hey," said Buffy.

"What?" He started, then blinked at her as she sat down at the other end of the bench with her own paper cup. She wore white slacks and a lime-green blouse that matched her high-heeled sandals. Twice dead and she was still cool and bright, California incarnate. Something in him relaxed ever so slightly at the sight. As long as Buffy could wear ridiculous shoes, the world would keep turning. "I was on my way to see you. Willow said you were at work?"

"Just until eleven. It's part time. Emphasis on 'part.'" She fished a pair of sunglasses out of her white shoulder bag. "New girl back at the house?"

Giles shook his head.

"Score for the creepy eyeless guys?"

"This was more of a research trip."

"Mm." She unwrapped a straw and eased it through the hole in the cover of her coffee. "So it doesn't stain my teeth," she explained. "Okay, laugh. Go ahead." She frowned when he didn't respond. "Or glare? Or make some face that doesn't come straight from a movie-of-the-week?" she added, very quietly.

He could smile, and they could drink their coffee together in the sun. The image was almost as seductive as the dream the night before. Giles laid his left hand on his knee, seeing the sunlight pick out the narrow white scars along the fingers. "I went looking for something that might cast some light on the problem of Spike," he said quietly.

"Giles. He. Has. A. Soul."

"I know." He curled his hand into a fist. "What's more important, for me, is that you trust him." Giles waited, hoping that would sink in. "But it bothers me that we, we don't know by what mechanism he gained a soul, or how the First was controlling him and circumventing the chip." I statements only, Willow had said, long ago.

"We don't know how any of us got souls. Why does it matter? Giles..."

"Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps my... past makes my judgment suspect in the matter of vampires with souls. So I'm asking you, Buffy, if you can understand my concern, and if you'll support making an effort to answer some questions. If you'll do that for me. Please."

The sunglasses made her face a blank, but her voice was gentle when she said, "What do you want to do?"

He drew the stone out of his pocket. "I want to use a mystical catalyst to explore the connection between Spike and the song, the trigger. This Prokaryote stone is the least traumatic method I've been able to learn of for doing that." He opened the box and held it out towards her. "There's an associated inscription that I've gotten transliterated, and the inscription on the stone itself - lean this way so it's in your shadow, it's easier to see in indirect..." The words died in his throat.

She had no shadow.

Giles pulled away, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"Oh, damn." The First tossed Buffy's long golden hair. "Knew I forgot something."

With a shaking hand Giles thrust the stone back into his pocket. It had known already, of course. No point in worrying about that.

"What, nothing more to tell me?"

He wrapped up his sandwich and shoved it after the stone, then bolted the last ounces of coffee. His stomach rose in protest, but he swallowed hard and lobbed the empty cup through the apparition towards the dustbin. He didn't wait to see if he had missed.

"Made ya mad. Uh-uh! Don't freak, Giles, you'll scare the nice civilians. Have a good talk with the other Buffy!" she called after him.

Giles made it to the far end of the block at a stiff-legged not-run before the catch in his throat turned into a series of hard coughs. He feigned interest in a window full of porcelain figurines and heavy semiprecious rocks while he caught his breath.

It had known already, he repeated silently, pressing one hand to the cool glass of the storefront before turning away. He was in Sunnydale; he had the stone; he would use it, if he could convince Buffy. That much, surely, was safe, or no more unsafe than anything else. He looked both ways, twice, before crossing the street. The new school loomed abruptly into view, a long sandstone bunker ugly enough to make its predecessor seem graceful. But the sealed Hellmouth still lay beneath. It was their own ground, his and Buffy's. They had fought each other here before, weathered the worst of their mutual betrayals. Here, if nowhere else, they would understand each other.

Giles’s steps slowed as he waited for a taunting voice. None came. The faint hum of traffic and the tck-tck-tck of a rotating sprinkler pressed heavily on his ears. Buffy, he thought, kicking a stone along the pavement simply to break the silence. Not the receptive specter on the bench, not the solicitous illusion in his dream, yet not the cold, taunting figure in Wesley's bathroom. Buffy, her infuriating, miraculous self. What could he possibly say to make her understand his unease with Spike?

He stopped altogether. “No.” There was the fallacy, the trick, the snare. The illusions had fed his sense of ill-use and played on his feverish need for succor, turning his attention inward and suggesting that his weakness would somehow sway Buffy. It might be true, but all depended on what she felt, what she needed. What did Buffy need? That was the question the First's latest machinations obscured.

Don't be sorry, she'd told him, long ago. Be Giles. That was what she needed, had always needed, from him in the crucible of an apocalypse. Giles bearer of knowledge, Giles speaker of hard truth. Giles, fuddy-duddy and familiar, solid at her back. Not begging for her attention, not dithering about his own potential unreliability. They could do this, just as they had fifty times before. He would state the case of history, of prudence, of cold tradition, and Buffy would fight him, and out of the conflict there would come some unexpected solution. If he couldn't convince her to use the stone, she would convince him of why it was unnecessary. One way or another, by day's end he would understand Spike's presence in the house, or Spike would be gone.

He coughed and straightened up, casting his mind back to safer times, simpler crises, himself in tweed and her in short skirts and candy-floss lipstick. Be Giles. Another avenue of hysterical second-guessing spread out before him, but he turned away from it and crossed the street with even paces. No more unsafe than anything else, he repeated silently.

“Good luck, England,” Jenny said in his ear. “Just do your best. That's what matters. Well, that and vengeance.”

“No.” Giles didn't look at her. “Curiously, what matters is saving the world.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and went forward onto the Hellmouth.

Tags: fic, fic:gen