Beholder

Chapter 2

The phone rang, interrupting Giles’s enjoyment of his classic Bread album. Snarling, he grabbed it off the receiver, hoping it hadn’t awakened Buffy. God knows, she got little enough actual rest these days. He’d hoped she might start feeling better, but he knew that her sleep was plagued with ms ams and nightmares over which he had no control.

“Who is it?” he asked brusquely, his habitual manners lacking.

“Giles, what the hell is going on?” roared Angel’s angry voice. “I just got home to a message from Buffy, something about wishing she could see me one last time…”

Giles dropped thone one with a curse and raced to Buffy’s room. It was empty, as was the bath. He clattered downstairs, glaring hastily about the room. Empty. The kitchen was empty as well. He turned towards the front, then tried the backdoor, on a whim. It was unlocked. He stepped outside.

Buffy sat propped against the post, a knife…Faith’s knife laying next to her. An ever-widening circle of blood surrounded her and Giles felt his heart leap into his throat. He ripped his shirt from his body, tearing it hastily into strips as he lunged for his fallen, oh so fallen, Slayer. Cursing ineffectually, he tied the strips tightly round the deep gashes on Buffy’s wrists, then lifted her tiny, too-light body into his arms. He carried her into the house and laid her on the couch, then reached fearfully for her neck to check her pulse. For a moment, he thought he’d been too late, but then, under his fingers he felt the faint pulse of life beating in her throat.

He reached for the phone, dialing 911 quickly, then waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He hovered over Buffy as they started an IV, then scribbled a hasty note to her friends before climbing into his car to follow the ambulance to hospital.

Buffy’s condition, though drained, was not serious once she’d received a transfusion. It was only after Xander, Willow and Anya arrived that G rem remembered that Angel’s phone call had begun the chain of events. What must the vampire be thinking there in LA?

*

“I still don’t see why you have to go to Sunnydale *now,*” Cordy whined. “It’s not as if I’ve had any visions about Buffy since last mon…” she shut up hastily, hoping that Angel hadn’t caught that last part.

“I have to go to Sunnydale to find out…wait…what did you just say?” He turned toward her abruptly and Cordelia was reminded that whether Angelus was in control or not, Angel was still a big, bad, bloodsucking vampire.

“I, um, I had a vision of her a while back.”

“When?” he bit out tersely, coming to stand directly before her.

“About a month…the day I got my new clothes from the Nordstrom shoot!” Her voice lifted with excitement at her remembered enjoyment of that day.

“And you didn’t tell me because?” his voice was getting growlier, she noticed apprehensively.

“Well, my clothes came and then I got that other vision and my head hurt and besides it’s not as if she didn’t get up after he hit her…” Cordy’s voice trailed off into the ominous silence.

Angel grabbed her by the shoulders and growled into her face, “Before who hit her? Who hit Buffy?”

“Um, ouch, Angel, you’re hurting me. The demon. The slimy one with the claws and the scales. But he didn’t kill her…she got up!”

Angel cursed under his unneeded breath and released his seer, stalking into the night without another word.

*

Willow, Xander, Giles and Anya sat in the waiting room at the ER. Buffy was stable, they knhat hat much, but her suicide attempt had drawn the psychiatric attending down for a consult, which was still going on. At last, she stepped from the room and motioned to Giles.

“Are you related to Ms. Summers?” she asked.

“I am her guardian, or I was,” he answered.

“You live with her?”

“Yes, along with her friend Willow, who rooms in the house, as well,” he added, trying to make the arrangement sound more normal and less…sordid.

“Fine,” she nodded approvingly. “Ms. Summers has notlt wlt with her blindness at all, and I believe this attempt was born out of despair, rather than a true desire to do harm to herself. I’m keeping her here for observation for a couple of days, but I will release her into your care, provided you think you can do a better job of it than you have been.”

“I…we will all work together to help Buffy however we may.”

She nodded brusquely, jotting indecipherable notes on her tablet.

“May I, that is, is it possible to see her? Just for a moment?”

“Provided you don’t upset her. I have her on light sedation right now, but she’s awake and alert. No more than 10 minutes.”

Giles nodded and stepped into the room. After the bustle of the hallway, the private room was quiet and oddly peaceful. Buffy lay silently in the bed, no expression on her face. Her bloodstained pajamas had been removed, and the hospital gown emphasized the pale, drawn features of her too-thin face. Her eyes were open and Giles realized he’d not seen them since she’d left hospital the last time. She’d hidden behind her dark gla for for nearly a month.

“You can stop hovering, Giles,” she said calmly. “I’m sure there’s a chair by the bed.”

“How did you…”

“Know it was you? I know your scent,” she said. “Xander smells like Dial and Anya’s perfume. Willow smells like strawberry shampoo and sage and sometimes other herbs depending on what spells she’s been working on. You smell like tea and cream in the morning and like scotch after dinner, all mixed with wool and that aftershave you like so much.”

“Buffy,” he said, drawing the chair near to her bed and resting one hand lightly on hers. “This isn’t the answer. I know you’ve been depressed lately, but this isn’t the answer.”

“Isn’t it, Giles? I don’t think you understood the question. I’ve waited, hoped that somehow, something might improve, but it’s not and it’s not going to. This is as well as I’m going to get and it’s not enough, Giles! How can I protect them, how can I keep them safe? How many vampires have killed people since I went blind, Giles? Are you even keeping track? I’m useless like this. A blind Slayer. Youuld uld have slit my throat yourself, once you knew for sure. I’m worthless. I can’t protect anyone this way. The world can’t afford to have a blind Slayer. If I die, though, then a new one will be Called and she *can* protect them. It’s the only way, Giles.”

Buffy twisted her hands within the soft restraints that held them in place. Giles knew that she could snap those restraints if she wished, snap them with the strength that coiled within her…the strength that, god help her, she wanted to gift to another.

“Buffy, dear girl,” he whispered. “I thought you were giving up, giving in. I had no idea that you thought…Buffy, the Slayers’ line no longer passes through you. If it did, another would have been called when you died on the tower. The line passes through Faith now, don’t you understand? Your death would have been for nothing, Buffy.”

Buffy jerked her head to stare at him with her sightless eyes. “But…Faith is in prison, Giles! She’s not due to be paroled for years and years! What am I supposed to do till then? I can’t see, I can’t hunt, how can I protect them?”

“You can’t worry about that right now, Buffy, please. Just get well, get strong. We need you. We will always need you.” He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Rest now, I must leave. We’ll talk more after you come home.”

She listened as his footsteps moved out of the room and were lost to her in the noise from the hallway. Tears trickled from her useless eyes until she fell into a uneasy slumber.

*

Angel pulled his car into Buffy’s driveway with a sharp jerk, then raced to the front door. No one answered the bell, no one responded to his pounding fist. Cursing, he stalked to the back, but was nearly knocked off his feet by the scent that greeted him when he rounded the corner.

Blood. Her blood. The scent was overwhelming, powerful, and fresh. Angel ran for the steps and stopped in horror. Faith’s knife lay on the porch. It glistened evilly in the moonlight and it sang to him of Buffy’s blood, blood he’d tasted, glutted on, and never forgotten. A pool of it lay, barely disturbed and only hours old, in a nearly perfect circle on the porch. Someone had cut her, cut her deep, and from her message, he feared that she was that someone. Viciously suppressing the urge to reach his hand down and grab the knife, to taste her blood, dried but still irresistible, from its evil blade, Angel strode inside, just as the front door opened, spilling Xander (Angel snarled), Willow, Anya and Giles into the stillness of the Summers’ home.

“Dead boy,” Xander sneered. “Great, nothing else could possibly go wrong now.”

Angel stalked to the young man and grabbed him by the throat. “Where is Buffy?” he snarled.

“Angel, put Xander down at once,” Giles ordered. “Buffy is fine. Well, perhaps not fine, but she’s in no danger. She’s in hospital…for observation. They plan to send her home within a few days. She’s as well as can be expected and I’m quite certain she would not be pleased if you killed Xander in her living room.”

Angel dropped Xander with a snarl and paced after Giles, who was walking to the kitchen. “Scotch?” he asked as he pulled a bottle from the cabinet.

“Giles, what the hell is going on? I got this cryptic message from Buffy, her blood is practically covering the back porch, and now you say she’s in the hospital for observation? What happened?”

Giles looked at the dark vampire. After Buffy had come home, he’d suggested calling Angel, but she had forbidden any of them to contact him. She didn’t want his pity, Giles knew, and he respected her for her decision. He knew how much it had cost her, how much she wanted her ex-lover with her. He couldn’t go against her wishes now, not if they were to work together.

“Buffy was…hurt in a fight with a demon approximately one month ago. She felt that her capabilities as Slayer were sufficiently compromised that she should pass the power on to the next potential in training. She attempted to do so tonight.”

“Pass on the…Jesus, Giles, there’s only one way to do that, she tried…”

“To kill herself, yes, that’s correct, Angel.” Giles tossed back the scotch in the glass and poured himself another. “I don’t believe she’ll attempt to do so again, however. I pointed out to her that the line no longer passes through her, hasn’t in fact, since Kendra was Called. Faith is the head of the line now, and only Faith’s death can trigger a new Chosen One.”

“Faith is redeeming herself, Giles,” Angel insisted. “I know you don’t believe me, but she is!”

“Whatever the situation with Faith is,” Giles said, “Buffy is no longer involved in the line of Slayers. She is outside of it, an anomaly. I believe that now that she understands that, she will attempt no further harm to herself.”

“But Giles, what the hell is wrong with her that she would do that anyway?”

Giles flinched from Angel’s brooding regard. This was tricky. “I believe that for reasons known only to her, Buffy simply felt she could not go on any longer, Angel. You weren’t here last year when we discovered that she’d been pulled back not from a hell dimension, as Willow believed, but from heaven itself. She was quite…traumatized by the entire experience. She hasn’t been quite herself since then.”

“If you’re talking about her fucking Spike, Giles, you don’t need to protect her. My bastard offspring regaled me in glorious detail about his…conquest of my .”
.”

“Spike? Oh, that was over months ago, Angel. No one has seen him since spring.”

“Regardless, Angel, I apologize for worrying you when you rang. Buffy will be fine. You can return to Los Angeles now if you wish.”

“I don’t wish, Giles. I’ve stayed away for Buffy’s good, but this mess convinces me that I was wrong, dead wrong about that. When we met after she…came back, she was so…distant, I thought she didn’t wa…need me, but she sure needs something. The Buffy I knew would never have considered suicide. She kept me from killing myself when The First was tormenting me, she told me that “strong is fighting.” I don’t know what happened to her, but I’m going to find out.”

“I’ll be at the hospital tomorrow night. Telem tem to expect me. I *will* see Buffy.” Angel turned in a swirl of black leather and stormed from the house.

*