CRADLE
Disclaimer, etc. as on first chapter.
A/N: Finally, I bring you Chapter 8. Many thanks to all those who reviewed "Cold Trust" (nice distraction, huh?) and made the helpful suggestions as to how to proceed with this chapter. I apologise for the wait, but everything just sorta stopped for a while. Anyhoo, this chapter sees a little more of Spike in the lead up to his return to Sunnydale - and I promise, it probably won't be what you're expecting - some minor Scoobie tension between Xander and Buffy (and Dawn), and, finally, Anya gets a look in… She's not the easiest character to write, by the way, so, as usual, apologies for anything out of character.
Without further ado, enjoy!
Cradle
Chapter Eight
Xander wandered sleepily down Buffy's staircase several hours later, having left Willow sound asleep in her room. He rubbed the grogginess out of his eyes and made his way towards the kitchen, yawning. He emerged a few minutes later carrying two mugs of coffee, one for himself, and one for Willow if she ever woke up, just as Dawn came down to find some breakfast. They both stopped in their tracks when they looked over to see the couch, where Buffy was curled up next to Giles, both dead to the world.
Xander exchanged a glance with the brunette, then looked back. "Did we… miss something?"
"I'm not sure," she said, "but if it is what I'm hoping it's not, I'm going to need therapy for life…" Dawn was, of course, kidding; Xander, however, seemed to have gotten the wrong end of the stick.
At this point, Buffy woke up, rearing her head from Giles' shoulder, which in turn woke him up as well. She glanced across at her sister and her friend and, apparently oblivious to their "aren't-you-going-to-explain?" looks, simply said, "Morning."
Giles, who spent a large proportion of his life feeling embarrassed anyway, smiled sheepishly. "I… I think I'll… let Buffy explain. Excuse me." With that, he got up and headed past them upstairs.
"Well?" prodded Xander.
Buffy yawned and looked around. "What time is it?" Her question was answered by the chiming of the lounge clock, which indicated it was ten o'clock. "Dammit! I'm late for work! Why didn't someone wake me up?"
"Well, Buff, we would have," said Xander, "if we'd known you were down here snuggling with Giles."
She sighed and rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "I wasn't snuggling. I came down here last night… this morning… I was upset and I forgot he was on the couch. We ended up having a long, healthy talk, and I fell asleep, that's all. If you'd get your mind out of the gutter for a few seconds and think about it, it really isn't that hard to figure it out." The uncomfortable air between them still hadn't shifted, and since they'd both only just woken up, tensions were rife. Dawn had, by this point, sensibly gone into the kitchen and left them to it.
"Sorry, Buffy, but what did you expect me to think?"
"Oh my God, Xander! Is your opinion of me really that low? It's Giles."
The argument was cut short by the appearance of Willow at the top of the stairs. "Wh-what's goin' on?"
"Nothing, Will," they said, simultaneously, and glared at each other. Buffy pushed past him and headed towards her room, giving Willow a pleasant smile that implied she had no qualms with her. She met Giles halfway as he re-emerged from the bathroom.
"Buffy? I thought you had to go to work."
"I'm gonna call in sick. I need to think over some things."
"Yes. Of course." He stroked her hair cautiously. "If you need to talk…"
"I will do so at a sensible hour." They both smiled. "Thanks for listening. And thanks for not being too mad at me."
"It's not you I'm angry with," he said, Spike's imminent demise implied in his words. Buffy was too exhausted to question him on that, so she simply nodded and vanished into her room. Giles ignored Xander as he headed to the kitchen, having heard the entire argument from the bathroom, and Willow watched the entire situation with interest. Her over-heightened senses detected a lot of emotions colliding in the Summers' house, most of them coming from Buffy and Xander. Buffy, she could sense, was confused and hurting; Xander was angry, and frustrated because some things were still beyond his comprehension; Giles was concerned, and she could detect a sudden, frightening hatred of someone, but it wasn't clear who; Dawn was hurting, too, and deeply worried about Spike – she wasn't making any effort to conceal this fact, either.
What Willow couldn't detect, however, was precisely how she felt. After Tara's death came pain, which was quickly replaced by rage… after the rage came remorse, and horror what she'd nearly done to her friends – in fact, to the world in general. Then came the pain again, fresh with the memory of Tara's limp and bleeding body in her arms, and then… nothing. Just complete numbness. Wilow wasn't sure whether this should be a good thing or not. It was good that she wasn't feeling the pain any more – even though, despite this, she still ended up wracked with sobs on a regular basis – but it wasn't so good that she never seemed to feel particularly happy. The closest she'd come to being happy again had been during the meal the previous night. And, typically, that all seemed to be a distant memory as she caught the end of the argument between her two best friends.
Xander cleared his throat and broke through her troubled thoughts, as he indicated the two mugs of coffee he was still holding. "You coming down for breakfast, or shall I bring it to you?"
Without a word, she came downstairs, took one of the mugs from him, and followed him into the kitchen. Giles was making himself a full English breakfast, as best he could with the available supplies, and Dawn was finishing her cereal. She'd also heard the argument, and glared contemptuously at Xander from across the island.
"You can be such an idiot sometimes…"
Losing his temper with Dawn in front of Willow wasn't an option, and, he thought, he wasn't really in the mood to be getting into a slanging match with a teenager. He aimed for a humorous retort instead. "You're not too old to put across my knees, young Dawny."
"Shut up."
Oh, so it was going to be one of those arguments, was it? Well, fine, Xander could be immature, too. "You shut up…"
"Oh, for goodness' sake!" cut in Giles. "Stop it, the pair of you." They both looked sheepish. "Now, I appreciate that everyone has things to work through right now, but I will not tolerate you all acting like children. If you're going to argue, please do so where I can't hear it." Turning to Willow and adopting a softer tone, he said, "Willow, how would you like to go for a drive today?"
"With you?"
"Yes. I thought perhaps we might have a little chat." Getting her away from all the negative energy currently bouncing around the house would be a bonus, too.
She looked to Xander for confirmation; he nodded, relieved that someone else was taking over for a while. He needed a break. "That'd be n-nice…"
Silence descended on the kitchen. Everyone ate their breakfast in their own little self-enclosed bubble, where they wouldn't have to cooperate with anyone else.
Africa, four days later…
Coping with the soul, while not exactly a day at the fair, had certainly become easier as time had gone on. The involuntary twitching had stopped, for one thing, and the urge to scream had diminished. Now, Spike even had time to think about other things than his previous kills. These other things included the one thing he'd come all the way to Africa to get away from – the Slayer.
The shaman had promised to send him back to Sunnydale. When he'd asked, he hadn't really thought about it; it just seemed like the right thing to do. He hadn't thought as far as how everyone might react to his having a soul. He also hadn't remembered that Xander was probably set to kill him, Dawn would never speak to him again for leaving without saying goodbye, Clem had probably left all sorts of things he didn't even want to contemplate lying around his crypt, and Buffy, of course, hated him. So what else is new? he thought.
If that was so, then, why did he want to go back? The easy option would have been to run away and stay away and make everyone's lives easier. Just take himself and his soul out of their lives. And this would have been a fantastic, wonderful plan… if not for the fact that if he didn't see Buffy again, he'd go out of his mind. He could live with her hating him; he just needed to see her, to keep an eye on her. He also desperately needed to apologise, for what it was worth.
And if he was going to be honest with himself, there was also the smallest, tiniest hope that she might not hate him after all. Perhaps they could work it all out. One thing was for certain – he'd coped two weeks with a new soul and all the perks that came with it, and it hadn't been pretty. He wasn't going to kid himself over this - if he was going to last more than a month without staking himself, he needed someone to help him through it. All of the people he knew and cared about (although that was an overstatement where some of them were involved) lived in Sunnydale, and one of them was bound to help him. Dawn, maybe, or Willow. He needed something as a constant to grab onto, just one thing that stayed the same, an anchor in his sea of impending brooding; that anchor, he knew, could only truly be Buffy, even if only from afar.
Just hold out two more days… he told himself. Just two more days, and Old Lurky in there'll send you back… At this stage, though, the contemplation of even one more day of the Hell he was going through seemed too much. Forty-eight hours seemed a century in his current state. But then again, he'd technically waited a century for Buffy already, even though he hadn't known it at the time… one more would be piece of the proverbial cake…
At which point, as if to prove himself wrong, his soul dredged up a memory of one of his particularly gruesome kills, one that Dru had made him torture. The first century, it was him who'd done the torturing. This time, he was on the receiving end…
Sunnydale…
Giles pulled up outside the familiar building with a sudden dread, hesitating slightly before he cut the car's engine. He was beginning to feel as though he'd done nothing since his return but talk to people – first Buffy, in varying degrees of detail and emotion, then Willow, who had only been slightly forthcoming about how she was doing, and now… here he was again, about to engage in yet another long and arduous conversation. This one promised to be the most difficult yet.
He stepped out of the car and contemplated the task ahead. It needed to be done, this much he knew; but he just wished someone else could be the Grown-Up for once. While it was true that he felt some small – no, make that immense – pride that they all looked up to him like the father of their strange family, he more than often wished that he'd never let himself become so emotionally involved.
A Watcher's devotion to his Slayer transcended any other kind of bond. It was beyond friendship or love; rather it was a necessity built on blind trust and the ever-important sacred duty. But the Council had been right all along – what Giles had with Buffy was a father's love for a daughter, and it had spread out to encompass her sister, all of her friends, and even, all that time ago, her mother. They were all in it together, and always had been. He'd deserted them, and now he had to pick up the pieces.
Taking a deep breath, he raised a hand, and knocked on the door…
Anya was curled up in an armchair, nursing a large, half-empty tub of ice-cream while she watched television. The talk-show was utterly failing to interest her, and her Double-Choc Delight was slowly starting to melt. It vaguely occurred to her that she hadn't left the apartment for several days, but at least it still had all four of its walls and a ceiling.
It was probably silly to still be brooding over the Magic Box. But she'd cried all her tears for Xander, and she'd managed to hurt him, albeit not in the way she'd anticipated. Her magic shop was all she had left, and even that was gone. In all honesty, she had a perfectly legitimate reason to still be brooding.
Her attention was drawn back to the television again. The sardonic and sarcastic host was introducing the next 'guests' – even Anya could tell that the whole thing was a set up – as they entered the garish set. "So," announced the host, gleefully, addressing a woman, "you say your fiancé dumped you at the altar…?"
Anya's viewing was interrupted by the sound of the front door being knocked. She placed the now-liquid ice-cream on a nearby coffee table, hastily wiped her eyes, and got up. She opened the door with a pre-prepared speech that she'd composed for any caller that was stupid enough to disturb her.
"I'm only opening this door out of common courtesy. I do not want to buy anything, or sample anything, or discuss insurance, and-"
"Anya…"
She stopped in her tirade and actually looked at the person on the other side of the threshold. Her eyes widened excitedly. "Giles?!" Flinging both arms around his neck, she hung on tight, and realised she hadn't seen him for at least two weeks. "Come in!" She practically dragged him into the apartment, and shut the door firmly behind them both, then began a hasty and rushed attempt at clearing up the mess she'd been living in – clothes strewn about, some day-old take-out containers, and a pile of Xander's things that she'd not yet had the courage to destroy. "You'll have to excuse the mess," she said, indicating a cleared patch of the sofa. "I've been too busy being miserable to be tidy."
Anyone who didn't know Anya would have interpreted her matter-of-fact frankness as bitterness, but Giles could easily detect the underlying pain to her words. "I… um… I don't mind, Anya."
She stopped tidying and switched off the television, hovering expectantly for several seconds, then apparently remembered her manners. "Would you like some ice-cream?"
Giles peered into the proffered carton and winced at the slop inside it, then put on a polite expression. "Uh… n-no, thank you." He gestured for her to sit down; she did so, and stared at him curiously, waiting for him to initiate the conversation. When he didn't, she said:
"It's very nice to see you."
"Yes. Ditto."
"I've missed you," she admitted, quietly.
"Giles smiled. "I missed you, too." Then, suddenly embarrassed, especially when he saw the radiant smile he got in return for his comment, he back-tracked. "You, and everyone. All of you."
"Oh." She seemed mildly disappointed. "Everyone…"
He got the distinct impression she'd been by herself for a while. "Anya, when was the last time you saw anyone?"
She thought; this in itself indicated it must have been a fair time. "I saw everyone after Willow nearly ended the world." Again with the frankness. Maybe she was bitter, after all.
"And not since?"
"No." She wasn't going to mention how she'd spotted them in the restaurant. It almost didn't matter any more.
Giles sighed. It was now or never. "It's not healthy for you to stay cooped up in here, Anya. I know you're still hurting from the wedding. I'm so very sorry I couldn't be there for you – all of you… From what I've heard, you could all have used my help."
"I doubt it," she said, sighing, unknowingly echoing what Buffy had said a few days ago. "I mean, could you have prevented Warren from shooting Buffy and Tara? Or stopped Dawn from stealing things from the Magic Box? Or stopped Xander Harris-" (her contempt was obvious as she said his name) "-from leaving me at my wedding?"
"No. I probably couldn't have. But I could have been there afterwards."
"You came when you were needed," she told him. "Burst in like my knight in shining armour." There was an uncomfortable pause, then she changed the subject. "How is everyone?"
"As well as is to be expected." Another pause. "Buffy has told me everything that's happened."
Anya shifted a little nervously where she sat. "So… so you know about her and Spike?"
Giles examined the suddenly very interesting carpet. "Y-yes. Needless to say, I don't approve."
"Have you seen them together?"
He hesitated, about to tell her he hadn't, when he realised that she didn't know. "You haven't heard." Her expression indicated he was right. "Spike. He's… 'missing in action', I suppose. No-one's seen him since a few days after…" He trailed off. His original plan had been to wait for her to tell him about her liaison with the vampire, but it seemed it would come sooner than he'd expected.
"After what…?"
He hesitated. "I know what happened between you and him, Anya."
Her face fell, as her expression mimicked exactly that of a child who'd disappointed her father and knew she was going to be punished. "I…"
He stopped her. "Don't apologise. Believe it or not, I think I understand why you did it."
"I'm glad you do," she said, evidently trying not to break down as memories of wanting vengeance against Xander, and of what he'd done, came flooding back to her. "Because I certainly don't."
"Well, it doesn't matter," he said reassuringly, although he didn't believe it himself.
Anya was attempting to work out how he could possibly have found out. "Did you see the footage? Did someone actually tape it?"
"No… no," he said, calming her down. "Buffy told me…"
This, apparently, was much worse. "Oh, so Buffy told you. Queen Buffy. The most popular girl in the world." There was no hiding the fact that she was bitter over this.
"Anya-"
"No, I understand, Giles. Everybody loves Buffy. Spike loves Buffy, you love Buffy, even Xander loves Buffy. And, just to counterbalance all the love, everybody hates Anya."
"Nobody hates you. I know it might seem like it sometimes, but believe me, none of us hate you. It's just… you have to understand – they've all been through a lot, just like you have. Excluding yourself from the group isn't going to help. If you've felt left out, it's not been done on purpose, but if you alienate yourself completely, it'll only make matters worse."
"I might as well not be around." Her original plan went out of the window. Seeing them all eating together had cut deeper than any knife wound. "You all looked perfectly happy without me the other day, eating in that restaurant."
Realising that she must have passed them and noticed, Giles' face looked the very picture of guilt. "Oh, Anya…" He placed a hand over hers. "I'm sorry… It was only supposed to be Buffy and Dawn with me to begin with, because they'd run out of food, but Willow and Xander ended up coming along as well. I promise you, we didn't intentionally exclude you." She still looked hurt, but seemed to accept his excuse. "Would my taking you to dinner make up for it?"
She smiled. "I suppose so."
Giles smiled back. This was progress. "Anya, why don't you come back to the house with me. We all appreciate you much more than you realise. I think you might be a calming element – Buffy and Xander keep fighting, and while you still have your own battles with him, I think you need to at least try and work through them. And Willow wants to apologise to you."
"She does?"
"She does." He gave her a serious look. "Please, Anya. I only ask because I want what's best for you."
Heaving a sigh that was part-relieved and part-nervous, she nodded. "All right. But only because you asked me to."
Within ten minutes, the two of them had finished tidying up, so that she'd at least come back to a clean apartment, and were heading back towards Buffy's house. Anya stared out of the window in silence for the entire short journey, thinking over all that Giles had said. Perhaps she'd misjudged them after all. Maybe it was partially her own fault for being so antisocial. The restaurant incident did sound like an honest mistake on everyone's part.
Moreover, she really did have to try and make up with Xander. He'd received his dose of vengeance, and it had hurt him as much as he'd hurt her. Anya also wanted to apologise to Buffy – she'd not known about the Slayer's relationship with Spike, of course, but now, she felt terrible. She'd never intended to hurt Buffy… just like she knew Willow had never intended to hurt her, either.
Now she'd thought it all over rationally, everything made a whole lot more sense… she was ready to see everyone again, in fact, she was eager to do so. Anya honestly hadn't realised how much she'd missed all of her friends during her bout of voluntary solitude. She felt, suddenly, as though everything would be all right again. It would take time, of course, but it would all be fine…
To be continued…
Chapter 9 will be here a lot sooner than this was. I already know what's going down in that one… B/S-ers, start your engines!! Oh, and reviews would be nice, too ;)
