Part 2
by L. Inman
These days Rupert went to sleep with his mother singing the old lullabies in his ears. He ignored her steadily night after night, and after a while it became eerily easy to feel nothing. Easy until, of course, the First grew bored with that and came to him as someone else, as it surely would any time now.
"Giles! You're not listening," Buffy said.
Rupert tossed himself over, so that he could not see the sudden vision of Buffy in his hotel room, but it did no good; Buffy instantly reappeared on the other side of the rickety bed.
"Are you getting bored with me?" Buffy inquired, cocking her head to one side.
"Q.E.D.," Rupert said, and turned over again.
Rupert had not quite managed to get used to the First as Buffy, but he had, after some trouble, managed to submerge the physical recoil.
He was, however, unfortunately out of scotch.
"Too bad you're out of scotch," Buffy said, sitting in her phantom way on the foot of the bed. "Guess you're stuck with me tonight."
Rupert bit his tongue before he could say that he wasn't tired of her. He wasn't tired of Buffy, but Buffy wasn't here.
And maybe he really was perhaps the littlest bit tired of Buffy.
He suspected the First knew it. But if so, it was waiting till a more opportune time to play that card.
If Rupert went to sleep with his mother's lullabies, he woke up next to Jenny Calendar, dead and glassy-eyed, just as Angelus had arranged her. The first time that happened Rupert had recoiled so hard he fell out of the bed and hit the floor with a reverberating flump, an animal cry racking his throat. He had spent the next ten minutes under a cold shower, not even fully undressed, face under the spray, weeping hoarsely; Jenny wandering around the bathroom on the other side of the shower curtain, asking Rupert what was wrong.
Score a touchdown for the First, plus the two-point conversion and a recovered fumble on the kickoff.
After that first morning, however, Rupert collected his faculties and set himself to assume a blasé demeanor even if he had it not. He woke up next to Jenny every morning and gave her the look you would give a drying worm on the sidewalk. The First appeared to be endlessly amused by this look: Rupert found that out when one morning Jenny suddenly became Buffy in her yummy sushi pajamas, hugging her knees in the bed as he got out of it, all soft golden skin and childlike eyes. She said, "You know who you look like when you make that I'm-strong-dammit face?"
Rupert did not deign to ask who.
"Wesley." And Buffy fell over in a fit of giggles on the bed.
Rupert gave her a withering look and went to get his shower. He had a meeting with another girl's parents in an hour.
Half the world away, Elisabeth woke to the sound of her own voice, singing cheerfully somewhere in the flat. If the First could, it'd be doing house chores for even better effect; Lord knew the flat needed it—Elisabeth had somehow let herself get behind with the housekeeping. "I'm not a morning person," Elisabeth shouted hoarsely from the heap of covers she hid under nightly. If her doppelganger thought that constituted being caught out in a mischaracterization, it gave no sign; the singing merely stopped, and for a few hours Elisabeth had respite.
Then it began again.
Particularly wearing were the fresh images of girls he failed to save, repeated for him on a seemingly endless loop for the first few hours after each time he came upon the scene of carnage or the funeral (he was growing morbidly familiar with customs of grieving the world over). One particularly trying day ended with Rupert drinking himself to sleep in his hotel room, Quentin Travers keeping him company in the worn armchair next the bed. "Bad business, this, Giles," he said.
"Yes," Rupert said on a swig direct from the bottle, "bad business indeed. Have I ever told you what a pernicious thoroughgoing rotten bastard you are?"
"No," Quentin said, "but I knew it anyway. You've taken up being honest, I see. You'll come to a bad end that way." And he chuckled.
"How's the thesis coming?" Elisabeth's shade asked her kindly.
"It's not," Elisabeth said, with her forehead in her hand, eyes immobile on the book. "Duh."
The not-Elisabeth sighed. "Guess that's what comes of trying to make academic hay out of your own life."
"I'd like to know what else you make it out of," Elisabeth said tightly.
"Oh, I don't know. Whatever real academics use. I wouldn't know."
"You really are putting a lot of effort into this thing," Angel said, panthering his way across the hotel room (another room, another bed, another hotel, just like the last). "I mean, the whole nine yards, all for the Gipper. —I ever tell you I met Knute Rockne? Nice guy."
Rupert lay faceup on the bed, the seraphic look on his face not even achieved with scotch. "Why don't you try being my favorite Watchers for a while?" he said, his voice equally seraphic.
Angel waved a hand. "That's too easy. Jeez, give me some credit for creativity."
"I could never fail to do that," Rupert said. Somewhere within himself he thought vaguely that it was probably a bad sign that he felt so relieved to be talking back. It no longer seemed to matter that it wasn't really Angel, or Buffy, or Quentin speaking to him: he could say all sorts of things he'd wanted to say to their real counterparts, and no one would ever know. Except the First, who was the world's worst gossip.
Angel came around to the side of the bed and looked down at him affectionately. "You always were a tough nut to crack. You've got such style. You know my favorite part of your style?"
"What?" Rupert's eyes remained on the ceiling. He had always known he'd come back here eventually: the veritable lover's dance between himself and Angel, uninterrupted by imminent apocalypse or rescue by Xander Harris, carried to the fine exquisite ecstasy of torturer and tortured. He went with it.
"Your moral grandeur." Angel savored the words with a thin smile. "It doesn't come from you, you see: it comes through you. Can't touch it that way. Can't take it away if you refuse to have it."
It was a great compliment. Rupert drew it in like sweet breath; then next moment something had waked him and he sat up hot with fright or shame, he didn't know which. He got off the bed and walked straight through Angel to the sink, where he turned on the cold tap and splashed his face again and again.
He turned around, face dripping, to see Angel smiling at him. Angel winked. "Almost had ya," he said, and disappeared.
Rupert turned back to the sink and began to wash his hands. He kept it up for ten straight minutes.
Elisabeth took to spending whatever time she could in the company of other people. But more often than not her bid for normalcy backfired: her friends and colleagues didn't quite know what to make of her pale distraction, or how to interpret the chase of disconnected emotions across her face, as if she were having a conversation with no one. "You're becoming a time-honored Oxford phenomenon," someone told her kindly over a glass of sherry, "an Eccentric."
Elisabeth's other self, standing behind her friend's shoulder, gave a great snort.
She had hovered, like a paralyzed kid on the high dive, on the verge of telling Brian what was happening. But she always lost heart for anything beyond explaining to him that the evil was growing stronger. That in itself was problematic; Brian wanted to know how she knew, if she wasn't in touch with Rupert, what was happening with the evil. Elisabeth, with the taunts of her other self in her ears, could not bring herself to say.
The hardest part was not letting her eyes follow herself around the room while she was with other people. They couldn't see or hear it, and she knew she must look crazed, but she couldn't help herself sometimes, watching her own hijinks. It had occurred to her more than once that she was a natural candidate for the Ministry of Funny Walks, and she had never known it. She had also never realized that the surprised, worried look she had often seen in the bathroom mirror was her habitual expression; or how off-putting it was. How on earth had she ever had any friends at all, or lovers?
One evening, sitting in the makeshift livingroom of Brian's bedsitter, she took a sudden opportunity, while Brian was in the kitchen making coffee, to ask: "What is it you want from me, anyway?"
Her mirror image lounged up against the bookshelves that formed the livingroom's wall. "Only lawyers should ask questions they already know the answers to," she said.
Elisabeth stared at her counterpart as she grinned, until Brian joggled her shoulder. "Elisabeth. Elisabeth. Here's your coffee."
Elisabeth took her coffee without looking at him and sipped it, her wary eyes on her First-self, who began to prowl the room, circling her and Brian where they sat on his couch. "Tell him," she hissed at Elisabeth with another grin.
Elisabeth had the feeling the First wasn't entirely talking about Brian. She closed her teeth against her retort and lifted the coffee to her lips; sipped, and tasted nothing.
"Elisabeth," Brian said in a small voice, "will you please tell me what's wrong?"
Elisabeth could feel Brian's gaze on the side of her face, desperate and worried. She heard herself say, "It's too hard to explain."
"Oh, stop lying to the poor boy," the First-Elisabeth said. "It's perfectly simple. Just tell him that you're keeping the info from him because he's out of his league. Isn't that what you're good at?"
Elisabeth glared at her.
"I mean," Brian said, "I understand that there's an evil, and it's taking a toll. I just—"
"'A Neevil? What's a Neevil? Maybe it's him,'" said Elisabeth's shade, whimsically.
"—just don't understand what's going on with you."
"Don't you quote C.S. Lewis at me," Elisabeth said, gritting her teeth.
"What?" Brian said, startled. "I didn't. I wasn't quoting."
"Not you," Elisabeth said.
"Elisabeth," Brian said, exasperated, "there's no one else here."
If she turned her head she would see the fright she knew was on his face, and she couldn't bear it. She burst into tears, and instantly the First began to mimic her crying perfectly.
"Just make it stop," Elisabeth wept.
She felt Brian taking the coffee out of her hands and setting it on the table; then he gathered her into his arms. "Shh, love. Shh. I'm sorry I pushed you. Don't worry. It's all right." His hand stroked back the hair at her temple with a tenderness that opened her grief wide. She cried, vying with her shadow for the loudest, most pitiful keening and unable to stop it from escalating.
"Oh, sweetie," Brian said, his voice thick; he held her closer.
When she couldn't cry anymore she choked to a stop, huffing softly in Brian's arms. The First went on mimicking her weeping a few more seconds, then tailed off into soft laughter.
Elisabeth had come to loathe the sound of her own voice.
Brian held her away from him and pulled out his handkerchief. It used to make her laugh without fail; Brian didn't at all look the sort who would carry linen, and she knew for a fact he wasn't raised to. It was one of his endearing quirks.
He wiped her face gently with the handkerchief. "I think," he said, "you should take the day off tomorrow. Do no work whatsoever. Just stay in bed and drink tea and sleep. All right?"
"It won't help," Elisabeth said, taking the handkerchief so she could blow her nose.
Brian, holding her shoulders, looked at her with tight-lipped chagrin.
"What can I do for you?" he said.
She began to shake her head, but he persisted. "I can do something. What can I do?"
"You can die," said the First.
Elisabeth kept her eyes on Brian's face, willing herself not to give in to the sudden terror she felt plucking at her nape.
"Want me to come and stay the night with you?"
Elisabeth sniffed. "If it's not too much trouble," she said, in a voice she hadn't used since she was a girl.
"Right then," Brian said. "I'll pack a bag."
At home Brian put Elisabeth to bed, but it was a little while before he could make her a cup of tea, as there were no clean cups in the flat. Elisabeth tried to ignore Brian's glances over the squalor of her living space, but it was harder when he turned a glance on her in the bed that clearly said: Why didn't you tell me?
So instead of camping out on the couch Brian got to work cleaning the flat, moving quietly so Elisabeth could sleep. But sleep was far from her mind at this point; she waited patiently for either herself or for Bringers to arrive. She really shouldn't have asked Brian to stay with her—it only put him in danger—but she figured that he was really no safer in his own home than with her, and she wanted at least to think she was protecting him.
Oh, damn. She really was going to have to tell him what was happening.
"In case you're wondering," the First said, "I'm not sending any Bringers after your little friend."
"Am I supposed to think that's a relief?" Elisabeth said, without looking over at where her mirror image had appeared on the bed next to her.
"He's not worth it." Elisabeth's face smiled down at her. "Incidentally, you aren't either."
"Q.E.D. So what are you doing here then?"
The First-Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Pretty much just amusing myself."
Elisabeth closed her eyes calmly. "Oh? Not carrying out a campaign to fuck up Rupert's role in the apocalypse by getting me to tell him what's coming?"
Elisabeth heard her own laughter coming from the First, but this time didn't even wince. "I don't need you to fuck Rupert up. I have him well in hand. He's coming along very nicely." Her voice softened and sang the words, as if she were singing Elisabeth a lullaby.
But she broke off the lull and said, "You're right, of course. There's no way your information could help him. Of course, he doesn't know that. All he can do in that case is to trust you. What a thing it is to be trusted," the First mused, "...more precious than silver, or gold, or whatever that silly song says. What on earth possessed you to spend so many years among the Baptists?"
"They call me crazy," Elisabeth said, not opening her eyes.
"That they do, my dear," the First said: "that they do."
Elisabeth opened her eyes to an empty room, but she felt no respite.
A few minutes later Brian appeared with a steaming mug. "Brought your tea," he said. He placed it on the nightstand for her. She smiled briefly and thanked him.
But instead of going away he stood next to her bed and studied her face. "Who were you talking to just now?" Brian asked, as if he were forcing the words out.
"Myself," Elisabeth said.
Rupert lay on the camp bed, suppressing the shivers that yearned to take over his muscles. His nerves were fraught; Buffy's shade had been chattering at him all day, now throwing incomprehensibly arcane pop-culture references at him, now lamenting her lot as the Slayer who didn't get to stay dead, now musing philosophically about the myriad ways he had failed her. He had worked hard to pretend that her veiled references to the Cruciamentum delivered from behind the real Buffy's shoulder hadn't rattled him; but now he was tired, and all he wanted to do was go to sleep.
But the First had other ideas.
"Giles," Tara said, "you look really tired. Don't you think you should relax and rest?"
Rupert turned over, carefully so as not to tip the cot, and glared at her. "I would do, if you'd kindly shut up."
Tara smiled. "I could tell you a bedtime story. I always tell Willow a bedtime story when she's stressed. I could tell you one. Of course—" Tara's smile quirked like a cat's— "I did other things for Willow before she went to sleep, that you probably wouldn't be interested in." But then her expression changed and she cocked her head to look at him in a new light. "Or maybe you would."
Rupert squinted at her in amazed disgust. "What on earth makes you think I'd be interested?"
"Well," Tara said, "you've been without for a long time, haven't you? Your girlfriend sent you away. Not very nice. I'm no substitute, and I can't touch you, but I can give you a little something...."
And to Rupert's horror she began to pull her shirt up and over her head. She wasn't wearing a bra, and her breasts fell free, her generous flesh warm in the dim gold lamplight.
"You don't know a thing about Tara, do you?" Rupert said, his voice shaking. He turned over and shut his eyes tight, no longer able to hide the quiver in his limbs, or fully suppress the shameful response the First had wrung from him.
And then he heard a laughing voice that drove an electric chill through every cell in his body.
"God, Rupert. You're so porous. I can soak into you from everywhere; it's hardly even sporting."
His breath turned to iron in his lungs, and he forced himself over to look at the abomination. What he saw wrung his heart afresh.
Elisabeth stood, cleaning her phantom glasses on the tail of her fuzzy white shirt, a drift of soft hair falling into her face and catching the lamplight.
"You're not," Rupert faltered, "you can't be—"
"Dead?" Elisabeth finished for him, looking up from her task. "You tell me."
Rupert thought fast, his whole body as dizzy as his head. "You died—in the doorway—but you came back—" He stopped. There was no way to know if Elisabeth's form was available to the First because of her temporary death, or because she had recently met with one more permanent.
"Go ahead," Elisabeth said, returning her glasses to her face. "Make the call."
Rupert was on his feet before she had even finished saying the words, and he had gone twelve steps before his next thought. But then he halted, and turned back to face her. "No," he said, his voice hard.
They had agreed to do this separately. He had promised to honor her request.
"No?" Elisabeth said, with a slight smile. She had sat down incorporeally on his cot after he left it. "Very well then. Sit down. We'll chat."
She patted the cot at her side.
Part 3
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