Dust and Ashes, Part 4
by L. Inman
Elisabeth dragged herself out of bed and under a hot shower, determined to keep up the level of tidiness in the house that Brian had established for her, and to make herself do schoolwork. For the most part this plan succeeded, though it took several cups of tea to move her sluggish brain into quick enough gear for study, and she had the distressing notion that her near miss sorting a red sock out of her whites was an omen for the day's work. To her relief the First seemed to be too busy elsewhere to be here to make a comment.
As if she had summoned it by thinking of it, the First appeared and wandered over to where she sat at her desk.
"Speak of the devil," Elisabeth murmured.
"Hardy har." The First-Elisabeth crossed her arms. "So, I was just thinking: how would you like to watch Rupert die?"
Elisabeth channeled a shudder into her compressed lips. "No thanks."
"Oh, come on," the First said. "It'd be easy to arrange: I've already got him fixing to come to you."
Elisabeth kept her eyes on her book, but she was no longer able to read the words. She drew a hardy breath.
"He was amazingly easy to sidetrack," the First said, lifting casual eyes to the ceiling, "—I mean, considering what a fixation he has for Buffy." She cocked her head and looked down at Elisabeth. "Doesn't that bother you?"
"Doesn't what bother me?" Elisabeth said, in the dull tone she had developed over the weeks.
"That he cares more about her than he does about you."
Elisabeth had had this unworthy thought a few times, but had squelched it on the grounds that a) Buffy (besides being the closest thing to a daughter Rupert had ever had) was the past and future of Rupert's heritage, and b) Elisabeth herself was constantly urging him to put that heritage first, so if she ever felt left out, who was to blame?
"It'd bother me far more if he didn't," Elisabeth told the First.
"Oh righhht," the First answered, "because of your commitment. To staying uninvolved, to not making waves, to keep from taking up too much space—thin as a shadow—I thought you'd given that up."
"Well, I slept with Rupert, if that's what you mean," Elisabeth said dryly.
"And gave him your virgin heart. It's so cute." Elisabeth's mirror image clasped its hands under her chin and batted her eyelashes. "Will it break said virgin heart when I kill him?"
Yes. "You planning to make the experiment?"
"Will his heart break when I kill you?" the First mused, thoughtfully.
"You can only make one experiment or the other," Elisabeth said, a fine edge growing in her dry voice. "Courtesy of the arbitrary restrictions of the mortal coil."
"Romeo and Juliet doesn't count?"
"'In fair Verona, where we lay our scene—a pair of star-crossed lovers,'" Elisabeth murmured. "No. Not really. Unless you mean to play the part of Friar Lawrence."
"Or County Paris." The First sighed. "No, you're right. I can only do one experiment. Won't you be interested to see which it is, when he comes?"
And she vanished.
In the silence that followed, Elisabeth began to wish the First would return and start heckling her again. The back of her neck was prickling and from time to time she shivered hard in her desk chair. It had not sounded like an empty threat, like the trash talk she had learned to endure from this evil with her voice. The First was on the move; there were plans; Rupert was coming here. And when he did, the First would arrange for the death of one or the other of them.
That Elisabeth suspected the marked one to be herself eased her mind not at all. Rupert shouldn't have to watch her die, not on top of everything else. And if he were to be the one killed....
Elisabeth ran her hands over shaking arms. She would have to warn him. She would have to try to keep him away.
And that pretty much meant calling Sunnydale.
Elisabeth shuddered.
On a large airliner heading ever deeper into night, Rupert sat silent and wakeful, consuming his second little bottle of Red Label, poured (such a nicety) into the plastic cup of ice with which the flight attendant had provided him. He had shaved properly before leaving; combed his hair, ironed his shirt.
It wasn't much of a preparation.
Quentin Travers was keeping him company again, occupying the seat across the aisle in his phantom fashion. "This is part of our heritage too, you realize, Giles," he said. "Doing the hard thing. Making the sacrifice."
Rupert couldn't tell him to shut up without drawing the glance of the other passengers. He settled for curling his lip before draining the last of his scotch. He rattled the ice and set the cup down with a steady hand.
"Not too fast now," Spike drawled from the place Quentin had been. "Dutch courage is one thing, but you don't want to Johnny Walker yourself into oblivion."
Rupert made no answer. The sky outside the window grew dark enough to show his reflection. Rupert turned his head away.
He'd rather look at the First than himself.
Elisabeth swallowed dryly and reached for the phone. She swallowed several more times as she dialed the number she had written down in her address book. Funny: she would have thought the First would be at her shoulder, cracking wise as she begged Rupert to stay away from her—no. She wouldn't, couldn't, beg. It would be like putting a big "Eat at Joe's" sign over her block of flats, veritably inviting Rupert to his fate. She would be—not subtle either. Elisabeth had had enough of subtlety, and probably Rupert was equally fed up with it.
It rang, once, twice, three times. Click. "Hello?"
"Hello. Is that—is that Willow?" Elisabeth shook harder, swallowed again.
"Yeah. Um, who's this?"
"Sorry, it's Elisabeth Bowen."
"Oh! right. Um, Giles isn't here."
Elisabeth's insides sank. "He's not there?"
"No, he—went on another trip. Should I...tell him you called when he gets back?"
A faint flutter of panic was rising in Elisabeth now. "No—I have to get hold of him before he gets back. Does he have a cellphone?"
"No," Willow said. "He keeps saying he's going to buy one, but he never does. I think he likes being mysterious. You know, just showing up to places and disappearing." Her voice held equal tinges of affection and irritation.
"It's a damned inconvenient time for him to be mysterious," Elisabeth said tartly.
Willow's reply took on a definite shade of hauteur. "Well, I'm sorry I can't really help you get hold of him right now—I don't even have an itinerary for him—"
"No," Elisabeth said, her voice catching, "I'm sorry—I just—I need to talk to him and— If he calls...if he calls, please try to make him understand that he can't come here."
There was a small silence, then Willow said slowly: "Elisabeth...he didn't say anything about going to see you."
"The First said...." Oh what a way to earn credibility, she thought, starting a sentence—any sentence—with The First said....
But Willow snapped to attention. "The First said what?"
"Said it was going to send him to me." And kill one of us, she could not bring to voice. She swallowed once more and tried again. "He's in danger if he comes."
"Elisabeth," Willow said quietly, "he's in danger everywhere he goes. Does it matter if he comes to you?"
That fact had not occurred to Elisabeth in just that way, but she was too far gone to heed it. "The First—" she faltered, "—the First is trying to destroy the story I know—trying to get Rupert off track so he'll take the wrong path. I can't let him do that. I can't let him come here—"
"Wait a minute," Willow said, "what do you mean, the story you know? There's nothing you know. You came here two years ago. You don't know any more than the rest of us."
Horror rose in Elisabeth's chest and swallowed her voice completely.
The silence grew.
"You do know more than we do," Willow said, in the voice of new understanding. "You saw it all before you came here. You showed up here knowing all our futures—" She broke off.
It came to Elisabeth's mind just then what the First meant about the completion of losing, of being caught, the exquisite torturous relief of it. Elisabeth had been shaking as she held the phone to her face, but now her hands grew calm. She remained silent, letting Willow's damning words soak into the silence.
"And Giles knows," Willow said.
Elisabeth cleared her throat. "Yes," she said, "he knows."
Elisabeth could hear Willow's breathing, quick and frantic, over the line. When Willow spoke, her voice shook. "Did Tara know?"
Elisabeth stood up, tears rising in her eyes. "Yes," she whispered. "She didn't ask what it was, and—"
Willow's voice rose. "And you didn't do anything. You saw what was going to happen to her, and you didn't try to stop it?"
"I couldn't," Elisabeth said. Oh, what a lame-excuse-sounding answer: and the sound Willow made indicated she thought so too. Elisabeth drew a hard breath and plunged in to explain.
"There's a delicate balance," she said, holding her voice quiet, "that I couldn't afford to upset. And I didn't know if anything I did would only make things worse—I had to stay away—I have to keep out—please, Willow, tell Rupert—"
Elisabeth jumped as Willow hung up.
"Dammit!" she said. She stared at the phone for a full minute, willing it to reconnect her to Willow so that she could fix it, but it remained silent in her hand. "Dammit—dammit—dammit."
Taking a deep breath, she dialed the number again.
This time Buffy answered.
"Buffy," Elisabeth said, "it's Elisabeth. I need to talk to Willow again. Can you—"
"No," Buffy said, and Elisabeth recognized the pleasant danger in her tone, "you don't."
Elisabeth drew a breath and waited.
Buffy's voice grew even more pleasant with her next words. "I don't know what it is you said to Willow. But if I was there, I'd put you in whatever the Brits call an emergency room. Are we clear?"
Elisabeth let out a sigh. "I didn't mean to—"
"Good," Buffy said lightly.
"Listen, Buffy, if you could just tell Rupert—"
But Buffy had already hung up.
Elisabeth took the phone away from her ear and stared down at it for the second time. Then she made a sudden movement, as if to throw it across the room—but she thought better of actually doing it at the last second. "Shit," she said, to the empty livingroom. "Shit!"
She began to pace the livingroom furiously, pausing on one circuit to drop the phone none too gently into its rest. "Well, the fat's in the fire now," she said, and let out a growl. "So fucking stupid!"
She paced some more, swearing intermittently, expecting the First to appear any moment to get a front-row seat for the show. But moments passed, then minutes, and the First did not appear. Perhaps it had decided its work was done. Elisabeth swore again.
Yes, that must have been the plan. Work the pump handle of Elisabeth's worry about Rupert, then make her do what she had sworn not to, make her call Sunnydale and throw everyone there into chaos. Well, shit.
Elisabeth gave up, locked up for the night, and went to bed, where she wept for a long time before falling asleep.
In the morning she half-expected the world to be ended already; but everything was eerily normal, from the sunlight streaming through her bedroom window to the ordinariness of her messy desk. You can't expect it to ruin everything right away, said the voice in her head. A crack in a dam doesn't work that way.
So Elisabeth got to work, suspended in a numb acceptance of what had happened. The day passed quietly; no one called, except Brian, in the afternoon: "Listen, 'Lisbeth," he told her answering machine, "if you don't return my call I swear I'm going to break down your door and make sure you're still alive." He gave a little laugh, but she knew he was not joking. "So when you get this—" Elisabeth picked up the phone.
"I'm sorry, Brian. I really did mean to call you back."
"Oh, thank God," Brian said. He paused to get his breath back, then asked: "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Elisabeth said. "I got lots of sleep and am now holed up working."
There was a little pause, then Brian said, "You are still going to tell me what is going on, right?"
What could it hurt now? "Yes," Elisabeth said.
"Shall we go out tonight? Get some drinks and work it out?"
Elisabeth's heart sank. "Oh, I'd love to, Brian, but—now I've actually gotten back to work I want to keep on tonight. Pub lunch tomorrow?"
He paused only a second. "Sounds good. I'll pick you up tomorrow noonish then."
"I look forward to it," she said, trying for a smile.
"Right. Take care, all right?"
"I will."
Elisabeth put the phone down and went back to staring blankly at her open book.
By the time evening rolled around, however, Elisabeth had actually managed to get some work done. She sat in the quiet, reading slowly, occasionally making notes in a hand that had grown more chaotic since the First had begun its campaign.
Night fell, and she was still working. She had not been keeping track of her meals, and it occurred to her around nine that perhaps she should eat something today, but for another ten minutes still did not stir from her desk. She finally went to the kitchen, made herself a foldover ham sandwich, and ate it at her desk, flipping pages of her notebook.
A knock sounded at the door, and Elisabeth startled, letting her book fall shut. Then she shook her head. The First had made her far too jumpy. It was probably Brian, disregarding her broad hint that he should leave her alone. She got up and went to the door.
Through the peephole she saw that the man standing outside was not Brian at all. Her heart stopped a moment, then started again at a race. She opened the door a crack to look at him.
"Rupert," she whispered, "you shouldn't have come. It's not safe here."
His hands were in the pockets of his coat, his expression broadly laconic. "It's not safe anywhere," he said.
There seemed no answer to make to that; so Elisabeth stood back from the doorway and let him in. She shut the door behind him, shaking a little as she turned the lock; then turned to face him where he stood just inside the livingroom. He had neither taken his hands from his pockets nor changed expression.
She moved around him into the full light of the room, looking at him. His eyes moved to her face, his expression unreadable. "I hoped you wouldn't come," Elisabeth said.
"I have no doubt of that," he said quietly.
Something in his manner prompted Elisabeth to ask: "Did Willow get hold of you, then?"
He blinked, but no real surprise registered on his face. "No. I haven't spoken with Willow since I left. Why?"
"I called her. I was trying to get hold of you. To warn you not to come here."
"Ah," he said. "And you were going to trust to my naivete to heed the warning?"
She squinted at him. "Your—sorry?"
"My naivete," he said patiently. "My trusting nature."
"Your tr—" Elisabeth stopped, narrowed her eyes. "What's going on?"
Rupert took his hands from his pockets, and his voice lowered to soft danger. "Why don't you tell me."
She stood quite still, her eyes on his. "You didn't come here to rescue me, did you," she said at last, her voice as quiet as his.
The corner of his mouth moved in what was not a smile. "No."
Involuntarily she shifted back a step. "Then what did you come here for?" she said hardily.
"To get the information I should have had long ago." He matched the step she had taken away from him.
In that moment Elisabeth decided she would not run: it would only encourage worse things, and anyway where would she run to? "You won't have it," she told him. "It's no use to you."
"Why don't I be the judge of that."
"This isn't about judging," Elisabeth said, holding her ground though he came a step nearer. "It's about balance. The safety of the world is at stake." Even in her ears the words sounded inane, but he didn't quibble.
"Indeed it is." He came a step yet nearer. "So why don't you tell me what I want to know."
"No," she said.
At this he did smile, raising his eyes briefly to the ceiling: Elisabeth was caught off guard by the gesture, for the next moment she found herself pinned tight against the wall next the kitchen, her left wrist in a merciless grip between them.
She had never envisioned the familiar, pleasant scent of his skin accompanying pain like this, never imagined them this close together and not loving; never thought his eyes meeting hers would mean enmity: and the shock of it left her mute.
He spoke, and she scented scotch on his breath. "Hmm. You appear to be touchable...." He moved his thumb, and pain shot through her arm, making her flinch.
She looked up into his face, and as the meaning of his words sank in her fear was temporarily swallowed in a flood of compassion. "Oh, Rupert," she whispered.
"Don't waste your pity on me," he said evenly. "I know exactly what I'm doing." He gave a small twist to her wrist; she shut her teeth against an open wince. "Now," he said: "tell me what I want to know."
His voice was soft as a leaf falling in winter, and in his eyes she saw that he spoke the truth: he had chosen this, and had no intention of hiding it.
And gave him your virgin heart, echoed the First mockingly in her mind.
"No," she said, and bit back her breath at the punishing pain in her wrist. If he twisted it much further it was going to break.
"Tell me what I want to know," he repeated softly.
Elisabeth snapped back breathlessly, "Which is, for the record...?"
"If and how the First is defeated. Who accomplishes it. If necessary, who survives."
"I'm telling you that information is no use to you," Elisabeth said, and received such a vicious twist to her wrist that she heard the bones creak. Her body responded with a convulsive jerk: he absorbed her impact against him and used his whole body to pin her tighter. "You're hurting me," she croaked.
"That's the idea. The sooner you give me my information, the sooner it will stop hurting."
"Rupert," she breathed, "you have to listen to me—" Her breath died in her throat as the bones of her wrist cracked against each other once more.
"I'll listen to you all night long, if it's what I want to hear."
Anger prickled hot under her eyelids and constricted her throat. "We can do this all night long, too," she said, her voice suddenly strong under the threatening tears.
"Or," he said, an edge creeping into his voice, "we can take it further." She wasn't sure exactly how he moved, but it increased the radius of her pain tenfold. She bit back a cry.
"Do you realize what's happening, I wonder?" he said (she had the faint sense of his sanity unraveling in his soft voice), "while you sit here comfortably in your ivory tower? Do you know how many people have died horrible deaths? Or is it always only a story to you?" He was close enough for his breath to fan her cheek. "As for me," he continued, "I've had enough of being naive, had enough of waiting and watching. I've had my hand on a source of information for two whole years and I swallowed all your lies—"
"They're not lies," Elisabeth said. And was rewarded with pain so great her head went back against the wall. He waited for her to recover enough to look him in the eye again, and she did, the tears finally spilling over.
"I'll break it if I have to," he promised her. "I'll do more. Do you think I won't? Do you think I won't give you the death you should have had two years ago?"
So this was what the First had meant about killing each and destroying both. What a fool she had been. The tears spilled hot down her face, and she had to take a moment to gather her voice.
"Then do it," she said, weeping at last. "You think I want to live after this?"
She felt him grip her tighter: but his face had become somehow chaotic. It only made her angrier. "God damn you," she choked, "what kind of life do you think I'm living—comfortable? With the First wearing my face and using my voice—" She coughed at the spume in her throat. "I will—tell you—nothing. If you haven't killed your mercy—then kill me now." She lost voice completely, and let go in his hands, so that he was forced to hold her weight up.
Through her tears she could see the shattered look in his eyes; gradually his grip on her faded, and she sank out of his grasp to slide down the wall, weeping.
For a moment there was nothing else; then his hand reached down to her, and his voice scraped like a sheaf of paper— "Elisabeth." It was the first time he had used her name.
She batted his hand away and staggered to her feet, ducked around him and stumbled to the bathroom, where she gripped the toilet with one burning arm and one numb one, and lost her ham sandwich.
Her breath tore at her throat. After an interminable time she got control of her body again, swiped the cords of saliva from her lips, flushed the toilet, rinsed her mouth at the sink, splashed her face.
She returned to the livingroom to find that Rupert had not moved from where he stood. She gave him a wide berth and went into the kitchen, where she filled herself a glass of water with shaking hands. She came back into his view with it, taking small sips.
For the first time she saw his face clearly since he had let go of her: he seemed almost to have fainted on his feet. With a savage mercy she strode forward and seized his coat lapel. "Sit," she told him, manhandling him (awkwardly, because of her arm) over to the couch. He sat. She put the glass of water into his hands. "Take this." He took it, slowly, from her, and when he was holding it she went and got another glass for herself, which she filled not with water but with brandy. She returned and took the chair opposite him, perching on its edge as though nothing would ever bear her weight again.
He seemed to have recovered enough to look up at her; she found as she sipped that his eyes were on her face, though still somewhat unfocused. As she looked back at him, his gaze dropped to her glass.
"None for me, I see," he whispered.
"Not feeling very hospitable for some reason," she said. Her voice sounded very shrill and young in her ears. "And you seem to have already had some."
His eyes dropped to his water glass. "My dutch courage," he said vaguely.
"Your saving grace," she said. The tears threatened to rise again, but she conquered them with very little effort.
"I—"
"If you dare apologize to me—"
He shook his head. "No."
There was a long silence.
"You are free to go," she said at last, "when you feel able."
He looked up. "What did the First say to you?"
She gave a bitter laugh she had never thought herself capable of. "You couldn't possibly be interested."
"Please," he said.
"Everything and nothing," she said, rising shakily with her drink. "Day in, day out, my own face, my own voice, my walk. I wasn't important enough to kill, then I was vital to the cause. Then it said it planned to draw you here and kill one of us. I assumed," she said, with another little laugh, "it would be me; I assumed it would break you to see me die and your mission would ultimately fail. I tried to warn you and only ended up betraying to Willow that I knew your future—which didn't go over well, naturally, since the logical conclusion is that I cold-bloodedly let Tara die."
"Oh God," he murmured.
"So I'm rather non grata at the house on Revello now," she said, turning to him. "Just so you know." She took another sip. "That's it in a nutshell."
He raised his eyes to her, but gave no other response.
"I can only assume the First Evil told you I was in league with the Big Bads," she said, caustically. "Fairly easy thing to do, since it has access to my face." She took another sip of brandy. "You should have killed me."
"I suppose that was the plan," he said softly.
"There is no plan," Elisabeth said. "Is the First here right now?"
Rupert raised his head enough to look around the room, then finally shook his head.
"No one here but us chickens," she said, with a false cheer that made Rupert look up at her uneasily. She knew what it was about: she sounded insane even to herself.
"You should have killed me," she repeated, more to herself than anything.
He made a sudden movement, as if to launch a long explanation. But in the end he only said: "I was desperate."
"But not desperate enough," she murmured.
Another long silence stretched between them.
"I want you to go now," Elisabeth said at last.
He stood: the hem of his coat trembled.
"Will you be all right?" he asked. On his face was a familiar look of ecstatic pain; it made him look older than his years.
"Don't concern yourself," Elisabeth said. "Go and do your work."
"My work," he repeated, bitterly.
"Which," she said, "you can do just as well without my information. If you ever decide to believe me."
"Elisabeth...."
She lowered her eyes to her glass, and swirled the amber liquid so that it caught the light. "Get out," she said, very quietly.
He set down his glass. She stood there, keeping her eyes on the play of light in the brandy, until she heard the door open and just as quietly close. Then she set down her brandy glass and lowered herself into the armchair, where she remained till morning, watching the bruises come in on her arms.
Part 5
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