Dust and Ashes, Part 6
by L. Inman
The doctor pulled Brian aside quietly, after the moan had stilled in Elisabeth's throat.
"Do you know what those—" he gestured at the fading green bruises on her arm— "are all about?"
Brian cast his eyes down. "I tried to get her to talk about it," he muttered, "but she wasn't very forthcoming."
"Do you think she's being abused?"
Did he think she was being abused? "I think," Brian said carefully, "that it was a single incident. But I don't know for sure."
He could feel the doctor staring a hole in him. "Mr—"
"Whitaker—," Brian supplied—
"—this could be indicative of something very serious. She's clearly suffered a severe emotional trauma in addition to exhaustion and physical vitiation. It could be a matter for the police. If you're protecting someone—"
Brian lifted his head. "The only person I want to protect is my friend," he said.
"Then if you know—"
This was his big opportunity. This was what he'd been waiting for, visualizing, in hopes of making Rupert Giles pay for what he'd done. He opened his mouth.
"No," he said feebly, after a moment's silence. "She...never told me."
"She hasn't a...boyfriend, or anything of that sort?"
Brian's eyes were back on Elisabeth's troubled sleeping face. "No," he heard himself say. "She hasn't anyone. She's alone."
There was a silence; then the doctor let out a sigh. "Well, I'll start the inquiries. But I doubt it'll come to anything."
"She won't like that," Brian said suddenly, as the doctor turned away. He turned again and gave Brian a measuring look. "But you have my blessing for it."
The doctor seemed to understand the look Brian was giving him. "Right," he said, and disappeared, leaving Brian to his vigil at Elisabeth's bedside.
He kept at his work. He worked; slept; laughed (a brittle ghost of his old laugh); presented an eggshell semblance of who he used to be. It almost didn't seem to matter that he had died off, all of him except for faint flashes of anger—self-pity, and battle madness—sometimes appropriate to the occasion, sometimes not.
The First seemed to be leaving him alone for the most part, except for the nights when as Buffy it wandered silently around the house, looking over Rupert's sleeping charges with eyes hardly more bright and hard than those of the real Buffy. Rupert was far beyond wondering what the First was doing to Buffy in private. It never even occurred to him anymore. The two pairs of eyes looked nearly the same: and this, with his deadened vision, was all Rupert could see.
They weren't going to win this one. The marrow of hope that he had never quite lost within him had now dried to a powder and blown away. He had nothing to offer Buffy in this fight; death, when it came, would be—oh, probably not a relief—wasn't there a special hell for such as he? Except some part of him still protested that he didn't deserve it. It was a conundrum he was too tired to solve.
It was time to cut his losses, though where those losses lay he could only guess.
It was almost a relief when Robin Wood singled him out for a conversation.
Elisabeth came out of the sedative quickly, bounced into panicked wakefulness within three blinks, and had to be put out again.
One of the sisters brought Brian a cup of coffee, which he accepted gratefully. He had no idea what time it was.
"Her priest is coming," the sister said. "Called just now, found out where she was."
"Oh?" Brian uttered, startled. He had forgotten that Elisabeth even went to church. Brian held no sanguine hopes of the priest, whoever he was, being able to do anything useful for Elisabeth. Perhaps, Brian thought, he should duck out for a moment and avoid getting prayed over as well.
"Yeah," said the sister, "Mother Anne comes here every now and then to visit people. She found out about Miss Bowen by accident, I think. So she's coming over."
"Like, now?" Brian said, feeling a faint stir of panic.
"Yeah, now," said the sister. "Oh! they're calling me."
Brian twisted in his chair, mouth open to make some sort of protest, but it was useless, the sister was gone. He was useless, just sitting here: why should he begrudge an old lady in a collar saying a few words over Elisabeth's sleeping form?
The woman who strode into the room and to Elisabeth's bedside could hardly have been less like Brian's idea of what her priest would look like. In fact, for the five seconds before he caught sight of the collar, Brian wondered what the hell this person was doing in his friend's room. "Excuse me—" he said indignantly, just as he caught sight of the round of white peeping over her navy windbreaker. "—oh."
"Yes?" The woman turned and pinned him with grey eyes. She was quite young, probably no older than himself, with wayward short ash-blond hair. Her jaw was a little too strong, her mouth a little too wide and thin, for beauty.
Brian stood up, feeling vaguely as though he ought to be showing some mark of respect. "You—you're—"
"Anne Langland; vicar at St. John's. Elisabeth is one of my parishioners. And you are?"
Under her steady commanding gaze Brian swallowed. It seemed to matter not in the least that he was several inches taller. "Brian Whitaker," he stammered.
Recognition lifted the priest's frown. "Ah."
Brian felt a stirring of panic. "Elisabeth mentioned me to you?...Listen, about those women...I didn't really—" Mother Anne raised a humorous eyebrow, and Brian trailed off: "...and she never...mentioned...the women to you, did she."
"No," the priest said. "She said you were her best friend."
Brian had now gone completely mute. He nodded.
Mother Anne sighed. "I'm glad you're here." She turned to look down at her parishioner's closed face. "What are they saying about her?"
Brian shoveled his brains together fast. "Well, they've been keeping her on sedatives so she stays asleep. I think they mean to discharge her once she's slept a decent stretch."
Anne shook her head. "That's no good. She needs to be properly looked after." She looked up at Brian's face. "Do you—?"
Brian winced. "I'd planned to take her in, but—all I have's a bedsitter, you see, and it's not all that quiet...."
The priest returned her gaze to Elisabeth's face, frowning. "It'd better be the vicarage for her, then. There's plenty of room. If you wouldn't mind helping to look after her—"
"Of course," Brian said, without waiting for her to finish.
"She looks awful," Anne said, compressing her lips. "I should have got into touch with her sooner. I knew something was up, but—well, there's no use crying over spilt milk." Brian could see that the vicar's eyes were studying the bruises on Elisabeth's I.V. arm, but beyond a thoughtful look she made no comment. Instead she produced a small, round brass case from the pocket of her windbreaker and quietly anointed her charge's forehead, murmuring softly. As Brian watched, his eyes stung for a moment.
Anne finished and turned to see him watching silently. "Usually," she said, "I ask permission of the patient first. But I feel sure Elisabeth would—"
Brian nodded definitely.
"Listen," she said, "perhaps we should exchange telephone numbers, so that when Elisabeth is discharged—"
"We can," Brian shrugged, "but I'll be here."
The priest gave him a long look. "Right then. I'll be about making the arrangements. I'll see you soon." She turned and made to leave, but at the door she paused. "It's a pity we couldn't have met under pleasanter circumstances," she said, with a small smile. Brian gave a small nod—under pleasanter circumstances he'd have avoided a meeting with a priest at all costs—but if Anne knew it, her expression did not betray it.
With a final nod the priest disappeared, and Brian sat down heavily in the chair he'd occupied almost since Elisabeth arrived in the infirmary.
At last he was not alone.
Unconsciousness was blessing to her, but getting there was terrifying. She woke up once, and then again, and then a third time, to an instant seizure of panic: and her little Stevie Smith drowning analogy grew more and more apt each time they stuck her with the needle and brought the greyness curtaining down. Brian's blue sweater was a dark smudge among all the white coats and pastel scrubs; he was the only constant, so much so that she wasn't quite sure if he was really there, if perhaps instead all the flux around him was the true index of who and where she really was. It's like that one episode, she thought distractedly, where Buffy gets poisoned by the demon and thinks she's been insane all the time she thought she was the Slayer—
Damn it. Why did she have to keep mediating her whole damn life through that television show? It solved nothing, it made interpretation of events impossible—
Somebody was asking for Rupert, and this too was an annoyance.
Brian leaned close. "Don't worry," he said, as if from across a great distance. "You're safe. You're all right."
"Tell Rupert—"
But she had forgotten what it was she wanted to tell Rupert, if he really existed: and then the darkness closed over her again.
Dean Blakely came to visit, and had a whispered conversation with Brian in the corridor. It was possible Elisabeth could get a leave of absence for illness, and if she recovered, return either in the summer or next Michaelmas to make up the work she had missed. But it didn't solve the problem of funding; they had safety nets for her well-being, but currently there were neither free monies nor a volunteer to underwrite the cost of her scholarship.
"I'll take care of it," Brian said. "Give me the information and I'll get back to you."
Dean Blakely's crow's-feet crinkled sadly. "I'm afraid it'd be beyond a don's salary, Mr Whitaker," he said.
"I'll take care of it," Brian said stolidly.
The Dean grasped Brian's shoulder for a brief moment. "Give Miss Bowen my best wishes when she's awake," he said.
Brian nodded.
When they judged she had slept enough hours, they let her wake up of her own accord: and she did, slowly, her eyes dull and distracted. She kept down a few sips of water, then part of an orange ice. Her eyes followed the doctor's penlight, and she responded to her name. It was enough for the infirmary to send her home to adequate care. Brian went to bring his car round, and Anne stayed to help Elisabeth dress.
They brought a wheelchair for Elisabeth, but she insisted instead on clinging unsteadily to Anne's arm and mincing slowly down the corridor to the doors.
At the vicarage Brian helped bring Elisabeth into the house and was all set to tuck her into the bed Anne had made up for her when Anne intervened and insisted he go home and get a shower and shave, a nap, and some fresh clothes for himself. "You might stop by Elisabeth's flat and pick up some of her things when you've done," Anne said. "And I don't want to see you for another six hours at least."
Brian did as he was told.
The next morning, eight hours after the vicar had sent him home, Brian drove to Elisabeth's flat, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He let himself in with the key Elisabeth had numbly given him and, after checking that everything in the flat was in order, went to pack her a bag.
On his way back out he paused at her desk. An idea had germinated slowly in his mind while sleeping, and he had waked from a dead sleep with the alarm ringing in his ears and the idea growing just under the edge of his consciousness.
Now he pawed lightly through her papers, delicately moving notes and lists and index cards and sticky notes, until he found what he was looking for.
Tell Rupert, she had said.
"No problem, sweetie," he said aloud.
He flipped open her address book and began searching through it, carefully. Rupert Giles's name was in it, but the address listed was in Bath, and Elisabeth had said he was on his way out of the country. Presumably he'd be Stateside by now, unless he was dead. Brian dearly hoped the bastard wasn't dead.
He paged through more names, looking them over carefully. Some, like Olivia, he knew; some he did not. At last he found an address in Sunnydale, CA. Paydirt. The name was Summers.
He glanced briefly at his watch, gauging the—what? six-hour? eight-hour?—time difference, and decided there was no time like the present. Wake the old git up, serve him right.
He dialed (making a mental note to arrange to pay Elisabeth's phone and utility bills), and waited while the connection was made.
Finally, a flat, wary male voice. "Hello?"
"Rupert Giles, please," Brian said coolly.
The voice cleared its throat. "Speaking."
"Is that Mr Giles, then?" Brian said. (He couldn't believe he was being this polite.)
"Yes," came the impatient reply.
Time to lower the boom. See if this bastard cared anything about her.
"This is Brian Whitaker," he said, letting the temperature of his voice drop as many degrees as it pleased him. "I'm calling to let you know that Elisabeth Bowen has collapsed and is now under medical care. They're calling it stress compounded by exhaustion and possibly an unidentified physical attack. They've put forward inquiries about that last, but I doubt anything'll come of it."
Brian's voice went quite bitter on the last phrase. He stopped, and waited for the other man to respond. It took several seconds, but finally Rupert said, "I see," in a colorless voice.
Brian cleared his throat and schooled the emotion carefully out of his voice. "Everyone among her friends is doing their utmost for her, but I'm told unless someone underwrites her scholarship she may well lose her place at Oxford."
In the same colorless voice, the other man responded: "As you may or may not have been told, the world might be ended before that becomes an issue."
Brian said: "I don't care if it ends at teatime. You're the one who's going to provide the funding. That is, if you give a shit about her at all." He cleared his throat again, more to still his shaking than anything else.
Rupert's silence, following this bolt, was the longest yet. Finally he answered, with what Brian thought was a hateful catlike coolness: "I doubt Elisabeth would be willing to accept that kind of help from me."
"That's why you're going to do it anonymously." Brian dug in his pocket, still shaking violently, and pulled out the information Dean Blakely had left on his answerphone. "I'm going to give you Dean Blakely's number, and the number of the Bursar, and the amount required, and let you call them and make the arrangements. I don't care what you call it, call it the Punch and Judy Endowment, call it the bloody Red Tea Cozy Endowment. Just get it done. Today."
After another interminable silence, Rupert said: "Very well. Let me get a pen."
Brian waited until Rupert gave him the go-ahead, then read out the numbers to him in a voice upon which he congratulated himself as being quite light and free of strain.
"Thank you," Rupert said finally. "I'll make the arrangements."
"Good," Brian said. "Well, good luck with that end-of-the-world thing."
"Thank you," Rupert said dryly.
"And one more thing."
"Yes?"
"Don't ever come near her again." Brian pressed the button to end the call before Rupert could respond. He braced his hands on the desk and took several minutes to breathe himself back into equilibrium before taking up Elisabeth's bag and leaving her flat.
He paused in the car for just a moment, to savor what he'd done. He'd never be able to tell Elisabeth, of course—that is, if they survived whatever apocalypse was coming and Elisabeth got her faculties back and returned to her coursework. She had a best-case scenario; Rupert had found out what his act had done to her; and he, Brian, had been the one to tell him.
At last, Brian thought as he put the car in gear: something had been accomplished.
Part 7
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