Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 13

"No," Elisabeth said, "he isn't. At least, not until he really hates you." She set her hands on her hips and glared at the closed door. "Mind you," she added to Giles, who had shrugged out of his jacket and was retreating into the kitchen, "it's you he likes, not me."

"Oh lucky day," Giles said, plucking the kettle noisily off the stove and turning on the kitchen tap to fill it.

Elisabeth was beginning to feel just the least bit peevish. "You might have told me he was coming."

"I meant to," he said, turning up the gas flame under the full kettle. "But I got sidetracked going out the door. And then I meant to make it back here before he arrived; but that didn't happen either. My apologies."

Elisabeth thought she wasn't the only one feeling peevish. She went up to the bar window and crossed her arms upon it, pulling off her glasses and laying them next to his spice aumbry as she did so. "No luck?"

He straightened with his back to her and let a long breath out his nose. "Nothing more definite than what Spike had to say. No...." He opened a tin on the counter and rummaged busily through the teabags it contained. "It's been a bloody rotten evening, and I don't know why I'm drinking nothing stronger than tea. And weak tea at that: all my Darjeeling is gone, not to mention my Earl Grey. D'you mind weak tea?" he asked her glumly, without looking up.

"I don't mind weak tea," she told him consolingly. "I like Earl Grey, but some brands put too much bergamot in. I'm better off going with something that's easy on the stomach."

He wasn't really listening to her: he put down the tea tin as she was speaking, and when she finished, said: "I'm working on it, really I am. There should be a breakthrough soon, and when there is I can send you back home...."

"We'll find it," she said, trying with her voice to reassure him.

"I might have found it today, if I'd spent the afternoon working instead of—" he inhaled deeply— "meddling where I don't belong—"

"Giles," Elisabeth said sharply.

He looked over at her, the grief lines creased round his mouth again.

"We'll find it," she repeated. "We're getting closer. Spike said the energy source grows and burns itself out. So at least we know now there's a time factor."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Giles said.

She was going to protest that Spike had said it also happened periodically; but before she could get the words out she thought two things at once. First, that even if such things happened in a periodical fashion, it wouldn't mitigate the problem Elisabeth had outlined to Giles earlier, that of her staying in Sunnydale for very much longer. And second, that she had heard that phrase before. Time was a factor...What time is it? she had asked Giles. After moonrise, he had said—or she'd thought he'd said—

"Elisabeth," Giles said, his voice sharp in her ears as it had been before, in the car.

It hurt—oh, this time it hurt—like the strings of bass violins tearing against the grain. She fought to catch her breath as the—was it a form of frustration?—distilled itself in her brain, building, scalding like acid. She shut her eyes tight: and there was the darkness again, inexorable, the rooms flung open and voices chattering, accusing—I want to go home—

I have no home.

The faintest of cries wound itself like a thread around her vocal cords, drew tight, and snapped.

Let it be the way it is.

As always, the true dictum sounded like madness. She resisted it.

Let it be the way it is.

So you have no home; let it be the way it is.

So you are frightened and frustrated; let it be the way it is.

So you are stranded, so you are nothing-with-a-shape, so the fibers of your soul are torn; let it be as it is. You will mend, and even if you do not, all will still be well.

Elisabeth stopped resisting, and came toward recognition, there in the darkness.

You see? All will still be well.

She could breathe again, and her eyes were open, and her sight was registering now: and what she saw was Giles's face at close range. She was standing—she was still upright—partially because he was gripping her arms; as she regained her senses she stood under her own power and met his gaze with her own, her consciousness growing.

"What happened?" he said.

She began shivering; she drew a breath and let it pass off before she even thought of answering.

He was holding her more gently now; but he did not let go. "What was that?" he said again.

"It was me," she said, her voice sounding odd in her ears. "I went to—that place again."

His eyes behind his glasses were intense and dark. "Tell me."

"Tell you...what it was like?"

"Perhaps not that," he said (she noticed now he was very pale). "Tell me how you brought yourself back."

"I did—"

"You did. I saw you do it. Tell me how you did it." His voice had that inimitable Giles-calm with the—something—curling round the edges of it; he needed reassuring, and only knowledge would accomplish that.

She swallowed, and blinked, to get her bearings. "It was...that thing about the time. Time being a factor...I had a thought like that, when we were in the car, you know, on the highway...."

"Yes," he said patiently, "I know. Go on."

"And I was back there again. And I was back where I was today, in the dark. And I got frustrated and—afraid—like I do when I have a bad episode—" she swallowed again— "and I wasn't going to be able to pull it out. And then I thought what I do when it gets that bad: just to let it, you know, be as it is...." She wanted to look away from him, telling him this, but it was the most important part, and he had not pitied her yet: so she went on. "I had this thought, you see, that I wanted to go home; but then I had a thought that I had no home to start with; and that was what I had to accept. It's like...." she searched for a description— "it's like—like a passion of accepting. It's what you have to do. It's what I have to do. That's how I came back." She stopped for a moment, grimaced at him. "Do you know what I'm saying?"

He released her gently and straightened; nodded; pulled off his glasses and made a quarter-turn away from her. He fumbled a few steps to the table and braced his hands on its surface, his left thumb anchoring the earpiece of his glasses. His head went down between his shoulders: and suddenly she understood what was happening. The blood rushed hot into her face, and she uttered the words anyway, stupid as they were:

"Are you—are you crying?"

He made no response, but it may as well have been an affirmative; she saw a little flinch contract his shoulder blades under his shirt.

Frantically, she pulled at the crook of his arm till his hand came free from the table. Still he did not respond except to lift his other hand and transfer his glasses to it, then drop them to the table; he turned a sob into a cough. She caught a sight of the side of his face, and stopped tugging at him. "You can't—"

"Can't what?" he said, choking on it, his eyes hard shut.

She was dizzy. She let go of him altogether and turned to stumble blindly down the hall and into the bathroom. She slammed the door with her body, unsure for a split second whether to cry first or throw up first. Tears prevailed; she slid down the door till she was sitting on the cold tiled floor. Threw her head back to bang it once, hard, against the door, so that it hurt. "No," she uttered once.

It didn't, however, take long this time before she was spent. And when she was, a thought came to her sitting there, swollen-eyed, on the floor.

Aren't you a bit old to be embracing melodrama quite so enthusiastically?

At this she barked a laugh, sniffled her last, and clambered up from the floor to go and find him.

To her relief, he had not gone far; in fact, he had not moved except to sit down in his chair at the table. His elbows were on the tabletop; his hands were steepled, and he rested the bridge of his nose on his forefingers. His eyes were closed, not in pain but in the memory of pain.

She went slowly to take the chair across from him. She was not surprised when he remained as he was; and yet she knew he was fully aware of her presence.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

His eyelids flickered. "Sorry for what?" he said, moving his lips only a little.

"Pitching a childish fit and running away," she said. "I'm done now."

The corners of his lips moved in what was almost a smile.

"It's only," she said, her voice catching a little in spite of herself, "it's only that I shouldn't be allowed to have such an effect on you."

His eyelids flickered again, and a faint line appeared between his brows. "Why not?"

"Giles," she said, "I'm a shadow here. For all I know, I'm a shadow everywhere I am, but I know I'm one here. And I ought to—I have to—stay that way."

At this his eyes opened on her face; she met his gaze, but it cost her something to do it.

He took his hands away from his lips and spoke. "You seem to be calling me by one name or the other by turns. I would like you to choose one and stick with it."

"Would you keep to the point," she said irritably.

"I am," he said, his voice quite flat.

She could acknowledge the point, but she didn't have to like it: she dropped her eyes to the table and pursed her mouth before answering. "It isn't that simple," she said.

"Yes, it is. You aren't really a shadow, you know," he said. "You want to be; but you are not."

Elisabeth shut her eyes.

"It would be better," she said, "if I were."

"Better?" Skepticism.

"Easier." She gave it to him with the voice of a recalcitrant child, keeping her eyes shut.

"Yes."

She opened her eyes to glare at him. "Is there something wrong with wanting it to be easier?" she demanded.

"No," he said. His mouth was twitching in that almost-smile again. "It's just that you seem to be flirting with that complicated human closeness as it happens to suit you. I think you said something about that just today—something about points of contact and playing it to the hilt." His tired eyes twinkled ever so faintly.

She lifted her chin. "Are you accusing me of being inconsistent?"

At this he really did smile.

"Damn you," Elisabeth said. She braced her elbows and put her head in her hands. "Damn you, damn you, Rupert."

The silence in the room evened and deepened, as they both recognized the side she'd just come down on. Giles cleared his throat painfully, breaking it.

"On the other hand," he said softly, "I am sometimes spectacularly wrong."

Without lifting her head, she whispered, "Not about this."

"Even after...?" He stopped completely.

She took her hands away from her head and laid them flat on the table, keeping her eyes on their squarely tapering shape, on her boyish knuckles and flat, fragile nails, which were bitten in places despite her efforts to control the habit. When she opened her mouth, she spoke to them: "That wasn't your fault."

"I pushed you," he said, his voice thick again.

She shook her head, unable to find the words to build the argument that would stand against his palpable grief.

Minutes passed as her thoughts moved, glacier-like, to the place they'd begun. She shook her head again. "I don't know what to do," she said, her voice low. "I could try to make the touch—except—"

"Except...?"

"I might not be able to," she said. Her eyes filled, and she kept her gaze carefully on her hands.

He cleared his throat again. "What do you mean?"

She opened her mouth, and after a few seconds she managed to say it: "It was Nothing."

"What was nothing?" he said.

"I was," she said, her vision blurring. "At the bottom of me. There was Nothing."

He said nothing to this; she could almost hear him taking it in, trying to understand it.

"It's like one of those cruel children's tricks," she said, the tears drying unshed in her eyes. She had even stopped shaking. "You know, on TV, where they have someone open a door, and then a smaller door behind that, and then another and another, hundreds of them, and finally you open just this little bitty door and there's nothing there."

After a pause his voice scraped to life: "That is what you're afraid of?"

"That's what is," she said to her hands. "That's what I found. Nothing. And not a homely kind of Nothing. Just—this sick empty—" She broke off, and it was a long moment before she could say what came next: "Isn't...isn't that what pure evil is made of?"

"Yes," he said, his voice a whisper.

She lifted her eyes to his then, resolute as if standing before a firing squad at dawn. "Then...?"

His eyes met hers, quiet and earnest. "I know you are human," he said.

The water came into her eyes again, but still did not spill over. "But you don't know what I should do," she said.

For the first time his eyes dropped; his shoulders went down a fraction, and the grief lines seemed permanently carved into his face. He shook his head, and opened his lips to say, No, I don't know: but the words never came.

It was then that Elisabeth finally registered a sound that had been tumbling lightly in her ear like a mosquito: the kettle in the kitchen, whistling ever more weakly as the tea water boiled itself away.

*

They gave up on the tea, without even discussing it. Giles went into the kitchen and turned the burner off under the kettle.

It seemed too early to go to bed, so he got out the chess set. She set up the pieces, and they both made a valiant attempt at playing a game before Elisabeth laid the tip of her forefinger on her own king, rocked it, and pushed it over slowly. It rolled against the queen and stopped: she looked up at him wordlessly. He nodded and began picking up pieces to put them away.

They went to bed. Elisabeth changed into her ratty T-shirt and pajama pants in the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and returned to the livingroom to make up her bed on the couch. By the time she settled into her nest he was already upstairs. She lay there listening to the sound of dresser drawers opening and shutting, and the rustle of the covers as he pulled them back. His light went off, leaving the lamp at her head the only source of light in the flat.

Silence, and Elisabeth couldn't hold back anymore. So many tears…she had had no idea how much she had been carrying. And of course there was no one to take it from her.

I have preserved all your tears in my bottle…

To do what with? she wondered. It was her last clear thought as she put her face into Giles's pillow and went into a paroxysm of grief as quiet as she could make it.

She didn't hear him get up and come down the stairs, but she knew when he was standing next to her nest on the couch. She knew, too, when he bent tentatively over her, and his hand on her shoulder made no flutter of surprise in her.

He spoke her name quietly, and she snuffled and coughed to get a full breath. Turned her face aside, exposing to him the obvious signs of her grief.

Almost comically, he was whispering, as if afraid of waking some other person in the flat. "I—I know you don't—I know that probably the last thing you want is me…but—" He stopped, and she sniffed thickly and glanced up at him.

"But," he continued, broad apology in his voice, "I thought perhaps if we were both going to be miserable, we ought to be miserable together."

She sniffed again and made a shrug with her face. "What do you suggest we do?" she croaked.

He straightened a little and cast a glance around the room. "I don't know…chess is definitely out."

"As are books," she added. "'Oh canst thou not minister to a mind diseased…'"

He smiled wryly and took up her quote. "'…Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart?'"

"You know the Scottish play," she murmured. "And of course the answer is, 'Therein the patient must minister to himself.'…Let's watch television."

He shut his eyes in a silent laugh. "Very well, let's."

He turned on the other lamp at the side of the couch and went to clear the books away from the television table. He tossed her the remote; she had just sat upright enough to be able to catch it. "Find us a program," he said. "I'll make the tea."

Elisabeth had never seen a remote so old as this one; the markings under the buttons were very nearly worn away. After a few tries she managed to get the TV on and begin flipping through the channels. Giles rattled about in the kitchen for quite some time while she desultorily watched the end of a Law and Order rerun; when he came out, he was carrying a tray with several vessels on it and a plate with a heaped cloth napkin upon it. He set the tray down on the coffee table, and Elisabeth lurched up to pluck away the napkin. "Scones!"

"Yes, scones," he said, glancing askance at her as if she were about to launch a verbal attack on them.

"I don't remember seeing any scones in your kitchen," she said.

"I freeze them," he said, "and then heat them up in the microwave. It's not quite the same as fresh, but it works all right, and they keep longer this way."

"Where do you get fresh scones in California?" she said, reaching for one and putting it on her saucer.

"I make them," he said, indignant.

She smiled as she poured out tea for both of them; as she added milk and sugar to hers, he took his cup and settled (gingerly at first, but then more comfortably) on one end of the couch, arranging his soft purple robe over his knees. She tossed him her down blanket and rearranged the other around herself, curled up with her scone and tea.

"Oh!" he said, "I forgot the lemon curd." He tossed away the blanket and hauled himself to his feet again.

"This gets better and better." Elisabeth worked herself more comfortably into the corner of the couch and reached for the remote.

When Giles returned, he was carrying not only an old marmalade jar half-full of lemon curd, but also a small jar of Devon cream and two spoons to serve them with. "Wow," Elisabeth said. "Do you make the lemon curd too?"

He raised supercilious eyebrows at her. "As a matter of fact, I do."

"Then it should be good," she said, and drew out a heavy spoonful of smooth yellow curd. Once it was on her saucer, she stuck a finger in it and popped it into her mouth. "Mmm. I could eat this stuff straight."

He gave her a confessional glance that made one corner of her mouth quirk up into a smile.

There was absolutely nothing on. Elisabeth flipped through the channels, then gave the ornery remote to Giles. He could handle the remote slightly better, but their luck still did not improve, until he hit the public television station and they found that what had been a telethon fund drive was now an episode of Antiques Roadshow. "Wanna watch this?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "Okay."

So they munched on their scones and watched the episode, making rude comments every now and then ("He has a terrible toupee." "Disgusting."), sipped tea and refilled their cups from the pot.

Giles hit the mute button when the telethon came back on mid-episode. Elisabeth was polishing off her first scone. "Why," she asked him around the last bite, "are scones supposed to be stuffy?"

"I don't know," Giles said, instantly aggrieved. "Nobody says that chocolate chip cookies or apple pie are stuffy."

"Scones get a bad rap," she agreed, swallowing. "I mean, they're just flour and butter and sugar. They have no nutritional value whatsoever. It doesn't take much to make them—"

"—badly," he said.

She tipped her head to concede him the point. "My scones are terrible. Guaranteed to suck ninety percent of the moisture out of your body." She sucked in her cheeks and let them out with a smack.

He smiled.

"They're crumbly and messy and nobody in their right mind would call them dainty."

"They're maligned," Giles said. "And the worst of it is, the loudest among them probably haven't even seen a scone. Xander Harris, for example, probably doesn't even know what a scone looks like."

"It's probably because they've never been to Britain," she said sagely.

"You haven't either," he accused.

"I'm an English lit major," Elisabeth said. "I've been everywhere."

He looked at her skeptically.

"At least," she said, "I can appreciate a good creamy scone when it hits me in the head."

"True, O Queen," he said with a smile.

"Give me another." She held out her curd-and-cream-streaked plate, and he obliged.

She started in on the new scone, adding more cream and lemon curd; he poured her a fresh cup of tea, which she accepted gracefully.

"I begin to see," he said, "that I just need to feed you the right things to get you to eat."

She snorted good-naturedly. "Right. Oh, the show's back on."

"Oh." He unmuted the television.

They spent the next hour heckling the Antiques Roadshow judges ("I've got one of those in my attic in England—it can't possibly be that valuable." "You have an attic in England?" "And a box to put it in."), finishing off the plate of scones, and taking turns scraping out the last of the lemon curd onto their plates. During one round with an ancient walnut secretary, Elisabeth broke off drooling over the furniture to glance at Giles, who was using his fingers to clean out the lemon-curd jar. He froze with one finger in his mouth as she looked at him, caught red-handed.

"I'll never tell," she told him.

"My reputation would never recover," he said with a smirk, and offered the jar to her. She declined with a polite upturned palm. He looked sadly into the empty jar. "I'll have to make some more soon."

"Indeed you will. Look at that—it has a hidden compartment and they're not even going to add money for it!"

"You have a fetish for desks?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"Well...."

"That was rhetorical, smarty."

He grinned over at her. She saluted him with her teacup and drank off the last of her tea. "On the other hand," she said, "once that secret compartment is exposed to the public in an Antiques Roadshow marathon, it's not so secret anymore. So I guess it doesn't rate extra money." She leaned forward to set the empty teacup on the table.

"That's one way to look at it."

"You are of my opinion, I know you are."

He saluted her with his teacup and drained it as she had done.

When the next telethon interruption came, Elisabeth got up to take a bathroom break ("Thank you very much for the power of suggestion," Giles said when she got back, getting up himself; "No problem," she said), and came back to clear the coffee table of their cups and plates. They settled themselves back on the couch again to watch the next episode in the marathon. Except that this time Elisabeth curled herself up more lying down; as Giles unmuted the television she stretched out—tentatively at first, but then more boldly—ending by wedging her bare feet behind him. As they watched the show he shifted his shoulders and settled back comfortably, snugly against her feet; and she relaxed.

The dance of antiques went on; Elisabeth's eyes grew glassy, and she saw when she glanced at Giles that he too was feeling the hour. He had run his hand through his hair, leaving a tuft to stick up at the back, and his glasses had slid down his nose.

Her eyelids drooped, watching the screen.

*

The television screen was a static palette of color ribbons. On the couch, Elisabeth was stretched out asleep with one hand curled under her chin, Giles's blanket tucked around her. Her down blanket, rumpled and askew, lay across Giles's lap; his head was back, his glasses half-fallen onto his broad forehead; his mouth was open, his breathing audible.

Something made Giles wake with a snort; his head jerked up, and he brought up a hand to stop his glasses falling off his face. Once they were straight, he took them off altogether for a moment and rubbed his eyes hard. After a moment he pushed aside the blanket and got up to turn off the television.

Behind him, Elisabeth stirred and gave a little groan. He turned to look at her. Her eyelashes were fluttering as she blinked. "Did I miss anything?" she murmured.

He smiled faintly. "No."

"Mmm."

He turned off the other lamp, watching her. She was no longer asleep, he could tell, though her eyes were closed. There was just enough room on the edge of the couch for him to perch at her side, and he did so, straightening his robe over his knees.

She moved a little to make more room for him, and he shifted to sit more comfortably close to her. "It's been quite a day," he said softly, reaching out to tuck a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear. His hand lingered, to smooth her rumpled hair over her temple.

At first her only answer was an affirmative grunt; then she said belatedly, "I'll drink to that."

"I think we did," he said.

"Mmm."

They were quiet together, his fingers stroking her hair lightly. "With weak tea," she said at length.

He smiled. "With weak tea. I suppose it wasn't all that bad."

She smiled without opening her eyes.

"You have the smallest ears," he said, his fingertip tracing the outer rim of her ear where it lay against her hair.

"The worse to hear you with," she murmured. "Guess it means I'm not much of a mouser."

"A—what?" he said, snorting a laugh.

"They say that you can tell whether a cat's a good mouser by the size of its ears."

He chuckled. "In that case, I ought to be an excellent mouser."

She grinned and opened her eyes long enough to glance at him; he spoke the truth.

Another silence came and lengthened; then she said, "You feeling better?"

"Yes. You?"

"Yes," she said. "I'll be all right."

His fingertips faltered on her warm smooth hair. "I know you told me not to apologize anymore—but—" She heard his deep sigh. "I'm sorry. More than I can tell you."

She reached a hand from under her chest and patted his knee. "You're absolved," she said quietly. "It was going to happen sometime; it may as well have been now. Just think how much worse it would have been if I'd been alone, or with people who couldn't have understood what was happening to me. I wouldn't have understood it, probably. No, it was better to face it now, and here."

He sighed again. "These things are bound to come, but woe to him by whom they come. It would be better that he should be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck…."

"That's not you," Elisabeth said firmly, opening her eyes.

"It's not you either," he said. His gaze arrested her breath. Once he saw he had her attention, he went on:

"I hold by my former opinion. I know what you think you saw, but I think it represents what you fear, not what is."

"Then why do I fear it?"

He shrugged and adjusted his glasses. "Because it's a reasonable thing to fear." He returned his hand to its ministry upon her hair.

She heaved a sigh and stared ahead of her, at the corner of the coffee table.

"Perhaps," he mused, "it's the only reasonable thing to fear."

"'We have met the enemy and it is us,'" she quoted softly.

"Yes." His voice was very wry.

"It will still be well," she murmured, closing her eyes again.

"You think so?"

"It's one of those things," she said. "I have a faith that it will."

"I used to," he said.

The note in his voice made her massage his knee consolingly. "I know."

Again they were silent together; his fingers, incisive like a scholar's and paradoxically gentle like a soldier's, continued to stroke her hair. After a time she withdrew her own hand to curl it under her again, shut her eyes, and sighed. Within minutes, sleep evened the lines of her face and slowed her breathing.

He tucked a nonexistent strand behind her ear one last time. "Goodnight," he whispered. When he stood she drew a sudden deep breath, but did not wake. Relieved, he straightened the down blanket and pulled it over the other on top of her. When he was satisfied that she was firmly asleep, he slowly climbed the stairs to his own bed. Soon he, too, succumbed to a sleep as deep as hers, as quiet and as mercifully dreamless.

*

Chapter 14