Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 28
Rupert, as Elisabeth discovered when she went downstairs, had bought groceries. He was in the act of putting them away when he saw her descending slowly, step by step, still weaving a little from the remaining effects of her concussion. His face brightened. "Oh, hallo," he said. "Are you feeling a little better, then?" He delayed turning to put the milk in the fridge, watching her face.
She came down the last few steps with a thump. "Yeah," she said, clearing her throat to get the word out. "I see you went to the store."
"Yes." He turned finally and continued, his voice buried in the open fridge. "I also got some Chinese, if you feel up to eating." He shut the fridge door and turned as she came into the kitchen doorway. "How do you feel about egg drop soup?"
She offered him a little smile. "Sounds good. I'm gonna—gotta—" She gestured down the hall to the bathroom, acknowledging his swallowed smile at her pointing finger half-lost in the sleeve of his pajama shirt.
As it turned out, the egg drop soup was a healing balm almost as efficacious as the potion Tara had given her. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be hungry. She looked up from scraping the last bits of egg out of the bowl to see Rupert watching her, nakedly, a faint hopeful light in his tired face. "You were hungry," he said.
"Yeah," she said.
"Oh! I forgot something," he said suddenly. He got up from his chair across from her and went to where he'd draped his suit jacket over the couch. After a quick shuffle through the various pockets, he straightened and came to lay next to her plate—her glasses. "I had them repaired," he said as she picked them up and unfolded the earpieces. "They couldn't do much about the looseness of the frame, but they did smooth the scratch off the right lens."
She wasn't ready to cry, not yet, but a small thread of a silent wail went up inside her. She cleared her throat. "Unlike Peter Rabbit," she said, "I don't remember when I lost them."
He gave her a small rueful smile. "You lost them on my doorstep. I just missed stepping on them when I dragged you in the house."
She didn't want to talk about what had happened. "Thank you for rescuing them for me." She attempted to put them on, then realized that the bandage over her temple was an uncomfortable obstruction. She gave up and folded the glasses back again. "So no bread and milk and blackberries for me tonight; dose of chamomile and bed actually sounds good."
"The tea Tara left does have some chamomile in it," Rupert agreed, rubbing absently at his temple.
Elisabeth opened her mouth to say that Tara was right and he could do with some of that tea himself; but she realized in time that that would mean revealing she had heard their conversation, and she didn't want to talk about England either. She shut her mouth.
After dinner Elisabeth found her backpack and took it with her into the bathroom, where she unpacked it while her bathwater ran. She pulled out item after item, as if her pack were a dimensional Christmas stocking and she had no idea what would be in it; and indeed some things were a surprise. Her books, blank before, had her name written neatly on the half-title in pencil, as they had always been; her CDs once again carried the little return address stickers she'd put on them several addresses ago. Elisabeth looked closely at the Joan Osborne: the sticker was rucked on the corner where she'd tried to pick it off and given up in disgust, just as she remembered. The latest Indigo Girls CD, however, was still missing. Of course, Elisabeth thought: they haven't recorded it yet. She sighed and set her CDs in a small pile next to her folded clothing.
She shook her pack lightly; there was a rattling, and she reached in again. Drew out first one amber prescription bottle, then another. A fresh tightness growing in her chest, Elisabeth ran her thumb over the label on the tranquilizers. The doctor's name had worn away, and she could no longer remember it. Guess this means it's time to get a new doctor. She rattled the pills lightly in the bottle. She had no intention of taking any tonight; not only did she still feel the perennial need to conserve her meds, she now also felt she would rather drink Tara's tea.
Does this mean I'm turning into a mystic? she wondered. Quite apart from her native distrust of chemicals and faceless scientific medicine, she was beginning to feel a movement within herself toward the rhythm of the old knowledge...the knowledge that had preserved her so that she could die in one piece, then kicked her back here whole....
Elisabeth shook her head, to clear the thought. Thoughts like that impeded her recovery, and prolonged by hours, days, the time she'd have to spend in Sunnydale. The time was for action; and oddly enough (barring the odd soul-shaking thought) Elisabeth felt quite up to it—she felt—rather—
Full. The bath had run full, and she hauled herself up from the floor to turn off the taps, undress, and slip into the water. She sighed in as much bliss as could be expected of one who was recovering from a concussion, slid low in the water, and closed her eyes. She hadn't had a bath since—since the night she and Rupert had—
This was not exactly a welcome thought either, but only because it was pleasant and bright, like a small sun in her consciousness. Elisabeth kept her eyes closed and lay silent in the warmth, moving only occasionally, to wet again the surface of her skin that rose out of the water.
At length a tap came at the door, followed by Rupert's muted voice. "Elisabeth?"
Elisabeth opened her eyes, but did not otherwise move. "Yes?"
"All right in there?"
"Yes," she said. She shut her eyes again, but after ten seconds opened them again. "Rupert," she said.
The door opened a crack, just enough to admit one of his eyes and a few mussed curls of his hair to her view. She smiled.
He gave a short nod, moved a hand to poke his glasses into place on the bridge of his nose; withdrew silently. The door clicked softly shut.
Elisabeth sat up and, wincing, peeled the dressing from her stitches so that she could wash her hair.
*
Later, she submitted to Rupert's ministrations, sitting quietly while he cut lengths of adhesive tape for a new dressing. "I'll try to make it small," he said, "so you can put your glasses on."
"Okay," she said.
Rupert seemed in the mood to make small talk. "The doctor said you were awfully lucky that 'tree' caught you on the bony part of your temple. He said if it had hit the soft place, you might have been killed."
"Little did he know," Elisabeth said.
Rupert answered with a mordant grunt.
She kept her eyes on the old framed map on the livingroom wall and let her consciousness focus on his gentle fingers pressing the bandage into place. "There," he said. "It looks a little clumsy, but it should do. I don't suppose you'll want to sleep directly on it."
"No," she said. She didn't much want to sleep at all anymore, now that it was dark; and her head still hurt her a good deal. She turned her head to look at him. He had a soft, fuzzy look about him, the look of one who has resigned himself to being too tired.
"Shall I make you a cup of the tea Tara left you?" he said.
She left it for you, too. "All right," she said.
She sat at the table and waited while he brewed the mixture in the kitchen; watched as he said the blessing over it, looking off an unfolded piece of notebook paper. He brought it to her and put it into her hands with the faintest air of ceremony. She took it with a compressed smile and carried it with her upstairs. "Goodnight," Rupert said from below.
"Goodnight," she said, and disappeared into his bedroom.
*
She drank half the tea. It was all she wanted, all she needed to sink back into the softness of Rupert's bed and drift off. Rest; rest imbuing the fullness of her limbs, straightening the room of her mind.
She didn't know how long she had been asleep when she woke again, slowly in the tired yellow light of the single bedside lamp. She was not well. It was her only clear thought as she came up out of unconsciousness. She was not well; and then a second thought: she should drink the rest of the tea. She struggled for mobility and finally got herself sitting upright.
More thoughts came; not clear ones, but still mostly-formed. It was still dark. Elisabeth looked at the alarm clock: it was just past one. She reached to touch the cup on the night table; it was cold. Perhaps it would not work cold. Perhaps she should heat it in the microwave and bless it again. She looked up.
There was still light downstairs. Forgetting the tea, Elisabeth slipped gingerly out of the bed and padded out to the upper landing.
Below her Rupert was working at his desk. The desk lamp, one of several that were lit, picked up the glitter of stubble on his cheek. If he were to grow a beard, Elisabeth thought, it would probably be gray. As she watched he pulled off his glasses and rubbed mercilessly at his eyes, then put them on again and stared closer at the page of some ancient book. Even from above, Elisabeth could see that the open page of his notebook was empty of everything but doodles. Piled near him, on the desk and on the table, were many more books, and Elisabeth could not tell if they were books he had gone through yet or not.
"Kind pity chokes my spleen," she murmured, and he looked up.
"Elisabeth. Are you...all right?"
"I'm fine," she said. "You should be in bed."
"I'm all right," he muttered. "I'm just working. Go back to sleep, Elisabeth."
"Why don't you come to bed," she said flatly.
Of course, he took no more kindly to anything that sounded like an order than she did herself. He looked up again, more than a little annoyance in his face. "I can't. I have to work. I've gotten behind."
She let his words sink into the silence, as clear an indictment of her continued presence as anything else he could utter. He did, however, have the grace to begin to look mortified, and it was this as much as anything that made Elisabeth suddenly furious.
"You won't find anything on the demon woman tonight," she told him. "Come and sleep."
"Is that a prediction?" he flashed back.
"It's common sense." Elisabeth folded her arms over the shaking in her chest. "Look at you. You can barely read."
"I can read well enough," he said. Not only did he have the air of digging his heels in, he was getting decidedly Rippery about the shadowed eyes. Elisabeth thrust out her chin. As if she didn't have enough nonsense to deal with.
"Tara left that tea for you just as much as for me," she said at last.
"It is very kind of Tara, and you, to take such a concern," he said coolly.
"Damn straight." Elisabeth's Midwestern drawl was coming out. "Don't you patronize me with the truth."
They stared each other silently to stalemate.
She decided to leave it that way. "If you are at all inclined to pull your head out and take some advice," she said quietly, tidying her drawl away, "the potion is very good for what ails you. I'll leave a space for you in the bed if you change your mind." She turned.
"And why," he said, "shouldn't I bed down here?"
She turned back to look at him, and suddenly read correctly his sardonic look. "Because that couch'll kill your back," she said tartly.
He gave her a sweet little smile.
Elisabeth bristled.
"Fuck you," she said. "If I wanted to get in your pants, I'd just...get in your pants. As it happens, I'm rather more interested in recovering from a concussion at the moment. Good night, Rupert." She turned on her heel and went back into the bedroom.
Well, she said to herself, that was such a success, Elisabeth. You'll be up for Tactician of the Year before you know it. She reached for the cold cup of potion and downed it in three swallows. Whether it worked or not, it would at least wet her throat.
She flounced back into the bed and burrowed herself into the covers, making sure that there were pillows enough for him should the impossible occur and he decide to get some sleep. She reached out and turned off the lamp, leaving the room shrouded in shadow, a darkness in which she could feel her nerves thrumming all the more strongly. She ignored them and closed her eyes. And the cold potion seemed to be working, for she began to fall asleep almost at once.
She woke again, some time later, to the sound of him moving about in the darkness of the room. All the lights in the flat were out. She almost opened her lips to speak to him, to ask if something was wrong; but instead she listened, and heard him undressing, slowly, fumbling and—she knew it somehow—still angry. She kept still as he felt his way around to the other side of the bed and slipped under the covers. He shifted and wriggled a little, letting out a long sigh, and became as still as she except for the faint remaining quiver of Giles pissitude. She listened with all her senses: his quiver of anger subsided and was replaced with a faint shivering of a different character altogether, something that smoothed over her own anger and left her listening without rancor till his breathing evened.
"Kind pity chokes my spleen," she mouthed into the darkness, and fell asleep again, this time for good.
*
Rupert woke, as so often, without an alarm. The light in the window had not yet grown enough to give more than a faint watery gleam to the shadows of the room, but it was enough to be daylight: time to get up. He turned his head to check on the sleeping form on the other side of the bed. The back of her head was to him, the line of her shoulder and back quite still where they were visible above the covers. He watched, to make sure she was breathing, and drew breath himself when he saw the faint lift and fall of the covers over her side.
Stealthily he slipped out of the bed; donned a pair of sweatpants and his glasses; picked his way quietly downstairs into the dark livingroom. On his way to the bathroom he gathered up a fresh T-shirt and boxers from the pile of folded laundry atop the washer. He showered, shaved with a meticulous hand, ran his hands through his damp hair. Then he went to make coffee.
He should not have said that to her, about getting behind. He had been so careful to breathe not the faintest word of recrimination to her about her presence: it wasn't her fault, and what could she do about it? It was he who had failed to prepare her, comfort her, save her. And what he could do for her now was imperfect at best.
And she was tired; why else would she have savaged him like that? Indeed, if he'd been rendered helpless in somebody else's house for a week and change, he'd have started in with the savaging a lot sooner. Not, of course, that he had responded to it wisely. Rupert sighed to himself and poured a strong cup of coffee; it was a morning for drinking coffee black. Perhaps she would overlook what had happened last night. Perhaps they would need to say nothing about it.
He was on his second cup of coffee when he heard sounds upstairs. Presently Elisabeth puttered softly down the stairs and into full view, bleary-eyed and tousle-headed. She gave him a brief wave and disappeared down the hall to the bathroom.
When she came out he offered her a cup of coffee, which she accepted wordlessly and began to doctor herself, pulling out a spoon and retrieving the milk from the fridge. To Elisabeth, it seemed, no day was a black-coffee day. The bruises on her face had shaded off into many brilliant colors—green and yellow where Buffy had hit her, blue and purple and black where the vamp with the club had followed up. She was wearing her own pajamas again: baggy flannel pants and a T-shirt clearly chosen because it was no longer fit for public wear—he wasn't even sure what color it was supposed to have been. He wondered if she had had it new or acquired it from someone else. There was, in fact, very little he knew about her even yet—where she had come from, what sort of family she had had, what had driven her to leave home and wander. She was an odd sort of person, both prickly and vulnerable, both savvy and gullible, chary of touch yet harboring a good lover's instinct; a description, he realized suddenly, that could well be applied to him. Perhaps that was the only thing that made her difficult for him to know.
"How are you this morning?" he heard himself asking her. Rupert, that was stupid. He at least knew she disliked talking in the morning.
She gave him a raised eyebrow, but there was still the touch of humor at the corner of her mouth and in her eyes. "I'm all right," she said. She lifted her doctored coffee and took a sip. "You?"
He shrugged on a long breath. "Oh, I'm all right."
She nodded and carried her coffee out to the table.
He said, "I have time to make some eggs before I go out to the shop. Would you care for some?"
She looked back at him briefly, her face serene. "Okay."
He got out the frying pan, a bowl, a few eggs, butter, and cheese and left them on the counter, then went upstairs to get mostly dressed. When he came back down she was still sitting in her place at the table, sipping at her coffee; she gave him a brief smile as he passed. Good; she appeared not to be angry with him. He mirrored her brief smile and went to make the eggs.
"So what are the plans for today?" she asked him over the sound of his whisk beating the eggs.
Good question. "I'm going to be in the shop this morning. This afternoon I thought I'd take you with me to—" he paused— "get a few errands run…."
"Before I go to England?" she said.
He stopped beating the eggs and turned to look at her. There was a silence.
"Yes," he said finally. "There's the matter of your passport, for one thing…"
"I have one," she said.
He stopped again and looked at her. "You do?"
"Yeah," she said, nonchalantly. "Found it in the inner pocket of my jacket last night. All shiny and new. I hadn't used it yet."
"Well," Rupert said, nonplussed, "I suppose that saves us the trouble fudging one for you."
He could feel her eyes on him even as he turned to pour the egg mixture into the hot buttered pan. "When am I to leave?" she asked him.
He cleared his throat. "Day after tomorrow."
She made no answer to this, and he was afraid to look at her. He kept his attention on the cooking eggs.
"I always wanted to leave the country," she said cheerfully as he loaded two plates with eggs and a few pieces of toast. "I was planning to go to Europe once I'd saved enough money."
"You'll have money enough to visit Europe if you'd like," Rupert said, carrying the plates and a handful of silverware out to the table. He put hers down in front of her and sat down with his. He arranged his silverware and began to pile eggs onto a piece of toast, when he saw that she had not moved to touch either her silverware or her plate. He looked up at her: she sat motionless, her eyes on her food, and tears were sliding down her face. As he watched, she began to quiver slightly, and the tears fell faster.
"Elisabeth," he said—so she was angry after all, then—and at the sound of his voice she put her hands up and covered her face. A faint mewling sound issued from her throat.
A joke flashed through his mind—Didn't know you were that tired of eggs—but he quashed it, put down his fork and stretched a hand across the table toward her, though she couldn't see it. "Elisabeth," he said, more softly, "if this is about last—"
"I want to go home," she wept.
He flinched, as if by her words she had actually kicked him in the stomach rather than merely making him feel that way. He sat transfixed, watching her break down; then forced himself to move. He scraped back his chair and went to her. She did not acknowledge him, so, tentatively, he touched her hair. When she made no move to push him away, he touched her shoulder, trying to gather her in—and she turned slowly to press her face into the lee of his shoulder. For a long moment he was lost with her as she cried, half-kneeling next to her chair, holding her as she shook; then he woke to himself and realized he was speaking to her—useless promises—"We'll try it again," he was saying, "we'll do the spell again...."
After a moment it seemed she too could hear what he was saying, because she lifted her head and pulled back to stare at him, her face wet and flushed. "You can't," she said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. (Rupert wished he had his handkerchief on him instead of upstairs in his suit jacket pocket.) "The focus has passed."
"There'll be another one," he said helplessly.
She tilted her head and gave him a hard, tearful stare. He sighed and gave up.
"Besides," she said, wiping her face and shivering, "it won't change the fact that—that I died back there."
"No," he whispered. "It won't."
She wiped at her wet face, uselessly; he rose and plucked a cloth napkin out of the centerpiece to give her, then pulled out the chair next to her and sat heavily in it.
She was recovering her self-possession: she gave him a mortified glance from over the napkin as she blew her nose. "Sorry," she sniffed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—lose it like that—"
He gave her a look, and she desisted with the apology. She searched out a dry spot on the napkin and blew her nose again.
He sat silently as she finished. Presently she put down the napkin and picked up her fork. "I should make an effort with these," she said, beginning to pile eggs onto her toast.
"They're probably cold," he said, reaching to pull his own plate over.
They were; but the meal was still edible, and they ate without comment. He was relieved to see the alertness back in her movements when she turned and asked, "Is there any juice?"
He began to rise. "I'll get some."
"No—" She jumped up. "No. I'll get it." From the kitchen she asked: "Want some?"
"Please," he said.
She brought them both cups of juice, and they finished their meal in a silence much less charged than it had been before.
"So," she said finally, swallowing hard, "England."
"Yes," he said.
She gave him a sidelong look. "It's a big island."
"London," he said.
She looked at him, gathering her question. "How's that...how's that gonna work?"
He sighed. "I've found a place for you to stay, with a friend of mine, till you get on your feet."
"Oh," she said, very softly. "Okay."
"And you will," he said.
She lowered her eyes to her plate and prodded the remains of her eggs. He decided to be brisk.
"I've made some arrangements already, for your care in the interim. You'll have a place to stay, and some money. There are a few loose ends to tie up yet, but that will only take a few phone calls, which I'll probably make this morning and tomorrow. You'll probably need new clothing for the London climate, but I suppose that can wait till you get there—you and Olivia can do the shopping—"
Elisabeth's head jerked up. "Olivia?"
His fork hand paused. "Yes...."
She stared fixedly at him. "Olivia," she repeated. "As in, Olivia-who-used-to-be-your-orgasm-friend Olivia?"
He put down his fork altogether and folded his arms over his chest. "Yes," he said, daring her to make something of it. Orgasm friend, indeed.
"Let me get this straight. You," she said slowly, "are sending me to stay with your ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend who left you because she got freaked out by Hellmouthy stuff."
He heaved a great sigh and folded his arms tighter. "Yes."
She left her chair and paced the length of the table, her hand out feeling its edge; then returned to her place without looking at him. Finally she gripped the back of her chair and turned her gaze on him with full force. "Are you insane?" she inquired.
"Not last time I checked," he said, with a serenity he did not feel.
"Check again," she said. She began to pace the room again. Rupert sat, watching her silently, trying not to glower.
She turned on him again. "What did you tell her about me?"
Rupert sighed. "I told her you were a refugee of sorts. That you'd washed up in Sunnydale and needed a fresh start. That you'd been through a difficult time."
"And that other little key piece of info, namely that I've also been in your bed?"
Rupert waved a hand without quite unfolding his arms. "Oh, she'll take that for granted."
She had been going to turn away, but stopped and stared at him in frank incredulity. Rupert blinked, winced, shook his head. "I—that didn't—come out right. I meant—"
"—to make a slap at your own whoredom, I presume," Elisabeth said, now folding her arms in her turn. "Also to underline the Bloomsburian character of your circle of friendships. I understand," she said, though he would have thought that such understanding would have calmed her tone of voice.
"I'm not sure you do," he said. "Our relationship is not what would concern Olivia...."
"No," Elisabeth said, "just the fact that I'm screwed up in the head by being an alien in this dimension. Of course the fact that you and I shagged takes a back seat to that."
He flushed hot and uncrossed his arms. "It's the best I can do," he enunciated.
She went quite still where she stood, and the color left her face. Her eyes dropped. For a moment Rupert felt a salt satisfaction at his victory, but it was short-lived; she opened her lips, trembling, and he felt cheap. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
He sighed through his nose, said: "No—forgive me. You're quite right. It's—perfectly damnable, and if I—if I could do better, I would—"
She lifted her eyes to his. "Rupert...."
He went on. "Olivia's reliable. She's of independent means, relatively unencumbered, and—because of her discomfort with supernatural matters, relatively incurious about what's going on here." He couldn't look at her anymore; he dropped his eyes and began to plait his fingers together on the table. "She'll be kind to you, and she won't pry into your affairs if you don't want. She's...my only friend who fits all those descriptions."
"I'm sorry," she said.
He lifted his face, trying to articulate some antidote for her need to apologize, and ended up merely shaking his head helplessly.
Elisabeth sat down in the nearest chair and sighed. "Beggars have no right to be choosers," she said.
If she had said it bitterly it might have angered him further, but there was real penitence in her voice, and for the second time that morning her words gave him a visceral flinch. To cover the sound that would have come from his mouth, he said, "You're not."
She lifted her eyes skeptically. "Not what?"
"A beggar."
"How do you define the term?" she said dryly. "It's like I just got born—I'm at square one, totally powerless...."
"Well, not totally," he said. "You do have your knowledge."
She snorted, but gently. "A power I can't use. Except perhaps to nettle you with." This last she delivered with a small glance at him, a veiled apology that undid completely all the sinews of his resentment. He dropped his gaze; his shoulders and head followed, and his eyes grew wet. There was a silence, then he said:
"You are more gracious than I. Forgive me."
When he looked up at her she spoke, cutting across the whole of their cross-talk. "You want your domain and your focus back. There's nothing wrong with that."
His throat ached. "Nevertheless," he said huskily, "you have something to forgive."
She met his look soberly, then gave him a small smile. "I will forgive you," she said, "if you let me drink you under the table tonight."
He blinked, then recognized what she was referring to. "I thought you said that was difficult for you to do."
"With Tara's tea," she said.
"Oh," he said. He drew a sudden, relaxed breath. "All right." He hesitated a second, then stretched an open hand across the table to her. For a moment she stared at it, as if it might become a snake, then looked up into his face. What she saw there must have reassured her, for she reached out slowly and took his hand in a strong clasp, and as she did, the color came back into her cheeks.
She let go of him and got up from the table. "You'd better get going." She reached for both their plates.
He looked at the clock. "Oh, God." He stood and reached for his empty juice glass, but Elisabeth came out of the kitchen and took it away from him. "I'll wash up. You go. Go," she repeated when he hesitated.
Rupert went. Upstairs, knotting his tie, he drew another long breath, poised between regret and relief. He shrugged into his jacket, grabbed his wallet and keys, and hurried downstairs.
She was running water and scraping their plates into the trash. "You sure you'll be all right?" he said anxiously.
She looked round at him. "If I'm not," she said, "I'll call."
He nodded. "Right. I'll—I'll see you later this afternoon."
She gave him a little smile, which he found himself able to return.
*
He was gone, and the flat was quiet. Elisabeth finished washing the dishes and wandered into the livingroom, finally choosing the easy chair as her refuge. He was gone, and it was quiet: it was safe to cry, and she did, hugging a throw pillow to herself and tucking her head against the side of the chair.
He was the only tiny tendril of a root she had put down in this dimension, and he was tired of her. She couldn't deny him the justice of his need to get back to his work, to end what to him was an excursus from his life and purpose; but it hurt nonetheless. She had lost her convenience to him, she thought bitterly, just like it always happens…no. She would not project her ignominious past onto him; she had never been convenient to him, and he had always been warm-hearted toward her—still was, as a matter of fact.
It didn't help.
The fact was, Elisabeth had never exactly planned for being really alone. Oh, she lived in a vagabond solitude, but she hadn't actually planned never to see her family again…just not before she had written some books and gotten older and possibly wiser and could walk back in with her own money and her independence and no need to toe any more lines….
"It was a stupid fantasy anyway," she said aloud to herself.
An impossible fantasy, now. She was now quite literally dead to them.
And why wasn't she properly dead, anyway? She had prepared for it, as much as one can. She had been, more or less, ready. And it was a far better proposition than living here (here including whatever she might find in England), living on the bounty of Rupert and Olivia….
Elisabeth sat up and pressed her head back against the back of the chair, and drew a breath in through her teeth. "I will not feel sorry for myself, I will not, I will not," she said under her breath.
Self-pity she could combat; but grief she could not, and it came for her then, and she curled in a little ball in the chair and wept bitterly for a long time.
When the worst of it had abated, she got up and went into the bathroom for some toilet paper with which to blow her nose; and ended up washing her face at the sink altogether, again avoiding the mirror. After she'd dried off, she liberated the roll of toilet paper from the dispenser and carried it with her back to the livingroom. She had a feeling she was not done crying yet.
She was debating whether to crawl back into the chair again when the phone rang. Elisabeth sniffed and cleared her throat as best she could, and went to answer it. "Hello?"
"Elisabeth. Hi. Giles leave for the shop?" It was Xander.
"Yeah," she said. Her voice had gone soft corduroy from the crying. She cleared her throat again and hoped it wasn't too obvious.
"Okay. I'll catch him there. So you on for tomorrow?"
Elisabeth blinked. "What's tomorrow?"
"Giles didn't tell you? We decided if you're going to England you need a real coat. Apparently it rains a lot there, you know."
Her eyes went wide. "Oh, Xander, you don't have to…."
"I know we don't have to. Don't worry about it. We're all going in on it, so it's not like it's crunching anyone's wallet. So anyway, tomorrow I'm taking the day off work and Anya and I are going to take you shopping."
In the background, a small voice said, "Ooh, ooh. Can I leave school and go shopping too?" followed by a loud chorus of "No."
"Damn it."
"Dawn."
"Are you at Buffy's house?" Elisabeth asked.
Xander gave a little laugh. "How'd you guess?"
("Well, you cuss." "Dawn. School." "Okay, okay.")
"Listen," Xander said, "I gotta catch Giles before I go to work myself. I'll see you tomorrow, kay?"
"Okay," Elisabeth said faintly.
She held onto the phone briefly after Xander had hung up, staring into the middle distance, before putting it back on its rest. Her other hand was not free; she looked down and saw that she was still holding the roll of toilet paper. She rolled her eyes mildly and set the roll on the desk.
She needed something to do. She stood thinking about it for a few minutes until it came to her.
"When in doubt, clean," she said, and went to find the broom.
*
By the time Rupert came home she had scrubbed out the bathtub, swept the kitchen floor (finding two Tylenol as she did so), scrubbed down the stove, laundered the sheets on Rupert's bed, dusted the livingroom, put away Rupert's folded clothing, gotten dressed herself, and read two chapters of Murder Must Advertise. She was starting on the next chapter when he came in, dragging his satchel with him and looking more tired than ever. "Hallo," she said.
"Hallo," he replied. "Are you ready to go out? I think I'd better keep moving before I…."
"—completely plotz?" Elisabeth finished. "Sure. Let me get my shoes."
He wandered further into the room and stopped at the desk, as she retrieved her socks and shoes and started putting them on. When she looked up, she saw that he had noticed the roll of toilet paper sitting there; he had picked it up and was frowning thoughtfully at it. She hurried with the laces of her shoes. "Sorry," she said, plucking the roll out of his hand, "I forgot to put this back. I needed a tissue." She offered no other explanation, instead choosing to retreat into the bathroom and return the roll to its dispenser; but when she came back she had a feeling he had read it all correctly, for his mouth was a small grim line. But all he said was, "Shall we go?"
"Yes," she said briskly, "we shall."
*
Since her passport was in order, they agreed that all her other errands could be accomplished at a large drugstore. Inside, he handed her a shopping basket with an amusingly British gesture and said, "Get whatever you need. More is optional; less is not."
She drew a deep breath. "Okay."
Without further ado Rupert wandered off to the magazine section and left her to it.
Elisabeth sought out the travel-size section and loaded up on shampoo and bath gel, toothpaste and deodorant; they were small and would fit better in her pack, Elisabeth would tell Rupert if he protested. She cut through the feminine product aisle, headed for the vitamins, but stopped. That was going to be an issue quite soon, she realized; so she chose a few things there, then went to the analgesics aisle and got a bottle of naproxen—that would double nicely for both cramps and the nagging headache she still had left over from her injury. Elisabeth noticed that a woman was staring at her halfway down the aisle; she met her eye, and the woman flushed and scuttled away. It took Elisabeth a moment to remember that her face was florid with bruises, topped by an awkward bandage and finished with her crooked glasses as a pièce de resistance. She shrugged and went to find Rupert.
She tracked him down finally in the clothing section at the back. "What do you think of this?" he said, turning around with a garish orange and red T-shirt.
She winced. "Honestly, Rupert? I don't think it's your color."
"Not for me. For you."
She suppressed a smile. "I don't think it's my color either. And anyway," she added, more seriously, "if I bought something new, you know, I'd have to throw out my entire wardrobe."
He didn't answer in words, but she could tell he didn't think that was a half-bad idea. She added dryly, "And that can wait till I get to London. I think I'd be better off shopping with a woman than with someone who's been known to wear brown-and-peach paisley scarves."
He flushed. "I'll have you know that that scarf was an heirloom." He shoved the awful T-shirt back onto the rack.
She groaned and turned toward the checkout center, and he trailed after her. "I was hoping that scarf didn't actually exist. Ah, well, at least you didn't buy it. But what could possess you to wear it?"
He caught up and matched her stride. "I happen to like it," he sniffed.
"Uh huh, so why aren't you wearing it nowadays?"
He lifted his chin austerely. "It doesn't go with my new suits."
"I should say not. Your new suits are very nice."
"Just for that," he said, "I'll take it out and show it you when we get home."
Elisabeth caught sight of the same woman who had stared at her bruised face opening her mouth in horror at Rupert's last remark, then disappearing down another aisle. Elisabeth sucked in her lips and tried not to laugh.
"What?" Rupert said.
She shook her head, and he subsided. As they reached the checkout line, she dared a glance up at him, just as he was darting a glance at her. His lips twitched; Elisabeth looked away smiling.
"Indian food, after this?" he inquired, as she heaved her basket onto the counter.
"Okay," she said.
*
Darkness had begun to descend by the time they arrived back home. Rupert went upstairs to change, and Elisabeth went off to the bathroom to rake over her booty and stow it in her pack. When she was finished she changed into her pajamas and took the pack upstairs with her.
She found Rupert dressed in sweatpants and T-shirt, sitting on the bed, reading something on a piece of paper. It wasn't till she had dropped her pack in the corner that she realized what it was he was reading.
Some of her new things fell out of her pack as she dropped it, and she bent to gather them up. "It was a stupid gesture," she said without looking at him. "I wish you'd throw it away."
He looked up. "It's not bad poetry," he said.
"It's execrable poetry," she said, refolding the T-shirt she had worn during the day.
"I don't think so," he said.
She shook her head, suddenly unable to answer him. A small part of her mind noted with clinical sarcasm, We are now leaving the Denial stage and entering the Anger stage.
"I hope you don't mind if I keep it," he said quietly.
Elisabeth bent and shoved the T-shirt hard into her pack. "As you like."
She took as long as she could returning her things to her pack. When she stood finally and faced him, he was tucking the folded sonnet away in his copy of The Art of War. He finished, laid the book down in its place, and lifted his eyes to hers.
They were silent a moment. An ache lodged itself under Elisabeth's tongue.
He brought his hands together as if in appeal, humility in his face. "Is it time for my tea now?"
She swallowed hard and nodded; then abruptly turned and went downstairs to make it for him.
She followed the directions on the piece of paper Tara had left; when she came to the blessing she hesitated only a little. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn't work for her; but at any rate the herbs would be good for him. She carried it carefully upstairs and found that he had gotten into bed and arranged himself on the side that had become his. He took the cup from her hands as she sank down on the bed next to him.
"Are you going to have some too?" he asked her, as he lifted the steaming cup to his lips.
She nodded. "Later." He sipped thoughtfully and she said, "I don't know how potent my blessing is, but it shouldn't change the virtue of the herbs."
He smiled and sipped again. "I don't imagine there'll be a problem." He was looking sleepy already.
She sat silently while he drank the potion off, slowly so as not to burn his tongue. When he had finished he handed the cup back to her and let his head fall back on his pillow. "Goodnight," he murmured.
He was asleep within a minute. Elisabeth smoothed down a wayward curl of his hair and decided that between his exhaustion and the tea, there was little to choose as to what made him drop off. She took the cup downstairs and brewed another serving for herself; and after making sure the house was battened down for the night, she took it upstairs with her and settled into the bed next to him. She drank the potion with another chapter of Lord Peter, then subsided quietly under the covers, blinking sleepily.
Her eyes lit on the corner of the torn notebook page sticking out of The Art of War, and rested there. And despite the tea, it took her a long time to follow Rupert to sleep.
*
Chapter 29