Chapter 16: Good News
Exactly 23 days and two hours later, Willow received a text from Anya.
[Good news! Your forcible employment is hereby terminated]
Willow replied:
[Huh?]
[Giles is back at work, so your services are no longer required. Thank you for your help!]
Dazed by the suddenness of the exchange, Willow said the only thing she could think of.
[You're welcome.]
Willow had been scheduled to close that evening, but apparently now her day had opened up substantially. She pulled out her psych textbook and dug into next week's homework. It never hurt to get ahead.
Buffy popped her head into Willow's room, finding the witch on the bed surrounded by books and notes, as per usual.
"Hey Wil, Anya says Giles is back at the shop. I'm going to head over to welcome him back to the land of the living. Wanna come?"
Having anticipating just such a conversation, Willow supplied her ready answer: "Oh, no thanks, I'm totally swamped with my coursework. Maybe next time?"
Buffy shrugged. "Okey dokey. Don't work too hard!" And with that, the Slayer was already on her way out.
Willow spent another half hour on her school work until she couldn't concentrate anymore. So, are you just never going to go back to the magic shop? she asked herself. You're never going to be around Giles again? The guy who's your best friend's Watcher?
She got up and paced around her bedroom, feeling agitated. It was as though she had had a pebble in her shoe for weeks, but now the pebble was a giant boulder standing in her way. The last time she had spoken to Giles, she had said some horrible things to him, and he had been horrible right back. Maybe she shouldn't love him anymore, maybe she should hate him, but she just couldn't. She knew his anger came from a place of pain, and she hoped he understood the same thing about her.
Sighing heavily, Willow plopped down onto the bed and cleared her books and materials from it. She crossed her legs and rested her arms on her knees, closing her eyes. She pushed all the questions and worries from her mind, focusing only on her breathing. After a few minutes, she could feel her mind become still.
Opening her eyes, she looked over at the potted jasmine near the window. Gently reaching out with her will, she urged more life into the plant. Slowly, the vines began to grow, the white blossoms popping open all over the stalks. The room filled with the rich, familiar scent. She closed her eyes again and continued her meditation.
Four more days past, and Willow had run out of excuses. She had avoided going to The Magic Box because of homework, tests, chores, therapy appointments, classes, exhaustion, and fake illnesses. Finally, Buffy marched into Willow's room Thursday morning and announced, "You are meeting me at The Magic Box after I'm off work today. We have a vamp problem and I need your help. So take the night off from your studying and your panicking and whatever else you're doing. Capiche?"
Before Willow could even consider a possible response, Buffy had marched right back out. Willow's shoulders fell as she realized she was going to have to face Giles sooner or later, and it had suddenly become sooner.
Over the course of the next few hours, she allowed herself to think of all the reasons that it might be fine. Giles might not be working tonight. Or she could just face away from him the whole night and not look at him. Or she could get horrific food poisoning and spend the whole night throwing up instead of having to face Giles. Or maybe they'd get attacked by monsters and she'd be too dead to worry about anything.
Once she found herself considering that death might be preferable to an uncomfortable confrontation, she shook herself out of it and decided she would just deal with it. Rip it off, like a band-aid, she told herself. Setting her mind to it didn't quiet her thoughts, but it did allow her to focus and get through the first half of her day with relative calm. She attended her Sociology course, grabbed a late lunch with her study group, and hung around on campus until the lengthening shadows told her it was time to bite the bullet and head to The Magic Box.
When she arrived at the storefront, she peeked inside to see if the others were there yet. The last thing she wanted was to be alone with Giles in the shop. Thankfully, Buffy and Dawn were already there. Willow tried to slip in quietly, but the bell over the door announced her entry just the same.
From their position in the shop, Buffy and Dawn couldn't see the door. Only Giles, standing in the middle of the floor, looked over and saw Willow. He met her eyes, and the moment seemed to stretch out before them endlessly. Unlike his cold and vacant expression from weeks earlier, Giles' eyes were ablaze. For a split second, Willow thought that he was going to run over to her and sweep her up in his arms, but he stood fixed to the spot, his eyes boring holes into her.
The intensity of his stare was too much, and she cast her eyes down. Giles had so many things he wanted to say, so many things he was afraid to tell her, but this was not the time nor the place. He tried to read Willow, to understand what she was feeling, but his own emotions colored his vision. He turned and placed the book he was carrying on the table where Dawn and Buffy were sitting.
After a moment, Willow forced herself to step forward into the shop, eventually rounding the shelf and announcing her presence to the Summers girls.
Dawn shot out of her chair excitedly and gave Willow a bear hug.
"Hey Dawnie, what'd I do to deserve this?" Willow asked, a smile coming unbidden to her lips.
"I aced it! My math test, the big unit test I've been studying for since, like, forever! You're the greatest math tutor ever," Dawn avowed breathlessly.
Willow hugged Dawn again, patting her on the back. "Hey, look at you! I knew you could do it."
Buffy broke in. "I'm glad someone around here can be the geometry expert, because under my tutelage, Dawn would be wondering what all those funny shapes are."
"Don't worry, Buffy," Willow retorted, "I'm sure you help Dawn with loads of stuff."
"Yeah, last week you showed me how to stake a vamp from behind, remember?" Dawn offered.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure colleges really look for that well-rounded student who can kill a demon from any angle."
Willow shrugged. "Angles are geometry."
Just then, Xander walked in, trailing a very bored-looking Spike. "Hey guys," Xander said, "sorry we're late. Captain Peroxide here needed to preen himself for twenty minutes before we could leave."
"Hey, you try getting your hair right without a reflection and we'll see what you say then," Spike retorted.
Giles, who up to this point had been standing over by the counter, straightened and fixed his eyes on Spike. Willow had envisioned a lot of ways that tonight could go horribly wrong, but it hadn't even occurred to her that Spike might be joining them. This was a new level of awful.
Hoping to forestall the tension between Spike and Giles, or possibly just prevent the rest of her friends from noticing it, Willow initiated the usual shop talk. "So, Buffy, you said something about a surge in vamp activity in Sunnydale?"
Buffy turned her attention to Willow and took on an air of seriousness. "Right. For the past week or so, there have been way more vamps out on the town than usual. Like, ten times as many."
As Buffy continued to report the details of her recent vampire encounters, Willow anxiously watched Spike and Giles. Spike affected an aura of coolness, as per usual, and crossed his arms over his chest. He met Giles' eyes with his own steady stare, neither man willing to be the first to look away. Willow noticed that Giles' fists were balled up, the knuckles bright white.
"And that's why I asked Spike to come," Buffy finished. "Hopefully his connections with the local vamps can give us some insight into what's going on."
Alerted by the sound of his own name, Spike turned to the group. "Uh, yeah, well I dunno what to tell you. There are definitely more fangers in town, but I haven't heard anything that might tell us why. I don't even have a whiff of a new big bad. Just me." He winked roguishly in Buffy's direction and she rolled her eyes in response.
Willow stole a glance over at Giles and saw that the tension in his body had relaxed just a little. She let out a breath that she hadn't realized she was holding.
"Wil?" The witch shook her head and looked over at Buffy, who had clearly said her name more than once. "Yeah, sorry Buff, what?"
"I asked if you would be up for some research tonight. I know you've been super busy, but it would really help us out. This is kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing."
"Oh, yeah, yeah," Willow agreed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and trying to refocus. "Totally, I can do that."
"Okay, Spike, you see what you can find out at Willy's. Everyone else, let's hit the books." And with that, Buffy and the rest of the gang were off, vanquishing evil one ancient page at a time. Willow could swear that Spike winked at Giles before leaving the shop.
As the night of research got underway, Willow did her best to bury her nose in the densest, most impossible book in the shop. She was shaken out of her deep focus by the chinking of a teacup being placed before her. She looked up to see Giles looking down at her affectionately. The tea was exactly as she took it, exactly as Giles had prepared it for her a hundred times in England. After depositing the cup in front of Willow, Giles placed his hand on her shoulder for just a second, giving it a gentle squeeze before turning away.
Without any warning, Willow burst into tears. The loud sobs startled Buffy, Dawn, and Xander, who had been absorbed in their books.
"Willow, what's wrong?" Dawn asked.
With effort, Willow swallowed and stifled her tears. "It's nothing, Dawnie, I'm fine." She looked over at Buffy, who was equally concerned. "Really, I'm okay. It's just been a long day. My therapist says that it's normal for this to happen sometimes, but it'll be less and less over time."
Buffy reached over and squeezed Willow's hand. "You sure you're okay? Do you want to go home?"
Willow returned the squeeze and shook her head, smiling feebly. "I'm sure, honest. I can stay."
Xander's attention throughout this exchange had been fixed squarely on the Watcher. Giles' face was flushed and he was unmistakably rattled by Willow's reaction. Xander watched as Giles turned away from the group and spent an inordinate amount of time wiping his glasses.
When Giles turned back around, he met Xander's eyes. Xander said nothing, but clearly intended to remind Giles of their conversation weeks before. Giles averted his gaze, still trying to gather his thoughts.
You did this to her, Rupert, he told himself. You broke her heart and now you have to face the consequences of that. He briefly wondered if he should have just left as he had originally intended, but a part of him knew that Xander was right, and it would have been an act of supreme cowardice to disappear like that. He had displayed enough weakness over the last month as far as he was concerned.
As Willow composed herself and everyone got back to their respective books, Giles watched the witch work. The way her hazel-green eyes soared over the page, her pupils slightly dilated as she devoured information. The way she absentmindedly stirred her tea with magic, lazily moving her fingers in the air to get the spoon to swirl in the cup. The way she chewed on her lip when the imperfect translation vexed her.
Over the past few weeks, he had thought of Willow and little else. After their fight at his home, he recognized that he was in over his head. The very next day, he had made an appointment to see Doctor Gruden, the same therapist who had been counseling Willow since their return to the States.
He hadn't chosen Dana because of her association with Willow, but rather for the same reasons that Doctor Lane had referred Willow to her in the first place. Doctor Gruden was versed in the supernatural and had an excellent reputation. Giles had seen her half a dozen times and was starting to work through his own issues of self-loathing and guilt, much as Willow had.
Giles had also tossed out his liquor, cleaned up his house, and started to take better care of himself. Although his physician chided him for his poor post-operative care, Giles was following the instructions to the letter now, and was nearly healed. He would almost call his health "robust" if he didn't have to take stairs so slowly.
As Giles watched Willow from across the shop, he wrestled with the same demons he'd been battling for weeks. At least now, after many hours of help, he'd come to see a simple truth: the least healthy part of his relationship – or whatever it was – with Willow was his own behavior in it. If they loved each other, if they wanted to be together, the greatest threat to their happiness was Giles' own self-destructive tendencies. He felt a lot of shame in that, but perseverating on it wasn't making anything better.
With Xander, Buffy, and Dawn all engrossed in their tasks, Giles quietly stole over to Willow. He hooked his finger under her chin and pulled her face up to look at him. He breathed, "I want to see you," and gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He didn't want her to fall apart again.
Thankfully, Willow just gave a curt nod, then went back to her reading. He wasn't sure what she was thinking, but at least she had said yes. Giles moved back over to the counter, cracking his own tome. Although his nerves were pulled taut and he was too anxious to do real research, he went through the motions for lack of a better alternative.
Over an hour passed and not a single thing had come to light since the beginning of the research session. Buffy growled in frustration and slammed her latest read closed. "This isn't getting us anywhere," she said, depositing the book on the table with a thud.
A feeling of relief swept over the group. Almost in unison, Dawn, Xander, Willow, and Giles all shut their books as well.
"Sorry, Buffy," Willow offered, her mouth twitching to the side in an expression of dismay.
"Maybe Spike will find some info from the underground and give us something to go on," Xander hoped.
"Maybe you'll hear something out on patrol," Willow added.
"Maybe we could go get ice cream?" Dawn suggested.
Buffy smiled skeptically at her sister. "Nice try."
Xander leaned in conspiratorially. "Actually, I could really go for some ice cream."
Rolling her eyes dramatically, Buffy agreed. She grabbed her bag and coat, waving goodbye to Giles. "You coming, Wil?"
Willow glanced over at Giles, who was studying the floor. "No, I'm going to hang here for a bit. I've had too much sugar today, anyway."
Buffy and Dawn swept past Willow on their way to the door. Xander stopped next to his friend and squeezed her arm gently. Willow looked up into his warm eyes and smiled. He said nothing, but she understood. He was wishing her good luck.
With her eyes, she told him, Thanks. I'm going to need it.
