Chapter 9_52
Forgivings Pt 1
AN: I once again must apologise for the extremely delayed update. I know it's not cool, and I don't even have a good excuse except perhaps for a writer's block. I really struggled with this chapter as I found it – and still do – terribly cheesy in some parts, but now it's here and I can finally move on! Yay!
Also, many, many thanks for the last review, I very much appreciated, particularly the critique about Helen visiting Giles' father before Giles' call, and I was really, really angry with myself that I had not followed up on that, especially after I had actually built up to it in the previous chapters – with Giles thinking it would be time to get in touch. I guess I had chickened out in the end, and missed so a good opportunity to develop some genuine Giles-story, more out of fear I would write him wrong or OOC, although I realize that not writing him or defining him merely by his relationship to Helen is not really an option, so I hope to be more daring in the coming chapters.
Giles was standing behind the main counter with a book in his hands. He had taken off his jacket and his vest, his tie was loosened, he was frowning at the text when he heard the footsteps.
If he was surprised to see her there he didn't show it. She merely saw his eyes narrow a bit into a scowl, and he laid the book on the counter. "Yes?" He asked in a chilling voice when she came to a halt in front of him.
Helen nervously grabbed her scarf with one hand. "I-eh... I'm looking for a few books on the war... I mean the-eh... the 1904 war," his daunting stare was making it hard for her to utter any sensible sentence, "between the-"
He finally took his eyes off her, cutting her short and turning away to sort a pile of books lying on a trolley behind him: "I trust you remember where the history section is."
"Yes," she said weakly and walked away towards the book racks at the back of the library.
Finding what she had been looking for she returned a few minutes later. Without a word or even a look at her he checked the books out, but when she wasn't moving to leave, he looked up asking wryly: "Anything else?"
"Eh-yes..., there's-ehm... one more thing," she said nervously, "I'm supposed to take over the Latin classes from February on... a-and I wondered if you had any- I mean if there were any in the library."
"Any what?"
"Eh-books... in Latin- not in Latin, on Latin, obviously," she closed her eyes briefly thinking that this was a disaster, wishing that she could just put an oblivius charm on him and this conversation and leave.
He furrowed his forehead. "What sort of books? Commentaries? Grammar-?"
"Grammar! Yes, grammar," she exclaimed happy for once being able to offer a straight reply, "a book on the grammar... is... what I need," she added regaining some comfort and confidence.
He raised his brows again into a strict glare. "Medieval? Classical? Or Renaissance Latin?"
She opened her mouth only to close it again. She actually had no idea what Miss Jamison had been teaching in her Latin classes, she should have had a look at her teaching plans first. "Eh... both? ... I suppose...," she muttered confused.
Without a word Giles disappeared in his office and returned moments later with a small pile of books. He was looking at the covers, making sure that he had got the right ones and even forgot to be all angry and frigid for a moment.
"I wonder why Principal Snyder didn't ask you to teach it," she said attempting a casual tone as she hoped she could at least involve him in some small talk, "your Latin is much better than mine." She smiled sheepishly and regretted at the same time having said that. It sounded silly and she knew flattery was probably the last thing he would accept coming from her right now.
"No, it isn't," he replied coldly as he handed her the books. "Here you are. Those should do. The two of them are in German, but I've always found their textbooks very thorough and the grammar impeccably explained."
"Thank you, I-ah... I appreciate a lot," she took them and her eyes were sweeping from one cover to the next, yet unfocused and without really seeing the letters. "I-ah... I'm a little nervous about the appointment," she began yet another attempt for small talk when he cut her off impatiently:
"You'll do fine." He looked up, a little taken aback himself by the harshness of his own voice.
She decided it was perhaps time to go. "Are you sure you won't miss them for a while?" She asked when she was about to leave. "When should I-ah...?"
"I don't need them right now," he replied. She nodded with a weak smile and turned to walk away. "But of course I'd appreciate if you brought them back before you leave town without a word some other night," he added poignantly.
She felt cold sweat seizing her once again at the sound of those words and the tone in which he said them. She merely swallowed dry, for a split of a second she felt like running away, ashamed, but she found herself rooted to the spot, unable to take her big black eyes off him without saying something. Anything. There was a brief confusion on his face, and then she said in a low voice that was hardly audible anymore, yet that was so full of honest regret and remorse, that it almost pained him to hear it: "I'm so sorry."
For a short moment they both just looked at each other. She saw his eyes mellow just before the phone rang in his office. He stiffened again, bowed weakly, murmured, "Excuse me" and disappeared behind the glass door.
She watched him vanish in the small ante-room leading into his office and then his silhouette reappear behind the window, rising an arm to his ear as he picked up the phone. She could just barely hear his muffled voice, the words were indistinguishable, but she imagined him saying "Hello, Rupert Giles," and again the painful longing filled her up, and the desire to make everything up to him. The school bell rang just then to remind her that she needed to get back to her class.
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The call had unhinged Giles. He had almost completely forgotten about the pending cruciamentum – or tried to repress it would be more accurate, and now Quentin Travers himself called to remind him that he had about three weeks to prepare himself and his slayer for the ultimate test. He had read a lot about these "examinations", they learned about them in the Watchers Academy as the "rite of passage" every Slayer must undergo to "prove herself worthy". Yet over the years, especially after his own readings in older Watchers' diaries he came to abhor this event and found that all those names and descriptions the council had come up with were euphemisms really, trying to cover up the actual rather barbaric and – in Giles' opinion – unnecessarily cruel nature of the ritual, especially since none of the Slayers had ever asked for this.
What he found even more disturbing were those few Watchers' diaries that he could remember ended just before the cruciamentum: their last entry was from a day before the trial, and then nothing. It was precisely that nothing, those blank pages that were stirring his imagination now. He had never read or heard of what had become of those Watchers and their slayers – although the fate of the latter wasn't so hard to guess. For a moment he wondered what the watchers did after a failed exam, or how the Council disposed of them. For some absurd reason the image of the Indian sati-ritual popped into his mind and before he could shake it off and stop himself, his mind presented him with an image of himself burning on top of Buffy's funeral pyre, all the council elderlies standing around and watching with stony expressions that appeared to be less sad than inconvenienced by the scene. A high-pitched whistle interrupted his thoughts and finally he raised his blank gaze away from the small dancing flame under his tea-kettle.
As if that and everything else that was going on wasn't enough, Buffy came in between two periods together with Faith and they reported him about their patrol last night where they had been witness to a bizarre ritual among a new demon-sect that neither of them had seen before and who had performed a peculiar ceremony near one of the Sunnydale cemeteries where they had sacrificed one of their own.
"A ritual sacrifice among their own kin?" Giles said still nonplussed and frowning.
"Yes. Maybe it's the new thing," Buffy said casually.
"Yeah, but if they'll keep it up, there'll be nothing to slay around here," Faith murmured in her throaty voice, and once more Giles thought how very much un-like the two slayers were. He thought that unlike Buffy, Faith would probably be really at a loss in a world without demons, without her calling.
When they left, Giles started looking in his books for the demons in question based on Buffy's and Faith's description. It was late afternoon when he finally managed to identify the species as a Daih-rah demon. The text, however, was in Middle Aramaic, a language he needed to brush up on first, and he knew even then he would spend hours, if not days translating it. As he was skimming over the small letters trying to find at least some key words that would give him a clue about the nature of these demons, he suddenly froze: the words mouth and hell in a close proximity boded no good.
When Willow, Xander and Oz came to the library a while later, they found him standing behind his counter, frantically picking one of the books in front of him, then feverishly browsing through its pages before throwing it back and picking another.
"Hey, Giles, what's up?" Willow asked curiously.
When Giles raised his head and gave them a bemused and somber look, Xander walked past and threw his bag on the table. "Oh, not again," he drawled in a dreary voice.
Giles seemed taken aback by the exclamation for a moment. "I-I haven't said anything yet."
Xander began rummaging in his bag for something to eat. "Didn't need to. Your face is like an apocalypse-commercial."
It was late evening, and the Scoobies were still sitting around the main table in the library. While Faith and Buffy had been sent on another patrol, the rest of them were either browsing through some books in the hope to find some more, or – in Giles' and Willow's case trying to read the foreign accounts on the Daih-rah demons.
After a long time of silent research Willow raised her head from the Latin text she had been translating. She browsed further in the book only to see that she had only managed to read what seemed to be an introduction to a much longer chapter about the habits of the Daih-rah. She sighed and looked over to Giles, who still appeared to be fighting with the Aramaic text, then her eyes swayed across all the opened books lying on the table. She bit her lip and turned back at the Watcher, saying in a low, careful tone: "We could use one more pair of eyes..."
"Oh, I agree," he muttered while skimming through the pages of an old dictionary looking for a word. "But-uh... I thought Cordelia wasn't-uh... hanging out... with you anymore," he added rather absently.
Willow glanced at him outraged. "I don't think she'd be much of a help," she said a little indignantly. "Not with the Latin anyway," she added after a brief pause and gave him a meaningful look, but his eyes were fixed at the entry in the dictionary and her insinuations were lost on him.
"Besides," she wouldn't give up, "I was thinking of someone else." And as he still didn't seem to be really paying attention to her, she said nervously, but louder: "Someone who does... read... Latin...," her voice faded away when his head suddenly spun around and he looked at her sharply for a split of second, then returned his focus back to the book.
"I don't think so," he said in a chilly voice.
Willow opened her mouth to protest, when he spoke up louder and harsher this time: "I don't need-," he paused and somewhat embarrassed took off his glasses to clean them, then said in a calmer tone, "we don't-uh...," he didn't know what to say really. For a moment he pictured Helen sitting where Willow was just now, with one elbow on the table, supporting her head on her palm, and he knew what he had just almost said was a lie on so many levels. But he was now too tired to think about that.
So, instead of saying anymore, he merely closed the book in front of him and got up to his feet, avoiding Willow's eyes that were staring at him questioningly. "It is late," he said evasively. "I think you all perhaps-uh... should go home and get some rest. I'm sure tomorrow we'll-uh... we'll progress faster."
Willow looked at him, he saw disappointment in those big brown eyes as she slowly rose and began to collect her things.
After the others had left, Giles waited for the call from Buffy or Faith as agreed. He was already beginning to worry and regret that he had dismissed the research party, when finally his phone rang and the hoarse voice of the younger slayer greeted him on the other side, reporting that they had not encountered the Daih-rah demons anywhere and that apart from one new risen vampire, whom they had slain, there seemed nothing else to be going on. He hung up and a little relieved that the world didn't seem to be ending tonight he grabbed his overcoat, put the book he had been translating along with a dictionary into his bag and left.
And as the apocalypse wasn't as pending as he had feared, it was the cruciamentum again that pushed it out of his mind, making him brood over how or whether at all he would be able to go through with everything it required, starting with secretly administering Buffy the muscle relaxant without her noticing anything. Could he really do that? He wondered. And then it occurred to him that two years ago he wouldn't even have questioned it. What changed?
He arrived at home, and so deepened in thoughts and doubts he felt the sudden desire to talk to his father about it. Of course his father had never had a slayer of his own to train, so he had never got to go through the trial with her, but Giles recalled that he had been close friends with a few watchers who had. But even now as he was holding the phone in his left hand, after a brief consideration his pride got the better of him and at last he put the speaker down again, turned off the lights and with heavy footsteps walked up to his bedroom.
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"I can't look at this anymore," Willow lamented on the next day. "Plus I have tons of homework to write, Giles." She walked up from the table towards the counter, behind which he had been standing for a while, a cup of tea in one hand, with the other he was browsing through the newspaper to see whether it reported some unusual occurrences that could have a connection with the new demon arrival in Sunnydale.
He looked up at her, somewhat taken aback as he didn't know what to say to that, and from her look he sensed that she was getting at something else.
She paused for a moment, looking at him with a subtle plead in her eyes.
"You don't have to forgive her," she began in a quiet voice, "but we need her. If nothing else, her Latin is better than yours, and she's way faster at translating it than me... Plus you're gonna spend at least another week at reading that Aramaic text."
Giles looked hurt for a moment at this attack on his skills, but he knew Willow was right. If nothing else, Helen's Latin was better. Before he knew her, without any false modesty he hadn't thought it was possible simply based on his thorough watcher training and the amount of Latin books he had to deal with. But she seemed to have at least as much reading experience as him and the advantage of having been better trained in its more practical use too what with all the spells and incantations she had been using every day.
"And in case you're wondering how to ask her," Willow pulled to her one of the newspapers that had been lying on the counter, and drew a heart with her pencil around something, then turned the paper over for Giles to see, "here."
He glared at her, but she looked at him strictly with raised brows ordering him to obey for once. He looked down at what she had en-hearted, and wanted to object again, yet his imagination was faster and he was lost in the idea almost immediately.
It was a small section on one of the pages advertising the upcoming cultural events in town, and it was announcing a concert for tonight:
Fresno Philharmonics (Stephen Bradley) playing
Sergej Rachmaninoff – The Rock Op. 7
Paul Dukas – The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 5
Willow saw that he seemed to be lost in thoughts for a few seconds. Actually, he was torn between two poles at that moment – on one hand he thought he was too proud to give in and stop being angry and just forgive her, on the other hand, just for a fraction he thought what it would be like if he did: he imagined her glowing face in the darkened auditorium, her eyes beaming and fixed at the orchestra, they would widen every time she would hold her breath when she was particularly captured by the music and looked like bliss personified. Picturing her like this, imagining that he could make her that happy and see it happen and that it would only take a quick call at the theatre to book two tickets – the proud and still hurt part of him was losing the upper hand. For when he was honest with himself, Helen's Latin was the last thing he was missing about her.
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Helen was walking towards the library, wondering a little about what the Scoobies might have been working on. Willow sounded very mysterious, but couldn't or wouldn't tell her anything, only that she was to come to the library at exactly 7pm, that it was important, and that she was supposed to take her coat with her – which, as she thought about it now, was rather an odd request. She was also nervous about this, pondering who exactly wanted her to be there or rather who maybe didn't.
In front of the entrance she paused and frowning slightly she peered through the small round window inside. There seemed to be no one in there. The lights were on, a few books were lying around the table, but none of the Scoobies were anywhere to be seen.
"Hm," she murmured to herself, before finally swinging the door and entering.
"Hello?" She spoke as she was slowly walking towards the large table in the middle of the library, throwing curious looks both to her left and right.
"You're late." She got scared and turned around at the sharp, icy sound of his voice. He must have been standing behind the door the whole time, she thought. His expression was – as she had almost got used to it during the past few days since she had returned – stern, impenetrable, he was looking at her in the same way – his eyes cold and strict, his lips pressed tight, no trace of a smile or even some sign of being pleased to see her and that she was back. She wondered for a moment if he was ever going to forgive her.
"I'm sorry," she gave a nervous reply, feeling a bit like a little child that had misbehaved. She noticed only now that he had his scarf around his neck and his coat over his arm. He pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning onto, didn't say anything, instead turned around and switched off the lights before motioning her to leave with him. She took a hesitant step in his direction, but when he raised his brows to an expression that wouldn't put up with any objections or delay, she hurried towards the swing door that he was holding open for her.
She followed his swift steps through the school corridors, her mind feverishly trying to figure out what he was up to. They reached the parking lot behind the school and Helen still didn't dare to ask where they were going. Not even when he opened the passenger door on his car for her and waited until she got in, then walked around, set in himself and started the engine. She shot him stealthy glances, but it was impossible for her to assess his mood. He looked smug a little, his eyes were fixed on the road, his lips were slightly pursed together, with the corners raised just a little bit so that it made him look quite complacent – and her all the more uneasy. For a brief moment she had the absurd idea that this may not be Giles at all, but some kind of a demon that had taken his likeness and she was now being taken away, perhaps to be a part of some ritual sacrifice to appease an even worse and much more monstrous beast with three mouths, seven horns and twelve tails...
Giles knew she must have been very uncomfortable by now. He had sensed her stolen, anxious glances in his direction, also her nervous squirms were getting more and more frequent, her right hand wouldn't stop crumpling her scarf, while with her left she kept nervously fumbling the handle on the passenger's door, her eyes though, staring at some invisible point on the windscreen, were blank and widened. He smiled inwardly, wondering how long and how far he would get to drive her before she'd do something, yet he made no attempt to put her out of her agony for now. After all, he thought that her short suffering wasn't nearly an adequate punishment for what she had put him through in the past half year.
In her nervousness and feverish thinking about what bizarre prank she had been made part of she hadn't been paying any attention to their route. It wasn't until Giles pulled the car to a parking lot in front of the theatre that Helen finally took in the outer surroundings and realized that, if she was to be sacrificed, then the audience – so it seemed – would be much larger than she had thought – and clearly mostly human. In fact, it would appear to be a major festive event in town tonight. For there were numerous groups of people standing around, some were dressed in more festive clothes, evening dresses or suits, others who hadn't made it home from work to change were wearing more casual things.
She was still staring at the groups of the concert attendants when Giles opened the door for her and offered her his hand to help her get out of the car. She took it without much thinking. By now she had abandoned her theory about being sacrificed and thought that Giles and the Scoobies probably were on some case and that was the reason she was brought here.
"This way," Giles said, putting a hand on her back to lead her through the crowd. Had she not been so entirely confused and looking around her in all directions, she would have noticed the softer, warmer tone of his voice. She walked alongside him without a word, then followed him inside the theatre as he approached one of the counters to pick up the tickets he had reserved earlier that day.
Giles paid and let the lady explain to him where exactly their seats were, then again laid a hand on Helen's back and with the other motioned towards one of the side staircase leading up to the balcony. With amusement he noticed her somewhat alarmed and disturbed expression and smiled. When they reached the balcony, Giles pointed at their seats and nodded to Helen as if to encourage her to take hers. She was reluctant and looked around her once more, still desperate for an answer, but when Giles sat down next to her, she too slowly took her seat.
They were silent for several minutes. Giles was smiling complacently without looking at her, while Helen kept throwing stolen glances around them to see if there was anything suspicious. Meanwhile the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra arrived at the stage and began their tunings, and after Giles saw that not even their sound would make Helen stop fidgeting he finally stuck out his hand with the program in front of her without turning at her.
She took it, then whispered. "Is there something I'm supposed to do?" She asked anxiously, wondering suddenly whether she had missed something elementary, and whether he was now expecting her to do something, something obvious, like perhaps to stun the evil first violinist who in reality was a bloodthirsty vampire.
Only now he turned his face to look at her and she almost pulled back, she was so surprised by the sudden unexpected warmth in his eyes. They were smiling, showing the little wrinkles in their corners that made him look so youthful.
"You're supposed to listen," he said calmly and nodded towards the stage. The orchestra fell silent, in a moment the conductor would enter. He leaned closer to her: "And perhaps you can tell if Dukas was a wizard too?" He asked in a whisper.
Helen was utterly perplexed by all this. Yet as it was the first straight question she had been asked this evening she focused on answering it right. "Why no," she said slowly, while Giles was savouring her confused expression, "not to my knowledge." She blushed under the direct stare of his eyes and dropped her look on the program in her lap. "But many muggles believe Rachmaninov was one-"
They were interrupted be the applause of the audience as the conductor entered the stage. Distractedly they joined in, Helen shot side glances at Giles to find out what he was really up to, whether the previous warmth she had caught in his eyes could have just been a trick of light or her own wishful thinking. But it didn't seem so. She watched his profile, with a faint trace of a smile on his lips, his eyes a little narrowed in the dim light of the balcony were focused on the stage. He looked a lot like his father when he had offered her a seat in his office at the Museum, she thought, unbiased yet attentive, distant yet not unpleasant.
As he moved a little to cross his legs his arm brushed hers and she felt a sudden heat overcome her, realizing this was the closest they have been since she had returned. And when after a few minutes he made himself more comfortable, sinking a little lower in his seat, and so seemingly casually slid even closer, his shoulder now leaning against hers, her heartbeat got faster, and louder, so loud in fact that she could barely hear Rachmaninov's piece.
During the first applause Giles finally wasn't able to withstand her stolen stare anymore and turned at her once more. His lips were pursed into that smug smile she had seen earlier during their drive, but this time instead of being fixed on the road his eyes shone at her, and the look in them was full of something she couldn't really place, something yet that was so far away from the hardness and the cold with which he had been looking at her the past few days.
"What is it?" He asked and leaned his face now closer to hers to be able to hear her through the loud applause.
She was overwhelmed by this new closeness, by his soft voice for a brief moment, and though still a bit puzzled, she suddenly felt more at ease, as if for a moment their old familiar intimacy had returned between them. "So you didn't bring me here to dispose of the conductor?" She asked.
He laughed quietly: "Lord no... He's not that bad, is he?" He said in a half whisper and threw an amused look at the stage. "Judging by the applause I think the audience would frown upon that too."
They both locked eyes with each other for a long moment, she seemed to be wanting to freeze him with her intense stare, make sure he won't disappear and suddenly turn back into the bitter man from only a day ago. But he was anything but that. Even as the orchestra began to play the second piece and he at last took his eyes off her, his expression didn't change, or if then he seemed to be pleased about something even more. And although she was still a little confused, soon the music absorbed her entirely, it was one of her favourite childhood pieces after all and she had to admit, it would have been a sacrilege to jinx the conductor: the orchestra was playing it superbly.
"I forgive you." She got startled at the unexpected whisper that sounded in her ear and that almost got lost in the applause that had arisen at the same time. She turned her head only to find his few inches away. Her clapping faded away when he slowly closed that last distance to kiss her.
Though gentle and soft it hit her like a bombshell without a warning, entirely unforeseen. Therefore it took her a second before she responded by leaning into it and closing her eyes. A shiver that was far from unpleasant seized her when she first felt the tickle of his breath on her face, and after that again the sudden heat spread through her whole body anew. Someone behind them cleared his throat and made them realize that the applause was over and the orchestra about to begin the last piece before the intermission. Helen sensed Giles parting his lips from hers only reluctantly, and that simple notion caused butterflies swarming around in her stomach.
The first bars of Dives and Lazarus filled the great hall. The harpist was a genius, yet neither Helen nor Giles were in the state to really appreciate it. She was hearing the sound, but she was listening to Giles' breathing next to her, knowing by its frequency that he was just as exhilarated as her. She wasn't sure whether the heat surrounding her was coming from him or was her own, but it felt like if anyone came between down they would get burnt by it. He wanted her back. He said he forgave her, only after moments she managed to think of that. That was what she had been secretly hoping for, although she knew it was more than she had deserved.
Her eyes were glazed and fixed at the harpist when Giles looked at her. She must have loved the music. And apart from being very much pleased with himself for arranging this, he was now also a little sorry that they'd have to sit through it for another hour, before they could- When her leg brushed his and he suddenly felt her hand moving down his thigh, listening to the music was no longer the only thing that was getting harder. He crossed his legs again.
It was the first time she could remember that she wished the music to come to an end at last. It was beautiful, but right now it seemed so... unimportant, silly even that they were sitting here, wasting their time instead of... catching up in everything.
When the piece was finally over and the audience got up to their feet to a roaring applause before they would disperse around the theatre for the twenty minutes intermission, Giles leaned down and said into her ear: "How do you feel about listening to the rest of it on CD?"
She grinned at him impishly before grasping his arm and they both made their way through the clapping rows out into the night. In front of the theatre they came to a halt, breathing the cold January air. They may have been two freshly released inmates who were just taking in the sensation of suddenly having endless possibilities. Giles took her face into his hands, something he did, as she remembered, when he was particularly impassioned, yet despite his large hands it never felt grabby or possessive or rough, and she loved the gentle touch of his long fingers on her cheeks, it almost made her lose her senses when he kissed her. And it wasn't enough.
"Your place or mine?" He asked as if he had read her mind.
"Yours. Always," she muttered, pulling away from his lips only unwillingly. For a brief moment she considered to simply take his hand and aparate to his apartment, but she decided to wait with the surprise of her restored magic a little longer – even if right now it meant to spend another quarter of an hour in a car before they would get home.
They weren't driving longer than few minutes, when she suddenly said. "Stop... please."
Giles furrowed his brows and looked at her concerned, pulling the car over to a parking lane. Her voice sounded strange, he thought she might have felt unwell all of a sudden and needed fresh air, but when they stopped and she turned her face at him, he saw the same unearthly calm, an inner concinnity that was there on the night she paid him a first visit after her return. He sensed she was about to say something, he unfastened his seatbelt and turned around in his seat so that he could look straight at her.
She was nervous, but managed to stay calm, her hands folded in her lap, she took a deep breath, looked him in the eyes and said once more: "I am sorry." Her voice was firm, it was not a mere last breezy excuse of someone who was finally happy to have achieved forgiveness and move on. There were things she needed to say before she could do the latter.
"I know I hardly deserve to be forgiven," she began slowly, then paused again. The possibility that he might not understand was scary, but that was the risk she simply had to take.
"Forgiveness is not done because people deserve it, it's done because they need it," he spoke in his velvetian voice that was always making it hard to listen, because the mere sound of it was filling her with delight, anticipation, excitement, and mostly – desire.
"Not only did you need to be forgiven, also I needed to forgive you," he said it almost lightly as if those were the simplest, most plain, obvious truths of life, "because I need you."
She closed her eyes and smiled before replying: "Still, there is one thing you deserve then... I feel I-ah owe you... an explanation," she began again and looked back at him fearing he might want to interrupt or stop her in order to spare her the unpleasant part, but he must have sensed that she really wanted to get it out.
And so she talked, starting with the nightmares she had been having for weeks, months even since the encounter with Rodolphus at Giles' apartment, recurring nightmares where horrible things were happening to him, where he had been tortured and killed, feeding her anxieties, the growing fear that something terrible would have happened to him sooner or later, if she had stayed.
"And when I saw that painting from my dream... on that wall in the manor, and I turned around... and... you were staying behind me, your hands bandaged, your face still pale and scarred and wearing traces of what Angelus had done to you...," she shivered and looked at her hands, "I-... it was a little thing seemingly... looking at it now it sounds so stupid, but-eh... back then – from that moment on I only had one thought in my mind... and that was to leave... to leave was the only right thing I was supposed to do. To go far away...," she spoke in a quiet voice, slowly and in snatches as some things and words appeared to take their time to come over her lips and when they finally did she wanted to get rid of them as fast as possible, "... what other parts of my nightmares would become true if I stayed?"
She told him about Márkos and her long, tiresome, but very salutary conversations with him which finally made her see things in another way, made her recognize that the world wasn't evolving around her and that bad things might always happen to people she cared for, no matter whether she was around them or not, but mostly because those people had a perilous occupation of their own which had nothing to do with her. "It took me long to see how twisted my perception of things had been... long until I really regretted I had left simply because I had been so sure, so obsessed with the notion that that had been the right thing to do... that that was the way it was supposed to be."
When she finished, she stared at her feet for a moment before turning her head to him. She found his eyes fixed on her, his lips again pursed together. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, or even whether he was angry, disappointed, upset, or none of it. She felt her heart make a jolt as she suddenly feared he would take back what he had said before and throw her out of his car never to talk to her again.
"Won't you say something?" She asked in a trembling whisper, a huge bulge building up in her throat.
He fought the urge to kiss her again, because he was afraid they would never make it home if he did. He wouldn't be able to stop.
After a short moment that to Helen seemed like countless hours she saw the corners of his mouth rise into a fond smile. At the same time he tilted his head a little and said: "Let's get home."
AN: I hope the next bit will come sooner and won't be such a pain to write. Btw. just in case you're bored or want to read an even cornier alternative to this chapter – two years ago I had this part posted as a separate story. Here I changed it a lot because I didn't like most parts of it anymore.
As always – critics, suggestions, corrections are very appreciated.
