(no subject)

[elgrey]

Closing The Cupboard Door, Part One


They were all in the library when the call came through, researching the pages Willow had gleaned from the Books of Ascension, Oz still holding her hand as if he feared she might be snatched from him again and Xander hovering close. As the machine was there they let it pick it up and – as it turned out to be not an anxious parent but Wesley – they let him go on talking to the machine at least for a little while:

“…Hazranak…five-clawed, not three-clawed.... Giles, are you there…? You need to write this down. Five-clawed Hazranak, a witchfinder, so make sure Willow...with Buffy or Angel.... It’s very strong.... I think the mayor must have.... So he knows about the pages.... I think there are sanctuary spells but I can’t remember.... You have to call Willow.... You have to protect her....”

“So, now he wants to protect Willow?” Xander demanded. “I seem to remember that a few hours ago he was the guy who wanted to give her up to the Mayor.”

Oz frowned at the phone. “Does Wesley sound a little…weird to anyone else?”

Angel was already heading for the phone, as was Giles, the vampire snatching it up first. “Wesley? What’s that about a Hazranak?”

“It’s a witchfinder. Summoned. Very, very dangerous – and strong. I think the Mayor may have.... You have to find Willow....”

“She’s here,” Angel told him. “She’s safe. Wesley…? Are you…? Is something wrong with you…?”

Buffy looked up at that. “Where to start....”

They all heard something that sounded like either a giggle or a gurgle and Wesley’s mild, strange: “Yes…pretty much everything according to my father. Are you in the library? It will be able to track her. You can’t kill it with an iron blade unless you anoint the blade with twice-blessed sage and something else…damn…something ordinary.... I can’t remember.... Lemon juice...I think it’s lemon juice....”

Giles was already getting the ingredients, adding over his shoulder: “Tell Wesley to lock himself in until this creature is dealt with. If he tries to come over here he’ll just risk getting in its way.”

“And ours,” Buffy added darkly.

Angel said urgently: “Wesley…? Where are you…?”

“Did I tell you about the twice-blessed sage? You mustn’t leave Willow alone until this thing is dead....”

“Wesley?” Angel shouted. “Wesley!”

“What’s wrong?” Giles demanded.

“He’s not breathing right.” Angel held out the phone. “And he’s still connected but he’s not speaking. There’s definitely something wrong with him.”

“Do you think he’s drunk?” Buffy asked. “If I was Wesley and had to be alone with myself a lot I’d probably need to drink.”

Giles gestured at her to keep it down, pointing to the still open phone-line and she rolled her eyes.

“Wesley…?” Angel tried again but there was nothing more than the sound of breathing on the other end. He cradled the phone and looked across at Giles. “There’s something wrong but if a Hazranak is really on its way here, it’s going to take all of us to deal with it.”

Giles handed the twice-blessed sage and a lemon to Willow and pointed to the swords he’d stacked on the table. “Would you mind anointing…? Thank you, Willow.” He crossed over to where Angel was still holding the phone and took it from him. “Wesley, are you there…?”

There was a long pause before they heard a faint: “Yes....”

“Do you need help?”

Something that definitely sounded like a giggle. “Oh, I think I’m beyond help, don’t you? My father would.... Don’t tell my father about Balthazar, please, Giles…? Please…?”

Angel murmured to Giles: “I’ve smelt the whiskey on him a few times but....”

“Do you want me to come over?” Giles asked Wesley quietly.

“No! Willow.... You have to protect…she re-ensouled Angel, must have a lot of power.... Don’t want to give it to the Hazranak. All those schoolchildren.... It’s so cold here, isn’t it? I thought California was warm....”

“I’m going over there.” Angel was heading for the door when it was abruptly ripped off its hinges and thrown at him, a slavering demon, eight-feet tall and with five claws like steel talons, hurling itself into the room with the speed and savagery of a hungry lion.

It was terrifyingly fast and it made a beeline for Willow, smacking Oz to the right and Xander to the left. Even Buffy barely had time to snatch up an anointed blade and drive it into its side as its claws were reaching for the red-headed witch. It snarled and roared, yanking out the blade and hurling it at Buffy who barely ducked in time. Giles grabbed Willow’s wrist and pulled her up out of the demon’s reach, while Angel threw off the door and charged at it. The blade he grabbed had evidently not been anointed as it simply bounced off its scaly grey flesh. The Hazranak raked Angel across the chest, making him vamp out furiously. He threw himself at it as it made to leap after Willow, and slammed it down onto table at which they’d been working, reducing it to shards of broken wood and scattering the swords across the floor like spilled matches.

“Which swords are anointed and which aren’t?” Xander demanded.

Willow grimaced. “I don’t know now!”

Buffy grabbed the blade the demon had thrown at her and stabbed it hard in the back, the sword penetrating gristle before it jarred against bone. It roared with pain and anger, and reared up, barely giving her time to pull the blade back out with a sickening sucking sound. Oz snatched up a sword and tossed it to Giles who had Willow pushed behind him and was ducking the Hazranak’s flailing claws with difficulty. Xander tried hacking at the beast but the sword bounced off as if it were made of rubber, while Angel punched it repeatedly in the stomach to distract it from springing at Giles and Willow. It raked Angel across the chest again, leaving a threadwork of crimson across his skin as Buffy drove the sword into it a third time. Roaring with rage and pain, it seized Angel by the throat and hurled him away then sprang at Giles who met it with the point of his sword. The blade went deep into its heart and it roared and flailed at him, yanking the sword from his grip. Giles ducked and pulled Willow away, while Oz snatched up another sword and tried to hack at its legs; the blade bounced off and it spun around to slash at him, its roars blood curdling in the confined space. Xander pulled Oz out of the way and tried to block its raking claws with a hastily snatched up sword; claws met blade with a metallic screeching that was worse than any chalk on blackboard. Xander was still wincing from the sound as the beast snarled furiously and knocked the sword out of his hand. As it turned once more to go after Willow, Buffy yelled at it to distract it and, as it swung at her, sliced two-handed with all her might. A second later its head was bouncing across the room and its body crumpling to ooze greenish blood onto the library floor.

Panting and winded, they staggered to their feet and looked at the wreckage. Angel was bleeding from its raking claws and everyone except Willow had bruises or cuts of one of kind or another.

Buffy snatched a breath and wiped off the blade. “A little more warning would have been nice, Wesley.”

“Without Wesley at least some of us would be dead,” Giles pointed out. “I didn’t know that five-clawed Hazranaks couldn’t be killed by a conventional blade.”

“He probably wrote an essay on them at the academy when he was swotting for his top marks in every single subject.”

Willow looked up in reproach. “Hey, what’s wrong in getting top marks in every subject?”

“Nothing,” Buffy said hastily. “Not when it’s you, Will. It’s just creepy and sad when it’s Wesley doing it.” Giles gave her a quelling look and she sighed. “But, I will say ‘thank you’ to him next time I see him, I promise. And no cracks for…a day at least.”

Angel staggered to his feet, blood running from his scored chest, and turned back into his human face. He lifted one of the Hazranak’s horny forearms and smelt its blood-stained claws then sprang for the door.

“What is it?” Giles demanded.

“Wesley isn’t drunk.” Angel was out of the door and running so fast that it took Buffy a second to realize his meaning and then they all exchanged horrified glances.

“Guilt trip leaving this station,” Willow gasped.

Buffy snatched up a sword and ran after Angel, face grim and set. Willow grabbed the first aid kit and ran after her, with Giles, Xander and Oz in hot pursuit. Giles ran back for a flashlight and then headed after them, fumbling for his car keys as he did so and wondering what exactly they were going to find.


With the rest of them following him in Giles’s car, Angel tracked the Hazranak to the park opposite Wesley’s apartment, then sniffed the air, swore under his breath and sprinted to a patch of muddy ground underneath a bush. In the light of Giles’s flashlight, they all saw one very good patent leather shoe, then a stockinged foot, then stained cloth shredded by the diagonal rake of steel-sharp claws, a once-good woollen suit rent and torn to mud-stained bloody rags. Then Wesley’s face, skin clammy and horribly pale. His hair looked black against the pallor of his skin, eyelashes thick and dark in a face that looked unexpectedly young. “Wesley…?” Angel bent his head to Wesley’s face. “He’s breathing.”

Buffy saw the phone that had evidently fallen out of the man’s hand and snatched it up, breaking the connection and then breathlessly calling for an ambulance.

“No time.” Angel was already lifting up the unconscious Watcher, the man’s head lolling limply against Angel’s shoulder. “We have to get him there now or he’s not going to make it.”

“Let me help.” Xander hurried to take Wesley’s feet while Angel took him under the arms. As they lifted him up, Xander winced and Willow looked at him anxiously.

“What is it?”

“He doesn’t weigh enough. Is that because of the blood he’s lost? Giles…?”

“Let’s just get him into my car, Xander.” Giles hurried ahead to clear the back seat and to snatch a blanket out of the boot of his car. Angel slid in first, carefully manoeuvring Wesley onto the back seat, propping his head onto his lap and gesturing to Xander to cover him with the blanket.

“Hurry,” he said tautly to Giles, but the man was already in place and turning on the ignition.

“Check that Wesley’s place is locked up and then make your own way home,” Giles told the others as he pulled out into the empty road and stepped on the accelerator.

Angel fished the keys out of Wesley’s ripped jacket pocket and tossed them to Buffy through the window as they sped away for the hospital.

Willow shivered, obviously very close to tears as Giles drove away at breakneck speed. “Do you think he’s…?”

“I don’t know, Will.” Buffy wrapped her arms around herself to ward off a sudden chill.

Oz took off his coat and wrapped it around Willow’s shoulders. “We didn’t know and we came as soon as we did.”

Willow looked up at him. “I didn’t say....”

“Just cutting to the point where you do.”

“I thought he was drunk.” Buffy gritted her teeth. “Angel said something was wrong. He said....”

“Hey, Oz already covered that.” Xander, noticing Oz’s action, hastily gave her his jacket. “We didn’t know. We came as fast as we could get here. We’ve done everything we can. Let’s go and find his place and lock it up.”


They found Wesley’s front door open, the floor scattered with reference books and something that seemed to be a diary open on the desk. The apartment was bare and, apart from the books, entirely impersonal. He had unpacked his clothes and stacked his suitcase neatly under the bed, but that seemed to be it. There were no photographs around, no diplomas or certificates on the walls. There was one opened and one unopened letter on the desk, both were addressed in the same neat old-fashioned handwriting to ‘W. Wyndam-Pryce Esq.’ The opened one had some of the letter protruding and Buffy saw the words:

…terrible disappointment to all of us who had such high hopes of…
…considerable investment in time, money and energy that you have…
…finally do something to show you are worthy of the family name…

She winced. “Creep.”

Willow looked at her in shock. “Buffy, he’s in the hospital.”

“Not Wesley. His creepy father or uncle or guardian or whoever wrote this to him.”

“You’re reading his mail?” Xander looked at her in disbelief.

“It was open. I saw. I wasn’t peeking.” Buffy sighed. “Okay, maybe I peeked a little, but it’s right here.”

“He wasn’t expecting anyone else to be reading it and I don’t think we should.” Willow looked around at the books. “Should we tidy these up? I think Wesley probably likes things to be tidy.”

Oz bent and looked at the open pages. “He’s researching Ascensions here. Original demonic forms.”

Xander looked at another one. “And this is one is open on pan-dimensional demonic forms. Here it is – Hazranak Major and Hazranak Minor. It’s written in a language I don’t understand. Something squiggly.”

“So, he was researching the Mayor when he saw the Hazranak.” Buffy bent and looked at his open notebook. He had written: ‘Hazranak? Major or minor? Not native to this dimension. In Aramaic called ‘the Witchfinder’. Threat to Willow? Summoned by Mayor? Must identify species. Inform Giles of appropriate measures.’ “He must have tried to follow it and it got scent of him.”

“He was trying to help me.” Willow gazed at her own name written in Wesley’s scarily neat handwriting.

“Why didn’t he call an ambulance?” Xander looked up in confusion.

“Wesley’s not the most flexible guy in the world. I think he was still doing this.” Oz pointed to the notes. “‘Must identify species. Inform Giles of appropriate measures’. He hadn’t written himself a note about what to do if it ripped him to pieces.”

Willow winced. “Don’t.”

“Do you think we need to take this in to show it to Giles?” Xander held up the books. “Maybe there’s some kind of antidote or something?”

“To being used as a demon chew toy?” Buffy countered. “I think not getting clawed in the first place is the only antidote to that.”

“It can’t hurt.” Willow started to gather up the books and then grimaced at Xander. “Just be careful with them. I think Wesley likes his books to be handled carefully.”

Buffy said gently, “Willow, you do know it’s not your fault that...?”

Willow looked back at those neatly handwritten notes. “I know.”

“He owed you,” Xander said tautly. “He was ready to give you up to the Mayor when it suited him.”

Buffy looked at the open notebook on the desk.

…apparently impossible for those schoolchildren to grasp that one must occasionally sacrifice the people that one loves for the greater good. And yet why should they? They weren’t trained for this. Even Buffy, who was born to it, was not trained from birth as some past Slayers were. They are modern teenagers with no concept of the idea of sacrifice. And yet they risk their lives every day out of what…? I still don’t know. Perhaps, simple friendship. And yet I have to believe that they do understand the concept of the greater good. I don’t think anyone hangs out in a graveyard every night with a good chance of meeting an untimely death for the adrenaline rush. I’m just so tired of being everyone’s whipping boy; of having to be the one to say what must be said, advocate doing what must be done, because no one else is prepared to face up to the unpleasant reality of the current situation. If the Mayor ascends thousands are going to die, including these schoolchildren.

She closed the notebook and picked it up. “Let’s get to the hospital.”

***

As he paced in the hospital corridor, Giles went over the scene again, trying to think of something else he could have done. Wesley was pedantic, pompous, socially retarded, and annoying. He was also a fellow human being who was currently undergoing surgery to try to replace the blood he’d lost attempting to do the right thing. A flawed, frightened, unprepared and occasionally ill-advised fellow human being, but still someone of the world of the living who should not yet be joining the world of the dead.

One of the undead seemed to be sharing Giles’s thoughts as he also paced restlessly. “I should have known. I should have....”

“Angel.” Giles looked across at him wearily. “You’re the reason he even has a chance right now. He should have called himself a bloody ambulance. I still don’t know why he didn’t.”

Angel sighed. “It was probably the next thing on his To Do list.”

Thinking about the way Wesley functioned, Giles winced. “It probably was.”

“Or he was trying to atone.”

“For being prepared to sacrifice Willow for the Books of Ascension?”

Angel shook his head. “No, I imagine he still thinks we’re wrong about that. To atone for giving into cowardice.”

Giles thought of Wesley being prepared to give up Angel in exchange for his kneecaps and cringing in fear when that vampire attacked him. Most people would have at least have thanked him and Angel for their intervention but Wesley hadn’t even managed that. “He didn’t seem too upset about it at the time.”

“He stank of shame.”

Given Wesley’s abject terror of Balthazar Giles wondered if that hadn’t been urine Angel had smelt. Aloud he said only: “Well, he didn’t make the best showing in the world, I admit, but it was his first time in the field and he was horribly under-prepared for the reality of being a Watcher. The Council should step outside and smell the blood from time to time instead of concentrating all their energies on rules and regulations, traditions and rituals.”

Thinking of blood, he remembered the feel of Wesley’s seeping into his shirt cuff as they carried him into the emergency room, shouting for a doctor as they did so. Even allowing for Angel’s vampire strength, the wounded man had felt horribly light. He supposed that was Wesley all over; the appearance of a competent adult but underneath someone entirely insubstantial – except that a lack of moral fibre or backbone or the ability to stand up against oppressive authority shouldn’t actually make you weigh less. It had been another of those jolts he’d kept feeling. Looking down at Wesley’s face, he had seen again how young he looked; something that in the past had exasperated him beyond measure – this boy dressed up in man’s clothing, pretending to be an adult, telling Giles what to do, but now suddenly the realization that Wesley’s youth and inexperience weren’t just annoying to Giles, they were something Wesley was ashamed of, something he had been trying so hard to conceal. Suddenly he was looking at a pale bleeding vulnerable young man and his protective instincts could not help but be engaged. The lightness of the body he and Angel carried had also struck him in a different way, not another of those annoying deceptions Wesley was carrying out on everyone, by pretending to be so much more adult and substantial than he was, but a realization of fragility. Wesley’s wristbones were half the size of Angel’s; that didn’t come from a lack of experience in the field. There was something fundamentally…breakable about Wesley that Giles had never noticed until now.

With a pang of guilt Giles realized that in the weeks since Wesley had arrived from England he had not once invited him over for dinner or asked Joyce if she would be so kind as to do so; had not suggested they went out for a drink or asked how he was liking life in Sunnydale. He had tried – he really had – to be patient but he had also enjoyed the fact that Buffy did not like his replacement, and had not wanted him replaced. He thought his behaviour had been entirely human – certainly not inhuman, but he could perhaps have been a little less inclined to treat Wesley like the enemy just because the man had been sent to replace him.

“How is he?”

Giles turned around in shock to find Buffy, Willow, Xander and Oz all gazing at him anxiously. They were all carrying books or notebooks of some kind. “He’s in surgery.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Buffy asked.

“He’s in critical condition,” Giles admitted.

“What does that mean?” Buffy pressed.

They both knew that she knew what it meant; she just wasn’t ready to hear it in conjunction with Wesley. He wondered why it should somehow feel like more of a shock that someone they didn’t really like that much should get himself ripped open by a demon. Or perhaps it was just that Wesley hadn’t seemed the tragic type. He was slightly ridiculous and very annoying and a little pathetic. Definitely not the type one expected to find bleeding to death in the mud.

“It means he may die, Buffy.” Giles gazed at her levelly. “And it’s no one’s fault. Not even Wesley’s. He was just trying to do his job.”

“His job isn’t to get himself sliced up by huge killer demons,” she said shortly. “His job is to…be annoying somewhere safe where there are books and cups of tea.”

“We brought his books.” Willow proffered them. “Just in case.”

Giles restrained the urge to ask ‘just in case of what?’ but Angel looked around in surprise. “I don’t think there’s anything mystical about what that demon did to him, it just....”

“Sliced him open with its razor sharp talons, yeah, we saw,” Xander said grimly. “We just wanted something to do.”

“Well, it never does any harm to be research a problem.” Giles tried to give them an encouraging smile but his face seemed to have forgotten the actions. They piled the books on the seat next to him, finishing with two notebooks and two letters. He frowned at those last items. “I don’t think we need to read Wesley’s private correspondence.”

“You should read this.” Buffy held out the letter.

“If the worst happens I’ll inform the Council. I’m sure they have Wesley’s next of kin on file.”

“Don’t you think you should send for someone from his family now?” Willow pressed. “So when he wakes up there’s someone here who…likes him?”

There was a painful silence after her words. Angel grimaced and looked across at Giles who sighed. “The doctors already told me that they advised contacting his next of kin, but if this surgery doesn’t save him then no one in England would be able to get here in time to say goodbye and if it does, there will be plenty of time to inform them afterwards.” As they all looked at him in mute reproach, he sighed. “I doubt Wesley’s parents are in the first flush of youth and I don’t really want to frighten them unnecessarily.”

“You should read the letter.” Buffy’s face was blank, grim.

“Buffy, I’m not comfortable with invading Wesley’s privacy unnecessarily. The Council will have any telephone numbers that....”

She took the envelope from him, yanked the letter out and shoved it at him. “You should read it.”

For a moment his feeling of distaste at invading another’s privacy almost overwhelmed every other emotion but seeing the look in her eyes, the intensity which he couldn’t quite categorize or yet understand, he felt he owed her the respect of knowing she would not ask him to do such a thing lightly. He took the letter out of the envelope and began to read:

Wesley,
I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what an honour the Council has done you in entrusting you with such a task. Two Slayers under your care. I wish I could convince myself that you were in any way equal to the job appointed to you, however your past record of weakness, inadequacy, vacillation and emotional immaturity leads me to conclude that in your case the Council has mistaken academic diligence for actual leadership abilities. I trust I don’t need to remind you how bitterly disappointed your mother and I will be if you let us down and bring the family name into disrepute?

Giles recoiled from the letter to look back at Buffy and realized that the expression in her eyes was a slow burn of rage.

“Did your father talk to you like that?”

“No.” Giles thought of his own father, a grave kindly man, always talking about honour and responsibility and how important it was that he carried out the task appointed to him, but never suggesting in the same breath that he was incapable of doing so. “Certainly not.”

Angel looked around with a frown. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t think Wesley wants to wake up to Daddy’s smiling face, do you?” Buffy’s tone was clipped, her gaze still holding Giles’s.

Giles abruptly remembered Wesley’s voice on the other end of the phone: Don’t tell my father about Balthazar, please, Giles…? Please…? “No.” He folded the letter carefully and put it back into the envelope. “I don’t think he would.”

“It goes on like that for two pages.” Buffy obviously needed to channel her anger somewhere and Giles supposed that Wesley’s absent unfeeling father was as good a person as any. “You should read all of it. Wesley…kind of makes more sense when you do.”

Oz put another notebook onto the pile of books. “He was researching the Ascension. We think he must have seen the demon through the window. Went out to get a better look and....”

Xander gritted his teeth. “Don’t they teach ‘how to stalk really big scary killer demons without getting yourself ripped to pieces’ at Watcher school?”

“If they did, Xander,” Giles said quietly. “They probably wouldn’t teach it very well.”

“He was head boy,” Buffy put in, still holding Giles’ gaze, seemingly wanting him to put something right that they must both know he really couldn’t. “Of that stupid Watcher’s school he went to. Apparently there couldn’t have been much competition that year.”

“Buffy....” said Willow reproachfully.

Buffy looked across at the redhead. “Oh, that isn’t my opinion. That’s his father’s. Apparently ‘no one was more surprised’ than him when Wesley ‘informed him of his achievement’. He could ‘only conclude Wesley must have shown considerably more character and concentration at school than he ever did at home’. Oh yes, and that ‘distinguished’ grade he got for mystical studies class? Must have been a fluke because you know when Wesley was seven he completely messed up the resurrection spell he was attempting and ‘never showed any true aptitude’ for....”

“Buffy, that’s enough,” Giles said sharply. “If – as we all hope he will – Wesley pulls through this, he won’t want you either reading his private correspondence or passing on its contents.”

“You know when I asked Wesley if he has any human parts? I’m thinking if he does, he didn’t get them from his father.”

“Wesley’s father sounds a lot like mine,” Xander admitted.

“And mine.” Angel grimaced.

“Seven?” Willow looked up wide-eyed. “Wesley was doing spells when he was seven?”

“Apparently not very well,” Buffy said tersely. “Basic errors of Latin pronunciation that could have been had the most disastrous consequences. Proof that Wesley should never disobey those older and wiser than him blah blah blah. Oh yes, and when he was eleven he wrongly conjugated a Hebrew verb before visitors in a way that was painfully embarrassing for his poor old dad. That kid was just one headache after another by the sound of it.”

“Buffy....” Giles held her gaze.

She took the letter from him and slammed it down on top of the books, or as well as one could slam something as limp and yielding as blue airmail paper. “People shouldn’t be allowed to do that to their children, Giles. Why is it okay for someone to do that to his child?”

“It’s none of our business,” he reminded her quietly. “This is all between Wesley and his father and I don’t want it discussed any further.” He didn’t add that they both knew her anger with Wesley’s father was just a smokescreen for the anger she was feeling at herself because she had been unkind to Wesley and about him when he was bleeding to death in that park after using his last few gasps of consciousness to try to save someone she loved. No doubt Wesley’s father would not be winning any parent of the year awards any time soon but that had nothing to do with the rage Buffy was feeling right now, and the longer she kept passing the buck the harder it was going to hit her when she admitted with whom she was really angry.

Giles looked from Buffy’s set angry face to Willow’s pale anxious one, Oz not quite as inscrutable as usual and Xander undoubtedly shaken up, and was reminded that they were all very young and had done as much as they could do. “There’s no really point in you being here. You should go home and get some rest.”

“What are you going to do?” Buffy asked.

“Angel and I will wait here.”

“Why you two and not us?”

Angel looked across at her. “Because we’re older than Wesley.”

It wasn’t the answer Giles would have chosen but when he thought about it, it was the one that made the most sense. Wesley was younger than they were and that meant they were on some level responsible for him in a way that Buffy and the others were not. It probably was how Angel felt. With Giles it was more complicated, something to do with the man being a colleague and a fellow Englishman and perhaps especially a fellow Watcher, not to mention a vague sense of having failed him.

“There’s really nothing more you can do for him tonight,” Giles added. “The doctors are doing all they can. Why don’t you get some sleep? Oz, Willow looks very tired. Xander, why don’t you take my car and drive everyone home? You can bring it back in the morning.”

“You’re letting me drive your car and I’m not supposed to take that as a sign that either the apocalypse is coming or else Wesley is....” Xander looked at Willow’s near-tearful face and didn’t finish that sentence. “Okay. I’ll drive everyone home.”

They trooped away, looking pale and dishevelled and upset, Buffy giving Giles a last look over her shoulder that was half angry teenager displacing her guilt, and half just wanting him to make everything all right, to wave his magic wand so that none of this had happened or at least ended well.

He sighed and looked up at Angel, thinking again how bizarre it was to be alone with the outward appearance of the creature who had killed Jenny and tortured him, and yet to find him subtly comforting.

Angel said, “There’s nothing more you could have done, Giles.”

Giles picked up Wesley’s notebook. There were two of them, one red-bound, one blue-bound, they appeared to be his official notebooks, the ones that would be passed onto his replacement if anything happened to him; these, at least, Giles was breaking no confidences by examining. He opened the book and tried to get the print to come into focus while still seeing those terrible rents in Wesley’s good suit, the one he always wore; with a jolt Giles wondered if it was the only one he owned. He noticed that his fingers had dried blood on them, saw Wesley’s face so pale and with that thick fringe of black lashes that made him look so absurdly young. He swallowed hard. “I know. I know that.” He turned the page of the notebook and began to read.