Giles pushed a polystyrene cup into Xander’s hands and crouched back into the chair beside him. The hospital halls echoed with distant chatter and electronic beeps, and the syncopated hum of the flickering fluorescent light above them. Xander just kept staring, and saying nothing; Giles’ eyes flitted around, his mind very much elsewhere.
Finally, Xander broke the silence, or tried to. His hands moved, his mouth opened, but it was a few seconds before he found the words.
“She’s going to be OK. She’s going to be OK,” he said with a nervous chuckle. He turned to Giles in appeal. “Isn’t she?”
Giles blinked. “W-w-well, yes, I mean, the doctors will do whatever needs to be done. It’ll be fine” Giles squirmed slightly, embarassed. Then he remembered tonight’s discussion, the new relationship they had and he steeled himself to try harder.
“There’s no need to worry. Buffy will have the counterspell any minute now and then she’ll be right as rain.”
But Xander wasn’t listening. “This is all my fault!” he exclaimed, surging to his feet. “If I hadn’t been stupid jealous guy, then we never would have had that fight and... possibly therefore she wouldn’t've been so thirsty after yelling at me and thus have had no need to drink punch for the rest of the evening...” Xander rushed his conclusion as he realised he was talking nonsense. He sat down again, and gesticulated his awareness of the fact. “OK, ok, so the punch link is pretty tenuous. But I shoulda been there. And instead,” he sallied again, pointing a finger at Giles, “I was playing careers day with you and Buffy.”
“Xander, you couldn’t have stopped this from hap - what do you mean ‘playing careers day’? Do you think tonight was some sort of joke?”
Xander smiled with fear, guilt, worry and his ever-present self-mockery. “Yeah. Me a Watcher. I get it. Good one, Giles,” he added, patting him on the shoulder. “You had me going there for a while.”
“Xander, I wasn’t joking.”
“Sure. Of course. I’m gonna be a big time Watcher-man, and go to England and go to college, and become an Oxford scholar …” Xander wasn’t talking to Giles any more. “And then maybe I’ll marry a supermodel and start up my own software company, and play for the Lakers and...”
“Xander.”
“What? What do you want from me, Giles? I’m not that guy! I'm not the guy you want! I’m not a superhero - I'm just the, the comic relief! The guy who always gets captured, or tied up or something. I’m - I’m Daphne!”
“Daphne?”
“In Scooby Doo. The girl who always gets - forget it.” Xander sank down into his chair again. “You got it wrong, Giles, you got the wrong guy. OK? I’m just a stupid geek who lives in a basement and can’t even hold down a job selling ice-cream. I’m not the one you want. Take Willow. She deserves it. She’s the golden girl. I’d only screw it up.”
Giles stared straight ahead for a long time before he spoke again.
“You know," he said quietly, still staring straight ahead, "Buffy told me a story once - about you. Something that Angel had told her. It was, well, a few years ago, now, back, back when Angel had lost his soul, and Buffy was in hospital, with the flu. It was a very hard time for her, and she was vulnerable, and alone, and probably quite frightened. And you were standing guard, by her bedside, probably just down there.” Giles pointed down the hall. “And sometime during the night, Angel came into the hospital.”
“Angel didn’t tell Buffy exactly what happened that night, but he did say he had come to the hospital that night specifically to feed off of her. He was planning to weaken her that much more and begin his plans to destroy her. If, if he’d been successful, if he’d gotten to her, then Buffy would have been too weak to stop him from summoning Acathla. The world would almost certainly have been destroyed.”
“There was only one thing that stopped him from carrying out his intentions that night, Xander. There was only one thing that stopped him from killing Buffy right there and then.” Giles turned and captured Xander’s gaze. “And that was you”
Xander looked away, embarrassed. Giles kept his eyes where they were. “Courage, Xander. That’s what you possess. That’s what makes you so special to Buffy. And it’s what will make you an excellent Watcher.”
“The Slayer, and Angel...mages, witches, demons: they all have special powers - spells, superior strength, immortality...even tentacles, sometimes...but a Watcher has none of that. He is just an ordinary man. He can rely only on his own mind, and his own body to save him. Those are his only tools against all the countless armies of darkness that stalk the world. To face that threat, with, with just yourself to rely on, takes incredible courage. Some would say, to the extent of bordering on insanity. But if nobody stood against this threat, then the world would be consumed by darkness in an instant. So that is what a Watcher does - faces that darkness, every single day. Because we’re the only ones who can; the only ones who have the courage to do so.”
Xander bit his lip, thinking. “Sooo,” he exhaled, “when you thought of the phrase ‘bordering on insanity’, you naturally thought of me, huh?”
For once, Giles laughed at Xander’s joke.
“But what about Buffy?" Xander continued. "I mean, I just can’t leave her. She depends on me. OK, mostly she depends on me to get donuts, but...it’s something. It’s part of something. You just said so.”
“Your devotion to Buffy does you credit, Xander. But you mustn’t let it stop you from fulfilling your potential. I doubt you’ll ever be replaced, Xander, but Buffy has many friends that she can rely on. She has Riley, and Willow, her mother and her sister - between us, we can look after her. And besides, she’s a big girl; she can look after herself, too...”
Dale’s pudgy fingers wrapped even tighter around Buffy’s throat as he easily lifted her whole body off the ground. But it was no longer Dale. It was still his face, but his body had swelled and twisted under the strange magic which was screaming through his veins. He was almost seven feet tall, and his body writhed with newly-born muscle and sinew. His arms flexed like steel cable as his grip tightened and he raised his sword.
“I was once just a man” he whispered. “But I have drunk the blood of David, and I am now one of His Chosen. A true Soldier of the Lord.” He smiled as he uttered her death sentence: “And His will shall be done.” Dale swang back to deliver the killing blow and Buffy saw her chance. She used his momentum to swing her legs up and delivered a savage kick to the elbow of the arm holding her. On a normal man, the joint would have shattered.
Dale’s spouted a storm of biblical curses as his arm contracted with agony. Buffy found her feet back on the ground and pressed her advantage. She grabbed the wrist around her throat and dropped down into a backward roll, catapulting Dale over her shoulder with a judo flip. But in a second he was up again and rushing towards her, sword held high.
She ducked once, twice, side-stepped, then leapt into a backward roll as his sword strokes came at her in a blur. Dale’s sword cut down again, and again, and she desperately twisted her body left and right, sliding backwards, keeping him at range as best she could. But he kept driving forward, forcing her back and back down the aisle, his blade cutting a fraction closer with every blow. She needed a weapon, but nothing was in sight. Needing time to think, she jack-knifed sideways and dived between two pews.
As soon as Dale reached her hiding space, he tore up the pew and stabbed downwards, but saw only her feet worming back under the next one. He grabbed that one and threw it back so hard it split in half when it crashed against the first. But she was gone again, working towards the back of the church and further and further away from the aisle - and from Dale.
Dale ripped up the pew after pew like he was reaping wheat. Each time, stabbing down with full force. Each time, Buffy was but an inch away, slipping again safe in to the shadows. And then, she wasn’t there at all. In his rage, he’d missed her break away down the side of the church, running for the vestry at top speed. “No!” shouted Dale after her. “You will not escape me!”
Dale pivoted and with one titanic kick, slammed the few remaining pews backwards into the tall oaken doors. Dale laughed as they boomed shut. "Nowhere to run now, woman," he growled, mostly to himself. "There's no way out!" Dale sighted down his sword and smiled. Then he charged after her once more.
Buffy skidded into the vestry and her mouth sagged open. There was no back door. She was completely alone, and Dale was stronger now than any vampire she'd faced. And she didn't even have a weapon. Then she saw it, and breathed a sigh of relief.
It made sense, of course. If Dale had found a sword, chances are it had a twin which completed the wall decoration. Gleefully, Buffy snatched it off the wall, and as an afterthought, grabbed the shield above it as well. She just had time to slip her arm into it when Dale stormed in. She looked down at her new arsenal and smiled smugly.
“See, now that I know you’re going with the whole medieval thing, I can accessorise to match”
The two men were still sitting on the same bench, in the same pose; Xander’s eyes turned forever on the doors at the end of the corridor, Giles staring distractedly into space. The silence of the hospital had grown more stale around them.
Xander spoke without looking around. “I - I always kinda thought you didn’t like me.”
Giles was indignant. “I like you!”
Now Xander looked at him. Giles coughed and rolled his eyes.
“Alright. So maybe you have, in the past, been known to cause me some amount of…irritation. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like you.” he sallied.
Xander looked at him again, one eyebrow raised. “Come on, Giles. Would we ever be hanging out together, if it wasn’t for Buffy?”
Giles reflected. “Well...well, what do you want me to say? You’re right, of course. We are not the two most compatible people on the planet. And if it wasn’t for Buffy’s friendship with you, and what that has come to mean to our efforts, then no, I sincerely doubt we would ever have associated, on our own free will.”
“Especially now you no longer have cable,” added Xander.
Giles ignored him. “But, well, over the years you have become part of the team. It's not friends exactly, but...the point is, you’re a very important person in Buffy’s life. And so naturally, I care about what happens to you." Giles paused, then decided once more to keep going. "And in a strange way, I do respect you, Xander.” Giles stared at him for a beat. “A very, very strange way. But with good reason - you’ve proven your worth and integrity many times. You brought Buffy back from the dead, you defeated the Judge - and I seem to recall you pulling me out of the firing line on more than one occasion.”
Xander gave a nervous laugh, unused to the praise. Giles continued. “The simple fact is that I wouldn’t be offering this opportunity to you if I didn’t believe, well, that you could do it. You may be a...well, a buffoon a great deal of the time, but you’re capable of a lot more than you think. And it’s about damn well time you realised that, so we don't have to keep telling you.”
Before Xander could say anything, there was a scream of sirens, a flashing light and suddenly the world exploded into sound and fury. Doors slammed, gurneys crashed onto their wheels and the corridor flooded with running doctors. Two, four, five, six, maybe more - faces Xander recognised, faces he’d only just left behind at Stevenson. He leapt to his feet, trying to match the pace of the gurneys, to see the faces, to find out how bad it was. Giles, too was pushing through the crowd, picking up scattered bits of information as it was shouted across the beds.
“Yeah, the group poisoning. From the college.”
“How many more?”
“Pressure is dropping...”
“We need more fluids in here!”
“-treated at the scene”
“What the hell did they take?”
“Coming through!”
“-still don’t know. Reckon it was some sort of acid.”
“We’re gonna have to bag him!”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I need some help over here!”
“Christ, it’s burning her whole throat out -”
“She’s still bleeding...”
“Sir?”
“More fluids. Flush the whole system.”
“We’ve got to figure out what she took!”
“SIR!”
Finally, Giles realised the nurse beside him was addressing him. “er, sorry, what?”
“Are you the man who brought in the first poisoned girl? err...” the Nurse consulted her notes, "Anya?"
In a flash, Xander was at his side. Behind him, unseen, the last guerney rolled in the doors, bearing a familiar red-haired girl.
“Anya. Yes. Is she OK?” Xander asked intently.
“She’s doing OK, so far. We’ve got her pressure back up and her breathing is fine. But we can’t seem to stop the bleeding. The doctors just don’t know how to treat her because we don’t know what she took.” The nurse decided to press her point. “And if we don’t find out soon, well, she could die. Are you sure you don’t have any idea at all what it could have been? Or is there any possible way you could find out?”
Giles nodded. “We’re working on it.”
Buffy catapulted though the vestry door and bounced painfully onto the stone floor. A trail of blood flowed down her arm and her head was ringing like a gong. She understood now: the shield wasn’t like armour; it didn’t protect you. It was a weapon, designed to deflect blows, and she had to start using it as one whenever she could. Such as when she was lying on her sword arm and Dale was charging towards her. Like say, now.
Buffy slid her body forward and swung the side of the shield deep into Dale’s ankle. His blow still came down, but without force as his muscles clenched with pain. She pushed up his arms and stood up, slamming the shield into his chin, and then stepped away clear again. She raised her sword and for a second simply stared fiercely at her combatant. He did the same.
Then it began again.
Block. Block. Block. Swing. Move back. Buffy had never trained in medieval weaponry, but her natural abilities were compensating while she figured out the flow. You didn’t wave a claymore around like it was a stake, you kept it right back, blocking and dodging until you saw an opening, then you swung the thing in there like a crowbar. Unfortunately, every time she swung, Dale’s sword was ready to block. And as her legs began to weaken again and her queasiness returned, she didn’t know how long she could keep her shield in front of his crushing blows.
The echoes bounced around the church as Dale’s two-handed swings clanged again and again into Buffy’s small shield. She swung again, and the clangs gave way to a higher-pitched ring as again he was too fast for her. Again he came at her, smiling now as the thrill of the advantage pushed him onward. Again, she blocked and jumped and dodged, and then saw the opening. She swung with lightning speed, only to be beaten again. Then with a twist, Dale slammed his blade back against her hilt, bending her wrist to an agonising angle. The pain knocked her backwards and off balance, and he lunged for her thigh. Buffy brought down her shield just in time to push the blade clear, but the impact drove his sword blade deep into the metal. Dale laughed and pulled away hard, sending Buffy’s only defence skidding across the floor.
Dale turned back to her, sword down, awaiting her surrender. “Your time has come, witch.”
“Check your spelling, Dale,” Buffy spat. “It starts with a 'B'.” Buffy shifted her grip and threw her sword like a javelin. There was a clang of stone as it went right through Dale’s left foot and hit the stone floor.
Dale bellowed in pain and rage and sank slowly to the ground, clutching at the steel. Buffy was already gone, racing across the dais and into the nave. The church still had the ancient model of a second pulpit, raised above the church floor. She raced up the narrow stone stairs two at a time.
There was an insane laugh, and a sudden clang. Buffy reached the high altar in time to see Dale drop the bloodied sword on the floor and rise to his feet again. He looked up at her and smiled. “See? God is with me, and all your earthly powers cannot defeat His will. The Word of God is as solid” - and here Dale stamped his bloody foot down hard on the cold floor to make the point - “as a rock.”
In a flash, he leapt across the dais and jumped onto the low altar. With another jump, his hands caught the balustrade of the high altar, but as his face cleared the rail, Buffy slammed a hardcover Bible incredibly hard into his face. Dale dropped to the ground, screaming again. Buffy looked down at her weapon of choice and smiled. “Hmm. Looks like you we’re right on that one, Dale.”
Riley's shoulder hammered into the thick oak doors one more time, then he jumped back as a screech of steel rang through the stone walls, followed by a high-pitched, tortured scream. He prayed to God that it was Dale's voice.
He'd told her Dale wasn't stupid, that he wouldn't come easy. They'd already seen he was prepared to poison a room full of people just to make his point. If he'd summoned some demonic power to help him fight, there was no telling how strong he might have become. And no telling if Buffy would be able to defeat him, not with the effects of the holy water still hanging over her.
As more shouts and rings of steel echoed inside, he knew she was in trouble. If she underestimated what she was up against, he could kill her. Riley set his shoulder to charge at the doors again, then checked himself. This wasn't working. Not fast enough, anyway. But churches weren't designed to be impregnable. There had to be another way in. He just had to find it - before it was too late.
Dale was back on his feet in another second, spitting blood and cursing. He grabbed his sword and looked up for his prey. He smiled as he spied Buffy, limberly climbing up the pillar to the arched roof. “Running away already, witch? Don’t you know you can’t run from the Lord?” he mocked.
Buffy took a second to catch her breath. “Really? I thought that was the IRS?” she shot back, then immediately began climbing again. She ignored Dale's shouting from below, and the aching throb in her wrist, and the cold stinging in her arm and just how far above the cold stone floor she now was. All she thought about was climbing. Hand over hand, foot-hold to foot-hold, up and up and up as fast as she could.
Finally, her sweaty hand grasped the lowest wooden cross-beam and she allowed herself another short break, thankful that her strength had held. But only a moment, then she was edging her way very carefully across the beam to the window.
Dale laughed again, his deep tones resounding into the dark ceiling. He limped slowly underneath her, watching her progress with great amusement. “And just where are you going?” he guffawed. “Think you can fly away?” Buffy just shook her head slightly in disdain, taking care not to move her eyes from the thin beam along which she was crawling. “You know,” Dale continued, “you really should thank me, Buffy. I’m only saving you from yourself, from the wickedness you do. And the wickedness you inspire in others with your...lewd behaviour.”
Buffy just kept staring straight ahead and crawled onwards. “You know, it’s so nice to hear the church speaking out on social issues for a change” she muttered. With one last slide, she reached the brick wall. Stretched beneath her was the massive stained-glass window, a shimmering ribbon of colour even with darkness outside.
Dale was chuckling again. “Yes, that’s right. Mock me. Mock me all you want.”
Buffy glanced down at him. “Well, I thought I sort of already was,” she said.
Dale growled. “You think you are wise, but it is the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of God is a secret knowledge, and you can never know it. Because you are woman, and women are not of God. Women are weak.”
“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Buffy “We’re totally weak. That’s why you’re the one with the bleeding foot and the broken nose.” She looked down to the lip of the window sill, and found what she was looking for. She breathed a sigh of relief that Riley had been right. She slowly and carefully wrapped her legs around the beam, and then swung underneath, her arms stretching out to grab the frame.
Dale growled again, and with renewed fervour strode across the dais and leapt onto the back altar, directly beneath her. “You still don’t understand, do you?" he shouted upwards. "I am a Soldier of God. I am the embodiment of His holy word!” Dale was laughing again, hysterically. “You really think you can defeat me? You think you can defeat God himself? Nothing can stand against me! Nothing will ever stand against me again!” At that, he snatched up the chalice and anointed his sword with the wine. With a pass through a candle, it roared with flame. Smiling, he changed his grip on his sword, and aimed it upwards, sighting the distance between him and her.
"It's about time you came back down to Earth, woman" he growled, swinging back his massive right arm.
Buffy got a firm grip on the metal frame with both hands. "You know, I was just thinking the same thing," she said with a smile. Then she released her legs around the beam.
Buffy’s body dropped, and then arced out across the empty air, pivoting with the window that she pulled behind her in her mighty arms. The metal hooks at the base acted as a fulcrum, but the temporary sealant simply ripped away and crumbled as Buffy plumetted faster and faster. Outside, guy ropes strained and snapped. Steel creaked, shuddered and screamed and the window came on, out, out, out, and then simply dropping, falling, gathering speed, racing down, down, down -
Dale had just enough time to shield his face.
The crash roared through the empty church, a tidal wave of sound. Glass fragments exploded into the air like a firestorm. Windows shattered. Foundations shook. Buffy screamed.
And then it was quiet.
After a moment, Buffy’s face, dusty and scratched, appeared from behind the pile of pews she’d managed to reach in her landing. For another few seconds she just sat there, shivering. For the first time, she understood what it meant to actually wait until the dust has settled.
With a crunch, Buffy's sneakers entered the sea of glass and steel. A thousand jagged edges, of rose and amber and turquoise, shimmered across the floor of the church. And in the centre, framed in a bloody crucifix where the window had passed around him, lay Dale - beaten, bloody, but alive.
Buffy wasted no time. Before Dale could raise his head, she crossed the distance and brought her knee down hard on the centre of his spine. He spasmed in pain, hissing through clenched teeth. Buffy used the motion to lock her arm around his neck and pull him to attention. "Right, that seemed to shut you up. Now like I said when I first came in, we don't have a lot of time. My friends are dying, and you know how to make them better. And you've got about two seconds to tell me."
Dale could only growl with pain and defiance. "No?" said Buffy, with dangerous cheerfulness. "Well, then, how about we introduce Mr Face to Mr Glass a few more times, huh?" Buffy spat, and then slammed Dale’s head down hard into the shard-covered stone. Dale choked out another roar of pain as Buffy pulled him up again. Two large gashes lined his cheeks and his lips were bleeding. A nick had just missed his left eye. "Now do you feel like talking? Because frankly, I'd love to spend all day smashing your face into broken glass. In fact, I could probably take it up as a hobby. But right now, I need to save my friends!"
Dale said nothing. Buffy's eyes glazed over with rage. She grabbed his hair in a steel grip, and aimed his face down once again into the glass. She pulled back -
- and another hand stopped her.
"No" said Riley.