Damage Control, Part 3

by L. Inman

 

Rupert arrived in Oxford in very good time.  Buffy’s plan had worked to a T.  He had returned to London, where he had purchased a shiny silver mobile with a color screen that lit up with an eerie blue light when folded open.  The nice lady who sold it to him had taken pity on him and helped him enter crucial numbers into his speed-dial menu.  He had retrieved his car and buzzed confidently up to Oxford without mishap.  Even his head was cooperating; it hurt much less than it had the night before.

            He knocked briskly on Elisabeth’s door, feeling an oil-and-water mixture of buoyance and apprehension.  It was just possible that Buffy was right, and that his welcome would not be exactly warm.  In fact (he thought as he waited for her to open the door) it would be far, far more than he deserved if she were glad to see him.

            It occurred to him suddenly that she was not answering.  He knocked again.

            Again no answer.  He would have to call her.  He glanced up and down the street, trying to remember where the nearest phone box was.  Belatedly he recalled the existence of his mobile and took it out.  He folded it open and squinted at the controls.  How the hell did you call someone on this thing?  There was a little “menu” icon in the corner, but he didn’t know how to get to it or how to retrieve Elisabeth’s number from the call list.  Perhaps he could just dial the number in.  He tried it, but nothing happened.  “Fuck!” Then he saw what he suddenly remembered had been described as the “send” button.  He pressed it, tentatively, and found himself in business; he could hear Elisabeth’s phone ringing faintly inside her flat.

            The answering machine picked up, and he started slowly back down the steps, formulating his message.

            “Ah—yes—Elisabeth—it’s me, Rupert….I—I’m back in Oxford, and would like to see you.  I stopped at your flat but you weren’t home.  I—erm…I’ll try at Magdalen and see if you’re there.  When you get this, you can call my new number…ohh, fuck, I don’t remember what it is.  Well, I’ll call you back—maybe stop by your flat again if I can’t find you….I—”

            The beep cut him off.

            Rupert wandered across the Bridge and into Magdalen College.  No one, he discovered to his dismay, had seen Elisabeth that day, nor was she expected to turn up.  He worked his way from library to common room to seminar room, a heavy foreboding growing in the pit of his stomach.  When, an hour later, he had turned up nothing and no one who knew anything of Elisabeth’s whereabouts, he began to panic.

            He called her flat again.  Still no answer.  He left no message.

            This is what I get for not calling her before, he thought frantically.

            It was time to eat crow.  He went to the porter’s desk and asked to be directed to Brian Whitaker’s rooms.

 

*

 

He could hear Brian’s voice in the corridor as he approached, laying down the law with vivacity to a student:  “…Do not, for the love of God, ask me again what I want.  What I want is for you to apply your reasoning powers to a subject you may say is drudgery but which is quite meaningful in and of itself and therefore does not require your paltry passion.  It also does not require my imprimatur on every sentence.  Every time I want a paper written to my personal specifications, I write it myself, capisce?  If you use the inevitable subjectivity of marking as an excuse for poor argument, I shall beat you with your own notebook.”

            Rupert waited, masking a little smile, outside the door until Brian and the student had done; presently, the student ducked out, very red-faced, clutching his bag.  Rupert turned his indulgent smile briefly on the boy and advanced to knock on the lintel.

            “Come in,” Brian said, without looking up from the papers he was shuffling on the table.

            Rupert came in a few steps; it did not take long for Brian to raise his head and see him.  He had the remains of a magnificent black eye fading healthily on the right side of his face.

            “Oh,” Brian said blankly.  “It’s you.”  He went back to shuffling the papers, keeping a wary eye on Rupert.  “What do you want?”

            Rupert briefly considered saying that what he wanted was Brian’s attention to a subject that displeased him, but caught himself in time, thank goodness for small mercies.  “I…I’m looking for Elisabeth.  I’ve been unable to locate her.  It’s…” he stopped himself saying troublesome— “worrying.”

            Brian raised his eyebrows above the rims of his reading glasses, and finally took them off.  “What,” he said, “she’s not at home?”

            “No,” Rupert said, “and no one round here has seen her at all today.”

            “Well, she wouldn’t be here today, she hasn’t got anything she has to come in for.”  Brian frowned.  “And you say she’s not at home?”

            “Yes.  That is what I said,” Rupert said tightly.  A fresh tendril of panic was rising in his chest.

            Brian considered.  “Well…that’s odd, but it’s not completely out of the way.  There are a number of places she could be.  Have you checked…?”

            “I’ve been all over the college.”

            “Yes, but there are a few hidey-holes she might—”

            “I know the hidey-holes,” Rupert said impatiently.  “I once read History here, you know.”

            “Really?”  Brian blinked.  “You’re a Magdalen man?  I thought you were Christ Church.”

            “Christ Church!” Rupert snorted.

            “Just an idea I had,” Brian muttered.  “Any rate, I don’t see any reason to worry unduly.  I mean, Elisabeth does this occasionally.  Disappears, I mean.  It’s never anything truly bad.  Though, well, there was that one time she was kidnapped and interrogated by the Council of Wankers, may-they-rest-in-peace—”

            Rupert gave him a level look.

            “—oh, and there was the time she took off to stay at your place all by herself without any medical help, to wait out the apocalypse.  And—well, that time she was holed up in her flat completely gaga when y—when the First Evil got through with her….”  Brian stopped; an inward look of gnawing worry came into his face.  “This isn’t really helping, is it.”

            “No,” Rupert said, succinctly.

            “I don’t….”  Brian made a small movement, as if he were going to say more, but checked it.  Instead he churned his hand through his dark-sandy hair, thinking.

            “When did you see her last?”

            “Few days,” Brian said.  “You don’t think…?”

            “I don’t know.”  Rupert sighed, smoothed a hand down his burberry.  “I’m not sure how to—I don’t know what to try next.  I don’t want to crowd her—but if—if she’s—”

            “I’m sure she’s all right,” Brian said hurriedly, now looking really alarmed.  “Tell you what—” he glanced at his watch— “I can’t leave here for a few hours, but if you go back to her flat and see if she’s returned—and have a look about the city—maybe see if she’s at the church—St. John’s, you know—and call me—no, perhaps I should call you—”

            Rupert pulled out his mobile and opened it.  “I have my number—well, I just got this bloody thing today, I don’t know where the number is.  Perhaps I’d better call you….”  He fussed with the keys, hoping to make the mobile’s number magically appear on the screen.  “Dammit!”

            He could feel Brian looking at him.  Self-consciously he flipped the mobile shut and looked back at him.

            “I’ll give you my number—here,” Brian said, tearing off a scrap of paper and scrawling on it.  “So what happened to your head?” he asked, glancing up as he wrote.

            “Paris, the city of lovers,” Rupert said dryly.  “Where some people kiss in cafés and others hit you with fire-escape ladders in dark alleys.”

            “Ah,” Brian said, polite to the nth.  “That’s a shame.  Well, here you are.”

            Rupert took the paper from him and folded it into his burberry.  “Thank you.  So you think I should start back at her place, then.”

            “Your best bet,” Brian said.  He didn’t have much of a poker face, Rupert reflected; even he could see the worry beneath the calm.

            “I’ll call you,” he said.

            Brian made one sharp uplift of his chin for a nod, and Rupert made good his escape.

 

*

 

Back at Elisabeth’s flat, Rupert knocked firmly and waited.  When she did not answer, he made up his mind to jimmy his way inside.  Bugger law, propriety, and personal independence; Elisabeth could be seriously hurt somewhere.

            He dug in his pocket for his old set of picklocks while reaching for the door handle, expecting to meet the resistance of a locked door.  Instead, the handle turned easily and the door opened without any resistance at all.  Staring at it, Rupert felt his low-grade panic deepen to heavy foreboding.

            Cautiously he pushed the door further open and slipped inside.  “Elisabeth?” he called, voice low.  There was no movement visible, except his own in the little mirror above the coat-hook rank in the foyer to his right.  The mirror, he saw, was mostly covered by strategically-placed gloves and scarves; looking at it, all Rupert could see was one of his own eyes.  He turned away from it and moved slowly, quietly into the flat.

            He saw and heard nothing.  There was a stale fug of unwashed dishes, or decomposing kitchen garbage, or illness, or—

            “Elisabeth?”

            No answer.

            She was nowhere: not in the untidy kitchen, or the livingroom, or the utility alcove.  He moved on quickly to her bedroom; she wasn’t there either.  On her nightstand stood a half-glass of water; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues and clothing, and the sheets lay tangled where they had been flung.  The top of the dresser held a scattering of hair accessories, makeup, and pill bottles, among which lay the framed mirror, face down.

            It felt like a nightmare, he thought, a nightmare moving at a predetermined speed through empty rooms.  He turned and went out of the bedroom, pausing in the corridor to poke his head into the bathroom: and there she was.

            She was hunched motionless in the corner between the tub and the wall, in front of the toilet, bare feet half-sprawled awkwardly across the faded linoleum, one limp hand resting along the tub’s edge.  As he watched, paralyzed, she canted her head back to look at him and moved her lips in a wan attempt at a smile.  “Hey,” she said.

            In an instant he was on his knees in front of her, stretching hesitant hands to touch her shoulder, her hand.  “Elisabeth.  Are you—?  What—what is this?”

            She wasn’t quite meeting his eyes.  “The old complaint,” she answered hoarsely, “—more or less.”

            “How long have you—has it been like this?”

            She was responding favorably to his touch, but still wouldn’t quite look him in the eye.  “Oh…only a day or so.”

            Rupert kept his own counsel about that:  only a day of illness was not enough to produce those shadows under her eyes, or reduce her hair to lank, unwashed ribbons that retained the marks of every touch.  He said nothing, merely looked away briefly, pursing his lips, and let out his breath in a hiss.  Only a day was still a day too long.

            “D’you think you can stand?” he asked her, tentatively.

            A faint look of worry came over her face, but she said, “I think so.”

            Rupert stood, shucked off his burberry, and tossed it out into the hall.  Rolling up his sleeves, he bent again to help Elisabeth slowly to her feet.  Guiding her with one hand, he turned on the shower taps with the other and felt the spray, waiting for it to warm.  He helped her to undress, slowly peeling her out of her sour T-shirt and working the cuffs of her sweatpants off her ankles.  Naked, she looked even more unloved, pale and scrawny, than he had remembered in their brief moment together days ago: his eyes stung, and he blinked them clear so that he could help her step unsteadily into the tub, and hold her up under the hot spray.  A hard, visible shudder went through her as the water spilled over her body; she put out a hand to brace herself against the tiled wall.

            He was reluctant to let go of her, but she assured him that she could stand and wash by herself, so he backed away and went out of the room, saying:  “I’ll be right nearby if you need me.”  Aching for something to do, he went into her bedroom and (after a brief moment of indecision) stripped the sheets off her bed, gathered all her dirty clothing, and carried it in to drop in front of her washer to wait till her shower was done.  He collected her garbage and put it out.  He opened the windows and set the ceiling fans going, rickety-click, rickety-click below the noise of the shower.  Then he went looking for some clean clothing to put her in; finally he dug out a large T-shirt that had once been his and a pair of faded black leggings, along with a ratty blue robe that he was sure was secondhand.  Back in the bathroom, he realized with dismay that all her towels were dirty—he glanced around desperately and saw that the one clean one was tacked up over the mirror.  With a sharp yank he pulled it down; one tack skittered across the floor, and he bent to pick it up so that Elisabeth’s bare foot would not find it.

            He was waiting with the towel when she shut off the water and turned to push aside the curtain.  He draped her in the towel, and was ready with each article of clothing when she reached for it.  Finally he held the robe while she worked her arms through the sleeves, and guided her out of the bathroom, grabbing her comb on the way.

            No words passed between them as he settled her into the nest of blankets and pillows he had made for her on the couch.  He was not, therefore, certain whether it was a good sign that she let him sit at an angle behind her and take the comb to her clean wet hair.  He got a glance at her face for a moment while her head was turned; her eyes were closed, the damp lashes lying in a trembling curve over her cheek.

            Her hair combed and shining, she moved like a tired child to burrow further under the blankets, curling up to leave him room to sit, and closed her eyes.  “Thank you,” she murmured.

            He cleared his throat.  “How long since you’ve eaten?”

            She did not open her eyes.  “Don’t remember.”

            “I’ll make you something.  Some soup?”

            After a brief hesitation she nodded, and he got up and went into the kitchen.

            He had to pause for a moment, hands braced against the counter, before he began: overcome for a moment by the shame of having resented her interest in his welfare only to find that her welfare had suffered outside his own interest.  Making her soup was so far short of the least he should do for her that he could only put his hands to the task with all his care and attention.

            While the soup was cooking he scalded a week’s worth of dirty dishes in the sink, and put in the first load of laundry to wash.  When at last it was hot, he ladled a generous portion into a mug, heavy on the broth and light on the noodles, and tasted it gingerly before adding salt and pepper.  Elisabeth was out of saltines, so he carried the mug out alone to her on the couch.

            She was sleeping fitfully, and startled at his touch; but she recovered quickly and sat up to receive the soup from his hands.  Encouraged, he sat down close to her and watched her as she took tiny sips from the mug.

            “I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” she said, blowing lightly across the steaming surface of the broth.  “I heard you knock the first time, then I heard you call.  So I crawled out to the front door and unlocked it in case you came back.  I think I must have looked pretty funny,” she said, with a wry grimace.

            He sat miserably for a moment before answering.  “I’m so sorry,” he said at last.

            She looked up at him; her face was still tired but her eyes had lost a little of that studied concentration upon inward pain.  “My dear, what for?  It isn’t your fault I was ill.”

            “Isn’t it?”  He studied his guilty hands.  “I could have kept in better touch with you.”

            “You were working,” Elisabeth said.  “And, I presume it was fruitful work, too:  you’ve got a new bump on your head.”

            He brought a hand up vaguely to touch the painful lump.  “Yes.”  Then:  “Oh! damn!  I forgot.”  He got up and began to root in the pockets of his burberry for both his mobile and the scrap of paper with Brian’s number.  He found them and let the coat fall back in its place draped over her chair.

            “Whose cell-phone is that?” Elisabeth asked.

            “Mine,” Rupert muttered.  “Just got the bloody thing today.  Hardly know how to work it.  Let’s see….”  He squinted hard between the keypad and the scrap of paper, and found with an uncertain thumb the send button.  As it rang, he stood and paced the length of the couch.

            “Who are you calling?”  Elisabeth sat looking up at him, both hands curled around her mug of soup.

            “Brian.”

            She frowned.  “Brian who?”

            But he did not answer her, for Brian had picked up.  “Hallo?”

            “Ah—yes.  Rupert Giles here.”

            “Did you find her?”  Brian’s voice was urgent.

            “Yes,” Rupert said.  “She was at home, curled up sick in the bathroom.  She was too ill to answer the door the first time.”  He caught sight of Elisabeth’s expression changing from bewilderment to comprehension to faint pique.  “No, she’s all right, now, I think,” he went on.  “Would you like to speak with her?”

            He held out the phone to Elisabeth, who was glowering mildly at him.  She took it, trading it for her mug.  “Hello?  Hi, Brian.”

            Rupert carried the mug into the kitchen to wash it, shamelessly eavesdropping.  “Yes, I’m all right now…Well, I was all right; and by the time I wasn’t it was too late to…No, it was just a relapse of the old trouble, that’s all.  It creeps up sometimes…No.  No.  You didn’t…it was just….” She sighed deeply.  “I know…I know.  Yeah.  Oh, that’s not necessary, Brian.  Rupert will be here….” The pique returned.  “That’s not necessary either.  I don’t need babysitting….Yes…Well, if you’re both still tag-teaming me by the end of the summer, I’ll have something to say about it.  Gosh, I hardly know what’s worse, the pair of you lamming each other in public, or in league to keep tabs on my health….Oh, I intend to get plenty of mileage out of it.  You’re welcome.”  She listened for a moment, and her next words were indistinct below the water Rupert was running.  By the time he finished washing up, started a new load of laundry, and returned to the living area, Elisabeth was concluding the call.  “Yes.  Yes, I’ll see you then…I love you too.  Bye.”  She searched with her thumb, as he had, for the right button to end the call, her face a mask of—concentration, or grief, or fading anger, he could not tell.

            He sat down gingerly on the other end of the couch; she moved her blanketed feet so that he could cradle them in his lap.  He began, just a little, to relax.  “Brian duly reassured?” he inquired.

            “Yeah,” she said, playing with his mobile.  “He says he’s not letting a day go by without my speaking to one of you and affirming I’m all right.  Geez, Rupert, this thing is loaded.  When did you get it?”

            “This morning.  Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him?” he said, tentatively.  “He was very worried.”

            “It’s even got a camera.  You can take pictures of rare demons and such.”  Elisabeth finally heard his words and lowered the mobile to look him quizzically in the face.  “Men are amazing,” she said finally.  “I get all psyched up for the Code Duello, and what happens?  I wind up with a pair of Jewish mothers.  You never call, you never write—  In stereo.  It’s truly…what’s the word I want?”

            He gave her a level look.  “Appropriate?”

            Her shadowed eyes dropped, she sucked in her upper lip, and went back to playing with his mobile.  For a long moment there was only the sound of Elisabeth’s fingers ticking on the keys and the little phone’s notes of response.

            At last Rupert cleared his throat and said gently:  “Elisabeth.  What happened?”

            Her fingers hesitated on the keys, but she did not take her eyes from the little screen.  “Nothing happened.”

            He tossed his head and opened his lips to remonstrate, but she lowered the phone and forestalled him.  “Nothing,” she repeated, “happened.”  Her mouth was small and drawn in an expression he recognized as shame.  “That’s how it works,” she said.  “Nothing happens.  I win some small battle or other, I get through some stressful time, I go back to my life.  Nothing happens.  And then I get sick.  It doesn’t have a rhyme or a reason to it.  That’s how my messed-up mind works.”

            “It seems like you’ve just explained the rhyme and the reason,” Rupert said quietly.

            She moved her head suddenly, as if trying to wriggle out of imaginary bonds.  “It isn’t—there isn’t any secret to it,” she said.  “That’s what I meant.  There isn’t any key that will bring a solution.”

            Rupert hadn’t asked her for a key to the solution; but he kept quiet and watched her face, until she sighed again and went back to the distraction of his new phone.

            He sat silent, holding her feet in his lap, thinking.  He had looked forward to coming home, to seeing her again; and now he had what he wanted—even now, despite everything, a sense of home was seeping warmly into his skin.  But Elisabeth, whose home it actually was, enjoyed no such benefit.  He let his eyes wander around the flat, taking in her desultory, and in some places abandoned, housekeeping.  A memory niggled at his consciousness but did not come clear.  He sat quietly thinking, cradling her feet.

            After some time the dryer’s buzzer sounded.  Rupert got up, putting Elisabeth’s feet gently off his lap, and went to unload the warm fresh towels and sheets.  He carried the lot to her bedroom and made up her bed, folding the towels and setting them aside.  The ceiling fan had freshened the air; Rupert smoothed the covers, turned on the bedside lamp, and began straightening her dresser.  He righted the mirror and centered it carefully on the dressertop; swiveled it up a little so that he was looking into his own face.  The lump over his left brow was indeed looking rather festive, as Buffy had predicted, and there were faint shadows under his eyes, an echo of the smudges under Elisabeth’s.

            Shadows.  The mirror.

            He glanced around him, remembering.  The mirror in the entry, blocked with gloves and scarves.  This mirror, laid on its face.  And….  Slowly, Rupert took up the folded towels and carried them into the bathroom.  He set them on their shelf over the toilet and then stood looking at his reflection in the portion of the mirror that was not draped with the flat sheet.

            I will bring her darkness to the surface.  I will make you watch me destroy her.

            Silently, almost without an instant of change, every cell in Rupert’s body polarized into cold, unadulterated rage.

            He reached deliberately for the flat sheet and snapped it free of the thumbtacks pinning it in place.  The tacks went flying; one of them landed in the tub and skittered hollowly over the porcelain.  He picked up the other and set it on the counter.  He dropped the sheet in a heap on the damp floor.  After a momentary glance at the thin hard set of his mouth in the exposed mirror, he turned and went into the livingroom, moving without hurry.

            Elisabeth was in the act of closing his phone and putting it down on her battered coffee table.  As he reached her, she was rearranging the blankets around her so that she could curl up in a new position.  She looked up at him and paused.

            “What is it?” she asked.

            “Will you come with me a moment?”

            She took in his grim face, his outstretched hand, and after a moment laid hers in it, frowning.  “What is it?” she said again.

            He made no answer, merely began leading her back toward the bathroom.

            A few steps from the bathroom door, she understood and halted.  “No,” she said, trying to wrest her hand from his.

            He turned, not letting her go.  “You can’t put this off,” he said.  His hand went out to grasp her shoulder.  She planted her feet in response.  “Not the best idea you’ve ever had, Rupert,” she said through set teeth:  but her control was slipping; Rupert could feel the tremors in her muscles.  Her pupils, as she met his eyes, were wide with danger.

            He was committed now, however.  “You can’t wait,” he repeated gruffly, and began to tug at her shoulder and hand.

            “No—”  She braced against him, panic stirring in her face.

            He let her use her weight for a moment, to unsettle her balance, then pulled her forward in a surging tug.  She was forced to move forward a few steps, almost to the threshold, before she stopped him again.

            “No—let me go—”  Her voice stopped short of a real cry, keeping their struggle private and confined to the quiet of her corridor, and his passion intensified into real pain.

            “Please,” he said.  His hand gripping hers stung with the heat of friction; his eyes sought hers to plead.

Their struggle convulsed in the doorway, and even as he drew her in bodily she was turning to escape, a small cry breaking from her throat.

“No—no—look, you have to look—”

“Please—”

He was strong, hatefully strong, it seemed to him; it was difficult but not impossible to gather her in and hold her, shaking pitifully in his arms.  “Please don’t make me,” she whimpered; but she had stopped struggling and instead now clung to him, hiding her face, as if she could force him by her very helplessness to protect her from her own reflection.

“You have to look.”  Rupert did not recognize his own voice.  “Please, Elisabeth, just look.”  He shifted her in his arms, and by moving quickly he managed to work her round till she was facing the mirror, his head against hers so that she could not turn away.  “Look in the mirror.  Look in the mirror.  It’s yours, this is yours, it belongs to you, it’s your birthright.  Own it.  Take it back.”

“I don’t want it,” she whispered, shutting her eyes.

“Yes you do.  Yes you do.”  His voice had dropped to match hers.  “Or what else are you doing here?  You won.”

“That’s bullshit,” Elisabeth uttered, her face screwed up against the sight of her own reflection.

“Bullshit, is it?”  Rupert’s voice shook, and he held her closer, breathing hoarsely.  “I came back and you were still standing.  It was already over, and you won.  Where’s the First?  Is it standing here now?  No, it’s you, because you won.  You won.”

A tearless howl broke from her lips and she turned to burrow herself hard into his shirt.  “Then why do I feel like this?” came out in a muffled wail.

At the moment she was not the only one hating her own reflection:  Rupert shut his eyes and laid his cheek against her hair, and held her while she shuddered.

“Because you paid a price,” he said softly, after a moment.

She drew long breaths, and shook hard in his arms; he could tell that she was not crying, and it occurred to him for the first time to wonder if he’d just done the very thing to make her really ill.  “I’m sorry,” he said against her hair.

In the midst of her shaking she began to smooth her small hand consolingly against his spine; and the last of the rage failed Rupert altogether.  He gathered her closer, as much taking comfort from her as she was from him.  She was clinging to him, he felt, but not as if he were hers to hold.  He wanted that back, wanted her well and bold and claiming him again—his partner, his equal.  How bitter it was that he had played such a role in taking that boldness away from her.  His eyes closed, he smoothed her hair, over and over; it was still faintly damp from the shower.

At last she drew a long quivery breath and shifted in his arms.  He opened his eyes to see their reflection; she was daring a small look at herself over the crook of his elbow; then she raised her gaze, and their eyes met in the glass.

She pulled back, and he released her so that they were face to face.  “I need to use the toilet,” she said, still shivering visibly.

He felt a fresh pang of anxiety.  “Are you going to be sick?”

“No,” she said, with what could have been either a smile or a grimace.  “Just the usual.”

“Ah.”  Awkwardly, he edged aside to clear her path to the toilet.  “I’ll go put on the kettle, shall I?”

“Sounds good,” she said.

“Right,” he said, and beat his retreat.

He filled the kettle and put it to heat on the stove, then went to start the next load of laundry.  He glanced about the flat once, furtively:  the First might not be here, but there was plenty of residual memory hanging about Elisabeth’s home.  A proper smudge of the place might not be a bad idea, Rupert thought, his eyes on the heating kettle.

It occurred to him after a few minutes that although he had heard the toilet flush and the tap run, Elisabeth had not emerged from the bathroom to join him.  In fact, the whole flat was eerily silent.  Moved by a sudden fright, Rupert jolted himself down the corridor and peeked into the bathroom doorway, fearing the worst.

Elisabeth was standing at the counter, very still and grave, looking her reflection in the eye.  As he watched, she stretched out a hand (her fingers scarcely trembled) to touch the mirror:  a faint flare of condensation rose briefly where her warm fingertips met glass.  They stood that way, silent, the glass Elisabeth and the warm living one; and in the sad eyes of her reflection Rupert saw her accepting, absorbing the enormity of her burden.

Standing in the doorway, Rupert swallowed and swallowed and felt his throat close on an urgent spume of tears.  He had done this to her.  He had made her burden intolerable, he had helped to make her hateful to herself, he had left her to suffer alone; and the mere impossibility of ever making it right, ever making himself right, was enough to suffocate him.  He swallowed again and choked down a breath: it made a harsh sound in the stillness, and she turned to look at him.

The movement of compassion on her face scalded him into full-fledged weeping, which he tried in vain to stop.  He brought up a useless hand, as if it could press back the grief into its hiding place, erase her having seen it, efface himself from her presence so that she could finish making peace with herself.  But she moved toward him, and he cowered away, blinded by his own hot, stinging tears.

“Shhh,” she said, gathering his hands and pulling them down and away.  He rested back against the doorframe and cried.  “Shh, Rupert,” she whispered.

Something soft and thick was brushing his face; he regained his vision enough to realize that she had withdrawn her hand into the sleeve of her robe and was using it to dry his cheeks.  He almost laughed at the absurdity of it; and this was enough to buy him a racheted breath.  He looked down into her face:  her eyes were still tearless, but filled with the same acceptance, both grim and graceful, meeting his.

He made his voice to work:  “I’m sorry.”

She still did not cry, but her mouth was small again, like a child’s.  “I know,” she said, reaching to catch his fresh tears with her sleeve.  “I know.”

With an effort Rupert got hold of himself.  If he had any say in the matter, she wouldn’t have to bear the weight of his apology on top of everything else.

She finished wiping his face, and they stood silently, eyes met, Rupert drawing long breaths.  “We will say no more about it,” she said quietly, freeing her hand to touch the damp hollow of his cheek with the back of her finger.

They had hardly said anything about it.  Rupert wondered if they needed to.  Perhaps surviving was enough.  He sniffed hard, and nodded to show he understood.

She went back to the toilet and peeled off a length of toilet paper for him to blow his nose on, which he used, drawing a last cornsilk breath, and tossed toward the toilet.  The wadded tissue hit the seat and fell to the floor, and they both laughed.  She bent and retrieved it, dropped it into the bowl, and returned to face him in the doorway.  They stood face to face once more, both shivering a little, neither knowing what to say.

Then the kettle gave a sudden bubbling whistle, and they were released.

 

*

 

She helped him make the tea, and within a short time they were settled once more on her couch, with her feet in his lap.  She sipped at her tea, which was fortified with milk and a dollop of brandy, and studied his profile thoughtfully.  He had put down his tea and secured her feet in his cup-warmed hands, his head tilted slightly back, his eyes closed as if in meditation.  His face bruised, his skin creased more sharply with age and weariness, he looked vulnerable, more vulnerable even than when he had been weeping ten minutes before.  He was not, however, going to fall apart, and neither was she:  as much of a luxury as that might have been, they were both going to be forced to go about the business of surviving.  Elisabeth was beginning to feel a touch more philosophical about this; the miasma of nausea and despair was beginning to clear, leaving her feeling oddly cleansed.  This was no surprise either.  Elisabeth closed her eyes and sipped deeply at her tea.  Covering her mirrors was beginning, in retrospect, to seem slightly overwrought, but she was resolved not to shame herself for it: that would only lead her back where she had started.

            As if following her thoughts, Rupert asked:  “Is all this going to make you ill again?”

            She opened her eyes to his face; he was looking at her anxiously.  For Rupert, at this point, she knew only an honest answer would do.  She thought about it, letting her gaze go unfocused.

            “It might,” she said finally.  “I don’t know.  But even if it does, I’ll get well again.”  She looked back up again, and before she could stop herself, she asked:  “Can you stay a day or two?”

            His answer was both welcome and troubling:  “I’m not going anywhere for a while.  I mean to stay home at least a week.”

            She hesitated.  “Are—are you sure?  There isn’t a thing?”

            “I mean to stay home at least a week,” Rupert said firmly.

            “Because if there’s something important going on—”

            “There is.  Right here.”

            She gave him a look.  “Don’t be diffident.  I’m talking about the work you have to do.  Isn’t it—aren’t you—finding Slayers?  If you’re needed—”

            “This week,” Rupert said, flushing, “the work can go hang.  And considering the state you’ve been in, what makes you think I’d even consider abandoning—”

            “Whoaaa—rein in there, pardner.  Rupert:  can you imagine I’d take other than a practical view of this situation?  I mean, this thing is global now, if it wasn’t before, and you’re shorthanded as it is.  The question is, are you needed?”

            He glared at her and took in a long, visible breath.  At last he said, quietly:  “At the moment?  No.”

            “Okay.  That’s all I wanted to know.”

            There was a silence that did nothing to ease the sullen glare on his face.  “Does this mean,” he said at length, “that you don’t plan to divorce yourself from it this time?”

            She stared at him:  a strong hint of guilt tinged his lowered expression.  Elisabeth couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him this chaotic…no, yes she could, and it wasn’t a consoling thought.  “I wouldn’t have taken you back into my bed,” she said slowly, “if that were the case.”

            “That didn’t stop you before.”  There was a long, awful silence, and he lowered his chin even more.  Elisabeth felt a constriction in her chest that had nothing to do with the remnants of illness.

            “I didn’t realize you were still angry with me about that,” she said quietly.

            “I’m not,” he said—gave a shake of the head, acknowledging the absurdity of that claim— “I shouldn’t be.  You were right, after all.”  He leaned his head back and addressed a deep sigh to the ceiling.  “Oh, God, how right you were.”

            “I don’t know that I was,” she said, even more quietly.  “And I can’t know, now.”  There was an ache in her throat and she masked it with a sip of her tea.  It couldn’t be anything but a bad idea to have this conversation now, but she couldn’t see any way to avoid it.  She drew a fortifying breath.

“I hurt you,” she said; and the acknowledgement made him look at her at last.

“You couldn’t have—”  He stopped, and started over.  “It’s foolish of me to have taken it personally.  Especially when—” he dropped his eyes to her feet— “I depend on—others—not to take my actions personally.”

She wasn’t going to let him go down that road.  “It was personal,” she said.

He started, and looked up to search her face.  Elisabeth repeated it.  “It was personal, what I did.  Buffy’s not the only one who is her job.  I knew that.  I understood your job—but I didn’t—in the end, I didn’t want it to touch me.  I was afraid—”  She broke off:  she had been trying not to use that word.  But it was too late, and she returned her eyes stoically to his face.  “I was afraid,” she said; and left it at that.

He sat with his eyes and his hands on her feet, turning the thought over.  “Not without reason,” he murmured.

If only, Elisabeth thought, her throat aching, they could have said these things before.  Not that they had not tried.

He turned once more to look her in the face, with an expression that made her heart hurt.  “And now?”

They were both so tired; their heads listed along the same plane with the back of the couch, as if at a predetermined signal they might rest against it, faces almost close.

“Is there anything left to be afraid of?” Elisabeth asked softly.

            The lines of grief were hard around his mouth.  “No worst, there is none.”

            “Then you understand,” she said, simply.

            He turned his eyes, wide with momentous thought, back down to her feet.  Elisabeth had a sudden vision of what he must have looked like as a boy, the boy he had brought with him through the years.  He was exactly what she wanted, and she was almost frightened at her lack of misgiving.

            He gave a heavy sigh.  “I can give you almost nothing,” he said.

            “…But blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” Elisabeth finished, with a small smile at the memory of the dream she had had, waiting alone in Rupert’s flat.  “I’ll take it.”

            He looked up at her, badly startled; then turned his gaze inward.  “What?” Elisabeth said.  “What is it?”

            “It’s nothing,” he said at last.  “Just an odd sense of déjà vu.  I had an odd dream,” he added, when she continued to look at him expectantly, “before the battle.  About that night at my house.  I held your feet then, too.”

            Elisabeth went very still.  “And quoted Churchill?”

            “Yes,” he said dreamily, not catching on, “and you said something to me about—”

            “Maundy Thursday,” Elisabeth said.

            Then he did turn again to stare, his breath arrested.  A faint breath of wonder came into his expression; he whispered, “It was you.”

            “It was us,” she said quietly.

            He glanced down at her feet in his lap, as if a clue might lie between them.  “And now we are here.”

            “Looks like,” she said.  And laid her head against the back of the couch.  “Also?”  He looked at her.  “You called it home.”  A faint smile grew in her face, and she shut her eyes, her tea mug tipped just short of danger in her hands.

            “Mmm,” was his only reply.  And they breathed quietly together.

 

*

 

That night they went to bed early.  Rupert went out to his car and retrieved his overnight bag, which was stuffed mostly with dirty laundry now.  By the time he had brushed his teeth and undressed for bed, Elisabeth was already there, curled in what should have been a relaxed position but was belied by her rigid motionlessness.

            He bent over her and stroked back her hair.  “Is there anything you can take?” he asked softly.

            “I’m out of tranquilizers,” was her short reply.

            “Anything else?”

            She shook her head against the pillow.  “I’ll be all right eventually,” she said.  “It has to run its course.”

            He gave her a small nod and moved round to his side of the bed.  Instead of sinking down beneath the covers, however, he propped his pillow against the headboard and arranged himself in a half-seated curled position, mirroring her body but not touching her.  “I’ll watch till you fall asleep,” he said.

            She turned her head to look back at him.  “But you’re tired, too.”

            He smoothed her shirt down her shoulder and answered her in a voice effortlessly light with gentleness.  “Do you really think this costs me very much?”

            For answer she put her head back down and shut her eyes.

            “Just rest,” Rupert said, stroking her arm.

            He watched her as she slipped from stage to stage on the way to sleep:  she shivered under his hand; her eyelids slid closed, lashes trembling; her breathing shuddered and then grew more even.  He watched for a little while, then drew the edge of the covers higher over her, and dropped his head to rest his brow against the top of her pillow.  His thoughts lost substance in the roil of his remaining headache, and before he could change positions, he was asleep himself, in the still lamplight.

 

*

 

It was a very disturbed night.  Her sleep was fitful at best, and she kept waking to a skittering tumble of half-thought that was both familiar and frightening in its disorganization.  Rupert was little better off; he had fallen asleep hunched over her like a guardian, and she found him twitching, swallowing moans, or snoring unevenly, every time she woke.  We’re some pair, she thought once, with that part of her mind that always cracked a wry comment from her mental sideline every time she flirted with madness.  Some pair, eh Rupert?

            Once, she was startled edgewise into wakefulness when he jerked in his sleep and stifled a cry, and she had to force her mind into some kind of order so that she could reach out and soothe him.  “Shh,” she croaked.  “Shh, Rupert.  You’re okay.”  His soft eyelashes flickered, but in the end he subsided without waking, and she lay back down, her vision and mind dull and unfocused, for another ten minutes before dropping off again.

            Not until the early hint of waning night crept over the flat did they both settle into a true sleep, quiet and still with profound exhaustion.  When Elisabeth bubbled up slowly from unconsciousness she found that her companion was already lying lazily awake, staring up at the slowly revolving blades of the ceiling fan.  She slipped a hand over the covers on his chest, and he responded minimally, pressing her fingers against the warmth of his thin T-shirt.

            “All right?” he murmured, after five minutes.

            “Mmm,” she answered.

            Another long moment passed.

            “Coffee?” she said.

            “Oh, yes please,” he groaned.  He moved, maintaining touch with her, but paused.  “Shower first, I think,” he added.  “I’m a bit ripe.  My last shower was in France.”

            She raised her head and smiled, not daunted as she rolled over to kiss him.  “I’ll make the coffee.”

            He heaved himself, grunting, up and out of the bed; Elisabeth lay still for a moment, watching him adjust his wrinkled T-shirt and boxers and indulge in a long stretch: seasoned skin over well-aged muscles, deep furrow of spine half-defined by the thin drape of his T-shirt, the down of male hair on his legs, the comical pouch of his boxers in back.  She smiled as he dropped his arms and puttered out of the room, rubbing at his jaw and under his nose; then she rolled to her back and waited for her thoughts to straighten themselves into daylight alertness.  She needed to make a trip to the library; she owed Dr. Biggs a paper and Mr. Edwards a phone call.  That was the thing about returning from sickness and despair, one had to backtrack and begin again to meet one’s responsibilities.  Not that it wouldn’t be welcome; surviving had taught Elisabeth, among other things, how much she loved her work.

            The shower water started; Elisabeth blinked out of her reverie and got out of bed.

            In the kitchen, later, she stood nursing her cup of coffee and listening to the water run.  Rupert was taking a very long shower.  But then he had probably earned it; that bump on his head was no joke.  Disorganized thoughts about wounds visible and invisible shaped themselves in Elisabeth’s mind.  She had dreamed once that she had broken her leg somehow, and in the dream had jumped up and shrugged and laughed and kept on running, despite her companions’ protests.  In the dream she had felt no pain, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had: the point had been her frenetic headlong charge in spite of—and perhaps because of—injury.  She twisted her mouth into a wry grimace and took another sip of her cooling coffee.  There was startlingly little difference, she reflected, between dream and reality in this instance.

            The shower shut off abruptly, and she heard him rattle back the shower curtain.  Taking her time, Elisabeth washed out her coffee cup, took a selection of Rupert’s clothes from the dryer, and returned to her bedroom.  On the way, she glanced in the bathroom:  he was shaving meditatively, lower lip poked up to get at his chin; his skin looked pink and warm above the damp towel he had wrapped about his waist.

            Elisabeth paused, her face going hot.  Glancing down, she saw she still had his clothes in her arms; they seemed rather irrelevant now, so she went into the bedroom and dropped them on the bed.  Then she stripped her own T-shirt over her head, and dropped the leggings to the floor.

            A few minutes later, she sidled into the bathroom with her kimono belted loosely over her naked skin.  He was splashing his face with warm water; he patted about the counter for the hand towel, and at last his eyes emerged above it, open and alert.

            He turned and saw her; she saw his eyes take in her state of dress.

            “Oh, I’m sorry.  Did you want in here?  I didn’t mean to hog the bathroom.”

            “No,” Elisabeth said.  She backed up to the counter and hoisted herself up to sit on it.

            “No?”  His shy, diffident look told her exactly what she wanted to know, and her skin warmed, rejoicing.

            “No,” she said.  “I came in here to seduce you.”

            He cast his eyes down, a little smile gathering on his lips.  “I wondered how soon I might reasonably hope for that,” he murmured.

            She slipped her finger into the curl of his palm and drew him, lightly, over to face her directly.  “Ask me,” she whispered.

            He leaned in toward her ever so slightly, like a candle flame bending to flirt with a hand placed near it.  “When might I hope for you to seduce me?” he asked, his voice low.  His scent washed over her, damp warmth and shampoo and shaving soap, and a little shiver went through her, chasing, as she imagined, all the unpleasant shivers of the past few days out of her body.

            “Oh, I think—” she murmured, leaning in, her lips close to his and their breath mingling— “just about…now.”  She kissed him, very lightly.  He kept close, eyes closed, waiting for her to continue; so she kissed him again, and then again, keeping her touch light and her lips gentle.  After a moment she lifted a hand to trace his jawline and moved closer to savor the taste of his mouth; and with a shudder he responded fully all at once, kissing her back with equal fervor, his hands slipping in to mold the silk kimono to the curve of her hips.

            “Speaking from a purely selfish point of view,” he broke the kiss to say— “this is the best gift I ever gave you.”

            “It’s rather high on my list, too.”  She lifted her other hand and buried both in his damp hair.  She kissed him, holding him thus, till he made a soft sound in the back of his throat; then she freed her hands to rove his freshly-bathed skin.  He undid the tie of her kimono, and as he drew the folds of silk apart she slipped her hands round his waist, to explore the place where the furrow of his spine disappeared into the wrap of towel.

            His kiss wandered from her mouth to her cheek and eyelid.  “Would you call this,” he said breathlessly, “a successful seduction?”

            For answer, she smoothed her hand round the hem of the anchored towel: it sagged around his waist, and then it dropped to the floor.

 

*

 

After, she clung to him, nuzzling the lee of his shoulder, tasting its dampness, waiting for their breathing to slow.

            “Mmm,” he said at last.

            She could feel him smiling.  Without opening her eyes, she bent her head and kissed his skin above the breast, smiling too.  Then she pulled back to grin at him.  “My turn for the shower,” she said.  “Bathroom hog.”

            He grinned back, and smacked her backside lightly.  They both gave a little snort of laughter; kissed one another open-eyed; and then he began to help her down from the counter.

 

*

 

When Elisabeth got out of the shower, glowing, she found that Rupert had made breakfast; he had also set her little dining table with the nicest plates and silver she had, and unearthed a small cobalt vase from beneath her sink; it now gleamed clean, with a sprig of rosemary in it.  “Rosemary?” she asked him.

            “In the neighbor’s garden,” he replied with a small grin.  “I figured it would be least missed.”

            Appetite had returned to her along with the mere joy of seeing him across the table.  She couldn’t yet be sure if these simple joys made it easier or harder to navigate these chaotic days, but for moments at a time it seemed enough, to drink them in without asking questions.  At times, as they ate, his eyes would lift to her face with a mirroring expression of relieved joy tinged with mortal uncertainty; but they did not need to say anything, and they finished their meal in a companionable silence.

            She volunteered to wash up while he sorted his laundry and cleaned up in the bathroom; and after these tasks were finished she let him putter comfortably, coffee in hand, while she sat down to answer long-neglected emails and put the finishing touches to the draft of her paper.

            After a time he approached her in her chair and put down his coffee mug to massage the nape of her neck.  She shut her eyes briefly, with a little purr of pleasure, and then returned to her work as his strong fingers moved to her shoulders, seeking out the tension and releasing it.  “I could give you a full massage, when you’re finished,” he said, reaching with his thumb between the chair and her back.

            She nodded, unable to trust her voice.  A new response took hold, delayed by the numbness of her illness:  widening grief at the tenderness in his touch, a tenderness like her lost mother’s, matter-of-fact and unalterably for her, as of protection and sponsorship.  For a moment, she felt, he had never touched her any other way.  I was always true to you in my fashion….  Perhaps, in a sense beyond hard fact, he always had been true to her.  She swallowed hard, and with an effort edited the last sentence and posted the draft off to Dr. Biggs.

            “Go lie down,” he said.  “I’ll bring you some coffee.”

            She went, hoping that the few moments alone would help her recover.  But when he followed her a few minutes later to present her with a mug of coffee prepared with exactly the amount of milk and sugar she liked, she could only sit miserably on the edge of the bed and fight a losing battle with tears.

            “What is it?” she heard him ask.  “What’s wrong?”

            She shook her head.

            He put the coffee down on the night table and reached for her:  she put out a blind hand, as if to ward him off, except she found herself gripping his T-shirt at the waist; and at the end she gave up and cried into his stomach, his bewildered hands stroking her hair.

            She had to be able to live without him.  She couldn’t afford to want him this badly, couldn’t afford to put any weight on his coming home the next time, or his being able—or even willing—to be for her as he was at this moment.  It was sickness to need him, she had tried so hard to avoid it, all her life—all both lives—and of course that was pathology too, nobody could be that independent, nobody should be, it wasn’t right to pretend to invincible immortality and shame oneself for failing—she had always wanted to live untouched—but didn’t that mean being the First? and she wanted to touch him, wanted never not to be touching him; was it sickness or health?  She didn’t know, and either way it hurt—

            As she wept her thought simplified.  She had nearly lost him; she had him back.  Perhaps this was enough.  Her tears spent themselves; and by the time she had thought this, she had finished altogether.  She leaned, sniffling, against Rupert’s front, with her arms up around his waist, and breathed herself back into a semblance of equilibrium.  At length she lifted her head to look up into his face.  To her relief, he was not weeping himself; his expression was a familiar blend of stoicism and gentleness.  “Better?” he asked softly.

            She pursed her lips into a wry near-smile.  “I think so.  A bit.”  She burrowed her face into his front again.

            He moved, bending to pile all the pillows on the bed against the headboard, and shifted her so that he could crawl behind her onto the bed.  Acquiescently she followed his lead, so that in the end they were sharing the piled pillows, looking down the length of their nestled bodies.

            “Tell me about your paper?” Rupert said, settling her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

            She told him about the confluence of images in Chaucer, hagiography, and the book of Job, about power dynamics between utterly helpless people (usually women) and their accusers and oppressors, about the holiness of complaint and justification by history.  “It sounds interesting reading,” he said.  She twisted her head around in an attempt to look at him, and he added, “No, really.  It says something about life.  You make the subject sound like something interesting in itself.”  There was a hint of humor in his voice, but she interpreted it as self-deprecation rather than amusement at her, and relaxed.

            “All right,” she said, “tell me about—where was it you went?”

            “Paris,” he said.

            “Tell me about Paris.”  She snuggled close and let her eyelids fall to half-mast.  “And lay it on thick.  I’ve never been there.”

            But Rupert suddenly went rigid.  “Oh, shit!” he said.

            She half-rose.  “What?  What?”

            “Damn, and damn,” he said.  “I forgot to call Buffy when I got back yesterday.”

            “Oops,” Elisabeth said, raising her eyebrows.

            “I was supposed to give her my new mobile number, and let her know everything was all right up here.”  He lurched up and got off the bed to retrieve his cell-phone, and returned to the bedroom dialing.  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said to Elisabeth— “hello?  Hello?  Buffy, it’s me.”

            He pulled the phone away from his ear, and even Elisabeth could hear Buffy’s voice raised to an instant shout.  “Rupert fucking Giles, you are so fucking paying for this Chunnel ticket!”

            Elisabeth saw the split-second stalled look on his face before he answered, precipitately, “That’s not my second name.”

            “It is now, you bastard, goddammit.  I spoke French for this ticket.”

            “Buffy—”

            “It was damn good French too—”

            “Yes,” he said tensely, “but you’re not—actually on the train yet.  Are you?”

            “Standing on the platform, Giles.” (Rupert pulled the phone away from his ear again.) “Waiting for them to call my number.  In French.”

            “Well, good,” Rupert stammered.

            “I have half a mind to come up there anyway and kill you.  Or at least kick your ass, for not being dead.”

            “Buffy, I hardly think that’s—”

            “Because if you’re gonna be dead, the least you could do is call and tell me!”

            Elisabeth heard plainly the little wobble in Buffy’s voice at the end of that sentence.  She bared her teeth at Rupert in an alarmed grimace, took her coffee mug, and departed, shutting the bedroom door behind her.

            She lurked in the kitchen, pouring out the cold coffee and putting on water for tea, trying not to hear—no, there it was—Rupert’s voice half-raised in the wounded, plaintive pitch she’d been dreading.  She winced and turned up the fire under the kettle.  It struck her as odd that Buffy should have gotten the wind up about Rupert now, while regarding his much more dangerous absences the past year with relative implacability; but as she thought about it, it made perfect sense.  “Post-apocalypse freakout,” she said to herself—and rolled her eyes: it was a good description of her state of mind, too. 

            She was bobbing the teabag in her cup when Rupert emerged, stalking into the livingroom with the aura of family combat radiating off him in waves.  “Did you apologize properly?” Elisabeth inquired.

            “She wants to talk to you,” Rupert said, holding up the phone.

            Elisabeth blinked.  “Oh.”  Belatedly she moved from the kitchen doorway, dropping her teabag in the bin on her way, took the warm little phone from Rupert’s hand, and headed back to the bedroom.  “Hello?”

            “Hi.”  Buffy sounded much calmer now.  Elisabeth took a nervous sip of her tea.  “Listen,” she went on.  “Gimme the dish on Giles.  Is he cracking up still?”

            “You have to ask?” Elisabeth said dryly.  “Hey, are you still waiting for the train?”

            “No, I’m in a café in the station.  I’m not kidding about his paying for the Chunnel ticket, though.  Anyway, I wanted to ask you:  do you want to be a contact in our network?”

            “A what?”  Elisabeth squinted at the wall.  “Are you eating something?”

            “Had to order something.  Forgot what it’s called.  It has lots of chocolate.  Which I deserve.  What I said was, do you want to be a contact?  I mean, it’s not a slight on Giles’s competence or anything—” a hint of residual pique sharpened Buffy’s tone for a moment— “it’s just that I don’t want any of us working alone if we can help it.  And Giles is a bit….”

            “Fragile?”

            “Or something.  You would know better than me.”

            Elisabeth blinked.

            “Um…Elisabeth?”

            “Oh, I’m here.  I was just thinking.”

            “Totally,” Buffy said.  “It’s not like this job is a bed of roses.”

            “I always thought the idea of lying on roses was a bit overrated,” Elisabeth said.

            “You know, you’re right.”  Buffy, from the sound of it, had taken another large bite of the chocolaty thing.  “Hate roses, anyway.”

            Elisabeth said cautiously, “Well…this is what I think.  I don’t mind being a contact, or helping Rupert with the work.  But I think I’d better keep myself in an…auxiliary role.  I think that if Rupert knows I’m in the email loop, and on the phone tree….”

            “He’ll leave you with the work of communicating.  Good point.”  Buffy took another bite and waited till she could swallow before continuing.  “Excellent point.  I mean, what I had to go through just to get him to buy a cell-phone.”

            “Yeah.  It’s a pretty fancy one, though.  We’ll let him pretend he doesn’t like it.”

            Buffy started laughing; Elisabeth heard a chink of falling silverware.  “Oh my God.  Does it take pictures?”

            “Oh, absolutely.”

            Buffy sighed.  “All that sexy technology, and he still didn’t call me.”

            “Well,” Elisabeth said, “it was a rather difficult evening.  I was ill when he arrived, and a bit helpless.”

            “He mentioned that.  Are you okay?”

            Elisabeth shrugged, though Buffy couldn’t see it.  “More or less.”

            “Good,” Buffy said.  “It’s been a shitty time.”

            “You got that right,” Elisabeth said.

            “Well, look, I’m gonna go.  I’d better change directions and head back to Italy before Dawn scales the convent wall.”

            “The whaaat?”

            “Joke.  Well, kinda.  Kids these days.”

            Elisabeth snorted into a laugh.

            “At least I got some decent shopping out of this trip.  And shopping seems to be the same everywhere—you just point, grunt, and flash your plastic.”

            “I would think.”

            “You’ll keep an eye on Giles for me?”

            “Yes,” Elisabeth said, “and poke him to call you when he needs it.”

            “Do that.  I need a woman in my corner, with him.”

            Elisabeth snorted again.

            “Well, au revoir and all that.”

            “Ta-ta.”

            “Cheerio.”

            “Bung-ho!”

            “Hasta la vista.”

            “Bye.”

            “Bye.”

            Elisabeth found the End button and pressed it, feeling an upsurge of hilarity.  She picked up her tea from where she’d parked it on the dresser and carried it and the phone out to the livingroom where a feral Rupert was pacing at speed.  “Here you go,” she said, handing off the closed phone to him and ignoring his tercel stare.  “All done.”

            “What’d she say?” he demanded.

            Elisabeth shrugged.  “She wanted to establish contact with me.  That’s pretty much it.  Also, it was the best phone conversation I’ve had with Buffy in, like, ever.  So that’s a plus.”

            “Well, bully for you,” Rupert said, pocketing the phone.

            “I’m guessing not so much for you?”

            He gave her the stare again.  Elisabeth found herself breaking into a small irrepressible smile; she coughed, and swallowed it with an effort.

            He planted his fists on his hips and turned his glare off into the distance.  “Buffy’s developed this distressing habit of swearing at me.  I don’t understand it.”

            Elisabeth couldn’t stop the snort of laughter shooting through her sinuses.  Rupert turned sharply on her.  Unable to control herself, she sank down on the couch and set her tea down on her disreputable coffee table, and went into quiet convulsions of laughter.

            “It’s not funny,” he said, which of course only made her laugh harder.

            “Rupert f-fucking Giles,” she choked out, and went off into a loud fit of hysterics.

            She had a tear-blurred vision of him maintaining his basilisk glare at her for about ten seconds before he cracked.  He started to laugh, ruefully at first, then hilariously, then dropped next to her on the couch and laughed uproariously.  At last Elisabeth wiped her wet face and sighed a few breaths, then uttered, “Oh, God.”

            He turned to her a mirroring weepy face.  “My new second name,” he said, his voice light and hollow with tears and laughter.

            She took his hand and pulled him up with her.  “Get a cup of tea,” she said.  “Come back to bed, and tell me about Paris.  I want to know how you got the bump on your head.  It looks better, by the way.”

            He felt gingerly at it.  “I’d almost forgotten.  It’s a story of deep ignominy.”

            “Aren’t they all?”

            He looked round for something to throw at her, but by the time he saw the teatowel lying on the table, she had scooped up her mug and escaped back to the bedroom, hooting.

 

*

 

In the small haven of her bed, they nestled together sock-footed, and Rupert told her about Paris.  He had arranged his position so that he could watch her face as he told the story, laying it on thick as she had asked; she raised one eyebrow, or both, at all the right places, and did not laugh at him till he had finished.  But even that did not last long.

            “What’s going to happen to those girls?” she asked him.

            “Well,” he said, “there’s a convent in the French Alps, run by several generations of women who—well, they don’t seem to think too highly of Watchers since the Council tried to take one of their novitiates in the 1780s, who happened to be a Potential—anyway, Buffy found them last week or so, and they are providing a trustworthy person to conduct them there.  So we should hope that they get better care than they had been receiving; they were hardly able to understand their own power, it’s too new to them yet.”

            “The circle widens.”  Elisabeth was looking at him gravely.

            “Yes,” he said.  His eyes and thoughts lost focus, until she touched his hand, and he saw her face again.  She did not say, you can only do a bit at a time; but she did not need to.  He offered her a small smile and settled back more comfortably against the propped pillows.  He let his gaze travel idly over her small T-shirt and the curve of her hip and thigh under her pajama pants.  After a long moment he realized he was staring, and returned his eyes to her face, which wore an expression of amusement and affection that seemed to undo a knot somewhere inside him.

            He cleared his throat.  “It’s way past lunch.”

            “You hungry?” she inquired, making no move to get up.

            He gave her a long, speculative look.  “No,” he said finally.  “Or—well—”  He stopped, his eyes on the curve of her thigh.  He was silent so long that Elisabeth asked him, humorously, “What are you thinking?”

            He looked her in the face.  “I was thinking,” he said, deliberately, “that I have no place to touch you the way I’d like to.”

            Her expression was still humorous, but a hint of reproach came into it.  “And that would be because…?”

            He leaned close, daring—daring— “I haven’t—we never have—you haven’t been—”

            “Try me,” she whispered.

            He could feel her soft breath against his lips.  He stammered, “But what if—”

            “Rupert, for heaven’s sake,” she said, and kissed him.  When she pulled back, waiting for his verdict, he was already afire.

            He could see in her face the same latent uncertainty that had always informed his approaches to her (even at their most passionate moments), at first because of her inexperience, and then because of her vulnerability, and now because of the whole morass of wrongs and mental imbalances that still lay between them:  but along with that uncertainty was its obverse, a sense of choice, a determination that did not deal in clenched teeth but in quiet deliberation moment to moment.  A certainty like his own, the certainty of a person who more or less knew herself, for better and worse.  He loved this in her, and was frightened by it in the same way that he frightened himself.

            He brought up a hand, tentative at first, to slip along her jaw and touch the soft ribbon of hair behind her ear.  Their gazes met and held:  and he couldn’t hold back any longer.  He reached for her mouth in what was more a crush than a kiss, snarled his fingers in her hair and held tight, slipped an urgent hand under her head and aligned his body to hers.

            And she responded; oh, God, she responded; her hands darted under the hem of his T-shirt and she pressed close as by gravity, and he rolled her to lie on top of him so that he could let go her hair and strip off her shirt and yank hard at her pants.  Then he rolled her over again and kissed her, devoured her, from her mouth to her collarbone to her soft, round breasts, frantic to touch her everywhere at once.  He felt her hands in his hair; they slipped through and let go as he moved downward, working off the rest of her clothing, pressing his face into the softness of her belly, the streamlined flesh of her thigh, muscle and curve—“like art,” he uttered, foolishly—

            He rose up again, to bring the taste of her own body back to her mouth, hands claiming every inch they could reach as hers worked furiously to undress him at the waist:  he heard a soft stripped reed of breath lance through her throat, and she uttered his name, in such a note that he instantly demanded she say it again.  “Rupert,” she said, louder, and his urgency to be inside her increased tenfold.  He let his weight fall upon her, felt her curl around him, limbs and flesh; then he raised himself on shaking elbows to look into her face.

            Her eyes were open, and when their gazes met she grinned and whispered, “Rupert f—”

            Hastily he covered her mouth with his whole hand, suppressing a upsurge of laughter.  “You make me laugh,” he gasped, “I won’t be able to live up to my new second name.”

            She was laughing under his hand; he felt her tongue teasing at his fingers, and bent to replace his hand with his mouth.

            He rose once more and drew her down the bed with him, to give them room to move.  He did not wait to ascertain whether she was ready for him; but gloriously she was, and he pushed hard, needing her, claiming her, over and over—over and over again—

            He bared his teeth, pressing hard; he heard her give a half-voiced cry that might have been pain, might have been ecstasy, and was certainly beyond him.  Unprepared for the shock of the power that went through him, he cried out and collapsed upon her, shaking, breathing quick and shallow, held immobile by the tangle of his jeans and her pajama pants around their ankles.

            “I think you lived up to it,” she said, some time later, her voice still reedy.

            He started laughing, silent, teeth-bared laughing at first, then his voice caught up, and it sounded like a sob.  Her hand buried itself in his hair, comfortingly.  He lifted his head.

            “You were with me,” he said, as if to confirm it.

            She cupped his face in her hands.  “I was with you,” she answered.

            They touched faces for a moment, eyes closed.  Then she said:

            “Shall we get the rest of these clothes off?  I mean, I really like your cell-phone, but do we need to have it in bed with us?”

            “W-what?”

            “It’s falling out of your pocket.  I can feel it on my leg; it’s cold.”

It seemed Rupert hadn’t forgotten how to laugh, after all.

 

*

 

They spent the rest of the day in bed, clothed only briefly, to take delivery of Chinese food and a pizza late in the afternoon.  He gave her the massage he had promised her; she held him with his head upon her breast and stroked his hair; they made love a third time, near sunset, Elisabeth riding him gently, looking down into his face the while.

            Later, she lay with her head resting gently upon the softness of his belly, an arm flung gracefully over him, the fingers of her other hand twined with his.  “Tired?” she asked, looking up to his heavy-lidded eyes.

            “Knackered,” he said, with a little moan tinged equally with satisfaction and self-pity.  “I’m not a young man anymore.”

            Her lips curved into a wicked little smile.  “Well, it could be worse, you know.”

            He shut his eyes but could not stop the answering smile.  “That is true.  Knock on wood.”

            She reached out with her big toe and kicked the nightstand lightly in an attempt at meeting the superstition.

            “How’s your head?” she asked him.  He opened his eyes, flushing, and she clarified, “I mean, the site of your injury,” with another little smile.

            The blush still rose hot on his face, but he closed his eyes again, smiling.  “It’s fine.”

            “At least it won’t add another scar to your collection….How many do you have, anyway?”

            He snorted gently.  “I’ve never counted them.”

            She lifted her head and surveyed the length of his body, trying to remember where she had seen the various marks of his career.  At the moment, however, she felt too lazily sleepy to look much closer than the broad raised scar of the wound she had changed the dressing on two years before, where her head had been lying.  “This one healed well, considering.”

            “Mmm,” he said.

            She laid her head back down and searched with her hands, expecting to find nothing; but as one hand swiped under his waist she found a familiar mole, which reminded her of another scar.  “Oh, I’d forgotten about this one,” she said, shifting so that she could run her fingertips down to the edge of a splash of scar at the top of his buttock.  “What’s this one from?”

            He sighed and opened his eyes to look at the ceiling.

            Elisabeth brightened suddenly.  “Oh, that’s right.  Isn’t this where Jenny shot you with a crossbow?”

            He let out another rueful sigh and smiled up at the ceiling.  “Good times,” he said.

            Elisabeth chuckled and lay her head down again, withdrawing her hand.  His fingers drifted down to stroke her hair.

            “D’you have any?” he asked, almost dreamily.

            “Any what?  Oh, scars?  Not many.  Most of mine are psychological.  The others I got by accident, or disease.  No combat, no crossbow bolts to the ass….The women in your life do seem to end up shooting at you there one way and another.”

            “Why do you think I’ve never let you behind me with a projectile weapon?”

            Elisabeth snickered.  “You really think I’d accidentally shoot you in the ass?”

            “I’m not worried about its being an accident.”

            They both laughed.

            “Probably smart,” Elisabeth said at last, closing her eyes.  “Though I do love you.”

            His hand moved again, stroking her hair over her naked shoulder, his breathing soft under her head.

 

*

 

For the first time in a long time, both Elisabeth and Rupert slept well.  They rose in the morning, breakfasted on tea and biscuits (Elisabeth’s last grocery trip had been more than a week ago), and reluctantly got dressed.  For a while Rupert puttered, nosing among her books, while Elisabeth sat down at her desk and got some work done.

            Time passed comfortably, until Rupert began to feel distinctly peckish; he was on the point of saying something to Elisabeth about perhaps possibly popping out for an early lunch at her favorite pub, when there came a knock at the door: shave and a haircut, six bits.

            “Oh!” Elisabeth jumped in her chair.  “I’m not fully dressed yet.  Rupert, would you go answer that, please?”  She scuttled into the bedroom, the tail of her rose silk kimono fluttering behind her.

            Rupert had his suspicions about this; and sure enough, on the other side of the door stood Brian Whitaker.  He looked distinctly unhappy that it was Rupert greeting him but clearly meant not to make a fuss.  “Mr. Giles,” he said, jerking a nod.

            Rupert returned the nod, quirking it slightly to the side.  “Mr. Whitaker,” he said, and stepped back to let Brian enter.

            “I’m almost ready, Brian,” Elisabeth called from the bedroom.  “Rupert, get your shoes.”

            Brian flushed.  “You don’t mean to say—” he started, but clammed up suddenly and waited.

            Rupert glanced around and saw his scuffed boots sitting by the couch, but also decided to wait.  “I hope you are well,” he said to Brian.

            “Perfectly; thank you.”  The other man twisted slightly without uncrossing his arms to observe the pleasantry; Rupert noticed he was carrying his chin rather high.  “And you?”

            “Very well, thank you,” Rupert nodded.

            Elisabeth appeared, stuffing her foot into the other of a pair of sneakers and tying the lace stork-like on one leg.  “Ah, you’re there.  Good thing too, I was getting hungry.  Rupert, get your shoes; we’re going out to lunch.”

            “Elisabeth,” Brian said carefully, “when we made these plans, I did not anticipate that we would all go.”

            “And,” Rupert added, “this is the first I’ve heard of the plan altogether.”

            Elisabeth paused in the straightening of her shoelace.  “Oh?  Did I forget to mention it to you?  Oops.”  Her expression was entirely too innocent.  “Hang on, let me get my jacket.”  She disappeared again.

            Rupert turned to look significantly at Brian, and saw that Brian was sending the same look back at him.  Rupert sighed deeply, and went to get his shoes.

 

*

 

By the standards Rupert and Brian had established, it was a perfectly comfortable and uneventful public outing.  There were some glares all round when Elisabeth came back out donning her windbreaker, and some elaborate politeness about the ticket at the pub (Elisabeth paid, thereby ensuring that the two men were equally offended), but no open unpleasantness occurred.  Brian sat ramrod straight, relaxing only when Elisabeth began to talk about her paper: a good topic, as both Brian and Rupert were able to say something about hagiographical records in general.  Rupert, feeling at first too resentful toward Elisabeth to help her move the conversation along, decided at length that it was not worth making them both suffer, and he suspected Brian of the same idea, because they both began making contributions at more or less the same moment.  Too, Brian shared Rupert’s concern that Elisabeth eat enough, and each in their own way urged her to eat not only her food but some of theirs, earning them both a half-amused glare.

            By the time the lunch was finished, it seemed to Rupert that a three-way rapport had been established: an irritable and austere rapport, it was true, but nevertheless enough to be going on with.  At any rate it seemed probable he and Brian would be able to keep their word not to brawl in bookshops anymore.

            Elisabeth got up to pay the bill and visit the restroom, and the two men wandered out to the vestibule to wait for her.  They had spoken little directly to one another, except in the heatless passion of thrashing out an academic point, and Rupert didn’t want to queer the pitch by trying to talk to him now.  But he did glance at him, and before he could prevent it he found himself meeting eyes with the man.  Brian’s expression was calm but otherwise unreadable; after a moment he said:

            “I know she loves you; and I respect that.  I’m not out to make trouble, or put my oar in.”  He leaned in a few inches closer, and his next words were very quiet and even.  “But I saw the bruises you left on her, and I’m not going to forget that.  I just wanted you to know.”

            They were an equal height; and they stood eye to eye for a moment, little heeding the couple who slipped past them out into the street.  “That’s fair,” Rupert said at last, very quietly.

            Brian gave him a small nod, and a few moments later Elisabeth rejoined them.  “All ready?”

            They both nodded, and the three of them began to push out the door.  Outside they parted.

 

*

 

No scars, Rupert thought as he and Elisabeth walked home.  No scars; but bruises.  They had faded and gone before he saw her, after the battle, and he had never known they ever existed, though he ought to have guessed.

            No scars, he thought.

            As they walked Elisabeth slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.  “Are you mad at me?” she asked, simply.

            He darted a glance down at her, and sighed.  “Not anymore.”

            “Okay,” she said; and that was that.

            But later, after a quick grocery trip, when they were finally settled together on the couch once more, he turned to her.  “Can I…can I ask you something?”

            “Yes?”

            “Did you and Brian ever go to bed?”

            Her eyes widened a bit, but she was savvy enough otherwise not to be surprised; she bought time with a sip of tea.  Rupert felt the need to temporize.

            “I mean, it’s not really my business if you did.  It’s just…I’d just like to know what I’m dealing with.”

            She nodded.  “That’s fair.  No; we never went to bed.  We fooled around some, mostly recreational.”  She poked out her lip and thought for a moment, then took another sip.  “I rather think the fact that we didn’t go below the belt, so to speak, was because of him, rather than me.”

            Rupert thought this over.  “Really?  He does think a lot of you.”

            “No,” she said, “that’s why I think so.  All his relationships are calculated to be superficial, and we were too good of friends straight away for that.”

            “And you?”

            She looked at him.  “He’s my friend.  It’s a good thing we didn’t actually sleep together; it wouldn’t have worked at all.  We know that now.”

            Rupert grunted.  “D’you think he’s—” he paused— “Is he gay, I wonder?”

            Elisabeth started to laugh.  “Thank you for the compliment.  No—no, I know what you mean, don’t worry.  I would suspect him of being more or less omnisexual, except for two main factors: one, he grew up in Manchester; and two, his father thinks his career at Oxford is a ‘pansy-ass job’ and doesn’t even make a load of money to make up for it.  That’ll tell you most of what you need to know about Brian.”

            “Ah,” Rupert said. “Indeed.”

            She smiled over at him.  “Anything else you’d like to know?  I’ll put out my question-answering shingle.”

            Rupert declined the invitation.  He already had plenty to think about.

 

*

 

Later that evening Elisabeth tried for a while to conceal her shakes; it had cost her a great deal to appear serene and unaffected at the luncheon, and she didn’t want either Rupert or Brian to know it.  But unfortunately Rupert had attuned himself to her, and soon dug out her secret.  He prescribed her a hot bath and sat on the toilet lid, reading to her from Busman’s Honeymoon.  He was very good at doing the voices, and Elisabeth sank deep in the steaming water and closed her eyes to listen.

            After the bath the reading continued; they took turns, chapter by chapter, until both of them were sleepy enough to call it a night.  Rupert wanted to keep the bedside light on for her, but he’d slept that way two nights already, and Elisabeth insisted that the bathroom light was good enough.  It took some doing, but she convinced him; and as if the act of being convinced had worn him out, Rupert fell asleep almost as soon as the light was out and they had got quiet.  Elisabeth worried for a while that she would never fall asleep, and fell asleep still worrying.

            And then her mind betrayed her.

            She dreamed the end of the apocalypse had been itself a dream, a blinded vision of wishful thinking, and again she was alone in her flat.  A knock came at the door, and as if she had done it a hundred times before, she went to answer it.

            He was there, Rupert was there, her enemy, the Rupert who hated her as father, mother and spouse to follow his black destiny.  She backed away from him, and he followed, as she knew he would; he pinned her against the wall, and spoke cruelly to her, and the hope she had earned in the daylight was torn away, because there was the First standing behind Rupert’s shoulder, egging him on: and then she was looking at it from the First’s point of view, watching Rupert pin her and hurt her and say those awful things, and heard her own cries in that voice she had learned to hate—no—please—please—

            A hand was gripping her from behind, pulling her away, saying her name; she resisted at first: she preferred the completion of losing to a hope that was a lie.  But the hand and voice were insistent, and shook her, gently and then harder, and for some reason she found herself lying down.

            She was in a bed; she was in her own bed, with the dream still in her consciousness like a poisonous gas, and Rupert’s arm was hard and strong around her, and he was speaking to her, not cruel things now but kind things, reassurances, and she broke and cried.  She cried, and he soothed her, until all that was left of the dream was herself in her bed, and Rupert, the Rupert who loved her, stroking her hair and murmuring meaninglessly in the darkness.

            “Were you dreaming?” he asked her at last, when he could sense she was calmer.

            She nodded.

            “What happened?” he asked her: the last thing in the world she wanted him to ask.

            “I just—it wasn’t over—and the First—”  She swallowed another sob, and said no more.

            “It was a dream,” he whispered.  “It was nothing but a dream.  Just rest.”  He kissed her hair; and in a guilty sort of relief Elisabeth subsided and nestled herself back into his arms, and let him comfort her.  In time her breathing evened itself out, her visceral shaking subsided, and her eyelids drooped.

            “Just rest,” Rupert said, and she closed her eyes, and fell into a sleep deeper than dreams, simply and at once.

 

In the morning, she woke to light, and to the world she was putting back together.

 

*

 

Finis

 

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