Shadow Though it Be:  An Excursus – Chapter 17

by L. Inman

 

Elisabeth strode quickly past the churchyard fence on the other side of the street.  She heard Buffy’s voice shouting behind her, and broke into a lope; the beat of her feet pounding on pavement was a different beat from the throbbing in her face, and between the two she felt sick.  Her glasses were bounding precariously up and down on her nose, so she slowed to a walk again, measuring her progress streetlight by streetlight. 

            Even in her own dimension, this was the sort of stupid thing she never did, walking alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood at night.  Elisabeth threw back her shoulders and lengthened her stride, to give a tacit appearance of confidence, but there was little more she could do than that.  At least she still had the cross: not that that would protect her from human marauders, which she was sure Sunnydale had aplenty.  Elisabeth gripped the cross like a marionette’s control and gritted her teeth. 

            She wasn’t sure where Giles’s neighborhood was from here.  But Sunnydale was small enough that she could find her way to the main drag and to Giles’s place from there.  She’d get back to his apartment soon enough—provided she didn’t get mugged or bitten on the way. 

            Back to Giles’s place, the scene of her ignominious non-date.  Honestly, what had she been thinking?  These people were at war; why was she getting mixed up with them?

            The town was still as quiet as it had been an hour or so earlier, when she had walked this beat with Buffy.  Elisabeth looked over her shoulder.  Buffy should have caught up with her by now and started giving her what for for running off alone on the Hellmouth—but that was okay, she had a fairly good retort waiting on her tongue—

            Still looking behind her, Elisabeth cannoned straight into someone in the path ahead.  “Oh!” she said, jerking her head around to look briefly at the man standing there, “excuse me.”  And she moved to go around him.

            Except he grabbed her arm and spun her back to face him.  “Where you going?” he said.

            “None of your business,” Elisabeth said, yanking her arm free with an effort.

            But the man’s eyes were glinting with a strange light.  Elisabeth took one step back, then another.

            “You’re not thinking of running away, are you?” the man said, in a tone of mock concern, following her step for step.

            Elisabeth suddenly remembered: she brought up the cross and shoved it close to the man’s face.  He winced hard and bared his fangs, then swung a paw-like cuff at her wrist.  It knocked the cross out of his face, but not out of her hands.  Elisabeth regained her balance and drew herself into a crouch, ready to run—but the vampire was ready first, and brought a boot up to kick her wrist from the other direction.  The cross went spinning out of Elisabeth’s hand into the street, where it rattled hollowly, practically the only sound in the night.

            Before Elisabeth could decide whether to dive for the cross or take off into a run altogether, the vamp had grasped her jacket lapels and lifted her off her feet, his grinning face close to hers.  “What’d you do that for, huh?”

            Elisabeth tried to kick him, but he was holding her up too close and her center of gravity was too far off.  “Let go!” she snarled, her glasses half-falling off her face again.  She pushed her hands against him, his elbows, his arms, in an effort to make him drop her, but merely touching him proved to her that his strength was not that of an ordinary man:  there was no tension in his muscles lifting her at all.  The vamp laughed.

            “Hey, Tom!”

            “Yeah?” said the vamp, not looking away from Elisabeth, whose eyes were beginning to tear up.

            “Come on—never mind that one right now—Jake’s getting his ass kicked in the cemetery—by a girl—”

            At this Tom looked around at the smaller vamp beside him.  “Come on!” he said again.

            Tom the vampire looked back into Elisabeth’s face and gave her a gloating growl; then dropped her unceremoniously into a heap on the sidewalk and took off with the other, their footsteps strangely muted in the thick darkness.  Elisabeth struggled to a half-sitting position and watched them disappear, her glasses dangling precariously from one ear across her face. 

            We sit around and watch the fireworks and drink beer—and blood, if we’re lucky, Spike had said.

            “Well, hoo-ray for you,” Elisabeth said bitterly into the night.  She got to her feet slowly—with new aches and scrapes to add to her collection—and retrieved the cross from the street.  She set off at a limping trot for the next street, breathing hard and wiping her wet face.  That was almost my epitaph, she thought to herself:  Here lies Elisabeth Bowen, done to death by vampires with low I.Q.s.  “Oh, God,” she said explosively into the night. 

            It was only several yards later that she realized that she had just filched her own last name out of the ether.  And with it, a whole host of memories, close enough to bear a scent.

            We sit around and watch the fireworks—

            I want to go home—

            There: down the street, the familiar lights of Giles’s apartment house.  Safe from vampires at least, Elisabeth thought bitterly, and strode down the walk.

 

*

 

She knocked sharply on Giles’s door, and waited gazing off into the darkness of the court for him to open up.  When he did, she straightened her glasses but did not turn her head to look at him.

            “You know,” he said, “since you’re staying here, you don’t really need to knock.”  Elisabeth looked at him at last.  “Though,” he added, “I must admit it makes a nice change to know when people are coming into my— What happened to you?”

            Elisabeth firmed her mouth and flounced past him into the house.  “Sunnydale happened to me, is what.”  Leaving him holding the door open behind her, she went into the kitchen and opened his fridge.

            “And where’s—”

            “I’m taking one of your beers,” she said loudly from the kitchen.  “I don’t even like beer.  But this is a special occasion, calling for noxious libations.  And for God’s sake, why don’t you keep your beer in a warm place, like Englishmen are supposed to—”

            “Would you mind explaining this special occasion to the uninitiated?  And where’s Buffy?”

            “Still patrolling,” Elisabeth said with a heavy false jocularity.  She heaved herself up onto the kitchen counter and applied Giles’s churchkey to the beer bottle with a savage flourish.  “Still out there kicking ass, God bless her soul.”  The beer cap skittered across the counter and pinged to the floor.

            “What happened?”

            Elisabeth took a long swig of the beer.  “We patrolled.  That’s what happened.  Or to be more precise, Buffy patrolled.  That’s pretty much it.”

            She took another swig, wiped her chin on her sleeve, and added:  “And don’t give me that look.”

            His eyes narrowed, taking stock of her, from the smudges of dirt on her jacket to the cross she’d dropped on the bar counter to her skewed glasses and the large swelling on her left cheekbone.  She could read the suspicion plainly on his face.  “…Buffy didn’t give you that, did she?” he said quietly.

            “What, that same look?” Elisabeth said, gesturing with the bottle at his face.  “Of course not: that thing’s a Rupert Giles original.”

            “You know what I meant.”

            Elisabeth didn’t bother to defend her misdirection.  “See this?” she said, holding up the bottle again.  “This is me drinking, not discussing.”

            Giles opened his mouth, but whatever he had planned to say to that was lost.

            “Yeah, I gave her that,” Buffy said from the doorway.

            Giles rounded on her.  “Why?”  But Buffy wasn’t looking at him.

            “Are you stupid or something?” she demanded of Elisabeth through the bar window. 

            Elisabeth’s voice, answering her, was quiet and hard:  “I admit I’ve done a number of unwise things in the course of the evening.”

            Buffy flung down her weapons bag and pointed out the open door into the night.  “I’ve been checking alleys for your body.  You don’t just run off like that—you don’t just run out into the streets without protection—”

            “Oh, like I was so fucking safe with you,” Elisabeth retorted, reddening.

            Buffy swelled visibly.  “I wasn’t going to let you get killed by vampires!  Mighta done it myself, maybe—”

            “That’s a comfort,” Elisabeth snorted.

            “Just hold on a minute!” Giles put up his hands to distract them, and left them up, shoulders hunched, to squint at Buffy like she’d just announced her application to clown school.  “Why did you hit her?”

            Buffy gave him her high-eyebrow look.  “Thought she was a demon,” she said.  “Guess she isn’t.”

            Giles put his hands down but squinted at her harder than ever.  “Don’t you think you could have ascertained that without violence?”

            “No.”

            Elisabeth gave a mordant grunt and took another swig of beer.

            “Anyway,” Buffy said, as if that were all cleared up, “I’ve come to take Elisabeth home with me.”

            “Oh, brilliant,” Elisabeth murmured .

            Giles’s voice shot up an octave.  “What?”

            Buffy gave him a level look but did not otherwise answer.

            Giles drew a long breath.  “I would think,” he said, slowly and with the utmost patience, “that if you mistrusted Elisabeth the last thing you’d want to do is take her home with you, to stay with your family.”

            A muscle moved in Buffy’s jaw: clearly Giles had made a point.  She didn’t, however, look as though she were going to back down; but Giles pressed his advantage before she could argue.

            “And it’s not as if you’ve given her any reason to want to go with you—”

            “Doesn’t matter,” Elisabeth said.

            They both turned to look at her.

            She shrugged and lifted her beer again.  “Since I’m at your collective mercy,” she explained.  “I don’t get to call any of those shots.”  She put the bottle to her lips again.

            Giles stared at her: she could see his eyes widen wonderingly at the bitterness of her tone, but he left it for the moment to turn to Buffy and say:  “Then I have a say, and I say—”

            “After all,” Elisabeth went on, not caring whether they listened to her or not, “I have every reason to be grateful for any and every place of sanctuary—considering I’m lucky to be alive—”  She broke off to swallow at length from the beer again, then put down the bottle to wipe a stray tear from the round of her cheek.  She glanced over and saw that both of them were staring at her, each with their own shrewd look.

            “What happened?” Giles asked her quietly.

            “I told you,” Elisabeth said, “I admit that I’ve done a number of stupid things this evening….”

            “Were you attacked?”

            Instead of answering, Elisabeth took another shaky sip of beer.

            Buffy was watching Elisabeth with a look of grim understanding.  “She was attacked.”

            Elisabeth put down the beer and shut her eyes briefly.  “They left me when they got the news that one of their number was getting their ass whipped by a girl in the cemetery.”  She had gone quite pale.

            “Were you hurt?” Giles asked her, more quietly still.

            “No.”  He opened his mouth again, but she forestalled him.  “Not hurt, not bitten, not turned.  Just a few bruises.”  She picked up the beer bottle again and ran her thumbnail under the damp edge of the label.  “Yes,” she said, “rather stupid.”  She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, shutting her eyes.

            Neither Buffy nor Giles said anything.  Finally Elisabeth took her hand away and opened her eyes to look at them:  they were having a silent and furious conversation, Giles with his hands on his hips and his lips very thin, Buffy hard-fisted and wide-eyed, with the look of one resisting chastisement to the last.

            “Well,” Elisabeth said sharply, “aren’t you going to decide what you’re going to do with me?”

            They turned to look at her; then almost as one they looked back at one another.  Buffy swallowed and lifted her chin, but Elisabeth saw that her eyes had dropped.  Abruptly she turned on her heel, swept up the weapons bag, and shut the door behind her without a backward look.

            Giles stood staring at the door for a long moment after it had closed, then turned to Elisabeth, but she had seen his look coming, and turned her gaze to her knees.  She was painfully aware of him as he came into the kitchen.  “I think I could do with a beer myself,” he said.

            She thrust out her own bottle toward him.  “Have this one,” she said.  “I still hate beer.”

            He took it from her and examined the level in the bottle.  “Nevertheless you seem to have consumed an appreciable amount.”  He took a swig.

            “Yeah, well.”  Elisabeth braced her hands on her knees and turned her eyes away from him.  “I had to notice what I was drinking sometime.”

            He moved to put the bottle on the counter a few feet from her, so that he was standing in her sight line.  She was prepared to look away from him again, but he kept his gaze forward and braced his hands on the counter’s edge.

            For a long moment neither of them spoke.  Then he said, wearily:  “I should have stopped you going.”

            Elisabeth lost patience, and let out a deep pent-up sigh.  “Please don’t do this.”

            He looked over at her questioningly.

            “Please don’t start looking for ways to blame yourself.  All it means is that you didn’t have control over what either I or Buffy were going to do.”

            Looking at him, she thought:  well, that’s torn it—I’ve made him mad now.  He continued to stare at her impassively, his eyes dark and very intense.  Then she thought:  well, let him be mad.  She stared back.

            “That’s what I know,” he said finally, carefully.  “I thought it would end badly, but I certainly didn’t think it’d end with you alone and attacked by a vampire.”

            “So, then,” Elisabeth said, as if spelling a sentence out for a child, “it’s not yourself that you really want to blame.”

            Yes, she’d made him mad.  Good.  She watched him take a deep swig of beer.

            “Well, yes, then,” he said finally, his lips primming as he put down the bottle.  “Yes, you were stupid.”  He wheeled a little to look at her, saw that she hadn’t crumpled up from this assertion, and went on.  “I told you first day you were here to be careful, and you mocked me.”

            Elisabeth had forgotten.  She registered his point with a blinking wince.

            “But you seemed to know what you were talking about, so I left it.  You knew what the Hellmouth was like, and yet you ran off into the night alone, without the Slayer.  I’d like to know what you thought you were playing at.”

            Clearly, Giles had not planned to say quite so much, but he was well warmed up now, and he kept going.  “And you seemed to know it was going to be unpleasant, so I don’t know what the hell possessed you to go at all if you were just going to mistrust Buffy and run off.”

            He drew a long shaking breath and took another drink of the beer, only to lower the bottle abruptly and cough on the next part of his tirade.  “I took you for someone with a bit of intelligence—I didn’t take you for someone with a mere wit for one-liners and a foolhardy sense of judgment—”  He broke off and took another swallow.

            Elisabeth spoke at last, her voice hard and shaking:  “I didn’t mock you just to be ornery.  I was whistling in the dark.”

            “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?  You didn’t listen to a word I said,” he retorted in a hiss.

            Elisabeth had gone pale again, but she answered him as levelly as she could.  “In that case, I owe you an apology.”

            For the first time Giles raised his voice.  “You haven’t understood yet, have you?  I don’t want a bloody apology.  It’s your bloody safety I care about!”

            Thundering silence followed.  Elisabeth bit her lip hard and swallowed tears down the back of her nose.  Giles braced his hands on the counter again, dropping his head between his shoulders.

            The silence lasted.  Elisabeth put up a tentative hand to explore the swelling on her cheekbone.  At length, he lifted his head without turning to look at her.  “I’m sorry I shouted,” he said softly.

            She did not have the voice to answer him; he turned his head to look at her.  She lifted her chin and studied the chipped paint on the cabinet door across from her, swallowing.

            “And,” he said heavily, “I daresay you’ve already been sufficiently chastised for your stupidity.”

            “You think?” she said on a breath.

            He opened his mouth, and tilted his head, perhaps to say her name or to otherwise comfort her, but she spoke before he could.

            “I wasn’t expecting it to go quite so badly either.” She drew a breath and found she was able to conquer the threatening tears.  “I thought I could talk it out with her.  I didn’t think I’d—make myself into such a sitting duck.”  She turned to look at him again.  “I didn’t think I would say and do so many foolish things at once.”

            He turned his gaze back to the counter.  “Well, you’re not the only one saying and doing stupid things.  I don’t know what the hell’s possessing Buffy, either.  I don’t know what bee in her bonnet has got her instincts so—phenomenally skewed about you.  Why’d she hit you?”

            If it wasn’t already crystal clear to Giles, Elisabeth certainly wasn’t going to be the one to enlighten him.  She shrugged.  “She thought I was a demon.”

            He gave her a withering look.  Elisabeth said, “Well, really, Rupert.  I’ve come out of nowhere, I say I don’t know who I am, there’re holes in my story a mile wide that I can’t do anything to fill—what is she going to think?”

            She wasn’t sure if it was amusement quirking up the corner of his mobile mouth.  “So, what, are you defending her now?”

            “Not defending,” Elisabeth said.  “Just…evening it up a bit.”

            One of his eyebrows went up and she amended, “Okay, defending a little.  My previous heated remarks notwithstanding.”

            It was indeed a little smile touching the corners of his mouth.

            “Nevertheless,” he said, “I hardly think that any suspicion would justify using violence on an unarmed human being.  Buffy should have kept herself under control.”

            “As you did, perhaps.”

            He went still for a moment, drawing a long rueful breath.  A long moment later he said, “I’ve been meaning to apologize to you for that.”

            Elisabeth rolled her eyes.  “Rupert—Rupert—my dear, stubborn, addle-pated man—you have gone and completely missed my point.”

            He turned his eyes sidelong to look at her, in that hooded gaze Elisabeth knew could turn to anger or humor in an instant.  “Which is?” he said coolly.

            “My point is, not that you are as guilty as Buffy, but that Buffy is as innocent as you.”

            His eyes were still wary, so she went on.  “You live on the Hellmouth, for heaven’s sake.  Frankly, I’m surprised you all haven’t decided to lock me up somewhere and bring me food every six hours.  Yeah,” she said, as his expression turned skeptical, “it frightens me and makes me angry…but I reckon that’s my lookout—my personal risk.  It doesn’t make your behavior any less understandable.”

            His eyes and mouth were still skeptical, but the humor had returned to his expression.  “Then you don’t think Buffy’s attitude toward you is wrong.”

            Elisabeth looked him directly in the eye.  “I think the problem is more with her attitude toward you.”  He blinked.  “That’s why she hit me.”

            “That’s why…because—?”

            “Because I said so.”

            Giles whistled.  “That was stupid.  Bit flattering, I admit.  But….”

            “Hey,” Elisabeth said, pointing to her swollen eye, “I worked hard for this.”

            He snorted a laugh and lowered his head between his shoulders again.  “I just don’t understand it though…she’s never felt quite such a strong animus against my other—”  He stopped abruptly.

            Silence.  A faint pressure of hilarity went through Elisabeth’s sinuses, and she waited for it to subside before she said gently, “…against your other girlfriends?”

            She could only see one side of his face, but the dramatic eye-rolling expression of humiliation that crossed it was, to Elisabeth’s mind, priceless.  “The killing irony of it is,” he said, his face beginning to glow pink, “that I’d scarcely got a moment to myself to even think of you—of it—that way before she buttonholed me.”  He snorted loudly.  “‘It’s disgraceful.  You’re old enough to be her father.  And I can’t have you carrying on like this when you have work to do.’ And then of course when I protest, she comes out with this—thing—about you—”  He broke off, scowling.

            “But you see why, don’t you,” Elisabeth said reasonably.  “I’m an unknown, a possible enemy, and she’s used to having your full cooperation, or at least your reluctant cooperation.  But without it, she has to add you to her list of people to full-on protect.”

            “Funny,” Giles said, looking at her, “you made the opposite argument a few minutes ago.  A few minutes ago the problem was her attitude toward me.”

            “It’s all of a piece,” Elisabeth said.  “Why do you need me to tell you?  You’re her primum mobile.  You go off rhythm, the world goes off rhythm.”

            He stood, frowning morosely ahead, thinking it out.  After a moment he said softly, “But that’s not fair to me.”

            “Of course it isn’t.  But she’s not going to figure that out today.  And there are times,” Elisabeth took a breath— “there are times when you don’t want her to.”

            He straightened slowly and turned to look at her.  His eyes behind his glasses had gone quite cold.  “You’ve made a study of my character, then?” he said quietly. 

            She drew herself up to face him.  “Do you object?”

            “I do, if you’ve formed your opinion before you ever met me.”

            “I haven’t,” she said.  “I’ve been watching you since I got here.”

            “Would I have provided you with that much knowledge in so short a time?”

            Her mouth primmed in a way that mirrored his, if she had only known it.  “If you’re hoping I’ll say I knew nothing about your character before I blundered into this damned dimension, then you’re in for a disappointment.”

            He had the grace to look slightly chastened; but he continued to face her unblinking.

            “And if this upsets you, then why are you blaming Buffy for throwing a punch at me?” she added.

            He drew a breath and let it out in a sigh.

            “Besides,” Elisabeth said, “if I’d known nothing before, I found out all I needed to know listening to your conversation with Buffy a few nights ago.”

            He looked decidedly more comfortable at this; then suddenly he blinked.  “You eavesdropped on our conversation?” he asked her, tilting his head quizzically.

            “Of course I eavesdropped on your conversation,” she said frankly.  “I needed to know where I was in your time.  And I found out,” she added, with a rueful glance at the ceiling.

            He studied her for a long moment, with that calculating look Elisabeth had come to know very well in five days.  She was not, however, sure what he would say next; she wet her lower lip, waiting for him to speak.

            He said:  “Does Buffy know now that you know what’s to come?”

            “No,” Elisabeth said, “but she was a bit distracted.  I’m sure once she calms down a bit she’ll put it together.  Then, as your people say, I’ll be for it right enough.”

            Giles sighed and put his backside to the counter across from her, folding his arms.  “Probably so.”  He stared down at his feet for a moment, then said without looking up, “And I suppose it’s all the worse that you don’t have any reassuring news to give her.”

            Elisabeth nodded. 

            He was moodily silent for several minutes.  She watched him, again waiting to see what he would say.  Again she was surprised.

            “Is it….”  He paused to stare off into the hallway, choosing and rechoosing his words.  “Is it—wrong—to want to be significant?”

            He looked back at her, searching her face for an answer.  Elisabeth felt a small ache under her solar plexus.  Her shoulders went down.  “If you ever find out,” she said softly, “tell me, would you?”

            His answering smile was wry and honest.  “It’s a bargain,” he said.

            They were still for a moment, looking at one another; then Elisabeth said, “I know you said you didn’t want it, but I ought to apologize for mocking you.  I didn’t realize it would leave a mark; but that’s no excuse.”

            He smiled again.  “It didn’t, really.  Lord knows I ought to be used to it by now.  In any case we will say no more about it.”

            “Good,” she said.

            There was another silence, in which Giles scratched his ear and then refolded his arms, and Elisabeth put up her hand again to check the progress of the swelling on her face.  She looked up to find him watching her.  “You should put some ice on that,” he said.  She tried to demur, but he went to the freezer and began to rummage in it.  “You forget,” he said, “that I have extensive experience with head wounds.”  His eyes twinkled at her over his glass rims as he reemerged with a package of frozen peas, which he began crushing in his hands, to loosen the contents.  He took the tea towel Elisabeth had used while cooking that afternoon from the oven door, wrapped the bag of peas in it, and handed it to her insistently.  She rolled her eyes, but shrugged out of her jacket and took the makeshift cold-pack from him, and began to apply it to her face.  “I hate putting ice on things,” she complained, holding the pack up awkwardly.  “It hurts worse than the actual wound, and it makes my muscles tired holding it there.”

            “Do you expect me to have an answer to that bit of whining?” Giles asked her, resuming his place across from her.

            “Of course not,” she said irritably, and he grinned.

            While she sat holding the pack to her face (moving it every now and then to ease the burning cold on her skin), Giles stood, arms crossed, eyes on the ceiling, thinking.  Presently he murmured:  “I have no idea what I’m going to do with Buffy tomorrow.  We were supposed to meet and make plans.”

            “Sounds like a barrel of fun already,” Elisabeth said.

            “Any ideas?” he said, turning his incisive gaze on hers.

            “You’re askin’ me?  With my abysmal Buffy batting average?”

            He could not quite nip his smile in the bud.

            “Ask Xander,” Elisabeth said.

            “Xander?”

            “Yeah.  He was awfully prescient about this evening’s events.  He told me to count the cost if I was going to—”  Elisabeth stopped short.

            “Going to what?” 

            Elisabeth was strongly tempted to stick her tongue out at that dry smirk of his.

            “You know,” she said uncomfortably, “flirt with you, and all that.”

            “Ah.”  His smirk became even more pronounced.  Then it became lost as he rethought what she’d just told him.  “Xander said this to you?”

            “Yes,” Elisabeth said.

            “You discussed it with him?”

            “Well,…he kinda noticed my elaborate dinner plans.  And I think,” Elisabeth said hurriedly, “he felt obligated to explain to me about Buffy.”

            “I see,” Giles said.  Elisabeth rather wished that he did not.

            “And,” she went on, “seeing as how the whole production was an unqualified disaster, I think he couldn’t have warned me strongly enough.”

            There was a new little smile playing on Giles’s face.  “Entirely unqualified, d’you think?”

            She gave him a look.  “Is this the place you want to be?”

            He had to concede that point, at least.  “No,” he said, with a wry twist to his mouth.

            Elisabeth sighed and lowered her pack to her lap.  The lump on her face was now shining and red; she could almost see it herself.  She looked over at him, expecting a remonstrance for taking the ice off her wound, but instead she found that he was looking tentatively at her.  Their eyes met and he spoke.

            “Do you…does she—ever figure it out?”

            Elisabeth blinked.  “Who?”

            “Buffy.”

            “Figure what out?”

            He lowered his eyes to his shoes again.  “What you said.  About me.  About….” He gestured with one hand, but was unable to go on.

            “You mean,” Elisabeth said, “without you doing something drastic?”

            He dropped his shoulders and raised his eyes to the ceiling.  “I see your point.  It’s better not to know.”

            She drew an easier breath, relieved that he had accepted it so easily.  She said:  “But of course there’s a reason why she’s the greatest Slayer there’s ever been.”

            He said nothing to this, and glanced into her eyes only briefly, but she was alive to the subtle change in his face and posture: the contentment in his eyelids, the mother-cat pride he took in her, his best-kept secret—or worst, depending on your point of view.

            The words were drawn from Elisabeth almost before she knew what she was saying:  “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

            He lifted his eyes, humorously acknowledging the reference, but when he saw her face, the lightness fled his expression, leaving him pale.  He looked away, his eyes moving inward, putting it together.

            When he returned his eyes to hers she saw that his face was haunted, and reading her own fearful expression did nothing to ease the lines in his face.  When he spoke, his voice was quiet as a breath.  “You’re telling me something…aren’t you?”

            There was a beating as of wings under Elisabeth’s ribs.  She said, her voice as quiet as his:  “I figure it’s something you already know.”

            For a long moment their eyes met; then he gave a few stuttering nods and looked away, looked inward again, as if there were a gnawing pain in his vitals.  Even so, it took Elisabeth a long moment to realize what she was seeing. 

            With the cold pack gathering damp in her hand, she watched him run the progression of his thoughts, as if she could read them straight from his face:  the lonely glow of his pride in her, the helpless clamor of his need for recognition, the buried acknowledgement of the inevitable conclusion—the whole delicate complexity of their relationship—laid out for her view as if it were a little planetarium of strange and wistful delights.  And she felt a moment of terror.

            Terror, because she saw her fingerprints all over this delicate instrument—had, at the very least, been given a privileged pass to watch an unrecorded, vital moment—and had probably, merely by being there, introduced a subtle change to the silvery workings of this universe….

            He stirred from his reverie, turned to look at her, and caught sight of her face before she could mask her expression.  He moved, suddenly, to stand up from the counter and cross to her; but he waited for her tacit invitation before he took the cold pack from her hand and put his arms around her.  She settled her own arms around his shoulders and shut her eyes, embracing him.

            For a long moment there was only silence, a silence complete enough that Elisabeth could hear the kitchen clock faintly ticking.  Neither of them made any move except to breathe, and for the first time that evening, she found she could relax.  Her closed eyes softened; and presently she put up a hand to touch the back of his hair.

            He spoke, his voice pleasantly deep and whiskered in her ear.  “Thought you were committed to staying uninvolved….”

            She let out a pent-up sigh with her words:  “Oh, screw it.”

            She felt him laughing silently.  “Thank God,” he said.

            “But it’s complicated,” she said into his shoulder.  “I hate complicated things.”

            “No, you don’t,” he said, “you’re afraid of them.  There is a difference.”

            She opened her eyes briefly.  “Now who’s doing character studies?” she said.  He chuckled again, and again they were quiet.

            A brief trickle of thought came and went in her mind, about the love of friends and the balance of opposing forces, but she let it go its way and peter out without mining it for something to say.  Instead she smoothed the back of his hair and let out a contented sigh.  Every now and then he made a movement to smooth her shirt down her spine.  The kitchen clock ticked complacently.

            At length he pulled back to look at her, and suddenly she found the heat rising in her face.  Nevertheless she met his eyes and said lightly, “I am sitting on your kitchen counter and still you’re taller than I am.  This is untenable.”

            He smiled.  She put her hands to his shoulders and moved him delicately back a step.  “Excuse me.  I must go in search of ibuprofen.”

            “There’s some Tylenol in the drawer over there,” he said as she jumped down from the counter.

            Accordingly she went to the drawer he indicated and pulled out first a bottle of Tylenol, then a sandwich bag with a handful of pills in it.  She opened the bottle and upended it; a lone pill dropped into her hand.  She looked up at him.

            “Spilt them this morning,” he said, with a little shrug.

            “So that’s what that noise was.”  She gave him a small smirk.

            He rolled his eyes.  “I was trying to be quiet.”  He looked down at the sandwich bag, the self-deprecating humor fading from his face a little.  “Seems like a lifetime ago,” he murmured.

            “No kidding,” Elisabeth said, dipping her hand into the bag and adding one pill to the one in her hand.  “Floor’s clean,” she said, “I reckon I can take this.”

            He had glanced around the kitchen as she spoke and spotted her glasses lying forlornly on the counter where she’d been sitting.  He went over to pick them up.  “Would you like me to try and repair these?” he said, looking up from his examination of the bent frame, only to see Elisabeth choking and making a nauseated face.  “What’s wrong?”

            “I took the Tylenol with the rest of the beer,” she said.

            “For heaven’s sake.  Why’d you do that?”

            “Dunno,” she said, clamping a hand to her mouth.  “Questioning my judgment.  Not for the first time.”

            But she recovered enough so that when he said, “Perhaps you’d rather have the last of the shiraz?” she was able to answer almost normally:  “What, there’s some left?”

            His eyebrows went up.  “And what are you trying to imply with that?”

            “I was implying that I thought we drank it all,” Elisabeth said tartly.  “Don’t be touchy.  And yes, I would like the rest of the shiraz.”

            So he took out the wine bottle and poured her a glass, turning the bottle upside down so that it emptied completely.  He surveyed the result and said, “On second thoughts, perhaps you shouldn’t drink too much in your medical state.”  He put the glass to his own lips and took a significant drink of it.  “There.”  He handed the glass over to her, his eyes half-hiding a viperish smile.  She returned the look exactly and accepted the glass of wine from his hand.

            “Now,” he said, “let’s see what we can do about your glasses.”

 

*

 

Chapter 18

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