__I Made This Mistake Once__
By Dien
Giles leaned his head back against the stone wall, sighing. He, Buffy, Willow, and Xander had been in this room for what he estimated as about three hours now, and there was absolutely no way of escape. He stood, hands handcuffed behind him, to a pipe in the wall, much like the position of Xander and Willow, at other points in the room.
Buffy was fastened more securely, with strong and heavy chains set into the wall. She had tried repeatedly to break them, and they had held firm. They knew their captors were vampires, planning to sacrifice the Slayer at midnight tonight in what was known as the Moon of Blood. Giles wondered at his and the others' stupidity, in allowing themselves to be led into what, in hindsight, was so obviously a trap: they had been gathered at his apartment, researching this `Moon,' when a feminine scream had come from outside.
Being the brave, noble, heroes they were, he thought bitterly, they had of course run to the rescue...and into the arms of the forty waiting vampires. Through sheer force, everyone had been brought down (Giles had lost his glasses in the fight), even Buffy, and they had woke in this room, securely fastened and chained.
The Watcher guessed they had about four hours left until the hour Buffy would be killed. The only thing left to do was wait. He himself had strained at the cuffs until his wrists were bloody, but they were tight and he worked to no avail.
There was little conversation as they each silently racked their minds for some way of escape. Giles' mind, already having run over the lack of options several times, wandered to the coming ritual.
A mortal was to do preliminary castings; they had to be at least a halfway competent sorcerer, and Giles had found himself wondering just who was to perform that part of the ceremony. His questioned was answered with yet another display of the gods' twisted sense of humor.
The cell door, a heavy oaken affair, swung open, and stepping into the small, dark room was a figure Giles knew all too well.
"Ethan," he hissed.
"Thought I smelled something stinkier than vamps around here," Buffy said sardonically, struggling again against her manacles, with the same results.
"And a pleasure to see you again too, Slayer," Ethan Rayne smiled. "My, my this is interesting. In one small room, and firmly bound up as a bonus, we have--drum roll, please--the bonified, beautiful, brassily blond Buffy the Vampire Slayer," he alliterated mockingly.
"And in this corner, standing 5 foot 5 and weighing in at barely 122, the wonderfully witchy, winsome Wicca Willow. Also their young friend, the...hmm, this is hard for `X,' the, ah...xenophobic Xander? Hmm...could use a bit of work..." he muttered. "Ethan, what are you doing?" Giles said in exasperation.
"Ah! Could it be? Do my virgin ears deceive me? I do believe I heard the clarion call of the rough, rage-filled, rapacious, rascally, rash--my, I could go on like this for quite a while, couldn't I?--reckless, remorseless, ruthless rebel known as Ripper...though currently reformed, making him timid, tweedish, tedious, tiresome, and very, very tame, no?" Ethan finished with a triumphant smile.
"Do you ever shut up?" Buffy snapped.
"`Fraid not, love, I like the sound of my own voice entirely too much for that," he grinned.
"Obviously," Xander shot back. Ethan ignored him.
"I thought they locked you up, Ethan," Buffy said sweetly and Ethan only chuckled.
"Slayer, the cage has not yet been built that can keep me from conjuring a few minor imps to wreak havoc, create a distraction, and allow me to pick the lock of my woefully inadequate prison."
"Huh. So you're working with the vamps now?" Xander muttered.
"No, lad, they just allowed me in here for visiting hours," he replied sarcastically. "Actually, I've been hired to perform a little bit of craft known as the Moon of Blood. Heard of it, Ripper?"
"Go to hell, Ethan," the addressed replied. He smirked, murmuring, "No doubt."
"So, what, you're here to start early or something?" Buffy said grimly.
"Hardly. Just wanted to chat with my old mate Ripper for a bit before the whole lot of you are slaughtered like pigs," he said pleasantly.
"Chat? I don't think we have anything to say to each other," Giles growled.
"Oh, come off it, old man. We can pleasantly reminisce about long gone days, when you didn't beat me to a bloody pulp every time you saw me...you know, when we were still friends, mate."
"I said, we don't have anything to say to each other," he said, staccato emphasis on each syllable.
"Oh, don't be that way, Ripper. You remember...nights out drinking, two of us still mates, going out and raising bloody hell in London...it was fun..." he said wistfully.
And Giles could no longer contain himself. "Fun? Fun?! How the bloody hell can you even say that, you fucking bastard? I'll tell you what I remember, Ethan. "I remember looking at my hands and seeing blood on them. I remember, for months after I went back to the Council, seeing the faces of the dead every time I closed my eyes, hearing their screams in my ears. I still wake up, sometimes, in the middle of the night, from dreams of Randall burning, Ethan.
"I remember Molly Jackson, dying from an invisibility spell gone wrong. I remember Douglas cutting his damn wrists open with a kitchen knife because he couldn't take the voices anymore, the voices we put in his head. I remember the look on my father's face after I shoved a knife into his heart, Ethan.
"I remember Nigel McAstaire, jumping off a roof because he thought he could fly. Thought that because of drugs we supplied him with. It took them a full bloody day to get all of him out of the sidewalk.
"I remember the look on my mother's face when they told her son killed her husband. I remember going out and getting drunk, and the next day, waking up next to a corpse with my favorite knife in him, and I not knowing how it got there. Not even knowing his name. That's what the fuck I remember, Ethan. It sounds like jolly good...fun, don't it, mate?" he asked, unaware of the tears on his cheeks.
Ethan looked a little shaken. "Ripper...they...Douglas, Molly, Nigel...Randall...they knew what they were getting into, what sort of game we were playing--"
"Game," Giles spat. "Oh yes. You and your sodding games. Don't you understand?!! Damnit, Ethan, it wasn't a bloody game! People died, Ethan. People died.
"People died because of things we did. We played with forces we didn't understand, trifled with things beyond our control...we thought we were gods, playing with fire and not getting burnt. But don't you get it? Maybe we didn't get burnt, but others did! Other people paid the price for our mistakes, died for the sake of our games! We were playing with lives, with minds, hell, we bloody gambled away our goddamn souls, Ethan!
"And we walked away with the little smidgens of power gained from those encounters, and counted ourselves the victors. Well, welcome to Victory, Ethan. How does it taste, to be a victor? It seems a little bitter in my mouth, but maybe that's just my conscience speaking.
"It's not like a game of sodding chess, you know. People got hurt. People died." He took a shuddering breath.
"And when people get hurt, it's not a game anymore, Ethan," he finished in a small voice, slumping.
Ethan looked shocked. Moving closer, he started, "Ripper..."
Giles turned his head away. "No. Ripper's dead, Ethan. Ripper's dead, and I'm not sorry. Not in the least. There isn't one thing he ever did that I don't regret, not in those whole five years as Ripper."
Something a little bit like pain flickered in Ethan's dark eyes. "Nothing?" he whispered for his old lover's ears alone, holding Giles's green ones with his own. "Nothing? You look me in the eyes, you bastard, and tell me that. It was all a mistake to you, is that it? Well, guess what, Ripper. Those years with you were the best one of my life, because for once, I wasn't alone. You look me in the eyes and tell me that it was all a big fucking mistake. Tell me you regret letting me love you," he whispered into the other man's face.
Giles looked away, the other man's pain too sharp. So vulnerable, those eyes right now, when they didn't hold amusement, malice. All it would take to hurt him, just tell him that everything had been a mistake...he could hear himself, cold and cruel; "Ethan, you were the biggest mistake of all."
But he couldn't bring himself to lie.
He bowed his head, refusing to meet Ethan's eyes. "Just go, Ethan. Get out of here. Please."
"No!" Ethan grabbed Giles's chin and forced him to look at him, to look him in the eyes. "You answer me. Do you really regret everything?"
Giles closed his eyes. "No," he finally whispered. "Not everything."
Ethan let go and without another word, turned and left the room.
After a pause, Buffy said, "Giles. You okay?"
He let out a shuddering sigh and opened his eyes. "I'll live."
"What...was that all about?" Willow asked cautiously.
"Nothing important." He wasn't in the mood for questions, the questions that would certainly come.
A long silence, then Xander said, "My arms hurt."
Another long silence.
"Giles?"
"Yes, Buffy?"
"What did you say about your father?"
A sigh.
"Buffy..."
`Please, Giles." Willow's voice.
Sigh. "When... About a year after I met Ethan...we were at a pub one night.
A man came in, dressed in a full cloak and hood--the ceremonial garb of a Watcher. I knew they were looking for me, so we got up and went out the back door. We thought ourselves safely away, but he managed to follow us. We started running.
"I don't know how long we ran, but eventually...we thought we had lost him. We were stopped t a corner, and we were laughing now, even though we had been scared earlier, but in hindsight it seemed funny.
"Ethan stuck his around the corner and stopped laughing. He said that the man was coming, had somehow managed to keep on us through all of that. I looked too, thought he was joking with me.
"It was a foggy night, and here he came, this giant man, clothed from head to toe in his dark robe, striding through the fog like some avenging ghost come to punish us for all our sins, and we started to feel terror.
"There was nowhere to run anymore, so I pulled out my knife and stood to one side of the building as what we had started to feel was something not of this earth came closer. As it rounded the edge, I stepped out and slammed the blade into his chest.
"He fell. Toppled backwards, a terrible gurgling noise coming from his throat, and as he did so, the hood fell back and the moonlight splashed over the face of my father: wide-eyed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
"I learned later that he had volunteered to come look for me that night...the Council had been planning to send someone else. He came for me...and I...
"I killed him." He finished in an flat voice, at odds with his shaking hands and the tears on his face.
"Oh," said Buffy in a small voice.
Another long silence.
"Any ideas on how we're gonna get out of here?" Willow finally said, mostly
in an effort to change the subject.
No one answered.
Silence.
"My arms hurt," Xander said.
"You already said that," Giles noted absently.
Longest silence yet.
The door swung open again, the figure entering.
"Ethan," Giles said tiredly.
"Shh." He walked over to Willow (having sized her up as the one least likely to beat the crap out of him, no doubt) and pulled something out of a pocket, a something that gleamed; keys. Quickly unlocking her handcuffs, he said, "All right, now get you and your friends out of here, d'you understand?" He put the keys in her hands and walked out of the room without a backwards glance.
"He's helping us?" Xander hissed.
"Musta had an attack of conscience," Buffy said wonderingly.
"Willow," Giles said urgently, gesturing (huh?) to his handcuffs.
"Oh, right," Willow said, hurriedly unlocking his. The minute his hands were free, he ran after Ethan. He caught up with him in the hallway, noticing an pile of dust on the floor--the guard--and grasped his shoulder, spinning him around. Ethan met his eyes calmly.
"...Why?" Giles asked.
Ethan shrugged, a tremulous smile appearing on his face. "I know you think I don't have any conscience whatsoever, but you're wrong. I have nightmares too, filled with the faces of dead friends--deaths I'm responsible for. I guess I didn't want your face to be one of them, Ripper.
"And I think...I guess...maybe I'm still in love with you a tad, hm?" said with a sad smile.
Giles kissed him. Gently, lightly brushing his lips over the other man's. For one moment, they held each other and it was as if nothing had ever changed.
Then Ethan let go, stepped back, and smiled the familiar, cocky smile.
Waved a saucy goodbye as he walked away. Giles watched him disappear through the door at the other end, then turned to see the three teenagers come out of the door to their cage.
"Shall we go home?" he asked.
"Let's shall."
* * *