__Passage__
By Head Rush



It was nearly midnight, and Wesley was deeply into the translation when a knock on the door made the hairs on his neck prickle. It was bucketing down outside, he wasn't expecting anyone, and following Willow's barely-coherent phone call a few hours before, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what was out there. He picked up a short sword and unbolted the door.

A tall, dark figure stood with one arm braced against the wall, and it took Wesley a moment to recognise him. Giles. He was dripping wet. He raised his head, frowned and blinked at Wesley as though he was expecting someone else, and eyed the heavy sword in his hand. His expression was more than watchful, his posture tense. He was pale and unshaven. Thanks to Willow, Wesley had some idea of what had happened that day. Not a lot, but enough to be very careful with this man.

Moving slowly, Wesley put the sword down. "Giles, you're not about to attack me, are you?"

A long stare, until pain washed over his face. "No."

"Glad to hear it." He looked shocked and strained, and God only knew what else. Speaking was obviously an effort.

"May I come in?"

"Yes, of course." Wesley could smell the magic on Giles as he shuffled into the sparse living room. He quickly shut and secured the door. "What happened today? Are you all right?" He had another thought. "Where are the others? And what's happened to Sunnydale? Willow wasn't exactly a fount of information. Is she all right? What about…" Giles turned and delivered a look of such profound weariness and grief that it stopped him dead. He held up a hand. "Sorry. No more questions."

Giles shook his head. "S'all right. Willow's fine. She and the others are at the hospital."

"Are they – "

"They're fine." He tipped his head. "Well, not fine, exactly. Some of them are dead. Others are badly hurt. But… some of them are fine. Willow being one. It seems she has goddess powers now. We're, er, not sure yet." He frowned, apparently not even having made sense to himself.

Wesley blinked. Right. Some of them were fine, some were not, and Giles clearly was among the not-fine. "Why aren't you at the hospital with them?"

Giles shrugged. "I wanted to get the translation from you as soon as possible. We need to know where to go next." His teeth were chattering and he leaned against the sofa, letting it prop him up. "I have to get them somewhere safe. To recover."

He was going to be out the door and flat on his face somewhere down the road if Wesley didn't do something. "*You* need to recover for a bit, first." On impulse he suggested, "You're soaked. Why don't you take a hot shower, and we'll see if we can get any more sense out of you after that." Wesley was relieved to see a slight smile from the man.

"Thank you, but I can't stop."

"Do you really need the translation right now? You're not moving on tonight, are you?"

"No, but…"

"Do the others have a place to stay?"

"Yes, they're going to the…" he had to stop and think. "The Hyperion."

"Does Buffy have a cell phone?"

"Yes."

"Do you know her number?"

Pause. Giles sighed. "Can't remember it."

"Do you have it on you somewhere? Perhaps in your wallet?"

Giles's face relaxed a little. He nodded, and pulled a battered black wallet from his inside pocket. He fished around until he came up with a scrap of paper with a couple of numbers neatly printed on it.

Wesley took it from Giles's shaking fingers before he could snatch it away. "I'll call her while you get on with the shower. If they're all right, I'll let her know you're staying here tonight, and I'll be bringing you over in the morning." When Giles opened his mouth to protest, he went on, "Angel and the others can look after them better than you can at the moment."

The fight went out of Giles. He swayed, and dropped his head in surrender. "All right. Thank you."

"It's the least I can do." Since he hadn't been there to support them when the hellmouth opened. Wesley ushered Giles to the bathroom and showed him where everything was. When Giles stared blankly at the shower controls, Wesley turned it on and adjusted the temperature for him. He really was out of it.

He left Giles to it, but not without reservations – if anyone was likely to slip in the shower and brain themselves in one of those accidents-in-the-home that one heard so much about, it was Giles, right now.

He went back to the translation, listening for the sound of a body hitting the floor, or a lack of movement for too long a time. Finally the water pipes ceased their clanking and groaning, and a few minutes later he heard the bathroom door open.

"I forgot. I, ah… I haven't anything to change into."

Wesley retrieved a pair of sweats and a long sleeve t-shirt from his chest of drawers, and handed them through the door, then went back to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

When he returned to the living room, Giles was laid out on the sofa, asleep. He'd been meaning to offer his guest the bed, but decided that now he was down, he was better not disturbed. He got a blanket from the cupboard and put it over the man he'd never quite been allowed to get to know. Here, like this, he seemed more remote than ever.

Wesley turned off the lights and went to bed.

* * * * *

He was woken by shouting some hours later. He felt foggy enough to have been asleep for some time. He threw the covers off with a groan and went out into the living room. The lights were still off, but Giles was thrashing on the sofa, pulling sharp, deep breaths as he lay on his left side. He was talking, but not making sense, and the aura of mystical energy about him was still quite strong. The blanket was on the floor, as were the cushions. Wesley hovered, trying to decide whether Giles was better left to ride it out rather than be startled awake.

Giles's gasp of pain and grab at his leg was the draw-breaker.

Wesley sat on the coffee table in front of the sofa. He reached out and put his hand on Giles's shoulder. Giles jerked, but didn't wake. Wesley tightened his grip and shook him a bit. "Giles. Wake up."

When Giles swore long and desperately, Wesley shook him harder. "Giles, wake up. You're having a nightmare. Wake up."

Giles continued to swear.

"Wake up," Wesley repeated. "You're safe here." He shook Giles insistently, and tried to pull him over into his back.

"Ow, fucking… Stop it, Wesley, I *am* fucking awake!"

Wesley pulled back a bit, stung. "All right. Sorry."

"Christ!"

"I said I was sorry."

"What?" He blinked up at Wesley, disorientated and confused. "No, not you."

"What, then?" Wesley got up and put the light on, though he suspected, correctly, that Giles wouldn't thank him for it. He turned in time to see Giles blotting at his eyes as though wiping away tears. His eyes did look red and sore. There was blood all over his trouser leg, about halfway down on the right hand side.

Wesley made a sympathetic noise. "What happened here?" Giles touched it gingerly, and inspected the blood that came away on his hand. The detachment with which this was done was worrying, as was the lack of a response. "Did you have this looked at when you were at the hospital?"

Giles did, finally, turn onto his back, and shook his head. "No. I let the others go first. Then it was getting late, and I thought I should come to see you."

Wesley sighed. Giles's stubborn streak hadn't diminished over the last couple of years. "Take those off."

"No, I'll just…"

"Take them off. For one thing, you're bleeding all over my joggers." His joggers had clearly passed the `ruined' stage some time ago, but as he'd guessed, Giles's automatic reaction was to obey, to not be so rude as to bleed on his host's clothes.

Giles stood up just long enough to get the trousers off. He sank back down with a held breath, and together they inspected the damage. Wesley put his glasses on. The entire side of Giles' leg, from knee up to where it was covered by his boxers, was a vast purple-black bruise with a deep gash in the middle. It was bleeding freely.

"You didn't notice this before?" Wesley questioned carefully. How out of it was he?

"Thought it had stopped."

"What did it?" said Wesley, debating whether he should get Giles back down to the hospital, by force, if necessary.

"Bringer's axe. Mostly the flat side, but a bit of the cutting edge too, apparently."

"Apparently so." Wesley went to the cupboard and got Giles a clean towel to press to the wound. When he returned, Giles was scrubbing at his eyes again. Even when he'd stopped rubbing at them, he didn't take his hand away.

"Giles?" Was he crying? Wesley pressed the towel to Giles's leg. He hissed, and Wesley wasn't surprised when Giles took over the job himself. "Is the pain very bad? Are you injured anywhere else?" Perhaps the wound was cursed, or he had other injuries? What had happened out there in Sunnydale?

Giles shook his head.

Wesley doubted that very much, and but the man's eyes remained hidden. Giles's grip on the towel was loosening, and Wesley pressed down firmly on both his hand and the towel, which earnt him a curse. "Keep the pressure on. I'll go and see what I've got in the first aid kit."

He chucked out half the contents of the bathroom cupboard in the process, but did eventually find the first aid kit and a box of bandages. When he returned to the living room, it didn't appear that Giles had moved at all. He sat back down on the coffee table and unpacked the kit. He was poised to start cleaning the cut when Giles opened his eyes.

"I'll do it."

This, Wesley remembered; Giles's need to be in control of whatever he could; to not draw attention to himself; to downplay whatever he thought and felt if other people were suffering. He watched as Giles struggled to steady his shaking hands well enough to apply the antiseptic pads, stopping every few seconds to let the burn subside.

"This is ridiculous. Give it to me," said Wesley. He leaned forward and took the pad from Giles's hand. He was relieved not to encounter resistance this time, and quickly finished the job. The slice was clean, but deep. "You need stitches."

Giles nodded.

"I haven't any anaesthetic. So, I can do it without, or I can take you back to the hospital."

"Fucking hell, I'm not going back there again."

This Giles swore rather more than the one Wesley remembered. "Shall I get on with it, then? Get it over with?"

"Yes, fine."

It had been a while since Wesley had done this, let alone trying to do it on someone who'd had no pain relief, in bad light, when he wasn't at his sharpest. He wasn't sure which of them should be more nervous. Well, no, he was, actually. He laid everything out ready, and when he couldn't put it off any longer he warned Giles to brace himself, and began.

Giles lay on his side throughout, face red, knuckles white, but mostly quiet.

"Good, Giles. Nearly finished. How are you doing?" Giles nodded, and he took it as a sign to go on. They both breathed a deep sigh of relief when he tied off the thread. "Lift your leg a bit. That's it." He put a bandage over the wound and wrapped more gauze round the leg to hold it securely, in case Giles had another nightmare and started thrashing around again.

That done, he washed his hands, then dealt with the rubbish, the stained joggers, and the kit, and put it all away. He returned to the living room. "Can I offer you a cup of tea? Or something stronger?"

Giles opened his eyes and nodded. "Tea. Thank you."

* * * * *

When Wesley returned with the tea and a couple of painkillers, Giles was sitting up properly, his head in his hands.

Wesley put the mugs down. "How's it feeling now?"

Giles nodded, head still in his hands. A prickle of mystical energy lifted the hairs on Wesley's arms and neck.

Wesley was fairly sure Giles was in tears.

"Who have we lost?" he asked quietly.

Giles lifted his head at last, confirming Wesley's suspicions. "We?"

Wesley flushed. "We're on the same side. Aren't we?"

After a moment, Giles nodded.

"You must have used a hell of a lot of magic yesterday."

"Yes," he said flatly.

"Would you like me to leave you in peace to go back to sleep?"

Giles hesitated. "No." He gave a small, apologetic smile, and Wesley nodded.

"What was the nightmare about?"

"Yesterday."

He nodded. "What happened yesterday?"

"Not yet, Wesley. Soon, but not tonight."

"The sooner the better, I think." The more Giles internalised whatever it was, the worse it would be for him. Wesley knew all about that.

"I can't think clearly. Tomorrow."

"Will you be able to sleep before then?"

"I don't know."

"Giles, what happened? You know I won't condemn anything you've done."

Giles suddenly pinned him with a stare. "What makes you think I've done anything?"

Wesley didn't reply. He'd brought Giles to the edge of the cliff, and he'd either jump, or not.

"I killed a child," he said at last. "A potential. Twelve years old."

Bloody hell. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." Giles smiled faintly and without humour, and gathered himself. He spoke with slow reluctance. "Her name was Holly. Bright little thing. Always trying to get into my books, always asking questions, always following me about…" he paused. "I wasn't always very patient with her."

"You had a lot of potentials to deal with," said Wesley.

"Yes, but she was the youngest. I should have made more allowances for it. Wasn't that she wasn't attentive. In fact, I was always tripping over her. She was always offering to do things for me."

"Sounds as though she had a bit of a crush on you."

Giles blinked. "Hadn't thought of that." He smiled, the closest to a smile of genuine warmth Wesley had yet seen from him. "Perhaps. In any case, sometimes when she was mucking about in training, I'd send her away to stop her distracting the others. Usually I'd do a catch-up session with her afterwards, but sometimes I just didn't manage it. So she wasn't as prepared as the rest of them."

Wesley nodded.

"Which is why I told her to stay with me when we went into the high school. And she did. I was drawing some Bringers away from Anya, getting them to chase me down into the basement. What I didn't realise was that Holly bloody well followed me too."

"Into the basement?"

"Yes. It was dark, and there were too many obstacles. Almost immediately, the Bringers got between us. They attacked her first, as the weaker opponent. She gave as good as she got until she stopped to warn me that one of them was coming up behind me. I turned to face it, heard her cry out, and when I turned back she was on the floor with an axe in her chest, blood everywhere."

"What about the Bringers?"

"I yelled for help. Anya and Wood took over the fight and got them away from us while I tried to comfort Holly. But the axe had gone in deep." He shook his head. "It was obvious she wouldn't make it, but the axe in the wound minimised the bleeding. She wasn't going to die immediately, but she was going to die, and she was in bloody agony."

Wesley nodded.

"I waited as long as I could, but I could hear the fighting intensifying upstairs. The other potentials were yelling for me, and I thought I could hear movement elsewhere in the basement."

"Yes."

"I asked her… I said, `What are we going to do about this, Holly?', and she said… she said…" he paused to compose himself. "Go and help the others."

Wesley felt his throat tightening.

"But… the thing is, she didn't really want me to go. Not the way she was holding onto me."

"She was in pain, Giles, of course she was holding onto you." She must have been scared to death, he did not say.

"I think she said it to please me."

"Perhaps that was part of it, but she'd have known she was dying. At that point, you do." When Giles looked at him, he said, "I speak from experience." Giles gave him a look that suddenly made him feel like more of an equal than he'd ever felt before..

Giles sighed heavily. "Bloody hero, that kid."

"Yes, she was. I don't think you taught her badly at all, Giles."

"They were coming. We both could hear them. There were too many. I couldn't have fought them. If I'd stayed with her, I'd have been killed. If I'd left her as she was, God knows how much more they'd have made her suffer, and she'd have had to go through it alone."

"That's right. Did you have time to think?"

"No."

"So what did you do?"

"I held her head, and told her how brave she was, and to close her eyes." He stopped. "I think she was suspicious, but she was in too much pain to speak. I put my hands at the base of her skull, and… do you know, she relaxed then," he said, almost in tones of wonderment. "I suppose it felt good, and she trusted me." His eyes screwed shut, and he rubbed his fingers hard into his eye sockets. "I forced a massive pulse of mystical energy into her brain. She died instantly. And I left her." He shook his head. "Christ."

Wesley nodded, trying to process the scene himself. "I'm so sorry. Sometimes the things we have to do really are… well, there aren't words for it."

"Appalling? Treacherous?" Giles struggled up and off the sofa. He looked as though he was about to start breaking things.

"No, although it certainly can feel that way." Wesley stood up too, just in case. Giles was blind with anger and self-loathing, chest heaving, pacing as best he could, hissing with every step. It wouldn't last long, but it was bloody dangerous while it did. "Sit down, Giles."

"I'm going out. Be back for the translation in a bit."

Wesley easily beat him to the door. "What are you going to do?"

"What I have to."

Oh, surely not. "Go out looking for Bringers, is that it? Are there any left?"

"Bound to be." Giles reached round him for the doorknob.

Wesley pushed him back against the wall. "What are you going to do when you find one?"

Giles's eyes burned into him, fever-bright with rage and adrenaline. "What do you *think* I'm going to do?"

"You're going to slaughter it. And if there are five, or ten, or fifty of the bastards, you'll slaughter them too, in a cathartic battle to avenge this small atrocity and assuage your conscience with vengeance. In your underwear. With a bad leg. And no weapon."

"You can lend me something."

Wesley rolled his eyes. "Hello Buffy, I'm sorry to tell you that Giles is dead. He was off his trolley with pain and guilt, so I furnished him with my best sword and sent him off into the night to hack whatever he found out there to bits. Unfortunately, he didn't come back." Giles tried and failed to throw him off. Wesley gentled his tone. "Tell me, Giles. If you go and get yourself killed now, what will Holly's sacrifice have meant?"

Giles stopped fighting him, but Wesley didn't let go, afraid Giles would fall. He looked down and saw the blood soaking through Giles's bandage. "Get into bed. I need to check that."

Obedient at last, Giles headed for the sofa.

"No, you'll never get to sleep on there. Take my bed."

Giles looked as though he was going to protest, but changed his mind. He limped down the hall and lowered himself onto Wesley's bed, where he lay unmoving, unspeaking, arms crossed over his face while the bandage was removed and the wound examined. It was inflamed and seeping, but the stitches had more or less held. Wesley cleaned it up, applied one of the antiseptic salves Willow had given him, and affixed a new dressing.

Giles was lying quite still now, his breathing much calmer. Wesley supposed exhaustion had finally claimed him.

He turned out the light, debated whether he should take Giles's place on the sofa, and rejected the idea. If anyone needed a watcher just now, it was Giles. Besides, it was nearly dawn. He carefully lay down on top of the duvet, close, but not within easy striking distance.

"Wesley?"

"Yes."

A soft exhalation. "I'm a terrible guest."

Wesley smiled. "Well, perhaps under different circumstances you'd be all right."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be daft. Glad I could help."

"We need your help now," Giles said softly, his words slurring with onrushing sleep at last. "All of you."

"Don't worry. You'll have it."

"Thank you."

"Go to sleep, Giles."

"I'll feel better in the morning, is that it?"

There was the brittleness again. "Well, I doubt it will be this morning, but some morning, yes, you will. You know it; you've been through it before. All of you. And in the meantime, you've got us." This was the best he could do, to give Giles safe passage through this night and this day, and through the coming days. He turned, and saw that beside him, Giles had finally fallen asleep. His expression and posture was relaxed and open for the first time since… well, ever, as far as Wesley could remember. This was a different man to the one he'd known in Sunnydale, and he was a different man to the one Giles had known. Damaged as they all were, this was a chance to start over, to make things right in all sorts of ways. He was looking forward to it.

* * *