Title: Going Back 6/8
Author: Gail Christison
Pairing: B/G
Rating: PG-15 for romantic stuff and mildy scary bits.
Summary: First of all, this is a sequel to a post Tabula Rasa fic I wrote a long while ago called "The Visitor,"
http://www.wickedsky.com/oncemore/omwf/fanfic_visitor.html in which Buffy goes to England to reconnect with Giles and to tell him something. They do indeed 'connect' and their relationship evolves into a ..well a relationship <g>. This sequel was written purely to explore the dynamics of that new relationship but it turned into an exploration of Giles' past, and an introduction to it for Buffy, as well as a mystery [not sure how that sneaked in there <g>] that needs to be solved.
Disclaimer: Mutant Enemy, Joss..yadda yadda
Distribution: If you want it, please just ask.I like to share <g> Anyone who already has permission...go for it :-)
Feedback: After the length of the birth of this thing? Oh, Ghhhod yesss :-) chriscln@iinet.net.au
Author's notes: Following on from the summary, I should explain that this story was started in 2002. Three pages sat for 12 months before being resumed in 2003 and a healthy chunk written, Emily and Gregor arriving with it :-). Annnnd yet I managed to get stuck again...I've still only just finished it. It was one of those kind of fics. More hiccups than a Saturday night drunk <vbg>
Thanks: At this point I have to thank some people. I'm pretty sure that Ruth and Karen checked out the Scottish accents for me a long time ago, and Gileswench has been great at keeping me going on this thing as well as providing early beta-ing and feedback on parts of it. I also have to thank Karesia for the final beta at short notice and amidst great adversity. It was profoundly appreciated. :-) With over 2 years to cover I'm sure I've forgotten someone who helped or who got shanhai-ed to provide a spot-beta along the way. Whoever you are, I love you...please don't shoot me :D
Dedication #1 Happy birthday, Kim and thanks, my friend
Dedication #2 For Dawn M. B/Gers like you keep me writing. :-)
Gregor was crossing the open ground with an arm load of split kindling and the day's firewood.
When they reached him, Giles was blowing hard and Buffy was flushed and a little windblown.
"How did you get up here so quickly...where did the wood come from? Where...where were you?" Giles puffed.
Gregor looked at his load, and then from one to the other as though they were children.
"Fetching firewood from the coal cellar. Are ye no' a wee bit old to be playing running games?" he teased.
"But...ten minutes ago we were talking to you down by the..."
"We were down at the wishing stool," Giles cut across Buffy smoothly.
Gregor grinned. "Aye, and up to no good, I'll wager, the pair o' ye."
They both watched the old, proud back as he made his way slowly across the yard to the kitchen.
"Okay, where's the Twilight Zone music?" Buffy growled. "This is weird, even for us."
"The coal cellar," was Giles' only reply.
Buffy followed him to the hatch door but almost collided with his back when he stopped suddenly just inside the feed room entrance. When she straightened, Catriona was there again.
"Dinna fash, Rupert. He keeps me company every day for a wee while, and then I send him back with the firewood. He won't remember until the morrow, when we meet again.
"'Iona, how is it you can't leave? You surely earned the right to rest...to peace?" Giles asked her grimly.
"I had a choice," she said quietly. "Go when it was my time, with all blessings, or stay to help Thomas...and be condemned to remain here for eternity. Eternity is such a long time, Rupert. Don't begrudge me the small respite, the small dispensation given me to save my father. He loves our time together, and it allows me to do what must be done to keep him from his fate in the coal cellar. He wants to stay for his Emily. They need each other more than they need to live. He knows that if he leaves, she will slip away before her time, for the want of him."
"I-is Gregor a...y'know...too, like you?" Buffy asked suddenly.
Catriona laughed, a pure, clear sound of real merriment, and shook her head. "'Tis true that if my Da were taken he'd surely stay for my mother, just as I did," her eyes flicked to Giles, "for your father. But Gregor McKenzie is so alive, of *such* true stock that he'd surely live to a great age, if not for the coal cellar."
"You get the wood for him," Buffy said suddenly. "But..."
Giles' eyes widened as he put it together. "Catriona...the body in the cellar...the missing rungs, the blown light?"
She nodded. "If I were not here fetchin' the wood for him, so that he doesna fall, Da would have joined me long ago. His old bones would snap like twigs in such a fall. I am sorry about Gilbert Crouch, but he died swiftly. His puir heart failed him on the steps, in the dark. If it's any consolation, he loved my parents very much, and before he...before he went on, he gave his blessing."
"His blessing? You mean he said it was okay to leave him down there like that maybe for years and years?" Buffy squeaked.
"For the sake of my parents...his dear friends...he did. He had no wish be discovered at the cost of another life."
"Then," Giles cleared his throat, "now that we have discovered him and he can be removed and everything put right so that your father won't be in danger of an accident any more, there's no reason to keep his remains from his family any longer?"
Catriona nodded. "He will be pleased for their sakes."
"Um...problem," Buffy interrupted. "What are we going to do about Gregor? He thinks he's been going down to the cellar for wood for years, not to mention telling Emily that he was...going, I mean."
The dark haired slayer smiled serenely. "Leave it to me. From this point onwards, they'll both think the door's been seized until Rupert forced it open, and that Da hasn't been down there since before everyone thought he'd taken a turn."
"Why did no one look here for Gilbert when it was realized that he was missing?" Giles asked quietly.
"They would have asked my mother. But there was no reason to think he was still here. There was no way to know his heart would fail. He used to come and go at will, but he always knocked at the kitchen door first and asked if my mother wanted anything. That day, of all days, she was at the hospital sitting wi' her man whilst he fussed about being stuck in hospital and being endlessly poked and prodded."
"The specialist appointment," Buffy said suddenly .
Catriona nodded. "He took ill...and they thought it was his heart."
"So they rushed Gregor off to hospital and Gilbert took over all the outside chores?" Giles guessed.
Catriona nodded. "Only, he told me it wasn't his heart. It was pneumonia coming on. It was lucky he was such a tough one and that the antibiotics were aye powerful enough to pull him through. But it meant no one was here when Gilbert fell. It grieved Gil most that he let the door fall closed, because he knew no one would know he'd been down there or that the steps were broken, and that bless'd feed room is so shadowed, even at the best of times. No one opening the door would have seen anything but darkness."
Buffy swallowed. "So you promised to protect Gregor from falling, for as long as it took, and Gilbert said it was okay...to leave him there?"
Catriona smiled at her. "Aye, and it's been fine 'til now and all." Then her face fell. "But I don't know what I'm going to do if I canna talk to Da anymore."
"Couldn't you talk to your parents anyway?"
The young Scot shrugged. "If it were allowed, I'd have warned Da long ago, and I would have been talking to my mother too, this long while. I have tried many times, but she canna see or hear me. It's more than odd that you both can see me now. Unless of course either of you has died..." she added doubtfully.
Giles and Buffy looked at each other.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Well I know I died...drowning, swan-diving...take your pick. When did you...?"
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I...um...after that Post creature tried to bash my brains out...on the way to the hospital. The poor paramedics had their hands full. I believe they revived me two or three times."
She stared back at him, white as a sheet. There had been no hint of the extent of that particular drama, even after the glove had been recovered and Mrs. Post dealt with. Giles had returned to school, battered, bruised, but not letting on that anything was worse than any of the other times he'd been bashed on the head and knocked unconscious. As much as she wanted to pursue the revelation, she made herself focus on her fellow Slayer's fate.
"You should be allowed to go if you want to. You earned it."
The vivid blue eyes grew sad. "A bargain is a bargain. I cannot regret the time I was given both with Thomas and with Da."
"Research," Buffy muttered, then looked at Giles. "We have to research. We've got to find something...a-a loophole or something."
"What exactly is it that still holds you here, Catriona?" Giles asked quietly, dampening his Slayer's enthusiasm deliberately.
"A promise. It was my time, but I wanted to stay for Thomas. H-he said if I stayed, I would never be allowed to leave...but it was my choice."
Giles frowned. "My father said that?"
Catriona looked up at him bleakly. "No...no, not Thomas. The light. The light told me."
"The light?" Buffy asked dubiously. "You mean, like an angel or something?"
The other girl looked doubtful. "I think I would have known...if it was an Emissary of the Lord..." She shook her head. "It was an intense white point of light. When I hesitated...when I didn't move on...it came to me, while I was watching Thomas struggling to write in his diary. It told me that it knew I wanted to stay...that if that was what I chose, I could...but only if I accepted that I would never be able to leave here." Catriona's face grew hauntingly sad. "Thomas was in such pain...so alone. I couldn't go. At the time it seemed such a simple bargain, but Thomas had lost heart, no matter how much he tried to hide it from me...and when his time came it was to his Alice that he went, no thought of remaining here...not even a moment's pause..."
Giles' eyes narrowed. "You made him forget you, didn't you?"
She looked away. "He waited so long to be with her again..." she whispered.
"So...researching interfering points of light..." Buffy added hopefully and looked up at Giles. "Your dad must have had at least as many books as you've got. Plus council contacts, right? So..."
The tall Watcher and the slender spirit turned to her.
"Research what?" Catriona asked curiously.
Giles rubbed his index finger on the divot between his brows. "Um...I could venture a guess. I think perhaps Buffy suspects your benefactor of having ulterior motives for trapping you here."
"But what possible purpose would be served by keeping me here? As I am, I have nothing to offer except my company, and none have sought me out, nor have any whom I've sought out, other than my father, been able to see or hear me, until now."
"Gregor? Right. Wait...he wasn't part of the original deal, so how...?"
Catriona turned again to the fair haired Slayer. "'Tis true. Until Gilbert fell, I'd been completely alone...at least after Thomas went. Gilbert was the first soul I'd talked to since my Watcher's passing. Then, just a few weeks later, Da was going to the cellar for firewood after a storm; the first time since his release from hospital. He'd never been able to see me but I still foolishly ran out and tried to stop him anyway. I was so certain I would fail..." she whispered.
"I just wanted him to be somewhere safe...wanted him to see me...and then suddenly there we were...sitting on the wishing stool...and he could see and hear me. He was beside himself at first. He wanted to tell mother, until I told him that she wouldn't be able to see or hear me. We both knew he couldn't risk being taken away from her. They would have thought...even she might have thought...that his mind was going, but I knew he'd have to try anyway so..."
"So you modified his memory each day so he wouldn't have that burden, and allowed him to believe he was the one fetching the firewood. Is that why neither he nor, apparently, your mother, appear to know that Gilbert is missing? You did that too?"
"I'm not sure how, but I did what was necessary," Catriona confirmed.
"But you could have told him about Gilbert, instead...warned him not to go down to the cellar..." Giles pointed out quietly.
"And if I had...?" she asked hauntedly. "It would have meant he'd have to remember me...to remember my words, and he might have tried to convince my mother. He might have gotten himself taken away... might have jeopardised their entire future. I didn't know what would happen...I only knew I couldn't go back to being alone again...I couldn't."
"And now?" Buffy asked softly. "What do you think will happen if the authorities take Gilbert away and the steps are fixed?"
Catriona's eyes filled with unshed tears. "Then you'll leave. And there will be no reason for me to see Da each day...I'll be alone again."
Giles and Buffy looked at each other.
"Research," Buffy repeated. "Mean ass, burning white lights."
Giles looked at Catriona again. "Can you come up to the house with us? To the Study?"
She nodded forlornly.
It took over three hours to find any reference to any kind of manifestation that could or had represented itself as an intense point of light.
"Ballieri's Curse?" Buffy muttered, dumping the huge, dusty, leather-bound text on the table. "The picture's in American," she said whimsically, "but the rest is in Latin. Time to do your thing, Giles. And by the way, this collection is way older and way weirder than yours. Some of these books are disturbingly 'Harry Potter'. I kept waiting for one of them to try to bite me when I pulled it out."
He rolled his eyes, but didn't move his gaze from the text under the black and white representation of a glowing point of light.
"Giovanni Ballieri was the first to document the phenomenon...a sentient concentration of pure energy, likely mistaken in the past for Judeo-Christian religious icons...Angels, divine messengers, archangels, and the like..."
It was Buffy's turn to roll her eyes. "And it was in fact...?"
"An entity trapped here...in this dimension...trapped for so long that it shed its corporeal form millennia ago. It can't get back to its own dimension. Ballieri's wife died, leaving him bereft. But then she started coming to him, spending time with him, until finally she told him much the same story that Catriona has told us, including the memory loss, so Ballieri left himself notes. Through Juliana, his wife, he was able to learn more about the entity...and to find a way to send her to her rest..."
Catriona's eyes went very wide as they all looked at each other. "How?" she whispered.
Giles continued to translate the Latin text. "He became convinced that the only reason his wife couldn't leave was because...she believed she couldn't."
Buffy snorted. "The entity said so, so she made it true?"
They both looked up at the small noise Catriona made. She was looking horrified. "All this time...and I only had to...?"
Giles scanned the last few paragraphs and nodded again "I-I'm afraid so, 'Iona. If Ballieri is correct, you are free to go. And I'm afraid you aren't the only one. It would seem that the entity is amusing itself to relieve its boredom while it waits to find a way home again...convincing souls like yourself that they cannot leave and then watching to see how long it takes them to realize...regardless of their suffering or despair."
"Sounds like more than a little bit of spite as well," Buffy offered. "All those people moving on...souls leaving this dimension going on all around it....and him...it...always left behind. Sounds a lot like petty revenge to me..."
"'If I can't go, nobody can...'" Giles mused.