Title: Don't feed the plants. 6/9
Author: Pythia
Disclaimer: I don't own any of them - Buffy and the gang belong to Joss, and
Audrey-II was originally cultivated by Roger Corman before being set to
music by Howard Ashman.
Willow was out from under the bench in a flash, only to find herself standing by with helpless anxiety as Buffy moved to join Xander in staring up at the dangling Watcher. The shift in the support beams had twisted the racking from which Giles was suspended and moved him a little closer to the floor, but not by much - and while the curve of the overhead mechanism had sheltered him from the worst of the glass storm, he was bleeding in what seemed to be a thousand places. In the silence which had replaced the rustle of the plant thing's death throes, it was far too easy to hear the soft splat of dripping blood as it hit the floor.
"Just - give us a minute, will ya Giles?" Buffy's request was strained, her voice quivering with emotion. Willow knew exactly how she was feeling; her own eyes were prickling with sympathetic tears, and there was a tight lump in her throat. He looked so - *helpess*, dangling there.
And there didn't seem to be anyway to get him down .
"Oh," Giles murmered faintly, the effort in his voice marring the bite that lay behind his words, "do take two. Or three. As many as you bloody like. I don't think I'm going anywhere..."
"Stepladder?" Xander suggested, looking round a little desperately - as if he half expected one to magically appear. Willow hadn't seen one, but she found herself looking anyway, just in case.
"Slayer," Buffy corrected with tight determination. She beckoned Angel over with an imperious hand and he slunk across the glass-strewn floor to join them, clearing fighting his reaction to the siren scent of blood. "I cut, you catch," she ordered, tugging the vampire into place. Angel looked up at bloodstained feet and swallowed convulsively.
"Make it quick," he requested, his voice hoarse and his eyes flickering with hints of gold and red. Willow mentally echoed the sentiment, although not for Angel's sake. She was sure he could keep control of himself for long enough - but every moment they delayed meant another moment of torment for the suspended Watcher. She was surprised he hadn't passed out from the pain.
Or the blood loss.
Or both .
Buffy merely grunted an acknowledgement of the request, her eyes and her mind on the problem at hand. Willow followed her gaze as it backtracked the tangled ropes that held the racking in place. It looked as if the complex mechanism was well and truly jammed; cogs and wheels had been twisted away from their ratchets and some of the wooden fitments were smouldering, inevitable casualties of the exploding arc lamps.
"There," Willow suggested, spotting a point of potential weakness in among the mess of rope and vines and buckled metal. Buffy nodded and then turned and leaped onto the nearest bench.
It took several determined hacks with the axe before the knots began to unravel, but once they did, everything unravelled - tensioned ropes snapped, the torn ends whipped through damaged pulleys, metal creaked, wood cracked, and one end of the rack from which the Watcher was suspended dropped with a heart-pounding jerk.
Giles didn't scream - although Willow felt he had every right to. He caught back a somewhat gargled gasp as the support gave way and his own weight dragged him down the now-angled poles; barely a moment later he dropped off the end and straight into Angel's waiting arms.
It wasn't an elegant catch, but it didn't need to be; it was good enough to prevent a threatened tumble to the glass-strewn floor, and gentle enough to avoid any further damage - although the Watcher did briefly pass out, which was probably just as well given the way he was being manhandled.
Angel went on trying to be gentle as he hefted the wounded man over his shoulder and carried him into the outer laboratory. Buffy leapt off the benches and raced ahead of them, grabbing hold of vines to drag them off the workbenches so she could clear a suitable space for the vampire to lay his burden down. Giles came round with a heartfelt groan, and Xander hastily shrugged out of his sweater and used it to blanket bleeding shoulders before they were carefully lowered onto the bench; Willow busied herself with a hasty search for supplies.
Once free of Giles' weight, Angel shrugged out of his now bloodstained coat and draped it over the man's shivering body. His fight with his inner demon was getting desperate and the longing that burned in his eyes was frightening in its intensity.
"You'd better ." he said, waving at the worst of the wounds and hastily stepping away to regain some of his self-control. Buffy nodded, stepping in between the two of them, deliberately shielding one from the other.
"God, Giles," she said, tugging a knife from her belt and using it to gingerly cut at and peel away the bloodsoaked twine that still encircled her Watcher's wrists. "Don't ever scare me like that again, you hear? I thought . well, I *thought* you were going to be plant food for sure. And then . *Will*," she protested, glaring at the young woman in question as she reached to begin gently wrapping each of the man's damaged wrists with a padding of cotton wool and strips of cotton sheeting. There'd been plenty of both left in the laboratory supply cupboard, just as she'd expected. Nobody ever bothered to scavenge things like that.
"What?" she queried, smiling up at her best friend with the most innocent smile she could muster.
"What were you *thinking*? Were you trying to kill us both with that whole 'sky is falling' thing? I mean - yay for doing the slice and dice on the vegetable, but I would have got it. Eventually. We were trying to *rescue* him, not serve him up as sushi!"
"And thank you for *that* particular image," Giles murmured faintly, bringing the brief tug of a smile to everyone's expression. He didn't see that, since his eyes were shut, but the soft squeeze that Willow gave his hand conveyed the thought just as well. He squeezed back - painfully and with very little pressure, but enough to let her know he was on her side.
"It was *his* idea," she defended, a little wounded that Buffy might think she hadn't considered the risks involved. She had - but really she'd had no choice. Buffy hadn't been getting any closer to the plant thing and it had been amusing itself playing with her while Giles was busy bleeding to death in front of them. And besides, if Buffy *had* got close enough to be threatening, there would have been nothing stopping the thing from simply swallowing up its victim in a couple of bites.
Which was totally *not* an image she wanted in her head, and would be much easier to get out again if he wasn't lying there, peppered with glass shards and oozing blood from all those nasty scratches across his stomach and chest.
And back and legs.
"We should get him to a hospital," she realised with anxious concern. "I think some of these need stitches."
"Some as in *most*," Xander assessed, half under his breath. "I'll go call 911."
Things got a little chaotic after that. Xander raced off to make the call and came back with Bob the deputy janitor in tow. He'd heard the crash of the greenhouse roof collapsing - and he took one look at the wounded librarian and jumped to any number of sensible and totally erroneous conclusions. By the time the paramedics and the police arrived - one to ferry the by now semi-conscious Watcher to the hospital and the other to drag off the babbling and clearly insane Simon Kellman -- Buffy and Angel had slipped back into the ruins of the greenhouse and made absolutely certain there was nothing left of the plant creature but a whole load of glass slivers and mulch. Bob had learned of Frank's fate at Kellman's hands, the police had taken note of how the young man had tried to cover his tracks by attacking the school librarian when he'd discovered the murder, they'd *all* been congratulated over their lucky escape when the greenhouse roof had collapsed, and Willow was feeling totally wrung out, for all sorts of reasons.
Nevertheless, it was *she* who'd insisted in climbing into the ambulance with Giles and going with him to the hospital. Xander volunteered to get the weapons back to the library and make sure everything was locked safely away and Buffy and Angel left on patrol. Reluctantly, since Buffy was still extremely worried about her Watcher, but Giles insisted she should attend to her duty and go - and Willow promised she'd keep an eye on him and make sure he got the best of care.