TITLE: WARLOCK 9/14
AUTHOR: vatwoman
DISCLAIMER: JOSS WHEDON, MUTANT ENEMY AND FOX/UPN OWN EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ‘BUFFY.’ NO INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. THE CHARACTER OF KOVACS IS MINE.
FEEDBACK: YES PLEASE, TO VATWOMAN@Y...

“Giles? Hey, Giles? You in here?”

Xander’s voice echoed around the silent library. The light was on in Giles’s office and, as he found when he went in and touched it, the half-drunk cup of tea on the desk was warm. He frowned, thinking that the G-Man and his library kind of came as a matched pair – didn’t find one without the other.

Then he heard the groan.

He raced back out into the library’s central area, focussed on where he thought he’d heard the sound coming from and launched himself up the stairs and deep into the stacks.

He found him kneeling on the floor, struggling to rise and cursing as he did so.

“Bloody hell! Bloody hell!”

Xander dropped to his knees beside Giles and gently touched him on his back.

“Giles? Are you ok?”

“No! No, I’m not ‘ok’!” Giles raised his head, twisted around and glowered at the younger man. “Do I look to be, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘ok’?” Xander shook his head, figuring that, given how pissed Giles looked, anything he said would be the wrong thing. Giles touched the bloody wound on the top of his head, “Ouch!” He staggered to his feet, grabbing the stack beside him for support. “My bleedin’ ‘ead! Why is it always my bleedin’ ‘ead? Fuck!”

Xander grinned at the ‘Ripper’ accent and then more deeply at the use of the swearword. “Naughty language, Giles, and in front of an impressionable youth. I’m shocked.”

Even bruised and covered in blood the look Giles aimed Xander’s way was enough to make the young man rapidly sober up. “I’m a forty-four year old man, Xander. I drink alcohol, have sex and swear.” He narrowed his eyes. “What is it you would say? Oh, yes: 'get over it'.“ He swallowed heavily and pressed the heel of his hand onto his forehead. “I think … “ He reached out and clutched Xander. “… I think I need to sit down.”

Xander turned into Giles’s arm and caught it across his shoulders then wrapped his other arm around Giles’s waist. “Ok?” Giles nodded and allowed himself to be guided down into the main area. He sat on the end of the long table, groaning as he settled himself. “Giles?” The boy looked frightened and Giles tried to give him a reassuring smile but found that he couldn’t summon up the energy to do so. The black pit of exhaustion dragged at him again and he felt his eyes close. “Hey, G-Man? No! No sleeping on the job!” He felt Xander’s hands on his arms gently shaking him awake. “Stay with me, Giles.”

Giles forced his eyes open again and murmured, “My head hurts.”

“I’ll get the first aid kit. Are there painkillers in it?”

“Hmm?”

Again the slightest of shakes.

“Painkillers, Giles? Are there any in the first aid kit?”

Giles blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head and bring himself back to Xander. He nodded, grimaced as he did so. “Yes … yes … in the kit.”

“Ok. I’m going to get it. Don’t move.”

Xander waited for Giles’s nod, gave him a searching look then dashed off into the office, returning moments later with two arm loads of supplies. Putting everything down on the table he shook out a couple of tablets and handed them over with a bottle of water.

“Here, take these.”

Giles tossed them back and took a deep swallow of water. “Thank you.”

After slipping off Giles’s jacket, Xander surveyed the damage. “Can you open your shirt a bit.” Giles moved to open the top two buttons of his shirt and grimaced when he felt cold water on his skin. “Sorry,” Xander apologised, “Guess I should’ve maybe boiled the kettle again?”

“It’s alright.” Giles demurred.

“Were you unconscious?”

“Don’t think so, just stunned.”

Xander worked steadily cleaning away the blood from Giles’s neck and face, pleased to see that there were no wounds revealed beneath. He moved in closer between Giles’s spread legs so he could see the top of his head. “Just the one cut.” He wiped away the blood surrounding it … and hissed in a breath. “Nasty. It’s not big but it’s deep.” He narrowed his eyes at the wound. “May need a couple of stitches.”

Giles looked up. “No.” He shook his head. “No hospitals. Can you butterfly it?”

“I guess, but stitches would be better.”

“Just tape it.”

“Ok.” Xander agreed but let his disapproval tinge his voice. “What happened? He coming at you again??”

“No,” Giles started to shake his head but found it clasped in Xander’s gentle hands. “Just the after-effects of the spells. His and mine. Tired. Keeled over.” He gripped Xander’s arm as sting of antiseptic shot through his nervous system. “Hit the book trolley on the way down.”

Xander nodded remembering now that he’d seen the overturned trolley lying on its side beside Giles. He applied the tapes to the cut and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

“I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

The library doors banged. Xander whipped around and then quickly back again to face Giles once more. “Kovacs!” he hissed.

“Don’t say a word. Don’t look him in the eye. Understand?” In reply to Giles’s urgent whisper Xander nodded, his eyes wide in alarm. “Step away.”

Xander moved around the side of the table leaving Giles with an unobstructed view of the man who was slowly killing him. He stood up and walked deliberately to one of the chairs, settled into it and propped his feet up on the table.

“No, you’re not interrupting anything. Just a minor mishap which required some running repairs. What can I do for you?”

“I have come to talk.”

“Oh?” Giles dropped his hands into his lap. “About?”

“Jenny Calendar.” Kovacs moved further into the room, stopping barely a dozen feet from Giles.

“What about Jenny?”

“She’s mine.”

“All evidence to the contrary.” Giles kept his voice light but didn’t stop the hint of steel from entering it.

“I will have her.”

“Oh, well then.” Giles laughed. “It’ll be pistols at dawn, I suppose!” Kovacs, reacting to the mocking tones, took an involuntary half-step forward. Giles’s eyes went opaque. “Or perhaps you’d prefer some other weapon?”

“I had thought to just kill you … then I found the magick within you and now that I have? I’ll pull it out of you and then I’ll kill you.”

“I think not.”

“You won’t be able to stop me.” Kovacs’s eyes purpled.

Giles laughed again. “I was the master if this magick when you were still in short trousers wetting yourself with excitement because you’d been given a plastic wand from the local joke shop.” He glanced down at his hands and seeing a speck of blood there, rubbed it away. “If I was a better man, I’d pity you.” And he raised his eyes, cold now. “Of course, I’m not.”

“You’d do better to pity yourself!” Kovacs snarled.

“And why would I do that? I have the girl, remember?” Giles schooled his face into a polite, concerned, frown. “Perhaps I should pity you, after all?” He stood and walked to Kovacs, halting a mere arm’s length away. “I mean, you’re never going to feel the softness of her skin, and the heat of her as she takes you inside her, are you? You’re never going to hear her beg you to fuck her and you’re never going to hear her scream your name as she comes in your arms.” Kovacs took the last step to close the distance between them and Giles, looking down into the indigo eyes, smiled. “Oh, do. Please.”

Kovacs bit down on his control, jaw clenching with the effort. “Very good, Mr. Giles. Very good. But I can wait. You’re weak now.” He glanced up at the wound on Giles’s head. “Damaged. It’s only a matter of time. Your magick to mine. Your power to mine. Jenny. Mine.” He took a step back but kept his eyes locked on Giles’s. “I will spare you no pity.” He spun on his heel and marched out of the library, leaving the doors to rattle closed behind him.

“O… kay.” Xander spoke into the silence. “I had you ahead on points right up until that last. So, we talking draw here, right?”

“No,” Giles spared him a look before once more fixing his gaze on the doors. “I’d say we took that round.”

“And you figure that, how?”

“Because we’re still alive.”

“Oh … “

Giles turned around to face Xander and saw that the young man’s eyes were dark and edgy with fear. “I’m sorry.” He apologised soft-voiced. “I didn’t have time to warn you.”

“That I was going to hear all kinds of Giles/Calendar sex stuff? Scarred, here!” Xander bobbed his head from side to side as he replayed Giles’s words … then grinned. “Ok, kinda turned on too … but scarred! Deeply, deeply, scarred! Gonna be in therapy for the rest of my life! Giles and monkey-sex: so not in my top-ten list of double acts!”

“I was trying to goad him.”

“Yeah,” Xander nodded. “Got that. Question is, why?”

“I had to know if he could do the magicks without the tools – the devices.”

Xander raised an eyebrow.

“And if he’d shot red-hot laser beams from his eyes and crisped you?”

“Then we’d have our answer, wouldn’t we?”

“And you’d be dead!” Xander stood shaking his head at the mad logic of Giles’s argument - then something occurred to him. “ ’Course he could just be in control of himself; you know, ‘Mr Ice Man’?”

Giles let his eyes drift towards the doors and nodded absently. “If that’s so, then that’s something else we’ve learned today.”

Xander’s gaze followed Giles’s.

“Yeah, guess it is.” He blew out a deep breath and his irrepressible humour bubbled to the surface. “And I thought teenage romances were intense!”

Giles found he was grinning in spite of himself and he reached out to briefly clasp Xander’s shoulder. Xander ducked his head, smiling shyly at the unspoken thanks from the older man. The library doors flew open and the two men stepped apart.

“Hey, Giles!”

“Buffy.”

“Watcha … hey!” She rushed over and stopped in front of him, almost toe-to-toe, eyes wide as she took in the blood on his shirt and the damage to his head. “What happened?”

This voice always surprised him – the tone of command –even though it had been instilled in him to accept and obey it. A Slayer to her Watcher. He remembered very early on her mocking their relative positions: ‘A Slayer slays, a Watcher … watches?’ She’d said it with such scorn … and he’d babbled through a rebuttal that didn’t seem to touch her at all. He’d wondered later what she would have said if he’d told her the truth - that he was there to serve her; Rupert Giles, The Watchers Council and all that that had ever entailed. A whole world’s history.

“I had an unfortunate encounter with the book trolley.”

“He threw the book trolley at you?” Two plus two makes six. Buffy’s eyes turned an icy blue and she spun away, intent on confrontation. “I don’t care what you said, I am so gonna kill him!”

“Buffy!” Giles grabbed her arm, dropping it again when she turned back and lashed him with her gaze. “I was dizzy and fell onto it.”

He’d spoken quietly and calmly but also firmly and waited for the tone of his voice to penetrate the haze of anger enveloping her … and allowed himself a smile at the incongruity of the moment; a small, slim young woman standing guard over a man twice her weight, more than twice her age and a whole foot taller than she was. He laughed and, stung, she turned on him.

“It’s not funny! There’s nothing here that could be said to be funny! This is an official ‘not-funny’ zone!”

“What’s not funny?” Willow and Jenny came in, in time to hear Buffy’s comments. “Giles!” Willow gasped, seeing the blood on him.

“Hey!” Xander butted in, deciding that his superhuman efforts to stay out of things had gone unappreciated for quite long enough. “The Watcher’s ok. Well, ok, not ok, but the bleeding’s stopped, the hole’s not that deep and Kovacs didn’t fry him with his laser beam eyes, so … “

“… Kovacs has laser beams in his eyes?” Willow goggled, aghast.

Giles rolled his eyes. “No, Willow, he does not!”

But Xander was on a roll. “Could have had one Watcher extra crispy, right here!”

“Xander!” Giles shouted. “Shut up!”

“Kovacs was here?” Jenny’s voice was low and strained. “He did this to you?”

“That ‘Ripper’ wannabe?” The scornful comment was again Xander’s, mouth running ahead of his brain as the earlier tension finally ran out of him.

“Xander!” Giles and Jenny, together. “Shut up!”

Jenny caught Giles’s face in her hand and tilted his head downwards slightly so she could see the wound. “What happened?”

“I was dizzy, lost my balance, fell and hit the book trolley on the way down. That’s it.“

“And Kovacs? What did he want?”

“To gloat.”

He was daring her to disbelieve him and it was what he wasn’t saying, hadn’t been saying, that crowded her again. She was suffocating under his attempts to protect her, all of them, from the truth … and she was just so tired of it all.

“I can’t do this anymore.” An all but inaudible whisper. She turned, walked past Willow and Buffy and made it back to the doors before he caught her.

“Jenny?” He held her arm, his large hand wrapped itself comfortingly around her elbow.“What ...?”

She could see his incomprehension hovering around the frown lines on his forehead and around the careful smile that lifted one corner of his mouth. She touched him there, feeling the warm flesh silken against her fingertips. She allowed herself to smile at him in her turn.

“I hate this place, the way it just sucks the life right of you.” She reached down and gently removed his hand from her arm, squeezing his fingers before letting go. “I must go, I’ve got things to do.” She looked up at him again and saw the love and concern for her in the soft green eyes. “I must go.”

He stepped back, pushed open one of the doors for her and asked, “Will I see you later?”

Not able to answer him, she walked out of the library and felt her whole heart break into a million pieces.

*************************

When the bones had told her that she’d face trials here she’d wondered, but even in her darkest moments she’d never considered this. Killed outright? Probably. Vamped? Maybe. Giving herself as a sex-toy to a monster? No.

The door to his classroom was right in front of her and he was in there, she could see him through the glass panel in the door, all she had to do was walk through and …

… what? She’d walk through and Rupert would be saved? Except that there was no part of her that actually believed that.

She’d seen what powerful magicks could do to people. The way it corrupted. The arrogance it engendered. She’d seen it as a child in the people she’d called her family. She’d even seen it in Rupert. She’d seen the way he’d changed in the moments when he’d squared off against Ethan Rayne and in those quieter moments in his apartment, the spells falling from his lips. He’d shed the shyness and gentleness that had intrigued and attracted her from the start and had, chameleon-like, put on a different skin. One of granite hardness, harsh amusements, deep power and complete surety of purpose behind everything he did.

And this in the man she loved.

She hated Andreas Kovacs: the careless way he took; the arrogance of his choices; the way he willed people dead; and the complete lack of concern about the consequences of his actions. He didn’t care about anyone or anything and that terrified her more than anything else about him. She’d known for days now what she was going to have to do and the fact that it would almost certainly be an empty gesture had been gnawing at her resolve. Empty gestures were not her style. Her stomach churned and the acid taste of bile was suddenly in her throat and in her mouth.

False hope is a helluva thing – causes empty gestures to maybe not be so empty after all. Giving herself to Kovacs knowing that he’d kill Rupert anyway: the empty gesture. Distracting him for a night, perhaps as long as a day, giving them a chance to find a way to defeat him: the false hope.

It would have to be enough.

She pulled open the door.

*************************

He was writing on the chalkboard when she walked in and he continued to do so, ignoring the sound of her heels echoing on the classroom floor as she came to him.

“Jenny, what a lovely surprise.”

“Andy.”

She stopped on the far side of his desk and waited.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” He turned around and smiled. “How is Rupert?”

“I want you to stop.”

The smile deepened. He looked away long enough to find the cloth on his desk, pick it up and rub the chalk dust off his hands before once more gathering her with his eyes.

“And what would be my incentive?” He didn’t even pretend to misunderstand.

“Me.”

The amused expression drifted away. His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to one side, considering her offer.

“So very tempting.” he mused. He dropped the cloth and came slowly around his desk, stopping at her side. Reaching out and catching her chin in his hand, he tilted her face towards him. His gaze brushed over her eyes, her mouth. He ran his thumb across her lips, then down over her chin and throat to halt at the pulse-point in her neck and bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement of the steadiness of her heart. “There is, however, the matter of Rupert’s magicks ...”

“… me.” She repeated, her tone was calm and no-nonsense: there would be doubts later but not here, not now. “One night - to do with as you wish.”

“Do not try and bargain with me when you are bringing nothing to the bargaining table!” The eyes shaded into violet as he allowed the passions to build. “It is only a matter of time and I will have it all.”

Jenny pulled her head back from his hand and stepped away a few feet. She crossed her arms and stared at the floor for a few moments, breathing deeply. She nodded, “Yes, you’ll have it all but I’ll fight you every step of the way. And you’ll never know if I came because you really brought it out of me … or because I faked it.” She shrugged. “Your choice.”

He laughed. “You could fake it anyway!”

“I could.”

“And I could make you respond to me whether you wanted to or not.”

“With magicks?” Again she shrugged. “I’m guessing you won’t want to do that - would pretty much taint the victory.”

Kovacs leaned on his desk and pushed his hands into his pockets. The slight lift to the corner of his mouth signalled his ‘defeat.’ “The attacks on Rupert will stop. Do you believe me?”

“No.”

“Good, then we understand each other perfectly. You will come to me of your own accord?”

“Yes.”

“To do with as I wish?” She held his gaze, willing the calm to stay with her for just a while longer, and nodded. “I have been looking forward to this very much; the anticipation is everything, don’t you think?” He straightened and came to her side. “Late this evening, perhaps? Shall we say one a.m? No earlier, I have some things I must prepare … and I enjoy the small hours of the morning, it is a time when we all seem to be so very vulnerable.” He stroked down her arm and felt it pimple as the hairs on her skin stood upright. “Don’t disappoint me.” He smiled again and stepped back, letting her go.

As she reached the door he called her name. “Jenny? Perhaps you would be so good as to not come to me smelling of him.” His eyes darkened to indigo. “I find that I do not like the stench.”

His laugh followed her out the door.

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