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summer_of_giles2014-07-14 12:41 pm
The Coldest Winter We Ever Spent, Part IV: Dog Days (4 of 7)
Title: The Coldest Winter We Ever Spent... (Part IV: Dog Days)
Author: 
protoneoromanic
Pairing: Buffy/Giles, Buffy/Angel, Giles/Angel, others hinted at
Rating: Explicit/ NC-17
Word Count Part IV: 3105
Trigger Warnings: RAPE, torture, underage sex, intergenerational sex, miscarriages, hostile sexual activity, extremely graphic violence
A/N: Ratings, and Warnings apply to the work as a whole, and are added as soon as I know they're coming.
Beta: gilescandy (Although there is only so much even she can do for a stubborn old thing like me!)
Legal Notice: This non-commercial artistic activity meets Fair Use requirements
A/N: "You think you know, who you are, what's to come. You haven't even begun." BtVS 4.22 'Restless'
Giles slammed Buffy mercilessly against the coffee table. Glass shattered and she fell, hard but not far. The unforgiving tile floor pounded the shards of wood and glass into her naked back. His hands were around her throat now, squeezing the life from her.
He was stronger than any vampire she had ever faced. The weight of his body, now also suddenly naked, pressed down on top of her. His penis, bulging and pressed tight against her exposed belly, was hot to the touch. Willow sat on the sofa, eating her apple, looking on with a mixture of cheerful indifference and casual interest, as if she were watching a movie. As Giles continued to strangle her to death, Buffy felt rough strong hands that were somehow also his forcing her thighs apart.
Anne's eyes flew open in the semi-darkness. Her heart hammered in her chest. The shadows on her ceiling, so familiar at every hour of the day and night, told her that she had slept only three hours. That was enough for one night she told herself. She was not about to risk having any more dreams today. She rolled over and groaned miserably, disgusted and disheartened by the prospect of spending yet another morning lying awake in bed, trying to summon to will to force herself to do anything marginally worthwhile.
In a fit of sudden decisive action, Anne leapt to her feet. Immediately, she regretted it. Feeling dizzy and nauseous, she held on to the bed while it swayed along with the rest of the universe. By sheer force of will, she both managed not to vomit and resisted the urge to lie back down. She should know better by now than to stand up that fast.
The baby grave dream often left her with a sort of phantom morning sickness, so she assumed that was the one she had had, though she didn't clearly remember anything other than the sensation of being chocked by two strong hands. She just needed something to eat, Anne decided. She just had to remember that it was all in her head. Once again, as she dressed for another early morning raid on the local Doughnut King, Anne Winters drilled herself on the one important fact about her life that she was absolutely sure of. 'Whatever else is wrong, at least I know I'm not pregnant.'
It was Buffy who had gotten pregnant, not Anne. Buffy had lost her baby. And Buffy was dead. She had come to the mouth of hell, as was her destiny and died there the way any good Slayer would have, saving the world in the process. Her only mistake had been hanging around afterward. The very existence of Kendra should have given her the clue that Buffy wasn't needed anymore. By anyone.
The new Slayer, the real Slayer would come to the Hellmouth, or wherever else, when she was really needed, just as Kendra had. And she would surly fair a lot better without some has-been, fuck-up Slayer getting in her way and causing more apocalypses for herself than she could handle. Giles would go on with his work, one way or another. Someday, Buffy would be just another past Slayer to not tell his new Slayer about, a learning experience in what not to do as a Watcher. Her mom would miss her and probably so would her dad, but they would also be relieved not to have to worry any more about the late night phone calls telling them she was in the hospital or in jail. Willow and Xander would certainly be better off without her, safer. Even in Sunnydale, their lives hadn't needed that much saving before she had started getting them mixed up with monsters and stuff. Now, they knew enough to stay away from danger. They would be alright.
As for Anne, she had the Doughnut King, and after that, another breakfast shift at Helen's Kitchen. They weren't great reasons to get up, but they were reasons. Especially her job. Work equals money, which equals rent, food and all the things you need to stay alive, keep off the streets at night, get up in the morning and go back to work. That was what most people called living. If it was good enough for most people, it should be more than good enough for Anne Winters.
~~~~~
Rupert Giles parked his faithful old car on a gloomy side street in one of the poorer quarters of Los Angeles and tried to screw his courage to the sticking place, as the expression went. For the seventh time in half as many weeks, he was following a tip, a sighting, a speculation as to the whereabouts of Buffy Summers. He took a tiny, folded scrap of paper from his breast pocket. Carefully unfolding it for the millionth time, for the billionth time, he read: Helen's Kitchen. 1900 Freemont St. Waitress. Anne Winters. Matches the description of Buffy Summers.
The potential pseudonym struck him as terribly like her, terribly honest, terribly innocent. Terribly sad. Anne was Buffy's middle name. And she had so lost herself, that she felt she was the child of summer no more. She belonged to the winter, now. The emptiness that follows the expense of passion, when your joys and sorrows have frozen in your heart and the idea of life as an ongoing enterprise becomes distant, theoretical, belonging to the past and perhaps, though less certainly, the future. On the cold north wind of the mind, his heavy heart was blown like an old ship, tempest tossed, across the great deep, to England, to London, to the many long winters he had spent in one summer there.
Giles laughed mirthlessly at his little flight of fancy. Of course it made sense to him. It made the sense he desperately needed it to make. Just as all the others had. He warned himself not to get his hopes up more than was actually necessary to get himself out of the car and do what he needed to do. But if he failed again... if again Buffy was nowhere to be found... it was getting to the point at which truly desperate things must be attempted to avoid dire consequences. Things as desperate as encouraging Willow, an innocent, vulnerable young girl who all but worshiped him, to plunge deeply, rapidly into the study and practice of the dark arts.
Willow had seemed, if anything, too excited by the prospect of having him 'teach her to do magic' when he had touched casually on the subject two weeks ago, but then another promising lead had popped up, and another. And he had been as relieved as she was frustrated each time to find that he 'didn't have time to begin her lessons just yet'. Now each failure filled him with regret that he must soon make good on that promise, and most likely not at a pace or to a degree that she could safely and easily handle.
It would be a dreadful thing to do to her, to use his knowledge to steer and manipulate her power for his own ends, just as he had done to Ethan all those years ago in London, when winter had still been summer there. He knew, deep in his soul, that for her to learn magic so soon, so fast and from so selfish and foolish a teacher would lead her to a bad end. He could not let that happen, could not be responsible for that. And yet, he must find Buffy.
~~~~~
Two blocks from Helen's, Anne stopped dead in her tracks without knowing why. Scanning the street ahead, she soon found her reason. Parked by the curb, just past the diner, was a gray Citron. She turned on her heals and beat a hasty retreat to her apartment, though she had to tug very hard on certain parts of herself to drag them along. In the alley beside her building, she stopped and vomited next to the dumpster.
By the time she had dragged every last longing bit of herself up the stairs and summoned the courage to call Pete, it was fifteen minutes past the start of her shift. She could only imagine what Giles must be telling Pete about her right now. That she was a runaway and ought to be sent home to her mother, probably. Certainly not that she was a supernatural warrior, or a murder suspect, or his ex... whatever she had been to him. Whatever was being said, she had to at least call in before she got fired, before she lost her place in the world completely and had to start over. Again.
The phone rang six times before it was picked up by Eddie, the dishwasher. “What?” he asked, not impatient, just raised without any manners of any kind. That was Eddie.
“I'm uh, sick? I guess?” said Anne nervously, “So, I'm not coming in, okay?” Maybe it wasn't Giles. There could be other gray Citrons in the world. There had to be.
“Anne?” Eddie asked, seeming genuinely uncertain.
“Yeah, it's me,” she said, getting just a little bit impatient herself.
“You know there's this like old, weird, British detective guy in here looking for you?”
“For me?” she squeaked, not sure if she was disbelieving or faking disbelief, “Are you sure? What did he say exactly?”
“He said, 'Erm, um, yes, well, excuse me, hello, erm Pete, is it? Begging your pardon, but I was wondering if there is a young lady working here by the name of Anne Winters.”
“Damn it,” Anne cursed quietly. Eddie's British accent left something to be desired, but there was no doubt in her mind that he had just encountered Rupert Giles. “What did Pete say,” she whispered, hoping that it would give Eddie the clue to keep his voice down as well. It didn't.
“I don't know,” Eddie replied loudly and cheerfully, “I came in here to answer the phone.”
“Listen,” Anne whispered, still willing him to lower his voice but not feeling like the hassle of trying to explain the need to him, “I need a big, big favor. Could you please call Pete in here and put him on the phone right now, but whatever you do, don't let Gi—the British guy know what it's about.”
“No prob,” Eddie assured her, then he called out, “Hey, Pete, Anne's on the phone for you! I don't know what it's about!”
Anne cursed a little more loudly this time. “What?” said Eddie. She almost hung up and made a run for it. But she had just bought groceries and paid August's rent. Besides it was Tuesday, three days to payday. She had left the Doughnut King without enough change in her pockets to interest a coke machine. She had even less of a where to go or how to get there now than when she had left Sunnydale two months ago. She'd just have to... think of something.
To her immense relief (and tiny disappointment) it was Pete, not Giles, who took the phone from Eddie. “Anne, where the hell are you?” he demanded. “Your shift started almost half an hour ago! I'm cooking and serving all by myself. And now there's some kind of candy-ass private dick in here looking for you.”
Under any other circumstances, Bu—Anne might have been amused by this description of Giles. But right now she was too focused on the danger of discovery. “Please tell me you haven't told him anything,” she begged.
“I told him your shift started half an hour ago and I don't know where the hell you're at,” he replied crossly. “Where the hell are you at anyway?”
“I'm... at a friend's,” she lied. If she had had a friend's to go to, she would have gone there right at that moment. Her address was on her application in Helen's desk drawer and she did not at all trust Pete to be able to keep it from Giles. He could be... persuasive. “I'm sick,” she added, almost truthfully. “I was just calling in when Eddie told me... what was going on.”
“What is going on?” Pete demanded, “You're not some kind of fugitive, are you?”
“No!” She lied defensively, “of course not. He's just my ex-Wh—whatever, okay?”
“Really?” Pete asked, sounding doubtful, and in a weird way, sort of disappointed in her, “That guy?”
“Yeah, Pete, listen,” Anne redirected him, “never mind about that. I need him to go away. I need you to help me make him go away. He cannot know that I work there or where I live or he will not go away until he finds me.”
“I already told him you work here,” Pete told her unapologetically.
“Okay, I can work with that,” Anne tried to assure both Pete and herself. “Just—did he have my picture or anything?”
“Not that I saw,” Pete answered.
“Did he ask you how long I've been working there?” Anne asked, planning as she went along.
“No,” Pete answered.
“Okay,” Anne instructed him, “Here's what you do. Tell him I'm like thirty years old or something and I've been working there for ten or twelve years. He'll start wondering if he's got the wrong Anne Winters. He'll probably show you a picture. Just tell him it's not me. Okay?”
Pete grunted noncommittally. “I'm taking a lot on faith here,” he complained.
“Please, Pete,” Anne whined, “I'm seriously and actually begging.”
“Alright,” Pete agreed, grinning, “but you owe me, and I mean big. Big Favors. More than one.”
“Thankyouthankyouthanyou!” Anne enthused, obviously very relieved, “Thank you so much! You won't regret it.”
“You're damn right I won't,” Pete agreed, trotting out the smarmy, suggestive tone he mostly saved for special occasions now that he knew Anne knew he wasn't actually going to make a move and therefore wasn't bothered enough by it for him to have any 'fun' teasing her that way anymore. “And you're working a double shift tomorrow,” he added, a sudden, and much more authentic idea of how she could start paying him back.
“I live to serve,” Anne agreed, “Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Pete said, “I've gotta go before this turnip of yours starts talking to the customers.” With that, he hung up.
~~~~~
Pete walked back out into the dining room. “Was it her?” the Englishman asked breathlessly, frantically, “Is she coming in?” Pete didn't know what had made him think this guy was a detective. The desperate gleam in his eyes definitely said crazy-stalker-ex.
“No,” Pete said, trying to sound like he regretted giving him bad news even a little bit just to be polite. “She had to take her sick kid to the ER. Your best bet is to try to catcher her on Thursday,” he advised, knowing full well that Thursday was Anne's day off.
The Englishman looked suddenly pale, “Bu—Anne had her baby? Already?”
“What baby?” Pete asked, “Her kid's like six years old.”
The look of alarm on the older man's face gave way to a sort of wry disappointment. “How old is Anne Winters?” he asked.
Pete tried to look annoyed. “Twenty-five? Thirty? How do I know?” he blustered.
The Englishman's look of grave self-pity deepened more than should have been possible given its hang-dog starting point. “Erm, just to be sure...” he said in a sort of apologetically hopeful way, pulling a folded newspaper out of his giant man-purse. It made Pete sick to think that Anne was willing to get it on with this guy but not with him. And apparently she was knocked up too, or at least Mr. Fussypants sure thought so.
Pete pulled the paper from his hand, not having to feign annoyance anymore. It was a four page rag from some piss-ant town called Sunnydale. It was folded back to isolate for viewing a good sized black and white photo of a slightly younger but instantly recognizable Anne Winters. Just above the fold was the striking headline, “Local Teen Cleared of Murder Charges; Still Missing.” The paper was only three days old, Pete realized. If Anne was as eager to keep in touch with everyone from her old life as she was with this guy, this would probably still be news to her.
Pete peered at the photo, pretending to consider it, “Could be her,” he said finally, “If she was younger and lost a few pounds. And if it wasn't for the nose.”
The old bastard gave him an appraising look, then sagged with something that might have been either disappointment or relief as he reach the conclusion that Pete was exactly as stupid and therefore incapable of running a simple con on him as he looked. Pete favored him with an obligingly stupid grin. “Sorry man,” he said. “I hope you find your Anne.” At last, the Englishman left. And although his manner had never been anything but polite, almost friendly, Pete was more than a little relieved to see the back of him.
At first, Pete had had every intention of using his new knowledge that Anne was (for all she knew) a hunted murder suspect to gain the upper hand in the little game of cat and mouse she'd been pretending not to know they'd been playing for weeks. Yet as one day passed and then another and July gave way to August and the long, slow, hot L.A. summer wore on, he never quite seemed to find his moment, or his nerve.
Pete would have liked to have told himself he was being merciful. Anne was, after all, a sweet, lovely girl. She was fragile, vulnerable and obviously already in a lot of pain. She didn't need any more problems than she already had. Especially if she really was having that crazy old prick's baby. Then again, Pete had taken advantage of several young girls sweeter and more vulnerable than Anne over the years, and one or two almost as lovely.
So, what was it, Pete wondered, that always made him hesitate? He felt... not fear... exactly, but a sort of deep apprehension. No matter how lost and alone and wounded Anne might be, there was something about her that was hard and sharp, the opposite of fragile, not vulnerable at all. Something that gave Pete an instinctive visceral knowledge that he did not want this woman for an enemy.
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Another great chapter. Looking forward to reading the next when I get home from work.