Chapter 004 - [Accidental Voice]/[Action]/[Video] - Luceti Valley Lifetime

[consultmybooks]

Giles dreams again that night.

Buffy doesn't feature as largely in them this time around, although she is still quite prominent. It's almost as though, by speaking with her, he's partially satisfied whatever desires his malfunctioning mind was trying to process last night. Tonight, other horrors play themselves out in his subconscious.

Willow is alive again, but now she's twisted and dark and broken. They fight, and Giles is more powerful than he's ever dreamed of being, but Willow is stronger and she mocks him - "Hurt me? Boy, you just don't get it, do you? Nothing can hurt me anymore. This? Is nothing. It's all...nothing." And his own daughter all but destroys him.

He's being tortured again, but Helios isn't there. He's alone, and the figure standing before him doesn't belong to the Third Party because he has no wings on his back. And he hurts worse than he can ever remembering hurting, but Giles says nothing. At least until Jenny kisses him. Then he says everything, and waits for the world to end until Xander comes to rescue him, sarcastic and sardonic as ever - "Then why would they make you see me?"

Buffy is crying, and he can't console her, but sometimes they're in a library and sometimes they're in a training hall and  and sometimes he's poisoned her and sometimes she's begging him not to abandon her. And sometimes they're in the training hall together and they're laughing together like nothing's wrong even though everything is wrong and they both know it. And sometimes she's slamming a door in his face with her last, cold words ringing in his ears - "I think you've taught me enough."

And sometimes he's with a girl he doesn't know, a girl who's tall and dark haired and powerful. And they go everywhere together, to places he's never imagined existing outside of a book and sometimes not even then. And they fight, there's always fighting, and they win no matter how much it hurts them. And he pulls her free from the maw of a monster even as he leaves another man to die.

There's a war, worse than anything they've ever experienced at the hands of the Third Party. Innocent girls die. The sky tears itself open and horrors pour forth to tear the world asunder. Giles is holding the dark haired girl close to him as they do. Buffy isn't there

He wakes up with a gasp that becomes a sob. But a sob is better than a scream. And then Giles just lays there for a second in his own bed in his own room, listening to the sound of his heart racing. He tries to take in the familiar details of the room, tries to put his mind through all the paces Paprika once taught him to make night terrors less terrifying. It's not the first time he's had dreams this vivid and wrong.

But this night and the last have definitely been the worst.

Knowing that he's not going to be getting any more sleep tonight, Giles gets himself dressed as quietly as he can and leaves his room. Courtesy and care for his flatmates means that he's quiet as he can be, distressed as he is. They might still hear him. They might already have heard him. But Giles does his best, ducking out to the kitchen to make tea and closing the front door softly behind him.

The tea doesn't help, doesn't calm, doesn't soothe. The scent of the rising steam just makes him remember his dreams more powerfully, words and captured snapshots rising to his mind even as he tries to forget them, tries to let them fade into nothing like dreams should. His hands start to shake, until finally one wrong move knocks the mug over, spilling tea all over the table.

Giles' journal, sitting nearby, turns itself on in time for anyone still conscious to hear Giles swear at the mess before hurrying to grab enough paper towels to clean it up.]

Damn it!

[Silence for another few seconds, the quiet of the last calm before a storm. When Giles' voice comes over the journal again, he sounds as though he's desperately trying not to break down.]

I'm not insane. I'm not, I can't be...

This is ridiculous. I don't want to save the world. I can't even take care of my own children.

This isn't like Halloween. This isn't the same.

Why is this happening now?

[The relative quiet is broken by the sound of the mug shattering, Giles having just hurled it violently against the nearest wall. The accidental transmission ends there.

He spends the rest of the night working on the boat. It's positioned far enough away from the back of CH7 to hopefully not disturb anyone this late. Exhaustion and anxiety mean that Giles makes a  few mistakes in his work, but not many. It isn't the first time he's had to build a boat, after all.

The sun has started to rise before he picks up his journal again, and this time it's to turn on the video function. Anyone who notices the feed will see that Giles appears to have it trained on some sort of...creature, while standing at a respectable distance. The creature is monster, in every sense of the word. The beast is sniffing around at the edge of the treeline, paying him no need at first. Even when it does finally look up at him, it's only to let out a threatening growl. Giles flinches back - the beast returns to whatever is occupying its attention and, in a few minutes, has made its way deeper into the forest.

Giles doesn't follow - his voice over the journal is a mixture of hushed fascination and fear.]

My god...

Comments

[consultmybooks]

I'll certainly do my best. See you in a while, Buffy.

[herotypical]

[ and it doesn't take her long to show up -- a sword in one hand. ]

[consultmybooks]

[Giles is sitting on the tree trunks that he'd been spending the last few hours attempting to turn into a boat. The journal is closed, the creature is gone, but he slides back down to the ground when he sees Buffy turn the corner and points into the forest.]

It left, just a couple of minutes ago.

...I didn't feel especially confident trying to get it to stay. Sorry.

[herotypical]

...I don't blame you. Still -- that's more than a fair dose of troubling.

[consultmybooks]

Yes, it certainly is.

...it was after something. At least it didn't find whatever it was with me. The complex seemed to get its attention for a while [He indicates Building 7 behind them] but after that it left.

I don't understand it.

[herotypical]

Another shift? So soon?

[ frowning. something isn't right. ]

[consultmybooks]

Why not? Getting shuffled last week was hardly as bad as we usually get. Or as long.

The Malnosso probably just managed to stave off whatever it was for as long as the festival.

And now we have to manage.

[herotypical]

Monsters and nightmares. Gee, how manageable.

[consultmybooks]

We seem to be doing well so far.

...well, no, I just spent the last three hours trying to build a boat instead of sleep. But under those circumstances, I'd still say that I'm doing all right for myself.

And no one's been hurt yet.

[herotypical]

That we know of.

[consultmybooks]

I haven't heard anything. Have you? That's all we have to go by right now.

[herotypical]

[ she bites back a very pessimistic comment of how that simply meant there were no survivors. that would have been the dreams talking -- that dark, troubled girl she felt like in her sleep. ]

Right. No need for panic.

[consultmybooks]

[And although he can't admit it, even to her, right now Giles is almost drawing on the man he was in the dream. The man who could face something like that thing and want to see more, who could keep his calm when a monster came sniffing literally at his doorstep and channel rage instead of fear.]

Not yet, at any rate.

But I'll take it.

[He sighs and flips open his journal.]

Well, Buffy, what would you recommend? Where should we go from here?

[herotypical]

[ a twitch. how familiar that sounds. almost. ]

Alert people, I guess. I'll talk to the town watch a-and maybe organize some kind of patrolling regime.

[consultmybooks]

[Not just to you, Buffy.]

Alert people, certainly.

And after that I suppose I'll just try and see what I can see.

[herotypical]

[ and then...thanks to their previous conversation: ] Are they getting worse for you?

[consultmybooks]

That would be why I spent the last three hours working on a boat instead of sleeping, Buffy.

I didn't think it was possible after the night before last, but they most certainly are.

[He replies without missing a beat. Too many people heard him smash his favorite mug against the wall.] And not just me.

What about you?

[herotypical]

D-definitely worse. [ and better, all at once. it's very alarming. ]

[consultmybooks]

...the prevailing theory is that they're caused by a shift.

I can't imagine that doesn't have something to do with it, at the very least.

[herotypical]

They're so real. I mean -- they can't be. But they feel like they're real, when I'm in them.

[consultmybooks]

Yes, they do. Mine feel just the same. It's the same with a few others that I know of so far.

But you're right, they can't be. I've been dreaming about places I've never been, and things that don't exist. Even the subconscious can only do so much.

[And Giles is watching Buffy carefully to read her reactions to his words, carefully and far more directly than he has since they were both young.]

[herotypical]

I'm still me in them -- but...not me at the same time. And then sometimes, I'm someone else entirely.

[ other slayers, though she doesn't know to call them that. ]

[consultmybooks]

Someone else...? Literally and not metaphorically?

...that is odd. But, under the circumstances, "odd" is probably allowable.

[herotypical]

The whole thing has an extra whiff of odd but -- yeah, literally.

[consultmybooks]

...if you mentioned as much to Paprika, I'm sure she'd have something incisive and clever and meaningful to say.

As it is? I don't think we can really understand until we know what the purpose of this shift is.