"Deputy Zaherne?" The voice was an unwelcome interruption. Sky grimaced at her computer screen and jabbed at the save keys, just in case she lost what little she’d been able to compose in her report. It had been a long night, and an even longer day so far – questioning, or rather trying to question her prisoner, organising the search parties out in the desert, and dealing with Angela’s father, who’d gone from distraught grief to furious anger and back again. This was a nasty case, and the preliminary autopsy report had made it even nastier. The last thing she wanted was to be disturbed for trivial reasons.

"Who’s asking?" she requested, swiveling in her chair to confront her visitor. There was a young woman standing in the door to her office; a young woman with a determined air and a no-nonsense attitude about her. Her blonde hair was caught back in a practical style, she was dressed in jeans and a plain blue shirt, and she carried herself with the air of someone on a mission. Sky’s first thought was that she was looking at a fellow officer. Her second suggested reporter. The answer she got was the last one she’d been expecting.

"My name is Buffy Summers. I’m a friend of Rupert Giles. I was told you’re the one handling his case."

Sky blinked. Deputy Maybourne, the officer who shared her office and had been roped in to help with the investigation, snorted in disbelief. "The Ripper has friends?" he queried incredulously from his corner of the room. "That’s a little hard to believe."

Sky threw him a warning look. They’d spent half the night talking to the man she’d arrested, and she still didn’t know how to measure him. He’d refused to co-operate beyond the basic requirements, and that hadn’t been helping his situation any. Maybourne had initially suggested – just as Artie had done – that the man was plain crazy, and was all for calling in the men in white coats so that they could deal with his stubborn silences. After several hours in the man’s company, he’d changed his diagnosis to suggest that their killer was a cold-blooded psychopath – a creature without a soul, who was cunning, and canny and playing games with them.

Sky wasn’t so sure. She’d seen that kind of detachment, that empty, distanced response before – except she usually saw it in the victims of violence, not the men who perpetrated it. His quiet insistence that he had not killed Angela Millen hadn’t wavered, through all their long, angry questioning – and his desperate anxiety for her sister, a concern which he had stubbornly refused to explain, had clearly dominated his thoughts throughout the interview. She’d seen – and heard – the level of his intelligence, the depth of his education. He’d quoted poetry at them with bitter irony, muttered softly in long dead languages and given every impression of being – not a prisoner accused of a crime, but a prisoner of war, stubbornly clinging to his own equivalent of name, rank and serial number. The look in his eyes had been disturbing: the look of man drowning, wrestling with guilt and beset by demons. Whoever – and whatever – Rupert Giles was, he was a complex, haunted man.

One whom, it appeared, did have friends.

Or one, at least.

"You’d better come in, Miss Summers," she suggested, motioning to the chair beside her desk. "I think we need to talk to you."

The woman took the chair, giving Maybourne a hostile look as she did so. The large holdall she dropped at her feet made an odd clattering sound. "I know you do," she said, making it something of a challenge. "And I need to talk to him. You’ve got the wrong man, deputy. I know what you think he’s done – but I know he’s innocent."

Maybourne snorted a second time. "Yeah, and I’m a Oscar winning actor researching my next role … Come on, sweetheart. Zaherne here caught him red handed. Literally red handed. He’s as guilty as hell – and one way or another he’s going down all the way. Once we find the other girl – "

"You won’t." Buffy Summers’ voice was bleak. "Not unless you know where to look. Please," she said, turning to Sky, since it was fairly obvious that Maybourne was being less than receptive. "I have to talk to him. That girl’s life could depend on it."

Again the snort, the skeptical reaction before Sky could respond. "You don’t think she’s still alive, do you? God – how naive are you? Your friend," and Maybourne emphasised the word so that it implied all sorts of unpleasant things, "lured those two innocent creatures out into the desert, raped them, and then murdered them, in cold blood. I guess you’re the one he called, huh? Well, I don’t know what he told you, but you can take it from me – he’s nothing but a demon in human guise, and he deserves everything he’s gonna get."

"Maybourne." Sky finally managed to get a word in – and it was a furious one. "Miss Summers – it is miss, right? Miss Summers is trying to help us here. I’m sure she’s as eager as the rest of us to see justice done. Now – if she believes that she can persuade her friend to reveal Jodie’s location, then I for one am more than willing to let her try. That is what you’re talking about, isn’t it Miss Summers?"

The young woman was staring at Maybourne as if he were something that had crawled out from under a rock. "Not exactly," she said, her voice tight and her eyes fuming. "I don’t think he knows where she is. But I know he can tell me something that will help me find her. And when I do – " She turned to look at Sky with a determined smile. "You’ll know I was telling the truth about him."

Sky sighed, sitting back to consider her visitor with patient sympathy. It was never easy when someone you thought you knew well turns out to be someone you didn’t know at all. The young lady’s loyalty was commendable in a way – but it was also misguided. "Truth is a fugitive thing, Miss Summers. I deal in facts, not feelings. Right now, I don’t have many facts. I have a man I caught at the scene of a crime, his hands red with blood and no other footprints but his anywhere near the corpse. I have a prisoner who’s refused medical examination, won’t take the lie detector test, and simply clams up when I ask for explanations. I have no idea why a respectable, educated man – an Englishman, working in this country for several years, with a valid green card and what seems to be a healthy bank account – is suddenly living out of a battered pickup on the backroads of our badlands. Who, when he does talk to me is spouting things about visionquests and seeking spirit guides as if he’s watched ‘Dances with Wolves’ one time too many. And then there’s you. You’re what – nineteen, twenty?"

"Twenty one," Buffy affirmed warily. Sky nodded.

"Thought so. Don’t you think you’re a little young to be championing the cause of a man over twice your age, and whose crime is – well, to put it bluntly – a matter of liking them young? What exactly is your relationship with Rupert Giles?"

"My – " The young woman’s reaction was flabbergasted. "My god. You don’t think that – oh," she realised, subsiding a little, "I guess you might, thinking about it, but … No," she said firmly. "No, it’s nothing like that. I mean, I happen to like older men, but – well, Giles is Giles. I’d never – I just wouldn’t, I –" She actually laughed at the thought. "No way. That would be – that would be wrong," she concluded softly. Confidently. "He’s been – he’s been like a father to me, these past few years. Looked out for me, taken care of me … He and my mother might have – once, you know?" She looked a little embarrassed at the idea – a reaction that brought an involuntary smile to Sky’s face. That gave her tale the ring of truth at least. "They got on pretty well. When she died – well, he was there for us. Part of the family. And when I – " She broke off, reconsidering what she was about to say. "Well, my sister and I, we – we think of him like an Uncle, I guess. Someone we care about. And before you say anything," she said pointedly, "my sister is younger than I am, and no, he’s never even looked at her the way you’re talking about. He’s not like that. He was my school librarian. He used to date my computer teacher," she concluded defensively.

"High school teacher," Maybourne muttered significantly. Sky ignored him.

"Miss Summers," she said gently, "I know you don’t want to hear this, but – the men that commit these kind of crimes – very few of them appear to be ‘like that’, as you put it. Have you ever felt that you – or your sister – "

"No," Buffy interrupted firmly. "Deputy – I’d trust that man with my soul. If anyone knows the difference between right and wrong – good and evil – then it’s Giles. He’s innocent of this crime, and if you just let me talk to him …"

Her plea was persuasive – and after a long night getting nowhere, with a lost child and nothing but circumstantial evidence that led around in circles, Sky was willing to try almost anything to break the case. It wasn’t exactly going by the book, but then – the book wasn’t always right.

"All right," she agreed after a moment. "I think I can arrange that."

Maybourne gave her a sideways look – then shrugged. It was no skin off his nose if she bent the rules – and a feather in his cap if it brought results.

"Alone," Buffy insisted softly.

Sky – half out of her chair – subsided again. "I don’t know if I can – "

"Alone," the young woman repeated, her tone and her eyes insistent. "I think I know what’s going through his head. He won’t talk if anyone else is there. There are – things, we’ve faced together – personal things," she added quietly. "I know he’ll talk to me."

She still hesitated – but then the chance, that one slim possibility of finding Jodie alive, persuaded her. For some reason she trusted this earnest young woman – and her faith in her friend was compelling, no matter how misplaced. "All right," she said after a moment or two. "But it won’t be for very long. And I’ll be within call – just in case you – in case you need me."

Buffy Summers smiled. A grim, uneasy smile. "I won’t," she said.

And for some reason, Sky believed her.

The cell was small, no more than the length of the bunk and three times its width. There was a single blanket thrown over the mattress, and one rumpled pillow, its cover dingy and torn; a tiny hand basin, with a dripping tap, which had left a lime-scale stain on the white porcelain; and a primitive covered toilet lurking beneath it. There was a window, high up in the far wall, through which a pale shaft of sunlight pierced, spearing down into the dim interior of the cramped space. And there was the man, huddled in its light, haloed by it, like a renaissance portrait of some holy martyr, struck by the light of God.

Buffy paused in the passageway taking in the scene, dismayed by the heavy, metal bars and the grim, Spartan space behind them. This was no place to put a man barely weeks out of hell and haunted by memories of being chained. These weren’t the ice-slicked stones of Malador, but they echoed the feel of them, the confines of captivity and the hopeless weight of despair. It was echoed too in the figure the space contained, his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around them, his forehead resting on his knees. He hadn’t looked up as she approached. He looked as if he’d never look up again, wrapped in shadow despite the sunlight. The weight of despair. He wore it like a shroud.

She nodded to the deputy, who frowned, but did as she’d been asked and silently walked away leaving her alone in the echoing cell block. Buffy wasn’t sure what to make of the dark haired woman with steel blue eyes who’d made the arrest. The other deputy – the slightly overweight, smiling redneck who’d made all those crass remarks – was nothing but a jerk, and she wished she’d been in a position to tell him so. The woman, on the other hand, had been prepared to listen to her; she still had her doubts and was sufficiently professional to consider them.

Even though the whole situation sucked.

Who would believe tales about demons and monsters, out here in the wilderness? This wasn’t Sunnydale. This was a small town on the edge of the desert, a backwater, a forgotten kind of place, where vampires would never bother to come and only the Native Americans would know about the evils that lurked beneath their sands. Superstition, the townsfolk would say. Nothing but superstition and nonsense.

She was the Slayer. She’d sent her boyfriend to hell in order to save the world, had averted apocalypse more than once, and had closed the portal to chaos with the sacrifice of her own life. Less than two hours before, she’d been transported from one place to another in the blink of an eye, pushed through a warp in space to arrive, dizzy and disorientated, in the middle of a mundane, run down shopping mall. She’d had a vampire as her travelling companion, and practically the first thing they’d seen had been a startled Lanteran, slithering away down a maintenance hatch. Lanterans were pretty harmless really, but it proved a point.

There were demons everywhere. You just had to know how to look for them.

"Giles?" she called softly, wondering if he’d been pushed too far, if she’d arrived too late to reach him. The damning accusations that had brought him to this place would have cut him to the soul.

"Hello, Buffy," he murmured, not bothering to lift his head. "I-I didn’t know it was that late."

"It’s not," she answered briskly, moving over to stand by the bars and consider him with concern. She was grateful that the rest of the cells were empty; this was going to be hard enough without anyone else listening in. The detective had insisted she leave her bag and her coat outside, so it was just her, dressed for hunting and wearing the little gilt cross Angel had given her, years ago. "It’s still mid-afternoon. Will did the big magic thing, you know? Grand translocation – pop here, pop there – poof. Only it wasn’t poof, exactly, since we got this map and she put us down inside a mall, just half a mile from here. I had to leave Spike in the burger bar."

"The stupid little fool," he said, meaning Willow, not Spike, although he might have done. "Playing with fire. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, what she risks. There’s a-a price for that kind of power. I hope to god she never has to pay it …"

"Giles," Buffy told him, a gentle but firm rebuke, "if I’d called you up and said I was half a world away and in trouble – what would you have done?"

Now he lifted his head, meeting her eyes with a look that turned her heart over. They’d taken all his clothes and draped him in prison grays, but they hadn’t cleaned him up or given him a chance to shave. His face was bruised; one eye was swollen and there was a cut on his lip, another across his cheek. He looked terrible – although not as bad as that night, two months ago, when she’d fought for his soul and brought him home from Malador.

He’d left the hell dimension behind. But he wasn’t out of hell by any means.

"I’d have come," he answered, his voice barely a whisper of sound. "Through - hell if I had to. No matter what the cost …"

"Exactly," she said. "So don’t go blaming Will, just because she cares about you."

He sighed, letting his head drop back to his knees. "I’m sorry," he breathed, a soft cry of pain. "I-I wouldn’t have called at all, but – "

"I know, I know. The Zamaroth and the missing child. That’s a given, you know? It’s you I’m here for. You shouldn’t even be here. I know you didn’t do what they say you did."

"Do you?" he asked, as if there was a doubt, as if he thought she might consider such a thing. She moved in closer, wrapping her hands round the bars, discomfited by the barrier they presented.

"Yes," she told him resolutely. "From the bottom of my heart, from the depths of my soul – I know you. And I know you’d never do anything like that."

He flinched, almost as if her words had struck a physical blow. Her hands tightened on the steel, her eyes assessing the situation with angry frustration. He was huddled at the far end of the bunk, locked in his misery, chained by his despair. A hug, a touch, the simplest of human comforts, might be enough to strengthen him – but that was out of the question. She couldn’t even reach him. "Oh lord," he murmured, a sound of utter wretchedness. He was shivering, she realised, despite the warmth of the day.

"Talk to me, Giles," she said, glancing down the passageway and wondering if anything could be heard at the other end of it. Call, the detective had said. If you need anything … "We don’t have much time here, and if I’m going to help you, I need to know what’s going on. You found the child, right? Realised it was Zamaroth that had attacked her and started to go after them. That’s when the cops arrived."

He lifted his head and nodded, staring at the far wall, his eyes written with grief. "More or less. I’d been up in the valley all day. There’s a – a spirit lodge, up on the ridge. An old place, filled with power. Sacred ground."

"Been there, done that," Buffy supplied helpfully. He threw her a sideways glance.

"Yes, I know." He sighed again, a sound that cut through her like a knife. This wasn’t fair. Even in Malador, even in the depths of hell, she’d been able to touch him. "You got the first Slayer. All I got was – a garbled voice in the wind." He’d gone looking for answers, for a place to work things out. He needed to know who he was and what he’d become. A long month, hunting for somewhere to stand – and then this had happened, dragging him back into the pit.

"What did it say?"

He shrugged. "I don’t know. Something about - knowing myself, knowing when I was judged – th-that kind of thing. Didn’t make much sense. Maybe it does now …"

"No," she said firmly. "This isn’t what the spirits meant. You know better than that. Giles, you have angel fire in your soul. Don’t think for one minute that your destiny lies in darkness, because it doesn’t. This is a test. A – a trial. Like all those labours Hercules had to do. Okay, so it’s not quite killing hydras, but – you still have Iolaus on your side."

He assayed a painful laugh. "Buffy," he murmured affectionately, "you do have a way of putting things … A mythological labour. I-I wish. Lord, how I wish …" He sobered with another sigh, one laden with weary effort. His head tipped back against the wall and he stared up at the window for a moment or two. "When the sun started to go down, so did I. I didn’t want to be – uh - up there in the cold. I was halfway down the valley when I heard someone scream."

"Angela?" The men behind the desk had been talking about the girls when she’d arrived. She’d even joined in their anxious concerns for the one that was missing and condemnation for the thing that had killed her sister – until she’d realised they were actually talking about Giles.

"I think so. It might have been her sister, but – I-I didn’t know there were two of them. Not then. I ran the rest of the way – spotted the Zamaroth heading out into the desert. Thinking about it," he frowned, "there may have been two of them. The one I saw w-wasn’t carrying anything. If it had been, I’d have probably realised …"

"Two demons," Buffy noted. "Makes sense. One of them must have grabbed Jodie and dragged her away. When Angela tried to stop it, the other one went for her. They’d only need one alive. If they’ve been building a nest. Xander’s being research man," she explained, at the look this piece of knowledge engendered. "You really must get your books sorted out. Took him ages to find the right one."

"If he paid attention," Giles sighed, "he’d - understand the system. You let him loose in my library?"

His momentary spark of alarm lifted her spirits a little; he was down, but he wasn’t out. Not yet, at any rate.

"Dawn’s keeping an eye on him. Although I hope Xander didn’t tell her about Zamaroth nesting habits. Don’t worry," she smiled encouragingly. "They won’t do any damage."

"Doesn’t matter," he decided bleakly. Now that was disturbing. When Giles stopped worrying about his books, he was in real trouble. "Buffy - the one I saw was - heading west. There are some gullies lying at the foot of the buttes – ideal ground for them to hide in. I don’t suppose the search parties have been anywhere near there."

"West. Gullies by the buttes. Got it. I’ve got Spike in tow, so it shouldn’t be too hard to track them. We’ll find her. I promise. And once we do – they’ll have to listen. You didn’t kill that girl – and you certainly didn’t –" She hesitated over the word, remembering his confession, barely a month ago.

"Rape her?" he completed, his voice empty of the emotion she might have expected. Empty of everything. "No. I didn’t do that …"

"So tell them," she said, trying to understand why he was so reluctant to defend himself. "Look – I can understand you refusing the medical thing – because of the blades and the other stuff – "

"They already think I’m a monster," he told her bleakly. "I-I didn’t think they could cope with the proof."

"You’re not a monster." The denial was firm. "Changed by event, gifted by angels, transformed by – by destiny, maybe …"

"A prince of hell," he considered distantly, his eyes fixed on a point in time, not space. "Heir to the Incandescent. Last of the Grigori. There are days I know how Angel feels, knowing what he is, what he’s done. You don’t know, Buffy. I am a monster. Seeing that child –" He shuddered and looked away, hunching with a sudden return to his anguished despair.

"You didn’t kill her," Buffy repeated firmly, trying to convey the support and comfort she wanted to offer him. The words weren’t enough – but they were all that she had. "You were just too far away to help. Giles – take the lie detector test. Tell them. Tell them it wasn’t you. That you never touched her. You’re not a murderer."

Softly, so softly that she only just caught it, he whispered, "Yes, I am."

Her heart skipped a beat. Had he killed? Other than vampires and demons and squirmy, squishy things that just didn’t count? Back in his younger days, perhaps, running with Ethan Rayne and making pacts with demons … Had that come back to haunt him? Or was it something else?

"Giles," she questioned softly, "this isn’t about – Ben, is it?"

Spike had told her. Told her about how her faithful Watcher had assumed the duty he knew she’d never be able to meet. How – while she had raced to rescue Dawn and offer herself in willing sacrifice – he had ended the life of Glory’s mortal host, preventing her from ever returning to the world. It wasn’t something he could be proud of, but it had been necessary. An act of sacrifice as noble as the one she’d assayed. To carry the cost of a human life, to live with it, knowing that it had to be done …

"Y- you know about that?" There was a tremor in his voice, a note that echoed the emotional turmoil that he was fighting to control. Buffy wondered if she were pushing him too far – but she had to know. Had to understand what it was that was tearing him apart, so that she could help him deal with it.

"Yes," she said softly. "I know. I know what you did – and I know why you did it. Giles - it was the right thing – the only thing to do. You know, you have a strength of heart I envy. You always do what needs to be done, no matter what it costs. No matter how hard the choice, you always choose … Me, I – I agonise about it, I back away from it, I try and work round it, I – I make a big deal about it. You just – just take the arrow and go on with the fight …" Her voice trailed off. Right now, he was lying wounded on the field of battle, using what remained of that strength to strike out, blindly, desperately - and the only victim of those blows was himself.

"Is that what you think?" he asked, a bleak and despairing question. "Is that how you see me?" He shook his head, lifting it to stare, once again, at the narrow window and the shaft of light it framed. "It isn’t true, you know? I make mistakes. Sometimes I let my heart rule my head when – when I know I shouldn’t. I don’t always get it right – and I have to live with what I’ve done … Oh lord," he murmured, closing his eyes and shivering with misery. "What have I done?"

"Giles?" Her hands clenched helplessly on the steel. She felt as if she were losing him. As if he were slipping away before her eyes, drowning in his wretchedness, the way he had so nearly drowned in the darkness they had excised from his soul. He needed a lifeline – but until he told her what it was that haunted him, she had nothing to offer, nothing to throw. "Giles, don’t do this. Talk to me. Help me out here, I - I want to help you. But I can’t if you won’t let me. Ben was business. Ben was – life and death apocalypse stuff. Take the test. Tell them the truth. Tell them that you would never - have never killed a child – " She broke off, catching his grimace of pain and the sudden, shuddering sob that he couldn’t quite suppress. Cold horror clutched at her heart.

"Oh my god," she whispered, staring at him, feeling her whole world shift and tilt, the entire foundation of her life teetering on the edge of a precipice. "Giles …"

"Her name was Marie Ann, " he breathed, soft words offered in colourless tones. He watched the wall as he spoke, his eyes seeing – not the narrow confines of the cell, but a dark place in a much darker world. "I don’t know how old she was – five, six, something like that. Such a little thing. She had a ribbon – a blue ribbon – in her hair. Funny how you remember things like that. All the little details. The bruises on her body and the long, weeping wound where he cut her. All down her arm. The blood dripped off her fingers … but she never cried out. Not once. I pulled her away from him – and he laughed. I remember that too. The way he laughed."

"Salamiel," Buffy mouthed, encompassing the horror, giving it a name. Her world tilted back upright, still shaken, still steeped in consternation – but back on firm and certain ground.

"I can still taste - " Giles continued, still in that numb and empty voice. " – taste the blood. Sweet and salt, all at the same time. His and hers together."

She didn’t want to hear this – but she had to. It was hint, no more, of the torment he’d endured, the nightmare he’d barely survived.

"He left her with me. He said – he said I had to take good care of her. She was so afraid. So fragile. I tried - I tried to comfort her, I – I held her, I held her so close … She was nothing but ribs and bruises. Shivering. In the end she went to sleep. There, against my heart. Sleeping. And while she slept – " He paused to draw in a long, anguished breath. " – I made sure she never woke up again …"

Buffy shivered, hearing – even in those quiet, hollow words – the agony of that moment, the desperate and distraught decision that he had been forced to make. He couldn’t have saved her. Her life had been over the moment the Malumbra had dragged her into their private piece of hell. But he had found a way to release that tortured child from the terror and the pain, to free her from endless horror and further abuse.

Even if doing it had cost him a piece of his soul.

"When they ask me," he begged softly, whispering the question which harrowed his heart, "if I - I’ve killed a child - what am I supposed to say?"

"I could only give Buffy a few minutes with him," Sky explained, smiling as Angel handed her a fresh napkin. Her fingers were greasy and she’d been looking for something to wipe them on. "It would have been longer, but right then was when the trouble started. The girl’s uncle had been out rabble rousing. He was a truck driver for the local highways board; he’d rounded up every street digger and highways engineer he could find, filling their heads with righteous fury and leading them to the precinct on a holy crusade. I should have started to be suspicious right there and then. We had Angela’s killer and the evidence was against him. Our priority was Jodie and that’s what he should have been focused on. Even the angriest of men should have been more concerned with finding her than worrying about justice – or revenge. But not Harry Danden. He led his mob right into the lobby and they were so fired up we nearly had a riot."

"Lynch mob," Wesley frowned. "Nasty expression of human nature. In some ways it’s understandable. With a crime like that – well, who could believe it possible? We may know that monsters exist, but for most people, it’s – more than they can comprehend."

"People reacting to hearsay and demanding retribution?" Angel played with a limp lettuce leaf left in the taco box. "Been there, done that. Of course, in my case, I was responsible. But a lot of innocents have been murdered by mobs over the centuries. Fear and anger – they can blind as well as they can reveal. And once people start baying for blood …"

"Oh, they were baying for blood, all right," Sky said, grimacing at the recollection. "They were even armed. With pickaxes and shovels."

"Ouch," Cordelia reacted. Fred shivered.

"It’s not a nice feeling," she said. "Being hounded by a mob. Scary." Gunn reached over to squeeze her arm and she gave him a grateful smile.

"Well, fortunately I missed that experience," Giles assured her. "Although – uh - I gather it wasn’t for want of them trying."

Long Sea Crossing - Chapter Two, Part Two. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by anyone - Universal, Pacific Rennaisance, or any other holders of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Buffy the Vampire slayer trademarks or copyrights.
© 2003. Written by Pythia. Reproduced by Penelope Hill