Halfway There, Chapters 14 to 18
Sep. 21st, 2010 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indriSUMMARY: What happened to Giles in Season Seven?
SPOILERS: For almost all of the televised Buffy and Angel. Guaranteed free of spoilers from the comics, as I haven't read them.
RATING: PG13 for adult themes and violence.
WRITTEN: Begun September 2004, recommenced September 2009, largely completed October 2009.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Some dialogue is quoted or closely paraphrased from "Lie to Me" and "Restless" by Joss Whedon, "Bring on the Night" by Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie, "Storyteller" by Jane Espenson, "Lies My Parents Told Me" by David Fury and Drew Goddard, and "Dirty Girls" by Drew Goddard. Thanks to my beta readers, peasant_, shapinglight and revdorothyl.
14. LP
He has an hour to spare in Hong Kong before the flight to Shanghai. He spends most of it in an electronics store, buying a phone. "It has to be one that works all over the world," he says.
"Satellite or Tri-Band?" asks the shop assistant, a young man with amazingly coifed hair.
"What's the difference?"
He doesn't know why he finds electronic gadgets so difficult. He's perfectly adept at mastering all sorts of other complicated information. Perhaps it's due to a deep-seated suspicion that they devalue the physical objects that he loves, like books and LPs. Or perhaps it's something like gadget-dyslexia. Besides, for years he's avoided learning anything by asking Willow to take care of it. He peers at the shiny plastic handsets and realises he's been falling behind all that time. If Jenny had still been here, she would have helped him with it, and mocked him at the same time.
In Shanghai's gleaming airport a few hours later, he buys a book of maps. He pauses over an English-to-Shanghainese dictionary, but the book says at the front that most Shanghai residents speak some Mandarin, which is the one Chinese dialect he knows a little of. Then he's off to hire yet another car.
Ten minutes later and he's very glad of the maps.
15. Cupboards
First, he passes trucks, train stations, warehouses, and all the other usual accompaniments of a major airport. Then some fields. Then a motorway. Then some quaint-looking houses. Some housing estates, with blocks of flats stretching into the distance. Some more fields. An elevated train track. Huge, rectangular ponds. More houses, more warehouses. Industrial estates. The Yangtze River.
The buildings are getting taller. He passes into wide streets lined with skyscrapers. There are plazas, department stores, municipal lakes. More motorways, more tall buildings, another river.
Shanghai stretches on. Houses, skyscrapers, factories, universities, parks, hospitals, railway stations, shops. And people, everywhere people. People in cars, on motorbikes, on bicycles, on buses, on foot, on skateboards. Reading newspapers, having snacks, chatting on their mobiles, heading off to lunch. Driving taxis, selling stallfood, sweeping streets. On pavements, on roads, on railway platforms, hanging half-way out of windows.
Giles can't remember how long he's been driving. There's a thickness in the back of his head that means the jetlag's about to hit. (Houses, sportsfields.) His map insists he has still has another fifteen miles to go. (Houses, shopping malls.) He's too tired to drive with any concentration - perhaps he should pull over? (Railway station, park, houses.) Why does it look nothing like he expected? (An Ikea.) It's because he's been picturing the city in the 1920s: jazz age, bawdy, gaudy. (Houses, strip mall.) A lot has happened to Shanghai since.
Perhaps Spike remembers the Shanghai of the Twenties.
He finally reaches what he thinks is the right housing estate. The buildings are terraced, four stories high. The numbering is confusing and Giles has to double-back a couple of times to be sure.
He knocks. He waits. He knocks again. He waits for a car to go past behind him, then he breaks a small front window and reaches in to unlock the front door.
Inside, the house is empty. There's no carpet or furniture. He walks through to the next room, wary: still nothing. The kitchen has a stove but empty cupboards. But there's no sign of a struggle, or of blood.
It's the same story upstairs. Perhaps he has misread the house number? His map and the address are back in the car.
He steps out the front door and is instantly knocked on the head.
16. Chair
When he comes to, he is tied to a chair. This is very far from being his favourite way to wake up.
He's underground, he thinks, or deep within a building, or perhaps it's night. He can see no trace of natural light, just four concrete walls, a door, and an electric lamp. He feels nauseous.
A man in a military uniform comes in then. "Rupert Giles?" He glances at a clipboard. "A British national, currently living in the United States?"
"Currently in China," Giles says. "I travel around a lot."
"So we know. You arrived yesterday from Los Angeles, hired a car, and drove immediately to the home of a young woman we have been monitoring for some time."
Oh God, Giles thinks.
"On Tuesday last, Wu Chao-Ahn was attacked by a group of six blind men. As we had been monitoring her movements, we were able to neutralise the men and took Wu into protective custody."
"They're not men," Giles says. "You'll find--"
The soldier cuts him off, glancing at him sharply. "Wu is one of an accounted thirty-two known young female targets of these men. Of these, twenty-six, including three members of national Olympics teams have--"
"You have to bring the survivors to me," says Giles. "We're keeping these girls safe, we're--"
"Have died," the soldier says, "along with approximately sixty-eight other citizens plus fifty-two foreign nationals. Many of those who were murdered were also under surveillance: suspected cultists and those who were in frequent contact with undeclared international political networks."
That would be The Council of Watchers, thinks Giles.
"Wu has been questioned, but claims to know nothing of these men, the cultists or the international network. Then you arrive." The soldier puts down his clipboard and takes a step closer. For the first time, Giles gets a good look at his face: he's probably in his fifties, and has such sad eyes. "What's going on?" the soldier asks.
Giles explains as best he can. "Of course, all of that only makes sense if you believe in demons, or in the reification of unspeakable evils."
The man considers.
He gestures to someone outside, and four younger soldiers come in. They untie Giles but seize his arms, forcing him to walk along corridors and down stairs deeper into the building.
They reach a door that is protected by four armed guards and a series of heavy locks. Giles doesn't like the look of this.
The door is pulled back and Giles is taken in.
Inside is a comfortably furnished room, with a bed, a sofa, a desk, a computer, a telephone, a fridge and TV, but no windows or other doors. A young woman sits on the sofa, with the phone in her hand.
The older soldier arrives. "Rupert Giles, I am releasing Wu Chao-Ahn into your custody." He hands Giles some official-looking documents, including a passport.
"Ah, thank you," says Giles, not really sure where this is coming from.
"And also Fong Li."
Giles turns around to see a handcuffed woman being brought in. She's middle-aged, a little tubby, and has hair going salt-and-pepper black-and-white.
She looks as surprised as Giles does.
17. Car
"I was looking for her as well," says Fong Li. She is sitting in the back seat of Giles's hire car, next to Chao-Ahn. In the rear-view mirror, Giles watches her rub the back of her head. "You want the next right."
They're in a district of huge warehouses and factories, nowhere near, as far as Giles can tell, the apartment block where he'd looked for Chao-Ahn.
"No," he says. "My general intent was 'away'."
"And put the pedal to the metal, before Comrade Zhi changes his mind."
"Is that likely?"
"Well, his superiors might change his mind for him."
"What happened back there?"
"They let her go," she says, "and they let us go too as a happy coincidence."
"But why?"
"Zhi wants to let her go. Her family has influential friends and they're influencing. But if he lets her go, she dies, and that's bad for him. Also, he might not like it very much, as he's an OK guy. But now he has you, convenient foreign stranger, so he can claim to be releasing her into safe hands and make it your fault. And I'm just too awkward to keep."
"And who are you exactly?"
"I'm Mrs Fong," she says. "Think of me as a friend."
They pull up at stoplights. They're leaving the warehouses behind now, and are heading into the city proper. He asks, "Are you a Watcher?"
"Not the way you mean. But there's a bunch of us who kept our knowledge going in unfriendly decades and political climes."
Chao-Ahn says something he can't understand.
"Can you ask her to say that in Mandarin? I can speak a little of that."
Mrs Fong asks, but Chao-Ahn's reply is brief. "She can't speak Mandarin. She's from Hong Kong."
"Bugger," says Giles.
Traffic is bad as they reach the city centre. Chao-Ahn and Mrs Fong have a long conversation as they inch through the streets. When their talk tails off, Mrs Fong asks, "Is that 'Giles' as in 'Wade-Giles'?"
"Ah, yes, in fact" he says. "Herbert was a distant relative. But my own language studies have concentrated rather more on the Indo-European."
"Pity," says Mrs Fong. "Miss Wu's going to have a long trip."
"When you said her family is influential--"
"You don't want to know," says Mrs Fong. "Keep her safe and you won't have to worry about it."
"I don't find that reassuring," Giles says.
They reach the airport after an hour. Mrs Fong shakes his hand.
"Won't you come with us?"
"Too many Potential Slayers here, I think. Plenty to do. You take care of her."
Chao-Ahn watches this conversation and then asks something of Mrs Fong. She does not like the reply. A huge argument breaks out. There is shouting and tears.
Finally, Mrs Fong grabs Chao-Ahn's shoulders and says something to her, quiet and intense.
"Does she know why she's going with me?" Giles asks.
"I've told her there's issues," she says. "As I said, her family's influential. I haven't said exactly what, but I've told her she'll be safe with you."
"And she believes you?"
"Not all that much."
Chao-Ahn stands tall and turns to face Giles. She says something to him.
Mrs Fong translates: "She says, 'Let's go.'"
And so they do.
18. Curtains
In the airport, he calls Lydia. Once again, it's one of the nurses who replies.
"Are you a relative?" she asks.
"Her cousin in America," he says, as it's very nearly true. "Rupert Giles."
"Well, you might want to come and visit soon," she says. "The operation didn't go well."
Giles cancels the flight back to California and books them on to London. He tries to explain to Chao-Ahn, but the best he can get is confused looks as he points at a map.
Another thirteen hours trapped in a flying metal tube. Chao-Ahn is restless, looking about herself the whole time. Often she seems on the verge of speaking to one of the other passengers.
Giles pops into the loo halfway through the trip and when he comes back he sees Chao-Ahn lean forward to speak with a Chinese-looking man in the next row up. The man says, in an American accent, "I'm sorry, I don't speak much Chinese." She sinks back on her chair.
They get a taxi from Gatwick. This turns out to be a mistake: the M23 is at a standstill. Giles finds himself shouting at the driver and hitting the taxi door with his fist.
At the hospital, he is directed along corridors and up several flights of stairs. Chao-Ahn hangs back and he has to beg her to hurry with the look in his eyes.
Lydia has a private room, antiseptic-clean, panelled with wood veneer. The window is half-open and net curtains blow a little in the wind.
He does not recognise Lydia at all. Her head is red and puckered where it shows from under the bandages and she does not seem to have any hair. Her arms are swathed in bandages apart from her left hand. Her legs, under the bedsheet, seem to end at the knee.
The nurse is saying something, but otherwise the room seems very still. The nurse says something again.
"What?" asks Giles.
"She passed," says the nurse. "She passed not two minutes ago. Very quietly."
Giles has never seen anyone who looked as bad as Lydia who lived longer than an hour. How had she answered his calls? How had she kept things going? And what made her decide that Giles was the right horse to back?
"Are you sure this is Lydia Chalmers?" he asks, stupidly.
The nurse nods.
Giles pulls a chair up to the bedside and takes Lydia's less damaged hand. It's still warm in his grasp.
"Have any of her other relatives visited?" he asks.
The nurse nods. "Mr Wyndam-Pryce," she says.
"Older than me or younger?" he asks. "There are two."
"Older," she says. "He's already taken most of her things. Not that she had much, just her notebook and her phone."
Giles sits with Lydia until she grows cold. Chao-Ahn sits in a corner, staring in consternation at the woman's dead body.
SPOILERS: For almost all of the televised Buffy and Angel. Guaranteed free of spoilers from the comics, as I haven't read them.
RATING: PG13 for adult themes and violence.
WRITTEN: Begun September 2004, recommenced September 2009, largely completed October 2009.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Some dialogue is quoted or closely paraphrased from "Lie to Me" and "Restless" by Joss Whedon, "Bring on the Night" by Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie, "Storyteller" by Jane Espenson, "Lies My Parents Told Me" by David Fury and Drew Goddard, and "Dirty Girls" by Drew Goddard. Thanks to my beta readers, peasant_, shapinglight and revdorothyl.
14. LP
He has an hour to spare in Hong Kong before the flight to Shanghai. He spends most of it in an electronics store, buying a phone. "It has to be one that works all over the world," he says.
"Satellite or Tri-Band?" asks the shop assistant, a young man with amazingly coifed hair.
"What's the difference?"
He doesn't know why he finds electronic gadgets so difficult. He's perfectly adept at mastering all sorts of other complicated information. Perhaps it's due to a deep-seated suspicion that they devalue the physical objects that he loves, like books and LPs. Or perhaps it's something like gadget-dyslexia. Besides, for years he's avoided learning anything by asking Willow to take care of it. He peers at the shiny plastic handsets and realises he's been falling behind all that time. If Jenny had still been here, she would have helped him with it, and mocked him at the same time.
In Shanghai's gleaming airport a few hours later, he buys a book of maps. He pauses over an English-to-Shanghainese dictionary, but the book says at the front that most Shanghai residents speak some Mandarin, which is the one Chinese dialect he knows a little of. Then he's off to hire yet another car.
Ten minutes later and he's very glad of the maps.
15. Cupboards
First, he passes trucks, train stations, warehouses, and all the other usual accompaniments of a major airport. Then some fields. Then a motorway. Then some quaint-looking houses. Some housing estates, with blocks of flats stretching into the distance. Some more fields. An elevated train track. Huge, rectangular ponds. More houses, more warehouses. Industrial estates. The Yangtze River.
The buildings are getting taller. He passes into wide streets lined with skyscrapers. There are plazas, department stores, municipal lakes. More motorways, more tall buildings, another river.
Shanghai stretches on. Houses, skyscrapers, factories, universities, parks, hospitals, railway stations, shops. And people, everywhere people. People in cars, on motorbikes, on bicycles, on buses, on foot, on skateboards. Reading newspapers, having snacks, chatting on their mobiles, heading off to lunch. Driving taxis, selling stallfood, sweeping streets. On pavements, on roads, on railway platforms, hanging half-way out of windows.
Giles can't remember how long he's been driving. There's a thickness in the back of his head that means the jetlag's about to hit. (Houses, sportsfields.) His map insists he has still has another fifteen miles to go. (Houses, shopping malls.) He's too tired to drive with any concentration - perhaps he should pull over? (Railway station, park, houses.) Why does it look nothing like he expected? (An Ikea.) It's because he's been picturing the city in the 1920s: jazz age, bawdy, gaudy. (Houses, strip mall.) A lot has happened to Shanghai since.
Perhaps Spike remembers the Shanghai of the Twenties.
He finally reaches what he thinks is the right housing estate. The buildings are terraced, four stories high. The numbering is confusing and Giles has to double-back a couple of times to be sure.
He knocks. He waits. He knocks again. He waits for a car to go past behind him, then he breaks a small front window and reaches in to unlock the front door.
Inside, the house is empty. There's no carpet or furniture. He walks through to the next room, wary: still nothing. The kitchen has a stove but empty cupboards. But there's no sign of a struggle, or of blood.
It's the same story upstairs. Perhaps he has misread the house number? His map and the address are back in the car.
He steps out the front door and is instantly knocked on the head.
16. Chair
When he comes to, he is tied to a chair. This is very far from being his favourite way to wake up.
He's underground, he thinks, or deep within a building, or perhaps it's night. He can see no trace of natural light, just four concrete walls, a door, and an electric lamp. He feels nauseous.
A man in a military uniform comes in then. "Rupert Giles?" He glances at a clipboard. "A British national, currently living in the United States?"
"Currently in China," Giles says. "I travel around a lot."
"So we know. You arrived yesterday from Los Angeles, hired a car, and drove immediately to the home of a young woman we have been monitoring for some time."
Oh God, Giles thinks.
"On Tuesday last, Wu Chao-Ahn was attacked by a group of six blind men. As we had been monitoring her movements, we were able to neutralise the men and took Wu into protective custody."
"They're not men," Giles says. "You'll find--"
The soldier cuts him off, glancing at him sharply. "Wu is one of an accounted thirty-two known young female targets of these men. Of these, twenty-six, including three members of national Olympics teams have--"
"You have to bring the survivors to me," says Giles. "We're keeping these girls safe, we're--"
"Have died," the soldier says, "along with approximately sixty-eight other citizens plus fifty-two foreign nationals. Many of those who were murdered were also under surveillance: suspected cultists and those who were in frequent contact with undeclared international political networks."
That would be The Council of Watchers, thinks Giles.
"Wu has been questioned, but claims to know nothing of these men, the cultists or the international network. Then you arrive." The soldier puts down his clipboard and takes a step closer. For the first time, Giles gets a good look at his face: he's probably in his fifties, and has such sad eyes. "What's going on?" the soldier asks.
Giles explains as best he can. "Of course, all of that only makes sense if you believe in demons, or in the reification of unspeakable evils."
The man considers.
He gestures to someone outside, and four younger soldiers come in. They untie Giles but seize his arms, forcing him to walk along corridors and down stairs deeper into the building.
They reach a door that is protected by four armed guards and a series of heavy locks. Giles doesn't like the look of this.
The door is pulled back and Giles is taken in.
Inside is a comfortably furnished room, with a bed, a sofa, a desk, a computer, a telephone, a fridge and TV, but no windows or other doors. A young woman sits on the sofa, with the phone in her hand.
The older soldier arrives. "Rupert Giles, I am releasing Wu Chao-Ahn into your custody." He hands Giles some official-looking documents, including a passport.
"Ah, thank you," says Giles, not really sure where this is coming from.
"And also Fong Li."
Giles turns around to see a handcuffed woman being brought in. She's middle-aged, a little tubby, and has hair going salt-and-pepper black-and-white.
She looks as surprised as Giles does.
17. Car
"I was looking for her as well," says Fong Li. She is sitting in the back seat of Giles's hire car, next to Chao-Ahn. In the rear-view mirror, Giles watches her rub the back of her head. "You want the next right."
They're in a district of huge warehouses and factories, nowhere near, as far as Giles can tell, the apartment block where he'd looked for Chao-Ahn.
"No," he says. "My general intent was 'away'."
"And put the pedal to the metal, before Comrade Zhi changes his mind."
"Is that likely?"
"Well, his superiors might change his mind for him."
"What happened back there?"
"They let her go," she says, "and they let us go too as a happy coincidence."
"But why?"
"Zhi wants to let her go. Her family has influential friends and they're influencing. But if he lets her go, she dies, and that's bad for him. Also, he might not like it very much, as he's an OK guy. But now he has you, convenient foreign stranger, so he can claim to be releasing her into safe hands and make it your fault. And I'm just too awkward to keep."
"And who are you exactly?"
"I'm Mrs Fong," she says. "Think of me as a friend."
They pull up at stoplights. They're leaving the warehouses behind now, and are heading into the city proper. He asks, "Are you a Watcher?"
"Not the way you mean. But there's a bunch of us who kept our knowledge going in unfriendly decades and political climes."
Chao-Ahn says something he can't understand.
"Can you ask her to say that in Mandarin? I can speak a little of that."
Mrs Fong asks, but Chao-Ahn's reply is brief. "She can't speak Mandarin. She's from Hong Kong."
"Bugger," says Giles.
Traffic is bad as they reach the city centre. Chao-Ahn and Mrs Fong have a long conversation as they inch through the streets. When their talk tails off, Mrs Fong asks, "Is that 'Giles' as in 'Wade-Giles'?"
"Ah, yes, in fact" he says. "Herbert was a distant relative. But my own language studies have concentrated rather more on the Indo-European."
"Pity," says Mrs Fong. "Miss Wu's going to have a long trip."
"When you said her family is influential--"
"You don't want to know," says Mrs Fong. "Keep her safe and you won't have to worry about it."
"I don't find that reassuring," Giles says.
They reach the airport after an hour. Mrs Fong shakes his hand.
"Won't you come with us?"
"Too many Potential Slayers here, I think. Plenty to do. You take care of her."
Chao-Ahn watches this conversation and then asks something of Mrs Fong. She does not like the reply. A huge argument breaks out. There is shouting and tears.
Finally, Mrs Fong grabs Chao-Ahn's shoulders and says something to her, quiet and intense.
"Does she know why she's going with me?" Giles asks.
"I've told her there's issues," she says. "As I said, her family's influential. I haven't said exactly what, but I've told her she'll be safe with you."
"And she believes you?"
"Not all that much."
Chao-Ahn stands tall and turns to face Giles. She says something to him.
Mrs Fong translates: "She says, 'Let's go.'"
And so they do.
18. Curtains
In the airport, he calls Lydia. Once again, it's one of the nurses who replies.
"Are you a relative?" she asks.
"Her cousin in America," he says, as it's very nearly true. "Rupert Giles."
"Well, you might want to come and visit soon," she says. "The operation didn't go well."
Giles cancels the flight back to California and books them on to London. He tries to explain to Chao-Ahn, but the best he can get is confused looks as he points at a map.
Another thirteen hours trapped in a flying metal tube. Chao-Ahn is restless, looking about herself the whole time. Often she seems on the verge of speaking to one of the other passengers.
Giles pops into the loo halfway through the trip and when he comes back he sees Chao-Ahn lean forward to speak with a Chinese-looking man in the next row up. The man says, in an American accent, "I'm sorry, I don't speak much Chinese." She sinks back on her chair.
They get a taxi from Gatwick. This turns out to be a mistake: the M23 is at a standstill. Giles finds himself shouting at the driver and hitting the taxi door with his fist.
At the hospital, he is directed along corridors and up several flights of stairs. Chao-Ahn hangs back and he has to beg her to hurry with the look in his eyes.
Lydia has a private room, antiseptic-clean, panelled with wood veneer. The window is half-open and net curtains blow a little in the wind.
He does not recognise Lydia at all. Her head is red and puckered where it shows from under the bandages and she does not seem to have any hair. Her arms are swathed in bandages apart from her left hand. Her legs, under the bedsheet, seem to end at the knee.
The nurse is saying something, but otherwise the room seems very still. The nurse says something again.
"What?" asks Giles.
"She passed," says the nurse. "She passed not two minutes ago. Very quietly."
Giles has never seen anyone who looked as bad as Lydia who lived longer than an hour. How had she answered his calls? How had she kept things going? And what made her decide that Giles was the right horse to back?
"Are you sure this is Lydia Chalmers?" he asks, stupidly.
The nurse nods.
Giles pulls a chair up to the bedside and takes Lydia's less damaged hand. It's still warm in his grasp.
"Have any of her other relatives visited?" he asks.
The nurse nods. "Mr Wyndam-Pryce," she says.
"Older than me or younger?" he asks. "There are two."
"Older," she says. "He's already taken most of her things. Not that she had much, just her notebook and her phone."
Giles sits with Lydia until she grows cold. Chao-Ahn sits in a corner, staring in consternation at the woman's dead body.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 10:12 am (UTC)I'm very happy to have Roger W-P to hate, now. Lydia has always been dear to my heart, but now she is my favorite war hero.