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Part 11
“Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream,” said Giles quietly as he looked out on the distant army approaching slowly through Hell’s gray dawn.“Huh?” asked Buffy, handing him a cup of instant coffee.
“Oh, nothing. A bit before your time, I’m afraid.”
Buffy smiled. “I know where it’s from, Giles. I just never expected to hear you quoting Pink Floyd. Kinda thought if it wasn’t written by Puccini, you’d never heard it.”
“I was a teenager once, you know. I imagine it’s fairly difficult for you to believe that, but in point of fact it’s quite true.”
“Fifteen years ago, that might have been tough to swallow. Ever since the clerks at the grocery store started calling me ma’am, I can relate,” said Buffy.
Giles smiled and returned to his contemplation of the forces arrayed against them. “Wellington called the Battle of Waterloo ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.’ I suspect if we come through this, we’ll have one over on the Duke by a fair margin.”
“Sure looks that way. Giles, in case I don’t get the chance to say this later, I just wanted you to know how deeply touched I am that you came for me. You and Angel both. I know it must have been very difficult for you to look beyond the past and see him for what he is, not what he was. You don’t have any idea how much that means to me. I don’t think any woman could ever ask for a better friend.”
Giles put his arm around her shoulders and, drawing her close, said, “Nor could I. Buffy, I couldn’t be more proud of the woman you’ve become if you were my own daughter. What you did for Jenny — there are simply no words for how very grateful I am for that. I feel very privileged to be your Watcher. And your friend.”
The sound of boots on stone behind them caught Buffy’s attention.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” said Angel.
Giles withdrew his arm and said, “No. No, not at all. I’ll leave you two alone. I expect you have a good deal to talk about.”
“Giles,” said Angel.
The Watcher stopped and looked at him.
“There hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t wished I could undo it, that I haven’t wished I could give her back to you.”
Giles nodded. “It wasn’t you, Angel. She’s found peace now. And you’ve been given a second chance. Don’t spend it regretting a past that you had no control over.”
“I think maybe that’s good advice for all of us, Giles,” said Angel as the Watcher retreated to the encampment.
“It’s hard for him,” said Buffy.
“If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be much of a man. Short of killing you, I don’t think there’s anything I could have done to him that would have been more cruel.”
“Kill me? In your dreams, boyo. I had you beat six ways to Sunday.”
“You’re in mighty good spirits, given what’s coming our way.”
“Angel, I’ve seen the face of Death more times than I can count. The Reaper and I are old friends, practically drinking buddies. Sometimes, the only way to really deal with that is to live in five-minute increments. And right now, in this five-minute period of eternity, I’m standing with the man I love. There’s nothing beyond that at the moment.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a very strange girl, sometimes?”
“I think I’ve heard that once or twice, yeah. But seriously, if I were to stand here and think of you and Giles dying this morning, I’d probably just crawl into a hole and hide in terror. And that wouldn’t do any of us any good.”
“I wish I had your courage,” said Angel.
Buffy raised herself up on her toes and kissed him. “You came after me. I think that more than qualifies you for hero status.”
“Okay, break it up. We’ve got a war to fight, and that kind of sentimentality isn’t killing anything except my appetite,” came Hunter’s voice, clear and serious.
The mood was broken. Judgment day had finally dawned.
* * *
“Beginning scan sequence … now,” said the technician at the control computer as Willow nervously watched the Romanovsky Gate. “Acquiring phase beacon. Beacon locked. Dimensional manifold topology, nominal. We’re go for final initialization for Crossover.”
Willow breathed again. “That’s a relief. I mean, not that I didn’t think you guys knew what you were doing or anything like that, but I’m more the good old-fashioned, musty grimoire, Latin incantation kind of girl. I’m not used to all this cybersorcery stuff. Which is odd, I guess, considering I’m not such a bad bit-slinger myself.”
“It’s the twenty-first century,” said the tech, stereotypical in white lab coat and wire-frame glasses. “Why would you risk the imprecision and fallibility of a verbal incantation when you can exert unvaryingly precise control over any given spell matrix with this kind of equipment?”
“Um, fun?” suggested Willow.
The technician’s look indicated quite clearly that as far as he was concerned, ‘fun’ had absolutely no place in the practice of modern magic.
“Or maybe not,” Willow amended, returning her attention to the deceptively quiet Romanovsky Gate.