Buffy Fic: The Plural of Apocalpyse 1/1
Dec. 18th, 2006 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gilascaveTitle: The Plural of Apocalypse
Author: James
Pairing: Giles/Xander
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit made
Spoilers: set post-series
Summary: Giles and the others are training the new Slayers. Life is, for them, pretty normal.
Notes: for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fannishnej, for the yarn!
Rupert Giles rolled over in bed and thought very hard about all the reasons why he could stay in bed until noon, or after. The list was, unfortunately, rather short and easy to get through. The list that came unbidden afterwards was much longer and more annoyingly correct - reasons he needed to get out of bed and on with his day. He stayed on his back and stared at the ceiling; beside him there was a soft noise, then an arm was slung across Giles' stomach.
One very compelling reason to stay in bed, he thought, except that Xander had come to bed even later than he had and Giles knew he really ought to let him sleep. He glanced over at the lightly-snoring mound of bedclothes and tousled hair, finding his will to get out of bed weaken. A quick snuggle, perhaps, and he'd be out of bed possibly no later than ten. No one would miss him, he had no meetings scheduled and no classes to oversee. A building full of Slayers-in-Training could easily amuse themselves under the watchful eyes of Buffy and Willow and--
The banging on the outer door to their suite of rooms startled him. "Mr. Giles!" Several voices shouted together; more banging, and Giles groaned. Sitting up, he glared down at Xander who hadn't even moved at the ruckus.
"Serve you right if the world is ending," he said.
Xander grinned. "Not me they're yelling for," he mumbled into his pillow, good eye still closed.
"Faker," Giles scowled, but hurried out of bed and into a robe as the door-pounding and yelling continued. He'd never had quite the problem of children barging in on his rooms like he had back in Sunnydale -- though he was fairly sure that it was due to that rather memorable time two years ago when the door had banged open right as Giles had been sliding inside of his lover.
Xander had crawled under the bed and stayed there for the rest of the day, and the girls had, strangely, taken to knocking instead of barging in. The younger girls, at least -- Giles had noticed one or two original Slayers who had lurked around the hallway making noises about video cameras.
"All right, all right!" Giles called as he crossed through the outer room toward the door. More banging regardless, then he opened the door and found five extremely agitated faces.
"Mr. Giles! Mr. Giles!" That was Celeste, all of sixteen and a student for almost four years. Her companions were her usual circle -- Mary and Dianna, both Slayers, also sixteen; Caroline, a fifteen year old witch, and Dabny, one of the few warlocks they had at the school. They'd been tight friends the entire last year, Giles knew, and he suspected they would opt to continue training as a team when they graduated into fieldwork.
They were a rather good team, Giles knew; they had plenty of skills spread out among them and they had a good leader in Celeste. He wasn't sure that Mary and Dianna would continue to follow her rather than form their own team -- Slayer, witch, one or two others for researching duties and backup. But they seemed to be content for now and Giles had to admit their marks in classroom exercises were all fairly impressive.
Right at the moment they looked like the world was about to end.
"Now, what's going on?" he asked, as he saw they'd more or less caught their breaths and might be able to explain coherently.
"The world's ending!" Mary screeched. Giles winced, remembering why he'd never agreed to work with the very youngest of the girls, and rubbed his head.
"The world's ending, I see." He tried to think. There had been some noise about a concert this weekend; most of the children had wanted to go, and Buffy had actually agreed to shepherd a group of them. Perhaps they'd run out of tickets. "Is that all?"
"Didn't you hear us?" Celeste asked, eyes wide and still breathing hard. "The world is going to end."
"Right, that's what I thought you said. Why, exactly, do you say the world's ending?"
For a moment all he could hear was high-pitched babbling as all five of them answered him at once. Then Mary held up a book she'd been holding and said, "It's right here!" She gave the others a look and they fell quiet.
Giles leaned down, squinted, then sighed. "I haven't got my glasses. Wait here-"
"It says the world is ending!" Mary said, helpfully. "We read it a dozen times, and checked everything and all the signs and portents are right here!" Her finger stabbed a section of the book and Giles leaned closer, identifying the book as Marhalis' Collection of Portents.
It was a restricted book, one that the younger students weren't even aware was in the library, much less allowed to read. These children would have gained access to it this year, and Giles wasn't terribly surprised they'd been studying it.
Last year the books of transmutation spells had been all the rage, keeping Willow and himself rather busy, corralling wild imaginations and wilder spell-casting. The year before that it had been knives. This year it was apocalypses.
He opened his mouth to tell them to let him go back to bed and worry about the world ending later, but stopped as he saw the way they were looking at him. There was real fear in their eyes. Giles stepped back and ushered them into the sitting room.
"All right, explain to me what you've found."
~~~
It actually took longer than Giles would have expected for them to explain everything they'd found. Mary went through everything she'd found in the book, then Dabny took over to explain what they'd been able to cross-reference and confirm. Caroline and Dianne took turns throwing out reminders, then finally Celeste asked, "So what do we do?"
Giles thought about his bed in the next room, and Xander, still in it. Before he could say anything, he heard Buffy saying, "Giles, we have a problem."
"See! We were right! The world's ending!" Mary shouted, leaping to her feet.
"Calm down," Giles told her, and turned his attention to Buffy, now standing in his doorway. She gave him a raised eyebrow at the state of his attire, then shot an amused look towards the bedroom door. "What is it," he asked before she could say anything that was, unfortunately, not true about what he'd been doing before being interrupted.
"You remember that guy, Mr. Ander-something? The government guy who showed up last week saying we'd kidnapped some kids?"
"Yes, of course. We showed him all the forms the parents have signed and he went away."
Buffy frowned, worriedly. "He's back, and he has cops with him. And vans."
Giles was on his feet. "Oh, dear. This sounds serious."
She nodded. "I've already got Faith and Andrew rounding up the little kids in case anyone tries to nab them. But I was hoping we could talk our way out of this one. If we have to break any bones I'm not sure it will help our case about being a perfectly innocent private school."
"Right you are. I need to get dressed; Buffy, please taken Mr. Andercromby to my office and let him know I'm on my way." He was already heading towards his bedroom; he could hear Xander moving around.
"But Mr. Giles!" Celeste shouted, grabbing his arm. "The world's ending!"
"I heard you," Giles said. "And from what you say the world won't be ending for another three and a half days. This, however, is an immediate crisis which I must content with."
"But we have to avert it now," Mary clamored. "Didn't you hear? The sunrise and the bones and the crazy chickens and the warthog!"
"I heard--" Giles stopped, already thinking about what he could do with Mr. Andercromby, and what would be best. He still didn't know what had tipped the man off that something was unusual at the Summers Academy for Gifted Students -- Xander and Andrew had wanted to call it Xavier's School, which fortunately Buffy had argued down. The second runner-up had been Giles' School, and that one Giles had successfully avoided by nominating the name Summers.
They'd been in business for five years, now, bringing in young Slayers and training them. They'd even had three graduating classes so far, and teams of Slayers and witches and personnel he still didn't have a proper name for as he refused to call them 'Watchers'. They'd had no real trouble with the law until now; Giles began to wonder if perhaps Andercromby didn't have some more sinister reason for wanting to break up the school. Some demonic reason -- he hadn't even thought about the man not being everything he claimed.
He suddenly realised that Celeste and the other children were still hanging onto him, worrying about their apocalypse. "Look, I haven't time to handle this right now," he said, gently. "We have three days -- why don't you five see what you can do about...averting this apocalypse."
All five of them stared at him, bug eyes and breathless.
"But we're just kids!" Dabny said. "You and Buffy have to...."
"It's an apocalypse," Mary said, pronouncing it carefully in case he'd misunderstood. "We can't... it's... the whole world is counting on you..."
Giles smiled. "I have every faith that you can handle it." He clapped Celeste gently on the shoulder. "See what you can do, and let us know when you run into any trouble. Right now I've got to keep the police from taking away our youngest students and doing god knows what with them."
Celeste had gone decidedly pale. "But...but... it's...." She trailed off, then frowned thoughtfully.
Giles took another few steps towards his bedroom, then heard her say, "All right. Dabny and Caroline, I need you two to cast a locating spell...."
Giles got into his bedroom and found Xander just slipping on a sweater.
"I'll go see if Faith and Andrew need a hand," he said, and he paused long enough to give Giles a kiss.
Giles slipped his arm around Xander's waist and took a second, longer one. He really would have preferred a long, leisurely morning in bed -- sleeping or not. From the grin he got when he let Xander go, he knew his lover was thinking exactly the same thing.
"Or we could let the world end, and let the cops take the kids, and we can have sex," Xander continued.
Giles sighed. "You have no idea how tempted I am," he said in all seriousness. "Someday we're going to retire, and I can laze about all day as much as I want."
"You can, maybe," Xander said as he headed for the door. "I'm still a spring chicken. Old man." He grinned and ducked out of the room before Giles could respond.
Giles laughed and hurried to get dressed, so he could get down to his office before Buffy succumbed to temptation to break anything she shouldn't.
~~~
He didn't see Celeste or the others for two and a half days. He hadn't really been looking -- Mr. Andercromby and the police hadn't been easily swayed, and Giles had kept them busy with double-talk and flustered Britishisms while Buffy had gone investigating. It had turned out that Andercromby was working for a vampire nest who'd hoped to lure the youngest, and presumably more vulnerable, Slayers into their clutches. Buffy and Faith had taken a small team of older students for some field training and wiped the whole lot of them out in half an hour.
Now Giles was heading back to his suite, hoping to collect Xander along the way and get back to his earlier plans for staying in bed as long as humanly possible. He caught sight of a patch of blue smoke coming out from under a door -- the conference room nearest the East Wing Library.
Frowning, he headed towards it. He heard the faint sounds of chanting -- a spell he didn't quite know if he recognised. Cautiously he opened the door and found Celeste and the others all sitting in a circle. Celeste and Mary were holding stakes at the ready, Caroline and Dabny were holding twisted bits of herbs of some kind, dangling from string. Dianne was kicking at a pile of cloth on the floor.
"Mr. Giles!" Celeste saw him, face breaking out into an excited smile. "We did it! The world isn't ending!"
"I...see?" Giles looked over the array once more, recognising now the symbols chalked on the floor and the scent of sandalwood. "You've averted it, then?"
"We did!" Mary piped up, sounding all of eight years old. "No more apocalypse! We froze the warthog and freed the chickens, and the Bithagoris beast has been vaporised!" She pointed at the pile of cloth.
"I see," Giles said again. "Well done." He gave them all an approving nod, prompting squealing and jumping from all five of the children.
"Can we have ice cream?" Caroline asked. "We missed dinner because of the timing of the spell and I know there's rocky road in the freezer."
"Yes, of course," Giles said, still looking at the remains of the spellwork. Without any further word, the children ran past him and out the door, chattering loudly amongst themselves about the apocalypse and the merits of rocky road versus vanilla.
"So, what's this?" Buffy asked, and Giles turned to find her coming into the room.
"A rather well made spell," Giles said, pointing unnecessarily at the chalked symbols. "They've actually summoned, controlled, and dispatched a Bithagoris beast. I can't verify any of the other things.. chickens and warthogs and the like."
"But the world isn't ending," Buffy replied, poking at the beast's robes lying on the floor still. "So they must have done it."
"We still have a day," Giles reminded her.
"Nope." Buffy smiled. "Willow says they successfully averted it. She found the warthog and let it go once their spell here was over."
"Ah. Good, good. Excellent." Giles looked around the room again, and shook his head.
"Yay them," Buffy said. "Right?" she added, doubtfully.
"Oh, yes. Yes, of course. They all five pass. I'll let Xander know."
"It's kinda too bad," she said, pouting. "I was looking forward to some last-minute apocalypse averting."
"You what?"
"Well, we never get to, anymore. We haven't had a group of students fail to avert an apocalypse in months."
"So, our training is effective. I rather like knowing we can rely on them to save the world," Giles argued. Admitedly, the whole testing process was hard on his nerves, but really he had found he much preferred it when others did all the nasty work.
Buffy grinned. "That's because you'd rather be home with Xander. Me, I want to kill things."
"I tell you what. The next apocalypse, we won't let the students find the first signs. You can have it all to yourself."
"Really? You're not just saying that?" Buffy gave a bounce, smiling from ear to ear. Then she scowled. "Not all by myself. I'll need you and Willow and Xander. I always had you guys when there were apocalypses to avert. Apocalyp...ti? Apocalyptos? Giles? What is the plural of apocalypse?"
the end
Author: James
Pairing: Giles/Xander
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit made
Spoilers: set post-series
Summary: Giles and the others are training the new Slayers. Life is, for them, pretty normal.
Notes: for
fannishnej, for the yarn! Rupert Giles rolled over in bed and thought very hard about all the reasons why he could stay in bed until noon, or after. The list was, unfortunately, rather short and easy to get through. The list that came unbidden afterwards was much longer and more annoyingly correct - reasons he needed to get out of bed and on with his day. He stayed on his back and stared at the ceiling; beside him there was a soft noise, then an arm was slung across Giles' stomach.
One very compelling reason to stay in bed, he thought, except that Xander had come to bed even later than he had and Giles knew he really ought to let him sleep. He glanced over at the lightly-snoring mound of bedclothes and tousled hair, finding his will to get out of bed weaken. A quick snuggle, perhaps, and he'd be out of bed possibly no later than ten. No one would miss him, he had no meetings scheduled and no classes to oversee. A building full of Slayers-in-Training could easily amuse themselves under the watchful eyes of Buffy and Willow and--
The banging on the outer door to their suite of rooms startled him. "Mr. Giles!" Several voices shouted together; more banging, and Giles groaned. Sitting up, he glared down at Xander who hadn't even moved at the ruckus.
"Serve you right if the world is ending," he said.
Xander grinned. "Not me they're yelling for," he mumbled into his pillow, good eye still closed.
"Faker," Giles scowled, but hurried out of bed and into a robe as the door-pounding and yelling continued. He'd never had quite the problem of children barging in on his rooms like he had back in Sunnydale -- though he was fairly sure that it was due to that rather memorable time two years ago when the door had banged open right as Giles had been sliding inside of his lover.
Xander had crawled under the bed and stayed there for the rest of the day, and the girls had, strangely, taken to knocking instead of barging in. The younger girls, at least -- Giles had noticed one or two original Slayers who had lurked around the hallway making noises about video cameras.
"All right, all right!" Giles called as he crossed through the outer room toward the door. More banging regardless, then he opened the door and found five extremely agitated faces.
"Mr. Giles! Mr. Giles!" That was Celeste, all of sixteen and a student for almost four years. Her companions were her usual circle -- Mary and Dianna, both Slayers, also sixteen; Caroline, a fifteen year old witch, and Dabny, one of the few warlocks they had at the school. They'd been tight friends the entire last year, Giles knew, and he suspected they would opt to continue training as a team when they graduated into fieldwork.
They were a rather good team, Giles knew; they had plenty of skills spread out among them and they had a good leader in Celeste. He wasn't sure that Mary and Dianna would continue to follow her rather than form their own team -- Slayer, witch, one or two others for researching duties and backup. But they seemed to be content for now and Giles had to admit their marks in classroom exercises were all fairly impressive.
Right at the moment they looked like the world was about to end.
"Now, what's going on?" he asked, as he saw they'd more or less caught their breaths and might be able to explain coherently.
"The world's ending!" Mary screeched. Giles winced, remembering why he'd never agreed to work with the very youngest of the girls, and rubbed his head.
"The world's ending, I see." He tried to think. There had been some noise about a concert this weekend; most of the children had wanted to go, and Buffy had actually agreed to shepherd a group of them. Perhaps they'd run out of tickets. "Is that all?"
"Didn't you hear us?" Celeste asked, eyes wide and still breathing hard. "The world is going to end."
"Right, that's what I thought you said. Why, exactly, do you say the world's ending?"
For a moment all he could hear was high-pitched babbling as all five of them answered him at once. Then Mary held up a book she'd been holding and said, "It's right here!" She gave the others a look and they fell quiet.
Giles leaned down, squinted, then sighed. "I haven't got my glasses. Wait here-"
"It says the world is ending!" Mary said, helpfully. "We read it a dozen times, and checked everything and all the signs and portents are right here!" Her finger stabbed a section of the book and Giles leaned closer, identifying the book as Marhalis' Collection of Portents.
It was a restricted book, one that the younger students weren't even aware was in the library, much less allowed to read. These children would have gained access to it this year, and Giles wasn't terribly surprised they'd been studying it.
Last year the books of transmutation spells had been all the rage, keeping Willow and himself rather busy, corralling wild imaginations and wilder spell-casting. The year before that it had been knives. This year it was apocalypses.
He opened his mouth to tell them to let him go back to bed and worry about the world ending later, but stopped as he saw the way they were looking at him. There was real fear in their eyes. Giles stepped back and ushered them into the sitting room.
"All right, explain to me what you've found."
~~~
It actually took longer than Giles would have expected for them to explain everything they'd found. Mary went through everything she'd found in the book, then Dabny took over to explain what they'd been able to cross-reference and confirm. Caroline and Dianne took turns throwing out reminders, then finally Celeste asked, "So what do we do?"
Giles thought about his bed in the next room, and Xander, still in it. Before he could say anything, he heard Buffy saying, "Giles, we have a problem."
"See! We were right! The world's ending!" Mary shouted, leaping to her feet.
"Calm down," Giles told her, and turned his attention to Buffy, now standing in his doorway. She gave him a raised eyebrow at the state of his attire, then shot an amused look towards the bedroom door. "What is it," he asked before she could say anything that was, unfortunately, not true about what he'd been doing before being interrupted.
"You remember that guy, Mr. Ander-something? The government guy who showed up last week saying we'd kidnapped some kids?"
"Yes, of course. We showed him all the forms the parents have signed and he went away."
Buffy frowned, worriedly. "He's back, and he has cops with him. And vans."
Giles was on his feet. "Oh, dear. This sounds serious."
She nodded. "I've already got Faith and Andrew rounding up the little kids in case anyone tries to nab them. But I was hoping we could talk our way out of this one. If we have to break any bones I'm not sure it will help our case about being a perfectly innocent private school."
"Right you are. I need to get dressed; Buffy, please taken Mr. Andercromby to my office and let him know I'm on my way." He was already heading towards his bedroom; he could hear Xander moving around.
"But Mr. Giles!" Celeste shouted, grabbing his arm. "The world's ending!"
"I heard you," Giles said. "And from what you say the world won't be ending for another three and a half days. This, however, is an immediate crisis which I must content with."
"But we have to avert it now," Mary clamored. "Didn't you hear? The sunrise and the bones and the crazy chickens and the warthog!"
"I heard--" Giles stopped, already thinking about what he could do with Mr. Andercromby, and what would be best. He still didn't know what had tipped the man off that something was unusual at the Summers Academy for Gifted Students -- Xander and Andrew had wanted to call it Xavier's School, which fortunately Buffy had argued down. The second runner-up had been Giles' School, and that one Giles had successfully avoided by nominating the name Summers.
They'd been in business for five years, now, bringing in young Slayers and training them. They'd even had three graduating classes so far, and teams of Slayers and witches and personnel he still didn't have a proper name for as he refused to call them 'Watchers'. They'd had no real trouble with the law until now; Giles began to wonder if perhaps Andercromby didn't have some more sinister reason for wanting to break up the school. Some demonic reason -- he hadn't even thought about the man not being everything he claimed.
He suddenly realised that Celeste and the other children were still hanging onto him, worrying about their apocalypse. "Look, I haven't time to handle this right now," he said, gently. "We have three days -- why don't you five see what you can do about...averting this apocalypse."
All five of them stared at him, bug eyes and breathless.
"But we're just kids!" Dabny said. "You and Buffy have to...."
"It's an apocalypse," Mary said, pronouncing it carefully in case he'd misunderstood. "We can't... it's... the whole world is counting on you..."
Giles smiled. "I have every faith that you can handle it." He clapped Celeste gently on the shoulder. "See what you can do, and let us know when you run into any trouble. Right now I've got to keep the police from taking away our youngest students and doing god knows what with them."
Celeste had gone decidedly pale. "But...but... it's...." She trailed off, then frowned thoughtfully.
Giles took another few steps towards his bedroom, then heard her say, "All right. Dabny and Caroline, I need you two to cast a locating spell...."
Giles got into his bedroom and found Xander just slipping on a sweater.
"I'll go see if Faith and Andrew need a hand," he said, and he paused long enough to give Giles a kiss.
Giles slipped his arm around Xander's waist and took a second, longer one. He really would have preferred a long, leisurely morning in bed -- sleeping or not. From the grin he got when he let Xander go, he knew his lover was thinking exactly the same thing.
"Or we could let the world end, and let the cops take the kids, and we can have sex," Xander continued.
Giles sighed. "You have no idea how tempted I am," he said in all seriousness. "Someday we're going to retire, and I can laze about all day as much as I want."
"You can, maybe," Xander said as he headed for the door. "I'm still a spring chicken. Old man." He grinned and ducked out of the room before Giles could respond.
Giles laughed and hurried to get dressed, so he could get down to his office before Buffy succumbed to temptation to break anything she shouldn't.
~~~
He didn't see Celeste or the others for two and a half days. He hadn't really been looking -- Mr. Andercromby and the police hadn't been easily swayed, and Giles had kept them busy with double-talk and flustered Britishisms while Buffy had gone investigating. It had turned out that Andercromby was working for a vampire nest who'd hoped to lure the youngest, and presumably more vulnerable, Slayers into their clutches. Buffy and Faith had taken a small team of older students for some field training and wiped the whole lot of them out in half an hour.
Now Giles was heading back to his suite, hoping to collect Xander along the way and get back to his earlier plans for staying in bed as long as humanly possible. He caught sight of a patch of blue smoke coming out from under a door -- the conference room nearest the East Wing Library.
Frowning, he headed towards it. He heard the faint sounds of chanting -- a spell he didn't quite know if he recognised. Cautiously he opened the door and found Celeste and the others all sitting in a circle. Celeste and Mary were holding stakes at the ready, Caroline and Dabny were holding twisted bits of herbs of some kind, dangling from string. Dianne was kicking at a pile of cloth on the floor.
"Mr. Giles!" Celeste saw him, face breaking out into an excited smile. "We did it! The world isn't ending!"
"I...see?" Giles looked over the array once more, recognising now the symbols chalked on the floor and the scent of sandalwood. "You've averted it, then?"
"We did!" Mary piped up, sounding all of eight years old. "No more apocalypse! We froze the warthog and freed the chickens, and the Bithagoris beast has been vaporised!" She pointed at the pile of cloth.
"I see," Giles said again. "Well done." He gave them all an approving nod, prompting squealing and jumping from all five of the children.
"Can we have ice cream?" Caroline asked. "We missed dinner because of the timing of the spell and I know there's rocky road in the freezer."
"Yes, of course," Giles said, still looking at the remains of the spellwork. Without any further word, the children ran past him and out the door, chattering loudly amongst themselves about the apocalypse and the merits of rocky road versus vanilla.
"So, what's this?" Buffy asked, and Giles turned to find her coming into the room.
"A rather well made spell," Giles said, pointing unnecessarily at the chalked symbols. "They've actually summoned, controlled, and dispatched a Bithagoris beast. I can't verify any of the other things.. chickens and warthogs and the like."
"But the world isn't ending," Buffy replied, poking at the beast's robes lying on the floor still. "So they must have done it."
"We still have a day," Giles reminded her.
"Nope." Buffy smiled. "Willow says they successfully averted it. She found the warthog and let it go once their spell here was over."
"Ah. Good, good. Excellent." Giles looked around the room again, and shook his head.
"Yay them," Buffy said. "Right?" she added, doubtfully.
"Oh, yes. Yes, of course. They all five pass. I'll let Xander know."
"It's kinda too bad," she said, pouting. "I was looking forward to some last-minute apocalypse averting."
"You what?"
"Well, we never get to, anymore. We haven't had a group of students fail to avert an apocalypse in months."
"So, our training is effective. I rather like knowing we can rely on them to save the world," Giles argued. Admitedly, the whole testing process was hard on his nerves, but really he had found he much preferred it when others did all the nasty work.
Buffy grinned. "That's because you'd rather be home with Xander. Me, I want to kill things."
"I tell you what. The next apocalypse, we won't let the students find the first signs. You can have it all to yourself."
"Really? You're not just saying that?" Buffy gave a bounce, smiling from ear to ear. Then she scowled. "Not all by myself. I'll need you and Willow and Xander. I always had you guys when there were apocalypses to avert. Apocalyp...ti? Apocalyptos? Giles? What is the plural of apocalypse?"
the end