Work Text:
“He’s a mage, according to Willow,” Buffy explained. “Says he can control the elements, but Will tells me he’s a bit of a bragger. He only has a real handle on a couple of elements, mainly calcium and magnesium. Which means he has a knack for carving marble and can make milk fly through the air in spirals and little tornadoes. The way she described it, it actually sounds sort of pretty.”
“Good to know. I won’t try attacking him with yogurt and statuary,” Giles said from the ground. He tried half-heartedly to wriggle out of the ropes around his wrists and ankles.
“But then there’s the bones,” Buffy said, pulling on the chains that held her to the wall.
“I had a feeling it might come to that.”
“Will you be alright?” She asked. Calm, resigned, hiding whatever she may feel about his upcoming agony. She may be not quite yet twenty, but she was more of a leader than Giles ever was. The general hiding behind formality.
If it had been Buffy awaiting torture and Giles the chained spectator, he would pulling so hard against the chains that they would cut into his wrists. He’d be yelling at their captor, threatening him and begging for her to be spared. Giles would be a mess.
He had never made a good leader. From the moment Watcher and Slayer had met, it had been her in charge.
The mage brushed in just then. He didn’t even bother to wait until he had stopped walking before he raised his arms and called on his power.
With a twist of his hand in empty air, the mage broke Giles’ right arm. The Watcher curled in on himself, a groan-scream slipping out through his clenched teeth. After that, everything was a blur, mixed together like a tidal pool with the waves coming in. His bones cracked like popcorn. Every rib, each of the sixteen bones in his right hand. Legs and collarbones and toes, the net of breaks working its way across his torso and down to his feet.
By the second snap, Giles was screaming unashamedly, but he hardly heard it. The roiling of the pain filled his mind until reality didn’t exist. But around the time that his last rib broke, a small trail of thought wisped into existence. Slowly, the thought grew and developed until it balanced raw sensation. He could still feel the pain with full awareness, but he could think calmly as he twisted on the ground.
Broken bones pressed their sharp edges into his flesh while Giles considered his Slayer. His scream silenced for a second as he opened his eyes, breathing harshly, and saw the way Buffy pressed her mouth firmly closed. Then the pain overwhelmed him, and his lungs were working again.
With her stoicism in the face of the suffering of her followers, Buffy seemed almost masculine. At least, he would have thought of the quality as masculine had he not seen it in her. Buffy had a way of taking traditionally male traits and making them her own. Slaying in a skirt, giving orders with a flip of curled hair. Girls weren’t often pushed into circumstances that forced them to kill or be killed, but when they were, the must end up like this. Watching their friends suffer with a resolved expression. Determination and leadership didn’t seem manly in Buffy, they just seemed… grown up. Natural yet unnatural. No one her age should have to listen to an adult scream in pain.
His thoughts didn’t distract him from the agony, they just existed in a different sphere of his mind. Like his usual personality and Ripper. Separate, but coexisting. So he realized immediately when the bones stopped breaking.
“Stop,” a voice said firmly, sending a crackle of magic through the room. It had been decades since the last time he used dark magic, but he could still sense its presence like an addict’s eyes catching the glint of dirty spoons. Willow was here to put a stop to everything.
Giles laid still, trying not to breathe. He was still contorted in a strange position, on his side with his limbs twisted every which way. The mage had not yet gotten to Giles’ left arm when Willow intruded, and in contrast to the roaring in the rest of his body, that one limb hardly felt like part of him. It was disconnected, floating.
But Giles was distracted from his meditation on the phantom sensations by the realization that no battle was occurring. The exchange of spells should be deafening, but instead the only noise was a quiet gasping. The Watcher opened his eyes to see Willow immobile, frozen in place.
The mage could control her bones, but Willow’s magic was fighting back, so they stood at an impasse. One that badly needed to be broken by an interruption.
Looking around for a way to help, some convenient weapon or spellbook within arm’s reach, Giles caught sight of one of his legs, bent halfway between his foot and knee as if the mage had created an extra joint. The Watcher swallowed hard against his suddenly turning stomach, and then, unexpectedly, he let out a snort of laughter.
Which quickly turned into an, “Ouch, bloody hell, what the fuck,” when it jolted his ribs. But it was enough to make the mage look down at him in confusion.
“Something funny?” he asked.
Giles smiled. “Just a bit. You have to admit, it’s slightly amusing that everyone always makes that one strange little mistake. Such a small thing, shouldn’t even matter, but in order to cause the maximum amount of pain and distress, you broke my right hand first.”
“And?” the mage prompted.
“I’m left-handed.” Giles’ broken right fingers had slid easily, if painfully, through the ropes that had been binding his wrists, and now he staggered to his feet, drew back his unbroken arm, and punched the mage hard across the face. Giles was exhausted, but the blow was still strong enough to knock the mage off balance and give Willow a second to break free of his control. As the Watcher collapsed to the ground, nearly blacking out from the pain, he saw Willow dart forward, a dark fireball at the ready in her hand.
He laid on the ground in the eye of the storm wondering how he had even managed to stand up in the first place. The moment he’d put even the slightest amount of pressure on his left leg it had buckled agonizingly beneath him, the broken bone folding like a hinge. Now, he was too exhausted and nauseous to do anything more than breathe while Willow backed the mage into the wall with an unstoppable flurry of magic. Xander had walked into the room behind the witch, and Buffy now barked at him to find the keys and unlock her wrists. A moment of flailing through stacks of paper and knick knacks later, Xander had the keys and Buffy was free.
But instead of rushing off to join the fight, she knelt down beside Giles. “Willow…” he protested.
“Is doing fine. She’s kicking that guy’s butt from here to the demon dimension. You, on the other hand, I’m a little worried about. How badly did he hurt you?” she asked, lightly laying her hand on his unbroken one.
He flipped his hand over and wrapped his fingers around hers. “Just… a couple bones broken, Buffy. I’ll be fine.” The effect was somewhat ruined by the painful catches in his voice.
“Giles,” the Slayer warned.
“Alright, maybe more than a couple. But only the ones in my right arm and hand. And my ribs. And the bones in my legs and feet. But none else.”
“Right, just those ones,” Buffy said with a small smile. There was movement by her side, and then Willow and Xander were crouching on the ground as well. Giles hadn’t even noticed the battle end, but of course he had been certain of the outcome. No mage is a match for an angry Willow, once she knows what she’s dealing with.
“How is he?” the witch asked.
“Trying very hard not to worry me, which means not too great,” Buffy responded.
Willow picked up Giles’ right hand, the broken one, to check his pulse, but he hissed in pain and she put it down quickly. “Broken bones?”
“Yeah. A lot of them,” said Buffy.
“So, I’m thinking next stop hospital, then?” Xander said.
“Not a hospital. Please,” Giles said, voice cracking. He hadn’t meant to add that last word, but it had slipped out at the thought of being carried to the car and driving over Sunnydale’s rough streets to their little hospital. Lying still was agony enough.
Buffy nodded and forced her face into a determined expression. Her eyes were shiny, but no tears fell. What had he done to turn her into this? Eighteen-year-old children fought and died in war, but they still cried at the horrors. No teenager should be this wise.
“We’ll fix you, Giles,” she said, squeezing his hand. “You’ll be alright.”
I’m not the one who’s broken.