"Lost & Found" ~ Part 3

SPOILERS: Set post-"Chosen" in my own little Joss-comic-free AU.
RATING: FR-M [mature situations, angst]

DISCLAIMER: Without Prejudice. Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and concepts are copyright ©1997-2002 20th Century Fox, WB Television, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN Television. No Infringments of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission. While certain places herein are based on real geographical locations, the details are drawn purely from my own imagination. No resemblance to any real place and/or its populace intended. My original characters are not based on any real people, and no resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, is intended.

Part Three

In her mind, Buffy still wandered the empty moorland in the gentle spring sunshine. In reality, she had sat down to rest against some large sandstone boulders, just below the ridgeline, around the same time Giles chanted his Swahili incantations and the gray clouds gathered threateningly overhead. Without realizing it, she fell into a trance-like sleep against the rocks, her body sheltered from the chill wind and pending rainfall by an overhanging bluff.

It was there that her quest began in earnest, for her destination was not geographical, but spiritual. To obtain answers to all her questions, to rediscover herself and her path in life, she needed only to look deep enough inside herself, to the source from which all chosen ones drew their individuality and power, her slayer essence. The first time she had undertaken such a quest in the high desert of southern California, her subconscious mind had embodied this source in the guise of Sineya, The First Slayer. There was no reason to think this time would be any different.

As Buffy 'walked' across a rolling hillside carpeted with delicate mauve flowers, a prickling sensation at the nape of her neck suddenly alerted her to the fact that she was not alone, despite endless miles of heath and heather that stretched to the horizon in all surrounding directions. Frowning, she stopped and turned in a circle. To her right now, beyond the border of purple flowers, a stream appeared, trickling down to form a pool at the bottom of the hill. There, at the water's edge, a white horse quenched its thirst in the cool mountain runoff.

Drawn, she started towards it, and it wasn't until she was close that she realized how diminutive the horse was in stature. It was no less regal, however, as it whinnied, and snorted, and stamped its front hoof in recognition of her approach. Water dribbled from its mouth as it raised its head to watch her draw near, its bright, brown, intelligent eyes catching her gaze in a sign of understanding and welcome. Reaching the petite equine, which stood no more than the height of her own shoulder, Buffy petted the velvety muzzle in a gesture of greeting.

"Hey there, my little pony," she murmured with a fond smile.

She received a happy snort in reply. The Welsh mountain pony had been expecting her, idly grazing on the moist, succulent grasses that grew along the water's edge while it waited.

"I hope you know where we're supposed to go," she told her guide, "because it all looks the same to me out here."

The pony again snorted and nodded, and without further ado, turned to cross the babbling stream, walking away at unhurried pace. Taking a striding jump across the water, Buffy followed the pony up the small hill on the other side. With a couple of quick paces, she fell into step beside it, and was content to listen to the dawdling 'clip-clop' sound of its hooves as it threaded up the pebble-strewn track.

At the top, where the exposed upland presented a spectacular three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the undulating hills and vales, the pony stopped. Turning slightly, it stamped its hoof and shook its head to indicate a direction. Buffy looked over her left shoulder with some doubt.

"I don't think so," she disagreed with a frown. Despite the different route and the fact that she had totally lost her bearings, she instinctively knew that she had come from that direction. Therefore, she reasoned, her goal must surely be the opposite way--symbolic of her leaving behind the past for the future up ahead. "There's nothing back there for me."

The white pony evidently thought otherwise. It stamped its hoof and snorted determinedly.

Buffy shrugged. "Okay, Obi Wan, you're the boss."

Together, they started down dale. At the top if the next hill, they stopped again, but this time it wasn't to admire the view. Before, where there had been only bright sunshine and waving hillsides of windswept heather and moor-grass, now the horizon ahead looked dark and foreboding with a gloomy knot of thunderheads hanging low in the sky. Flashes of lightning jumped between the clouds, then a white-hot bolt snaked towards the treeless earth below.

"That can't be good," Buffy said of the menacing weather. "Maybe we should go the other way." But the pony began walking away from her again, resolutely heading towards the storm and making her hasten to follow.

The farther they traveled, the more Buffy became aware of the clear delineation between the storm and the sunlit hill--between her past and her future. It was as if God had taken two opposing photographs of the same scene, cut them in half, then butted them up together to form a single image of the mixed, opposing conditions. When they next stopped, Buffy still stood in the warm sunshine with a bright blue cloudless sky above her, but with just one more step, she would cross into the darkness and gloom under an active, angry sky.

Uncertain, she glanced at her guide. "Does this mean I'm destined to live in the darkness? Or that I have to face the past to see the future?"

The pony snorted, but she could not interpret the reply as affirmative or negative, or to which question it pertained.

Hesitation growing, Buffy regarded the storm swept landscape again. "I don't wanna go that way."

She stumbled, pushed from behind, as the pony used its muzzle in the center of her back to propel her determinedly in that direction. Regaining her balance, Buffy turned with her hands on her hips.

"There's nothing for me there," she insisted with a frown.

The pony disagreed, adamantly whinnying and snorting and stamping its hoof. When she made no attempt to comply, it reared up on its hind legs to make its point.

"Okay, okay," Buffy said, reluctantly giving in. Turning to face the storm, she took a resolute breath, and with a single stride, stepped out of the sunshine and into the gloom.

Heavy cold rain drenched her immediately. Pushing clinging strands of wet hair out of her eyes, she grimaced at her companion. Although the pony stood just three feet away, warm sun still shone brightly on its white coat. It shook its mane, and gave her a final happy nod and snort, before turning and walking away across the sunlit hillside in a slow unhurried gait. She watched until it had disappeared over a small rise, and then she was alone.

Buffy pouted unhappily, cold and soaked to the skin, with no clear idea what awaited her or what she was supposed to do. A chill breeze cut through her, making her hug herself. The thunder and lightning briefly drew her attention skyward, making her frown again. Of course, it had to be miserable as well as dark and depressing--a mood befitting her entire life.

"L-lightning never s-strikes in the same p-place twice."

Whirling at the unexpected yet familiar voice, Buffy was astonished to find herself back on the hillside with the ancient stone circle, the borrowed Council Range Rover, and Giles. But in the space of a single heartbeat, her surprise turned to absolute horror. Giles sat huddled on the ground, in the mud, oblivious to the icy wind and the torrents of rain running off him. With his knees drawn up to his chest, he shivered uncontrollably, repeating his mantra over an over.

Buffy realized, then, that she hadn't actually heard his whispered words; no way she could over the raging thunderstorm, not even with her enhanced slayer hearing. Instead, she had felt his fear in the very depths of her being.

"Giles!" she called in alarm. Why hadn't he taken shelter in the car?

She tried to move, but unexpectedly found that she couldn't. The waterlogged earth underfoot had turned to sticky, muddy peat, clinging so powerfully to the soles of her shoes that she could not lift either one no matter how hard she tried.

Yet she desperately needed to. If she only ever managed to accomplish one more thing in her life, Buffy knew, without any doubt, that one thing was to be with Giles. She needed to comfort him just as surely as she needed to breathe.

With that revelation, and all the subsequent connotations it brought with it, she also realized the real reason she couldn't go to him. A small part of her recognized that she wasn't actually there in a physical sense. Rather, she was inside her own mind, having some sort of lucid out-of-body experience.

A particular violent bolt of jagged fork lightning reached towards the ground, towards Giles. It immediately silenced his whispered mantra and caused him to cower lower in utter dread. Fearless, Buffy looked skyward, watching it withdraw empty-handed, listening to the thunder growl away in disappointment. The storm was what had her normally stalwart and unflappable Watcher frightened out of his mind?

"Giles!" she called again, despite knowing the futility of the act.

Frustrated by her inability to aid him, Buffy again attempted to move out of the clinging mud that held her fast. She was The Slayer, dammit, and someone dear to her was threatened by a monster. She wasn't going to let something as mundane as a patch of stupid mud stop her . . .

Her right foot came away from the bog with a reluctant slurp.

No way, she was giving up. Her mission in life was to slay monsters, even it the monster in question was simply one called 'fear.'

Determined, and feeling more focused than she had in weeks, she struggled to pull her other foot free. Giles needed her, and in her heart and soul, she knew she needed him in more ways than she could count.

The epiphany came to her in the blink of an eye. She had grown disillusioned with the role Fate had forced her to play, training an army of inexperienced young girls to be humanity's first line of defense in the unending fight against evil. Most of her students graduated as carbon copies of herself, lacking her experience but armed with the same skill and determination to survive. Over time, Buffy's anxiety at giving so much of herself to so many strangers grew, until she thought she had nothing left to give anyone else. Love, she commiserated, true love, was an elusive goal that she would never find. Feeling sorry for herself, she identified a likely cause, and had thus begun to believe that being in London with Giles meant she could never get on with her life; that he was the personification of a past she so desperately wanted to leave behind. She had to leave him before she ended up hating him.

And yet, something always prevented her from going.

Her spirit guide had known the truth, the nature of that 'something,' which therefore meant she had known all along, too. She had simply shut it away, locked it deep inside where she didn't have to deal with it, because its acknowledgment was every bit as scary to her, as the thunderstorm was to her usually courageous and steadfast Watcher.

Giles wasn't the past; he was her future.

With a final tug, her left foot jerked free, forcing her to take a couple of quick steps backwards to maintain her balance. As the lightning made Giles recoil even more, Buffy rushed towards him with outstretched arms . . .

. . . and abruptly woke with a startled gasp. Momentarily disorientated as a rumble of thunder faded across the heath, she clutched the boulder on which she had fallen asleep, a poor substitute for the man she so longed to embrace. Straightening, she blinked away the confusion that came with being ripped out of a trance-like state and dumped into the awareness of real thunderstorm happening above her head.

Focusing, Buffy took stock of her surroundings. The sandstone rock felt gritty and wet beneath her, and somewhere nearby, the sound of a steady drip echoed slightly in her protective rocky hollow. She realized it was indeed raining, but the semi-sheltered overhang of her resting place had protected her from getting wet. Mostly. Her right shoulder must have been exposed some, because the arm of her coat felt damp to the touch. Not that it matter; she was about to get a whole lot wetter.

Springing determinedly to her feet, she hurriedly retraced her steps out of the ravine to the hilltop above.

Hopes falling, Buffy wiped the rain out of her eyes as she looked out over the empty moorland. With no discernable landmarks, it all looked the same, especially in the thick gloom of the storm. To make matters worse, night had fallen, which meant finding her way back to the Range Rover was going to take some doing. Losing her way was a distinct possibility, and the thought that she might not find Giles until morning made a cloying knot of panic rise in her throat.

The image in her mind's eye of him cowering in the mud, so lost and alone, was enough to make her whimper. He needed her, as much as she needed him.

Forcing herself to take a deep, calming breath, despite her inherent need for action, Buffy closed her eyes, and endeavored to clear her mind of everything but Giles. He'd been so good to her in the year she had lived under his roof. Her needs came first, they always had, so much so that she'd foolishly begun to take his kindness for granted. Giles had so many good reasons to turn her away, and one very important one not to.

She loved him, and while in the past she'd convinced herself it was simply the platonic love of friendship, in her heart and soul Buffy knew, now, that it would not take much to let it transform into something far more passionate. With just a few right words from his lips, or a tender caress of his hand, they could start something new together, a future.

If only he'd have her.

If only she could find him!

For an extended moment, she stood on the top of the hill, oblivious of the chill wind picking at her wet hair and clothes, and the freezing rain that fell like a shower of ice on her warm skin. Opening herself up, she reached out with her feelings. With her vision quest complete, she hoped that the temporary transference of his guardianship had been returned to him, and that she would once more be able to sense the mystical bond they shared as Destiny's last Chosen Ones.

What if she wasn't able to find him? What if their bond was irrevocably broken because of the stupid way she had deliberately distanced herself lately?

Just when she was about to panic again, she sensed him. Like a weak beacon in the midst of a raging tempest, she found him, and vowed never again to let him go.

Eyes snapping open as the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed, Buffy pinpointed the direction where her future lay, and took off over the soggy moorland as fast as she could possibly run.

Part of her had hoped her dreamscape visage had been more prophetic than actual, but to her distress, she came upon Giles exactly as she had seen him--hunkered down on the muddy ground, several yards from the only possible place of refuge from the storm. In the dim circle of light provided by his abandoned flashlight, she could see the tension in his body, the terror that still gripped him.

Suddenly angry, she wanted to scream at him for being so stupid, remaining out in the wind and rain when he could have taken shelter in the back of the Range Rover. What the heck was the matter with him, anyway?

Without warning, she went from being angry to being very scared. What if she was too late?

"Giles!"

Buffy rushed the remaining distance that separated them. Giving no thought to the penalty that awaited the stylish designer label jeans, that on her last Harrods shopping spree made her £200 poorer, she dropped to her knees in front of him, squelching into the mud.

She clutched two handfuls of his saturated leather coat at the shoulders in an attempt to make him look at her. His head lolled under her gentle shake, but she couldn't see his eyes behind his rain-spotted glasses, so she pulled them off and dropped them uncaringly on the muddy ground. His eyes were open but he sat still and silent, unresponsive to the point of being completely unaware of her presence. With a careful eye, she looked him over, searching for any sign of physical injury. Nothing. However, she did discover something just as alarming.

Giles had stopped shivering.

While she didn't know a whole lot about hypothermia, Buffy knew enough to recognize that this was not a good sign. Concerned, she felt his neck for a pulse. It was slow--too slow for normal--like his breathing. And his skin felt unnaturally chilled. All of his body functions were slowing down with the extreme cold--heart rate, breathing rate, metabolism, and mental activity. If she didn't get him out of the freezing wind and rain and warmed up soon, he had a real chance of going into cardiac arrest.

The only good thing about Giles' current condition was that he was too far out of it to put up any sort of resistance when she hauled him to his feet. Never more grateful for her Slayer strength, Buffy half dragged, half carried his much larger bulk through the incessant wind and torrential rain, over to the already-opened back of the Council-owned Range Rover.

Her glance swept over the hinged lid in the cargo area floor, the spare tire sinking into the mud beside the vehicle, and the assortment of dropped tools. She quickly deduced what had happened. The bad news was that she wasn't driving out of there to the nearest hospital any time soon. Not without trying to change the tire herself, which there just wasn't time to do, given that she actually didn't know how to change a flat. Giles' cellphone had had no signal earlier, so it certainly wouldn't have one in the storm, therefore calling help to them was not on the list of options either.

Determining that Giles' best chance lay with the action she took in the next few minutes, Buffy slammed the spare tire well closed to form a flat area in the back of the Range Rover. The raised lift-gate provided temporary shelter from the pelting rain, so she sat him on the bumper, propped against the rear corner, while she completed the rest of her preparations. Crawling inside, she tugged the felt-covered air mattress from the front seat, and quickly laid it over the back, all while trying not to make too much of a puddle.

Climbing back out, frowning at the small amount of rainwater she had inadvertently taken inside their warm, dry, haven, she came to another momentous decision. It wasn't one Giles was going to like, come morning, but given his life-threatening condition, she felt it more than justified.

"C'mon, big guy," Buffy said, gently manhandling his limp form back into a sitting position. His hair was plastered to his scalp like a skullcap, providing the source of the icy rainwater still dribbling down his face and dripping off the points of his nose and chin. His eyes had almost completely closed. "Stay with me, Giles. You hear me? I need to do this, okay?"

Not expecting an answer, and not disappointed, she pushed his coat off his shoulders. Waterlogged, the thick leather weighed a ton, so she just dropped it on the muddy ground outside the back of the Range Rover where they'd deal with it later. Working quickly, she pulled off his wet sweater, which was glued to his skin. As a result, his t-shirt came off as well and saved her the trouble. Next, her fingers sought the buckle on his belt. She got it undone, likewise the snap on his jeans, and then knelt to pull off his muddy, water-filled boots and socks. Returning to eye level with him, she hesitated, shy, uncertain, and blushing like a virgin when it came to unzipping his fly.

Apprehensive, Buffy's gaze darted to Giles' face. She felt an odd sense of relief and disappointment at discovering his eyes had drooped all the way closed. He had no clue she was undressing him, or even that she was there with him, which was both a good thing and a bad one. With tentative hands, she maneuvered him out of his wet, clinging jeans, but could only stare in open-mouthed astonishment at the sight of what awaited her underneath. She'd long ago pegged Giles as a boxer shorts man, but never in a million years would she have guessed his tastes ran towards fun yellow smiley-faced prints.

Shaking her head in amusement, storing that little nugget of information away for a later time, she figured she was just lucky that he hadn't 'gone commando.'

Awkward in the confined space, she managed to drag him inside the Range Rover and get him settled with his back against the wad of pillows she'd stacked in the corner behind the driver's seat, all before he got any colder. With no time for modesty, she stood outside under the lift-gate and quickly stripped off her own drenched clothes down to her bra and panties, which although damp, like Giles' boxer shorts, would grant them both a modicum of dignity when he eventually did become aware of what was happening. Dumping everything outside in the mud and rain, she gathered her wet hair into a ponytail and twisted the rainwater out of it as best she could. Then she climbed in beside him, and pulled the tailgate shut.

Cocooned in their relatively silent world, with the lightning and thunder continuing to ravage the empty moorland around them, Buffy realized that just covering Giles with the sleeping bag simply wasn't going to cut it. Half-propped up on the pillows as he was, she crawled over his legs, mounted his hips, and gently laid her upper body flush against his. Reaching back, she dragged the sleeping bag up over them both, carefully making sure all parts of him were enclosed within the down-filled warmth.

He was so cold that she let out an involuntary gasp, and for a brief moment, the possibility of losing him again became an awful reality. Determined not to let that happen, she tucked her arms around him, sharing every millimeter of warmth she had to give. Cheek resting against the crinkly hair on his bare chest, Buffy felt tears prick her eyes, as she desperately wondered what else she could do for him. She was not good with the knowledge stuff; that was his department. Giles was the one who always knew what to do, not her. And now that his life had been placed in her hands, she felt inadequately equipped to deal.

The lightning flashed outside the Range Rover; thunder rumbled away.

Sniffing back her tears, Buffy's gaze fell on the cardboard box of supplies. Sticking out of the top was Giles' thermos of hot tea. If he drank some, it would probably help warm him from the inside out, but she very much doubted she could get him to swallow anything at the moment. It would just dribbled out of his mouth or make him choke, and was therefore a no-go. Likewise, she thought of turning on the car engine and running the heater, but nixed that idea because of the frigid air that would blow over them for the first five or ten minutes. Both those things might help, but not without hindering the situation first. And neither was doable without her leaving her present position, which she was extremely reluctant to do.

No, she decided resolutely, she was already doing the best thing she possibly could, donating her body heat. Settling her cheek lower, she listened to his heartbeat, the slow but steady thump-thump that was so reassuring to her. She took comfort in the fact that it was rhythmic rather than irregular, and that Giles was healthy, strong, and physically fit.

He was going to make it.

He had to make it.

Fighting the sting of tears once more, she found one of his hands, picked it up, and began rubbing his chilled fingers with her thumb in an attempt to jumpstart his circulatory system. After a long moment, she tucked his hand under her chin and held it close to her heart, grateful that her Slayer constitution made her far more resilient to cold than a normal person. She could hold him all night long, if she had to, without his abnormal body temperature ever affecting her.

And that was precisely what she intended to do.