Part Four:
Giles woke to sharp morning air and the soft peaty smell of a fire that had burned down to little more than embers. The cold light of an equally cold day painted the interior of the croft in a softness of greys and shadows. He was sprawled out in front of his hearth still wearing yesterday's clothes, his socks rumpled around his feet, the rest of him half wrapped in a blanket - and he was alone. He groaned softly, feeling his body protest the after effects of sleeping on a hard stone floor. It had just been a dream. An achingly impossible dream.
He groaned a second time and carefully levered himself into a sitting position, blearily rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Just a dream.
Of course it had been. Buffy was dead and buried, laid to rest in the dark, dank earth. He'd carried her broken body home after the fall. Had washed and dressed her, and given her a soft kiss goodbye ...
He shivered and dragged the blanket up around his shoulders. He needed to get up, to fix the fire and find something to eat. Needed to stir himself back into some pretence of life, needed to go through the motions and somehow survive another day.
He wasn't sure why he needed to, but he needed to.
Didn't he?
Memories of the storm and the ghost it had brought him whispered through his mind. The sight of his Slayer, soaked and shivering. The look in her eyes, so empty and lost.
And the feel of her tucked up against him, seeking sanctuary in his arms ...
"Oh, Buffy," he breathed, watching a wisp of smoke curl up from the embers, and feeling a tear echo its path as it spilled from the corner of his eye and slid down his cheek.
"Present and accounted for." Her voice cut through the silence like a return of the evening thunder. Giles practically jumped out of his skin. "Which is more than I can say for your bathroom. I went to use the little girl's room and - hey - no little girl's room. No little boy's room, either by the look of things. What do you do around here? No, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know ..."
Buffy was standing in the doorway, still bundled up in the clothes he'd given her, his windcheater draped around her shoulders and her feet kicked incongruously into his sea boots. Her cheeks were reddened by the crispness of the weather and her hair was mussed by exposure to the wind.
"Buffy!" He was on his feet in an instant, closing the distance to wrap his arms around her and hug her tight. "You're real. You're alive."
"Well, duh," she reacted, then realised what he must have thought and looked contrite. "Oh. Yeah. Still here. Still me." She relaxed into his bearhug, returning it with a gentler one of her own. "Still you, I think, although it's kinda hard to tell under all that hair."
The gentle dig was the final straw; the raw emotions that had ballooned inside his chest the minute he'd heard her speak welled out of him in a quiver of laughter and tears, a sudden rage of hysteria that he just couldn't stop.
"Oh, Lord," he gasped, clinging to her, holding her as if she were a rock and the world a storm that threatened to sweep him away. "Oh, dear Lord..."
"Giles? Giles?" It was Buffy's panic that reached him, throwing him a lifeline that he caught and used to bring himself under control. She was guiding him to the nearest chair, pushing him into it with concern. It was probably just as well. His legs had gone to total jelly and if he hadn't sat down, he'd have probably fallen down. "God, Giles, are you okay?"
"Ye-ye- yes," he managed to gasp, struggling for breath and feeling the room swim. He was still shaking with silent laughter and fighting down tears. He'd been overwhelmed with laughter, even reduced to helpless giggles once or twice, but he'd never had an attack quite like that before. There was a little part of him somewhere cataloguing the experience with fascination. The rest of him was just trying to cope with the way his heart was trying to tear itself out of his chest. "I'll ... I'll ..." He gestured helplessly, annoyed at his sudden inability to form coherent sentences.
"Be all right in a minute?" The look of horrified alarm on Buffy's face relaxed into one of wary suspicion. Giles nodded, trying very hard to get himself back under control. The sheer reality of her presence helped a little. Dreams didn't sink bruising fingers into your arm, not even in imagined panic - nor did they absently massage the damage away, applying a gently soothing rub of apology while they stared at you with bemused concern. "You'd better be all right," she ordered firmly, "because I don't think dialling 911 would do much good around here, even if you had a phone to dial with in the first place and ... Giles? Are you laughing at me?"
He shook his head, still quivering with inexpressible happiness. "For you," he managed to say, capturing her eyes with his own and hoping he could convey some of the overwhelming emotions that were pounding through his heart.
"Oh," she registered, then : "Oh wow."
Wow indeed. He looked away, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to calm his breathing and regain a modicum of his dignity. Buffy's hand left his arm, departing with a little squeeze of reassurance; when he turned to look he found she'd stepped back to look at him, studying him with thoughtful intensity.
The bright red windcheater had slipped from her shoulders at some point, leaving her a mussed and unlikely angel engulfed in Aran. She was pale and she was unhealthily thin, but she was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"I - ah - umm ... I'm - I'm sorry about the mess," he apologised, the first non sequitur that sprang to mind. He needed to say something, to break the sudden stretch of silence that lay between them. "I-I wasn't exactly expecting company."
"No," she acknowledged softly, offering the word as an apology of her own. "I guess not." There was a beat as she turned to look around the cluttered croft, taking in its disarray. "So ... when did you turn into Xander, anyway?"
The question - delivered with such deadpan timing - threatened the return of his giggles. He had to swallow hard, several times, and even then he couldn't help the aching stretch of his grin. Buffy - somewhat surprisingly, given her mood the night before - grinned back. "Sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to set you off again."
"That's - um - okay," he assured her, taking some deep breaths and wondering if the struggling fluttery wings of joy that seemed to have taken up residence in his chest would ever settle down. He threw his own glance at the undeniable evidence of his shattered life and grimaced with sudden embarrassment. "I ... probably deserve that."
"Well ..." She held the thought for a teasing minute, then lapsed into a wry smile, one that actually touched her eyes as well as her lips. "I kinda like it, actually. It's - Xander-ish, but with cross referencing. I mean - who else but you would label all this stuff in trays, and ..." She waved vaguely at the tumbled gear in the corner. "... keep a couple of broad swords in among his shovels and his fishing poles?"
He coloured a little at that. Old habits die hard. There was nothing to fear on the Sully; nothing to fear, and nothing to fight - but the swords stayed close to hand, just in case. "The - um - stuff in trays is supposed to be labelled," he explained, watching her as she began to move round the room, taking a closer look at his things. "This is my work, Buffy. Remember me telling you ... last night? About my excavations?"
"Oh. Eww," she realised, hastily putting down the shard of pottery that she'd just picked up. "You mean ... this is all dug up out of the grave stuff? Things they - they buried with the dead?"
"Exactly." He had to smile at her squeamish reaction. "It's fascinating what people thought they might need with them in the afterlife. Souvenirs of who and what they were. And, *really*," he chuckled. "I would have thought you, of all people, would be the last person to be fastidious about a little grave dirt."
Giles realised what he'd said as soon as he'd said it, and his heart contracted with a sudden jolt of guilt and pain. He hadn't meant to imply ... He'd been thinking of her as the Slayer, as the determined and courageous soul who'd dealt with vampires and ghouls and other foul things with only a moue of disgust. She was standing there, poised by his finds, her body suddenly rigid, her shoulders tense and her hands clenching convulsively. He was on his feet in seconds, instinctively reaching for her - and then held back, suddenly unsure of his right to do so, or her likely reaction to his touch. "I'm sorry, Buffy," he said, cursing himself, cursing his thoughtless, cruel words. "I - I didn't mean ..."
Her eyes had closed. She flinched as he spoke, reacting as though he'd physically struck her. For one long unbearable moment she stayed that way, transfixed by memory, caught in a moment he had no way to empathise with.
"You didn't know," she murmured eventually. Her words were flat and colourless, delivered without emotion, or expression. "You couldn't know. How could you know? You weren't there. Oh, God," she gulped. Her head jerked and her eyes flew open, frantic and unfocused. "I woke up in my coffin. I - I had to - had to - claw my way out, like a vampire. Like a dead thing. Everything was too bright, too loud, too harsh. And you weren't - there!"
The joy in his heart recoiled with anguished alarm, assaulted by her protest and her pain - but he refused to let it escape. He seized hold of it instead, locking it away for safe keeping while he worked out how to deal with her distress.
"I'm ... sorry," he offered again, tentatively putting his hand to her shoulder, resting it there with wary concern. "I really am. I-If I'd known, I - I would have been there. You know I would. But I ... I- I'm here now." He didn't know what else to say. Trite phrases and words of meaningless comfort tumbled though his head and he rejected them all. Buffy didnt need platitudes. He suspected she'd already had her fill of those.
She looked down at his hand, then slowly tracked along the length of his arm and up, to meet his eyes. The bleakness in her expression slowly softened into a wan, apologetic smile. "Yes," she breathed. "I guess you are."
There was a beat, as they both considered that - and then she was pressed up against him again, wrapping him in a determined hug. One that suggested she was never going to let him go.
He didn't really have a problem with that - provided she allowed
him to breath occasionally.
"Y-you know," he said with a sudden sense of insight. "It's
all right for you to be angry. I-I'd be angry, if someone ... if I
were ..."
"In heaven?" she offered woefully. "You can say it, Giles. It's true. I was done. I was safe. I was at peace. And they - they pulled me out without a ‘by your leave' or a ‘you mind if we ...'" She broke off with a sob. One that she followed with a teary sniff. "Rock bottom sucks," she decided, loosening her bearhug so that she could lean into him instead. Giles took the opportunity to take a slow breath and drag a little oxygen back into his lungs. "I mean - look at me. Pathetic much? There you were, all in the happy moment, and making with the Slayer jokes and - I just ... I just shatter into pieces. Tell me," she asked, tilting her head to look up at him with haunted eyes. "If - if you had been there? Would you have stopped them? Or would ...?"
"Would I have helped?" He wrapped her in a gentle embrace of his own, staring over her head and out through the half open door. There was a hint of winter sun glinting off the sea and the sky was pale, far paler than her eyes. He wondered how best to answer that question - and settled for a sigh of honesty. "I don't know. But I do know this," he added, pulling back a little so that he could look down at her. "If I had? I'd have made some sort of effort to find out where you were first. And bloody well dug you up, before I started casting spells."
She blinked at him. The corners of her lips twitched - and then she was burying her face in his chest again, using his sweater to muffle her own sudden attack of giggles. "Oh God," she gulped. "Giles, did I ever tell you how much I love you?"
"Uh ... well, um," he reacted, looking down at her in bemusement. "I-I think you did." The memory that sprang to mind wasn't a matter of words. It was the way she'd looked at him, that day they'd faced the knights of Byzantium - the way she'd looked when she thought he'd been about to die. It had been a desperate, distressing moment - but recollection of what she'd conveyed in that look curled a quiet smile behind his beard. "Yes, I - I seem to remember something..."
"Liar," she accused, filling the word with affection. "I don't think I did. Not really. But I do. Love you, that is." She heaved a heartfelt sigh, snuggling in as close as she could get. Which couldn't have been much closer, short of major surgery. "This is nice," she decided. "I could stay right here forever."
Giles' smile became a wry grin. He'd been thinking much the same thing himself. "I-It's an option, I suppose," he allowed, giving it a moment of not entirely serious consideration. "But ... the fire is going out, so we'd get awfully cold, and then - there is a little matter of breakfast to think about ... Not to mention lunch, and dinner and I ... I tend to get a crick in my neck if I go to sleep standing up. Besides," he added warmly, "I'd like to show you the Sully, and Isolde's altar, and the sunset from the cliff top. Maybe even take you fishing. If ... um ... you want to come, that is."
Buffy slowly and warily took a step back - not letting go, but giving herself room to look at him properly. "You'd take me ..." She took a breath and tried again. "I thought, m-maybe ..." She needed a second breath and a swallow. "You're not going to - sendmebacktoSunnydale?" The fear came out in one long rush, and he watched a note of wonder dawn in her eyes. Had she really thought he'd send her away? Or had she expected him to drag her back to the hellmouth and insist she served her destiny, no matter what?
"Buffy, I just got you back from the dead. I'm not about to send you anywhere. Not until - not unless- you want to go." A sudden flare of concern clutched at his heart. Was there something she wasn't telling him? "Do you need to go? Is Dawn in trouble? Xander in danger? Willow out of control?"
She frowned, digesting the questions and the order he'd asked them in. "No," she offered to the first, quiet and reassuring. "No," to the second, packing it with sisterly affection. "Not that I know of," to the third, which was honest, if not totally reassuring, and - finally a: "Not any more."
Not any ... It was his turn to frown, lines of concern deepening across his forehead. While Buffy was his Slayer and a part of his soul, the other members of his adopted family held just as important a place in his heart. Dawn was safe, Xander was probably being - well, Xander. And Willow ... "She did something ... unwise, didn't she?"
Buffy nodded, looking down at the floor with what looked suspiciously like guilt. "Maybe I should have seen it coming, Giles, but ... I-I just ... I guess I didn't know how anymore. She was so - so proud of what she'd done. She didn't see how I was hurting. How could she? I ... couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell any of them."
He reached to tilt her chin up, a gentle, wordless demand that she look at him. Not so that he could read the pain in her eyes - since he could clearly hear that in her voice - but simply to offer her the absolution he knew she needed. Yes, she was Buffy, she was the Slayer, and she tended to hog responsibility when it came to the bad things that happened in her life - but she wasn't responsible for Willow's misjudgements, and she certainly wasn't responsible for the consequences of those misjudgements. No doubt the young witch had meant nothing but good in her determination to bring her friend back from the dead. No doubt she'd thought she had the strength to handle that kind of power.
It was just that power, being power, tended to corrupt the unwary, and lead the reckless astray.
He knew all about that sort of arrogant mistake.
"Pride," he murmured softly, "often precedes a fall. This sounds like a long story, Buffy, and I don't think you're quite ready to tell me it yet. Just ..." He paused to consider what she could tell him that would pacify the now gnawing knot of worry that was taking root in his guts. "Tell me that she's safe, she's not burned too many bridges, and that someone's taking care of her. Because I need to take care of you, and I'm not sure I can do that if I'm worrying about Willow."
Buffy stared at him, a glimmer of tears welling in her eyes. The starkness of her guilt faded, to be replaced - first by a look of anxious gratitude, and then by a small and haunted smile. "You always take care of me," she murmured softly. "I need to take better care of you ... But there's no need for you to be worry-guy," she went on, a little more briskly. "Will's ... safe. She's with Tara and - well, my part of her wish came true, so, I'm thinking - that place in Devon? Where Anya took them? That's where she'll find the help she needs."
Devon?
He knew a place in Devon; an old place, filled with quiet power and guarded by much wiser hearts than his own. Was it too much to hope that Willow, his poor, sweet Willow, had found refuge in the one place that would understand how the magic might have claimed her - and help her claim it back?
It had been too much to hope for anything lately - but he looked, and there it was, the last of Pandora's gifts, fluttering in the depths of his soul. It felt good to find it there.
The knot in his stomach loosened a little. Buffy had given him the assurance
he'd asked for - but he couldn't help a raised eyebrow and an anxious
quirk of his lip. There'd been a little too much information in her words
- and then not quite enough. "Wish?" he prompted worriedly.
He'd half expected further guilt at his question. What he got was wry
embarrassment. "Oh. Yeah. Umm ..." She looked away for a moment,
then back, looking apologetic. "Remember I said - Xander left Anya?"
He nodded warily, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Well ... he did andshewentbacktothevengenancebusinessandshe'sa - demonagain althoughIdon'thinkherheart'sreallyinitsomehow." The words came out in one long rush, as though telling him quickly would let her gloss over the import of what she said. "Anyway ... after Will did ... what she did, Tarasaidshecountedashavingbenwronged and Anyaofferedherawish and IthinkshethoughtTarawouldwishWilltobearatlikeAmyor something ..." He was watching her with fascination, the rollercoaster of high drama and total soap opera that was life in Sunnydale spilling out of her at the same breakneck speed that they'd always had to live it. He hadn't forgotten it; he'd just spent time away from it - and to hear it, like this, made him feel as if, when leaving the hellmouth, he'd somehow managed to step out of life and time altogether.
Maybe he had. Time wasn't the same on the Sully. It moved at its own pace and kept its own council. It had held him suspended for what had felt like forever. And here was Buffy, bringing him back the gift of forward motion along with everything else.
He'd have to teach her how to stand still, once in a while ...
"... butthenshewishedthatWillandIcouldfindthehelpweneeded - and Anya brought me here," she concluded with a gulp for breath and another of those sheepish looks. "Well, not here, exactly, because she said she couldn't, but she brought me to that - place - yesterday, and the man brought me on his boat ..."
"Clanlarris," he offered thoughtfully. "The village - it's called Clanlarris. And the man's name is MacDougan. Dougan MacDougan. Although he's generally just known as Mac."
It was her turn to stare at him - wide eyed and disconcerted. She'd clearly hadn't been sure how he'd react - and it was equally clear that quiet calm had not numbered among the possible options. "So Anya's a demon again ..." He paused to consider all the ramifications of that. It didn't surprise him very much. Oddly enough it didn't worry him either.
She brought her back to me ...
"That's why she couldn't bring you as far as the Sully. Demons can't set foot here. Not while Isolde's blessing holds."
"Oh." Buffy frowned for a moment, and then her puzzlement cleared. "Oh yeah. So you said. Last night." He smiled at the way quiet realisation dawned on her face. Realisation ... and a sense of disconcerted wonder. "This really is sanctuary, isn't it," she breathed. "No - demons, or vampires, or anything I'd need to be all Slayer-y for ..."
"I - ah - wouldn't say that," he teased. She tensed and he quickly diffused the moment with a grin. "You - um ... rescued my boat yesterday, remember?" A sudden worried thought struck him. "You *did* rescue my boat, didn't you? It is still there?"
"Still there," she affirmed, giving him a look he'd never seen before. A soft, loving look, filled with affection and apology. "All anchored and kept safe from the storm." She stepped in close again, laying her hand, and then her head gently against his heart. "Just like me."
His arms folded around her again, holding her with reverence, with appreciation for the miracle she'd always been. "Oh, Buffy," he breathed, packing his heart into the sound of her name. They stood like that for a moment - for an eternity - and then he heaved a reluctant sigh. "You know, I really do need to do something about the fire," he said. "Fancy a cup of tea?"
The laugh she found to answer him was the sweetest sound in the entire world.
Dougan MacDougan stared into the teeth of the wind, guiding his boat through waters that were choppy from the unsettled weather. The grey lines of the Sully shimmered on the horizon, its crags mellowed into the sky by morning mists and the drift of winter cloud. For once, the familiar sight didn't lift his spirits; he was too worried about what he might find once he reached the island. The young woman's face had haunted him, all the way back to Clanlarris and through all the days since. He knew it was none of his business, but he hadn't been able to let it go. She had carried so much pain with her - and while the sacred island offered refuge to the hurt and the heartsick, there was a fear in his heart that she had been beyond help. Beyond all reach.
He'd cursed himself for leaving her, for not staying to see that she reached the man safely -for not making sure that there'd been someone there to take her in. And he'd prayed that, if the man had been there, their meeting would have been a welcome one, and not the cruel and bitter consequence that he feared.
He'd been witness to how fragile the man was, how close he walked to an edge no soul should ever choose to cross. He'd found refuge on the Sully, in seeking Isolde and living in her shadow - but he hadn't found healing and he hadn't found peace. Not the peace of heart he desired.
The man had seen too much, done too much; he carried it in his eyes, and it had weighted his heart, encased it in stone. Mac had felt the power in him that first day, but he'd never seen it. It was chained by his sorrow, a cloak of despair that clung to the Englishman like a shroud.
The young woman had come wrapped in that same cloth, and Mac feared that it might have been more than either could bear. If the weather had been better, he'd have been back the next day - but the sea had kept him home, and his heart had kept him awake through the long nights of winter storm, and the chill days that followed them.
There was a hint of sunlight peeking through the haze by the time he brought the boat to rest beside the tumbled quay. It gilded the tips of the Sully's peaks and sent cloud shaped shadows dancing down their slopes. The ferryman stepped off the gunwales and looped the mooring hawser around the nearest stone bollard, frowning a little as he recognised new damage wrought by the storm. The stone causeway had been there a long time - but in the end, time, wind, and weather would drag it down into the sea.
He walked down the sturdy length that remained, pausing to kiss his fingers and rest them respectfully against the keystone at the causeway's end. Its carvings had long since vanished into vague bumps and hollows, but he could trace them easily in his mind. The circle for light, the cross for sanctuary and the tree for life; Isolde's blessing, carved here many centuries ago. They were carved, too, at the base of her altar, incised there with deep and determined certainty. He'd said as much, that first day - and the man had gone to find them, turning back the raised sod that covered the stone and unearthing their freshness to the light of day.
Mac had pondered the wisdom of that; the need to discover the past and bring it, stained by time, into the present. ‘We are what the past has made us,' the man had said, and then he'd sighed, a deep and weary sigh.
‘Aye,' Mac had answered, ‘but past is past. Where's the reason
in digging it up again?'
The man had sighed a second time,more wearily than the first. ‘So that
we remember who we are,' he'd said. ‘So that, what was done, has meaning.
We should never forget. The worst possible sin is to forget ...'
Except, of course, that that was exactly what he'd wanted to do, and couldn't, and that was the burden he carried and the reason he delved into history, because the present was too hard to bear, and the future had no meaning for him. Not any more.
There were days Mac cursed his gifts, that told him too much and yet not enough to know what needed to be done.
The beach was littered with storm debris; sea washed shapes of wood, piles of deep water kelp ripped from its anchorage, the drape of a barnacle encrusted net, an unlikely twist of chain, and the occasional dead fish. Gulls were scavenging among the reek of seaweed, and his approach sent them wheeling up in protest, a flutter of wings lifting, like angels, from among the stones. Their flight obscured his view, so that he emerged, dazzled by whiteness and deafened by raucous defiance, into the space before the croft almost before he was aware he'd reached it.
Isolde was dancing on the strand.
Not the staid and sturdy saint, captured in manuscript and medieval stone; this was the true power of the Sully, a lithe and lovely thing, a creature of grace and strength, clad in white and outlined by radiant light. Her knight, her eternal defender, moved beside her - a figure dark beside her brightness, yet charged with a light all his own. For a moment, Mac looked back a thousand years or more, seeing the souls that had cleansed the Sully of an ancient evil and made it a sanctuary for all time - and then he blinked, and everything focused, and the vision was gone.
Well, not entirely. There were two figures moving on the beach; the young woman, and the Englishman. They were - the old man blinked a second time - fencing. With a pair of deadly looking swords that danced and clashed and whirled with determined delight. He'd have thought - from the first glance, from the clearly uneven nature of the match - that the man would have had the better of such a slender lass in moments. But she was holding her own. More than holding her own. She was forcing the pace and laughing with it, driving her opponent back up the beach, darting in to strike and slash with wild abandon. The man was defending himself with remarkable skill, but for all his parries and his counter blows, he could not hold his ground. He was being forced to retreat - and that finally proved his undoing.
A slip, perhaps a step on an uncertain stone, betrayed his balance; he staggered under the next blow, his sword slewing sideways, and his body hastily twisting as steel thrust forward to take advantage of the misstep. A lithe foot swept out - and the man was lying flat on his back, a sword point at his throat and the young woman grinning down at him in triumph.
"Gotcha," she crowed. "Still got it, still swinging it, *still* number one on the hill."
"Ah ..." The man was gasping for air, his lungs heaving from effort. "Quite. Umm - you - do - know," he added a little breathlessly, "that it is usual for a knight to be - gracious in - victory, as well as defeat?"
"Yeah?" She was still grinning broadly. "You yielding?"
"No," he answered matter-of-factly, threw his sword up to knock hers from
her hand - and swept her feet out from under her with a remarkably agile twist
of his own.
"Hey!" she protested, turning the tumble into hasty back flip that took her
several feet back down the beach. "No fair!"
"Serious combat never is," the Englishman declared, easing himself up into a sitting position and wincing as he did so. "But ..." His hands went wide. "I yield. Consider that a - dying twitch."
"Not in a million years," his opponent retorted, with decided feeling. She walked back up the beach and offered him her hand to help him up. "That is, a big no to the dying thing ... where you're concerned. Twitching, I get. Just ‘cos something's down, don't mean it's out. Got it."
"Good," the man smiled, brushing sand off his jeans. "I think that'll do for today, don't you? We can ... do this again tomorrow."
The young woman grinned, dipping down to recover both weapons. "Wassa matter, Watcher-mine?" she teased. "Out of practice?"
"Yes," he shot back, his voice still a little breathless. His head tipped in the old man's direction. "Besides, we have a visitor. Good morning, Mac."
"Good morn," Mac acknowledged warily. He didn't quite know what to make of the two of them - the man in his jeans and his thin dark sweater, and the woman wearing what appeared to be one of the man's white shirts, belted in around her waist. She was barefoot and bare-legged, and her hair was caught back at the nape of her neck. They both looked as if they ought to half freeze to death in the sharpness of the wind - except that he was sweating, and she was flushed and glowing.
The difference in her - in the both of them - was breathtaking.
"Oh," the young woman had reacted. "Umm ... er ... hi. Good to see you again."
"Aye," Mac agreed, looking her up and down with quiet approval. "You too, lass. ‘Tis a fine sight you are for a man who'd feared to find what had become of ye. A fine sight indeed."
She looked down at herself and blushed a little. The Englishman smiled at the sight - a quietly proud, loving smile that his tangle of beard did nothing to hide. Mostly because the smile started in his eyes - and, now that that shuttered, shattered look had left them, it seemed that he had very expressive eyes.
They spoke volumes, and all without a word.
"I guess I - I worried you a little. The other day." The young woman hugged the swords to her chest, reminding him again - for a moment - of the saint he'd thought her to be. "I -"
"No lass," he interrupted gently. "There's no need for explanations. The Sully is a place that offers sanctuary, and I can see you found it here. And you," he added warmly, turning to consider the Englishman with quiet amusement. "I said you wouldna find what ye were looking for, digging in the past. Hope and healing doesn't come from a grave."
"Actually," the man said, still considering the young woman with that soft and certain smile, "that's exactly where it came from, Mac. I hope you've brought milk. Buffy drank the last of it yesterday, and I have strong objections to drinking tea made with that god awful dried stuff."
"I have it with lemon," she smirked, earning herself a momentary glare that made the old man smile. He glared just that way at his Janet when she teased him, and for much the same reason.
"Aye, well, I prefer a drop of the ‘uisge beatha' myself. But that's not for the like of you, lass. And the man here - drinks one or the other, but never mixes the two."
"I should think not," the Englishman noted, sounding slightly scandalised. Mac grinned. He wasn't above a little teasing himself.
"I've the milk, the mail, the weekly shop and a few gifts for the lass," he said warmly. "I'd a mind she might be in need of a warmer thing or two, and Janet looked out some of our Morag's for me. She's- a - no need of them now."
An anxious look flitted across the young woman's face and she glanced at the man with some concern - but he smiled and nodded, knowing what lay behind that particular turn of phrase. "It can't be long, now, can it Mac? A month? Less than that? He's about to become a great grandfather," he explained, and the young woman looked relieved - and a little surprised.
"Really? I didn't think you were that old."
"Buffy." The man's admonishment was pained. "For heaven's sake. You've been spending too much time in Anya's company."
"Ah now," Mac chuckled, "there's no harm in honesty. And I'm flattered. They do say I'm as old as the hills and only a little younger than the sea. But what do folk know?"
"More than they think and less than they believe," came the answer, wrapped in quiet certainty. "Buffy, you should - um - get yourself inside. You'll catch a chill stood around like that. Mac and I can unload the boat and ... um ... "
" ... I'll go put the kettle on," she finished in mock martyrdom. Her half turn and flounce towards the croft was meant to be equally feigned high dudgeon - but she paused at the steps and turned back, the mockery and teasing replaced by a sudden and anxious concern. "You won't be long, will you?" she asked.
"No," the man assured her gently. "Not long. We'll be right back."
Her response to that was a grateful smile - albeit a slightly haunted one. "'Kay," she said and vanished into the croft, leaving the two men standing on the strand.
"She's a little ... fragile, right now," the Englishman explained. Mac nodded.
"Aye," he said. "There's a soul that's seen a storm or two. But give her safe
harbour and time to repair - and she'll be ready to face even the roughest seas
with confidence."
The Englishman smiled a little sadly behind his beard. "I hope so," he sighed.
"I just wish she didn't have to."
They turned and walked down the beach together, the Englishman with his hands thrust into his pockets and the old man watching him from the corner of his eye. He hadn't given up his burdens, but he was carrying them with greater confidence, walking with a firmer step and standing a little straighter under their weight. Miracles happen, but rarely overnight - and there was, Mac suspected, still a long road ahead for both the man and the young woman who had sought refuge at his side. But they would be walking it together - and together, he surmised, there was very little that they wouldn't be able to overcome.
The end of a tale - or a new beginning ...
He'd wondered back then, which it was he might be witnessing. Wondered, as he ferried a pale ghost to this place of sanctity, whether he took her to her final rest, or to find a second chance at life. He knew now that it was both - and neither. That this was just a pause in a much longer tale, the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. The man at his side was the kind they used to write sagas about, back in the days when Isolde was young - and the woman? The woman, if not Isolde herself, was still cut from that same holy cloth, chosen to serve the world.
They had both been wounded in a war he had no way to measure - wounded to the heart and seared through to the soul. The Sully had given the man sanctuary - and with it, a place where she could come. A place of safety.
And now she was here, perhaps they could both begin to heal.