Empty Prayers
I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take

TITLE:  I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take  (Part 4 of   Empty Prayers, Last one)
AUTHOR:  Tevye
E-MAIL:  anatevka44@yahoo.com
SPOILERS:  Becoming (Yes, I am so far behind that I am still stuck in season two, but oh well)
SUMMARY:  What if Giles found Buffy before she came home?
RATING:  We're at a nice in between stage of a strong PG-13 and a mild R.  You've got your violence, sexual implications, and pounds upon pounds of angst.  If the last part disturbed or bothered you, you won't like this
one.
FEEDBACK:  It makes the voices happy.  I got all kinds of responses to pt 3. I loved every one.
DISTRIBUTION:  Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, I love to see my stuff posted.  Just tell me where it is (So I can go look at it and gloat to myself. )
DISCLAIMER:  They're all mine.  Okay they're not, but I can dream can't I?  All right onto reality.  All hail Joss, Joss is god.  Hearing the enthusiasm?
NOTE and DEDICATION:  This is written for Britt despite the fact of her evil deeds last Thursday. Also, I have been having a problem with this story.  When I post, I have been getting strange line breaks where there shouldn't be any.  I have tried to fix it, but if it doesn't work please forgive me.
WARNING:  I wrote this last part while on a serious caffeine jag. It makes the voices stronger.  Everything that happens, and any tissues sacrificed during the reading of this fic is their responsibility.


I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take by Tevye

Rupert Giles leaned his hunched figure against the rough bark of one of the many oak trees in Sunnydale cemetery and stared up at the stars.  It was funny.  Here they were clearer here than in the hazy atmosphere of the city, but now he was struck by how cold and distant they seemed.  < Nothing to tell me? >  He mused at the distant figures.  < Where do I go from here? >  Still the white jewels kept their own counsel and refused to guide the poor lost soul that stood beneath them.

He had aged overnight.  His shoulders slumped in a defeated posture. His usually impeccable appearance had deteriorated into a random convergence of clothing to keep him decent.  Life had become a series of lonely routines done simply to fill time.  Nothing had really sunk in yet.  The fact that she had left him for good, that this empty space in his soul would never be filled again.  His desperate mind kept believing she would just appear around the next corner.

The path his thoughts had led him down still left him unprepared for the sight of her standing not even twenty feet from him.  "Buffy?"  His voice was harsh with pain and disbelief.  He whispered her name over, but still she didn't turn.  Pushing himself off the trunk he staggered toward her, and then recoiled.

She had finally turned to meet him.  It was her, but not *her*.  Her face was warped in the horrid mask of the creature she had spent her whole life fighting.  < Oh, god >.  She advanced on him, and he reached instinctively into his pockets for a stake.  Only his heart took over and instead he held out a cross in his trembling hands.  Hissing she backed away and ran off into the dark night.

Whatever was left of the broken man was stripped away in that instant. Giles collapsed on the ground of the cemetery.  He didn't even have the tears left anymore. Holding his head in his hands, he simply stared at the ground.  The ground.  The ground needed fixing. It was all wrong.  That's what he should be doing, fixing things.  His hands reached out of their own accord, and began to smooth the grass.  The grass where she had just stepped.

Fate was cruel.  Cruel didn't exactly describe what had happened, but his brain could not search beyond to find the right word.  Instead it could only harp on just how cruel fate was.  She was so precious to him.  More than precious, she was everything, absolutely everything to him, and she had been taken from him.  "I loved her.  I still love her."  Ripped from him, when everything seemed to be going perfect.  It had all happened so suddenly.  One minute she was standing with him in the rain laughing, and the next . . .

His hands clawed at the dirt, trying some way to forget the feel of her blood on his hands, as he had held her trying to keep her with him.  She had died in the way no slayer should ever die, without a fight.  By a vampire who didn't even realize he had just killed a slayer.  "He didn't even know." Some would consider it poetic.  God, how he hated poetry.  It was the worst of his nightmares.  The ones he had never dreamt of, never imagined, of all his worst fears and horrors he had always thought that she would at least die in a way worthy of her.  And now, now . . .

It had never even occurred to them not to Xander, not to Willow, not even to him.  He had been out the door so fast the possibility that she could have been made never entered his mind.  Yet there she was standing before him looking, so beautiful, so alive that he could have kissed her.  But she wasn't alive.  She wasn't even his slayer.  Something else held her body.  He would have to do this.  He just wasn't sure he could.

*****

< I can't.  I can't do this. >  He was going on night number five of no sleep, of  stalking, watching her as she prowled.  Every time he came close to staking her, she would look a certain way, or make a gesture that reminded him, and his will evaporated.

It was as if seeing her walking around like this, kept her alive for him.  In some small way it filled the gaping whole in his soul.  He was far beyond obsessed, and unhealthy, he realized that, but it didn't matter.  He couldn't stop following her.  He even knew where she slept in the daytime.  He would creep in and watch her, the way he used to when he would wake up in the middle of the night.  Just watch her, watch over her like he was supposed to do, the way he hadn't been able to when she died.  Only now she didn't look like she was sleeping, she looked dead.

That was what he was trying to keep in the forefront of his mind, so that he could do what was needed.  < She's dead old man.  Let her rest. >  So he had returned here, to where she was buried.

Crouching down beside the gravestone, he ran his fingertips across her name.  *Elizabeth A. Summers*  Maybe that was what was wrong.  No where on the rough surface did her name exist. It allowed him to keep Buffy alive in his mind.  He pressed his hands against the date.  Born February 1981.  Died . . .

He took his hand away.  His heart had broken a week ago, but everyday when he reminded himself that she was dead it broke a little more until nothing was left, but shattered fragments that would never be repaired.

"Hurts, doesn't it?"  A ragged breath tore out of his body.  He couldn't turn, couldn't face her.  Her hands rested on his shoulders, ran down his back, then up to his shoulders, again.  < So cold. > The chill of her skin bit through him all the way down to his bones, and he embraced it, just to have her touch him again.  So warm, that's what she had been.  Her warm spirit had wrapped his in such a complete envelope of joy.  He could still feel the way her hands would run along his body. Touching him just to feel safe, needed, wanted.  Had she loved him?  He would never know.  It wouldn't have mattered.

The chill increased as she pressed herself against his back, and whispered in his ear "I can make all the pain go away."

"We could be together forever.  Remember you said you would follow me? Follow me now.  Join me."  He turned to face her.  < It would be so easy. >

"Come on Giles.  No pain.  No fear.  Eternity.  We could finally be in control.  Nothing else, just us."  She sounded so much like her.  He could really believe that she still was.

Closing his eyes, he leaned in as her hands ran along his face.  "You promised me, remember. Don't go back now."  He had promised.  He shouldn't break his promise.

Without even realizing it, he had tilted his head so that she had access to his neck.  Eternity with her, it was what he wanted, but it wasn't *her*.  He pulled away horrified, and made the mistake of looking into her eyes.

They were brilliant blue, just the way he remembered them.  They called, and he answered.

"I'm so, so tired.  Tired."

"I know, but it will all be over in a few minutes.  I promise."  She kissed him softly, as a promise of things to come, and brought her head down to his neck.

He winced as her fangs pierced his skin, but the pain didn't matter. Nothing mattered if he could be with her.

Wanting to touch her, he brought his hand up to her head.  He fingered a silky strand of hair, and then touched her skin.

His world returned in sharp focus as his fingers encountered the ridges on her face.  It wasn't her. No matter how much he wanted to believe that it was.

As his life coursed out of him, reality began to slip away.  < Giles. > She was calling to him.  Her voice whispered softly inside his mind.  < Giles, set me free.  Let me go. >  Oh god, she was still there.  Somewhere inside that horrible creature she still existed, unable to stop it, unable to escape.

The darkness was closing in.  It was so inviting, he couldn't fight it anymore.  This was right.  This was how it should happen.  He should never exist beyond her.

With his last ounce of strength, his last breath, he brought up his stake and put everything right.

*****

Xander stared blankly down at the man who rested against Buffy's gravestone.  His voice was thick with sadness and disbelief.  "You found him like this?"

"Yeah,"  Willow's soft reply was muffled by her tears.

"I just don't understand.  I mean it was like he gave up."

"I think he did."

He turned to stare at his friend.  "He loved her Xander.  I don't pretend to understand it, but something happened between them.  He loved her, and we . . . we didn't even let him see her when she died."

"But to just give up like that."

"He gave up long before that.  When . . .when I talked to him that night, it was like speaking to a dead man.  I think he died when she did."

Xander kneeled and picked up the stake that lay beside him, blowing off the dust.  "We never really knew them, did we?"

"No, we never did.  Maybe they're together now though."

"God, Willow, I hope so."

*****

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the lord my soul to take.

*****

END