So, here he was. Inevitable, he knew. They always found each other. A whole wide world out there, and yet, they ended up in the same pub at the same time. Ethan smiled an ironic smile, realizing he was channeling Bogart, and then he picked up his drink and walked over. Because it was what was in the script. It was what he did. Would always do.
That night he’d gone back to Sunnydale. The blood still fresh on his hands, but only metaphorical. Only incorporeal. He had destroyed them. All of them. It was better than they deserved, they who had put a shovel in his hands and told him to dig. It took more than what they’d done to break Ethan Rayne. They would never break him. Could never break him. There was only one man who could break him. And that man was in Sunnydale. So, Ethan went. Back to Sunnydale. Felt the trembling tingle of the Hellmouth on his skin.
That man who was here now. Didn’t matter why. Ethan knew why. Because it was meant to be. Because fate had a heavy hand, and pushed them all around like a young girl playing with rag dolls. Giles-Rupert-Ripper. Sitting at a table in a dark corner of a London pub, crouched over a clear glass that he held like a lifeline. Candle flame on his glasses.
If he hadn’t looked so damn old, it would have been a flash straight out of their youths.
Except Ripper had never abided the glasses.
Ethan slammed his own drink down on the round table, and that was the first notice he got. Affronted green eyes jumping up to his face in the gloom. And then, recognition. And then, like clockwork, there was the anger.
He wouldn’t say that what they’d done hadn’t hurt. Because of course it hurt. It hurt to have needles jabbed into your skin day in and day out. It hurt when they shocked you with increasing voltages of electricity, from a small, almost pleasant tingle, up to triple digit screaming agony. But they couldn’t touch him. Not really.
Ripper’s fist in his gut hurt. It always did. But he barely tried to evade it. Let the blow come, let the force drive him back into the neighboring table, let Ripper catch him by the collar and haul him to his feet.
This was his greeting. This was the script. When he’d knocked on Ripper’s door that summer, back from the desert and still soaked in all that metaphorical blood ol’ Shakespeare was so very fond of, Ripper’s fist had been the first thing he’d really felt. The first sensation that had registered. In hours. No. In months. So he’d let him. Let him hit him. It was his utter silence, in the end, that stopped the blows.
Here in the pub, held close enough to kiss him, he could feel Ripper’s body. Feel the curve of his stomach, too pronounced for middle-age alone to account for. And he smiled, feeling the blood on his lip.
“Come to demand child support?” he said, knowing that all Ripper would hear was ‘Hit me again.’ Because that seemed to be all Ripper ever heard. Could say, ‘Nice day we’re having,’ or ‘Your mother wore army boots,’ didn’t make a bloody bit of difference. It went the same every time. Ethan knew why, Ethan was a man, himself, and knew that Ripper had his pride. But then, he also knew that what it truly was was cowardice. Deep, childlike terror. Ethan was everything Giles denied in himself. His very existence was a threat.
Except, this time, Ripper shoved him backwards. And then walked away.
Six months, naked in a sterile white cell. Food came from the ceiling, every day, on schedule, the only way to keep time. Was drugged, of course, but then, Ethan had always been partial to a bit of controlled substance. Time passed easier while tranquilized. The humiliation was only distant and far away. Like it was someone else. He liked to pretend it was Ripper.
He followed him out into the street. Around the corner to an alley.
The blows had stopped after his silence. Ripper had looked down at him, and Ethan’d simply stood up, dusting himself off, feeling the pain. Beautiful pain, bright and sharp. Like freedom. Like hatred. Hatred. Oh yes. Rupert had looked so taken aback. So guilty. As though he’d done harm to an innocent. Wearing the same mask of regret. A lie. Such a lie.
But this was good. Guilt was the collar around Ripper’s neck, and now Ethan had the leash.
“I suppose you want to know what-” he began, rounding the corner into the alley.
But couldn’t finish speaking, because Ripper hit him. Hard, across the jaw, driving him back into a brick wall. And then grabbed him by his coat. *Slammed* him against the wall. Crack of skull against brick, world suddenly dark around the edges, stomach suddenly clenching. Another fist, hard right hook, cheekbone cracking like a twig. He would have fallen, but Ripper’d grabbed him again. Then thrown him to the ground. Hard. Hand catches on asphalt, trying to break his fall, skin shredded on the uneven surface. Blood in his eyes, everything’s red, blood in his mouth, tastes like copper, blood on his hand, wet and cool. Too dizzy to get up. Not in the script. Not this.
They were trying to quantify magic. Trying to put it in their neat little boxes. Because they liked boxes. Soldier boys, oh so brave. But terrified. Terrified of anything that didn’t fit in their boxes. They really liked boxes. Kept all of them in boxes. Literal boxes. Flat white, with one glass wall, so they could see them. Trying to put Chaos in a box.
Stupid. So, so, so stupid.
Chaos couldn’t live in a box. Ethan couldn’t live in a box. Ironic, really, that it was their boxes that kept them alive so long. Chaos couldn’t live in a box. Ethan was powerless.
Guilty Ripper, looking at him, battered and bloodied. One tug on the leash, and they were upstairs. Ripper folded like a deck of cheap playing cards. Always did. Thought he was the one with the power. Always thought that. Believed it, even at that moment, flat on his back with his cock in Ethan’s mouth. Giles liked boxes, too. But his boxes weren’t going to save him. Ripper was in Ethan. Always, always, like the metal bits in the brain of a bird, he navigated by him. He’d give anything to get him out. Would never happen though. Ripper was a cancer that was deep inside him, tendrils reaching into all parts of him. Couldn’t cut him out without destroying himself.
So... second best thing. Put a part of himself... in Ripper. Show him just how much power he didn’t have. Leave a piece of himself inside him forever. Or at least a few months. Something Ripper would notice. And never forget.
Like he’d never forget. That he’d spent the whole evening. Warning him. About the sodding soldier boys. And yet...
Ripper had handed him over, with a smile on his face, and a song in his heart.
It was a game, he wanted to say. Are you mad? It was a game. It was always a game. He was supposed to know that. Had always known that, before.
The soldier boys, they didn’t play games. Nothing was a game to them. Deadly serious, they were. So perfectly uptight. So perfectly convinced that they were doing the Right Thing. So utterly and completely sure that they were serving humanity. So equally sure that Ethan and the others did not and never had belonged to that particular camp. Because of their damn boxes. He, they all, could do things, things that weren’t on the label of the box for “humans”. So, he was cast aside, into the junk box, the one labeled “other.” An animal? A demon? Didn’t matter to them.
The kick came a heartbeat after he was expecting it, sinking into his stomach. Pain radiated, as it did, and he groaned, curled in on himself on the cold pavement. Another kick, hard against his ribs, hard enough to bruise, or maybe crack, definitely hard enough to roll him over on his back. Then Ripper was on him, his knee pressing into Ethan’s windpipe.
“Undo it,” he said.
Ethan knew he couldn’t kill Giles, much as he wanted. Just couldn’t do it. But he could hurt him. He could show him just how much of an illusion that power he thought he had was. A drop or two of blood and semen, an appeal to Diana, goddess of fertility, a sacrifice of an actual goat. Ethan always crafted his own spells. Like works of art, everything in its place. He had a binder of them, neatly typed pages with neatly drawn sigils. There was a place for order even when one was a chaos mage. Every spell he’d done, every chant he’d written, was in that book, from the time Ripper left. From the time Randall’d died.
But he couldn’t remember how he’d killed the soldiers. He just remembered them dead, scattered about on the hard desert sand, still as the dusty rocks, rifles fallen from their hands. And all the other, witches and werewolves and sorcerers. He’d been standing alone, by his own half-dug grave.
Then he’d walked to the road and hitched a ride back to Sunnydale.
“Can’t,” he’d croaked, around Ripper’s knee in his throat.
“Wrong answer,” Ripper said. Knee dug deeper, vision narrowing, pain, pain, pain.
“Swear I can’t.” He’d mostly mouthed the words.
“Why the bloody hell not?”
All the spell had done was supply the necessary equipment, set things up. The conception itself, cellularly? Perfectly natural. It was ingenious, smoothly skirting around the difficult issue of using magic to create life from nothing.
“No reason not to kill you, then.”
Yes, Ripper. Kill me. You owe me that much, you bastard. And it’s the worst thing I can do to you. Make you live with it, all your life. You destroyed me, Ripper. I’ll destroy you. I’m not playing anymore.
Everything dark, pain faded away, lungs burning for lack of air. And in all that, he’s hard.
And then the pressure was gone. And the first thing he sees as his vision returns, slowly, like a photograph developing, is Ripper’s back. And then Ripper is gone, and he’s alone on the ground in an alley, nothing but pain and vertigo. And loss. How much more could he lose?
He dropped his head back on the asphalt and stared up at the night sky, tasting blood.
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