Strictly Business: Sleeping Easy
by Fairfax
The rain hurled itself at the lead-paned windows with such force that Anya held her palm against the glass, half expecting to feel a vibration. This storm-filled night had brought with it a darkness so complete that it reminded her of other, much earlier times. There were no artificial lights out there, only the moor, uninhabited, wild and deadly.

The thunder - that had been rolling around the valley for several hours - returned with a deafening peal. Despite knowing that it wouldn’t have, she turned around to see if the sound had woken Giles.

He’d been lying in the narrow bed - in this dark-panelled room for over two days now.

‘It’s just sleep,’ the coven’s healer had assured her. ‘The infection had started to close down his system, I had to use some serious magics to counteract it - that’s a lot to deal with. So I’ve fixed it that Rupert will wake up when his body needs to, not when his brain tells him he ought.’

Anya didn’t like it, this spell; Giles wasn‘t just sleeping. When people slept naturally they moved around, their expressions and their breathing changed, maybe sometimes they’d even mumble a bit - but he’d remained motionless and silent the whole time. It was creepy; it was too close to death.

She walked away from the window, then sat back down in the chair facing Giles as close to the bed as she could get. Anya slipped her hand under Giles’ unresisting fingers. It didn’t matter to her that he was unaware of the gesture; it was important that a connection was made.

Andrew had asked her if she was bored, sitting here like this, but she wasn’t. Limitless patience was one of the keys to success when it came to vengeance, and her first stint as a mortal had been carried out at a much slower pace than this second one; there had been nothing like the constant distractions and diversions the twenty-first century offered.

Lightening momentarily lit up the room. Anya looked at Giles’ impassive face. Not shaving suited him, though it would look even better if he could be persuaded to grow his hair a little longer. Lulled by the rhythm of the rain she started to doze, snapping happily back to consciousness when the hand she was squeezing, squeezed back.

********************

‘You’re awake!’ cried Anya.

‘You’re sat i-in the dark,’ returned Giles.

‘There was a storm. I like watching the lightening.’ As Anya explained she lit the three thick church candles that stood on the bedside table.

The Coven was easily the worst-lit building Giles had ever spent time in: candles appeared to be less a necessity, more a compulsion. Watchers surrounded themselves with books, witches with candles. Were his eyesight not already wrecked, Giles would have worried about the cumulative effect all the evenings he’d passed in flickering half-darkness was having.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Anya.

He’d been hoping that she was going to tell him. Coming round always resulted in a terrible uncertainty; were there going to be sympathetic smiles and outstretched hands to pull him back to his feet and get on with things? Or concerned faces, a new location and the unwelcome knowledge that something was fundamentally amiss?

‘Lauren, the new healer, did a great job,’ she carried on. ‘Oh, and it’s Thursday.’

‘Thursday?’ Giles sat up, and on moving received another shock. ‘What the the hell has she done to my hand?’

He held his right hand up, turning it this way and that staring in horrified fascination at the thick bandage that stretched halfway down his arm and the splints holding his fingers rigidly in place.

‘You spilt your knuckles on that vamp's teeth, and got poisoned by the bacteria in their mouth.’

‘Why would a creature that isn’t alive have bacteria in its mouth?’ wondered Giles aloud. ‘Mind you, Spike could smoke even though he wasn’t breathing…’

‘Giles, that is so not important right now,’ cut in Anya. ‘Another few hours and you’d have died.’

‘Oh…um…I see,’ he was having trouble taking Anya’s words in. It had been a brief, straightforward fight. That his life could have ended as the result of throwing a single punch was a bizarre notion.

‘So they made you sleep, while all the poison and crap that was attacking your system went away,’ Anya shrugged. ‘Lauren’ll give you the long-words-and-lots-of-science version when you see her.’

‘What’s all this in aid of?’ asked Giles, gesturing with his bandaged hand.

‘You can’t move your knuckles, because they’re all messed up. She had to cut away loads of dead tissue, which was gross, and is going to be all scarred and nasty looking.’

It was too much information. Giles pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to pull himself together; even though he’d apparently been asleep for a long time, he suddenly felt very tired.

‘Do you need anything?’

He rather suspected that in the morning the answer to that question would be ‘a new body’; however right now he was too light-headed to care. He felt pressure on his shoulders pushing him back down onto his pillows.

‘Relax,’ said Anya. ‘Get some sleep and be well.’

‘You make it sound so simple.’

‘It is,’ she replied confidently.

Giles smiled as he closed his eyes. Anya’s attitude was so reassuring, she was extraordinary, she was here, she was… He tried to pull coherent thoughts from the scrambled mess in his mind, but sleep overtook him and he thought no more.

******************

Anya watched over Giles for a few more minutes. Watched him fold into a more comfortable position, heard him sigh and saw a frown briefly accentuate the lines on his face. She blew out the candles and quietly walked out to go to her own bed. Now that Giles was sleeping easy, so would she.

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