Blessed tiara. Thank you, connie.

first part of the coda, darned busy work day

Despite Giles' demands that they keep moving, Ethan aimed everyone at a hotel. This time it was a nice hotel on the rich side of discreet, where money bought a chance to recuperate. He had money enough, if he wanted to use it.

Judicious use of basic misdirection spells got them all into a suite with two bedrooms, each with attached bath, and only one outside door that required warding. Ethan deposited the girls in one room, Giles in the other, then just stood in the sitting room, leaning against a table as he tried to force his brain to unlock.

He was impressed all to hell with himself, being calm and resourceful and getting everyone out of that. Underneath it all, though, he could picture the flames ripping through the walls, catching the people. He worshipped chaos, fire made him happy. If he hadn't been a sorcerer he'd have been a pyromaniac. Or a fireman. But this was just destruction for death and evil's sake. People died of some of the things he did, he didn't deny that, but that had never been the purpose. Collateral damage. This, this was just murder and barbaric destruction.

Underneath his hands were the books they'd rescued. Eyes closed, he ran his fingers across the bindings. No magic spoke from these volumes. They were old and valuable, but not alive.

He opened his eyes to look at them. Ti'tillen's Guide to the Higher Dimensions. A good book, essential for anyone who was even thinking of portal travel. So essential that several copies existed in libraries around the world. Ethan flipped through the volume and saw annotations in various hands. Notes from travellers? Possibly very worth saving, then. The other book Giles had grabbed was a collection of maps of leylines cross-referenced with known communities of demons of various sorts. Again, worth saving but hardly unique.

He laughed when he saw the book he'd grabbed as they left: Volume 6 of the Collected Works of Sigidith the Poet. Kudos to the Watchers for their urges towards a complete collection, but surely Sigidith was better used to prop up uneven table legs than as research material. He touched the book still tucked under his shirt. At least one truly unique book was saved. He pulled it out and studied it for several minutes. He understood the symbology of the Janusside linguistic system. There were probably very few people in the world--even fewer, now--who were better suited to interpreting the work than he, who would be a more appropriate guardian.

After a few more moments, he added it to the pile of books on the table.

Oh Connie.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Being a spectacularly random vignette of X Men Movieverse fic, of all things. No, I don't know much about X Men canon, and it probably shows. Apologies to Theo, who has already looked over this for me, lord love her. (Have added a wee bit more detail as per your rec - thank you!) Suggestions and criticism, as always, fallen upon with gratitude. I think it probably still needs poking with a stick a little - it's v. much a vignette. Still, it's the only damn thing I've written for a while.

* * *

Unbound

It was growing daily more difficult to distinguish between dream and memory and guilty desire. And the further North he travelled, the worse it grew.

By day Logan scoured the land for clues to his past. He scanned the undulations of the horizon, squinted at street signs, and followed half-remembered scents and stinks down unpromising alleys and overgrown mountain trails alike, but all to no avail. Still, he enjoyed the solitude. There was something oddly soothing about familiarly unfamiliar rooms in seedy motels; about dough-faced men and women wearing name tags and plastic smiles; about anonymity and speed. The sad furnishings were always rank with the ghosts of other occupants, with echoes of their stale fries and staler sex. Old blood and sweat and coke all spilled into the dismal carpets and overlaid with the pathetically hopeful smell of chemical cleaners in clumsy parodies of pine-sap or spring flowers. He always slept with the window open, letting the cold night air carry in its own promises of unseen places. Logan had enjoyed the luxuries at Professor Xavier's school, and he knew that he would be returning eventually - but right now he wanted space, and thinking time, and answers. He'd never been much of a team player.

But after two months of playing Jack Kerouac he'd had a bellyfull of wide open spaces and spent more than enough time alone with his thoughts, and he still didn't have any answers. By day he was getting nowhere fast.

And at night, sprawling between rented sheets or under silent stars, Wolverine dreamed.

He dreamed of riding down deserted highways in pursuit of something priceless and perfect and always just out of sight. He dreamed fragmentary images and echoes of sensation from a time before his skeleton was silvered over. He dreamed the memory of pain so vivid that it woke him flinching and flailing and clawing scores across the mattress or the wall. A curtain of red-brown hair concealing a familiar face. The tentative tenderness of smooth knuckles sliding gently across his raspy cheekbone. A fingertip tracing the line of his jaw. He dreamed the mild buzz of Xavier's chair and the simple sound of shattering glass; the jarring impact of flesh against flesh and the sheer exhilaration of violence and movement. Laughter. Power. Helplessness. Belonging.

Sometimes he dreamed about Jean Grey, and in the morning he would grin as he imagined telling her the next time their paths crossed. "I dreamed of Jeannie," he would say, and her mouth would twitch at the shameless cheesiness of it. He had wanted her as soon as he saw her. Beauty, class, power and brains - and, unfortunately, lousy taste in men, because she insisted on sticking with the bland, blond All-American hero instead of taking a chance on the crazy Canadian. He couldn't entirely blame her, of course. It was the smart thing to do. The safe thing to do. But in Logan's dreams Jean Grey didn't do the smart thing or the safe thing, and there was no smug Scott Summers looming in the background. These were good dreams.

Sometimes he dreamed about Marie, with her body light as a hollow-boned bird; and in the morning his brow would furrow as he let himself worry about the kid. Because she was a kid, even though she didn't seem to realise it and all too clearly wanted him to forget. She was too young to buy a beer, but still old enough to die for some stupid cause. He worried about Marie far more than he had expected to, and he thought about her at unlikely moments and smiled. She was a brave girl, and a pretty girl, and she was his girl, but he was far too old for her. But in his dreams she was older and wiser, or he was younger and more stupid, and there was no need for gloves. These were good dreams too, but in the morning he winced and felt like a dirty old man.

And then there were the other dreams. Riding off into the sunset hadn't made them go away; if anything, they had gotten worse. He still had no idea how to handle them. These were the dreams about flying and falling; dreams in which his own limbs resisted his will and he felt himself twisted and bent and splayed like a puppet, and the only part of his body that Magneto could not control went right ahead and betrayed him anyway. This was not who he was, or who he had thought himself to be; but still the sense-memory of Magneto's effortless mastery of his flesh haunted Logan. It frightened him, and angered him - and something else besides. He knew that Magneto and Charles Xavier had a past, and that Magneto was a man who liked other men. Logan was not. Very much not. But still he couldn't stop dreaming about that strange possession, and wondering what else Magneto could have done, had he time or inclination. What else Marie could have done to him, when she absorbed Magneto's powers. In sleep his brain took the ball and ran with it, and his flawless, reliable claws bent and buckled and lost all their edge. He woke up wet and hard and dry-mouthed from dreams that should be nightmares, where his strength was all meaningless and every move he made was at another person's whim. Magneto, Marie, Jean, Professor X: in dreams it didn't matter who was calling the shots, only that they could and did, bending his flesh or his bones with some power he did not understand. These dreams went beyond good or bad, and the only comfort he could cling to in their dazed aftermath was the near-certainty that they were nothing more than dreams. Not yet shards of memory. Never that. And a man was not responsible for his dreams.

Oh, HELL.

I love you so much.

beams

And I you, doll.

Fay, oh Fay. That was remarkable. Really. I love it very much.

Part two of the coda. Nearly done.

Slowly he went to the bedroom where he'd left Giles. A knock on the door brought no answer, and he peeked in cautiously. Clothes lay on the floor in a trail leading to the bathroom, where the shower was running. Ethan went to the closed door of the bathroom and listened. Beneath the sound of water, he thought he heard crying.

Damned proper upbringing, mustn't show your pain where anyone can see it. No, have to hide in corners, disguise the tears under something else. Ethan wondered if those children in Sunnydale had ever been allowed to see the tears. As many battles as they'd fought, he imagined they had. But he wasn't allowed to see them anymore. He was no longer worthy. And so his oldest ... friend huddled in the shower and suffered alone.

"Bugger that," he muttered, and he yanked his shirt over his head.

He knocked on the bathroom door briefly, in warning, then slipped inside. The room was full of steam. Behind the shower door, Giles was straightening from leaning against the wall, his back to Ethan.

"Yes?" he said, his voice thick.

Ethan didn't bother answering, just pulled open the shower door and stepped in.

Giles stared at him, shocked. "I beg your pardon!"

"Rupert, hush." Ethan closed the shower, then just looked at Giles a moment before resting a careful hand on his face.

Without his glasses, Giles' eyes had no defenses. The outrage faded quickly, showing the shock and pain. He tried to hold on to the bluster, but he only got halfway through a babbled command for Ethan to leave before his voice cracked and he had to drop his eyes. Blindly he reached out, and Ethan pulled him into his arms.

Being skin to skin brought out the honesty in each other. There had been lies and prevarications between them since the day they'd met, but at times like this they'd allowed truth to show. It was no different now they were older, allegedly wiser, and much, much better at telling lies.

The falling water from the shower allowed the fiction that the drops on Giles' face were not mostly tears. He let Ethan hold him up for now, abandoning his duty, his mission, his heritage. For now.

"I knew them," he whispered, staring at the shower wall with his head on Ethan's shoulder.

"I am sorry," Ethan said softly, stroking his hair.

"I didn't like most of them. I bloody hated a lot of them. But ..."

"But they were people you knew, people you'd worked with, people doing the same job you are."

Now he could dare show his fear, as well. "It's taken out the Watchers, Ethan. I don't know what to do now. I know I was trying to stay out of their way, but I'd always expected that I'd have them as a resource if I truly needed it. The First has destroyed the only organized defense the world has."

Ethan managed an honest chuckle. "Which only means it's time for the disorganized defense. Which is better than no defense at all."

Giles nearly laughed, then the reality of it hit again, making him sob. "Gone. They're all gone." Ethan tightened his hold and said nothing for quite a long time.

Finally, damnedable practicality made a few points clear to Ethan. "We're losing the hot water, Rupert. And my joints are too old to appreciate cold water. And you should probably get a little rest before we do anything else. And some food."

"For a chaos worshipper, you have a disturbing grasp of sensible matters." Giles slowly pulled himself upright, but he didn't let go of Ethan's arms.

"All the best chaos has a touch of order to it."

Giles nodded, but his attention was on Ethan's left arm, specifically the scar where he'd burned away the Eyghon tattoo. "Why did you do it, Ethan?" he asked quietly.

"What, this? You know very well why, to put Eyghon off my trail."

"Not just this. Why--" He blamed shock for the tangents his mind was taking, and he had always wondered. "The costumes. You were hired for the band candy prank, you tosser, but I've never understood why you came to Sunnydale to play your trick with the costumes. Did you need the Hellmouth to power it?"

Were they still in the trusting place where truth was allowed? Ethan decided to risk it. "I did it in the first place as, well, an offering to Janus. I did it in Sunnydale because you were there. No one else in the entire country would have appreciated it the way you did."

"Appreciate it? I kicked your arse and smashed your shrine."

"Well, yes," Ethan grinned, "but I can't say I wasn't expecting that."

Giles stared at him for several moments. "You could have just rung me up and said hello. I wouldn't have hung up on you."

"Oh, where's the fun in that?" Ethan lost his smile. "The man you were then had put everything behind him. You'd had that very nice museum job, which you obediently gave up when you were assigned to Sunnydale. You were being such a good boy, I wasn't sure how you'd react to seeing one of your wicked old playmates again."

"And you cared that much about how I'd react?" Giles asked softly, meeting his eyes.

"Yes."

Giles studied Ethan, and his memories. After Eyghon, he had denounced all his old ways, turned his back on the passion of magic--and on the magic of passion. Until he'd been called to Sunnydale, and the real world reminded him that blindness could get you killed. He reclaimed his magic, his passion, and even his music. He'd thought he'd even reclaimed something with Ethan, until that evening of reminiscence and booze had turned into adventures in demon form. Pillock.

"Why did you turn me into a Fyarl, anyway?"

"Revenge," Ethan shrugged. "And green really is your color."

Giles blinked, then burst into laughter. He rested his forehead against Ethan's and lost himself in giggles as Ethan draped his arms around his shoulders. Finally he caught his breath,

Giles blinked, then burst into laughter. He rested his forehead against Ethan's and lost himself in giggles as Ethan draped his arms around his shoulders. Finally he caught his breath, and the two of them just looked at each other for a while.

"You should get some rest," Ethan said eventually. "I can feel you shaking." He reached over and turned off the water, long since gone to tepid.

"And the girls are probably wondering what we're doing. Don't grin like that."

Chuckling, Ethan shoved open the shower stall door and grabbed the nearest dry towel. Giles actually had his hand out to accept the towel before he remembered who he was with. The second towel, though, was handed to him as Ethan dried his own hair.

He was in the middle of drying off his legs when it all hit him again and he had to lean against the wall.

Ethan took his arm. "What is it?"

"Sorry. I just--saw it all again."

"Remembered everything."

"Yes. God. Fifteen centuries. We predated Charlemagne. When the Black Death decimated Europe and the monsters roamed at will, we fought the tide. The Watchers themselves went out to battle, there were so many vampires and demons about." He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. "So many times humanity could have gone under to darkness, but the Watchers held on. And now it's over. It's done."

"No, it's not."

Giles opened his eyes and looked at Ethan, who was looking disarmingly serious again.

"It's not over," Ethan added. "Because you're still here."

"But I'm the last."

"Only till the next one shows up." He patted Giles on the shoulder. "Get dry and get dressed. I'm going to order an embarrassing amount of food from room service. Shall I see if they have curry?"

"Oh, god, if they have a decent masala, I shall love you forever."

"For that I might just go out and see if that little restaurant we liked in Wembley is still there."

"But not that one in Neasden."

Ethan shuddered. "Dear god, no. If ever a place deserved to have a Rakshasa show up and wreck everything, it was that one."

"What Rakshasa?" Giles frowned.

Ethan did a fair job of looking innocent, then he grinned his normal wicked grin and left the bathroom. Giles leaned against the wall a while longer, his heart and mind aching, but his soul being very glad he wasn't doing this by himself.