Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 5 - LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

He raised his son in the English way
And he taught him respect, he taught him how to pray
He sent him off to boarding school
Where he learned how to live by someone else's rules...

... It must be something much deeper than fear or pain
Another child learns the pattern, he won't break the chain

Fear of God and the feel of the rod will raise a good boy
The fear of God and the feel of the rod will raise a good boy
The fear of God and the feel of the rod will raise the next boy


(Rick Springfield Album - Living in Oz) 

Chapter 5.22
Sunday, June 16th, 2002


"I still say if you're going with the bed idea, then it would be better to have some sort of metal frame," Anya argued.

Giles looked again at the dark pine bed he had chosen with its simply but exquisitely carved head and foot pieces. "I rather like this one. I know Spike might like the Gothic look, but this is for Buffy as well."

"Honestly, Giles!" Anya exclaimed in impatience. "It's just not practical, at all. There isn't even anywhere you could attach any handcuffs and, if you did somehow manage to get them to lock on somewhere, all the varnish would scrape off."

Giles reddened and pushed his chair away from the computer. "I think maybe it's time we took a little break. Why don't I make us some tea and see if I can find Dawn? She should have some idea what sort of furnishings they had in mind."

 

---

 

Giles might not have recognised Offspring, but he did realise that the music coming from behind the door of Faith and Dawn's room was grungier than the teenager's normal boy bands and he silently raised a prayer in hope that her taste in music was finally approaching something more appropriate to her intellectual age.

He gave the briefest of knocks and raised his voice in question. "Dawn?" He paused in deference for possible female nudity until he heard the teen confirm he could enter.

"Dawn," he began as he pushed the door open. "I was wondering if perhaps you could help me ou-." He stalled as he realised that the girl was not alone. He frowned briefly as he searched for the appropriate name amongst so many newcomers. "Brandon, it's not that I have any objection to you per se. You seem like a rather nice young boy, as teenage boys go, and it does appear that you might be doing something useful..." Giles waved a hand in the general direction of the large scale maps that Brandon and Dawn had spread out across both the bunks. "However, I can't help but think that Buffy and particularly Spike might imagine the library to be a better venue than any that places you both alone behind closed doors, and from a personal viewpoint I have to wonder why it is that, considering you at least nominally still live with your father, you never actually seem to go home. "

"Sorry, sir," Brandon answered still somewhat subdued after Ireland's World Cup exit. He continued in time before Dawn could finish drawing in breath to indulge in a fit of teenaged pique. "Amanda just went down to get some sodas from the kitchen. She'll be back in a minute or two. If I'd thought about it, I'd have made sure she left the door open. We didn't mean to break the rules." The boy's head tilted down and he looked at his fingertips as he rubbed at the cuticles of his left hand. He couldn't keep his eyes from glancing across at Dawn before he continued, however. "Dad's out of town for a few days. There, em, was some... stuff that, he, ah, had to do."

Dawn's eyes narrowed and she rounded on him. "You didn't say your dad was out of town," she said, not even trying to conceal her suspicion or her burgeoning anger. As yet, she didn't know exactly what she had to be angry at, but she figured she'd find out soon enough.

"Does it make a difference?" Brandon asked in a soft reasonable voice. "It's not like I wouldn't choose to be here most of the time anyway. I might have slept in a proper bed a bit more often but I'd still head straight over and Mr Giles would probably still be trying to get rid of me." Brandon's gaze shifted back to the watcher. "But, sir, Buffy and Spike said it would be okay for me to stay until he got back."

"Yeah," Dawn answered far too calmly. "It makes a difference. I'm supposed to be your girlfriend, but everybody gets a say in whether you stay over except me."

"It wasn't meant to be like that." Brandon sounded both hurt and apologetic, but even when Dawn raised an eyebrow and gave him a questioning glare he made no attempt to elucidate further.

"Well, maybe when you explain what it was meant to be like, then we can talk. I'll tell Amanda you took the maps and stuff to your room." She stood up and grabbed all the paperwork, crushing it until it fitted into an awkward armful, which she thrust out toward the youth as he rose to his feet.

Brandon didn't bother to argue, but the scuff of his boots against the floor as he left told its own tale of misery.

Giles tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. "He might have a perfectly good reason for not mentioning it. He doesn't seem the type who would deliberately-."

Dawn gave the watcher a withering look. "Giles, if you want me to help you with something, then off topic now."

 

---

 

"Wesley, darling, why don't you bring Marie and your other friends over here?"

Marie smiled at the sound of Penelope's voice, but her smile faded when she realised that Wes's mother sat at the same table as Quentin and Roger, though the presence of Lydia Chalmers, who seemed to be having nothing more substantial than a glass of water, did a little to ease her nerves. "Is she serious?" she whispered in Wes's ear, her teeth clenched as she tried to keep watch on Rosa with her tray of food.

"Never let it be said that mother missed out on a chance to watch father and Quentin squirm."

Lily walked around the pair as the couple slowed. "Is not polite to keep your mother waiting." She took a seat next to Roger, who sat across the table from his wife, and Wes and the others followed suit, Wes beside his mother with Rosa on his other side and Marie next to her, automatically placing themselves so that they could both help the girl if she needed it. Clem and Ha Nath took places next to Lily.

Wes made the necessary introductions and Quentin made the barest of acknowledgements before he returned to the conversation he had apparently been having prior to the group's arrival. "It's important that you begin as soon as possible," Quentin announced, not so much to Roger as to everyone at the table and those nearest to it. "You'll need to go back to England. With everyone concentrating on the research materials, it seems unlikely that the older personnel records will have been moved yet. You will need to check through them and track down as many as possible of the retired members. They need to be warned of the threat and they should be alerted as to how they may get in touch with us here, should any of them find anything relevant to the situation in their own private libraries."

Penelope's lips twisted in a wry smile, magnanimously allowing Roger and Quentin their facade. She turned to Marie and the others. "You must forgive Quentin for his abruptness. Having had watchers kowtowing to him for a decade or so has made him forget that, as far as everyone else is concerned, the world fails to revolve around him." She winked at Rosa. "I bet your mommy would tell you off for being rude if you ignored people like that, but grumpy old men can get away with it..." She met Roger's gaze. "Speaking of which, it's such a pity that you have to leave just when I get here, but I'm sure we'll potter on without you, dear."

 

---

 

Lydia and Tara chose a spot nearer the basement stairs than the circle that remained set up with the manacles in its centre. They cleared a good sized area of the general dust and detritus that littered the floor, marked out a sacred circle that could easily accommodate both of them, using rock salt crystals. They marked out another smaller circle at the centre of that one. Intersecting that one they drew a pentacle. From her pockets Tara pulled out a selection of gemstones; amethyst as a general protection against negative psychic energy; jade to counter more directed psychic attacks and also for its association with the protection of children; quartz to represent protection for the home or other buildings; peridot for physical protection and also protection against demons and, finally, red jasper for protection from dangerous situations. Just outside the smaller circle, next to the stones, Lydia placed small clay incense holders with tall narrow incense sticks, leaving them unlit for the moment, but placing a box of matches ready to one side.

Tara fetched a large book from the caretaker's office, opened it and placed it next to the inner circle, so that there was enough space for someone to sit cross-legged and read from it without touching the outer circle. The two women surveyed the layout, straightening up an incense holder here and a line there until they were satisfied.

They adjourned upstairs to the shower room which had a sign on the door saying it was out of bounds between half past twelve and one o'clock. There, they took it in turn to use the communal showers. They washed from head to toe using unperfumed toiletries and redressed in freshly laundered clothing. Tara had chosen a flowing white skirt with broderie Anglais edging and a peasant style top that flattered her rounded curves. Lydia wore white canvas bootleg jeans and a clinging T-shirt so new its soft fabric practically glowed and made even her fair skin look dark.

They walked barefoot back to the basement and took their places facing each other. Stepping into the circle from opposite sides, they settled into cross-legged positions with the book directly before Tara. The two women clasped hands and the Wiccan began to read from the book. Lydia followed on, repeating Tara's exact words with just a few seconds delay, their phrasing and the rhythm of the chant seeming to fall into synch, even though their words didn't, like young children singing 'Row, Row, Row."

Lydia watched as, slowly, the inner circle began to glow with a dim light. She continued repeating the words that Tara spoke before her, until gradually the chant became a repetition by rote that required no conscious thought. The circle glowed brighter now, its essence formed from the merged power of the two women whose canon acted like a magical pulse, drawing power through their linked bodies like the human heart pumps blood through the body. Raising her eyes to to Tara's, the two came to a silent agreement and focused their will on the circle of light. The circle swirled gently outward gliding over the outer circle without disturbing it, and then deforming under their will until it matched the confines of the basement room.

The magical energy continued to pulse through the women seemingly unabated and, again, they pressed onward by unspoken accord, visualising the sweep of the protective barrier in their mind's eye as clearly as they had seen it when it was within the confines of the room. The light spread outward and upward until Lydia saw that it enveloped almost all of the building's lowest level. As Lydia channelled her will, her lips still moving in the same rote chant, she became aware of something akin to a magical form of friction. The protected area continued to expand, but much more slowly now.

The best way to describe what she felt was as is if the magic they used to power the warding spell was akin to water released from behind a dam. Water continued to flow down from the hills into the reservoir which seemed just as full as it had been when they started the working, but it was as if the engineer was closing off the sluice gates so that the power available to fuel the spell was becoming less plentiful.

Digging deep within herself, Lydia began to not just accept and shape the power that flowed between them but to actively suck it from the reservoir within them, working to overcome the resistance she felt to the spell's continued expansion. Tara's eyes widened in shock and she tried with nothing more than her own eyes to soothe her. She pushed the protected area outward until it extended beyond the walls of the school building, then upward until all the floors were covered. The look of shock died away from Tara's eyes, replaced by a look of trust and with a rush all the friction washed away. The wards flooded out to the boundary of the property forming a glistening bubble over the school and its grounds, visible to any who cared to look at it with magical senses. With one last effort of will the women hardened the walls of that bubble until it formed a metaphysical shell. Tara slapped three times on the floor to end that phase of the working and ground the power between them.

The Wiccan's eyes held fear and hope as she met the watcher's. "I-."

"Shhh!" Lydia calmed her. "We can work out what it all means later. For now, let's bury these stones and finish this..." She pushed to her feet, broke both the inner and outer circle with her toe and then reached down to offer the witch a hand. "We never thought we'd be able to do more than a couple of rooms without having to find more people. Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth."