"There's just ten minutes before the witching hour, dear. Stop faffing about with candles and come and sit down." Ethan grinned up at Giles from within the chalk circle they had drawn on the study carpet.

Giles lit one last candle then carefully crossed over the circle's line to settle on the floor cross-legged across from Ethan. "This position seemed a lot easier when we were young," he complained.

Ethan, whose own knees had cracked loudly when he'd sat down, nodded ruefully. "It's all right once you're down, I've found. Now, how do you want to do this? I have maps, a pendulum, marbles, pixie dust, those ghastly Crowley cards, and I was going to fill a bowl with water to look into, but then I thought of this."

He held up the mirror Giles had given him for his birthday, the wooden frame and handle carved with foxes and badgers. There was a certain elegant symbolism in using the mirror that appealed to Giles. "Yes, I think that would do nicely."

Smiling, Ethan said, "I hoped you'd say that." He moved around so he was facing away from Giles, out of the circle. "We'll need to be spooned, I think."

"All right," Giles said, trusting Ethan's instincts when it came to things like this. He moved so that he was directly behind Ethan, close enough to feel the heat of his body, with his legs to either side.

"Do you want to say any ritual words, dear?" Ethan asked. "We've not done this before together, not ever I don't think. I'm not sure what you like."

"It's not something I've done much of either. There were a few... dabblings when I was searching out Potentials last year, but they weren't very sophisticated." He grimaced. "I was still in my magic leads to badness mindset."

"I think," Ethan said decisively, "that we should scrap the rote. We have the protective circle; that's enough." He lifted the mirror and looked into it. "Put your hands on mine?"

Giles smiled, sliding his arms around Ethan to take his hands. "Always, in any way you mean it."

Ethan chuckled and tilted the mirror to reflect both his face and Giles'. Their expressions grew more serious as they looked into the glass; then Ethan started talking in a low, significant tone. "Concentrate now, while I utter the invocation. Romper, bomper, stomper, boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic mirror, tell me today. Did all my friends have fun at play?"

Giles couldn't hold back a surprised laugh. "So which of us, Ethan, is Do-bee?"

"Oh you, dearheart. Definitely." Ethan's reflection grinned.

"So I guess that means I need to sting you later." Giles liked this; when he was young, before meeting Ethan, magic had always been serious stuff. It felt good to have laughter and humour mixed in with it now.

"Sounds like a plan," Ethan chuckled, wriggling back against Giles. Then his face in the mirror became serious again, and he closed his eyes. Suddenly Giles found himself seeing with pattern sight once more. "I'll provide the ocean," Ethan said, "and the craft, but you are our navigator and captain."

"Right," Giles murmured, letting himself sink further into the magic and the pattern that Ethan was letting him see.

Ethan was very quiet for a while, and to start with, Giles wondered if he was meant to be doing something, but then his vision moved again, lifting up and looking down upon the circle, upon them. "Keep calm, dearheart," Ethan said soothingly. "I'm finding us a better perspective."

"I'm in your hands, love."

"Funny. I thought I was in yours." With a vertigo-inducing swoop, Giles felt his point of view jerked upwards again, through the ceiling, and into Megan's bedroom. Both dogs, who were being allowed to sleep in there as a treat so that they wouldn't disturb the scrying, looked up from the floor and stared directly at Giles... or at whatever part of him Ethan was pulling around.

"We've an audience," Giles murmured as he stared back at the two puppies.

"Shh," Ethan murmured, and Giles wasn't sure if Ethan was talking to him or Skunk. Then there was another lurch upwards, through the roof, and this time they didn't stop. Surging up through the night sky, Giles watched their house, their street, get smaller. Ethan asked, "We are thinking this country for Fran-the-sham, yes?" It was odd, hearing Ethan's voice so clearly with the body he'd left behind in the house below.

"Yes," Giles replied, and it was just as odd to be speaking. "For better or worse, England seems to be the centre point. She'll want to be close to the heart of it."

The city below was no more than many dots of light now, some of them moving, some still. "This is probably high enough. Let me ramp things up a little." Before Giles could ask what Ethan meant, almost all trace of normal vision vanished, to be replaced by an intricate three-dimensional network of moving multicolour threads and interweavings. "Christ," Ethan breathed, obviously impressed himself. "We would have died for an experience like this when we were young and stupid."

Giles was just as impressed with Ethan. "We certainly tried many other ways to fly. This puts the whole Chitty Chitty Bang Bang experience to shame."

"Well, here's the ocean, dearheart. Now you get to sail it. I suggest we both think hard about the bitch, not our emotions, but what we actually know about her. Then you steer us where you will."

"Right." Giles ran through everything he knew about Francesca in his mind: how she looked, moved, sounded, the annoying way she had of looking down her nose even at those taller than her, the bitter disapproving frown she seemed to wear perpetually.

They, or at least their conscious presence above London, started to slowly move. West, Giles thought, but it was hard to tell really. He felt Ethan shiver in his arms, back in the house.

Giles automatically tightened his grip on Ethan in response. "What is it?" he asked softly, still keeping the image of Francesca firmly in the front of his mind.

"Look down, Rupert. See all those dark red knots dotted about?" There were indeed a number of darker patches within the pattern network, opaque and writhing like nests of snakes.

"Yes." He didn't like the look of them, the feel of them, at all. They felt.... jarring, like a song being played just a tone out of tune.

"Chaos."

"Good Lord."

"Dark Chaos hotspots." Ethan sounded... angry? "I know we've never done this before, but I find it hard to believe there are usually this many."

"I'm sure there's not. We've had a rise in reports of Chaotic activity for several months now, but this..." Giles shook his head. "Seeing it... makes it more real."

Ethan's hands moved slightly within Giles'. "I'm not sure how long I can do this. We should find Uberbitch while we can."

"Right." Giles returned his concentration to the task at hand, and slowly they began to drift to the west again.

It was a slow movement, almost sedate, and it perhaps should have lulled Giles into a meditative calm, but instead the level of concentration he was trying to maintain, as well as the surreality of Ethan's gifted vision, made Giles impatient and almost anxious. He was beginning to worry what would happen if they moved too far from their bodies, when his attention was drawn by one of the knots of Chaos in the array.

His thoughts of Francesca seemed to connect somehow to that knot, a tenuous but visible thread rising from the dark nexus to hover in front of them, or in front of where they perceived themselves anyway. He really didn't have the vocabulary for this.

"Looks like we might have a connection," he murmured, focusing on the information and leaving the logistics of how they were gaining it for later. Francesca and Chaos... On the one hand, it seemed absolutely logical that she would join up with the main threat against the Council in general and him and Ethan in particular, but on the other, Francesca was one of the last people he would have considered aligning herself with Chaos, so hidebound and obsessed with rules and traditions was she.

"That's not what I would have predicted." Ethan sounded tense. "Rupert, if she's allied with Chaos..."

"We'll have all our enemies in one place and won't need to fight a war on two fronts?" Giles sighed. "I know, but we'll deal with it."

"Chaos and Order working together like this, organised Chaos... It's unnatural."

"Some would say the same about us," Giles reminded gently.

"That's not at all the same… is it?" Ethan snorted. "Well, maybe it's similar. But we're more… guided intuition… or something."

"We did it first."

"We do it better. I can't imagine Frannie doing anything like this, can you? She'd have an instant breakdown as her limited reality dissolved." Ethan tightened his hands below Giles', clenching the mirror's handle. "Shall we take a closer look?"

Giles tightened his own grip over Ethan's hands. "All right," he said, bracing himself.

The thread leading down to Francesca Travers' possible location strengthened and became more opaque, presumably in reaction to something Ethan was doing. "Haul us in, dearheart," he said, his voice a little strained.

Not sure exactly how to do it, Giles just went with his instincts, concentrating and doing... something that got them moving down the thread.

Giles had no idea where in England this knot, this nexus they were heading to, actually was; he could only hope Ethan knew how this 3D tapestry corresponded to the real world. As they got closer to the nexus, he could see a strange dark area beside it, an area where there were no threads of any kind. He was just about to ask Ethan about it when he saw something appear from within the dark spot, rising up towards them rapidly. He couldn't tell what it was, but he was positive that it wasn't something they wanted to tangle with, not when they were so vulnerable, pulled so far from their bodies and unprepared. "I think we best make a strategic–" Giles began, but the thing, the presence was on them before he could even finish the sentence.

It enveloped them in darkness, in Chaos; Giles felt like he had after touching that pouch, or, moreso, back on that train when he'd almost died. But this was more than just Chaos; there was an intelligence here, a malevolent presence that hated and hungered and wanted their confusion, their pain. Red eyes, fur like smoke, claws and a muzzle full of teeth that wanted to rip into them, minds and bodies both, rip through them until blood and magic flowed equally from mortal wounds, rip the two of them apart...

"Fuck!" he heard from Ethan, his voice more furious than Giles had ever heard it. "No, you bloody well won't." Giles felt some of his power being pulled from him, and for a fraction of a second he resisted, until he realised it was Ethan pulling, mixing it with his own to make something greater. "Fight back, Rupert. Use this. You have to be the focus here. I'll get us home."

Giles had already started instinctively blocking the attacks –his magic and mind forming a shield for them to clash against. Now, to the shield, he added a sword, formed out of their melded will, bright with their magic, that seemed to burn the darkness around them as much as it cut through it.

The Chaos... thing hurt appallingly wherever it touched Giles, the pain somehow being felt in his body, but it was clear that his sword hurt the whatever it was in turn, producing screams audible only in his mind but no less deafening for that.

Ethan, meanwhile, was pulling them back, increasingly rapidly. The pattern network blurred around Giles as he was swept backwards. The faster they moved, the harder Giles fought to sever the connections the Presence was trying to make and hold onto, although it was something like fighting a psychic hydra – for every tendril Giles sliced through, two more seemed to pop up in its place.

It seemed to be having problems keeping up, however, the gap between them slowly increasing. Making what was probably a last ditch effort, the thing seemed to condense itself, becoming small and inky black, looking like a rip in the fabric of the pattern reality. The white teeth in its savage muzzle and its swirling red eyes were the only substance in that absence of anything at all.

Then it surged forward, swiping at them with an arm formed of void wielding razor claws.

There was a scream; whose mouth it came from Giles couldn't have said as cold seemed to cut into his –their?– bones, and there was a noise like the smashing of a thousand windows.

Then with a jolt it was over. Giles was back in his body, back in the study. A quick review revealed both of them were apparently Chaos-free, but Ethan was panting and trembling in his arms.

"Are you all right?" Giles asked, tightening his embrace, not willing to let go of Ethan just yet.

"No." The single word was quiet, almost distant.

"Ethan." Alarm skittered along nerves already drawn taut and raw by what they had just been through. Giles pulled back, but only enough to get Ethan to turn and face him.

There was blood splattered on Ethan's face, just a little. Looking down, Giles could see it had clearly splashed there from Ethan's hands, and perhaps also from his own, as he suddenly realised they were stinging. Ethan still held the mahogany mirror in his hands, but the glass had smashed into myriad needle-thin daggers. Ethan's hands were studded with them as were his legs below. And yes, Giles had broken off shards impaling his own skin.

"Fuck." It seemed an appropriate reaction.

"Rupert..." Ethan's voice had the hollow calm of someone lost to fear.

"It's all right. We're all right." He moved to take the broken mirror from Ethan's hands but stopped at the many sharp pricklings in his hands from the glass. There was a cantrip he'd learned years ago to remove splinters; with an instant's thought, Giles gathered his magic and murmured, "Fragmentum externus disperge," adapting it to the current situation.

The glass fell instantly into sparkling dust that blew away on a non-existent breeze, disappearing. At a different time, Giles would have felt proud of himself, improvising so easily, but that time was not now. Ethan's hands were dripping blood, those patches of skin not red and sticky, were white with the force he was still gripping the mirror's handle.

"Ethan..." Giles reached for the mirror again. "You can let go now."

"No."

"Yes." Giles kept his voice firm, but as reassuring as he could. "It's all right. I've got it. I've got you."

Ethan was staring fixedly at the dull wood wherein the mirrored glass had been inlayed. Then suddenly he snorted loudly, and the frame dropped into Giles' hands as Ethan stood up. He walked to the French windows to stare out into the dark. "Those who play with people as if they're toys enjoy using superstition to make their puppets dance," he said coldly. "I know their tricks as if they were my own." He laughed. It was far from a nice sound. "Funny, that."

Giles got up and carefully placed the mirror frame on his desk before moving to Ethan's side. "It, whatever it was, broke the mirror because it couldn't break us. The mirror can be repaired. As for superstition, we seem to be the focus of far too much, prophetically speaking, for any mere superstition to affect us."

"I wish we'd used a different mirror," Ethan said quietly. "That one, I... Oh, to hell with it." He turned and held out his hands. "Shall we find some bandages before we totally destroy the carpet?"

"Might be a bit late for that," Giles said looking at the mess where they'd been sitting. "But bandages would be called for, yes."

Ethan was pale and still visibly trembling, but he seemed to be with Giles again, not off somewhere unpleasant. "Are you hurt beyond your hands?" he asked Giles.

Giles shook his head, even as he took a quick inner stock. "No," he said, once again following his instincts and pulling Ethan into his arms in spite of their injuries. "It looks like you got the worst of it."

Ethan kept his hands clenched together, but he relaxed against Giles clearly relishing the hug. "I'm trying very hard not to panic," he said, nuzzling Giles' face, "But that thing... "

"Is gone for now." Giles turned his head enough to place a gentle kiss on Ethan's lips. "We'll be better prepared when next we meet it." He didn't even try to deny that they would meet whatever it was again.

"The Uberbitch and that... void beast? Together? Rupert, we..." Ethan shook his head sharply, and pulled from Giles' arms. "Let's get to the bathroom before I start to look like I've been swimming in red paint." He strode to the door, but hesitated with his hand out before opening it. Sighing, Ethan pulled his sleeve down over one hand and used that hand to open the door.

Giles followed Ethan out into the living room and up the stairs. "The room will clean, as will the doorknobs, but yes, I rather like you to keep most of your bodily fluids inside your body."

"All of them?" Ethan asked a little archly. "That seems a bit unfair." Humour was definitely a good sign. They walked into the bathroom together, and Giles turned the light on. Ethan pulled a face at himself in the mirror. "I seem to have slipped with the blusher."

"How careless of you. Sit down," Giles said, reaching for the first aid supplies.

Ethan hesitated before obeying. "Do you want my trousers off?"

"Quite often, yes," Giles replied with a bit of smile.

Ethan gave him a pointed look, but the corners of his mouth were definitely twitching upwards. He put his hands to his belt and started to undo it, wincing. "Who's going to bandage you, dearheart?"

Giles looked down at his own hands. "I'm not as badly injured as you. but you can see to me after we get you taken care of, if you like."

"Better not bind my fingers too tightly then." The trousers fell to the floor. Not exactly blood-soaked, but definitely blood-dampened. It seemed to be mostly Ethan's knees and calves that had been punctured by the glass. Ethan kicked the trousers to the side and sat down on the lid of the loo, holding his hands out. They were sticky with blood, still oozing from several of the deeper wounds.

Giles cleaned the cuts as gently and thoroughly as he could and then quickly bandaged up those that were still bleeding. "Okay?" he asked eventually, looking up at Ethan.

"You'd pass the first aid exam," he said with a small smile. "Thank you. Shall I do yours now? I can probably manage my legs by myself; they only caught a little of the shrapnel."

"I can do them," Giles said, a bit more sharply than he intended. He gave an embarrassed smile and explained, "I like taking care of you."

Ethan's face sank into a glad smile, and it was only then that Giles realised how tense and miserable Ethan had been looking still. "I think," Ethan said, just a little hesitantly, "once we've recovered a little, we need to contemplate some more magic,"

"You have something in mind?" Giles asked, as he knelt to see to the cuts on Ethan's legs.

"I'm trying to tell myself it's just superstition, but we mystics deal in symbols; we work through symbols, and that mirror was a potent symbol of us." Ethan paused and swallowed before continuing. "That Chaos-beast's attack may not have hurt us physically, but I think we have been wounded on a different level, Rupert. We should work" –he lifted his hands expansively– "protective magic and binding spells, repairing the damage and fortifying our defences." Ethan looked hard at Giles before he finished. "We may know roughly where they are now, but they know where we are too."

"They always have." Giles rather suspected that had been true far longer than either of them would like to admit. "But added protection can be nothing but prudent." He also thought that working magic together again right away would be much like getting back on the horse after being bucked off; he didn't want to take a chance of his old phobias reasserting themselves.

He felt Ethan's bandaged fingers slipping through his hair, combing and stroking.

Giles looked up and met his eyes, smiling ruefully. "You know exactly what I'm thinking, don't you?"

"Patterns are my speciality," Ethan acknowledged with a wry smile. "But I strongly suspect you know where my thoughts keep taking me too, and you don't have that excuse."

"I'm good at languages. Ethan-ese may have given me problems at times over the years, but I feel I'm fairly fluent in it now."

Ethan's legs were finished. He stood and waved at his vacated seat. "Now it's my turn to be the carer. And then I suppose we better tidy up downstairs. I don't want Megan to stumble on that mess tomorrow morning."

Giles took Ethan's seat and obediently held out his hands. "Agreed. We don't want her thinking we sacrificed a goat or something."

Ethan cleaned Giles' hands with great care, pausing to kiss clean patches every once in a while. "I'm such a Pavlov's dog," he murmured.

"Are you?" Giles asked affectionately.

Ethan glanced up at him, grinning just a little crookedly. "Kneeling at your feet like this, it's having the predictable effect. Despite everything."

Giles returned the grin and leaned over to kiss him. "After we finish what we have to do, we might be able to indulge Pavlov's dog."

"Really, we're obliged to," Ethan claimed. "Vital rebonding work."

"Work, work, work," Giles teased.

"It's a hard job..." Ethan started and left it at that. Giles just chuckled and kissed him again.

***

"Well, this has been an interesting night," Rupert remarked with dry humour as they got ready for bed.

"One of our finest," Ethan replied, resorting to sarcasm. His hands hurt. His legs didn't feel anything much more than itchy from the bandaid adhesive, but his hands prickled and throbbed. In ideal circumstances, they should have waited longer before improvising such an elaborate protection ritual as the one they'd just completed, but circumstances were far from ideal.

"I've had worse days," Rupert offered, finishing undressing and sliding beneath the covers. He held them up for Ethan to join him.

Pulling off his last sock, Ethan obliged, but he sat up, leaning against the headboard, not yet ready to lie down despite his fatigue. His mind kept going back to his mirror. "I cried like a baby when you gave it to me," he said, only exaggerating a little. "Do you remember?"

Rupert, as usual, was easily able to follow his train of thought. "I remember," he said, reaching over for Ethan's hand. "It's just the glass that's broken. I'm sure it can be fixed."

"I should know better than to let things gain significance beyond their practical use. I do know better." But symbols, as he'd said earlier, were unavoidably important to those with a mystical bent. He played his gaze over their wedding rings, glinting on their joined hands.

"Symbols are important," Rupert said, uncannily echoing Ethan's unspoken words. "There's nothing wrong with attaching significance to such things, and in the end, this is just going to make the mirror all that much more significant. It's broken, we'll fix it, we'll hold it even more valuable because of that." He smiled faintly. "Rather like us."

Oh, and that worked so very well as an analogy. Ethan smiled gratefully at Rupert. "You're quite right. To be truly a symbol of us, the mirror needed to be broken, and by Chaos too, but I will feel a lot happier when it's in one piece again." He stroked his bandaged fingers over Rupert's cheek. "You're a very wise man."

"I have the occasional moment of brilliance," Rupert said with a self-effacing smile.

Freeing his left hand momentarily, Ethan raised it to stroke over the brand on his right arm, the badger mark Rupert had placed there. Almost invisible unless he used a form of mystical sight, the symbol was subtle, but his fingers could feel it even without enhancement. "They can't take this one from me... Well, I hope they can't." He laughed a little hollowly.

Rupert shifted, leaning over to place a kiss directly on the brand; the touch sent a spark of something through Ethan. Not so much sexual as just... love. Belonging. "They can't take you from me either," Rupert murmured, the words only adding to the feeling.

Ethan finally slid down in the bed, wrapping his arms around Rupert. "I suppose we better hold another meeting tomorrow, but for now, I just want to fall asleep with you."

"Good." He felt Rupert wrap his arms around him in return. "I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to knock you out to get you to rest."

Rupert felt warm and strong and very real beside him, not a symbolic comfort, but an actual one. Ethan yawned deeply. They'd worked hard tonight after the scrying and attack, and he hadn't even been able to take the usual pleasure in working magic with Rupert because it was too important to be relaxed about. It was very late, and the morning's alarm call seemed to loom all too near. Sleep had rarely been more welcome.

***

He was lying in the middle of a forest clearing with his lover. The grass beneath them was soft, and the sun shining down on them was bright and warming. It was a bubble of peace that stretched out into the trees surrounding their little copse, but he knew it didn't go much further beyond what they could see.

He knew that beyond their immediate influence the forest still was twisted by a dark malevolence, its claws scrabbling to get into their sanctuary. If he listened hard enough he could hear its scritchings at their barrier.

"It's inevitable, you know," his lover commented casually. "Barriers will be breached, the centre reached, the sentries overcome."

"Yes," he agreed, "but does it have to be now? It's so comfortable here."

"Time to go home."

A cloud passed over the sun, casting a dirty shadow where golden sunlight had dappled their bodies.

"Yes," he said sadly. "Maybe you're right."

He looked up at the edge of the clearing; a door was there now, a portal; its periphery was decorated with frolicking foxes and badgers.

"See?" his lover said with a smile. "Our path comes calling."

"And we have to choose how to walk it," he replied, remembering. Somehow that made him feel better about going.

They stood and walked towards the door, but his lover stopped him before he could walk through. "You're forgetting something."

He frowned, but then laughed softly. Reaching out, he took his lover's hand. "They can't take you from me."

His lover's smile practically shone. "Together then."

"Yes. Together." He took a deep breath, squeezed his lover's hand, and stepped through the doorway. From somewhere distant came the tinkling sound of breaking glass.

The lift doors slid smoothly open, and they walked into a corridor. Underlit and bare of any ornamentation, it seemed to go for miles in either direction, unmarked doors leading off at regular intervals. "Which way now?" he asked, confused. This wasn't what he'd expected.

His lover shrugged and pointed down the corridor. "Forward?"

They started walking, but he couldn't stop looking at the doors they were passing. They called to him; he couldn't stand not knowing what was behind them. Finally he stopped in front of one, unable to resist any longer.

"What are you doing?" his lover asked, watching him reach for the doorknob.

"I'll just take a quick look. I promise."

"Do you think that's a good idea? You might let something out." Even as his lover asked this, he handed him a key. Small and heavy, it appeared to be carved whole from emerald.

"Better out than in," he answered, chuckling, and placed the key into the lock and turned.

Something huge and hairy barrelled out through the door, knocking them both over, before it was gone in a flash of white fangs and red eyes.

"Well, that was rude," he said, accepting the hand up his lover gave him.

"It should have been kept on a muzzle," his lover agreed, looking into the now open room. "I think there's more in here."

He looked inside but shook his head. "It's just a cat that might not be there. We have to rescue the little girl before we can get to the happy ever after."

"Can't have that," said a strange voice from beneath them. He looked down to see a snake, grey with glinting eyes, weaving around their feet.

His lover shook his head and bent down to pick up the snake by the neck. "You're not supposed to be here." He tossed the snake over his shoulder where it disappeared with a squawk. "It's always about the girl," his lover said. "There's just more of them now."

Over his lover's shoulder, he watched in horror as a man grew up from where the snake had vanished. The man smiled, and lateral eyelids closed briefly over his serpentine eyes. He wiped a small black feather from the corner of his mouth and held up an emerald key for them to see. "Looking for this?" asked the voice of the snake.

"That's not yours," he said, feeling cold inside. "It won't work for you."

The snake man smiled coldly. "What makes you think it's going to work for you even if you have it? A key is no good if you don't know what lock it fits."

"The key is the solution," he answered, approaching the snake man slowly.

"The key is nothing," the snake man replied and tipped his head back, opening his mouth and dangling the key over it. A forked tongue flickered out, tasting the stone.

His lover moved up to stand beside him. "The key isn't yours. You'll be punished for touching it."

As the words left his lover's mouth, he could see that something was happening to the snake man. The snake man stiffened, eyes widening in surprise and pain. He jerked spasmodically and something sharp and yellow pierced his chest from the inside.

As he and his lover watched and the snake man screamed, a large black-feathered bird tore its way out of the snake man's chest. With a triumphant caw, it took flight, ripping the key out of the snake man's hand.

The key fell from the black bird's talons, tumbling down towards him. He held his hand up to catch it, but it stopped in mid tumble. Everything stopped. The scene froze. And a booming voice said loudly, "Wake up, you fools!"