Thanks MC and duellistjc...
Okay so I am what 19 minutes after my promised post time. Part 20 is below... and that means Part 21 - the meeting is next!*S*
Part 20 though... that is a big hump. Possibly the worst thing I have put these characters through. It is not violent. It is not graphic... but it should once more show you what VW is. Do I need to make this point again? I think not...
Big thanks to Jo in this and she gets a credit.
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – A Lost Soul (Part 20)
Author: Katharyn Rosser & Jo ‘Wizpup’
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: Tara speaks to one last person… someone perhaps more lost than even she is.
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: So very, very close to meeting.
Notes: I guess that there is a touch of karma involved here in the 50/50 choice that I made here. I mean you don’t try to burn your daughter at the stake without consequences do you? There is an end-note.
Thanks To: All of the usual suspects for all of the usual reasons. You know who you are and you know what you mean. Especially to Jo here… there was some specific information I had gotten wrong here. Jo was good enough to run a very fast re-write to clear it up. Oh and Amber. Amber. Amber. Amber. And Amber. You get that?*S*
The Sidestep Chronicle
A Lost Soul
By
Katharyn Rosser
Tara turned the tea down just because she still had the long lingering headache. Almost a week later, it was still with her. At least now it was nothing more than a headache. It had started out with her head feeling as if it would fall apart. Hardly any surprise though. The last time she had tried something like that it had laid her up in bed for a week – virtually delirious with the pain. This time it was easier – she’d been able to keep functioning – it just hurt.
It had been, she supposed, the whole combination of factors that had made it so bad. Controlled teleportation to a very specific space, whilst manipulating the stake as well. This was no random shifting of matter from one place to another… The concentration required had been immense and the pain had come in along that line of concentration, snaking out into the crevices of her brain where it still lingered and sparked the discomfort. Just whenever she moved though. It was only the fact that she had shifted the spell focus itself into the ingredients that had protected her from worse and allowed her to continue to work and hunt. Even if it did still hurt to think. Just a night in bed and at least she had been able to carry on with her task.
For Allan.
For Willow.
She shuddered to think what might have happened if she had tried to carry the entire load herself, through her own power rather than the consumption of the ingredients. That would have been bad… just like before. There were some things that you couldn’t get used to – and couldn’t allow yourself to think that you could. That way lay danger. Dark danger. She had walked the fine line once more. Wobbled on it like a tightrope. But she hadn’t fallen into darkness.
And it
had worked.
The vampires were still there, obviously, but they were now being far more cautious… they were staying away from the areas that she patrolled regularly. They had learnt and they had adapted to her tactics. If she had
just been trying to protect a certain area then that would be great – but she was still trying to kill them all. Nothing less that that.
A job that’s half done isn’t done at all, Tara. Yes sir.
Whilst her kills each night were fewer so were the deaths of the people of Sunnydale, the last three nights in fact there hadn’t been a single death. That would have worried her, made her think that something was being planned, something bad – but they, the vampires, had been out there anyway.
Abductions had gone up in those previous three days though… a bus full of people, venturing too close to the town… she guessed that they were corpses, arisen as the undead or being herded as meals right now. The worst thing about that was that even if they were still alive there was nothing that she could do. Not today. She wasn't ready yet. And that was what
really hurt. It always did hurt to know that. She knew where they would be – but she could do nothing about it. She had never become immune to the pain of the innocents in all this and she feared the day that would happen.
But she couldn’t let that fear cripple her.
That was what must have happened to this gentleman from whom who she was rejecting the offer of tea. A real gentleman as she had always been taught a man should be.
“A glass of water perhaps?” he offered. “I am afraid I do not drink much else. Tea and water. Water and tea.” He smiled – it was the first time he had since she had arrived on his doorstep.
“That would be nice, thank you,” she told him realising that he wanted to get her something – that it would make him happier to do that. So she let him.
He toddled off to fetch the drinks, and Tara could hear him filling the kettle up for his own. She took the opportunity to look around the living room from where she sat. It had seemed rude to gawp whilst he was in here with her.
It was immaculately kept. It was almost as if no one actually lived there, so perfect was the cleanliness, the placement of objects flat against the edges of the surface they were on – almost obsessive. She found herself looking at her fingers and shoes to make sure that she was not about to mark the carpet or the furniture with some speck of dust or dirt he might pick up on and disapprove.
She didn’t want him to disapprove of her – even though she had just met him.
“Where do you know
her from, Miss Maclay?” he called to her, sticking his head around the door.
She couldn’t very well say her dreams could she? “I am – well – I am going to Sunnydale High. Back to school. A little, t-to graduate.” It was no explanation at all but he might think that she had moved away or something. Anything would do as long as she didn’t have to tell him –
I dream about your daughter.“You were there before? You knew her?” He brought the glass of water to her. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you being here with her… before.” All of the emphasis was on ‘before.’
“Thank you,” she said taking the water. “I-I wasn’t. Here before I mean.” For some reason Tara thought that she should wish that she had been. The insane idea that she could have been introduced to him as a friend… or something. But she hadn’t been.
He smiled sadly. “Neither was I that much. We left her a lot to do our jobs, to see our rather widespread family. Sheila, my wife - and I did.
She was a very responsible and mature child.” He broke off, seeming to shudder and went back to the kitchen where the kettle sounded to have boiled.
Tara looked around the room. There were pictures everywhere. Husband and wife together. Many just of his wife. They spanned the decades… and she could trace how both of them had changed in that time – and the heritage that had shaped Willow’s face – which was burned into her memory. The ears… the colour of the eyes. The shape of her chin. But there wasn’t a single picture of Willow in this, a room filled with memories. Not one. Neither as a baby nor as the young woman she had become. Nothing in between either.
Not one picture… she had hoped to see something. But she couldn’t ask him to show her, could she? Not when it was so obvious what he had been forced to do.
Ira Rosenberg had taken the image of his daughter out of his life… and though Tara had mentioned her name, Willow, on his doorstep he had never said the name once. A name he and his wife had given to their child. He had avoided it in every sentence where he might have mentioned it, whilst ‘Sheila, my wife,’ had littered his speech.
He couldn’t talk about Willow. And she knew why. It was so terrible that she would never mention it to him and force him to think about it – even if it was bound to be on his mind every waking minute. She knew the effects of that sort of pain. But she also just knew – well you didn’t need to be a psych graduate to figure out what had happened.
He was talking about both of them in the past tense. ‘She’ and ‘Sheila’ they were both in his past. He had lost them both and he couldn’t quite face that. He was broken spiritually. How different, Tara wondered, was she. Had she just taken another route?
Perhaps he understood what had happened, but she didn’t think that she was the person to try and explain the nature of vampires any further to him. That his daughter’s life had been snatched away from her before she could become all that she should have been. Before the last of the child had become the beautiful, intelligent woman that should have made her mark in the world. She couldn’t tell him that some demon had set up in residence within the still walking shell…
And that was the reason why… It wasn’t anything to do with his daughter at all. He should have been proud of his daughter. It was all the demon that had killed her… It wasn’t Willow’s fault. But she couldn’t tell him that.
Tell him that was why something that looked like Willow had killed his wife. The mother of his daughter who was already dead when that happened and in a better place. Whatever your belief system it had to be a better place than Sunnydale. This was a virtual hell on Earth.
She wondered why he stayed?
Why anyone stayed?
Tara knew for a fact that Willow, the vampire, had killed Sheila Rosenberg. She didn’t need to hear the story to feel his pain. She knew pain all too well… but perhaps not quite like this. What if Daddy, or Donny, had been the one to go and kill her mother? If either of them had become a vampire and then killed her mother.
How would she feel about
them? Would she have kept
their pictures around? Would she have blamed the person that the demon resembled – even after they had died? She might…
She didn’t need him to tell her. But eventually, as they sat drinking the tea and the water together, he did anyway… and she hoped that it had helped him to be able to speak of it… It had helped her to understand what a monster Willow Rosenberg had become when she was turned by the vampires that had murdered her. No. She had to stop thinking that – this hadn’t been the real Willow that had done this.
Any of it.
Tara thought it might have helped him to talk… he probably hadn’t talked about it at all until she had arrived. Who did he have left that he could talk to? One of those relatives in another town? A place where vampires were just something out of movies? No. They would have thought he had cracked up under the stress and had him committed or something…
His story was terrible though. Despite all her experiences Tara had rarely seen or heard worse. It was obvious that the vampire that Willow now was liked to play… she had toyed with this man.
“We said Kaddish for her together, Sheila and I”. Seeing from her face that she did not understand his words, Ira explained carefully what he meant. “Kaddish is a prayer for the dead, we believe that it helps the soul of the departed to enter into paradise. We are taught that no soul is so bad that it cannot enter Gan Eden, and Kaddish is our way of helping. I say it still for Sheila, I know I always will; but I cannot say it again for… her.”
After telling their story he was showing her the contents of Willow’s room, coated with dust and untouched in nearly four years. The girl who had liked, and she looked around taking in every detail, cuddly frogs, computers… books. Lots of books. She had become a thing that had delighted in torturing her human father mentally as she had physically tortured his wife. Her own mother.
Tara had a hard time understanding how anyone could do that to his or her mother. But this hadn’t been a person, it was… it had been a vampire and she had to get that fact into her head. So that perhaps she could get the monster out of her head… and out of her dreams.
Maybe though, she reflected as she left him, and stepped out into the bright sunlight, she was not dreaming of the vampire. She had sort of convinced herself in the past weeks that she must have been. That the vampire was the only reason for the strangeness of the dreams. But maybe… Maybe she was dreaming of the human Willow had been. The young woman… maybe in Tara’s dreams she
could be good. Even if what Willow became was something else entirely.
Surely better off dead - that later version of the girl.
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Once Tara had found out the name and had known that her quarry was dead then it had not taken her a long time to track down Willow’s final resting place - but she had not sought it out right away. Somehow it was not a place that she had wanted to be, until now.
She hadn’t had the heart to ask Ira Rosenberg where his wife and daughter were buried. Perhaps, though, if she had connected Willow’s religion with the burial then she might have realised there were fewer cemetery records to search though, only two Jewish cemeteries in Sunnydale… only? There were towns bigger than this with just one cemetery for all their faiths. It was amazing how the population – even now – was still growing or at least holding its own.
Perhaps the despair of the place made people seek solace with the person they loved. Maybe it made them more prone to bring forward new life. Perhaps new life was the equivalent of hope – or its tangible proof. There were children at kindergarten though that had never known a Sunnydale where they could be taken out after nightfall…
Who had probably never seen the stars and never discovered the big pineapple.
Where was the hope in that?
The goddess knew that everyone was the same in death. Unless, of course, you didn’t stay dead. Tara knew now that the grave was empty anyway. It wasn’t even that Willow had been buried here and had risen from it. She had just never been here at all. No body was ever found. They hadn’t even been sure that Willow was dead until… she came back and announced the fact. This place had nothing really to do with Willow at all.
Except that, like the memorial at the High School, she was also a part of it. It was as much a commemoration of her life as it was a stone to mark her death. Whilst the grave next to it was a testament to her death – and what had followed it.
The engraving on the headstone, like many others around it, was in both Hebrew and English. Tara was grateful for that, for the fact that she could read Ira’s final wish for his beloved wife.
‘Here lies buried
Sheila Rosenberg.
May her soul be bound up
in the bond of eternal life’
Her own daughter had killed her. No. That was not at all fair to the real Willow, and it seemed very important to be fair to Willow when she was stood here looking at her headstone. Willow had not killed her own mother. The thing that she had become – that had taken her body for its own purposes - had killed Sheila. Willow herself, she was surely somewhere far, far better than Sunnydale.
Tara had to believe that. Because there were other people that she cared about who should be in that same place.
Even so, the idea of a daughter killing her mother. It wouldn’t leave Tara’s thoughts… it horrified her. Their mothers, she realised, died at the same time. The same month – though there was no precise date and she didn’t want to look for closer parallels – that would be too terrible. She, Willow, was killing hers whilst Tara’s was dying of the grief of her own loss. Vampires had killed both women, one only a little less directly than the other.
Funny though, that didn’t make her feel closer to Willow. Just being here in Sunnydale where Willow had grown up had – that had brought her closer. But not the loss of their mothers. Perhaps because Willow was dead before her mother had gone and had never experienced it… Tara had just wished that she had been dead back then. She would have wanted to join them, her family. Back then she would.
Now she had a purpose to fulfil before she could go anywhere… or become.
At least Willow herself had not suffered that particular pain – losing her mother.
And the pain had shown Tara a purpose.
She laid the flowers that she had bought on the empty grave, kneeling looking at them there for a while, and reading the words that Ira Rosenberg had chosen for Willow’s own marker… despite what happened. ‘Beloved daughter.’ That was it. Just that. A name and that simple description.
On an empty grave.
The headstone stood out from the ones around it. No hope for eternal life expressed on its cold, smooth surface. Nothing either to indicate that Willow had achieved an eternity of sorts; just not one that any parent would wish upon their beloved child.
Instead of leaving all the flowers there like that Tara divided them and laid a number of them on the grass above Sheila Rosenberg’s grave as well. It was something that she had not done for her own mother since the funeral – and somehow it made things seem just a little better.
There were no flowers on either grave, and when she thought about it Tara realised that she had seen very few, as she had walked through the cemetery on the way to the markers she sought. Sheila’s grave had a pile of stones upon it, as had many of the others she had seen. Tara guessed it must be a tradition of their faith, and stored the fact away, willing herself to recall it later, so that she could find out what the stones meant. Even without knowing what the stones represented, one thing was clear. There were no stones on the ground in front of Willow’s headstone. Whatever offering Ira had made in Sheila’s memory, he couldn’t bring himself to offer it for his daughter.
Her life needed marking though. Tara knew that she would be back here in the future – the near future. Willow was in her head even if she wasn’t here in this grave.
Close enough?
No.
Just because she wasn’t here didn’t mean that Willow shouldn’t be remembered for her life. Just because of what something had done with her in death, horrible as it was… There would never be a body in this grave. Not even any ashes if she had already been destroyed as a vampire too…
Nothing at all. It was empty.
But for a long time Tara couldn’t tear herself away from that place.
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Endnote - Didn’t want to spoil it above but Jo rewrote the whole grave visiting section. I am fortunate enough not to have much experience with funeral rites of any faith – and still less regarding Judaism. I think this reads a lot better now and certainly it will be more accurate… as always though when someone helps me out. Her good. My bad.
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You hear that baby? I am not going anywhere.
at: 4/16/02 6:56:26 pm
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