*Sigh* You know getting anyone to accept and keep the credit they deserve around here is just impossible... and Mollig - nice to see I am predictable.
PART 21! This may be a little overhyped as I think a few readers think this heralds imminent happiness... but it is their first meeting. Now if you have all been good kittens I shall begin... (or yes Sass in your case naughty in a good way)
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Noticing (Part 21)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
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: This is the moment you have all been waiting for. The meeting.
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: Not a couple but very aware of each other – they meet.
Notes: I am idly wondering how long it will be before you are badgering me to find out when they will be together… I shouldn’t think it will be long before someone asks. All I said for this part was that they met… and after I have been teasing you with near misses for so long.
The use of “It” whilst variable is quite deliberate in this fic. You’ll know what I mean.
Thanks To: Kerry who read the first draft of this and came up with some pretty insightful comments and ideas – and won’t even remember. It was along time ago now. Water, bridges etc. I just had a note about it! Jo for the wonderful, prompt and exacting beta. Louise who had the grace to notice me once upon a time and gave me the title for this one.
The Sidestep Chronicle
Noticing
By
Katharyn Rosser
Tara had been moving quietly through the darkness in the shopping district of town when the pendant started to burn at her neck. The intensity of the pain, though it would not ever mark her flesh, was such that she knew that she was either very, very close or that there were many vampires for her to kill a little further away. Sometimes, though, it just burned like that for a single vampire… she had never figured out what marked those ones out from the rest. It was usually too late to ask by the time that she had destroyed them. And once the burning was gone it didn’t even matter. Until the next time. The building had been a costume shop by the sign above the door. She fingered the stake that was held loosely in her cupped hand a little nervously, picking the uneven splinters from it with her nail, the pointed end up her coat sleeve. She’d have to stop that little subconscious gesture, last night she’d got a splinter right under her nail and had been digging around with a needle for ages to get it out.
Pain didn’t worry her much though. She’d been hurt too much already.
Something had ripped the shutters from the windows and gained entry… but that hadn’t been tonight – it had been a while ago – although definitely since she had arrived in town. She had noticed the damage when hunting on other nights, but it was only tonight that it seemed that the shop was occupied. It just felt that way – as if the vampire the pendant had alerted her to was in there. The darkness within was complete, swallowing anything that went inside. There was no other light source than the few working streetlights lending their glow to the first few feet beyond the torn shutter.
Darkness was their ally, not hers. They could see in near perfect darkness and all that she might detect was some small sound if they were careless in their stalking. Perhaps the glow of their feral vampire eyes – a bit like a cat. To step inside there with that thing would be a big risk. That wasn’t how she liked to hunt them. Pursuit too often turned into ambush. But she should have died long, long ago – and something was… pulling her. If she didn’t go in there and destroy it who would it kill in the future? Wouldn’t that death be on her hands? And a hundred more? A thousand? And if just one of those was not a final death… The lives on her hands would grow exponentially for all of time.
She just felt that she had to go in there. Not even for those who might suffer at its hands in the future. Just for herself. It was something that she had to do… her feelings told her to go in there. Whatever the risk. ‘We feel what we feel.’ So the Mayor had told her and she trusted her feelings enough to do this now.
Tara bent and cautiously stuck her head inside, her own body blocking out what little light there was. She pulled her skirt up to stop it catching on the jagged metal of the shutters or the broken glass and stepped over them. Waiting for her eyes to become as accustomed as they could to the lack of illumination in there before moving further inside. She considered conjuring a light source, but if there was some trap here that would reveal her presence. The pendant was torturing her throat and she nearly ripped it off, so intense was the sensation. But the pain was a friend. When it stopped hurting she would probably be dead. So at least now she was alive and she could seek, temporary, relief in the death of whatever was in here.
Then it cut through the darkness, a stifled cry of pain and a long low moan. Probably as the promise of the pain was fulfilled and the long torture of agony set in. Someone was being killed in there. Tara couldn’t wait for her eyes to grow used to the darkness. Not any longer.
The stake was in her hand. In here though, unable to see, she would have to try to and take the vampire by hand. There would be no chance to get fancy. If she was going to avoid taking the place of the victim – and still make the kill - she would have to be very, very quiet. With a gesture of her hand the air beneath her feet became the familiar cushion on which she continued, soundlessly, to walk into the old store. The pain at her throat was, well excruciating was the only word. If it had marked her flesh then it would probably have been burning through her throat now. She wanted to let out a moan herself, but that would get more than just one person killed. It might be, probably was, too late for the person who was in there with the vampire. But there were those in the future who could be saved.
Up ahead there was light though, dim streetlight getting in somehow. She moved to the doorway to what had probably been a staff kitchen and break area where the roof had caved in and there, in the far corner was the vampire and its victim. The young woman must be in a bad way if the bite was going on and on as long as the pained moaning. Before Tara could do a thing for her she would be dead. Vampires could kill in seconds with a bite, but equally they could take their time draining a body of enough blood to be fatal. They took pleasure from the feeding, from the fear that coursed through their victims, and - so said one vampire she had offered freedom to in exchange for information – the pleasure that the victim would also feel. So they dragged out death. She’d destroyed her informant anyway. Promises to vampires had no meaning. None at all. Except for the promise that she would destroy all that she could find. They could rely on that one promise.
The vampire must be feeding in the light for a reason. Darkness was their friend. She had always told herself that. It hadn’t been wrong so far. Darkness
was their friend. And this one chose the light. Seeing the embrace that they were in for the first time though Tara could appreciate why. The vampire was in the classic pose, stood behind her victim, one hand holding the head to one side whilst the bite was applied over the shoulder. But the teenaged victim was… she had been attacked in more ways than simply having her blood sucked. Her clothing was all unfastened and she had scratch marks all over her exposed flesh. Even as the bite proceeded the vampire’s free hand was moving all over the girls body trailing blood, drawing and smearing it from a well it seemed to have dug with its nails into the girls side.
The vampire was taking more than just blood and the depths to which they would sink again sickened Tara. It wasn’t enough that they would take your life, your blood. They had to take some sick pleasures with it as well? The vampire wanted to be able to see its victim clearly… when it chose to look. It was going for full sensation – including the visual. Now she could see then there was nothing preventing her doing this with the magic. The vulnerable spot that was the heart was hidden behind the girl – but the victim would soon be dropped when another stake pierced the red haired vampire’s head. That would get its attention and allow Tara a clean shot.
Tara raised her hand, stake resting flat upon it pointing at the vampire, it quivered as the magic grasped it and it hovered just above her hand. Red hair…
The vampire became aware of her just as she let the stake go, catapulted by the pressure of magic no longer restrained by the force of her will. It looked up at her and even in its demonic visage Tara knew that she could not let the stake hit that face – not a face that she knew that well. It was twisted and evilly bumpy… but it was also…
She snatched out at the stake, trying to stop it, grab it, nudge it, shift its course – anything at all. But she hadn’t maintained control of it or kept her focus. Just let fly and she missed catching the stake entirely.
It was the vampire that avoided it instead when she had failed…
It was the vampire that reached up and swatted the stake out of the air with the flash of a flat, bloody palm. The victim sliding down her body into a heavy heap at her feet as the stake clattered into the corner. The vampire watched as Tara reached into her pocket and pulled out another one resting it in her palm but making no move to do anything else. She had no idea what she was going to do now… nor did the vampire seem inclined to do much either. Not run, not fight… it just stood there looking her over.
It was her dream. When the vampire leered at her it was a mockery of the face of her dream goddess.
It was a nightmare.
By the Goddess…
It… this thing….
She was Willow.
The blood oozing from its mouth, being licked at with a lascivious gesture before it proceeded to clean its hands like a cat might its paws. Licking long and carefully every trace of the blood from them. Like the cat the vampire was a vicious killer and when it left its true face in favour of what it had once been, like a cat it pretended to be something it wasn’t.
The vampire, now looking for all the world like the goddess of her dreams, like Willow perhaps had done, finally put the finger that had been buried, a few moments before, in the side of the girl’s torso into her mouth and sucked the evidence from that too.
Then she, the vampire, grinned.
Their eyes were locked. The vampire was watching her and she was watching it. And Tara couldn’t even remember just how the silent incantation necessary to levitate the stake went. How to prepare it to stake the wide-open vampire. She wasn't sure that she would have done it if she could. What would it accomplish. The girl would still be dead at Willow’s feet.
It was Willow. Here…
But she was dead… really dead. Destroyed. She couldn’t be here. She was gone. Daniel Osbourne… the werewolf had killed it… her. This couldn’t be. The werewolf had killed her.
And now he was dead.
So was his girlfriend.
Oh by the Goddess no, no, no… How? She’d come back. Somehow Willow was back and what could Tara possibly do about it?
What would the vampire do to Ira, her human father?
What will she do to me?This just couldn’t be. Surely it was another of her dreams… turning into a nightmare. What they had shared in their dreams… could never be. Tara had accepted that when she had learned Willow was dead. Again when she had found out the girl had returned as a creature of evil. But now… this was worse.
The vampire Willow was really here.
Tara broke her contact with the vampire’s eyes and tried to focus on the magic required to impale it. All of the harm that this vampire had done – to her human mother and to countless others. The dead girl at her feet. The pain and suffering she…it would inflict in the future. Even on the pain that the pendant offered her as a reminder of what she was dealing with. She folded all that anguish, that pain and her rightful thirst for justice in upon itself, focusing and willing it to bring her the mental clarity she needed to deal with this…
thing.What was she thinking? Was the vampire working some magic of her own on her? Making her feel this way? Making her doubt that she could, should or would kill it?
It’s a vampire Tara. Stake it! I’m trying sir. I’m trying…
She could kill it.
She should kill it.
But she wouldn’t kill
her.She couldn’t… kill… Willow.
Not without knowing why a vampire was in her dreams. Or why it was back. How. She had to know all of it. For years now this thing… this vampire…
she had been her only constant companion. A thousand dreams in that time. A million daydreams when her mind wandered. Why was she, it, in her mind? Tara had to know that.
And just when Tara had accepted that she would never see it… her – here she was. How could she have come back? They can’t come back… if they could come back then how could Tara be sure that all the others ones she had destroyed wouldn’t come back too?
The ones directly responsible for killing Daddy and Donny… had they come back after she had gone? Would the Master if she killed him?
Willow was back. She was here. In the cold, dead, flesh. But
was it a thing… or was it Willow? Intellectually she knew the answer. It was a demon in a Willow shaped shell… but it was all that was left of the girl – the woman - she thought was her dream goddess. All of that rushed through her mind, threatened to emerge as a question but it was the vampire that spoke to her first.
“Why do I know you?” Willow asked her.
Conversation with a vampire. Something she had never done. Threatened… coerced yes. Conversed… never. How do you speak to a vampire? An evil killer who you have just watched torture and murder a young woman? To talk to it and answer it would be like forgetting what it had done. Forgiving. She should be staking it right now. “I don’t know,” she told it.
“You’re in my head.”
The voice… even the voice was like music to her. “Yes,” Tara confirmed to her. It didn’t really surprise her that the vampire had been seeing her too. So they were in each other’s dreams. And the idea that vampires actually dreamed… She didn’t like that as much as anything that she knew Willow had done. That made them… her… more human – and they weren’t. They were monsters. She had to believe that because it was the truth… but she could feel the truth – in this case – slipping. Dangerously slipping…
“I dream of you.” The vampire was slowly walking over to her, sniffing the air as she came, stepping over the discarded body like it was an empty soda can. It might as well have been for all the significance it had to Willow.
“Yes,” It wasn’t approaching danger that was keeping Tara focused on the vampire. Not that at all. It wasn't that which was driving the discarded victim from her perceptions… making her ignore the dead young woman. She just watched Willow approach, numbly holding the stake. Unsure that she could bring herself to do anything even if the vampire tried to…
Whatever…
“Sometimes just you in my head.” Willow touched her head then. “Sometimes us… nasty, fun little dreams.” The vampire smiled and there was no sign of its fangs. “I like them. Do you like them?” it… she, asked Tara.
It was standing right in front of her, breathing though it didn’t need to. Inhaling her scent if Tara was any judge, rather than sniffing. It was a more sensual mannerism – to be breathed in… Sensual? Her mind screamed at her to say ‘no.’ To tell the vampire that she didn’t have thoughts at all like that. That the thoughts were just like a memory of something that never was. That they were just impressions of the vampire, or the person she, it, had been. That the idea of holding, kissing and… playing with… the thing it was… her, never crossed Tara’s mind. Her mind screamed at her to lie to the vampire.
“Yes,” Tara admitted again, her mind betrayed by every other part of her body. Every sense that longed to confirm what she had dreamed of. Smell… touch… taste. Her heart… sustained by the dream of a red haired goddess that loved her… now wanting that because she was
here. But she had never really dreamed of Willow as a vampire. Never that – not for certain anyway. Sometimes the bad things in the dreams… maybe they had been a hint. But how could Tara shove a stake through that unbeating heart?
So easy. It should have been anyway. It was there in front of her… offering itself up to a simple thrust. Just as she had opened herself up to the bite by letting it… her… Willow close to her. If that attack came from Willow she knew that, right now, she would not fight it. She would let it happen. But both of them knew that neither was going to do anything to the other.
They were both too fascinated. Too surprised…
The vampire raised a still bloody index finger, kissed the tip, planting her victims red blood on her own lips and then stepped past Tara. She stroked the sticky finger along the blonde’s cheek, and the touch was more intense than that of the pendant which was, stoically, doing its duty and sending waves of pain into the flesh of Tara’s throat, protesting the proximity of the evil thing. Its touch. The stripe that it left the evidence of Tara’s failure to act. A badge of disgrace. It was like an open sore. As if it was her own blood leaking from her body. Better if it had been. Or maybe better if she had just got here too late to do anything – after Willow had left.
“Leaving now… I’ll see you again.” And it, the creature, was gone.
Willow was gone.
“Yes.” That was all she had said to the vampire. Not ‘let the girl go…’ Nothing that might have saved a life. Just ‘yes.’ Over and over ‘yes.’ Agreeing with everything that it had said, because they must have been feeling the same things. Except for the disgust. The disgust Tara was keeping all for herself. She might hate the vampire, all vampires, but she was disgusted with herself and her weakness. How many chances to plunge the stake into Willow? It, that thing… she was guilty as a vampire of matricide and a hundred, a thousand other deaths. It was… She was… Willow.
Show me a pretty face, the disgust said to her,
that has been plaguing my dreams for years and I forget all about what I should be doing. The duty I took on myself. Daddy would not be impressed at all. He’d have told her that she must do better next time. And she intended to – maybe next time she would actually try to kill that vampire.
But she didn’t want to. At least not without knowing why it was here. Who it had been before and why it was inside her head. It… She… Willow.Why they were in each other’s heads.
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Stroking her bloody finger along the cheek of the hunter Willow absorbed the heat from tender flesh, sucking it out as she had sucked the other girl’s blood. And it wasn’t just heat - there was a power, a force within the human. The hunter was some sort of a magical person. But they had already known that there was a magic user in town… this was her. That must have been what she did with the stake. Willow knew that this was the one that the Master had sent her out to find – to kill. But aside from that magical sensation… there was something more than just that, even though that alone made her finger tingle, there was something more. There was a charge as their skin touched.
Like static, it went right through her body from the finger… to the interesting places and back up into her head... Even after recognising the blonde from her dreams, lovely, lovely dreams, she had still intended to finish that caress with a blow, or a snapped neck – or better yet a bite on that succulent pulsing neck. She wasn’t hungry right now, all full up, but the magical hunter just looked so tempting. The images in her mind and that charge as they connected though, those stayed her wrath. The hunter had tried to kill her. No one who had tried to destroy her before still lived. No one. She’d seen to that as a priority upon her return from wherever it was that she had been. The emptiness.
But she’d let this hunter live – even when she was the one that Master specifically charged her to find and kill. Or bring to him. Willow didn’t want to take the blond woman to him though – there was only one thing she wanted to take… the blond herself.
Just the vaguest possibility that what she had seen in her nasty little daytime dreams could ever come to pass… how could she miss those chances? They seemed to be such fun… and there was that connection – that charge. How interesting would that make things? A touch that could cause sensations like that… would more interesting touches do even more? There was no sacrifice in missing the kill this time. She could always eat the hunter later – and not just eat. There would be other pleasures first – pleasures that she had been dreaming of but never really fully indulged. There had never been anyone who interested her like that – human or vampire. Killing pleasures… stolen, forced, moments before death… delicious torture had been more than enough for her. But compared to those dreams she had been having that real world history all seemed so empty. Later though… after she had seen whether the soooo interesting dreams were just desires… or prophetic. There was fun to be had with that blond huntress.
This hunter would be hers, to have and to kill just as she had sworn. But for now, she had to… she had to think… And besides she was all full up. She didn’t want to play on a full stomach.
“Leaving now… I’ll see you again,” she said to the hunter and once more it replied just with a single word. It was if it was afraid to say more – even if it didn’t act that way otherwise – and Willow liked to be feared. For whatever reason and to be feared because of what was in her dreams… their dreams. That was delicious. She could almost taste it.
She could almost taste the hunter. The blood, the fear. Other things… better things. Hair, flesh and lips. And her scent… that clean, subtly perfumed scent… Perhaps a little moisturiser there. How smooth the skin might be… Mmmmn. As she stepped into the street there was actually a spring in her step. She paused and looked back through the abandoned shop to where the hunter was still stood, unmoving, drinking in the shape of her body. She wore a coat and a long skirt which weren’t exactly revealing, but hiding nothing from a seasoned body watcher like Willow who could see in the darkness as well as she could the light. Interesting times ahead.
Ahead.
On top
Below.
Wherever.
*************
You hear that baby? I am going nowhere.
) was quite poignant, and Tara visiting both graves was heart wrenching, especially, as others have pointed out, the curt description on Willow's headstone and the lack of small stones placed there. Go Wizpup!!! (Hebrew makes your head hurt? Have you tried Aramaic? Oy!) As someone posted earlier (I apologize that I can't remember who) the shades of gray here are both fascinating and painful.
at: 4/19/02 12:21:15 pm