Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle – Facts and Suspicions (Part 132)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.com Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Nothing is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: After the storm…
Disclaimer: I 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. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: Nothing right now.
Thanks To: All My Brilliant Beta Readers (AMBBR) Kerry (Forrister) and Jo (Wizpup) who for some reason signed right back up for this fic after seeing the size of the last one. No accounting for madness is there. And Celia (TiredSoul) who should have known better but signed up anyway. *HUGS* and Big Thanks to all of you.
This is one of Celia’s *shurg* and she seemed to laugh a lot in this one. It’s really not funny though!
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle
Facts and Suspicions
By
Katharyn Rosser
They’d have to leave Toni where she was; staying at Jenny’s for at least the night. Maybe more than just the night since there was a real possibility that the teenager wasn’t going back to their place any time soon. To say that she hadn’t reacted well to what had happened would be an understatement and Tara had some very definite suspicions about why that was. Toni hadn’t explained. Toni wouldn’t explain. Maybe Toni
couldn’t bring herself to explain. But even so, these things that Tara had weren’t even really suspicions – they were more like facts that she couldn’t prove even to her own ultimate satisfaction.
And she knew that Jenny shared those same ‘facts’, ‘suspicions’ or whatever the heck they were – Jenny had told her the things that seemed to clinch it for both of them. “She’s asleep now?” Tara asked.
“Finally,” Rupert confirmed.
They all sat in the living room – the wreckage of earlier in the night already cleared away and put out by the bins for collection. At least the wreckage that could be taken away by someone else and chucked onto the city dump.
Some things just couldn’t be taken away. Emotional wreckage. Tara wasn’t actually sure how that was taken out of someone’s life like so much garbage. She knew how she’d felt when it had happened to her, and she knew why. Duh, Willow. But she wasn’t sure just
how the wreckage had slipped out of her life, and being as she couldn’t give someone as wonderful as Willow to Toni, Tara had to admit she had no idea how she was going to help Toni get past this.
“Don’t you think that you should be going to bed honey?” Tara asked Faith gently trying to shift her weight in a suggestive way. Looking after the little girl was at least something she
could do. And it was way, way, way past her bedtime by now.
Still… could Faith have slept straight away? Could any of them? Look at the trouble Toni had getting to sleep.
At least Ben had never woken up during it all. Though that wasn’t all that surprising as the boy was blessed with the ability to sleep through any disturbances – which as Jenny had already observed many times in the past meant that he was bound to be wide-awake and demanding attention when the rest of them had just gotten to bed. And managed to fall sleep of course. Ben, like Faith before him, was real good at that one. He could pick his moments in a household that was often up at all hours of the night… fighting evil and all.
The one good thing was that at least she and Willow wouldn’t be interrupted by his awakening. They should be going home. They would go home. Just as soon as they mustered the will to get out of here. It was tough… bad things had happened. Toni was here. There was no natural inclination for them to leave.
Maybe they could have stayed. Maybe they should be staying. There was room, especially now the tables had been destroyed and discarded, for them to stay. There was always the sofa bed, which had always done them so well in the past. Lots of nights – and a few memories on that old piece of squeaky furniture.
But, one day, they were going to buy Rupert and Jenny a futon to replace that. Apart from the squeaks there were springs with sharp tips in that sofa bed. Springs, plural. Roll the wrong way at the wrong time and you’d wake up wondering who was trying to take blood from your boobs. Tara had actually had that dream.
Springs or not… the reality was they couldn’t have stayed if they wanted to. One thing they certainly knew was that Toni needed space. Space that was away from them. No, that wasn't very fair to Willow. Toni needed space that was away from her – after what had happened.
And because of what had happened they wouldn’t be taking Toni back to sleep at their place – and what that meant worried Tara a little. Perhaps it shouldn’t have worried her, because safety wasn't an issue – not with Rupert and Jenny both here and no way for a vampire to get in. Faith wouldn’t be answering the door for a while. Not now. She knew that she couldn’t do anymore – and someone would explain it all to her soon. And there were other steps, apart from addressing it with Faith, that would be taken – tomorrow.
Perhaps Tara should have been pretty okay with the security the adults and their home offered to Toni – after all the young woman was just a guest in their own place. A guest that, officially, shouldn’t really have been staying with them anyway… She knew that she and Willow were the best defence Toni could have though. No vampire could enter their place – period – and even if it did… she and Willow were best qualified to deal with it.
Not that Rupert or Jenny were slouches though.
But now she felt all guilty for letting this trouble come to their friends... It had come so close to hurting Faith and Ben too. She knew it was silly – she hadn’t actually been the one to let the trouble in – but she felt as if she’d put them all in danger by leaving Toni here. What if they hadn’t been so close to home?
She could write that guilt off, and hoped to do so in just a few minutes, because Rupert and Jenny knew
all the risks. Any vampire could have come to the door – not just one that seemed to know or want Toni. And if Faith had answered it then she might still have let them in. Maybe it was less likely when it wasn't a vampire claiming to be someone’s Dad – if that was really what had happened – but in this case the focus the vampire had certainly seemed to have on Toni had been a good thing. It could have killed them all.
But it wanted Toni. Jenny had pretty much confirmed that – just as Toni’s reaction had. They hadn’t asked Faith much about it yet – the little girl had been too upset to force her to go back over it just yet. But in a few days then, Tara hoped, it would just be a memory to Faith. One they could look at if they had to.
Tara couldn’t and wouldn’t have done anything differently about bringing Toni here… But there was something else she really did regret.
Having to kill him. If everyone was right then… she’d killed Toni’s Dad. It wasn’t as if she was feeling guilty about
that. Even if it was true. She was, all in all, pretty sanguine about the whole thing – apart from what it would do to the girl. To have seen it. That was what she regretted, but she wouldn’t have changed what had happened to him, once he’d come in here. No one who mattered had been badly hurt and that was all there was to it.
At least not physically.
There was nothing else that could have been done. There was, perhaps, only one other solution to the entire situation – if the situation was what she thought it was. Had that really been Toni’s Dad? Even if it had been then the one remaining option wasn’t an option that was ever likely to be available to them again. Besides, it would have still required that she’d done what she’d done anyway. Toni would still have seen what had happened. Nothing was going to change that.
It was from Toni’s point of view that Tara thought she had reason to feel guilty. The teenager would probably want her to feel guilty.
Ifwhat she suspected was actually true. She wasn’t the only one with the suspicions. She knew Jenny had them. She knew Willow was right there too… It was just that no one wanted to talk about that.
“Okay,” Faith replied to her question about going to bed.
Once more, Rupert looked up in mild surprise as Faith agreed to so something for Tara that he’d been trying to get her to do for the last hour or so. At least when he hadn’t been checking on Toni. Tara knew that he could have ordered his daughter to bed, and she’d have gone of course, but this wasn't the time for discipline and orders – it very rarely was. They certainly didn’t want Faith to feel that she’d done anything wrong – but at the same time they’d have to impress the rules on her – so they’d let her stay here with them, alternately with each of them until now… Never alone.
They’d all been suggesting bedtime to Faith, but she’d resisted suggestion up until that point and now she’d embarrassed Tara all over again by seeming to only listen to her. Actually she thought that it was just because Faith was, finally, tired and more comfortable than she had been before. It was still embarrassing though, even though she knew the girls parents didn’t mind at all. She knew that Jenny and Rupert were happy to make use of the relationship she’d developed with their little girl but there was just something
wrong about constantly appearing to have more influence over her than they had.
She often thought that maybe it was because they
were Mom and Dad that Faith paid so much attention to her rather than them. Kids were supposed to find something to run up against in their parents… otherwise they turned into doormats. It was just… sometimes she wished Faith would say ‘no’ to her and ‘yes’ to Jenny a little more – and she supposed if she asked something stupid, then the little girl would. There was a lot of common sense in Jenny’s daughter.
She had a English father after all, and that was the English thing wasn’t it? Common sense and tweed.
And tea. They couldn’t forget tea.
There wasn’t a whole lot of commonsense in this situation. There was certainly no common sense response – or perhaps there was. Perhaps that was exactly where Faith had been? Working from common sense because she didn’t know any better.
Which kind of brought them back – once Faith had kissed everyone good night and Jenny had gone to get her ready for bed – to what had happened that night. They waited until Jenny did come back, Faith was staying with her Mom and Dad tonight whilst Toni had her room, but then – with Toni and Faith safely in bed – they had to try to put it all together. They had to separate what they
thought had happened from what had
actually happened and Jenny was the only witness to most of it that was still up. If they couldn’t figure out what had happened then how could they stop it from happening again?
And once they had figured it out then they, she, had to go so Toni didn’t wake up to find her here if she got up in the night. Morning was another matter… They might well have to be back then.
“Faith opened the door,” Jenny said in conclusion. “It had to have been her,” she concluded. “Besides he had hold of her – if he’d been able to get hold of Toni he would have done.”
Willow agreed with a slow nod. “Only a person who lived here could invite a vampire in – unless there was some kind of ritual that allowed him to get past that barrier? I mean we can de-invite a vampire through rituals, is there any reason you couldn’t allow one in using the same sort of method?” Willow was looking to her for her answer.
Tara had already thought about that – not specifically in relation to this – but a few years back. She’d looked into it – and asked Rupert to do so when she’d gotten to know him and the resources he could try use with his position in the Watcher’s Council. A ritualistic way through the barrier – apart from the ritual of invitation – had long been one of her nightmares – and the reason she’d developed her own barriers. “There’s no known ritual,” Tara replied confidently. “The de-invitation is pretty much a religious, ritual. Thing in its own right, a blessing more than anything else. It’s not technically magic at all – even though it fulfils ritualistic requirements. But there’s always the unknown,” she admitted. It could have been something new which got him in here. But the chances were… slim. Vampires couldn’t perform magic as the people in this room understood it and had little patience for those who could.
“No. He was invited,” Jenny told them as she came back to the sofa. “You just had to look at him to know. He wasn't the plotting kind of vampire. He was much wilder than that. Either someone did a ritual on him or he was invited. I’d go with the latter – seems to make more sense when vampires are involved.”
Jenny, Tara mused as she held out a hand to give Jenny’s a quick squeeze, wasn’t the sort of parent to blindly defend her children from any sort of criticism. This was way too important. But here she was pretty much laying the blame at her daughter’s door and she sounded pretty mad about it – because she was scared of course. Faith knew not to open the door, but once the door was open, she’d never been told the importance of inviting people in – or rather not doing that – or why. An open door was… no different to the door not being there at all.
Common sense would have told Faith that.
The door in itself was a barrier – against a human, once it was open, they could just walk in. The invitation part made no difference in such a case. So, in an effort to keep their little girl from losing too much of her innocence too soon, they’d just forbidden her to open the door. The invitation was the important thing here though.
Tara could just imagine trying to explain it all to Faith. She could hear the girl’s favourite question right now. ‘Why?’
If Faith had actually known what could happen, and why, then Tara was sure that she’d never have done it. She wasn’t a rebellious kid by any means. It had just been that it seemed so early in her life to try and tell her about the way the world really was as opposed to what they were all teaching her about. Both Rupert and Jenny had wanted Faith to have as normal a life as possible – at least until she started to want to go out and then she’d have to know about the dangers that lurked beyond the safety of her home. Tara agreed with the sentiments – she had back then and she still did now. Unfortunately it appeared that the world wasn’t going to allow those contradicting viewpoints to exist. Not any longer. Events had overtaken them.
They’d have to tell Faith what she could and couldn’t do. And if the little girl asked ‘why’ then they’d have to tell her. At least part of it. The easy to explain part.
Besides, Jenny was correct – there was no lingering sense of any magic being used here tonight. Nothing she and Willow hadn’t performed anyway. “You’ve got it right,” Tara confirmed to the teacher. “He was… I think he was one of the wild ones.” She still had some doubts about that, there were some things that didn’t ring true with how he’d behaved, but they could kind of be explained away if certain other things were true as well.
Logic was at work – but so was gut instinct. Willow would be proud of her. But then Willow was pretty much always proud of her.
“He seemed pretty focussed from what Jenny said,” Willow observed a little doubtfully. And that was precisely Tara’s problem with the hypothesis but she could see a way it could still be true.
Tara knew that her lover hadn’t had so much experience with those even more animalistic vampires – at least not as a hunter of them. They were rare, and even when they came along, they were so wild that they burned out very quickly. They made themselves too obvious to survive for long – it didn’t take a Slayer to kill a vampire that was being stupidly obvious. But as someone who held memories of how such abominations came to be… That was the basis of Willow’s doubt too.
She knew what they were supposed to be like and it
had been out of character.
“But look at what was he focused on,” Tara reminded Willow. “Or rather who.” There was simply no getting over what had brought that vampire to this house. What had held its attention once it got here – and what it had wanted once inside.
Unless they were supposed to believe there was a vampire who knew sign language, desperate for a conversation that just happened to come along? Not likely. There was more going on than coincidence.
And it, she, was nothing he could have guaranteed would have been here. He couldn’t have just ‘happened’ to find Toni here. It wasn’t like she lived here now… And if that vampire had been who they thought it was, why had he - an abomination even amongst vampires - ‘cared’ enough to come over here at all? Creatures like that weren’t motivated at all – except to kill and to eat. And to randomly destroy.
Even other vampires looked down on their lack of ambition. There had been nothing random about seeking out Toni though.
Tara watched as Willow thought about that and perhaps she’d reach Tara’s conclusion as well. Tara hadn’t wanted to prompt her love to get to that realisation – Willow had a better analytical mind than she did. It would reassure her if Willow reached the same conclusion that she and, apparently, Jenny already had. Everything was ‘apparent’ and ‘perhaps’ because until right now no one had been able to talk about it without bothering Faith or Toni herself. Whilst Willow had thought about it though, Tara had gone back to think about what Faith had told them about what had happened.
“I’m certain Faith just thought she was helping Toni and Jenny,” Tara concluded now that the girl’s mother and father were both sat and ready to discuss it. “She said as much – but then she didn’t really know how to explain it all. The ‘why’ of it, I mean.” Tara supposed that not only did you have to know how to listen to Faith, you also had to want to listen and hear what had happened. She’d been no better than Jenny and Rupert when they’d gotten rid of the vampire who’d been here in their home… Between all of Toni’s hysterics and the aftermath of the attack itself…
It wasn't surprising that, in their worry, Jenny and Rupert hadn’t wanted to listen to everything Faith had been trying to say. They’d just wanted to hug and warn her in equal measure.
Well, Tara had been given chance to listen a little and whilst that they’d all pretty much made their minds up that someone had to have done something wrong – something that they had to prevent from happening again in the future – after speaking to Faith she wasn’t sure that was it at all. Maybe no one had done anything at all. Or if they had, it hadn’t really been Faith’s mistake.
As usual Faith had her own, irrefutable, logic – at least in the terms she understood anyway. They’d always wanted her to be helpful, and she’d known Toni couldn’t hear the door – and someone had been there.
She’d just wanted to help. Any other time… it wouldn’t have mattered. It was just because it was this once when everything had changed.
Jenny and Rupert hadn’t wanted their little girl to know what was out there too soon. She and Willow had both understood and agreed with that – even if it wasn’t their decision to make. The kind of rituals which protected their own apartment and dorm room had never been necessary here. Tara hadn’t pushed for them and no one else had suggested or asked about them despite. Rupert and Jenny were both well aware of them and how she could apply them here – but no one amongst them had had really thought it necessary as long as no one invited a vampire in.
And now that had happened.
The fact was that they could sit around and second guess themselves for the rest of the night, and there wasn’t so much of it left, but it wasn’t going to change what had happened or what had to be done now.
“How is it,” Rupert asked her, “that you always know how to listen to Faith better than we do?” All three of them turned to look at her. She could just imagine how they were guessing what her response would be.
Tara smiled back. It was pretty simple really – she just tried to put the fact that Faith was a kid out of her mind and she then she found that she really wanted to know what she wanted to say. Also, she didn’t have another child to look after and worry about who was more demanding in his own way. Nor did she have to be with Faith twenty-four hours a day very often. There came a point, she was sure, that as a parent you just had to filter some of it out to keep your own sanity and get on with everything that had to be done in the house and for the other members of that family.
It was the ‘yeah, yeah’ school of self-defence. She understood it entirely, when she’d looked after Faith for a few days she’d found herself slipping into it too.
“Magic,” she replied. “Not really,” she added as Rupert, Jenny
and Willow looked more intently at her. She wouldn’t do that and they knew it but after a night like this one, perhaps jokes weren’t the way to go. “Faith… She knew that she wasn't supposed to get the door, but she thought it was okay because we’d left her with Toni and to her Toni was ‘older.’”
“You mean
I left her with Toni,” Jenny said grimly, taking the blame on herself.
“No,” Willow replied before Tara could. “She means
we did – otherwise she’d have said ‘you’ to us, meaning you and not either of us – but Tara didn’t. She said ‘we’ to us – meaning ‘we.’” In a different tone that could all have sounded quite accusatory, but in fact this was just Willow, it was how she was and Tara loved her for it. “We all knew that Toni was going to be okay with the kids, she’s proved it since she’d been here.”
“And she still is okay with them,” Tara added. “It wasn't Toni’s fault at all and the only thing that Faith did wrong was not actually
getting Toni or you when someone knocked,” she told Jenny. “But she really did just think that she could help by going to get the door. Toni was there with her, in the room, it was just unfortunate that she couldn’t react in time to stop Faith.” And if she had reacted… would Toni have still been alive now?
Would Toni have gone out there with him when she couldn’t have invited him in?
Tara thought she just might have, if he really had been who they thought he had been – her Dad.
“If Faith had just waited for Toni to look up,” Rupert insisted, “then none of this might have happened.”
“No, love, we can’t blame her for that,” Jenny told him with a sigh. “And I know you’re not, but we could go back to ‘if we’d just explained why she wasn't to get the door… and the importance of not inviting someone in.’ Maybe we should have done that.”
“But
we didn’t,” Tara completed. It was a collective ‘we’ – Rupert and Jenny were Faith’s parents of course – but she and Willow had been as close as anyone could be to the little girl since missing the first few months of her life. Faith had grown up around them – almost as much as she had with her parents. They loved her almost as much, she was sure of that.
The decision not to burden Faith with the knowledge of the real world was something they’d all agreed to. More than once. Tara had loved the theory, which was why she’d supported their decision in the end and her concerns about what that might mean… well, they’d never been about something like this. Rupert and Jenny were her parents, but about things like this – vampires and demons – they tended to come to her, and sometimes Willow, for an opinion. And none of them had seen this on the horizon. She’d never have guessed this could have happened. She’d always been good at seeing these things coming but this was such a unique circumstance.
It was bad luck more than anything.
Vampires, sure they could try it on and ask to be let in – but Tara was pretty sure Faith would have refused them. It looked as if it was just because this vampire had known Toni that Faith had invited him.
No one could have seen this coming. No one had seen Toni coming – being so closely involved with the victim of the vampires… they’d never been there before. And without Toni this wouldn’t have happened either. This could have been pretty much a nightmare – if things had gone slightly differently. If Jenny hadn’t found a cross. If she, Willow and Rupert hadn’t found the way into the vampire nest quite at the time they had – if they’d been later setting off back…
No. That wasn’t somewhere that they wanted to go. Though she was sure it was in their minds as well, she didn’t think it was a good idea to dwell on it. ‘What ifs’ weren’t something that people like she and Willow should
ever dwell on. That way led to madness and never stepping out of the past.
Like what if she’d never gone to work for the Mayor? Would she have come to Sunnydale otherwise? Would she have met Willow? Would she ever have fallen in love with the idea of a woman she hadn’t been able to know then? Would she have been able to fight to bring her back and then enjoyed this life that they had together now? Would they have ever known Rupert and Jenny?
But then would the other Faith, the Slayer, still be…
No. See that was just one tiny part of it.
This was why ‘What if’ was a dangerous discussion or thought process. It trapped you in the past that might have been. Back to the present, Tara, she told herself.
“Faith just thought she was helping – because you were seeing to Ben and Toni couldn’t hear the door. She just wanted to help,” Tara explained her opinion again – but it was pretty much based on all of the facts as she saw them. It fitted everything that she’d heard tonight and Faith had been too upset earlier to even consider trying to tell a fib. “That’s a good thing.”
Fibbing was something Faith was really bad at. At least they thought so – unless she was actually really, really good and no one had caught her.
Willow looked at her with her eyebrows raised. ‘Good thing?’ those delicate lines asked soundlessly.
“Usually,” Tara suggested. “It is, usually, a good thing. You wouldn’t
usually want her to sit there and ignore the door would you?”
“I want her to tell me when someone is knocking,” Jenny said firmly. “That’s what I want.”
“If it had been Tara at the door though?” Willow asked.
“The two of you just walk in without ever knocking,” Rupert observed – which had always been one of his traditional English problems.
People in England, it seemed, didn’t do that – but as far as Tara understood it, they didn’t do a lot of things that normal people did. Anyway, she welcomed Rupert’s attempt to distract his wife from the natural need to try and lay blame. As if blame would fix everything.
Tara understood that, she wanted to blame herself for part of it too. But she didn’t. Not when she thought more about it.
“And you are very welcome to,” Jenny said with a mock glare at her husband, “as you are well aware. But I know what you mean Willow,” she continued. “If it had been either of you knocking, I wouldn’t have minded Faith getting the door – right then I would have thanked her for it and never thought about what would have happened if it had been something else.”
And that was it. They couldn’t live their lives, as a family, in the worst case all the time. Cautiously yes, but what were they going to do when Faith was wanting to go out to see friends in the evening… or even dating? Okay… so that was a ways off yet and she’d understand the rules better by then but… it was an issue.
By then Faith was going to have to know all this stuff. There was a Hellmouth under them – it would always attract vampires and demons and things that they didn’t want their daughter to meet on a dark night. No matter how dedicated she and Willow might be to getting rid of them, there were always going to be some that eluded them and they couldn’t lock Faith and Ben up just because of that. It was the way things were in Sunnydale. Generations of kids had dealt with that, often subconciously, and those that didn’t had died.
Faith and Ben would get to know it all.
“She didn’t know… You didn’t know,” Tara said. It was that simple. Faith couldn’t be made to feel that she’d done anything wrong, and after their initial questions – which had upset the little girl even more than she already had been because they’d had to be pretty insistent – they’d carefully made Faith feel that she wasn't at fault. They couldn’t change that now.
And even if she had been in some way responsible, they couldn’t actually blame her – she was so young that it could never be her fault.
Nor could it be Toni’s fault. She wasn’t a babysitter. She’d just been there. They’d left her there. Whilst she’d shown she liked being around the kids and she was responsible enough to take care of them without even being asked, she couldn’t be blamed for not looking up right then at that precise moment.
Nor was it Jenny’s error. Sometimes there were things that she had to do too. It really was no one’s fault. They were the people who cared for the kids, their parents and their friends. If it was anyone’s fault it had to be all of theirs. But the natural impulse to assign blame, or to feel guilty, couldn’t apply to anyone this time. Besides, aside from a couple of tables, there was no physical harm done.
Mentally though… That was a different problem. Maybe.
Faith would, hopefully, forget about it pretty soon – or at least not recall too much of the detail. They didn’t want her having nightmares about this sort of thing – not when they had to live here.
Toni’s reaction was a different matter. Tara was sure Toni
was already ready to start having nightmares. They’d get to that though. At least Toni was asleep for now and hopefully she wouldn’t be dreaming.
Sometimes dreams were good and when you woke you had to face the real world again. For Tara, for the last few years, waking up to the real world had universally been a pleasure. But sometimes… dreams were bad.
“What do we do about Faith then?” Jenny asked. Husband and wife both turned to her and Willow for an opinion. They probably already knew what they wanted to do – it was surprising how often they could be of one mind given how different they were – but they had faith in the two of them too, which was always nice to feel when it came to something as important as their kids.
They always felt a part of their upbringing which was because they were a part of it. Jenny had often told them that neither she nor her husband had a definitive guide to parenting – and no one had ever written one to parenting on a Hellmouth. It was what friends were for.
Willow, in her turn, looked at Tara. She could tell that Willow knew what she was thinking. They didn’t need a connection to realise this sort of thing. Perhaps the answer to the question was something that they should have done years ago – but there hadn’t been any real need back then. Now Faith was big enough to open the door and able to articulate well enough to invite people in. That made a big difference to things. One day Ben would be too and that would be double the trouble. Even if, by then, Faith might be big enough to be more responsible than her brother.
Jenny wasn’t necessarily done with having kids though – no matter what Rupert thought.
“There’s a ritual,” Tara explained, “that I used to use to make the places where I was sleeping secure – when I was in other cities and didn’t have a proper ‘home’ in the sense that vampires are affected by it.”
“It’ll block anything that’s undead, most sorts of demons too,” Willow continued, sounding proud of her girlfriend. It was always nice to hear pride in Willow’s voice. “Even if they are specifically invited in, they still can’t cross the boundary line of the ritual.”
Tara watched Willow explain, amused at the irony. Willow, as a vampire, was the only person she’d ever empowered to cross that line. She supposed that, really, it would only really have been ironic if that Willow had been this Willow though.
And it hadn’t been.
Her girlfriend, becoming aware of the amused scrutiny, smiled. “Sorry baby, your ritual, your story.”
“Thanks sweetie,” Tara raised and then kissed her love’s hand before she carried on. “Willow’s right. It has no effect on people, but nothing unnatural or magical in nature can cross the line of the ritual – even if they are invited. Not vampires. Not demons. Nothing like that. They can only come in if they carry a specifically created charm with them. We probably wouldn’t bother doing that for them.” It was always best to end on a lighter note.
“It would have been handy to have in place earlier,” Jenny ruefully suggested. “I think you told us about it right after you came back to town? This is what you offered us? What you used on the apartment?”
Tara knew now it would have been useful, but… Jenny was right, she had mentioned it way back and then… “I sort of forgot about it after we first put it off as unnecessary. You and Rupert were always so careful. You knew the rules and you followed them to keep vampires out of your home. Then when Faith was so tiny it wasn't an issue, then…”
“She grew up fast,” Rupert said, shaking his head.
He was always saying that, wondering where the time had gone, but just wait until she hit puberty. Now that was something Tara was firmly intending to be around to see. Time would tell whether Faith was going to resemble her mother, her namesake, Rupert… who had been a little wild in his youth, or some curious hybrid.
Perhaps she’d rebel and be really ‘boring.’
“I wonder where the time went sometimes,” Willow agreed.
She smiled, thinking of the how much her girlfriend sounded like Rupert. Then Tara looked at her, raising her own eyebrows this time. Just what was Willow going to say she meant by that?
“Because it was all so completely wonderful,” Willow continued barely missing a beat. A smile and another quick kiss followed which made it a-okay by Tara.
Willow was right though – somehow all this time seemed to have flown by. And she was also right to say that by and large it had been completely wonderful. Sure, there were times, when something threatened the town or either them directly or their friends, that had been less fun. But it had made them who they were and she was happy with that. The people they were, especially Willow, were pretty damn wonderful.
“So you’ll do that ritual?” Jenny asked. She was clearly anxious – and why not? After what had happened, who wouldn’t be?
“First thing tomorrow,” Tara promised. “When we come back for Toni. We don’t have what we need to do it right now – it’s quite complex and time consuming.”
“Are you sure that it’s okay that Toni stays?” Willow asked, a question Tara had been about to ask again.
“I really think she should,” Rupert said. “She’s certainly in no state to leave tonight.”
Jenny nodded and gave Tara a sympathetic smile.
Those gentle words were a polite way of putting it. “I’m not sure she’ll want to go with us, me, tomorrow either,” Tara noted. It was likely to be
her that was the problem for Toni – if there was one. Maybe she could stay at the apartment the Mayor had left for her whilst Willow stayed in the dorms with Toni? If they had to… just for a little while. She didn’t want to ever be apart from Willow but, someone had to take care of the girl and they’d obviously spent nights apart before.
“You think she will blame you? If it was him?” Rupert asked her.
Tara looked around, looking for a consensus. Willow, she thought, might have more than suspected. Maybe. Jenny – she was pretty sure that Jenny knew as much as she did even though they hadn’t talked about it. She, Willow and Rupert had come in at the end of the ‘game’ and had just helped determine the final score. But she knew… Well, not ‘knew’ in the sense of knowing, but… it was much more than a suspicion though. “I’m almost certain that I really did kill her Dad.”
Willow and Jenny… she could see that they weren’t shocked by that certainty. There was no more evidence now than there had been before – so they must have already been pretty certain even if they didn’t like it being confirmed. Rupert had, perhaps, been a little more sceptical. Yeah, Rupert was definitely on the sceptical team. It was as if he might have thought, or heard something about it, but hadn’t wanted to go there unless he had to.
“If it was, then
we killed him,” Willow assured her. “We were there, baby. All of us.”
“Absolutely,” Jenny said and reached over to squeeze the hand Willow didn’t already have a loving grasp on.
“Quite,” Rupert added. “It was a team effort – you just happened to be the one with the stake for the coup de grace.”
But that was kind of the point. No matter how true it was that they’d all been involved, Toni wasn’t going to see it like that. She was going to see the stake. She was going to see Tara holding the stake. She was going to see Tara stab that stake into her Dad’s chest and then him disappear in a puff of dust.
Dead.
Again.
And this time killed by someone she thought she could trust. Toni wouldn’t want to blame the rest of them, because it was better just to have one person to fault – rather than lose the whole support structure she now had. That was just human nature.
“She won’t see it like that though,” Tara told them. No one tried to argue with her on that one. Willow squeezed other hand though – contact always helped. Willow was there for her. She could always count on her being there. Jenny and Rupert too – and they were all okay. Alive. Well. Faith was fine… Ben hadn’t even woken up.
Things were as good as they could have been – unless your name was Toni and you’d just seen your Dad die in front of your eyes for the second time. Something which had resembled her Dad anyway.
“Are you sure that it was her father?” Rupert checked again, in spite of all the evidence they’d all been able to piece together from what had happened and what had been said by Faith and Toni’s frantic signing.
They hadn’t been able to keep up with it at all…
“Faith said that he was spelling with his fingers, and I saw that myself,” Jenny noted. “He was saying things too. She thought he was Toni’s Dad – apart from the fact ‘Daddy’s don’t do that.’”
That, at least, made them all smile for a moment. Faith’s trust in father’s based on Rupert was touching.
“And he was,” Willow went on, “focused on Toni.”
“When really he should have been one of the wild ones,” Tara completed. “He had the look of them, the slightly more ‘dead’ look than the others. The way his eyes were so wild. And when he was provoked he reacted differently. Toni told us, sort of, what happened to him – she thought he died without being bitten. So… he was bitten later. That lends credence to it. It was him.”
She was aware of the thoughts passing through her love’s heart and mind right now – they were similar to those which were passing though her own. Willow had killed her own mother, actually the vampire had, but Willow remembered that as clearly as if she’d done it herself.
Not only had Willow lost, but she’d never been able to get away from a memory that suggested she’d done it herself…
Tara had lost too. She’d lost her entire family – until she’d found this new one – and that grief had sent her on a four-year campaign of justice and revenge. Which… admittedly… had brought her here. And she remembered driving a stake into that vampire’s heart… how hard that had hit her because it was all the Willow she’d ever known. Right then, not knowing if she’d lost the only Willow she’d ever know. By her own hand no less. It had been a curious mix of pain and relief.
But… that had given her this Willow, the real Willow that she’d
always loved. And the hand that had killed Willow… It had found other Willow related pastimes.
Where was the silver lining for Toni that Willow had ultimately been for her?
Toni, Tara was sure, hadn’t known that her Dad had been turned. Maybe she didn’t know the process or how to spot it, but Toni hadn’t known anything about it. He had been gone as far as she knew. The grief had been fully formed. All that had remained of him was left behind when Toni ran. She hadn’t talked about him that much, it had taken all of those who’d chatted to her to piece the events down there together – but Tara had been more easily able to tell that the young woman was in some deep pain, holding a lot of it in, and that she’d clearly been devoted to him too. All Toni had ever admitted to wanting was to be able to bury him…
And wanting the impossible, to get him back, of course.
Then he did come back – as a monster wanting to hurt her.
To hurt all of them.
It hadn’t quite been the same for Toni as it was for them. She didn’t have the luxury of it just being a memory that had been overtaken by happier events now, or knowing it hadn’t been her at all. As far as she was concerned she’d seen her Dad die twice now and whatever progress she’d made after the first time must have been more than blown away by this second one. The entire world had changed and he wasn't in it anymore.
Again.
How would she have reacted if Donny or her own Dad had come back, all those years ago? It was a question that she could never really answer, but she doubted she’d have been here now. She wouldn’t have been able to fight them right away. Toni was stronger than she had been a few days after it had all happened.
And fate couldn’t have done anything if she’d been dead. Willow… She’d never have found Willow. Willow would still have been a vampire… never to be warm and loving again.
Tara couldn’t decide if she was glad that she didn’t know what he’d been saying to Toni or not. Perhaps Faith had heard it, if he’d been speaking the same words as he’d been signing. But that wasn’t somewhere they were going to go to find out. They couldn’t ask Faith – even if the little girl had understood – which she probably hadn’t. She knew that the ‘man’ had been bad. Saying some bad things, but she was a sensitive child. Faith would have been way more upset if she’d understood everything and what he must have meant by it. If she had been a few years older she might have been scarred.
As it was, the little girl was just scared. Not going to bed until just now was probably more of a ‘wanting to stay with the grownups’ thing than being too full of adrenaline.
Toni… what about her? Toni was probably the reverse of Faith. Less scared than she was scarred by the whole thing. She’d already shown that she didn’t scare easily – that even if she was afraid she could still more than help herself to get away from whatever it was that was making her feel that fear.
She couldn’t run away from this though. This was something that was with her now and she’d have to face it just like she’d helped them and tried to keep Jenny and Faith safe by distracting him. Tara had no cause to be as it wasn't a result of anything she’d said or done, but she couldn’t help being proud of the girl when Jenny had mentioned that.
Now she just had to hope that Toni would let someone face this with her – alone wasn’t the way to deal with things like death and grief. Even if that person who helped her – or people – didn’t include Tara herself, she thought Toni really needed that. But she could see how the person who’d killed her Dad for the second time wouldn’t be a great comfort.
Before this… Toni had wanted to help the people who were still down there. She’d wanted to be rid of the vampires that were hurting people, who’d hurt her and killed her Dad – but she hadn’t wanted to risk anyone else’s life to do that. Not hers or Willow’s. Not Rupert’s either. Which was probably why she’d been holding back some things, even though there were hints that she was desperate to have her Dad’s body back.
Now what would she want? Now that everything had changed and was more immediate again.
Maybe this would push her more towards vengeance… and Tara hoped not, even though it might have helped them get the information from her, which could have helped them when they did go down into the tunnels. Vengeance never had a ‘bright side.’ It wasn’t the way to get information.
Maybe it would push her into hating Tara…
She hoped that wasn’t the case either. She’d understand it – but she never wanted it to happen.
Or maybe Toni would try to do something silly all by herself – which was what they’d been afraid of all along. There had always been the chance that she’s want to do something she wasn’t experienced enough to know how to do in a way that wouldn’t end up in her getting killed. That chance had seemed less likely, but now…
Tara knew all about that… She’d done something silly, way back, and she hadn’t cared if it had gotten her killed.
The magic itself might have killed her.
She’d just been lucky. Or maybe fated.
She’d known it was the wrong way, but she hadn’t cared. Would Toni be willing to risk so much as she had?
What they knew of Toni… well, it wasn’t the true Toni was it?
Tara had often thought that about herself – after her family had been killed no one that she’d known, including the vampire she’d let into her life, had ever known the true Tara. Not until she’d persuaded Lilah to get Wolfram and Hart to bring the real Willow back for her. Jenny had remarked on it, how she’d changed since that moment. She’d been a different person on her return to Sunnydale than she had been when Jenny had known her before.
When she’d been the friend of the Slayer who’d slept on this very sofa bed.
It wasn’t Willow that had changed her, rather she’d been able to be herself when she was with Willow. Only when she’d found Willow had she been able to let the sensitive person who could love out from behind the cold heart she’d been forced to adopt so that the magic and the tragedy of life in the world out there wouldn’t get to her. She’d often thought that Toni had adopted something similar – though she had no proof of that.
When would they get to be able to know the real Toni? What would be the key for her? And why would she let Tara be one of the people to help her find it? No reason for that at all. Not anymore.
And thinking of bringing Willow back. Wolfram and Hart… Did Toni know what had happened there? That there was actually way to get him back? At least now there was – now he had been a creature there was a way… Had anyone let anything slip about Willow?
No. If Toni had known, upset as she was, she’d have been down here now demanding that they go and do just that – even though there was no way in the world that the lawyers would agree to it again. Not after last time – not after what Lilah had demanded that she do to her… The price was too high for anyone but Willow.
She wasn’t welcome there and she could never offer either Lilah or the firm what they wanted. Different things but equally repugnant to her. Lilah didn’t even want it anymore… Tara had seen to that at the lawyer’s own request. It had been her fee – and her protection. She’d touched magics then that she’d never been near since and never wanted to. Messing with people’s minds was way beyond what was acceptable under any magical tradition and code that was regarded as anything but evil.
Some people might have thought that memories were something you could ease for people, but it was something that she’d never do to Toni either… no matter how much she was hurting. Forgetting was never a good thing – it was against the nature of what made people human. Experience made you grow… even bad, bad experiences that seemed like they ripped your guts out and tied them into your hair. Experiences shaped you… You couldn’t just rub that out - as much as you might like to sometimes. Not through drugs or alcohol. Not through the seemingly less harmful magic.
They could do other things to help though – if Toni would let them…
But right now, more so than before, Toni couldn’t find out that there was a way for him to be brought back. Back, but not as the Father she’d known before. He’d been turned too late. Tara didn’t want to think about what came back would be like… Toni’s Dad might die again.
If Toni knew then it would give her hope that could never be fulfilled – and that would crush her once again later. Tara hated secrets… but this was one that she was going to have to keep – and ask Willow to keep too. It was a secret that was worth keeping.
At least for now. Until Toni was in a position to understand.
It was less of a secret and more of a way of keeping Toni calm. Tara hadn’t even had to think about it before… but now Toni’s Dad had come back as a vampire – now there was a way. Just not a way that would ever come to pass. It wouldn’t solve anything – given his obvious condition when he was turned – anyway. But more than that, it wouldn’t be fair to the girl to know that there could have been a way
if there had been something valuable enough that she had which she could offer the beings who could make that come to pass.
Tara still shuddered every time she thought about the Vocah and what it could do to any of them if it chose – despite what it had done for her at Lilah Morgan’s request. It, and Wolfram and Hart, had thought that they were gaining something when they’d agreed to that deal…
Clearly they hadn’t gained a thing. She and Willow had run, hidden and now they were back – and the law firm hadn’t even come near them since then. They weren’t so hard to find nowadays but still they’d been left alone… Not as valuable to the lawyers, or anyone else, as they’d all assumed. It wasn’t like there was a signed contract or anything. Was there?
It was best this way – she didn’t want them to be after them and she knew that Willow definitely didn’t want that either. They didn’t want to be part of a prophecy and they didn’t want to have a fate… except for the fate that saw them being together. Together was the cornerstone of everything. They could certainly live with that one. The point was though, that Toni wouldn’t have a value to the only group that they knew of that
could give her Dad back to her.
The teenager wouldn’t understand that though. She was a bright kid, clever and resourceful – they’d all come to like her a lot in the time that she’d been around – but she was still a kid. A teenager – which was probably even worse – and that meant she had a teen outlook on life. One that – when it came to something like that – would ultimately involve ‘it’s not fair.’
And Toni would be right – it wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t now. She’d had Willow given back to her… and every other person in the world who lost someone to becoming a vampire… they couldn’t have their loved one back. Just like Toni.
That wasn’t fair.
Willow had been one of the creatures that Toni hated now, and Tara had selfishly brought her back.
That wasn’t fair either, no matter how much it was part of what was fated.
But it was going to hurt Toni to be told, or to find that out. Better that there was no chance at all. Toni wasn’t a brat. She wasn’t annoying and, at her age, she had every right to be. But Tara couldn’t deny the reality of the situation.
They’d killed all that was left of her Dad and taken him away from her.
Forever – it had to be forever for more than one reason.
How would she have felt if the Slayer, Faith, had killed the vampire that had been all she had left of Willow? What had she allowed to happen to prevent feeling that? And this had been Toni’s
Dad. What Toni needed now, only Toni knew. It was their job to try and see that she got it. Apart from what they couldn’t give…
“I’ll go and see her,” Jenny said, starting to stand up.
Tara reached out and gently pulled her back. “No. Not yet. Let her sleep – she might not be able to too much after this.” She hadn’t been able to once the nervous exhaustion had worn off… “I’ll go and see her in the morning when we come back to do the ritual,” she said.
“You think that she might blame you?” Rupert checked. The suggestion was clear. He didn’t think, and assumed Tara had been implying that, it was a good idea.
It
wasn’t a good idea. But it was the only one she had.
“That’s why it has to be me that does it,” she said.
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If I want a little pussy, I got my own to play with.
Chance in
Chance.------------------------
) But I enjoy the feedback, discussions and teasing as much as the story itself. 
*curling up in the corner*
at: 9/27/03 1:08 pm
)