Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle - Where We Are… (Part 150)
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: Where we are a little while after the last part…
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: Okay, this part opens up the next section of the story and even I have no idea where that is going to go – though I know the ultimate destination.
Thanks To: All My Brilliant Beta Readers (AMBBR) Kerry (Forrister) 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 one is one of Celia’s and some people are just born to RML.
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle
Where We Are…
By
Katharyn Rosser
“So what do you want to do today, baby?” Willow asked her lover as they reclined against the pillows in their bed. Choices were always good. Life was about choices, and no matter how many times they were asked, they always got to put each other as choice number one. And that was the way should be.
Tara paused before replying, seeming to think about the question. The exaggerated pause, with a spoon in her hand, might have been a mistake. The spoon was loaded with milk and cereal and the slight hesitation caused an inevitable spillage as soon as there was a wobble. And the cold milk hitting Tara’s bare chest was enough to bring on a bigger reaction that could have seen milk and frosted flakes go everywhere.
But it didn’t.
Tara just bit her lip and refused to swear. Tara always refused to swear, no matter how much she might have wanted to. Willow wasn’t even sure that such words were in her vocabulary. No matter how bad things got. Tara had probably been biting back a ‘rats’ or something. Certainly not a ‘damn’ for this, which was about as far as she ever got. And if the word ‘bloody’ ever passed her lips then Willow would have expected her to emigrate to England immediately, barely even stopping to pack.
Just so long as she was with her baby, that would be just fine.
Even if it were in England with the bad weather and the cynical people...
There were, she supposed, words they both uttered – at certain times – which were technically considered swearing by the people who were bothered about such things. But in the contexts involved… it was tough not to see them as entirely appropriate and descriptive. It was as short a step from spicy to dirty talk as it was from being spicy to being deliciously dirty.
“Don’t worry love,” Willow said as Tara set the bowl aside. “There’s none on the duvet.”
“It’s all over
me though,” Tara protested and started to reach for a tissue to wipe that away.
Willow looked and saw there was just like a splash. A small splash. And, she had to admit, a small trail of milk, which disappeared between Tara’s gently lolling breasts and then under the covers. “It’s not exactly ‘all over’ you, baby, delicious as that might have made you.” she said. “It’s more like a gentle distribution.”
“Well, it
feels like it’s all over me,” Tara complained and squirmed carefully, probably to avoid upsetting the bowl again and furthering the trail of milk which was on her already. “It’s still trickling down me,” she said with more than a little disgust. She did hate to be messy.
“Really?” Willow laughed. She had to. Tara squirming was either a comical, or highly erotic, sight depending on the circumstances. At present, it was really like a weird mixture of the two… after all there was the comical side of it with Tara’s body reacting to the cold. And then there was the fact that Willow firmly considered herself a breast gal… and more especially a Tara’s breast gal. The objects of her affection were being all sassy as her lover moved around to stop the descent of the milk.
It was gravity though, it was inevitable.
They had to respect gravity.
Willow put her bowl down on the floor and leaned across her girlfriend, holding her own hair back to avoid getting any of it in the offending liquid, and gently lapped at the tiny splash of milk which had resisted gravity and now rested, in little globules, on the swell of Tara’s right breast. No, really it was less of a lap and more of a kiss… with just a little tongue to make sure that she caught it all.
She had to do a good job so Tara wouldn’t feel messy anymore.
“I could live with this today,” Tara said as Willow moved inwards, between her breasts, in pursuit of the trail of milk. “Or at least for this morning…”she conceded. They had things to do sometimes today…
Willow pulled the covers back; the milk had stopped its descent… well, more sort of spread around the crease of flesh at the bottom of Tara’s ribs. In one way that was good… Willow could reach all of that without having to move around too much. In another way… a few inches more would have worked well for her too. She sighed and went back to work. “We’re still,” Willow said between gentle cleansing kisses, “having breakfast… and you know…. what happened last time… we tried playing with food.”
Tara thought about that.
Willow thought about it.
There had been fun as far as it went… and then things had gotten a bit messy when they’d tried to get too ambitious. Most fruit… now, that was cool. But a mango… despite the erotic implications… that was just a little too sticky. And the erotic implications of fruit were more than a little wasted when there was no need to pretend anyway. The real thing was right there before them.
Over them.
Under them.
Wherever they happened to find, and put, each other.
The shower afterwards had been fun though. Fun in a totally sexy way.
“We could practice our fingering a little?” Tara suggested. “If we want to avoid the food problem.”
Willow, having chased up the last of the milk, had to straighten up before she could reply to that suggestion. She had to be able to see Tara’s face – not that there wasn’t anything there which she couldn’t have told from the tone… except for well, her lovely face. That kind of beauty was always worth another look. And another. Possibly still another. “I assume you mean signing and finger spelling and stuff?”
“You know what I mean,” Tara told her as her fingers ran through Willow’s hair.
“Oh yeah. You know I know, and I’m not saying ‘no’ to what you know I know. ‘No’ is so far down my list of things to say to you today… about anything to do with fingers… that, in fact, there isn’t even a list with ‘no’ on it at all. I’m so the ‘yes’ girl today,” Willow promised her.
“You’re ‘yes’ girl nearly every day,” Tara countered and trailed her fingers around Willow’s earlobe for a moment or two. “Perhaps,” Tara went on, “You should be asking me what we’re going to do with the
rest of the day. Since it seems we’ve already booked out a good part of the morning.”
“Perhaps so,” Willow admitted.
After Saturday morning in bed… They’d both been out hunting last night – just as someone had been out every night recently. Ever since the night in the sewers there had been some combination of Tara, Rupert and herself out there in the night making sure that nothing like Darla and Drusilla could happen here again. And it was true that nothing
like them had happened. Darla and Drusilla had just continued to happen.
Because they were still out there. They’d let them go and Willow still wasn't totally okay with that. She couldn’t deny it had been the right decision at the time, to get those kids to safety, but…
Drusilla was out there.
And Darla was out there.
Two vampires Willow wanted dusted for very good reasons.
She didn't regret letting them go though – not when they’d saved the children by doing so. Darla and Drusilla hadn’t made either she or Tara regret letting them go to save the kids either. Yeah, there was certainly an intellectual knowledge that they must be out there hunting and killing people these last two months, but compared to the lives that they’d seen saved that night…? The theoretical people were less easy to feel for than the real ones they’d seen and saved.
And there were all the lives in the future, which had been saved from what… maybe a hundred vampires – and all the others that they would have created in turn? They both still felt that what they’d done had been worth it. They still discussed it occasionally when the doubts came back to them – they always came to the same conclusion though.
At least Willow was pretty sure that Tara still felt that way too… She’d have been certain but, right now, her mind was on another definition of how Tara felt.
She was, clearly, being invited to re-discover how Tara felt once more. Not that she needed to be re-introduced to that pleasure. Frisky Tara… as in actually ‘frisky’ now… it was something she could have easily handled even more of. Tara was… She was loving, sexy, beautiful and an infinite source of pleasure… but ‘frisky’ was something that had been missing for a little while. They made love… they made wonderful love. But friskiness was a state of mind, one Tara hadn’t found herself in for a while.
Willow liked it.
She liked it a lot.
She liked how Tara seemed to feel that she could relax a little more now than she had been doing. Even when they did have Toni living with them most of the time – and even when they were living in an apartment that should have been way beyond their means if it hadn’t come to her from a man who was, basically, evil. Tara had never, after all that had happened here that Willow remembered too, been totally comfortable in this apartment in the past and hadn’t been again until they’d had the ritual burning of the mattress which had been in this bed originally.
They’d done that a long time ago though.
It was a bed where Tara had finally done what she’d had to do, ridding the world of something evil. Something that had also been called Willow. It was almost funny – Willow was able to see what she remembered as a death, a betrayal,
and as a bright new beginning to her life – almost a rebirth. So, she guessed, did Tara. It was just that Tara also saw it as the last act of something that should never really had been in the first place – a weakness, which should never have been exposed.
Tara just wanted them to be them – she wasn’t at all proud of what had gone on before there had been a ‘them.’
And she didn’t have the excuse, in her own mind, of having been someone or something else, not like Willow herself had. Not that Willow ever used it as an excuse.
Things were so much better now though. Tara was more relaxed, they had a resident guest in Toni, friends round for dinner whenever they wanted and now Tara was also a lot more willing to be ‘frisky.’ What more could a girl ask for? Tara had, perhaps, always been frisky, but it was tricky to be totally liberated in a dorm room with paper-thin walls you could put your hand through if you hit it too hard.
Not that either of them ever had hit the wall so hard, there had been thrashing at times, but never actually ‘hitting’ the wall.
There were stories though.
Regardless, they now they had proper construction between them and the neighbours… and between them and Toni. Proper construction was a key ingredient in bring ‘frisky Tara’ to the fore. That, and a little Willowness too, of course. In many ways it was like stepping back to the later days on the Maclay farm where Tara had brought her back to herself. They’d certainly, once they’d gotten past the most worshipful, loving, adoration, made it all the way to frisky city there. Willow was glad to be back. Frisky City. Population of Two.
It was, all in all, a beautiful world.
So it was two months since they’d been down into the sewers with Rupert to clean out that nest… Had it really been so long? Two whole months? She must have frowned a little at that moment, because the woman she loved touched at the corner of her mouth and turned it into a smile for her. First by pushing Willow’s lips and cheek into the right place and then because Willow just couldn’t help laughing at it anyway.
“What is it, sweetie?” Tara asked a moment later.
Willow only realised a few seconds later that she hadn’t answered Tara’s initial question, and that she’d had to repeat it. Lost in her own thoughts, when she should be lost in finger… spelling. “I was just thinking,” she said, “of how time passes and it either seems to take ages… or other times can be gone in an instant but it never seems to take the right amount of time.”
Tara made a little sound of understanding which made her boobs shake, just a little, and Willow carried on hoping for more little sounds like that. “And then… when you look back… what seemed to be taking ages and ages whilst you were doing it, just seems like a moment afterwards. And vice versa…” Time was a strange and wonderful thing.
They, for example, had all the time in the world. They had always. And forever.
“We’re way too young to be thinking like that yet,” Tara teased her. “Or at least we’re not old enough…”
Willow supposed her love was right – it was ‘old lady’ thinking if ever she’d heard it. Or at least thought it. And Tara thought they were old enough not to be young anymore? Well, Tara could speak for herself… some people around here were younger than they remembered being. “Not so old that we can’t still scamper when the occasion calls for it,” she confirmed to the lovely woman that was stroking her face now. She was so tempted just to lay her head on Tara’s chest, looking up at her and playing with her nips… just for the pure fun of it.
“Scamper?” Tara asked. “Where did that suddenly come from?”
Willow had just naturally come across the word in her mind – but it fitted beautifully. “I think we still have scampering in us… I know I do anyway. If you’re feeling too old and decrepit to scamper with me then I suppose you could just go back to sleep and rest a little more.” Frisky Tara better not dare do that though.
“I can still scamper to you love,” Tara promised her.
“And round me?” Willow asked as she thought of some little kitten that Tara really wasn’t – besides the word had another meaning for them, especially here. What else scampered? Koalas? Nah… they were very much… well, non-scampering. Too slow to scamper. Squirrels maybe? Nope. Tara was just… Tara. And hers – which was just as important.
Tara would have to scamper as herself. But would that be on all fours? And was scampering naked? She was pretty sure it might be… she always thought of scampering as naked. Kittens didn't wear clothes after all.
Wouldn’t naked scampering make it all perky?
“Round you, and right back between your legs,” her love teased.
“Promises, promises.” Willow was pretty much as in love with frisky Tara as she was with every other Tara right now. Who was she kidding? She loved everything about Tara all the time.
“Play your cards right…” Tara suggested and the tone of her voice said that ‘playing her cards right’ pretty much might mean as little, or as much, as staying right here. Wasn't it a ‘hand’ of cards?
Staying here was fine. Willow wasn’t going anywhere. They could get all fingers and all licky on each other. Maybe even a little pervy, in the best possible way.
She was still thinking though and they did have
all morning… All day actually, unless they thought of something else to do with themselves or more especially with each other. “I just meant,” she started to say and was pleased that Tara didn’t even sigh at the further interruption of her frisky girl plans, “since the sewers, you know? Where did all that time go?”
“I think we spent a lot of it right here,” Tara suggested, obviously unwilling to give up totally on the playful mood, even if she was indicating a willingness to listen to Willow’s thoughts. Tara would always listen. It was one of the things she was best at, listening, getting it and making everything right again.
Oh, and some wonderful woman loving too.
So… listening was just one of those traits… and the others were just some of the other traits and abilities Willow valued even more highly. Still more might be on display this morning. Probably would be.
Willow had to admit she liked her lover’s ability to listen. Tara was willing to listen and play along with her… and she knew that she was willing to play along with Tara. Play with Tara. Even the thought of that word, ‘play’ didn’t bother her here. Here in this bed, new mattress or not. This was the scene of some other ‘play’ but she really didn't care about that. Not now. It had been a different time, different people. In the same place, maybe, but it was a different life.
For her at least – and she thought for Tara too.
And those four years had passed even quicker.
The last two months were the real blur though. “A fair amount was spent here, one way or another,” Willow agreed. They’d just been so busy. With the hunting, school and Toni…
“One way or another,” Tara repeated. “Sometimes both ways.”
Willow could practically hear the wink. “Seriously, well, seriously-ish.” It was only ‘ish’ because it was hard to be serious when she was stroking round and round Tara’s nipple with her fingertips. “So much has happened since then, baby... to more than just us.”
Three hundred and thirty two people, other than themselves, had come out of that sewer nest alive. And, happily, it had been three hundred and thirty three who had gone to wherever home was – or wherever the state said that home was going to be. More than they’d brought out of there… It had been wonderful, in a sad way, to hear that one lady had given birth, the very next night after getting out. It was like she’d been waiting to get out of there.
Much, much better to have waited. Willow knew what vampires would have done with a new, defenceless, baby. No… bad thoughts. Tara nipple. Tara nipple. Tara nipple.
Tara.
Okay, she was better now.
Tara thoughts always made things better. Tara nipple thoughts… they had an extra edge.
Predictably perhaps, the local media had hailed the little boy as some kind of miracle baby in the midst of the other stuff, the bad things, that this time they couldn’t ignore. But why not? It was a miracle, of a kind – his mother had survived for him to be born. These were vampires. The press had needed to tell the story, the good story – but equally it meant they’d had to tell the bad one. ‘Gang-related-PCP’ just wasn’t going to cut the mustard this time – no matter what the official investigation decided.
There had been way too many people to ignore. Way too many stories which must have been similar enough – and strange enough – for them to have picked up on what really was going on.
Officially, it was still under investigation… but it hadn’t been dismissed as casually it once would have been.
Her mind was almost tempted to go off on a ‘cutting the mustard’ tangent of internal babble, but Tara was entwining fingers through her own and she already had a head full of other stuff she wanted to clear out before the bliss began, so she eased herself away from being ‘tangent girl.’ Just this once. Sometimes it just wasn’t the most appropriate thing.
Bliss girl was better.
The new Mayor, and they both still thought of her as the ‘new Mayor’ even after she’d already been re-elected, had no interest in covering up a story, like what had happened in the sewers. Mayor Wilkins probably would have made sure it was swept under the carpet – no tangents! – unless it would have served him in some way to let the story out. This Mayor just saw ‘crisis, baby, photo-opportunity’ and not necessarily in that order. It was what a Mayor was supposed to be. Not getting much done which anyone noticed, but not having the ambition to be a demon either.
She
was a politician though.
Almost as bad. Worse in some ways if you considered politicians had souls, at last allegedly. It had led Willow to wondering if Mayor Wilkins had been evil because he wanted to be evil – or if he’d been one of nature’s politicians taken to extremes?
So whilst the new Mayor hadn’t covered it up, the drug link hadn’t gone away entirely either. When the local media, who probably all knew better, had rationalised what had happened for the TV and papers, they’d come up with something other than a gang. They’d decided that apparently a ‘cult’ had been to blame. Wasn't a cult just a gang which had a few more specific aims?
Willow had to admit that ‘cult’ wasn’t, in itself, a million miles from the truth. But she was having trouble finding a different description of the Order that fitted the ‘truth’ as the world would understand it.
They were a cult.
Had been a cult. They were destroyed now.
A cult, which according to the press, had kept hostages who had been painstakingly gathered from all over the state. Probably to avoid raising suspicions in any one place. And the hostages must have been forced onto drugs of some sort. It was necessary to explain the unexplainable things that had appeared in hundreds of witness statements.
Willow even wondered if some of the people, once rescued from the nest, might have chosen to believe that themselves. The drug angle. Sometimes a lie was easier to handle than the truth would have been.
And who was going to insist on the truth? Certainly not she, Willow or Rupert – they knew the dangers too well.
As far as the media were concerned though, it was thought the cult members, none of whom had ever been found or identified, might have been on similar drugs… She supposed that was the only way people could rationalise more than a single, cold-blooded killer in the same place at the same time – let alone a hundred of them. More than a hundred it would seem. It wasn’t the age-old ‘Gang Related PCP Problem’ – the new Mayor had that ‘under control’ – but still…blame the drugs.
Willow had to admit it was a good message in some ways… It had probably kept more than a few kids from straying into that truthfully dangerous drugs territory and would do in the future too.
At least until the memories faded.
Perhaps memories never would though. She wasn't aware there were kids in Sunnydale who were on drugs, at least not many of them, at least not compared to other towns in this part of the state. Perhaps, partially, it was down to the bad publicity drugs had always received around here.
No matter how bad the world had become.
Had Richard Wilkins been running his own ‘Just Say No’ policy? It seemed likely; the evil founder of this town had always had a concern about the youth of the town. He hadn’t wanted anything to happen to the kids around here unless he or his demon sponsors had been the ones doing it.
And needles? God forbid… Tara said the man had been terrified of germs. A dirty needle would have been his idea of hell on earth – something he’d been happy enough to create, but in a clean way.
In the ‘deathtrap tunnels,’ as they had been labelled, over two hundred sets of remains had been found so far. And the emphasis was on ‘so far.’ Every time someone had tried to put a number on the bodies it had suddenly shot up again as a result of ongoing investigations.
It was terrifying but Willow couldn’t doubt Tara’s logic when she’d concluded that if they’d rescued a few hundred people there must have been at least double that who would never be rescued.
Willow privately thought it would be much higher. She knew vampires… they could get by on a kill a week, but they’d hate to restrict themselves so much.
Meanwhile, the ongoing discovery of more and more people had been reduced to a footnote on the local news – and a small spot in the banner of the newspapers. At least it had until some reporter put her foot somewhere it shouldn’t have been and ended up bleeding to death. Media interest had spiked again there, and another figure had been added to the banner count. It wasn’t that people weren’t interested, it was a local tragedy after all, it was more the case that the media couldn’t think how to retell the same story once again.
That numbers were still climbing – just a little slower now, Willow supposed some of the closest dumping grounds had been discovered, leaving them to find the ones which were further away and the occasional body here and there. And there would be another dumping ground. Two hundred victims? That was nothing like the final total… The vampires they’d destroyed that night would have gone through those in just a couple of days. The more she thought about it, the more she knew it was true.
And yet, somehow, no one outside of the Sunnydale media and police had become involved in all this. She was sure there must have been some bulletins elsewhere, in the first days, but no huge media interest they always saw on the TV for other, much lesser, crime events.
Willow had to admit, as she tickled her lover’s sides, she had no idea how that continued to be the case. If something a tenth as big had happened in some other town, or even in the giant metropolis that was L.A., then the media would have been there from all over the world. Instead there was just the local station and the two papers that operated in the town and the surrounding areas.
Perhaps it was just that no one really liked to think about how many there were still down there, perhaps hidden away in other places in the sewers. No one wanted to think about how many would never be found. Some of them… Well, there were demons and other, more natural, creatures, which would deal with bodies given time… Depending on how long ago people had first been taken down there… some of them might never be found.
And then there were all the people who had been turned into vampires – people whom they’d killed to free all those who were still alive. Willow had no regrets about the destruction of vampires – but it was tough not to think about the families who might have been somewhere else, worrying about the people their bodies had used to belong to. Hoping that they were amongst those three hundred plus that were freed… but the truth was that if they weren’t home by now, then they wouldn’t ever be. And then… Well, then they might even be hoping the people they were missing would be found amongst the bodies. At least then they’d know for certain what had happened – that they had even been in Sunnydale. But if they were never found… they’d never know for sure what happened to their loved ones.
Willow didn’t quite get it. It wouldn’t have been her choice… She’d always choose the chance of a loved one being alive, no matter how small that chance was, rather than the certainty of death just to make herself feel better. She was probably a being more than a little harsh though. She’d never been there and she never wanted to be either. If the sad day ever did come…
Tara nipple.
Tara nipple.
There, that was better.
Anyway, after the people had been released, there seemed to have been a never-ending stream of relatives and friends. Some were lucky enough to be visiting people in the hospital… Some were unfortunate enough to be on a kind of pilgrimage to the scene of what was genuinely an unbelievable crime. There had been visitors of all ages, religions and races. She, Tara and Rupert had intentionally kept a low profile around the hospitals, police stations and sites of the investigation. They’d done their part – and now they didn’t want to be recognised by the survivors. Just in case someone started asking questions they hadn’t really been asked before – though as time went by that didn't seem likely, because no one was really asking the right questions.
Which was good, because they didn't have any answers they’d ever want to try to explain to people who just didn’t know and couldn’t possibly understand.
“So much is still happening,” Tara agreed as she cradled Willow’s head. Willow could tell she was savouring the gentle kisses, the fingers that strolled around her torso. The milk was all gone now, but Willow could still sense sugar.
Sugar of a kind.
What Tara had said was certainly true enough – everything
was still happening. Everything was still pretty much the present about that night, rather than left in the past – no matter how mundane it had become in the media. And one person who was very much in their present, and who hadn’t had a single relative visit her, was Toni. If Willow thought a lot had happened to she and Tara, then she was sure far more had happened to Toni over that period.
The young woman had, accompanied by Jenny to avoid either she or Tara being recognised by anyone who’d been down the sewers, eventually agreed to use the chance the rescue had created to carry out one very necessary task. Reporting her Dad… not just missing but actually dead. There was no point in simply saying that she didn’t know where he was. That would… well, it would have dragged the whole thing out and Toni
had seen him die.
More than once as it happened.
She couldn’t have reported him missing, talking to the police, without her face revealing she knew he was dead. Toni was a very expressive girl – for all she took a little getting used to.
Willow liked her and so, she knew, did Tara.
Using the opportunity of the rescue, had allowed the girl to tell, almost, the whole truth and confirm that he was gone forever. They even knew that the police had pulled his dental records – with her help in tracking down his dentist in Fremont – in anticipation of a body that they would never, ever, find down there. But there were lots of bodies which would never be found… it might well be accepted as one of those.
Not having any family to contact or a better place to send her, the police had let Toni go back home with Jenny that night. The police must have figured they had enough parentless children to deal with, and as Jenny was a well known and respected teacher, Toni would be better off with her than in the system. Jenny believed, all things considered, that the police had been pretty easy on Toni – not pressing her too hard when they could see that she was getting upset and frustrated by communicating through an interpreter, even with Jenny’s rudimentary finger spelling assistance. Willow had to believe it was more down to the volume of cases than any special sympathy for Toni. The police had so much to deal with at the moment and they had to know there would never be a single prosecution.
Telling her story – or a slightly modified version of it – to the police seemed to have helped Toni to some extent. But it also had to have made her reflect on what had happened and on what she hadn’t been able to say to them. She hadn’t been able to say a word about seeing her Dad one last time.
A wild creature trying to kill her.
No one had told Toni what she could or couldn’t say, but the girl had pretty much absorbed the reality of the situation from the news and from conversations she, Tara, Rupert and Jenny had.
For a few days, the omission had made Toni harder on Tara again. Willow knew that was the cause because Toni had told her as much. She’d been harder than Tara could possibly have deserved in any circumstances. Even from Toni’s point of view. Not nasty… just not as friendly as she clearly felt able to be with Jenny, Rupert and Willow. And it was obvious nothing in the world would be able to turn Toni against Faith. Not even Faith’s adoration of all things Tara.
Toni had been… cold towards Tara. Cordial and polite, which was the way she’d obviously been raised, but never close. Never really appreciative of Tara’s part in saving her - twice. Tara took it as being the focus of the girl’s frustration, so the rest of them didn't have to be anything but close to her. Willow’s baby bore up under the pressure, but it wasn’t easy.
For Willow though, those few days had been hard too. It had been hard to give Toni the support she needed when the girl was being discriminative towards Tara. It hadn’t been Willow’s girlfriend’s fault. None of it. It had been a matter of chance that it’d been Tara to do the deed and she’d had no choice.
And Toni knew it. Deep down, she knew. It was just hard for her to accept.
It had been a few days, nearly a week, before the police had advised that Toni’s immediate future needed to be decided – and that they’d referred her case to the appropriate local bodies. Toni, by then, had returned to the relationship she’d had with Tara before. Not perfect, but a damn sight better than cold.
After that, things had moved pretty fast, or seemed to have now as she was looking back on it. At the time, decisions seemed to have come slowly. Toni had, she later revealed, even been close to running away – rather than be sent somewhere that she didn’t want to go. The month that someone had indicated that it would take to get a full hearing had persuaded her not to do that though. They’d been pretty sure that for that month, at least, Toni wouldn’t be sent anywhere.
And so it had proved. The month had passed and she’d stayed with them for the whole time.
Sunnydale social services were more than a little swamped right now. This was never a quiet town for them, but since the sewer ‘cult’ had been brought down they were now dealing with orphaned kids or those that had no idea where they lived, or even if their parents were alive. Gradually, Willow supposed, the numbers were reducing – there were reports every few days of children being re-united with their parents who hadn’t been with them in the cages… but back when Toni’s case had first been reviewed, they’d been so swamped that you could practically smell the fetid water.
They’d been more than happy, as a temporary measure, to allow Toni to stay with the librarian and the teacher – two responsible and upstanding citizens as they were. It was hard to think of two more responsible people. And that decision was ultimately what had stopped Toni from running. When they’d asked her about it later, the girl hadn’t even been sure where she was going to go – or how she was going to live without money or other necessities – but she had been about to run, if she'd had to. No one, least of all Toni, wanted to think of her living on the street.
Willow supposed that now, if Toni decided to go, that at least she would have thought about it and planned a little more carefully. Was that a good thing because she would be better prepared? Or a bad thing because Willow still couldn’t be sure the girl wouldn’t bolt if she thought she had to avoid a choice she didn't want to accept.
And so Toni had been with Rupert and Jenny, officially, for a little under a month. There had been social services visitors just to check on her and they hadn’t minded the fact that she and Tara were so involved with Toni as well. The more people who cared about her the better as far as the officials were concerned. Especially people who knew some sign, and were trying to learn more. Sign was the big language barrier to them, they had no one available to see Toni who could sign and was also a social worker. They just had interpreters which annoyed Toni no end.
Willow supposed they’d been impressed by the sign language, but also by how Toni accepted the use of computers for chat. It hadn’t taken them all that long to figure out that the girl wasn’t keen on the interpreters who social services used for their meeting – at great cost to everyone.
Anyway, there was no burden. She and Willow liked being around Toni. Willow knew that Tara felt responsible in some way, which was a little ridiculous, but they both liked the girl a lot so it had never been a chore to be there with her. Even getting grilled by social workers who just wanted the best for the girl. Their signing was coming on pretty well now, which made ‘talking’ to Toni a lot, lot easier. Real words. Okay… so maybe it was a little like baby talk but they were definitely getting there and it was baby talk in whole sentences now.
Signing… finger spelling… fingering… One thought led inevitably to another. She trailed an ‘I’ shape down Tara’s body and felt the reaction ripple back through that finger. Tara did have the best ideas.
Not to forget Tara nipple. She kissed it again even though she didn't need the distraction.
The court hadn’t been so keen on that informally agreed arrangement for the longer term though. They had to think about the rest of Toni’s life and education, which Willow was entirely in agreement with. They all were. They’d all ended up caught between a few different situations and considerations which had threatened to, and pretty much had, changed their lives… at least for a while.
The solution was… unique. Willow had never heard of anything quite like it but then she wasn’t involved in looking after orphaned kids – or hadn’t been until now.
If Toni’s Mom had been tracked down, then none of it would have been an issue. Toni would have been with her Mom – assuming she was fit to be so – and that would have been that, but no one, least of all Toni, knew where she was. Or even… and this had never been said… if she was okay. But given her Mom wasn’t around, then Toni’s preferences had been taken into account and her preferences, perhaps typically for a teenage girl, were pretty strong.
She knew exactly what she wanted, if not how it could possibly work.
They’d always avoided saying Toni didn’t want to go with her Mom, because it wasn’t an issue until it was a possibility, but Toni made it very clear that she
didn’t want to go into the system either. None of them wanted her to go into the system – even if it hadn’t been overloaded right now. So it had just been a question of what the options were… And neither they nor Rupert and Jenny had considered for a moment that any of them not being an option – at least for the short term.
Toni deserved some sort of stability at the very least.
They were all willing, between Tara’s insurance payout, savings and the Giles’ salaries there were adequate financial resources to take care of Toni too. It had come down, eventually, to a question of space. The Giles apartment didn’t have a lot of spare room. Faith had the old study, which had already been converted into a bedroom for her. Ben was still sleeping in the main bedroom with Rupert and Jenny. Without putting Faith out of her room there was nowhere for Toni to call her own – which was okay for a few days, but not so much for a few weeks or months. However long this might take.
And so Willow had, without even really asking Tara, suggested that they could look after Toni at the apartment the Mayor had left for Tara. It wasn't like Toni needed 24/7 care now was it? She needed people to be around for her, but she was fourteen going on forty in terms of what she’d already been through in her life, more than anyone should ever go through their entire lives. The apartment, if she and Tara moved in there again, would offer her the space they all needed. So they had argued with social services and so it had come to be.
Willow remembered that Tara had looked at her a little curiously when she’d suggested it but aside from that there had never needed to be any discussion about it. Willow had suggested it for Toni… and for
them. She’d wanted to help the girl and Toni didn’t seem to mind the idea – no matter what occasional slight problems she had with Tara. Kids were supposed to have problems with authority figures.
And these weren’t really problems. They were more like extended moments of silence. It was like Toni was counting to ten sometimes. Not that Tara was ever unreasonable, it was more that Toni disagreed or needed to rebel against something – to some extent.
Tara was, Willow had to admit, the parent figure in the apartment. Much more so than she herself was.
And Toni
was a teenager.
The judge, understandably, hadn’t been entirely convinced that two college students had a) the apartment they were talking about, b) the room in it for a teenager, c) the finances to support themselves, let alone Toni and d) the determination to help. They’d persuaded her of that though. Then had come the predictable ‘youth’ and lack of ‘parental control’ objections. No, not objections, more questions. The judge had never objected to the plan. She’d just asked reasonable questions to make sure they were capable of carrying it out.
Tara was so the parental-control girl.
It seemed, looking back, as if the judge had actually liked them. She’d been a little over-impressed by Willow’s own over-enthusiasm and determination to help and slightly more impressed with Tara’s solid devotion to doing what was right. The way Tara explained it and made the case, Willow couldn’t believe that there was a single person in Sunnydale who wouldn’t have seen their solution as the right thing for Toni.
Including the judge, once she’d checked that with Toni herself. The girl had readily agreed given the options available to her.
So the solution was the right thing, if a little strange. She and Tara were living in the centre of town with Toni at the apartment. Jenny and other suitable tutors were teaching Toni, being as Sunnydale High didn’t have a provision for deaf kids right now, at the Giles’s apartment, which was now doubling as a schoolroom as necessary where Toni stayed over some nights – especially if she and Tara were going hunting which would leave no one with the girl until the early hours.
Sometimes she even stayed over with Jenny and Rupert because she didn't like to leave Jenny alone when Rupert was one of those hunting.
Oh, and Toni loved being with the kids.
Jenny and Rupert were the principal guardians but Willow was proud that she and Tara were named, and thus trusted enough despite their youth, to also be mentioned in the papers. More importantly, in terms of the judge’s faith in them, they were the ones who Toni was actually living with.
And over the last few weeks of living together full time, they’d all kind of gotten used to each other. Toni and Tara, where there had been a little lingering tension, had settled in and the stiffness only came over them when a memory was tweaked. Once that happened, whether Tara accidentally did the tweaking or it was a necessary discussion about something with Jenny, her or anyone else, then Toni would get a bit sulky for a while.
Often it was something as simple as her Dad ‘never did that.’
It was understandable… They weren’t her parents and would never be. But they were being responsible. Tara especially. If that was the worst of it, and it seemed to be, then things were easier than they might have been. In the circumstances. If Toni had been half as typical as most teenagers at Sunnydale High had been when Willow had been there, then the girl could have been a real bitch.
She wasn’t.
Tara, of course, felt bad when Toni was sulking… even if she hadn’t directly been involved in the conversation that had started it, but then… after a while… it appeared that Toni started to feel bad that Tara felt bad. Which was kind of good, in a way.
And then they’d hug and make up. Till the next time it happened and there was always a next time. There probably always would be.
They’d come a long way since that night they came back from the sewers. It’d taken a long time for Toni to let Tara close enough to hug her.
Fortunately it wasn't that frequent and they couldn’t blame Toni for a second of how she felt. Feelings were feelings and she and Tara knew that better than most. Nor could they ignore the simple truth. Toni
was a teenager, and just because both of them had abnormal adolescences which hadn’t offered time to be a typical teenager didn't mean Toni shouldn’t be one now. Doing the sulking thing was a teen thing to do, the least problematic of them too.
It had been a little strange at first; having someone else here most of the time, but it was kind of good too. It had made Willow appreciate the idea of having someone else in their lives, someone they could care about and be responsible for, even more than she had before. Practical application of what she’d thought for a long time. Wondered about. And every time she considered how this was working out, she went back to old thoughts and old discussions with Tara…
She wondered how Tara might react to the suggestion of having someone permanently in their lives now. After the experience with Toni. Toni’s presence hadn’t stopped them being able to go out and hunt vampires had it? And that was one of Tara’s big objections a little while ago. Even so, it wasn’t going to stop Tara from looking at the duty she believed that she
had to perform now was it?
It struck her that these were very profound and serious thoughts to go with the friskiness she was feeling bodily. But it sounded about right in her head. Friskiness didn't mean she had to stop thinking… at least until friskiness took her where only one thought
could exist.
Tara.
They’d had to go out and hunt, even after Toni had come to stay here at the apartment and they’d moved out of dorms to facilitate that. It wasn’t as if the rest of the world had stood still whilst they’d been dealing with all the stuff – Toni, the aftermath of the attack and everything else. And… ‘aftermath’? Why was that called what it was? It was one of those strange words that she used without thinking where it might have come from. Used in ignorance….
Had there used to be something ‘after math’ which everyone had really remembered? Had it been lunch perhaps?
Tara must have noticed another funny little look on her face – well, that was just fair because Willow always noticed things about her baby too. “What?” she asked once again, obviously already knowing that it wasn’t something too serious.
“I was just thinking of ‘math’ and ‘aftermath’,” Willow said. “And why ‘aftermath’ is mathy at all.”
“You have wonderfully unique thoughts, sweetie,” Tara assured her with a chuckle which rippled out from her chest and through Willow as she lay with her cheek right there.
“Not
totally unique,” Willow insisted as she looked back up into her love’s face. “We do share
some thoughts. A lot even.”
“True,” Tara conceded, “but not about ‘aftermath.’ I never even considered it”
Willow mused on that. “Do you think that something happened
after math one day? Something so big that or ever more they started saying after math… aftermath?”
“Lover, compared to math,” Tara joked, “Most things seem pretty big and impressive.”
“I like math,” Willow protested. “You didn’t like math?” She already knew the answer to that question, but she had to ask again. It was the geek within who wanted to champion her cause.
“I’m not death to all math or anything,” Tara told her, “but I don’t
love math the way that you
love math. That’s why they invented calculators for the rest of us, so the check book would actually balance.”
Willow felt herself blushing, hot blood moving through her cheeks. “I don’t
love math. I love you.”
“I know, which is most of the reason why I tease you like that, baby. Just to hear you say it again,” Tara replied with a happy grin.
“I bet you could tease me in other ways and get me to say it too,” Willow suggested. It never took much for her to reaffirm her love for this woman. She could feel hot blood pulsing through some of the places she was referring to. She had no shame about that… Frisky Tara would always have that effect on her. No, it didn't have to be Frisky Tara.
Tara would always do that to her. Frisky or not.
It was a wonder that her blood wasn’t boiling, but in a good way, practically all the time.
“And here I was thinking you could tease me this morning,” Tara replied almost shyly.
Tara felt she had to be shy to ask? What had happened to Frisky Tara? She wanted Frisky Tara back. Shy Tara was good… lots of fun sometimes, but she wanted
Frisky Tara.
“Mutual teasing then?” Tara wondered and closed her arm around Willow’s bare back, running a finger up and down her spine. It made Willow shiver, but in a good, good way.
Sexy shivers.
“Not necessarily…” Willow relaxed further into her love’s embrace. If she relaxed too much more then she was going to be… Well, she wasn’t really sure what… but it would be
totally relaxed. Of course
total relaxation really only came one way…
Not even sleep offered total relaxation… there was just the moments after… well, after Tara had been helping her to totally relax for a while. Those were totally relaxing – the end of any bodily tension.
Relaxation time was something they’d always made sure that they had, but despite Sunnydale pretty much being as quiet as it had been for years, there were still things going on. Bad things. They both knew Darla and Drusilla wouldn’t give up and so they knew they couldn’t either. And even if it wasn't Darla and Drusilla, there would always be another big bad. There might already be.
Until something evil was dead or destroyed then there was no way to write it off.
Darla and Drusilla might be dead, but they hadn’t been destroyed.
Willow was sure that several vampires they’d destroyed since the nest had originally been part of the Order of Aurelius. They’d wondered if they were left over from the attack on the sewers but the taunts, the determination and the almost perfect ambush tactics – to get to
them – said otherwise.
It was much more likely that they’d been sent after them, but the Order wasn’t what it had been, either in legend or in Willow’s memory. Just a few years ago the Master would have sent The Three to deal with them. The Three might have been a challenge, if Tara and her friend the Slayer, Faith, hadn’t already overcome them back then.
It had been the first time Willow recalled watching Tara directly.
She knew she remembered every moment of Tara experience, even from those bad days, but sometimes the chronology eluded her.
Darla’s new equivalent, the new ‘Three’ had actually been ‘four’ and definitely not needing a capitalisation. They didn’t have any of the strengths to deserve a capital letter and Darla couldn’t have believed in their ability. The ‘real’ Three had served the Master for centuries. They were warriors who’d been created in the days of real warriors – men who knew how to use swords and axes because they’d been trained – as humans – to go to war that way. What Darla had sent after them was more like a gesture than a threat.
It had been more of a ‘we haven’t gone away’ message than anything, which was never going to have been dangerous.
Darla might have
hoped that ‘the four’ would get lucky and prevail, but Willow remembered Darla well enough to have known that the vampire couldn’t have expected them to have won the night. It was just a message to them – a warning or a declaration of intent. Darla wanted Sunnydale. She wanted them dead. She’d made no secret of that. She never had. And she wasn’t willing to accept the fact of their victory in the sewers.
The problem for Darla was figuring out what she was going to do. She must have realised by now that lone vampires, or small groups, just weren’t going to get it done unless they got really, really, lucky. Massed groups, just like the sewers, couldn’t be expected to work any better next time than they had last time. She and Tara could hear, see and feel them coming from a mile off.
It wasn’t all plain sailing though. The problem for she and Tara was figuring out what Darla was going to do. Was she just going to keep creating vampires until they found her? Keep sending those creatures against them and hoping for blind luck? Darla and her minions only needed to be lucky once. Willow worried about what the senior member of the Order might choose now. Now there was a grudge to be reckoned with too, before it had just been about dominating Sunnydale – now it was personal.
They both knew Darla had to find something new and some time soon she was bound to find it. Sunnydale was full of new, bad, things. It was why the town was a Hellmouth. When Darla had found that thing, then she’d use it. No doubt about that. And then they’d have to deal with it.
She and Tara together.
What was most immediately worrying was the knowledge Willow had that, in the past, Darla had used guns. It was something that she hadn’t faced before in even the most red-neck of vampires and she wasn’t sure whether Tara had – at least not in the hands of a very strong, very fast, vampire. And then they had to consider that there could be more than just Darla with guns.
What Willow was pretty sure of was that Darla would definitely risk attracting that kind of attention, or her followers attracting it, if she thought it would work. Results counted for Darla. Appearances were secondary except for her own fine clothes of course. Tara had actually been surprised when she’d mentioned Darla using guns. Rupert had been too. They’d never even heard of it before – a vampire using guns. But there was no reason why they couldn’t. They had human hands, they were easily capable of pointing it and squeezing a trigger.
Willow didn’t remember considering it herself when she’d been… well, a creature willing to do anything to anybody so long as it hurt. It was a point of pride, she supposed. Darla had plenty of pride, but she was practical as hell too. Scary combination in the hands of a powerful vampire. Besides, what pride she had would have been deeply stung by them. The one good thing was that Willow was sure Dru wouldn’t use one. Darla wouldn’t trust her with one. Bullets might not kill vampires – but they could hurt like hell and make moving around unnoticed in the human world they wanted to feed in much trickier. People tended to notice blood and bullet holes, especially on creatures which clearly weren’t too worried about them.
But aside from those worries, about Darla and Drusilla and the Order, Sunnydale had been pretty subdued. Danger-wise at least. And that was a very good thing. Subdued danger was less danger – and less danger meant that they didn’t have to take so many risks with their lives to help protect others. They would, they did when they had to, but Willow thought that less danger was way better than more danger. Less danger was the way that she liked it.
No one was really going to argue with her logic there.
So much so that Tara was, despite rediscovering the need for it, only making one sweep a week with the pendant through town. Just to be sure. Willow would be happier when Tara wouldn’t have to rely on something that hurt her at all – but she was just taking precautions. Necessary precautions. This wasn’t some guilty overreaction, this was just making sure that no nests were forming in the town that they’d have to struggle to clean up later.
And because she wasn’t detecting so many vampires, it rarely hurt her anyway. That was a good in Willow’s book too.
Life was, with a few tweaks, getting back to what amounted to normal around here. One of those tweaks was Toni and her presence, and the fact that they’d moved off campus to house the teenager with them. Toni was more than a tweak. She was a major difference in their life and Willow hadn’t heard a word of complaint out of Tara. Not a word, despite the fact – and Willow knew it was true – she had kind of manipulated everyone else, including the judge, to let Toni stay here with them. Tara had no word of complaint for Toni either… even though they were still having awkward moments. Though fewer and farther between.
Now they knew some more words in sign… There were moments where Toni was the teenager she had every right to be, reacting to circumstances that she had every right to remember and feel bad about. And Tara… she just took it. Willow herself tried to reason with or persuade Toni but Tara seemed to think she herself had lost that right.
Which wasn't saying that Toni ran roughshod over Tara – as was the case with how Faith manipulated Willow herself. Tara was always the more serious one. She was the one that was being more… parental, and Toni clearly respected that. Most of the time anyway. Tara was, after all, a little more used to it. She’d had more experience with teenagers and looking after them than Willow had. Willow admitted to herself that she was still adjusting to the idea of being, partly, responsible for Toni rather than just trying to be her friend.
When Tara ‘took it’ from the teenager, she took it with the patience of a saint. Sometimes it was tough to know what Toni was saying. Either they wheeled out a laptop or even a piece of paper or they relied on Toni to go slow enough, in easy enough words, for them to get it. After all, it had still only been a few months that’d they’d even been thinking about learning some simple sign, thinking that Toni wouldn’t be around for very long once the nest was gone. Add to the weeks of non-use with all the goings on recently and their sign wasn’t the greatest. ‘Use it or lose it’ was a saying Willow didn’t have to wonder about. So when Toni got angry or frustrated, any little words they could still recognize broke down. The signs became more expressive, powerful, and much faster too as she forgot how slow she had to go – or got frustrated by it. When Toni got like that, it was just like they were on the receiving end of a shouting argument, but the slap of hand against hand was the only sound. And not knowing what she was saying just frustrated Toni even more.
Then she could get slow and sarcastic. Real slooooooow.
Was there such a thing as sarcastic signing? It wasn't in the books, but yeah… You could read pretty much anything in sign that the other person chose to put there, in the movements – in the expression. It was also Toni’s big project with teaching them practical signing – the girl was determined to making their signing less boring. Willow had seen Tara – she’d seen herself in the mirror. Their expressions were more ‘am I getting this right?’ than ‘what do I want to say?’ She supposed that confidence was what they needed and that was just going to come from practice – which they looked to be getting quite a bit more of.
The police couldn’t find Toni’s Mom so the girl was staying here for the foreseeable future – unless something changed.
It wasn't like they were carrying out a manhunt for her or anything – after all, this wasn’t a criminal situation. But the various departments appointed by the judge to see to finding her just hadn’t been able to track her down as yet. Some of not being able to find her proved that she wasn’t… well, that nothing obviously bad had happened to her. There were records of that sort of thing. Death certificates. Hospital records. But instead… it was like she’d ‘dropped off the face of the earth’ as Toni’s caseworker had put it.
Of course, had she lived in Sunnydale, it wouldn’t have been that unusual that someone disappeared with no trace, no records. But there was no indication that Toni’s Mom was ever in a place like Sunnydale – if there ever was another place like Sunnydale. Other Hellmouth’s sure… but nothing quite like this town.
Willow sort of hoped that Toni’s Mom had just wanted to disappear. She could think of altogether too many things that could have happened to force that on Toni’s Mom. Her
wanting to drop off the face of the earth would have been a ‘good way.’ They both felt that way. They didn’t want anything bad to have happened to her. What Toni wanted in that area was more of a mystery, but Willow was sure Toni didn't need the news anything bad had happened to her Mom right now.
Willow wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to anybody, neither would Tara, but the reason that she, at least, wanted it here was because she didn’t want Toni to go through what it would mean and she didn’t want either of them – and it would probably have been Tara – to have to tell her either. Just because Toni didn’t want to know her Mom, if she ever really had, she was still Toni’s Mom and there had to be some feelings there.
As for whether she, personally, wanted Toni’s Mom found at all… She really couldn’t say. Willow knew that Toni didn’t and that was a big influence on her thinking. Obviously her Dad hadn’t been saying bad things about her Mom because this wasn't an adult thing. It was more like Toni had built her Mom up into this ogre or something – inside her own head. Betrayal as a little kid had done it to her. Willow didn’t doubt there were reasons for Toni’s Mom leaving, but… they weren’t good enough reasons in her opinion – especially when Toni didn't know them.
Toni might actually like her… if she got chance to know her.
But the teenager’s mind was pretty much made up. The danger was that if she wasn't careful, Toni was going to ‘talk’ herself into care or something. Even if her Mom was found. If Toni refused to go with her, or ran away as she’d threatened to do… Then she would end up somewhere which was probably worse than with her Mom. She’d be in a system that had to look after all of the kids, not just her. A system full of its own problems, which couldn’t give her as much as she needed.
And in an oddly selfish moment Willow wondered whether she wanted Toni’s Mom to be found? She couldn’t help wondering what was actually best for Toni. Clearly it wasn't being in care – but maybe it wasn’t her Mom either. She didn’t even know her daughter now – she hadn’t been in communication with her for years. Would that be the ‘best’ for Toni? To be with someone who didn’t even know her as well as they did?
Somehow Willow could see that maybe it wouldn’t be.
Somehow she found herself starting to wonder… No. That was a thought that was like totally out there. She wasn't going to follow up on, or listen to that thought. Not yet anyway. She couldn’t do it…
Besides it was hardly conducive to friskiness… Onto friskier things then. Maybe onto Tara. One way or another. Much better thoughts. She tipped her head back and was looking up into Tara’s face again; being kissed on the forehead before she could even let Tara know that she was ready for Tara-frisky now, please…
“Eat up your breakfast,” Tara said to her.
Willow considered that. "Cereal in the teeth wasn’t a good thing not for friskiness. Its all soggy, and besides there's something else I want to eat." Two could play at the verbal teasing. Two would play at the more physical version too.
"I'm not," Tara said, "going to promise you that everything else I have to offer you isn't a little soggy too. Or at least long-term damp."
"That doesn't matter at all," Willow promised her love and forsook her breakfast in favour of something else to snack on.
"We never decided what to do," Tara moaned as Willow started to make love to her. But this will do for now.
************************
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If I want a little pussy, I got my own to play with.
Chance in Chance.
------------------------
), W/T accomplished what they needed to do. And nice use of Tara's one stake. Made its point.
...I am not overdoing it with the praise! and by the way, you deserve much praise 
...well, you do dagnabit...anyway, sorrows have beset upon me like a pack of wild dogs and I know this is a vague but I'm not trying to litter this reply with my hurts...if it would please you I would go further into detail if a message shows forth in my inbox, but I shudder...I simply squirm at the thought that there is an end to this story....oh yes its coming...we know and now you've gone and said it..plus, the story's kinda heading that way isn't it? I suspect that you can't keep on until W & T are old ass grannies sitting on their porch sipping on their "lemonade" and only kind of playfully and conspiratorally flirting with the nurses on their home visits...as they reminisce about that one time in band camp when they...well, you get the digitally remastered moment...I always try to remember everything in your episodes that grab at me and there are many, big and small, profound and mundane, all so very special...so here's a preemptive shh cuz I'm about to roll into town on the praise train....k, you got game.
She will post a new update as soon as possible