Shoot you Ruth? Heck no... you just stopped me from having to double post! Though I did say the ending would be happy... best guess 30-35 parts away yet...
Anyway onto Part14. This is one of those awkward ones that I need in there, but would not stand either with the preceding one (risking losing impact there) or the following part either. Call it filler... it seems to end a little abruptly but it is leading somewhere within the next two parts... as you will see.
That said it widens the cast a little neh?
Take care Kittens and enjoy!
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Questions (Part 14)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: Following on from Tara’s discovery of who Willow was she has questions to ask that need answers.
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: Closer and Closer
Notes: This is quite a short part and I make no apology for that. Better to end it where I do than move into the next one and spoil the effect. This part, 15 and 16 all take part within the same 24 hour period… remember what happens.
Thanks To: Jo, Kerry, Louise and the readers… Ruth for as stirring ovation of “I trust you.”
The Sidestep Chronicle
Questions
By
Katharyn Rosser
The Mayor was, as always, as good as his word. She had been given permission to go and talk to anyone that she wanted to in the school today, but it quickly struck her that anyone who had been a contemporary of Willow’s and survived to graduate was already gone from High School. That had led her straight back to Vice-Principal Snyder.
Whilst his boss was amiable, and she actually kinda liked ‘Bob’ Flutie, he was too much of a good man to let her start wading around in the permanent records. Snyder, on the other hand, was eager enough to please the Mayor – or avoid displeasing him – that he would let her take her time on the computer.
She’d have bet that Willow could have found out everything a lot quicker. The young woman had obviously been a computer wizard. Snyder kept interrupting her efforts as well.
“You know that this is absolutely not allowed,” he told her, for the third time. “if it wasn't for the…”
“The Mayor?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the records but reminding him where her, admittedly transferred, authority lay. The sound he made could only be described as ‘Hmmpf.’ They both knew that there was only one winner here – and that was the power of Richard Wilkins in the town. Neither of them particularly had to like it. Snyder certainly didn’t. It probably didn’t help that he was banished to the other side of his own desk, like a visitor in
her office.
The photo in the permanent records was the same one that adorned the Wall of Remembrance, which disappointed her a little. She realised that she was getting greedy. Before, all that time when she was desperate just to know
who Willow was - just the name even - she would have been overjoyed to see a photo. Now she had a photo and all she wanted was more. More pictures – more knowledge.
Snyder ‘Hmmpfed’ again and pulled his jacket straight, rounding the desk to see what she was looking at. She would have liked to have been left alone here, but she could understand his genuine concerns. The records involved current students too and though she had no interest in those he couldn’t be letting her into
that private material. And, of course, he wanted to stay in control too. “What are you looking at anyway?” he asked, standing so close to her that she had to move to get him out of her space. “Who’s that?” he asked looking at the screen.
“Willow Rosenberg” she replied, without looking up, without moving her eyes from the screen. The tiny image didn’t tell her any more than she already knew about her dream girl. But at this moment it was all she had. “Did you know her?” It didn’t seem enough.
“She’s dead?”
“She-She’s on the wall.” Didn’t he know? He should… he had been hearing her name, reading it sometimes for over three years. He should know that she as gone. He should know them all.
“Hmm, must have been before my time.” He took the mouse off her and started to manipulate the records faster than she could keep track of. “Hmm, better than the average student. She’d have kept our grade point average up a little higher. It’s always the useful ones who get eaten and never the trolls.” He was whizzing though screens that she hadn’t even tracked down yet – but she was adapting, starting to take it in. “Why,” he continued wondering aloud, “is it never the cretins and the idiots?”
She narrowed her eyes, but kept quite quiet. She wanted the information that she was seeing – and there was no chance of getting a print out, so she kept quiet and avoided arguing with him. He really seemed to dislike his students though… which she couldn’t help feeling was weird in his profession.
“She wasn't much for sports and team play though. Dropped out of chess club, no other sports or societies. Not even band. She looks the type for band though. God I can just see her waving a flute around… Urrgh, Kids.”
This time she looked at him wondering how he could be making these comments – especially about someone who was dead.
He saw her looking at him. “I maintain,” he explained to her, “ a sense of proportion. You won’t catch me crying in my office like Principal Flutie.”
“M-maybe,” she took the mouse back off him, “you should. Tell me how I can get a list of her teachers and the people who were in her classes.”
“They already left, last summer. Those that made it.”
Was he being deliberately cruel? He knew that she cared a lot more about the students than he obviously did… was that why he was being like this? Perhaps it was his survival mechanism. Perhaps it was just him who was the troll. “Then you shouldn’t really care what
I am asking you to do should you?” She met his withering gaze and held it until eventually he backed off.
“Click on faculty.”
At least he had intelligence to know when he was beaten. If not the good grace to handle it well.
----------------
She had talked to a few of the teachers before she had reached this classroom – lab time just over. She was looking forward to something a little more productive than what she had learnt from the School Librarian. All he had to say, cleaning his glasses as he gave her some peculiar looks – which were probably English - was that Willow had simply been a ‘student who returned her books promptly.’ He seemed to think it was a great compliment – though she had got the impression that there was something more going on there. When she had said Willow’s name for the first time… he had reacted. And again when she had asked where she might find the Computer Science teacher.
This should be better… Willow had evidently been good with computers. This teacher had to remember her then didn’t she? Tara hoped so.
This teacher was the first to actually show some concern and ask how Tara had got her name. Security, despite all that happened around here, was obviously something for the hours after sundown and whilst computer security was not something Tara had even really considered she was pleased that this teacher had some clue about it.
“How did you get this list?” the teacher asked Tara, waving the print out of faculty members who had taught Willow Rosenberg.
Tara just gave her an apologetic smile. She might not like Snyder, first, second and third impressions all counted – but she wasn’t going to reveal him as the source of this list.
“Never mind,” Miss Calendar, J, said. “What do you want to know?”
“D-Do you remember Willow Rosenberg, Miss Calendar? Can you tell me about her?” Tara asked without preamble. She knew that she had leapt into the questions much too fast. She hadn’t even waited for Miss Calendar to confirm that she even remembered Willow. Tara needed to hear something about the dream woman. Something other than she returned her books promptly.
“Call me Jenny, only my students call me Miss Calendar,” she smiled at the younger woman who seemed a little nervous. Perhaps it was just the slight vocal problem though. “Sometimes not even them.”
“I-I might be one of your students... I’m coming back to take a few classes, so if you don’t mind…”
“You’re the one coming back to school to graduate, who works for the Mayor?” Miss Calendar’s eyes narrowed a touch, looking her over. The teacher seemed momentarily cautious, then brightened again. “Well anyone who has a full time job can still call me Jenny, okay?” Her smile was one filled with genuine warmth despite that lapse.
Tara smiled. “Okay. B-But Willow, did you know her?”
“Yes I knew her. I liked her… she was the first of my students to, well, you know.” There was an awkward silence.
Here in Sunnydale it was nice to find someone who wasn’t blasé about death, Tara thought. “Y-Yes I know.”
Jenny seemed to drift off for a second before she started to speak again. “She was really great, she could really have been something – she was pretty much everything a teacher could have wanted. Attentive, bright, contributing… always handed her homework in, always got A’s. Always asked for the extra reading that showed someone was actually listening to you at all. But that wasn’t,” Jenny remembered, “the best thing about her.”
“Wh-what was?” This was what Tara was here for. This… to know Willow. To know the best things about her.
“She had a kind soul. She was quiet outside of class, you could see that a lot of the other kids either just ignored her… or didn’t like her. She was brainy, which alienated some, a bit quiet I guess – so others ignored her. She wasn’t exactly a geek, but not exactly popular either. But she was nice. She was kind. Helped me a lot when I first got here. You know, setting stuff up – getting to know the school and the curriculum they had already covered. She didn’t have an unkind bone in her body. And then she was… gone.”
Tara just sat and looked as Jenny remembered. The feelings so clearly emanating, the expressions, from the teacher told her as much as the words could. This wasn't a teacher, like some of the others, who had just paid lip service to the qualities of a student they didn’t really remember – but didn’t want to admit it. This was someone who really knew Willow, and would also have wanted to know her better. Just like Tara did.
But they were both too late.
“She was a little shy I guess… which made what happened all the more shocking,” Jenny told her.
“I-I guess losing your first student must have been tough. It must always be,” Tara agreed. There were bound to have been more from Miss Calendar’s classes over the time after that.
“Oh no… I mean yeah, you’re right about that – but she wasn't the first to die from my class. I pretty much teach the entire school in IT, it’s a mandatory subject and well I’m the only one. I knew the ones who died before her.”
Tara could tell that Miss Calendar felt their deaths too. Then why…? “But you said that she was the first one…” Tara was sure that Jenny had said that, she remembered it clearly.
“Don’t you know?” Jenny looked at Tara surprised then suddenly curious. “Why do you want to know about Willow anyway?”
“Know what?” Tara asked her ignoring the why.
“I’m not sure that…”
“Know what?” Tara pressed, insistent on having the full facts.
Jenny Calendar sighed succumbing to either the force of Tara’s personality or the desire to talk about someone that she had liked. “I thought you knew. Most people did… It was kind of hard to miss.” Her voice was sad… muted, and the feelings that were evident… Tara started to get the most horrible feeling about what was coming.
What other first could there be?
“Willow was killed,” Miss Calendar started, “but she…” The teacher stopped, unable to go on.
Tara didn’t need her to. She knew. “C-came back,” Tara completed. “She came back… as one of them.”
“You didn’t know did you? That she was a vampire?” Jenny could see that Willow meant something to the younger woman, and then to be told that she was a vampire... That wasn’t something that she should have forced onto the younger woman.
Tara ignored the question. Was this why she had been dreaming? Because somehow Willow was still here in Sunnydale? “So she is out there? In town… in the night?” Willow was one of the things that she had to destroy. Oh by the goddess… Willow was one of the things that had killed her family… and in this town, here in the seat of the Master’s power, it was likely that she worked directly for him. She killed for him…
She is my enemy.Know your enemy Tara. Yes sir.
Why am I dreaming about her? Why do I [b]feel her?The turmoil in her mind was made up of all the dreams that she could remember, rushing through her once more. All the feelings that she had carried out of the dreams and into her empty waking world. Out of the darkness and into the sunlight. Where the only Willow Rosenberg that there was now could never, ever go.
Tara knew that she should hate Willow now. Just because of what she was, and somehow she couldn’t. She wanted to know why she was dreaming of a vampire. That vampire. That was all. There was no hate. There was no rage. Just curiosity. She fingered the completed carving she had slipped into her pocket after last nights dream, wanting herself to react more, to throw it across the room in some desperate show of hatred. But the carving just brought it all home to her all the more. It was real and it was tangible… maybe just the unconscious force of her mind, maybe an expression of her desire for something else in her life… but why would she betray herself with these sort of feelings – for a vampire?
Because until right now she hadn’t known? Or had she? Did the dreams somehow tell her that? There were things in them that didn’t, hadn’t, rung true. Hadn’t made sense at the time. She had just assumed that it was because they were part of the dreams and dreams didn’t have to make sense. But if you put this spin on it… it started to make a horrible sort of sense.
Maybe I did sort of know, she admitted to herself.
She missed whatever it was that Jenny had said in the middle of all that mental rambling. She shook her head, forcing herself to focus on the moment again. Time enough for all of this later. “S-Sorry, what was that?” she asked.
“Are you okay Tara?” Jenny asked. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“N-No. You didn’t. It-it was just a shock. I wasn’t expecting… that. What did you say just now though? Please… I need to know.”
“I just said that… well she isn’t out there anymore. She was killed, or whatever it is you do to vampires.”
“Destroyed,” Tara murmured. “You destroy them.”
I destroy them. In this moment the idea made her feel sick.
“Yeah, well she was destroyed last year. A student here did it. Two of them actually,” Jenny admitted, before slowing and realising what she had said – how it was affecting this woman, and also that she was bound to ask who they were.
Tara did.
“Who?”
------------------------
Talking to him was a bit like talking to a stone. Although she guessed that there were more animate stones around. And she had thought that she was quiet… It wasn’t that this Oz was being obstructive… just monosyllabic. If she asked him a direct question then she would get a nice direct answer. But he wasn't big on volunteering information.
“You killed her then, in-in the warehouse?”
All that had got her was “Yes.”
Fortunately she had already spoken to the other one. They seemed to be some sort of anti-vampire coalition or something – Larry and this Oz – although they had used to do that from the school. Now they were at UC Sunnydale – but neither had admitted whether they were still active. Larry had sounded proud when he talked about their limited success, but Oz? He just seemed to get on with it. Tara knew that was the way that you had to go about it really, if you wanted to be successful and to stay alive.
And that
was the first mark of success – staying alive. If you didn’t achieve anything else then staying alive was enough. If you died… you never got another chance.
“You know… that she is definitely d-dead then,” it was a pointless question. Of course he knew. But she couldn’t get over it all… and the worst of it was she didn’t know why she felt that way.
“I dusted her myself. I vote yay.”
Conclusive much? She should really have left it there… but she had one final question for him and wondered if he could give her a better answer than she would have been able to provide if their positions had been reversed. “Wh-what was she like?”
He would have shrugged, she guessed, if he had been a touch more expressive. “A vampire.” There it was. That was what she was. It would have been Tara’s answer if asked about any of her kills. ‘A vampire.’
Well that just said it all now didn’t it? He’d killed her… it. And that was the end as far as he was concerned. Job done. There was no emotion behind his words, neither excitement nor disappointment at the death of the vampire. It surprised her, and she wondered why. For all his reserve… she sensed something about him that she hadn’t been expecting. There was something of the animal in him. Some people had that – a hidden wildness.
In his case well hidden. But not from her. She had enough experience to know that there was something more to this Oz. But at this stage it was just an impression and she had been wrong before.
Besides he'd killed her... killed Willow.
***********
You hear that baby?
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