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Part 38 Kittens...
Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Possibilities (Part 38)
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: Two shorter parts linked together to get us to the new arrival.
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: VW/T with the usual proviso
Notes: Once again take care as this pushes Vamp Willow’s nature.
Thanks To: The usual crew…
The Sidestep Chronicle
Possibilities
By
Katharyn Rosser
“Well that’s just the most unfortunate bit of news that we’ve had all week,” Mayor Wilkins commented as she presented the file to him. With Allan gone he had been leaning on Tara for tasks other than those for which had been hired. Things that Lizzie, his long-time secretary, flat out refused to deal with.
Good for her, Tara thought wishing that some of it she could also avoid.
The Mayor seemed to be making hardly any effort to find a replacement for his former deputy – or to recruit any kind of assistant. He’d said, when she asked him, ‘It just wouldn’t be decent to do that yet. Allan isn’t even cold…’ he’d paused, thinking for a moment, then continued, ‘Well, I imagine that the decomposition is actually keeping him rather warm. All those chemicals at work?’ He looked questioningly at her, seeking an opinion as he often did for the little questions that he loved to puzzle over.
‘Lovely image,’ she had replied under her breath and got on with a part of Allan’s old job. She had no idea what happened to dead bodies once they were in the ground. She didn’t want to find out either.
Taking over some of Allan’s role as Deputy Mayor actually involved a lot less ‘Mayoring’ and far more research and paperwork. The office staff, marshalled by the indomitable Lizzie, were on her side though which made things a lot easier. She’d always kind of had a gift for research anyway.
Perhaps the rest of the staff were a little afraid of her. For some reason she couldn’t pin down. Maybe it wasn’t fear exactly, more like awe. They knew, as well as she did, that Tara was the main obstacle between them and being eaten. The Mayor often needed his staff to work out of office hours; being broadly – if not specifically - responsible for the security of City Hall, it was she who kept them safe. There was a new full-time security consultant now, which should have left her free to go hunting… and to do the ‘special’ briefings for the Mayor. Instead she found herself approached over every little concern they had.
They seemed to trust her more than they did the new guy who was an Acung Demon called Vic. It was probably more about him being new… which meant that she was no longer the most recent arrival. She guessed that, in a town like Sunnydale, one was only an outsider until someone even newer turned up. Now she was on the inside. She found herself quite liking Vic. He didn’t eat people – which was the only thing she personally required of him. And he was good at his job.
It was Tara, though, who was approached to walk people to their car or to come back to the office to walk someone home after dark – and she was happy to do it. She kept them safe and kept the vampires guessing. It also brought her to new locations to hunt.
At first she had thought that their standoffishness was because she had walked into a job with, seemingly, no qualifications. Then as they had warmed to her she had wondered if they being like that because she had found favour with the Mayor.
Her life had made her cynical.
Finally she had realised and accepted that maybe they’d just started to like her. As Daddy had always said, but rarely put into practice, ‘A single word of kindness will take you much further than a thousand angry words.’ She’d tried to live by that. Having no training in the administrative tasks which often seemed to be assigned to her, she relied heavily on the people who brought these reports to her. But that seemed to be okay, because Allan had done the same thing. She trusted them to give her what she needed and like a glorified dogsbody she took that into the Mayor for them. There was a general reluctance, amongst the office staff, to face him with that sort of material except when they had no other option.
This latest report was the most significant and the first one in which she’d actually had any real interest. The Slayer. A new one at that. Sent here to Sunnydale. She didn’t know the source of the Mayor’s information, but to find that out must have taken some doing. She wondered if it had been Lilah, or her firm, that had provided him with the information. The lawyer had left last week, after three days in Sunnydale – lots of meals on expenses. She was getting to appreciate the
conversation she could have with Lilah. With the Mayor there was the whole employer/employee thing going on. Willow… well Willow was animated on some subjects but had no real interest in most others unless she could turn them into a game.
Willow was focused just on blood, hunting, playing and Tara. Sometimes they stretched those things… but really conversation was not so much their thing. It was intimacy. It was not being alone. It was play… it was
being. Something that worked when it never should have. And there was no obvious reason for it.
Lilah, though, just listened, as if focusing on every word. And Tara had listened to her in return. It was sort of like having a friend… though she knew that she couldn’t trust the lawyer. Lilah had proved that by telling the Mayor about Willow.
How Lilah had known, that wasn’t so much of a mystery. Tara had ‘let’ her find out by not forcing Willow to stay away for those three nights. Even if she could have forced Willow… but if she had really wanted to keep that secret then she wouldn’t have allowed what she had allowed. She was still in control of her own apartment, her own life and her own body. She
could have stopped it.
Maybe she had wanted someone to find out. Maybe she just couldn’t keep that secret anymore. Maybe she wanted someone to be happy for her. Or to stop her.
Not that she blamed Lilah, she was the Mayor’s lawyer and this did affect him. How could it not… his assistant with… a vampire? The creature she was supposed to be killing. Nor had he confronted her about it… barely mentioned it so far, in fact. Perhaps she had been wrong to try and hide it… perhaps he understood.
Perhaps he was just being understanding – or letting her make her own mistakes. He was big on that. The whole ‘growing up’ thing. Lilah hadn’t seemed exactly surprised either…
Or perhaps it was that she was just too valuable to his plans to be upset right now. She couldn’t trust his motives… She couldn’t ever really trust him – even though she didn’t think that he’d ever lied to her.
It occurred to her that she had reason to distrust pretty much everyone she knew. But none of them had tried to pretend otherwise. Lilah, the Mayor, Willow…
And now here was this information… it had to have come from Lilah. It bore the stamp of the L.A. lawyer, as far as Tara had been able to figure that out. It was thorough, complete and just what they needed to know at just the right time. There was a name, a location. The name of the Watcher – the English librarian from the High School that she had met, briefly, whilst trying to find out about Willow. The same one who refused to let her take books from his library just because she wasn’t a full time student.
Her own reaction to the news of a Slayer in town was very different to that of the Mayor. “You don’t think that it will be a good thing?” she asked him when he eventually looked up from the file.
“In general I have found, having known of more than a couple, that Slayers are absolutely fine and dandy until they get in your way. Then unless you kill the heck out of them you can’t get on with anything worthwhile.” He smiled in deference to the expression on Tara’s face. “But I am sure that this one will be different. It’s been a good few decades since I knew a Slayer. I’m sure they must have changed the training by now – made them less of a stick in the mud.”
“She’s h-human you know….”
And on my side in this war against the vampires.“I’ve heard some conjecture about that I can tell you,” he waved that idea aside though, “but I wouldn’t ask you to do anything to her. No sir. I know and absolutely respect your limits Tara. You show integrity and that is something that is far too lacking in your generation. When I find someone with that integrity I won’t jeopardise it. Not for anything. Certainly nothing as trivial as a Slayer.” His tone was reassurance itself.
Why couldn’t she quite believe him? “Trivial?” This was a Slayer they were talking about.
The Slayer. Tara had seen one herself – and been impressed. Right up until Kendra got herself killed. “She can help us. She’s fighting, you know, the same things as we are.”
The Mayor gave her a smile. The sort of smile that seemed to say that her naiveté was touching and valued because of it. “You know Tara, that’s why I find I like you so much, so early in our relationship.”
“I-I say stupid things?” she guessed from his reaction.
“You tell me the truth as you see it, which is always refreshing. Tell me what you are thinking.”
The pressure started to mount with that request. Was she going to be responsible for the fate of the Slayer? He might not ask her but… he might ask others to remove the irritation from his town. “W-well I-I just think that a Slayer would fit in well with our plans.” She said ‘our’ deliberately. He had largely left the planning and elimination of the Master to Tara, refusing to interfere and trusting in her judgement. “You suggested that we whittled down the Master’s servants before we confronted him directly – and you were absolutely right. I
would have died if I had faced him… now we have a Slayer to help do that for us. She doesn’t even have to know that she
is helping us. She j-just has to be here to do that.”
“Helping me you mean?” he said. She nodded reluctantly. “That’s alright, I have a thick skin. And it will get thicker.” He laughed. “You really think that she can help you?”
“She can help us.” The ‘us’ was important to say but he was dead right. She was thinking mainly of her own ultimate goal, the destruction of the Master. With a Slayer here in Sunnydale… If the Slayer had been here when she arrived, she might never have made this bargain with the devil. Or at least
a devil, that saw her working for him. She found herself sort of liking the Mayor… but that was just his charm. His goals… she couldn’t agree with those. Never.
With a Slayer here in Sunnydale things would move faster… and that might ensure that her justice was complete before her own true nature was revealed. And turned her. And… it would allow her to spend more time with Willow. Less time on the hunt…
Just the thought of that sent thrills through her and at that moment she wasn’t sure which was more important to her. She knew which should have been though.
“Then by all means, do what you must with this ‘Faith’ – though I assume you will be keeping her away from your Willow?” It was perhaps only the third time that he had directly mentioned the vampire’s name since discovering her link to Tara. He watched her carefully – waiting for a reaction. Waiting to see if Tara would change her position on the Slayer in the light of that.
“If-if she goes near Willow then one of them will die.” She had persuaded Willow, through blatant bribery to stay away from Lilah, but the vampire wouldn’t tolerate a Slayer. Not even for a second, not even for her Kitten, she realised. There was no way that she could. And the Slayer would see Willow and she would see a vampire. One who hunted and killed each and every night. Irredeemable.
That vision, that clarity should have been Tara’s. It should have been exactly that. Exactly why Tara knew she should have staked Willow… before she fell in... Had she fallen? Really fallen?
Never mind, how could she blame a Slayer for feeling like that? You feel what you feel Tara. And the Slayer would feel that she had to destroy Willow.
“And that one won’t be your Willow?”
“Never,” she told him firmly, then realised what she was saying. “N-Not that I would… I mean I would n-never…” Tara spluttered. She couldn’t kill a person – not a real person. And certainly not for just doing what she should have done herself. He couldn’t think that she was threatening to do that could he? To hurt this Faith if she went after Willow? She didn’t need to… Willow would do just fine all by herself.
But then Willow had been destroyed before… No.
“Hey you’re my girl. I know you wouldn’t do anything like that,” he told her soothingly. “And I must say that I admire your devotion to her. I may not agree with your choice of paramour, but I do admire devotion. Wherever I find it.”
He actually sounded pleased. He hadn’t commented much so far on their relationship and he didn’t seem about to say anything further now. She wondered if he was thinking that if the time came that all he had to do was provoke Tara with a threat to Willow. That then she would do whatever he wanted her to.
She wasn't so sure that he was wrong. What was the one thing in this world that was as important to her as anything else? As important even as bringing justice to the Master? Only Willow – and how quickly had that happened? Too fast? Certainly wrong.
“You know,” he said, “Slayers never clean up after themselves,” he commented.
“Well the vampires go, you know, poof.” She gestured with her fingers.
“But there are little smears of dust all over the place… and do we really know what happens when that blows around town? It could be asbestos all over again. Who knows? And what about the demons? Slayers just leave the bodies where they fall. Urghh” he shivered as if there was one in his office, microbes rotting it already. As if it was there on the carpet.
“Yes,” Tara admitted. “That is by far the worst thing about having a Slayer in town, they are so unsanitary,” she even gave him a smile, which he returned ten times over.
“Absolutely right. Now,” he continued after his laughter had subsided. “What’s your first step in getting this Slayer to do what we need her to do then?” The ball was firmly in her court. She just had to run with it.
***********
BLOOD“You’ve been feeding again,” Tara said as she touched Willow’s arm, holding the door open. It was a cool night but the vampire was warm to that touch. Almost warm enough to pretend that she was not… what she was. What if the Slayer had seen Willow?
Tara hadn’t told her about the Slayer. She’d know for a few days and she hadn’t said a word to Willow – terrified that the vampire would rush off to seek a confrontation. Tara needed the Slayer even though they hadn’t met yet. And she needed Willow even more. She didn’t want to lose either.
“Every night,” Willow replied and kissed her. The Kitten knew it and still she made an issue of it… but if it really bothered her that much then Willow believed that Tara would at least have tried to stop her. One way or another. But she never did. “Didn’t play though,” Willow told her, and immediately wondered just why that was. Not playing was simply because there was no fun in it anymore… well very rarely. Even if she started to enjoy it then something stopped her. More often than not now her kills were clean. And quick.
Xander would have thought she was insane.
Maybe I am… insane for the Kitten. But Willow wasn’t sure why she had told her that she didn’t play? Because she didn’t want her to wonder…? So that she could tease Tara so easily. Letting her think that she would. That she did. She could watch the movements of her Kitten’s face as she thought that she might taken her games elsewhere. The Kitten knew the truth as well as she did though. The games they played were just for them. And they were the most and the least of what they were… depending on when you asked.
And if anyone did ask Willow would rip their heart out and feed it to them.
Just because I don’t play doesn’t mean that I won’t look after my Kitten… or kill.Almost meekly the Kitten accepted that and led Willow into the apartment. So soft… and so strong. Willow knew that Tara needed her almost as much as she needed her Kitten. She knew that – and kinda resented it. All she should need was fresh blood… and now she needed a living, breathing, loving, person – this one - to exist. A person who hated what she was as much as Willow despised what she had been before… what Tara still was. A living human.
And there was the cat basket… the stupidly named Miss Kitty lying on her back… feet in the air. Foolish feline. Willow kicked the basket and smiled, pleased to see the young cat jerk out of whatever dream she was in…
“Tired now,” she said. It had been a long, long night. It had taken forever to find anyone stupid enough to be on the streets. She’d almost had to go back to the Bronze for something to eat… and with that place outside the town proper and sun-up so close that would have meant staying there… That would have meant no Kitten for the night.
And that wouldn’t do at all.
The Kitten, she knew, had been asleep. She had spotted Tara out hunting just before midnight and had carefully avoided her. It always seemed best not to force the Kitten to make a choice between her and the ‘innocents’ that she wanted to save from… well things like Willow. After that she had checked the apartment twice. As usual the window was left ajar and both times the Kitten was sleeping. She looked refreshed now, even early in the morning as it was, but Tara would go back for a nap later if Willow wanted to play now. It was how they were forced to exist, living in the outside world together for only a few hours in pre-dawn and after sunset. The apartment was their place together.
Having been told of Willow’s weariness Tara made her way straight to their bed. And it was ‘their’ bed now. It was always harder to get to sleep when she was alone in it. She liked to think that Willow felt the same way, thought that she actually did, but it was just one of the many things that she never actually got around to asking the vampire… because she always feared being told the truth. Sometimes it was easier to live a question, than to live with the answer.
And Willow was her answer.
Not, Tara thought to herself, that Willow was anything but totally genuine. All the ‘good,’ ‘innocent,’ people in this world. And they all lied. It took people who were more or less evil to tell her the truth all the time. Willow, Lilah, the Mayor. Willow, especially, delighted in it… because she knew that the truth hurt Tara sometimes. But it
was the truth.
Willow ran her finger down the Kitten’s back as they reached the bed, and was pleased to see a shiver run through her. But there would be no playtime. That was not what either of them wanted. If she had, she knew that the Kitten would have acquiesced, but more than that the Kitten just wanted to be close. Which was what brought them to a comfortable embrace in that large bed, covers pulled up over them… fingers idly moving in the hair or on the skin of the other. Like rocking each other to sleep… but smaller gestures.
“You have to get up?” Willow asked her, sounding resentful already.
“I have to be in his office at nine,” Tara replied.
“Time enough,” Willow said and snuggled up closer to the Kitten. Four hours together then. It would do. Willow knew that she shouldn’t like this. Not really. That, at best, she should find it inoffensive to be here and to be held by this warm sack of blood. That she should take what pleasure she wanted and then, one day, sacrifice the Kitten and move on. But she wouldn’t. Somehow the Kitten made things better than they were without her. Willow liked the world as it was… it was full of food. It was full of fun… and it was bad. Which made even more weird that something good made the world a better place for her.
“You never ask me,” Willow said.
Tara smiled to herself, Willow so often did that. She spoke as if the listener should know precisely what she meant… when often they had no idea. Actually she was pretty much the only person who listened to the vampire. “What?”
“You never ask me not to feed.”
“I’m, you know, a-afraid to ask.” Just like Tara was afraid to tell…
The Kitten is afraid of me… she’s afraid that I would hurt her? She had to know that hadn’t been an option since before they even met. “Why?”
“If-if I asked you drink to from a bag of blood, you might refuse. Then where would I have left to go? I would have asked you to change what you are and you would have refused. Then I might have to, you know, make a gesture that would hurt us both,” Tara explained softly, playing with Willow’s delicate ear.
“You’d leave Kitten?” the vampire asked her.
“I don’t know if I could ever really leave. No matter what…”
“Good… because you can’t. I won’t let you and I would always find you again,” Willow said. A grip of superhuman strength tightened on Tara briefly then relaxed enough to be both comfortable and comforting. “Always”
“I don’t like what you are… what you do, but I won’t ask you to change that. You don’t ask me to stop killing vampires,” Tara explained.
“Don’t care about vampires.”
That brought another little grin to Tara’s face even though the reverse would never be true… she felt every kill that Willow made. The deaths were building up like a pressure around her heart. They were both lone hunters yet so attached to the prey it hurt them. “I don’t want you to refuse me… and I never want you to lie to me.” That was why she didn’t ask.
“Don’t lie… the truth is more fun.” And usually it was. Tell a lie and it might hurt – until the lie was discovered. The truth did not change, so the hurt it caused endured, unchanging. A promise of the truth was much, much more effective for her purposes. With her prey and with her lover.
“And if I did ask you to stop,” Tara said slowly, quietly.
“I’d refuse… but not lie. Nobody knows me like you do.”
That was the truth.
*************
You hear that baby? I am going nowhere.
by pikescoob » Wed May 15, 2002 6:24 am 
at: 5/15/02 2:26:17 pm