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Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 16 (258))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: Willow finds a familiar face. Or shirt…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: Well, there was a cliff-hanger at the end of the last part but one that is – slightly – related to what happens here with Willow. What? You thought she’d end up in the Halls and not meet anyone that she knew? There had to be at least one familiar face and again, it’s a character I enjoy writing.
Thanks to: Anyone who has better ideas than I do. It’s good someone keeps me humble (!!)
Willow had finally caught sight of the creature – though since it wasn’t from her world it was technically a ‘demon’ like everything else – that had been following her.
Unexpectedly though it was… kind of cute.
Kind of.
The little demon was only about half her height and if its species’ gender worked like they did on earth then evidence available from the lack of clothes suggested it was definitely male. Outside of those two qualities it had the skin of a snake, the ears of a those old movie Gremlins and eyes that were disturbingly like a cow’s. All big, brown and sympathetic…
And once it had plucked up its courage to approach her it chattered incessantly. As in it really didn’t shut up.
Didn’t look or act too bright either, but perhaps it was just young rather than dim. There was nothing about it that appeared dangerous or anything other than… cute. But that quality definitely came from the eyes and the chittering rather than its skin because… well, she’d always had trouble with conceptualising snake’s as cute and she was fairly sure it was nothing to do with her gender preferences either. But yeah, it was cute in its way…
Plus the fact that it seemed more wary of her than she was of it, which was a definite bonus.
The alternative, being hunted down by something big, scary – undoubtedly with teeth - and probably immune to anything she could throw at it wasn’t something she was interested in contemplating right now.
And after nearly an hour of wandering it – he – was the only thing she’d seen apart from rock. So instead of talking to herself she’d been talking to – or at – it instead. The chitters seemed to be coming in response too, so she actually felt like she was having a conversation, even if neither of them understood the other.
She wandered because there didn’t seem to be any hurry to go in any particular direction. Any one – or all - of them could be wrong so until she knew better it was probably better to save her energy.
What she was though was reassured by the fact that this creature even saw her. It reacted to her. It knew she was there. Ergo… there wasn’t anything about her condition – being alive – that was stopping the dead from seeing her and presumably vice versa.
Always assuming it was dead, but if it wasn’t then it was in the same boat as her and at least she wasn’t alone here. Either way it was a win. Small company was better than no company at all.
“Sorry, little fella. I told you, I don’t have anything for you to eat.”
She hadn’t gotten around to scratching it under the chin yet, mostly because it was definitely looking for her to give it something and she didn’t want it to take her fingers off instead. Or to find out if it was even equipped to do that.
That raised another question though, assuming it was – in her terms - dead then why did the dead have to eat anyway? Or was it just something automatic? A remembered behaviour? Or perhaps some sort of punishment… perpetual hunger and nothing to assuage it? Not a comforting thought since that would mean that there had to be some sort of higher power that was in control and interested in misery.
Down the line, that was something anyone would have to worry about.
And there she was, assuming this place was purgatory or something along those lines. Point of fact, she had no idea what it was.
Or even that she was in the right realm. All she knew was that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Which thought had led to a name for the little fella. “I’ll call you Toto, okay?”
Toto didn’t give any sign that was good or bad for him and just chittered at her some more. It seemed to be asking her to hurry up though. “I don’t know which way to go?” she said, gesturing in a motion she hoped conveyed that one way was pretty much as good as another.
Maybe she should’ve followed a wall around or something, but based on how long she’d been wandering Willow estimated that she was at least a mile from a wall that blocked her way now anyway and there was little sign of much changing ahead of her.
At her gesture though, instead of following her, Toto turned and scampered off in a different direction, about forty-five degrees around from where she’d been headed. Shrugging – because one way was as good as another – she set off in pursuit and Toto speeded up to a brisk walking pace once he was sure that she was following him.
All the while there was a cheery, ongoing commentary through chitter – which may or may not have been an obsolete demonic social network. Pleased with herself for finding a funny in the circumstances – even if it had been a decade since anyone actually used its namesake - Willow turned her attention to what she was going to do now that she was making progress.
Picking a direction was progress, but she was going to need a better guide than this. No offence to Toto, but she didn’t speak whatever language he was speaking – if it was a language at all – and the Halls of the Dead were full of… well, they should have been full of the dead.
The fact that the dead seemed to be curiously absent was one of those good news/bad news things. Bad news because there was one of them she needed to find and then figure out how she was going to get out of here and good news because hey, they were dead, there were a lot of them and a tiny – but significant – percentage of them had quite probably been killed by her.
“But what are the odds of meeting someone I killed?” she asked.
Toto stopped, looked back at her with a quizzical sound.
“Never mind,” she said, making a shooing gesture. “Keep going.”
And after a while they were making progress; some definition was coming to the cavern. It was narrowing and the roof had come into view again. If you’re in trouble, ask a friendly local.
Talking of which, after another twenty minutes walking, they were wherever Toto had led her. The little demon stopped and gestured at the dark opening. A dark, foreboding opening.
He seemed cheerful though, for a mini-demon who didn’t seem to do anything but chitter and wait for wanderers to pass by that he could bring to the deep, foreboding opening.
“I don’t want to go in there,” she said under her breath.
“You don’t want to go in there,” another voice said.
The owner of the voice stepped from behind a column and Toto hissed at it.
It was a voice that was familiar. So was the… shirt?
“Ethan Rayne?”
“In the flesh, so to speak.”
“What are you doing here?” Willow asked. He looked… younger. Younger than when she’d last known him and by now he must’ve been… He was dead. Yay, he was dead and she was in the right place!
“Yes,” he said, he must’ve understood her realisation. “I’m dead. As the proverbial dodo. But, like everything, here I am.”
“Everything?” she asked. “I’ve only seen you and him.”
“And you stand a very good chance of not seeing anything more, Miss Rosenberg,” he said. “Not if you go into there.” He pointed at the opening.
Toto was hissing, clearly agitated. More than once he bounded up to the – dead - warlock and punched him in the leg to very little effect before dashing away out of reach again. Ethan didn’t even react to the taunting.
“You’re not saying that Toto would kill me?” she asked, since the attacks on Ethan were about as effectual as it might’ve been had Toto been a five year old child.
“Toto?”
“Him. It. No, him. He’s definitely a boy demon.”
“Hmm, you really shouldn’t start naming things as soon as you find them,” Ethan said. “But that is exactly what I’m saying.” The demon was almost out of control now, its anger and frustration bubbling higher and higher. Threatening a tantrum which Willow felt she was well equipped to deal with. “Tell me, if he’s Toto, does that make you Dorothy? Or the Wicked Witch?”
“I’m not in the mood for you, Mister Rayne.”
“Whereas I’m quite in the mood for you,” he said as suavely as he could manage and – being somewhat younger in appearance than he had been – it might well have worked on some people. What with the accent, the handsome good looks and a shirt that wasn’t quite so bad as she remembered his worst being… “It’d be a shame to cut this short.”
“So what’s in there that’s so bad?” Willow asked. The extension of the cave – unlike the rest of this place that was lit but with no discernable light source – was absolutely black. Like something had sucked all the light out of it.
“As one of those dreadful movies that were your country’s chief cultural export suggested, ‘That isn’t a cave.’”
Ethan stood back, willing to let her go in there, she was sure. If he was right about the danger, even if she died in there, he’d shrug his shoulders and move on with whatever they were calling this instead of a ‘life.’
And that was exactly what Toto wanted. While she had little reason to follow him, she had even less to follow Toto apart from a demonic kind of cuteness.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, two and a half feet of Naranje demon only serves one purpose, really I’m surprised you’ve not run across them before. They’re quite distinctive.”
“We don’t do this anymore,” Willow said, feeling like she’d have to explain why she might know the term. Besides, she’d been more sort of action girl. They’d had an ex-Watcher to handle the knowledge and he’d retired.
“We? Oh yes, you were rather wasted on the lovely Miss Maclay. Now there was a woman who knew how to kill a demon. And how’s my old friend Ripper? I’ve not seen him around here, so he must still be in your world?”
“Yeah, he’s fine – look, what’s this Nerenje demon?”
“Naranje,” he corrected.
“Nerenje, Naranje, what is it?”
“Easier to show you, old girl.”
“Less of the old, please.”
“Quite. Now – if you’d be so good as to toss one of those balls of flame I remember you using, just into the entrance of that cave?”
“There?”
“Right there will be lovely.”
“What’ll happen?” she asked suspiciously. He didn’t do anything that wasn’t for his own personal gain, in the service of chaos or possibly both, but how was he going to gain from that?
“Well, we might want to take a few steps back out of general respect for your abilities, but your little friend will probably start to object once he realises that the game is up.”
“You know,” Willow said, “you’re just as infuriating as I remember you being.”
“This place doesn’t promote change,” Ethan told her. “It’s not really what it’s for. Now, if you please?”
Where was the harm? Well okay, in tossing fire around like a play thing there could be all sorts of harm… And it was a toss up as to who she should trust. There was the cute, mini demon she’d just met and hadn’t been anything but helpful – so far – and there was Ethan Rayne who’d never actually tried to kill her but had been more than willing to let it happen in the service of some very serious vampires.
So who to believe?
Insufferable he might be, but she tended to think she could trust Ethan at least this far. Whatever he wanted it wasn’t going to be her death – and how would that work down here anyway? Perhaps he knew, perhaps that was the thing?
“Okay, okay…” she stretched out her hand and manipulated the elements to send a jet of flame into the mouth of the cave.
Except it wasn’t a cave at all. Damn it, she hated it when the bad guys were right.
Over the fierce shriek of protest from Toto there was a deeper bellow from the ‘mouth’ and the air itself seemed to shake. She doubted what she was seeing but then realised that it was the blackness that was surging towards her.
It shivered, shimmered as it came for her. The entire ‘surface’ of what had appeared to be a cave entrance stretching out towards her, rolling over the ground and she could see it was… sticky.
Willow stumbled back two or three steps as she realised what it reminded her of. Those lizards, the ones that stuck out their tongue about the length of their body, lightning fast to catch a bug.
And if it was the lizard then she was the bug. Fire bug…
“A little further,” Ethan encouraged as she moved backwards, but it was already too late.
The wall of darkness, sticky darkness, slammed into her but seemed to have reached its limit. That was a relief. An icky, disgusting relief. But she’d been just far enough away -
Except it started to pull her back towards it, she was stuck to it.
“Some flame might help,” he said as she struggled not to be pulled back into its grasp.
No shit, Sherlock.
It was hard to focus though, it was like sinking into soft cushions with nothing solid to hold onto or push against. As it pulled her back, she was enfolded and caught up. He was right though, she had to make herself an unappealing meal. A very unappealing meal and not for the digestive effects. Too hot to swallow.
“Hope you don’t like Mexican,” she said and let loose with the flames Ethan had encouraged.
The new bellows of pain told her it was having an effect and – good news – the mucus or whatever it was that was coating her didn’t seem to be flammable. In fact it seemed to be helping to protect her because this was beyond point blank. This was tantamount to setting fire to herself and hoping it hurt enough for it to let her go.
When that didn’t happen right away, Willow found some sort of calm in desperation. Whether it was trying to take her somewhere or to eat her right away, she wasn’t in the mood and it wasn’t what she was here for. She’d come too far to get swallowed up by some cave sized gecko.
Her mind snapped into focus, pushing the very natural panic aside. That was a skill she’d had back from the old days and one she was pleased still worked for her.
Now that she was focused though… She ignored the fact that the target was right there, enfolding her, and worked the element of fire as if this was some sort of big bad she was standing off from. She sought out the most pain she could inflict, jets of flame, balls of it, simple ignition. She felt the heat as the explosions were right up against her but she was protected from the effects by her own thermal control and also by the disgusting stuff that she was getting coated with. After all this she was expecting to be at least singed, but the only thing she could smell burning was flesh.
Not hers, which was a plus.
What it was that finally made it spit her out she wasn’t sure, but eject her out it did. In the same way she’d been enfolded, she was rolled outwards – and at speed – by the force of the musculature and pushed away from it, sent rolling across the ground.
But if the ‘cave’ was done with her then Toto wasn’t. Before she’d even come to a stop, the mini-demon was on her, leaping from a long way away and landing right where she’d ended up – predators instincts. All at once teeth appeared - vicious, barbed and deadly sharp. Claws had grown and were caught up in her hair, scratching at her.
This was a five years olds tantrum that could really hurt her now.
“No,” Willow said and pushed back with the magic. She wasn’t as adept as Tara would’ve been, but a simple wall of air between her and the demon was enough of a shield, then she just expanded it and pushed it away – taking the demon with it.
“You might want to toast it,” Ethan said from somewhere near her.
But it was fleeing and she let it go. Not such an easy mark as it had thought, clearly.
“Thanks for the help,” she said as Ethan stepped up to stand by her head.
“I told you to stand back.”
“A little late!”
“I also stopped you just walking in there – and you would’ve.”
He was right about that. He might not have saved her life, but he’d saved her some trouble, that was true. And it was possible, in her panic if he hadn’t warned her, that the ‘cave’ might’ve succeeded in subduing and eating her.
Tara would’ve been so damned mad. She’d never have heard the end of it.
“Yeah, well… thanks for that too.” She held out a hand. “Help me up?”
“You’re mistaking me for someone who believes in chivalry,” he said.
“Such a gentleman.”
“Actually, I’m big believer in feminism. Not only do I find powerful women so very alluring but I also believe that a woman that’s covered in Naranje mucus has a perfect right to help herself up.”
And he was right, she was covered in… Yeah, they were calling it mucus. There was no getting away from that.
“Yuck.”
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If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.
Chance in *Chance*
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. (The sounds of feet hitting the ground with nobody in sight kinda reminded me of those Chucky movies with the possesed doll killing people.) Is it friend or foe? Since she's in the halls, I'm leaning towards the latter. Can't she just hurl some fire balls at it? Kick ass now, take names later? I felt sorry for Giles. It's hard to accept the fact that his best days are past.
