Sidestep - Third Chronicle (COMPLETE)

Grimm · **Posted:** Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:17 pm

Lost huh? I watched the first season and then 'lost' interest. So, I never would have caught that. However, while I was watching a H.I.M.Y.M rerun last week, I snickered when Lily (Alyson Hannigan) said that Tara would be a great name for her future daughter. Next time give us something easier!!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:27 pm

SMGOVAN - I pretty much watched lost in a burst of 4 seasons and only had to wait for 5 so it didn't have chance to lose my interest LOL

Next part in a moment...

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:27 pm

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 23 (265))
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: Tara is still possessed.
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: Yup, still not back with Willow… This isn’t very pleasant. It’s not supposed to be. Vampires are evil. Lots of demons are evil. Possession is bad. How did a show about a vampire slayer lose touch with that? The warnings from the last Tara part – overblown as they may have been – still apply.
Thanks to: Those who pop out of lurkerdom to say nice things. Good to know you’re there.

If Tara could’ve cried, she would’ve.

The tears wouldn’t come though. Voluntarily or otherwise. She couldn’t wipe her nose. She couldn’t even just give up, collapse and drool.

The despair existed and the demon, Eyghon, was wallowing in it. Any other time, she’d have hidden it away – not let it see what she was feeling but there was nowhere that she could hide it. It was inside her. It knew all of her. It touched every thought, every feeling and every part of her. Her despair was like…

Honey, it provided the comparison to her. Just to prove the point.

The sensation of the demon within her – or as Eyghon would have it her being trapped inside the demon – was bad enough. But she only had to think of how she’d been raised, what had happened to her Mom and a generations of Maclay women before her to be tipped over into that need to sob.

But she couldn’t cry. She couldn’t do anything.

Just to make things worse the demon was casually cruel.

It didn’t sneak through her mind, thoughts and feelings. It was very obvious in it’s intent and it’s interests. It was like watching someone you hated first rummage through your underwear, then find your diary and finally sit down to read it while you cat purred in their lap.

Like it but worse. You wrote in a diary, you were choosing to take that risk when you did so. In her mind there was nothing edited out. Perhaps even less self-justification or delusion.

I know you as you really are.

Not that it had been hurting her, which she was sure it could’ve done with ease, all the same the sensation was so intimate and so alien at the same time… But she’d agreed to this, given it permission through the judgement of her friends and in her more sober moments – when it wasn’t focused on her – she had to concede it was still the right decision.

Eyghon knew what it was doing to her though… Of course it did.

For a while there it had started to suggest that it was behind the initial possession of a Maclay woman, using her powers to abuse the trust of those around her, hurt her own family.

It had wanted her to hate it and to feel the disgust at having it inside of her now if that had been true. But she was – sadly – getting used to its presence, learning her way around it too. Disproving what it claimed hadn’t taken more than a few moments while it had still been chuckling – audibly – at her immediate discomfort.

What if it had been true? What if it had been to blame? Had something very like this happened to one of her ancestors?

More to the point, what selfish deal would one of her ancestors have made with the demon if there truly had been one involved? Because it had proven that – at the end of the day – it’s power came from bargains. Ill-made ones offering it much more than its hosts – at least in the end - but bargains all the same. It was most a threat when it was betrayed and cheated and by any stretch of the words that was what Rupert and his friends had done to it all those years ago.

They’d dug their own graves.

What Ethan Ryane – who they were effectively given to the demon - had done by distracting it from him, tattooing Jenny and removing his own? That burned the demon like a brand. She felt it. Yes, it had gone after Jenny and given every appearance that it would’ve been satisfied with her but in truth it was the original four that it wanted and Ethan had offended it more than the rest. Played the deal better, taken more from it.

And now she was facilitating it’s hunting of him just as it was facilitating her way into the Halls of the Dead.

Quid pro quo. A bargain.

Chalk up another deal with a devil for her… Even though she thought she’d left those kind of things behind years ago. Pre-Willow. Pre-live Willow at least.

Demons. She was beginning to remember why she’d struggled for so hard and so long against them. It wasn’t simple memory anymore, it was very real.

And that just amused Eyghon even more. Its taunts were crippling because it had access to every part of her, inside and out. But it didn’t know her. It didn’t understand her. There were concepts that were as alien to it – even after centuries of doing this sort of thing – as most of it’s mind was to her.

It knew about - but didn’t understand - love. It didn’t understand loyalty in the abstract sense. It couldn’t understand why she’d risk her own life for someone else, even if it knew very well that was what humans could - and often would - do.

And it was that lack of understanding that she felt helped to keep her sanity from slipping. Because that really would have been the end if it’d been able to put those facts and feelings together…

It could have damaged or destroyed a part of her even in this short time, with the lever of her mother…

And yes, it knew that. The failure to do it then was it’s own punishment. Constrained from hurting her, its revenge on that front was more and more petty while hers was to sink deeper into appreciation of the things that it couldn’t isolate or understand.

In truth, she was well aware that by the time they started down into the Hellmouth, they were heartily sick of each other.

As for how they traversed the Hellmouth to one of the unknown number of realms that existed out there and coincided here? Well, Eyghon confirmed the answer. You simply had to want it otherwise random things would happen. And while it couldn’t just go there unbidden, the Hellmouth certainly knew the way. It wasn’t just a gateway, there was… an intelligence of sorts there. It reacted, it knew what it was supposed to do.

In their case it knew what they wanted.

But she was the one who wanted it.

And boy, did she want it.

Willow was there, she’d been alone for what? Nearly two days now?

It was time. It was long past time she was there to help her wife and suddenly… they were somewhere else.

This was the Hall of the Dead then?

It didn’t look much like anything very special, not that different from caves that the Mayor inhabited – brighter perhaps but definitely nothing special. Then again one cave probably looked very much the same as another wherever you were, she supposed.

“Right,” Jenny said as Tara felt her body being taken forwards, into the mouth of this new place.

“Hmm?” the demon wondered with her voice. It’d picked up her tone, her inflections. It used them to bother the others. Again, a subtle punishment for its summoning. Petty really, but it was so constrained by the bargain that it took what it could get.

“That was the deal, you’re here now. It’s time for you to release Tara.”

“Perhaps you’d open up to me again, Jenny Calendar?” Eyghon asked.

“Get out of my friend.”

“Or else…?”

“Or else I call you in breach of your agreement and I think you know how that will end up.”

Tara felt the flare of anger, the moment of fear at that threat being made. The demon was crafty though, it wondered if Jenny had simply been given the words, without understanding what they meant. Honestly, Tara didn’t know – after all the others had kept such things from her for this very reason. So it asked it’s own question. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” Jenny asked, momentarily confused and that confusion left a surge of excitement through Eyghon.

“Do you understand what that means?”

Jenny’s hesitation was telling to someone who’d known her as long as Tara had, but the demon wasn’t fooled by it either. “You’ve just been given the words to use, pitiful human. You were interesting, as a vessel but you don’t understand what you’re doing. You’ve forgotten what your people once knew. You’re no more than a caster of bones. A conjurer of parlour tricks.”

Jenny controlled her obvious anger and used those words she’d been given. And she made them sound impressive. “Eyghon, I call you in breach of a bargain fair made. I call for the Arbiter to cast you out.”

Eyghon hissed, Tara wasn’t sure she could’ve made the same noise if she wanted to. And yet it came from within her and she felt the hatred even though it wasn’t hers.

The second repetition of three had the same effect. “You don’t know what you what you’re doing, human. Calling the Arbiter? Here? She’ll tear you limb from limb just for inconveniencing her. There’s a reason we do not come to this place.”

Jenny didn’t hesitate. “And what will she do to you? Eyghon, I call you in - ”

All at once Tara found herself wracked by sensation, every muscle contorted and twitched. Air was driven from her and sucked back in a huge gulp – and that had been something she’d controlled. She’d needed the breath and it had come – she was getting her own body back?

That was the way it happened, as over the course of a few seconds Eyghon withdrew from her. Bit by bit the demon’s hold on her body was broken, leaving her – once again – slumped and collapsing. This time it wasn’t teleportation though, it was like the cutting of the strings and her momentary inability to remember how to control her limbs and to balance… all that good stuff you learned as a kid. Breathing, fortunately, was something she still knew how to do.

But the demon wasn’t totally gone. It lingered in her mind, a stretched connection. Weaker and weaker. It left nasty, evil thoughts there. Memories/fears/dream/fantasies it had. What it would do to her, to those around her.

It wanted to hurt her and this was the only way it could do that now

Jenny had frozen as all of this started, Tara turned her face to her friend. “It’s me,” she managed.

“Really?”

Obviously there was no sign of the demon, hence why Jenny might be feeling some doubt.

“It’s me,” Tara croaked, feeling like Eyghon had dragged itself out through her throat after all that rasping and evil-voice.

“Prove it,” Jenny said.

What? How? The demon had access to all of her memories, all of her thoughts and fears and dreams. There was nothing about her it couldn’t have known if it wanted to. Maybe it hadn’t understood everything, but it would’ve known what she’d have said in any given situation.

How was she supposed to prove it to Jenny?

It had known all about she and Willow. The secret moments they never admitted to anyone else. The intimate murmurings of love and devotion to each other.

All at once that thought brought the bile from her stomach. It rose filling the back of her throat and she didn’t even try to keep anything down, pushing herself up and away from the ground as she threw up.

Jenny could only help by pushing her hair back, wrapping it behind her neck and out of the way and after that left the hand on her back, rubbing gently. “Yeah,” her friend said. “It’s you.”

Tara gasped, trying to take in some air before it started again while Jenny comforted her. God, she hated this. Three or four times in her life. A couple from over-indulgence and once from bad prawns…

Now one from being infested by a damned demon.

“Look at it this way,” Jenny said. “It’s gone and you’re not being Exorcist sick, which would be traditional.”

“Ha - ” Tara started to say, but broke off to finish emptying her stomach. Could there be anything left?

“It’s not the black heart of a demon you’re vomiting up either,” her friend said. “You okay?”

“Much better,” she lied, not even having anything to wash her mouth out. Jenny was right though, it was just… well, breakfast. And the accumulated loss of control of her body. Hours of not being able to move, sick with worry about Willow and the intrusion into her thoughts.

It was enough to make anyone sick, no matter how cast iron your stomach.

And when she thought about that again, she retched. But there was nothing left.

When she apologised for spitting, Jenny shushed her and found a tissue from somewhere. A mom of many years, she’d not given up on the habit of secreting them around her clothes.

“We should’ve brought supplies,” Tara said.

“Hungry after that?” Jenny wondered.

“No, I mean like water.”

Looking around, Jenny could obviously see what she meant. The place was pretty barren. “Yeah. Could get to be a problem. Lets worry about it when we have to though.”

After that it felt pretty much like a priority now, but keeping on spitting was helping – a little anyway.

“Where’s Eyghon?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t care,” Tara told her. “Lets go.”

For a start the smell of – well, the smell of it was keeping her feeling queasy and secondly any distance they could between them and the place the demon had exited could only be a good thing – no matter whether this realm was filled with the dead.

It was also where Willow was. No matter how far away Willow was, she was closer now than she had been a few minutes ago.

“I’m hurt that you don’t care,” a rasping voice said, stepping out of the shadows.

“Eyghon?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, yes,” the demon said.

Tara noticed Jenny looking at her. The demon had kept her visage, but twisted it. Bumps, horns of bone and open sores covered her face and exposed skin. Also it seemed to have lost some of what she had up top. A more masculine, larger and demon tortured version of herself.

“That’s just sick,” Jenny said.

“Isn’t it?” The demon beamed, blackened – sharp – teeth exposed to them both. A long, fork tongued flickered lasciviously.

So recently had it been inside her that she – unfortunately – knew exactly what the insinuation behind that action was supposed to mean. The way Jenny shuddered as well suggested she remembered her own infestation so many years before.

Tara hadn’t even known her then, but it was plainly fresh enough in her mind. And that didn’t bode well for putting this behind her any time soon.

“I know what its like,” Jenny said to her. “I know.”

“Then you know we shouldn’t think about it,” Tara replied. “Come on.”

“What about me?” Eyghon asked. “Don’t you want my help? I can be so very helpful.”

The fact that it had kept – and twisted – her form showed that the demon only cared about continuing what it considered its revenge. Ethan wasn’t the end of it for Eyghon, but it did want him so very, very much. She understood that. It wanted Ethan Rayne much more than it wanted to do anything to either of them – especially bound by it’s deal as it was.

It couldn’t touch them here or at home, but demons were tricky things. They could accomplish their goals in less than obvious ways. Encouraging others to perform harm, giving their position away or otherwise screwing up what they were trying to do. That would ruin their day and leave the demon considerably satisfied.

All of it within the word it had given.

Demons, you couldn’t ever trust them.

So she just walked away from Eyghon, ignoring it. After a moment of hesitation Jenny fell in beside her. “Isn’t that just a little childish?” Jenny asked. “Walking away?”

“I certainly thought so,” Eyghon said, managing a better imitation of her voice when it tried.

“Just ignore it,” Tara said. “Maybe it’ll go away.”

Both of them laughed, one at the actual – quite feeble – joke and the other more cruelly at the sentiment.

“Keep walking Tara Maclay-Rosenberg. In a matter of minutes you’ll wish you’d listened to me and believe me, I will be there to see it.”

“Tara - ” Jenny said, hand on her arm.

“You know what it’s like,” Tara said. “You’ve been there – I don’t want that thing anywhere near me.”

“But it does know the demon realms,” Jenny said. “You’re right, I hate it. I hate what it knows about me and I hate that there’s a piece of it still in me – even if it was finally useful and let me come here. But it knows these places.”

Tara looked back at her own distorted face. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “If it could come here on it’s own then it would’ve done already. It hasn’t been here before, it doesn’t know this place. I know that much. It’s a stranger in a strange land, just like us.”

“You took that from its mind?”

Actually she hadn’t thought enough about it to get that from the demon before it’d exited from possessing her. But that seemed the logical conclusion, and she really didn’t want it around them. Especially not when Willow saw them. What she’d done to get here and what Willow had to know about that were two very different things. At least for now.

But the good thing was that she could feel Willow a lot more clearly now.

No question that her wife was alive, she even had a sense of the direction.

And Willow was this-away. She didn’t need to answer Jenny’s question. They had no choice but to push on.

Then she felt Willow’s sense of alarm.

“Come on. Quickly.”

******************

Kajun · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2011 12:47 pm

Katharyn, Wow, if Eyghon ever managed to understand the concept of love and sacrifice he could become an unstoppable force. As it is, it takes someone with pretty strong willpower to resist his sick mind games. Thankfully, Tara has that –in more ways than one! Now Eyghon can, and does, use what he gleaned from Tara’s mind to inflict continued torment on her. He obviously didn’t expect Tara to dismiss him so quickly and oozed pathetic desperation. LOL. Tara is on a mission and she is an unstoppable force. If he was smart, he would take a page from Spike and join to team that’s gonna win!

One of the many things I love about this story is that it is unpredictable and consistently moving forward. Too many stories are formulaic: X does Y then Y does X, change the chapter number and repeat which is reminiscent of Amy spinning on a wheel and equals ZZZZZ. This story, however, is intriguing, clever and highly entertaining. There is a nice balance between providing detail and allowing the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks.

Anyhoo.. glad Eyghon’s taunting didn’t work on Jenny and now Tara is, for the most part, free of the demon possession. That was gross and freaky. We don’t even get a chance to breathe though.. Tara knows Willow is in trouble. ACK! Who is at already?? LOL. Great update!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2011 1:52 pm

On a break from a new part of Lesbian Gay Type Women in Love redraft... (Shameless plug huh?)

Hey Kajun. Honestly, I hadn't considered the consequences of Eyhgon being loose in the Halls until you posted about them... Oops. LOL. Yes, down there it can do anything.

Interesting you refer to it as male, I tend to always think female due to the Jenny possession in the canon.

As for what this demon is? I seem to consider it kind of... normal. To be this is what possession is. And a demon that does that - however it does it - is pretty much just naturally evil...

I will offer this spoiler. We will see Eyhgon again but it doesn't form an intrinsic part of the plot from hereon in. Can you say 'McGuffin'?

And yes, Tara is a force... restraining her (both her and Willow actually) from simply nuking their way out of trouble is a major factor in the story and the reason things go as they do. I dislike characters just 'forgetting' what they can do, but equally if you want to tell the cool stuff with characters facing off, you can't just do the obvious thing and nuke em...

So don't be surprised when they aren't as quick to use their power as you might've thought. It's all to get to the cool stuff

I'm very pleased you find this unpredictable, I hope it continues! As hinted at above, I think that quality lessens a little in the coming parts but in order to foster another quality.

That X. Y, Z formula is part of why I dropped earlier Sidestep stories from being Third Chronicle. I hope this won't be like that for you, though - since it's a tight story - I worry about that compared to the lengthier (and more exploratory) second Chronicle. It's the detail I've let go. I let you guys find more of it for yourselves rather than me spell it all out (I used to that cos I couldn't bear to let other people decide what I meant!)

And, aside from the quality that got her into the Halls, Tara is absolutely free of Eyhgon. Not leaving that thing inside her... icky enough already.

Thanks so much

Katharyn

Kajun · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2011 9:13 pm

Long or short, I dig your version of the alt universe and this epic tale of Willow and Tara. No worries. Finally... you give me a spoiler! LOL Thanks :grin

And hooray for a new vignette in the works!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:04 pm

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 24 (266))
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: Finally… back to Willow…
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: Yes, I’ve admitted it. It was a giant tease to give you that last line of the last Willow part and then hold off this long. But hey, all those stories needed to be told and you want to know Tara is in the same place before you go back to Willow. The fact I could keep you coming back this long is a miracle LOL. No hiding it any longer, it’s in the first few lines. This is Vamp Willow. Naturally enough writing VW turns out to be fun, for all that may be a threat to the girls…
During this you may note some confusion in reference to the pronoun applied to Vamp Willow. Her. She. It. Partly this is the writer changing her mind during the writing and redrafting process, but also I left some of the confusion in place because (our) Willow is also confused by it – a little… So sometimes she’s an ‘it’. Sometimes it’s a ‘she’. Deliberately so.
Thanks to: Everyone who wanted it to be VW and everyone who thought it was someone else.

“Hello pretty.”

“No. No. No. No. No…”

“Not pleased to see me?”

“You’re dead.” Obvious statement much? Willow gabbled for lack of anything more reasoned to say than that, still it was better than endlessly repeating ‘no’. And could she be in any more denial? If it’s not real it can’t hurt me… “I mean, you’re – you’re - ”

“You’re me,” the creature that looked just like her walked around her, running a finger around the neckline of her sweater.

Willow could feel the same thing as when she’d paid off Ethan my touching his hand. A slight transfer of energy from the living to the dead. But the other her, the vampire didn’t twitch. It didn’t gasp or make faintly disgusting noises.

The other version of her did keep doing it though. Seeking out contact. Running a finger all the way around until it was back in front of her and taking an unhealthy interest in where the cut of the sweater dropped a little lower.

“You’re dead,” Willow said again, shrugging off the finger as it pulled at the fabric, then slapping at it as the doppelganger failed to take the hint.

“You already said that,” the other one said, just a little disappointed that she wasn’t more expressive. “You’re the boring one, aren’t you?”

“No, not boring,” Willow said, feeling like she was back at school and being taunted by anyone who wanted to join in. At least before this… thing had been created at the moment of her murder.

Before it/she’d taken her revenge on all those who’d tormented her. Nearly all of them anyway. And yes, she remembered just how…

“I’m just not into torture and things,” she said by way of a retort.

Ha, in your face, doppelganger.

My face…[/i[

“It’s like looking in a mirror.” The vampire’s finger tip never left her skin, even after it had momentarily accepted the denial of permission to look at her boobs, pushing now at her cheek and her nose. Prodding. “An old mirror. I got old. So old and wrinkled and I’m falling apart. Look at me. I used to be so pretty.”

The other her looked like she had when she was… well, when she’d died.

And if it was here then…

This was the vampire. Or was it? It didn’t have vamp-face on. It was pale, that was certainly true, but could a vampire even exist here? No one had said that they could, no one had [i]said anything – and she hadn’t seen… Vampires were dead and they were in the real world. That was what made them a problem. They were the undead and they were in the real world.

That’s why we killed them.

So what was this one doing here?

There was something about vampires and their victim/hosts that was different. Had to be. When the vampire had taken her, turned her. She hadn’t come here to the Halls of the Dead anyway. She’d been in… nothingness.

Literal nothingness. Awareness without anything to be aware of. And it had driven her quite mad, she was sure of that now. There’d been no passing of time. No stimulus for the senses. No darkness. No silence. Just… nothing. She’d tried to describe it to Tara, more than once, but that was the best she could do – how did you describe something that wasn’t there apart from as the absence of any comparison?

But then this vampire had been killed by Tara and she’d been brought back from that limbo, nursed back to mental wellbeing by the woman she’d always been intended to love. And now it was here?

In what world was that fair?

“You’re looking kinda pale and dead,” she retorted, it was about the best she could do because it was true that she looked different now. She had – by the standards of the girl she’d been back then – gotten old.

There weren’t too many wrinkles though. Good hydration and plenty of orgasms. That was what kept the wrinkles at bay, studies showed it. The water she sorted for herself, the other she and Tara helped each other with.

“I’m alive,” the vampire said, still prodding her. Over and over again, enjoying the sensation she must’ve been receiving. The fingertip was cold, and this was certainly a dead thing – but this might well be deader than most anything else here.

It wasn’t her. It was the twisted, sick vampire version of her. And that… why would that be?

“No,” Willow said. “You’re dead. I’m alive.”

“I’m you. Or maybe you’re me. I don’t know. Do you know?”

“You’re a relic. An evil thing that was put down years ago and almost everyone forgot about.”

“I didn’t forget.”

No…

She had the memories of this vampire, up to the point that Tara had tied it down, naked and with ribbons no less. Come to bed with it, promising it the sort of pleasures that it had lusted after. The creature had been equally powerless in the face of fate when it came to Tara Maclay as she was.

And Tara had betrayed it. Willow considered it fitting that the last memory she had of this… thing was that of the stake sinking into her chest, pricking her heart and then… nothing. Nothing until she’d become the girl who became the woman she was today.

This version of her knew all this, remembered it just as she did – at least to that point.

And it had already been insane long before that experience, twisted by the bite of Drusilla who’d made her and still roamed the world… somewhere. One of the few vampires that had crossed their path that they’d not accounted for.

“I take it you’re pleased?” Ethan asked warily, and he should be. He might earn favour or get his head ripped off for interrupting its reverie.

“You’re the perfect gift,” the vampire said after a long moment, clapping its hands excitedly. “I’ve never been happier.”

The smile was lethal in its promise.

“Thank you,” Ethan said graciously. “Now, if I might be excused?”

“Don’t you want to stay for tea?” the vampire asked, all winsome and girlish.

“No. No, thank you,” Ethan said.

“But we’re having blood. Fresh and hot!”

The vampire wasn’t really focused on him, but Willow looked to the man who’d handed her to this creature. He seemed to regret it, but that didn’t change the fact that he had done just that. And he was still scratching his arm. Well, let him. She was past caring; she had bigger things to worry about now than Ethan Rayne. But just see if she listened to him again. Or slapped him. More like punch his lights out.

Once she’d worried about this… thing.

An insane version of herself that had lots of very good reasons to hate the woman that she loved – and the vampire had come as close to loving as they were able to.

Not close enough but... you had to figure that obsession was the fuel for deepening insanity and that couldn’t be a good thing. Not for her, since she was the one who actually had Tara.

“I’ll stay though,” the vampire urged her. “I’ll stay here with me and we’ll have tea and then… we’ll see about who’s alive and who’s dead.”

Willow shook her head. No way, no how was she staying with this… thing. She ought to fry it right now and why wasn’t she doing that again? Oh, that was right – shock.

Now she was over it…

“You,” the vampire was looking into her eyes, pushing a finger into the middle of her forehead. Annoyingly. “You want to hurt us. You want to set things off, don’t you?”

“You don’t deserve to exist,” Willow said, guilty as charged. “Not anywhere. And quit that. I said quit it.”

The things it had done, the things she had done… People she’d known. She’d killed her own mother. Terrorised Ira and taunted him with it, left him alone just to give him the chance to revel in his continued pain at losing both the women in his life.

And as for Tara…

Those pleasures had been different but no less knowing, no less cruel. Done in the full knowledge that there was hurt and pain behind them. Accepted by Tara because of a dream of fate. This thing had been the best she could do. The best Willow Rosenberg she could find.

But it had come right in the end.

And now…?

The vampire smiled, leaned in and licked her face from chin to where that finger had been and then grimaced. That’d be the Naranje slime. “I taste bad. We’ll get me a bath.” Its hands were by her sides, holding her wrists firmly but not painfully. “All cleaned up and then… then we’ll play.” Shifting to a whisper, the vampire brought cold lips around to her ear and nuzzled it as it spoke. “You want to burn us, don’t you? All toasty?”

Willow hadn’t realised but her hands were ablaze. That was what the vampire had brought out of her. Uncontrolled fury, not at all abated by her fear.

Good instincts.

“Think about this,” it continued. “We’re here and we’re there – where you come from and I used to be.”

What in - this place - did that mean?

But when it released her hands, circling her once more, she had to wonder what it knew. Or what it might believe – whether it knew it for certain or not. Sometimes it was lucid and darkly brilliant – some of those machines that it had built had been inspired – but at other times it was absolutely insane. And never once did she remember the vampire version of herself advocating caution.

Follow your desires. Hunt. Feed. Abuse. Kill. Those were things that mattered to this creature. Giving cryptic warnings had been more Drusilla’s style.

But this one had still been smart. An inventor of terrible devices for her Master. Creative too. It’d taken that from her, she was convinced. Taken in terrible directions.

If there was some warning hidden in the madness then… should she pay attention to it?

Wasn’t it plausible that – in her unique case having being recalled from vampirism to exist as a human again – that the vampire now had to remain here, in the Halls of the Dead? The demon itself was…

She had no idea whether she could kill this creature again. Even if she was pretty certain that she should.

On the other hand… could she kill anything here? The Naranje hadn’t exactly died, though it’d been caused pain, and where did something that was already in the Halls of the Dead go when it was killed? For all she knew she might end up sending it back to her world, the real world. Back to Tara…

She was the one who was alive here… she was the one who was exposed and in danger.

Taking ‘steps’ against this creature now, putting her out of her own misery, was tempting but could backfire spectacularly. What if it accomplished what Toni had threatened her with? A reversal of what the Vocah had done in bringing her back from the ashes of what this creature had been? What if torching it made that easier?

“No, you can’t kill us,” the vampire said. “You don’t dare – you don’t know enough. You don’t know if you can. You don’t know what will happen.” It seemed insanely pleased – obviously – with her indecision. And it understood it because a part of it was… her. It – like she – hated to be ignorant of the rules of the game.

The other thing was, in this citadel or whatever it was, the vampire was hardly alone.

No matter what she did now, there might be others who could take revenge or just wouldn’t help here. She had to remember that she was here to do something else, to find Toni’s Dad and to bring him back – somehow – to the girl. Fail in that and she might find herself in a worse place than this… returned to limbo.

Anything else was… not getting the job done and until she understood the consequences of her actions – or she was forced into acting - she was just going to have to hold fire, as it were.

But the temptation was there.

Not to mention the fact that the vampire probably didn’t have any real idea what she could do. Not being overly surprised by the fact that her hands had – to all intents and purposes – appeared to be on fire didn’t mean this thing understood what it was up against.

After all, all it knew of her was from before she’d been turned by that other crazy vampire bitch, Drusilla. Back when she’d barely been able to defend herself. Not even a sizzle of a spell. She couldn’t have warmed a glass of milk without a microwave.

All the rest had come along afterwards, when she was with Tara and their connection had given them access to power that the vampire couldn’t understand – because they really still didn’t. No one had seen the like of them in centuries and back then science’s investigation of witchery hadn’t extended beyond how to stoke the bonfire to best effect.

Suffice it to say that today she could’ve char grilled this whole room in a flash, if she’d been ready to do that, and walked out barely smoking herself.

On the other hand, there was plenty that she didn’t understand either and it was that ignorance that held her back.

“It’s delicious,” the vampire said, looking her over.

“Umm,” Willow replied. “What is?”

“We’re going to spend soooo much time touching ourself,” the vampire said, again whispering to her. Private. Intimate. Shudderworthy.

“No. There will be no touching. Not me. Not you. You’ll get hairy hands. You’ll go blind. Just – eww no.”

Because… No.

No.

No.

No.

Really. No. And ‘hell, no.’ Just for added emphasis.

“Want a bath?” the vampire asked. “It’ll make you taste better… There’s even water, if you prefer that to blood.”

Willow shuddered, having a clear – shared memory – of the latter option back in the dark days of Sunnydale’s past. How many people had she sent here, to the Halls of the Dead? Just so that she could bathe in their still warm blood?

And, obviously, it’d gotten everywhere…

“I want – I’m here to find someone,” she said, keen to distract it in any way that she could.

“A bath will get you tasting all sweet and warm that wrinkly skin of yours.”

Did she want a bath? Sure she did. She was covered in Naranje slime. But having it at the behest of the vampire seemed a little bit too much like cooperating with it and she knew she’d never kick herself – it – out of the room.

On the other hand she’d been delivered into its hands and she had no idea yet whether she could – safely – kill it. Or even if that was possible here, to kill the twice dead in their own place? Cooperation – or at least not opposition – was going to have to be the word of the day for now.

When the vampire’s cold hands slipped up the back of her top, making her jump, then she had to do something about this. Limited cooperation or not, she had to set boundaries. “Okay, enough is enough. No more touching. No more licking and definitely no hands up – or down – clothes. I don’t care how gay you are, that’s really creepy and it’s not happening. Right? Are we on the same page here?”

The vampire just gave her a lazy smile.

It was willing to wait. It did – of course – have as much time as it wanted.

Kicking it in the ass and torching it was a pretty attractive prospect. So attractive that it was tough to see past to figure out what else she might do since that wasn’t an option that was on the table right now.

Because she knew – she had the memories to substantiate it – just what this vampire would be very willing to do with her. It didn’t think about consequences. Wouldn’t even consider them. If the most amusing, most appealing course of action was to pull the wings off a fly – or off her – then that was what it would do.

But if she was threatened, if she was left with no choice, then destroying it – again – would be her only option.

If it got to that point then worrying about what would happen next would just have to wait.

For now though, she knew she was pushing its patience.

She had to regain control of the situation and that was something she could do when the vampire was calmer, less excited by something shiny and new and – hopefully – then it’d be a bit less grabby.

Willow gently removed the vampires hand from her ass where it had moved after caressing her back. Gently squeezing to test her more than anything else. The vampire wanted to know what it could get away with, how far it could push – and enjoy – without causing a fight to the death.

“You’re right,” she said, hating herself for being willing to manipulate rather than fry it.

“Hmm?”

The leather-clad vampire was pressed up against her. All dead and cold, bereft of the warmth and life that might’ve made it an enticing embrace – to someone who wasn’t in love with the best wife in the world.

“I could do with a bath,” Willow said. “To be clear though, just in water. No blood.”

The vampire seemed only slightly disappointed, taking more pleasure from her acquiescence.

“And alone,” Willow added, feeling she needed to be even clearer. No blood. No undead versions of young, bad self.

It might not have taken those memories she tried to lock away to understand the vampire, anyone could’ve read its intentions right now. But given that she had them… maybe she could string this other Willow along, just far enough to figure out how she could get out of this and find Toni’s Dad.

Because if she went back a failure, what guarantee was there that Wolfram and Hart wouldn’t turn this creature lose again? On her world. On Tara.

The vampire laughed and started to sashay away, blatantly sexual in its walk and with a tighter ass than Willow could actually remember ever having. That was what hot leather did for you, along with being frozen at the age it had died.

Abruptly though, her attention was drawn to something else. A feeling… She was aware that something had changed.

Tara was here. She could feel her wife again, beyond the vestige of their connection that had only been confirming Tara was still alive and – she hoped – had been reassuring Tara of the same thing.

It sent a little thrill through her because… Tara.

But wait… Tara was here? Tara who’d betrayed and killed the vampire?

Oh bugger….

“I’ll let the Master know you’ll be joining us for dinner,” the vampire said, throwing that out there casually. As if it was of no matter and of course she should’ve already known. “Maybe we’ll hold hands…”

The Master?

Of course the vampire that Willow had once been couldn’t have taken and held this place, that required a degree of sanity it didn’t possess. But the Master?

And with Tara here too?

Everything about this plan was falling apart…

******************

Grimm · **Posted:** Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:14 pm

Got-diggity--damn!!!! Vamp Willow+ Human Willow + a very determind Tara = the train wreck from hell!! They are on a collision course that is gonna blow the roof off of the halls. Furthermore, as if the girls didnt have enough to deal with, you throw the Master into the mix.... damn. Sooooo, Ethan is not on the up and up. I'm surprised by this why? I'm just happy that he will get his just deserts when Eyghon catches up with his punk ass. I'm very fearful of what Tara's reaction will be once she finds Willow in the company of her alter ego. Again, I was both hoping and fearing for this possible scenario.This is one hell of a story that you are blessing us with. I am filled with nervous anticipation!

Hmmmmmmm :hmm

, Will Toni's (what a bitch) father be a part of the Master's inner circle? And, is the Master the real reason Willow and Tara were sent to the halls? Does W&H want them to do another tag team smack down on the vampire king? Or, do they want our girls to provide a way for him to return to the real world? I keep wondering if Willow is successful in completing her task, does that permanetly destroy whatever is keeping the undead in the halls making it possible for anyone (or thing) to cross over ?

I really like how you handled Willow's relunctence to use magic to destroy V.W... while she was standing with the fire balls in her hand, I literally yelled 'fry that bitch'. After assuring my children that I had not lost my mind by yelling at the computer, I realized that she had very legitimate reasons to be reluctant. I wander if Tara will hesitate once she gets a glimpse of her worst fear come true.

I wonder if slayer Faith is around.. if she is would she be inclined to help? I know i'm over thinking this...i'm just very excited!

Kajun · **Posted:** Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:30 pm

Katharyn: Awesome! And.. oh boy. It’s interesting that VW doesn’t react to the energy exchange. The naughty touching was bad enough without adding various lurid sound effects. Poor Willow! It didn’t occur to me that killing VW in that realm might actually send her back to the living world. Yikes! I hope killing the dead isn’t how they are returned. Toni’s father.. again with the Yikes! It appears Ethan knew in advance Willow was going to be there. Or was that just his dumb luck? Willow will need to kick it up a notch now. But she does have several advantages over VW: Knowledge, sanity, power and, most importantly, Tara. Hah.. I should just say ditto to SMGOVAN’s questions! Definitely interested in the possibilty of seeing Faith again. Great update, as always!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:56 am

Thank you so much, SMGOVAN

First of all though, let me say that this author does not encourage yelling in the vicinity of children

Well most people knew it was Vamp Willow so my teasing that it might be Dru (which others had in mind - I forget who was who) was only mischief making. But it is fair to say that this may turn confrontational eventually. And possibly combustible.

I wasn't actually going to use the Master at all, but it's inescapable that VW really isn't up to the job alone. She's attracted by shiny things and though definitely very smart, not exactly focused... Plus, hey, its the Master! I lost all the great villains after First Chronicle!

Lets just say that Ehygon is not forgotten...

As for Tara's reaction? Well, we'll have to see won't we?

Your other questions... hmm, I can't say too much other than some of them are closer to the mark than others and some are good ideas where I didn't go (or spot!)

As I think I put in the notes... (and previous comments) Tara and Willow are really overpowered now to write. They can, and have, dealt with pretty much anything that is thrown at them. It's the old cell phone problem. Most TV shows or movies find a way to take the usefulness of phones out of the equation. It kills drama. "Where's X? Oh noes!" "S'okay, I'll call her. Look, she checked in at the mall!" SNORE. Same with their power... you have to find a reason NOT to fry the bad guys or there's no sense in having them. So I am just pleased you like the reason! It will be around a while yet...

I'm not spoiling anything when I say that slayer Faith exists in this realm. That was pointed out (though I hadn't named the place) in the epilogue to Second Chronicle. As for whether she shows up... that would fall into the same potential categories as your earlier questions LOL.

Thanks

Kajun - I like the word 'awesome.' It's awesome...

Thanks!

Once again I am in a situation where I have to point out the evil and yes, that takes on a sexual edge to it because - hello - vamp willow. Suffice it to say that nothing could or would ever happen.

Maybe I haven't made enough of it yet but Vamp Willow (and the Master) are - at least so far as Willow knows - anomalies here. Vampires don't come to the Halls. That's the point of being undead for them... so it's not like we'll see a flood of vampires, no matter what the rules are. However the rules - as I point out above - are both a useful plot device and very valid. Sure, Willow can fry... but does she know what she's doing? This is why the girl is smarter than certain Slayers...

And yes, you have all of Willow's advantages down nicely. Most of them will come into play

Thanks so much,

Katharyn

Grimm · **Posted:** Thu Oct 06, 2011 8:24 am

Please, please, plllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeee update.. I need to know :gnome

!!!!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Thu Oct 06, 2011 9:58 am

Okay, since you ask so nicely, an update will be up in a couple of minutes

But you really expect me to give you answers??

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Thu Oct 06, 2011 9:59 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 25 & 26 (267 & 268))
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: A short check in on Tara and Jenny’s progress and then a longer section on Willow fending off… well, herself. Kind of.
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: Once again we come to something that, as a writer, is ‘fun’ to write as an exercise but not exactly where you want to be as a person. But there’s no getting around the fact that Vamp Willow is described as ‘evil, skanky and kinda gay’. Two of those things are a negative and the other certainly isn’t, but all three of them colour who she is – we know that. So the Willow section is really one to set the tone for her in the spirit of character development for those who don’t remember the first Sidestep. I suspect some people may like it and some people will be made uncomfortable by the underlying tones. That’s the point though – we often like to be made uncomfortable - and I hope that both sides can enjoy it for what it is.
And before anyone asks ‘why doesn’t she just torch the vampire?’ Well, yeah… but then you wouldn’t get to read the two Willow’s in the same place together. It’s one of those storytelling trade-offs… Willow doesn’t think it’s safe to do so.
Thanks to:

Part 25/267

“I’m going to go out on a limb,” Jenny said, puffing hard between her words, “and say – and – I’m going say this is not a good – not a good thing.”

They were running, which meant a different thing now than it had back in the day when they’d been somewhat younger.

Not that they were ancient now but you couldn’t deny that they’d been younger and better able to deal with it back then. An hour on a treadmill twice a week really didn’t prepare you for trying to escape from a pack of the dead in their own Halls.

Pack? Was that even the accepted term?

These things weren’t zombies, far from it; they were functioning beings with most of the same attributes now they were dead than they’d had in life.

Apart from a heartbeat, Tara supposed, but she wasn’t about to stop and test for one.

Assuming she was correct then it might turn out that condition – the one they didn’t share - was an advantage in prolonged chases. While none of the dead seemed up to sprinting – a fast jog seemed to be their limit – equally they appeared to be tireless. After all these were fairly ordinary people. Mixed in with the group were the ones who’d probably died of a heart attack. Kids. The elderly.

Yeah, they’d dropped them for a while, but when they’d slowed down the dead had caught them with that relentlessness.

And they were all – every one of them - keeping pace just fine, which really made her wish she’d put more effort in back in the gym. Being fit and keeping her tone just didn’t seem like quite enough right now.

But the alternative wasn’t exactly palatable. She didn’t want to test her magic on these… people. Dead people, but people all the same. Stopping when maybe it wouldn’t work – whatever she did - seemed like a bad idea anyway, but what if it did work? These people had done nothing to her.

At least not yet…

A chase, sure, but what the threat was? They really weren’t sure. It just seemed better to be… away.

"We can’t keep this up,” Tara gasped while they took a short breather, hidden just down one of the labyrinthine corridors they’d stumbled into.

“Maybe they won’t find us.”

“Maybe we’ll get lost ourselves,” she countered. The crowd knew this place, they lived here – or whatever the dead did instead of living... Not so for them though – and they didn’t want to take up residency anytime soon. They couldn’t take the risk.

“There’s always Eyghon,” Jenny replied, bending over and showing the strain even more than she was. She kept in shape too; it was true but this wasn’t a sprint, it was threatening to turn into a marathon.

“Do you even see the demon right now?” Tara replied a little impatiently. Maybe it was the proximity of their respective possessions – Jenny’s had been decades ago - but her friend seemed much happier to consider making a deal with a demon than she was. This was the second time she’d suggested it.

Tara even wasn’t sure when they’d lost Eyghon – if they had - but it simply hadn’t had to run from the crowd. Maybe it had been content to be left behind, either to chase down Ethan Rayne or have its pick of those others who were here.

“What the – what the hell was it anyway?” Jenny asked, wisely changing the subject. “I mean, I like to think the mob has a reason for coming after us? Sheesh.”

“I don’t think it was anything we did – I mean, think… I think it was when that child touched you?” Tara suggested, thinking back on it. “The little girl?” There were some – a few - children they’d seen here… of course. Tough as that was to deal with, they didn’t seem to be in agony or purgatory or anything – which had to be a good thing. It was truly just… a place?

“We were fine,” her friend replied. “No one had noticed anything unusual but - ”

Then all hell had broken loose. Jenny was right, there hadn’t been much to show that the dead were… well, dead really. No gaping wounds or injuries. No pallid skin or excessive groaning about brains. And everyone except the kids seemed to be… well, there weren’t a lot of old people here and most of the dead looked to be in their twenties to their sixties. Not all, but certainly most and that just didn’t add up except… back in the day, hadn’t people died a lot earlier?

Maybe that was it. Or maybe they were coming here in the form they’d been in their prime then? Whenever that had been? That’d also account for the fact that the cause of their deaths weren’t obvious.

It was an idea, but one she couldn’t prove. What they did know was that something about the sight - and touch - of the living had… attracted those who were dead when they got too close. And because the first of them had been a child Jenny had been more patient – and perhaps a little less wary – than she might’ve been with an adult.

On the other hand who knew how long a child had been here in that state? The ‘little boy’ could’ve been older than both their ages added together. Much older… It was something she didn’t want to think about unless or until they had to.

Besides, exhausted much?

“It’s the touch,” Tara said. “I’m sure of it. It was right then, right when she did that and the others saw the effect it had.”

“And then – and then we let the group build up too much too.”

Some people might call it ‘a crowd’ but she was pretty sure that once they started to chase you then it officially became ‘a mob’ whether it was angry, desperate or just plain… attracted to the living.

That was the weird thing. It wasn’t like they were being hunted for their blood. They’d both been there before and this wasn’t feeling that at all.

Oh no. In fact they’d been pretty much… welcomed. Seemingly kindly dead people – and things that hadn’t been ‘people’ but still seemed to think the same way – had seemed glad to see them.

Overly glad to see them when you got right down to it.

Touching their hands and faces. Holding that little girl that way she had sent the child into waves of… It sounded creepy to think of it as ‘pleasure’ because that wasn’t what she meant at all, the right words were escaping though. Maybe… ‘bliss’? Maybe how Portia got when you gave her nip? Like tickling a puppy behind its ears

It was like those people had all been in the cold dark and suddenly they were bathed in warm sunlight.

And they were willing to chase that warm sunlight, drawing others to the chase and telling them what they’d found. Okay, so the analogy was falling apart, but that was how it seemed.

“Yeah, there’s that too,” Tara agreed. Letting things get to the point where there was an official mob hadn’t been her smartest move during a number of days where smart moves had been hard to come by. From anyone.

“What do you think would happen if they caught us?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I really don’t. Maybe they’d get tired of it after a while or – knowing people – maybe things would get out of control and we’d really be in danger. Either way…”

“It’s not getting us out of here.”

“That’s right,” she agreed. “You know, maybe we ran the wrong way.”

“Back to the Hellmouth?”

Tara shrugged. It would’ve had the advantage of being safe. They could’ve gone back through where the dead – they were told - couldn’t have followed them. “But again, we’d have been wasting time.”

“You suppose that Willow managed to get through here without being… touched?” Jenny asked.

Tara looked at her friend. “No one better have touched my girl.”

--------------------------

Part 26/268

“Mmm, can I touch?” the vampire asked.

Willow jumped, sloshing water from the large, marble tub that was more like a sarcophagus than a bath. Given the lack of plumbing and the fact she’d had to heat the water herself she was willing to believe that might’ve been the original purpose.

After all, look at where she was.

At least being marble it hadn’t stained with what - she assumed - had been the previous liquid mediums used. At least in recent memory. How long had the vampires been here? And why only the two that had been mentioned… All the hench-beings she’d seen weren’t vamps at all. Not a one of them, in fact most were human – albeit dead.

Just not… undead.

And by and large she’d been left alone. Unmolested – a great, fabulous word she aimed to be closely associated with – apart from the grab ass earlier. Now she had to engage with this creature though, she knew very well it wouldn’t just go away. In a perfect world she wouldn’t have had to go along with it this far, or taken a bath.

But in a perfect world she wouldn’t have gotten up close and personal with a slime demon either. Things here weren’t perfect.

Far from it.

“What the hell are you doing there?” she asked.

“Watching. I like to watch. But then I like to do as well. I’ll do you if you like…”

“There won’t be any doing, thank you very much.” Telling it to get out of here wasn’t likely to do anything but encourage it so she slipped a little deeper into the water but didn’t take her eyes off the creature that wore a younger, paler version of her face.

“You’re welcome,” the vampire replied, it’s eyes fixed on her in turn.

It seemed to have sorted it’s pronouns out too, realised that she wasn’t it and it wasn’t her. Maybe. What that meant for it’s plans and its… appetites she had no idea. But then expecting too much rationality out of something that was batshit insane just wasn’t fair. “How… long were you watching?” she wondered.

“Long enough.” It didn’t just grin, it practically leered. “So you’re what I would’ve been?” the vampire asked, walking around her – seemingly careful to avoid the water that had slopped on the stone floor. Did that mean anything?

“No,” Willow said. “I’m me, you’re a different me, a me who had a terrible accident.”

“Accident? The kitten, she killed me.”

Tara… Tara had – finally - tied this vampire to a bed and staked her under the promise of all sorts of kinky games. Everything it had wanted and not – then – gotten from her.

Willow stayed silent. If it knew, if it remembered – and it did - then there was much she didn’t want to admit to even if it was a choice between speaking the truth or torching the bitch.

“You’re with her,” the vampire said squatting down beside the tub and dipping a fingertip into the still warm water, amused when she winced and recoiled from the possibility of a touch. “Aren’t you?”

Once again, Willow stayed silent but that was about as much confirmation as the vampire seemed to need.

“I can smell her… all over you. Is the kitty here too?” The vampire’s finger was swirling at the very surface of the water, creating an eddy that Willow could feel through the water.

“No,” she squeaked. What, in the goddess’ name, was it thinking? What did it intend to do?

“You’re lying,” the vampire said. “But that’s okay, I’d lie to me too. I would soooo like to spend some time with her again though. She’s mine, you know…?”

It was trying to rile her, of course. That was the thing with this creature, it was insane. The mildest promise could turn into the most terrible vengeance. A bloody oath into nothing... So when it spoke of Tara that way, there was no telling from moment to moment what it meant now or what it would mean if they actually got to that point. Playtime? Murder?

And that was something else… She hadn’t seen any evidence that vampires fed or killed here. Not yet. Could they even feed? Did they need to? And what if they didn’t?

But how else had this other Willow ended up here?

And… it’d mentioned the Master before. Was that the same Master that…? The one who’d given her to the insane vampire Drusilla who’d turned her into… this creature that was dipping its finger in her bath and not hiding the fact it’d like to dip that finger somewhere else too?

Was this the same Master who’d ruled his domain through a combination of fear and terrible inspiration? The demon that had turned Sunnydale into the first vampire enclave the world had known for centuries – probably since the dawn of real human civilisation? That Master?

Reluctant to touch it, but left with no choice, Willow reached to push the vampire’s hand back as it got perilously close to her bare thigh. No way, no how. It was the same with puppies, kitten, children and insane vampires. You had to establish boundaries. No touching. Especially not touching outside of ‘safe’ areas.

And what the hell was a safe area when you were dealing with your – younger – vampire doppelganger?

The act of removing that hand gave the vampire a little bit of a rush though.

“Mmmm, yes,” it said. “I so want to play with her. And you… all of us together?”

“No touching,” Willow said.

“But touching is the best part,” it complained.

“No touching.” Willow slipped deeper still into the water when talking threatened to set off deep enough ripples to reveal parts of her she certainly didn’t want to bring to it’s attention.

The vampire took her hand though, the one that had been removing its own from the water. “Oh, what’s this?”

Its eyes were fixed on her wedding ring, of all things…

“Just a ring,” she said.

“Nooooo,” the vampire said. “That’s the ring you always wanted. Remember… I remember, we – share things don’t we. Somehow. I know you, I know what you wanted – you wanted… the special one to give you this ring.”

A ring that had worked it’s way down through the family over the years from mother to daughter and grandmother to granddaughter. The last person to wear it before her had been…

She stayed silent, not wanting to bring up that death or any of them really. But especially not that one. This vampire had done it but because she remembered every sickening moment of it she’d also done it. She’d not managed to get away from the guilt of that most heinous of crimes. She remembered every moment of the torment that she’d put her own mother through.

And she remembered that she’d made Ira, her father, watch every moment of it. That the point behind the woman’s suffering, it had actually been his suffering. On the other hand, it was why her father was still alive. For which, at least, she was thankful.

This vampire was an artist at those kinds of things. Focusing on what mattered to you and dissecting it, in front of your very eyes. Sometimes literally. Taking it apart until all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put humpty back together again.

And obviously the so the ring fascinated it. It knew, from that simple band of metal, that there was an opportunity there. Small things, small clues led to it’s basest of pleasures.

“The kitten gave you this, didn’t she? Your – my – our father gave it to her to give to you.”

It wasn’t really a question, the vampire knew it because that had always been the plan, in a round about sort of way. There’d been something between it and Tara, Willow remembered, that had confused and puzzled it.

Not love, never that. The vampire wasn’t capable of love and – no matter what Tara had thought she might’ve felt for it at the time – you couldn’t truly be in love unless it was reciprocated. They both knew that now.

But all the same… the vampire hadn’t been able to kill Tara either. Hurt her, yes. But its instincts had been muted by her presence. It’d never taken her blood. Never tried to take her life and – at the end of the day – put itself in a position where it could be destroyed.

The question – with all of them in the same realm now – was whether the vampire would be so restrained again, knowing what Tara had done. And faced with the fact that her kitten had married another version of Willow Rosenberg. Would territoriality and jealousy kick in? It’d already claimed that Tara belonged to it. And if it did then who was most at risk? Her or Tara?

It was something she had to be wary of. As if being naked in a stone tomb of a bath in front of a insane, mass murdering demon – that happened to like girls as well as rather less pure pleasures – wasn’t enough to make her wary.

“I’d shut your mouth about her, if I was you,” Willow said. She tried to keep her tone casual, not wanting to play to the instincts that she knew very well were there. Some vampires, those who listened to their intellect, you provoked them through your actual words. This one, she was sure, it was about how you said it. What you did. Those were the things that set it off. When it came to the words, they didn’t matter so much.

“Mmm, fiery,” the vampire said, still holding her hand and examining the ring. “I picked this up, you know… after I cut her finger off and sucked it dry – the marrow was so… mmm.”

“Shut up,” Willow said through clenched teeth. Trying not to overreact. She didn’t know what would happen if she tried to kill it. She might just piss it off. Or send it back to their world. She had to be sure, or desperate, before she pushed it so far that fire was her only way out.

“You know that though, don’t you?”

“What’s in me is in you – what I did, you know. What you did, I know… We all know each other. I’d like to know you… inside. And outside. Old… but still so pretty.” The vampire’s thumbnail was pressed into her palm, threatening to break the skin.

Even the crude innuendo didn’t strike her as badly as the truth. Yes, it was all there. And that was the most terrible thing – of a lot of terrible things – that this corruption of who’d she’d been had ever done. It’d been drawn out over… too long and she remembered every terrible moment of it.

“Let go, bitch.”

“Temper, temper,” the vampire said.

“Shut your mouth or - ”

“What?”

Would it be so bad to find out whether she could – in fact – torch this thing? Whether, here in the Halls of the Dead, it could get any deader? Imagining the worst case – sending it back to their world in some reversal of the established order – was just that. A worst case. More chance that the vampire would just go up in a flash of burning ashes.

“Just shut up,” she had to swallow her anger like bile. It’d threatened to surge up and drown out common sense. She was naked, in a bath with a vampire that could cheerfully rip her head off – but was probably aiming lower for it’s attentions at the moment - sat right here beside her. More to the point the tub of water was right here, plenty of chance for it to put itself out. It’d take a few seconds to combust anyway. This wasn’t the time or the place.

“And you’re still perky,” the vampire said, sounding delighted as it’s attention shifted elsewhere at the flick of a switch.

Willow blushed and slipped back into the water as she realised that her anger had made her rise up. Taking a deep breath and resolved to stop pushing its buttons, she spoke more calmly. “Please, just let me finish here. What did you want anyway?”

“What did I want?” The eyes didn’t leave her in much doubt what it really wanted. It wanted to play – the only question was just how that play would’ve gone. Play for this creature had rarely involved anything other than feeding, torture – psychological and physical – or sex. Most often two or three at the same time. Whatever it was she wanted no part of it – no matter the combination.

“You came here for a reason,” Willow said, trying to focus it on something else. Though it hadn’t vamped out – she hadn’t seen that yet at all – it did have that predatory look in its eyes.

Smart people had gotten out of the way once that look started to manifest.

Smarter people still stayed away and didn’t end up in the vampire’s company.

And the smartest of all? They stayed out of its bath.

“Clothes,” it said. “Yes, clothes. I’ve brought you clothes. I wouldn’t mind you wandering around all naked and touchable but the others were covered in slime and I thought you’d like it better this way.”

“Umm, well, thank you,” Willow said. That was a valid point and the naked thing really hadn’t been an option. There were things she just wouldn’t do.

“See… I can be nice,” the vampire said, reaching out to push a strand of errant hair back behind her ear. “I can be so very nice. You know that. You know how I feel. I know how you feel… we can be nice together. Nice to each other. On each other. In - ”

“Shhhh,” Willow said, pressing a finger to its lips and hating herself for playing that game.

It was on the edge, she was going to be forced to torch it if it didn’t back down and let that predatory instinct recede. No question, it was going to try something she simply couldn’t accept. A bite or… worse. Yet, to make an enemy of it now was something she couldn’t afford. She wasn’t dressed for it for one thing.

Fascinated with her sudden shift, with the touch, it did lapse into silence.

“I know you can be nice,” she said. Because she remembered how it had treated Tara and that was the nicest it had ever managed. “But now’s not the time.”

It made her almost physical sick to be this way, but that wasn’t the way to look at it. She was playing it. She understood it, knew how to push it’s buttons just as it knew some things about her.

“Oh?”

“That’d be a waste,” she said. “What about Tara – what about the kitten?”

“Hmm, you think she’d like to join us?”

NO! She’d kill you and scold me as soon as look at you.

“She’s loved both of us,” Willow lied. Tara hadn’t loved this thing at all. She’d just been as close to a Willow Rosenberg as she could’ve been at the time. More to the point Willow’s wife still considered herself to have been unbalanced – mentally unbalanced – during that whole time. “Wouldn’t it be delicious?” she asked, a sick feeling in her stomach.

“It has been so long since I’ve played with the kitten… So long… And you…”

“Well then.”

The edge of danger vanished from the vampire’s dead eyes and Willow knew she’d won this battle, even if its mood could turn in the flash of an eye. Or a nipple. Because that was where it was looking again.

Thank goodness the water was cloudy; she covered herself with her hands all the same but then had run out of hands to do so as its eyes drifted lower.

“Is there a towel?” she asked practically, as if she was putting the whole thing behind her for the moment.

“Hmm,” the vampire said. It got up, all sass, sex and undead.

But damn, had she ever been able to fill out leather pants and a bustier that way? Where in the world had it gotten those?

“Towel,” Willow reminded it as it walked away from her.

She craned her neck as the vampire seemed to be… It was holding the large towel open, across the other side of the room. It wanted her to walk to it, naked… A challenge of sorts.

And where the hell had towels come from in this world? And clothes and marble bathtubs – unless it really was a sarcophagus and who needed one of those here…? More to the point what really happened here?

She didn’t understand what this place really was. Or the rules. The rules could turn out to be very important. Rules – even the lack of them - usually were, that was the point. The rules would say whether she could kill this vampire and what would happen after that.

The rules would tell her if she could safely use her power here… If so, she didn’t have to put up with any of this and even the Master better look out. This wouldn’t be the same battle that Tara and that slayer called Faith had fought against the leader of Sunnydale’s vampires. Not half so hard, not if she had safe access to her power.

Not if it would actually kill him and keep him dead. Dead-dead. Dead and gone.

Yes, she needed to understand the rules. She needed to keep the vampire from killing, biting and especially getting fresh with her until she did.

She needed time to figure things out and making empty promises to it about she and Tara was one way to do that.

And it required a tiny sacrifice. Which was why she forced herself to get out of the bath and walk over to the vampire. She didn’t show fear or reluctance. Not even bashfulness. She knew full well what would set it off, she remembered being on the other side of those eyes.

It never looked down at her body. Instead it held her eyes in its own and because she wasn’t ashamed or hiding herself, it looked just a tiny bit disappointed.

Well, good.

This is a different Willow Rosenberg, bitch. And that’s the rule that counts.

*****************************

Grimm · **Posted:** Thu Oct 06, 2011 2:09 pm

Okay, that was like eating tofu when I really wanted a steak!!! It will sustain me. But, I am (again) left unsatisfied :crash

!!!! Actually, I really enjoyed this update. I had to laugh when Tara said “No one better have touched my girl.” and then you immeadiately transit to Vamp Willow asking “Mmm, can I touch?” :lmao

.... Tara is going to go ape shit when she catches up with them.

Soooooo, what are the rules of the halls? I can't help thinking that W&H is up to something (duh?). I mean are they expecting Willow and Tara to go down there and just wreck shit? Is that what they were hoping for? Nothing else could provoke a negative reaction out of the two of them the way being threatened with 'playtime' with V.W. can. So her being there has to be intentional. If no other vampires, besides the two of them, are in the halls it is not a coincidence that they are there.

Willow is doing very well with her temper. She can see that the Vampire can be manipulated and she's playing the game. I thought she might lose it when V.W. said that 'kitten' was hers. But the Willster was able to stay strong. I fear that if V.W. says the wrong thing in front of Tara... poof.. Vampire go boom!

A possible future Faith sighting makes me happy! Please update soon. 2morrow works for me :grin

.

Kajun · **Posted:** Thu Oct 06, 2011 4:18 pm

Katharyn, Maybe Tara should use a smoke screen to get some distance between herself and Jenny and the relentless touch-a-holics? It’s not using magic on them exactly and she needs to do something of a test to see how/if her magic even works in the Halls. Not sure what is creepier.. being chased by zombies or normal looking people. I think people. You know zombies wanna eat your brains, but these things.. would they drain her life energy? This just gets more disturbing by the minute. When Tara meets up with the doppelganger, the innuendos and painful reminders of things she did long ago are gonna be unbearable. She can handle it but it’s doubtful Jenny will keep a cool head. I may need to step outside and count to a bazillion until VW is poofy-smoke-dead-dead! Now shoot.. since Willow is wondering if the Master is the same one she remembers or not.. is Toni’s father the Master? Also loved the canon dialog with a twist in both chapters.. Well done!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Fri Oct 07, 2011 9:59 pm

Okay people, what you have to realise is that this series (after careful rejigging) will end in part 300 (cos I like round numbers!)

This means that with another 32 parts to go its unlikely you're going to see quick frying. More of a long bake... Admittedly there's a prolonged 'ending' with most characters given their own end but it's a good 20+ parts until we see the actual climax of this story. So, no holding of breath. No stepping outside for the duration... You'll turn blue or get cold

SMGOVAN - Must admit that was one of the few 'planned' transitions where I took the last line of one part into the next. These two chapter posts were originally written as separate chapters/posts and perhaps they wouldn't have worked as well then...

The rules of the Halls... we will get to them. And we'll see that caution was a good thing until they understand. Plus means I get to play with the characters

As for what W&H want? Well... y'all are conspiracy theorists so nothing I say is a grand enough conspiracy. That said... yesterday I added a whole new scene (actually big enough to be a chapter) to a later part giving more on W&H based on previous feedback. So, you see, you guys are still making me create...

As for 'coincidence', I've said it before a few times. Some things are planned, this is true. But actually, T/W and everyone else in canon, they are just the people that things happen to. They're always in the wrong place at the right time. What could be simple, rarely is. It's their qualities that get them through it. So don't underplay fate or coincidence too...

I wish I had more of the young kids in this series, I'd love to use 'Vampire does boom'!

As for update... coming very shortly. Thanks,

Kajun - Tara and Jenny are about to make their escape, but yet again you make suggestions I never thought of

It'll also do the test though...

I'm so sorry I can't say too much about your speculations... but I can't yet!! What I do love is that you spot all this canon stuff and I'm not even aware of it. With very few exceptions, I'm not thinking 'must insert line' here... I just write this stuff. But I suppose back when I did start writing the girls I was remembering canon dialogue... so it's gone through a few internal filters to get there.

BTW - I also like Poofy-Smoke-Dead-Dead...

How can I get these two phrases into some characters? Mouths? Hmm...

Thanks so much.

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Fri Oct 07, 2011 10:01 pm

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 27 (269))
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: Tara and Jenny make their get away from the pursuing dead as well as figuring where Willow might be.
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 married with a family. 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: Quite possibly this part has the single greatest end line I’ve ever written but don’t skip ahead as it will make no sense out of context…
Thanks to: The faithful crew of the good ship Feedback.

“Okay,” Tara said. “Enough of this – just… enough already.”

She and Jenny weren’t getting away. Whatever it was, the dead could apparently sense them – even in these Halls that were so complex as they were risking getting even more lost with every turn they made. It was only her near perfect memory that was allowing them to be as random as they were with any confidence they could get back where they had come from.

Still, she was working on making sure they could get back to the way out.

Apart from that though they’d be completely lost.

They might still be completely lost. It was only a near perfect memory and more and more things seemed to have been slipping through the net in the last few years, though she put that down more to tuning out triviality and focusing on what was important rather than actual aging. After all, she wasn’t that old.

The grey hairs, now that was down to aging.

“You mean – you mean we can stop running now?” Jenny gasped.

Tara put her hand on her friend’s back, massaging gently. They’d both run themselves into the ground and she was impressed at Jenny’s stamina and ability to keep going this long. One of them was a few years older than the other, after all. “It’s not getting us anywhere, is it?”

Jenny shook her head, taking the opportunity to snatch a few more breaths.

“So,” Tara said. “Time for me to do my thing.”

“Is that going to work here?”

It was a valid point, she supposed and one that she hadn’t actually tested despite having no sensation that she was disconnected from the power. Willow was here, they were connected and the physical laws – at least – seemed to be the same. Gravity. Light. Heat and so forth. So… She twirled her finger, focusing on the air within it and watching as a mini-tornado, big enough to snatch at their hair, sprang into life between them. “Looks like.”

“Cool.”

Tara let the tornado fade away, then turned her attention to just what it was that she was going to do. Earth most of all was her thing and that included all the things that grew. The trouble was down here they were on rock or stone and hadn’t passed anything at all that was growing or looked like it ever had.

Fire wasn’t really her element, though it’d do at a pinch and anyway burning their pursuers wasn’t really acceptable. After all they hadn’t shown any intent to actually do them harm, they just wanted… well, a piece of them. Something about how the living and the dead connected was appealing to them. The transfer of energy.

Water then? Also in short supply.

That only left her with air and actually that took her right back to her roots. It was what she knew best – after years flinging pointy pieces of wood with the power of her mind – and she had any number of ways to push these dead people back.

More if she cared to put her mind to be creative… And since she didn’t want to really hurt anyone creativity might be advisable.

“Come on,” she said.

“Oh God, Tara - you said we were done with running away,” Jenny complained when urged to get moving by Tara grabbing her arm. “I was really depending on that meaning no more running.”

“We are done, now we’re advancing in a new direction,” Tara replied. “If they’re going to catch up to us – if we’re going to let them – then I want an easy way out.”

“Okay, sounds sensible but lets try to avoid the running, please. You promised to get me back alive, remember and a heart attack, well, it could mess with your promise.”

“I do try to be sensible,” Tara told her, glancing behind them and trying to tell how close their pursuers might be. They were definitely back there though.

“It’s because you’re not English,” Jenny suggested. “We all struggle with the sensible part compared to the English. Phew.”

“I thought you said sensible was just being boring?” Tara asked as they approached the spot she’d identified. Anything to keep Jenny’s mind off her discomfort and obvious stitch.

The slower pace as well as the change of direction meant that very quickly behind them – and when they turned around – in front of them, the crowd of pursuers was forming. They were shouting things, in a variety of languages, and some weren’t even human. In the Halls of the Dead, it seemed, everyone was alike.

Dead.

And in pursuit of the living.

No undead though… No vamps. She supposed that the point of the undead was to remain in the realms in which they’d died so it made a supernatural kind of sense that they wouldn’t be here and – using Willow’s experience as the example – they knew that not even the soul of the victim came here. At least not while the vampire still existed.

“Let’s have this conversation later,” Jenny said. “There’s lots of people there who seem to want to touch us and much as I have a past that wasn’t averse to a little touching, that was a long time ago and… well, it’s certainly not why I came here.”

“Agreed.”

“So where’s this exit you were talking about?” Jenny asked, looking around and plainly just not seeing it.

“Just do what I say,” Tara assured her. “When I say it. In fact… take my hand now.”

“Better you than one of those dead guys,” Jenny said, pressing it into hers as requested and squeezing tightly.

“Awww, I never knew you loved me so much,” Tara quipped.

“Just do your thing, girl.”

No pressure then. They had their backs to the wall – though nothing like as literal a wall as Jenny might have liked – and her friend’s wellbeing was entirely in her hands. It hadn’t been like this for years and years.

Wasn’t it kind of like falling of a log though, accepting that kind of responsibility? Hopefully…

“Thicken,” she murmured, having not needed to do that in anger for a long time now.

It was Jenny who tested that it had actually worked. “Doesn’t look as cool as a wall of water would,” she murmured and prodded the last line of defence with her finger. The cushion of air between them and the dead absorbed the pressure of her prod but – like those body armours that they kept putting on the news – the harder you hit it the harder it pushed back and the better it protected you. It’d only compress do far before becoming as good as a big sheet of metal.

“Okay, okay then,” Tara said, taking the point. “But how cool is this?”

Once again, she twirled her finger tip. It wasn’t really necessary but – even though she wasn’t really showing off – there wasn’t much room for error in what she was attempting. A few gestures couldn’t hurt and could definitely do some good in helping her focus. Get this wrong and she could end up doing more damage to them than the ‘people’ that were chasing them down and now were slowly advancing, all having a reason for why they needed to be touched, to feel the energy of the living. All trying to explain at the same time.

“It’s the tornado again, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah… but watch.”

The direction of rotation was the key – at least that was what Willow had said when they’d been talking through the theory. You want the tornado to throw whatever you were pushing in a certain direction – usually not towards you – so with a little thought and a little size – which did apparently matter...

With those in place, and some careful control, the front rank of their pursuers were scattered like pins in front of a bowling ball.

You know, the kind of bowling ball that – when you got a little over enthusiastic with it – flung the ‘pins’ off into walls at waist height. That kind of bowling ball.

“That may have been a little too much,” Tara admitted. It wasn’t like those people had really hurt them or even scared them. Running away was more about avoiding the possibility – and the delays involved – plus one direction was pretty much as good as another right now so long as it was generally towards Willow.

“But you were right,” Jenny said, seeming exhilarated. “That was way cool.”

“Way cool?” Tara asked. “Even your kids are old enough not to be hip anymore.”

“Don’t,” her friend said. “It’s enough that I’m married to a grey, balding Englishman and love him too much to get out of it. I don’t need to hear about how even my kids are getting old.”

“Okay,” Tara said, squeezing her hand. She had access to the magic and that massively changed the odds, if not moved them into their favour. “Ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“This…” She pivoted and rotated the cushion of air so that it was behind them, then took a step backwards over the precipice. A huge cliff… as in end to end football fields in height above the next piece of ground.

Jenny was aghast, even though the air was easily supporting her weight. “Tara! No! Actually I’m not ready, not for that!”

“One way out,” Tara pointed out as the dead people she saw were getting up and probably both confused and pissed now. She would’ve been, if someone had flung her into the air with an instant tornado. It was precisely the kind of thing that would’ve ticked her off and ruined her day.

“You could’ve told me this was what you had in mind,” Jenny was edging backwards towards the precipice, but still on solid ground rather than an invisible platform of thickened air that she was stood on.

“No,” Tara said, “I couldn’t – or we’d have been having this discussion a few minutes ago. And what did you think the cliff was for anyway? How many other exits do you see?”

Obviously not happy, Jenny still managed to take her place on the cushion of air, but Tara was waiting until she was fully ‘onboard’ before taking any other steps. There was a question of balance here and she wasn’t about to do anything to risk her friend plunging to her death. Which raised another point. If you were here, and alive, could you die?

It wasn’t something she intended to put to the test. There was no sign, yet, that it was even relevant. Get in, stay away from the already-dead, grab Willow and go on home. Simple.

“What do you think is down there?” Jenny asked.

“Not these dead people,” Tara decided. “You know, the ones I don’t want to hurt and are getting kind of close if you could just shuffle this way a bit.”

Right now their pursuers were maintaining a healthy distance and a few of them were starting to realise how close to the edge they were – or actually off it. It was a measure of the fact they actually didn’t mean she and Jenny harm that some of them reached out and tried to warn them about the drop off. Whatever it was they got from having living people here, it certainly wasn’t something that caused them to want to ‘hurt’ them. This was more… excitement. A puppy looking for attention from someone new through the door.

On the other hand it was scary how obsessed they’d turned out, but it might’ve been one of those reinforcing crowd things too. She didn’t think that many people had actually managed to touch them, so some others might just be along for the ride. Thinking of which. “Jenny...”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Fine. What do I think is down there? More people. More dead people. Lots of them by the look of it. But… not these ones. So long as we don’t touch them, we should be okay?”

“These seemed to be able to sense us,” Jenny pointed out. “Find us.”

“At a short distance and touch is the main thing that gave us away – now we know that - but these ones will have us unless you get right on, right now.” Jenny could feel it under one foot, she was stood on it. The other one was still on the cliff edge. “Come on.”

“Get on what? There’s nothing there! Nothing to get on!”

“Shut up and just stand next to me,” Tara said, losing her patience a little. That was enough to shock her friend into doing what she was told. “Right. Good.”

Letting gravity take hold of them – and the cushion of air – was no great trick. That was the natural state of things and falling was certainly no problem. The trick was more about controlling that fall. First of all to make sure they didn’t die and second to control where they actually came down.

First things first though.

“Ohhhhhhhhh shit.” Jenny’s cry was prolonged and only built in intensity – as did the grip on her hand - as she ‘allowed’ their descent to speed up more and more.

Realising just how high up they really were meant that getting down quicker was more of a priority.

“Tara, sometimes I really haaaaaate you.”

Physics taught her that falling could only get to a certain upper limit of speed – terminal velocity. The factor that she was more worried about was losing control. The longer she had to hold them up, the more that could go wrong with terrible consequences. Speed seemed better. If she was distracted or something, then she could be in real trouble.

They could be.

And being where they were, Jenny would never let her hear the end of it if they died here.

This wasn’t a magic carpet ride by any means and this wasn’t something she’d really done… wow, since back when she and Faith – the slayer, not Jenny’s daughter who’d been named for her – had descended from the crosswalks that supported the lighting rigs down into the throng of vampires that had needed destroying.

Yeah, that had been a while ago. It’d also been about ten metres. Max.

This? Waaaay more than that. Way, way more. Way, way more than a couple of football fields too.

Getting down, before something interfered, was her absolute priority.

“Slower please,” Jenny gasped when she asked if her friend was alright. The wind threatened to snatch her words away, leaving them shouting.

“Can’t,” Tara said. “We need to be down, before I lose it.”

“Lose it? Lose it? Who said anything about losing it?”

Tara didn’t answer, starting to look at where they might land. There were… there were a lot of people down there. A lot of them. This was where the thronging dead were, she assumed. Stepping off a cloud of air in the middle of them wasn’t likely to be very covert and almost certainly would result in at least one touching their hand or skin – deliberately or not.

And that would mean… well, they wouldn’t even have the room to run this time.

“Open space,” she murmured, looking. “Open space.”

“What?”

It was difficult to hear with the air was rushing past their ears.

“I said we need open space. How about that…” She didn’t point, keeping a grip on Jenny and using the other hand to gesture, to make the orientation of the cushion of air obvious to herself. Sure, she should have been to do that without a visualisation, but would Willow or Rupert thank her for getting cocky at this kind of height?

No.

They’d be spitting mad.

“How about what?” Jenny asked.

“The roof of that building.”

It was what she was aiming for anyway, already turning their vertical descent into lateral movement. Since this was a cave, the builders – who built houses in the Hall of the Dead? – didn’t have to worry about having a conventional style ‘outdoor’ roof to shrug off the rainwater. It was almost flat, or so it seemed. As they got closer it actually looked like more of a dome shape. But a shallow one. She aimed for just off the middle, not wanting to hit the point that was furthest from the ground and most likely to make them tumble and roll.

“Tara…”

“Hold on to my hand,” she said. “Don’t let go, whatever happens.” If it came to it she hoped to be able to stabilise and catch them, even if they landed awkwardly and fell off the edge of the roof. But she couldn’t do that for both of them, not if they were separated.

“As if!” Jenny said, tightening her grip to the point it was painful.

Impact wasn’t exactly bone-rattling, but it wasn’t like stepping off a magic carpet either and both of them went to their knees – mostly for balance – as soon as she dismissed the thickened air from beneath them, ready to snatch it back into existence if either of them should start to roll off the roof.

Taking a moment to breathe properly – still out of breath from the running – she tipped her head and looked back up at where they’d come from. “That’s a long way,” she said. “Much further than I thought.”

“You don’t say. Never. Ever. Do that again.”

“Not even if they’d been rampaging zombies intent on eating our brains rather than copping a feel?” Tara asked.

“Never, ever do that again.”

Tara smiled, squeezed her friend’s hand a little more lightly than they’d been clasping it up until now. “All we have to do now is get down.”

“No,” Jenny corrected. “All we have to do now is get down off this roof, find something to cover ourselves so we can move through the crowds without getting every dead person – and thing – in this realm following us for a bit of hands on time, find Willow, find what Willow’s looking for and then get out of here.”

“See,” Tara said. “It’s not so bad when you put it that way.”

“I’m not Willow,” Jenny reminded her.

“I noticed that.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mostly that if you were we’d have eliminated one of those problems already but also Willow does things for me that you really don’t,” Tara said.

Jenny laughed, for the first time since their plunge. It was a relief that she could recover so quickly. “And that’s why you want her back. But you know, if I’d been ten years younger, gone to college with you and not met an Englishman – things might’ve been different.”

“I doubt it,” Tara replied, rolling her eyes at the joke. After all the whole reason they were in this mess was that somehow fate had decreed that she and Willow must be together. Didn’t matter how or why, it was just a quirk of fate that a certain law firm had bet on.

A wonderful quirk from her point of view even though things had been done, others allowed to happen. Deals had been made. Lives had been lived without fulfilling them and… here they were. Exactly where they were supposed to be, she supposed.

“Yeah, I doubt it too. You’re really not my type.”

Laughing for a few seconds, Tara sobered quickly when she thought about Jenny’s real type, the family they’d had. “I’ll get you back to them,” she promised, having a flash of empathy for Jenny who had no direct involvement in this. No need to be here except that she could. No reason to take this risk.

The one who’d left her family behind. A husband. Kids that Tara loved like they’d been her own. She didn’t think she could’ve been closer to Faith, Ben and the others if she or Willow had given birth to them themselves. So she understood what was back there for her. The pull of it was very much the same as what brought her here, after Willow and it wouldn’t do to forget that.

She wasn’t the only one in love.

“I know.”

“If I take risks – or what seem like risks – I want you to know now that it’s to get you home. Back to them.”

“Not me,” Jenny replied. “Us. Oh…”

“What?”

“Well, looks like this might’ve been a good place to make a landing – if you can call it a landing. I mean - ”

“Never mind criticising my technique,” Tara chided her. “You can tell tales about that for years to come – once we’re home. What have you seen?”

“You don’t see it?”

Tara looked around. The town – city – really, clustered around a large building on a hill. She shrugged.

“Obviously that’s why I had to come with you,” Jenny said. “I think I’ve just paid for my ticket. You must be overexposed.”

“What?” She didn’t get it.

“I know where Willow is.” Jenny pointed.

“Okay, it’s the big building on the hill – in terms of places to head to I can see it makes a certain amount of sense and she is that general direction but so is pretty much everything else. Why are you so certain?”

“Tara, come on. It’s Willow.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t get it.”

“You really don’t see it? How can you not see it?”

“What?”

She looked up where Jenny was pointing and – right down to some sort of crystal or stone at the tip and right then knew just what Jenny was about to say. Maybe it’d had a female architect who’d felt in need of a push-up bra? The explanation made about as much sense as all that phallic compensation theory of building design back home.

“Call yourself a lesbian?,” Jenny said, even though she’d seen it now. “Good god, it’s a giant boob. Where else would Willow go?”

*******************

Kajun · **Posted:** Sat Oct 08, 2011 5:18 pm

Katharyn, This chapter was so much fun! Now I don’t know which is my favorite so far, Willow VS Ethan or Tara and Jenny VS the Wannatouchies. Huge sigh of relief to know Tara’s magic works in the Halls --what a ride! I love that Jenny is the first to realize where Willow is. She isn’t there purely for the company after all. Now who could possibly have been the architect? A breast gal for sure.

If vampires aren’t supposed to be there.. VW and the Master must be obstacles placed by WaH or someone yet to be revealed determined to prevent the return of Toni’s father. Unless.. the Master is Toni’s father. Shoot. I wonder if Ben is Glory. (the other Ben :wink

) Whoever manages to bring her father back has to have moxie. That suggests he is someone of great import in the Halls. Or.. it takes someone willing to “kill” an “innocent”. Tara didn’t want to cause harm to her pursuers but maybe that’s what is required to send someone back. Or.. they will need to feed him enough life energy to force expulsion from the Halls. This is a big puzzle with countless ways this go down. Can’t wait to find out which way you take us!

Landing on a roof was genius and kudos to Jenny for thinking of much needed body “armor”, especially now that they must maneuver past the throngs of dead things to get to Willow. I think the last line put this chapter in the lead. I may be too old to be a hipster too, but I agree with Jenny.. that was way cool! Edge of the seat here.. :grin

Grimm · **Posted:** Sat Oct 08, 2011 9:26 pm

Wannatouchies?!?! :bow

That really was a great chapter!! My (yes she is mine!!) Tara is the total package. She has brains, beauty and a heart of gold. A lesser person (me) would have just blasted the hell out of the wannatouchies and not have given it a second thought. But, she used her intellect to get them out of what could have turned into a toxic situation and was able to avoid hurting any of the beings that reside in the halls. I also took great pleasure in the fact that she managed to scare the sh*t out of Jenny in the process!!

Sooooooo, They think Willow's in the Nipple factory :hmm

... I hope it's not a trick. I would hate to see Tara walk into a Boobie trap :grin

.

We are getting closer to the showdown....I'm very excited!

ps. what Kajun said (re: Toni's dad)....is he the Master? is he in league with the Master? or, are the Vampires the obstacles that Willow needs to get thru in order to reach Toni's dad? I know you won't answer any of my questions....that's part of the fun...and the torture :gnome

!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Sun Oct 09, 2011 8:45 pm

Wannatouchies... love it

Also the nipple factory LOL

Kajun - Thank you so much... I think there may be another vs. part that you come to like (I hope) but we're a little way off that yet. And yes, magic works. After all, though I point out just how 'Mary Sue' I've made the girls and the problems of not having them just blast their way to the end of the story in 2 chapters, it'd be waaaay to tough to come up with non-magical ways to get around this stuff and I am a lazy writer LOL

The whole boob shaped dome actually came from catching another of those 'every skyscraper is a phallus' commentaries on some show. Somehow I've never quite bought into the fact that if you have a limited amount of land and want a large amount of workspace then you have to build up... but if you want to explain things that way why not have a boob-dome instead

Not going to comment on your theories too much as usual...you never know who's lurking LOL

Thanks so much.

SMGOVAN - Nah, this Tara is mine... sorry. I think what I really want to get over is that the wannatouchies aren't bad. They aren't zombies or whatever (though I've totally let it read that way) Until they do something 'wrong' Tara isn't going to hurt them if she can avoid it. That said, she isn't going to take many chances either.

And yes, scaring Jenny always fun... she's so deliciously snarky.

We are getting closer, but not close, to the showdown... I think that will come in about 290 (the final one) with the parts after that leading to the close at 300 with all threads tied off. Don't hold me to that though, just guessing without looking

(Of course those numbers are total Sidestep parts - not just in third chronicle!)

More breast puns please

Thank you.

More than likely the next part will go up later today.

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Mon Oct 10, 2011 9:52 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 28 (270))
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 out a little more about her surroundings and gets closer to the rules.
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 married with a family. 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: Once again with the ‘vampires are evil and they do bad things.’ I don’t get too graphic but some of Willow sees is laid out here and it’s not pleasant.
Incidentally – as written – this would’ve been chapter 31. But because I don’t like to leave you with short parts were actually in 28. See how I give up my prolonged feedback fixes in favour of giving you what you deserve? A fanfic writer can do no more…
Thanks to: I’m running out of people to thank without being repetitive. Is it compulsory? I feel bad if I don’t! So here’s for L… I haven’t done that in a while.

“Boob.” Willow murmured as she came out of that semi-conscious state, caught between sleep and being fully awake. “Giant boob.”

Seemingly in the blink of an eye the time had skipped on by nearly an hour – a fact she only knew by looking at her watch since there was no outward sign of day, night or time passing in any way here.

Before she’d apparently drifted off again there’d been some decent sleepy-time, even allowing for the fact that she’d was creeped out by the vampire version of her own self.

Once she’d entered the vampire’s embrace – she preferred to think of it as being another her for reasons of sanity and avoiding even the tiniest hint or suspicion of fidelity – she’d taken the towel away from the younger, deader and eviler version of herself and taken care of her own dampness, thank you very much.

The towel had been a useful way to cover up too because… hello, exposing herself to evilly gay Willow Rosenbergs - that were dressed like founder members of a leather fetish dungeon - was not exactly embraced by the vows she and Tara had written for their wedding day. The other vows, after the ceremony. No one got to see the goodies…

And despite the vampires apparent – and very obvious - urge to lay its hands on her, it’d largely left her alone.

But yeah, in that moment of clarity between being asleep and – well not - she’d just realised what this place had reminded her of.

It was a giant boob. Funny it’d taken a dream including Tara to realise it. Because – frankly – it wasn’t really anatomically correct but from her memory of the view from the outside it was mostly reminding of… well, a Tara-boob.

Of course it probably wasn’t and it certainly wasn’t supposed to be a Tara-boob if it was any boob at all, if only because millions – billions – of women out there had boobs just like it. So, it could be a generalised boob – just a generalised boob that was generally like a Tara boob.

She was still close enough to sleep to allow the comforting blanket of millions of boobs – two by two – take her to a warm, happy place. Though Tara was perpetually at the head of the line. Every other boob was just… there. Like… background boobage, offering tribute to the magnificence that – still – were Tara-boobs.

“Yes,” a voice said from the near darkness.

“What the hell - ?!”

She bolted upright in the bed, realised who the voice belonged to and made an effort to cover her own – somewhat lacking – boobage with the sheets. At least now she was getting older there was no risk of anything threatening to slip down around her knees. Perpetually perky – or near perky – was definitely her thing.

The vampire though... talking of unnaturally perky. How in all the hells did she get cleavage like that? Even with a corset? It made her think that perhaps all versions of her hadn’t been created equal…

Helped not to have to breathe though.

It’d been sitting across the room and now it opened its eyes she could see it. Though it still hadn’t vamped out – they weren’t those orange/yellow eyes that said you were about to have your throat ripped out – the eyes still showed up in the dim light. Almost like a cats when the light hit them just right.

It made them look even more empty and soulless. Not surprising really since, hello, empty and soulless creature sat right there.

“It is,” the vampire said again.

“A boob?”

“Mmmm. Don’t you know whose?”

Okay… Wait a minute? Either the vampire – which lets not forget was insane and prone to lying about anything that amused her – was going to tell her it was some sort of famous person, someone she might’ve heard of or… “No.”

“Mmm, yes.”

“No.”

“Yes,” the vampire said again but more forcefully, not seeming to want to play that game.

“But – my – I mean, it’d be a lot lower and flatter - at least in a reclining posture – which it would have to be to get that orientation and point skywards - ”

“Not us!” the vampire said, clearly frustrated with her attempt to apply science to this. But what did it want, she’d just woken up? “The kitten…”

Tara.

It wasn’t generally Tara-boob-esque? It was Tara-boob?

Okay… Processing. She was sleeping inside a Tara-boob. Her first reaction was that it was all kinds of creepy. Her second was that Tara should never-ever know and the third was that it had to be a lie. After all this place was… huge.

Which wasn’t to say that Tara hadn’t been up to being the model, if you ignored the effect of gravity and passing years and… No…

“Bullshit,” she said.

“I designed it,” the vampire said and the confidence there had a ring of truth. Willow remembered that – as the vampire – she’d had all sorts of things built to her specifications. Some things with inspiration that had been a great deal less architecturally – or mechanically - sound than a boob. And a great deal more terrifying to think back on too.

The exsanguinator – for example – had started life inspired by a juice box. She’d actually been aiming to reduce the pressure inside the body so far that… No, not ‘she’. It. It’d been doing those things. Not her. All she had was the memory and it wasn’t hers.

And faced with the vampire herself she needed to keep her head. She needed to figure out the rules here and then do something about this, not start feeling guilty about things she remembered but it had done.

“Fine, so who built it then?” she argued. The place made the pyramids look small by comparison. Probably.

“There’s no shortage of… motivated labour here.” The vampire finished that off with the same noise she’d used to make to indicate a whipping. Oh yes, it’d loved a whipping. The patterns on – and in – the skin. The blood, especially the blood.

Willow still wasn’t sure she believed it, but next order of business – which would really have been the first if it’d hadn’t engaged her in a boob conversation just after she woke up - “What are you doing in here?”

“Watching you.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

When you put it that way there wasn’t much she could say, not that would have much effect on it anyway…

She stayed there, looking across the room at the reflecting eyes that – she knew – could see her perfectly clearly. The night vision was about all she really missed from being this… thing.

“You’re boring to watch though,” the vampire casually concluded after a minute or two of looking at each other. As if making conversation.

“Sorry,” she said, feeling somehow pressured to be a better, more entertaining sleeper. Damn you, competitive nature.

“The kitten was… entertaining. She had dreams. She knew how to writhe and moved so deliciously even when she wasn’t naked… Especially when she wasn’t naked.”

It was true, Tara did move deliciously, but the fact the vampire knew this about her wife annoyed her more than anything else that’d happened. No, one think annoyed her just a little more. That she’d known that about her wife before ever laying her own eyes on Tara. Remembering it. “Shut up about her.”

Of course, it was a mistake to be so intense about it. Without any preparatory movement – with no other warning at all - the vampire was in the air, springing at her. It was all about the eyes and the dark shape that landed atop her – already straddling her and pinning her down before she could think to call the magic to her assistance.

Not that she couldn’t have toasted it right now if pushed.

But she didn’t know the rules. Do that and she could make an enemy that was invulnerable to anything she could do… and while her life was very, very fragile. She knew what this creature could do to someone who was alive, keeping them that way while they wished it would all just end.

More to the point Tara would kill her if she didn’t make it home and ended up stuck here.

The vampire hadn’t released its demon side though. It was still human looking – she still hadn’t seen vamp-face here. And that helped stay her hand, helped her breathe through the urge to set it on fire. She had to believe there was something that was stopping them from doing that. A rule, a condition. Something she could use to her advantage – even if they still had the strength to take over this place.

“Say that again,” the vampire said. “Please.”

“Keep your demon mouth shut about my wife,” Willow said in a very measured way. Completely calm. Almost neutral in her tone for all that she really meant the words. “Please.”

The ‘please’ seemed to amuse it more than the repeated demand might’ve angered it.

“Possessive… Mmmm. Shall we fight for her?”

If it came to it, sure she would. But it wasn’t going to be some leather clad cat fight dominated by vampiric characteristics like strength, speed and teeth. No. if it came to that it’d be down, dirty and over quickly. The flickering embers would last longer than the ‘fight’.

Yeah, bitch.

“No need for that,” she said, more than happy to lie in order to delay that outcome as long as possible though.

“I was there first,” the vampire said.

Yes, there was that. Perhaps the vampire’s fascination with Tara was due to a sense of possessive entitlement. Didn’t mean she respected or agreed with it, but she could see where that might’ve come from. The vampire was obviously spoiling for a fight though. It didn’t want submission, it wanted to actively assert its dominance and its instincts needed her to resist in order to do that.

This was very much a creature, for all it possessed her memories and a devilish intelligence.

“But I’m there now,” Willow replied simply. Possession was nine-tenths as she said. Unfortunate analogy in the circumstances, but there you go.

“I was the first.”

Now that made her… what? It was a strong visceral reaction but she was finding it hard to characterise. Anger? Perhaps that the vampire had raised it. But also some element of self-loathing because she remembered that first time she/it had with Tara. She carried the same recollections, the same sensations and the same… reactions at the time as the vampire did.

“I know,” she said. What else was she going to say? There was no point denying what they both knew.

“Because you remember. Because you were me.”

“I was you,” she agreed. Call the vampire ‘it’ if she liked, but ultimately that was true.

It was the thing that no one got, no one understood fully. Not even Tara. Everyone seemed to think that the terrible part of the memories she carried of the vampire was what it had done. That, somehow, she knew how terrible it had been and saw them through the eyes of the person she was today. Someone with a soul.

They thought that the guilt came from that, the pain and the fervent wish to be able to scoop part of her brain out.

No. That wasn’t it at all.

There was nothing between her and the memories. There was no moral or ethical filter. She hadn’t been trapped in the demon, aghast in horror. No, what she remembered was the pure, unadulterated joy of doing those things. Killing, maiming and abusing for sport. Barely even to feed. Wanting to seduce Tara and to hurt her – despite fascination ‘she’ couldn’t overcome. And doing ‘her’ best to be repugnant so that it was just that little bit debasing.

She remembered not wanting Tara’s love. Adoration, sure. Lust, certainly. But love? The vampire had never wanted that. Why would it?

Willow remembered feeling that way. In memory terms it had been her. There was no difference in the quality of those memories from how she’d felt when Toni had come to her to ask her – tell her – to come to the Halls. Or the bliss of their wedding day.

That was the thing that no one got, maybe not even the vampire. And she wasn’t about to try and explain it either.

“Not going to play?” the vampire asked.

“I do have something to say,” she revealed.

“I’m all ears.”

Ears and corset boosted cleavage, as in ‘goddamn, girls. Get down.’ “Tara staked you. She staked you and she brought me back. She chose me, the one she’d never known, over you.” She said it just as plainly and simply. But that was checkmate. That was game, set and match. One-hundred and eighty.

“I brought you clothes,” the vampire said, suddenly business-like. Or as close as it got to that quality when it was rearing up over her, legs straddling her middle.

“Like yours?”

“No, you’re… large.”

That was hardly fair. But then Willow wasn’t sure how she’d have fit in those clothes at fifteen, let alone now. Maybe you had to be dead to pull it off – or pull them on. The vampire threw a pile at the bed, but both the pile and the plural of ‘clothes’ proved to be misleading.

“Where’s my underwear?” she asked, holding up the black, full length dress.

The vampire shrugged. Not it’s concern and she knew all too well – for the dead at least – there was no need - or desirability – for them in that outfit. No sweat or anything to worry about.

At least it hadn’t made her get up, naked, to come and get the dress off it - again. She’d have taken the sheet, but it hadn’t even tried, which meant it must be really ticked at that statement she’d just made. She needed to be careful, but since it wasn’t looking for cheap voyeurism right now, she felt safer.

“You need to get off,” Willow said.

“Mmm, yes I do. Is that an offer?”

“No, you need to get off me – I mean, you need to move.” Damn, this thing was just an innuendo machine.

And who said vampires only thought with their stomachs?

Sighing, simply for effect, the vampire got off her but stayed close. So yes, much safer… Willow wriggled under the sheet and pulled the dress on. She did struggle with the zipper though. Sighing and seeing no option she stood up and turned her back. “Zip me.” She was damned if she was going to let the dress fall off her – no doubt at the least opportune moment. That was just how things went for her.

The vampire neither made a meal of it – again an unfortunate possible turn of phrase – nor made it a simple gesture. The way it grasped the zipper left it trailing a nail along the skin of her spine until Willow couldn’t stand it any longer and stepped away. “I can get it from there.” Be nice… Be nice… “Thank you.”

“You look… almost edible.”

It was, Willow understood, almost the greatest compliment that the vampire could make.

To prey.

She had the sudden impression that this was hard on the soulless creature she’d once been. That somehow… What was it? It had held off from feeding on Tara before but probably because it was enjoying itself in too many other ways – including hurting the woman who’d gone on to be Willow’s wife.

But her?

It was holding back from something it very much wanted. It wanted to feed on her – probably while it did other things to her - and… for whatever reason, it wasn’t.

Self-restraint hadn’t ever been a part of this vampire’s makeup. So perhaps it was someone else’s restraint.

Or something’s?

The Master had been mentioned. More than once and he was the one thing – the only thing – that had ever kept a lid on this vampire’s cravings. And then only barely.

“Somewhere we’re going?” Willow asked as she looked at herself in the mirror. It was reassuring that she saw a face she recognised rather than one that was lost to the past – and death.

“Oh, yes.”

“Where?” she asked.

She didn’t fight against it, this wasn’t the battle. Rather she was curious. She’d be going somewhere anyway and she needed to… well, she needed help to find what she’d come for. She needed help to get out of here too with that objective in hand.

Also, she was pretty sure, the Master had no interest in being human. So he wasn’t likely to bite her hand off – literally or figuratively – to take the place of Toni’s Dad in going back to the real world that way. Was that even the way it would work?

But how could she ask anyone for help to take someone else out of the Halls of the Dead? It wasn’t like this place was a resort now was it?

The words ‘Hell’ and ‘No’ linked naturally together.

“You know where we’re going,” the vampire told her.

“The Master,” she said.

“Mmmm,” the vampire replied, as if savouring it. “He’s been waiting for you ever since he heard.”

“Heard what?”

The vampire didn’t answer her question, leaving it hanging. Another of her little games. She supposed she could’ve asked questions around the subject, figured it out if it really wasn’t going to tell her, but what was the point? It’d all become clear very soon and talking to it, showing an interest, didn’t seem like a healthy option. Less than neutral. Asking questions, rather than telling it, gave it control. Too much.

They left the room, the vampire making an extravagant gesture of allowing her to go first while Willow considered what choice she really had?

It didn’t feel like much of one unless – until – she knew what would happen when she killed one of these things.

So she was going to see the Master.

And yes, the title had always carried the status of the Master pre-eminent among other masters. There was no sense in denying it. She was… afraid of him.

If the vampire that called itself Willow was scary, it was pretty much because it was insane and cruel with it. But the insanity was the main thing that distinguished it from most others. That vampire was predictability unpredictable. You knew that there was always something ‘fun’ on its mind. That was the point of its existence.

But the Master? The Master was just plain terrifying.

They’d fought worse than him – she and Tara – and beaten them too.

Point of fact, the Master had been taken down by a Slayer – if not the first one to try – and a witch who hadn’t come fully into her power yet. So he wasn’t all that bad compared say to a giant snake demon but… yes, he still scared her.

Much of it was his personal connection to her, the complete dominance he’d asserted over her and subservience he’d demanded when she’d been this vampire. Yes, he’d given her power over the humans, over all the other vampires in Sunnydale but…

This vampire called Willow knew her place and that was firmly under the heel of his boot.

And if he had been ‘easy’ for Tara and her slayer friend to take down, easier than some of the things they’d faced, that had been after a long campaign. That was after they’d torn apart his support structure, killed the vampires that he’d created and loosed on Sunnydale.

After they’d removed the one named Willow from his circle through… well, through making it believe in its connection with Tara. That version of Willow Rosenberg had betrayed the Master by allowing Tara to live.

Once Luke had also fallen then… Well, much of the Master’s strength came from his control over others.

But vampires like Luke, Darla and, yes, Willow didn’t submit to anything without good cause. And the former Mayor of Sunnydale had brought Tara to town purely because he couldn’t deal with the Master and the tide of vampires on his own.

Or at all, actually. The Master had interfered with the Mayor’s ascension and the two had been facing off.

And the Master had been winning.

So yes, he was scareworthy in his own right.

Of course, so was she. He’d died before she’d been brought back and it was only after she was breathing again, with Tara, that they’d come into their full potential as users of magic. Or rather the elements. The Master shouldn’t have been her letting into his presence, not if he understood what she could do.

But she remembered him well enough that she knew he’d not pass up a chance to show his followers – and there would be followers – he was the dominant power here. He’d want to show her that too. It was important to him. This wouldn’t simply be an execution. That wasn’t his style. Everything he did had a purpose.

And faced with two versions of Willow Rosenberg, what would his response be to that?

Undoubtedly curiosity and something that was well thought out. Unlike most vampires he wasn’t a slave to either his stomach or his instincts. He’d existed long enough to learn to control them. And perhaps that was what was scariest about him. He had all of a vampire’s strengths – and more – but few of the weaknesses that usually they’d have been able to exploit.

He almost wasn’t a vampire at all. In appearance he was more creature than human – even before he vamped out.

In short, she could do without a trip to visit him.

“So he already knows?” she asked unnecessarily.

“Of course. He knows everything that happens here. This is his place now.”

Willow didn’t ask if the vampire meant here, in the building, here in the cavern or here in the whole realm of reality. She figured the answer would become obvious if it was something she needed to know.

“But you built it – this… what do you call it?”

“Home,” the vampire said.

“You built… home?”

“The Master took what was here. Improved it.”

The Master did this, the Master did that… nowhere in there was the accomplishment of the vampire. Which was strange – when they were alone - because, no matter where it got it from, this creature she was walking behind remained a devilishly intelligent and resourceful individual.

Looking around the place Willow was certain that the vampire hadn’t had chance for a correspondence qualification in architecture and yet… here the building was. Just like the machines it’d built with no real experience of designing much beyond science projects in the sixteen years of life and twelve of education they’d shared.

She could see, when they moved through sections, where old ended, new started and vice versa. But no one had claimed it would be seamless. Just… booblike.

“What was here before? Who built that?” Willow asked. She was impressed, in spite of herself if they really had gotten this built in what… a few years?

Or did time move differently here? No, no matter what time was doing outside this realm, here it would be subjectively one second after another. Hours and days.

One thing she noticed as they walked through the huge building was that everyone they passed was paying very close attention to her. That didn’t seem like a good thing. But the older and the younger versions of herself walking down a hallway side by side? Good job she couldn’t’ have still crammed herself into the leathers, that might’ve looked really… clichéd.

“Who cares?”

Willow lapsed into silence and paid more attention to the building. It was as large on the inside as it had appeared from the exterior, but she was detecting a theme. The place she’d stayed last ‘night’ had been on the periphery of the complex and now they were moving towards the heart again.

Under the boob, so to speak.

Unfortunately as authentic as a giant boob-like dome could possibly be, the heart wasn’t likely to a beating one. Because of the realm, but more particularly because of the occupant.

As they moved through the wings, hallways and connected buildings that made up what appeared externally to be one huge edifice, the interior became darker and disconnected from whatever the exterior light source was. Some windows were covered; more – in the newer sections – simply didn’t exist.

The décor varied enormously too. From open brickwork to exquisitely done – and roughly vandalised – murals and sculptures.

The closer they got to the centre of the web, the more obvious the signs of the Master’s lair though.

It wasn’t that he was personally an aficionado of such casual demonstrations of power as dried ears hanging from the tip of a sculpture’s sword. No, the Master was never needlessly cruel.

He frequently found himself in need of inflicting cruelty for good reason – by his own standards at least.

In the past it was more that he attracted and maintained a coterie of those for whom the opportunity to inflict that cruelty was desirable. Vampires, basically. The Master had been the atypical one, not the rest of them.

Candles were his thing; the man gloried in surrounding himself with fire. Though he’d always stayed away from the sun – not every vampire could let that go – he did like to demonstrate his lack of fear and simple power. So the candles, any one of which could’ve started an all-consuming inferno.

Plus, she supposed, he was from an age when that had been the only source of light and that was becoming more obvious as they went through the building.

Random body parts – though never a full one - candles and a strange lack of blood.

The previous lairs she’d known – both the Bronze and his cavern beneath Sunnydale when he’d been caught in the Hellmouth – hadn’t underplayed the blood motif.

Here though? A smear, here and there… but you could almost have expected the walls to be painted with it.

Which raised one very obvious possibility. Here everyone was dead. No one’s heart was beating. While only some of those here were demons – including these two vampires – the living were going to be pretty damn rare.

Rare enough that she and Tara – because she was certain her lover was within the Halls now – might be considered ‘deliciously rare’. Was she being taken to the Master as a present? A treat? Genuine, warm, heart-pumped blood?

The vampire version of her had given no sign of it, which was reassuring actually because the doppelganger would’ve been even less capable of keeping a secret like that than she was pretending they hadn’t organised a surprise party for Tara’s birthday.

But whether her escort intended it or not, how would the Master react when faced with living, warm blood in a body that had betrayed him? Did she have to trust in his famous self-control? Would he feel the need to exercise it?

She swallowed, hard, just when the vampire happened to be looking at her.

“You’re afraid,” it said.

“A little,” she admitted. When it came to fear, this Willow was unlikely to be fooled.

“You should be.”

“Why?”

She had the chance to go the other way now, fight her way out and just get the hell out of here… Back to Tara.

“It’s the Master.”

Yeah. That.

Finally they closed on heart of the building and if the journey here had been hinting at it, to actually be here was…

It looked like the giant dome – certainly not intended to be boob-like from the inside – had been inserted into the midst a lot of other buildings. The sides of those had simply been removed and cleared, the colonnade around the perimeter of the dome transitioning into the middle of rooms, halls and open air spaces without regard to the architecture.

This place was the important one, everything else inconsequential.

“You put this up?” she gasped, impressed in spite of herself. You didn’t have to understand the intricacies of architecture to understand how keeping something like this up – in defiance of gravity – was an incredible feat.

“Hmm, I made sure it happened,” the vampire said.

Once she turned attention to what lay beneath the dome though… Things changed from impressive to terrible.

Those ‘clues’ along the way gave way to what she could only describe as… This place was a cathedral of suffering.

Cries of pain echoed through the place, traversing the seemingly excellent acoustics. With almost random placement there were clusters of people and beings. Some of them inflicting the pain and some of them taking it.

And still not much blood at all. Which made her neck throb, and she was very conscious of the spot where her blood pulsed so close to the skin. Where she’d been bitten and turned. Where he’d suck the life from her if…

She and the vampire advanced along the aisle towards the centre, the raised spot that looked out over the rest of this place. His place. His spot. His throne.

And she already knew he was there. She could feel his presence like static in the air. A pressure.

This was something she’d forgotten, she’d been in his presence – as a human – for a short period of time really. But all of that time she’d been able to feel his force of personality. His power… That had changed once she’d died and been turned but she’d seen the effect in others.

He had a power over the living; it was something she had to be wary of.

Perhaps he had a power over the dead too and that was how he’d taken over.

There were an infinite number of the dead here – well nearly – so why wouldn’t they tear this place down and bury him in it?

Of course, she didn’t know the rules. Didn’t know if that was possible – but why would they… Why let these things happen? Why suffer?

This wasn’t casual torture. It wasn’t even – apparently – torture with a purpose.

She was surrounded by systematic, sick cruelty.

“Why?” she gasped.

The vampire heard her, of course. “Why not?”

Was that the Master’s opinion too? Do it simply because you could?

It made her feel sick.

Sick scared…

What she had to hold onto was that she wasn’t helpless. She could defend herself and even help others if she had the chance. She wasn’t the geeky kid who’d stayed out a little past curfew and got taken prisoner by vampires. Hung in a cage and made to watch her best friend get murdered and killed.

Left there, terrified until the insane Drusilla arrived to turn her… to rip away her mind as well as her soul.

She wasn’t that girl anymore, whereas a part of the vampire beside her still was.

“I’m not helpless,” she murmured to herself as they approached a throne that appeared to be made from bones.

“Oh,” said a voice she recognised too well, “but I’m afraid you are. Welcome, Willow Rosenberg.”

It wasn’t just the voice she recognised. The pale, stretched skin over his skull. The perpetual sneer and the black leather…

The Master.

******************

Kajun · **Posted:** Mon Oct 10, 2011 9:34 pm

Katharyn, I guessed something right? Whoohoo! Willow struck a nerve reminding VW that Tara chose her over the vamp. The doppelganger is not likely to forget that comment. I could almost see the wheels of plotting revenge spinning thru her crazed mind. Yikes! So if the Master wasn’t ever needlessly cruel, yet he is allowing all this torture, which seems pretty unnecessary to me, is he simple placating VW? Or is inflicting pain the closest thing to killing he can get in this realm? Hmmm.. yeah, I’m still wondering if “killing” anyone/anything in this realm returns them to the living world. The Master and VW wouldn’t like that. So he took over the Halls from someone (cough Toni’s dad? cough) and is, basically, torturing the innocent and, likely, not so innocent. Tara won’t stand for that. Looks like there will be more to this little mission than either girl anticipated. My list of questions keeps growing!

Oh.. and the Master is wayyyyy underestimating Willow. He will learn, too late, she is far from helpless.

I’m still giggling over SMGOVAN’s boobie comments.. LOL!

Grimm · **Posted:** Tue Oct 11, 2011 9:04 am

Kajun, The 'wannatouchies' has to go down in the Sidestep hall of fame! Before this trilogy is done, we will have our own little language....lets term it 'Sidesteppian'.... I speak sidesteppian fluently because I am addicted to this story.

Katharyn, Wow.... So, no killing in the halls and very little blood. I would think this scenerio would drive V.W. insane (since she's already crazy would it do the opposite and restore her sanity?). This world has got to be 'no fun' for her.

Willow did a very reasonable job of keeping her cool while still managing to stick it to the Vampire. I was surprised that V.W. did not retaliate. Which was the first comfirmation that something was very different in the Halls.

I am really wondering how Toni's dad ties into all of this. I don't think he's the Master.

Everytime I read about V.W. and her very capable and twisted brain, I flash back to those anti-drug commercials of my youth. This is your brain (insert photo of Willow). This is your brain on drugs (insert a mental image of V.W. because she is a Vampire therefore no photo would be availabe)....any questions? What a waste of a beautiful mind. I was not shocked to learn that she was responsible for the construction of the boob tube nor was it a surprise that Tara was her source for inspiration. Willow's gonna level that place when its all said and done.

Update soonish....I eagerly await Tara's arrival!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:00 am

Hey there.

Thanks so much for your fullsome responses - as ever. I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out, the mystery to fade and the surprise to cease and what you might say then!

Kajun - Did you guess right? I don't remember so... yay you!

I'm pleased you could see VW working because I haven't been that happy with her (or another character) in terms of characterization. It's funny, I was very happy with that in Sidestep 1 but now... maybe I'm just more remote from the show and thus the characters. But if it works for you, very good. What do I know? LOL

Okay, your needlessly cruel point. There's another possibility. Maybe he thinks this cruelty is needed?

As for who they are torturing... I think they're pretty much equal opportunities when it comes to that. They don't discriminate...

And yes, I think it's reasonable to assume that the girls won't let this stand... after all, one day, everyone will be back here. Friends, family, even them...

SMGOVAN - I thought I was doing well to label them the 'already-dead' but wannatouchies would've been way cooler. Find/Replace-All perhaps? LOL

No heartbeat = low blood... and yes, VW is getting antsy... So imagine what a morsel Willow (or Tara) is?

As I said before the whole boob shaped dome came from me watching TV and having a laugh at phallic imagery... but the idea of VW having something resembling the pyramids in scale built an army of the dead seemed very cool too... In reality it's not architecturally sound, of course, but hey another world, another set of laws

As for updates... since you both replied and I am far enough ahead... Shucks, you can have one now since it's not that long

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:09 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 29 (271))
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: A short Tara and Jenny interlude as they make progress into the Halls of the Dead.
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 married with a family. 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: This part is fairly short because the next one is a long one and so they won’t run together easily. Naturally you’ll probably receive them the same day or closer together. Also because I had some interesting feedback in the thread to a much earlier part that I though needed to be re-addressed and clarified, I’ve inserted a little of that here. See, feedback can still help shape the story… essentially when you’re asking good questions and I can see that I’ve not got the message across quite right, I can add that in. Of course, by the time you see this part then I’ll have redrafted the whole fic… but it’s never too late!
Thanks to:

“At least our exit was more dignified than our entrance,” Jenny said as they came out of the empty building by more conventional methods than they’d gotten in.

Struggling down from the roof and in through a window - with a cushion of thickened air to catch them in case of a slip – hadn’t really been the dextrous highlight of lives that hadn’t exactly been filled with moments of athletic grace anyway.

Doors suited both of them just fine.

“Much,” Tara agreed. “But I just don’t get why this place was empty?”

After all, the town/city/Halls of the Dead were plainly filled with people. At least down here in the bowl after their descent from the cliff. Look at the tide they’d just stepped out into. Surely someone must’ve wanted to live in this house? It looked like a nice place - or it would have with some furniture and the like.

“Me neither, but at least we don’t have to pay for that window.” Jenny’s action to get them in had come a little too easily to her for Tara not to wonder if she’d done it before.

“Good point,” she agreed.

Actually, it might easily be that people here didn’t need to live anywhere. What if they didn’t sleep? What if they didn’t tire – as appeared to be the case when they’d been ‘chased’? If so, might they not eat either? Their families were likely broken up at the point of death, at least for a while. Did you need a home here? Shelter? Was the real estate market as dead as the inhabitants were?

Stopping to ask though… Did they do that?

No, but they’d agreed that they were comfortable going out into the crowds again – busy enough now that if anyone tripped then the whole street would grind to a halt. The theory was that they were covered up with old clothes they’d found in the largely empty house and so inadvertent physical contact was less likely.

Not that they’d been dressed from as if in swimsuit pageant when they came down here. But with gloves/hand wraps and full arm coverage, there was less chance of anyone bumping up against them skin to skin and even if they did the big crowd might do them a favour. It was noisy – yes, the dead did apparently like to talk – and the press of people might make it hard to realise who had given them the inadvertent thrill of contact with the living.

But stopping to ask someone questions though? That was another matter. Yes, they were ignorant of what happened here. It was a whole other world and she had to figure it made more sense to the dead who occupied it than it did to her and Jenny. On the other hand it looked like the dead could recognise the living, without actual touch being required, so who could they stop and ask?

It was unlikely that anyone would fail to notice they were alive. They might look the part at least, what with the impromptu additions to their outfits.

Of course, being women of some dress sense - and given that the dead were hardly under-whelming in their fashion – they hadn’t just torn up the first material they’d found, though it might’ve come to that. Rather they’d been through the attic – the only part of the otherwise empty house containing anything – and found some outfits that helped. A leather jacket – not the kind bikers wore – and matching gloves had just been there in a trunk, under a lot of clothes affected by moisture and mould.

Why? That was anyone’s guess.

Perhaps fate just owed them some luck. It certainly owed them something.

Tara had the feeling though that they wearing clothes that were vintage of some kind of original inhabitants here. What did that mean then? That the Halls of the Dead hadn’t always been here? Or that the living had – at one time at least – lived here as well? Now that was an interesting thought.

Or perhaps that the dead liked a change of outfit as much as the next person?

Maybe everyone had just taken to camping in a big way, moving out of their homes?

No way to know, yet.

If the clothes marked them out in any way then you wouldn’t know it from the press of people out here in the street. There was only one direction of flow, towards the citadel on the hill. Other streets, she’d seen from above, went in the other direction, but here… one way only.

But it seemed remarkably organised. Strangely organised, in fact.

Which direction was fine – as was organisation - it was towards the citadel that they wanted to go. Giant boob or not – and she could see what Jenny meant – it was the most obvious landmark in sight and must serve some sort of central function.

“No one seems to care,” Tara said, not actually mentioning the word ‘living.’

“Or notice.”

“I guess,” she said, leaning in to talk into Jenny’s ear since it was the only way to be heard without shouting, “that it’d be like anything else. How would you hear, see or feel it in the midst of so many people? You could set off an air horn here and hardly anyone would notice.”

“True. You want to know what else is strange?”

This ought to be good, since they were walking the throngs of the dead. What could possibly be stranger than that? She waited for her friend to continue.

“Why,” Jenny virtually had to shout into her ear to be heard, “Why is Toni doing this?”

“You’re wondering that now?”

“I’ve had time to think,” Jenny said. “Everything was an emergency up to now. First to find a way in, then to get to Sunnydale then get rid of that demon, finally escaping the dead up there. One thing after another, but now we’re here… Look, in there, I had time to catch my breath and think about it. I don’t get it – I mean I do kind of, but I don’t get it really. She’s sent Willow after her Dad.”

“Toni?”

“Who else? She sent Willow after her Dad. But she’s lost more and more recently than that. What happened to Charlie – and Mal – it’s… I don’t get it. I loved my Dad and he didn’t die in the best way,” Jenny said. “But if something happened to any of my kids or Rupert and I could only have one back…? My Dad wouldn’t get a look in. He’d lived his life – wasted it mostly, and Rupert has had a good innings too. He wouldn’t want me to pick him over one of the kids.”

Tara nodded, she knew that Rupert wouldn’t want to be brought back at all. So did his wife. He’d probably argue against the wisdom of doing the same for his kids, warning of dire consequences but… ho hum.

“Why wouldn’t she send Willow here for Charlie instead?” Jenny asked.

She knew exactly what Jenny meant and it was a very good question. One she didn’t know the answer to. Short of engaging Toni in conversation and exploring her motives – when really she just wanted to shake the younger woman – how could she know?

She had her theories, of course, but thinking about them too much led her to thinking about Toni and that took her places she didn’t want to be. One day, she might forgive Jenny’s adopted daughter for what she’d done. But not anytime soon.

“She’s always been – right back to when we first knew her and she found out that dead wasn’t dead. He did come back, but he came back a monster, abomination. But that must’ve put the seed in her mind. And once she found out what I did with Willow, getting Willow back… I guess…” Then it came to her. She put together some of the things that had been said and she thought she knew… “It’s in her contract.”

“What?”

“It’s in her contract,” she repeated, a little louder. “That’s why she went to work for them, why she stayed and what they’re giving her in return. We both know she’s realised what they are – but she stays and does what they want anyway – because it’s in her frigging contract…”

Damn those lawyers and the demons that were behind them. They’d taken a perfectly wonderful young woman and turned her into someone who could do… this. She was still pissed at Toni, enough she might yet do her some physical harm if she showed up right here, but… understanding was starting to creep through her anger. In part, this had been done to her just as much as by her – which didn’t take away Toni’s personal responsibility, but it did help her understand it a little better.

If she was right.

They stayed silent for a while then, not for lack of observations to make but more because it was inconvenient to talk as they had been. But passing some buildings Tara pushed at some of the door handles. All the same. All open. All empty.

“You don’t want to be in there,” a male voice said from behind her.

“I’m sorry?” No sense in avoiding a conversation. That’d be more suspicious than anything he might pick up.

The voice belonged to a teenager, spotty and pretty indicative of the kids that came to her school every year – except this one seemed to be able to both see and hear. His clothes though… they said eighties to her, not that she was a fashion expert, that was what it looked like. All those pop videos she remembered from growing up and sneaking over to watch cable at a friend’s house. Daddy wouldn’t have had MTV or anything like it in the house.

“You don’t want to go in there,” the young man repeated, “they’ll know it you do.”

“Who’ll know?” she asked.

“Them.” He nodded towards the citadel on the hill/mountain that dominated everything. “Who do you think?”

“Okay,” she said, as if that meant something to her. He seemed to assume that she was the same as him, so what did the dead do when they met? “I’m Tara.” She considered introducing Jenny, but the movements her friend was making suggested that wasn’t what she wanted.

“Gray,” he said. “Graham. But Gray to my friends. New here are you?”

“Kind of,” Tara replied while Jenny didn’t turn around, the retired teacher just kept going in the press, holding her hand and guiding her. Further Jenny was proving a useful reason that she couldn’t shake hands with her new ‘friend’ Gray.

“Been a while for me,” he replied. “Long while. Mostly we find out how time’s passing by asking those that arrive though. Not everyone wants to talk though – I’m pleased you do. You hadn’t just had New Years had you?”

“No, that was months ago,” Tara told him.

“I figured, we get an influx in the holidays. Booze, driving, depression. Whatever. That wasn’t what did for you was it?” He sounded worried he might’ve been disparaging about her mode of death. It was, she supposed, one of those things you had to worry about in a place like this.

“Actually,” she said, not wanting to commit herself to something she couldn’t back up with impressions and facts, “I don’t know. We were driving home and…”

“And then you weren’t, driving I mean.” He nodded sagely. “Instant. Quick. Clean. Probably a car or train hit you. Maybe you were in a coma for a while, but you wouldn’t remember that and I doubt you’d arrive here together if one of you had lived that way. You girlfriends?”

“Just friends. What about you?” That was only polite then, to take an interest in what had happened to him? Great ice breaker… ‘Tell me, how did you die?’

“Bee sting. I’m allergic.” He didn’t seem too bothered about it but then he’d had time to get used to it. “Don’t worry, it’s how most conversations here go to begin with. There’s no weather down here and not much by way of organised sports,” he gestured to the roof, “and this place… we’re dead, it does weird things to us. Until they came… not much happened at all unless you did it for yourself. But things were better than they are now.”

“They? Who came?”

“Damned vampires, man. Vampires.”

***************

Kajun · **Posted:** Tue Oct 11, 2011 1:05 pm

SMGOVAN, You are the expert here so 'Sidesteppian' it is! And I’m grateful for your addiction since it inspired Katharyn to continue this most excellent, epic tale. Much thanks!

Katharyn, Yes, I guessed who the architect of the Tara boob was.. although it was pretty obvious. LOL! Desperate to get something right.. I admit it.

So now we know why Toni is doing this for her father and not her child. Too bad she agreed to a specific person in the terms, eh? Did the previous attempt to bring back her father inadvertently create a doorway for the vampires to enter and take over the Halls? Obviously, since Tara killed VW and the Master, they haven’t been in control for a great length of time --Long enough to turn most wannatouchies into mindless, uncaring zombies though. I really like Graham. I hope he becomes an ally and isn’t a plant working for “The Man”. It’s sad, and scary, that nothing happening is better than what is happening in the halls. Graham also gave Tara and Jenny an important bit of info: The damned vampires know of their presence since they entered the building in search of clothes. Whew.. great update!

Grimm · **Posted:** Tue Oct 11, 2011 5:21 pm

That does answer the question of why her father. But, I still hate her filthy guts!! Graham does 'seem' like a good wannatouchie. But, Ethan appeared to be 'helpful' and we see how well that worked out. Whats the what with Jenny? Does she know him? She clearly is avoiding something.

So, the light should be on for Tara now. She's gotta realize that V.W. is in the house. Graham said that things got bad when the Vamps got there which I took to mean that Vampires in the halls was a new occurance. Does it have anything to do with the spell that was used to restore Willow? I remember Toni (bitch) saying something about the spell being very specific and something that she didnt understand. Did the Vocah create the Vamp snafu when it did the spell?

Since it worked the last two times I tried it, Update soon please!!

edob · **Joined:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:10 pm **Posts:** 169

i'm back, i missed this story while away:) awsome updates, and a boob dome. so fucking cool:)))

Katharyn · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:56 am

hey, Edob Welcome back. Nice to have you (so to speak!). More with the boob dome appreciation LOL. If I'd known it was this easy to please kittens I wouldn't write whole stories!! Thanks.

Kajun - Yeah, I can be kind of obvious when I want to be. But then you STILL were all in doubt if it was VW and I thought that was obvious so go figure

The Toni stuff was a little bit of a tweak based on the early feedback. Something had to soften the image a little. You're not supposed to like her, but it was going a little far!! Least this way you know the reason. It hasn't changed, I just made it more obvious...

The doorway, hmm... I think you have all the info you need for that soon!

And no, time is pretty consistent so the Master and VW have not been here too long. Long enough to take over, build a boob dome and start imposing his will though... Precise timing falls under the matter above

Careful what you say about 'Most' of the wannatouchies... That is a tweak I made this morning to a later part having read this. It's actually a tiny, tiny number in % terms. He's barely even started. Imagine everyone who ever died. Most of them aren't even here in the cavern and he's not got to all of those... Lots and lots, for sure. But not 'most' not by orders of magnitude!

Gray... not saying much yet.

I keep saying it, and it will come home to roost later, the caverns they're in now... it's like the lobby of the Halls of the Dead. Nothing very exciting happens in the lobby, maybe free cake or something. But the good stuff is elsewhere... (okay, hotel analogy not working any more!)

Thanks

SMGOVAN - Filthy guts now? Ouch. What did I do to her!? LOL

Again, not spelling much out about Gray yet... As for Ethan, he doesn't know it but he's got a demon after him... give him a break!

Jenny is... Jenny. No more than that at the moment. You figure it out

Like I said to Kajun, the manner of the door that got the vamps there will become more obvious soon... Between the two of you though you're not a million miles away...

As for update, within the next hour or so. Depends how fast my dinner cooks!

Thanks,

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:00 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 30 (272))
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’s meeting with the Master.
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 married with a family. 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: For obvious reasons this was a fun one to write! I just hope I found the voice again… been a while! When I started Sidestep, 30 still felt like a milestone (we’re in part 30) but now… somehow the number seems less important. Now 40… that would be a milestone/millstone… I wonder why my perspective has changed on that? Hmm.
In this part I’ve pretty much switched from ‘it’ for Vamp Willow to ‘Her’ this is to be consistent within the part itself, but there are some sections where it reads really awkwardly to maintain the ‘it’ from previous parts. You can put this down to Willow’s confusion on the subject and her changing feelings in terms of recognising VW as a being in her own right – albeit one that can die. But mostly it just reads better ?
Thanks to: Oh, anyone who wants to be thanked I guess.

Willow didn’t stay silent because she was trying to be tough. But not because she was scared into it either.

She stayed silent for the very best of reasons, because she really didn’t know what to say. And if you couldn’t say anything that sounded halfway intelligent and avoided ‘umm shit’ then it was better to say nothing at all.

True fact.

“And hello to you, my dear,” he said.

Her doppelganger had left her at the foot of The Master’s dais, ascending the steps to his side where he stretched out a hand to her, greeted her like a lady in days gone by and then waved her gently away. Satisfied with that the other Rosenberg drifted into the background where – Willow was sure – her attention would wander from what happened here to the tortures that were still ongoing. Willow knew very well that the vampire was easily distracted by shiny, screaming things.

“Now, Miss Rosenberg it has been a very long time… for you at least. Don’t you… miss all this?”

“You’ve always been a showman, haven’t you?” she asked, emboldened by… she wasn’t sure what really. Experience perhaps. Confidence in her abilities. Certainty that fate wouldn’t cut short her life here, away from Tara. She wasn’t going to go out with a whimper. She wasn’t going to go out kicking and screaming.

She wasn’t going to go out. Period.

The Master’s head went back and he let out one of those terrible, terrible laughs. The only one he was capable of actually. But it was rarely heard even when he was being amused by cruelty. Though he was the kind of big bad that merited a giant, twirling moustache, the laugh wasn’t part of that image.

As she knew, occasionally the Master could be genuinely amused. She’d just managed it.

“I have a big personality and you got old, Willow. So how’s that working out for you?”

“Life’s good,” Willow said. Emphasis on the ‘life’ part.

This was surreal though. He was gone. He was dead gone, not undead gone. Destroyed. Gone. Tara and Faith had killed him and… now he was here. That other version of her was here too. Okay, all three of them were out of place in the Halls of the Dead, but it was part memory and part reflex to fear him. Automatic, at least in that primitive-save-your-life part of her brain.

Right now she knew that her doppelganger… it was afraid of him. That fear was why it obeyed him and actually at the core of all the worship that he attracted to him. In a sense she supposed it was dominance rather than imposition of fear. Fear was the stick. Basking in his reflected power and glory was the carrot. Or the blood bag, in this case.

“And then you came here…”

“Did you make it happen?” Willow asked.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Wolfram and Hart had traded their lives to powerful men and creatures. Though the Master had never been their client as far as she knew. Indeed, the law firm had supported Mayor Wilkins against him.

“Actually, I didn’t even know you were amongst the living. It explains many things.”

Now what did he mean by that? And was it better or worse for her that this was just… what?

Could it really just be coincidence?

If so then it might not be such a big one. After all he was – at least - twice dead. This was the Hall of the Dead. Where else would he be? But then… apart from the other Willow, where were the rest of the vampires?

She had reason to believe that the soul of a person who was taken by a vampire existed in some sort of limbo, at least until that vampire was staked and the two parts could reconnect without the demon – but then here he was and he was very definitely possessed of his demon-side.

As was the vampire Drusilla had created.

There was something else going on… but was that what he meant? That he didn’t understand it either? That perhaps her being in the world of the living explained how he could be in the world of the dead when neither could’ve been the case without some sort of interference?

Given he was here though, what else would he be but… in control?

That was what the Master did. He took control and remade things according to his own perception of how the world should be. He’d turned imprisonment in the Hellmouth into an inconvenience, into rule over a town of thousands of people that no one had challenged effectively – not the police, not the Feds or the army. No one until Tara had come to town to back up its founder.

And now he was here…

Had the Halls always been like this? Or had he remade this place too?

Certainly this part of it was… all him. She expected that he was aiming for the rest of the realm to take on the same… décor. It horrified her, but showing him that kind of weakness would only make her look like prey, provoke a confrontation she needed to delay until she understood. “I don’t know how much you’ve done with the place, but it’s very you.”

“It is, isn’t it? Now, Willow, shall we talk about what you’re doing here?”

Truth or dare.

Did she dare to tell the truth or did she dare to try and tell him a lie? It’d never worked when she was serving him – and she remember that as a vampire she had tried when the truth had been unpalatable. The results had been… painful and – had she been human – would’ve been permanently crippling. Now she was human and he might well have that power over her that he had over everyone with a pulse.

Wouldn’t he? What was happening here? After years here he should have been surrounded by vampires… except everyone here was already dead. What were the damn rules? Enquiring minds wanted to know and start frying.

And how did she dare to find out that truth? Could she fight him? Even now? And if she tried and it didn’t work…

“I was sent here to find someone,” she said. Decision made. He’d know there had to be something.

“And who was that?”

“No one you’d know,” Willow said. She hoped not anyway…

“But my work is expansive.” His sweeping gesture encompassed the entire domed area where his ‘people’ were at work.

Not the vampire that shared her name though. That one was still hovering. But this was the thing. Another doubt. What if he had taken Toni’s Dad and… did what he did?

In that case wasn’t it better to know and then she could just find Tara and get away from this place?

Telling him who she was looking for though? That knowledge simply added to his power while it did nothing for her and what she needed to accomplish. She’d have been surprised if – once he knew - he wouldn’t go out, find Toni’s Dad and taken personal pains to… well, to inflict personal pain. Just because she wanted him.

And Willow knew all too well that the Master could make you wish you were dead… or alive, in this case. He didn’t take such a personal interest all that often, but when he did… it was a truly terrible thing. She’d never seen – or inflicted – anything like it. Not even as the vampire when she’d seen and done some terrible things of her own.

“Why?” she asked. Why all this? Why this place? Why had he taken over?

“Why not?”

“That’s not good enough. Remember, I do know you.”

“Oh, Willow, Willow, Willow. Deliciously disrespectful in life as well as undeath. You’ve found some courage in the other world. But don’t forget, I know you too, my living, breathing protégée. How quickly I could relieve you of those tedious signs of life your showing these days. And – bonus – I’d still have you around.” On the word ‘bonus’ he was on her. Moving impossibly fast, his hand was around her throat – but didn’t close and rip her windpipe out. It didn’t even touch her.

Millimetres from her skin, but there. Close enough to feel.

Which was the only reason she didn’t try to see whether that parched, stretched skin of his would burn as well as it seemed it should.

He ‘released’ his grip – without having laid a hand upon her – and stepped back to his throne at a more leisurely pace. Coming to rest as he had before he’d come at her.

And there it was… she was vulnerable here too. That was the message. She was supposed to understand that she’d just survived by his whim, that he could remove the privilege at any time.

Dead was dead. And she didn’t want to be dead.

Tara would kill her If that happened.

Willow was turning things over in her mind and looking for options. Outright resistance was likely to provoke him. He had rather more control than most vampires, but made up for that by being utterly terrifying when he finally let loose.

And he had powers, powers that she’d never seen any other vampire exhibit. Ones she had to be wary of.

Powers that verged on magic. Even though Tara had experienced some of them, she hadn’t believed the things Willow had told her were actual ‘powers’ and rather thought of them as tricks. It’d seemed academic, being as he’d been destroyed, but she’d never believed that version of things. He wasn’t your usual two fangs and an ego kind of vamp and that was something Tara hadn’t had the up close experience to really understand.

“Can we talk?” she asked. He wanted something from her, even if it was only to wait for who turned up after her. Better to delay his attention then, surely?

“Yes, lets,” he said. “Sit at my feet as you used to.” The latter was a command and one that she was inclined to obey when he laced it with some of that power that none of them understood. Defiance in the face of that power, again, was likely to set him off and so she obeyed. Did it really matter?

“Quid pro quo?” Willow asked, wanting to hold his attention.

“If you like. I’ll start. You’re alive – that much is obvious and you’ve been that way for some considerable time. So… clarify for me just how that came to be. And when?”

The way that he put the questions suggested that he had his own theories and she didn’t see how it could hurt to answer him honestly, if not completely. But while she was fairly confident she could defend herself – for all that he only had to flick out his foot and lean forwards to decapitate her – something she’d seen happen – matching wits with him was a trickier prospect.

He was devilishly smart and without the insanity that characterised her own doppelganger. In short he didn’t really have buttons she could push. He didn’t have an inflated ego – despite his eponymous title – because he lived up to everything that was expected of him. His temper was even to a fault and even when he reacted, he didn’t lose it. Shifting from violence to serene calm in a matter of moments.

So the truth. “Not long after – after you were killed in the Bronze,” she said. “A matter of weeks after that.”

“And the ‘how’?”

“A Vocah demon.”

“Hmm, I expect I know the one you mean. Expensive. Out of your price range, I’d have though.”

Looked like, considering the price she was paying had brought her here. “So I get to ask a question now,” Willow said, refusing to make that into a question or to ask permission to do so.

She was on edge, despite the show of bravado, watching him for even a flicker of anger that might threaten to end her life. At this proximity it would happen before she could move. Perhaps that was why he’d insisted she sit where she was. Since she’d never see the kick she had to predict it – read him and his mood. But he was perfectly capable of killing her without changing his emotional state one whit.

But watching him without appearing nervous and showing the predatory side of him that she was weak and fearful otherwise… those Dog Whisperer shows from years ago that Miss Kitty had loved to hate? Same thing with vampires. If they sensed your energy was weak then they saw you as a victim. If you offered them resistance without dominance, they saw you as a threat. It was a very fine line.

But she had the advantage of knowing the mindset from the inside out.

“Quid pro quo,” he agreed.

But what question? There were so many things she needed to know and – eventually – she might have to ask him about Toni’s Dad. But not yet. That would give up too much and much too soon. Place too much emphasis on his importance. For now… she needed to know what he was doing here, how much power he really had and what the damned rules were.

Knowing the rules would mean she could stop just sitting here. Tara had spent years breaking her of her impulsiveness, getting her to sit and think for a moment before just reacting – especially when she was stressed out. And this was ranking pretty high on the old stressometer.

The ‘interview’ or perhaps it was an ‘audience’ could end at any moment but jumping right to what most concerned would give away a lot too. Coming right out and asking those kind of questions would reveal weakness just as surely as showing fear and while he might see through a lie he couldn’t repeat that feat with an omission.

Especially the omission of a question.

“How do you rule here? I mean – I can see ‘how’, I mean how did it happen? Aren’t there other vampires? More demons?” Numbers… that could be important.

“I was here, I set about making it in my image. If you were truly raised to life by the Vocah you should understand me well enough to know my patience is limited… It seemed best to make the place mine.”

“And the other vampires?”

“No. Not here.”

“Then these are - ”

“That would be another question, Willow.”

Willow bit her tongue. Their truce was fragile enough. But were they then saying that the abuses being meted out all around them were at the hands of the merely dead rather than the undead? It had looked that way, but she really hadn’t been certain because… where did you find so many monsters?

And was he even a vampire? The other Willow Rosenberg, she hadn’t vamped out yet… The Master though, he pretty much had always looked this way so long as she’d known him. He was perpetually vamped out and still not a slave to his instincts. Proving that it was perhaps more of a choice than purely a product of their nature.

“So the Vocah brought you back, someone sponsored that. Was it – by chance - the Mayor of that dreary little town we were in?”

“His lawyers,” Willow started, not quite making the connection to Tara. Omission. He couldn’t spot an omission except where she made it obvious.

“Ah, them. I turned them down, you know. Now, you had a question. About other vampires…”

“Yes. Are there any here? Are you and… her, are you vampires?”

“Perhaps you’d like me to show you? We’re vampires without a purpose. Vampires who no longer need to feed to survive amongst a flock who no longer pump the blood to satiate our thirst anyway.”

“So you amuse yourselves in other ways,” Willow concluded, looking to everything around her. “That wasn’t a question.” His words, the way he was looking at her… not pleasant.

“But I’ll answer all the same. You know, Willow, I miss it. The terror and panic making the heart beat faster, pumping blood down my throat. Thick, hot vitae revitalising me even as you feel the life slipping away from them. It’s the purest form of predation in the universe. Don’t you miss it?”

“No.”

Except… Just as she felt the genuine shame at what the vampire behind him had done because she shared the same memories, this was something else. She knew exactly what he meant. All of it. He was right about how it had felt. Because she remembered experiencing it and it was just as he’d said… only better. She’d found it better than… anything.

At the time.

Of course now the remembered sensations made her want to barf, probably would’ve if she hadn’t had an empty stomach, but she was lying when she told him ‘no’.

He recognised it of course. “You’re lying. Maybe you don’t want it, but you do miss it.”

She said nothing, he hadn’t asked a question either.

“Your turn, I’m sure eventually we’ll get to what you’re here for and what you can do for me.”

Except she had an idea what she could do for him. She could be food. He already had a Willow, he didn’t need another. But it sounded like he hadn’t had blood in a long time… Both of their appetites must’ve been suppressed though, the vampires. Must’ve been because otherwise… The other Willow, she certainly wouldn’t have made it this far. If they’d been that hungry, they’d have torn her open and drank until she was just a husk.

Sucked dry.

“Why no vampires here?” she asked. Hopefully the answer would be getting to the nature of death here. Maybe it would also be approaching understanding of what would happen if she watched him burn. For so old a vampire so old the consumption would be fast burning and hot.

“Perhaps you mean why are we here and the other’s aren’t?”

“That too.”

“I never really got to the bottom of it, but now you’re here I suspect it very much had something to do with… you.” He pointed a talon at her to make his point.

“Me?” Okay, now that was… not going to be good.

“For my protégée at least. Your recall by the Vocah violated the natural order of things. And you’ve never been here before, have you?”

“No.” She gave him that for free.

All the time the vampire had existed – which she remembered as clearly as being there herself – she also had a parallel memory of perfect nothingness. She called it limbo for lack of any better name.

With no measure of time, place or self it had driven her entirely mad and it’d taken Tara a long time to bring her back, to put her mind back together and then to deal with the guilt.

“And to answer the rest of your question neither is any other vampire so far as I’ve determined. I’ve called , I’ve called them to me and… nothing. Not even Luke and you know very well he would never have ignored my summons.”

He was right. If Luke had been in this place, in this realm, then he’d have come… eventually. Even if you had to walk everywhere then… Luke would’ve come.

She forced herself to look at the nearest victim of his tortures. It was necessary if she was going to understand the rules. The rules were so very important and short of trying to kill someone just to test them out… “What happens if they die?” she asked. Can they die?

“Do you really want me to answer that?” he asked, appraising her. Perhaps he even guessed at the motivation behind the question, but it would only be a guess. He still had no reason – especially with no other vampires here – to know what she was capable of.

It was her ace in the hole. He could kill her, but she could – almost certainly – finish him too. So long as the rules were… fair.

“Please,” she said.

“Willow?” He didn’t mean her, he was summoning his minion.

The vampire slunk around his throne, running its fingertips along the long femur that formed the top of the armrest. “Master?”

“Your counterpart remains as curious as you are, I wonder if you’d like to enlighten… you.”

“What does she want?” The red-haired vampires eyes were fixed on her, no longer sulky as it anticipated the Master’s pleasure.

“She wants to know what happens if things go too far with our decorations?”

“Oh, may I?”

“You may,” he said, “you’ve done very well bringing her here unbitten. I shall not forget it.”

So these two vampires could bite her then, presumably feeding. And for the doppelganger to be warned off… that probably meant the bite could be fatal but then she was alive and everyone else here… wasn’t.

“Goodie. Which?” the vampire asked, turning in place and looking at the collection arrayed around them.

“The girl, I think,” he said. “Even after you severed the vocal chords its whimpers still annoy me.”

A child?

The Master was looking down at her, challenging her to try and stop him. Willow was following her undead counterpart though, with her eyes. She could see where the vampire was headed and… she wasn’t going to stop it. If that poor girl could be put out of her misery – not a child, but a girl in her late teens, then… Goddess help me, I wish it for her. She’s already dead. She’s already dead. She’s already dead and I am shit out of luck if I try to save her and he realises.

The things that had been done to the girl, she recognised some of them… Had once been capable of them. It was obvious that Willow and the others had been creative, prolonged and sustained. The eyes were empty of understanding, even at this distance. There were scars all over the body. The hair, probably once long, black and beautiful – brushed by her mother – was matted with… Wax and mud, if not blood.

That other Willow had a thing for candles and burns.

As the girl’s body verified.

Forgive me. This is better.

Calling him a monster was… pointless. But this, all of this was monstrous. And it had to be stopped. But… how to stop it? She had to breathe. She had to understand before she could end this… It was more important than anything else here. Even getting Toni’s Dad back. This all had to be changed, she had a new mission here.

Because one day everyone came here and… she wouldn’t want this still to be here when they, or their friends… God forbid the kids.

The vampire went behind the suspended girl and, mercifully quickly perhaps, snapped her neck from behind.

Willow found herself shouting all the same. Words. Curses. Epithets. She wasn’t even aware of what came out of her mouth, even though she hadn’t wanted to give anything away.

But she knew it was anger at herself, for not stopping it.

“Calm down,” the Master told her when she paused long enough to try and get her for breath. She realised that her voice – she’d screamed loud enough to hurt her throat. Cursed him the same way.

“Calm down?! That was little more than a child, a little girl. Someone’s daughter - ” And I let it happen because I still didn’t understand the rules. Because I needed to know.

“And she still is,” he said.

“You killed her to make a point,” Willow continued, barely registering the words. And I let it happen.

“And she’s as dead now – or alive – as she was a moment ago,” he said.

Willow hesitated. “What?” Was he saying what she thought he was? Was that the reality here?

“You were never stupid, Willow. Not when you were in cage and you diverted attention from yourself and not when you served me after you were turned. Oh yes, I know very well that you remember every second of that. I even know how you feel about it.

“I too have been recalled by the Vocah in my day and each and every time I’ve been turned… again. Luke was the last to do so.”

He knew… but he gloried in it. He’d probably always been unhappy as a human and not because of the guilt. She didn’t think he was capable of that. This creature had never had a soul, she was certain of that. There was nothing in limbo, waiting for his final death. It’d shrivelled up and died even before he’d been turned.

“But - ”

“There are no miracles here,” he said. “The dead rise from whatever lies beyond this place every single day.”

“We make them,” the doppelganger said. “Over and over and over…” She span in place as she continued the chant.

At least until the Master stopped her. “Do you see?” he asked.

“You torture the dead and then kill them….”

“Then I start all over again,” the vampire said. “I miss the blood but… isn’t it glorious?”

“What kind of existence is that?” Willow asked, forgetting her strategy of not giving away too much emotion. Tough, she was emotional. “Pathetic. That’s what. That’s the limit of your ambition?” Could she shame him into stopping? No, but… it was pathetic.

“No, my dear, dear little blood bag. That’s the limit of my protégées amusement,” he said. “But when she brought you here… when she came to see me last night? I have to say it was quite the most excited I’ve seen her in years.”

“She has blood,” the vampire her said, just inches from her. “It pumps. I can hear it. I can smell it. I can see skin at her neck, pulsing… pulsing…”

“Calm,” the Master told her. “You don’t waste a morsel like this on a mouthful of blood, satisfying as that might be. You’ll have to excuse her, Willow. It’s been a long time for her. She’s getting antsy.”

Willow shook her head. Somewhere there was a teenage girl, maybe a freshman at college when she first died. Dead but not a vampire, who’d just been tortured and then re-emerged from somewhere intact, alive but presumably carrying the mental scars. And how many times had that happened? How often did the vampire – or the acolytes – ventured out and snatched up the same girl? Or the other victims?

She was well aware that the fun was in the repetition. Release followed by renewed imprisonment and torture.

How many times had that girl been through that cycle already? And what did she have to look forward to if it had only been the once so far? What about that that man? The older woman over there? The bald guy?

It wouldn’t be so prolonged… She’d have to make sure of that. Maybe she couldn’t do anything right now, but… She couldn’t leave this realm and leave this sickness here. It needed to be cut out, destroyed utterly.

With no coming back.

It was a cancer and it needed to be excised.

“So now you see, Willow,” the Master said. “What death means here. What it is that happens. I’ve given you a lot and now you owe me an answer to both my next questions.”

Her face was streaked with tears and they were obviously fascinating the vampire if not the Master. The doppelganger ran a finger along the trail of the wet streaks and tried to lick them. Willow shook the attention away. She waited, not trusting her voice.

“Tell me, Willow,” he said. “Do you by any chance keep in contact with Tara Maclay?”

Whatever fascination Vampire Willow had for her tears vanished in the moment he so casually mentioned Tara. Though the vampire itself had referred to Tara more than once, now it was… different. It’s eyes flashed and turned yellow, its fangs were bared and it was ready to rip, tear and feed just at the mention of Willow’s wife’s name.

“And if so, is she here with you?”

*****************

The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe - Willow & Tara Forever

Sidestep - Third Chronicle (COMPLETE)

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