Fic: - The Sidestep Chronicle & Second Chronicle

[Forrister]

*Crawls out from under a tumbleweed*

Sorry hun, I truly meant to reply to the previous part last week, but didn't have time just then so I put it off, then I got tied up with legal estate stuff (you wouldn't believe how much lawyers charge to make photocopies and phone calls so I am doing as much as I can myself and leaving probate to the lawyer). Next thing I know there is yet another part posted and I'm still one reply behind. Mea Culpa!

Ok, the previous bit. I always like Dru bits - for some reason I'm fond of her. It might be her style, it might be her child-like way of looking at things coupled with her totally sadistic streak. I'm glad she's getting on so well with Tiger - I'd hate for him to be on her list of future amusements. Ethan may be getting too many irons in the fire for his own good. I'm not sure how his plans are working out, but he strikes me as a juggler who is cannon balls while walking perilously close to the edge of a cliff.

This bit. I was waiting for Ira to stick his oar in. Toni is doing the typical teen-centric thing. Viewing the world only as it applies to her - not thinking of things from other people's points of view. I can understand this - but she needs to get beyond it, and she needs to learn that no matter what her reasons, some behaviours just aren't acceptable. She owes so much to Tara, Willow, Jenny, Rupert & Ira, and its about time she began to think a little more about that. I accept this will take time - you can't deal with emotions like she's been going through overnight. I'm glad she will be going to Jenny & Rupert - its a family thing that the girls can't really provide her with by themselves. She needs to be treated more like a daughter than like a little sister - this Jenny & Rupert can do far better because they are seen more like parents already.

Be well hun,

Forrister

Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur
Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time

[Katharyn]

Oh I most certainly didn't mean you!

Dru's fun to write because you can do practically anything you like with her and it reflects some aspect of her personality. I addition to that you can flick between them at whim and no one cares! In fact, she is a writers dream. A character you can deliberately make 'out of character' and 'inconsistent' You'd have to be a good writer to mess her up!

Ethan's kind of become a means to an end in this fic. I think I've made him far more compentent than he seemed in the series. But then I think the series sold him short. He not only survived but prospered in some very dangerous places and made himself the sort of person that powerful beings wanted to hire. So when I make him less of a buffoon I think it's still tru eot who he was designed to be.

And actually, all the above probably makes him good at what he does.

Ira/Toni... ah. Yes, Toni is a teen. But one with reasons as you point out. And it really hadn't been long at all. It's only a week or so since she found out, even by the later part, so in terms of her getting over what happened, it's hardly any time at all. If she's till like this in a few months you can scream 'Get Out, Get Out, Get Out' at her and call her Dawn.

Which isn't to say she will necessarily come around.

I'd never thought of the T/W treating her like a kid sister thing in those terms. Certainly it's probably true of Willow, and I suppose Tara was treating her more like a daughter than Willow, but on the other hand without the benefit of 15 years of raising her.

Interesting... I may tweak some things around that.

Thanks hun.

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle – Up On the Roof (Part 223)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Very little is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Tara and Willow feel the consequences of things happening around them in Sunnydale.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill. References to most movies in this are made lovingly, and some not so lovingly but with no profit being made.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: This part is because I refuse to accept that you can do stuff in one ‘episode’ without it having consequences our girls have to deal with. God, I sound like Ethan.
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else. Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW.


The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle

Up On the Roof.

By

Katharyn Rosser


The day after Part 222 and 2 -3 days after 221


“This isn’t a coincidence,” Tara said.

“I don’t remember saying it was,” Willow replied, just the tiniest bit testy. It was the kind of situation that could make you testy – just a little.

“I know, I was just like thinking aloud,” Tara said.

“Oh, okay.” That happened to her too. She was always thinking aloud. “Well, she’s right.”

“Huh?” Tara was instantly confused. “Who’s right?”

“You are,” Willow said.

“But you said, ‘She’s right.’”

“She is – but she’s you,” Willow said. Didn’t Tara get it? “I was joining you in thinking aloud.” And when she’d thought about it she’d thought ‘she’s right.’ Actually she’d probably thought ‘the wonderful woman I adore is right,’ but that seemed a little too flowery for the conversation they were having.

“Well,” Tara said after a moment, “she’s weird.”

“Me?”

“Uh-huh. The sexy woman with the red hair. She’s definitely weird.”

“Maybe, but she sounds hot,” Willow said, smiling. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stop complimentary thoughts slipping into her inner dialogue. “Do you think I could meet her?”

Tara paused and pretended to think about it. “Well… I think you already know her pretty well, but not as well as me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I know parts of her she’s never even laid eyes on,” Tara said, managing to keep a straight face. Which was about the only thing that was straight up here.

“Well…” She wasn’t sure what she could say to that. “Now I think about it, I suppose I know her inside out.”

“So,” Tara said with as much smugness as she could probably manage, “do I.”

“Okay, so you do.” There was no denying it. Tara had come to know her inside and out. “But you were the one who didn’t want to do that ‘I am woman, let’s sit with a mirror between our legs’ thing.”

“Oh, and you did?”

Actually no. “Well. It’s not what the new Wicca Group was supposed to be about. I know that said it was about ‘Woman Know Thyself’ and ‘Finding the Inner Me’ but that’s a little less magical and a little too gynaecological for right after class.”

Not that they’d held out much hope of finding anything to interest them at the new group. “You know, there’s quite a view from up here,” she said as they looked out over Sunnydale.

“Yeah, I didn’t notice it last time we were up here,” Tara said. “But you’re right, as usual.”

Lights winked at them as cars went between buildings and trees in the far distance. The whole town was shrouded in the glow of thousands of street lamps – hiding their stars from them. But even with light pollution, it still had its own kind of beauty on a night like this.

They hadn’t planned to come up on the roof of City Hall at all, and they hadn’t gotten up in the conventional way either. The stairs had been out of the question – they hadn’t even been able to make it around to the main doors to see if the security guard would let them in. Someone might’ve gotten hurt in the press if they’d done things that way.

The conventional way.

At least now they were safe though.

Safer anyway.

“It’s kind of like that movie,” Tara said. “We saw it a while back? What was the name of it?”

Which film had they seen where someone was up on a roof? “Clerks?” Willow guessed. They definitely weren’t going to start playing hockey. They didn’t have any gear for a start – which was going to hinder them a little.

But on the plus side, she could look down from the roof at enough potential players to start a small league. If they wanted to.

“No,” Tara said. “And we’re not even mentioning that film after what he-who-shall-remain-nameless did with Chasing Amy.”

“Okay, sorry. You’re right. Ben Affleck’s not enough to make any woman reconsider her sexuality. But what film do you mean then?”

“Erm… Dead by… No, Dawn of the Dead!” Tara said.

“The remake?”

“It was a remake?”

“I think so.”

“Well, it was new to me anyway,” Tara said, checking out the sight below them.

Willow looked down again, armed with this new information and considering the supposition that’d been put to her. “They’re not, you know, dead,” she said finally.

“Okay, I grant you, that’s a difference,” Tara said. “But still.”

“And they don’t want to eat our flesh and turn us into zombies,” Willow said. “I’m pretty sure that was in both versions. It went with the whole dead thing.”

“Okay,” Tara said. “You’re right again. But don’t you think…?”

“And there’s not exactly hordes of them as far as the eye can see in the parking lot,” Willow said, making yet another point against Tara’s comparison. “In fact, there’s not actually a parking lot. It’s more… grass down there. And we’re not on the roof of a mall. But other than all those little things, yeah, it’s just like the movie.”

They considered that for a few moments.

“Wasn’t that the film with the hot doctor, or was she a nurse? She started out in a hospital anyway, in scrubs.” Willow felt like she had to ask, just for clarity.

Tara nodded. “Uhuh. That was the night you had me… you know.”

Oh yes, she did know.

There was something about brainy, not too tall, blondes with long hair and the strength to do what had to be done that just turned Willow on. Add scrubs into the mix and… Well, she couldn’t imagine what the attraction might be.

If you believed a couple of his movies, it must’ve been a case of not enough Ben Affleck in her life. To set her straight.

They didn’t tend to watch a lot of ‘horror’ movies though – even less than they watched Ben Affleck movies. And not for the obvious reasons.

It was just that they were a bit too banal and, honestly, too like their everyday lives to really hit the spot. It was like other people going to the movies to watch people deal with insurance claims, or selling bathroom suites.

They’d actually once been threatened with being thrown out of a movie for critiquing the accuracy of its vampires and demons. No one had even bothered about them snuggling in the back row. No, it’d just been the comments they’d been unable to help making. She’d been so ashamed and afraid anyone else would find out. She didn’t want to be the kids who chattered in the back row and spoiled the movie for everyone else.

But they had been, just that once.

Still, no matter the quality of horror movies – remake or not - they’d both agreed that nurse/doctor/whatever in that movie had been kinda cute. With bonus points for the fact she hadn’t done what every other blonde in a horror movie was supposed to do, taking her clothes off before dying horribly with a knife stuck between her surgically enhanced breasts.

Was it wrong to regret the fact she hadn’t taken her top off at all though? No, it’d been obvious enough there’d been no enhancements there.

They lived this stuff, and aside from the pheromone thing going on with werewolves, they’d never noticed the creatures’ apparent preference for buxom young women. Nor people getting desperate to have sex during monster attacks… It just didn’t happen that way in real life.

Except their lives, obviously, and they always waited until they got home.

Well, nearly always.

Even if they didn’t quite make it home before they made… well, even then it was never during the crisis.

And thinking of banal parts of their everyday lives fighting monsters and demons… They both peered down over the edge of the roof once again, perhaps in the vague hope the crowd would’ve dispersed.

Below them were – still - more than a hundred people. She’d tried counting them, but they kept moving around and frustrating her efforts. That was just another reason not to like them very much. They were, as she’d said, all human.

And it’d all started out with one coming after them and begging for a ‘fix.’ Of what, they’d had no idea. They’d just been out on the hunt. Things weren’t supposed to start coming after them. And who’d known it would lead to this?

They’d originally assumed it was some sort of addict, and they hadn’t exactly been wrong. It just wasn’t the sort they’d expected or that Mabel had used to be. The girl they’d met in L.A. was just about their only contact with someone tied to drugs in recent years.

This hadn’t been that. While they were trying to figure out whether they could do anything to help or just needed to elude the guy somehow, more and more had started to appear and forced them into the elusive option – at least trying to be.

That was what’d led them to be up here and those people to be down there.

In hindsight, they probably didn’t do elusive too well.

“If Rocky had ended up on a roof after he ran through the city,” Willow said, “it’d be a bit like that too.”

Tara thought for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah. I can see what you mean. But we didn’t do very well on the steps.” Rocky never fell over and scraped his knee.

At least not on the clips they’d seen. Maybe there were outtakes.

“Does it still hurt, baby?”

“Yes,” Tara said, feigning real distress.

Willow knew what she wanted. “I’ll kiss it better later.”

The broad smile that replaced the ‘poor little me’ look told her she’d hit the spot. Now all they had to do was get down from here without any further injuries.

To anyone.

Running hadn’t really helped so far. Those people had some sort of motivation and, for whatever reason, they seemed to be it.

As for using magic to hold them back…

Tried it, not trying it again. That’d been like a red rag to a bull. Those already pursuing them had gone into a frenzy she could only equate with watching a dog being offered a juicy bone. And yes, there’d been salivating.

Then still more of these desperate people had appeared to join in the crowd scene, attracted by the magic.

Despite what’d seemed obvious they’d wanted to confirm it. So they’d experimented a little and now they were pretty much certain it was the magic that was setting them off. Attracting them and then sending them wild.

Which presented a new problem.

No more magic, at least not now they’d used it to get up here and out of the way of the… Yeah, she was willing to call them a ‘mob.’ Definitely more than a crowd.

Not your good-old-fashioned-witch-burning angry mob, but a mob all the same.

But what to do now? Magic usually offered them some sort of answer, and maybe being stuck on what to do pointed to something Tara had always instilled in her to be wary of. Perhaps they were a little too reliant on the magic.

On the other hand, they didn’t use it casually just to make their lives easier. Neither of them was a Slayer. To kill vampires and demons like they did… What choice did they have? They couldn’t physically match those kinds of creatures, they had to use magic.

Not that any of their usual choices – pointy sticks and the like – would’ve done the job this time anyway. These were people. People who seemed to be in pain through addiction to something linked to magic. They couldn’t hurt any of them unless they had it came to the point they had to defend themselves.

Hence the part of this situation where they found they were stuck up on the roof of City Hall without a way to get both down and away from the mob.

They couldn’t go home, or to the Giles’. That’d just see the entire mob cluster around whichever of those places they chose. And mobs – though this was their first – were reputed to have a tendency to get violent when they didn’t get what they wanted.

It was realising that which had led them up here in the first place. Somehow they had to get rid of that lot, or give them the slip entirely.

They knew what they had to do, it was just the ‘how’ that was causing problems.

They’d spent the first few minutes watching more and more ‘addicts’ arrive, until eventually the stream had dried up. Getting up the side of the building had taken magic and that was probably what had drawn the last few. Now they were all down there, trying to climb the walls and having no luck at all.

Perhaps someone had designed the place to be resistant to desperate mobs.

Now who could that have been?

Unable to get up and seeming to be unwilling to work together either, the crowd of the desperate had resorted to calling out to them, begging for something they didn’t know how to provide. Even if they’d understood what they were being asked for, that’d just raise the question of whether they should give it to them?

Would the easiest way down be to give in to what they wanted?

Was easier better?

No, addiction was never helped that way. Give an addict what they want, and they stayed addicted. That wasn’t helping anyone – least of all the addict. But usually that kind of decision wasn’t complicated by the prospect of being stuck on a roof in the middle of the night.

They both had classes in the morning too.

Could they wait this out? Maybe if it was noticed, and certainly by morning when people started to come to work, the police would get involved. But that wouldn’t be the best answer either. Questions would be asked. Ones they probably wouldn’t want to be involved in answering.

Like how they got up on the roof without going past the security guard inside.

“Can you tell what they’re saying?” Tara asked as she peered down at them again.

“It doesn’t make much sense,” Willow replied. “Even when I can make the words out.”

Tara nodded. “Did you hear some of them say something about a rack? I thought…”

“Yeah,” she said. “I did think I heard something like that. I thought maybe they were talking about your rack, since I don’t have as much up top for them to want a part of.”

“Willow!”

“It’s just what I thought,” she said. The first thing that’d come to mind actually. Perhaps she just had a dirty mind. Well, if she did it was entirely because of Tara. She hadn’t had it before she’d fallen in love with this woman.

And the supposition made a certain kind of sense. They’d been offered money, big stacks of cash, house, cars and even sex. Anything for a fix of… what? They didn’t know. But in the circumstances Tara’s rack, lovely as it was, wasn’t a totally surprising thing to be mentioned.

“I thought it sounded like more of a name,” Tara said. “You know, in the context without leaping to conclusions that I’m sure had more to do with how much you seem to like my rack than anything else.”

Chastened, Willow considered what her girlfriend was saying. Could it be a name? Rack?

“Like ‘Spice Rack’?” she suggested. “That’d just be silly, wouldn’t it?”

Tara laughed. “You can talk, oh-lady-of-the-tree.”

“Willow’s a perfectly good name,” she said. “You just can’t stop saying – or moaning – it at the most wonderful times. Anyway, your name means ‘Elevated Place.’ And sometimes, when you are moaning my name, doesn’t that just kind of fit? In more ways than one?”

“Only when I lose control,” Tara said, but she didn’t try to deny it. There were things that were undeniable in life. Coffee. Love. Tara’s ability to keep control – or lack thereof – under certain stimulation.

“I think you’ll find I make you lose control, baby,” Willow said, wanting that correction out there. It was an important distinction. Tara being made to lose that kind of control was – literally – high marks.

Her girlfriend smiled. “Okay, I admit it. But getting back to the point. ‘Rack’ could be a foreign name or something. It might even be a kind of tree.”

Willow frowned. “I’ve never heard of a ‘Rack tree.’”

“That was just an example,” Tara said. “What I was going to say was that I think Willy might’ve mentioned something a while back about this ‘Rack’ character.”

“If it’s a person,” Willow said.

“If it’s a person. Or creature.”

“So we’re listening to Willy the Snitch now?” Willow asked, not at all sure they’d want to be taking his opinion on anything. He knew what was going on, but not usually in time to stop the thing happening.

Willy was good for after the disaster had happened and you wanted to know about it. Or for getting there just in the nick of time. But they preferred to stop things before they happened at all which limited his usefulness.

“We’ve always listened to Willy, what’s wrong with Willy?” Tara asked.

“Nothing. I hate to do it – particularly about a guy with his name - but again I come back to the fact he probably had more interest in your rack than anything else,” Willow said. He’d already offered them
several ‘movie’ deals, and even tried to sweeten it by promising no men would be involved.

That was what passed for ‘sweetening’ in his lexicon. As if that had been why they weren’t already running out and making porno already, no matter how ‘tasteful’ he claimed it could be.

After all, they were lesbians weren’t they? Wasn’t ‘exhibitionist’ and ‘porn star’ an integral part of the definition of the word?

At the time she’d been so mad she’d made him understand the difference between his fantasies and the real world with the barest whiff of burning hair. And he’d needed to pluck his eyebrows anyway.

“Oh come on, Willow,” Tara said. “You can’t keep holding that against him. He’s an equal opportunity weasel. He’ll try and make some money anywhere he can, with anyone. If Larry had turned up to ask him questions, he’d have said nearly the same thing to him. No girls involved. It’s Willy - anything for a dollar.”

Willow sighed. Maybe Tara was right; maybe she owed him an apology. He did have his uses when the do-do had already hit the fan and no one knew what kind of do-do it was. “So what were these rumours he mentioned?”

“Well, it didn’t make much sense at the time and I didn’t ask him to go into more detail…” Tara said, obviously making her excuses in advance.

Willow nodded for her to continue. “I won’t hold you to it.”

“He was going on about places that weren’t… Well, places that weren’t here.”

So naturally Tara wouldn’t have been so concerned about it. They looked at the big picture, but that was the point the big picture was… big. When it came to the details, they could only look to Sunnydale itself. “But?”

“He was saying something about this ‘magic fix’ or ‘hit.’ Something like that anyway,” Tara said. “It was hooking a lot more people across the country than it had back in the day when it was ‘just people like Rack.’” Air quotes made the point of the last sentence.

“Rack.”

“Yup,” Tara said. “He just tossed it out there, as if I should know what he was talking about.”

“And because you didn’t, and it seemed like something that was from somewhere else…”

“I didn’t think any more about it,” Tara completed for her. “At the time I think I was more worried about that mobile blood donor unit that’d gone missing.”

Sometimes things just did get stolen for the heck of it. Even in Sunnydale. Not everything had a nefarious purpose. As had been the case that time, when the driver had wanted to take her boyfriend… ‘parking’ but didn’t have a car of her own.

But some things did have that nefarious purpose. He/She might be here; if Willy thought they knew about ‘Rack’ then ‘Rack’ might be a Sunnydale thing. So it really could be that Rack was what these people all wanted – or at least something he/she could give them.

Or was that stretching the very limited facts they had? Probably. She was known, from time to time, to take the facts and run with them. Sometimes the wrong direction entirely.

“Surely we’d know if someone was ‘dealing’ to all these people though? I mean look at them all! Especially if whatever it was he gives them was magic based? That’s our thing – magic. That’s the kind of thing we’re supposed to know about. I mean, we would. Wouldn’t we?”

“That was another reason I said ‘nah’,” Tara said. “Except I didn’t actually say ‘nah’, I just let Willy carry on till he got to what I wanted to know about.”

“Why would anyone…?” She didn’t get it. What could this Rack offer these people? We’re they all users of magic? All of them down there? If so, she’d never known there were so many in the town.

But this was Sunnydale. The background count from the Hellmouth made everything magical work better, easier and quicker here. Maybe they should’ve expected the magical population to be quite high?

No pun intended.

“I don’t know,” Tara said. “Same reason people get addicted to anything I guess? Needing more than they’ve got to get past some problem in their lives, even if they know it’s going to leave them with a lot less.” Tara shrugged. “Perhaps they didn’t believe there was a downside.”

They looked at the people below them. That was some downside. “You think that’s what happened to them then?” Willow asked. They certainly seemed pretty desperate for something.

“If it is, then I’d bet every one of them thought they could control it, that they could just take what they needed and not give anything up,” Tara said.

Willow nodded. These people weren’t like Mabel; she could see that just by looking at them. They hadn’t been pushed into addiction so someone could control and abuse them. They’d probably come looking for it. And now they were caught like butterflies pinned on a card, and in pain. Just like Mabel had been, no matter how they’d started out.

And the things they’d offered for what they were looking for… Some of them might’ve even done the things Mabel had to get it. At least before the girl had been cleaned up and started kicking vampire butt in L.A. with the rest of Alonna’s vigilantes.

Right now, they’d heard, Mabel was operating on an adrenaline high. That’d pass, in time, and she’d spend the rest of her life avoiding what her body would still crave. But it’d be easier for her as time went on.

But these people hadn’t even taken that step. They were looking for something to make it better, if only for a little while. Adrenaline wasn’t going to do the job either.

“Oh Goddess be,” Tara sounded surprised. What now?

“What?”

“Have you tried looking at them?” Tara asked. “I mean really looking.”

Of course she meant through the magic. Willow took the suggestion, seeing immediately that every man and woman below them did indeed have the aura of someone touched by the mystical part of the world, but that they all also had deep, dark holes where the ‘magic’ part of them should’ve been.

It wasn’t like the mystical part of an aura was a fuel gauge that read from full to empty. At least not normally. She could look at Tara this way and the magic part of her – the mystical part of her – would look the same whether she was exhausted through a long night of defending themselves or fresh as a daisy.

But these people… they were empty. Dark. Barely there at all.

Even if those addicts had used all their magic, they’d be showing signs of recovery – it would still have been there, maybe just not as bright and obvious. It wasn’t the magic they used that you could see in an aura, it was the magical potential.

And that was what was missing from these people. It wouldn’t have looked like that in a normal person – let alone someone who had been touched by the mystical. She shivered. Where the magic should have been there was only emptiness. Not black, just emptiness.

“It’s like someone scooped it out of them and left a vacuum,” she said. She could guess what that had to do to someone’s spirit. Their ‘soul’ if you liked to think of it that way. Had what they’d lost been taken in one? Or had it been corrupted and eaten away by whatever they wanted to be done to them?

“And who’d submit to something like that?” Tara wondered.

Willow shrugged. “Probably someone who wanted whatever rush they got in return. It had to be something that made them feel good – or at least better. Isn’t that what an addiction is? You know what I mean.”

“I do?” Tara asked.

“Don’t you get a rush when you do a spell?”

“No…” Tara said, slowly. “Do you?”

Willow paused, thought about it as Tara looked at her. She couldn’t really try it now just to see, that’d send the desperate people below into yet another period of frenzy and someone might hurt themselves. But yeah, so far as she could remember that sensation – it was a rush.

“Kind of,” she said. “You know, I used to get it a lot more when it was all new, back on the farm. I just assumed you did… You don’t feel that?”

Tara shook her head. “How does it feel?”

How to describe it… That was a toughie. There really wasn’t anything she felt right about comparing it to. It was just… a rush. “I suppose if I had to say anything I’d say it was… kind of sexy.”

“And you didn’t mention this to me until now because…?”

“I thought it happened to you too,” Willow explained. “I thought it might be part of the reason you liked doing magic with me.”

“Only when we’re connected,” Tara said. “When we’re working magic together, then I guess that’s kind of sexy. That is a kind of rush. No, not so much a rush as a long, slow build to... Well, you know.”

“That’s it,” Willow said. “That’s it exactly. I get a milder – and less sexy – version of that feeling when I do certain kinds of spells. The old ones, you know… before we got all elemental about it? I suppose I really don’t get it any more, not on big magic anyway. Which is a good job. The amount of power we’re channelling… If it still felt sexy now, well you’d never be up off your knees.”

“This isn’t funny, Willow,” Tara said. “If something like that is happening to you – or was – we’d need to be very careful about what we do.”

Who’d been joking? If the sensation had been linked to the power, she’d be in orgasm every time she tossed a fire spell at a vampire. “I know. I’m just saying.” Though if Tara was going to worry about it, she was kind of sorry she’d mentioned it.

“Perhaps your level of tolerance went up,” Tara suggested next, after having thought about it.

“Maybe, or maybe it’s just the kind of magic we do now doesn’t have that effect.” It bothered her just a little that Tara didn’t feel the same things she did, especially when they’d been doing the same kinds of magic. But perhaps tolerance levels did have a lot to do with it. “Do you think that’s what it is? Someone’s giving them that rush?”

It didn’t seem to be enough to get someone hooked on. Unless it was just ‘like’ that, but actually something different. More intense. Something they’d want more and more of and ultimately wouldn’t be able to live without?

So much so they’d chase two witches around town and beg for any scraps they’d give up.

But perhaps, by associating magic with Tara and loving her, she’d by-passed its addictive qualities? She had her woman; she didn’t need anything else that the magic could do for her. Tara – and yes doing spells with her back then – had been more than enough.

“It’s got to be something about pleasure – and I don’t mean sexy pleasure. I mean the kind of thing that happens in the brain. Chocolate. Caffeine. Drugs. You know?” Tara said. “Or surely they wouldn’t do it?”

“So you think someone’s taking from them? In exchange for that? Taking power from them?” Willow asked.

“Not just power,” Tara said. “Look at them; they’re empty and desperate – not just lacking power.”

Willow shuddered again. Yes, Tara saw the same thing she did. Her girlfriend was just better at describing what she saw. It was their potential, their ability. Not just the energy that fuelled it. “You really never felt anything pleasurable about the magic?”

“No, apart from when I’m with you and we… well, you know what we do when we share it,” Tara said. “And I guess, maybe… Sometimes when I was younger, after I practiced my spells at home – before the bad things happened I mean – well, I…”

“Oh, so it was like that was it?” Willow teased. “Alone in your room after you’d done some spells…” She let the thought hang. And the inference. Self-discovery took many forms. That wouldn’t have been better, or worse, than any other.

“No,” Tara said. “It really wasn’t. At least not much.”

She kissed Tara’s cheek and considered what they knew, or thought they knew… Or had at least conjectured. “Here’s a theory, but maybe magic gives you a rush – most people’s magic anyway – to make sure it finds a way into the world? To make you want to use it?”

Tara looked thoughtful as she drew her coat around her more tightly. There was a breeze up here on the roof of Sunnydale’s highest building; it was getting to Willow too.

“But our magic, the one we use now is - ” Tara said.

“ – It’s very old and it seems like it died out in the past,” Willow said. “Maybe that’s why?” Okay, she had absolutely no evidence at all for this, but… But why not? Evolution was tricky; it’d done all sorts of strange things. Look at the duckbilled platypus.

Magical ability was natural, so wouldn’t that conform to some of the same evolutionary rules? Tara really didn’t look very happy with the idea though.

“I’m serious,” Willow said. “Just like animals get pleasure from sex to help condition them to want to reproduce.”

“You watch the Discovery Channel way too much,” Tara told her.

“Oh come on, you can’t deny that the queer monkeys were cool.”

“Way too much,” Tara said again. “And all this isn’t helping us here and now. To get down from this roof and deal with these people.”

“What do we do then?” Willow asked. Tara was right, all this thoughtfulness was good for later, but not of much practical use. “If we give them what they want we’ll never get rid of them.”

“Even if we knew what it was they wanted and could do something about it,” Tara pointed out.

“But if we don’t even try then we could be up here all night,” she completed.

Their eyes met as Tara told the harsh truth. “I don’t see how they’re any different from Mabel. Whatever it is they need, they really need to come off it. For their own good. They need to go cold turkey. We can’t have this lot showing up every time we use magic to deal with a vampire or demon. And we can’t stop doing what we do, or other people are going to get hurt.”

“I agree,” Willow said.

“So?”

“What do we do?” she asked. “We’re still up here – we need to get down somehow. Unless you want to build a fire, sing some songs and stay the night? Do you think a fire might scare them away?”

“Our singing definitely might,” Tara countered. “But no fires. They’re not regressing to cavemen. They’re not going to be scared by a fire up here. But they do look pretty desperate.”

“Yes,” a familiar voice said. “I imagine they are by now.”

Familiar voices were never a good sign when you were trapped on a rooftop wondering how you were going to get down. It always meant it someone you really didn’t want to see had turned up.

How he’d sneaked up on them was something she’d worry about later on.

“How did you get up here?” Tara asked.

He smiled. “My face still opens a few doors,” the former Mayor told them as he came to the edge of the roof and looked down at their predicament.

Willow couldn’t help thinking that a more important question than the one Tara had asked was “What do you want?” To her way of thinking, that was pretty fundamental.

“As always, I just want to help. You gave a donation to SOS, now let me help you,” he said.

“You could jump off, see if they’ll tear you to shreds,” Willow said, not really expecting him to take her up on the idea. It’d be worth as much to her as the old Speak and Spell that they’d given to his charity. Her old speak and spell.

Given over her objections.

He smiled, of course. “They really don’t want me. I might squash a few for you though. They don’t even want the two of you. Not really. They just want what you can give them.”

“Magic,” Tara said.

“I knew you’d have already figured it out, but it is a beautiful night and I fancied a walk. Would you like a mint? Still only one calorie.”

They’d always been one calorie, that wasn’t why they weren’t taking them from him.

“What do you know about this Rack?” Willow asked, ignoring his offer.

“Rack?” he seemed surprised. Was it because they knew the name, or was he just generally surprised that Rack might be involved. Whoever he/she/it was. “Yes, that would make some sense.”

Probably the latter then. “What?”

“Rack is – was – the worst kind of underworld figure Sunnydale had to offer,” he said.

“And I always thought that was your job description,” Willow said.

“Willow,” Tara warned before he could answer her. And she did take the advice. The former Mayor knew something they needed to. Now wasn’t the best time to antagonise him into withholding that information from them. “If you know his name, you must know what he did?”

“Well, you know his name but you don’t know what he did,” he said.

Willow nodded. He had them there.

“All I need to say is that you should never, ever go near someone like Rack,” Wilkins said.

“Is he dangerous?” Tara asked.

“He wouldn’t attack you,” he replied. “At least not without cause. But he’d certainly take advantage of you. Tales of his tastes – and those like him - have filtered back to me in the past. Once he has you snared, that’s when you’ll do anything for the high for the temporary rush of power he gifts you with. You’ll do anything, submit to anything. No matter how degrading it is. And that’s what he wants from you. Those who’d…”

“What?”

“The best analogy I ever heard for it was a rape of the mind, soul and spirit. If not the body. At least it would be a violation if they didn’t submit to it for more, always just a little more. That’s what he wants though – he gains something from doing that to a person. Something that gives a part of what a person is to him. Something he can use, and trade back to others. I even heard it suggested that perhaps he’s as addicted to the process as those who come to him.”

“So why didn’t you send me after him?” Tara protested. “If you knew this was going on, why wouldn’t you do that?”

“Because he existed outside our time – or at least out of phase with the world we live in. To find him, to move across that phase boundary requires a certain kind of magic I had no idea how to give you. It requires contact of a sort and once he tastes you… he’s part way to having you.”

“Not me.”

Willow believed it. And so, she could see, did her girlfriend’s former employer.

“Of anyone, I’d accept that of you, Tara. But he was also very low on our list of things to do and I couldn’t have stood to see it happen to you,” he explained.

“Why do you keep using the past tense?” Willow asked. “About him?” She had the feeling they already had the answer to that one. If he’d still been ‘available’ then why would all those people be coming after them for what they needed?

“Oh, because he’s in the past now. Dead perhaps. Someone’s been killing – or otherwise removing – his kind from all over the western half of the country,” he said very matter of factly. As if the – presumed - death was nothing to be mourned.

From what she’d heard Willow couldn’t help thinking he was right about that. Not that she’d ever admit to agreeing with him. She couldn’t have stood to see Tara in the state those people below them were in though. If it’d hooked her… how different would things have been?

Would she even have existed now?

Would either of them?

“So he’s left all those people needing…” Tara said thoughtfully, mostly to herself.

“He’s left much, much more than this. I happen to know there are several new residents up at the Sunnydale Asylum, still more on the streets… somewhere.”

“Somewhere that’s not here,” Willow concluded.

“Lives have been destroyed,” Wilkins said. “I’m not going to shed any tears now he’s gone, no matter how inconvenient that might be proving to the two of you.”

This was starting to bother her. That was the third or fourth thing he’d said that she found herself agreeing with. In a row. “So what do we do?” she asked, trying to put some challenge into her tone. If he wanted to help, he could help. They needed it. But this wasn’t a forum for him just to show off what he knew.

“I’d suggest the obvious, not using magic for a while. Or at least making sure no one’s around when you do and then moving on as quickly as possible. They’re so desperate they can virtually smell it. It draws them, even though they’d usually never be aware of what you were doing.”

“That’s not going to get us off the roof,” Tara pointed out.

He shrugged. “You know, being up here reminds me a little of when the Beatles came to town, just after doing Ed Sullivan. I have a picture somewhere.”

“Great,” Tara said, not finding anything helpful there.

“The Beatles were here?” Willow had to ask. She didn’t want to give him a reason to tell them about the old days but… It was the Beatles. That was music history, and they’d been here? On the roof with him?

He just smiled at her. Bastard. “I’ll distract them,” he offered. “If you’re polite about asking for my help. This probably needs a politicians touch.”

Willow saw Tara glaring at him, but if they weren’t going to do anything about him and they didn’t want to hurt these people then what could they do? They definitely didn’t want to be stuck up here all night, especially now he was here too.

That was something else she didn’t think she could stand.

She swallowed her pride. “Please,” she said. “We’d appreciate it if you’d do what you could.” What she didn’t say was, ‘if you want to add anything about the Beatles coming to Sunnydale, that’d be just fine too. Or you can jump off the roof.’

And, as she’d known he would be, he was enormously pleased to be asked. “But of course, my dears. Of course. If you’d step back so they can’t see you? You are rather a tasty morsel for a starving man when you step up to the edge like that. You’re just tantalising them.”

They did as they were asked, and then Tara stopped him from doing anything more until she was content with what he had planned. “You’re not going to hurt anyone are you?”

“Tara,” he said. “I’m wounded. Wounded that you’d think I’d do that to my – former – constituents.” He shrugged off her restraining hand and stepped up to the lip of the roof.

One slip… One simple slip and one of their problems would be over. But they didn’t do that kind of thing, or even wish for them to happen.

Much.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen, please! If I could have your attention?”

He was going to talk to them like it was a town meeting? They’d never have thought of that.

“My friends here aren’t able to help you. What you need, they cannot give you. They’re just what you used to be. Simple users of the mystical energies.”

‘Just’? ‘Simple’? Hello. We’re right here.

“You are drawn to them, but they cannot help you!” he called out, clarifying the situation.

They could hear the disappointed protests from below, but he just kept speaking over them.

“However your predicament is not unanticipated,” he said. “If you’ll look to the back of the Court House, across the street, we’ve laid on a bus to the airport where – for just the price of your ticket –a flight to Cleveland has been arranged, where I’m assured a lady of your former supplier’s ability and quality waits to meet all your needs.”

“You can’t do that,” Tara hissed.

“And I’m not,” he said quietly, looking back at them. “There’s no bus, let alone a flight to Cleveland. When they go that way, we’ll go this way and leave. Hopefully they just need time – time to get past this addiction. Perhaps a little something to take the edge off, but they can get past it… At least they will eventually,” he said. “I’ve seen it before.”

He stepped back to the edge of the roof and started to call out to the crowd again. “So if you’d all please make your way to the back of the Court House in an orderly fashion, we’ll be on our way in just a few minutes.”

Willow looked at Tara. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

“Must be because we’re not devious liars,” Tara said, as quick as a flash.

But it was working. The crowd was filtering away. Heading as a group to in the direction he’d sent them. They were even ‘proceeding in an orderly fashion.’ Just as he’d asked them to. People wanted to believe him. That was what Tara said had always worked for him.

And perhaps their addiction made them gullible.

“Thanks,” Tara said reluctantly as they waited for the crowd to disperse enough for them to go the other way. “What were you doing here anyway?”

“Perhaps I was just out for a walk. Perhaps I missed the old place. Or maybe I was looking for another chance to show I’m not all that bad.”

Willow, for one, was willing to let that lie. She didn’t like him, but she wasn’t about to do anything about him now. He had helped them and he was running a charity that they couldn’t find any problems with. What that proved about him they’d talk about later. “Do you know what happened?”

“I’d assumed it was rather obvious from what we were saying. Someone put their dealer out of business,” he said. “Aren’t you pleased?”

“Was it you?” Tara asked.

“No,” he said with a smile. “Not as it happens. Though I might’ve done, given the opportunity.”

She sighed. They were caught. He’d helped them, and they’d have wanted this Rack taken down – if they’d ever known about him.

“What are you really doing?” Tara asked.

None of them missed the fact that she was talking about a larger scale of doing than just what’d happened tonight. This was the big question – the one they’d been worried about and only he knew the answer to.

Naturally Willow didn’t expect an answer that’d reassure them in any way. Tara looked more open to being surprised though. Maybe she thought he’d come out and admit it.

“What I’ve always done,” he said. “I’m looking after this town. But this really isn’t the time or place to talk about it. We’d better leave before they find out just how far I exaggerated the truth.”

“You lied,” Willow said as they went to the opposite side of the building.

“I got you out of a fix. Now remember ladies, no magic. We all need to take the stairs,” he said.

Tara sighed, looked at her, then back to him. “Isn’t there anything we can do for those people?”

He paused, smiled fondly at her and then answered the question. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don‘t have as much time to read as I’d like.” With that he led them back to the stairwell, and in a minute or two they’d exited past the surprised security guard, fortunately one Tara knew from the old days and was probably used to her turning up places she wasn’t expected to be.

“Thank you, again,” they both said when he’d gotten them outside and there was no sign of their own personal mob.

“I assure you, it was my pleasure. And Miss Rosenberg?”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if you know where you father is tonight?” He was gone before either of them could react and worry about the nature of the question.

---------

“Baby,” Tara said as they paused at the back door. “Ira’s fine. I’m certain of it.”

“You heard what he said,” Willow said.

“It didn’t sound like a threat. He sounded… well, he sounded amused actually.” She knew him of old. She knew when he was making threats, and when he was trying to be funny. This was the latter, she was certain of it.

But she knew they still needed to check on Ira.

“And megalomaniacs always laugh at stuff normal people wouldn’t,” Willow pointed out, gripping the door handle.

“He’s hardly a megalomaniac,” Tara said, trying to sound reasonable, but Willow kind of had a point.

“He helps us a little and now we’re all chummy?” Willow demanded.

Tara sighed. “Of course not, but you were the one who asked him for help. And he’s not a megalomaniac. That’s all. Whatever else he is he’s not one of those.”

The lights were on and when they went into the kitchen through the back door, they found it was a mess. Ira hated a messy kitchen – so that was a bad sign. A potentially bad sign. Ira hated mess so much he usually did the dishes between every course of a meal. Something was… strange. She had to admit it.

And that created a modicum of worry, even for her. Had she read her former employer wrong?

Tara gestured, there were sounds coming from the direction of the living room. She already had a stake in her palm, Willow did too. They crept to the door, wanting to catch whatever or whoever was going on by surprise. Brandishing their weapons, they counted to three in sign, burst though the door and took in the scene.

“Ira!”

“Tara!”

“Dad!”

“Willow!”

“Lizzie!”

“Tara!”

“Lizzie?”

“This is Willow?

“Erm…” Okay, this was potentially an embarrassing situation. “Lizzie, Willow. Willow, Lizzie.” She’d wanted them to meet – but not, necessarily like this.

Ira, it was safe to say, wasn’t under attack.

He was very far from it. Not as far as he could be, but still pretty far.

And Lizzie’s presence explained how the old Mayor had known what Ira was doing tonight.

“Erm, hi,” Willow said, dropping the pointy wooden death stick into her bag and then giving her Dad and his… new friend a wave. It was pretty feeble. Given how shocked and surprised they both looked, ‘hi’ and a wave wasn’t likely to do the job of explaining what they were doing here.

“Nice to… meet you at last,” Lizzie said slowly.

“Right… Erm. Okay. Yeah, we’ll leave you two kids to whatever you were doing…” Tara said and pulled Willow out of the room before things could get any more awkward.

She didn’t want her girlfriend getting in the middle of them now.

For people their age talking, being sat like that, closer than conversation usually required, was practically foreplay. Wasn’t it?

Ira and Lizzie together?

---------

“How old is she anyway?” Willow asked.

“I don’t actually know,” Tara started to say but stopped when Willow’s look told her that wasn’t the right answer. “Well, she’s over sixty.”

Willow could admit that she was having issues with this. At least to herself.

“My Dad’s fifty-five. She’s too old for him!” No old woman was going to make a toy-boy out of her Dad.

“Will, they weren’t even kissing.”

“Stop it! Stop now!” she didn’t need images like that either. “You saw how close they were.”

“And I noticed Lizzie’s lipstick wasn’t smeared at all.” Tara was being entirely too reasonable for Willow’s liking. “Sweetie, get over it. Your Dad’s got needs like everyone else. Like us.”

“Oh no, don’t you dare start with that. You are not comparing our needs with his – or theirs. I’m just about willing to accept he and Mom had sex when they were young. Him and Lizzie, that’s not an image I want in my head. No. No. No. And no again.”

Except just saying it had put the image in her head. Think of something else. Think of something else. Come on brain. Something else. Anything else. Gay monkeys. No. Movies - Terms of Endearment. No. Miss Kitty leaving little gifts in their bed.

Ah, there… that was more like it.

“She’s not exactly the wicked step-mother type, love,” Tara added.

Willow was still thinking fast, anything to keep that image out of her head. “We need to ask her to dinner,” she decided on the spur of the moment.

“That’s it,” Tara sounded pleased. “Get to know her. I wanted you to anyway.”

“You think this is funny,” Willow accused. Didn’t Tara get how serious this was? The one remaining parent they had between them, and he was going to be made into a toy-boy for some geriatric floozy?

“Only very.”

“We’re having them to dinner because I want to know if her intentions are honourable,” Willow said. “And friendly.” Friendly she could cope with. Even close friends. Close friends could sit like that with each other. Close – platonic - friendships could spring up quickly too. Couldn’t they?

“Oh, you’re the limit,” Tara said. “She’s good people, oh lover of mine.”

“I know you like her,” Willow said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s good enough for my Dad.”

“They weren’t even holding hands.” Tara practically spelt every word out, making it very, very clear.

“She was all there, ready for him to… to… To hold her hand or something. It was disgusting.”

“Granted, they were close,” Tara said. “But I hardly think it’s time to go shopping for wedding outfits.”

Willow paused, she hadn’t thought of that. “You really think it could go that far?”

“I don’t know anything more than you do!” Tara said. “I just found out in the same embarrassing way you did!”

“Well, if you don’t know then don’t say things like that. It freaks me out.” There it was. She was in a freaksome place. Her Dad was getting close to someone… On top of everything else that was happening; now she had to worry about that?

“You don’t say… But I think it’s sweet,” Tara decided.

“Stop it. Now.”

“Wanna hold hands?” Tara asked, leaning against her for a moment.

“Oh, you Witch!”

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

[Forrister]

*Brain hurts*

Just finished 13 days straight at work. Slightly brain fried but not so much that I can't reply.

T & W's perspective on modern movie culture is amusing, its cute in a geeky sort of way. I had a good chuckle over the following part.

They lived this stuff, and aside from the pheromone thing going on with werewolves, they’d never noticed the creatures’ apparent preference for buxom young women. Nor people getting desperate to have sex during monster attacks… It just didn’t happen that way in real life.

Except their lives, obviously, and they always waited until they got home.

Well, nearly always.

We both know they don't spend all their time having, talking about, or thinking about sex. It only seems that way.

I'm wondering what Richard is up to. Is he following them? Is he keeping an eye on his town hall. (Ok - its technically not his at the moment, but I'm sure he thinks of it that way.) He certainly can handle a crowd, and seems to be trying to be helpful. Which always has me suspicious. I'm still tossing up his ultimate motive. I suspect its far more complex than the canon Wilkins goal of 'build the town, nurture the town, protect the town, eat the town'. You've taken the whole 'Willow's addiction to magic' storyline in canon, turned it around and set it on its ear. I like the explanation you give for what Rack does too.

This leads us to Lizzie & Ira. Ok, he's an older gentleman, not a stick. He has social needs. I just find myself wondering how he managed to meet and form a relationship with Lizzie. Was it just pleasant happenstance? Or something more sinister? Is Lizzie acting for herself? Or for her boss? Having voiced the obvious concerns, I think its kinda sweet. Willow's difficulty in getting her head around the whole concept is endearing, and typical of most children, no matter what their age. Its hard to think of a parent in the whole dating, kissing, sex thing.

Sending you lots of hugs before I detach the cat from my lap and go back to bed for some more well-earned sleep.

Be well hun,
Forrister

Salix magica ars efficere. Lascius puella!
Willow does it with magic. Sexy girl!

[Katharyn]

Eeep. 13 days? That's too much. But you are surprisingly conversant for someone with brain fry so, well done.

I like doing these little rambles into whatever is interesting the girl's at that moment in time. And I think it's pretty canon too. Maybe not so much for them specifically but for BTVS in general.

That inevitably led me to horror movies and what they'd think of them... all the cliches, that thought process went on for quite a while longer but I trimmed it back to that quote you gave.

And hey! I've been pretty good about not letting them have sex all the time. Or even hinting it. Mostly.

What is Richard up to? Ah, well... I've just been editing what I call the 'Big Bad Finale' from part 234-238 and it's fair to say by then you will know.

I have to admit I was worried about what I said about Rack. I broke a self imposed rule by bringing him in - but I so wanted a karma kill, and he did also serve a genuine story prurpose here. What I didn't like myself for was what I was implying happened to Willow in S6, however we all know about that so I try not to dwell on it.

You will get to find out about Ira and Lizzie later... quite a while later, but just because it's going to get busy for a while after tomorrow's part. Yet another canon character enters the fray and think this one is kind of fun.

A classic even.

Lovely quote by the way.

Be well
Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle - Payoff (Part 224)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Very little is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Conversations around the state of Toni’s relationship with Tara and Willow. Also this deals with how they resolve the situation of the magic addicts.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: This is the last part before we step away from the T/W/Toni thing for a while, hopefully into something that you’ll enjoy. This one is a little short, but
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else. Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW.


The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle

Payoff

By

Katharyn Rosser


A couple of days after part 223


*What are they doing?* Toni asked.

Jenny knew very well who ‘they’ were. In the past few days she’d noticed Toni seemed to think that if she avoided using Tara and Willow’s names then they were somehow… further away.

“Willow’s helping some people,” Jenny said. “Tara and Rupert too.”

She didn’t pretend to understand what it was they were doing – even in theory. It was very far from the casting of bones and nowhere near information technology or child-rearing – and those were her three specialist subjects at the moment. She didn’t have a lot of time to start figuring out rituals with them.

What she did know was that her husband had come up with something in his books that could help and then, out of the blue, another part of the puzzle had arrived by post from Richard Wilkins. Or at least enough of the puzzle to show them he could help even more.

And with that suddenly everyone was excited about helping those addicted people who’d practically been chasing Tara and Willow around town to get their fix.

It worried her just a little that they hadn’t even bothered with too much suspicion about the motives of the former Mayor in providing that assistance. She had to think that whether the lack of suspicion was a good or bad thing was as debatable as Wilkins’ motives.

*Those addicts?* Toni asked, her expression showing just how she felt about that issue. It was magic they wanted, and magic that Toni blamed for a lot of things that’d gone wrong in her life.

Jenny had the impression the girl counted anything about vampires and demons as ‘magic.’ And now, somehow, Sunnydale had its magical version of crack-heads? This wasn’t helping with Toni’s impression of Tara and Willow, that was for sure.

“That’s right.”

*Why?*

Why? Toni had to ask? “It’s what we do,” she said, firmly allying herself with Tara and Willow – not just her husband - by her choice of the collective description. Toni couldn’t expect her, just because she was living with them now, to take sides in her dispute with the other part of their extended family. And to be fair, the girl hadn’t shown any sign of wanting her to do that. All she’d done was ask questions.

On the other hand, there had been a lot of tension… “And you’re not going to get me to say anything bad about them,” she added.

*No! I didn’t mean - *

Jenny had the impression that in Toni’s ideal world she might’ve left the room then. But Toni was in a far from ideal situation. She had Ben cradled in the crook of one arm and Faith was curled up asleep across her lap, snoring gently.

No, Toni wasn’t going anywhere just yet. It was a miracle she was finding enough freedom to sign at all, at least without waking Ben.

No matter what else was going on, Jenny had to admit Toni was wonderful with the kids. For an only child, she’d taken to them really well – and them to her too. And she didn’t mean ‘wonderful with the kids’ like Tara.

It wasn’t the same. Tara was practically a second Mom to Faith and if Jenny had been less secure in her friend’s motives she’d have been unreasonably afraid of that bond the two of them had. Afraid it’d usurp the fact she was the one who’d carried and given birth to Faith.

Especially being as Faith seemed to like Tara more. She was okay with that though. Faith was a strong willed girl, but a good one too. Much of that balance had come from Tara, Jenny was sure of it. And one thing she’d learned was that there was no predicting the whims and affections of children.

And it wasn’t like her daughter hated her or anything. Faith loved her, she knew it in the depths of her soul. She saw it every time the girl smiled at her.

Faith just liked Tara more. Not Willow, not Rupert, not Toni. Just Tara.

If Mommy told Faith off, there’d be tears. If Tara had to tell her off, then Faith would look absolutely dejected. Heartbroken even. But she learned the lessons faster and rarely repeated whatever she’d done wrong when it was Tara who caught and admonished her.

And Jenny was pleased she’d always encouraged both Tara and Willow to correct her children as they thought necessary. It meant the kids saw what they were doing wrong right then, not sometime later when Mommy came home.

So no, Toni was more like Willow with the kids. A big sister – and with more patience than Jenny would’ve expected of her.

In day-to-day life Toni didn’t suffer fools at all. Neither fools nor people who treated her like an idiot – or even just differently – because she was deaf. But she was patience personified with the kids, no matter what they did.

Just this evening Toni had been carrying on a signed conversation with Faith, who – at the time - had been pestering her to let her bounce on the mini-trampoline. All the while she’d been changing Ben practically one handed.

But just because Toni was good with the kids – and living here - didn’t mean she or her husband would break faith with Tara and Willow though. Especially as neither of them could find fault with how the girls had handled anything in all their dealings with Toni.

*Sorry,* Toni said, looking unhappy as she stroked Faith’s long hair with the same hand that cradled Ben, rocking him at the same time. Quite a feat. More impressive had been getting them both to sleep at all.

“Me too,” she said. She shouldn’t have accused Toni of wanting her to badmouth the girls, but this whole ‘enmity’ between Toni and them was getting really, really tired. “So what did you mean?” she asked more gently.

She didn’t want it to be a challenge, she just wanted to know. She’d leapt to conclusions, so if they weren’t valid Toni could say her piece.

*I… I just wanted to know what they were doing… And why,* Toni said.

“Because people need their help,” Jenny said. “Like I said, it’s what we do.”

*But is it because they can’t use magic without all those people following them around? Or is it to really help them?* Toni asked. It seemed like that was important to her. Was this what was at the root of the latest problem she had with Tara and Willow?

One motive had to come first; she supposed Toni was right about that. But even if it had been to stop a crowd gathering and begging for a fix every time they had to use their power, then that was helping people too.

These weren’t Slayers they were talking about. Tara and Willow depended on magic to protect them all, Toni included. It’d saved all their lives more than once. “Which do you think it is?” she asked.

She didn’t honestly know the answer to her own question, but there might not even be a distinction to the girls. Tara and Willow might just have thought of one reason before the other. Both were equally valid.

Toni frowned, plainly unhappy. But she wasn’t angry, which was probably a step in the right direction.

Probably.

Actually, Toni just looked more sad than unhappy. *They make it so hard to - * she signed and then had to stop as Ben shifted.

“What?”

Toni just shook her head. No finishing that sentence it seemed. What’d she been about to say?

“It’s time to put him down anyway,” Jenny said, going over to the girl to collect her son.

*I’ll do it,* Toni said.

“No, it’s okay. You know what she’s like. If you move you’ll wake her up,” Jenny said, looking down at Faith. “And she’ll wake him and then we’ll all be cranky in the morning. All but you anyway.”

Toni had the unfair advantage of not hearing the kids when they cried or screamed. It was probably a large part of her ability to maintain a very even temper with them. But then she had to admit Toni couldn’t hear them when they laughed either, so maybe that evened things up.

She took Ben from Toni and left the girl there with Faith, careful not to wake her son as she took him up the steps to bed. She couldn’t help wondering what was it Tara and Willow made so hard for Toni? What had she been about to say?

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

“You can come out now,” the voice called, summoning him from the backroom he’d locked himself in. Just in case.

“About bloody time,” Ethan said. “What’ve you been doing out here?”

“Entertaining our local Witches,” Wilkins said. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“So you’re helping them now?” Ethan asked. Had that been in the plan? Not the one he’d been involved in. “That’s the second time in a few days.”

Wilkins smiled. “I never had a problem with helping them, Mr Rayne. The problem was whether they’d knowingly work with me.”

“And now you’ve gotten them to?” Ethan wondered. It was a rhetorical question as his mind turned to the possibilities this offered up. The former-Mayor had assured him this was how it would be, that the Witches would cooperate with their aims. He’d doubted it then but…

This could be the first step towards that objective.

“I believe it was a situation of your making, rather than mine,” Wilkins said. “And this was the best way out of it. Being unable to use magic freely benefits no one here.”

Ethan had to admit he hadn’t anticipated the reaction of Rack’s former ‘customers.’ He’d never stuck around long enough in any of the other towns or cities where he’d taken down the dealer to see this happen.

But yes, after a game of poker where he’d been inconspicuously cheating as much as his opponents, he’d emerged and those junkies had started following him everywhere, demanding he gave them what they couldn’t get anywhere else.

It was probably a good job they hadn’t known he was to blame.

And while he’d partaken of a few of the offers from a couple of the more attractive ladies and kept up his end of the bargain, he didn’t really want to have his freedom curtailed that way. Nor did he want to step into Rack’s shoes.

“It was the only way to get the power,” Ethan said. “Rack was the last one we’ll need, but he was also the last one available within a reasonable distance.”

“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” Wilkins told him. “But some forethought as to the consequences goes a long way. You need to apply some common sense principles, if you’d like my opinion. I can give you some pointers if necessary.”

He’d admitted to the failing on his part. Duly chastened he returned to the subject, ignoring the offer of being taught how to do his job. Politeness definitely counted, and it was never wise to insult an employer. “So now they trust you? That could be useful.”

“They don’t trust me in the slightest,” Wilkins said way too cheerfully.

“And that’s a good thing?” Ethan had to ask.

“Trust would be a little much to expect at this stage. It’s enough if they distrust me a little less than they did before.”

“So that’s why you’re so pleased?” Ethan asked.

“Trust isn’t necessary, you know that. Pragmatic realism will do quite well enough for our purposes,” Wilkins said as he inspected his fingernail and then made an adjustment with the tiny pair of nail clippers he carried around.

Ethan thought about what the man had just said. “It’s a hell of a leap of faith from joining up to help ease the pain of Rack’s customers to what you’re proposing to do. Pragmatic or not. Realistic or not.”

“True,” the former Mayor agreed with him. “But the same logic applies. They – like you – couldn’t do what they needed to while these addicts were tracking them down at the slightest whiff of mystical energy. And heavens forbid those unfortunates had found the entrance to the Hellmouth. So my Tara, and her partner, did what they had to. They accepted my offer. We’ve already put their pragmatism and realism to work for us.”

Ethan nodded. He could see that, but he didn’t think it was necessarily part of a trend. “So what did you give them?”

“Together we’ve created what they chose to call a mystical methadone – a term I find I despise,” Wilkins said. “However it is somewhat accurate. It’s something that will ease those weak minds through their withdrawal.”

“That’s all very well but - ”

“Ah-Ah-Ahhh. No buts. I’m sure they’ll be just as pragmatic when we’re ready to offer them my final choice too,” Wilkins insisted without waiting for his argument.

“You’re certain?” Somehow he couldn’t see it being that simple. The Witches were as fundamentally opposed to helping this ‘man’ as Ripper would be to helping him. That was why he’d been hiding. They had history, and they knew what he was he wanted.

At least they thought they did.

“If we do this right, there’ll be no other choice they can make,” Wilkins said.

Oh, he was going to appeal to their common sense.

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

“Are you sure we should do this?” Tara asked, and not for the first time.

“I want to see the kids, and I want to see her too. We haven’t had much chance since… Well, you know. Since the… you were there, you know,” Willow said, still not backing down, even if she couldn’t actually call it what it was out loud.

‘Disastrous breach of the relationship’ just about covered it.

Rupert had to be the one to point out the most obvious flaw in her wishes. “Willow, both Faith and Ben should be in bed by now.”

Yeah, but that didn’t change what she wanted. She only wanted to see them; there was nothing wrong with that. She could peek in without even disturbing them. As for Toni… that had to be why Tara was reluctant to go over to the Giles’ place. “You think Toni will get mad?” she asked.

Maybe that was what Tara was afraid of, but Willow was asking Rupert for his opinion too. He was the one Toni was living with now, and it was his house they were walking back to after another night of doing good things.

“No,” he said. “To be honest neither of you seem to inspire that much anger anymore.”

“See!” she said to Tara. “That’s good. That’s progress.” Having Toni living apart from them, but where they could still be a part of her life was having a positive effect. It’d been the right – and admittedly the only – choice.

“Yes, perhaps it is,” Rupert agreed. “Now you inspire… I suppose I’d describe it as ‘sullen silence.’”

Oh. Okay.

Well, ‘sullen silence’ was still better than Toni being mad at the mere mention of their names. And silence was part of the Toni package anyway. Sullen… that was where the problem still lay.

And wasn’t it a strange word?

“Baby,” Tara started. “She’s not going to run into our arms and say she’s sorry – or forgive us - no matter how often we just stick our heads around the door.”

“I get that, I really do.” They’d lost Toni. She’d already accepted that. But somewhere inside her, there was still hope. Tara had hope too, she knew it. It was just that Tara’s hope was working on different timescales than hers. “But stranger things have happened,” Willow said.

“This is Sunnydale,” Tara said. “Stranger things are always happening.”

“Yeah, okay, but my point is that stranger things have happened. You have to admit it.”

“Yes, okay, love. Stranger things have happened,” Tara agreed with a hint of patience in her voice that suggested she was being humoured.

Willow knew what it really was. Tara just didn’t want her getting her hopes up.

Again.

But honestly, Willow thought she was being realistic. It could happen. Toni was a teenager; they were famous for their changes of mood and heart. And if Toni really wasn’t mad at them anymore, that was real progress.

Sullen silence? Cakewalk! They could deal with that.

It wasn’t like getting to know her all over again. She was still Toni.

With Jenny and Rupert looking to formalise Toni’s place in their family, Willow thought it was important that things got back to normal as fast as possible. To give them a fair chance. The Giles’ were already their family. Their kids were she and Tara’s kids too. Toni would be back in their family – even if there were problems between them.

Though Toni might think otherwise, she’d never really left the family. That was why it had – and did – hurt so much.

“Stranger things like who’d have guessed we were going to work with the old Mayor?” she suggested.

“Yes, that was a touch on the surprising side,” Rupert said. “Not what I envisioned when I got up this morning.”

Tara sighed, they’d been over this ground before too. “Okay look, I didn’t want to do it – but he came up with that way of infusing personal items with energy so those people could draw on that while they got over the cravings. You both know that was the key to getting Rupert’s solution out there and doing some good for them.”

None of them had ever seen people so mystically drained, and that kind of loss couldn’t be limited to just the magic being taken from you.

It had to affect your very soul. Their condition wasn’t just like a magic battery that’d gone dead - they’d had it scooped out of them entirely. Obviously in some way that gave them some kind of rush, maybe even a brief mystical boost. Or else why would they all have submitted to it?

All they really knew was that they couldn’t see how it’d be anything less than months for the people to recover completely – if they ever could. But maybe what they’d done tonight would help the addicts get past the worst of it. The charms they’d created for distribution to Rack’s former customers – with Wilkins’ help – would take the edge off the pain and the need.

They’d thought of it like ‘lining’ the gaping hole in these people and stopping them feeling the loss quite so keenly. If they could dull the need, then the craving for more – to be made to feel better through continuing the addiction – would subside.

Hopefully.

In theory.

It was about all they could do and even Tara had to admit that they’d never have come up with the idea alone. She and Tara hadn’t gotten beyond wanting to do something. It’d taken Rupert’s research to show them the way and then Wilkins’ solution to make it practical. Then their link to the elements to actually channel the necessary power.

So yes, Rupert was right. Helping, and being helped by, the former Mayor wasn’t what they’d had in mind this morning.

“Oh, I accept it was necessary to ease those people’s suffering,” Rupert said before she or Tara could chip in. “But it doesn’t make it any less surprising.”

“Or strange,” Willow said. “Are we trusting him now?”

“What do you think?” Tara asked.

“I think he wasn’t doing anything that didn’t serve his own purposes,” Willow said. “Okay, he didn’t need to stop those people following him around, but something about them was probably cramping his style.”

There had to be some sort of self-interest at work. Didn’t there? This whole town had been built in the image of his self-interest. An ego like that didn’t just start being munificent did it?

“Yeah,” Tara agreed. “On the other hand, at least we know now he has no power – except through rituals.”

“You should be the last one to underestimate the power of ritual magic,” Rupert said. “Granted, it’s just not as fast or adaptable, and it requires more planning. But, subject to those limitations, it’s capable of every bit as much as you can manage.”

He was right, and they admitted it through their silent nods. It was easy to think of rituals as a ‘lesser’ kind of magic, just because it’d come first for Tara, as a child and young adult. Back then Tara had suffered the debilitating pain of carrying out ‘ritual’ magic without the focus of spell ingredients to absorb the strain. Those who had no respect for animals might’ve used a familiar to take that pain for them.

Miss Kitty wouldn’t have stood for it though.

No one they’d ever heard of had done what Tara had done, at least not for so long. And it’d taken so much out of her. Perhaps it’d only been bearable because of what Tara – and now she as Tara’s partner – had been born for.

Now they practiced an infinitely older, nature linked, magic. It was that which felt ‘advanced’ to them. But it wasn’t really the case. The right person, with the right skills, could do a great deal of damage through rituals, potions and the like. As Rupert well knew from his college years.

Eygon anyone?

“Maybe it was someone who works for him,” Willow wondered aloud. “They might be the reason he needs to get those people off the streets, to stop them harassing anyone who needs to use magic for what he wants.”

She knew from Tara’s reaction, her girlfriend looked up sharply, she’d hit a nerve. That could very well be it. “Yeah, he or she would have the same problem we do,” Tara agreed.

“All of which might mean he’s getting ready for something?” Rupert wondered. “If he has someone working for him who’s using that amount of power – even ritually – it can’t just be to work for a charity.”

“I doubt it,” Willow said. “Did anyone else find it strange he knows so much about this ‘Rack’? But he’d never said anything to Tara about him before, not even just to say ‘stay away’?”

“I did wonder,” Rupert said. Tara nodded too. “His concern is all very touching some years later, but hardly helping his case. I must admit I assumed he just knew. I hadn’t assigned it any ulterior motive.”

“He does know a lot,” Tara pointed out. “About all sorts of things.”

“But to come up with a solution so fast?” Willow said.

“And then to come to us with it…” Tara nodded slowly in agreement.

“He’s up to something,” Willow and Rupert said together.

“One thing you have to know about him,” Tara said. “He’s always up to something. Or a lot of things. Our problem is figuring out what he’s up to now.” She opened the door and they stepped into Rupert and Jenny’s home. What greeted them was a scene that stopped all their worrying for a few moments.

The room was darkened. But they could see Faith was curled up with Toni on the foldout bed. In the chair, they could see from the reflections that Jenny’s eyes were open. “Shhh,” she said in sign. “Faith wouldn’t go to bed without her. She wanted a sleepover on the foldout.”

Willow looked at Tara, caught her girlfriend smiling softly in the dim light.

“Thanks for bringing him home in one piece,” Jenny said as she came over to them and gave each of them a hug.

“Thanks for staying home and watching the kids,” Willow said.

“They are my kids,” Jenny said with a smile. Rupert gave her a look. “Okay, okay, they’re our kids.”

“Share and share alike,” Rupert said before he kissed her.

“She said something I think you should know,” Jenny said.

“Toni?”

Jenny nodded. “She… How can I put this? I think she regrets what’s happened. I don’t think she’s forgiven you by any means. But I think what Ira said hit her pretty hard. Maybe something I said to her too.”

Tara and Willow looked at each other. Regret? That was… that was definitely progress. “We regret it too,” Willow said.

“But we wouldn’t change anything we did,” Tara added.

“She knows that. I think… I think she knows we’ve all been hurt – and not just by her. She knows she’s not the only one, and she’s not got any special claim on changing things,” Jenny said.

“That’s great,” Willow said.

“It’s good,” Jenny agreed. “But just because she knows that doesn’t mean its how she feels. She’s still hurting, and that’s not going to stop any time soon. She still feels betrayed. But I think, at least, she understands why it had to be that way.”

And what else was there to say?

Saying their goodbyes they left, arm in arm. All she’d wanted was to see them, the kids and Toni. And now she had. Finding out the rest… It gave her hope. “Worth the walk?” Willow asked. “Just for a few minutes there?”

“Yes,” Tara said and kissed her. “It was worth it.”


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

[Forrister]

Heading back to work tomorrow after a nice quiet 5 day rest. I use the word 'rest' loosely because Sasha and Brandy kept me on the hop, simply because they were glad to have me all to themselves for a change.

I can see the beginnings of reconciliation with Toni in this part. She knows in her head that bringing her Father back was not possible. It'll be a long haul before her heart accepts it too, but in the meantime she's slowly learning to live with it. I like family scenes, it reminds us of what all that fighting evil is for. It also makes the characters real people, with lives outside of their mystical crusades.

I can see that you chose your words very carefully here. I suspect that what I saw in them others will pick up on eventually. Sneaky girl! Richard's plans seem to be progressing on schedule. Ethan still has no real idea of his own part in those plans, and he's likely to find himself on a particularly narrow fence between Richard on one hand and Darla/Dru on the other. I just hope Tiger comes out Ok. (No letting Dru eat the cat please.)

Take care hun, have a good week.

Forrister

Via infernae, ipse sanctus designo, benevolus aedifico, et propositum bonum vium saxo.
The road to hell is planned by the self-righteous, built by the well meaning and paved with good intentions.

[Chummy]

Hey that was a great update can't wait to see what will happened for our lovely couple.

[Katharyn]

Hey Kerry, at least you get the 5 day break. Apart from the pesky part of doing 13 days on the trot (gah!) 5 days together would be nicer than just a weekend. I want a five day week, then five days off, and full pay

When you say you can see the start of a reconciliation, that just about sums me up. I want to show the stages of things. I never wanted to just say 'oh, its fixed' or deal with a major issue in a single part. Life isn't (often) like that. Things take time. And when life is like that, it should be a shock.

Also the family is all about it for me. That's the point of this. Life after the horrors of the original SS. Life that's better than the canon - even in a 'worse' world.

I always choose my words carefully BTW... though in the part I am just about to post the title gives it away! I was going to hold you in suspense, but then... nah.

And I can assure you that Tiger, along with T/W, is safe. I promise.

Don't work too hard... just hard enough so they are pleased.

Hi Chummy thanks. What's next is... just about to be posted. A fun few parts (and quite revealing for one character), at least to me!

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle – Tara vs. Dracula – Round One (Part 225)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Very little is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Doesn’t the name give it away?
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: Yeah, the end section was originally written as if Toni was still living with them, but I liked it so I just edited it rather than removing it. This mini-arc takes more of the situations from the canon than usual. Wackiness ensues. Eventually. I was going to hold off from naming Dracula until well into the part, but hey they did it in the show…
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else. Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW.


The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle

Tara vs. Dracula – Round One

By

Katharyn Rosser


A Day or So After Part 224


Tara had finally come to the conclusion – after careful deliberation – that in the grand scope of things - their worries were relatively small ones. If just for the moment,

And that just showed what optimism did for a person. Things definitely weren’t as bad as some of the times they’d been through.

After all, what were they were worried about at the moment?

Not as much as a couple of days ago, that was for sure.

They’d tentatively proven that they could use magic without being mobbed by addicts of whatever that magic-dealer had been dishing out. And if one did turn up, she and Willow both made sure they had a pocket full of the charms they were giving out to relieve the symptoms.

That was their latest problem – and it seemed to be solved. Even if it was always a little dangerous to think that way.

What else?

Of course there was the old chestnut that was Toni, and how they were getting on with her. Or not getting on with her as the case may be. But even that situation looked a little better. There was reason to be optimistic. Toni had said, come right out and said, that she ‘didn’t hate’ them.

Lack of hate fell into the credit column. Definitely. Tara refused to see it in any sort of bad light. It was much better than things had seemed when they’d gone to get the girl back from Wolfram and Hart.

Rupert and Jenny were setting up to bring Toni into their family on a permanent basis, if all parties agreed. And maybe she and Willow would find their way back into Toni’s trust one day too.

That was another plus, she honestly believed that was possible. Looking back, a few days ago, she’d hoped rather than believed.

Next problem. The Mayor, technically the former Mayor, had actually helped them out a couple of times and wasn’t making any obvious gestures towards turning himself into a giant snake, so that was looking okay. Or at least not imminent.

Not that they’d ever stop being wary of him. If anything she was even warier because he wasn’t doing what they might’ve expected him to. But still, the simple equation was:

Giant snake demon = bad.

If she remembered her maths correctly, that meant you could flip that around and also say:

Lack of giant snake demon = good.

Now if they could just keep Toni from getting wise to the fact that once upon a time they’d been forced to kill the Mayor – and now he was back from the dead too – then there shouldn’t be an unfortunate twist in the tale.

Or the tail.

So what were their biggest problems of the moment?

Two things.

One was waiting for the response to Willow’s – for some reason delayed - postgraduate applications. They couldn’t do anything about that except keep calling and being told it was ‘in the system.’

The other was Ira.

At least Ira was Willow’s big obsession of the moment. So Willow’s worry about Ira was Tara’s problem – rather than Ira himself. Her girlfriend was still freaking herself out about Ira and Lizzie.

Tara was having trouble getting past the parts of it that were unbearably cute. Parts, plural, because not only was it nice to see Ira pursuing a relationship – especially with someone as nice as Lizzie – but freaking out Willow about something that really wasn’t that serious was fun too.

At least it was up to a point.

But she supposed that point had pretty much been reached now. Reached, breached and run past at a high rate of speed.

But it was Lizzie, Willow just didn’t understand what that meant.

No matter what Willow might worry about, Tara was sure her intentions were absolutely pure. Or at least if not ‘pure’ then not in any way bad.

Even older people had their needs and yes, some of those needs still lacked ‘purity.’ She definitely planned on having needs when she and Willow reached that portion of their lives. If they didn’t still have needs, then someone was going to get a talking to.

A stern talking to.

And those needs she intended on having probably wouldn’t be all that pure – apart from the love.

That was a long way off though. At the moment she was out here all alone, she still had her youthful – ever-so-slightly impure - needs and she was enjoying herself on the hunt.

Tara had left Willow to get some sleep after she’d spent last night catching up on her assignments and exam preparations. She kind of suspected that a good chunk of last night had actually been taken up with re-colouring the timetable for said activities, but Willow wasn’t stupid. She’d get the work done and prove that colouring in spreadsheets wasn’t a waste of anyone’s time.

It was like one of her missions in life. Quirky as that might be.

Willow hadn’t even protested when Tara had put her to bed, which was a sign of just how tired she really was. Even if her girlfriend might deny what was best for her, she rarely denied that Tara knew what that thing was. They trusted each other; they’d usually take each other’s advice.

Most of the time, at least.

In this case her advice had only been a little self-serving as well as what Willow needed. It was just the same way she dealt with Faith and Ben. You could use maths for this one too.

Tired Willow = Cranky Willow.

Cranky Willow < Fun

Rested Willow > Fun

So what was the value of c squared?

She had no idea, but it was that kind of logic that’d left her out here on the hunt.

Tara fully intended to get a lot of satisfaction out of tonight. She wasn’t above admitting that there was less nobility of purpose right now than just helping to protect the town and its people.

She also wasn’t above admitting that there was something cathartic about stabbing a vampire in the chest with a stake. Not even using the magic. Dusting vampires by hand made it feel much more personal.

It really felt like she was removing one more – if little - part of the stain of evil that was on the world. It made her feel a bit less helpless too. She couldn’t do much for Willow at the moment other than cover for her and let her get some rest. But she could do what they both did best.

Okay, this was what they did second best. But it’d been what she’d done best before she’d ever known Willow and realised what her best really was.

It all should’ve been good. Go out on the hunt. Track a vampire. Stab it in the chest with a pointy stick.

Poof.

Done.

Easy and satisfying in one package.

The thing was she was pretty sure she was being watched, even if she couldn’t pin down who or what it might be that was following her. As she tracked her own target, certain that the vampire she was following wasn’t aware of her presence, she could definitely feel something else.

Something tracking - or even - hunting her.

And she’d long since learned not to ignore that kind of feeling.

It actually felt like someone was right at her shoulder – something – and she could feel the breath against the hairs of her neck. But if she turned to look there was absolutely nothing and no one there.

Maybe she was being paranoid, but paranoia had often kept her alive and she was happy to go with it again now, reaching out with all her senses once more as she turned to look behind her.

It happened. Sometimes they were watched, and nothing ever came of it. Maybe the vampires, or something else, wanted to watch them at work. Maybe they were just curious.

Sometimes it was probably more than curiosity. That was how it felt tonight. Either way she wanted to know who or what it was that was following her.

It wasn’t her crowning moment of hunting glory as she almost walked into the back of the vampire she’d been following across town. It’d only gone on this long because she wanted to practise her hunting skills.

And because the ‘something else’ had distracted her.

As a result of her desire to know what else was out there, and not actually watching where she was going, she’d not noticed the vampire she intended to dust stop to sniff the air. Stop for long enough to be right in front of her.

The demon-possessed shell of what’d once been a human being turned to her. Finally, after quarter of an hour of her practising her stalking skills, it was alert to her presence.

That’d be the walking into the back of it that’d let her down.

Oh well, no more practice tonight. She’d just take what satisfaction dusting this vampire would offer, and then find out who or what was following her. It’d also make her look a little more competent.

Tara slammed the stake into the vampire’s chest and had the near instant satisfaction of watching it disintegrate before her eyes. This one was a burner, probably older than most that still came to Sunnydale.

She shrugged. Age didn’t matter. It was dead-dead now though, no matter how old it’d been.

But even before the dust had started to separate and drift off on the breeze, she was looking around again. She’d almost felt as if… As if the whatever-it-was’ interest had intensified at the precise moment she’d destroyed the vampire.

But no matter where she looked, she saw, heard and felt…

Nothing at all.

Except, of course, there was something. Something that spoke to her. It sounded, and felt, like a voice inside her head. But not the same as when she and Willow communicated that way.

But a voice in her head wouldn’t have been so foreign. Her inner Tara didn’t do accents. And didn’t do ‘male’ either.

“Impressive. Your skills remind me of the Slayers – but you’ve lasted longer than any Slayer in centuries,” the voice told her.

Tara whirled around. This time it wasn’t in her head – it was real and it was talking audibly to her, whatever it was.

Facing him revealed a lot.

He was certainly a vampire – the pasty skin was a dead give away, as well as the lack of warmth from someone – something – so close to her. But somehow it was like he was only partially there, and the rest of him was somewhere that was… else.

The word ‘ethereal’ was the only one that came to her mind to describe it, but she knew what that meant and this wasn’t it.

Not quite. Etherealish.

But that quality, as well as being able to stay mostly hidden from her, pointed to him being a genuinely old vampire. Way older than the one she’d just dusted.

More maths.

Age = Power

On the other hand, how he was dressed just screamed ‘fan boy.’ It looked like the movies had convinced him just what vampires were expected to wear. Lots of dark colours, velvets and… was he wearing a very pale foundation to enhance his pastiness?

The cape, the long flowing hair and skin that was even paler than normal... Yeah, she’d seen that before. But by definition fan boy vampires weren’t exactly old enough to have as much power as she suspected he had.

If she had to pick a more likely option she’d have said he was one of those elder vampires who was stuck in his own past. The accent didn’t do anything to discredit the theory. Old world.

“I knew a couple of slayers,” she said to him, letting another stake drop into her palm, ready to dust him. He was going to have to die – but she had to admit she was just slightly curious about him. Why’d he been following and watching her?

Playing some game?

Perhaps testing his own hunting skills?

Was he curious too?

Or was it that he’d stalked her and now he wanted to gloat that he’d been able to do so? He wasn’t the first to manage it, but then none of the others had walked away either.

And the way she was feeling, staking another vampire would really hit the spot. Especially when he was giving off such an overbearing and arrogant vibe. That’d make his immolation all the more satisfying. “They taught me a lot,” she added.

“Of course they did,” he replied. “But they are in the past because they couldn’t learn anything from you. Their power – like mine - is rooted in darkness. But what you had to teach, no one else could learn. You couldn’t help them. You shouldn’t blame yourself for their deaths.”

“I helped them,” Tara insisted, not willing to accept either what he was saying, or that she held any guilt about that.

Of course there were things she did feel guilty about when it came to Faith and even Kendra. But whatever he thought he knew, it wasn’t her reasons for that guilt.

“And yet they are not with us. That is the way of the Slayer. Candles that burn bright, but then are snuffed out. They are beyond anyone’s help, those so cursed as to be chosen. But you…”

Now she was convinced he was a genuinely old vampire. This was no wannabe fan boy in a funny cloak with a fetish for having the silkiest hair you ever saw.

And it was so very, very silky.

Less concern about the hair-care, she told herself, and back to the point. She believed at least part of what he was saying. He was right about the nature of Slayers. Up to a point. So this was a vampire that’d known at least one Slayer and was still here. From what he was saying he might have known more than one…

It certainly made him old, or at least well travelled, and probably dangerous.

No matter how good staking a vampire would feel right now – she wasn’t sure now was the time to test herself against him hand to hand. Faith or Kendra might’ve managed to take on an ancient vampire that way – but she wasn’t up to that. They were a little too close together for comfort.

What she needed to think about now was what he was capable of and what needed to be done. She needed to increase the gap between them and then stake him in the safest, most accurate way. Didn’t she?

What was that she was thinking about?

Oh yeah, what needed to be done. Now what was it she’d been planning to do with the stake? She looked at it, wondering why it was in her hand.

Oh… yes… that.

“Leave town now,” she offered, a little confused about why it was so hard to think about killing him. “No snacks. Just get out.”

The words sounded alien to her – the only other times she’d done something like that, there’d been a hostage or someone else at risk that she had to protect. Why was she offering to let him leave? There were only the two of them.

Why even give him a chance? Why not… Why not… The thing with the pointy stick. What was it you did with that? Ah, why not stab him with it?

She knew with absolute certainty what the result of letting him continue to exist would be. He’d hunt and kill and people would die. Why was she making the offer…?

She shook her head, trying to clear it. Clear it of the doubts, of the cobwebs that were suddenly obscuring the clarity she was used to when it came to doing… What was she doing?

Hunting vampires, that was it. She was hunting vampires. This vampire. She had a stake in her heart and when she stuck it in his chest that would be that.

“Or?” he asked with infinite, self-assured, calm.

Tara held the stake in clear view. “Or you’re next.” At least she’d managed to make the threat.

Was he doing this to her? Or was something else wrong? No vampire had ever managed to cloud her mind before. Was it him? And if it was, what was he doing?

No, it wasn’t what he was doing; it was what he was trying to do. It wasn’t a mental assault, trying to control her mind. It was insidious, like fog under a door… easing in without her even realising. And now she knew it was happening she could fight against it. But… that begged the question, what else was he capable of that she wasn’t ready for?

She didn’t want to be around him. Kill him, go home and worry about it later.

“It would be a privilege – to see your power at work. But I must decline your kind offer to end my existence. I’m curious why you would give me a chance to survive our meeting though? You know what I am, I know what you are… Magnificent.”

He was curious?

And she was ‘magnificent?’

She didn’t know what the answer to his question was… She knew he was trying to influence her, but being aware of it shouldn’t she just have destroyed him there and then?

She knew she needed to, but somehow… She didn’t want to. At least not right now. So instead of telling the truth, or destroying him, she lied. “Right now I don’t think you’ve hurt anyone here and I want to go home, so it’s really a matter of efficiency. If it’s easier and faster to kill you – I will.”

But would she?

It worried her that she’d even need to doubt it? She knew what he was trying to do – was he still doing it? Could she kill him?

Intellectually she wanted to, but something just made it seem like too much effort.

Ultimately it was still just a vampire. Even the Master had been just a vampire. Eventually they all just drifted away on the breeze.

“You are right, of course. I am no murderer. I take only from those who give, from those who desire the ecstasy of my kiss,” he told her, sounding proud of himself. His accent dragging out the words. Even if it were true would he kill without feeding?

Of course he would.

Most obviously because he lacked a soul or the positive traits and emotions that went with one, but also she knew the type.

It wasn’t that there was the slightest bit of humanity in creatures like this that was absent in most other vampires. They certainly weren’t better than the more obvious ‘rip your throat out’ vampires.

No, they’d simply found a lure – whatever it was in each case - that brought more sustenance than hunting and killing people. If that was what he was, then he was no different to those vampires over the railhead that fed from willing humans in exchange for the pleasure it provided their victims.

But they were still vampires.

He was still a vampire.

And they were still killers who needed to be put down. At least she knew that now and the idea didn’t elude her.

“Not here. Not in Sunnydale,” she said. “There’ll be no ecstasy and no feeding here. No kissing either.”

Why’d she felt it necessary to add that? Perhaps because she got the vibe that he expected to be attractive to her.

Then he laughed at her; he actually stood there and laughed at her. If he knew who she was then he knew how many vampires she’d dusted, and yet he was laughing. It didn’t prick her pride – she didn’t feel proud of anything except saving lives – but he was definitely either delusional or extremely powerful. One or the other.

“Do not concern yourself. I have not come all this way for the blood of peasants,” he said.

“Then?” she asked, as she wondered once again why she wasn’t just staking him already. Why wasn’t she staking him and going home to her girl?

“I am here for you Tara Maclay. I am drawn to you,” he told her as if it explained everything. “In all the time I’ve travelled the world, I’ve never found anything quite like you.”

He was here for her? “Oh, well sorry that you wasted your trip but I’m not interested.”

The best way for her to show that disinterest was just to stake him. She let fly with the stake watching only as long as it took to direct the flight of the stake to his heart. A split second after it left her hand, no more than that. Then she was turning away before the process of his destruction had even started.

Turning towards home, and the woman she loved.

Even if she’d doubted she was on target – and she hadn’t - she heard the whoosh as he was dusted. She’d noticed his surprise when he’d realised that she’d just staked him. Well good, and now her mind was clearer too.

Clear enough that her thoughts could turn to all things Willow.

Actually to Willow and more than a little relief at being able to deal with him so easily. So he hadn’t been so powerful then? Something had been holding her back a moment ago and she was sure it was his influence. Clearing after he was dusted seemed to prove it.

Maybe that was behind his surprise. He’d thought he had her under his control? She knew the Master had acquired some mind control tricks, but nothing like this. Nothing so… cautious.

Still, it wouldn’t be a problem that occurred again. “Dusted,” she said softly. Whoosh. Poof. The slightest of breezes and in an hour he’d be all over Sunnydale.

But then, as she started to walked away, that accented voice called to her again. “Such decisiveness, and I’ve never seen a vampire killed that way! You’re as creative as you are powerful.”

She spun around.

Again.

As a rule, vampires didn’t usually make her spin around twice. Once just about covered it.

But there he was, flicking dust from his cape. A cape that had been consumed with the rest of him. She’d seen the stake hit him. She’d heard the whoosh of the dusting. It was a sound like no other and one she knew very well indeed.

He’d been destroyed. But here he was anyway.

No simple vampire then…

“What are you?” she asked.

He seemed surprised again. “Don’t you know? I had assumed you would know me as I know you, Tara Maclay.”

“No,” she said.

“I am Draaa-cula,” he announced in as grand a fashion as he could manage. Almost as if there was some sort of dramatic music in the background. Probably with some big kettledrums and an organ.

Tara just looked at him.

Her first instinct was to go back to the assessment that he was really some horror film geek who’d bought a cape and some false teeth before putting himself into the path of a vampire.

It happened. There were people with so little that was real and worthwhile in their lives, they’d put themselves in harms way dressed like it was Halloween.

Or at least Halloween as it’d been celebrated in about 1972.

Of course most vampires would slaughter such wannabe’s out of hand, but some – those with a sense of humour or madness – would turn such a person and give them what they thought they wanted. The demon who inhabited them, having no dress sense of it’s own, would follow the human memories.

So yes, over the years she’d run across people pretending to be him.

But this one… the accent sounded genuinely old world, not just put on. The outfit was authentic rather than bought at a costume shop, she could see the quality of his – recently destroyed - clothes.

And none of that would probably have convinced her in the slightest, but he’d re-formed himself after she’d staked and dusted him. She was certain she hadn’t missed. And there’d been a whoosh to prove it.

Whooshes didn’t just happen.

Besides, she’d already heard Dracula was real – not just a movie character.

So she believed him. Which was why she could give him her response. “Fine.”

She accepted he wasn’t a feeder, and that meant she could leave him while she tried to figure out just how she was going to kill him. If stakes weren’t up to the job she wasn’t sure most of her magic was either, after all that’d just set fire to him or something and that wasn’t going to help.

Next time she dusted him, she wanted him to stay dead.

So she walked away and went to see someone who’d seen more movies than she had.

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

So she believed she could ignore him? Kill him and leave? Ignore his commands… his invitations.

No, it was not that simple.

Even in this form, the primitive brain of the flying rodent he was occupying felt the wound to his pride. His dignity.

She would fall. She would fall before him like all the others.

And she would fall now. The silly little girl hadn’t even closed her window. The huntresses always believed that, at home, they were invulnerable. But a lack of an invitation was no obstacle to him.

Would she be lying there? Dreaming of him already?

He darted for the open window.

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

Willow stirred, aware Tara wasn’t beside her.

She didn’t ever sleep properly until Tara was here, not deeply. Not in any way that satisfied. Glancing at the clock, she wasn’t worried. Tara would be home soon, curl up around her and hold her until morning.

Then real sleep would come.

Through the window she noticed a fluttery shape approaching.

Was that a bat?

Cute little things with furry ears.

She watched it for a moment as it came closer and closer, then smacked at some speed into the invisible field that held back all things mystical from their apartment.

The way it slid down, it was almost like a bird that crashed into a window, falling in slow motion. The resistance of the air in the wings making it slowly spiral downwards.

Poor little bat.

Oh well, Tara would be home soon.

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

Rupert was excited; it wasn’t exactly hard for Tara to tell.

With Willow in bed, and needing her sleep, her first thought for help with much needed research had been Rupert and Jenny. Besides, their place was nearer.

She’d killed the most famous vampire in the world once tonight – if that was really who it’d been – and that should’ve been enough. Now she didn’t so much need help to kill him again, but rather to make sure he stayed that way.

Willow… Willow could be told about what’d happened in the morning. After sleepy time.

Tara wasn’t about to go home and wake her girlfriend up – not even for Dracula. It’d mean delaying things to go back across town and she wasn’t even sure they’d get to do anything but check books tonight anyway.

Rupert and Jenny were another matter. She’d let herself in and gently gone to wake them up, half-disappointed and half-pleased as Jenny had come up behind her, holding an axe to her throat before realising who she was.

The disappointment had been because the axe didn’t have much of a slicing edge; it was intended to be swung so the threat was hardly that great. On the other hand Jenny had managed to detect her there and do something about it.

In a town this dangerous that was a good ability to have.

Once again ever-useful sign language allowed them to have discussions without waking the kids up. She'd already explained why she was out alone tonight and just where she’d been. Mentioning the name of the vampire had been what set Rupert off though.

“Dracula?!” he said again. That was the third time, and the second time it’d been audible.

“So were really talking Christopher Lee on a bad teeth day?” Jenny asked.

Tara nodded. “Yeah, and I’m pretty sure he’s the real thing. Dracula – not Christopher Lee.”

If Tara hadn’t been looking at her friend just then she might not have noticed Jenny’s reaction. It wasn’t anything she said, but Jenny was definitely having an expression. One that said ‘hmm, that’s very interesting.’

And of course it was interesting. More interesting than the run of the mill vampires they usually came across in town these days.

There was something to be said for the good old days, when killing vampires had been a challenge either because of numbers, or their power. Not much to be said, but something.

Her opinion differed to theirs though. They’d have plenty of time to think about how interesting this was once this vampire was dusted. And staying that way.

And if Jenny was interested, her husband was probably as enthusiastic about doing research as Tara had ever seen him. And that was pretty damned enthusiastic.

“It’s just one of the all-time classics,” he said. “There are creatures that have entered into popular mythology, those constructed from the dead parts of other people, poltergeists and werewolves of course. But amongst all of them none has been as popular or enduring as vampires and greatest of those is Dracula. Stoker did a wonderful job of bringing him to the public imagination – even if the Watcher’s Council wasn’t very pleased with him at the time.”

Tara and Jenny both looked at him, wondering the same thing.

“What are you? Exposition guy? Who are you telling this stuff to?” Jenny asked.

Rupert frowned. “Ah. I suppose I was being a little on the verbose side. I just felt… It seemed natural to explain things. To explain what I knew and you might not.”

Tara smiled as Jenny chided him. “Well, English, we know this.”

On the other hand Tara hadn’t actually known that the Watcher’s Council had anything to do with Stoker.

Rupert nodded, accepting his admonishment as he always did. “Don’t you think it’s fascinating though? We’ll be able to finally separate the myth from the legend. Was Bram Stoker closer to the truth than the films that followed? Or was the whole thing a ploy by the vampire to distract attention by making himself into a popular myth – almost a fable? Did you know that there was speculation, in the Council, that Stoker only wrote the book at the command of the vampire himself?”

“Look, I agree.” Jenny said patiently to him. “It’s exciting, but you’re doing the exposition thing again. As if there was someone here who didn’t know this already.”

“Tara came here for help with research on him. And if I can’t let you benefit from my education and my experience with all things mystical,” he said, “what am I for?”

“Well, you could go and check on the children,” Jenny teased him. “I found a use for you in having them.”

Once again Tara found herself smiling. It wasn't that they were putting Rupert and his expertise down – it was often extremely useful – but he’d already revealed that he didn’t actually know any more facts than either of them.

But perhaps he knew more of the questions that needed to be asked.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” she said before he could shift his attention from her hands.

“Oh?” Rupert asked.

“I staked him,” Tara admitted. It’d turned into pretty much her worst vampire staking nightmare. A stake that had no effect – or at least no long-term effect. A vampire she couldn’t kill. And they weren’t talking long, complex rituals. It was like poof he was gone, then poof he was back again.

Without the second poof.

“You staked Dracula?” Jenny asked, she seemed shocked.

Tara nodded. “And seconds later – and I mean that literally - he was back, reformed as if nothing had happened – clothes and all.”

“That is a potential problem, I can see why you’ve come to us.” Rupert said thoughtfully. “Though it’s not entirely unexpected given his identity.”

Jenny nodded. “So was he sexy?” she asked.

Tara blinked in surprise. It seemed like a question that had come out of nowhere and wasn’t all that relevant to the conversation she thought they’d been having about indestructible vampires. Besides… “You know, I am a member of the female appreciation society.” Weren’t they just worrying about trying to kill him and having him stay that way?

Jenny just rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, Tara. I’m firmly in the girls for boys club but that doesn’t stop us having conversations about hot women. And being a lesbian doesn’t stop you making value judgements, just like the rest of us.”

“You have conversations about hot women?” Rupert asked, dragging them even further off topic.

“Don’t you boys talk about sexy men?” Jenny asked.

“With who exactly? And no.”

Point taken. There really were no men in Rupert’s life apart from Ira and those on the faculty at Sunnydale High. Until Ben grew up he was pretty much on his own.

But why was Jenny so fixated on how sexy Dracula was? Tara could tell Rupert was actually more interested in that than what she, Jenny and Willow talked about.

Tara considered what she remembered for a moment. “I suppose he was better looking in person than in any of the movies. Great hair. Why?”

“Oh yes,” Rupert agreed. “Do enlighten us.”

Jenny looked at them and must’ve correctly interpreted their expressions. “Oh, please. Look… a long time ago he seduced three of four sisters from a family in my clan. And I mean seduced – at least the way I was told about it. You’ll understand when I say I’m not old enough to have seen it myself. Anyway, they went away with him became his brides in eternity.”

“The Brides of Dracula?” Tara wondered aloud. “They’re real too?”

Jenny nodded. “At least the idea of them existing – maybe not all the rest of it. I don’t know – it’s all oral history and that tended to get a little twisted in the telling.”

“Your people didn’t swear vengeance, did they?” Rupert asked, sounding a little suspicious.

It was a good question – it seemed that the Calderash were willing to swear vengeance against anything and anyone that crossed them. There were probably some modern-day oaths around about being gouged over postage on E-bay.

After all, an oath of vengeance was what’d brought Jenny here to Sunnydale. The Calderash were a people with long, unforgiving memories. Did she have some mission when it came to Dracula, as she had with Angelus? Something some dim and distant ancestor had sworn her to?

Vengeance over unspecified ages went with the Calderash just like chips with dips.

“Of course they swore vengeance, but it didn’t help that he was next impossible to kill. Staking, beheading, fire, sunlight… Every time they tried it he just came back. Even my clan’s vengeance has a practical side. And when you came down to it, he never forced, stole or hurt the sisters. He seduced them and they chose to go with him,” Jenny explained.

“He made them vampires,” Tara felt she had to point out. “It’s not exactly Romeo and Juliet.” She thought about that comparison for a moment. “Or Romeo, Juliet and her sisters.”

“True,” Jenny said, “but I think even the elders realised that the sisters wanted to be what they became and they knew the consequences. They were wild girls, unlike their younger sister. The point is that the way they tell the story, Dracula never took anyone who didn’t want to be taken – at least at some level.”

Tara looked at her friend sceptically.

Jenny gestured. “That’s what I was told. Maybe it did get twisted in the telling, but it was centuries ago. Also by then Dracula had already been a feature of their lives for centuries too. No one alive then remembered a world without Dracula living in that castle that dominated the land.”

“So they let it go?” Tara asked, not quite believing it. This was the Calderash they were talking about.

“Yes, besides their vengeance was soon focused on the monster that took the remaining sister a little later.”

“Angelus?” Tara checked, knowing the story well enough.

“Yes, that one.”

“He died at the Masters hand,” Rupert reminded them.

“We know,” Jenny teased, kissing his cheek as she did so. “Tell it to someone who doesn’t, baby.”

“Well, pardon me for sharing,” Rupert replied, feigning offence. “But just a few moments ago you were deriding my expositional skills. Yet here you are laying it on so very thickly…”

Jenny put a finger against his lips. “Hush. Look, if what your really wondering is whether I have anything to do with this? No. I was required to carry forth my people’s vengeance against Angelus. That’s it. No more secrets – I promise. But Dracula… he was the one I was always interested in when they told the stories. It sounded so sexy, being given your deepest, darkest wish. Even if it was very wrong.”

Tara frowned. “So, just to be clear, you found kidnapping and turning three girls in vampires sexy?” It wasn't exactly what she was thinking now she knew the story.

“No,” Jenny said in a tone that didn’t exactly inspire confidence. “But it was fascinating how some people do have those kind of dark wishes. And I suppose I found him sexy,” Jenny explained. “You know, in theory. Since only one person here has met him and she won’t say whether it’s true or not because she’s too afraid of sounding even the teensiest bit hetero for long enough to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“I am not afraid. And I may have met him,” Tara said, wanting to set that straight. They still couldn’t be certain whether this was really him – even if all the evidence pointed that way. She hadn’t seen any ‘Brides’ and she don’t suppose there were meant to be any wedding bands to give it away. If he’d had three rings on his finger, maybe that would’ve been a sign.

But it was hardly likely.

“So you find Dracula sexy? As well as fascinating?” Rupert asked his wife. They’d long ago shifted from sign into forced whispers. And that was a sign of how this was stirring it all up.

Tara could see where this might go. Seemingly hurt feelings, whispered arguments that wouldn’t be real but Jenny would still be determined to carry through even against English reticence to participate in her games at all. “Guys… before you get into this – do either of you actually know how to kill him so he stays dead? That’s kind of why I came.”

“So now you want my expertise?” Rupert asked with a smile that said he was joking. “With or without exposition?”

“Do you know?” Tara repeated.

Rupert and Jenny looked at each other. “No,” they said at the same time.

“My people weren’t even able to curse him properly,” Jenny explained. “And believe me they would’ve tried. They’re as big on curses as they are on vengeance. Word has it he somehow knows a lot of the tricks other demons have as natural abilities. Part of the price he pays for being able to do those things – reputedly – is that he’s incapable of gaining sustenance from an unwilling victim.”

Interesting – if true. Could a vampire really trade limitations for special abilities?

“Which isn’t to say that he couldn’t kill anyone he liked, he just can’t feed,” Rupert said. He sounded like he wanted to make very clear the fact this was still a bad vampire. The kind that should be disposed of with all due haste.

As if there were any other kind.

“I always thought he’d probably consider killing ‘uncouth’ – he always sounded like an upper class kind of a demon to me,” Jenny said.

Tara had to smile, in spite of her worries. She wasn’t letting Jenny, for one, anywhere near him. Dracula had managed to cloud her mind, what could he do to a straight, already interested, woman like Jenny? “I’m glad I came. You really do know all about him. Nothing useful, but you know ‘stuff.’”

Jenny sighed, ignoring the jibe. “I almost wish I could meet him – and the sisters.”

Tara and Rupert looked at each other, then at Jenny. It was a silent ‘What??’

“I mean if they weren’t bloodsucking fiends,” she followed up quickly.

“You know, sometimes I doworry,” Rupert told them both. “You all drive me to it.”

Jenny grinned. “Hey love, there’s nothing for you to worry about – but you know if you‘d like me to pretend to be a Bride? We could see if there was anything about you I’d like to suck on?” she offered.

That stopped Tara cold. It wasn't the first time that Jenny had been blatant in her sexuality in front of her – it always made Rupert squirm, which was probably the point.

But bringing a vampire scenario into it? And talking about sucking on things? It was tough to decide which was the more disturbing, and frankly deciding would mean thinking about it. And she didn’t want to do that either. “Okaaay. Time for me to go.” She stood up. “Thanks for the information.”

She looked back to Rupert who was squirming. Yes, that was a definite squirm. “Good luck,” she told him.

“Thank you, Tara,” he replied as Jenny started towards him.

“I’ll read more about Dra… Oh.”

It was definitely time to go. She closed the front door and tried not to think about what was going on in there.

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

On a hierarchy of sins Willow wasn’t quite sure which ranked higher. On the one hand there was Tara sneaking in last night and not waking her up to reassure her that she was back safely.

On the other, there was not waking her to tell her just who she’d run into.

One she could discover just by rolling over, the other needed her to be told. Which Tara had finally gotten around to doing now. Hours later.

“Dracula?” Willow asked again. Just to make sure she’d heard right, even though it wasn’t exactly a word that was easy to mistake. The nearest she could get to mistaking it was ‘duckula.’

However, it didn’t matter which sin ranked higher really. By her own admission, Tara was guilty of both.

“That’s right,” Tara said.

So, her woman was being all cooperative now that she’d been caught out? Tara had been told off and was probably going to pay her penalty in the giving of pleasure. It was like a tradition.

Sometimes Willow wondered whether Tara liked to be ‘bad’ just so she could pay such a penalty. Still, even if that was her motive it was no excuse. “How come I always miss all the good stuff?” she asked.

“You don’t miss all the good stuff,” Tara replied evenly.

She supposed that depended on what you defined as ‘good stuff.’ “Okay… well, how come I missed this good stuff?” she amended her statement. There was good stuff she’d been present for, much of it revolving around this woman.

Without Tara there simply wouldn’t have been any good stuff ever again. That pretty much trumped everything else she could do. Good or bad.

“You were tired and you needed your sleep. And its not like I knew it was going to happen,” Tara argued. “I didn’t go out knowing Dracula was out there. You know I didn’t – I couldn’t – hide anything from you. And we needed to find out what to do about him. Once I found him it was just research time. We couldn’t go and actually do anything – so what was the point in waking you up then?”

“True,” Willow said. “Ish.” Okay, so Tara hadn’t known she would meet Dracula, but Willow wasn’t about to forget about not being woken up after the fact. Even if her slumbering on after Tara had arrived home showed just how tired she must’ve been from the previous night.

“No dreams?” her girlfriend asked, still sounding concerned.

“No,” Willow said. She hadn’t dreamed like that for months. She didn’t have to have dreams now that the subject – the ex-Mayor - was back in town for real. “And stop changing the subject.”

Tara just wasn’t deceitful enough to pull a switch like that off.

“Alright, alright,” Tara conceded. “So what do you wanna know, curiosity girl?”

That caught her out. What did she want to know? It was Dracula – allegedly – so most of what she might have wanted to know was already out there in the books and films.

Or was it? Perhaps that was what she wanted to know… How much of what she thought she knew did she actually know? Even if she didn’t know she knew it rather than thinking she knew it, it’d be nice to know whether she knew it at all.

Where were the facts in this case? The book? The movies? The folklore?

“Was he sexy?” she asked finally, settling on the first thing that came to mind.

Tara sighed. “Not you too. Why is everyone asking me that?”

It sounded like the ‘sexy question’ had already gotten tired for Tara. Rupert and Jenny must’ve brought it up… Jenny, most likely, she couldn’t see Rupert having a pressing need to know.

She still hadn’t gotten past why Tara would wake them up and not her though. If she needed immediate research help or not. After all who was the lesbian gay-type lover here? Not Jenny and Rupert! Oh no. She was the LGTL and she had privileges. Even if – at the moment - they were Dracula-type privileges, they were privileges all the same.

Or at least they should be. After this, she might well have to reassert herself. Put Tara in her place – and it was such a lovely place for Tara to be. And she didn’t mind being there either.

“Because that’s his thing,” Willow explained. “Sexy. He’s supposed to be seductive and I guess part of that means he has to be sexy, at least in his own way.”

“I guess,” Tara said, seeming to agree with the assumption rather than the judgement about the vampire’s attractiveness.

“So?”

“What?” Tara asked.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Was. He. Sexy?” She could just have touched the surface of Tara’s thoughts and known the answer, but right now she wanted Tara to do as she was told and answer the question. She was trying to stay mad at her, but it was always so difficult.

Tara paused, as if looking into her memory. “I can see why some people might thing so,” she said slowly.

“Some people?” Willow checked, more than willing to tease. Tara deserved some teasing for last night’s failures.

“Okay…” Tara replied. “Maybe nine in ten people would find him sexy.”

“But not you, huh?” Willow asked. Tara was setting herself up as one in ten? Well, here they were, two ones in ten. Two ones in ten together, doing what one’s in ten did with each other. She snuggled up closer to the woman she loved. Willow was more than willing to forgive if Tara was more than willing to be contrite.

Demonstrations of contrition could be so very intimate and appealing.

“Oh no. Not me. I have my very own clear idea of what’s sexy and what’s not,” Tara assured her, already with hands in her hair.

“Oh?” Willow half-moaned when she realised that Tara was more than willing to pay her penance, right here and now.

“Yes, sexy is Willow-shaped,” Tara told her before slipping down to pay attention to what she obviously considered one of the more interesting parts of the Willow shape. “Didn’t you know?”

“Oh.”

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

“What the - ” Willow exclaimed, unable to make her own words out.

It wasn’t the first exclamation that had left her lips in the past little while, but it wasn’t one that’d been aroused by Tara either. Someone was banging on their bedroom door.

Only one person they knew banged like that without saying anything, and that person didn’t live here anymore. “Toni,” Tara replied.

Willow could tell that was what she said, even though Tara was also muffled at the moment – just as she was. With one of her hands on the back of her lover’s head Tara wasn’t about to get a clear word in for a little while. She sighed. Tara was still coaxing the pleasure within her, building it, but Willow knew that she was going to have to pay attention to that door. She’d been distracted and it was hard not to be sucked out of the moment - rather than into Tara’s loving mouth - once that’d happened.

The pleasure was there, but the inexorable ascent had flattened out and would probably slip into slow decline in a few moments.

The girl outside their room had no sense of sonic scale, and her blows on the door might as well have been part of an earthquake. How could anyone get into… With that going on?

Not the best timing in the world on Toni’s part. One benefit of her moving out – and they were few and far between – was this wasn’t supposed to happen anymore.

The banging got more urgent, and so did Tara’s attentions. Willow could tell that her girlfriend was determined to help her come to the point they’d been building to… but it was already too late. The moment was rapidly collapsing for Willow, now she was more worried about what was wrong with Toni.

Why was she here so early? When they were barely on speaking terms? Come to that, why was she here at all?

Never a demanding girl, Toni had never wanted to come into their room when she’d lived here – even if she knew what a firmly closed door meant – and turning up here, with all that’d gone on, it had to be something important.

She released her pleasure grip on Tara’s head and encouraged her girlfriend to come up beside her. Tara was all frustrated too.

Willow shared the sentiment.

Still it wasn’t like they hadn’t both already reached some pleasurable moments this morning. Perhaps they’d been a little greedy expecting to slip another one, or another something, in there.

It’d be easier to be philosophical when you were looking for a reason to appear cool, collected and not at all like you’d just been making some very intimate and pleasurable time with your girlfriend.

Eventually Toni just came into the room, they weren’t exactly dressed to go and open the door for her now were they? She actually had no idea where her nightshirt was, let alone her underwear.

As the girl came in Willow could see she was dressed for her morning run and all red faced, breathing hard. In that – at least - Toni wasn’t the only one. There were different kinds of exercise. Different muscles that could be worked on.

Tara snatched up the sheets more tightly over them. Willow looked and smiled at her girlfriend. Yeah, they had that subtle sheen of sweat too. Breathing a little hard.

*Sorry,* Toni signed, going even redder. There was no chance she didn’t know what they’d been doing. She couldn’t have lived here as long as she had and remained totally innocent to that kind of thing.

But this was the first time she’d been back here since she’d taken her stuff and moved out, and she found them like this? During a crisis – and it had to be. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d accused them of just a few days ago?

Being too into each other to pay attention to anything else?

“No, it’s okay,” Willow replied, unsure how to proceed. After all how could they have told her to come in? Or stay out? Toni had always known that she could come in after waiting a few moments. It was just inconvenient she’d chosen now to do it. “But for the record a little more time from knocking to entering?” she suggested.

Toni nodded, but in a way that said she wouldn’t be back to do it again anyway. Then the girl watched as Tara reached out with the sheet and wiped Willow’s glistening fingers.

“Oh, Goddess,” Willow felt her face turn scarlet. How…? What would Toni…? Tara… Oh, Goddess indeed.

Tara, bless her, tried to cover for them – for her. She was the one who’d been signing with fingers that had been… Oh…

“We were just…” Tara said, not seeming to have a good excuse to give Toni. There really wasn’t much of a way around it. “We just were.”

That was right about where Willow was too. Unable to come up with anything that sounded right to fill the gap after ‘were.’ “Been running?” she asked to help Tara out. Tara had tried to cover for her and now she could help Tara.

With the world’s dumbest question.

Or at least the world’s dumbest question this week.

Had Toni really been out running in her running gear, running shoes and with her red face? She just might have been. It wasn’t the comeback question of all time – even if it was still avoiding what they’d just been doing with each other.

And what might be wrong? It wasn’t like they could just leap out of bed. Not like this. Especially not after everything that’d happened. Not unless it was so bad they had to. She fluffed the sheet away from Tara’s chest where certain, swollen, things had been a little too prominent.

Toni, to her credit, didn’t treat the question with the contempt it deserved. *Yeah,* she signed. *Look, I can see this is a really bad time to ask –*

“It’s okay,” Tara assured her.

Willow, desperate to get past what Tara had needed to do for her damp fingers, wanted to go further. “It’s more than okay. It’s perfect.” She wanted Toni to feel free to come to them. Wasn’t this a good sign?

Toni looked at her, doubt in her eyes. She was supposed to believe that this was the perfect time? Lying to her was what had got them into trouble into the first place. Even if it was for the best of reasons.

So okay, Willow had to admit it – a minute ago when Toni had been banging on the door and she and Tara had their faces between each other’s legs it had been pretty far from the perfect time. Not just their faces… witness the fingers.

“Okay it’s not perfect,” she conceded, “but it’s definitely okay. It’s always okay. Its what were still here for, to answer questions.” And there it was. That was a good, noble purpose.

“And be supportive,” Tara said, backing her up.

“But questions are really good,” Willow signed, emboldened by the support.

“Knowledge is very important,” Tara added.

“So fire away,” Willow said, pleased with how this was going. They’d turned it from being caught in a great deal of embarrassing delectation to a matter of constant support for the young woman who’d moved out because she didn’t feel she had that. Now Toni was back, they could help her and Toni wanted them to.

Where was the bad?

At least where would it have been if they’d just had another minute to themselves? She sighed, sensing the last vestiges of pleasure fade from her body.

“And let us expand your knowledge,” Tara said at the end.

Toni looked at them, lying their naked beside each other under the sheets. “I think you already did,” the girl said, and it might even have been a joke.

Not so long ago Toni had accused them of spending too much time having sex to notice what’d been happening in the sewers. But this didn’t feel like a continuation of that. It felt like… yeah, it felt like a joke.

All the same, Willow felt the blood rush to her face all over again. Toni would tell Jenny and they’d be hearing about this for a while yet. As for just what Toni might’ve learned… there was no getting around the fact that the biggest thing was not to come in so quickly. For her own comfort as much as theirs.

Willow looked at Tara, finding her girl with just as flushed a face as her own must have been, her cheeks were burning and it wasn’t anything to do with how tightly Tara’s thighs had been gripping her. “Go ahead,” she signed. They’d laugh about this one day… maybe after Toni went. But not right now. Now it didn’t seem so funny to be caught out like this.

And if her fingers had been all shiny, what about her face. Willow reached up and wiped her lips, trying to seem casual about it.

Luckily for them Toni was willing to skip right along to whatever it was that had caused her to let herself in and bang on their door early on a Saturday morning. Okay, not so early – but a few minutes too early for them.

And totally unexpectedly.

*Does Sunnydale actually have a castle? A real, honest-to-goodness stone castle?* Toni queried.

They looked at each other, but it was Tara who asked the question in both of their minds. “You want sightseeing advice? Now?”

“Are you off looking for a hot, educational, date with Mal?” Willow asked and was pleased to see Toni blush even as she denied it with a shaking head. “Because I don’t think a castle’s going to be it. Sunnydale was settled well after the era of the great European castles. Very few were built here in the colonies and very few of those that were survive. Even then you couldn’t call them a castle like you probably mean.”

Toni shook her head, as if it was all too much information. Willow felt stupid for going into such detail and joking about Mal. Just because Toni was here didn’t mean that all was forgiven. Damn… that’d been almost as dumb as the running question.

*No, I just wanted to be sure because… Well, it does now. And I thought that might be the kind of important stuff you guys wanted to know about. To keep people safe. You know? That’s what you do right?*

The two of them, side by side in bed, looked at each other again. A castle? Here in Sunnydale? Probably a Dracula thing. Oh well, they’d decided to show their love for each other knowing about him… A castle could wait. Couldn’t it?

With a beautiful woman, naked here beside her?

Hot, wet and naked…

Toni must have noticed the look that passed between them then, because she made an offer that belied the urgency she’d shown when banging on the door. *But I’m sure it’ll still be there in an hour or so. It looks pretty permanent. All stone and old. Kinda indestructible actually.*

“Oh, we wouldn’t need that long,” Willow countered quickly, without thinking.

“Speak for yourself,” Tara told her.

“We’re coming,” Willow said. They couldn’t ignore Toni now.

*That’s what I thought when I saw you,* Toni replied, and this time it had to be a joke. Right? Were things that much better? Had they missed something? Or was that a more subtly phrased criticism?

It would be if they kept her waiting just to keep having sex.

Okay, there was no ‘just’ when they made love, but Toni wouldn’t see it that way.

Tara sighed. “Yes, we’re coming. I want to see this.” Then she reached for Willow’s mouth, stopping her signing. “Willow you have a hair… just here.”

Toni didn’t seem to need the signs to know what Tara had found. She just shrugged and walked out.

“This is good right?” Willow said.

“A castle appearing along with Dracula?” Tara checked as she got out from under the covers. “Not what I’d usually put in the good column, no.”

“No, she must still be carrying her key and everything. I mean her coming to us like this. That’s good right?”

“It could’ve been better timed…” Tara sighed.

Another sixty seconds would’ve been very, very much better.


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

[Katharyn]

Seems I double posted.

[Forrister]

Grin . . . Bigger grin.

I liked the byplay in this part. It is good to see Toni coming to them with things again, even if its somewhat inconvenient in the timing. Its a big step for rebuilding their relationship. I also liked the whole Tara, Jenny, Rupert conversation. I may have mentioned before how I like Jenny's wicked sense of humour. Poor Rupert is vastly outclassed and even Tara finds herself struggling a little against Jenny's wit.

Drac is back. I was wondering if you were going to have him make an appearance here. This seems set to be more than just a flying visit though, with Drac bringing his mobile castle with him. Assuming of course it is his castle. (Just the thing for every well-travelled vampire with a sense of style.) It will be interesting to see where this leads. The thought of a confrontation between Drac & Dru intrigues me - don't know if its on the cards, but it would be interesting.

I liked this part. I liked it enough to read it through twice. Was the double posting deliberate?

Be well. I fully intend to have a nice quiet weekend here.

Forrister

Qui scribit bis legit
He who writes reads twice

[Katharyn]

Double post? Me?

Nah.

*whistles for innocence*

I'm glad you liked it, I'm pretty much writing for you now

This is one of those fun parts - fun to write I mean. Some are just so heavy and have to mean so much that the weight bears down on me as I work on them. This is the kind of thing I can whiz through and fele good about it.

I have to admit that Toni coming to them here is a cheat. Dracs appearance originally happened when Toni was living with them, but I valued the scene more than being true to that. Also it's a goodf way to show just what you picked up on.

There's much more Jenny/Willow/Rupert byplay before the Drac part is done, less so Tara. And, for once, Jenny is going to leave herself... vulnerable to riposte.

Drac - he is here to serve a purpose (which I will not yet reveal but you could guess at) also because I think he would be drawn to Tara/Willow. And, finally, it's fun!

Enjoy your weekend and thanks... we're getting there steadily. We'll be done by Part 242 I think...

Katharyn

[tazraven]

So... I thought I'd stop in and say hey, even though I haven't read too much since my last comments. School has been kicking my ass and while I'd love nothing more than to finish Sidestep today, as I just got to part 97, I have to study. Just wanted to remind you to write for me too Anyways, some feedback...

So, last time I left feedback was about 10 parts ago. However, there was a big first in those 10, so I felt the needs to leave some comments. As always, some quotes as well.

“You want to… ummm… get perky with me?” she offered.

She watched the smile start to form on Tara’s face when they crossed those perky parts. “Yeah, you know…” she thrust her chest out and Tara’s little smile broke across her whole face. “…Perky. Ha ha ha.”

“Perky and… naked,” Willow added deciding to up the stakes.

Hehe. I think I fell in love with Willow after that line. She was just so cute and timid and really trying her darndest to be with Tara. Perky. *Snicker* Perky and Naked. *Snicker, snort* Ok, I'm good. Seriously though, that was Willow to the bone. She's a spaz, no matter how many times she's died, and I love that even with all of the badness, and all of the memories, and all of the darkness, she's still able to be this cute and, perky, spaz. So, thanks for that.

Willow… was.

I can't help but quote some of those. You have a way of writing down the simplest sentence but having it mean so much. I love it. Tara describing everything that encompasses Willow, only to have her realize that Willow just is. Yay.

There was a finger pressed to her lips. “Not a word,” Willow told her, “Is ever needed to excuse you loving me.”

That was so darn sweet, I think I might have cavities. Willow was so cute, trying to "seduce" Tara, but in the end, they still didn't make love, and that was alright. Tara stopped, but only because it wasn't the right time for them. It shouldn't have to be forced. I loved when they eventuall made love, because it just seemed so natural, and I honestly melted with the above line. Too cute.

Alright, time for one of the funniest imagined scenes... ever. Willow and the floating. Let's just get a visual here. A lithe redhead floating in the air along with every other inanimate object in the room, all because she touched a crystal. Tara, standing in the doorway, with what I can only assume would be an amused grin, because honestly, who wouldn't crack a smile at that scene? That scene totally reminded me of Mickey Mouse losing control over the broomsticks.

Item One – Get Willow down from where she is floating just under the ceiling.

Item Two – See item one and repeat as necessary.

And something else I had to quote for the sheer hilarity of it. Makes perfect sense of course, it was just so succinct and obvious that it made me laugh.

“No honey,” Tara instructed, “don’t pull. Just want to come to me.”

Willow looked at her as if she had said the dumbest, most obvious thing in the world.

Ever.

Another one. Lmao.

Willow, who was a young woman, physically she was still only in her late teen years… but spiritually she was going on into the hundreds and she carried with her enough bad memories for a thousand lifetimes.

So, part 96 was them on the bus going back to Sunnydale. I quote the above bit, because it was sort of like I just remembered Willow. I guess because my focus for almost the entire story has been Tara. But all of a sudden, there's not a Willow-shaped thing, but a Willow. And I forgot how much she'd been through. I'm amazed that she's able to function, let alone be a person who obviously is trying to make something of herself. Her vampiric self killed strangers, friends, and family. She has all of these memories, yet still is able to go on. Pretty damn amazing if you ask me.

So, until next time. I can't wait to find the time to read the end of Sidestep and finally start on the Second chronicle, but until then, have a good one. Thanks so much for writing.

~Sara

[Katharyn]

Hi Sara Okay, yes... I'm writing for you too. You'll have to forgive a feedback whore. I don't whine about it, but I don't ignore it either LOL.

Parts 87-97, OMG I barely remember them - certainly not the specifics, which is what makes your feedback even more fun. (Even if all I can see in your quotes is my bad puntuation!) Perky and naked... You're right, she is a spaz and it's tough to keep hold of that in this fic. At the point you are at she's just come back - later she gets a lot of power. Keeping her a spaz is tricky, and perhaps I don't do enough of it now. On the other hand, I try to earn her development as we go. Tara's too.

'Willow... was.' Yes, I used to do that a lot. I say used to, I think perhaps at that time it was about the blossuming relationship. As you read on, when they've been together four (and more) years there's less of that. Not because they don't feel it but because the focus shifts. As you'll see...

I remember about them NOT making love. It felt very important that the time and place had to be right. It had to come from love itself, and I think it was an important indicator about the relationship. I don't often pull from my own life in this fic, but that's something. I think a relationship where you DON'T just jump on each other at the start BUT where you want but wait for the right moment is inherently stronger than one where lust is given free reign.

Lust being given free reign comes later

The floating was fun. I often do this (more so in the second chronicle as it's not as life or death all the time) I give myself permission to do things that are just fun and then figure out how they fit. In this case, the development of the magic was important - but the scene itself was just fun.

Fun was important then. The reader - that's you! - has been through this incredibly dark journey and deserved some kind of pay off apart from 'they all live happily ever after.' But also I knew it was going to get dark(er) again as they faced what they'd done by returning to Sunnydale.

I'm not sure I'd have had the courage to go back like they did.

TBH that bus trip, and what happens in the next few parts, is the entire rationale of the Second Chronicle (though I didn't know it at the time.) How do you deal with the things that'd happened, that they'd done and the people it hurt. What does that do to you? What does it mean to be the person/people who have to try and keep that kind of thing from happening again?

Thanks for checking back Sara, and I am curious about one thing. Why 'TazRaven'?

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Post 1 of 2 for length.


Title: The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle – Tara vs. Dracula Round Two (Part 226)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Very little is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Willow and Tara go to the castle and meet some people they know there.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: For the record, no character did anything here that they didn’t want to at the time… It’s a comedy part and I encourage you to think back to the episode in question. Despite the comedy though, you’ll hear more about this. Of course.
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else. Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW.


The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle

Tara vs. Dracula – Round Two

By

Katharyn Rosser


Within a couple of hours of part 225


“Yup, I’d have to admit that’s a castle,” Willow said as they came over the brow of the hill.

And there it was. Big as life and twice as… stony, that was the only word for it.

It was very stony.

“Is it really?” Tara asked herself more than Willow. She stopped right on the top of the hill. There was no need to get too close without thinking about what that might mean first. Toni had been right; there definitely hadn’t been a big stony castle out here yesterday – or at least not before last night.

Tara was confident she’d have noticed it during the several thousand times she’d been past this place in the past few years. Or within half a mile of it, which was probably how far back you could see it even if you were caught up in the trees.

Willow paused beside her. “I’m going to have to disagree with your rhetorical question, baby. Looks like a castle to me. See, it has the big, stone walls and towers and everything. Castle.”

Tara wanted to agree with what her eyes appeared to be showing her, but you didn’t just look with your eyes – not if you knew what was good for you. “Look harder,” she said. Sometimes you had to look with your heart, your mind and whatever magical senses they had available.

“What are you thinking?” Willow asked, after squinting at it for a moment.

Tara paused, wondering how to put it best. “You can’t just put a castle on the back of a truck and drive it around,” she said finally. She’d taken her own advice and looked – but she still wasn’t seeing anything out of place. It still looked like a castle.

And it still looked stony.

It looked hundreds of years old too. Like it’d always been here. There were even plants growing up from the bottom of the walls. It was the ‘age’ that was bugging her most of all.

“Agreed,” Willow said. “And you definitely can’t build one like this overnight. Not unless the Army Corps of Engineers were in town and had one hell of a kegger to get them going. I looked like you said, and it seems real enough. Unless you see something I don’t… You don’t see anything do you?”

“Yes… I mean no. Yes, it seems real and no, I don’t,” Tara said. That was bothering her though. There just had to be something mystical about this, didn’t there? How it was built, or brought here… or maybe it was formed entirely from magic.

Except she couldn’t see any sign of that either.

“Shall we?” she asked, slipping her hand from Willow’s and letting a stake rest in it instead.

“Well, I didn’t figure we’d come out here and then just chalk it up to experience,” Willow said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek as they moved towards the edifice.

Her girlfriend was right, what else were they going to do? Particularly as it couldn’t be a coincidence this thing had appeared the same night ‘Dracula’ had revealed himself to her.

As they got closer she could make out what looked like fire or candlelight within the windows – if you could call them windows. Most of them were more like… archery slots. It was daytime though so what was up with that? She supposed there couldn’t be a lot of natural light getting in through those.

Not that the occupant would worry about that.

On the other hand, mystical castle or not, there was no way whoever had brought it to be here could’ve gotten Sunnydale Light and Power out here to hook them up them up to the grid overnight.

You needed an appointment weeks in advance to make sure that happened. They’d learned that for themselves. And they’d had to turn to candles too.

“Feels real,” Willow said as she banged her hand against the hard stone at the base of the walls. You could tell it was hard from the way she nursed it afterwards.

“Something isn’t right though,” Tara said as she pushed her own hand against the same spot. She could feel the cool stone sucking the heat from her hand, chilling her in return. “Come on, let’s look around.”

They started to move round the foot of the walls, looking up at the overhanging architecture. Nothing about this place was new. This stone hadn’t just been cut, nor had it just been put back together.

Eccentric rich people did that; they shipped castles from Europe stone by stone like a giant, three-dimensional jigsaw. Eccentric vampires evidently had easier ways of getting it done.

Without the cat running off with the last piece.

“I think I get what you mean,” Willow said as they walked around the first corner of their circumnavigation. “You think he created it?” she asked, looking up at the castle that loomed above them.

It was an unspoken assumption that this place was Dracula’s. Dracula and castles. Surely they went together like vampires and blood. Or even like the Calderash and their curses. “I think it would fall outside the realm of ‘tricks’ if he could bring this here, or create it… Whatever he did,” Tara said.

She really hoped he hadn’t been able to create it from nothing though. Teleportation was a know quantity, but manipulation of matter on this scale would imply a great deal of power – specifically magical power. And that was supposed to be impossible for vampires.

They were just supposed to be incapable of it. Dead things, disconnected from the power of life, or even of living demons.

But he’d already come back from being staked. And in seconds too – no big ritual had been required. What was that? Magic? Or something else?

She was glad they’d insisted Toni went home to tell the Giles’ what she’d told them about the castle. At least then Toni wouldn’t be around a vampire, which was bound to be unpredictable.

Then she just hoped Rupert and Jenny took the hint and had the sense to make sure the girl stayed away. Toni being around vampires was bad enough… Master vampires – especially one that could remake itself when it was destroyed – was a recipe for serious trouble given everything that’d happened.

Willow was clearly into brainstorming mode now; Tara could almost see the thoughts whirling behind those lovely green eyes. She was probably making up for last night. Correction, she probably wanted to be seen to make up for last night. Just to prove a point. “What if it were unconscious?” Willow asked.

“An unconscious castle?” Tara said, knowing she sounded kinda like she felt about that. Doubtful. A castle seemed like a pretty conscious thing. It was either there or it wasn’t. You couldn’t really have an accidental, carefully constructed pile of stones.

“Okay, I’ll admit I put that badly,” Willow said. “What I meant was, you know, perhaps he’s not choosing to do anything and not using any kind of power himself. What if it – this - was like a part of him?” To make the point she whacked the stone walls with the side of her hand for emphasis, then pulled it back and rubbed it where she’d hurt it again.

Now that was an interesting idea.

There was a castle here, that was indisputable and it seemed highly likely it was something to do with Dracula. They’d both appeared at the same time. So maybe Willow was right.

“There’s no getting around the fact that a vampire can’t use magic – real magic,” Tara said, very much wanting that to be true. “And no matter how famous he is, he’s still just a vampire. Unless you know something I don’t? Did you read something…?”

Willow was always reading; it was amazing she found the time to do everything else they filled their lives with. Tara had the suspicion that if she hadn’t been here, if they’d never met, Willow would’ve been a stay at home kind of gal.

And yet still, somehow, delicious.

Her girlfriend shook her head quickly, which was a relief. “No, but I heard about him from the Master. I kinda get the impression that Dracula always saw himself as a special case. I don’t think the Master liked him very much.”

“Did the Master like anyone?” Tara asked. He didn’t strike her as the social type.

“Well, he liked me,” Willow pouted, secure enough now in her humanity to joke about it. A couple of years ago, she’d never have been able to find humour in what’d happened.

“Well, yeah,” Tara agreed. “But how could anyone not like you, baby?”

Willow smiled and gave her a quick kiss. “The way The Master told the story, Dracula made bargains and deals with all sorts of demons to obtain his powers. And if that’s true then it’s not technically magic if that’s right – just acquired powers. The Master had some too, but his mostly came with age – that was why he looked down on Drac, I guess.”

Tara knew what she meant. Unlike people, vampires got stronger and faster as they got older. But the beast within them also manifested itself more and more obviously. That might mean cloven hooves for hands. Or bat like ears. Dracula didn’t seem to have any of those – but he did have some tricks very like those the Master had developed. Tricks that could affect the mind.

And obviously one to create or move giant stone castles.

“Let’s get back to Dracula. This came up last night; you think he traded some sort restriction – say like only being able to feed on willing victims – for those kind of powers?” Tara asked. That’d been a new one on her. He could hurt whomever he wanted to, which would still made him a murderer, but he could only get sustenance from a willing victim?

It sounded like a demon bargain – of no real ‘use’ to the demon, but just the cost of doing business.

And did not feeding on unwilling victims make him better or worse? Neither, it just made him different.

If true, she supposed it was a little like giving himself a phobia, or a deliberate weakness. But only in exchange for what he believed to be a greater strength. The trick would be in ensuring the benefit was more advantageous to him than the restriction was troublesome. Yeah, it sounded like the kind of deal some of the Greater Demons would be into.

Demons, real demons, didn’t operate on the same ‘economic’ system as the mortal – and vampire – world. Their concerns were so very different that they’d gladly grant some kind of power for being able to put a restriction on a vampire like Dracula. Somewhere down the line they’d have seen a circumstance where it would work to their advantage – which was the whole point for them.

Tara still had no idea what the demon that’d done the ritual to bring back Willow had been paid, but it certainly hadn’t been anything as crass as money.

So, okay, where were they?

She could buy into the whole ‘restriction’ thing. But what was the definition of a ‘willing victim’? Presumably seduction, of whatever kind, counted as ‘making’ someone ‘willing.’

Where was that line though? Especially if he was using mystical powers to accomplish the seduction itself? Or did he just rely on his charm, good looks and very well conditioned hair?

Well-conditioned hair hadn’t been what was clouding her mind last night though… Then he’d been trying to do something else, and fortunately falling short.

“That’s right,” Willow said. “He traded. And more than once. That thing about having to sleep in his native soil, carrying a box of it around with him? The Master told me about that too. Maybe that’s what the castle’s for? To protect that box? I suppose it’s possible he issues with running water too. See, you should have come to see me about this last night, not Rupert and Jenny.”

Tara wasn’t going to get into that again. Willow had needed her sleep. End of.

“I might have to wonder why you didn’t tell me all this before,” she said, smiling as Willow had the good grace to blush. “But I won’t. But okay, we need to work on the basis that all the film stuff might be true?” she asked. “Or at least the book.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, I don’t think the shadow of a windmill’s sails will really do much to him like a cross, but he’s definitely constrained by the deals he made,” Willow said. “He’s not even all powerful – just smart. For every strength he has, there’s a weakness. It’s just that he’s probably picked weaknesses that don’t make him vulnerable to people like…”

“To people like us. Great.” Tara couldn’t help thinking about this theoretical stuff as she ran her hand around the stonework. “So this is all someone else’s power?”

It fitted, if true, because then it wouldn’t be violating the rules on whether a dead thing could use magic. Magic, as they knew it, was of the living world. In the demon realms it was bound to be different but they weren’t there. Dracula had to deal with the rules of this world. She’d never heard of anything in necromancy that came close to building castles, or moving them. It’d be reassuring to hear Willow say ‘yes’ here.

Given immortality and the ability to use real, living magic, a vampire could learn… There’d be no stopping one as it just got to know more and more, to get more and more powerful. So come on baby, say ‘yes.’

Willow nodded. “Kind of. Perhaps. I don’t know much more than you – more than the people you asked last night, but not much more than you. Only what the Master told me. But I could see how the castle could be another deal Drac made.”

Tara nodded, relieved. “But you think it could be like, where he is the castle is?” she speculated.

Willow nodded too. “Then it wouldn’t be magic, at least not his magic.” Then she paused, seeming to think of something else. “Or it could be something in the nature of ancient and powerful vampires.”

“Is he even ancient though?” Tara asked. She presumed he was older than that guy who’d written about the world’s most famous vampire – but by how much? Hadn’t Vlad Tepes had a reputation in the 15th Century or so? Wasn’t he supposed to be the basis of the Dracula myth? Even if that was true, it wasn’t so old compared to some vampires. She’d seen, and killed, vampires who’d been the basis of Greek mythology.

15th Century was… impressive, but no cigar.

“He’s at least as old as we can prove the Master was…” Willow said. “I always had the impression that the Master looked down on him as a ‘youngster’ though. Kind of a flashy upstart kind of thing. Like Rupert when he talks about ‘young people today’ but with pointy ears and a vicious desire for blood.”

Tara had to smile at the comparison. After a lot of research they’d been able to prove the Master had existed for at least four hundred years or so. That was how far they’d been able to get concrete records to show his presence in various parts of the world.

The trouble with that was vampires only started to twist and adopt the image of the demon within them after much longer than that. And the research had also suggested that it was only when they were twisted with great age that they started to gain mind control powers and the like. So… if the Master had thought Dracula – oh so human looking Dracula - was a youngster…

That might be a good sign. Drac might not be any more powerful than most other vampires. He might just have some tricks and know how to use them.

With a moving castle.

Tara stopped again, laid her hand flat on the wall and bent her will to try to feel whether there was any mystical power at all flowing through the physical matrix of this place. Energy bound everything together, but the energy of the natural world was very different from that of the demon realms or just plain old magic.

Nothing unusual though, which was just frustrating.

“Do you think it’s supposed to be impregnable? If that was part of the deal?” she asked. They hadn’t found a door yet. They’d been right around the place and they hadn’t found a door. Castles were one thing – but a castle without a door was going to be tricky to get into. And difficulty getting into them had been the whole idea behind castles, right? At least before Disney tried to trademark the presence of fairytale princesses and dancing fish.

But of course who’d need a door when…

“It’d make sense,” Willow said, seemingly having the same thought. “If he was able to turn into a bat or smoke or something – he could just fly up to a window and leave everyone else outside.”

Oh yes, they were on the same wavelengths.

But she couldn’t see him turning into a wolf to use doggie door.

Tara took a few more steps around the next corner, just to make sure they hadn’t set off in the wrong direction, and then called to her girlfriend to join her.

And there it was.

They’d already been here. They had. They’d walked right past this part of the walls. But it hadn’t been here then, she was certain of it. There were the doors, right where they’d already been. Last time around they’d walked past a solid wall but now there was a big wooden door.

“That wasn’t here before,” Willow gave voice to her own feelings.

“I know,” Tara replied. She was a little worried by the fact that a door had appeared just as they were talking about it, and still no hint of power. Okay, she was a little worried by mysteriously appearing castles and Dracula turning up in town, but this was a little more immediate.

Was it a coincidence? Could be… Or perhaps someone knew they were here? Someone who wanted them to make use of the door and go inside?

Someone or something...

Could it be the castle itself? Could it in some way be aware of them? She wasn’t sure if that was something she was more comfortable with than Dracula knowing they were here. It was daylight; out here they were – presumably – safe from him. Unless he had some way to withstand sunlight too?

In there, with barely anything you’d call a window, it’d be like night 24/7…

“Yup, look. Here are our footprints – and that,” Willow pointed at the doors, “definitely wasn’t there when we came around here before. We wouldn’t have missed them – two honking great, wooden doors. We don’t miss stuff like that; we’re noted for our powers of observation. I’ve scored highly on tests.”

“I know,” Tara said again as she reached for the door. Obviously as she turned the handles and pulled both doors gave an ominous creak. That was what castle doors were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Be the cliché. Just like the movies.

Usually movies about the owner of this place.

Talking about impregnability, these weren’t even locked or barred or whatever you did to doors this big to keep the people who were outside… out.

“What were you saying about impregnable, baby?” Willow asked with an shudder.

Tara understood it; he creak was long, loud and reverberated right through her from her stomach to her lungs to her teeth. “Never mind being impregnable, how stereotypical could this be?”

“The creaking?”

“Isn’t it just what you’d be expecting?” Tara asked. “I mean, we’ve never been in a castle before but isn’t this just what a castle door is ‘supposed’ to be?”

“I guess so, but I hadn’t thought about it.”

“No,” Tara said. “I think we were supposed to be all impressed with the creakiness. The authenticity and old world feel of it.” The need to convince them, if that was what it was, all pointed to a lack of class in their soon to be host.

Perhaps he was as much a victim of his own press as anyone else was. After all, even a vampire could go out and get some oil for the hinges. There were stores everywhere that were open after dark. There really was no excuse for big old creaky doors like these.

“Well, okay then. Colour me impressed,” Willow said. “Now, lets go kick Dracula’s butt. We might be making this more complicated than it really is, just because of who we think he is.”

Willow might have a point there. Not that they had a way of keeping him dead yet but hey… who cared about little details about that? They’d planned on doing more research today, but Toni’s visit had turned everything on its head and led them out here before they were ready.

But she’d already proved they could kill him, it was keeping him dead that was trickier.

Tara waved her girlfriend forwards. Since Willow was feeling so gung-ho then she could be the first to step inside – in search of the famous vampire butt she wanted to kick. “After you.” Someone had to go first.

“Why thank you,” Willow accepted the invitation with a small bow.

With the doors wide open, they could see inside – the torches they’d suspected from further away were just about the only source of illumination in there. And they were getting brighter. No, that wasn’t it. Actually it was the daylight that was fading.

“Why’s it going dark?” Willow asked as they looked back at the sun, low in the sky now. If anything it seemed to be dipping – heading towards night during what should’ve been the middle of the day.

Erm…

“I wish I knew,” Tara said. “Do we even want to go in there?” she asked. She couldn’t pretend that making them believe the sun was going down – assuming it wasn’t really happening – wasn’t a neat trick. It was one that interfered with their perceptions too. And that worried her more than anything else so far.

Or was it real?

Which was the worst-case scenario? He was in their heads, or he could control the orbit of the entire planet? Or maybe he was ‘just’ doing something with time?

“I see what you mean. But can we let it go dark without going in there?” Willow asked. “Once he can leave the castle we might never catch him. With sunlight – real sunlight - holding him in…”

Tara nodded, but she was still hesitant. “True – but what are we going to do? I’m not sure we can kill him – I already staked him and he’s still here.” That was what was really worrying her about this. Not that they could destroy him – that appeared to be easy. Just that he wouldn’t stay destroyed. Eventually they’d get tired, run out of stakes or just plain bored…

Then he’d be able to get them.

“We’ll find a way,” Willow said. “Rupert and Jenny were supposed to be looking for answers too right?”

Tara, as always, believed such a promise from the woman she loved. She nodded once more; Willow was making a lot of sense tonight… No, Willow was making sense this morning – no matter what the sun was doing. When she checked her watch she could see that he wasn’t doing anything with time.

“At least we can keep him down,” she said, shaking the bag full of wooden stakes she’d slung over her shoulder on the way out. After the incident last night she’d insisted that Willow bring just as many of her own. They’d even spent half an hour whittling, just to keep their stocks up. “While we try other things too. Fire, beheading… all of that.”

“Sounds like the start of a plan,” Willow said. “A plan’s probably a good thing, before we go in.”

Abruptly a large shadow was cast across them, as someone blocked the torchlight from inside. Tara grasped the first of her stakes, ready to do some serious damage via the power of nature. If it was too close, she’d just stab it in the chest. Willow, she knew, would be doing the same.

Vampires didn’t get to take them by surprise twice.

Then they both stopped. Stopped absolutely dead, but importantly without actually helping anyone else into that state. Especially not…

“Principal Flutie?” they asked at the same time.

The high school principal didn’t respond to their bemused question. Instead, he moved to hold the doors open for them. Unnecessary since it was already wide open, but it was all so very polite.

“What are you doing?” Tara asked him.

“More to the point, what are you doing here?” Willow said.

“Serving the Master,” he told them, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. And looking at him, it probably was the most obvious thing in his little world. He didn’t seem to be completely in the one they were more used to.

“Ah,” Tara said, unsure what she could really say to that.

Willow made an effort though. “You’re not a servant, you’re a Principal. At the local high school. Remember? Go Razorbacks!” Willow’s tone was gentle, if a little chiding for his forgetfulness. But it really didn’t have any effect on him. There was no blinding flash of realisation. Not even a confused shake of the head.

What’d happened to movie cliché?

“I am only what he commands me to be,” he told them. “Please, do come inside. The Master is expecting you.”

Tara looked at her girlfriend. They wanted to go in anyway, what did it matter if the Sunnydale High Principal led them in? What they did about him later would be the only real change in their plans – and he did complicate things. Now they had to worry about getting him out of here too.

Hopefully with all his faculties intact.

Willow nodded and as one they stepped through the oversized doors that immediately closed behind them. What else were big wooden doors supposed to do?

But even though they creaked shut, perpetuating the cliché, he was the one who was closing them. There weren’t closing all by themselves. That was more than they’d expected, or less. Something other than the movies dictated, that was for sure.

“If you’d follow me,” he asked and they did as he suggested, following him through the long stone hallways, trying to ignore his lunge for a spider in it’s web and the way he popped it into his mouth.

They looked at each other as they heard the crunch. Then they shuddered at the same time. ‘The Master’ had turned their old Principal into a bug eater?

Eww.

Inside the place was all stone, just like the outside. The difference was that inside the flickering candlelight was inexplicably brighter than it should have been. What furniture they could see was all wooden.

Tara was spending her time trying to remember the way back to the door though. This place felt bigger inside than the size of the castle should’ve allowed. They’d walked around the base in a few minutes, but inside they’d been walking and walking and there was no end to the corridors in sight, and they hadn’t done a full 180 yet.

While she was paying attention to their route, Willow was trying to convince Bob Flutie that his calling in life was service of a different kind. “No, really, you’re the Principal. I suppose you’re a new age one who kind of gets taken advantage of by the kids – but still a Principal. And you don’t usually enjoy multi-legged snacks.”

Tara looked at her. Willow didn’t really need to be putting caveats on his calling in life. He might remember all this later and Toni still attended his school. She kinda hoped he forgot the bugs though. She still couldn’t get over the crunch…

Who’d have thought a spider crunched that much?

Willow shrugged. “Well, he is and he didn’t.”

Principal Flutie seemed to be oblivious to all the arguments though. “The Master will see you now,” he announced showing them the doors he wanted them to go through.

Tara looked at him and sighed. “Baby, we can’t leave him here – especially if we have to get… heated.” That was the other thing about stone castles in the movies; they seemed to burn better than stone should. If they were going to try burning Dracula then…

Well, at the very least they had to consider all this wood, and the tapestries. They’d probably go up like a kindling if things got out of control.

Willow nodded.

“Okay,” Tara decided. “I’ll see the Master, I mean Dracula and you get him out of here.”

“Hey, hold on a minute, missy,” Willow said as Principal Flutie headed off to… somewhere. “Why can’t I see Dracula and you save Bob the Bugeater? You saw the Ma – Dracula last night.”

Tara was ready for that one though. “He’s already shown he was interested in me, he knew me. I can keep him occupied even before I do anything to try to destroy him. That’ll help buy you time to get Bob out of here.”

It wasn’t her favourite plan in the world, especially being as she didn’t know how she was going to actually finish Dracula off, but it had the virtue of getting the job done and getting Principal Flutie out of danger at the same time.

Always assuming they could find the door again.

But it was a serious point. They couldn’t be sure he’d pay attention to Willow and let them make that extra time.

“Kill the Master?” Bob Flutie asked, sounding concerned. Who’d known he was actually paying attention to what they said.

“Of course not,” Tara replied. “We’ll just be visiting, saying ‘hello.’” Without the wits to realise she was fooling him, his concern subsided. Willow rolled her eyes.

“He said ‘We’re’ expected – like both of us. That implies Drac knows about me too.”

“But hardly proves it,” Tara said.

“If you want to get into questions of proof, none of us can even prove we’re not just someone else’s dream – it doesn’t usually stop us,” Willow said.

“Will, baby. We have to get Bob out of here.”

“Okay, I buy into that. But you’re better at magic that deals with the mind,” Willow pointed out, waving around the place to show what the castle might be. “I’m fire girl. Fire’s probably the way to go when it comes to K-I-L-L-I-N-G him.”

Tara wasn’t about to accept that division of labour without proof. “I thought we agreed it can’t be magic? Our kind of magic?” Dracula was a vampire – he couldn’t do magic without ripping apart every rule that was known about magic and she wasn’t buying into that. No matter how many tricks he had. The castle wasn’t about magic of the mind. No way.

“The Master is waiting,” Principal Flutie reminded them.

But they were at an impasse. Willow wanted to see Dracula, but they both knew someone had to take Bob Flutie out of here.

“Hmmph,” Willow said. “Paper-rock-scissors?”

Tara nodded and held out her hand.

One, two, three. Their closed fists banged together and then…

“Paper wraps stone,” Tara announced and started for the doorway.

Willow sighed. “You always do that.”

“Then you should always know how to beat it,” Tara said, pausing. She knew what Willow was about to say.

“Best of three,” Willow demanded.

One. Two. Three.

“Paper wraps stone,” Tara said again.

“You always do that too,” Willow accused. “You always do the same.”

“Because I know you will.”

“Five?” Willow asked.

Tara shook her head. “Willow, love, please just help him,” she said. “I’ll see you soon after I… After I see the Master.” She didn’t want to upset the Principal again, that wouldn’t help Willow get him out of here.

Besides, she was sure there’d be something left for Willow to see. She had no idea how she’d keep him dead.

Tara stepped through the doors into the room where a legend awaited her. She didn’t want to wait for Willow to convince her not to do this.

Of course those doors closed behind her too. This time without anyone’s intervention. This time it was the cliché. Creaking and all. She had the definite impression it wouldn’t open again without someone’s permission though.

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Continued in the next post

[Katharyn]

Post 2 of 2 due to length

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As the doors closed behind Tara, Willow was still worrying about who needed her more. On the one hand there was Tara, the woman she loved and who’d killed more vampires than probably anyone else in the world. Maybe ever.

And then there was Principal Bob Flutie who’d got lost trying to find his way around his own school’s basement.

Twice.

In one day.

Much as she hated to admit it to – even to herself - she had to go after him and trust in Tara to do what needed to be done. Her woman always came back to her safely. The same couldn’t be said of Bob Flutie.

But where had he gone? As she went after him, she found he’d already passed through a number of doors and if she wasn’t quick she was going to lose him altogether.

Why, oh why, had he chosen today to become a master vampire’s minion? Why couldn’t he have stayed home and continued to be boring but definitely much safer?

And on the bug-free diet.

She didn’t just wish it had been that way because it’d be safer for him. No, if things had worked that way then she could’ve been helping Tara now – facing down the legend. Dracula!

And while she was wishing… Why did she have to suck so bad at paper-rock-scissors? She never won because always thought that this time Tara would break the habit of a lifetime. This time…

“Principal Flutie?” she called after him. She took one last wistful look at the door Tara had gone through before rounding the corner. “Principal Flutie? Bob?”

Nothing…

“He’s going to get lost,” she said to herself. Just because he was in Dracula’s thrall probably didn’t mean he’d developed a sense of direction. She hurried after him through the torch lit corridors, wondering where he could’ve gone… and what he might be eating now.

There was still all this wooden furniture in the rooms. Lots of candles and torches. Both were curious choices for a vampire. But if they were right then this was a vampire who had no fear of staking – accidental or otherwise.

Did he have any more fear of being burned than he did of pointy wooden death? The torches said not but then in the past she supposed that everything in a old European castle would have to have been lit this way.

Either that or you existed in darkness.

Vampires, for all their ability to see in perfect blackness, did like to have their possessions and lairs lit up somehow.

In the hindsight offered a few moments later, Willow would come to realise that worrying about vampire interior decoration had been the wrong thing to have on her mind as she went down unfamiliar corridors at speed, trying to catch up with her old teacher.

Distraction certainly explained why she fell off the abrupt end of the passage just as she passed through another dimly lit doorway. Okay, she wasn’t looking where she was going – but it wasn’t the kind of thing you expected. The passageway just disappeared. It was like a cliff. One moment there was a stone floor, the next moment there… wasn’t.

Fortunately a life hunting demons with Tara had sharpened her instincts. You had to be on your toes to work with Tara Maclay.

As soon as there wasn’t anything to stand on anymore, those instincts kicked in. All of a sudden she was catching herself with the magic. The air thickened beneath her feet but she still allowed gravity to play its part. Not even knowing how far down this pit would go – and it was too dim to make out the floor – she sank gently downwards.

Okay, she sank gently, but when she did hit the ground she hadn’t been expecting it. “Oww, someone lost the stairs.” Probably Principal Flutie. He was about the only person she could think of that could mislay a stone staircase.

Or – and this was possibly more likely - it was intended to be this way.

It was as she was thinking it could be a trap that she realised there was someone down here with her. The whole space was dimly lit and her eyes were still adjusting to it. All the same she knew there was someone here with her. Someone was moving and reacting to her entrance. More than one person had heard her voice.

This wasn’t necessarily good if they could see her and she couldn’t see them yet. Even if her eyes would adjust.

“Willow?” asked a very familiar female voice indeed.

“Jenny?” It was bad enough that Principal Flutie was here. But what was Jenny doing in the castle?

Their friend knew better than this and besides, she’d suck at being a minion. Jenny didn’t exactly have unquestioning obedience in her nature. “What are you doing here?” Willow winced as she asked the obvious question. There really wasn’t anything else she could say though.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time…” Jenny said in a strange voice, almost like she didn’t really realise where ‘here’ was.

“And wasn’t it?” her husband’s voice asked dreamily.

Rupert too?

“Oh yes, lover. It was a wonderful idea,” Jenny replied, equally as dreamily – then there was the sound of them smooching.

All Willow could see in the light from the flickering torches high above them were vague shapes, but neither of them appeared to be tied up or anything. Of course, unless there was another way out of here, they were essentially at the bottom of a pit so restraints wouldn’t be necessary.

But there was always another explanation for them being here. They might not be captives at all.

The lack of concern in their voices suggested… Actually no, scratch that. It wasn’t a lack of concern. It sounded more like they were both actually happy to be here... Either way, it worried her.

“Oh not you two as well. All you wish is to serve the Master right?” she asked. That was what the Principal had said, and where was he now? Bob Flutie had lost something else.

Her.

She’d been asked to do one thing, look after him. And she’d lost him even before she’d fallen down a hole. It’d be easy enough to get out the same way she’d eased her landing, but now she had Rupert and Jenny to think about too.

No. Change of emphasis. This wasn’t an accident. She hadn’t stumbled onto them… She’d tracked them down. That’d sound much better when she told Tara about it. Of course Tara would know better, but she wouldn’t say anything.

“Master?” Rupert asked.

Jenny laughed but the way Willow would’ve expected. This was more of a girly giggle that Willow had only heard before in some very specific circumstances. “She thinks were in someone’s thrall, silly girl.”

Rupert laughed too. “Yes, that is rather silly. Of all people, Willow should know we’re strong minded adults.”

“We’re certainly very adult,” Jenny agreed and there was the sound of smooching again – and as Willow’s eyes finally adjusted she could just about see them doing it too. It wasn’t a quick kiss, or one that was about reassurance. It was more like a ‘if Willow wasn’t here I’d kiss you somewhere else’ kiss.

Actually it looked like they might be getting to that possibility even though she was stood right here…

“So neither of you is in thrall?” she checked, if only to get them to part lips and talk to her about what they were doing here. Tara had left them at home last night, and Toni had come to get she and Tara… Had Rupert and Jenny gone out before Toni had even gotten up then? Given when the girl left to go running, she might not have noticed they weren’t there…

But then where were the kids? No matter what, they wouldn’t have brought them here. No way, no how. Not for any reason.

And this definitely wasn’t the time for smoochies. Of any kind. Or any where.

“Thrall? Oh no,” Jenny said to her. “I just wanted to meet… Well, you know… The Sisters. His Brides. They came from my clan you know? Did Tara tell you the story?”

“Yes,” Willow said. She had more on her mind than the story though.

“I didn’t want to come,” Rupert said, serious for at least a moment.

“Thank the Goddess for that,” Willow said. At least someone else around here still had his or her own mind. The Sisters? The Brides of Dracula? How could Jenny let herself be brought here? Just to meet them? Why?

“I didn’t want to come…” Rupert repeated. “Then I met them and then…”

“Then you did,” Jenny said, and her meaning was pretty plain.

Willow groaned. So she was the only one with her mind still on the fact this place was home to a vampire – more than one vampire if the Sisters were here too. “Are you crazy? The Sisters? You do know they’re vampires, right?

“Yes, but I must say, I found them very agreeable,” Rupert said.

“So did I,” Jenny added.

“Did you get bitten?” she demanded.

“Not like you mean,” Jenny said, and then they were smooching again. Threatening to go further.

“Where are the kids?” Willow asked, cutting to the chase. If she had to go after them as well…

“Don’t have a cow, Willow. The children are with your Dad,” Jenny said, dismissively. As if they didn’t even matter. Now Willow knew there was something seriously affecting them, unfortunately it sounded most like it was a serious case of lust.

But at least the kids were safe. Unless Ira was down here somewhere too.

Could this get worse than it already was?

“I told her it was crazy,” Rupert said, ignoring the explanation of where his children were. It was like they were high or something. “And she said ‘We’ve dealt with vampires before.’ She was right too. We have dealt with vampires before. Lots of them actually. We didn’t always need you and Tara, you know.”

“You’ve never hung out, making the smoochies in their basement before though,” Willow said. What were they doing? What was wrong with them?

“But we’ve never known vampires like this…” Jenny said happily. “They don’t even want blood. They just wanted –” She giggled. It was a very adult giggle.

Oh.

Ohhhh.

Wait. ‘Wanted’? Past tense? Ohhhhhhhh.

Certain things were becoming clearer both in the dim flickering light and in her mind too. She wished that at least one of those would get all dim again. It was tough to judge which though.

“Where are your clothes…” she started to ask, not sure she actually wanted to know, but neither did she want anything flapping around while they got out of here.

“There’s no need to stay, Willow,” Rupert said in his best approximation of a teacher’s voice. A figure of authority. “We’re perfectly alright.”

She didn’t say ‘And very nearly naked.’ “I wasn’t planning on staying, we’re going. All of us.”

“He’s right… You can go,” Jenny agreed in a singsong voice that completely ignored what she’d just said.

“Go? You can’t seriously think I’m going to leave you here?” Willow asked. She wanted to be shocked, but looking at them… Not much surprised her at the moment.

“That’s exactly what you’re going to do, young lady” Rupert told her, “if you know what’s good for you. We love you, we do… but there are things that we don’t want to do with you and Tara that we can do here. I’m sorry if that makes you jealous -”

“Jealous?”

Willow had to say, right then, she was so pleased that their thoughts and actions hadn’t turned to turned to she and Tara. So very, very pleased. “I might pay more attention to you if you weren’t almost naked. Just where are your – both your – clothes?” she asked.

“I was feeling a little hot,” Rupert said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“You too?” Willow asked Jenny.

“Hot,” Jenny said, nodding briskly. As if that would explain everything and make her leave, so they could get back to whatever it was they’d been doing.

“And yet you look as if the cold’s gotten to you a little,” Willow teased her friend. She had to. Distressing as this was, one day they’d be able to laugh at it. At least Jenny looked… chilly. She was deliberately keeping her eyes north of Rupert’s waistline.

It wasn’t just ‘cold’ that’d gotten to Jenny, there was some sweat too. They couldn’t really have been doing that here… now? Could they? Time to change the subject.

“Where are they?” she asked as Jenny smiled in the kind of way that confirmed to Willow she really didn’t want to know exactly what they’d been doing.

“They’ll be back soon,” Rupert said happily.

“They wanted to see the visitors first,” Jenny said. “And Rupert wasn’t up to a repeat - ”

“Oh no, Don’t start blaming me for them leaving!” He interrupted his wife to deny the charge.

Jenny ran her hand over his bare leg. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind… I was ready for a break too… Everything was getting a little… tender.”

Willow turned away as their smooching started to resemble foreplay. Then she coughed, obviously and loudly.

“Back soon,” Rupert repeated. “They made all sorts of promises to us…”

“You should go,” Jenny said. “Before they get back.”

Willow shuddered. “I’m absolutely certain I don’t want to know… So lets go. Now.” She needed to get these two out of here. Before anything happened to them. Before anything else happened to them, because something had already been happening – she was sure of that.

“There’s a big drop – quite impossible to get up,” Rupert said. “But thank you for offering.”

“It’s impossible,” Jenny agreed. “It’s really high, really steep. We’ll just have to stay here. Perhaps until you can come back with a ladder?”

“But don’t rush yourself,” Rupert said.

“Tried did you?” Willow asked doubtfully. They didn’t look or sound like they wanted to go anywhere.

“Briefly,” Rupert said.

“We tried very hard,” Jenny said, stroking her husband in a suggestive way that made Willow look away again. If anyone’s hands went… well, those places, she was leaving. Going up top and talking to them from there. There were some things that remained above and beyond the call of duty.

“But it’s impossible,” Rupert said happily as his wife caressed him.

“Stop that!” Willow said. “Right now. Maybe you tried… hard. But you reckon without my witch-fu.” That was what witch-fu was for. For getting her out of situations she really, really didn’t want to be in. And she wanted to be in this situation least of all. The vampires weren’t even here yet and she already knew she wanted to get out. Now.

“Oh,” Rupert exclaimed.

Averting her eyes, Willow wasn’t sure if that exclamation was about the revelation of witch-fu or something else. She suspected from the tone that… it wasn’t her. “Stop it,” she told them again. “You’ll hate yourselves for this when you get out of here.”

“Maybe,” Jenny said. “But it feels so good now.”

“Eww,” Willow had to say. “Look, Jenny, put that down and… Shit. Just find your clothes. Both of you find your clothes.” This was waaay too much for her. Couldn’t she have been one to face the impossible task of killing Dracula? That would be so much less scarring.

Easier too.

She’d just gotten over one set of recurring nightmares and now this?

“Maybe we should wait to say goodbye,” Jenny suggested.

“It only seems polite,” Rupert agreed, looking for her approval. “They’ve been so hospital. Sharing their… sharing themselves with us.”

Willow sighed. “No, were going. You two so need to get out of here.” Then she caught a flicker of movement. “Ohh.” Time was up. Now what was she going to do with her two friends while she dealt with the new arrivals? Rupert and Jenny were hardly on their best vampire-slaying form.

And she was ninety-nine percent certain there was nowhere they could be concealing any weapons anyway. She glanced at them, given what Jenny was doing now; she was suddenly a hundred percent certain of her facts.

At least not what she’d call a weapon… What they called it was one of those things she didn’t want to know.

“Oh, hello…” Rupert greeted the returning vampires with a broad, smitten smile.

And the look on Jenny’s face… “Welcome back,” the teacher virtually purred at them. Somehow it wasn’t the voice of a woman who was just in it for her husband, at least Willow supposed not.

She took a closer look at the vampires. The Sisters, the Brides of Dracula or whatever they were calling themselves.

She had to admit they were stunning… But they were stunning vampires. They were, perhaps, the most beautiful vampire women she’d ever seen, and she’d been in a position to see quite a few in her time – but there was an innate skankiness to every vampire that never went away.

Tara loved her, adored her. But even her woman admitted there had been something ‘wrong’ with her when she’d been one of the undead.

The ‘undead’ part of it might’ve been a clue. No matter how pretty they might appear to the casual observer, there was something always… ‘off’ about them. And that was before you even got to the lack of a soul and the ability to feel certain emotions.

These three weren’t interested in the casual observer though and it wasn’t emotions they wanted to feel. She could feel the pull of them at the limits of her awareness. There was some sort of power at work, making them even more seductive than their appearance and actions suggested they would be anyway. A power probably acquired in the same way as Dracula had picked up the rest of his tricks.

Even the way the three vampires moved was suggestive and filled with promise. It was no wonder Rupert and Jenny had succumbed to their, barely concealed, charms. In stunning lace dresses very little of them was covered that wasn’t a just token gesture at maintaining any dignity.

Rupert and Jenny wouldn’t have had a chance. Unless they’d been innately aware of the presence of such power, or tooled up and ready to resist it… How could they resist this? Then it struck her that usually a power like this required some kind of desire on the part of the ‘victim’ to build on.

Something she’d be certain to mention once they all got out of here.

All three vampires stared at her and there was nowhere to look but into their eyes. “Leave,” they demanded. All at the same time, speaking almost as one.

“We were just going,” she said certain it wasn’t going to be quite so easy as that, especially now they were back and their presence was so obviously felt.

Two of the Sisters had slunk their way to Rupert and Jenny’s side’s… hands all over them both. The third had insinuated herself between her friends and yes, there were the hands again. Hands in unusual places.

Not just vampire hands. Human hands were straying too… What was that she’d been wondering about desires that had to be present? It was the sort of thing that fell into the category of ‘not wanting to know.’

Then she realised what they’d really meant. They wanted her to go and Rupert and Jenny to stay. “Wait. Why me leave?”

They didn’t look like the faithful type.

The part of her that liked to know things – which was pretty much all of her according to Tara – was fascinated by the behaviour of these vampire women. They’d had more than their chance to feed, or so it seemed, and yet Rupert and Jenny were here. Intact. Alive. Unmarked.

Well, unbitten. The kind of marks they did have were ones even she and Tara had occasionally sported after a wild night together.

What was going on with them?

And why did they want her to go? Okay, she knew why they wanted her to go, but perhaps a better question was why they didn’t want her to stay too?

That was where the curious part of her was going.

Then there was the part of her that went… ‘Eww, I really don’t want to know that do I?’

“Leave them with us,” the three voices demanded. It didn’t take much imagination to understand what they were interested in, fascinating as the fact that wasn’t just blood seemed to her. She’d been a vampire; she knew what mattered – even if they wanted to play they their games.

But when Rupert and Jenny were on a happy like that… she knew what must’ve been going on too.

“Yes, don’t feel you need to wait, Willow,” Rupert said, obviously trying to sound generous.

“You know we’re both very, actually more than very, capable. We’ll follow you… shortly,” Jenny said, but it somehow didn’t assure her. “Toodles,” she added with a wave.

“Later…” Rupert managed to say.

“It’ll be… ah… morning at the latest,” Jenny told her, looking at the hands that roamed her body. “So don’t worry. We’ll be… ahhh… fine.”

Morning? They thought she was going to leave them here all day and all night? With these skanky bitches? Even if night was behaving strangely around here at the moment, they were crazy if they thought that was going to happen.

If they wanted to explore the wilder sides of their sexualities, she was all for that. She was sure they could come up with something on the internet to point them at like minded people. But not here, not now and not with these vampires.

Except, they already had.

So… definitely not again.

That was so not happening. But how could she get them to realise what was happening to them without pushing the vampire women into some sort of destructive frenzy that could get them hurt?

Pointing out what was being done to them would risk that result. Besides, they didn’t look unaware of what was happening – they actually seemed pretty delighted and… excited about it. Oh yeah, that was definitely excitement she was noticing.

Above the waist, Willow said to herself. Keep your eyes above the waist. The trouble was there were too many waists and they were starting to be all over the place.

“What about the kids?” Willow asked, hunting for a masterstroke to get this to end.

Maybe less ‘hunting’ and more ‘flailing around hoping to stumble across one.’

“Oh just stop it!” she had to insist when they ignored her.

“I told you, they’re at Ira’s,” Jenny said, waving her hand dismissively before planting that hand back on the naked thigh of one of the sisters. “Go see them if you don’t believe me…”

Okay, change of tack. See if this would work. “I meant what about them growing up to hear about this,” Willow lied. It was something she’d just thought about that, but she knew how important that would be – especially to Rupert.

Or at least how important it should’ve been.

“I don’t think the whole story has been written yet,” Jenny told her saucily, responding to where a vampire’s hand was going, just as her husband was.

“Mmmm, rather. Hold the front page,” Rupert agreed. “We’ll let you know.”

In a few moments this was going to descend into being more than she could bear to see, at least if she ever wanted to be able to look either of them in the eye again. She just hoped that some shame about what they were doing still existed. What they were being driven to do. What they, on some level, wanted to do…?

No, bad enough it was happening. Worse to start wondering how much of this was their free will and how much was the seductive charms of the vampires.

And what was Tara going to say? She was going to freak, and Willow’s girlfriend was someone who was well aware of the attractions and problems of a vampire lover.

Bright side, and there was one. At least Bob Flutie wasn’t down here with them as well. She’d be sure to remind them of that when they were back in the real world.

“Leave,” the vampire women hissed at her.

“It would be best for you to get that out of your hands - head – heads – get that idea out of your hands – head right now. I’m not leaving them with you,” Willow said, determined. Couldn’t she just stake them? What would Rupert and Jenny do if she did? Might they even try to help the vampires? Or get in the way?

She knew she could hit the targets; even all three of them, but what if her friends were so under the influence that they tried to defend the soulless creatures that were all over them. Not just over… there was under and even ‘in’ going on here too now.

“Leave…” the Sisters insisted. “We want them. They want us. They’re ours.”

Well, part of that statement was pretty obvious but wait a moment. Why were they so hot for the Giles’? “Wait just a second… what’s wrong with me?” she asked. Not that she wanted to be with them, but the implied rejection rankled with her. What did Rupert and Jenny have that she didn’t?

Okay… there were a couple of things Rupert had, but they wanted to keep Jenny too and aside from a cup size or two and some dangly jewellery – and oh yes, now she knew for certain that Jenny was still wearing those – her friend had nothing she didn’t have.

The sisters hissed as one, while Jenny shook her head. Were they tied together that way too? It was the vampires that replied, “You are not for us. We are not for you.”

Okay, that was as clear as mud. “Hey look,” Willow said. “Not that I’m offering, but I can be sensual and hot. No, actually I am sensual and hot! I’m a sensual and hot woman.” She was. She knew it. She’d been told it often enough. If they actually tried to lay a hand on her, especially in the way they were laying hands on Rupert and Jenny, she’d stake them all. But how dare they not recognise her sensuality!?

How dare they want not want her to stay?

“You are not for us,” the three voices insisted not sounding at all distracted by the attention they were paying to her friends. Attention that was getting all too intimate.

And being reciprocated.

“Willow,” Jenny said, “Honey, take a hint. They want a real woman. And a real man. Not a girl.”

The protest from her friend actually helped Willow snap out of her rejection funk. It made her smile because it was so filled with opportunities for revenge. “One day I’ll remind you that you said that.” Probably more than one day. Probably lots and lots of days.

But first they had to get out of here. Together.

She turned to the Sisters, which was difficult because there was a sprawling mass of Sisters and Giles family members and it wasn’t ever quite clear where the three vampires ended and two humans began. “Why am I not for you?” she asked, more interested now than offended. Besides, if they were talking then they weren’t doing other things with their mouths.

Tara would be proud of her though, for getting past the rejection. She’d always used to have to tell her not to worry about what other people thought of her. No one but Tara mattered, and that was the only important truth.

“Your mind,” one said.

“We see your mind,” the second told her

“You are not for us,” completed the third.

“What about my mind?” Willow asked. Keep their mouths occupied, before they find something else to do.

“Your desires are not our desires,” they assured her as one voice.

“Say what?” Willow asked, incredulous. Now this certainly wasn’t in the movies. In the movies… Well, she was pretty sure that these vampires did anyone. And anything. Now she found they were homophobic?

Okay, they didn’t look homophobic right now… What with what they were doing with each other as well as Jenny. Nope, nothing homophobic about the places those hands were going. Bring Rupert into it, as they had… Well, they were about to get very bisexual.

“Leave us,” they insisted again.

“You know – discrimination on the basis of sexuality is illegal in this state,” she reminded them, more and more bothered by the little sighs of appreciation that were coming from her friends, only interrupted by them groaning – either in appreciation again or at her continued presence. She didn’t want to know which, just to keep everyone talking until she could figure a way to get them out of here.

“Just go, Willow,” Jenny said to her firmly, no longer joking.

“Leave us with them – I assure you we’ll be quite alright,” Rupert added. “Go and help Tara.”

That was a low blow… Go help Tara? Like she was neglecting that duty to spoil their fun?

Or was it a plea for help? If she helped Tara then Dracula would be gone and they could escape? No. Rupert, if he was anything other than English, he was still a man and he was almost literally being led by a part of him that men were very used to following. She doubted the part of him that contained his brain at this precise moment was planning anything so subtle as escape. Nor did it want to get away from the Sisters.

Not that Jenny was doing any better.

“So what’s she?” Willow asked the Sisters. “Chopped liver?” Keep them talking. And she wanted to get to the bottom of just what it was that Jenny had that she didn’t, because these vampires were doing a great impression of liking girls. One of the best impressions she imagined – and hoped – she’d ever see.

“No, I’m all woman,” Jenny boasted.

“She’s with him,” one said.

“We are with him,” the next told her.

“He is with her,” the third concluded.

“They are with us,” all three said together.

“Oh, so I have to bring a man now?” Willow asked. By now she suspected that the truth was more about them realising she was immune to their charms and they were looking for excuses.

She’d seen their charms, nearly all of them in fact. But she hadn’t been driven to the – hmm – lengths Rupert and Jenny had. “Why am I even bothered by this? You’re all skanky whores who can’t complete a sentence alone anyway.”

My, my grandma, what big teeth you have… They roared their frustration at her taunts as soon as she made them. But as Willow accused them she’d made up her mind about the correct course of action.

This had to end. Now.

She let fly with the three stakes that were resting in her hand, picking a moment when she could see the hearts, or the backs, of all three of them – in amongst all the writhing and wandering hands.

Three stakes, three kills. Now who da woman?

Come on. Who was all woman now?

That’s right. Willow Rosenberg. Undefeated champion.

The fiery explosion of the vampires suggested they’d been at least as old as Jenny’s story about them had suggested. Who really knew how long they’d been doing this though? How many people they’d seduced and had their pleasures with?

Like she’d said – skanky whores.

The destruction of the vampires left Rupert and Jenny covered in dust and moaning in disappointment. Willow really didn’t want to reflect on that dust sticking to… damp skin. The idea of a rough vampire tongue, or rather smoother other parts of vampires… She shuddered.

The ‘awakening’ of her friends from their previous dreamlike state was almost the movie cliché. They shook their heads. They looked at each other – then at themselves and finally at Willow who was obviously staring down at them doing her best to look disapproving.

It wasn’t hard to be disapproving. She had so much high ground here. In fact she kind of hoped that they wouldn’t forget it all. There were years of mileage in this little tale.

“Oh,” was all Rupert managed initially. His body hadn’t quite caught up with his mental disappointment; at least that was what his new found desire for modesty suggested.

Jenny managed to be a little more articulate as she straightened what little clothing – technically underwear – she was still in possession of. “You know what, here’s a plan. Lets all promise never to mention this again? That would be the best thing, don’t you think?”

Both of them looked up at her beseechingly.

“You called me a girl,” Willow accused, pretending it was something that bothered her. She was a bad liar, she knew that, but Jenny and Rupert – as well as they knew her – were too discomforted right now to pick up on it.

“But in a really good way,” Jenny assured her quickly.

“I’m not a ‘real woman’ like you.”

“I have no idea what to say,” Jenny said with a sigh. And that admission alone was almost worth all the discomfort she’d been through.

There really was nothing for it, other than teasing. “So, you guys were walking on the wild side, huh?” she asked. “Have fun?”

“Shush, Willow,” Rupert said as he hunted for… anything more than the briefs he was still in possession of.

“That’s not really an answer,” Willow said. But she could see that, despite how embarrassed they were, they probably really had. That was why they were looking at each other, hoping not to see a different reaction in their partner.

Then, reassured, they glared at her. So that was how it was going to be, huh? “You know, Jenny,” Willow mused. “If we’d known you were that way inclined we could’ve taken you to a few places we know of…”

“Willow,” Jenny said firmly. “Nothing happened.”

Rupert coughed. “Nothing at all.”

“Oh yeah,” Willow said, looking down at them as they scrabbled around for clothes. “That’s just what I was thinking. I was just in the nick of time to stop anything happening. And you were really desperate to escape.”

“Willow, now see here - ”

“As I was saying, we could find you somewhere you can make time with living, breathing, girls. Real women, if that’s what you prefer,” she went on, feeling quite ruthless and enjoying it immensely.

“Willow…” Jenny warned.

“Unless its more something that you like to share together – in which case we really don’t know the places for you, but I’m pretty sure they have them in L.A.” Willow continued to tease.

“Nothing happened,” they said together.

Willow smiled, knowing that even if they’d been influenced and seduced, they certainly hadn’t been coerced. Their reactions told her they knew that too. It was more like their inhibitions had fallen away, and she’d seen it happen around vampires before.

But never quite like this.

“You know, that would really be a lot more convincing if either of you had anything but underwear on and I hadn’t seen those vampires with their hands in… Well, not just in your underwear. And you were here for what, hours with them before I arrived?”

They looked at each other and said nothing. She knew. They knew she knew. She knew they knew she knew. And now they were just hoping they could take their lumps and leave all this behind…

“Nothing to say, huh?” Willow asked. “You might want to get dressed if they didn’t tear your clothes off you. I need to get us out of here, and we still need to find Principal Flutie. Unless you’ve seen him already? Hmm?” She’d been intending to tease them but now she was in a really much scarier visual place.

One they seemed to have joined her in.

Yes, that might be too much. There were limits.

“Oh no! No, no, no, no, no!” Jenny shouted. “I’ll… I’ll admit to many things if I have to, Willow. But not that! That never happened. And if you ever suggest that it did…” She let the threat hang, ominously.

“Quite,” Rupert agreed, visibly shuddering.

She believed their protests, she really did. What’s more even if she hadn’t believed them, she’d have chosen to. She really would. And she’d never have mentioned that part of this again. Never ever. Such were the things nightmares were made of.

“He calls Dracula, ‘Master’,” Willow said, pleased that they didn’t seem to be doing the same. In fact now the Sisters were dusted, they looked almost back to normal. Apart from some obvious things.

Some very obvious things.

“I always knew he was weak minded…” Rupert accused.

Willow just looked at him.

“Nothing,” Rupert said, red faced.

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

[chronic]

“I always knew he was weak minded…” Rupert accused.

Willow just looked at.

“Nothing,” Rupert said, red faced.

That had me rolling around on the floor laughing.

Hee hee hee, it seems the Gileses have discovered some kink. I wonder why they went to the castle, was it really just Jenny’s curiosity, or were the sisters exerting influence on them from afar? I’m really enjoying Tara vs Dracula, I wonder what it is that Dracula wants from her? Is it just her power and status as a vampire hunter, but if so why is he drawn to her more than to Willow? I’m looking forward to their meeting.

I like your possible explanations for the moving castle, (unlike the series which played it for laughs and never answered the question of where the honking great castle came from.) I also like the idea of Dracula trading weaknesses in return for powers. Was that inspired by role playing games, where you can do just that?

Going back a bit, I enjoyed seeing the Mayor with the girls. I kinda miss the days when he and Tara were friends. As for Lizzie and Ira, well I’m sure Lizzie’s intentions are honest, but could Wilikins be using her as a pawn? He’s more than capable.

So, Lilah’s future is a flamey one. Does this mean that project Two Roses, and everything Wolfram and Hart did in the first story, has ended in failure? Presumably Holland had done enough to distance himself from the project to escape any blame. Still, he has new plans afoot which are completely beyond my means to guess ( although I enjoy trying.)

It seems to me that Lilah sowed the seeds of her own destruction. She insisted that she hate Tara after the change, and that hatred made her act foolishly. So by creating that hate, Tara made Lilah’s fall inevitable ( though I’m sure Tara wouldn’t be cynical enough to realise that at the time) thus creating the problem and its solution at the same time.

I seem to remember Holland saying that the reason someone (I’m guessing Dracula) was coming to town was to distract Dru, now that’s a meeting I’m looking forward to seeing!

chronic

[Katharyn]

Hi Chronic.

As usual when anyone posts a quote it's one where the words are missing!

Laughter is what I wanted. This was a really fun part to get into and a joy to come back to a few months later before posting. As for your more specific musings...

I don't really address the 'why' of why they went there, suffice it to say that they got there. I think my suggestion was it was curiousity and that led to more and more... However it's just as valid to have them exert an influence from afar (I wish I had thought of that!) However it definitely wasn't in search of kink!

Sometimes, Kink happens.

So I'm told.

TvD - once I thought of it (and this was a scene written very very early in the process because I knew I wanted it) it seemed more and more natural. She is the most successful vampire hunter in a long time. What draws him to her? Well, I would say I always saw it as the same thing that drew him to Buffy. That was never, explicitly, spelt out as the whole episode was played for laughs however I see it as he doesn't just kill. he seduces etc. I extrapolated that to mean he needs willing victims... but how dull would that be? Don't you think he sometimes wants a challenge?

As for the castle thing - yeah, the episode never went there. However, I am so anal that I have to explain stuff like that. This is why we have a 1.5 million word story here (more actually!)

I hadn't explicitly linked the wekness vs powers thing back to a RPG. Its been a long, long time since I was near one. But yes, it's probably a subconcious thing about that kind of 'balance'

I missed the Mayor and Tara too - it's a shame she can';t bring herself to trust him (and that he's untrustworthy!) They had a good dynamic, but as a writer I have to say it is one that works better when Tara is alone. When she has Willow, it's really not as easy to make him the 'best person in her life.' And he isn't!

Lizzie and Ira. Ha. I'll say no more than it's a perfect thing for Willow to stress over.

Lilah. Toast. Eternally Toast.

I won't say more about the project yet, but Lilah is done. There is more coming up about all this though.

I have more sympathy for Lilah than you. I pretty much redeemed her in the first fic and then plunged her into this. She didn't know what she was asking for. She didn't know where it would lead. We can see it was inevitable (and actually it's inevitable because the writer had to do it rather than her choice!)

As for your last line. Oh, somene remembered

Thanks,

Katharyn

[tazraven]

Kathyryn. I remember, months ago, telling you how I would try and catch up with the entire story within a few weeks. How seriously misguided I was. The Sidestep Chronicle was amazing. I’ve finally finished, and while I think I’ll take a small break before starting the Second Chronicle, I can’t help but seriously look forward to it. Oh, and Why TazRaven do you ask? Taz was my favorite looney tunes character when I was younger, and still is. Raven is my last name Anyways, onto my long and quote-filled feedback that I hope you like so much.

not after all she’d done.

No! Damn it… what the vampire had done.

I find it interesting how dense I was. For most of the last few chapters, I’d only been thinking of Tara, and how much she’d changed and was changing. Yet there’s this whole other person, who really hadn’t been a person for most of Sidestep, that I sort of completely ignored. She’s going through this humongous thing here, dealing with her soul, and all of the memories from her past “life” weighing down upon it. She’s full of such confusion and guilt, but not guilt that she should be feeling.

Then, shortly after that, she’d listened to other things. She’d revelled in her Mother’s screams. Other sensations. The taste of her blood. The smell of her fear. Even her… dead touch. Better dimmed. Much, much better dimmed.

Ok, creepy. I can’t imagine experiencing a lifetime of murderous memories, especially ones that include the murder of your own mother. Definitely much better dimmed.

‘She’ not ‘you.’ He’d said ‘she.’

Once again, you have Willow trying to distinguish herself from the vampire in her mind. I like that, depending on the person, they also distinguish. Tara and Jenny, for example, have always separated the two. They are separate people in their minds. Giles, however, did not distinguish the two until he thought about it and made the conscious decision to do that.

Tara could hear Willow murmuring… “I’d forgotten… I’d forgotten…”

Tara came to her other side and looked at Jenny who didn’t seem too concerned, what did she know? “Forgotten what honey?”

“I’d forgotten… that there was so much else in the world outside the farm that was good… beside you.” Willow looked at Tara then and Tara could have fallen into those big eyes and if she never found her way out she wouldn’t have cared too much.

“But… there is,” Willow continued.” There’s life and there’s love. All good things, like forgiveness. I forgive myself because it wasn't my fault. It’s only my fault if I let it be.”

That was such a big turning point for Willow, in my opinion. I hated her feeling guilty, because I really feel like none of it was her fault. She didn’t choose to be a vampire, and the part that was Willow was not present in the vampire. So to hear her say that, and tell herself that she only needs to feel guilty if she lets herself feel guilty, just really made me happy. It was time for her to let go.

“Tara isn’t a vampire. She wasn’t the Slayer. What right did your damned Council have to assess her anyway?” Willow asked him.

“Well, based on my reports of her activities,” he looked at Tara to avoid that powerful glare from the younger woman, “and your successes they wanted to see if she might be a candidate for recruitment.”

“Recruitment?” Willow couldn’t avoid a sad laugh. “Perhaps they should have come to work for her. She did more for people around here than anyone else. But,” Willow concluded, “because she didn’t want to be recruited or didn’t even know what they were doing, because she humiliated them, then she had to die? That’s not right Mr. Giles and you know it. None of the rest of it matters,” Willow told him. “None of it would have happened without that first mistake and it was yours… or the Council’s. I don’t care anymore whose fault it was but you’re not going to shout at her just because really you feel guilty. Tara’s got enough guilt of her own – without taking on yours too.”

Booya! Tara isn’t blameless, but it sure as hell wasn’t all her. Giles has his fair share, if not more, of the blame, and I was damn glad when Willow pointed that out. He deserved that, and to hear it come from Willow made it all the sweeter. Because to be honest, her and Jenny are the most innocent ones of the bunch. Tara’s next, finally followed by Giles. That was always the problem with the canon Scoobies. Too damn hypocritical. Good to see someone call him on his actions. Because honestly, Tara wasn’t the slayer, nor was she a vampire, a demon, or even a bad person. She was someone who was shoved into a situation with the death of her family, and instead of letting the darkness overtake her, Chose to dedicate her life to helping others. Yes, she let the vampire Willow kill people, and that was wrong. But she helped so many more than she hurt, and without her help, Faith would have been dead way before that. So, I reiterate, Booya.

To bring back a human from a vampire. That took magic that he couldn’t fathom. Power that he hadn’t believed would ever be accessible to those in this reality. At the very least there would have to be a crossing of dimension or timelines. Or something. He supposed that Tara had reached into the past and to do that she would have needed magic.

Magic far more powerful than she’d ever used before, at least as far as he could tell, and once she’d got a taste of that sort of power… the darkness wouldn’t let her go. Never.

Which was why he’d followed her.

Arg, and again hypocritical Giles rears his head. You know, just because he was all dark magick hates the world ticking time bomb guy doesn’t mean he should assume that about everyone. Tara was pretty darn responsible about her magick all her life, and that was evidenced every time she used it. She never used it superfluously, and for him to expect her to use dark magick just because he couldn’t think outside the box for how she could have gotten Willow back doesn’t mean he should blame it on Tara. Grrr.

“Couldn’t you just have staked it?”

Lol. But that’s too simple…

So she never heard his last words, laughing after a fluke shot. “Besides Tara, I’d like you here when I get back. I’m really looking forward to seeing you again – and Willow.”

Crap. That’s all I can say to that. I knew he’d be back, but to hear it put so bluntly, just made me worry. I wonder if that will be addressed in the Second Chronicle. Crap.

As his eyes adjusted though he could see them from this vantage point and well… the only word for it was that they were clinging to each other. Possibly he could go with entwined. It seemed to him, as hands moved across cheeks and through hair, that they were communicating without words.

That was such a beautiful image. They’re so in love, and so good together. I’m glad Giles got this chance to see them like that. He was able to draw that parallel between them and his own relationship with Jenny. It helped him forgive a bit easier.

She remembered when she’d had to scrabble for money just to buy some food… when there had been no money left for a motel room and she’d been sleeping on cold concrete trying to keep warm in an old sleeping bag. In a basement somewhere. Some city.

I forgot how far we’d come in this story. It took me a moment to remember, but when I did, I realized how much Tara had grown. She used to sleep in abandoned warehouses, on concrete floors, scrounging for food. It’s just amazing to me that she was able to come so far. Good for her.

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

“Can I show you?”

“Can I show you?”

Together.

Both

And last but not least, the last quote of Sidestep. So sweet. I am definitely looking forward to starting the Second Chronicle, and I can only hope it’s as amazing as this story was. I am very intrigued by the introduction of the new bad guy, and I know she will be further explained in the next story. If I was to guess though, I'd say it was Darla. Just a guess.

I don’t know what else to say besides thank you. This story was so great on so many levels. The characters were actual people, always changing and developing as their situations molded them. The plot was incredible. It was complicated and interesting, yet easy to understand and follow. The relationships between people were so real, I felt like voyeuristic. Not only the relationship between Vamp Willow/Willow and Tara, but also the relationship between Jenny and Giles, The Mayor and Tara, Faith and Tara, everyone. This story was such a good read, and you are a great writer. Once again, thank you.

~Sara

[Katharyn]

Gosh Sara, you write feedback like I write Sidestep!

Sorry but I don't have time to respond in the detail I'd like to just at the moment but I will do so a little later today. For now I just need to post the next part so my response will appear after that.

Thanks muchly though for all your kind thoughts, I hope second chronicle works for you (though it is a very different story.)

More later

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle - Tara vs. Dracula – Round 3 (Part 227)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Very little is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: The actual Tara vs. Dracula part of this mini arc.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: Would it shock you to know there was actually a point to this? Plotwise I mean? Would you believe that I’m not just doing it for fun? Okay, I admit it, the plot justification came after the part was drafted up. This mini-arc is one of those I wrote a long, long time before everything around it when I was just having fun writing what I wanted to and worrying about how to join the dots later. But as you will see in the next part, there is a plot point behind this.
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else. Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW.


The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle

Tara vs. Dracula Round 3

By

Katharyn Rosser



[b]Starts from the moment Tara and Willow split up in the castle – in other words a few minutes before the end of part 226.[b]


As the doors closed behind her, Tara found herself in what must have once been called the ‘Great Hall of the Castle.’

Okay, so that was just guesswork. It might never have been called ‘The Great Hall’ but it certainly looked like it should’ve been. It was a definitely a hall and, in scale, it was pretty ‘great.’ Ergo, as Willow would’ve said, ‘Great Hall.’

Willow was almost as fond as Rupert of words like ‘ergo.’

In appearance it was typically, almost stereotypically, medieval. A long wooden table, and the roaring fire in the hearth dominated the whole room. She could almost imagine some king of olden-times throwing bones over his shoulder to the hunting dogs that would’ve been resting in front of that fire.

She was a cat person herself, but dogs and fires went together. Just like dogs and bones. And it wasn’t like you could have a hunting cat, at least not on the human’s terms. When cats hunted, they did it for their own purposes.

Cats were just like vampires really, but the little gifts they left for you were smaller.

The fire was a strange thing to have here though – like the candles and torches out in the other parts of the castle. The potential for incinerating a vampire was vastly increased by the presence of open, naked flames. Some of them burned so easily they might as well have been covered in gas.

Presumably not Dracula though.

Either that or he didn’t care if it did happen because it’d just be a minor inconvenience. As a rule hanging swords and axes on the walls as decorations should’ve been a no-no too. Why provide someone with the tools to decapitate you? At least make them carry their own.

Then there was the availability of improvised stakes from breaking some wooden furniture.

A fireless, swordless home with stone or metal furniture seemed the smart way to live and she had no reason to think Dracula was anything but smart. Self-opinionated, egotistical and with an insufferable confidence in his own attractiveness, yes. But not stupid.

And he had great hair for a dead thing; she had to admit that too.

All of which told her something about him she hadn’t already discovered by the staking in the park.

“I knew you’d come.”

The heavily accented voice came from the shadows behind her, but then she’d already known that was where he was. She didn’t start, she didn’t react and spin around – instead she kept looking at the details of the room. He wouldn’t attack her, not yet.

He didn’t want to kill her – at least not openly – until he’d gotten what he really wanted.

Whatever that was would occupy their conversation for the next few minutes, she was sure of it.

“Why?” she said finally, turning to the place where she knew he was – even if she couldn’t see him yet.

“Because you are drawn to me,” he told her as he stepped out of darkness, almost as if he’d wrapped it around himself like a cloak. Out now, out into the flickering, fire light.

“I am?” she asked. She didn’t feel drawn. She knew what ‘drawn’ felt like – she’d been drawn by fate and destiny to someone much more significant than this self-important leech. This wasn’t drawn.

Repulsed.

Curious about his hair care products.

But not drawn.

“Inevitably,” he said.

“Really?”

“All women of power – all huntresses are drawn to me,” he said the words like he really believed them. “The darkness in me sings to the darkness in them. And in you. You are no different, Tara Maclay. Only your methods have changed, but in every way that matters you are as they are. Of the darkness.”

Tara smiled slightly; she couldn’t help it in the face of such misplaced pomposity. “Hmm. You really didn’t do much research did you?”

She and Willow weren't like anything he’d seen before. Their magic was one that had been dead and gone millennia before he’d even been born. Oh, and chances of her being drawn to him… hovered right around zero.

“Put the stake down.” His words made it a command, even if his tone suggested it was an invitation.

Tara made a play of thinking about it for a second or two. For some reason she wanted him to know he was wrong, besides she didn’t just want to start staking him yet.

Willow needed time to get Principal Flutie out of the castle and she only had so many stakes. After that she’d have to go borrow a sword or axe from the wall. “Hmm. Let me see. Should I put the stake down, just because you want me to?”

“Yes.” The final sound of the word lingered, as if becoming part of the room itself.

“Erm. No. Besides, I have so many more for you.”

Aside from giving Willow time, the truth was she still wasn’t sure what she was going to do about him yet – but obeying his commands certainly didn’t seem to be the best way to condemn him to a final death.

“Put it down. Put them all down,” he said, the words rolled over her, almost like a caress. One that was unwelcome. “Then you can come to me as an equal. Unprotected and yet unafraid. Ready to meet your destiny.”

“We already discussed that,” she said.

He smiled, perhaps appreciating her strength of will and relishing the challenge? He seemed like the type who’d be into all that.

Whatever.

He certainly didn’t seem puzzled or worried that his commands weren’t having an effect on her. So… he was expecting resistance – but probably still thought he’d overcome her in the end. Maybe that was what drew him to Slayers and the other people who hunted his kind. Because no one else gave him that challenge?

And did she care? Actually… yes.

“Do you cling to the stake because you fear me?” he asked.

“No.” Nor was it some sort of phallic substitute, something Jenny was keen to tease her about and she wondered if that’d become part of his insinuation.

“Then perhaps you fear the freedom my kiss will bestow on you?” They started to circle each other slowly.

“Not really,” she said simply. “I’ve been much closer to being bitten than you’ll ever get. And I chose to put myself there.” She wasn’t about to go into her history with Willow – or the thing Willow had once been.

Not with him.

He had no reason to know. She wouldn’t let him get as close as the vampire version of Willow had always been. He’d never get what he wanted because she’d already faced her destiny. Faced it, embraced it and loved it. Every single day.

“You see… You do want it,” he said. Was this the Dracula equivalent of glee? He seemed to think he’d been ‘proved right’ or something. “You put yourself in these situations hoping that one day, one of us will conquer you. One day we will free you from your fear.”

“No,” she said, still circling him. “I had the stake then too. And eventually I used it.”

“But someone else has tasted you?” he asked.

“Not like you mean.”

Now she was joking with him? Perhaps there was an effect he was having on her. She could feel the power of his charisma, but feeling its presence she was perfectly placed to resist and counter it. Its sheer unnaturalness disgusted her when she supposed he was hoping for fascination and longing.

“Where is his bite?”

“There is no bite,” she said. She didn’t bother to correct his assumption about the gender of the vampire who would’ve given it to her.

“You’re afraid. But also curious…” he said.

“Actually, I’m thinking,” Tara said. She was thinking about how she was going to kill him. There was plenty of wood in here, she could call up the living spirit of what it had once been and entangle him – but ultimately that was only going to have a lasting effect if wood piercing the heart did anything of lasting value.

In his case it wasn’t going to solve anything, and it’d take much more energy than a simple staking.

“Stop me, Tara. Stake me if you must.” It was more than an invitation, it was practically a caress. An unwanted caress. “It is your function, your purpose. Your gift.”

“I already did that. It didn’t work then and it probably won’t work now,” she said. She wasn’t about to waste her time and stakes with that unless she had to. And every second she could wait was more time for Willow…

“Then perhaps you should burn me?”

Tara smiled. The fact that he was suggesting it confirmed that it wasn’t something that would stop him. He didn’t seem the type to try a double bluff. Dealing with Slayers, someone would’ve called him on it by now.

“You don’t seem to be afraid of fire,” she said gesturing to the roaring hearth and the flickering candles. What vampires had done before electric lights she wasn’t sure, but it probably involved a fair few accidental combustions or sitting in cold, dark rooms.

He smiled back at her and his tone changed from seductive to reasonable. “You see… You already know a little of me. But I have so much more to show you, to teach you. Without me, and what I can give you, you will never be all that you could. You will never reach your dark glory.”

“There’s nothing about you I need to know,” she assured him. His tricks were curiosities but hardly a catastrophic threat when he was so restricted in what he could or would do. Ultimately he was still just a vampire.

Besides, he didn’t seem to be overly interested in triggering an apocalypse. No, he was far too vain and self-obsessed for kind of thing.

“You want to understand me,” he told her, looking deep into her eyes.

She didn’t avoid his gaze, or break the contact – despite being wary of any mental powers he might be able to employ. She knew the Master had possessed some sort of mind controlling power. That wasn’t for Dracula though – to use such a power, to control her, would spoil what he wanted to achieve. He wanted her submission, her willing submission after the challenge.

He wanted to win.

And he couldn’t feed on her until she surrendered.

As for what she wanted… She wanted him to understand the truth of her words. She wasn’t conflicted at all. What she said was what she meant and if he was trying to coerce or coax her into anything… It wasn’t working. “I want to send you away. Forever.”

“Forever, yes. I can give you eternity to discover yourself, your power,” he promised her, slipping into that more seductive tone again.

“You’ve really not done your homework have you?” she asked again, taking a guess at just why his words weren’t having the effect he supposed they would be.

“Everything will be clear to you after a taste, just a little. Enough that you will know, and understand,” he said. He tried to assure her, as if that would make everything all right.

“Oh no,” she said. “I have a steadfast rule – no one bites me. No one.” There was a tiny white lie in that statement but the bites she was thinking about didn’t draw blood. Willow liked to nibble… just a little.

“I didn’t mean for me,” he said holding out his wrist and running a nail along it, cutting himself.

“And there’s another rule I have,” she said with disgust.

Never, not even in those dark days with a vampire named Willow, had she ever wondered what it was that drew a vampire to blood. Not even for a moment. At first she’d always assumed it was a need for sustenance, but there was no denying there was something else it gave them.

She’d seen the effect it’d had on Willow, back then, and she understood there must be something else to it to keep them hunting night after night when they didn’t even need to drink that often in order to exist.

Existence wasn’t enough for them…

“All those years hunting us, fighting us, and you never even wanted a taste, Tara Maclay?” he asked. “To understand why we do what we do? I don’t believe that. You crave it, you crave understanding. Just as you crave me. You crave me because I can give you what you’ve always known you wanted.”

Oh, now that was funny. That really made her laugh. And she did, right there she laughed in Dracula’s face. Willow would be so proud. “Crave? You? No,” she said when she managed to stop.

He seemed piqued by her lack of respect and probably by the humour she found in the situation. That was just fine – pissing him off was the least of what she was going to do to him.

At least once she figured out how to deal with him in any kind of permanent way.

“You have no idea what I can give you,” he said. “You have no idea what you even are,” he chided her.

Tara shook her head. “I know exactly what I am.”

Plainly disbelieving, he challenged her. “What do you think you know?”

“Well, amongst other things – but probably most relevant to you right now… I’m gay.”

He stopped circling and paused, looking at her. He seemed about to say something, but he stopped himself, uncertain of what to make of that. What to do or say?

“Yup,” she continued. “I’m a big old dyke.” Well, not so old, or even that big. But the ‘dyke’ part stuck.

Outing yourself threw lots of people, most of them had never considered what they’d say, and he was no different. Could he really never have run across any of the one in ten before? It seemed unlikely. But possible, especially if he was used to pursuing Slayers. There couldn’t have been that many he’d encountered or the Council would definitely have done something about it.

Wouldn’t they?

Or maybe they wouldn’t have. That was the kind of caring bunch they were. There was always another Slayer coming along, and they weren’t expected to live long. Perhaps that was one thing she would have liked him to tell her, how many had there been?

But she wasn’t about to ask for information. “Also,” she said, “I’m a practitioner of the magic within all living things.”

That didn’t seem to register with him at all, but she thought it was another one of the reasons that she could resist the allure he obviously thought he had. Gay, magical and most importantly…

“Oh, and I’m in love.” She smiled as sweetly as she could manage.

He smiled, satisfied at last.

“Not with you,” she said, almost as an afterthought.

His face darkened, stretched into the animalistic features associated with the nature of his demon, and then he came at her. He seemed to launch himself straight up into the air before diving down towards her like some giant bird, the growl that he was emitting rippling through the air ahead of him.

Of course, she was ready for him to attack her. Despite the fact that he’d made out he was somehow superior, more controlled and all round better than other vampires – he was still just that.

A vampire.

In the end, vampires were just as much a slave to their demons as to their stomachs.

Tara took a step sideways and back, staking him in mid-flight. She watched as the dust from his destruction settled down on the ground. It didn’t look remarkable or as fiery as some, but she didn’t take her eyes off it and within a few seconds he was reforming himself right there in front of her. Gathering the motes of dust together until they became a shape and a shape became a form and a form became a vampire.

So she staked him again, just as soon as she thought he had a heart for her to shove it in.

Certain he’d be back again, so she stood over the spot and started to compose next week’s shopping list. They were definitely going to need more tuna. The way Willow was eating tuna at the moment they always needed more tuna. It was something her girlfriend had picked up from Toni. Still, it was a cheap and healthy addiction – dolphin friendly too, they always made sure of that.

Bananas. They needed bananas. Great for quick bursts of energy and if Toni was going to start coming round again, she’d probably be running over.

She thumped the stake into his chest but just hit the stone floor, as he wasn’t solid enough to destroy again yet. “Hmm, sorry,” she said as she drew back the stake and this time waited until he was composed enough to be dusted once again. Bananas, yeah. Nice green ones they could pick off and eat as soon as they were ready.

Whoosh.

Breakfast cereal.

And milk. It would probably be best to pick up a gallon.

Dinners… what were they going to make for dinners that they hadn’t had recently? Did they need to consider the possibility Toni might come round again after this morning? Maybe even for dinner? No, it’d be better to invite her – if things looked any better – and shop for that at the time. But with exams coming up they might need to eat on the run anyway…

Best to be flexible. Lots of pasta, noodles and veggies. That way they could mix and match quickly. It was a while since they’d recharged all the staple items anyway. She’d have to check the cupboard for brown rice.

This time she held herself back and only staked him when he was already fully formed, right down to the dull, dead, gleam in his eyes.

He just wasn’t going to quit was he? What had she decided on about the shopping? Flexibility… yeah. Speed and ease of cooking.

“You see, I did my research,” she announced with a sigh. “Even though you skipped it. All those things I told you about me were pretty obvious to anyone who looked. Anyone who checked would know that I was never going to fall – in any way – for you.”

She staked him again to punctuate the end of the sentence, checking her bag she still had plenty more left, up to now she’d been able to pull back fast enough to just see two stakes burned up with him. She could keep this going for a while yet.

“I’ve got lots of stakes and I can see from your face that it must hurt,” she said. He didn’t start to reform as quickly this time.

“Trust me, love, it does.” Willow said. Naturally she’d been as aware of her lover’s presence as Willow was of where to find her.

“Hi, honey,” Tara said to the woman she loved.

“Hey, baby,” Willow replied, coming up alongside her.

“Kiss,” Tara insisted.

Naturally Willow obliged. “You staked Dracula without me. Again,” Willow complained after they’d parted, looking down at the carpet of dust at her feet, kicking at it a little and making a trail through it with the point of her shoe.

“Many times,” Tara said. “I’m sorry. I know how you wanted to have a chance – but look,” she gestured at the reforming vampire. “You can still kill him.”

Willow looked, “Really?” she asked.

“Since when could I ever deny you anything?” Tara asked, pleased when Willow thumped one of her own stakes into the vampire’s chest and then, without missing a beat, turned to kiss her again.

“I honestly can’t remember the last time you did,” her girlfriend promised her. “But I’ll be sure to let you know when I do.”

“Did you find Principal Flutie?” Tara asked. Willow didn’t seem to have been gone all that long. Or had this taken longer than she’d thought.

“Eventually,” Willow assured her. “He’s out in the hall, dusting. I thought I should leave him out there… until we’d done what had to be done here.”

“Good idea,” Tara said, glancing back to the main doors of the hall and seeing…

Rupert and Jenny.

No, more than that.

This was a ‘scantily clad’ Rupert and Jenny. More of them than she ever wanted to see. On the other hand if she kept her figure as well as Jenny had, even after her friend had given birth to two kids, she knew Willow would remain a very happy woman.

Like, wow. She hadn’t seen this much of Jenny since the last time they’d gone swimming before Ben was born.

And like… What the heck were they doing here with next to no clothes? “What are they doing here?” she asked, turning back to what was left of Dracula.

“Oh, I found them,” Willow said, sounding mysterious. Which meant she intended to sound that way. Willow didn’t do innocent mysteriousness.

“Here to help,” Rupert said brightly.

“Yes, we wanted to be very helpful,” Jenny said.

“Did you bring stakes?” Tara asked, giving them just enough rope to hang themselves with. She could credit life with Willow for her boldness; once upon a time she’d just have blushed at their obvious discomfort and not mentioned how they were dressed at all. Or undressed as the case seemed to be.

“Ah… Yes, we did, actually,” Rupert said.

She glanced back again, fixing her eyes on him. “I’m not going to ask where you’re keeping them,” she said. “Either of you,” she said, turning her attention to Jenny for a moment. Then she whacked another stake into Dracula who was probably using her distraction in an attempt to sneakily build himself up again.

“I think we’re at an impasse,” Willow said.

“Hmm,” Tara agreed. “I was thinking noodles and pasta and things for dinner next week. Veggies… pick up a large pack of cubed turkey for frying?”

“That’ll be nice, free range though,” Willow agreed and staked the vampire once more. Like Tara had earlier, this time it was too soon and the stake banged the stone instead. “We haven’t had turkey for a while.”

“Annoying isn’t it?” Tara asked. “Give him a moment.”

Willow lashed out again, smiled as he was dusted. “That’s better.”

“There you go,” Tara said.

“We need some onions,” Willow told her. “Red for preference. And some garlic puree, I finished that up last night.”

“You used it all?” Tara asked, disbelieving.

“Well, I made you that pasta salad on Tuesday,” Willow said. “The one we shared at school?”

“Oh, yeah. Okay, that was good,” Tara admitted and thumped one of her stakes into the vampire again. It came away charred but still usable. “We might want some sun dried tomato too. Did you finish that off?”

“All in a good cause,” Willow said.

Tara nodded.

“Do you think we might get this finished?” Rupert asked. “Much as I like listening to you two planning your trip to the store, it is getting a rather chilly in here, despite the fire. There’s quite a draft.”

Tara glanced back. “So I see,” she replied, trying to give the words some significance. Where were their clothes? Jenny was carrying a sweater, but it didn’t look to be in very good condition. It looked ripped, or cut… something. Just something she could hold in front of her underwear.

“Real friends would offer their coats,” Jenny said, equally as significantly.

“That’ll have to wait a moment,” Tara said as she staked Dracula again. Jenny just waved her hand. A dismissive ‘take your own, sweet time.’

“You know, eventually we’ll run out of stakes,” Willow said.

“Would you like another turn?” Tara asked. She wasn’t worried about that just yet.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Willow said.

“My pleasure,” Tara kissed her again as they waited for him, but it didn’t take long before Willow dusted him. “Not too bright is he?” she mused as a million specks of dust drifted to the floor. Again.

“Your dying to ask aren’t you,” Willow whispered.

“Huh?”

Willow tipped her head back towards Rupert and Jenny.

“Oh yeah…” Tara said. She really did want to know.

“It’s better than you know,” Willow promised. “Better than you can guess, I guarantee it.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Jenny asked.

“Nothing,” Willow promised her. “Nothing at all,” and turned her attention back to Dracula.

This time they let him reform, there was an unspoken consensus between them. Somehow she and Willow had both decided what needed to happen. They needed to talk about what had happened to Rupert and Jenny and they needed to get out of here.

But first. They allowed the vampire to straighten up, and adjust his ruffled clothes, eying them warily. How his clothes were reformed with the rest of him she had no idea. Willow had been naked as the day she’d been born when she came back, but that’d been a lot harder to achieve too.

He didn’t even have a hair out of place.

“Leave town,” Tara said to him. “As soon as we’ve gone.”

“Yeah, and take those skanky homophobic sisters with you,” Willow said. “If they can do the same trick.”

Tara had been about to lay down the conditions of his freedom. She didn’t know how to kill him – yet – but none of that mattered. What the heck was Willow talking about? Homophobic? “Huh?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Willow promised. “About the dinner plans,” she said more loudly for the benefit of Jenny and her husband. Obviously more loudly. So obviously she wasn’t going to fool anyone.

Not even Dracula.

The vampire cleared his throat, as if demanding attention be returned to him – rather than their ‘dinner plans.’ “And if I choose to stay and pursue you?”

“Then I’ll take the time to find a way to kill you,” Tara assured him, turning away after Willow staked him again. Just to make the point.

“Yeah… bitch!”

Tara paused, waited for him to reform, stand up again and then held up a finger to show him they weren’t done. He waited as she took Willow’s hand and led her away. “Yeah, bitch?” she asked.

“Well, I wanted to emphasise the point,” Willow said.

“I think the staking did that, but ‘Yeah, bitch’?” Tara felt she was obliged to ask. It was a little… out of character.

“He tried to seduce you,” Willow said, blushing. “I know he must’ve. That makes him a… well, you know the b-word.”

Tara squeezed her girlfriend’s hand and smiled. “You can’t say it?”

“I can say it, but I choose to save it for the right moment,” Willow assured her as they came to where Rupert and Jenny stood waiting.

“Don’t say it,” Jenny said.

“And don’t save it to say later either,” Rupert said.

“In fact, just forget about it altogether,” Jenny said. “We’ll all just forget about it, that way everything will return to normal all the quicker.”

Tara frowned.

What was going on here? What did Willow know that Jenny and Rupert didn’t want her to know? Why were they stood in Dracula’s great hall in their underwear? “Forget about saying ‘bitch’?”

“That’s what you were talking about?” Jenny asked.

Tara nodded.

Their friends looked at each other, blushed and shrugged. “That didn’t help us, did it Willow?” Rupert asked. “In fact it may rather have tipped our hand.”

Willow just shook her head and waved it off.

Tara knew she was going to have to find out. One way or another. Willow could try to keep it from her, if that made her feel she was keeping her word to the Giles’. Always assuming any word had been given. Yes, Willow could try, but Tara had her ways.

She’d always found they were very persuasive ways.

Leaving Dracula stood waiting for them to come back to him, Tara deliberately didn’t go back to him right away. Let him wait. Now there were other people who deserved her attention. But obviously a stake still rested in her palm and she was ready to launch it at him if she had to.

Meanwhile she took off her jacket and offered it to Jenny, choosing not to say a word about just why she’d need to provide anything to cover her friend up. They’d run into demons and vampires before. And in assorted combinations they’d – however briefly - been captured and rescued each other in the course of events too.

But not one of them had ever been stripped down to their underwear before… Now both Rupert and Jenny were, at the same time? Fortunately she hadn’t come out in her leather jacket. It wouldn’t have been long enough to cover anything down below and might actually have managed to look more indecent than walking around in bra and panties. Whatever ‘decent’ was.

Still, it was a look she and Willow had explored a couple of times.

But never while out hunting vampires.

Or even out of the house.

Tara felt that her silence as she handed over the coat was more significant than any question she would’ve asked could be. It was something that worked with Willow, and because the little girl had been raised around them, Faith too. She stayed silent in the face of the glaringly obvious – not asking questions. The pressure built and built – even though it was all in their heads – and eventually they’d confess all to her.

It was all part of the mythos that other people had built up around her – Willow being the main culprit. If the truth were told it was that, on some level, she was still the person she had been all those years before meeting Willow. She never wanted to embarrass anyone except in fun. She gave them their privacy and the fact they regarded it as a pressure to speak up was hardly her fault now was it?

She did what felt like the right thing and they confessed anyway. There really was no downside to still being just a touch shy.

“Thanks,” Jenny said, looking significantly at Willow.

Willow shrugged and took her own jacket off, holding it out to Rupert.

“That’s not going to fit,” Tara said.

“He’s not supposed to put it on,” Jenny said to them, taking the proffered jacket and tying it around her husbands waist by the sleeves, the main part of the coat hanging down in front of him rather like a skirt.

Tara, who stood behind him at that point, had to the one to point out the flaw in that design. “Ah, butt.”

“But what?” Rupert asked.

“No, I mean… butt. Arse?”

He tried to move the coat around but his wife stopped him. “No husband of mine is going around town showing his bits off,” she assured him.

“It’s not like I’m naked, dear,” Rupert said.

“It’s not like you’re entirely not-naked though,” Willow said.

Rupert sighed, and brought the coat back around in front of him, which was what his wife had intended all along. Then he tried to change the subject. “We’re leaving him?” he asked as he looked over at Dracula, still just stood there.

“Eventually we’ll run out of stakes,” Tara told him. “Though we could go for a while yet.”

“But with all the tricks you’ve used,” Rupert said. “Willow, stop it!” He moved to stop Willow from getting around behind him.

“I’m open to suggestions. Everything we do to vampires is pretty much based on their known weaknesses when you come right down to it,” Tara said.

“Wood through the heart, decapitation, fire. Apart from daylight, we know he’s immune to all of the classics,” Willow added.

And that was that.

Except for staking him one more time. Just as a parting gesture.

As they exited the hall, Tara glanced back and saw that Dracula seemed to have had the decency not to reform himself that one last time. She closed the doors behind them. It was just a shame Rupert couldn’t do the same for his own behind.

But hey, as long as he walked at the back of the group then the only people to see him would be… other people. Tara could live with that.

He just had to hope none of them were his students. Try imposing a late book fine to someone who’d seen you walking around town with a pink jacket tied around your waist and your butt hanging out.

She was certain librarian school wouldn’t recommend it.

“Are you sure about this?” Jenny asked, and she didn’t mean her husband.

“It’s okay,” Tara said. “He needs a willing victim and he’s not going to find one here.” The truth was that she was less sanguine in her own mind about this than she was pretending to be. If you left a vampire alive you were condemning hundreds or even thousands of people to death. Maybe someone in town.

But the restrictions on this one… and the fact she didn’t know how to kill him…

What were they supposed to do? Devote their lives to staying and sharpening stakes just to plunge them into him? No. When you came right down to it a vampire that couldn’t get any sustenance from an unwilling victim was a vampire that was - at least partly - controlled.

And he’d been here for her. He knew he couldn’t have her – maybe he’d head off to find a Slayer or something? She’d have to get Rupert to pass a warning back to the Council.

She sighed.

All that rationalisation was fine, but… yeah, it still worried her. Not wanting them to see past what she hoped was a calm exterior to the troubled mind behind it, she decided to tease them again – just a little. “You two seem pretty quiet. What’s up?”

Jenny looked at her, as if weighing her motives and what she might have known – or guessed. Tara supposed she must have passed that examination as the teacher answered. “No reason. We’re fine.”

Time to take a swing at what was going on. “So did you meet the Sisters then?” she guessed. Something had happened and Jenny had been all interested in the girls who’d used to be a part of her clan, way back when.

“No,” Rupert said quickly.

Too quickly. So that was it. The Sisters. The Brides of Dracula.

“Nooo,” Jenny confirmed.

“That’s a shame,” Tara said, willing to appear to let it go. “So where are your clothes? Di\
d you have to cause a diversion with them or something? Make a rope maybe?” It was tough not to laugh, it really was. But then Jenny knew her share of secrets that Tara wouldn’t want revealing too. She couldn’t go too far.

Yet.

“A diversion for what?” Principal Flutie asked as Jenny took his arm and firmly led him from the castle. “What am I doing here? Why am I holding a feather duster?”

“All good questions, Bob,” Jenny said to him. “Questions that probably deserve answers.”

He seemed to accept he wasn’t going to get them though. Which was probably best all around.

“Mr Giles?” the Principal asked as they walked away from the castle.

“Yes, Principal Flutie?”

“Do you know your bottom’s hanging out of your… whatever that is?” he asked.

“He knows,” Jenny assured her boss. “But we’re not going to talk about it, okay?”

Picking something from between his teeth, Principal Flutie nodded, more interested in the whatever it was. “Eww. Bug.”

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

[Katharyn]

Okay, better late than never J

I did think, Sara, that you were being a little ambitious about saying you’d catch up in a few weeks. We are talking about several novels worth of writing here LOL

Second Chronicle is a seriously different animal. For a start with Willow alive, with Tara and in love there’s none of the darkness – at least not focused on them. The point of it is to deal with the unanswered questions left over from the first Chronicle. Though it features bad guys it’s not about them – or beating them.

It’s about the girls living their lives, making the world a better place than the prime Buffy reality and how much they feel they owe Sunnydale/the world… How much duty must they perform before they can have their lives back.

Right now, they feel they owe everyone a lot and they can’t get out of what that means – even though they are happy and together.

Second Chronicle is set 4 years on from the first – however you’ll still find Willow occasionally confused about what the vampire did and what she did… in fact you’ll find out just how much ‘memory’ she carries with her.

And I know what you mean about Tara being the focus. It was unconscious for me writing it too – I was intending to write about both of them but because Willow’s point of view really didn’t come into being until she became human, I’d neglected her too. She has changed – she will change more. And you can’t gloss over what she did. I took my cue from Darla’s return in Angel, but she knows. She remembers and it’s not nice.

You’ll get more about what Willow did to her mother later from an other PoV, suffice it to say it wasn’t pleasant at all – even by her standards.

It’s the hardest thing for Willow to separate what she remembers as a vampire from what she remembers as a person. Memory doesn’t come neatly delineated with cards that say ‘vampire’/’non-vampire.’ You have to think about them to tell where the difference lies and that is why she can’t forget, and in most ways wouldn’t want to forget either.

The fact she forgives herself here isn’t the end of the matter – it just allows her to function as a person in the real world outside of the farm. You know, if were her then I might never have left the farm!

And as a functional person she can get ‘booya’ as you put it J Tara doesn’t deserve what the Council accused her of. However we only have to look at business and politics to understand how they made the decision. I don’t have an issue with their decision so much as Giles’ decision to go along with – a distinction Faith made before her untimely death. And remember that death – he and Jenny lost too. I could have understood it from his point of view AFTER Faith died – but not before.

And that, in part, explains why he follows her later. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s caution. Tara might’ve done the same thing in his place. After all his wife is all ready to let Tara and Willow be around their kid…

Thus when he sees them together… It pulls off just what you quoted and persuades him things can be okay.

I can only hope you enjoy Second Chronicle. As I said, it’s a different animal but everything in there is the logical progression of the people we leave them as at the end of the first. Second looks at what their future’s could (and couldn’t) be and tries to find a way through that. It’s not – I freely admit – amazing in the sense First was. Short of killing Willow again there’s really no way to top the VW/T progression to get them together. But… I hope you can enjoy it.

Plus I get to play with new characters… always fun.

Thanks so much.

Katharyn

[Forrister]

I think I upset Brandy - she abandoned my lap because I was laughing so hard. I'm currently getting annoyed kitten stares. It's ok, soon I'll give her the fish I was saving for her dinner and all will be forgiven.

Dracula was a hoot. He must be the only vampire still operating in the modern era without even a vague hint of gaydar. His attempts to seduce Tara verged on the comic, but the really funny thing was the addition of Jenny, Giles & Principle Flutie. Thats what set me of in fits of giggles and so disgusted my cat. I'd still like to see Drac & Dru get together. I occasionally like my comedy black.

So who (or what) coaxed Drac to town at this point? What ulterior motives lurk in his arrival? Is this a distraction for bigger (and nastier) things?

I'm sure all shall be revealed. (A bit like Giles' butt really . . . . *giggle*) In the meantime, well done Katharyn!

Forrister

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi
Always wear underwear

[Katharyn]

First of all let me apologise for the disgruntled kitty. It wasn't my fault directly, but I failed to consider cat based problems. A fundamental of writing. My bad.

I wish I'd thought about his lack of gaydar! I put it down to overconfidence and lack of research, but gaydar would've been way funnier. I can imagine the conversation now.

I had to have a 'Xander' type character to eat bugs, and Bob Flutie just sprang to mind. But J/R came more from the fact I had to separate Tara and Willow and Bob FLutie wasn't much of an excuse. Hence, all you see there. Also it comes from Rupert's liking for his canon meeting with the sisters...but without him cheating on Jenny

Drac and Dru... well, I hinted and now everyone knows. You'll get to see that - if briefly.

What coaxed Drac to town? Easy. Tara.

No one plays Dracula. They just knew he was on his way anyway and made use of it.

So pleased you liked it

Katharyn

[chronic]

I loved the repeated staking, particularly Tara composing the shopping list as she did it. Willow's "yeah bitch" made me laugh too.

It got me wondering what would happen if Dracula was left outside in the sunlight. Presumably he'd keep burning up then reforming until the sun set - not fun, but not permanent either.

Looking forward to the next update.

[Katharyn]

Thanks Chronic

I had to figure that staking Dracula would eventually get boring... but Willow's perspective on these things is sometimes quirky.

Drac in the sunlight - yeah, I think you are dead on about how that would work.

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

I'm in mid transition of ISP's and there's been a snafu so until they sort that out I'll be posting from work on Monday's rather than Sunday's at home as I do now.

That said, here is the next part

Enjoy.

Katharyn

-----

Title: The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle – Tara vs. Dracula – Round 4 (Part 228)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Very little is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Okay, this is a cheat. The final TvD scene doesn’t involve Tara vs. Dracula at all, but it’s all in the aftermath of it. Besides, it’s still kind of fun. I hope.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional. Okay, I just realised in this mini-arc the Giles’ did get unconventional but hey, they had fun.
Notes: The thing about the girls worries about being oversexed that appears later on in this part… This is me commenting both on my own fic and some other ones out there where this is even more the case. Everyone loves PWP fics, but when there is supposed to be a plot and all they seem to do is have make love – often at strange moment - then THAT’s when they’re oversexed. Doesn’t mean it’s not good to read though!
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else, but doesn’t keep me oversexed (dang it!) Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW. When was the last time anyone thanked her?


The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle

Tara vs. Dracula – Round Four

By

Katharyn Rosser


A few hours after part 227


His awareness was necessarily limited and transitory in this form. No eyes, no ears. None of the traditional senses were available to him. But over the years he’d learned to feel the presence of anything that was ‘other’ and even a general direction and proximity.

No more than that though.

It was enough to know there was another intruder in his home. His servant, hopeless as the human he’d found at the school had been, wasn’t answering his mental summons.

His Brides… they would have to find their own way back from this disembodied state. He could be without their company for some weeks as they gradually found the strength to draw the fine particles together.

Or it might happen overnight.

They’d never demonstrated the control necessary for him to be certain of their prowess and, until now, he’d usually managed to protect them. They were but young. A mere century or two old. Their finesse and power would increase over time.

So he was alone, but he wasn’t alone enough.

Someone was here with him.

He’d allowed discretion to overrule his desire to rejoin the world for the past hour or so, but now he finally willed himself to reform. It was all he could do in this state, express his will to be what he should be. And that was what his Brides would be trying to find within themselves. They’d succeed or they wouldn’t.

Of course he felt nothing for them, nothing but a comfortable familiarity that this journey had been seeking to end. He’d wanted to bring another to his side, to his unlife and to his bed for those more carnal of pleasures. Someone worthy of the honour he’d been willing to bestow - eternal life.

Not another succubus, as his Brides had become. Not a servant. Not a minion.

An equal. He’d been looking for so long and he’d thought, this time…

But she’d rejected and destroyed him.

All his powers, all that the demons he’d dealt with had given him, had failed to sway her. She was too great a challenge How could he have missed the fact her desires lay with her own gender?

She’d left him here like this, not even worth the effort of discovering a way to give him final death. Like this he had no power, no form, but it was preferable to how the manner of her rejection made him feel.

In all his existence – even as a human - he could not recall feeling this way before. Even his death had been his own choice, forcing his sire to drain him and return him to unlife.

Oh, he’d lost battles. He’d been destroyed more times than he could count but…

He imagined this was ‘humiliation.’

How many of these ‘gay’ women could there be? Was this what would happen if he ever tried to seduce any of them with the lure of his kiss?

And if so why hadn’t this happened to him before? Could he really never have encountered a woman who preferred her own sex before? Perhaps he’d always picked those he knew would be receptive. Perhaps that was it.

Or was it the ‘in love’ part of Tara Maclay that had thwarted him rather than her carnal preferences? Or some combination of the two?

Doubt. It was at least a century since he’d been in doubt. And she’d done that to him too.

He’d feed where he could, with whoever would accept and provide for him. But he knew he was drawn to strong, dangerous women – he always had been. The challenge had always attracted him after centuries of simple, easy conquests.

But the challenge wasn’t nearly as seductive when he knew the outcome would be the failure of his charm. A failure to bring her around to his way of thinking and to welcome her to the night. When he’d made this bargain, sacrificing his ability to feed from the unwilling, the demon Gakatay hadn’t mentioned the resistance of the Sisters of Lesbos.

That certainly hadn’t been part of the bargain.

Things had been so much easier in the good old – god fearing - days. Back then repression and suppression by the humans themselves would’ve avoided this situation. Such women wouldn’t have had a chance to be in love with each other, since their own human society would’ve frowned on it. At least outside the portions of society where money obscured a great many things.

Although… He had to admit there had been that Countess in Vienna…

And the wife of the cobbler in Salzburg.

The serving girl in Grimsby…

More besides them where his charms had failed him, but they’d never given him a clue as to the reason…

Perhaps this had been happening more than he’d thought, the simple difference this time was the importance of the huntress. The destiny he’d wished for her.

Seeking women of power as well as beauty had become something that’d helped the centuries pass more quickly. Perhaps twice in each one he’d seek out a Slayer or, when the chance presented itself, someone like Tara Maclay.

He invested a lot of time and effort seeking these powerful women out. And this time… He’d found a huntress who could resist him.

And stake him.

Perhaps he was fortunate she couldn’t be bothered to actually try to permanently destroy him, since he really had no defences that she hadn’t already stripped away. Whether it was some combination of her love and… What was that modern word? Her love and her sexuality? He had no idea.

But before such a woman he was defenceless. And where the challenge had been the draw with innumerable Slayers, this time he realised he could not win.

Being staked did more than ‘smart’ as she’d alleged. It was a form of agony he preferred not to endure so often, at least not unnecessarily. When they’d been right here his persistence it had been a matter of pride, not letting the huntress have her victory in the hope that in the end she would fall to his kiss because of his resilience.

Now they were gone… there was no pride to be defended, so he’d chosen to rest in this disjointed form. It was as natural to him as his own; it was only the transition that brought the pain.

But with someone in his castle, what could he do but show himself and challenge their presence? This was his territory; his home and it meant more to him than a place to live. It was essential to his very existence. Another bargain had been made. Without it’s presence, without the soil it protected he would never be able to sleep and he knew what that would do to him.

Once he had eyes again, he laid them on the vampire – yes, another vampire – who stood over him. Something primitive within him reacted to her presence.

First of all to the invasion of his territory and in a heartbeat he was upright, on his feet, stood before a female who made his Brides look like the old hags of the village this castle had once towered over.

And she was perfectly savage. He could feel it. There would be no rationality to her actions because there was nothing rational about her. Nothing at all.

But neither was she instinctive. The animal, the beast within did not control her.

Was this…? Could this vampire be the huntress he should have been seeking in Sunnydale? It’d never happened before, but… He thought he knew who this might be. He believed that perhaps they’d even met.

Could a vampire draw him? Could she be both the challenge and the solution to his lonely existence?

“That’s a good trick,” she said as if there had been some bad ones. “Do it again. Do it again!” The vampire was begging in a way that would’ve been almost insulting in anyone other than her.

Childlike… or insane. Oh yes, he was sure he’d heard of her, though their previous meeting had been carefully chaperoned by that insufferable poet, William.

But no matter how unbalanced she might appear, she was still utterly captivating. He’d never before looked on a vampire and felt the hunger that the Slayers and huntresses brought out in him. He hadn’t felt this way since he’d turned Mina and kept her with him for a decade or two.

Oh, the dark perfection in a blood red dress that brought out the paleness of her face.

Could she be…?

Could she be his?

The poet was long dead, killed in this very town. And, he believed, this dark queen had been the one to turn the lover of Tara Maclay. Connection upon connection upon connection.

It could almost be fated. In a sense Tara Maclay could have gifted this magnificent creature to him.

“It is an ability you could learn,” he said. “In time.” Lies flowed easily off his tongue. Nothing he could do was learned – he didn’t have that sort of time to wait for his rightful powers to come to him. His abilities were the result of deals made with gypsies, demons and others.

In time she would learn that, and make the deal for herself if she was able to pay the price. But for now, he hungered after her in ways the idea of Tara Maclay had never stirred in him.

He hungered for this vampire’s presence in his home, in his existence. He felt the need for the blood of those she’d taken flowing through his veins, washing over his tongue. The blood of the unwilling. It’d been so long…

Of course he could kill and taste them now, but through her perhaps one of his bargains could be circumvented… She could take them by brutal, deadly force and then willingly allow him to feed from her. He could taste the sweet taste of fear once again untainted by the lust he’d been forced to inspire for so long.

Unless it was her lust… And that, he was certain, would be magnificent.

“Ooh yes,” she cooed. “You must teach me…”

“It will take time and dedication for you to realise just how powerful you can be,” he said, savouring the fact that the late – unlamented – William would never have let this one go.

He was about to take what his former rival had lost through his own careless death. In truth they hadn’t even been rivals. William had never really concerned him; the rivalry was all on the upstart’s side. William’s killing of Slayers a simple method of stopping him getting what he wanted from them.

All that way to China… and the Slayer had already been killed.

Perhaps they had been rivals, of a sort.

“Time you can spend with me. Here and wherever else we wish to be. Time to learn what I can teach you and for me to show you what you can teach me.”

He could feel the glorious power within her. Strength and viciousness far in excess of his own. He wanted that. He’d forgotten how much he might have needed it. Needed her.

“An eternity?” she asked him, plainly intrigued.

“Yes, my love. A dark eternity away from here,” he promised her. She would be vulnerable here – she could be destroyed and he needed her. Even if he hadn’t known it until this moment. He hungered for her as she’d hunger for him, in time.

Perhaps she already did. The way she circled him, played at plaiting his hair and never took her eyes from him. Yes, perhaps she was already fascinated by him.

He’d take a great deal of pleasure in unravelling her mysteries.

So there was no way he was going to tempt the wrath of the huntress Tara. He had been warned to leave and certain as he was of his new paramour’s power, why take chances? There was a whole world out there, and Tara Maclay only concerned herself with this tiny corner of it.

And now, with this new partner in eternity, he had no need of anything Sunnydale had appeared to offer to him.

“Yes. Yes!” she was stamping her foot in excitement, anticipation or was it the hunger? Had she tapped into his desires? Or had he tapped into hers?

“Just us and my dear Brides…” he gestured at the three of them, as freshly reformed as he was. While he was impressed with how fast they’d returned, he had to admit that they were somehow… lesser in her presence. Perfection had been redefined by her arrival. They would serve and amuse her, or he would let her dismiss or destroy them. Now he needed only her, he was certain of it.

The newcomer glided over to them, smiling innocently. “Do you like to play with dollies too?” she asked them. “Miss Edith and I love to play…”

He could see in his Brides’ faces that they knew things had changed.

But they were willing to accept their new places, he was sure of that. Just the five of them, hunting the world together.

Dracula smiled. He hadn’t been given this Dark Queen’s name – even though he knew just who she was - but it hardly mattered now did it? To him, every woman who fascinated him reflected a facet of Mina.

Mina who’d had a doll of her own once upon a time, one she’d turned to in her growing insanity.

And where was she now? All he knew was she still existed, as her sire onluy he could be certain of that.

Beyond hr existence… it no longer mattered. Perhaps here, finally, was someone to replace her. Someone who’d never leave him.

Someone who already embraced eternity and didn’t struggle against what she was.

Perhaps.

He looked at his new, Dark Queen. There were still doubts.

Until he could be certain he would recommence his search through the ages for his Mina. Until he found her again, this childlike devil would do. She and the forbidden blood he hadn’t even realised he was yearning for.

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

The castle vanishing just seemed to prove his point. Drusilla had been ready to leave. Her attention had been taken by just the person Wolfram and Hart had suggested it would be.

It hadn’t been ‘arranged’ but it hadn’t exactly been unexpected either.

Darla, of course, would be furious. She’d probably be furious with him. Ordinarily Ethan would’ve considered that a bad thing, but without Drusilla she’d actually need him more than ever.

The remaining senior vampire would be tied to him, ready to listen to his suggestions and to put herself where he needed her to be, without the mercurial Drusilla to bring a greater degree of blessed Chaos into the mix.

Everyone was happy.

Everyone but Darla, who hadn’t even had the courage to come out here with him. Drusilla hadn’t thought twice about joining him – in daylight. With a hop, skip and jump – and a momentary sizzle – she’d followed him to the car he’d enticed her to with promises of fun to be had.

Darla had been furious before they even left, but who could get Drusilla to do anything she didn’t want to?

And who could stop her from doing what she did want to?

No one.

“Home, James,” he said to the driver of the limo.

“My name is Earl, sir” the driver said.

“Indulge me, Earl. I’m British and eccentric.”

Earl gave him a professional smile, ready to set off. The man had taken the experience of driving Drusilla out to Dracula’s castle rather well. But then he was employed by Wolfram and Hart.

“You wouldn’t believe how often I hear that, sir.”

“Me too,” Ethan admitted.

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

Willow wasn’t entirely certain what it was they’d done. Okay, now that was a little white lie she was telling herself. Probably just to over dramatise it.

She knew what they’d done but she didn’t quite believe it.

Dracula. He was iconic. Of all the vampires in the entire world she’d never thought they’d take on, Dracula had been the one.

“Did we really just see off Dracula?” Willow wasn’t easily impressed by vampires – she knew from the inside out what it was to be one - but this wasn’t really a question of being a vampire.

The Master had impressed her; impressed her far more than Dracula would have had she still been one of the undead, but this was like… It was like meeting a movie star.

And staking him a few times.

Each.

Not something that happened every day.

“I think so,” Tara said. She sounded like she barely believed it herself.

They’d escorted Jenny and Rupert home and – after reassuring Toni that they were all okay - left those two to explain their lack of clothes. But rather than do that, Jenny had sent the girl to ask Ira to bring the kids back – which was strange in the age of the telephone.

Willow had the definite impression they’d both have preferred to sneak in, unseen, and put some clothes son.

And was it wrong to feel a certain satisfaction about Toni worrying about them? About she and Tara - too? No, she didn’t think it was wrong at all.

The afternoon stretched before them – now that daylight had returned – and the castle had already disappeared by the time they’d left the Giles residence.

That ‘day into night’ thing, it was a neat trick, Willow had to admit it. She had no idea how, or even if, they’d be able to mimic the effect. “So why so glum?” she asked her lover.

Not that she didn’t have an inkling. Beyond the thrill of meeting him, taking him on and proving they were better than the most famous vampire of all time… It really didn’t feel like much of an achievement.

“Oh, you know, whenever I’ve failed to kill a vampire in the past it’s always come back to haunt us,” Tara said.

“Whenever?” Willow asked, thinking how Tara’s failure to stake a certain vampire that had changed both their lives. Okay, not failure – more of a delay.

It hadn’t just changed her life; it’d given her life back.

Given her a life with Tara.

A life in love.

Tara nodded. “Even then baby, even then…”

Willow sighed, reminded of the grimmer parts of their past – there had been consequences to that delay – fatal ones for a lot of people who hadn’t deserved it. “Yeah, I suppose. But you know we’d still have been there now, staking him over and over. At least until we ran out of stakes,” she said.

Tara had to realise that. They couldn’t stand there forever staking Dracula could they? They’d had other things to do – like getting the Giles’ and Mr Flutie out of there safely.

“Maybe,” Tara said. At least that was half an agreement.

“You’ve seen the movies – he always comes back,” Willow said. They’d seen the movies; they often lay in bed late at night, chuckling at the blatant inaccuracies of the vampires presented on screen.

But this time…

She supposed Dracula had cornered the market on vampire lore, to the extent everyone today felt it was ‘cooler’ to shy away from the rules established there. But it seemed he’d let more of his nature slip out than might have been prudent.

Thank you, Bram Stoker.

Francis Ford Coppola, go back to the Philippines.

“But those are just movies.” Somehow Tara just didn’t seem convinced, despite the recent experiences they’d had.

“Usually I’d agree” Willow said. “But not when it comes to him. We both staked him, more than once. Everything I’d heard and everything we read pointed out how futile that - or the other classic methods - would be.”

They were nearly home, and even though it was only afternoon, she felt as if they’d been at it all night long. Whatever he’d done to make it seem dark must’ve screwed up her body-clock too somehow.

“I know…” Tara said, sighing once again. “Fire wouldn’t have been any better. Maybe not even sunlight. We’d have needed much more preparation to finish him for good. Maybe something like an eternal flame and you know how difficulty they are to sustain.”

Not to mention the… explosive side effects. And not chilli-explosive. Boom-explosive.

“See, you already know all this, now you just have to accept it.” Willow wanted to make it better, but she knew what was on Tara’s mind. It was on hers too, no matter how reassuring she was trying to be.

“Yeah,” Tara sighed.

“And you should just thank the Goddess we got there when we did,” Willow said. “Because I don’t know what would have happened if we had stopped to do any more research.”

Tara turned to her and frowned a little. “Why? Principal Flutie seemed okay when we dropped him off. Embarrassed perhaps, but Herbert was pleased to see him when he got back.”

“His wife wasn’t,” she said. Mrs Flutie was a… She was what could be called an ‘interesting character.’ And she Willow could absolutely see why the woman’s husband liked to organise - and stay to watch - so many after school activities.

She had to admit, if she’d been with a woman like that, so would she.

“I don’t think that was because he’d been away, more because he came back,” Tara said, smiling. Just a little.

Yeah. Jokes aside, Tara was probably right.

“Any,” Tara said, going back to the point. “Perhaps he’d have eaten a few more bugs… but he was fine, considering he was a thrall. And Rupert and Jenny were just locked up, weren’t they?”

It was a deliberately leading question. Tara wanted to know, but Willow wasn’t about to bite on that particular hook. “Mmm,” she said without lying. “You did good baby, you were like… like…” What were the words she was looking for? What would do Tara justice and keep her off the topic that neither of their friends wanted discussed?

“Yes?”

“You were like Tara Van Helsing. But much better looking than Peter Cushing ever was when he played the role,” Willow said, stirring in the compliment, no matter how obvious it might have already been.

Peter Cushing may have been many things, but he wasn’t a hot, sexy and glad to be gay vampire killer. Not in real life anyway.

“Tara Van Helsing?” Tara asked. “That makes me sound all exotic – or at least European.”

At least Tara seemed willing to be diverted.

So was that mission accomplished?

“Oh baby, you’ve always been exotic,” Willow said. There was something about Tara that’d always struck that way. It wasn’t her looks or her beauty. It wasn’t her accent or her scent. Not even her touch. It was something indefinable. Something… well, exotic.

“Really?” Tara asked, sounding surprised.

“Oh, hell-yeah, woman,” Willow assured her.

“And so now I just have to wonder why you’ve never called me that before?” Tara’s tone was challenging her as they entered their apartment building, checking the mailbox.

“Well, it never came up,” Willow said, pretending to be uninterested as she made a play of examining the junk-mail that’d been delivered, mentally discarding it all.

“Perhaps it never came up because whenever you were feeling I was especially exotic you were going in the opposite direction?” Tara teased, stopping her from reaching the stairs by pulling at the back of her skirt and teasing her backwards. Willow let herself be drawn, and received kisses to the neck for her trouble, making her shiver in pure appreciation.

“Hmm, so you think maybe it was while I was going in the opposite direction to an upcoming thing?” Willow asked. She was being distracted by the teasing finger at the very small of her back and the lips that gently caressed her neck.

Suddenly everything was looking very promising, and very much like she wouldn’t need to distract Tara from ‘other events’ at all.

“Yeah, you know – going down,” Tara whispered as this time the kiss was on her earlobe.

Willow turned and slapped her arm playfully, feigning indignation. Fruity talk? Right here in the lobby? She remembered a Tara who’d never have been comfortable with that kind of thing – but the memory was an old one, they’d both changed a lot since those days.

Comfort was… well, it was a comfortable thing.

“Well, even if I was going down,” Willow said. “That’s not the part of you that’s exotic. Even if that Brazilian was…” This time Tara’s kiss just stopped her. Mmm. She couldn’t rule out going down as a reason for not using the word ‘exotic’ though. Perhaps that was still when it’d struck her?

“How would you know whether it’s exotic or not? Hmm?” Tara teased her as they finally started up the stairs. “Lacking a basis for comparison and all? Unless you haven’t been telling me something about your past? Something ‘exotic’ perhaps?”

“I’m an open book,” Willow said. There was nothing, exotic or otherwise, like that in her past that Tara didn’t already know about. And Tara knew it all first hand. She’d always been the one who’d been with her.

Always.

“Well, I had noticed that something about you is usually open…” Tara said. “I just don’t remember it being a book. They’re usually something longer, smoother, sexier and quite often wrapped round me.”

“Which just goes to show it’s not always me that’s doing the going of the down,” Willow said. “And if you take relative motion into account…” She left the idea hanging, wondering whether Tara would get it. Sometimes their humour could be a little… idiosyncratic.

“In relative terms, you were coming up me?” Tara asked.

Willow pretended to be shocked. She’d set it up after all, she’d earned it. “Tara Maclay! What gave you such a potty mouth?”

They’d gone from moping about the vampire and hiding the truth about Rupert and Jenny, to the kind of verbal teasing that was almost always followed by teasing of another kind. The gentle pull on her skirt downstairs had been a clue. The kiss on the ear and neck another two, but now she was certain that Tara was having thoughts that were almost entirely carnal.

Could the day get better?

“That would be mostly you, baby,” Tara said. “But okay, I’m proud to admit I’ve done my share down there.”

“Play your cards right and tonight…” Willow said.

Oh, she was being bad now. Tonight? It ought to get a reaction from her girl. Why would Tara want to wait for tonight when she was already so clearly in the mood?

But Tara knew she was being played with. Tara always knew. All her faux-suggestion triggered in reply was to be stopped on the stairs again, a squeeze of the hand and then a lingering kiss that promised many, many more.

“Do you ever wonder if we’re oversexed?” Tara asked as they eventually continued up the stairwell.

Willow blinked. “Wow. Where did that come from? And more importantly, is it a trick question?”

“Trick? How do you mean?” Tara asked.

Willow knew that she had to explain this carefully or there could be an unnecessary delay before they got to the hot-woman-loving. Hot-woman-loving seemed even more important now than it had a few minutes ago, and it was always pretty damned important. “Well, if I answer ‘no’ then it sounds like I wouldn’t want more of the oversexing – if we were actually having of it.”

“You wouldn’t say ‘no’ though,” Tara said.

Absol-fragging-lutely.

“That’s right. There aren’t enough hours in the day for how much I want you, lover,” Willow said. “But if I say ‘yes’, then you might put me on a… well… You might put me on a diet.” And there was the quandary, what was the right answer to this a yes or no question?

‘Maybe’ could be construed as even worse than the more direct alternatives.

“Oh, you can diet if you want to…” Tara offered, and then added a condition before Willow could object. “Just so long as you keep eating.” The smile on her lover’s face quickly widening to a grin. A grin that revealed Tara knew neither of them would ever be able to stick to a diet like that.

They didn’t have the willpower, and they had altogether too much desire, to stick with it.

But Willow was still surprised. Her girl was going beyond fruity; Tara was positively inventive this afternoon. Must be something to do with their – almost – success. “Great,” she said, getting into the spirit of it. “We could call it the P-Diet. Low in all the bad things – burns calories.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to make any irresponsible claims. It can burn lots of calories,” Tara said. “It all depends. Sometimes not so many.”

“I stand corrected, but it’s always lots of fun regardless of the calorie burning potential,” Willow said. “Easy to stick to, enjoyable even. You know, we could make a fortune if we wrote a book.”

“Ha,” Tara laughed.

“Yeah, books. Maybe some videos,” she continued. “Instructional, all about the best things to eat. And how best to work up a sweat and burn off those calories.”

“Now you’re going too far,” Tara said.

None of which got around the point of the question though. “So do you think we’re oversexed?” Willow asked, trying to get a handle on where Tara was going with the thought.

“No… I guess not. I definitely don’t want less, but I just couldn’t help wondering. I do that from time to time. Wonder.”

“Well, stop it.”

Tara smiled, kissed her. “No need to worry, love. Have we ever gotten bored? Or even turned each other down?”

As if Tara didn’t know the to those questions answer already.

“I’d say we make love whenever we can,” Willows said, but was that Tara’s point? “That’s not the same as oversexed.”

“Then you can rest assured that, in my humble opinion, we’re good,” Tara promised her.

“In lust,” Willow provided the first part of the connection, holding up her hand to link fingers.

“In love,” Tara completed, wrapping those ever pleasurable fingers around her own, letting their mental connection snap into place momentarily.

They both smiled inside and started up the last flight of steps to their own floor.

“Okay, so I accept that you’re not about to put me on a diet,” Willow said. “Pussy-diet or otherwise. But come on, why did you ask? You don’t just wonder about things like that.” Willow stopped, falling behind her girlfriend.

Tara clearly had the same opinion that she did, that they were good. Very good. Overflowing with goodness and… other things that flowed when the mood was right. What could’ve prompted such a question though?

“I don’t know… Well, I mean…” Tara ummed and ahhed about how to say what was on her mind.

“Spit it out, girl,” Willow said, borrowing a phrase from the only English librarian she knew.

“I sometimes get the impression that people – other people - think the only thing we do together is go to bed and do the girl on girl thing,” Tara finally said. “People who don’t know us as well as Jenny and Rupert I mean.”

“Well,” Willow replied, thinking about that. “We do go to bed, and we do do the girl on girl thing. And we do do it very well, if I do say so myself. But without do do, cos eww.”

“True,” Tara said. “Very true. But it’s not all we do. I think that sometimes people assume we have this totally NC-17 life.”

“Nah, I’d rate some of it at least XXX,” Willow said, reaching up to tease the bottom of her lover’s skirt, then inside and under it to caress her bare leg. Oh, the advantage of the lower step.

“Well yeah,” Tara said, “but that’s it in a nutshell. It’s just ‘some of it’ – our lives I mean. I think some people assume all we do after we come home from hunting - or from school - is go to bed and make love.”

Willow watched as the thoughts played over Tara’s face. Just what was it that was very obviously going to happen right now then? They’d been hunting, killed the bad guy. Many times. And now they were almost certain to go to bed. The only doubt was whether they’d actually get to the bedroom before the making love part was upon them.

She was pretty confident, despite the fact her hand was up Tara’s skirt, that they’d make it to their apartment first… Even if not to the bedroom.

“Shocking,” she said, sweeping her hand higher up Tara’s smooth skin.

Tara rolled her eyes. “We do all kinds of things. We research, write papers, clean up, look after Toni – at least we did. We baby-sit, we see our friends. We were out with Tad, Liz and Jamie just the other night. We do other things too. We have pretty normal lives apart from the hunting vampires and demons thing. Our whole life isn’t about sex,” she insisted.

“Oh, I agree,” Willow said, slowly bunching Tara’s skirt in her hands as the woman she loved stood two steps over her. “Absolutely. It’s not all about sex.” But right now she was hoping the next few hours would be. Starting… well, now.

“Willow,” Tara warned, but she didn’t do anything to stop what was going to happen. Nor would she, their connection and long years of experience told Willow that much.

Unable to help herself, she laughed and started up the steps. Letting Tara’s skirt cover her up and then linking arms as she made up the height gap between them. “Shall we worry about this later?” she asked. “After we play to our newly discovered stereotype?”

“I could be stereotypical right now,” Tara said. “I really could.”

Mmmm, those few words held a lot of oversexed promise. It was the way she said ‘stereotypical.’ You needed talent to make it sound sexy.

“Now if you want to talk about oversexed…” She stopped. The moment had got too much for her. The flow of the conversation had almost made her give the game away to Tara.

Had it been planned that way?

Maybe.

Would she care in a few moments?

No.

“Go on,” Tara prompted.

“No, I can’t,” Willow said firmly, not about to reveal what she’d – almost – caught Rupert and Jenny doing in the castle.

Almost caught. Already done.

“You can’t what?” Tara asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Willow said. She’d promised. Had she promised? Had she actually said ‘I promise’? She couldn’t remember saying it. Perhaps the promise was in her head, or just implied. This was Tara; they had to know she might tell Tara.

She might have to tell Tara, mightn’t she? For Rupert and Jenny’s own good… There was always the possibility they might suffer from some lingering effects.

Or not.

Tara turned her by the arm so they were face to face and raised her eyebrows. This woman didn’t need words to make her meaning plain. She wanted to know, and she intended to find out.

Willow knew she’d have been just the same in her lover’s place.

“I can’t. I promised,” she said. It was easier to say she’d promised. It was the sort of thing she would have promised – even if she wasn’t sure she actually had.

It definitely felt like something she should’ve promised too.

“You’ve been dealing extra catnip to Miss Kitty?” Tara guessed, tongue firmly in cheek.

“What’s that got to do with over-sexed?” Willow asked, a little too quickly to get off the topic. She knew it as soon as she said it.

“Good point,” Tara said brightly, clearly ready to guess again. “So… Erm… Are Rupert and Jenny trying for another baby?”

“No! And what even makes you think it’s about them?” she asked and actually winced this time. She knew she’d probably given it away as soon as Tara had said their names. Jumping to a defensive posture now would only have made that more certain in her woman’s mind.

“Your beautiful face when I mentioned them,” Tara said.

Curses.

“You know I can’t keep a secret,” Willow said. “You have an unfair advantage.”

“Yes, I really do,” Tara said, all too agreeably.

“But sometimes I have to try,” Willow said. Sometimes there were things she really shouldn’t reveal. Things that were private – and with the hindsight available now they were away from the disturbing situation they’d been in – so very, very funny.

Yes, they were things she longed to tell Tara, but she couldn’t just come out and say anything about them could she?

“And I have to try to get it out of you?” Tara was perfectly able to draw her own conclusions, and it seemed she’d come to the right one.

“Mmmm,” Willow agreed without saying anything as obvious as ‘yes.’ It was hardly her fault if she had a low tolerance for interrogation at Tara’s hands was it? And what hands…

It wasn’t like that was a secret, Rupert and Jenny both knew that, if Tara put her mind to it, she’d never be able to hold out.

And why should she fight it?

She and Tara hadn’t been the ones making time with the Bride’s of Dracula. Rupert and Jenny were the ones who’d made the mistake – they couldn’t think that she’d be able to keep it from this woman, could they?

Did they seriously expect her to be able to resist Tara?

Or had the friends of Dracula’s ‘Brides’ just been hoping Tara would never try to find out?

They stopped outside their apartment and Tara didn’t even bother getting her key out. Instead Willow found she was being nudged back by her girlfriends hips bumping into hers, repeatedly bumping until she was backed up against the wall right by the door and Tara was kissing her neck, her throat – all the way down to her upper chest, pulling her top down to get some better access.

“Is this you trying to get it out of me?” Willow gasped as the passion started to overtake her, just about finding the breath to ask.

“It’s definitely me trying to get you out of something,” Tara whispered, still pulling at the neckline of her top, revealing a little more flesh to kiss.

Elasticity was getting in the way. Tara gave up on stretching anything downward and instead started to circle her hands as Willow found they were right up under her top.

As those pleasure giving hands surged up under her bra Willow found she was in the kind of heaven she liked to visit as often as she could.

Oversexed or not? She didn’t really care as long as this kind of thing continued. Even out here…

“Can’t… can’t tell you,” she said, determined to make the effort to resist. She might’ve promised. They’d expect at least this much from her. She still meant what she said, but she didn’t expect her resistance to last.

All her defiant words earned her was the tweaking of her nipples and that was no bad thing as punishments went.

“We can’t… stay out here,” Willow gasped.

“We’ll stay out here until you talk,” Tara promised her, continuing to fondle, kiss and stroke her.

Was her girlfriend serious? She was willing to push things further and further out here? No matter who might come along and see them? Okay, it wasn’t likely they’d be caught at this time of day, but it was definitely possible.

In the throes of her pleasure, Willow flicked her head to each side and confirmed there was no one but them up here on the landing.

At least for now.

Did Tara really mean it?

Her woman pretty much answered the unvoiced question when she pushed one hand down into the front of her skirt, into her underwear and immediately those loving fingers were flickering just where Willow loved to be flickered.

She didn’t stand a chance… she knew she didn’t.

And she didn’t care anymore.

“Talk,” Tara said.

Willow’s defiance was washed away by a torrent of desire, and not just metaphorically.

“Hmm?” Tara pressed. “Come on love… tell me.”

Tara was circling the centre of her pleasure now, teasing her. Daring her to withhold the information. Daring her to see if Tara was even capable of stopping. Of withholding the pleasure Willow found she so desperately wanted.

Again.

And again.

Eternally.

“Rupert and Jenny got frisky with the sisters down in the dungeon…” Willow blurted out in a rush, savouring the reward of wet fingers getting even closer to her clit. “Ohhh yeah… That’s how they lost their clothes and how I found them… under the influence.” Her sigh wasn’t one of disappointment.

There, now she’d it. Now could they go inside and get over-sexed already?

Or they could stay right here just so long as Tara didn’t…

Tara stopped. Willow’s eyes opened, seeing the look of shock on her lover’s face.

“Hey, come on. I broke a confidence for sexual favours,” she said. “Now you better keep giving me those sexual favours. Just so I don’t have to feel guilty about it.”

Even if Tara had stopped, her own body hadn’t. She was making the movements which kept the momentum going, while if Tara’s hands were stilled by the surprise.

“Rupert and Jenny?” Tara asked, making a distracted attempt to restart her loving movements.

Those flickers and circles…

“Yes… Now take me to bed and make me glad there’s no one but you who can hear me moan,” Willow said urgently.

“There’s no one but us here now,” Tara told her.

“Then you can take me to bed and make me scream…” Willow said, finding her own voice sounded almost as sensual as she felt.

“I’m not sure Mrs Marcuzzi would appreciate screaming,” Tara said as she finally found the rhythm again.

“I’ll go apologise… but laaater,” Willow groaned the last word, wondering if - even in this fruity mood - Tara would dare to take her too much further out here in the corridor? What if she was driven to a scream of delight out here? Would she be able to keep control? Sometimes, she felt like she could and pleasure took her by surprise.

Sometimes she just knew it’d be impossible, and this was one of those times.

“My hands are busy,” Tara said. “I think you better unlock the door – unless you want me to stop?”

“No! Don’t you dare.” Willow fumbled for the pocket of her bag and found the key, blindly reaching behind her for the lock. The longer it took the further she got and the more she needed to get in there so…

There…

The door swung open behind them, but Tara was holding her in place in the most delicious way possible. Pinned, in a sense.

“Any more secrets?” Tara asked, refusing to let her go.

Willow managed to smile mysteriously, but Tara just extended another finger and she just gasped again.

“Any more secrets?” Tara repeated.

She couldn’t take this much longer. Careless of how she was being held there, Willow dragged them both back through the door, keeping Tara close. In touching distance. In flickering and groping distance and leaving those fingers – especially – right where they’d found their way to being.

Somehow one of them remembered to close the door and they staggered backwards into the living area, the backs of her legs hitting the side of the couch.

“You’ll have to see about me and my secrets,” Willow said pulling Tara’s top upwards in a tangle of arms and clothes. “Not..ohhh… that I’m saying there are any.”

“Oh, I will,” Tara promised her as she used her free hand to get more and more naked.

“You don’t seem worried about Rupert and Jenny…” Willow gasped as they made it onwards to the bedroom where Tara pressed her up against the wall again and both their hands were in all sorts of interesting places.

“They’re fine and right now I’ve got my hand down your skirt and my fingers up your… I’ll tease them tomorrow.”


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

[chronic]

Ah, I thought Dracula and Drusilla going off in his castle together was rather sweet... oh for a Drac and Dru spin off story!

I suppose one way to defeat Dracula, at least temporarily, would be to simply seal him in a box and dump him out to sea, as Connor did to Angel. But then I don't think WIllow and Tara would be that ruthless unless Dracula presented a clear danger.

Poor Rupert and Jenny, but then they couldn't really expect Willow to keep a secret from Tara (especially under "duress" ) However, they might not feel so embarrassed once they've got some clothes on, I wonder if they might even feel a tiny bit pleased about it.

[Katharyn]

A spin off story?

Nooooo.

I'm nearly free, you can't do that to me now!

I wouldn't know what Angel did to Connor TBH - the kid plotline was annoying me even before I stopped watching it. TBH writing a story that deals with W&H so much makes that a little bit of a problem (since readers may know some canon I do not) but hey... my story, my rules

As a way of killing Drac though well... if you could get out of the box then the sea would be no problem, though the pressure might be at extreme depths. Hmm, interesting.

I don't think R&J thought Willow would be able to keep a secret. They probably hoped so, but heh, you're exactly right.

As for how they feel about it... that will become clearer

Thanks so much. Now I've replied I can go home!

Katharyn