AS TIME GOES BY
Part 29
Summary: Willow and Tara are quite the
muthas, while Xander and Dawn just signed on to play the part of that goat in Jurassic Park that gets raised up onto the feeding area for the T. Rex. Heaven knows where this is all gonna end up...
Pairings: Willow and Tara; Scooter Libby and his cell-mate. (Please oh please oh
please...)
Distribution: In 6-packs or handy Economy Size. Just slap my name on it, please.
Disclaimers: Haiku for Legal Purposes:
Creations lovely / Spurned by a foul creator / We but pay homage
Special shout out to Car, for talking me off the literary ledge earlier. Truly, your wisdom and mercy are great.THIS IS POSTED IN TWO PARTS DUE TO ITS LENGTH.*****A few minutes after seven that night, Willow and Tara emerged from their bedroom, utterly spent...Not, Willow reflected, for the reason that typically accounted for such a state after such an action.
They had retrieved three armloads of books from the shop and returned home to hole up in their room. They had hoped the drive might lull Kyra back to sleep, but she had been uncharacteristically recalcitrant, fussing every time they tried to put her back down. Finally, Giles offered to take over. "You two have other obligations at the moment," he said matter-of-factly, dropping to the floor with surprising agility.
"Are you sure, Giles?" Willow asked. "Because we--"
"I'll help too," Dawn announced, taking a seat beside the Watcher. "If I don't keep an eye on Jolly Roger here, he'll be feeding her kippers before you can say, 'My word, that's bloody awful!'"
"Of course," Giles replied archly. "I wouldn't want to spoil her appetite for the pork rinds entree."
"Listen, guys, she's really wound up--"
"No wonder you're worried, Tara, with these two on the job," Buffy nodded from the doorway. "I'll supervise." She walked over and plunked down on the floor, leaning in to nuzzle Kyra." "Let's discuss recent events in the former Soviet Union, shall we?"
"Bub!" Kyra gave her tacit blessing.
"Buh-
fee," came the exasperated plea. "You can say it: Buh--"
"Oh, is Aunt Bub getting peckish?" Faith asked, sauntering into the room with a Diet Coke in her hand and a grin on her face. "Don't worry, K-Biscuit. We'll check out the latest gangsta rap on TV."
"Like hell you will!" Willow shot back, aghast.
"Chill, Will. I'm just jo--"
"Hell!" Kyra shouted cheerfully. It was the happiest she'd been all day. Profanity appeared to agree with her.
"Very nice," Tara muttered. "Maybe we can buy her her first pack of cigarettes tomorrow."
"Don't pay any attention to the foul-mouthed bad lady," Faith murmured soothingly to Kyra. "She's very troubled."
"Where are Xander and Anya?" Willow asked, hoping desperately to stem this truly regrettable tide.
"Xander's playing Sergeant Rock." Buffy looked up from the
Good Dog, Carl book she'd been perusing. "Will, do you know the mother in this book leaves her infant daughter with a
Rottweiler? Seriously. She just says, 'Watch the baby, Carl!' and then leaves. Who knows if she's even
named the kid? So Carl gives the baby her bath and feeds her and keeps her out of trouble. Then Mom stumbles in from whatever crack house she's been frequenting and gives Carl a pat on the head." Buffy looked up, pursing her lips. "Somebody needs to call Social Services."
"It's a step up from the dingo she used with her first kid," Faith pointed out.
"Meanwhile, back at
Chateau d'Original Point?" Willow demanded.
And they say I ramble."Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me, Potty Mouth. He's prepping stuff on the military side of things. Anya, it goes without saying and yet I say it, is with
him."
"I guess she's mostly support," Dawn mused. "I can't really see her in the military."
"Nah, but I betcha the military's been in
her a couple of times," Faith offered absently. At the looks of abject horror, she added, "What? It's not like I cursed in front of a child. Now
that's inappropriate."
"OK, then, we'll get our research on," Willow said, drawing the tattered remnants of her dignity about her. "And, uh--thanks. Really."
"No worries," Buffy replied easily. "We'll do our best to undo the trauma of hearing her mother talk like a sailor home on shore leave."
********Five hours and innumerable cross-checks later, Tara looked at Willow. "I think it might work," she said, her voice a mixture of hope and exhaustion.
"It'll have to," Willow replied simply. "Otherwise, they're sitting ducks for nothing." She reached for Tara's hand. "Let's tell them."
********"Hey, we were just thinking about dinner!" Xander called out in an unnaturally bright voice as they descended the stairs.
Still catching hell, are we?Kyra was still up, and showed no signs of tiring of the full-on attention she was receiving. Everyone was sitting on the floor around her, courtiers to the worthy queen. Willow, though, had a sudden urge to hold her daughter, and Kyra gave no protest as she swooped her up and kissed her.
"Any luck?" Anya asked. "Or better yet, did you find something that proves we
shouldn't do this?" Buffy said nothing, but Willow suspected she was secretly hoping the same thing.
"That would be a 'yes' to the first part and a 'no' to the second," Willow said, and wasn't even sure how she herself felt about that fact.
"What do you have?" Dawn asked quietly, with an almost imperceptible squaring of her shoulders.
Willow sank down into the couch, cradling Kyra gently. Tara took the seat beside her. "OK--first of all, this whole thing depends on the Big Bad showing up in the first place," Willow cautioned. "If he opts for pragmatism over pride, this is all a moot point. He'll take somebody else, and there's no way we can track him."
"I guess it would be tacky to hope it does," Anya muttered, rising to her feet and beginning to pace.
"Tacky--but understandable," Tara acknowledged, smiling up at her gently.
"So let's assume that he does come after you guys," Willow continued. "We realized that if we
did trap him, we couldn't destroy him without...well, you know..."
"Destroying us," Xander supplied, his grin not quite reaching the level of "Credible."
"I believe that's what the medical profession refers to as 'iatrogenesis,'" Giles commented dryly. "
In extremis, no less." He stood and took a seat in one of the larger chairs.
"Right. So we had to find a way to trap him
and move him to some other container that we
could destroy--all without you guys going...well...nuts," Willow finished weakly.
"I'd like to vote for non-craziness," Dawn offered decisively.
"Kinda thought you would," Tara nodded. "So most of the typical binding spells wouldn't work, even the three we found that deal with intangible phenomena."
"So far I'm hearing how this
won't work," Anya broke in tersely.
Willow bit back a retort. She would probably react the same way if Tara were in Xander's role, if not more egregiously so.
"Right. So we kept looking," she said. "And I think we've found a way to trap
him without trapping you guys in there
with him. We set the bait, get him to bite, and then when we know he's taken the hook, we pull you guys out. It's the ultimate bait-and-switch."
Anya glanced around. "I think I speak for all of us and most of Sunnydale proper when I say: what the cuddly fuck are you talking about?"
"We know that your psyches are the bait, right?" Tara asked. "All the insecurities, despite the evidence? Pardon my bluntness, but we need to let him get a taste of those. But there's a way to extract your minds from your bodies once he's in there."
Six pairs of eyes looked at them in open confusion.
"Were you guys consulting the ancient texts of cannabis?" Xander demanded, peering at them suspiciously.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the mind supposed to stay put, not go traipsing around like Jack Kerouac out on the psychic road?" Buffy asked skeptically.
"In the long haul, of course," Willow replied. "But there are lots of cases of people voluntarily leaving their bodies for a short time. This would be sort of an altered consciousness, except we'd be the ones operating the switches."
"Why not leave us in there, if we know you can stop us from killing ourselves?" Dawn asked frankly. "It's trapped, and then you pull
it out."
"Because when it's in you--either or both of you--it's already physically contained," Tara explained. "Yes, it can jump ship pretty quickly, but it is housed, to some degree. Keeping it in you makes it easier to bind it before transferring it to the final container. This way, we're less worried about losing it in transit."
"It'll also be far less unpleasant for you," Willow added. "And far briefer."
"I got no problems with that," Xander said gratefully.
"OK, setting aside the 'whoa' factor for the moment," Buffy said, "where exactly would their minds
go? Is there, like, a mental Marriott they'd check into?"
"See if they have cable," Dawn quickly put in.
Willow grinned. "Actually, they'll be guests of
Chez Scoobie. We pull them out of their bodies, and into ours."
An atonal chorus of incomprehension greeted this pronouncement. Buffy's voice won out, more by virtue of vehemence than coherence. "Wait a minute--if they're in
us, where do
our minds go?"
"Hosts stay in their own mind," Tara quickly answered. "You just...scoot over a little bit."
"How does that work?" Anya demanded.
"Actually, if you're open to it, there's plenty of room," Willow replied. "The only way it wouldn't work is if you actively deny them access."
Tara picked up the thread. "We'll get the hosts prepped, put you in a receptive state of mind. You'll feel a slight rippling along your brain, front to back. That's your guest, checking in at the front desk."
"Well of course I'll be receptive," Anya huffed indignantly. "I would never keep Xander from entering me."
"That's just what the 75th Tank Division said," Faith murmured.
"I'll set up a lovely spot for you," Buffy assured her sister. "No room service, though."
Willow glanced uneasily at Tara. "Um, actually, Buffy--Dawn's mind won't be staying with you."
"What? Why not?" Buffy looked from one of them to the other, clearly unimpressed with this news.
"Because we need you to be ready to intervene with Dawn or Xander in case anything goes wrong," Tara replied evenly. "You're a Slayer. We need your speed." She turned to Faith. "And we need you to be in charge of Kyra. We're hoping she sleeps, but we're not leaving her alone. If anything goes near her and you haven't seen it before--kill it."
"You know I will," Faith answered quietly, then turned to her counterpart. "B--you feel OK going solo on the watch?"
Buffy seemed to be waging an internal battle between protest and acquiescence. Finally she gave a grim nod. "I can handle it."
Tara continued, in her same steady voice, "So, Xander is sent to Anya, and Giles--you hold onto Dawn."
The Watcher's reaction was hard to discern. Did he feel shunted aside as an inferior fighter? Or was he honored to be responsible for Dawn's mind?
His only reply was a soft, "Of course."
Buffy gazed up intently at her Watcher. "If anyone's brain is big enough to hold her, it's yours."
Giles gave her a gentle smile and a barely perceptible nod, then turned to the former Key. "You shall be safe, Dawn. I promise."
Dawn crossed her arms and fixed Giles with a
faux put-upon expression. "Let me guess--I have to think in complete sentences, properly punctuated."
"If you could, yes."
"Will, what are you and Tara doing during all this?" Xander asked.
"We're operating the controls. Pulling you guys out, binding this guy, and then transferring him to a container that will hold him and let us thoroughly and gleefully blast his ass back to hell," Tara said mildly.
"Gotcha," Xander replied slowly, looking at Tara with mixed respect and fear.
"OK, back up," Faith said, raising a hand. "How will we even know our boy's in there?"
"We thought about that," Willow nodded. "It's way too risky to sit back and just...observe. No matter how well anybody knows either of you, the signs are too subtle. We need to know not just that he's in there, but how
far he's in there so we know when to get you guys out."
"That's where the other mental magic comes in," Tara continued. "With your permission--we'll be watching your minds."
"Curiouser and curiouser," Faith mused.
"Boundaries don't count for much in this plan, do they?" Dawn asked wonderingly. "You're gonna read our minds?"
"Not read so much as watch from a safe distance," Tara explained. "It'll be sort of like watching a monitor, seeing if any 'blips' come on in the form of extreme self-criticality, fatigue, or headache."
"About those blips," Xander began hesitantly. "Just how descriptive will they be?"
"We won't know exactly what you're thinking," Tara replied with an understanding smile. "We will know if you're thinking something in the 'Bad' family--bad beyond ordinary funk. But the details--not so much."
"And so much relieved," Xander breathed, then scrambled to his feet and went to Anya's side.
Right--I march down here and say I saw Tara kissing Faith, and he's worried about privacy."We will, though, get a very specific read on the emotions," Tara emphasized. "That part's imperative."
"Makes sense," Dawn allowed.
"So you two are monitoring them, and if our guy really takes the bait, you pull them out," Faith summarized.
"Right," Tara nodded.
"Are you guys splitting the duties? One of you per one of us?" Xander inquired.
"No," Willow replied, shaking her head. "Both of us will be watching both of you."
"And should he attack only one?" Giles asked quietly.
The implications of that hung in the air for a moment, until Tara said, "There are a few scenarios here. If he hits one and goes far enough, we should be able to get him. That would actually be the easiest situation. Scenario Number Two: he sees it's a trap, in which case he's probably
not going to go for the other person, no matter how arrogant he is. He bolts, we can't catch him. Next case: he hits both of you at once. That's what I'd put my money on, frankly. He's done it before with us and I think the fact that it's two Scoobies, and the
final two he needs, just makes it way too tempting."
Everyone let that sink in, then Buffy raised her hand. "Next question: if you pull them out, won't this guy come with them? He gets in their minds--why wouldn't he come along for the outing?"
"Excellent question, Miss Summers," Willow commended her. "This thing isn't supposed to be there. It's sneaky and devious and it plays on what's already there, but it's not a part of the original mind. When you guys shook it off, it didn't stay with you. It headed off for my girlfriend, for which, by the way, I still owe it great heaping doses of pain."
"It's sorta like pulling a tablecloth out from under the cutlery," Tara suggested. "Really nasty, corrosive cutlery."
"Uh, excuse me?"
"Yes, Faith--you have a question?"
"Yes, ma'ams. What sort of container are we talking about? Do we have the raw materials here on hand, or is a quick trip to Home Depot in order?"
"Right," Anya scoffed. "We're talking about trapping an ancient demon. We probably have to make a perfectly circular box from the oldest cedars of Lebanon and have it blessed by an Ashkenazi eunuch. I'm sure that Home Depot is just--"
"Tupperware."
"Ex
cuse me?" And then Anya, miraculously, was speechless.
"Yep. When we were researching the spells for intangible phenomena, all three of them said that you shouldn't use a natural container."
Tara nodded. "It's true. One of them said that they only draw strength from the organic elements of any vessel."
"So we figured, what's more unnatural than Tupperware? Besides Angelina Jolie's relationship with her brother, of course."
"Unbe-freakin'-lievable," Xander muttered, shaking his head.
"And do we burp the Tupperware after trapping this demon?" Giles asked dryly.
"How do we know it's big enough?" Buffy demanded.
"The spells said that the dimensions of the container weren't relevant, so long as it does physically exist," Willow shrugged. "You know--it can't be a zero by zero by zero kinda deal."
"Size doesn't matter," Tara agreed. "As soon as we transfer it, Will and I do our final work of the night: we banish it to a hell dimension."
"Shouldn't we just destroy it?" Dawn asked.
"Too risky," Willow said. "We're not quite sure where the energy would go. It's not like some vampire that turns to dust."
"So we sacrifice the Tupperware to the cause?" Buffy asked, her voice pained. "
Damn this wretched fiend!"
Willow exchanged another glance with Tara. "I think that about covers it," she said, feeling the drain of the last few hours catching up to her. She also wasn't used to being on stage in such uninterrupted fashion. "Xander--what about the military paraphernalia?"
Xander gave a business-like nod. "Me and Anya went over to our place earlier and picked up some stuff. A couple of tranq guns, three miniature microphones, and six hidden cameras so you guys can keep a close eye on us without being in the room."
Faith nodded approvingly. "I like it. Nice blend of force and espionage."
"Thank you," Xander replied, giving a half-bow before Anya's scowl stopped him in mid-descent. "Anyway, there's some other stuff we brought along, depending on where we set up the scene. We figured we should go for limited entrance and exit possibilities."
"Definitely," Buffy concurred. "Especially if I'm gonna be watching
both of you juvies." Willow could see Buffy struggling to keep her fear at bay. She and Tara had also discussed whether Buffy's pride would keep her from admitting it if she wasn't sure she could watch both her sister and her friend.
"I don't think so," she told Tara. "Three or four years ago, maybe. Not now. I think Joyce's death taught her a lot about her limits."
"So where's our best option?" Faith asked, popping to her feet and glancing around. Buffy followed suit.
"I suggest the kitchen," Giles proposed.
"Where we keep the sharp knives?" Buffy asked, arched brows suggesting that in her mind, she was slapping Giles forcefully.
"We would remove any such risks," the Watcher replied in a slightly exasperated voice. "The kitchen has only two means of exit: the open archway into the living room, and the door to the back porch. Windows are difficult to reach, placed as they are over the sink. Moreover, they can be locked."
"Did you go through a stalking phase you never told me about?" Buffy inquired suspiciously.
"As can the front door," Giles continued, as if the Slayer hadn't spoken. "Both would slow down any efforts considerably."
"What about the upstairs hallway?" Dawn suggested.
"Too many doors to too many rooms," Xander countered.
"What about a bedroom?" Anya offered. "One door, one window." She glanced at the others. "The room we've been staying in--Dawn's room--doesn't have its own bathroom, so that makes for a pretty narrow playing field."
Buffy turned to Willow. "Would the psychic transport hit any snags going through walls?"
"God, what if my brain gets stuck in dry-wall?" Xander asked, horrified.
"We already thought about that," Willow assured him. "We kinda figured we'd be at least one room away. So no problems on that front." She looked at Tara. "What do you think?"
Tara shrugged. "I think it would be fine for our purposes. Buffy, what about you?"
The Slayer paced for a few seconds, frowning as she thought. "We nail some boards up over the window, make the door the
only way out. And a thorough sweep of the room: no pills, nothing sharp, we take down the mirror to get the glass out of the room." She let out a slow breath and looked at Faith. "I think it's our best option." The Dark Slayer nodded her agreement.
"OK. And our final decision:
when?" Dawn's voice was remarkably calm.
"It'll take at least an hour to fix the room," Xander said.
"We'll need about half that to prep both the hosts and you two," Tara added.
"And a few dry runs," Buffy continued. "To make sure everybody knows where they are and what they do."
"So maybe a nummy dinner, preps, and cue the atmospheric music?" Xander suggested. "Sounds like a true Scooby evening to me."
But Willow shook her head. "First of all, Tara and I are wiped. We need to be sharp and focused when we do this. Secondly, we did a little research on when the human mind is thought to be most vulnerable."
"And what did you learn?" Giles asked with interest.
"4:26 am," Tara replied apologetically.
"
What?" Dawn yelped. "AM, as in 'Absolutely Moronic'?"
"Sorry," Willow shrugged. "We're just the messengers."
"So we thought we should go ahead and order dinner, get everything set up, and then crash early. We do the physical set-ups tonight, and the mental ones then. We wake up around 3:30, get everybody in position, and mentally prep you Dawn, Xander, Anya, and Giles. And then, at about 4, Dawn goes back to her room--her original room--to talk to Xander while Anya ostensibly can't sleep and goes to the kitchen to get a snack."
"I dunno," Xander frowned. "Won't it seem a little odd that the Dawnster and I are having a heart-to-heart at 4:30 in the morning?"
"What?" Tara asked with feigned innocence. "Neither of you could sleep. Xander, you heard Anya get out of bed and decided you didn't want to worry her with
your worries. Dawn, you're up, too, and on your way to the bathroom you see Anya leave your old room. You decide it might be nice to talk to the one person who could understand how you feel. Neither of you are immune, you're scared...Maybe he's awake. You knock, he's up, and you go in for some sincere emotional sharing."
"Besides, anybody who watches this group for more than twenty minutes is already gonna think we have some odd habits," Willow pointed out.
"But that brings up the most important thing," Tara said, looking from Xander to Dawn. "Setting the bait. As much as possible, you two have to believe that you're really doing this--not as part of a plan, I mean. We'll help get you into that psychological space a little bit, but we can't hypnotize you."
"Why not? Faith asked curiously. "Wouldn't that make it easier?"
"We thought about it," Willow admitted. "We were hoping that we could put you into a trance and give you a hypnotic suggestion that you wouldn't respond to anything that made you feel bad about yourself. Problem is, this stuff works on what's already in there. It just turns up the volume a lot
and twists it into some really nasty psycho-pretzels. How do you tell the mind not to listen to itself, or what it
thinks is itself?"
"I'm getting a headache from all this meta stuff," Buffy complained. "Isn't there something I can stake?"
"We'll go out tomorrow and just brute force our way through the neighborhood," Faith said comfortingly. "Knuckles draggin' right down on the ground."
"Anyway, the idea is that we'll help ease some of the self-consciousness and fear," Tara continued. "But you'll still be in charge. So as much as possible, get into it."
"And try to avoid telling yourself stuff like, 'Don't think that,'" Willow added. "When we talk in negatives to ourselves, the mind tends to get a little oppositional."
"Where'd you learn that?" Dawn asked, looking at her in surprise.
"I took
another psych course last year," she shrugged. "One where the professor survived the semester."
"Anything in particular we
should think about?" Xander inquired.
Tara nodded. "It's kind of a dual thing. Reminisce over all the good stuff you've done, but let yourself feel any insecurities you have around that."
"Finally. A task I feel completely comfortable with," the carpenter said, his smile equal parts ironic and sad.
There was a brief silence, and then Buffy crossed her arms across her chest and drew a deep breath. "Let's get to work."
********
for then. Sure, it might be more than ten hours ago now, but screw it.
.... and now I can't get up, because I've done my back in. 
Just kidding.
your sense of humor is spot on here! You're so delightfully twisted! I love how your mind works.
I think we all have an inner Xander, though, which is what ultimately made his thoughts so effective.
Typical child. And the way everybody gets into teasing Willow about it at the same time as they jump at the chance for quality time with Kyra. The wry humour in your lead in sentence:
