You know one of these days I am going to stop telling people that I will post these parts at a certain time... because I never do.*S* Least I am always early if not punctual right?
Part 13 below Kittens. Roll on the rewards of good Karma (guess for who?) This part is supposed to get to you... And if you were wondering
how? after all I have done to them... here is the beginnings of the answer.
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Wall of the Dead (Part 13)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: Tara visits Sunnydale High…
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: Closer yet…
Notes: If I am serious when I say that Karma is a big thing in this fic then there are things that have to be done… and things that shouldn’t be. A couple of those ‘should nots’ crop up here and in the next few parts. Good Karma anyone?
Thanks To: The philosophical debaters of this thread. I would love to think that the professional writers who we analyse so much sit down and try to work out these issues in advance… but I doubt it. I think that they are just writing a story. I was.*S* Also the bumpers, yeah it is front page stuff*S* Kerry (and her new trews!) Jo and Louise.
The Sidestep Chronicle
Wall of the Dead
By
Katharyn Rosser
It was had been proposed, funded and officially named as the Sunnydale High Memorial Wall but everyone that Tara had spoken to so far had referred to it just as the Wall of the Dead. And it marked the unofficial heart of Sunnydale High School at which she was now staring. At least for the one day a month that the students and faculty chose to remember their predecessors.
They had come to the school after the Mayor had persuaded her that it was important to both of them that she finish off her education. That she get her High School Diploma. She had agreed with little enough argument. She had nothing much better to do with the free time that she had, and there was some of that despite the Mayor needing her at all hours. Either in the office or out on the streets, he hadn’t been exaggerating when he suggested to her that the hours where ‘flexible but unconventional.’
Besides he was going to let her study in City Hall, taking classes here at the school when she could and needed to. She had no fear of continuing her education. Once upon a time she had been very good in school, heading, they said, for scholarship and passage out of the tiny town she had grown up in. Away from her family. It had been all that mattered once upon a time. A chance at something else. Something more.
So important then, getting away and living just a little, because of what she was. What she was still to become, though she had not really considered it in months. Her focus had been elsewhere. Now she would give anything to see her father, her brother one more time. And her mother. But that couldn’t be. There were ways. Temporary and permanent. She had always known that. But the price was so high… and she was not willing to pay that much.
Now she had agreed to recommence her studies for the Mayor, and only a little for herself – despite enjoying most subjects. Their book-buying spree had briefly filled her with excitement, anticipation of new knowledge. She knew that there was a library, but it was reputed to be over laden with books that didn’t fit in the curriculum. She’d have to take a look – maybe there was something more advanced she could get onto. That had been her thinking - but then she had found out the overall timetable. She would graduate only a few weeks before it all became pointless anyway and she turned twenty. All sorts of things had to be accomplished by that deadline.
Graduation was pretty much the least of them.
It wasn't that she needed all that time – it was just that they only graduated once a year, as with any school. Did they throw hats? Probably… She’d never worn a hat. Maybe the Mayor would have her photo in his office. It was the sort of thing that he might have liked… he was that sort of wannabe demon.
His argument that she needed something to fall back on was irrelevant if well meaning. If she fell like that then she would not be getting back up. At least not as a human. But it pleased him to see that she was doing it and he had come here with her like a proud father arranging the transfer of his daughter to a new school. And after a quick meeting with the seemingly-nice Principal Robert ‘Call me Bob’ Flutie they had been handed over to definitely-less-nice Vice-Principal Snyder who had managed to ‘yes sir’ his way through that meeting despite finding out that she had exaggerated about her schooling at their last meeting. She was almost sure now that Snyder worked for the Mayor in more ways than simply though the school board. There was definitely… something there. Snyder knew about the Mayor. Or at least he thought he did.
But then so had she and it hadn’t stopped her. The compliments that the Mayor gave to the Vice-Principal were so obviously forced that there was no way they would be believed, except by someone who desperately wanted to hear them. Is that, she wondered, how he talks to me? Is that what others would hear if they were listening?
She believed what he said to her, but she wasn't desperate to hear the compliments like Vice Principal Snyder was. Really she would like to think that she didn’t give a hoot. That wasn't quite true though – it was always nice to be appreciated. Few enough people had appreciated her that it still seemed shiny and new when someone, even the Mayor, did.
After listening to some of the Vice-Principal’s implied criticisms of ‘Call me Bob’ Flutie she had signed the forms in the right places and arranged her curriculum. She would study alone and just visit for certain classes – as she already had studied most of what was on the list – and to hand in and receive her essays back. That didn’t matter to her though. Classmates had never been a big thing for her. Not after her one friend at school… Well it had ended badly in misunderstanding.
And now here she was, taking a look around the place. Shouldn’t that have come first though? The Mayor had been right however… it was a very different school from the one she had used to attend. Her school – for all its flaws - hadn’t needed a memorial service every month and a permanent Wall of the Dead dominating the central quadrangle.
Tara stared at the wall. On and on. She couldn’t quite believe her eyes. It was easy to believe that she was dreaming again – though she had hesitated to pinch herself, just in case. It wasn't a dream that she wanted to wake up from – though in other respects it was a nightmare. It was all so clear… the words. There were words that she would be able to read. Answers. She would, as she had dreamed last night ‘be there,’ if she could just read it. The writing. One particular carved entry. She stared and stared. She could not take her eyes away from it. In the centre of the quadrangle that was the heart of the school the memorial was… tragic was the only word for it.
It marked the lives of Sunnydale High students. So many dead here. So many of the town’s young taken from it… and every one of them since the date that the Master had risen. It was a wall… and it was being added to over and over.
She had, at first, looked at it more as an exercise in predicting the effects on the arrival of a powerful vampire – how fast would the dates be added, the body count rise and then, as people became more cautious, slow again? The deaths had clearly started out as daily events for some weeks. And then they
had slowed. But they had never stopped. Concentrating on the numbers and the dates on her first time around the square walled monument she had deliberately avoided the pictures of all the people that she had failed to help… even though a good number of them had died before she had even found her purpose - let alone before she had got to Sunnydale.
And then she had forced herself to look at them. The Mayor was stood with that rodent Snyder and they must have been able to see the tears that sprang to her eyes. This was just the young people. If all these students had been killed, along with some teachers, then how many adults and others – too young for this school? Along one wall, the earliest, the pictures were large, the names carefully inscribed, the details of their lives at the school explicit if not adequate. It was as if someone had expected that the deaths could not continue. What reasonable person would assume that they would? But the latest ones on the memorial were little more than passport photographs with a name and a date. Someone had realised that this was going on, and on, and on. That there might not ever be enough space for all of the dead.
All the death that she had seen and she was just crying now? What did these people have that all those others since her parents didn’t? They were her age. If she had lived here in Sunnydale then they might have been alive today. Sunnydale had lost far, far, more than she had. Families like hers… torn apart or perhaps entirely destroyed.
Not quite like hers maybe… but families were being destroyed by these things that roamed the night. She would kill them all. For all these young people. For their parents and for herself. She would kill them all. There wouldn’t be a vampire left in Sunnydale to kill again. Not one… where once she might have been content with the destruction of the Master… how could she let one survive?
It was on that second pass, made from latest to earliest that she came upon the picture that took her breath away. The hair was different from what she thought she remembered. The colour of the photo had been bleached by a little the sunlight, but she knew that person. She knew every curve of that face. Her mind had sculpted it during her sleep. It sat in three dimensions on the dresser by the window in her apartment. Last night that face had told her that she would ‘be there.’ The first stop on the journey. Hadn’t her goddess suggested that?
Or the last.
Her dream woman was dead. Long, long dead.
But the dream had never told her the colouring – the red hair sure, but not the skin tone, the eyes. The dreams gave her impressions but it was a vision. Fuzzy. Sepia tinted. Not to be totally believed. But the photograph… Even with the bleaching it was obvious that the girl who was the model for her dreams had a reddish brown blaze of hair to which those visions and dreams had never done justice. The hair was… different to how she remembered it. The girl in the picture had long straight hair that Tara could not help imagining flowing between her fingers and she found herself touching the ends of her own, seeking the sensation. Letting her hair drift over the back of her hand. The skin was pale as most natural redheads would be she guessed. And the eyes… the eyes were kind. Even in a posed photograph the picture radiated kindness. The other dead kids… it was typical yearbook stuff, some showed sadness, some were ditzy, some showing off. But this one… all you could say was that she was kind.
Somehow she had always known that.
And the academic honours… That girl was some kind of brain-box placed second in science fair after science fair across all her schools… but that was the lowest standing she ever achieved. Computer studies awards. Placing first in a number of subjects. A year of chess club? What had happened with that? Why had she left the chess club? Too rowdy? The girl was dead… three years dead and all Tara wanted to know was why she had left the chess club rather than how she had excelled at school. Stupid… stupid… stupid. And sad.
And her name… she barely dared to follow the lines of text upwards, and to above the date and the photograph to find a name. Never had she known the name. She had always, when dreaming, thought that she should know… but she never had. If this weren’t a dream then she would get to know the name at last. Would the mystery be gone with a name?
Willow…
She was called Willow. The tears were rolling down her cheeks now, flowing free and unchecked from her eyes. Over a hundred deaths might have started her sorrow off but those had all faded away to next to nothing. The details of this one young woman’s life… her name finished it. She was called Willow. She saw the surname but all that mattered to her was Willow.
She was called Willow.
I weep for you Willow. For all that you were and all that you could have been in a life that should have been filled with opportunity… and love. But was taken from you.It didn’t say if she had been a victim of the vampires… or if the wall was there for students who had died for any reason… It didn’t matter. The vampires had changed things, made things happen.
But why do I feel I know you? Why do I see you in my dreams? Why do you haunt me? We never even met and you fill my unconscious mind. You shape your image through me. How do you do it Willow? Why?Not enough though… not enough. This flat image, these few words, they didn’t tell Tara enough about her. Not the real person. The person behind the achievement. The woman, barely more than a girl, behind the picture. The details behind the dates.
She turned around, tearing her eyes from the faded image. She wiped away the tears on her sleeve to find the Mayor and the school Vice-Principal watching her, one curious the other… he looked bored.
And she despised him for that.
“Yes… we are all very sad,” the rat faced Snyder told her. He didn’t sound it though. “In fact,” he continued, “We are very sad at least once every month. It’s the sort of touchy feely feel-good event that our
Principal seems to like.” His own opinions were pretty obvious to Tara. Which just confirmed her opinion of him.
She felt like turning him into the rat he resembled… figured that maybe she could if she really tried. But that wouldn’t help. He was no worse than she was. This was the first death that had truly affected her in such a long time. Perhaps he was just hardened to it… just like she was. She supposed that people had to be… otherwise how would they function at all?
The Mayor, though, was aware that something inside her had clicked, and he looked at her quizzically. “You feel something Tara?” What do you feel… tell me. That was the unspoken sub-text.
I feel alone. I feel distraught. I feel the loss of a woman – a girl really – that I have never known. And I feel that a thousand times more keenly than all of these others added together. Worse even the people I have watched die… I haven’t felt this way since... my mother. “Yes” was all she said though, she couldn’t express the rest of it.
He came over towards her and Snyder was forced by his own fawning to accompany him. “You know Mr Mayor, sir, the monthly memorial
is today,” Snyder offered, noticing his patrons interest. He might not have cared what the new girl was crying about, but the Mayor… that was altogether different.
“We’re staying,” Tara told them both without hesitating. Without reference to her employer who was certainly curious about what had gotten to her.
“Yes...” the Mayor said slowly. “It has been far too long since I attended” The Mayor gave her that little get out, but his tone suggested that he wanted an explanation as Snyder scuttled away to arrange additional seating for them.
“You feel something?” the Mayor asked again, this time definitely wanting an answer.
“All these young people…” it was all that she could offer him.
“It is sad… the children are the foundation of any community.” And so useful for other purposes…
“They had families,” she pointed out to him. She wasn't sad for the community. “I’m going to fix it. I’m going to stop this,” she swore to him without revealing the deeper concern that she felt about the fate of one particular person. The one she now knew was Willow Rosenberg.
Had been Willow Rosenberg. He knew enough about her to know that the loss of about her family was what had ultimately brought her here so he accepted that choice.
“No Tara,” he told her and her reaction, the fire in her eyes as she spun her head to challenge him was the biggest surprise that he’d had in months. “
We are going to stop it,” he finished.
“‘I need to know some things… about one of them.”
“I’m sure that Principal Flutie and Vice-Principal Snyder will be more than happy to help you,” the Mayor assured her – the latter being a promise to her. He didn’t need to question her motives at all. It was clearly important. She had never asked him for anything - until now - despite so much being on offer to her. And now she wasn't even really asking. She was telling him. It actually made him proud… his assistant was coming out of her shell a little. That made him appreciate just how important this was to her then.
And it was just in time of course. Things to do… busy, busy, busy. As she turned back to the memorial he pulled out his pocket book, flicked to one of the back pages and placed a large tick alongside one of his notes.
All he had to do now was to let them know.
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The memorial service was perfunctory in the main. Every student in the High School that day was there. Such a large place and so few students though. A sea of drab clothes. Tara felt inappropriately dressed in her brighter skirts… but if she had known then she would have shown her respects. Her clothes were intended to have the opposite effect to those of the students and the faculty. Not that they were garish or anything… but she felt that way in this company. She wanted to attract the vampires – and it seemed to work for her.
And when she had attracted their attention - then she would kill them.
She had two hundred and thirty two new reasons to do that. That was how many names the principal read out. Two hundred and thirty two. All dead within the last four years. What was that? Less than forty-eight months? Nearly five a month. It was a tragedy back home if they lost a single student. She remembered a service of remembrance for a boy who drowned in the river. It had brought mortality home to her, to all of them. What must it be like here in Sunnydale – to live with death like that? Perhaps it was just a little like her life. Perhaps she really was home?
The names were read and the dead were mourned in silence. Absolute perfect silence. Because here it really could have been any of them. Any other school and there would have been giggling or chatting. Here that was not the case at all. Everyone knew that if they were not careful each and every night then they could be the next name on that list. She guessed that it gave them a different perspective on death. And she felt different too.
They had lost friends, people they had grown up with or, if they were teachers, children that they had taught. People that they had taunted and played with. Joked with and perhaps made cry. None of that for her here. But she still felt…
Like she had lost something important.
It was only as the service ended that she stood up and took a flower that she had picked from a quadrangle flower bed - one of the few in the school grounds that she had seen so far was maintained. Why would anyone fail to encourage the flowers to grow? It was not a nighttime job to do that. So much of Sunnydale had given up hope. They just didn’t care anymore. They had seen too much.
She took the flower and in full view of the assembled school and the Mayor she prepared to lay it at the base of the memorial… below a certain picture that had held her attention. But as she squatted to do so she knew that she had to show her devotion to the memory that she had never really known.
She touched the flower to her lips, breathing in the fresh, sweet, scent – imagining for the briefest of moments another sweetness from her dreams - and then laid it there.
For them all.
But most of all for Willow Rosenberg.
*********
You hear that baby?
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I love the way you write Tara in this fic....it is so familiar to me. I am not sure exactly why....but somehow very fimiliar. Can't wait for the next chapter.
at: 4/8/02 10:48:08 pm