Sidestep - Third Chronicle (COMPLETE)

Katharyn · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2011 12:03 pm

The Sidestep Chronicles

Third Chronicle

Katharyn Rosser

Okay, we’re back!

I made a couple of attempts to write a Third Chronicle for Sidestep over the years since the second one finished. Each of them failed because, really, I didn’t have a story worthy of what went before.

I’m the first to admit that (even though I love it and am very happy with it) Second Chronicle simply wasn’t conceptually on a par with the first. Better written IMHO as I got more experience, but the BIG IDEA wasn’t there. When the early versions of Third Chronicle didn’t have a BIG IDEA behind them either I abandoned them.

But… It’s Willow and Tara. I still love to play with them *COUGH* even though I am writing original fiction now. But I have tremendous difficulty NOT writing them as Sidestep Tara and Willow. I spent a lot of years with these versions of the characters in my head and – to me – they were almost the only version. So yes, there was a big pull to come back to Sidestep.

So, anyway… I wrote this story in a couple of months. It’s the size of a good size novel but not sprawling for a million words. By my own standards it’s actually quite short (LOL) but hopefully long enough to do the story justice. I like to think of it as greater maturity as a writer and being a little less self-indulgent. HA!

And yes. It is complete. It all exists on my laptop from Chapter One through to the end.

Since I completed that first draft I’ve left it on the shelf very deliberately for a few months to gain some perspective on it. Now, when I am redrafting it, I barely remember what I wrote or what is coming up so I get to approach it as ‘an outsider’ and to edit it accordingly. I find that works best for me. So I’ll be redrafting as we go, polishing it to the final version that can be posted. Some things may change a little, it might get a little tighter or I may even add scenes here or there, but there will be no major changes.

I don’t use a beta reader anymore. I’d love to but just don’t have the time for the back and forth of 3 or 4 drafts. So whatever is wrong with it is my fault. Given my (poor) memory it’s perfectly possible I will contradict First or Second Chronicle. Just live with it…

This story pretty much shuts down the Sidestep Chronicles. I can’t see a need for anymore and where I leave the characters won’t have unresolved plot points (which this one is based around). Also… the girls are hardly ‘girls’ anymore. They, like me, are getting on a bit. So Sidestep 4 might end up as ‘Willow and Tara in the retirement home.’ No one wants to read that story unless their adventures were really whacky…

Hope you can enjoy it.

Katharyn

United Kingdom, 2011.

Special Credit: SMGOVAN – Having being (nicely) bugging me about a sequel to Sidestep every time I ended up posting in the (massive) Sidestep thread, a few exchanges actually got me to thinking… (Which is a dangerous thing.) Some of that thinking led me to a moment of revelation (which is very rare) and to this story being largely plotted within a couple of hours. So yeah, you get to have your name shown in the credits right up front. Thanks.

Extra Special Credit: Xita! You know, thanks for this place and all… Guess this means you can’t shut it down for a while longer…

I was going to do what follows in separate posts prior to part 1 but the new approval process probably means I can't post any other parts until that comes through...

Prologue: The telling of what was and what is.

Chronicles one and two of Sidestep run to 242 parts and something around one and a half million words. Which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M). While I’d have loved that everyone could read or remember that, it’s just not going to happen. So in a bid not to limit myself to just the ‘old timers’ here at the Kitten Board I’ve attempted a potted summary of events in all that earlier writing. I would recommend that you read this as it will get confusing otherwise…

In my eyes this isn’t an AU except it’s THE original AU from the canon. This story is entirely set in ‘The Wish’ universe. Buffy never came to Sunnydale in what would’ve been season one. That meant that the Master rose unopposed and Willow and Xander were vamped. That, if you like, is canon from ‘The Wish’ as is Buffy’s eventual fate when she finally did arrive in Sunnydale.

In the first Chronicle - Due to the Master’s growing power a wave of vampires spread out from Sunnydale. One such group killed Tara's parents and brother. Tara, on her own after that, found she could help people not to suffer the same fate by using magic. She travelled the country helping with the spreading vampire problems until eventually she arrived in Sunnydale ready to take on the Master. By this point she’d already been dreaming of a red-haired woman that she was drawn to…

Her ally – and employer – at the time was the Mayor who had ‘missed’ his ascension due to the Master taking over. Tara always knew he’d wanted to do ‘bad things’ but since he opposed the vampires she hated she accepted that he was a force for good for the people of Sunnydale. At least until the town was freed from the Master.

Then Tara met the vampire Willow, a Willow who looked like the woman she had loved from her dreams but was not actually her. They were fated to be together but not as human and vampire. Fate, being a certainty, gave other interested parties a way to manipulate events to their own advantage around them – one such party being Wolfram and Hart.

Faith (the Slayer) comes to Sunnydale and becomes friends with Tara but only learns about the relationship with the vampire Willow later. When she, Giles and the Council do find out tough decisions are made. After the Master is destroyed, the Council decree that Tara is too close to a demon to be saved. Faith is just about willing to do her duty, if Tara will not repent, but is killed by VampWillow in Tara’s defence. Tara herself, torn in two, is unable to help Faith without killing all that is left of the woman she wants to love.

Ultimately Tara decides she cannot accept the pain the vampire Willow inflicts on people – not just for a shadow of what should be between them - and is forced to kill her. It was never Willow but... it was as close as she had known.

After Willow had been destroyed though Tara finds a way, via Wolfram and Hart, to get the real, human Willow back. In a terrible mental state, bearing all the memories of what the vampire had done as well as the state of limbo she’d been in while it was happening, Willow is in dire need of help. Tara takes the recovering Willow back to the farm she grew up on the two women slowly fall in love – for real - and eventually return to Sunnydale where they make their peace with the Giles’.

In the Second Chronicle - Tara and Willow remain in Sunnydale and they have become its guardians, practicing magic the likes of which the world has not seen for a long time. They are now friends with the Giles family, Rupert, Jenny (Calendar) and their children, including a girl called Faith who has been named after the lost Slayer. The burden of their duty weighs heavily on them though. They’ve both done things they’re not proud of and feel that defending Sunnydale is the least that they can do to make up for them.

They face the machinations of several enemies, Ethan, Darla, Drusilla and the Mayor, while a young, deaf girl – Toni – is caught up in them too. Toni loses her father to the vampires and gets away just in time for Tara and Willow to help her escape. Suspicious of the girls and their magic, Toni is a difficult charge for them, staying with them for some time while social services figure out what to do with the now orphaned girl.

Ultimately the Mayor – in his ascended form – takes charge of the Hellmouth, which was always his intent in becoming a giant snake demon. He sees it as a service that he can provide for the town he helped found, protecting it from what lies beneath it. His change also frees Tara and Willow from their duty to protect the town.

Toni is finally adopted by Rupert and Jenny, though she is by then close to Tara and Willow too. Finally the girls leave Sunnydale to be able to live their lives together.

The epilogue of the Second Chronicle shows us life a few years down the line where Tara had become the vice-principal of a school for children with sensory impairments and Willow has a company making software to support the education of kids at exactly those kinds of schools. Where they’re based then, outside of Boston, has no need of patrolling and Slayers. It’s – almost – normal.

The epilogue closes with a now college-age Faith Giles finding herself a girlfriend, Toni giving birth to her first child – Charlotte - and a rapprochement between the all too similar Jenny and Faith, mother and daughter who’d been fighting with each other for years.

And for a long time that was – as they say – that.

Except now there’s a third Chronicle.

The power of three, of course.

Notes
Since it’s a few years since I wrote Sidestep and also because it’s too much to expect any new readers to go away and read First and Second Chronicles, there are a few chapters – especially up the front – that lay out who characters are and what has happened and make it less of a direct continuation of the same story. In other words Third Chronicle is written more like a self-contained novel that anyone can pick up than expecting you to know everything. While that may annoy devotees, I hope it will make for a better all around experience.

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 1 (243))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: A re-introduction to the characters and set up for what is to come…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: As mentioned above, the early chapters of this story are structured to re-introduce the reader to the characters and establish their lives. I apologise to those who knew First and Second Chronicle well, but this is really for the newbies.
I’ve included the overall part number (243 for this one) above just because that is how I have it organised. Also I like big numbers.
Thanks to: Everyone who keeps the Kitten going.

Tara and Willow:

“You’re early, baby,” Willow called down the stairs when she heard movement. Only, what? Five o’clock and Tara was home? On a weekday? That was plenty unusual enough to comment on. “I thought you had an after-school?”

Not that she minded Tara being out quite late – at least in one sense. It was good discipline for her. Running a virtual company – with her developers scattered all over the world – was about as tough as running a normal one with offices and buildings. But for her there was one additional challenge; staying focused enough to get everything done in the face of distractions here in the house.

And Tara was the single greatest distraction she’d ever known when she was here. So… from a professional point of view having her woman out of the house at least ten hours a day was just fine for the health of the company – of which she and Tara were the majority stockholders.

“I do,” Tara told her, poking her head around the office door. “I mean I did. I asked Maggie to cover it for me though.”

Willow greeted her with a sympathetic smile. There wasn’t much that would keep Tara out of her after-school classes. She always loved teaching so much, but got to do so little now that she was Principal here at the school. Those after-school sessions were the ones where she reminded herself of the way she’d have liked things to be. “Guess it must’ve been a rough day then?”

“Never stopped,” Tara said, coming up behind her and kissing the back of her neck. “One thing just led to another. I had the trustees in and then there was that fund-raising lunch. I missed you at that, you know. My cutting edge software supplier always goes down well.”

“I know baby – and its sweet of you to acknowledge that I go down well too - but I had a conference call to Germany. What can I say? The Germans like to go home on time.”

Tara straightened up, just looping her arms around her now.

“I told them all about the work you do with us,” Tara said, “but you know I don’t do that very well.”

“You do fine,” Willow promised her, Tara wasn’t half as technophobic as she pretended to be. Even if the kids were racing ahead of them both. “I mean, you’ve heard me give the speech about a million times.”

Her company worked with the school because it was the premier software company supporting deaf, blind and multi-sensory impaired kids. That’d started as a ‘how can I help thing’ when Tara had started working here at the school. But looking at the market, there was a definite niche there and one that she’d now successfully made her own. The most satisfying thing about it – apart from building it up from nothing – was that a handful of former students actually now worked for the company. A few others had done and then moved onto jobs with the bigger players in the industry. They both got a kick out of that.

“I know, but it would’ve been nice to see you before… Billy Duke got a crayon stuck up his nose.”

Willow couldn’t help but laugh. One of the residential kids, she knew most of them quite well as they were often around here after school and at weekends. Billy was about the smallest and bravest little guy that you could imagine. Fearless as anything for all that life had stacked against him in terms of his impairment and family circumstances. “What colour was it?”

“Why does everyone ask me that? In the end it was stuck so far up there I had to take him to the emergency room. First thing they asked was ‘what colour is it’ too?” Tara said.

“So?”

“It was red, okay. It was red. And yes, it looked like he had a nose bleed.”

“You took him then?”

“Clare’s still off,” Tara said and Willow felt rather than saw the shrug while her woman embraced her.

“Comes to something when your school nurse is off sick during an emergency like that. How was Billy?”

“He thought it was great.”

“That boy’s going to grow up to throw himself out of aeroplanes,” Willow said, despite the fact that the military probably wouldn’t take him, on account of the blindness and all.

“Probably. Anyway, I just got back – schools out and I decided that I was entitled to get out of the office before six. So here I am.”

“I have to work,” Willow said.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, nose to the grindstone. Putting in the hours. Pushing on through and generally being the responsible adult that you didn’t fall in love with,” Willow teased.

“Hmm, so if I started to do this… you’d have to tell me to stop?” Tara’s fingers started to work their magic on the back of her neck, almost literally since any touch was charged and when they worked into something so fundamental as tension… Gods above it was good. Maybe, maybe there was some woman in Turkey who could do more for her in a massage, but massage was the least of it with Tara.

“I really might have to,” Willow managed, suppressing a groan.

“Shame.”

The fingers left her alone and Willow spun her chair around, going too far and having to bring herself back around again – ruining the effect. “Tara, don’t you come in here all frisky and leave me hanging. That’s just not appropriate behaviour.”

Tara was smiling, a sight she never got tired of. It kept her from starting to feel old. No matter how the numbers of years started to mount, she still felt young. Though the kids that they had coming through the school – and for many of them through this house – were starting to make her feel… more mature. God, she was employing some of them and they’d been with her a few years already – after going to college.

“Not sure I’m frisky. Not exactly,” Tara told her, running a finger up the stems of the flowers on the shelf across the room that had started to dry out and die on them. They’d been a gift and neither of them saw any reason not to preserve them as long as possible.

At Tara’s touch the colours started to return. The leaves filled out, turned green and were shapely rather than crinkled.

“Just how long do you think you can keep that going?” There was a prickle of magic in the air. Their own brand of it, one that no one else had ever really matched, not so far as they knew anyway.

“We kept our wedding blooms going for a couple of years,” Tara replied.

True. But this had just been a birthday gift, a delivery from Toni. Hardly super-special, but they’d been pretty and now they were again. All it took was a touch, a directed thought. A wish…

“And just what did you have in mind for this evening that brought you home to me?” Since they lived on the school grounds it was actually very easy for Tara to head back to the office, if she wanted to. Which plainly she didn’t.

“I want to cook you dinner.”

“Kitchen’s that way,” Willow pointed out and turned back to her desk, grinning and wondering what that dismissal would earn her.

With the faint prickle of magic in the air, Tara’s coming back across the room towards her was a little like someone walking through thick fog, it swirled and reformed ahead of her. Especially when it was someone so magically attuned as Tara was.

“Minx,” Tara said, her hands returning to her shoulders.

Willow enjoyed the renewed massage for maybe a minute but found that the tips of Tara’s fingers were dipping lower and lower, inside her shirt and… hmm, that too huh? “Something you like down there?” she asked as Tara briefly cupped her breasts.

“I seem to remember there might be, yeah.”

“Must be tough, for an old girl like you to remember something you haven’t laid hands on in oh… couple of days?” They’d shared that bath and hands hadn’t been the only things that had been laid.

Tara laughed softly. “Remember the days when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other?”

“Yeah, last Sunday was a looong time ago.”

“You’ve not done so badly since then,” Tara reminded her.

“Its always,” Willow said.

“And forever.”

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

Holland

“Mister Manners, would you care to move to the nineteenth hole?”

“You’re a good boy, Eric,” Holland replied. “But I think we’ll stay here a while longer. See this out.” He wasn’t quite ready to head inside.

Eric was Wolfram and Hart, of course he was. They’d hardly let him roam free without some sort of supervision. And these days he did need the help.

As retirements went this was about the most pleasant he’d actually heard of. So he couldn’t play golf any more, he did get an obscene amount of pleasure from watching it. And with this boy’s help, he never had to miss a swing. Something Eric didn’t seem to mind.

“Up the fairway, Sir?”

“Absolutely.”

With Eric’s hand lowering onto his shoulder, they shifted, moving from the tee at the 18th hole, up the fairway and a little into the rough near where the ball had landed. Wheelchair and all. The trick to not throwing up was just to take a breath in the instant before you left, otherwise the stench would get you, sure as anything.

Brimstone would do that to you.

“Well done again,” he said.

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Not exactly what you expected when you signed on to Wolfram and Hart, I bet? Looking after an old man? Helping him around the golf course?”

“I’ve had worse jobs, Sir.”

“Hmm,” Holland reflected. “So have I.”

“Besides, Sir, I know that it must be important. The firm doesn’t waste its resources.”

“That is very true. But still…”

“I do what I’m asked to do, Mister Manners. I do it without complaint and to the best of my ability. If you want to feel guilty about that somehow then you’re welcome to do so, but I take pride in my work.”

“That’s an excellent attitude. Excellent. Reminds me of one of my protégés. Back before you were born.”

“I doubt that, Sir.”

“Ah, yes. I keep forgetting, you’re older than you look. No, look. You see, that grip is all wrong. All wrong.” He pointed at the error the golfer they’d been watching was making, but knew that Eric wasn’t particularly interested. Though the demon could hold conversations on any number of subjects, golf just wasn’t one of them. But he put up with it anyway.

In truth his retirement wouldn’t have been filled with so much admiration for the game of golf if it hadn’t been for driving his firm-assigned assistants to distraction. Though, to peel back another layer of the truth he’d driven the others away in part to get hold of Eric - a rather useful assistant who could move him in the blink of an eye from any place he’d been before to another. At every shift though, for a split second, they moved via one of the hell dimensions and if the boy let him go there…

He wouldn’t.

Send Eric for a walk around the course prior to teeing off and he could unerringly find the best spots to view the action – and shots from them. Heck, the boy could actually take him from where the shot was played to where it was going to land before it hit the ground, at least so long as it didn’t go too wild.

The next time that Eric reached for his shoulder though, he put his hand over the seemingly younger mans. “No.”

“Ah. I’ll wait over here, Sir.” Eric recognised what this was.

Holland’s attention was focused internally. To the presence – not just a voice or an image but a very real presence – that entered him at that moment.

“Yes?”

He waited while the presence unfolded, sensation upon sensation unleashed into his brain. Knowledge. Opinion. Questions.

“An opportunity has presented itself,” he agreed. It was easier to verbalise – especially out here while there was no one around.

A further stream of presence. Agreement. More questions. Seeking of clarity.

“I agree; it’s time for her reward.”

Question.

“No, I’ll see it’s entered in her ledger.

Regret. Parting. Good wishes.

“Balance and harmony to you too.”

Eric seemed to know when it was time for him to approach. “Business, Sir?”

“Yes, we’ll be putting you to rather better use in the next little while, I fancy. Home, Eric.”

“Yes, Sir.”

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

Toni

The party would go on long into the night, she was sure. It was Friday and she’d already specified that none of her staff were to be found in the office tomorrow. Both security and the Shalk demons that guarded the offices had copies of those instructions and she trusted that she wasn’t going to get a call to say someone had taken themselves in anyway. ‘I just wanted to finish off…’ wasn’t going to cut it.

Maybe she couldn’t stop them working from other locations, nor actually did she have any intention of doing so, but she’d decided that she wanted them to cut loose. They deserved it and she’d learned through experience that they wouldn’t do that – any more than she would have – unless they were very firmly told that they couldn’t do anything else.

The party would go on without her though. She’d left them in the function room of one of last real pubs in Manhattan. Bosses were supposed to start a party off and then bow out at an appropriate moment so that the staff could bitch about her too.

A full one percent of her bonus was behind the bar too. It didn’t sound like much but it was enough to get every one of them blasted on whatever they chose to drink, pay for damages and leave some change along with a hefty tip. And there would be damages. When lawyers cut loose, there were always damages.

Toni walked into her apartment, having drunk enough to be unsteady on her feet and slipped her shoes off as soon as she walked through the door. Why she still did it to herself, she had no idea. Heels. God’s penalty for female lawyers who got to be the best at what they did.

And what she did was broker deals. She made things happen. She played every card that there was to play and in the right order. That was what she did at work and she was very good at it.

Of course the apartment was empty.

It hadn’t always been. Once it had been a place of fun, children and a husband to come back to. Someone to tell her she’d done good. For those who could hear, it’d been a place that had been filled with laughter and giggling.

Happy sounds.

Just because it had always been silent to her didn’t mean that she couldn’t tell the difference now. Toni had been born deaf and never missed what she couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t even a consideration in why her life was the way it was.
Didn’t mean that she wasn’t often reluctant to come home, but couldn’t stay away either in case… in case the ache went away.

The first room through the door – and this always tortured her – was her child’s bedroom. She kept the door closed, ever since that night she’d walked into the apartment, looked through that door and just fallen down on the bed amongst the stuffed animals and cried herself to sleep. Next morning she’d woken up a wrinkled mess and dragged herself to work at an unheard of nine a.m.

There were pictures in the hallway too. She didn’t dare take them down. Pictures of her baby, Charlotte. Pictures of her husband. The two and three of them. She couldn’t take them down, despite the fact that walking through them was like braving a tunnel of slaps in the face. But what if they came back? What if she took them down and they came back? What would they say then? They could come back… It was why she stayed here, even though it made her ache, so they’d know where to find her.

The kitchen was a safe place, devoid of too many reminders, and Mal’s absence had forced her to get better at fending for herself. Even making a decent meal when she was home early enough to bother. Mostly she stayed at the office with a healthy take-out though.

It was there in the kitchen that she took off her jacket, dumped her bag and made sure that the pad was left to charge and synch with the apartment systems. All her media, messages, bills and anything else that came up would be there waiting for her in the morning. Right now, she was taking her own advice. She was clocking off. She figured she deserved at least that much.

There was one picture in here though, Mal had hung it for her when they first moved in. Why here? At the time it’d just seemed like a good fit. A picture of her Dad.

He was long dead, of course. Long enough that it didn’t ache the way that the others did. But her last memory of him had been as a corpse that had been reanimated after the moment of death. A monstrous version of what was already monster. Of course that had to be her last memory of him, out at the Sunnydale Hellmouth. The place that had changed her entire life.

For better and for worse.

She couldn’t pretend that some good things hadn’t come out of Sunnydale. Tara and Willow who’d saved her life just after Dad had… passed. The Giles’ who’d taken care of her, given her a new family when they adopted her. Given her brothers and sisters that even after just a few years in their home before leaving for college she’d come to treasure. She’d been at just the right age to appreciate siblings who’d been much younger than her. She still enjoyed being their big sister as well as Tara and Willow’s younger one.

Sunnydale was also where Mal, her husband, had come from.

And she’d found success since then. An athletics scholarship. Running at the Olympics, her medal was buried somewhere in a drawer and rarely saw the light of day. Giving birth. Her career… All big successes. They’d all come from Sunnydale.

But so much lost too.

Because losing her Dad still counted for so much. She was still trying to put it right. Somehow. Why else, after spending her late teens with Tara, Willow and a Watcher would she contemplate working for the very law firm that had caused so much trouble in their lives?

Possibly because it was the only way.

Working as hard as she had… it had cost her almost everything that counted outside of the office. Relations with all of her surrogate parental figures had been strained since they found out and at best no one talked about it. That was when she made it to see them at all. At first it had been about being busy. Then, later, the judgement… Oh, the kids still loved her – and she them – but the adults? They tried hard not to let it show, but they were unsure about her now. Even after the accident… things had been difficult.

About the only person who was still actively in her life was Faith, one of the Giles’ natural born children. Her little sister. Not that Faith was above telling her exactly what she thought of ‘messing around with the forces of evil represented by Wolfram and Hart.’ But at least she was open and honest about it. At least it wasn’t just ignored or glossed over when it was about all she had left in her life there days. And Faith had long since left home, she could visit under her own steam, often just turning up and dragging her out of the office if she had to.

After all, the office and home were about the only places she could be found.

The question she’d been asking herself so much recently was what success was worth without anyone to share it with. Someone else who could appreciate it?

But she didn’t blame them for staying away, this was a self-inflicted wound.

Sitting here, prodding at the food she’d already prodded to stir-fry, left a lot of time to think about these things. She was – by everyone else’s standards – part of a problem that they’d all tried to put behind them.

Naturally Rupert was retired now, both as a librarian and a Watcher (though not as an Englishman abroad.) Her adopted brothers and sisters were off in school, college or the early stages of careers that had nothing to do with ‘evil.’ Faith had actually made a point of checking a number of potential employers weren’t amongst her clients.

Nice.

And the others? Tara was running a school, Willow a software company. They were doing good things with their lives. They all were – but they’d put the Hellmouth behind them. They’d fought so hard to put it behind them without abandoning the people who lived there – or the world because mouth of Hell wasn’t a localised phenomenon when it went wrong – to more danger.

She, on the other hand, was the one being paid a lot of money to keep things like a Hellmouth cooking. Just a few months ago she’d been asked to facilitate an apocalypse. Only a small one, but still. It hadn’t come off in the end, something to do with a lack of credit but she’d been quite willing to do it.

It was her job to do that, sometimes at least.

Willing… but not happy. It wouldn’t have been the first time either. What choice did she have though? What was she supposed to do? Give up on everything she’d been fighting for? Make all the sacrifices worthless by tossing away the end result?

She’d lost Charlie. Mal. All of them. And if she’d lost them then she had to follow through and make sure it was for something.

The price had already been paid.

Such a high price. Only a couple of other people in the world knew how high it had been.

There was a knock at the door. That hardly ever happened. Neighbours didn’t talk to each other here and even the doorman called up from the desk if they had a package or guest. So it was obviously a visitor who could bypass the doorman. One with courtesy enough to knock rather than just make their way inside.

Toni didn’t bother sprucing herself up. She was off the clock, she’d closed a big deal and been to the party. They’d have to take her as they found her. She dropped the fork she’d been prodding the food around with and walked barefoot out to the door.

“Ah, Toni. Nice to see you again.”

*And you, Mister Manners.*

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

wayland · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:14 pm

Hi Katharyn,

I was very pleased to see you post this. I know I have lots of good quality writing to look forward to.

I am one of those newbies, and I haven't read Sidestep in its entirety, but so far, with the help of your plot summaries, I don't feel too out of my depth.

I was intrigued by the opening, particularly by Toni, and look forward to seeing how the story develops.

Grimm · **Posted:** Sat Jul 30, 2011 5:02 pm

Oh My God!! I am happy to see that all my constant (and shameless) begging has finally paid off. I loved the reintroduction of the main players (especially frisky Tara). I have been having a crappy summer. So, I was overjoyed to see that You have brought my all-time favorite story out of hibernation. This almost makes up for being audited by the IRS this year (smile). Thank You Katharyn..

P.s. I loved my shout out (puffs chest out )!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:31 pm

Wayland - 'Intrigued' is a very good way to start

I will try and drag that out a little... you don't find everything out at once (though its not really a mystery) Thanks for hopping on the bus

SMGOVAN - Well you had to be here. It's your fault! Sorry to hear about your crappy summer. If this helps in some small way then that's nice to know

All I have to do now is live up to the hype...

Next part will post later today or tomorrow. I've not decided on the schedule yet but it should be at least a couple of parts per week.

Thanks,

Katharyn

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

thank you katharyn, can't wait to see where you take us

hat's off to smgovan :applause

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:46 am

I finally read the others so I could read this lol.
I like this a lot, revisiting old characters is always fun.
Loving how Willow and Tara tease each other, good thing they haven't lost that charm.

Great Job!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:00 pm

Well thank you edob. Absolutely hats off to SMGOVAN though, at times in the writing there may have been a few curses. Not serious heavy duty ones though

Astronsoul - afraid you won't find this story as light and cheery as the other one you commented on a few days ago, but it should have its moments... But we will see some more old characters turning up. Where I work, reading 1.5 million words to read 100,000 would be considered inefficient but hey, I'm embracing it

Thanks.

Next part in a few mins, technology allowing...

Katharyn.

Katharyn · **Posted:** Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:09 pm

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle(Part 2 (244))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: Toni comes to visit Willow.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: Yeah, I suppose I am setting up Toni in a certain light here… but don’t hate her. And yes, that is a cliff we're hanging on at the end. Or at least a small hill with a abrupt edge...
Thanks to: The real Frederick…

Willow had just severed the connection with Frederick, her Swedish developer, as the doorbell rang.

Frederick was very… Swedish. She wasn’t quite sure what that meant or how she’d characterise it, but that was the easiest way to put it. The people of every country had their idiosyncrasies and she was absolutely certain that he had the same thoughts about her.

With Frederick you could just about believe that the hippy movement – long dead before she’d even been born – hadn’t actually faded away. From his long hair, to his beard and down to his approach to business. Maybe that wasn’t a Swedish thing, maybe it was more just him – but the people she knew overseas contributed to her views of those countries.

But at the end of the day he was a top man, one of only a handful of people she’d hired who didn’t have an audio or visual impairment. Why? Because the man had a keen sense of the user experience. Witness the little games that he made in his spare time. She’d just downloaded the latest one while they’d been talking. Fiendishly addictive already and defiantly simple too. That was just typical of him. He made using the systems they built into something close to a pleasure, though it was possible she was biased…

“Perfect timing,” she muttered.

Their young cat, Portia, was sitting on the banister as she went down the stairs. A descendent of Miss Kitty Fantastico – and thus born into this house - even for a cat she took her sense of entitlement to ridiculous levels. As was expected Willow petted her on the way past but go no other reaction than a flick of her black tail at her wrist as she went by.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Willow said to Portia as she approached the front door, checked the peep hole and then opened it up. You always had to check. Sometimes the kids could be… mischievous. Speaking of people who weren’t kids and hadn’t ever been mischievous… “Toni?”

*Hey.*

*Shouldn’t you be off bringing about the end of the world?* Even though Toni didn’t care, Willow always felt she was addressing her more directly when she was using sign only, rather than verbalising the words as well. It just felt… yeah.

*I took a personal day,* the younger woman said.

Younger, but not that much. There were only seven years between their ages, even though she and Tara had once considered trying to adopt her. Every year that went by it seemed that they were a little closer in those terms, but a little further apart in other ways.

And this visit? Was this a good news or a bad news call? To be honest, with what Toni was mixed up in professionally, the lack of actual ‘bad’ would be very, very good.

*I guess they’ll just have to manage that without you then. Aren’t you going to hug me?* she asked.

It was heartfelt, genuine and right now she was really hoping Toni would agree. They needed something… Hugs had never really been Toni’s thing though and she just shrugged. It’d been a long, hard road winning her trust and acceptance and once she and Tara had done the hard work, the Giles’ had stepped in and taken the benefits. That was one way of looking at it. The other was that they’d stepped in and given her a real home that was best for everyone.

She didn’t resent the way things had turned out at all. What she did do was worry about this girl…

Woman.

Lawyer.

Wolfram and Hart employee.

*What are you doing here then?* she asked. *If there’s something buried in my yard, or under the school we don’t want to know and no you can’t dig it up to terrorise the world.*

*That’s not it,* Toni replied, but there was a flicker across her face that suggested that there was something to what had been intended as a joke. Immediately that put Willow on alert. This woman messed around with some dangerous things; it was the nature of what she did for a living. She made deals with some very real devils.

And if it sounded – or read – like she was making light of that then Willow hoped that someone could tell her how else was she supposed to deal with it? They’d long since given up actively trying to get Toni to quit Wolfram and Hart, once they’d come to appreciate what the consequences of that might be for her.

No one left the firm, not unless it was on the firm’s terms and usually after a lifetime of service.

Even now, after the accident, the firm still had plenty of hold over her. They didn’t need a husband or child to keep her under control.

More than that, Toni didn’t want to leave. And they’d had to come to terms with that too. Try to find a relationship with their ‘friend’ that skirted around the issues it raised for them.

*That’s not it? Good because, it’s been a long time since I was in the crispy-fried monster business.*

The occasional vampire here and there, when they strayed a little too close to areas that had some meaning to them – mostly the school grounds. Apart from that though, they really didn’t bother all that much with patrolling or even the magic. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done more than light a candle with her powers.

Well, technically, it’d been lots of candles because, hello, romantic gesture and it had been a bit of a challenge getting one to burn under water, but… No, no monster fighting for a while now. She and Tara weren’t exactly retired, but they were pretty much protecting places based on long-ago earned reputation and that wasn’t going to last all that long with nothing to back it up. Fortunately this was a quiet area when it came to all things supernatural.

Compared to living on top of a Hellmouth that turned into the vampire capital of the country.

*I need your help,* Toni signed.

*Of course. Anything. You know that. Just ask.* It was good that Toni could come to her and ask for something. It meant that their relationship hadn’t deteriorated as far as it sometimes seemed.

*No, Willow. I need your help.*

Oh. Help.

*Let me call Tara then. She can be here in a couple of hours,* Willow suggested. *She has a meeting this afternoon.*

*No.* Toni was absolutely firm on that. *No.*

*No? Why not?*

*It’s not her I need, Willow. It’s you. Come with me. We’ll get dinner. I’ll explain everything.*

*Toni. You know better than that. I’m not going to hide anything from her,* Willow said. *And I’m not just going to abandon her; we have plans for dinner anyway. We’re taking out the Principal of another school, he’s interested in my software and wants to talk to us both about it.*

*Willow,* Toni said. *I need you. I need your help. I’ll pay for the software. I’ll buy it for his school – he can have it for free. I don’t care about that, but I need your help. Now.*

She shook her head. *You don’t have to do that, you know I’ll help you.*

*But I need you now. It has to be now.*

*You can take me to dinner, but you can’t wait for - *

*Willow,* Toni said, obviously getting more and more wound up. *You don’t want Tara to know anything about this. Trust me. You just don’t.*

Willow shook her head. *You’re wrong about that. I don’t keep secrets from her, we don’t keep secrets from each other.*

*This time, you will.*

Once again she shook her head. *Even if I wanted to, you know I suck at keeping secrets. I get all flustered and guilty – she’ll know right away that there’s something and I’ll just have to tell her what it is. Even if I wasn’t going to tell her anyway, which I am. If you tell me, I have to tell her. So its better you don’t say anything at all if you can’t live with that.*

*No, Willow. You’ll hear me out and I promise you, you won’t want to say a word.*

*But why would I do that?* Willow asked. She couldn’t conceive of anything, except perhaps a surprise party, that she’d want to keep from Tara. Good news. Bad news. All of it. They were a couple. They were together and they loved – and trusted – each other.

*Because you have to go somewhere, to do something that she won’t want you to. So you won’t tell her.*

*Where?*

*Not here,* Toni insisted. *I’ll buy you dinner or we can just drive out somewhere and talk. But not here. I know all too well what you two can do to pick up on what happened in a place.*

*We haven’t done that for years,* Willow said, understanding what she was referring to. It’d been quite amusing at the time. But this wasn’t a joke. Toni wasn’t being conspiratorial for the sake of something good. This wasn’t a surprise party.

It was something bad.

And knowing Toni’s line of work, the sorts of things she’d actually need help with, it was probably something big bad. And it’d been a long time since something like that had come along to disrupt their lives. More to the point, their success in dealing with things like that had been based around being a team.

She and Tara, working together. That was what gave them the strength they needed. The Giles’ in reserve, holding down the book learning.

That wasn’t going to happen this time. Rupert was long since retired and if Toni didn’t want her telling Tara she certainly wouldn’t want her telling Rupert - and more especially Jenny – anyway.

So what in all the hells was it? What was it that she was so certain Tara wouldn’t approve of or agree to? Something that Toni believed she would agree to, even under these terms. There were few people in the world who knew her as well as Toni did. The younger woman had made an estimation based on all of that knowledge, not just on blind hope.

Toni was deaf, but she didn’t do blind hope.

And what was it that she thought she didn’t need both of them for?

Because pretty much for certain, Toni was wrong about that. It’d need both of them – or at least it would be a lot easier that way. Besides, it’d been a while since she’d… exerted herself that way too.

*You’ll get back into the swing of it,* Toni said. *I’m told it’s like falling off a log.*

*I think you mean riding a bike,* Willow pointed out.

*Probably. Willow, please I need you. I need you to hear me out. Once you do, you’ll do what I ask. I’m sure of it. But you can’t tell Tara. And we can’t do this here, where she can find out about it.*

*You remember the part where I love and trust her? Remember what always and forever means to us?*

*I know,* the younger woman said. *And I’m only asking you for the same. Some love. Some trust.*

Oh damn. She just had to go and say something like that, didn’t she?

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

Katharyn · **Posted:** Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:11 pm

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle(Part 3 (245))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: Willow comes home after going with Toni in the last part…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: To be honest this is another set up part, dealing with the trust and the love between the girls rather than the plot itself… Yeah, I am keeping you guessing as well as Tara…
On the ‘married’ thing… I’m still not a person who needs the word so long as the actuality and the protections behind it are there, but I think the girls would be. Plus, it tells of a better world. Which is what this is supposed to be for them.

Tara heard Willow slip into the house, a couple of ‘perimeter spells’ they’d long ago set up – back in more paranoid days – had alerted her, identified the magic and the person behind it. She’d have known just who it was even if she hadn’t recognised the sound of the car on the drive, the footfalls and on the steps and the porch.

Willow came in quietly though, even though she had to know that she was still up.

Had she been worried? No. Concerned? Not especially. Surprised? Absolutely.

But because they were connected on a level so fundamental that she’d know immediately Willow was in any real trouble – or if something worse had happened to her – and because she was certain Willow was well aware of the visit of her own client then, Tara had reasoned, there was a good explanation behind why her wife had left her to that dinner and dealing with the client herself.

Willow’s client. Not hers. Tara was very careful to limit her role in the business that – yes – she had an interest in to merely providing the same kind of recommendations any supplier would’ve given to a potential client. And they were all based on the facts too. Her integrity mattered to her. And she didn’t like to look a bit silly, not even knowing where her wife was when they had this prior appointment.

So it was obviously going to be a good explanation that hadn’t required mental alarm calls or messages left on a phone too

“Hi,” Willow said as Tara was clearing away the last of the dishes.

“Hey you,” she replied.

She wasn’t about to ask. Willow was going to have to come right out and admit whatever it had been. Admit everything. Whatever that was. Perhaps ‘admit’ was a touch judgemental, but she was in the privacy of her own mind right now. There were plenty of things she could rule out without even thinking about them – Willow hurting someone, getting arrested or cheating – but a world of other things that could’ve become an issue.

Willow was back, she was fine and so… whatever it was would come out in the fullness of time. Just so long as that was the next hour or so.

More to the point she was well aware that she was the absolute damndest person to beat when it came to interrogation of Willow. She knew all the levers to pull. All the buttons to push. And when she did, it was oh so delicately done if she did say so herself.

“You were probably wondering where I was,” Willow said.

“Crossed my mind, honey, I have to admit it,” Tara said, turning to face her woman.

“It’s only the third time I’ve done this,” Willow replied, moving towards her until they were close enough to touch, for the connection between them to kick up a notch.

There was something bothering her.

“Fourth,” Tara said. “But I’m not counting. Two of the other three involved weather a certain friend of ours would call ‘inclement’.”

“I left you with my client,” Willow said. “Potential client at least. Or… he was.”

“Still is,” Tara told her. Maybe she should’ve held that back for at least a few minutes.

“Really?”

“Really. Luckily, being a Principal himself, I had something to talk to Philip about all night. And as a customer of yours, as well as your wife, I was able to tell him what was what with the system.”

Willow leaned in, kissed her. Wrapped her in her arms. “Love you,” she said.

“Love you too.”

“Aren’t you going to ask?” Willow pressed, running a hand up and down her arm.

“Are you going to tell me?”

There was no reply to that. At least not immediately.

“Fair enough,” Tara said, eventually. She could see that Willow wanted to. She really wanted to, but she wasn’t actually speaking the words or letting much of anything show.

“It was… I had a rough day,” Willow said eventually.

They both had rough days. It happened. Sometimes more often than not, but that didn’t usually send Willow scampering off to dinner somewhere else and certainly didn’t leave her alone here with one of her wife’s clients. This was a woman whose business ranked number three in her list of priorities. That might not sound like much, but when number one was her family – wife included of course – and number two were the kids – both here at the school and more widely – then that was about as good as it was going to get.

“Nothing went as planned?” Tara wondered, still not directly questioning it. Of course she wanted to but… You had to have trust.

“You know, one of those days where you start off with everything laid out that you want to get done and then one thing comes up that just swamps all the rest of it. I’m sorry, baby.”

“You said that already, I won’t hold it against you.”

“I wish you’d hold something against me,” Willow said, her intention obvious enough.

“I swilled them off already, the dishes can wait until morning…” Tara promised her, knowing that the report on the evening would probably become pillow talk. And then she’d find out what was wrong with Willow too. “Let me help you forget.”

Yes, you had to have trust. You had to have love to. And it was perfectly obvious that – whatever had happened – Willow needed her right now. Needed her love. Her support. Needed this.

She drew Willow through the house, gently undoing her clothes, but not quite removing them as they went. Once they’d negotiated the stairs, kissing her. Touching her. The freshness of youth had left them both, but if anything Tara desired her more now than she had back then. Back when… unfortunate things had been happening that made today’s problems look very… mundane.

Sometimes you did have to put things behind you, if you couldn’t quite forget, and love was a shield that put a lot behind them.

She laid Willow down, kissed her way down pale skin. Tracing bones and muscles. Curves – such as they were – and lingerie.

Willow had been paler once, but that was behind them.

The sex had been rougher and love hadn’t truly been involved. That was long gone, replaced by many times the numbers of memories…

And that was the least of what had happened back then that she wasn’t proud of. A vampire… a vampire with the face, the eyes but none of the real person that was the woman she loved.

It was a memory. It was gone. She’d killed it and she’d done more… other things to get this woman, a vital, real woman back. Nursed her back to sanity and fallen in love with her after the faux-desire she’d held for a vampire that wasn’t really Willow at all.

Gently she eased Willow’s underwear down, tracing the path with little kisses.

Then applied all her focus to her lover’s pleasure.

There was a lot they’d had to forget.

But nothing to forgive. That wouldn’t change, no matter where Willow had been this evening.

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

Willow sighed. And not in a good way.

She’d tried. She’d really tried… and that was probably the point of failure right there. Because she didn’t have to ‘try’ when Tara made love to her.

A handful of times in all their years together and… one of them had to be tonight, didn’t it? It just had to be tonight...

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Tara was Tara, of course. She didn’t judge. She didn’t suspect or start jumping to conclusions. She just knew that… sometimes things didn’t quite click. With their connection, with the magical link between them they weren’t quite so subject to the whim of moods and worries as many other people – plus they were both smokin’ hot but…

This time Tara would’ve been be wrong. There was a worry. There was something that was weighing heavily on her mind.

“No apologies,” Tara said. “You know that.”

Willow’s lover, her wife - and that was still something that made her smile to think about - was still down there. But her movements were no longer intended to inspire lust or pleasure. No, they were probably a sub-conscious demonstration that it didn’t matter in the slightest that they hadn’t gone there. This time.

Maybe it didn’t matter to Tara...

First dinner.

Then keeping secrets.

Now this?

It was almost enough to make her hate Toni, if only for a little while. Maybe she needed to hate Toni.

Tara’s chin rested on her lower belly, looking up at her. Breath whispering over her skin. Stroking her drawn up ankles tenderly. You found comfort wherever it came from. Why not ankles?

Willow reached down and started to run her fingers through hair that was in some disarray after the last twenty minutes or so of trying. Here and there a few strands of grey. Tara refused to dye, believing it’d make her look more like a ‘proper’ Principal and so actually welcoming it.

True, she’d come young to the position and also true Tara wasn’t much of one for cosmetics and the like anyway but… Nothing, actually. But nothing.

There was no need for artifice. For falsehood.

No room for it in their lives. Starting with just that and ending with… whoppers.

Not unkindly, she got up, leaving Tara there, curled up at the bottom of the bed. “Why don’t you get undressed, baby?” Willow asked. “I just have to…” She gestured towards the door and padded up onto the landing, still half dressed herself. Up top at least.

Her phone was downstairs and there was a message she had to send.

She approached the action hesitantly, pretending that she didn’t know what she was going to say. What answer she was going to give. But Toni had known the answer before she’d even asked. That was why she’d asked. Toni was good at what she did, she manipulated events so that she only ever had to gamble on a near certainty.

In the end it took longer to select Toni’s name from the phone than to enter the message.

‘OK.’

“Who you calling?” Tara asked, appearing behind her and wrapping her in a sheet. Willow could feel that her girl was now naked behind her.

“No one,” she said honestly. She hadn’t called anyone.

“Taking naughty pictures to send me later?”

Willow was forced into a smile. It’d been a long time since she’d done that and – after one of the kids had nearly intercepted the message she wouldn’t be doing it again either. It seemed childish and a long time ago… “Just sending a message. Just confirming something that came up today.”

It was as close to a proper lie as she’d ever told Tara. At least since… well, since her bad-self had gone away and Tara had brought her back in that creature’s place.

But she didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t know how she was going to explain it. Not afterwards, when it had happened. Not up front either, when she needed to say she was going away.

Honesty was the best policy, she believed that. But Toni had made it very clear that Tara shouldn’t know and… it was the correct assessment of what would happen. If Tara knew then everything would be very much harder and… might not work out at all.

She let Tara hold her for a little while and they swayed together. Just gently. Just for a moment. Tara’s chin rested on her shoulder, her breath was warm and she felt so good there.

‘I can’t lie to her,’ she’d told Toni and she was sure that Toni had probably thought it’d just meant she was a bad liar.

That was true too. She was a redhead and her blushes were particularly telling and prominent, but that wasn’t the reason she couldn’t lie. She really couldn’t lie to Tara. It just wasn’t an option.

Unfortunately Toni’s advice about that still held true. ‘Then don’t say anything.’ Now she was having to practice deception by omission. By double-meaning and Tara holding her was making it gut-rippingly hard. No, it wasn’t hard to hate Toni for putting her in this position.

Not a happy thought. She turned to Tara, feeling the other woman adjust her embrace. She touched Tara’s face. Kissed it.

“There’s something wrong,” Tara said.

“There’s nothing wrong with this,” Willow told her. “Nothing ever wrong with this. I love you, you know that right?”

“Since when did you have to ask?” Tara wondered, still caressing her face. The sheet was slipping. But where was the bad in that?

“I know. You’re old reliable.”

“Less of the old, lover.”

“Always.”

“Forever,” Tara replied. “You looking to try again?”

Willow realised that one of her hands had crept to Tara’s bare breast, teasing a not exactly resistant woman. “You know how I hate failure,” she said. But honestly, she didn’t trust herself to let go enough. It wasn’t that she was holding something back – or felt that she needed to. Except that one honking big, unrevealed truth.

But… Physical and emotional climax would be her most unguarded moment and it shouldn’t be sullied with giving everything away. Not until she’d had a chance to figure out what she was going to say.

“We never failed,” Tara replied.

From a certain point of view, that was exactly right.

Willow eased her woman back, against the wall and her wife didn’t resist her at all. Nor when she slipped down to her knees and buried her face between the unresisting apex of Tara’s legs.

It wasn’t the first time she’d done this for the sake of guilt, but it was the first time that the truth wasn’t out there already.

Tara didn’t ask though. She just gave herself over to the pleasures that Willow wanted to impart to her. Not because she was guilty, but because this was how she felt best about herself.

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

Toni sat in the darkness, waiting for her phone to buzz and tell her that there was some response. It did this periodically, of course it did. She was tied into more alerts and newsfeeds – not to mention office messages – than she ever had time to read. But the signal from Willow would be clear.

In the end it lit up the room. The screen lit up. ‘Message from Willow RM’

It’d taken hours and the answer had been inevitable. Seemed that way, anyway.

She picked up the phone, looked at the message.

‘OK’

Finally. After so long, finally it could really happen. Willow would make it happen.

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

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:30 pm

DIBS!!!!

I love double updates!!!

And wow Willow keeping something from Tara, even in this that's shocking.
Wonder how this will play out....has me very curious!

Can't wait for the next update!!!!

Grimm · **Posted:** Tue Aug 02, 2011 6:30 pm

Oh Katharyn, now I have belly rumblings! The double post was most excellent. But, secrets are bad.. and this one strikes me as being in the "mother of all secrets" categories if Willow is willing to lie to Tara to keep it. Toni is sucking some serious ass in my book right about now... as usual you have my full attention.

Katharyn · **Posted:** Sat Aug 06, 2011 9:50 am

Astronsoul - Afraid I can't keep going on double updates LOL.

It is shocking, that Willow keeps a secret. I was hesitant about writing it but at the end of the day its a better kind of drama than hurting them!

Thanks

SMGOVAN - Secrets are bad and never a good idea. Sometimes they just seem necessary. I think all will become a little clearer... As for Toni, yeah. I knew I was doing that to her as a character but she does still mean something to the girls which is why it matters.

Thanks,

Next update in an hour or so...

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:31 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle(Part 4 (246))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: Tara and Willow hone their skills…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: I can imagine up front the reaction to Willow not telling Tara things. Suffice it to say that I’m not, ever going to take these two to places where their trust breaks down. No way. No how.
Thanks to: To the person that said it was OK.

“Okay, we’re out here.” Tara stood there, in the middle of the cemetery and shrugged.

“You read the report, just like I did,” Willow argued.

“I know the signs are good,” Tara admitted. “But I’m still not getting what we’re doing out here at all?”

Here was the thing. After a perfectly wonderful, lazy Saturday morning which had pretty much been spent in bed, Willow had turned to some websites Tara hadn’t seen her looking at in the past few years. Or maybe even the last decade.

Scanning for likely vampire risings. Yeah, that had once been a big part of their life. Now, not so much.

At first Tara had doubted what it was her wife was actually doing, like maybe she was worried about someone and actually needed to check on whether the worst had happened. But when Willow had been checking the hospitals, mortuaries, funeral parlours and miscellaneous news for up to a fifty mile radius – well outside of what they considered their ‘protected zone’ – then it wasn’t as easy to blow off. The question was ‘why?’

“We shouldn’t give up what we’ve got. Use it or lose it. Same reason we use the gym, baby.”

“Okay,” Tara agreed. “I can see that. I can. But why now? We use it, I mean we do pay attention and we cover off anything happening in the area but, Willow, we drove an hour to be here tonight. I don’t think we’ve even been here before?”

“Isn’t it a nice cemetery though?” Willow wondered. “Trees and yet you can see the stars too. Grass that’s been kept neat. This is a nice cemetery. I mean, we’ve been in a lot of cemeteries but I don’t think we’ve been in one this nice for a long time.”

Yeah, there was still something off about Willow.

Something was definitely on her mind and this was just the latest manifestation. Going hunting? Okay, so it wasn’t like newly risen vampires were really a challenge – in fact it’d been all too easy to kind of feel sorry for them – but they were more immediately destructive than any others so it was a good thing they were doing.

And when it came to challenges, maybe they should start out slow. Not because they were getting old – they didn’t acknowledge that much at all – but more because they were a little out of practice.

So… this. An ambush of newly created vampires. Up to four of them if the reports were anything to go by. Unusual amounts of blood-loss. Ripping and tearing at the wrist and neck, attributed to animals after the fact. And they were in the ground. If it had been werewolves then they’d be staying there. Vampires and they’d rise tonight, simple as.

“I suppose so,” she said, looking around at the scenery. As was usual the cemetery was ringed with hedges and closed packed trees, as well as fences. Ancient human symbolism to keep the dead where they were supposed to be.

Trouble was, these vampires would rise knowing how to find a gate. Most of them, anyway.

“Oh come on, we’re here and I thank you for indulging me. We might as well enjoy the scenery now that we are,” Willow said.

“Talking of which.” Tara pointed.

“Fresh graves.”

“Betcha they’re lazy,” Tara said. That was just the way their luck went. They came after newly risen vamps and they were tardy at the actual rising part.

“No bet,” Willow replied, slipping a hand into hers. “I spy?”

“What are we? Kids?”

“You’re never too old to play I spy,” Willow told her, wagging a finger. “Besides it’ll pass the time.”

Without you telling me what’s really wrong, love. It’s not just that we need the practice.

“Okay, okay. I spy - ”

“I go first,” Willow said, interrupting. “I always go first.”

“Fine, you go first.” Maybe it’d work like word association or something.

“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with D.”

“Dirt,” Tara said. “My turn.”

“Wait – did I say it was dirt? Why would you assume its dirt?”

“Because it’s always dirt. When we’re watching fresh graves, you always go first and you always come up with ‘dirt’,” Tara explained.

“That’s not true.”

“Okay, once you did go with ‘soil’. Was it dirt?”

Willow frowned. “Yes, it was dirt. Your turn.”

“I spy, with my little eye. Something beginning with G.”

“Grass.”

“No.”

“Grave.”

“Nope.”

“Gate?”

“No.”

Willow started to look around, actually paying attention to their surroundings. “Gables?”

“Good, but no cigar. And where do you see gables?”

Willow pointed. “That house, over beyond the fence. I don’t think I know what a gable is, but I bet that there’s one on that house anyway.”

“You’d win the bet – it’s the bit between the edges of the roof – but not this game.”

“You’re so smart. Grave?”

“Thanks, and you said that.”

“There’s more than one though,” Willow pointed out.

“We’re not playing that silly plurals rule either,” Tara announced. The last thing she needed was guessing ‘leaf’ for each and every L that came up.

“So it’s not grave?”

“No. Not grave. Or grave. Or grave.”

Willow shrugged. “I don’t know then, I ran out of Gs.”

“Gee, it’s a vampire,” Tara said, pointing.

Over Willow’s shoulder, breaking the earth in the same half-hearted way that teenagers got out of bed, a hand reached from the earth and patted around it, as if looking for a key that didn’t exist. Or a light switch. Something anyway.

“That’s not fair,” Willow announced. “You can’t have that. I’m pretty sure we outlawed that in the noughties. Definitely back when we were doing this more regularly anyway.”

“Okay, okay. You’re probably right. You want first stab?” Tara offered, knowing she’d more than bent their accepted rules.

“We’re stabbing? I didn’t bring a stake,” her girlfriend protested.

“We always bring stakes.” It seemed important to remind Willow of that. After all it’d long since been their – her – main weapon. By the time Willow was… back to herself and had joined her in the hunting then that changed a little and they’d been more focused on what the magic could do for them.

“Did you?”

“Well, I don’t need one.”

Tara pulled three from her bag. Willow knew very well that she’d been carrying at least one everywhere she went for about the last twenty years. Except on their wedding day. That’d been a stake free day.

And the honeymoon. Though she had taken a whittling knife along then. Just in case. More as a security blanket than anything else.

The hand had turned into an arm and was trying to lever the vampire from its grave. Not the easiest thing in the world, she imagined. Willow hadn’t been buried in a grave before she turned so she’d never had anyone to ask who’d been reliable. But that had to be a lot of soil and kind of claustrophobic.

Not that she really wanted to know.

“Do your thing then,” Tara offered, gesturing.

“Thank you, darling. I will.”

“My pleasure.” She swept her eyes over the other graves, checking them for sounds of other activity. Nothing yet though.

Nothing happened right away. Willow sat, kicking her heels as they waited for the vampire to emerge further.

Its eyes were as yellow and alien as with all of their kind in full vamp face as it rose. Learning to conceal that was – apparently – the first thing a risen vampire needed to pick up to prevent being so obvious as to be destroyed out of hand. Fixing on them, it saw not one meal but two. The demon’s instinctive hunger and predatory nature was more than enough to overwhelm whatever the vampire – a man in a nice suit for his burial – had been in its previous life.

The presence of food gave it new impetus, though it wasn’t yet experienced and therefore failed to wonder why they weren’t running away from it. Or what they were doing here watching it in the first place.

“What are you going to do?” Tara wondered.

“I thought I’d start out simple,” Willow replied. “Or were you looking for something in particular?”

“It’s your practice,” Tara said. “Deal with it how you like. But, please, deal with it.”

The vampire was free of the restraints of the earth now and moving towards them, perhaps it was just dimly conscious at the demonic level that they weren’t behaving as they should be. Confusion wasn’t a state it was capable of just yet though. The undead didn’t rise and wonder what they were since they were possessed, claimed by a demon that simpler merged with and subsumed the human memories of what had been.

Willow seemed to be thinking about it too much. Her gestures were – it looked like she was looking for the correct pose. Of course, they’d watched more movies about people shooting fire from their hands than they’d actually done it any time in the recent past.

The vampire hissed, ready to make it’s charge. Tara slipped a stake in the palm of her hand, ready to take over if she had to. It wasn’t that she was afraid Willow couldn’t do this, but there was a danger she’d go for style over substance and miss the most important point – killing the damned vampire.

“Any time, love.”

“Oh, alright.” Willow didn’t move other than to raise her hand and snap her fingers.

Like her fingertips highly flammable, a trail of fire flared from them and ignited the vampire. Surrounding it in flame as Willow – operating on some sort of an instinctive level herself – surrounded the creature with almost pure oxygen, inundating its clothes and natural space, the spark then setting that alight in a flash. Not that Willow relied on that manipulation of the air. Oh no, she could’ve done the entire job through the element she was most famed for.

The vampire fell down like a tree trunk. A burning, twitching corpse that exploded in a shower of sparks a few seconds after hitting the ground.

“Yeah. I’ve still got it,” Willow said.

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“Not much. Can I take another?”

With a stake still in hand, Tara nodded. She didn’t much care for the idea of the retrospective herself. This wasn’t who she was now.

This time when Willow snapped her fingers, her thumb remained ‘alight.’

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Tara wondered. “Isn’t it at least just hot?”

“Not really. But then I’m always hot.” Willow flicked her finger and a thin line of thermal energy – fire by any other name – extended from her fingertip like whip and sliced the clutching hand of the vampire from the rest of it’s body. The hand vanished in that familiar shower of sparks but left the rest of the vampire screaming – underground – and trying to get through the surface in spite of the fact it was probably marginally safer down there. “Kiss?”

Tara leaned over and kissed her. “Show off.” That was new, she’d never seen Willow do it before. Fire wasn’t supposed to move that way.

“I’m sure you can come up with something. I just wanted to make sure that I could still… I mean, it’s not something you can practice around the house. It’s not exactly lighting candles is it?”

“True. And I’m glad you didn’t. Come on, finish it off. The heads out now.”

Willow repeated the move, already having her eye in and the one handed vamp was obliterated. Head, heart, sun and fire. That was how you killed these… things.

“Cute, but this one’s mine,” Tara said as the third one was already up from the grave. Willow didn’t seem content to let her just get on with it though. “Leave it, baby.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Will, you wanted me to come with you. We drove an hour to get here so, fairs fair. This one’s mine.” To eliminate any further debate, she waited only as long as it took for that female vampire to lift its chest - and thus its heart – from the ground. A flick of the wrist, a manipulation of the air and gravity and…

The stake shot from the palm of her hand and struck the vampire cleanly.

Scratch three.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Willow asked/

“Moving target,” Tara said. She hadn’t intended to be impressive but since her girl was challenging her she did feel that she had to put some sort of value on it.

“Not moving very much. Do better.”

“Any requests?” Tara asked, looking at the final grave starting to trickle soil as the vampire beneath the surface started to push out of its coffin.

“Just do… better.”

“Okay. Fine.”

Her eyes closed and she slowed her breathing. Reached for and sensed the earth. The particles of it. The soil and the plant fibres. The genuine wooden coffin. That was easier if she was going to try to meet Willow’s requirement of her.

And there… just what she needed. A spark of the most primitive memory of life. A seed that had been driven too deep to ever hope to germinate successfully, unable to stretch towards life.

She nurtured that flicker of potential, directing energy through it. Encouraged the growth. She pushed nutrients and moisture to feed the rapid development she was encouraging and felt the initially imperceptible growth take hold. Tiny changes multiplied and the sprouting accelerated. She felt cells divide. She felt tougher bark form, roots developing as the main shoot pushed skywards. She gave it all the energy it needed, promised more.

In return for her gift the growth rippled in the directions she wanted and as the sapling developed into a young tree, with branches and leaves, the roots crushed the coffin. Perhaps that did for the vampire; perhaps some shard penetrated its heart then. Maybe it was the roots themselves twisting and circling through the ruined coffin and the dead thing inside it.

Eventually there was stillness and where there had been a new grave there was now a tree, no less than ten years old if you were to examine it. And under the ground…? Not much beside the shattered coffin since the vampire would’ve exploded.

“I know what you did, but it’s not exactly showy.”

“It won’t be rising though,” Tara said, just as the tree came into bloom at a strange hour of the night. She opened her eyes.

“Okay, that last part was more impressive. Visually, I mean.”

Tara found that she was sweating. “I forgot how hard this was,” she said.

“Maybe we’re just getting old.”

“Speak for yourself, woman.”

“We’ve still got it though,” Willow said, sounding more relieved than she had known cause for.

Tara nodded. Now she only needed to know what it was that they needed it for.

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

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Sat Aug 06, 2011 11:17 am

DIBS!!!!

Simple yet very entertaining, love how they kinda debate on their techniques. Loved how Tara dusted the one in the grave, very cool. Still trying to figure out when Tara will actually ask Willow what's up, not like willow to just dodge something like that.

Great Update!

Grimm · **Posted:** Sat Aug 06, 2011 11:58 am

I'm guessing something big is on the horizon if Willow thinks they need to get ther hunting skills up to snuff. I hate that she is still keeping this secret from Tara. But, it does make for better drama (even though it's driving me crazy!!).

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

totally wrapped around your little finger with this :bow

wish i was a bigger feedback reader, this is about all i can manage for now :blush

willow=secrets=not good!!!

love, love,love, your characterization of the ladies :heart

Katharyn · **Posted:** Wed Aug 10, 2011 9:09 am

Hi edob, welcome to the very small and intimate party

Gotta agree that I hate the Willow secrets thing, but as I think I've already posted in a part - or will soon if I haven't - Willow is the first to admit that she SUCKS at keeping secrets. That, ultimately, is a safety net. She couldn't keep a secret if she tried. But she has a reason to go just long enough... I'm not spoiling much to say it will go away soon, which will advance the story.

Glad you like the girls this way though... Thanks.

SMGOVAN - It's fair to say that the practice of their old skills is there for a reason. One for them and one for me. Again, this is me setting the characters up for anyone coming cold to this story rather than having read the first two Chronicles. Yes, I'm a proper storyteller now. I don't rely on remembering things from the equivalent of 10 novels ago. Mostly because I can't remember last week very clearly, let alone 8 years ago. See above about the secrets!

Thanks for sticking around

Astronsoul - Thank you! These are the kind of scenes I love to write for the girls, often bringing in someone else who's fun to write as well. But I love them this way. I can, and have, written whole stories just indulging myself in doing that. But this is a properly structured story and this will be a little rarer in this one... So I have to show it here, let you readers see it happening and how they are together. As for progress? Well, I've just redrafted what will be part 14 or so and by then Tara has known everything for a while...

Another part very shortly...

Katharyn

Katharyn · **Posted:** Wed Aug 10, 2011 9:32 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle(Part 5 (247))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: Willow dealing with what Toni has asked of her in the midst of a call from Faith.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: Remember, by the way, that the Faith mentioned here is Rupert and Jenny’s daughter, only named after the Slayer who was once assigned to them. Just a note for the newcomers. Old time readers may also have noticed that I’ve dropped the titles of the chapters. I miss them but I can’t think of more!!
Thanks to: As I redraft this I’ve just posted part one of the story, so thanks to those who were good enough to come along and feed back in a whole new thread. I hope you can all find something fun in this.

“Hey there, favourite aunt,” Faith greeted her.

It immediately put Willow on notice that there was a request coming. And right now people who considered her family had already asked enough of her. She changed the hand she was holding the phone with. “Hey, you perfectly adequate daughter of a friend of the family.”

Faith laughed at that one, it was a game they sometimes played. “So how are things?” She still sounded so young. She was young. Young enough to cause all kinds of trouble. Fortunately for everyone, she wasn’t like that.

“Things are… great,” Willow said, managing to find a little enthusiasm. She had to play the part. Eventually they’d all understand, but until then there was no sense in giving any clue away.

“Sounds like you had to think about that one,” Faith replied.

Time to change the subject. “So, how are you and Chris?” Willow said. Chris right? That was the name of her latest paramour, wasn’t it?

When you’d bounced Jenny and Rupert’s eldest daughter on your knee as a little baby you tended to start thinking of these boys – and girls – as something like a paramour. It was a good word, learned from the Giles’, that in this day and age didn’t really mean much. Which was good, when you didn’t want to be thinking about what the paramours in question were really up to.

“Willow, who told you about Chris?” Faith countered, not sounding too happy.

“Umm, Tara spoke to Angela a couple of weeks ago.”

“Goddamn,” Faith replied. “Are you sure it wasn’t my mother?”

Willow could just imagine her face. Thunder wouldn’t be the half of it. “No, Tara spoke to Angie. I swear. I take it that’s not the whole story?”

“We – Angie and me – we were having a tough time,” Faith said. “I went for a couple of drinks, just to get out of the apartment. That’s all. There was never anything between me and Chris. Besides, we’re back now – not that we were ever apart! I didn’t do anything to hurt her! I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Okay, okay,” Willow said. “Preaching to the converted here. One woman girl. If you say there was nothing between you and this Chris, that’s cool.”

“He’s just a friend, Willow!”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“No, you asked about me and him instead of me and the girl I’ve been with for years now. You suggested that not only did he want to get in my pants, but that I’d have let him. I’m bi-sexual. Not a slut. There is a difference you know, contrary to popular belief.”

Willow might’ve thought she’d really offended the girl, but there was a slightly humoured edge to the bitterness. An old ‘joke’ played on Jenny by her daughter and that most of them had been complicit in.

Faith had spent a number of years playing to her mother’s – low - expectations of her since the two of them had fought like cat and dog basically since she’d reached puberty. They were way too similar to do anything else. In those low expectations she’d… well, Faith had been suggesting that there’d been a certain high level of sluttiness going on. High enough to be called ‘slutty-slut-slut.’

In truth there’d been rather fewer actual lovers and one seeming love of her life. Angela. It wasn’t a conventional relationship by Faith’s mother and father’s standards, or compared to she and Tara but… it worked for them. And when things got unconventional, it wasn’t always Faith’s fault.

“I know.”

“What do we know?” Tara asked, walking into the room.

“Faith,” Willow mouthed, but then turned her attention back to the phone. She didn’t want to start having two conversations at once. But for Tara’s benefit… “Okay, honey. Well… I’m glad you and Angela are back together.”

“We didn’t break up!” Faith insisted. “Can’t I just have a drink with someone without everyone leaping to conclusions?”

“Is she there right now?” Willow wondered.

“What kind of a question is that?” Faith asked, still light-hearted enough to show that she knew she was talking to family. They’d said worse things to each other and taken it in the spirit it was meant.

Faith knew very well that they all loved Angela. Even Jenny loved Angela – especially as a settling influence on her daughter.

“The practical kind,” Willow replied. “Just nod once for yes and twice for no.”

“Nod? We’re not even on vid,” Faith pointed out. Tara was mouthing something to that effect at the same time. “And no, she’s not here. What, you think I’m a liar as well as a slut now?”

“I think you know what you’re doing,” Willow said, determined to be totally honest with someone. “I think that if you went for a drink with this guy, while you and Angela weren’t broken up then you knew very well what that would look like. You’ve always been good at spotting that sort of thing.”

“I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“And I’m sure she knows it. Just… don’t play the same games you did with your Mom with her just because you had a fight. Angela’s not like that.” Why she had to be the one who was telling Faith that, when they’d been together for years, she had no idea.

Angela, who was blind, had been a residential student here at the school back when Tara and Jenny had both been teachers and Rupert the librarian. A good chunk of Faith’s education had been here too, amongst the deaf and the blind kids because when it came right down to it learning was learning.

And it just so happened she’d fallen for one of them.

“Willow! You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know that when you get so used to someone, you start to think you can do anything you want. That you don’t have to work at things any more. That they’ll just know what you really feel about them. It’s not true. You always have to pay attention to their feelings.”

Tara was looking hard at her, unknowingly making her feel guilty because behind those words of advice was a secret that she’d not told her wife. It didn’t exactly help when Tara’s look morphed into a smile and the words ‘Love you.’

She blew Tara a kiss in return. It was heartfelt and genuine, despite the conflict she was feeling.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. But she knows,” Faith insisted. “She was there through all the stuff I did to Mom. She wasn’t exactly happy about it but, she was there. She knows it wasn’t real. Once we got together, it was only ever her.”

“And she knows that you can run a con like that on your own family,” Willow said. “That’s what else she knows. To hurt her.”

Silence on the other end of the phone for a while. “I didn’t really do it to ‘hurt’ Mom.”

“Maybe not, but that was one side-effect all the same and you let that happen. Just be careful with Angie. She’s a keeper.”

Faith sighed. “I know. And I want to. Just… sometimes we do fight.”

“Everyone fights.”

“Not you and Tara,” Faith said.

“Yes, sometimes. But… we have a different background to everyone else.” She met Tara’s eyes as she was telling how it really was. “We know that everything we need, like air to breathe, is right here. No matter what we may say or do, we know there’s nothing out there that’s - ”

“What did you last fight about?” Faith asked, wanting to make a point.

Willow pursed her lips, thinking. “Tara didn’t want me to have any more coffee. She said it would keep me up all night. I was quite determined about it. I said I’d be fine.”

Little things, never the big ones.

“We… we were trying to decide what to do after college,” Faith explained. “How we’d decide on who went where and… It’s not fair that she should ask me not to get a good job for a year, right? So that we can start equally?”

“No,” Willow replied.

“I knew it! That’s - ”

“No,” Willow interrupted. “I’m not getting into that argument with you.” Actually, when you thought about it… Maybe that would turn into some sort of workable plan. After all Angela had her own career to think about and if they were going to keep their relationship going after those years then there’d have to be some compromises. But Faith was a year ahead of her, closer to graduation.

They’d been living together all through school – and before that actually – so the long distance thing wasn’t an option they’d want to explore for any length of time. Willow wanted to suggest that an internship for a year or something like that might be a great choice. But… not getting into the middle of another couple’s fight seemed like a better idea.

She’d learned that lesson whenever Jenny had finally pushed the very British – avoid confrontation at all costs – Rupert too far and then started looking around for back-up. The second lesson from that had been ‘find out what the argument’s about before getting involved.’ Unfortunate words – with more than one meaning – had been spoken and she was still ribbed about it to this day.

“Okay,” Faith said. “Look, the reason I’m calling is - ”

“Umm, because you want something?” she asked, returning to her original suspicion.

“You have such a low opinion of me!”

“No, I just know you too well,” Willow said, watching as Tara smiled and sipped her tea.

“Well, okay. Yes. There’s – I was hoping Angela and I could come there and bunk with you guys for a few nights? Maybe a week?”

“Are you flying or driving?” Willow asked. How long really didn’t matter, they had plenty of room. But that was the better question.

“Umm, why? What difference does that make?”

“Because if you’re flying then you’ll want to borrow the car too. Or have us drive you wherever you want to go.”

“Err, we hadn’t decided yet. But we’ll make dinner every night we’re there.”

“The ‘we’ part saved you there,” Willow said.

“What does that mean?”

“Angela’s a better cook than you.”

“She has overdeveloped taste buds,” Faith said.

Willow laughed, expecting Faith to turn that into some sort of innuendo, it was just ripe for it after all and had she been talking to Jenny…

“Seriously,” the girl added.

“Okay, look. You know you’re both welcome for as long as you like. But you either drive over, or you hire your own car at the airport. I need mine and just a couple of days ago Tara had to take someone to the ER so, you can’t just drive off with ours.”

Another smile of approval from Tara. There’d been this thing between them that she let the kids – both from the schools and especially the Giles brood – walk all over her. Aunt Willow was always the one you talked to when you wanted something. Somehow they all had the idea she was some sort of pushover.

“Fair enough,” Faith said. “We’ll firm up our plans and let you know. ’Kay?”

“You want to talk to Tara?”

“Umm, sure.” Faith sounded a little doubtful. Almost as if she was afraid she’d get a different answer from Willow’s wife.

“She’s right here,” Willow said. “She already knows why you were calling.”

Tara rolled her eyes.

“Oh, okay then, sure.”

“I’ll hand you over. Bye for now, work hard and don’t forget we love you. We love both of you.” Yeah, she didn’t have to be subtle about it. Angie was good for Faith. Really good for her. Almost a Tara-esque level of goodness.

“Love you too,” Faith replied. She was still complaining that there wasn’t any way she was breaking up with Angie as Willow handed the phone over to Tara.

Willow’s focus wasn’t really on what Tara was saying to Faith, despite the fact she was sat there. Here she was, making plans for Faith to come over – no matter how tentative – and there was a strong chance that if it was anytime soon then she might not even be around to see them.

Damn it.

What Toni was proposing was… Who knew how long it would take? It wasn’t like she had a route map, let alone a timetable.

How long would she be away from work? From home? From Tara?

She had to make plans. Arrange cover, make sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing and most importantly try to find a way that Tara wouldn’t try to come after her.

That would be… it’d be a disaster if Tara tried that. It might ruin everything, not to mention being dangerous.

Because the thing was that Tara would find a way. The whole point was that there shouldn’t be a way, that was why it had to be her, but Tara would end up finding a way and then… How much danger would she be in?

More than she could handle?

“Wrong?” Tara asked, still talking to Faith.

Willow couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, of course, but one side was enough. That and Tara’s eyes flickering to her.

She was already suspicious… it wasn’t going away, even with the distraction on the phone.

“Why do you think there’s something wrong?” Tara asked, but looking at her. “I don’t know, I don’t think that there’s anything weird.”

How could she be expected not to be weird? Toni was asking the impossible, though really perhaps that wasn’t quite the case. Toni was asking her to do this, because only she could. She’d decided all by herself – agreeing with Toni – that for one time in her life that meant excluding Tara from it.

But…

Willow couldn’t get over the fact that not telling Tara was likely to turn out to be harder than telling her and making her understand how it had to be.

The thing was, Toni was right. You couldn’t do this thing she was being asked to unless you were – or had been – dead.

And that wasn’t Tara.

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

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Wed Aug 10, 2011 9:35 am

DIBS!

Lol you won't get banned, besides if you got banned I would be left hanging and that is just not cool!!!

The phone call between Faith and Willow made me laugh a lot, the little bickering but not quite bickering of the whole conversation was just classic. Though when Willow told faith about the being honest and completely open, man her feelings must be really eating away at her with this stuff with Toni.

Hopefully Tara will realize soon (since you hinted she probably would) and that she doesn't get too upset with Willow. Hopefully all this secrecy w ill be valid, and they can just move on from it.

Great Update!! :clap

Astron

Katharyn · **Posted:** Wed Aug 10, 2011 9:38 am

Hmm, just made a bit of a slip in the notes there and opened up a whole new AU... I had just posted to remember that this Faith is 'Tara and Jenny's daughter.' NOT SO!! That should've (and now does) say Rupert and Jenny's daughter

LOL

Don't ban me!!

wayland · **Posted:** Wed Aug 10, 2011 2:30 pm

Thank you Katharyn, this is excellent. The characters are written intelligently, with depth. You avoid lengthy exposition, but I can still sense the amount of history between them all.

And I'm still intrigued.

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

katharyn,

very happy to be part of a small and intimate party

so glad that angela and faith are still together, jenny and giles soon please. just wondering, do you consider that willow was dead or killed twice or just dead once, since tara killed her when she was a vampire?

she who slept through english, spelling, and typing class :blush

Grimm · **Posted:** Thu Aug 11, 2011 6:50 pm

I need to know!!! What's the what with this secret that Willow is keeping from Tara? The plot thickens... One needs to be living challenged to work the mojo? That would certainly exclude Tara. But, I know it's more to the story than that. I have a theory on who may be the big bad of this story (actually it's more like a wild ass speculation). But, I need to go back and re-read a part of sidestep uno before I put it out there. As always, I'm loving this story. I am a dedicated fan of your work. I'll still be around when you start working on Sidestep X the nursing home Chronicles!

Katharyn · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 8:57 pm

SMGOVAN - This secret is getting far too much build up! My fault I assume... but the secret itself is not the point. Just a method of getting from A to C and lingering over what B might be for a while LOL.

You're right in that Tara has never been 'living challenged' (I might steal and use that term!) so she is excluded... As for your theory, oooh do tell. Someone else expressed a theory to me in PM a few days ago but asked not to be told if they were right. Made my palms itch not to say anything LOL.

As for Sidestep X in the Nursing Home... No. Just no. Thanks for the kind words and support.

Hey edob - Seems we may be a Party of Five. I was never a Neve Campbell fan but Paula Devicq... Yum. Okay, I'm wandering and digressing LOL

You'll find me touching base with a lot of people in this fic, just because... Angela and Faith. That was a cute one.

Anyone who didn't read Sidestep 2 and it's epilogue really should at the very least go back and read that finale. It shows the characters years after the main story ended and is the basis of much of the relationship side of this.

Angela and Faith though... they were my fave from that epilogue. I loved the Jenny/Faith dynamic of clashing mother and daughter and the assumptions they make about each other. I think that meant that I had to keep A&F together but that I could introduce problems to make Jenny a little bit right as well. There's a certain amount of personal experience built into that!

(Notice how I can never answer anything simply?)

Jenny and Giles. Definitely. Very soon. Very very soon.

As to your question... Technically Willow is twice dead. She was killed by Drusilla originally while in the Master's cage and turned into Vampire Willow. Vamp Willow was then killed by Tara. However... in terms of 'number of deaths THIS Willow experienced' I'm torn as to whether it's one or two. Definitely more than zero though which is what matters in terms of the rules here...

However the thing to remember about rules is that no one ever tells you all of them and what they might tell you could be incomplete... Thanks!

Wayland - I doubt that the sense of the history between the characters is really about the writing and more about me having lived this for so long LOL. If I'd been writing about fresh characters my writing wouldn't have been up to that... But it's nice that you get that sense - no matter where it came from

The lengthy exposition is what I've pulled back on a lot - though I still go there from time to time - but it's mostly the 'random' parts that I pulled back on. Lovely character moments have become (I hope) part of the main rather than 'oh, that's a cool idea I'll write a part'...

Thanks so much for liking it.

AstronSoul - Thanks for the no banning support! I think you spotted the part in this chapter where a determined writer actually tried to link two ideas together (bearing in mind what I said to Wayland above) Yeah, I had to check in with Faith because she proved to be a great character in the Epilogue of Sidestep 2 - go read it if you haven't, just the epilogue if you don't want to go for the full thing which... goes on a bit - but then I made this slightly clumsy decision to try and make that 'checking in' part of the real story. I wish I could say both things were planned but... Nah. I have the 'nice idea' and then wonder what areal writer would have done

I tell you... fanfic is it's own world LOL

I also loved that it was possible to go somewhere funny and lighten the tone, it's easy to forget about that sort of thing and its a big part of who these characters are. They are at ease with each other to that extent. It takes a very close relationship to be mocking and serious at the same time and not give offence. Over and above the 'style' set by the show I like the dynamic as a very real one for them. I hope.

And yes, you're very right. This is eating away at Willow. She doesn't keep secrets. She can't keep secrets. But from her point of view, this time, she has to. What this will never be (and I make no apology for 'spoiling' this much) is anything that will hurt the girls relationship. Make this Lara and Susie and you could write a story around feelings of betrayal and collapsing relationships etc. No. The secret is significant for what it is, not what it does to the girls. Because - as I said for five years writing this - they are and will be happy and together.

Thanks.

More from me today or tomorrow at the latest. The next part is 'ready' but I just spotted a couple of things I can improve...

Katharyn

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 8:58 pm

Ok I was going to another story how did I end up here?

Oh well just a hello I assume a update is soon here lol.

~goes to figure out why I left the thread I did and how I ended up in this one~

Katharyn · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:04 pm

Because your DIBS alert let you down?

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:06 pm

lol maybe, but all I know is I was saying Dibs somewhere else (not actual dibs a joke) and I ended up here lol

Oh well I guess me and my comp had a major blond moment

Katharyn · **Posted:** Sat Aug 13, 2011 10:31 am

Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle(Part 6 (248))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: The revelation of what Toni has asked Willow to do.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also together. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: I dragged the suspense out for long enough I think, so I had to do something about that. Also there was the danger that you’d end up not liking the fact that Willow was keeping secrets. But remember, this is the first one and she sucks at doing it. It was never going to stay under wraps. I’m not sure that Willow ever thought she could. It’s not so much that Tara didn’t know something was up, just that she didn’t ask. Until now.
This part was originally two chapters that seemed to fit nicely together.
Thanks to: Everyone engaging in the feedback, whether in the thread or PM. It’s always nice to see what people are thinking and – even though the whole story is written – those thoughts are shaping the redrafts, so you are having an influence here.

Clearly it had been handled… badly.

Toni couldn’t sleep and – for her – it wasn’t the noise of the city that was keeping her awake as others insisted was often the case. To her it was as peaceful as it ever was. She couldn’t even imagine ‘noise’, at least not as other people seemed to think about it.

No, what was keeping her awake was mental noise. Thoughts turning over and over in her head.

She’d all but threatened Willow.

Maybe the ‘all but’ wasn’t even accurate. Hadn’t she really just threatened Willow? Plain and simple threatened?

In an ideal world she’d have had both of them on her side and for almost anything else… well, she knew very well that they’d have done anything for her. But it was the this one thing… If she’d approached Tara then the answer would’ve been ‘no.’ Plain and simple. She might as well have asked them to divorce and start seeing other people. It was that nonnegotiable.

No amount of finessing would’ve changed that decision once it was made and so, with Tara as the stumbling block, she’d been forced to work around her. Tara was – always had been – the one who was sensible, level headed and more cautious. Not that Willow was necessarily foolhardy and always rushed in, but she was more easily swayed by emotional arguments for all her focus on the rational in the rest of her life.

Like one of the elements she manipulated, Willow was fiery. She flowed like fire, consumed what caught her attention. Tara was more grounded and Willow recognised that, understanding very well why she’d been approached alone.

Willow also knew perfectly well that to discuss it with Tara would mean it wouldn’t happen and they’d face the consequences.

Consequences were what made it a threat. A real and actual threat.

Consequences that Willow wouldn’t expose her wife to.

She’d actually said to her - to Willow - ‘You’d die for each other, I know that. But you know what that will do to her.’

Toni had been forced to push aside her own feelings to make this happen. She’d needed to tap into her work persona for this. She’d needed to be ruthless in her persuasiveness. Or else what had it all been for over the last few years?

It wasn’t easy, not for anyone, but if the doorway could be opened then Willow could pass through it.

Those bastards at Wolfram and Hart, including her former mentor Holland Manners who’d brought this to her, had finally paid her for her services.

Oh, she’d been earning salary for years – and a good one by anyone’s standards – but working for them had always been on a single understanding. That once the books had been balanced they’d give her what she’d always asked for.

It was the sole reason she’d gone to work for a firm who’d brought such misery and pain not only into the lives of people she considered family, but to hundreds and thousands more that she didn’t know the names of.

And some she had.

The things she’d done in their interests and those of their clients…

Once they came to her, once they offered the method to get what she wanted then what choice did she have but to act on it? She had to - otherwise everything she’d done for them had been made worthless, a waste of lives.

What did you need to retrieve someone from death?

It was so simple really. Why she hadn’t put it together before she had no idea…

You just needed someone who could enter the Halls of the Dead and bring them back.

Willow could do the first part at least. She’d died, more than once if you wanted to get technical about it. She was a creature who, while perfectly human now, was of both sides of the veil. One of the very few that could be in any way trusted.

There was still a choice; they’d made that clear to her. There was always a choice. She could continue with Wolfram and Hart long enough to pay off something else that could enter both the Halls and this world or she could take the method she’d been offered and ask Willow to do what she could.

All these years just to get this far. Just to find out how. She might’ve had to sell her very soul just as a down payment to get more than that from them. To get someone or something to actually do the deed for her.

And if her soul was snatched away… it would be a very different realm that she entered when she departed this world. One that no one, even at Wolfram and Hart, wanted to talk about. She wondered if too many of her colleagues had done just that to get ahead in this existence? Careless of the next… or hoping the firm would preserve them here at least.

That the woman she could send to the other side was a powerful witch too was simply a bonus. The Halls of the Dead were an increasingly dangerous place by all accounts, at least in parts. For something that was alive to enter there and expect to emerge in the same state? With what they were there for? Yeah, better that someone like Willow - who knew what they were doing and had the power – was the one to go.

Finding a doorway was still an issue, but at least she had the person who was going to step through it. Tara simply… couldn’t. Not without dying and that wasn’t acceptable. No matter what Tara and Willow thought of her now or later, she wished no harm to either of them. Absolutely the opposite in fact.

And if it had just been that, just been about asking Willow, that would’ve been that. Willow might have done it, until Tara reasoned her around to the opposite decision.

Holland had given her the lever to make it happen though. The one thing that could bend Willow far enough away from her wife to let her see what she was suggesting was the only way.

The threat. A contract. Unfulfilled.

The penalty clause left – un-activated – all this time. Years now, but Wolfram and Hart never forgot. Never misplaced a contract or failed to collect on a debt. That was what Holland had really given her. Not a method, but a way of ensuring it came to pass.

Would she do that to them? Could she enforce the terms of the contract and invoke the penalty?

Certainly she’d left Willow in enough doubt about whether she could that her ‘friend’ had agreed to go forward with it. And how awful was that? Usually she could compartmentalise what she did at work and what she knew was right – or wrong. But not this time. This time it had been her family, her only family, which she was threatening and cajoling.

Willow had actually believed that she’d invoke the penalty clause in that contract.

Would she have?

In the heat of being rejected, after being so close to what she’d worked all this time for, maybe she would. But left with any chance to calm down, to think… probably not.

Except Holland would’ve taken care of that for her. After all he was still on the payroll and it was his contract to do what he chose with. They’d held off this long, presumably with this moment in mind – at least once she’d joined the firm.

Plus he probably knew how far she was willing to go and it wasn’t that far… He’d have taken care of it, the firm always did. And – hopefully – that was what Willow had responded to.

It hurt her do this.

‘It’s the only way,’ she’d said. And it was. It was the only way. Unless she was supposed to keep paying the prices that the firm demanded. Leaving thousands of other people worse off or even dead while she swelled the profits - and body-counts - of those who didn’t need more than they already had.

Willow seemed to have recognised that there wasn’t another option.

And that this was so simple that it had to be real.

The Halls of the Dead. That was all it took. A walk through the Halls and bring…

Bring him back.

It was all she’d been working for. Forever.

The fact that she couldn’t find fault with what she’d done didn’t mean that she got to sleep any more easily.

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

“So, are you going to tell me what it is?” Tara finally asked as they lay beside each other in the near darkness.

“What what is?” Willow attempted to sound all innocent, but it was a tone of voice she never used except when she was trying to hide something.

“The problem. The thing. Whatever it is that kept you awake most of the night and once you did drop off to sleep, woke you from a nightmare inside of an hour.”

“Watching me were you?” Willow asked.

It seemed that the pretence was over. So…? “Hard not to be aware of it, love.”

“Sorry if I kept you awake.”

Tara shook her head. That wasn’t what she wanted at all. “No, that’s not it. If you’re waiting for me to ask, before you say anything then fine – I’m asking.”

“I wasn’t waiting for you to ask,” Willow revealed.

“But you’re not going to pretend it’s nothing?”

Willow stayed silent.

“Sounds like an answer to me,” Tara declared.

She didn’t need to say that she could help or that she wanted to. Nor that together they could make it better and it’d all go away. It wasn’t like Willow didn’t know all that already. Not like they hadn’t been through enough that they didn’t have to say that kind of thing. “So?”

“I can’t say anything, Tara.”

Okay… If she’d given her word, that would mean something. “Why? Did you promise someone you wouldn’t?”

“No. But I still can’t say anything.”

“So?”

“So if I say something you’ll…” Willow shrugged.

“What? Take over?”

“No.” Willow made it obvious that was nothing to do with it, even though she Principal’s knack of taking over situations. It was something they’d talked about a few times. She tried to stop herself but… sometimes it still happened.

“Stop you?”

Another silence. Another confirmation.

“I’d only stop you if you were going to do something dangerous – I mean, more dangerous than we’ve dealt with before. More dangerous than I know you – or I – can deal with. Is it?” Tara asked.

She felt the shape that was Willow nod, it seemed to be reluctantly. They were lying side by side in bed, Willow’s fingertips playing in her palm, maintaining their connection at a physical level. Besides, from Tara’s point of view, it was just – and still - nice to be touched by her wife.

And was Willow conscious of the fact that, if she’d chosen to lie to her, it’d be that much harder to get away with when they were touching? Tara hoped that hadn’t crossed her mind, didn’t believe it would happen anyway. She didn’t like the fact that she even had to wonder about it.

“So why wouldn’t you ask me for my help too?” Tara felt she had to ask. She couldn’t just leave it at that, even if Willow wouldn’t tell her what was actually happening. But still, she was waiting for her wife to come around and volunteer the information without being backed up against a wall.

“Because you can’t help, baby. Not with this one.”

“Well, I think you’re wrong,” she said. She couldn’t conceive of a situation where two of them wasn’t better than either alone.

“Believe me, I’ve thought about it. And… you can’t help me. Oh, you could drive me somewhere or maybe pick up supplies, but not really help. Not this time, love. I wish you could because this scares the crap out of me and there’s no one I’d rather have with me to make that better. No one I’d trust more to keep me safe. But you know that.”

The thing was, she couldn’t think of anything that Willow could do that she couldn’t. Maybe… if she had some time then perhaps she’d be able to come up with something. Or if it was some sort of spirit quest – something in the depths of her own mind… But no, actually, even then she could’ve guided this woman she loved. Helped her. They were close enough, one being in two bodies, that wouldn’t have been any problem for her.

So what was there that Willow could do – and was going to do – that she couldn’t?

Something that Willow would do.

Even though it scared the crap out of her. She realised that her grip had tightened on Willow’s hand and forced it to relax, at least a little. “Is this why we went out hunting? That practice?”

Willow nodded again.

Something about that. Even though she’d just released that tension, Tara clutched again at the hand that was in contact with hers. Squeezed it. “Please, baby. Just tell me.”

“You can’t - ”

“I deserve to know,” Tara said. She didn’t say that she deserved much, not often. But this… she deserved to know. Definitely. And just let Willow try and deny it. Just let her try. She didn’t even need to spell out why.

And with that, Willow was beaten. Tara watched as she swallowed, drew in a breath and released it. Then another. Then… “The Halls of the Dead.”

“No.”

“Tara - ”

“NO.”

“Baby, you wanted to know and - ”

“That is absolutely not happening,” Tara said.

The Halls of the Dead? So far as she knew it was just a – misleading - name applied to an entire dimensional realm. Variously it was described as limbo, purgatory, heaven or hell. Depended on what beliefs you were dealing with, the writer’s perspective and what just how much they really knew about the truth of the many layers of existence.

It didn’t matter what you called it though. In no way was it a place that Willow should be going. It was a place for the dead… What took you there she had no idea, but… no.

“Tara - ”

“Nor is up for discussion,” she said firmly, dropping into Principal Tara mode again and not even caring. “It’s Toni, isn’t it?”

There was only the one person they knew that was hurting badly enough to do something like this. Willow’s lack of a response, once again, pointed the way. Tara flicked the light on, looked over at the wife who was avoiding her gaze.

Right now she could cheerfully flay Toni to within an inch of her life. Putting this in Willow’s head? Asking her to go there? The girl – the woman worked for Wolfram and Hart, this wasn’t something she needed Willow for. If she wanted… well, there was a reason that Toni had been working with them all this time. It hadn’t been a secret from them, not even at the very start. They’d been…

“It’s her Dad,” she said. “Isn’t it?” Of all the things…

“Yes,” Willow said. “It is.”

“Damn it all.” It wasn’t often she took to swearing even that much and pretty much since they’d met Toni the younger woman had been the most common cause. For all that they – both – loved the girl, she had an infuriation factor that was way higher than most people she had cause to meet, including children who didn’t know any better.

Her Dad… Of all the things it could’ve been, it was the most predictable. The fixation. Of course it was. She should’ve seen something like this coming years ago. It had almost been announced to them, but after losing so much else she’d never thought that Toni would…

“Tara - ”

“I don’t want to hear how she’s always wanted this and maybe it’s a good idea. It’s not, in any way, a good idea. No way. No how. And you will never persuade me that this is something that should happen. People die, Willow and she – of all people – should know that.”

Back when Toni hadn’t been able to do anything about it there hadn’t been such a problem. Yes, she’d been prone to periodic depression and yes, when she’d gone to Wolfram and Hart there’d been concern amongst everyone who knew her. More so after the accident.

But working there – and continuing to - had been her choice.

This wasn’t something she got to choose though.

“I know, but she knows that I died. She knows that I came back, Tara,” Willow said.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“It does, because you’re hardly one to lecture her about the impossibility of someone else coming back and besides…”

“What?”

“It’s one of the reasons she picked me.”

“You can enter the Halls...” Tara breathed, putting it together. Up to now her anger had stopped her thinking it through. It removed one level of danger – at least Toni wasn’t asking Willow to die for her – but added many more besides.

“I can enter the Halls. In theory. If I can find a way.”

“Which you’re not doing,” Tara reiterated.

Willow didn’t say anything. Still not a good sign.

“There’s still something you’re not telling me,” she concluded. She wasn’t yet in possession of all the facts. She wasn’t armed to fight this out with Willow – and that was why they hadn’t started to do so. It was why Willow was still holding something back.

“I could go or…”

“Or what?” Right now she was all about the ‘or’. There didn’t seem much of a way that anything could be worse than Willow going to the Halls. It didn’t matter how you described them they were for the dead. That was it. Period. If you were there you were dead. That was how it worked. Okay, maybe Willow could get in on a technicality, but that was the sort of thing that had never gone well.

It was about all that the literature, rumours and legends agreed upon.

“Or they could get… another me to do it.”

Tara’s eyes narrowed, knowing exactly what her wife was referring to. “She said that?”

“She said that.”

They were talking about the vampire that had once been Willow Rosenberg, of course. Tara had to consider her now that the vampire had, by any definition of the term, been her abuser. The fact that she’d pursued that creature and allowed it to exist for far too long didn’t change that.

Not in any way that mattered.

Nor did the fact that – eventually – she’d put an end to its bastard existence. But too late to save the girl who’d been pretty much her only friend back then. She’d let the vampire kill Faith – the Slayer that their friend’s daughter was now named for. It had been a long time ago since their Faith was almost the same age as the first one but…

Wolfram and Hart were truly willing to bring that vampire back?

Progeny of the Master. Every bit as smart as her Willow. A creator of terrible machines and killer of hundreds of residents of Sunnydale.

Insane.

Uncontrollable.

And obsessed with her.

If they raised that vampire then… She’d have to kill her again.

Fine. It was a vampire. It was what she’d do if she had to. Let Toni do what she wanted.

“Fine, let her do it that way.” She’d stake the vampire again, it had hurt last time because that had been the only Willow she’d ever known and the closest thing to what the dreams had promised and she was now living.

“No, baby, you don’t understand. They… they can’t – or won’t – raise her. Not while I’m - ”

“They’d have you bitten?” She was already on her feet, getting out of bed. Someone needed to bring Toni to her senses. There was no way this was the product of an entirely sane mind.

It wasn’t even a credible threat. Nearly any vampire that was old enough to be a threat to either of them – let alone both – was old enough to remember who they were. Maybe they’d try for the school, try to force compliance? That’d be a problem, but they’d protected a bigger area against more than this would muster so surely -

“No.”

Tara hesitated. So… what? Then, as Willow started to tell her, she understood it all in a terrible rush. Like a wave crashing over her that consumed all hope and swept away anything that was good.

“The contract,” Willow said. “The contract you signed to get – to bring me back. It was never… fulfilled. She says that.”

“But we – I - ”

“She says we didn’t meet the terms,” Willow said. “And she’s a lawyer. A Wolfram and Hart lawyer. She has reason to know, love.”

“She has reason to lie,” Tara pointed out. But it was a desperate hope. Because… Goddess above. It was one thing they probably could do. If they recalled the demon that had intervened… The Vocah…

Could they recreate the vampire that way? She had no idea. But… she was so terribly afraid that they could snatch the life from her wife. Her Willow. Replace her with a terrible thing that wore her face…

And even if it was possible for her to get Willow back again – her Willow – they’d make her do things she’d never wanted to do. Again. They’d pull her in beside Toni, bartering anything she had for what she couldn’t get anywhere else.

“We should’ve torn them down, we shouldn’t have stopped when we did. We should’ve destroyed them – all of them.”

Willow knelt on the bed behind her, holding her arm. “Tara – It’s easy to say now,” she said. “But we’d won – we’d got what we needed. And I don’t know – they operated in other realities too, we know that. I don’t think we could’ve beaten them. Not then. Not now.”

Tara pulled her arm away, went to the closet before stripping off her nightdress and considering what she was going to wear. It wasn’t an occasion to dress for, so she picked the first thing that came to hand. Jeans and a shirt. Just something to cover her body.

“Where are you going?” Willow asked.

“This isn’t happening, Willow,” Tara said.

“Shoes?”

“I won’t need them,” she said, crossing back to the bed and stroking her wife’s cheek. There was someone she needed to physically slap the crap out of.

“Huh?”

Then she was somewhere else.

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

AstronSoul · **Posted:** Sat Aug 13, 2011 10:38 am

Dibbbsssss, ok this time for real! :banana

Yayness for updates, and I am so relieved she finally told her! Though um it's a bit creepy, and crap Tara just poofed.
I really hope Tara knows what she is doing, I know you said things will work out but damn, I'm on the edge of my seat for real!

Great update! :applause

Grimm · **Posted:** Sat Aug 13, 2011 12:29 pm

Holy Sh!t!!!! I did not see that one coming. How clever of you to take it back to the contract. Toni has our girls by the balls with this one. Tara had to know that eventually this would come back to haunt her one day. I am soooooooooooooo excited about the direction of this story. Although the lack of feedback to this part of your wonderful trilogy is slightly confusing (to me at least), I am happy to see that you continue to update at a wonderful pace. I am proud to be apart of the 'Fab Five' of Sidestep trinity feedbackers.

The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe - Willow & Tara Forever

Sidestep - Third Chronicle (COMPLETE)

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