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Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 58 (300))
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 very end. Where else did you think this was going to end up?
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also married with a family. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: Well, we’ve had a number of endings, but this is the end of the endings and the end of Sidestep. I’m not even thinking of any sequels as this has pretty much been designed to remove the need for them. Everyone who’s anyone has been taken care of and their storyline tied up.
And if you spot a conspiracy here then it’s… NOT. Seriously. There’s no evil plan in the background!
Please, if you’ve been lurking (and have an account) just say hi here at the end so I can thank you. ?
Thanks to: Everyone I’ve previously thanked over the past 8+ years. Beta readers in the past, moderators and board owners, readers of course. Friends and family. I’m not going away, I’ll still be dropping in to write Tara and Willow in occasional fics, but probably not in a big series. Of course, I’ve said that before.
“Well,” Willow said. “I see the school didn’t fall apart without you.”
“Neither did your business,” Tara replied.
“So, what’s the opposite of indispensible?” Willow asked.
“Umm, dispensable?”
“I guess we’re dispensable then. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a bit more… needed?” Willow wondered.
Tara snorted. It’d taken her years and years to make all of the faculty in the school her hires. Not that those who’d been here when she took over as Principal hadn’t been good people, good teachers and good for the kids – some of them were still close friends – but there was always an element of aloofness from those hired by a predecessor. While they’d been here longer than her, hired by the same person who’d hired her, they ‘belonged’ to another era.
Finally, last summer, everyone who worked here was her choice – for better or for worse. That was the kind of responsibility she could live with.
And things had worked out. It was the first time she’d left the school in the middle of a semester for any length of time and everything was… just fine.
More to the point, given the sort of things that could happen in her life, the school was still here. Not that she was surprised. Just pleased.
“I shouldn’t be indispensible,” Tara said. “Not to anyone but you anyway.”
“Hmm, well that’s true. I still need you even if they don’t – but for different things.”
Willow pulled her closer as they walked through the grounds. It was the weekend and the place was still busy with the boarding pupils, getting out and enjoying the sun. Tara was big on that, you could be alone if you wanted to – that was fine everyone needed to be alone – but you had to get out of the halls and into the sun while you could. Winter was bad enough up here without staying inside in the summer too.
Sure, there’d be kids playing games and stuff indoors right now, but more of them responded to the courses and activities that the faculty – mostly in their own time – liked to put on for those who were here for some two hundred and fifty days and nights a year. Or they just found the fun for themselves.
For years and years generations of these kids had practically been living in their house, that had faded away when she became the ultimate authority figure though. Did she miss it? Sure.
Kids were always inventive, endlessly so.
Made her feel old just to be around it. Old but good.
Right now, the return of she and Willow was the biggest topic of conversation. No less than ten kids or groups of them had welcomed them back and wondered where they’d been. Guess which part of that had been the most important to them?
‘Out west’ was about as good an answer as they’d wanted to give. ‘Family business.’ You should be honest with kids but there were limits to what you’d admit to. The Halls of the Dead was certainly an answer too far.
“Good,” Tara said. “It’s good you need me.”
Willow thumped her arm after a long enough period of silence. “You’re supposed to say that you need me too.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. Willow, let me just say – for the record - I need you too,” Tara deadpanned.
“Finally.”
Smiling, they continued walking. Life was all around them. Grass between their toes – yes, the Principal did sometimes walk barefoot in her own school grounds – flowers and trees. It wasn’t her favourite time of year for the trees, she loved the look of the place in the fall, but this was her overall favourite time of year. How could it not be?
The lake Faith wanted to get married beside was so pretty, everything so green and full of nature…
The only thing that spoiled it was that – in a few weeks – the kids would leave for the summer and, with a very few exceptions who stayed here even in the summer, the place would lose that element of life that’d become most important to her.
On the other hand it was a time they could get away together, get out into the world and see friends who couldn’t get over here. Even if, somehow, they’d ended up doing that on their enforced trip already.
Meeting up with Faith and Angie hadn’t changed a desire to do so again, there was a wedding to plan after all. And yeah, she’d still take a trip to Sunnydale. The former Mayor had invited her and… he’d been good to them. Good enough that even Willow wasn’t going to begrudge him, at least for a while.
“Watch it, baby,” Willows said, diverting her sideways. “Squirrel crap.”
“You’re paying too much attention to the ground,” Tara told her.
“Is it wrong to only want grass between my toes?” Willow asked “And not digested nuts and… well, other squirrel crap?”
Tara just shrugged, glorying in the sun on her face and her girl on her arm. The wedding was going to be beautiful. She could see it now. And – with any luck – it’d just be the first of several as the Giles clan grew up and fled the nest. Plus, good excuse for new outfits.
“You know we’ll have to talk about it, one day?”
“That day’s not this day though, is it?” she asked.
“No. No, it’s not.”
Willow was right. One day they would have to talk about the things they’d discovered when they’d been… well, ‘on the other side’ was how they tended to refer to it now. There were all sorts of implications, plans to be made. Rendezvous’ and the like…
But really, why would they talk about that now? Morbid much? Maybe there was an alternative. Maybe they should… “Could we just write letters?” Tara asked.
“You don’t want to discuss it?”
“Do you?”
“No,” Willow admitted.
“So… letters?”
“Done.”
Easy peasy.
How was that for practicality combined with a complete lack of morbidity? And she didn’t feel like she was dodging anything. Willow already had safety deposit boxes for them both containing financial details, letters and wills. This would just be one more addition. “I don’t want to think about death or the dead or where they are… none of that. Okay?”
“Again,” Willow said, “Done.”
“And… absolutely nothing about whether we were to blame for what happened,” Tara said.
A firm nod from Willow. “We can’t – I don’t want to live that way either. We’ve been there. Done that. I don’t want to go back to buy the tee-shirt.”
“Me neither.”
“But… we did the right thing. I think we did a good thing,” Willow announced.
“Charlie?” Tara guessed.
“Yeah. I… if it had been anyone else, anyone who’d had a life of their own for any length of time, I’d have been sad but that would’ve been it. When she died… it wasn’t fair and I think we did the right thing giving her another chance.”
“I know we did,” Tara said.
“Good,” Willow said. “I mean, it was your Faith who came up with the idea. She’s not exactly renowned for thinking things through.”
“She’s my Faith now?” Tara smiled. “You’re right, she’s not a thinker. That was why they had Watchers,” she said. “The Slayer’s I mean.”
“I guess brain power wasn’t top of the list of requirements.”
“Pot luck,” Tara said. “Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t.”
“Faith or Slayer’s in general?”
Tara stayed silent, just with a smile.
“I don’t want to do anything but this,” Willow said after a few minutes.
“Walk barefoot in the grass avoiding squirrel poop?” Tara checked.
“That too – but this, all of this. The school. The business. The kids. Us. I don’t’ want to do anything but this.”
“Everything changes, love,” Tara reminded her.
“But we don’t have to be the ones to change it. I think… As long as you want this and they want you then we should stay right here. In a few years the company will be attractive enough to one of the bigger players that they’ll probably buy me out, you know that they’ve already been sniffing about.”
“Then what, for you I mean, since I have to stay here?” Tara didn’t mind that at all though.
“New challenge,” Willow said. “Maybe… I don’t know, can you see me as a teacher?”
“I can. But… can you?”
“I think I can.”
“You can’t work for me though,” Tara said.
“There’s a rule about that?”
“No, there’s not a rule. Except that I’m making one. You can’t work for me. There’s a line between what’s us and what’s work and even though it’s kind of blurred it’s definitely still there. You work for me and… well, what if I need to discipline you?”
“You know all the most effective methods, remember a couple of years back? That night with the - ”
Tara held her hand up and shushed Willow, a finger over her lips. “No, you don’t.”
“It’s not like there’s anyone to hear us,” Willow said.
“Half the kids here lip-read and they can do that from further away than they could hear us – sharp eyed little tykes - so… no.”
“Well,” Willow relented. “You do know all the most effective ways.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I!”
“You can’t work for me, not directly.”
Willow shifted into thoughtful mode for a second. “Well, I’m not sure I’d want to drive a long way to go and work somewhere else so… what if I was a volunteer?”
“Say what now?”
“What if I volunteered, what if I worked for free? You wouldn’t have to discipline me then,” Willow suggested. “Though you totally could if you wanted, once in every little while. Maybe… Perhaps?”
Tara rolled her eyes. She really didn’t think that their flirtation with what Willow was now calling choosing to call ‘discipline’ had really been that successful. More of a giggle – since they hadn’t been able to stop laughing - but more than that?
On the other hand… what Willow wanted, Willow tended to get. At least eventually. This beautiful woman had a way of wangling what she wanted out of her.
“We don’t have any volunteers,” Tara said, sitting on the bench by the lake, wondering where would be best for the wedding ceremony that Faith and Angie wanted. And then for the photographs.
Willow didn’t sit down right away though. “So I’d be breaking new ground.”
“And what would you do?”
Willow was stood in front of her and now Tara was loosely holding both of her wife’s hands.
“Volunteer type things, I could… I could give you a state of the art IT set up. At cost.”
“Then what?” Tara wondered, not entirely convinced that they needed anything better than Willow’s sub-contractors had already provided for her a few years back.
“I could… give inspirational speeches,” Willow said. Tara must’ve given something away though about her thoughts on that. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No,” Willow insisted. “You had a face. I know all your faces – including ‘oh, my god I can’t see your face because I’m sat on it’ – and that was a face.”
Tara shook her head. “Sit down.”
“I don’t know if I want to sit with you,” Willow said, half-heartedly pulling away. “You don’t talk to me anymore.”
Tara tightened her grip and pulled Willow back towards her and though her wife did fight her for a short moment, then she was drawn and only putting up a token resistance. She knew very well where Willow wanted to be.
“Okay,” Tara said. “I’ll talk to you.”
“The face, love?”
Tara still had one Willow’s hands in hers, but the other was running up the outside of Willow’s leg. And down again. It wasn’t going to deflect a woman who knew her this well though. “Inspirational speeches aren’t what I think of when I think of you.”
“I’d hope not, you get to see my many other qualities. And… goodies.”
Tara smiled, she couldn’t help it. “You know what I mean, you’re not a public speaker, baby.”
“I’m better than I was.”
“Granted.”
“I built a successful business and sold things to lots of people – people like you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“And you’re still claiming I’m not a public speaker.”
“Damn straight.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” Willow said, sighing. “I want to be a great speaker I just… the pressure gets to me and I get into the detail and I can’t stop myself and…. I’m doing it now aren’t I?”
“A little.”
“I do have a lot to say to the kids,” Willow insisted, being serious for a moment.
“Yes, you do. But unless they’re going to keep hearing from you and no one else, I think maybe you need to look for an opportunity that’d occupy you more.”
Willow finally sat with her on the bench, but draped her legs into Tara’s lap. “Foot rub?”
“You have dirty feet.”
“So do you.”
“But you’re the one who’s asking for a foot rub,” Tara said.
“Afraid your students will see you doing that and know about my foot fetish?” Willow wondered.
“What foot fetish?”
“Well, I have feet… I like foot rubs. And I like shoes.”
Tara shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a fetish, baby. You have no idea what you really want to do, do you?”
“You said do-do.”
“Yeah, I said do-do. But you don’t know, do you?”
“Nope.”
“And you want a change.”
“Yeah. Eventually – not yet, but… I don’t want to do what I do forever. Though I wouldn’t mind doing this forever.”
“And you don’t want anything to change for me?” Tara checked, pushing her thumbs into Willow’s feet.
“Yeah… I mean no, but yeah.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a lot to think about.”
So Willow loved where they were now. That was good, because so did she. So she wanted to do something else with her own life, if she could get the business to the point that it would’ve taken care of their futures… great. Frankly Tara wouldn’t have argued if Willow said she wanted to give it all up tomorrow and give it away. Yeah, she’d have asked if she was sure, but in truth that was Willow’s thing. Willow’s dream.
Now her wife was ready to start thinking about a new one and she’d be there for that one too. Willow was a builder. Once it was up and running, she was less interested. It wasn’t like that was news to her, she’d always been like that.
“Are you sure I couldn’t give a speech?” Willow asked. “I mean, I get to sign for half the kids anyway…”
“Baby, I’ve interpreted for you before – remember when you were doing that demo and needed your hands free? And you got a little flustered by that question - ”
“Stupid question!”
“Stupid, I know. But…”
“Yeah, that was bad,” Willow said. “Okay… no motivational speaking – or signing – for me. Not as a career.”
“What does that leave you with?”
“I need something I’m good at,” Willow said. “Something I enjoy and have a natural aptitude for.”
One thing did spring to mind, of course, but Tara really wasn’t sure that you could make a career out of that. Not a legal one anyway. And besides, they had their vows to consider.
“Oh, come on,” Willow pleaded. “Say it.”
“No.”
“I know you’re thinking it. Just say it.”
“I’m not saying it.”
“Spoilsport,” Willow accused as Tara massaged her feet. “Ow!”
“Sorry.”
“You know… I could get very lazy and sit home all day waiting for you.”
“No,” Tara said. “You couldn’t. You don’t do lazy. You tried it, you re-configured the definition to match yourself and you were still an abject failure at all things laziness.”
“Which is why I’d be so motivational!”
Tara shook her head. “Uh-huh.”
“Uh-huh?”
“I don’t think you can teach what makes you a success, love.”
“Explain, if you will.”
“I’d be delighted. What makes you a success is that you’re you. Your mind never stops. Your obsessive – in a very cute way – as well as being a perfectionist control freak.”
“Please, do keep paying me compliments,” Willow said sarcastically.
“What I mean is that it’s a very specific set of qualities that come together and make you wonderful. I couldn’t work the way you do, I couldn’t be a success that way. Most people probably couldn’t.”
“I do the hard work,” Willow said, obviously a little crestfallen.
“You do, totally. But you do it your way, love. Tell someone else – tell one of my kids to work that way and they’d probably drive themselves bonkers.”
“That’s about the third insinuation of mental illness that you’ve heaped on me in as many minutes,” Willow told her, threatening to pull her foot back.
“Oh, no,” Tara said. “I know you’re very sane. You’re the sanest person I know.”
“But…”
“No buts. You love me don’t you?”
“Head over heels, sweet lady.”
“And that’s about as sane as you can get, isn’t it?” Tara challenged.
Willow nodded and this time did pull her feet from Tara’s lap, swinging around to nestled closer to her. Tara put an arm around her wife once the new position was offered. In the shade, on a warm day with the leaves rustling and her wife in her arms… this was pretty much perfect.
“We put the world to rights,” Willow said.
“Again.”
“I want to stop doing that.”
“We did,” Tara told her.
“But…” Willow didn’t finish the thought. “I want to stop.”
That was a big thing to say, accepting that – yes, they’d gone back to it because they had to and Willow herself had been the catalyst for that, she’d allowed herself to tale that burden on when Toni tried to blackmail her. Now… no more? No matter what? Tara had to wonder if her wife had thought that through.
“I know. I agree. But… it’s the world we know. Other people don’t see it, what are we supposed to do say if Jenny’s family get in trouble? I mean… Faith’s practically a witch; she just chooses not to use the gift she has. They know too much, you want us to turn her down if she needs help?”
And there was the thing. To say ‘we’re not going to do that any more’ and to actually mean it? That was huge. Because it was – always – the people who they knew, loved and valued that were at risk when they didn’t Thankfully there wasn’t a cemetery for miles and vampires around the school were so rare they could go from year to year without patrolling. But… what if?
What if those things she’d just suggested to Willow really happened?
“There are other places she can go for help,” Willow said. “And we know where those are. People we can send them to. People we can ask to come help uys.”
“Sounds easy,” Tara said.
Willow sighed. “I know, it probably isn’t in the real world. But… this is the change, one of the changes I want to make. We’ve always left it open. We’ll do what we can if we need to,” Willow said. “If you want us, we’ll be there. Maybe… maybe it’s someone else’s turn to be there. Maybe it’s someone else should be who they need. Not us
“I think, maybe, it’s the only way we’ll ever really put it behind us.”
“What’s brought this on?” Tara asked. She didn’t disagree with anything Willow was saying, she’d known it for years but it really hadn’t been an issue that’d occupied them.
And she didn’t know, if Faith got in trouble, that she could say anything but ‘let us help you.’
“What we just did. Where we were…”
“We weren’t going to talk about that morbid stuff.”
“And we’re not. But, baby, if and when it happens – and I guess it will – we’ll be old ladies, surrounded by the kids and the people we love and still screwing each other’s brains out. In fact… in the act. Or after.”
“We’ll be screwing surrounded by people?” Tara questioned. “Kids?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“I want to take… normal people risks from now on.”
“Normal people risks,” Tara repeated. “That sounds good. Like… what would average Joanna do?”
“Yeah, that should be our decision making creedo,” Willow said. “What would average Joanna do?”
“Umm, Willow,” Tara said.
“Yes, love.”
“That’s what they call my ‘upper thigh’.”
“I know.” She seemed perfectly contented in that knowledge too.
“Your hand?”
“Yes?”
“It’s… on it.”
“It really is.”
“Out here.”
“Yup.”
“With the kids all around,” Tara reminded her.
“Half of them are blind,” Willow said, making a mockery of the earlier point about lip-reading. “And believe me, they can’t hear this. More to the point, there’s not one of them that can see a thing. There’s just a lake and us.”
That was true, there was no one around, right now. She knew it both by sight but also through the magic they wanted to put aside. With no sense of complex life around them… other than the crapping squirrels of course.
“Not that I’m against public displays of affection,” Tara said as Willow’s hand slipped up under her skirt. “But… what are you doing?”
“I’d have thought that was obvious enough.”
“I mean, what are you doing – doing that now? Here?”
“Do you want the quick answer or the more complex and nuanced one?” Willow asked, not stopping what she was doing and kissing her neck at the same time.
“Quick?”
“I wanted to.”
Okay, that was pretty simple. “What about the… mmm… the more nuanced one?”
“I asked myself what any average Joanna would do if it was a beautiful warm day and she had a hot wife available to her…”
“And this was your answer.”
“Well,” Willow hedged. “It is average Joanna. My first thought wasn’t very average.”
“I’ll bet it wasn’t.”
“I don’t do average very well… I need to work on that.”
“By all means,” Tara told her. “It’s importance to recognise your development needs.”
“I kind of like how this is developing though,” Willow said.
Tara didn’t think she meant how her fingers were creeping higher.
“What now?” she asked as Willow’s fingertips reached a significant point.
“Well, if I’m doing my job right then average Joanna should be feeling kinda frisky by now, or at least getting that way. And I think at that point she has to ask herself what, given the rest of the day is free, we’ve cheated death and saved the inhabitants of a different world as well as having a scorching hot wife who wants nothing more complicated than to get in her pants, average Joanna has to ask herself what she’d do…”
“Take you home,” Tara breathed.
“That does seem the average thing to do.”
“And maybe, you know, take that wife to bed?”
“Again, very, very average.”
Tara hesitated as Willow pulled the neckline of her sweater away from her skin and kissed around her collar bone. “Wait…”
“What, baby?”
“Willow, this is… this important.” Of course the lips and the fingers that were teasing her seemed even more important, but this definitely needed to be said. Asked… whatever.
“No one’s stopping you from saying whatever you like,” Willow pointed out.
“Okay… Are you, is the plan that we go back to the house and have some very average sex?”
Willow froze. “I had more making love in mind,” she said.
“Well, very average making love didn’t quite get to what I was asking you,” Tara explained. “But is that what you’re saying?”
“I think,” Willow said, recommencing the signals of her intent, “that what I’m saying is that it’d be average for us. Lets stick with that.”
“Oh, what a relief,” Tara said. “Cos, like you said, you are pretty exceptional in some areas.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Take me to bed and make very average - ”
“For us,” Willow clarified.
“Take me to bed and make very average for us love to me?” Tara asked.
“When you put it that way, how can I refuse?”
THE END
Afterword:
There it is… I actually considered ending in a sex scene but to be honest, I think this is better. And you guys can fill this in can’t you? In your heads?
Sidestep is now, definitively, over… While I could write one-shots in the universe there’s not much point. We have the girls, and their families, happy and together. The world has been put to rights.
What else could we possibly need to do for them?
This fic grew quite a lot after the initial draft, and quite a lot more once I was posting it because of the feedback from readers. It’s ended up 180,000 words long which – by my standards – is quite tight and concise but in the publishing world is way too long for anyone but say Steven King to put out there LOL
Such is the wonder of Pens. Posted anywhere else, just as straight text with no feedback it wouldn’t be what it is. That’s why it belongs here and only here and that’s why I write T/W here and only here…
Thanks to all of you ?
Though I am going on a break for a few days, I will be back to deal with any further comments and questions etc so don’t feel I’ve abandoned you now the story is done!
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If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.
Chance in *Chance*
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!) and shocking (I so did not expect to see her back..and certainly not to watch Hollands ticket get punched!).
And a huge Thank You for being a big inspiration for Katharyn to continue this most excellent tale! You deserve the honor of dibs and then some!
, we've ended up in a nice, rounded off place for Sidestep so I'm happy with it too. And it's certainly true I'm not going anywhere! I'll still be doing occasional T/W stories but, if I ever do another series, like this it will be all finished before I post. Takes less of my life that way! So it's a way in the future for now... 
