by Katharyn » Sat Apr 12, 2014 6:06 am
Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince - Chapter Seventeen
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Following on from the cliff-hanger…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. 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. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: So we’ve had some ‘fairly’ short parts in this story – by my standards – mostly because of the flow. This may well be the final part, but much longer than those short ones. I’m not sure there’s a good way to split it up. Depends – as I write this before redrafting – whether I think anything substantial needs adding.
It’s been a blast being back in this world where things don’t have to be deep or meaningful, where you can just have fun and put the girls in the sort of danger that should make you worry but in this reality is resolved with a punch (or a whip).
It’s also interesting to have this ‘different’ kind of relationship operating. One where there is love, but separation in favour of doing other things – important things. I’m not so certain either of these girls would know how to ‘settle down’ with each other. Oh, they’d be happy, of course, but it’s not who either of them is at this moment.
Maybe later it will be…
You know, possibly after a few more adventures.
Thanks to: Everyone who reaches this point. Stop in. Say hi, even if you’re too shy to leave feedback. It’s just great to know you’re there.
Everything slowed down.
It seemed to anyway. Because she had the opportunity to study Every. Single. Moment.
To know what was coming next.
Understand what it could, would and should mean.
Rosenberg had shot out and then crashed right through the collapsing stained-glass window, through which the morning light was starting to stream.
She’d leapt out into the open air.
In that moment of slow clarity Tara could see her, almost running in the air… legs still pumping even though they were taking her nowhere. It was all just momentum that was driving her forwards.
But the Prince was following. Part-predator – Part-unable-to-stop and either way unable give up his prey. Faster, heavier, seeming like – even in nothingness – he might still catch her on the way down.
Even though physics argued against such an outcome.
Of course there was only one of them who could hope to survive the fall, because the room almost hung, barely supported except for that spire of rock, over nothing at all. The cliff face behind them.
The one who could survive the fall – it wasn’t going to be Rosenberg.
She knew this.
But Willow Rosenberg wasn’t falling… Not yet.
Rosenberg had flicked out with the whip and that was wrapped around some stonework she couldn’t possibly have known for certain would be there but…
The important thing was that it was
And there she hung, pulling herself upwards as soon as the whip caught. Up to try and dodge the grasping claws of the Vampire Prince before gravity took hold of him.
Except he caught her.
In that moment his reflexes were equal to the challenge too and he was hanging from her ankle as time returned to what it had been.
Rosenberg cried out in pain. Maybe it was the added weight and the protests of muscles and ligaments suddenly asked to take an impossible strain. He must weigh more than three hundred pounds. Maybe he was actually hurting her in some other way.
No question, he was going to pull Rosenberg down, down to her death if he stayed there. No could maintain that grip except –
Tara could see that Rosenberg had the handle of the whip wrapped around her wrist and –
It’d probably dislocate her arm – maybe it already had.
Perhaps all that was holding them up was muscles and skin, stretched tight.
Tara hurried to the broken window. Just as with the trap door in the floor, at this height the wind was rushing through it, blowing her hair back where it had come loose. But she was only trying to get to Willow, hanging there…
And she started to let go of the whip with her left hand. The good one.
“No! You keep hold of that – I’ll - ”
“Don’t worry, doll,” Willow almost grunted the last, hated word and then caught a breath. “I’ve got this one.”
Looking downwards, the hanging woman started to kick at the Prince. Every blow she landed was causing her more pain than it did him. But still she did it. Every word punctuated by a kick, or the other way around.
“I.”
Have had.
Enough of.
You!”
Grimacing, unable to let go with her right hand if she wanted to, Rosenberg aimed… and on that final word dropped the icon, very carefully, from her other hand into the upturned, open mouth of the creature that was hanging from her.
Maybe mystical physics should’ve meant that the additional weight would’ve torn Willow’s leg off.
Except… somehow it didn’t. Instead, it surpassed his strength to deal with and pulled the Prince from her, sending him tumbling into the emptiness beneath.
Plummeting, you might say.
-------------------------
Everything hurt.
But some things hurt much more than others. Even though getting rid of that – very – dead weight was a massive relief, Willow was certain that she’d done something bad to her shoulder.
Hanging there, far above the rocky ground below, swinging in the wind… Yeah, that was some kind of agony. But she tried to hold it together in front of Tara. Getting weepy wasn’t going to help right now. But…
I could do with a good weep.
Bright side? Still alive to have those kind of thoughts.
Oh, and the Prince had been smashed on the rocks below because… Straight down.
She watched as Tara came right up to the edge, out of the shattered window and then looked down into the mists…
“Some help?” she asked as she continued to swing gently in the wind. It was murder, just murder on her shoulder but – there was another bright side.
Tara was here.
And the Navy didn't leave a girl swinging in the breeze. Not for long.
Holding onto stonework, Tara leaned out and offered a hand to her. It was as far as she could go and she tried to take the pain of swinging back and forth to allow her lover to grab her. But…
No. It was too far. It hurt too much and she didn’t have anything even to kick against to push herself out. Maybe without the dislocation - or whatever she’d done to it - she could’ve pulled herself up and used that to kick off but, like this, not so much.
She needed something to take enough strain that the whip could lose some tension. So she could free it and release the shoulder from its torment. That had to be Tara.
Or something connected to her.
“It’s not enough - your arm,” she gasped. “It’s not.”
Tara knew it, she could see it. But she wasn’t seeing the solution. “There’s nothing,” Tara said, looking around desperately.
“Take your pants off,” she hissed.
“What?”
“Take your pants off.”
“No - I mean - I know what you mean, I’ll go for one of the guards - ” the (almost) topless woman argued.
This was all because she’d already taken her shirt off. Well, now the mission demanded her pants. She cried out in pain to make her point. “Tara - I’m in agony here. Please, just take your damned pants off.”
There wasn’t time for her to try and take the pants off some dead weight, dead guy zombie that was still twitching.
Much as she might want to deny it, Tara understood the objective truth and kicked off her shoes before sitting down and pushing her pants down her legs.
The wind and circumstances conspired that she was hanging facing Tara every second of that.
“Not a word,” Tara said. “Not one, damned word.”
“Hurry up,” Willow gasped, but she could see that her lover - now literally just in her underwear - was going as fast as she could.
Then, clinging onto the edge of the window frame again - cutting herself in the process - Tara hung out once more and with one trouser leg around her wrist threw the other out to her.
It took three attempts before she caught it in her left hand and Tara was able to start to pull her in.
Which hurt. Obviously.
Hurt so much that she’d pretty much forgotten that the object of her desire was saving her life, again, but this time mostly naked.
That was how much it hurt. And some of the words that came out of her mouth…
Well, she’d learned some really foul words in a lot of languages.
And naturally, the pants started to rip as Tara pulled her in and she was able to transfer her weight away from the whip to free it.
“Thanks, doll,” she breathed as she collapsed to the floor of the tomb, just about convinced she wasn’t about to pass out because she hadn’t landed on her shoulder. Tara wasn’t about to let her fall into blessed unconsciousness though. No, because the interrogation had to begin.
Right now. Obviously.
Looking up at her though, all (almost)-naked and heroic? It was easy to believe Tara was some kind of angel.
I’ve never been interrogated by an angel before.
“What did you do?” Tara demanded as she pulled her in and away from the edge, but careful to avoid tugging or banging her injured arm.
“Huh?” she tried to focus, but all she could do was clasp her arm and try to find some spot – any way of holding it – that didn’t hurt so much.
Oh, and she was bleeding. Cuts across the stomach. Great…
“That! What was that?” Tara demanded.
“Sorry, doll. This time - SHIT! - This time I didn’t have time to stop and work out the plan with you.”
Then Tara hit her with her own hat, still carefully avoiding her injured arm.
“You call that a ‘plan’, Rosenberg? That’s not a ‘plan’ – trust me on this. I’ve liberated enough of them from bad people. And I told you a million times. Stop. Calling. Me ‘Doll’!”
“Sure… Tara.”
It was easy to be overwhelmed by the anger, especially while she was in so much pain. But she knew exactly where it was all coming from. From the very quality that had made them the ones who had to come here.
The one that made them a threat to the Prince they’d just sent tumbling into the depths below.
And that bright point did - just about - cut through the hurt.
“Rosenberg?”
“Yeah?”
“You know what I have to do,” Tara said, looking at her – very concerned.
“Is it a plan?” she gasped as Tara carefully held her injured arm and made her roll over onto the opposite side.
“It’s the only one. Sorry.”
Tara shoved, she heard someone scream and was fairly sure it was her. Then she passed out.
----------------------
“You’re sure you’re okay to move?”
“Yes, it’s still a good sling,” Willow admitted even though her first instinct, using Tara’s bra, had proven not to be the way they’d gone. And not having her arm popped out of its socket was so much better than when it had been.
Commander Maclay did good work whether she was fully clothed or not.
“I’m talking about you passing out,” Tara chided her, now - at least partially - covered.
“Oh, that. It was mostly just the pain.”
“I’m sorry.” Tara’s apologies really hadn’t stopped since she’d pushed her arm back into its socket. Not for doing that, but for hurting her so badly she’d passed out.
Or perhaps it was the ‘scream like a little girl’ Tara regretted causing.
Or hearing.
She didn’t remember it herself, but to hear her tell it, it sounded like it might’ve taken some of the mystery away. But, at the end of the day, she was what she was. Ira Rosenberg’s little girl who hated snakes and felt pain just as keenly as anyone else. Sure, she had a high threshold but when she did scream, it was absolutely like a little girl.
She was fine with that too. There was no shame in it. Not many people had ever made her scream and Tara usually had other, gentler ways.
No, not always ‘gentler’ but definitely much more attractive.
“We’re a long way from a hospital.”
“Stop fussing, d – Tara.”
Tara smiled. “How long do you think you can keep that going?”
“Not calling you doll? I’ll try for as long as I can. But like I said, good sling. If we find a bottle of something I’ll be set.”
And so they’d proceeded, looking around the place. Whether it was because the Prince had fallen or they’d just got to them all the ghouls already, they hadn’t met anyone they had to worry about while they’d been going through the castle.
“What do you think happened to the rest of them?” Tara asked.
“You’d know better than I,” she pointed out. “All of this… this is not what I do.”
She prodded at the remains of what had been one of the ghouls. The clothes were all Nazi, but the body was… just gone. Seeing one or two you’d have bet on the already leathery skin collapsing around the bones for all, but instead some of them had turned to little more than dust (a few with a bullet resting where the head would’ve been) while others were… goopier.
But – no matter what - all of them were at last… gone. No more twitching.
They’d made their way through the castle, passing some that they’d put down (if not killed) in their fights and others whose fates somehow seemed tied to that of the now departed Prince.
Or at least departed from the castle. Was that all it took? Had there really been all that much to worry about if that was what was needed to end them? Cut off the head and the body would falter?
Figuratively at least.
They’d probably never know how it worked and what had ended them.
But they were intent on finding the body of the Prince all the same.
Just to make sure that he was gone.
And they found him too. The sun was already rising from behind the mountains whereas it had just been breaking through them when he fell. Twenty miles away the sun would’ve been obvious for an hour or more, but here with the sharp, jutting peaks it had stayed hidden and some long shadows would still be cast until deeper into the morning.
But there was still light, more than enough to see by.
Which was how they found him.
Vlad Tepes – or one of his descendants, they weren’t entirely clear on that – impaled on one of his own, giant stakes. A post as thick as her thigh driven through his chest where he’d fallen. Was that irony?
Definitely bad luck. From his point of view.
While his velocity might’ve maxed out at the limit of these things, the weight of the icon had pulled him all the way down it. More than six feet of it extended above his chest, leaving him two feet off the ground, bent back on himself by the icon.
“Oh,” Tara said when she saw what she was looking at.
“Yeah. Ouch.”
“You want to see ‘ouch’ just wait a moment,” Tara said. She could see that Willow was – momentarily – confused. But then she realised that they were waiting for the sunlight.
“A moment?”
“Or a few.”
The sun was creeping, just creeping from behind – and around – one of the peaks until it reached that critical moment where it couldn’t be held back any longer. Even though they were waiting for it, and for much more than a moment, the final breaking of the light was a surprise.
Too much anticipation.
And then – even though there seemed no way he could be alive or at least comprehend anything – they were waiting for a reaction.
His head was half smashed open and one eye had popped out entirely. But both of them somehow focused just at the moment that the sun crossed his flesh and then he started to writhe and fight and struggle.
It wasn’t pain that drove his cries. If there were screams, they were of anger, frustration and hatred.
But awful as that was, they both stayed there and watched it all as he burned to a crisp.
Even then, when the screams had burned away with his lungs and throat they stayed. When the movement had stopped they still stayed. Watching. Watching until he collapsed into ashes and then the ashes blew away.
Only then did she reach to she pick up the icon wincing as the shift in weight tugged on the abused muscles around her shoulder.
“No,” Tara said.
“I was hired to recover it,” she pointed out.
“I don’t think anyone at the club’s going to pay you.”
“Oh, I figured that the government might have an interest in it?”
Tara smiled. “I suppose they might have… but let me.”
She left it so Tara could do just that.
I must be feeling better, watching her bend over in just shoes and underwear?
Such is the healing power of Tara Maclay.
“We have to walk down this mountain now?” she guessed.
“Yeah. You’re really going to make me walk down there in just my brassiere?” After the pants tore saving her life and the shirt was firmly tied around that barred window they’d really struggled to find anything else. Neither of them wanted goopy/ghoul-dusty, Nazi clothes.
So… Well…
“Suns up,” she said. “It’s going to be a nice day. You’ll be fine.”
“Very noble.”
“Look, we can go straight down the road to the village. None of that climbing or caving.”
“Great, yeah. I can arrive back there basically naked. What will they think we were doing? What will Dottie think?”
“I’m wounded and it’s chilly,” she explained.
“I know it’s chilly,” Tara said, hugging herself.
“I didn’t make you take your brassiere off, did I? And you wouldn’t ask me to try and take my jacket off now would you?”
“I guess it would hurt,” Tara said.
“Lots.”
“I’m starting to think there’s another reason you call me ‘doll’.”
“What?”
“Trust me, I know what you did with your dolls once you were old enough.”
“That’s just so - Okay… it’s true.”
--------------------------
Making it down the mountain hadn’t been nearly so hard as getting up there. As expected they’d only needed to find the track-cum-road down from the castle and then just followed it. But any time after sunrise, in a place like this, there’d been no way to get into town without being seen.
The surprise people showed was obvious.
And only a little of it was that she hadn’t been ‘properly dressed’ or even just ‘dressed’ by most people’s definition of the word.
Shoes. Socks. Underwear.
Thick socks, but still…
Thank you, Rosenberg. You perv.
Knowing Rosenberg held ulterior motives for getting out of her clothes didn’t change the fact that - at those precise moments - she hadn’t been able to come up with any better ideas.
And so… mostly undressed.
The rest of the obvious surprise had undoubtedly been due to the fact that the villagers didn’t expect people to come back down that road. Or if you did then… you should be avoided. It was there that, possibly, the underdressed part had probably helped. Because who could take her seriously as a ghoul or a vampire or whatever those things had been?
Technically, of course, they’d never gone up the road – but these people weren’t to know that. They just thought it was a miracle that they’d survived the castle.
And, due to the language difficulties, there were precious few people here they could tell what had actually happened. That they could assure that there wouldn’t be some sort of terrible, dark retribution boiling down from the castle above the village.
One of those people they could talk to had different concerns.
“So… really, when you think about it,” Dottie said, visibly thinking hard, “this wasn’t the weapon at all?”
The girl had the icon in her hands and was turning it over and over. She kept weighing it too. Testing it, as if it suddenly might weigh more than a car.
Or a house.
But no. In their hands, it was still less than five pounds. That wasn’t changing. It had simply had a different effect on evil…
And despite the fantastic nature of their story, Dottie had absolutely accepted what had been said as well. Accepted and had a few thoughts, a different perspective that was actually surprising her.
She’d never ever thought Dottie was ‘silly’ or even ‘naïve.’ She’d never have put her in that club if she had, but events had really proven that wasn’t the case. No, Dottie was simply… inexperienced. But she’d managed the Carpathian village equivalent of ‘stay in the car’ with dignity and without getting herself into trouble.
Which was one better than Rosenberg had ever done.
All in all, she had to approve.
“What do you mean?” Tara asked the girl.
Meanwhile, Rosenberg was pretending to be asleep. She had her hat pulled down over her eyes, but there was no way that she could – truly – be asleep. The train they’d waited most of the day for was just too loud. Their compartment was right over a set of wheels and every time it went over a join between the rails the doors, windows and even the floor shook.
Oh, and they did too.
No, Rosenberg wasn’t asleep. There was the train and then with her arm still causing her that much pain when it was jostled, no one could.
“Well, you wouldn’t even have been able to move it unless it was an act of love. Right?”
“That’s what they say,” she acknowledged, wondering where Dottie was going.
“So… Doctor Rosenberg loves you?” It sounded like the sort of question she’d been building up to for a few miles.
“So she says,” Tara said, glancing at the woman in question and wondering if it would get a response. Even a sardonic one. No… Rosenberg was still pretending to be asleep.
“But what did you say?” Dottie asked.
“Oh, I told her that I know.”
“You don’t love her then?” the girl followed up. “I mean, you – it doesn’t seem like you’re just… you know. Doing it. Even when you come back from an adventure in nothing but your underwear.”
“And shoes. And socks,” Tara pointed out. “Which we agreed not to talk about anymore. And we’re not just ‘doing it’.” Absolutely, she agreed with Dottie. Even though once they got back to Paris, once they dropped Dottie off and had her safe, she and Rosenberg might well not emerge from her apartment for several days. As long as that arm healed up enough to take more than a jostle.
It might take a couple of those days to get beyond the bedroom.
That was their usual pattern, she and Rosenberg. They met up. They talked. They connected along the way. They faced the danger, came out on top and then they went to bed for as long as either of them could bear.
By now… they could ‘bear’ quite a long time. Recently re-socketed arms not withstanding.
And then they went their separate ways, pulled apart by duty and careers. Quite often by the needs of their country. The needs of the free world, if you wanted to take the big picture view.
Yes, they parted. But they did it knowing there would always be a next time.
“So… you love her?”
“I didn’t say that,” Tara answered, not having missed the fractional reaction from Rosenberg. It was the reaction she was looking for. Just to prove the woman was awake.
“You didn’t not say it, either,” Dottie said.
“You are right about that.”
“You know what I think?” Dottie asked, smug as anything.
“I think you’re about to tell me,” Tara said, giving the girl a smile. She was cute when she was like this. It was easy to see how – despite her ‘inexperience’ – plenty of young women her own age just seemed to end up falling into her arms. “Right?”
Dottie smiled back, they really were at ease now. She trusted this girl from the small town who’d willingly accompanied them on a couple of adventures but knew when to keep herself out of the way.
When to obey orders too.
She was much better at that than Elizabeth Summers who kept needing rescuing before eloping with Faith Lehane. The one thing Summers had going for her was a mean right hook.
Holding your drink wasn’t a talent, so far as she was concerned. It just led to destructive behaviour.
Dottie was just… easier. Better.
“I suppose I am. Well, here it is. I might’ve built it up too much though.”
“No, go on,” she encouraged.
“I think – I think that one person can’t be in love on their own.”
Tara sat back, considered just how profound that sounded in her current state of exhaustion. Probably more than it merited and on the surface it seemed kind of judgemental about all sorts of people’s relationships – even if the girl was only really talking about her and Willow.
But before she could think much more, Dottie thought she needed to explain.
“Seems to me like, if it’s all one sided then it’s obsession, right?” Dottie asked.
“Or maybe a crush?” Tara countered.
“You knew?”
She nodded. “Willow’s been rubbing my nose in it every chance she got.”
“We were talking about a crush,” Dottie pointed out, grinning.
“Ha ha. I didn’t mind,” Tara said. “I guess it was even kind of flattering in a weird way.”
Blushing deeply, Dottie took a breath before she blurted the rest out. “I admire you, Commander. You’re not what everyone says you’re supposed to be. Not at all. I guess that… I guess it was a little dazzling.”
“Part of not being what people expect you to be is knowing when to politely ignore something once you know it exists. I’m just glad you didn’t throw yourself at me.”
Dottie’s lips thinned. “I kind of thought I was. Before I knew about Doctor Rosenberg. But… then you took me to that club and, that really opened my eyes.”
“Not just your eyes, kid,” the supposedly sleeping Willow said from under her hat.
Dottie flushed even brighter red and she started to mumble something that might’ve resembled an excuse, but Willow wasn’t having that.
“No. You’re right about Tara,” Rosenberg said. “She isn’t what anyone expects – not even me. I was sure – I was absolutely certain that when I told her I loved her, she’d say it right back to me. That’s her, that’s who she is. But she didn’t.”
“I didn’t need to, did I?” Tara asked.
Rosenberg didn’t answer her, at least not directly “Kid, you could do worse than look up to her. You could look up to me, for example. That’d be worse. But, if you did throw yourself at her, you and I would end up having words.”
“I’m past that,” Dottie said. “Now… I just really admire her.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Tara observed. On the one hand it was a relief that her friend wasn’t thinking about her that way, but on the other something of a disappointment that anyone could get over her that quickly.
“But I’m not into her, you know?” Dottie continued.
“Because?”
“She’s in love with you,” Dottie said to Rosenberg.
“I think I get to be the one who says that,” Tara told them. But neither of them were – apparently - listening to her.
Of course, that just meant she was being teased by both of them. Which certainly wasn’t what she’d had in mind…
“And – like I was saying – one person can’t be in love with someone who doesn’t feel it too. I never thought I was – by the way – Commander Maclay was just like… well, there weren’t many people like me – like us – back home. Or none, really. It was something – my whole world would’ve been very different, staying home. Then I came here and - ”
“There she was.”
“But really,” Dottie said, “it was the world that was here. Not her. I mean, when we went to that club… I had no idea that there were so many people like me. I didn’t think I was even like a lot of the women in that club but… I was. And places like that – I – I didn’t feel alone anymore.”
“And also, you had fun?” Rosenberg asked, just about managing to keep her voice level, but she could tell it was a struggle for her.
“Well, it was like another job, on top of my real one,” Dottie explained. “But in the best place in the world. Oh my goodness! Even if I was just a coat-check girl but… look at whose coats I was checking. Do you – do you - Commander, do you think the embassy would let me keep that job?”
“Really?” Tara asked. “That’s what you’re asking after all this?”
“Well… I can’t afford to be a member,” Dottie said. “But… I can be a coat check.”
“And hang out with the members after your shift?” Willow asked.
“They said I could,” Dottie said. “But now I realise that was Ilse and she was a Nazi and you killed her so that might not count for much – and I missed a bunch of shifts – and – and - ”
“You’re babbling, kid,” Rosenberg said.
Tara looked at the hat, since it was as close to Willow’s eyes as she could get. The kid was babbling? She was pretty capable of that herself. When she put her mind to it.
“I think I’d like to go back. One thing I’ve realised is that I’ve got a whole lot of people not to be in love with,” Dottie said with a shy grin. “I need to make up for lost time, before someone comes along and sweeps me off my feet. You know, like you two.”
“And who do you think swept who off her feet?” Rosenberg asked.
“Be careful how you answer that,” Tara warned her.
Dottie paused, thought about that. “I’d have said it was you, Doctor Rosenberg.”
Willow seemed happy about that, but Dottie wasn’t done.
“But…”
“But? What do you mean ‘but’? I absolutely swept her off her feet. Literally, actually – remember that Tara? The whole giant statue thing? The whip?”
“But,” Dottie continued. “You also said you loved her first, I think – the one sweeping, well, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Maybe I’m just a romantic,” Rosenberg said, discomforted. “A romantic sweeper.”
“Maybe, but I think the Commander’s playing it cool,” Dottie said, looking at her. “Getting what she wants. Playing the long game.”
Tara looked over at Willow, who was looking right back at her and wondering if that maybe that was how it had gone down. That what she thought had been happening, actually… hadn’t.
Rosenberg had thought everything was happening one way, her way and now that the (supposed) innocence of Dottie had questioned it that assumption… Well, she would wonder. Willow was very certain of who she was.
But honestly – to herself at least – there wasn’t a ‘game’. There never had been. There’d always just been what felt right at the time. She was a big believer in following what felt right. Without putting too much additional pressure on things.
Just because she’d known the very first time she and Willow Rosenberg had a romantic encounter – even before that actually – they’d also known how hard it would be to keep their lives, duties and careers going alongside what they knew they were going to be.
Saying something like ‘love’ – self-evident in many ways – would only have put pressure on them to be something they weren’t able to be. Not in this crazy world that they were moving through.
At least that was how it felt.
Was that the ‘long game’?
“Nah…”
“Looks like it to me,” Dottie countered. “But what do I know? Please don’t whip me.”
“Whip you?” Rosenberg asked, shocked. Like it had never occurred to her.
“Unless, like, you wanted to.”
“What?!” This time it was her time to be shocked. Dottie was supposed to have a crush on her and now she said that to Rosenberg?
Except… she was only playing with them. “I’m just kidding,” Dottie said.
“You’re a dark horse, Dottie,” Rosenberg said. “I just realised, but you really are.”
The girl smiled, just a little smug. “Darker than you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… while you were killing ghouls and vampires and things up at that castle?”
“What did you do?” Tara asked.
“The better question might be ‘who’,” Rosenberg said.
“Huh?”
“She did the girl who saw us off at the station? I thought she had a strange smile.”
“She’s just happy,” Dottie said, undeniably smug. But she’d probably earned it.
“Wait – you don’t even speak the language! Or did she - ”
“No,” Dottie interrupted. “She didn’t.” And the girl couldn’t stop herself grinning from ear to ear.
And that was why she was smug.
Truth be told, that was pretty impressive. ‘Connecting’ with someone when you couldn’t even speak the same language. That was… beyond impressive.
“Honey,” Rosenberg said, “you’re going to be wasted as a coat check girl.” Then she pulled her hat back down and at least pretended to be asleep again.
Tara thought about saying something, Dottie looked as if she expected her to. But then she closed her mouth.
There really wasn’t anything she could say. But she had to ask. It was something she just had to know.
“Really? Without saying anything?”
“I guess love just has its own language,” Dottie said.
Perhaps. But when it was obviously just the one night – when you both knew you weren’t ever coming back - she wasn’t sure you could call that ‘love’. No. That was something else. Not worse, but definitely not better.
Damn.
Rosenberg was right about Dottie. She was going to be wasted as a coat check girl.
Or a typist.
-------------------
“So I’ve got you all to myself?” Willow asked, aiming to loop her arm through Tara’s.
It was something she liked to do when Tara was in uniform. Having this girl on her arm was always nice, but having her on her arm in uniform? That was a genuine privilege.
It wasn’t so much showing Tara off as being shown off by her.
She hadn’t come into the embassy. Government frustrated her. She’d had enough experience with Tara’s bosses – from the Secretary of the Navy on down through the functionaries who kept everything going and buried half the world in paper – to understand that she simply wasn’t suited to it.
University had seemed bad, but compared to the government? Child’s play.
Maybe Romania had been rough. But Tara was still looking at days or weeks of paperwork just to close that matter off.
Never mind even if there was another crisis she should be solving. The paperwork monster must be served. Someone ought to look to slay it something.
“You have,” Tara said, offering her arm more fully. “All to yourself.”
“Hey, I’m the one in the pants here.”
“We don’t go for that role based rubbish,” Tara replied.
And that was true enough. From the outside plenty of people who knew them both made assumptions about them that simply weren’t warranted. Tara looked great in uniform and – more often than not – that featured a skirt. Tara was also much the more likely to be caught wearing a dress.
On the other hand, she was rarely seen out of either her suit or her field gear. She wore ‘men’s’ hats because they were practical for jungles as well as the rain, like today. They didn’t care about it though. The rain was light and it was warm and the sun was emerging from behind a cloud, casting a rainbow that wouldn’t last long as they headed down towards the Seine.
Too many people who never had cause to think about it liked to assume she was the ‘man’, entirely missing the point that being a lesbian was all about there being no men involved at all.
Dottie, she was sure, could’ve clued them in. The girl was… She had an appetite that, honestly, was something to do with youth. Or being hidden away in that small town or… Maybe she just had an appetite and needed to meet the right girl.
Even Lehane had settled down eventually.
Course that was with entirely the wrong woman but… The point was that it could happen. Even a (newly) legendary Lotharia like Dottie who could charm a girl into bed without words could meet the right woman.
But Tara too was operating in a macho world, one that wouldn’t even admit that it needed her. That was why she was – officially – a typist.
And it was why Commander Tara Maclay had just submitted a report, then attended an interview to clarify some points and now the result would be being encoded and sent to the desk of the Secretary of the Navy. Informing him that she – with some help – might well have saved a good portion of Europe from being overrun by Nazi ghouls.
A typical day in the Navy? Probably not. They’d probably never had a message like that before. All the paperwork that would follow couldn’t say more than that.
But most important, whether that had been a risk or not, she’d stopped Hitler from getting what he wanted. And that had to be an end in itself. Even if war consumed this continent, it wouldn’t be fought with the Prince of Carpathia – the Dark Prince – at it’s head.
She did wonder whether the role of ‘love’ had been mentioned. Not because of any need to hide or deny it, but just because she couldn’t imagine it would go over very well in a government report. Vampires and ghouls and religious icons, certainly – but ‘love’? Perhaps that had never been in a Navy report either?
Certainly not in that context.
They couldn’t have done any of it had they not been in love.
‘Role based rubbish’ though. That was what Tara had said.
“It’s true,” she admitted. “We really don’t do that role thing. When we’re rolling around so much, who can tell whose on top?”
“Exactly,” Tara said, sighing as pulled her closer.
“So, did it all go okay?”
“They sent Army Intelligence,” Tara confided.
“Ah.”
“They’re not exactly understanding when it comes to why two typists saved the world.”
“I can see why that would be confusing to them. And this time there were two typists.”
“Exactly. And they really hated the parts about the civilian involvement.”
Willow grinned. “Good.”
“I know. But it probably didn’t help that I outranked them too either.”
“Ohh, yeah they’d hate that. Stupid Army Intelligence.”
“They did.”
“So, what you’re really saying is that you had fun?” Willow asked.
“More than I’d have thought,” the other woman admitted.
Not many people thought it to look at her, but Tara Maclay had a truly wicked sense of humour. It was just very deeply buried. Once you got to down there though… watch out.
“And they had no trouble believing it? We didn’t have much by way of proof. Just the icon and that’s not exactly clear.”
“Oh, they got it, they’re with the Programme,” Tara said.
“What’s ‘the Programme’?” It sounded like it had a capital P.
“I can’t say.”
“But you just - ”
“Classified.”
“But - ”
“If you were working for ‘the Programme’, that would be something else,” Tara said. “Then I could tell you but…” She shrugged.
“I have a job - ”
“If you were working for the Programme, I wouldn’t have to deny that there was any cross-government body that was working to frustrate the hell out of the Nazi’s and dealing with every strange thing that came along.”
“Oh, well, shame I’m not working for them then,” Willow said. “So that I’d know that much at least.”
“If you’d be interested in some consultancy though…?”
“They did agree to pay me, right?”
“Mercenary.” Tara pressed a whole roll of US Dollars into her pocket. Of course, they might be one dollar bills…
If the US Government was being cheap.
“A girl’s got to eat, you know.”
“Well, I was hoping you would feel that way.”
Wicked. Sense. Of. Humour.
“And just how many days leave have you got?” Willow asked.
“I have to report to the Navy Yard in Washington next Wednesday,” she said.
More than a week then. Well, that was fine. A few days here and then a cabin on a liner? “Maybe I could keep you company on your trip?”
“I can’t promise I’ll be hanging around Washington,” Tara reminded her.
“That’s fine, we’ve never made promises.” For one thing she had to get back to the university anyway. But for another, the world was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Tara was convinced war was coming, as were all her bosses. It was a sobering thought, but they’d get through that the same way they got through the process of trying to avoid it.
By working together when they could and by being… who they were.
“I will though, if you want,” Tara offered.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s one promise I can make.” They stopped on the bridge, looking at each other as the sun finally overcame the light rain. Neither of them was looking at the water. Just each other. “I can say it.”
“I already know it,” Willow said. “You don’t need to say a word.”
“But you want me to. I’ll say it right now.”
“I have a better idea,” Willow said, pressing a finger to her lips to stop her being premature about it.
“Oh?”
“Why don’t you see how long you can not say it,” Willow said. “Considering what I have planned for you… That’ll be the real challenge.”
“Oh, I do like a challenge,” Tara admitted. “And you always are.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“If you say so,” Willow said. Then asked something she’d been building up to for a while. “By the way, have you still got that corset you were wearing at the club?”
“No. I mean – yes, but I’m not - ”
“Oh, come on.”
“No. Have you ever worn a corset? No, of course you haven’t. Let me tell you it’s not exactly comfortable and I don’t just mean how it pulls everything in and what it doesn’t pull in it pushes up.”
“I’ll be grateful,” she offered. Yes, it was the ‘up’ that she was interested in.
“How grateful?” Tara asked after a few moments.
“Oh, probably ‘very’. Certainly grateful enough you should probably want to get back to that apartment of yours. As soon as possible.”
“Hmm. That grateful, huh?”
“So?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.”
“On the way.”
“If you’re sure the arm’s up to it?”
“You’ll see how ‘up to it’ it is.”
“Promises, promises.”
----------------------------
Epilogue
The man - whose name definitely wasn’t Wells despite the name on his ID badge - carefully boxed up the small item that had been sent through from Paris.
He’d worked here for many years and had been quite content with that. However recently things had changed.
Recently he’d been inducted into The Programme when he’d started to notice that items that had – previously – simply been deposited with him had started to be checked out much more frequently. Asking questions was never encouraged, but because it had offended his sense of order he had and…
He’d always understood something - or enough - of the nature of the things that he was storing for the people in Washington. People who wanted complete security and had – previously – left them there to gather dust to ensure it.
Buried at the bottom of a bureaucracy just as surely as they were physically in the backend of beyond.
Now… The world was changing. He read newspapers. He recognised it. Certain items were never touched, so buried in that bureaucracy that he might be one of the few people on the planet who knew they even existed. But some of the others were evidently proving useful.
This was a deposit. One, he suspected, was more likely to be required one day than not.
Why?
He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t need to. Or at least not why it was unique enough to earn a place here. But it was small, portable and had come from Eastern Europe. These were the facts that gave it away. The way the world was looking, it was hardly surprising that someone – someone who knew what they had here – was willing to make use of those assets rather than just lock them away forever.
Otherwise why keep them at all? Why not just melt this down?
Someone was afraid it might be needed one day.
There was still a place for new acquisitions. Always a place here.
Even if he had to wonder what a small, religious icon, could possibly have accomplished for anyone.
It wasn’t his place to wonder what the story behind this was.
His place was just to pack, store and document.
For the bureaucracy.
THE END
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Authors note: Why leave that story tantalising for the future? Well, because although I am not exactly happy with the first draft of this story, if it does see the light of day then the next advance of time will see Tara and Willow during wartime and that’s something that has never been explored even in the Indiana Jones movies. But ‘The Programme’ sets up the possibility of something vaguely related, that they could be doing during wartime… Whether that can be ‘fun’ in the way of these stories and the movies, I’m not so sure.
So will I come back to it? I don’t know. I had this story in my head since the end of the original Raiders and it didn’t work out exactly as I thought it would because the original version would’ve been much longer, along the lines of Coulda Woulda Shoulda in length (well, maybe half that – ‘just’ Lord of the Rings length LOL) but I wanted to limit it to Nanowrimo length and the sacrifices I made for that (without even reaching the full 50K) were quite substantial. Who knows what redraft will add though… (For the record I am much happier with the redraft than the original!)
Willow and Tara will definitely return from my keyboard at some point, but whether they will ever return as Commander Maclay and Doctor Rosenberg is another question…
I find it tough to be objective on this, it feels a little like a bit of the poor relation to the Raiders version from last year. But then that was based on a masterpiece with me just putting it into my words. This… less of the masterpiece, but perhaps more character development and touches that – I think – locals hereabouts will enjoy.
So, I guess I don’t know.
What do you think?
Katharyn - UK - 2013/14
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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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DIBS!! I haven't commented on this story before, but the opportunity to dibs is to great to ignore! I love the story! It's very thrilling, the action sequences are wonderfully written, but above all I love the dynamic between our favourite women, the playful banter and the obvious, until now not spoken out loudly but true and deeply profound love. I'm curious how Willow plans to use this love to control the icon...can hardly wait for the next update. Lucky for us that you never let us wait long!
But using an act of love to make ghoulies extra dead... might cause a few people to wince LOL
along with crazy work schedule 
and sick girlfriend = me with no kitten fix 
