by Katharyn » Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:39 am
Title: Tara and Willow – Raiders… – Part Five
Author: Katharyn Rosser & Chewster
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. Love to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. And if you’ve not seen a film from 1980 then just tough luck, I’m not keeping it a secret. On the other hand, you’ll probably think we’re genius for such an amazing story.
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: Nepal – Elizabeth ‘Buffy’ Summers place and what happens there…
Disclaimer: We don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production companies, writers etc. We are making no money from this series of stories however any original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a retelling of Raiders of the Lost Ark and references other Indiana Jones films, a lot of dialogue and the entire plot has been taken from that movie. Other lines may have come from the script but were not seen in the movie and so could appear to be original when in fact credit belongs to the scriptwriter. Other elements are all the writers. It’s a complex mix and we will not be trying to allocate credit line by line.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the movie.
Couples: Well, no one as we open, but Tara and Willow forever.
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.
Notes: Elizabeth/Buffy’s background (the most controversial part that is suggested especially) here is largely adapted from that of Marion in the original script, elements of which were unfilmed or certainly not shown. We won’t linger or dwell over them and we can see numerous reasons why they weren’t included in the movie since it changes the original character significantly, but since this is writing we’ve chosen to bring it back. It certainly explains how she survived after Joyce/Abner’s passing. Personally we choose to look at it is a necessary practicality rather than the alternative. Oh, and Elizabeth isn’t the Slayer (though she does have a mean right hook and a remarkable metabolism for drinking games.)
Also, please take note… no matter what you may conclude from what you know of Marion/Indy and what a certain reading of the text of their meeting may suggest, there’s never been anything intimate between Buffy and Willow. Period. Their problems are different to those in the movie and not all revealed yet.
Oh, and Heinrich Nest, you’ve seen him in Buffy before… Go look him up.
Character map: This will only show characters so far revealed in the story, but just to keep things straight between this version and the canon…
Willow Rosenberg = Indiana Jones, Tara Maclay = Tara Maclay, Rupert Giles = Marcus Brody, Faith Lehane = Belloq, Riley = The never to be seen again snake in the plane, Joyce Summers = Abner Ravenwood, Elizabeth ‘Buffy’ Anne Summers = Marion Ravenwood, Heinrich Joseph Nest (AKA The Master) = the Gestapo agent with the burned hand.
Interesting factoid: Another difference in the original script was that there were actually two parts to the headpiece that they were trying to recover. One belonged to a Chinese Warlord and there was a separate set of adventures to recover that. We chose not to include it here because it really didn’t offer much and it’s easy to see why it was cut out.
Elizabeth Anne Summers.
Oxford graduate. World traveller.
Proprietor of ‘The Summer House’.
Local champion.
Once a week, the ‘Summer House’ hosted a competition that she rarely failed to take part in. Now, the name of the place that didn’t translate well enough for any of her friends here to have picked up the double meaning without her explaining it to them but she explained it better when she’d been in the competition.
The rules were pretty simple. As much as you could drink. One by one. Shot by shot. Last man standing won the pot and a cut of the bets. It spoke to the human need to wager and always drew a crowd. Providing the booze to run the competition more than paid for itself with the extra business it brought in. Most other nights there were but a handful of locals and the very occasional traveller or adventurer in here.
Adventurers… She’d known adventurers. What else do you call someone who comes to Nepal, usually under equipped and ill-prepared for what they’d find here?
Stay long enough and you might just attain the status of her other clientele - slightly less impressed by the drinking escapades - the smugglers and the fugitives. She’d grown used to, over the years, spotting those who came here to avoid the reach of the law.
Because around here, there really wasn’t any. You owned what you could hold and nothing more. And to do that you needed respect. You needed friends. And that was what she’d made for herself – one way or another.
All the same, she’d grown attached to the place since Mom had brought her out here all those years ago. She talked, a lot, about going home when she had the money. But there was money. There was plenty of money. It was harder to make here, though not impossible, but the costs were so much lower too. So there was money, money enough to at least get home.
But not money enough to live well when she got there. This bottle of booze she’d pretty much drunk dry had cost less than a milkshake back home. And this was the good stuff that only burned on the way down.
Smiling at her rival – this was their third rematch and he was yet to take her – she downed another shot of the fiery liquid. These days she barely even felt it at all. Most nights she took a third of a bottle.
Most nights.
Half the battle, she was well aware, was making her opponents understand the futility of what they were doing. Yes, that’s right, she could handle her liquor better than any woman who’d ever come through those doors (and most men).
Partly that was long years of training, partly – she was sure – it was because she had what Mom had always called a ‘fast metabolism.’ Some science thing she’d read about. It was part of why, as well, she had a mean right hook when she needed one despite the fact that – even when she was soaking wet – her opponent tonight would weigh three times more than her.
Tipping his head slightly, he – unsteadily – downed another shot from the line in front of him and added the glass to the long row of upturned empties. It wasn’t the done thing to touch the opponent’s glasses and so – for the sake of neatness – she aligned hers with his rather than the other way around.
Still upright. Another then. She didn’t hesitate at all.
It was all in the mind. All in the mind. He’d lost to her twice already, but he’d put on weight since then and that helped soak up the booze. Right? So they said. He’d been eating different too, coming here with a full stomach while she’d had a little rice and stew earlier but really hadn’t prepared that much otherwise.
He’d walked in here believing in ‘this time’.
He’d been shaken as they went beyond the point he passed out last time. Two glasses beyond it so far. He was doing well, she had to admit. But his eyes were glassy and she was still thinking analytically about it all. And how much real money the winnings would get her back home…
And now… She picked up another glass, three more until they had to pour some more and crack open that next bottle. That wouldn’t be a problem though.
She deliberately drank it slowly but then allowed herself to falter. Let him believe for a second. Let him think he’d won, because the crash when it wasn’t true would hit him all the harder… Opening her eyes after that moment, she slowly and deliberately put the glass down in exactly the right spot.
Looking him in right in the eye. Steady as anything.
Despair. Right there, that was despair. He didn’t believe any more. And with that he was beaten because though he managed to down the next drink and money started to change hands again, he couldn’t even keep upright in his chair. He was swaying, his whole world was about to crash down around him and… then it did.
She left it to someone else to catch him, collecting up her winnings from the table but leaving the rest. Cleaning up was something Mahdlo would handle tomorrow when he came in to open up.
Oh, yeah. My head is going to hurt in the morning.
Even though she wasn’t ‘drunk’, it’d still hurt while her body flushed it all away. Water and bed in that order – were the only things that were going to make it better. “Alright, all of you all out!” She repeated the instruction in the three different languages that she knew were being spoken here tonight, though only three of the eight that she spoke to a certain extent.
‘Get out’ was something she could say in all of them.
Of course, three of those others were dead. Thank Ira Rosenberg for his enthusiasm for ancient languages and his ability to teach them to anyone who hung around him long enough.
Funny, thinking about the old man after all this time.
When I keep his daughter as far from my mind as I possibly can.
“I said we’re closed,” she called as a shadow crossed the wall, someone coming in the opposite direction. “Go home!”
“Hello, Buffy.”
She froze, shocked by the pet name that no one here had ever known to call her since – well, not for a while. Shocked by the voice too, it sounded just the same. A little older, more mature. But… the same.
Think of the devil and she’ll appear.
“Willow Rosenberg.”
The slight, red-haired woman stood there, still wearing that ridiculous hat and looking… Still looking like a reject from the circus. Still carrying that bull whip around? But did the ring master usually have a revolver too?
“I always knew that someday you’d come walking back through my door.”
Willow actually managed to tease a bitter smile out of her with one of those – now incongruous – waves that she’d always used to give her. Just like a signal, to confirm it was really her. “I’m – I’m actually here to see your mother. I need one of the pieces that Joyce collected. From Egypt.”
“Oh, then you’re only two years too late,” she said.
Willow frowned, uncertain what to do – she could tell. Hug her? Once, maybe, when they’d been friends. But after what had happened… After what Joyce had gone through about that? No. So what were they now? She could tell that was what Willow Rosenberg was asking herself and coming up stumped, which was new. She didn’t know what they were to each other.
And I don’t know either.
Right now though… Willow Rosenberg was one of the reasons they were out here, at the ends of the earth. And maybe… Maybe she’d accepted her place now, but she’d certainly not forgotten how she’d felt when she arrived.
Or how her Mom had…
“What happened?” Rosenberg asked, displaying that uncanny ability to ask the questions that were right there in her mind. Even after all this time.
Just like she could walk in the door, when she’d thought about her for the first time in months.
Elizabeth gestured to Mahdlo, indicating that she was okay. She didn’t need help. Not with this girl. She’d started beating the crap out of Willow Rosenberg when they were no more than, what, six years old? It’d driven Mom and old Ira Rosenberg to distraction.
“She… she made sure things ended her way. There was something, something in her head. I don’t know, maybe back in the world we left - ” The world you were in - “maybe they could’ve done something. But… she was in pain, on and off, for a long time. But she was still digging, you know? Always digging. She spent her whole life digging, dragging me all over this rotten earth. And for what?”
“Oh, I’m – I’m sorry. Where – where’d you bury her?”
“Bury?” She laughed bitterly. “Oh, no. She’s out on the mountain. Avalanche. Probably she looks the same as she was at that moment.”
The cold would’ve preserved her. She’d thought about that often. Every so often a body would emerge from the glacier up the valley. Ancient… One day Joyce would do the same. It was kind of like immortality, in a way. That was what she’d said… maybe she really had planned it that way?
Intended to become a historical curiosity in some distant future?
“At least she was doing what she loved,” Willow said helplessly. It’d be easy to feel sorry for Rosenberg. Willow had come here looking to find not her, but Mom and probably thinking through all the things she was going to say after what had happened. Now…
She just finds me.
It’d be easy to feel sorry for her. But she didn’t.
“Don’t give me that, Rosenberg! What do you know? By the time she died we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. So guess how I lived, Doctor Rosenberg? I worked here. Upstairs. And I wasn’t the bartender.”
She swallowed, waiting to see Willow’s reaction. Of all the things they’d wanted and planned to do with their lives, which had she actually managed? Willow was a Doctor, always had been on that track. And what was she? She knew what they’d have called it back home, but she’d always avoided the local word. It was no uglier in its judgement of her morals but much more immediate.
“Finally,” she said, downing another glass of liquor off the table. Once again, Willow Rosenberg drove her to drink. “The guy that owned the joint went crazy. Snow crazy, they said. They took him away screaming and as they dragged him out, he said that the place was mine. Funny thing was, he’d never tried to lay a hand on me.”
Some people would’ve said they were sorry, she was ready for that. Absolutely ready to bite back at Willow if she’d dared to say that again.
But she didn’t.
“Why not leave? Go back to the States?”
“I will,” she lied, not at all certain she could anymore. “I’ll get there.”
Here… everyone knew about her and no one cared. She was someone, she ran the bar. After the local equivalent of the Mayor and the priest, there was no one that was more looked up to than her. No matter what she’d used to do upstairs. Even the ones who knew about that saw her differently now than they might have then. It was like she’d been reborn once she was given the bar.
Back home she’d have been… Poor. And she’d always have to imagine that the moral majority would – somehow – realise all about her. Label her. “But when I do, they’ll know me. Cause, when I go back, it’ll be in style. I’ll be a goddamn lady!”
“You always were a lady, Buffy,” Willow said.
“Just not the one you wanted.”
“Don’t give me that,” Willow told her wearily. It was an old argument. “You never wanted that either.”
“And you wouldn’t have given it to me even if I had.”
“You did something stupid,” Willow said. “And… so did I. It could’ve been a lot worse. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Leave it? Okay, sure. Let me tell you. I’ve learned to hate you in the last ten years, Rosenberg. But somehow, no matter how much I hated you, I always knew that you’d someday come back through that door. I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable. I just never thought it’d actually be my Mom that’d bring you here. Much less that it’d be something she dug up.”
Maybe it was ego that had told her it’d be unfinished business between them.
Willow walked over to her. “The piece, Buffy. You ready to listen? It’s important.”
“You bitch,” Elizabeth said, she didn’t have the energy for much venom though. “I just told you my mother was dead and you’re looking for something of hers?”
“I’m sorry, I am. But this is important and maybe we can do each other some good, even if you’re not happy about it.”
“Why start now?”
“Shut up and listen for a second.” Right here, in her own bar, Willow Rosenberg was telling her to shut up? Instinct said to punch her lights out, it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d tried. But in spite of herself, she was curious.
“I’ve got money,” Willow said.
The magic words in most of the world, and she knew it. “How much?”
“Enough to get you home, where are her things?”
“Gone,” she said. “I sold all her stuff.”
“Everything?”
She nodded, taking no little satisfaction in Rosenberg’s disappointment.
“Well, that’s too bad,” Willow said. She sounded defeated. Let down in a way that she’d never seen before.
Maybe it really was important to her. Important enough to get her what she needed. She picked up another of the whiskies, rough as it was, and downed that too. This time Rosenberg noticed.
“Tough broad?”
“I don’t feel it after a few minutes. Like the bruises when we were kids. I take a hit and it just melts away.”
“But no matter how much you drink, it doesn’t take away the reason you need it?” Willow asked.
Damn Rosenberg and her sober perception. “You really have money? You don’t look rich. I mean, I might be able to get a line on some of her things. I know who’s got them, this is a small place. So what do you want?”
Willow nodded, not triumphant even though she had to be able to see through the bluff. No, not a bluff. A lie. She didn’t want Willow Rosenberg to have what she wanted. Not really. Or perhaps she didn’t want Willow to go away yet… No. That really was the drink.
“A bronze piece, about this size in the shape of the sun. It’ll have a hole in it, off centre and a crystal. Does that sound familiar?”
It was all she could do not to reach for it right now. Mom had thought everything she’d dug up was important but all the truly important pieces had been sold to get them this far, to last thing long. All but one she’d never part with. The one thing Mom…
“Do you know the piece I mean?” Willow pressed, breaking her reverie. “Do you know where it is?”
“Maybe. How much?”
“Three thousand. American.”
She shook her head, unhappy with that offer and not just because it was Rosenberg. Not just because all that was left of Mom’s work was this woman’s need for it now. “That’ll get me back, but not in style. Must be pretty important to offer that much right off the bat.”
“Maybe.”
“Five,” Willow said. “And another two when we get back to the States.”
Seven… Plus what she’d saved up and what she could get for this place? She wasn’t going to retire, but she wouldn’t be a pauper when she got back either. And Willow Rosenberg would owe her a favour too. Plenty of people who hadn’t been there when Mom died would feel guilty and owe her favours…
Maybe she needed to sleep on it. Maybe she just needed Willow to squirm a bit longer.
“Come back tomorrow,” she said, making a decision.
“Why?”
“Because I said so, that’s why! Come. Back. Tomorrow.”
Willow nodded, reached into her pocket and pulled out the roll of cash. “I’m trusting you, Buffy.”
“Then more fool you,” Elizabeth replied. “Now get out.”
--------------------------
Tara watched the encounter from the balcony leading up the stairs to the guest rooms they’d been planning to stay in but now, it seemed, wouldn’t be.
Great. Just great. By local standards it was a minor snowstorm out there. Even for her, born and bred in rural Montana, it was a full on blizzard and now they had nowhere to stay.
Elizabeth ‘Buffy’ Summers seemed like… Doctor Rosenberg’s type, if she was honest. Independent. Strong minded. A challenge. There was nothing Rosenberg appeared to like more than a challenge.
After all, she’d been told so herself.
And the pair had history, all the history in the world. Right back to when they were kids.
And who could deny that Summers was attractive? You had to admit it, even after a harsh life here in Nepal. Harsher than they’d had reason to expect after what she’d implied about her ‘work’… up these stairs.
The surprise at not finding Joyce Summers here – the point of the mission – wasn’t so great as how Rosenberg and Miss Summers were around each other. There was barely concealed hatred – at least from Summers’ side – and no little regret from Rosenberg’s.
And this was something she didn’t know about. What had caused that alienation? The Doctor had avoided the question and what she could hear of their conversation hadn’t been exactly clear. Enough – too much – in some areas and nowhere near enough in others.
That wouldn’t matter though, not if they got the piece. They’d leave this place behind and –
The door beneath her opened again and for a moment she thought that Willow had come back in to pick up the argument again. Not the case. Five men by the footfalls and that estimate was confirmed as most of them stepped into her view.
Obviously she needed to conceal herself better before they looked up here and did so behind the long drapes. The wall she was pressed up against was cold, sucking the heat from her, but death was much colder. Four of the men were armed with machine pistols – German machine pistols.
The fifth… wasn’t actually the Nazi from the plane. Or at least not the man they’d suspected…
It took her a long moment to realise, but he had been on the plane. The kindly, almost English, sounding gentlemen she’d actually talked to when they’d been boarding in Hawaii. Damn, either she was slipping or he was good.
Very good.
Where was Rosenberg? She had to have seen them coming in and two versus five was going to be a lot better odds than one versus five. A moment earlier, she could’ve walked out with regrets but no mission imperative.
But… she did have the mission to think about though. She’d seen Summers had just pulled a large item on a chain from around her neck. Larger than any woman would’ve chosen to wear as a necklace unless she thought she had to keep it close.
Protect it.
Or had some sentimental attachment to it.
So, it – the Headpiece - was here, and so was a Nazi and his henchmen. She was here too. And all that was missing was Rosenberg.
“No one listens to me,” Summers called again without turning around. “We’re closed!”
Tara looked out from the gap in the curtains, pleased now that she’d worn black and should be blending into both the shadow and the deep crimson of the fabric.
“Good evening, Fraulein.”
“Like I said, Mac. Bar’s closed.”
“Oh, we are not thirsty,” the lead Nazi said. “And the name is Nest. Not Mac.”
The name wouldn’t have meant anything to Summers, but it certainly did to her.
Heinrich Joseph Nest.
The man was the dark side of legend in certain circles. The rise of the Nazi’s had been swift and brutal enough, but his reputation had been well established long before, even during the Great War and perhaps even earlier. That he’d come to the Nazi’s attention – and side – might have been inevitable.
But reputedly he did little that wasn’t in his own interests too. That woman down there, she was in serious trouble.
And so was she, because she didn’t fancy he’d take well to being interrupted.
Elizabeth Summers might be many things - and Tara didn’t envy her the choices she’d made after getting stuck here - but she wasn’t stupid. The men started to spread out, poking around in the bar. Checking for anyone else. Would they come up here?
“What do you want, Herr Nest?” Summers asked.
“The same thing as your friend Doctor Rosenberg wanted. Surely she told you there would be other interested parties?”
Tara slowly pulled her .45 pistol from its holster. It was lined with soft fabric to mask the tell-tale sound of metal against stiffened leather, it so was in her hand without anything to give her away.
Rosenberg… where are you?
Summers shook her head.
“Ah, the woman is nefarious. I hope for your sake she has not yet acquired it.”
Yes, his English was too perfect. Perhaps the King of England spoke that way, but no one else who hadn’t spoken it from birth did. She should’ve realised it when she’d talked to him. Too precise. Too clipped.
Heinrich Joseph Nest… I was talking to him. Did he know who I was? Probably not. But what I was? Maybe… He must be good enough.
“Why? Are you willing to offer more?”
“Oh, almost certainly. Do you still have it?” His tone was curious, rather than demanding. As if it was the least important thing. It was a mind-set, Tara supposed, in that he was thinking about how he’d prefer to get it from her.
She'd run into his type before.
“No,” Summers said. “But I know where it is.”
Clever girl. Summers had to know she was in trouble here, and she was smart enough to play the game. Or try to.
Because what might have bought her time… didn’t. Instead it merely diverted Nest towards his chosen methods. Summers seemed to pick up on it and wasn’t held back when she went behind the bar. The way she moved… it wasn’t just a casual thing. She was putting a solid barrier between them. Again, good instincts. “How about a drink for you and your men?”
Not just a drink. She had some sort of weapon back there, to a practised eye it was obvious.
“No thank you, Fraulein. Let us stick to the business at hand. The piece. Where is it?”
Now she was closer to her weapon, Summers got tougher and more stupid in the same moment. Most people did. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow when I told Rosenberg to? We can hold an auction. Everyone who can pay, wins.”
“I’m afraid our timetable is quite restricted, Fraulein. We have to be… ah, on our way as soon as possible. So I will have to be brief. Brief but thorough. Your fire is dying here, did you know? And… why don’t you tell us where the piece is right now?”
Tara considered the situation. Her concern wasn’t to save Summers, that was a secondary matter. She had to keep it out of enemy hands, if it was going to be as important as Rosenberg thought. And if it did fall into their hands, she needed to get it back. It was that simple.
If she didn’t have it, no one else could.
Elizabeth Summers – American or not – came in third behind those two priorities.
And to do all that… She had seven bullets, five targets and they were all better armed than she was.
Where are you, Rosenberg?
“Listen, Herr Mac,” Summers said, reaching for something behind the bar. “I don’t know who you’re used to dealing with but no one tells me what to do in my place.”
Nest, looking into the fire, shook his head and turned the poker he’d already inserted into the coals. You’d have to be a fool not to see what was coming. Summers could help. Okay, Summers could help if she had a weapon back there. And when she heard shooting, Rosenberg would get back in here too. She wouldn’t be alone for long and if she could take out their boss with the first shot…
But right now she couldn’t see him. His head and torso were hidden behind the fire place in the centre of the room.
“Americans. You’re all alike. I will happily show you what I am used to.”
One of the hired Nepalese grabbed Summers and pushed her over the top of the bar, trapping her hands and – unless she’d already grabbed a weapon – lengthened the odds again.
No, no weapon. Summers was lifted bodily over the bar and deposited in front of Nest. He was in her sights again – holding the poker which glowed red hot at the tip.
“Wait! I can be reasonable - !”
Summers pleas would’ve had more effect on deaf ears. Because this was exactly what Nest had wanted from the start. And, if I miss, the only thing that will be in our favour is that tight schedule of his… But it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to break Summers. The man might be an artist, but he was also German and undoubtedly efficient with it too.
Exhibit one. The red hot poker. Hardly subtle.
“That time is past.”
“You don’t need that. I’ll tell you everything!”
“Yes, I know you will.”
Tara reconsidered her approach. She knew where the necklace was and in just a few seconds so would Nest. She could take him out – or try – and probably die in a hail of bullets immediately afterward. She could shoot at one of his men instead, reducing the amount of firepower and die, but possibly at Nest’s hand or…
She could kill Summers… save her from what she was about to face.
And then suffer Nest’s tortures – or die – herself.
None of which were really appealing choices.
So it was a good job that there was a crack of a whip and the poker was snatched away when it was only inches from Summers’ nose. She watched as it arced high into the air, landing at the foot of the curtains she was stood behind and immediately setting them on fire.
Uh-oh. That wasn’t good.
Not good at all.
------------------------
Willow Rosenberg stood in the doorway, revolver in one hand and the whip in the other. Someone had once told her she knew how to strike a pose, this was probably another one.
Maybe they’d tell her later, if they got out of here.
Tara was in here somewhere, probably still upstairs, so she had some help.
Right?
“Hi.”
All at once things started to happen very fast and not according to anyone’s plan or orders. The catalyst was the reaction of one of the local hires that these Nazi’s had made. He opened up with his machine pistol and looking like he had no idea how to control the bucking weapon, because the first attempt to shoot her went wildly amiss.
It was almost more dangerous than an aimed burst could’ve been and everyone else in the bar took the opportunity to dive behind cover once that started. Even if cover was no more than a wooden table that she could just about overturn.
Hearing a different kind of shot being fired, Willow glanced upwards at the balcony and caught Tara’s eye as the giant with the machine pistol slumped to his knees, dead. But then everyone else opened up and the lead was really flying so she had to duck again.
Luckily she wasn’t exactly impotent in that regard and returned fire, targeting first the one who had hold of Buffy and then the one that was aiming upwards towards Tara. Last thing she needed was losing either of them. She’d never hear the end of it.
Buffy wasn’t exactly being a victim either, unleashing that right hook of hers at the guy who’d just shot in the shoulder. He went down and Buffy threw herself behind the bar just as it was raked by bullets.
Next thing, a shotgun blast took out the guy who’d been trying to get around her and that had to have been Buffy too. Deceptively tough girl, but the others were dug in. The Nazi with the poker fetish was in solid cover on three sides while his European buddy was trying to get to a better place to fire from. Willow spared a few more bullets to discourage him from that that tactical option.
The last local who wasn’t wounded – or worse – stuck his submachine gun out from cover and just sprayed wildly. Effective enough and two could play at that game. Willow did exactly the same in return, just with less bullets flying, but the revolver barked once, twice and then three times before she reloaded or tried to –
Grabbed from behind, lifted up off her feet, she was being crushed in the grasp of another giant. One of the locals and oh, about two feet taller than her not to mention three times as heavy. They grew them big here.
Shoving off against the nearby wall, Willow managed to force them off balance even while she was being constricted and felt like her ribs were in imminent danger of – ooof – the pair of them hit the ground and she rolled as the guy relaxed his grip in surprise and perhaps some pain.
Meanwhile, she could see that Buffy was still doing her part. When one of the men she’d already shot at stood up, in less fear, Buffy hit him over the head with what looked like an axe handle and – as he roared – Tara must’ve been the one to neatly plug him between the eyes though.
Success! No – she was being dragged back by the giant again, sliding along the floor as she was picked up by the feet.
And there was the revolver, inadvertently she was dragged towards it and snatched it up, pressing one – then another – of the bullets she’d been clutching in a death grip into the chambers. Shooting this son of a bitch was going to the only way to get away from him, for sure.
Hauled to her feet, she had one hand clutching the gun he was trying to take from her and another protecting her throat as the giant seemed intent on either choking the life from her or pulling her head clean off.
Maybe both.
“Shoot them both,” the lead Nazi instructed, an order that his compatriot seemed to approach with no little glee.
For sure neither of them was Aryan. She looked at the giant who was holding her up off the ground and – both of them with their hands on the revolver – swung it around to point at the other Nazi. Both bullets blew him away, leaving the weapon empty again.
The silly grin on the face of the man she’d just faced death with showed just how out of touch with this reality he was. She smiled too, but them brought down a brass pot on his head with all of her might and the guy slumped for a moment, letting her wriggle free of his grip, only to be caught and smashed down into the bar.
He roared as a bullet hit him. Tara? Maybe, but it just seemed to enrage him, like a bull stung by a hornet.
Now Buffy was the one spraying wildly with one of the abandoned weapons and if Tara had any sense, she’d duck – just as she tried to do – because Buffy and rapid fire weapons? That was just an all-round bad idea.
“Buffy!” Willow croaked as she was slammed down onto the bar again.
Buffy turned, as if about to - helpfully – shoot in her direction. Wide eyes showed her that was a bad-bad-bad idea and she ought to forget it. “How ‘bout some whisky?”
Summers smashed a bottle down over the big guys head, showering him in it as Willow thumbed a match from the bar and lit it… sending the big guy up in flames and him quickly running out of the place towards the snow.
Finally, she was able to breathe – if only for a moment. Okay, who’s next?
Taking in the scene she saw the fastidiously dressed Nazi, not the leader, get hit once and then twice by Tara. The second shot making a neat hole in his head. Goodnight, Shirley. Meanwhile – the leader was screaming, clutching his hand and running for the outside himself, short-cutting through a ground floor window. What had happened to him? Shot through the hand?
“You owe me one bar, Rosenberg! And seven grand!”
“Let’s get out of here,” Willow said, pulling at her hand. Tara was already on the move.
“Wait!” Buffy said. “Wait – here.”
She went with a cloth to a spot in the middle of the building inferno, picked something up and then joined her in running outside where she dunked the whatever it was in the snow.
Presumably the piece that she’d been looking for? Tara, by her side, seemed to have reached the same conclusion.
“Who’s this?” Buffy yelled over both the wind and the roar of the fire.
“Tara Maclay,” the woman herself said, stretching out a hand. Buffy turned it down, waving the cloth wrapped object that had been so hot up to a moment ago.
“Well, I’ll say this for you Rosenberg, you’ve sure learned how to show a lady a good time.”
“Tara, this is Elizabeth Anne Summers. Buffy to her friends.”
“And I’m not your friend,” Buffy pointed out. “Nothing personal. It’s just that until I get my money, Rosenberg, I’m not going anywhere. I’m your goddamned partner!”
She thrust the piece in her face.
The Headpiece of the Staff of Ra.
Of course…
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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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. I never liked AOAAG really...
with Raiders being one of my all-time favourite films so this should be a fun story to read. 
Does this also mean that Willow and Buffy had a relationship when they were younger which is why Joyce and WiIlow hadn't spoken for 10 years? 
is cool, but Marion pretty much grated on my nerves. By adding the strong, capable character of Tara as Willow's former and hopefully future lover, you made the story much richer. Plus I can much more emphasise with your Buffy than I could with Marion...probably partly because she is a familiar, beloved character for me and partly because we had a little insight into her point of view. 
