If you've not seen it, you may want to go look at the final post of the previous page...
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Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter Sixty-Three
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: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
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: Tara finds herself in an unusual position (and get your mind out of the gutter, for once I don’t mean with Willow!)
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
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: You’ve probably noticed (or I may have commented on it by now in feedback) but I’ve been building towards this for a while, building another team. Why?
Well, for one thing I thought I needed to break away from the traditional Scoobies for my own sanity, Giles is fun, but I loved writing him with Jenny in Sidestep and I can’t do that here so… The new team gives me some freedom to be creative and actually has a much better dynamic really. If you look at the personalities involved, who can’t have fun with that? Also, more is better right? And we’ll only see whichever team is with a point of view character at the time so the others can be off doing what the story needs while I don’t have to cover every nuance of every episode if I can just say ‘oh, the others took care of it’. That works for stuff the episodes never covered too…
Thanks to: Anyone who likes Faith and especially a Faith/Tara dynamic (as friends!) Now if only I can avoid Sidestepping her. *cough*
Disclaimer 2: The author would like to note that the suggestion in the ‘Thanks to’ section was neither a threat nor a promise. Nor was it a spoiler. Just an in-joke for those who read that story.
Music of the day: I just discovered the soundtrack to ‘Cloud Atlas’ by Tom Twyker (and the movie…) I’d encourage any of you to try watching it, it doesn’t work for everyone but if it does work for you then you’ll love it and it deserves to be seen. Now I need to go read the book. But in soundtrack terms, amazingly uplifting with some great tracks to write by (or even prep for posting by!)
It was, Willow thought, just like that book. The one about the wild horses and that guy who could just talk to them and they did whatever he wanted just because of how he talked to them – or whispered to them.
Yeah, it was just like that.
Except instead of ‘some old guy’ it was the ‘hottest girl on campus’ - who was coincidentally her girlfriend by the way – and instead of ‘wild horses’ it was a ‘rogue Slayer’.
That was lucky, really. She wouldn’t have wanted to be dating some old guy who whispered and dealing with Slayers was pretty much a requirement of going out with her. Always had been.
Just it hadn’t usually been… this one.
So, in the metaphor, Tara was like ‘the Faith-whisperer’ which sounded like it had a whole other meaning to it when you said it like that.
Anyone else - maybe excluding the Mayor because they’d actually got on – anyone else who’d tried saying any of this stuff to Faith would’ve probably gotten beaten around the head with their own – ripped off – arm.
Maybe that was a little extreme for new leaf Faith, but all the same – it wasn’t exactly hard to imagine. And she liked both Tara’s arms where they were. Arms led to hands and hands led to fingers and she liked… all of that.
When Tara had asked Buffy what it would take to get Faith a chance, Willow wasn’t sure that her girlfriend had been ready for the answer.
Now though, not only had Tara gotten it, but she was sat across the table from Faith, spelling it out to her. They’d fed her in the refectory, smuggling a tray of food over to someone not part of the student body, but looking every bit like she fitted in. In a sort of predatory way… The dining hall staff would’ve had to have been suicidal to try and turf her out.
“So let me get this straight,” Faith said. “B’s washed her hands of me?”
“That’s right, she doesn’t want anything to do with you,” Willow confirmed and perhaps she should’ve just shut up and let Tara deal with this. There shouldn’t be any messing with the best.
It was true, it was absolutely true. Tara was the best and could make friends with just about anyone. Here was the living, psychotic proof. Which made it all the more baffling that she’d never done just that. Friends were more of a recent thing for Tara.
“It’s not that – It’s just that Buffy’s not taking any responsibility for you,” Tara confirmed, shooting her a look. “That’s what she actually said.”
Sure, that was one of the things Buffy had said.
“Okay, I can see that. She always cramped my style anyway. But I get to be a Slayer again?”
“You never stopped being a Slayer,” Tara said generously.
You just started to slay the wrong people. People being the operative word.
“Okay, but you’re babysitting me?”
Tara shook her head. “What would be the point? If you wanted to get away from me, from us, then you’d manage it. So… no, we’re not babysitting you.”
I’d have just said ‘Yes, you betcha.’ And there was the difference between any old civilian and the Faith Whisperer.
“But you are judging me?”
“Yes… I am.”
And I have to judge you, baby.
It was one of the few things Buffy had ever asked her to do – demanded actually – that she absolutely hated and her friend had been apologetic enough about it. But equally unwilling to back down.
It was the Slayer that was asking this of her though. Not her friend and roommate. She had to keep an eye on Tara, that was the easy part, and make sure her girlfriend was making the right choices about Faith. Maybe, Buffy had said, if they got to knew Tara better that wouldn’t be necessary but until then… they had to trust her not to just blindly trust Tara.
And that was going to be hard. It would’ve been a whole lot harder if Tara hadn’t given her word and hadn’t been taking this all so seriously herself.
“Come on, lay it on me, T. I don’t like lots of words when just a few will do, you should know that by now.”
“If you hurt anyone who’s not a vampire, a demon or something like that, you’re d-done,” Tara said. “If you’re out all night and you’re not patrolling, you’re done. If you go near Eddie and Buffy, you’re also pretty much done.”
Willow would’ve expected Faith to argue with the part where she didn’t get to have her fun, after the Slaying, but she didn’t. Perhaps it was because that was the one part that they had more flexibility on.
“Is that it?”
“No.”
“Go on.”
“In sixty days, two months, I have to be able to tell Buffy and Giles what good you’ve done,” Tara said. “Willow has to agree or…”
“Let me guess, I’m done.”
“I know – I know it will be hard,” Tara said. “If you just left, I’d understand. But I hope – we hope that you don’t.”
That depends on how inclusive ‘we’ is. Not everyone felt that way.
“Because this Goddess of yours has plans for me,” Faith said.
A flicker over Tara’s face then, Faith knew more about that than she’d admitted do far then?
“I guess.”
“And when you say, I’m ‘done’? What does that mean?”
A natural question to ask, one that’d tell Faith whether she had a chance. Buffy hadn’t liked it, but she’d eventually agreed. Tara hadn’t much liked it either, considering what Giles had said might happen, but… that was the investment that Tara had made in this Slayer. She’d laid it all on the line to get her a chance to change her life.
Willow couldn’t think of a single person she’d ever known who’d have done the same for someone like Faith. Not after only knowing her such a short time.
However this turned out, Tara had just proved how special she was.
“The Watchers,” Tara said. “They’ll come back for you. Giles will tell them where they are and this time, no one will help break you out.”
“You know what that is, don’t you?” Faith asked.
Tara bit her lip.
“That’s a death sentence,” Faith continued. Her voice was remarkably calm though, like it was just a curiosity. Not as serious as she was rightly saying. “If you give me to them - ”
“None of us know that,” Tara said, not seeming to want to consider it.
“Yes, we do.” Faith sounded not just ‘remarkably’ calm but very calm, actually. She wasn’t criticising the deal. She wasn’t fighting against it or blaming her or Tara. “If you give me to them again then it’ll be because I screwed up again. I’ll have done something wrong. Maybe, if that happens, you’ll be doing the right thing.”
Was that Faith recognising that she might… go off the rails again? That she had to work not to do that?
Perhaps.
The unspoken part of the ultimatum, at least for now, was that the Watcher’s weren’t exactly a benign organisation. They existed for the sole reason of supporting the Slayer and finding better ways to kill vampires, demons and all that stuff. Fortunately not witches though… But that was their thing. Giles had seen two possibilities, three if you counted long term confinement in a Slayer proof cell – if there was such a thing.
The first possibility had simply being killing Faith so that they could trigger the transfer of her Slayerness to another ‘one girl in all the world’. One who’d be easier to control and keep onside. Faith could hardly have been more ‘offside’ after all. But that possibility had been shocking enough to hear him say, even if it hadn’t been exactly unexpected. They’d all thought about it when Faith busted out of hospital.
The other possibility Giles had been perfectly, scarily serious about had been that the Watcher’s might also use Faith – since Buffy was still here – to explore the limitations and capabilities of a Slayer.
From the inside out.
Vivisection wasn’t just something that shouldn’t happen to bunnies, dogs and apes.
And yet ironically, locking Faith up forever had been the second worst option after that. It would’ve driven her insane – more insane if you took Buffy’s perspective. Some wild things just weren’t meant to be caged…
“Maybe we’ll all get lucky and something will do me in along the way,” Faith finished her thought.
“Don’t say that,” Tara said.
“Could happen,” Faith said, shrugging. “It’s always been likely.” Maybe that was why she was so phlegmatic about it all.
“That deal’s what you’ve got though,” Willow said. “Tara tried her best, she did, but that’s the best that anyone was able to say.”
“It’s fair,” Faith said. “I’m not stupid, T. I know it’s fair after the shit I’ve pulled. But you have to know that I’m not just going to sit there, all meek like, and let Buffy hand me over to them? If it comes to that, I’ll fight. I’ll fight anyone and they all know how far I’ll go.”
“The b-best way you can avoid that is by not giving them any reason. Prove them all wrong,” Tara said.
“Sounds like the tougher path, but I won’t pretend that wouldn’t be nice,” Faith grinned, closer to herself at that moment than during the rest of the conversation. “So… what’s the plan, T?”
“Me?”
“Seems like you’re in charge. If you have to be able to tell them I’m a good girl now, then seems like you’re the one who has to be saying what we’re going to do. What ‘good’ is.”
“Umm…”
Yeah, Tara hadn’t thought about that. She hadn’t thought that either. It really was the two teams… Two Scooby gangs, except in one of those Daphne and Velma were joined by two of the masked villains that they’d previously fought against.
Now just so long as there wasn’t a Scrappy Do that they had to worry about as well. Or maybe that was Anya… annoying, if occasionally useful. She tried to imagine…
Put em up! Put em up!
“Umm,” Tara said again.
“I’ll leave you to think about that,” Faith said. “No pressure, it’s just my life in your hands and only sixty days to make a difference.”
Actually, the sixty days weren’t to give her chance to do that. It was to give her a chance to screw up. Stay clean that long and she’d be on the way to showing she could be trusted.
And that was what this was all about. Not ‘doing good.’
“We should probably start with a patrol,” Willow said, just trying to help. You couldn’t really go wrong with a patrol.
“You guys do that too?” Faith asked, sounding bored. “Sorry, I mean – yay, a patrol. I’ve been waiting forever to get out there and walk the streets of Sunnydale again, hoping some random monster’s too stupid to realise that I’m not the easiest prey in the world. Yay.”
Tara tipped her head. “That wasn’t very convincing. You’ll need to work on the sarcasm. Tone it down.”
“Tell you what. You find a better way of fighting the good fight, I’ll lose the sarcasm.”
“You don’t get to make - ” Willow started.
“Okay,” Tara said. “Shall we go, for now, though? There’s something we have to show you.”
Oh, yeah. That.
“Sure. Got my pointy stick right here,” Faith said as they left the coffee shop. “I can think of better weapons, but hey, they do call me a ‘vampire’ Slayer and I suppose you can’t go wrong with stabbing something.”
Tara, not knowing what to say, didn’t say anything.
“You girl’s packing?” Faith asked, mischievously brandishing the stake as they got out onto campus and Tara pointed down Fuller Street.
“I don’t carry stakes,” Tara said, looking at her.
“Me? No. Buffy usually brings – it’s rare I do the actual slaying,” Willow explained. “I’m more about the support roles - ”
“Was I talking about stakes?” Faith asked. “I asked if you were packing.”
It took Willow a few moments longer than Tara to realise just how embarrassed she should be about the nature of that question. Not helped by where Faith was looking. “No,” she said belatedly. “No. Not - And you’re not doing yourself - ”
“Uhuh. There was nothing in the rules about what I could say, Red,” Faith said. “You can’t just start adding shit to them now.”
“How about just courtesy? Might help you come across as nicer”
“Not really my thing. Look, I don’t care what you and T get up to. So far as I’m concerned she’s a big improvement on dog-boy. Upgrade, that’s what you nerds say isn’t it?”
“Tara’s not an upgrade,” Willow said, just a little testy. “Not just an upgrade anyway. She’s more like a whole new system.”
“With different bits,” Faith laughed. “Okay, okay. I can get with the programme. This park was always good for a few vamps; I guess you’ll be keeping score, Red?”
“Umm, yeah.” She had been planning to put together a spread sheet to show Faith’s wins. And any losses. Or unfortunate incidents. But the power of positive thinking was in designing a sheet that would allow for those negatives in the future, without actually including them now.
It was her way of pulling – not exactly for Faith, but more for Tara’s judgement. She didn’t want to be the girlfriend of the person who let Faith go off to do something terrible.
No, she wanted to be the girlfriend of the one who’d got it right, gave a Slayer a chance and seen it all come right for them. Even if it meant that Faith, from a certain point of view that was called ‘the law’, got away with what she’d done.
Mostly though, she was just going to be Tara’s girlfriend.
“Actually,” Willow said when they were already a little way into the park with no action at all, “everything’s been kind of quiet recently. Except, you know, when it wasn’t.”
“Demon invasion,” Faith said. “Little red fuckers, present company excepted.”
“Ha ha. But I meant like the usual background stuff, vampires, lone demons and the like.”
“Oh, cool. Can’t screw up if there’s nothing here can I?” Faith asked.
That was one way of looking at it. A big fat zero on the score sheet was definitely better than a negative number. Way to get with the programme.
“Talking of lone demons,” Faith said.
“Yeah?”
“I – I could do with some cash. If you have some.”
“Huh?”
“Lone? Loan? Cash?”
“It’s covered,” Tara said before Willow could say anything.
“It is?” Willow and Faith both asked the question at the same moment.
“Well - you – you can’t live on the street,” Tara said.
“Around here it might give some things a shock,” Faith said, referring to the fact that – all Willow’s life – there’d barely ever been any homeless in the town. Between the old Mayor and the vampires… smart folk in that predicament had moved on. The less smart… they’d not have lasted all that long.
“Where are we going then?” Faith asked, plainly bored by the lack of action as they transitioned from park into one of Sunnydale’s many cemeteries.
“The place you’ll be staying,” Tara announced.
Willow’s eyes widened as she realised what they were actually heading towards. Or rather where. Who.
“Nice place?” Faith asked. “I don’t have many standards, but I do have some.”
“It’s got a bed,” Tara deadpanned.
A slow smile spread over Faith’s face, some new respect there. “Well, that’s okay then. Since I’m a house kitty now, except when you take me out in my box, I guess I’ll have to bring them all back there.”
“That might not be such a good idea.”
“Why?”
Willow didn’t answer and they made a circuit of the cemetery, not coincidentally ending it on the north side. First of all that was where most of the new burials occurred – and thus where new vamps tended to rise – and also it was the closest point to the villa.
“I’m not enjoying this mysterious shit,” Faith said. “I have a low threshold for this sort of thing.”
“Not everything’s inst-instant,” Tara said. “You’ll have to get used to that.”
“Your friend Xander was, near as damn-it, anyway.”
“You’ll have to get used to too much information,” Willow said. “That too.”
“We’re nearly here,” Tara said.
“Where’s here?”
“There,” Tara said, pointing as they crested the hill.
Diana’s villa was something Willow hadn’t yet seen up close and honestly, she’d had no idea it was here. Always assuming it hadn’t just been magicked into existence – possible but unlikely – then that meant it had to have been built some time ago because it certainly didn’t look new.
Maybe it was the proximity to the Hellmouth, maybe it had belonged to Hades – who Diana apparently insisted remained Lord of the Underworld and thus of the Hellmouth that was its gateway. That was something they’d have to look into… Wasn’t it Hades who’d kidnapped that girl, married her and then she got to return to the real world for a number of months each year? Those months that represented the changing seasons?
Something like that, she probably needed to up her reading of the Greek mythos too. Maybe this place was for that girl he’d forcibly married? Whatever it was, Diana was here now and Willow still hadn’t come across anything that refuted who she claimed to be. Greek Goddess. Or just Goddess, actually. The Greeks had just been the ones to name her – according to some – or who had brought the whole pantheon into being through their beliefs – according to others.
Somehow she didn’t think that Faith was going to be much help in unravelling the mysteries? She had simpler needs.
When you looked at the villa, it was a mix of the new and the old world. The columns and design were undoubtedly Greek or roman in style, but more likely a modern interpretation of what that meant. But everything was lusher around the villa than it had any right to be. The gardens were European in their greenness, rather than the slightly yellow/brown hues that you saw here in what would’ve been a desert were it not for the fact a town had been built. Ivy even climbed the columns, statues played water into pools.
Big dogs roamed.
The way Tara handled the dogs did worry her. These were dogs that were large enough to have your arm off if they decided to, then they’d use it as a chew toy. At least for a couple of hours.
But Tara approached them like they were cuddly little puppies. Or like she would Miss Kitty, if Miss Kitty had been two hundred pounds of muscles, sinew and teeth. And who, incidentally, was probably not going to be happy when she smelled the dogs on them later.
“Cute dogs,” Faith said, walking up alongside Tara. Wisely, perhaps, she didn’t touch them.
“This is Callisto,” Tara explained, scratching behind the bitch’s ear. “And this is Jupiter.” The dog got a scratch on his belly, which seemed to leave him in some sort of heaven.
“Oh,” Faith said significantly, “he’s a big boy.”
Willow shook her head, walked up herself. Both dogs broke from Tara’s ministrations and looked up at her. Suspicious for a moment, then relaxing as they appeared to remember her. Nothing like that for Faith though. Almost as if they… already knew she was a house guest?
“I’ve seen them rip a vampire apart,” Willow said. “Piece by piece until they did enough damage he was dusted.”
“Nice mutts,” Faith said, squatting in front of Jupiter and capturing his head, almost as big as hers, in her hands. Remarkably it seemed to turn into some sort of wrestling match as the dog tested her strength and she proved she was equal to it.
“This is where you’re staying,” Tara said.
“What? This whole place is mine?”
“No,” a familiar voice said. “You have roomies.”
“Oh, lucky me,” Faith said to Ethan Rayne.
*********************
more soon 
? 
Would be cool, but I'm just happy that this particular story is going to continue onto season 5ish.
