Kajun's special request - X-File's comes to Sunnydale - is now ready but rather than dump it in the middle of the Checkpoint parallel I will post it when Checkpoint is completed (after part 124) since there's a nice story break there anyway. It's not a real chapter. It's not even a bonus chapter and part of the continuity, but it's fun (or not) and involves our characters so... Yeah.
So, after 124 for that.
For now, enjoy 123.
Katharyn
Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-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: Still ‘Checkpoint’ but we delve into the mythology a little.
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: I’ve been considering the nature of this fic and why you guys and girls are here (if indeed you are and this isn’t a very lonely thread.) Increasingly this story is pretty closely related to canon, scene by scene actually. Though I do miss some things and add others, fundamentally it’s the canon story. Just… a little different. I wonder if it’s the little differences that appeal? The missing scenes? The addition of characters? Or the thing that’s – so far – faded into the background, the big honking difference that is Diana? I don’t know… but given the story, I’m just curious if you read for the same reasons that I write? Probably not. I’m finding new ways to enjoy something that was taken away from me like the rest of this show. My feelings on the sixth season (from minute one of episode one) are out there. The musical that so many people love, I despise because of the actual content.
Even little moments like Dawn’s two mommies. All of this was taken from me too, because I just can’t watch it. But this way, my way, I get it back. I get to enjoy something and make it (in my mind) into something different. But not so different that you can’t recognise it for what it started out as.
So, anyway, I delve into a couple of things here. This fic already picks up one major inconsistency for me in strengthening ‘the end of the world’ threat which was never all that clear in canon season five, at least not for me. But when you also then introduce the Knights of Byzantium who were an ancient order dedicated to destroying the Key… Guess what? Those guys were right! That was the best thing that could have happened – at least before it became Dawn/Hope. And that means the monks were wrong… so… we go into that, explain it away a little here. What they were really all about. Or am I just forgetting something? Did the threat make consistent, logical sense in canon? I don’t think so… but please, tell me I’m wrong!
“What. The. Fuck.”
It wasn’t actually a question. Hope had let them in and now Faith had just come back from… Well, Paige’s. Finally, she went over there and now they’d called her back.
Maybe that was contributing to her upset about all this.
“Don’t you like it?” Tara asked.
“Hmm, let me think, T… Umm. Oh, no. Not really.” Faith was far from what you’d ever call ‘impressed’. Considering that Joyce had only been given half an hour to pack, she’d picked up a remarkable number of things that seemed to have no useful purpose during an emergency relocation.
Hope and Buffy had packed her essentials and Joyce herself had focused on the… homey touches.
Telling her not to apply them to Faith’s apartment had been a little like trying to hold back the tide with your hands. Not very successful.
“Doyleys?” Faith asked. “What’s going on with the doyleys?”
“It’s just a few things,” Joyce said, coming through and depositing a box of mixed herbal tea in Faith’s cupboard, pushing aside a collection of boil in the bag noodles that must’ve been untouched a while looking at the number of takeaway cartons in the trash.
Joyce had found those too.
“I’ve brightened the place up… Black and white is no colour scheme for the home of a teenager,” Joyce said. “Take it from me, roomie.”
Faith held up one finger, then lowered it unwagged. Joyce had already bustled out. There were three boxes of stuff she was unpacking. Maybe, just maybe, Faith’s own room was untouched.
“What’s happening, B? Why is your Mom making herself at home? Here?”
“Glory was in my house.”
“Holy shit,” Faith said.
“Exactly,” Buffy said. “Or – well, it’s unholy, I guess.”
“And you brought her here?”
The emphasis was probably for Hope’s benefit since she couldn’t exactly criticise Buffy in front of the girl for leading her to the Key’s home…
“Glory doesn’t seem to know about you, even though she smacked you around - just like she did me.”
“One girl in all the world,” Tara said. “She’ll know that much. Anything more than that won’t make sense to her…”
Buffy nodded. “She knows I’m the Slayer, she thinks there’s one and she thinks I have the Key. So you need to look after them both, Faith.”
“Both?”
“My Mom. Your sister too, I guess. You know, being as Hope’s watching out for Joyce.”
Yeah, that was absolutely the way round things needed to be.
“What about patrols?” Faith asked, looking at the ‘improvements’ in her kitchen with growing horror.
“If my Mom’s here and I know you’ve got her covered, then I can get back in the game,” Buffy explained. “I can pick things up.”
The two Slayers shared a long look and Tara wondered what was passing between them. Was it the suggestion and acceptance of a debt? For what Faith had done? Something about Hope and protecting her? They didn’t say anything though and whatever it was… the deal seemed to have been done without words being necessary.
Tara shared a look of her own with Buffy as Faith silently left the room and went through to the living area. It was one room of the apartment that Joyce seemed to like and she’d thrown the windows open so the long, flowing white drapes that had come with the apartment were billowing in the breeze.
Following Faith, she watched as the girl eschewed leaping over the back of the sofa and inside walked around it, sitting down alongside Joyce. “What are we watching?”
“I don’t know about watching,” Joyce replied. “Willow has this on sometimes. Can’t say I know why.”
“She does?” Tara asked. She was pretty sure it was a re-run of American Gladiators.
“Willow watches it for another reason,” Joyce said. One more sign that the surgery and the recovery had freed her of some of the inhibitions that once would’ve held her back from any kind of insinuation.
“So… I guess you’re watching it for the men?” Faith asked. “I can get with that programme.”
“No,” Joyce said. “I was never into muscles. It makes me laugh.”
“Hold on,” Tara said. “What do you mean Willow watches it for another reason?”
“You didn’t know?” Faith looked back at her, leering. “Oh, hey… Aren’t you Watcher’s pets supposed to be at a meeting?”
“Shit,” Buffy said, earning herself a rebuke from her Mom despite what her new landlord got away with. “Tara, are you coming? I’ve got to go…”
“I’m coming,” Tara said.
“Willow probably says that a lot too,” Joyce said and she was sure that she recognised the sound of a high five between the Slayer’s mother and the one girl in all the world that wasn’t also her daughter.
“This is too weird,” Buffy said as they hurried out of the building.
-------------------
“So where’s Ethan?” Xander asked.
Actually, Willow had a pretty good idea where the pain-in-the-ass warlock might be – or at least whom he was with.
Someone who doesn’t think he’s a pain in the ass… And that way led unfortunate innuendo that she was sure… she really didn’t want to think about anymore than she already had.
Innocence was really underrated.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t care,” Willow said, since that was a little more likely to end the conversation than what she really meant… ‘I don’t want to know.’ Of course that meant that she did know, or at least suspected. Then Xander would ask and then she’d tell him and… Actually, she quite liked Elise. For a Watcher she was okay.
Terrible judgement, but okay. And that was – for Elise rather than Ethan – she wasn’t telling anyone else what she knew. Who that woman decided to sleep with, ill advised as it might be, was her own business.
Certainly not theirs.
The thing was that they’d all tacitly agreed to be here to support Buffy and Giles in the outcome of the review. Ethan wasn’t the only one missing. Elise was the – only - obviously missing Watcher, but Travers wasn’t making his displeasure obvious about her.
No, it was the fact that Buffy was missing that was really ticking him off.
And then there was Tara who’d been with Buffy and probably still was, after all she wouldn’t have missed this if she had the ability to get here. They’d been held up. Obviously.
Hopefully not by anything too terrible
That was what Giles had explained more than once, making excuses for Buffy was all he seemed to do around Travers… and it had become a bit of a spectator sport since they were sat looking down up on the ‘balcony’, looking down at the table where judgement would apparently be delivered.
Delayed justice. Justice hopefully not swayed by the fact that it was ‘over twenty minutes late already justice’. The Watchers, the ones that were there, were taking their cue from their boss and definitely weren’t impressed.
Neither was Giles, he was hiding it better, but she could see it. The difference was that he understood this was Sunnydale, where the only point to a schedule was to demonstrate just how late events had made you.
Because there were always events to contend with and while he might’ve – just about – believed Buffy could be late for less than serious reasons, the fact that Tara was with her made it all the more likely it was something serious.
But try explaining that to Travers who didn’t know either of them well enough to appreciate all that.
“Twenty minutes,” Xander said.
“More than that, your watch is slow. Again,” Willow replied.
“What do you think he’s going to do if they deport him?”
“Go back to a country with rugby – without body armour. Football that actually uses the foot and where the ball’s the right shape.”
Xander smiled, in spite of the subject. “Tea and cucumber sandwiches.”
“History,” Willow said. “You know? Actual old stuff. Older than fifty years.”
“Cricket and more tea please.”
They both sat there for a moment. “You don’t think he’d actually want to go do you?” Xander asked the question, but she was wondering too.
“He doesn’t,” Willow said firmly. “And we don’t want him to either.”
------------------
“We’re so late,” Tara said, feeling the pressure of it even though it wasn’t her review. But it was so important… For Buffy, Giles and Hope, how could she not feel it?
She’d never used to worry about being late, mostly because she’d never needed to. She’d always been punctual. Then she’d come here and everything had changed…
Sunnydale had a habit of throwing things in your path that you couldn’t just step around, but it wasn’t just that.
She’d got her worry about being late from Willow and the few occasions it had happened to her, there’d usually been some Willow involvement. Two people sharing one bed and one alarm clock led to twice the chance of accidental alarm failure. Deliberate sabotage on more than one occasion too until she’d moved it to her side of the bed.
Then it’d become all too easy to lose track of time when she lost herself with, on, under and in Willow. Sometimes all four of them.
She’d still never been late for anything as important as this though.
And this time there’d been no Willow involvement. In fact Willow was going to tell her off about it, she was pretty sure.
“They’re Watchers,” Buffy said. “Let them… watch for a while.”
She might talk tough about it, but Buffy had been hurrying just as much as she was. And then, suddenly, she wasn’t.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding,” Buffy complained. Three… she had to think about it, but she was going to call them ‘knights’ had blocked their path, one directly ahead and one to either side of them.
Knights… You could tell they were knights by the full chainmail – obviously not made of plastic loops like in the movies – and the functionally nasty swords and weapons that they were armed with. Brandishing.
“I’m going to stand back again here,” Tara said.
Buffy didn’t acknowledge it, but Tara knew she was helping. Keeping out of Buffy’s way and then finding how she could help, that was the best thing she could do. Nothing made the Slayer complain more than unnecessary rescues, because she was worried about not pulling that feat off some time.
“Boys. I am not in the mood,” Buffy said. “I’m late and I’m pissed off and it’s not been a good night so… just walk away and no one gets their phallic substitute shoved where the sun doesn’t shine.”
None of them retreated or appeared to think better of what they were intending.
“Well, okay. Can’t say I didn’t try to warn you,” Buffy said and took the fight to them.
Seeing Buffy fighting vampires and stuff like that was a very different from people, even the training she’d witnessed didn’t really give you a good idea of how a Slayer would take on an armed – and armoured – man. But her training had obviously been more than up to it. Every one of these guys was bigger than Buffy and with the swords they all extended their reach by more than two feet beyond that.
But the knights were equipped for fighting other men, very like them. The weapons were heavy for all they were nasty. The armour even heavier, all of it slowing them down. Buffy was faster.
Much faster. And she was stronger, these were just normal men – in good shape admittedly – but just men all the same. Buffy was able to get inside their reach simply enough, delivering her blows and then dancing away before they could grab her.
It didn’t take long at all, Buffy disarmed one carrying a kind of javelin with two wicked points and then flicked it up with her toe, caught it and twirled it just like the practice floor – wielding it just like a steel version of the quarterstaff Giles made her train with.
A quarterstaff with nasty, barbed death on either end.
Immediately her tactics changed, clouting the disarmed man over the head with the shaft of the javelin, knocking him out and whirling on the other two. Now she was able to block their swings and her speed was still just as great. Would she have stabbed at them if they hadn’t been wearing chain mail? Tara liked to think not, but Buffy did drive the point into the stomach of one, it was stopped by the mail but the force alone was enough to make him double over and retch his guts up.
Eww.
The third Buffy got right up to, blocking a desperate swing and sliding the shaft of the javelin down under it reached the guard of the sword, caught there and when she twisted… The sword flew away and embedded itself in a telegraph pole not three feet from her head. Umm. A few more steps back then.
Buffy glanced back at her, looking apologetic and then whacked the javelin upwards into the guy’s chin, hard enough to put him down.
Tossing the javelin away, Buffy didn’t waste any time pulling one to his feet and removed his chain mail hood to reveal long hair and strong features. Probably the kind of guy Faith would’ve liked… But then Faith liked so many kinds of guys.
“Who are you?” Buffy demanded.
Avoiding the pool of vomit and the possibility of touching one of the fallen men, Tara made her way closer.
“Who. Are. You?”
“We are legion…” he said, contempt in his eyes.
“Legion? What, like the foreign legion?”
“I think he means there’s a lot of them,” Tara translated.
“Well, there are three less now,” Buffy said, as if threatening his life. Just because Tara knew she’d never do that, didn’t mean he’d realise it.
“Give me answers, bub, like I said before you made your move, I’m not in the mood and I’m in a painful hurry. I don’t have time for subtle. So, one more time. You and your buddies, who are you?”
“We’re… we’re the Knights of Byzantium.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Buffy asked, meeting her eyes. Tara had to shake her head. She’d never heard of them either.
He seemed offended that she didn’t. “We are legion - ”
“Yes, you said so already. There are lots of you. What do you want with me?”
“You have declared yourself our enemy,” he said.
“Funny, I didn’t send a memo or put an advert in the paper. Maybe it was one of those interweb things. What are you? Knights of Byzantium dot com? We are legion dot net?”
“Your actions have spoken for you, you protect the Key.”
“Of course, the Key… So you’re with Glory?” Buffy asked.
Tara happened to be watching him as Buffy asked the question and knew in an instant that wasn’t the case. The flicker of hatred when the name was mentioned. No, they certainly weren’t with Glory.
“No! We are no allies of the Beast!”
“Then you got the wrong message, Bubba. I’m not on her side.”
“The Key must be destroyed,” he said. “She must never gain what she has sought for thousands of years.”
“Destroy it?” Buffy asked, looking her way again.
“To save reality – this entire world, the Key must be destroyed. Even if it traps her here forever, the fate of everything rests on destroying the Key.”
Tara swallowed, hard. It was tough to argue against that kind of logic. Unless you knew who the Key was. Who. Not what. Hope… It was some cruel, ironic twist that Hope had been named as she had been. The Key… the thing that would destroy everything was named Hope.
It – she – offered nothing but destruction. The end of everything. The only hope was to keep her out of Glory’s hands.
Forever.
“If you kill me,” he continued. “A dozen will replace me. A score will follow each of them.”
Tara never doubted for a moment that Buffy would let him go. He was human after all and – in another circumstance – would’ve probably been an ally.
“Get on out of here,” Buffy said. “The sword though, that’s mine.”
“Wait…” Tara said, quickly enough that Buffy could plant her foot in his chest.
“Tara?”
“”Ask him - ” Better to ask herself. “You want to destroy the Key, to protect everything?”
“Yes.”
“Why… why didn’t the monks who had it, why didn’t they destroy it? They could’ve ended this…”
“It’s said they feared trapping the Beast here,” he explained, clearly surprised at the question.
“Why?”
“Because she’d already slain the old Gods, torn them down… The convocation of the priests of the new Gods, the religions that sprang up to replace those that had faded into obscurity, they all feared her – what she would do. If their Gods existed – and they believed they did – then they had to fear what she could do to them.
“So they wanted rid of her, they hoped that the Key might provide a way, without ending everything. Their experiments… tore down empires, ended civilisation for hundreds of years as cataclysms shook the world order. And every time, they attracted the attention of the Beast again.”
“They tried to send her home, I thought that was what she wanted?”
“But they tried to serve two masters. They risked the world… and – by now – they’d forgotten what purpose there was in keeping the Key at all.”
“It makes a certain sick kind of sense,” Tara said, looking at Buffy. The question they’d never asked until now really didn’t matter though.
Because the Key wasn’t just the Key. It was Hope.
***********************
The fun thing is she doesn't even know she was part of an X-File situation. No, wait, that's not the fun thing... 