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Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-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: We’re still Spiralling…
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: So this is one of those patches where – in the first draft - I am just struggling. Half a million words in, after just taking a holiday where I was barely keeping my minimum word count ticking over, it’s not a surprise. I know that redrafting will help take care of the problems that are slipping in and (hopefully!) you’ll never realise, but what I’ve learned over the years of writing is that you just have to keep going. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad to start with; you just write it and fix it later. The worst thing you can do is stop. I’m fighting a scene that just doesn’t quite work for me and an ending to the story I’m still unsure about – even though I think I’ve come up with the ideas that I need. (And, as a voice from the future that ending problem has now gone away!)
And, of course, this was more than a year before you got to hear about it… so it should be fixed by now!
Oh, we’re still in Tara’s Point of View, of course.
Things happening off screen: Well, the Knights of Byzantium have found out from their brainsucked leader that the Key is a girl… that’s pretty important.
After threatening – or promising - to leave Xander and Anya behind (depending on your point of view), it was finally the requirement to have ‘options’ that had seen them coming along for the ride.
And for a while there it had seen Miss Kitty homeless until she’d been able to track down Annie and deliver the feline into her hands. Better, probably, at Annie’s than in Xander’s basement.
But there’d been more delays there while she’d tracked Annie down and explained as much as she could.
It’d taken too long to get out of Sunnydale. Anything could have happened.
But it hadn’t.
Even though Anya (and Xander) were coming with them, it wasn’t anyone else’s’ presence that was making Giles wince quite so much though. He was driving the truck that they’d hired and every time he looked in the mirrors, you could just tell that he was reflecting on the wisdom of letting Anya – of all people – drive his car. Most of the way she’d stuck right behind him.
No matter what the stop lights might have said.
It had to be a good thing to have those options they’d decided were so important. Right? She’d kept reminding him of that every time it looked like he might pull over to say something.
Options. Good thing.
Everyone knew that, worst came to the worst, they’d bail from the truck and Giles, Faith and Hope would take the sports car and floor it while she and Buffy did their best to buy them some time. And then the rest of them would track the Lehane’s and Giles down later. Yeah, that’d mean changing vehicles but… if Glory found them then they’d have at least that much time.
Or they wouldn’t have any at all.
The ‘tracking them down later’ was more of a worry. That would only be if they got out a Glory attack in one piece and the pressure of that being up to her and Buffy wasn’t insignificant.
And it would leave Willow with Xander and Anya to watch over.
Everyone had been very firm on their roles and yet… somehow they were all in the wrong vehicles. That was partly because only Giles was comfortable driving the truck and partly because they had to concede that off road might end up being their escape route now they were out of town and on the highway.
Oh, and Giles driving this beast had seemed like a ‘power of positive thinking’ thing…
So though they were all looking out of the windows, only Giles was worrying about how his car was being driven as well as the road ahead. How Anya braked. How she stick shifted (she’d proclaimed herself an expert there for some pretty dubious reasons). How she gunned the engine… all of it was criticism that he didn’t seem to be able to hold back on.
Nerves, she was sure. Honestly, Anya wasn’t doing so badly considering she didn’t even have a licence. That was fact that Tara wasn’t sure that Giles was actually aware of otherwise he’d probably have asked Eddie to take his car, rather than riding shotgun with Anya as he was while Xander was up here with her and Giles.
Yeah… they’d picked up another vulnerable soul in Buffy’s boyfriend. The Slayer had insisted and, once they had the truck, who could blame her? There was plenty of space when they had the two vehicles and if Xander and Anya needed to come along, to make sure they were safe, they couldn’t not stop for Eddie.
Faith hadn’t said a word about Paige, not even when prompted. Her focus was on Hope and – honestly – the biggest thing Paige had to worry about was the end of the world.
No biggie.
Not that she knew about it…
So they made all these plans, made new ones and then put them into action and… Nothing had happened.
Not that anyone thought paranoia was – well – paranoid. At the moment, they were just driving. Out of town. If they didn’t know where they were going then it didn’t seem like anyone else should be able to figure it out, guess or betray them either – no matter how good the reason. It was another argument for Anya and Xander coming along.
And Willow… she couldn’t have left Willow behind. The notion of leaving Willow at the hospital had lasted about as long as a snowflake in a blast furnace.
Not happening.
“Tara,” Giles said more gently than he’d been criticising Anya.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling Willow down from blocking his view in the rear-view mirror. Her girl was only trying to help, looking the same ways as the rest of them. She just didn’t know what for anymore. “Oh, no, hey, baby… Look out that way. Look!”
Willow pressed her face up against the indicated window, scrambling over her to get there.
“No problem,” Giles acknowledged sympathetically. “In many ways, she was the best of us. Intellectually.”
“Better than me,” Xander said. He was up here with them because she could trust him to keep an eye on Willow, come what may. Everyone had their job to do in an emergency.
That was his. Just protect Willow, get her out of the way of danger.
“You don’t say,” Giles deadpanned. “But for her to have met a fate like this…”
“It’s not fate,” she reminded them firmly. “It’s an illness. And she’s going to get better. I’m going to make her better.” Yes, she might sound fierce. But she felt fiercely about it.
“Quite.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “We know, T.”
“Obviously,” Xander added.
Everyone was a little down at that point, Buffy wasn’t even acknowledging it. Tara was sure that she felt just as bad - even though it was based on a different kind of relationship - as she did. So did Xander.
They all loved Willow, in their own ways. And what had happened hurt them all.
Even though she didn’t understand it, Willow wasn’t blind to the emotional shift and Tara could see that she was getting distressed over the fact that everyone else was suddenly down. Willow could – in her calmer moments – be a bit of an emotional barometer. So she had to distract her girl again. Last time Willow had lashed out a few times, catching Buffy in the lip once and kicking Xander in the back of the head before she’d been able to restrain her and hated herself for doing it.
Hated every moment of holding her down. And of trying to capture flailing arms and legs – it had to be done – before she’d hurt herself or someone else – but…
“Incy wincey spider,” Tara started, taking Willow’s hand and pulling her fingers into the right places to match her.
Spiders didn’t seem to be a favoured choice though and it wasn’t helping, even if Willow stayed fascinated with her fingers. Some things, Anya would have said, were inevitable.
No, actually, Anya would’ve been way blunter than innuendo.
“Horsies!” Willow suddenly cried pushing her face right up against the window and making Tara look too through her sheer enthusiasm. Not only was Willow right, but it was a genuine relief to her that object and language were still correctly connected within her mind.
The horses were in a field, of course, running free. A foal and its mother cantering and playing. She found she was as enthralled as Willow while they were at the stop sign and when they started to pull away, Willow recognised that they were about to do so and started to whimper, following the sight of the horses back around the car. Clambering over them all to keep the eye line.
“Stop the car,” Tara said. “I mean – please. Stop the truck.”
“What are you doing?” Xander asked as she started to get out. Giles hadn’t argued, just done as she asked. He knew better.
“She’s been good all this time,” Tara said. “Kind of good, anyway. So we’re getting out, it’ll do her good to stretch her legs.”
“It’ll do us all good,” Giles said agreeably and she had to thank him for that, he could’ve joined the others in that it seemed liked an unnecessary indulgence when every moment, every mile, might count.
But they left a protesting Hope firmly pinned in the truck in between Buffy and Faith, while Giles left the engine running.
Just in case.
---------------------
“Hey, sweetie, look at the horsies.”
Like she could’ve stopped Willow looking. Her girl was absolutely fascinated with them. Actually she was trying to climb the fence to get at them.
Big, bitey things indeed.
It was a genuine, childish joy that she was seeing. And while that broke her heart, it made her glad too. If Willow was – if she had to be stuck this way, if she couldn’t be helped then… It was good that she could still find things like this that would give her joy.
And she doesn’t even know there’s anything wrong with her.
She disengaged Willows hands from the fence, then her feet. “No, honey, that’s their place. This is ours. We stay out here.”
“Want!” Willow struggled.
“Shhh, baby. Shhh, if you’re quiet, if you’re good, they’ll come here. They’ll come to us.”
That was an idea that hadn’t occurred to Willow, but it was easily enough done – even if the mare was rightly wary of someone so excitable as Willow plainly was.
Tara reached for the mother’s mind, reached out to her. Feeling her nerves but also the innate willingness to trust of the domesticated animal. She reassured rather than cajoled. When she shifted her attention to the foal, his curiosity was much greater and he took one or two steps before being batted by his mother in warning. But with a little more reassurance the mare relented and the two of them came right up to the fence. Willow squealed in delight, startling the foal with her enthusiasm.
His mother followed, still wary but less prone to being startled – she was a reassuring presence for him too. Taking over where Tara had left her touch in his mind.
“Very gently, love,” Tara said. “You can reach out and touch him.”
“Bites?!”
“No. Just reach out and touch his nose.” The focus that Willow had now, intent on the young foal made her think that was the thing Glory had taken from her. That all the words were there, all the intellect. Just… completely unfocused. Moments like this, if you could keep Willow’s mind on one, single thing then she wasn’t so much sick as… more like a small child.
But all too soon it was gone.
She knew she’d been right to pull over; this was good for them – both of them. She needed to hope and to understand what was happening too. “Very gently,” she said, taking Willow’s good hand and turning the back of it towards the foal.
They were taking the joint responsibility, she and the mare. For the foal and the girl. Neither of them expected to be here, but neither was unhappy about it either.
“Soft!” Willow said as she touched him.
Then the foal harrumphed at her, surprising Willow and making her snatch her hand back. The sudden movement surprised him too, his head shaking. Willow wasn’t frightened though, just surprised. “Poooh!”
Yeah, his breath was a bit smelly.
“Aw,” Tara said. “That’s not nice.”
“Sorry, horsie!”
“That’s it, you be nice.”
They stayed there a good few minutes, Tara handing Willow some grass to feed to him, causing her to squeal when his lips touched her fingers. It wasn’t sugar lumps like she’d handed over as a girl but was probably better for his teeth.
“Tara!” A voice from the car. “We have to go.”
“Come on, baby,” she said though Willow really didn’t want to at all. “We’ll come back and see them some other day, okay?”
“Cheese and crackers?” Willow asked, but almost as if it was a promise.
“Cheese and crackers.”
“Bye bye, horsies!”
Leading Willow away, Tara took a moment to meet the mare’s mind again, offering the concept of thanks. Was she understood? She wasn’t sure, but it had never hurt to be polite back on the farm where she’d learned to do those kinds of things.
Momma would be pleased.
She still had that in mind as they drove away with Willow’s face pressed up against the rear window, looking back at her new friends.
-----------------------
“New plan,” Tara said.
“Really?”
“Well, if you think we need a new plan – I’m actually easy - ”
“What’s the plan?” Buffy asked.
“I hadn’t realised, but – I think we’re coming up to Willow’s Dad’s cabin, the turn off for it, I mean,” Tara said.
“I didn’t even know he had a place,” Giles said.
“He likes to fish and… there are fish,” she said weakly.
“Really, genius? There are fish where he likes to fish? Good job really,” Faith told her with a grin, first dodging the crayon that Willow threw at her and then neatly catching it when it had already gone past her head.
“Don’t give her that back,” Tara said. “She’ll only throw it again.”
“Your wish is my command, genius.” Faith pocketed it as Willow had already forgotten about it.
“So anyway, he has a place up here… I don’t think many people know about it.”
“I didn’t know about it,” Giles reiterated. “I might have liked to come up here and she never said a word.”
“Willow… she doesn’t like the fishies,” Tara said, addressing herself to her girlfriend as much as him.
“If Anya were here she’d have something - ” Faith started.
“Anya’s not here,” Tara reminded her. “She’s in the car.”
“Just saying.”
“You know,” Xander said, “I think you might be right.”
“You knew about this too?” Giles asked. “All the times I asked about places where I could get a weekend away?”
The younger man shrugged. “I only came past here once. We didn’t stop.”
“So anyway,” Tara said. “The cabin? The road is in about half a mile, I think – on the left.”
“What do you think?” Buffy asked Faith.
“As long as that bitch doesn’t know about it,” Faith said. “Sure. Believe me, sleeping in a car or any sealed space gets really old – and smelly - when you’re next to Hopeless.”
Hope yelped, hitting her sister and Faith feigned intense pain when she took the blow to the arm. “You can’t say that!”
“She farts,” Faith said, holding Hope off easily. “As the Brits would say.”
“Do not! I’m the Key! The Key doesn’t fart.”
“Then maybe you’re not really the Key, because you fart all the time.”
“Okay, that’s one to much bit of information, also a vote,” Buffy said. “Tara’s position seems to be clear. Giles?”
“We’ve made some considerable distance already and shelter, at least for a night, has to be welcome. We can reassess things in the morning. Move on if we need to.”
“Xander?”
“I kind of want to see where Ira Rosenberg goes to get away from his wife,” he said. When everyone gave him questioning looks, he explained further. “I might need a place like that, one day. Have you any idea how much like Willow’s Mom Anya actually is? I tell you, Tara. You should watch out for Willow… they say a girl becomes her mother don’t they? Oh… Sorry, Buffy.”
“Why? I could do a lot worse.”
“Yes, you could,” Giles said, taking her hand for a moment. “Much worse.”
It was good that Buffy had reached a point where she could let that sort of thing pass her by, even make light of it. And it was certainly true that getting more like her Mom wasn’t the worst thing that could happen in the world.
No, they were running away from the worst thing that could happen in the world.
The end of it.
“Up here,” Tara said, trying to remember the trip she’d taken with Ira. “On the left.”
“Anya will be confused.”
“It could be worse,” Buffy joked.
Taking the track, after reassuring Giles that – yes – she really did mean the dirt road, their pace dropped quite a lot, but it ought to be worth it. The cabin was hidden by the landscape, kitted out - if rarely used - and they had enough canned supplies in the back to keep them going for several days even if there hadn’t been any there.
Also, she couldn’t think Ira would mind in the circumstances.
“Is it locked?” Buffy asked when they pulled up to the cabin. Yeah, it was going to be a tight fit but they were all friends and some people would have to take turns standing guard anyway.
“There’s a key – no, not you, Hope. Look, I’ll show you.”
“No,” Faith said firmly. “Stay here. Let me check it out first.”
“How would anyone know we were coming here?” Xander asked, wary of the caution that they were showing. “The only people in Sunnydale who even knew about it are right here with us and we didn’t know until a few minutes ago.”
“Glory sucked on Red’s big brain,” Faith said. “I’m sorry, Tara, but she did. We don’t know if that told her anything. You said she… knew some stuff. Rubbed you face in it – which, yeah, Anya would probably say something about that too.”
A possibility that she couldn’t deny, Glory knowing something. “You’re right. We’ll keep the engine running. Tell Anya what you’re doing?” she suggested and then, as Faith got out, “They keep the key in a lamp hanging by the door, see?”
“I see it.”
Passing around the back of the truck first to tell Anya and Eddie where they were and what was going on, Faith was watched by all of them as she checked out the vicinity. Not just the cabin either. Meanwhile Giles had the engine ticking over and hadn’t bothered with the parking brake.
“What’s down there?” Faith leaned in the window when she returned, apparently satisfied.
“Is it clear?”
“So far, what’s down there?”
“The lake,” Tara said. “There’s a river, at either end. More of a stream really, but he calls it a river.”
“How far?”
“About a mile,” she guessed. “You want to check it out?”
Faith wasn’t the most cautious girl in the world, in fact that was something that pretty much no one would’ve claimed about her, but now – with her sister’s life on the line (and the small matter of the end of the world) she was actually getting to be more that way. Tara could see that she wanted to do some more exploring, but instead Faith shook her head.
“Looks clear here,” she said and this is the place to ambush us if Glory knew anything. “Why don’t you all come inside, start making the place liveable – it looks like that motel in Hicksville, Alabama. Remember that, Hopeless?”
“Roaches?” Hope asked, setting them all on edge.
“No, I don’t think so but… let’s get all the corners checked too. Just – leave the gear in the truck for now. Just in case I find anything.”
Tara nodded, getting Willow out of the truck. It was a good idea but… “Remember this place, baby?”
Willow ignored her, being led but not communicating right now, her mind was probably still back with the horsies. It was a good place to be and she was glad they’d stopped. Glad for Willow and for herself to see her girl that way again.
Plus maybe that had made her remember this place? Would Willow have? Had she ever even been here? Even if Glory knew everything… No. Glory hadn’t known about Hope until Willow told her. So… it was unlikely she could know about the cabin.
Very unlikely.
And this wasn’t Sunnydale.
“So how did you know about this place?” Faith asked after they were out and the others were off inside.
“I came up here with Ira,” she said.
“Just the two of you?”
“Well, it was a fishing trip and Willow has this thing about hooks – she doesn’t like them.”
“I’m still not getting over the fact that her Dad fishes. When I saw him he looked… Not the outdoors type.”
Tara supposed she should be thankful that Faith was being as tactful as that.
“It’s the peace,” she said. “I don’t think he much cares if he catches a fish or not.”
“The place is a mess,” Anya called. “There’s dust everywhere.”
“We have cleaning stuff,” Tara reminded her and then turned back to Faith. “I don’t think even Willow would’ve thought about this place for years, definitely not since I came up with Ira – she definitely hasn’t been herself since she was little. If ever.”
“And now here she is. We should probably fish for supper, or tomorrow,” Faith suggested. “Preserve our other supplies. You said there were canned goods here?”
“Uhuh. You know how to fish?”
“Stick. String. Worm. Hook. Dangle. It’s a bit like picking up a guy, except they usually bring their own worm.”
“Can I come?” Hope asked. And yeah, hopefully.
“You mean can you be excused from cleaning duty?” Tara interpreted. “Like your sister’s checking out the lake for ‘security’?”
“Is that a ‘yes’?” Hope asked.
“It’s a yes, we’ll both go with her,” Tara offered, looking over at Buffy, hoping she’d offer to stick with Willow. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the others – she absolutely did – but Willow was calmer with Buffy of any of them and if the Slayer wasn’t on Hope duty…?
And Buffy certainly had no problem with that; everyone was looking to find an excuse. Even Giles, who was pulling some of his ‘essential’ books from the case in the back of the truck. “It just struck me that there may be some other alternatives that I’ve not yet explored.”
“Uhuh,” she said.
“It’s what a Watcher does,” he said, “especially since Willow...”
Yeah, they were short of one star researcher.
“So I suppose all this is leaving me and Anya to clean?” Xander asked as he unloaded the supplies.
“It’s your superpower,” Giles said evenly. “And why we brought you along.”
---------------------------
“Hey, you,” Tara said, seeing who it was. Eddie had caught them up and seemingly escaped the cabin clean-up crew. Like most of the others.
Running up like that, he was probably lucky Faith hadn’t ambushed him and smacked him in the mouth. Only his clumsiness had probably saved him.
Leaving the others there was actually making her feel a little guilty, but… being out here was helping her relax and that was something she managed very seldom now that Willow… Well, her girl needed round the clock attention. Just last night she’d woken up, slipped from the bed and started colouring on the TV screen before kicking the whole thing over, frustrated at… something.
So, yes, she was a bad girlfriend. Sometimes she needed an hour to just decompress and be able to go back to watching Willow without that tension in her any more. Because just seeing her like that was hard. No matter how good Willow was being, it never got easier than ‘hard’. Not even with the horses which was the happiest she’d been since… Well, since it had happened.
“Nature,” Eddie explained, flinching from the charge of a bug, right into his face and not realising how close he’d come to it being a fist instead. “Urgh.”
Faith had no patience with that. Surprise, surprise. But this time with more reason. The way Tara understood it; the two sisters had come from a rural area and sometimes lived in places with more insect life in both the mattress and the kitchen than in any square acre out here. It was probably tough for either of them to be bothered by bugs or they’d have gone crazy years ago.
And she’d grown up on the farm so… It was just the city boy who was having trouble.
“You really hate it out here?” Faith asked him. “Figures.”
The Slayer wasn’t all that impressed with the manliness of the Buffy-boy-toy. Those had actually been her words just a few moments ago.
On the other hand, Tara had tried to point out; Buffy was a Slayer – just like Faith. Where on earth were you going to find someone who could even get close to Slayer standards in the traditional ‘manly’ stakes? And if he was considerate, kind and – above all – patient, wasn’t that more than enough? Along with the love.
Faith had just been threatening to reveal how she liked a guy to try to take charge of her when they’d heard him approaching.
‘Try’ being the operative word, because it was pretty obvious that – actually – Faith appreciated the effort more than that random guy actually succeeding. And it certainly would’ve involved ‘letting’.
Too much information and definitely too much for her sister to hear, so she’d been glad that they’d detected the person following them to get away from the topic. Even she’d been able to pick up on the approach, with Eddie blundering down the trail breaking twigs, slipping on stones and the like. Eventually they’d just waited, content that anyone so ungainly – and swearing to himself - was unlikely to be a threat.
“I just hate bugs,” Eddie explained. “You girls move quickly!”
“I’m hungry and this isn’t like going down the store,” Faith explained, gesturing with the fishing rod. “So bugs scare you, huh?”
“Leave him alone,” Tara said.
“Not at all,” Eddie spoke up for himself. “I’m realistic when it comes to bugs, I hate them and I kill them – talking of which…” he stopped, listening.
“What?” Tara asked.
“No – he’s right,” Faith said. “Shhh.”
“Huh?” What? Were they hearing some giant bug? A plague of locusts maybe? Them!? ‘Talking of which’ what?
“Shhh!” Faith insisted and Tara silenced her questions, until she too could hear what they were paying attention to.
“What is that? Horses?” she asked, her mind going back to the encounter she and Willow had earlier in the day. Could there by wild horses around here? Or more likely, cattle?
“If it’s horses,” Faith said, “then it’s lots of horses. Do you get many riders up here?”
“I don’t know,” Tara said. “I only came up here the once – but that sounds more like a stampede than - ”
“Back to the cabin,” Faith said, making a snap judgement. “Back to the cabin, now!”
“There’s no time,” she pointed out, even though she was moving in the same direction that Faith was. As usual the safest place to be was beside the Slayer, she grabbed Eddie’s arm to make sure that he understood that too. Hope didn’t need to be told. She was sticking with her sister. “And it’s not my idea of defensible anyway.”
If they could avoid leading whatever this might be to Willow, Xander and Anya, that had to be worthwhile.
“Defensible?” Faith gasped as they ran for the treeline. “You think - ”
“There’s no time to think,” Tara told her, turning one of her own truisms back on her. “Go on. Up the tree.”
“What?” Faith asked.
“Not you, your sister. Up that tree, Hope”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “If you can get – oh…”
Hope was already making good progress up the tree, branch after branch, surefootedly finding her way up into the higher portions where there were plenty of leaves – this close to a source of water – to conceal her. “Oh,” Faith said. “I didn’t know you could do that. You stay up there. You don’t come down for anything and you don’t make a sound – not even if we leave you, we might have to lead them away. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“If we want you to come down, for real, we’ll say ‘silver’,” Tara suggested.
“Safe words?” Faith asked. “Really, what have you and Red been up to?”
“Okay,” Hope said again as Tara put some effort into making her less obvious. It wasn’t exactly bending light, like she had with Glory, more just… giving nature a hand. Hopefully no one would realise she was even doing it.
“I said not a sound,” Faith reminded her, then turned to her. “I didn’t know she could get up there.”
“She’s your sister,” Tara said with a shrug. “And you didn’t always live in town. You think we probably shouldn’t be stood right underneath it?”
“Too late,” Faith said, seeing the dust cloud being kicked up by the horses hooves rounding the hillside just down the valley they’d been following down towards the lake.
And then… riders. Horses, fewer than it had sounded like but by a quick tally – they wouldn’t keep still for her to count – twelve men, all in armour and all carrying swords.
Really? Who did that?
Still, could’ve been worse, they might’ve been carrying guns which a Slayer would have a much tougher time with.
“It’s those knights again,” she said unnecessarily. “How did they know? How did they find us?”
“Kind of moot right now, T,” Faith said, squaring up to them as best she could and hiking up her cleavage before she did. As if any sort of distraction would help. “Hello, boys.”
“Where is the Key?”
Tara focused on not looking upwards, not even flickering her eyes in that direction. It was a natural thing, to check that the thing they were after was actually where they’d just stashed it, but she wasn’t going to be that movie cliché.
“Key to what?” Faith asked. Her wide-eyed ‘I’m just a girl’ innocence probably wasn’t going to fool anyone any more than her slightly boosted chest. Buffy might’ve pulled it off – the innocence - but Faith was just too… grown up. No one who was naturally that sexual could pull that off.
“Don’t play games, child,” the lead rider demanded. “The Key, where is it? Tell me now.”
“Child?” Faith asked, her tone darkening.
“You probably shouldn’t annoy her,” Tara said. These were men, humans who were trying to do their best – in their own way – to keep Glory from destroying the world. They should have been on the same side apart from the bit where they wanted to kill Hope to frustrate Glory’s ambition.
All the same, they didn’t want to hurt them if they could avoid it. Trouble was, avoiding it was looking less and less likely. Pissing Faith off wasn’t going to help them out much either.
“I’ll do more than annoy you, girl. You need to be taught some manners,” he said, lowering the tip of his spear and pointing it right at Faith.
“And you’re the definitely the man to do it,” Faith mocked. “You and your big spear. Get that out of my face, we’ve not even been introduced.”
“Or?”
“Or I’ll take it off you and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Faith didn’t do ‘sweet’ any more convincingly than she did ‘innocent’.
The response to threatening their leader was for the whole dozen to lower their own spears, in a loose semi-circle – the trees prevented it being a complete ring.
They still had a direction of retreat, but they’d be ridden down faster than they could hope to run.
Tara realised that she had a grip on Eddie’s arm, still, and now she pulled on it as he tensed. They didn’t need any noble, manly but futile – gestures right now. Faith would make her move and it’d be less than noble, but it wouldn’t be futile either.
She hoped.
Probably not manly either.
“Do that one more time, pig face,” Faith said. “Please.” She had hold of one of the spears, shoving it back towards the man that was wielding it until it clanked into his chest armour.
“The Key, girl, where is it?”
“You’re in the wrong place,” Faith said, smiling. Yes, she really could lie when she wanted to.
“We’re the decoy,” Eddie chipped in, obviously thinking on his feet.” Right now it’s winging it’s way south.”
“Mexico,” Tara said, just in case their geography wasn’t so hot.
“Catholicism,” Eddie followed up. “A million little churches to hide it in.”
Now that was a good idea, one she hadn’t thought of. And it was taking some of the heat out of Faith’s confrontation with them. Albeit with what their order had been seeking for centuries was just a few feet above their heads.
“You’re lying,” the leader claimed, though he did sound to have a little doubt. Just a little, possibly because Eddie’s idea really had been a good one. “I won’t ask you again.”
“See?” Faith asked. “See? I warned you. Tara, didn’t I warn them?”
“You did warn them,” she said, hoping this wouldn’t turn into a fight. There were a lot of big, sharp looking spears and she didn’t really want to be impaled today.
Faith’s question was actually more of a signal though, warning her that she was about to take pre-emptive action to make sure that didn’t happen. Or at least Faith would hope so…
What her friend had planned, she wasn’t sure. Probably nothing. Plans and Faith weren’t a natural fit.
But she was very, very good at improvisation.
The next time a spear was prodded towards her, Faith grabbed it, quick as a flash and yanked it forwards – up to now she’d been pushing back at them – jerking hard enough that the man was pulled from his horse and fell in a crumpled heap, clanking heavily in his partial armour.
Faith let the fall take care of him, but she had the spear now and swung around with it – trusting that she’d pulled Eddie down to the ground, which she did just in time – while the Slayer was holding the pointy end of the spear and using the blunt end to hit no less than five of the knights across the head before jabbing back and throwing one from his horse clutching his bleeding mouth.
Two down?
The four she’d hit weren’t really hurt, but they were surprised because it had all happened so fast. If she hadn’t been warned, Tara didn’t suppose she’d even have seen it. In fact Faith might have hit her in that initial movement. And she wasn’t wearing armour.
Looking upwards – where else was she going to look from this vantage point? – she knew what she needed to do, the fall from the horses was likely to be the most damage they could do until the men were dismounted, it’d also remove a huge advantage that they had. These were big, imposing animals that could crush any of them. Faith might survive it but -
But the horses were easily startled too. Using the same skills she’d learned on the farm and had most recently used to bring the foal to Willow, she chose to emphasise the distress, anger and fear – everything she was feeling about being attacked – outwards into the minds of the horses.
They were sensitive animals, already on edge and affected by the tension, and with the additional pressure of her emotional state, more than half of those that were still mounted reared up and threatened to throw their riders.
And most managed it; the others were all fighting against it.
That left Faith with mostly thrown and dismounted opponents and despite the numerical disadvantage; she was quick to recognise the opportunity and threw herself into the fight.
And she didn’t hold back either.
Hope was up that tree, right there, and if she lost – if they lost – then the girl was in trouble. Eddie and herself wouldn’t last any longer than Faith. Hope would be… Maybe the world would be safe, but that wasn’t an acceptable trade to her.
So when Faith ran one of the knights through with the spear and took his sword from him to finish him off… she didn’t complicate it by wondering at the morality of it all.
This was about survival.
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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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Okay.. on to the bad badness of Tough Love. I thought, with Tara being my favorite and all, that sparing her would be less traumatic. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Actually, I could almost feel the tremendous pain Willow endured as the bones of her hand ripped thru flesh. Then “hearing” Willow cry out for Tara to save her but also praying she doesn’t show up, knowing Glory will hurt her too. She was in an impossible situation and could do nothing but sit silently, helplessly by and take whatever torture Glory dished out. Heart-breaking. 
