The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe - Willow & Tara Forever

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 12: Investigation (Nov 25)
PostPosted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 6:44 am 
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9. Gay Now
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Yay for excellent update-y goodness... I guess Willow's thirst for vengeance against Tara is going to be put on hold when she finds out about what Tara's marks mean... I'm glad that X-man tried to chear up Willow...

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 12: Investigation (Nov 25)
PostPosted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 6:32 pm 
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7. Teeny Tinkerbell Light
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Jen,

I've been reading this story with a great deal of fascination and appreciation. The story is compelling and the description is rich. Your resistance to exposition and to insulting your reader's intelligence is heartwarming. I can never really stay with stories unless they make me think.

I love that Laura finds her roots in Laura Roslin. I love her character, particularly when I can remember that BSG is as much a fantasy story as it is science fiction.

You've done a beautiful job re-imagining key aspects of these characters' stories. Tara believes she's trapped in her existence, but her encounter with Willow has led her to question that. It feels like Tara's story, despite all the differences.

I'm curious as to a couple of your choices. You don't really say what kind of feedback you want, but your writing is excellent, so I trust you'll weather some questions.

First, you seem to be reminding us that Jenny is Romany quite a bit. Why? It seems out of place when you seem so willing to trust that your readers are paying attention.

Also, why did you include the scene with Giles and Jenny in this chapter? Willow's rage gives the chapter this delightfully claustrophobic feel. Why let us out? The only thing we really learn is that Giles asked Xander to call, and we don't need to know that, not really; it's enough that Willow recognizes that it's out of place. I think Jenny's revelation at the end would have been even more powerful if you'd kept us trapped in Willow's experience.

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Last edited by BeMyDeputy on Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 12: Investigation (Nov 25)
PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:38 pm 
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2. Floating Rose
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The Laura/Laura Roslin connection is totally awesome! LR is a fantastic character (and OMG, Battlestar Galactica is a freakin amazing show! I’m new to it, too, so it’s all still fresh and shiny in my mind!), and now I’m even more excited to see what you do with Laura. :) I really like having a face to put to this new character - because I know the canon characters so well, it helps give the new character that same substance. And, it was interesting to read my interpretations of Joyce’s vial? Because they were totally crazy and delusional, right? :P

Anyway, this chapter is another great one! I like how you use the term demonic early in the chapter to describe Tara. I don’t really know enough about her character to say if I totally believe that’s the case (but really, I know pretty much nothing at this point, so...). But I do know she isn’t really a human. And Willow knows this much as well. I’m sure her feelings of betrayal are adding to her current perception of what Tara is.

Quote:
As if her mind were merely a game of chutes and ladders, Willow’s memories went directly from this bliss of being seventeen to the absolute hell of five months ago.

I loved chutes and ladders when I was a kid! I can see this new addition to the board, the day at the fair near the very top, and the biggest slide down to the bottom of the board with Buffy and the Bronze. Although, this would be a really sad and depressing version to play...

Quote:
Even worse was the feeling of unconditional and divine love she continued to feel for Tara, feelings of desire and affection imposed on her, forced, like rape it was, and Willow burned even more.

This was very interesting, for me. We always see Willow as the violator of Tara’s mind. So seeing this reversal was pretty striking. Of course, Tara didn’t mean for it to happen, but Willow doesn’t know this. And because that perfect memory of Buffy is now ruined, I’m not sure she would really be very forgiving even if she did know it was an accident. At least, not immediately.

I like seeing random bits of info about the President. Wow, he was in Ethiopia trying to help end famine? He must really be a wonderful, caring individual, huh? :eyebrow

I’m glad Giles had Xander call Willow. She definitely needs a friend right now, and their friendly banter was a nice distraction from Willow’s thoughts of vengeance. I especially loved the minions vs lackeys debate. Personally, I prefer the term minion, so Willow gets extra points in my book for that!

Quote:
“You are the author of your own happiness, Willow Rosenberg. You and I both, we relied too much on Buffy when she was alive. We depended too much on her for happiness, for guidance, for support. Now she’s gone and nothing is going to change it. She’s gone and our little kingdoms of happiness are gone, too? That’s unfair, both for her memory, and for us. We don’t owe her vengeance, Willow. We owe her happiness.”

and
Quote:
“Willow, stop,” Xander said firmly. She blinked her eyes and stared at him through the feed. “Please, just stop. Live your life. Be happy. Stop holding on to the past. If not for yourself, then for me. Please?”

And this is just magnificent. Sometimes it’s just so hard to let someone go, but Xander is right. I know it’s hard for Willow now, but I have faith she’ll start to heal sooner than she would expect. :D

And Jenny recognizes the mark!

Still very much enjoying this, and I can’t wait for more!!

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 12: Investigation (Nov 25)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:28 pm 
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6. Sassy Eggs
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~13~
The Farce Must Go On
(she will not come)


It was a continuation of the first day after Willow.

After setting Willow’s vial in its place on her shelf and putting the jug of ink back into the cupboard, Tara spent some time conducting an inventory of her ingredients. She relegated the soft and fragile universe of her tarot reading to a safe place in the back of her mind and concentrated only on this task. It was mindless and somewhat pleasant work for a woman obsessing over a kiss, a dream gone awry and a tarot card showing a hanged man.

(blood orange and summer gold)

Soon she had made notes on a clipboard and sent a message via the Interlink to her supplier. He would procure the items and have them delivered to the poppy den, along with foodstuffs and other necessities. If she chose, she never had to leave this building.

After Laura left her, she barely left the building for about a year.

This time she was properly alerted when the chime sounded, indicating that someone had left the poppy den and was coming up the stairs. She tapped a nearby vid screen on the wall, her heart suddenly and inexplicably fluttering, and she realized with some horror that she wanted it to be Willow.

(no Willow, remember?)

The screen showed a very familiar grown man instead, who swaggered his way up the steps, his infantile ego a battering ram ahead of him shouting I’m-gods-gift-to-women-so-you-may-worship-me. Her beleaguered heart sunk with amazing rapidity into the depths of her stomach.

(it’s too soon

he’s accelerating)


There was nothing to be done. Tara left the workroom, locking it behind her. She glanced quickly in the mirror, her lustrous locks once again a gleaming blonde from root to tip, the blackness of yesterday drawn from her hair into the scream-catcher, manifesting as her Master’s ink.

Tara started the kettle and then looked at her wide array of tea. She had to maintain a very delicate balance of tact and push with this particular man; she could serve him outrageously floral tea in tiny porcelain cups and he would drink out of politeness and necessity, but she would not set him on edge as deliberately as her other clients.

She hated to admit it, but she was a little afraid of him. There was something deeply sinister behind his hot and hasty temper, behind his disturbing tastes. For a long time she wondered if he ordered the dreams he did just to see if he could get a rise out of her. The last one she made for him nearly made her sick up.

The price for him was always ten thousand dollars. A pity that he had an abundance of cold and hard cash. She hated touching the bills he left on the table for her; she could sense the terror of bank tellers in the flimsy paper, she could feel the cool kiss of a pistol muzzle against a forehead or cheek, could sense the terror and fear imprinted on the bills along with the non-sequential numbers.

There was never blood on them.

She heard the dull clatter of her bead curtain announce his arrival into her parlour. For five long minutes Tara made him wait while she brewed the tea and prepared the platter. Cream, sugar, overly stale lady’s fingers and a deliberate small spill of the cream on the corner of the silver platter.

Careful, Tara.

Alas that she had served the white tea with Imperial Jasmine yesterday to Willow. That particular tea was also this man’s contradiction, and she felt compelled to use it against him.

Carefully.

She straightened her clothing, smoothed out her dress, and then took the tea tray. She eased hip-first through the silk curtain separating her living quarters from the parlour. He was looking directly at the opening and she saw his eyes slowly rake her body as she moved to the little chintz-covered table between the chairs. His gaze followed her every movement, fixating without shame on her breasts, her legs. He was standing by the bookshelves, tapping his finger on the wood, not disturbed in the slightest by their randomness. He had become immune to them a long time ago.

“Hello, Warren,” she said, using every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep her voice clear of rancour or ice.

“Tara,” he replied, his eyes raping her again, stripping her down to her bare skin and then comparing her to his other conquests, his prostitutes, his whores. Nonchalant, he made his way to Willow’s chair

(you fool, you’ll ruin the smell of it!)

and sat down, leaning back comfortably with his elbows on the arms, spreading his knees apart. His every look was a challenge; Tara merely set the tray down and poured the tea, willing herself not to flush with anger, not to straighten her clothes, not to let him know in any way shape or form that she detested him so very much.

Warren subjected himself to the ritual tea and the tiny porcelain cup was frail and scared in his hands. He sipped and stared over the rim at her.

A hundred beats of her heart.

Two hundred.

Damn him.

“What can the Apothecary provide for you today?” she asked as she must.

“That last one was mighty fine, Tara,” he said effusively, as if she could take actual pride in her work. “When I woke I could still feel her neck under my fingers. Like a bird’s neck it was, Tara, so easy to break.”

Lately his dark fantasies all revolved around a girl named Katrina. If Tara thought her prayers had any efficacy, she would pray that the real Katrina, if she existed at all, lived far away from here. If she had known the girl’s surname, she might have done an Interlink search for her, to warn her of Warren’s dark pleasures.

Thus the perverse desire to create for Warren Mears the very perfection of the dreams he requested, dark and misogynistic as they were. The longer he confined himself to the utter masterful perfection of his dreams, the longer the girl stayed alive in reality. If Katrina were ever to be murdered, Tara would blame herself for it.

Not for the first time did Tara wish she could just take her own life and be done with it.

Warren was already continuing, not even messing about with his tea now. He sat up straighter in the squashy chair and looked at her with dark excitement in his eyes. “I think I’d like to try something new,” he said, his lips thin with delight.

Tara forced herself to wait a few moments before asking, “What might that be?” She then took a sip of her own tea, congratulating herself on the calmness of her voice, imagining that she took the tea tray and smashed it over his head.

This time he stalled a little, pouring himself more tea, settling back into his chair, blowing on the surface of the hot liquid and sipping before finally speaking. He relayed his newest fantasy to her, how instead of killing Katrina, he wanted her first to love him and bow to his every sexually charged whim as his personal slave. When he described the negligible clothing he wanted this dream-girl to wear, Tara could have blanched.

But Tara was a professional. She had heard worse in her five hundred years of this particular enslavement. She showed nothing but vague interest and a slight hint of haughty disdain.

It took a long time in her workshop to concoct his fantasy. From her tablet she familiarized herself with the ingredients from the last dream she had prepared for him, only ten days ago. Then she sighed at looked at the shelves of her workroom. Like all manufactured dreams, this one required an enormous variety of ingredients in the tiniest of amounts, added in just the right order, mixed and breathed upon at just the right time. The vid screen surveillance could have shown her how he occupied himself in her parlour during her absence but she really didn’t want to know.

Nearly three hours later she was finished. Tara paused just inside the separating curtain, exhausted by her efforts. Summoning the tattered remnants of her strength and courage, she tipped the dream packet into her mouth and quickly swallowed it. It tasted rank and bitter, it tasted like the smell of decaying garbage and stale sex. It thundered behind her eyes and stayed there.

As soon as she walked through the curtain she noticed that he had already placed his stack of money on the little table. Another ten thousand dollars in only ten days. She walked through the room, the dream heavy and painful behind her eyes. She hated his power games; he would not rise as she came into the room, and she refused to kneel at his feet in order to be on the same level as his forehead. She endured the thought of him feasting on the sight of her breasts as she leaned over, and she kissed him on the forehead. With the tell-tale tingle the dream was transferred, and he finally left her parlour, taking his time gathering his things.

When he was gone down the stairs, Tara slid the steel front door shut, engaged the sliding bolts and activated the alarm. Trembling with the memory of the dream she had created for him, Tara walked into her apartment and opened a cabinet of spirits. She poured herself a tot of brandewijn and downed it in one swallow; it burned its way down her throat and sent welcome flames through her chilled body.

So she poured herself another, tossing it back just as fast.

A last measure of the fiery liquor, her hands shaking on the bottle, she splashed it over the sides as she poured and had to put down the flask. She carried her glass into the workroom and pulled up the vial she had created for him on his first visit. That had been twelve years ago, just as he started going to college. His vial had been cerulean blue once, before gradually turning to indigo. Now it was gunmetal black.

A reflection of his silence, the perversion of his true destiny.

Soon it would go glossy black, and he would be doomed like so many others. In his case, Tara could hardly wait for it to happen.

Tara stood back and looked at the array of vials on her shelf. So many dark colours, so few light ones. Mankind was doomed. This world was corrupted beyond any hope of redemption. After enduring clients like Warren Mears, Tara wondered why she and the others of her race tried so hard to hide Dawn. Why extend mercy to a race that didn’t deserve to be saved?

Was her own life worth so little in the balance?

(the hanged man)

Willow’s vial was front and centre, still that flat blood orange colour. Tara looked at it and remembered how Willow had looked yesterday when she first came in, all open and innocent and incredibly endearing.

Would she condemn Willow to endless night and no Dawn? There were some few innocents in the world; did they all deserve the coming fate?

Tara turned out of her workroom, still holding the glass of liquor in her hands. She sat down in a chair in her living chamber and took a tentative sip; her lips felt thick and violated. She lifted a strand of her hair to look at it; it had become a near universal raven black, save for an inch at the tips.

No more working today. She would scream plenty tonight, and portion a significant amount of her essence in sustaining the dream.

And even if she got drunk enough to pass out, the nightmare would still come, and she would still see it, and she would still scream until her throat was raw, the screams a cheese grater over all that soft and vulnerable muscle, the images of horror snagged like meat hooks through her eyes, and damn it, she was still going to drink even though she knew it was useless.

There wasn’t much day left. She spent the next few hours in a drink-induced fog. From time to time Tara would look at the vid screens, inspecting the crowd in the poppy den downstairs that got thicker and thicker as the evening progressed. She wouldn’t say it out loud, wouldn’t even think it, but she knew she was looking for Willow.

Foolish thought. Willow would not return, not after the horrifying dream they shared, the corrupted memories that she held most dear. Willow would not become another Laura.

(she will not come)

Eva came in the evening from Cambodia, having acted as catalyst for someone whose vial had gone glossy black. She brought supper with her, still steaming from a Cambodian kitchen; ban hoaw with rice noodles, crispy egg rolls and sweet fish sauce.

Normally Tara would have tried to cheer Eva up, create some useless platitude, forge some aberrant optimism. However, she realized that her only cheer of the day came from the bottle of brandewijn, so she stayed quiet.

Their meals partially consumed, the silence bound with their own collars, Tara finally asked, “How many is that this year?”

“One hundred and twenty six,” Eva replied.

“That’s more than usual.”

“The world is getting worse, Tara. We’re all just sliding on a slippery slope straight down into hell, especially the fools who use my services. They all think I can just open a hole and put them someplace better because they deserve someplace better. But it’s just another hell in a million other dimensions of hell, just like this one. I’m no god-damned fairy godmother, to wave some magic wand and give them a happily-ever-after they don’t deserve.”

“Are there really no golden dimensions?” Tara softly asked, staring at the enchantress over her plate of food. Eva looked unflinchingly back at her.

There was a faint melting of her shoulders. This was one of the few safe places that existed for Eva.

“There are some very close to being golden,” the catalyst admitted. “I look at them from time to time when the collar is too tight and the job too hard.”

“I wish I could see them.”

“Stop it, Tara,” Eva suddenly growled, and Tara lifted her head in surprise, her cheeks colouring with embarrassment. The catalyst put down her chopsticks and glared at her, her emerald eyes nearly sparking with energy. “No wishes in front of me, remember? None of your precious fantasies. There is no reason to think that anything is ever going to change. You live in your phantom world too much and you won’t produce ink. You don’t produce ink and who knows what the Master will do to you.”

Eva finally looked away, and Tara took a deep breath, controlling the shame she felt inside. She took a quick sip of brandewijn to cover up for her lapse.

Eva blew out her breath in apology and said, “He found Cassie, Tara.”

Tara’s eyes flew up and open. She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything.

“He collared her three days ago in Ethiopia.”

“Where? Erta Ale?” Tara asked.

The catalyst nodded and sipped her vodka tonic.

Tara shook her head. The volcanic crater of Erta Ale in Ethiopia was one of four lava lakes that existed in the world. The bubbling mass of fire and earth extended all the way down to the molten core of the earth itself, to the heart of the pure mother.

“How on earth did he find her?” Tara asked vehemently. “She’s a psychic, for God’s sake!”

Before she answered, Eva withdrew a small device, the size of her pinkie finger. It unfolded and a little red light began to pulse on the end. It was a silencer, and would jam any electronic surveillance that happened to be nearby. It did nothing for magical surveillance, however.

“One of your uncollared sisters was hiding nearby,” Eva slowly explained. “Satsu says that Cassie apparently gave herself up. Said she had received some vision that this was meant to be.”

(the hanged man)

Tara sat back in her chair. “It’s almost over, isn’t it?”

“Maybe that’s why Cassie did what she did,” Eva replied, swirling the vodka in her glass. “Maybe she has seen the end and knows we’re doomed. Despite all of us, the Master will win.”

Tara dared lift her head against the apathy in Eva’s voice. “And what about Dawn?”

Eva’s eyes flashed with honed daggers, and she angrily pushed her plate aside. “What did I tell you about fantasies, Tara? Do you honestly believe that Dawn can save us all?”

“She has before.”

“Yeah, that turned out real well, as I recall,” Eva replied, sarcasm weighting her words. “That last time she actually had to destroy us in order to save us, yet here we are again.”

(the destruction of self brings everlasting life to humanity)

Tara stared at her plate, chastened by Eva’s harsh words. The catalyst abruptly finished the spirits in her glass and went to the cabinet, pushing aside the bottle of brandewijn that had been left on top. “I see you’ve had a bad day,” Eva said, pulling out the bottle of vodka.

Tara was grateful for the change in topic. “Warren,” she replied.

“Ah.” Eva sloshed some vodka in her glass, tossed in two ice cubes from the freezer and then leaned against the kitchen counter and sipped.

Tara didn’t have to say anything else about her latest client. Eva well knew why there was so much black in Tara’s hair, what Tara thought of the man.

If only their own lives could be altered as easily as she altered his dreams and his destiny.

(we give what we never have for ourselves)

“I’m going to seduce someone,” Eva announced after a brief period of fierce quiet. “I’ll start with the Bronze Nightclub. Would you like to come? It’s been years since you’ve been properly seduced.”

Tara blushed and tried to blame it on the alcohol coursing through her veins. “N-no, thanks Eva. I’m not in the mood.”

“You’re never in the mood. That’s the point, Tara. You have to create the mood. The world is ending. We might as well enjoy ourselves. You can be my wingman.”

“It’s okay,” Tara explained, staring at the kitchen table. “I’m not a very good wingman, or wingwoman, or wing-anything for that matter. You’ll be better off without me cramping your style.”

“Suit yourself,” Eva replied, tossing back the last of her drink.

Tara keenly felt the difference between herself and the woman she had known for over five hundred years. Eva was a huntress, pure and simple.

And Tara was prey.

The emerging quiet was laced with disappointment, with cross words. “Eva?” Tara asked, desperate now to break that silence and show domination over at least one small thing.

“What is it?” Eva quietly asked.

“Thank you for bringing supper,” Tara said, motioning her hand at the picked over remains of the Cambodian food. “If I ask you all nice, can you bring me a Margherita pizza from Naples for supper tomorrow night?”

Eva’s face creased into a warm smile. “It’s nice to know there are some small perks to my power and position. If I’m not still wrapped around someone’s body, I’ll do that for you.”

Tara smiled, and stood up as the catalyst left her apartment. She busied herself with cleaning up, swaying slightly with the effects of the liquor. Well before midnight she fell into her bed and prayed to formless gods to spare her the night-terror to come.

There were no gods who listened to her prayers. No presence of form or formlessness to take pity on the meagre tool of the devil. In the hands of her Master she was a demon, a devil.

What was she without the collar that had slowly come to define her over five hundred long years?

The scream-catcher was brimming with oil in the pale light of dawn. There was sour and crusted vomit in her bed and on her clothes. If she were to force herself to feel gratitude for any part of her existence, it would be that she could not remember the nightmare that had provoked such a violent physical response.

It was the second day after Willow, and Tara’s stomach was cramped like a fist, her muscles trembling, her nerves firing endlessly and without provocation. She ate only watery gruel and dry toast in the morning and meditated without peace to restore herself.

Conflict waged within as the farce drew ever onward. Surely Willow would come. The red-haired woman must have seen the weariness, the desperation in Tara’s eyes. Surely Tara’s vulnerability had shone through the role of Apothecary, for Willow had touched her on the wrist as she knelt at her feet. Willow had cared, at least for a moment.

Didn’t their kiss mean something? Didn’t it tease Willow with addiction, taunt her with beauty? Didn’t it form within her bedrock of desire for Tara that could not be altered or forgotten, no matter Tara’s betrayal?

(my betrayal

she will not come)


It was late in the afternoon on this second day after Willow, sheets cleansed and mind-walls fortified, when a new client came up the stairs. It was a middle-aged Valley girl, bubble-headed and brainless, chattering miles a minute, each shrill word a contradiction to her name. She introduced herself as Harmony, and she was a nail technician in a seedy Nipponese salon, and all she wanted from Tara was a dream of high school days, where she herself would be the leader of the popular posse, not a “Cordette” anymore but…

“Well, I guess Cordelia’s name really fit our group. It just doesn’t sound the same if it’s the ‘Harmonettes’ or the ‘Harmonies’.” Tara’s newest and most learning challenged client tossed her thick blonde hair and continued, “Actually, I think I like that. Can you make sure that everyone knows that I’m the leader of the group, I’m the leader of the ‘Harmonies’ and get Kevin to ask me to the prom? I mean, Cordelia can settle with a nobody like Xander Harris and get all associated with his loser friends. Buffy was such a freak and then there was that nerd Willow.”

Almost lulled into insensibility by the hypnotic spouting of words, Tara jumped slightly at hearing Buffy’s and Willow’s unusual names. With every ounce of nonchalance she could muster (not that Harmony was that astute in the first place), Tara asked, “Willow? That certainly sounds like an odd name. What was she like?”

The question was so vacuous and innocent that Harmony immediately replied. “OMG,” she stated out loud. “Willow was the most spastic person I knew in high school, always wearing awful second-hand clothes and spending her free time in the library. Well, not all her clothes were awful because one day I realized she must have bought the very outfit that my mother made me give to Goodwill, and I couldn’t even tease her about it because hello, I had picked it out once, but it was so last year.

“Anyway, she must have thought she could make up for all her weirdness by being smart, which actually didn’t help at all with the whole socially challenged thing she had going on with her and that awful Xander Harris. I have never seen a sillier person on a skateboard in my entire life! I mean, even when Buffy arrived and somehow became Willow’s friend back in freshman year, it couldn’t completely erase how silly she looked most of the time. She had no idea how much we pitied her.”

Harmony buffed her immaculate nails on her skirt and looked at them before looking back at Tara and continuing. “I guess looking back I should have been nicer to her, you know, actually talked to her once in a while without asking for help with homework because it turns out she’s super rich now. She probably has no real idea how to spend her money. I could help her, you know. Show her how it’s really done?

“Ooh!” she exclaimed, sitting up in her chair. “I’d kill for some Prada. Oh, wait, can you include some Prada in my dream, maybe some Jimmy Choos? What I wouldn’t give for matching handbags and shoes.

“Oh my god, I just made a rhyme!” Harmony clapped briefly for her brilliance and grinned.

Tara had to force back her own self-indulgent smile of distaste. She could easily see through Harmony’s words, see the girl-Willow as she had been in the stolen dream, all introverted and wary. How Willow had hated her long straight hair and her second-hand clothes, and through them her mother and her upbringing and the poverty stained all over the ceiling. How she distrusted and reviled Buffy at first, convinced that teasing and bullying was imminent.

What a remarkable journey, from that Willow to the one who had sat in the chair opposite her only two days ago. Her good fortune must have seemed endless at some point.

Her good fortune and her faith both died with Buffy.

Violently.

Vengeance was birthed in its wake.

Harmony continued to talk about becoming a star in some reality show featuring cat dolls and vampyrs, but Tara suddenly didn’t care. She had what she needed to make her dream. She got up rather abruptly, feeling a stab of post-hangover headache, and told the girl-woman to wait. Tara swept through the curtain and went to her workroom, keeping the door open. After twenty minutes or so she heard Harmony’s voice through the curtain, “Hey, how much longer is this going to take?”

“Ten minutes!” Tara called back.

The dream was obscenely easy, and in seven minutes it was done. Tara swallowed it, put a disc on her thumb and entered the parlour where Harmony was obsessively filing her nails and popping bubble gum. It was as if her development had arrested completely upon graduation.

Tara knew that Harmony was not aware of how the other girls in the salon spoke about her. They detested her non-stop chattering of her glory days in high school. Even her clients pitied her as she gave them their mani-pedis and went on and on about prom and cheerleading and popularity. The thirty-year old ignoramus; the clients would vow to do anything to evade a similar fate.

Harmony had never left the United States, not even to visit Canada or Mexico. She had taken a trip to Las Vegas once, and had a one-night stand with a man who pretended to be wealthy. With her paltry salary and non-existent tips, she eked a miserable existence sharing a flat with an obese room-mate who had a penchant for stealing any spare rupahs lying around. The floor smelled of cat urine.

To all this Harmony was discordant and obtuse. A walking parody. Tara would have drawn attention to this sad fact if she thought Harmony would remotely understand the concept.

(how did Willow make her millions?)

Tara kissed the girl on the forehead while activating the disc on her throat and then shooed her out the door after asking for fifty dollars. Sheepish, Harmony gave her twenty and apologized, promising to pay double the next time.

Whatever.

There was very little black in her hair after this endeavour. The new vial with disc and water went to her bedside table to await the ink of morning for activation. Tara started to work in the afternoon but after botching three dreams in a row she gave up. Her tribute would be small this night.

Eva was nowhere to be found. No margherita pizza tonight. Tara microwaved a bowl of congee and stared at the walls of her apartment.

There were no dream deliveries that night, no contact with any living soul. She made only a skim of oil over the night. She stared at the thin blackness in the bowl and felt like an automaton. Her Restoration in the morning was swift.

Thus dawned the third day after Willow, and the farce of five hundred years created its own inertia, its own pull. On this day no one climbed her steps, and she made and delivered five generic dreams before midnight. She ached with loneliness when she returned to the gaping emptiness of her apartment, weeping on her lone pillow, knowing that no one could hear her and that no one even cared.

~

Sorry for the wait, next update on Wednesday: Chapter 14 - Carrot and Stick (sackcloth and salvation)


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 13: The Farce Must Go On (Dec 2
PostPosted: Sun Dec 02, 2012 11:22 pm 
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2. Floating Rose
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Dibs!! :kdevil

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 13: The Farce Must Go On (Dec 2
PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 6:25 am 
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Yay for great update-y goodness... I really hope that Warren soon has a very messy end... I rally really hope that Willow very very soon comes to rescue Tara...

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 13: The Farce Must Go On (Dec 2
PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 7:33 am 
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Well, I’m still very interested in finding out more about what happened between Tara and Laura, so seeing that Laura left her just adds a whole new level of what the frak to their story. I mean, I guess I had assumed Tara was the one to end it because of her Master or her fear or guilt or something. But, I guess not?

Ugh, Warren. He is just so gross, and I may dislike him even more than I already do because of this story (and I really love to hate him!), so thanks for that! We get still more clues about the vials, and Warren’s went from blue to black. And soon he will be able to visit Eva once he produces a certain level of black. But I’m still wondering what the significance of Willow’s blood orange color is (and Joyce’s golden!), and how it all ties together. And I love that this is something that is keeping me guessing for so many chapters! Such great writing! I really like the conversation between Tara and Eva. So, once a person’s vial turns black, Eva sends them to a hell dimension (of their choosing)? But a golden vial - would they go to a golden dimension? I love that Tara still has some hope that things will get better. 500 years of being controlled by her evil, terrible Master, and she still has hope. Tara is so awesome! And Dawn is the key to all of this?

LOL at Eva asking Tara to be her wingman (I’m picturing Eva in a suit a la Barney from HIMYM!).
Quote:
“I’m not a very good wingman, or wingwoman, or wing-anything for that matter.

Very adorable.

Quote:
There were no gods who listened to her prayers. No presence of form or formlessness to take pity on the meagre tool of the devil. In the hands of her Master she was a demon, a devil.

What was she without the collar that had slowly come to define her over five hundred long years?

And this. Tara may think she is evil, a demon, because of what her Master forces her to do. But that doesn’t mean that’s who she is. I still believe she is sweet and wonderful, and has a very good soul.

Harmony! She is just so terrifically clueless, and I absolutely love what you’ve done with her. It’s kinda sad that her life has been so meaningless that all she wants to dream of is being rich and popular in high school. But, she does redeem herself a little with Vampy cat!! Squee!! I wonder what color her vial would be? :hmm

Quote:
She ached with loneliness when she returned to the gaping emptiness of her apartment, weeping on her lone pillow, knowing that no one could hear her and that no one even cared.

Oh, this just breaks my heart. I so want Willow to get over there so they can kiss and make up! I mean, I know it’s not gonna be that easy, cuz Willow is pretty much hating Tara right now. But they need to be together so they can start to heal (and smooch!).

I am so loving this story, and I can’t wait for more!

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 13: The Farce Must Go On (Dec 2
PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 11:24 am 
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I've been lacking in feedback, sorry about that :)

Loved the introduction of Laura, very unexpected that you would do that, to put such a recent heartache in (well, recent in a relative way for Tara) - at first I was like 'Laura? Don't remember that from first time round.' So, me, being me, had to go back and read the original to see why.

Tara's interaction with her former lover was heartbreaking. I could imagine Laura's mind going back to when she was young and in love with Tara - it all made me feel quite melancholy.

So far the changes you have made have been subtle, but the taking of the photograph and a flesh and blood ex for Tara are very nice touches.

I remember Warren from the first time round - I didn't like him then, and that hasn't changed, he still made my flesh crawl.

You know, i wish I hadn't reread the original version, cos I know I have ages to wait for chapter 35 and the outcome of the whole berry thing - lol

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 13: The Farce Must Go On (Dec 2
PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:21 pm 
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These next two chapters are some of my personal favourites. I hope you enjoy them as well. Feedback response on Sunday, hopefully!


~14~
Stick and Carrot
(sackcloth and salvation)


A thumbnail moon in the velvety throat of night, stars sprinkled like pearls. Upon the empty beach the whole world seemed asleep, dreaming of dismay and delight in equal measure without chemical assistance. It was that transcendental time of night when it ceased to be very very late and became instead very very early. Beyond the sucking hiss of the waves tasting the beach there was very little sound. The ocean smelled tired and old, bathed in the salt tears of that thumbnail moon.

(fereste-te de omul insemnat de Dumnezeu!

beware the man marked by God!)


Tara was sitting on the beach, her feet buried in the cool damp sand. The solid weight of the sand was comforting, as was the whispering susurration of the waves. She was beyond tired; she knew she should go home and get her screaming over with, but Newton’s First Law held her.

(a body at rest)

Her motorcycle was parked at the top of the strand. After making her deliveries of the night

(it has been six nights since I kissed Willow

honestly, am I really going to keep reckoning my time like that?)


Tara had followed a long dormant impulse and driven out of the town of Sunnydale altogether. She felt reckless and haunted as she drove down the deserted highway; the only people on the streets were police officers enforcing the curfew and the occasional emergency vehicle. By this time of night nothing was abroad in California; nay in the whole country, and Tara had the highway entirely to herself and her enchanted bike.

She had driven the highway south at speeds guaranteed to loosen a few brain cells, riding without a helmet, letting her hair stream behind her in a mockery of her life. A wild sensation had overcome her, and she had wished she could keep speeding down this highway. First San Diego, and then the Mexican border city of Tijuana, ringed with the immense concrete bunker-walls that delineated the line between countries. In Mexico were jungles of tropical rainforest where she could hide for a hundred years.

It had been nearly fifty six years since she tested her boundary. Since Laura left her.

When she was fifty miles from the poppy den, she found she could travel no further. The compulsion laid upon her by her Master was absolute; the pain in her neck and elbow terrifying. She parked the motorbike instead, took off her sneakers and walked barefoot in the cool moist sand. Even then the pain was nearly crippling, making her eyes water and her teeth ache.

She had looked out upon the vast waves of the Pacific Ocean, at the stars that were sprinkled along the velvet throat of sky, and thought of her collar. Of her bondage to this Master there was no end in sight. It would carry on forever, far beyond these oceans and the lands beyond, far beyond the stars that dared to shine over her slavery.

There was no way to run from him, no way to fight him, no way to take her own life and deny him her own small role in his domination of the world.

She thought of suicide only when at her lowest. Despite the centuries of slavery the world still had some small pockets of beauty and wonder, tiny corners of fascination and delight.

Like this tiny pocket here and now, seated on the strand with sand packed over her toes, her face uplifted to the struggling light of the thumbnail moon.

Besides, there was one way to release herself from captivity. The very idea of it and the price it would toll was beyond her comprehension at this moment. She redoubled her concentration on the waves, the cool damp sand on her toes, trying to stay in the moment instead of riding on the stream of the Source.

Despite the horrors she beheld every night in her nightmares, Tara was not inoculated or protected against grief and suffering; each new disaster and calamity struck her empathetic heart. Five hundred years of bondage to this Master had been preceded by thousands of years of history wherein she beheld every facet of human suffering, every horror, every catastrophe.

Five hundred years ago she had lost Lilith amid the second greatest suffering of her long life. It had taken several hundred years to forget the sting of that calamity. When softly pregnant Laura first blithely walked into her den as a client sixty years ago, Tara had battled the obvious attraction and had lost. Loving Laura for those three glorious years had been a blessing and a curse at the same time. Laura had been so perfect for her, a bastion of endurance, a wellspring of love, and the horror of Lilith’s demise finally eased into the past.

With the memory of Laura to sustain her, she could look at the night sky and hold strong. Five hundred years of human suffering poured out upon her in an inky flood each and every night and yet she held strong; she thought of Laura’s baby, of Laura’s hair in the sunlight, of Laura’s perfect lips. If Tara was going to be a mule that her Master rode to endless power and immortality, he would have to flog her every step of the way.

Tara had long ago stopped trying to make Eva understand her feelings.

Tara packed the sand tighter around her ankles and tried to escape a realization that had been slowly dawning these past six days.

The indefatigable strength she had once possessed to outlast her Master was rapidly fading. The horrors of the dream-world were taking their toll, the restoration of her lifeforce longer and harder each morning. Even Laura could not help her now; her love was old and assuredly dying. Tara was a mule, and every whip-stroke was close to being the last. Soon she would capitulate to him, become a willing slave to his plan, because at least that would be the end. It would be over, and freedom would once again be hers.

That’s what he promised. That was the price of her freedom, and the freedom of the other Apothecaries throughout the world.

So many of her race had already fallen to him, had surrendered to the collar willingly in exchange for these promises of freedom. Sineya had been the first. Cassie was the most recent.

Tara would not join them.

She did not even know which of her sisters was yet free, save for Eva’s news of Satsu.

The water of the ocean crept up the beach and sucked away the sand on her feet, pulling it back into its maw. Even this she could not prevent.

It would have been far better if she had never kissed Willow on the lips. Six long days had now passed and Tara was beginning to believe that she would never see Willow again. The red-haired woman had not even come to the poppy den as had been her custom in the preceding weeks. It was inevitable; the woman who had so captivated Tara’s heart and imagination would become just one of thousands of one-time clients.

Already Willow was beginning to fade into the blackness of the past. Soon she would lose her shape and form and become nothing. As each day passed, Tara thought of her less and less.

(no wishes

no fantasies

no reason to believe that anything is ever going to change)


These affirmations were easy enough in the daylight. At night, they were harder. At night Willow joined the ranks of the others that Tara had loved other the years, Laura and Lilith and Zahara, and it was all because of that infernal kiss.

If only Willow had not kissed her like that. If only it had been simple, utilitarian, on the forehead. Just one of thousands.

But Willow had kissed her on the lips, had kissed her like her life depended on it, and because of that kiss Tara remembered all that she was missing. Tara remembered what it had been like to have that love in her life. Tara remembered all that she had sacrificed.

All that had been taken away by her Master.

Damn Willow.

And damn Willow’s lips.

(face it, Tara, it’s not like you didn’t freely participate)

Tara could not deny that she kissed Willow back. Who wouldn’t? When assailed by thirst, doesn’t one drink from any fountain? When in pain, doesn’t one seek relief in any form? When in famine, doesn’t one reach for nourishment?

(love hunger)

Tara had only taken what was offered, as if athirst, in pain, hungry.

And once the tongue is whetted, doesn’t the appetite beg for more? Especially when there is no hope of relief in the foreseeable future?

One sip, one morsel was all that Tara had been given. Now she had to become accustomed again to the lack.

Now she mourned her bondage more than ever, and wished she could tie millstones about her ankles and wade into the ocean, never once looking back on the world that had maligned her. The water would envelop her and douse her spirit.

A sharp jab from the mark in her elbow, and she rubbed it with sand-covered fingers.

Death was the last gift she was denied. The last gift of her race would remain hidden.

Tara pulled her feet from their sand-homes and scooted out of proximity to the advancing waves, and then lay on her back to stare at the stars.

The Age of Pisces was ending. The Age of Aquarius was about to begin.

The age of freedom, of technology, of the water bearer.

Any way she looked at it, she was doomed.

Sleepiness crept up her limbs, began clouding her breath. She heaved herself off the sand and walked on shaking legs to her bike, stumbling over weeds barely seen by the scant light of the thumbnail moon.

Despite her exhaustion and near-inability to drive a vehicle, Tara eventually arrived home safely. She locked her bike in the shed and mounted the back steps to her apartment as if in a haze. The rooms were swathed in shadow, but a little light from a single street lamp came through a gap in the curtains to shine on the picture of Buffy’s wedding she had placed on her small kitchen table.

Drawn to it, Tara picked up the picture, her hand moving over the young man between the girls. This must be the Xander Harris that Harmony mentioned. She traced Willow’s face next, sensing a sweet felicity, a shy innocence.

Then Tara touched Buffy’s face and felt once again that wrenching sense of wrongness, of destiny thwarted, a candy coating of happiness and bliss that every girl should feel at her wedding.

No fantasies, Tara. What secret was Buffy hiding, and why was she hiding it from her closest friends?

Tara took the picture in her hands and ripped it in half, slowly, carefully, separating Buffy and her friends from the groom and his allies. Then she stacked them and ripped again, across their torsos, and stacked and ripped again. She tossed the pieces into a shallow glass bowl and incinerated them with a candle lighter. The stink of charred photons seemed to bring her to her senses.

She fell asleep that night without thinking of Willow. If she screamed, she didn’t remember it. She even woke relatively refreshed and was restored easily and thoroughly.

An earlier incarnation of Tara would have reminded herself that it was the seventh day after Willow. This Tara didn’t care – there was no Willow.

Another form of Tara might have reminded herself of the vast number of days of enslavement to the Master. She used to count them as if it actually meant something. Why bother? Nothing really changed. Nothing ever would.

She was in rare form that day. Inspecting the vials, she found that one of them had gone glossy black. She picked it up, recognizing the name of the high school principal, Bob Flutie. For the last dozen years he had been plagued by dreams of his students going mad and killing him in one way or another. She held his vial in her hand and called to him.

Once she sensed that he was on his way to her, Tara opened a drawer on her worktable and pulled out a little leather pouch. Inside was a finger bone, tinged with immense age, a single runic symbol on it.

Eve. Source of life.

Tara held the little piece of bone with her eyes closed and called for Eva. Only moments passed before she felt a tiny emanation of power that signified the message had been received, and that she was on her way home from wherever on the planet she had been.

Her breath calm and regular, Tara dressed in all-black clothing; a silk asymmetrical skirt, a tight top that left her belly exposed and yet had long sleeves that flowed over her wrists. A black velvet choker on her neck with a single silver ornament, that of the Ouroboros. She pulled her blonde hair up, piling it soft and high on her head, fastened with a dark flower.

A day of celebration for Bob Flutie, or so he would believe.

Tara was taking books off the shelf and stacking them haphazardly about the room when she heard a small cough in the doorway. She glanced up to see Eva standing there. The catalyst’s mouth was slightly open; she took a few steps further into Tara’s parlour and raked her with her gaze. “Well, Tara, you look amazing. I could just gobble you up.”

Tara merely smiled and continued piling books in small precarious stacks. It drove Bob crazy. “His name is Robert Flutie, but most people call him Bob,” she began explaining. “He’s been coming to me for about a dozen years. He’s the principal at Sunnydale High School. He tries to be friendly to the students, but then they don’t respect him. Deep down he’s actually scared of them and tries not to show it.”

“Any particular triggers I should know about?”

“He has this thing about hyenas. I never heard the whole story, but something happened in the local zoo with the hyenas and now he’s terrified of them.”

“That should be enough to work with,” Eva said. “Send him up when you’re done with him.” There was a distinctive leer in her voice and Tara shuddered at the thought.

“I’m only doing my job,” Tara replied. “You’ll do the rest.”

“All right, all right,” Eva said, putting up her palms. The lush woman edged through Tara’s doorway but paused just inside. One more slow burn of a stare over Tara’s body ensued. “I mean it, Tara,” Eva smirked. “Damn, you’re a hottie.”

This time Tara did blush, and waved the woman away so she could finish her preparation. She could hear Eva chuckle on her way up the stairs to her own apartment.

Tara was in the kitchen preparing the tea tray when the chime came. She glanced in the vid screen and saw Bob Flutie coming up the stairs. Determined stride. Straightened tie.

Apprehension like a stench from his skin.

She carried the tea out into the parlour and stood by the chair. He entered the room and stopped just inside. Before he could flee, she said, “Welcome, Robert.”

Her voice was the noose around his neck. He came to her, meek as a lambkin. She put her hand on his wrist, her touch light and devastating. “Time for the next step,” she said quietly.

It took about twelve minutes to share a pot of tea together and for his questions to be answered. When he stood up again, his face was brighter, excited. She had planted a vision of perfection in his head, an ideal dimension where neither students nor hyenas existed, a place of contentment and peace that he richly deserved for all the pains he endured in this life, on this plane.

She charged no price this time. She took from him a kiss on his forehead and sent him floating up the stairs to Eva’s apartment. She did not watch him go. Neither she nor anyone else on this world would ever see him again.

After he was gone, she tidied her books, put them back in their ill-assigned spaces on the shelves. She turned to her workroom and had finished one dream, about to start another, when there came an alarm from the vid.

Alarm, not a chime.

Her heart lunged in her chest as she ran to the vid screen and touched it. “Anya?” she asked when she saw the petite blonde woman through the feed.

She was not her usual bubbly capitalist self.

“Tara, he’s on his way.”

Ice now, flash freezing her spine. In moments it would shatter. “How long?”

“Fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Thanks, Ahn.” The woman from the poppy den signed off quickly, no doubt to make her own frenzied preparations. For her part, Tara quickly debated the value of changing into less provocative clothing, or keeping this on to prove that she had worked today, despite the fact there was no black in her hair.

She decided to keep these clothes on. He would know what they meant.

In the midst of all her thinking she tried to tell herself that it was merely coincidence that the Master was coming. He didn’t know she had pushed the boundary last night, did he? Could he?

She ran into her parlour with a rag and soft bleach, wiping down every exposed surface. Tea. He would want tea. Earl Grey, with a touch of lemon honey. Real cream. Scones to serve it with. Did she have fresh scones? Was her living space clean enough?

(I don’t have enough ink)

Her head was pounding as she finished her preparations. She stood and religiously watched as the vid screen showed his arrival. Anya had resumed her usual verve and Tara envied her. They seemed to be speaking animatedly about work and money and other meaningless things. Soon enough they stood up together and he shook her hand.

Tara changed feeds to watch him come up the stairs, and he shook his head at the symbols spray painted on the walls. She got up, smoothed down her skirt, poured hot water into the prepared pot of tea. She could hear his step now, and he was not alone.

Tara lifted the tea tray and slid through the curtain separating her quarters just before he arrived at her landing. She saw his hand part the beads. “Knock, knock!” he called as he pulled the beads aside to let himself through, holding the beads aside for his deputy. The small and trim shadow of a man was carrying a cardboard box.

Did he leave his bodyguard downstairs in one of the few blind spots in the surveillance? In the car, perhaps?

She continued forward to put the tea tray down on the little chintz table. As he saw her, his face broke into a broad grin. “Tara!” he exclaimed, walking easily to her, shaking her hand as he always did, two pumps with the other hand holding her elbow. “You look dangerous today,” he continued. “Did we just send Eva another client?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Tara stammered.

“That’s my girl!” he exclaimed.

United States President Richard Wilkins the Third stood in Tara’s parlour, dressed in an immaculate three piece suit. As Tara looked at it she knew it had been tailored by hand in a Sicilian shop, with a tailor so nervous he would prick the ankles in taking up the hem, uttering useless apologies. President Wilkins wore shoes so buffed and shined they could have reflected the entire underworld. He stood in that genial way he had mastered so well; despite being President of the United States she could practically see him rolling up his sleeves to play a rack of snooker after, of course, wiping the cue of any germs left behind by the previous user.

He was aging remarkably well for being over five hundred years old.

Tara would not lean on anything while he was here.

(does he know I pushed the boundary last night?)

By his face alone, Tara could barely tell what he was thinking or planning. He showed only what he wanted others to see. His devoted citizens saw an accomplished and adamant supporter of cleanliness and high moral standards, who had made the United States the single most peaceful place on Earth to live, with free post-secondary education for all who desired it, universal health care, and astonishingly low taxes. Strict curfews and a well-established police force led to communities who rarely needed to lock their doors at night. And if voting was compulsory, as was two years of military service for every citizen when they came of age; that was a small price to pay for such standards.

His rivals saw a charismatic pseudo-hero with down-to-earth looks, a gracious countenance and landsliding support in Congress for bills that would slowly suffocate the populace, with prison time for expressing foul language and littering in public, and corporal punishment for crimes of drunk driving, theft, and failure to maintain clean households. He instituted the death penalty for assault, rape and murder.

His slaves saw a patient and methodical serpent, with access to knowledge, wealth and power beyond imagination.

And to all he was a God, like that of the Good Book, seething with brimstone and blessings alike. With fire and forgiveness.

(sackcloth and salvation)

By contrast, his deputy was an echo of a man, who rarely spoke or even smiled. Sometimes Tara mourned the inevitable fate of Allan Finch.

“You’ve got the place looking great,” her Master was saying, walking along one bookcase with a single finger outstretched to catch any appearance of dust.

Thank the formless gods that Anya always found out when he was coming, even on surprise visits such as these. Tara wondered if her contacts were in the capital city of Los Angeles or if she employed more electronic means of surveillance.

How much money could she be persuaded to part with for such an effective early warning system?

“Thank you, sir,” Tara replied.

“I only wish your neighbourhood could be as pleasant,” Wilkins continued. “The waste disposal crews must be slacking off, and you know what that means!”

(as the Queen of Hearts would say, off with their heads!)

Tara simply nodded, and ducked her head, and manufactured a small blush for her cheeks.

“I brought you some books to add to your collection,” Wilkins said magnanimously, waving to Mr. Finch. His deputy put the box down on the little table between the squashy chairs. Wilkins flicked open the lid and drew out the book on the top. “I had a meeting with Stephen Hawking this past week, he was advising me on a particular matter, and I asked him to sign a copy of his latest book for you. You can add it to your collection on Quantum Mechanics, wherever that collection may be.”

He handed the slim hardcover book to her and she feigned delighted surprise by opening the flap and gazing at the inscription. How generous of her owner.

(brimstone and blessings)

“That’s just swell, isn’t it?” Wilkins continued. “The rest of the books aren’t as valuable, but you should enjoy them nonetheless.”

Tara found her voice and replied, “I appreciate that, sir.”

“Well, you know I like to keep my staff happy. A happy worker is so much more productive than an unhappy worker, wouldn’t you agree?”

(does he know, does he know about the boundary?)

Tara nodded her head, holding the new book to her chest as if a shield.

“Which is why it surprised me, Tara, to discover that you tested the boundary last night,” he abruptly continued.

This time her blush and sharp upward glance were real.

As was the terror that congealed inside her organs.

She opened her mouth as if to speak, to defend herself and her poor choice, but not even strangled air emerged. Every thought was slain between her mind and her mouth and lay quivering on the back of her tongue.

“You know, I just don’t understand it sometimes,” he said, closing the cardboard flaps of the box and reaching out his hand for Mr. Finch’s dollop of hand sanitizer. “Society these days. Can’t even go on a peace-keeping mission without one of my own citizens trying to kill me. I mean, what more do people want? I create a clean country with no homeless people and very low unemployment, universal health care and free education, low taxes. What are my thanks? An assassin and a knife. As if it could have done any good. As you know, Tara, no mortal weapon can kill me.

“And then there’s you, Tara. I know you love reading, so I keep your bookcase well stocked. You have a beautiful apartment, you work with the public in a dignified manner, and you pull a stunt like last night. What more do you want from me, Tara?”

(only my freedom)

She opened her mouth once more and just as promptly closed it.

His face was darkening with anger; she could smell his cologne and the sharp sanitizer. “Maybe there has been just a little too much carrot lately, Tara, and too little stick. There are other places I can send you, you know. My friend, the Khan of Mongolia, could always use more women like you to help influence his enemies. The Shah of Persia has asked for you personally more than once for his harem. You should feel lucky I don’t agree with that sort of dealing.”

The ice inside her nearly snapped her muscles, and she had a hard time standing on her feet. She could actually feel her cheeks going pale in shock.

“You tested the boundary fifty six years ago as well, didn’t you?” he accused.

This time a white wall of faint slammed over her eyes and she sat down on the arm of the nearby chair heavy and hard. She blinked her eyes and tried to keep from passing out.

“Yes, yes, I know about that, too, Tara. I didn’t bother confronting you on that one; it was only to be expected after what happened with, what was her name, Laura? What happened this time? What is going on in your head that I don’t know about? You haven’t fallen in love with another client, have you? It turned out rather badly last time.”

Tara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “How do you know about Laura?” she asked quietly, carefully.

“I keep tabs on all my possessions, Tara. Especially the valuable ones. Now, I’m willing to keep skating a little line here. A happy worker is a productive worker. I don’t mind you enjoying a bit of happiness as long as you keep working. Ink and echoes, that’s all I want from you. Dally with whomever you choose as long as the work comes first.”

(fire and forgiveness)

He sounded magnanimous and generous and Tara wished she could smash the tea tray over his head. “Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Now show me how much you’ve managed to collect since last time.”

Tara took a deep breath and led him through the curtain into her workroom, glad that she always kept her living spaces clean and tidy. He stared at the four golden vials and asked, “Have you come across any new golden clients lately?”

(oh god

help me)


He was looking at her with casual interest, but she knew he was calculating her body language, her skin colour, and would carefully evaluate how she spoke her next words.

She ducked her chin half an inch, inclined it slightly to the side and turned one side of her mouth into an apologetic smile. “I’m s-sorry, sir, but I have not. I have two clients that are getting very close to manifesting gold, but no one new.” A glance to the rug to complete the false apology.

“That’s a shame,” he replied with a sigh. “I know you’ll keep trying.” He waited while she unlocked the cabinets and opened the doors to reveal eight jugs full of ink. The ninth had a skim of ink in the bottom and the tenth was empty.

“Carrot and stick, Tara,” he said quietly as he looked at the offering. “You better pull this around and record fast. If not for the sake of productivity alone, then maybe something else will motivate you.” He pretended to think for a moment, and then snapped his fingers. “I’ve got the solution. You catch up on the quota in the next seven days or I’ll kill Laura.”

His threat formed hands around her throat and squeezed until she could barely breathe or see straight.

He continued, his voice steady and near friendly. “Stay in the boundary, Tara. Do your job. Get my ink. Or Laura dies. You try to warn her, she dies. If she suddenly leaves town, she dies. Anyway you look at it, Tara, get me what I want,” and he brushed up next to her, his breath moist and conversational in her ear, “Or I will see her raped, desecrated, ruined and broken. This is it, Tara. The fairy tale is over.”

He straightened up and took a step back. Her hands shook so badly they fumbled with the cabinet doors. She followed him out of her workroom and back into the parlour.

“I hope you take our little chat to heart,” he said as he paused by the entrance. “Keep your eyes on the prize, and we’ll all get through this. Just a little while longer and it will all be over. You’ll have your freedom back. Unlike some people, I keep my campaign promises, Tara. Never forget it.”

With that, he was gone up the stairs to Eva’s apartment, Mr. Finch two steps behind him. She immediately leaned against the counter near the entrance of her parlour, her heart racing, her breath a calamity.

His evil genius was a presence that remained in the room. He had made his point abundantly clear.

(sackcloth and salvation)

~

To be continued on Sunday with Chapter 15: Clockwork Goddess

Jen
aka
Tara the Phoenix


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 9:30 pm 
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Dibs!! :grin

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 10:11 pm 
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Jen,

I really enjoy this story. I enjoy your imagery, and I do remember reading the first incarnation of this story long ago, but when you said it would be a re-working I decided not to reread the original. This way it's all new again.

I'm bad about leaving consistent feedback, but I do read the chapters and each one makes me look forward to the next.

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 6:44 am 
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Yay for excellent update-y goodness... Good to have more glimpses of how that world works... So bad boy Wilkins is the Master and also US President... It's really scary that Wilkins knows that Tara tested her boundaries and thratens to kill Laura if Tara doesn't produce her quota... I really really hope that Willow very soon rescue's Tara...

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 2:38 am 
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Your description of Tara on the beach was so vivid and so very well done. I could almost feel the sand between my toes, hear the waves, and see the tiny sliver of the moon in the night sky. I especially like the contrast of the vastness of the ocean with the restriction she feels from the collar and mark.

Quote:
Besides, there was one way to release herself from captivity. The very idea of it and the price it would toll was beyond her comprehension at this moment.

Um, yay?

I liked the peek into the process of ascension with Principal Flutie. It’s interesting to me that his vial went glossy black before someone as terrible as Warren. Although if he’s been going to her for 12 years, that’s probably why. And I wonder what kind of dimension Eva will send him to. The land without hyenas, or the land full of them? Is it a tortuous place she sends them, or the land of their dreams?
I’m also very curious as to what Tara is getting from that picture of Buffy. Her intuition is very strong, so if she thinks something isn’t right, than it probably isn’t. And I’m glad she got rid of it… it’s probably safer for her that she did.

The most powerful part of this chapter though, for me, was definitely Tara’s interaction with Wilkins. I always loved the Mayor on the show - he was my favorite big bad. And here, as the President and Tara’s Master, he’s a million times more menacing. Leading up to this chapter, I really loved all the little hints you gave us regarding his identity, with both the President and her Master in Ethiopia at the same time, and both living in L.A. Not terribly obvious, but definitely there for anyone looking closely enough. And speaking of looking closely, I’m remembering something from a few chapters back about Faith having been a bodyguard for Wilkins, and now I’m feeling super ultra suspicious of her. Does she know who/what he really is? If so, what the frilly heck is she doing working for Willow now? Enquiring minds want to know!

And now, Tara’s interaction with Wilkins. I love that he can be so kind and cheery one second, and absolutely terrifying the next. When he mentioned that he knew Tara had pushed her boundary I was nervous, but when he brought up Laura, and the fact that he knew of her, I definitely started to freak. And then his threat, to get her to fill the quota in the next week…
Quote:
“I’ve got the solution. You catch up on the quota in the next seven days or I’ll kill Laura.”

WHAT?!
Quote:
He continued, his voice steady and near friendly. “Stay in the boundary, Tara. Do your job. Get my ink. Or Laura dies. You try to warn her, she dies. If she suddenly leaves town, she dies. Anyway you look at it, Tara, get me what I want,” and he brushed up next to her, his breath moist and conversational in her ear, “Or I will see her raped, desecrated, ruined and broken. This is it, Tara. The fairy tale is over.”

skdghokgjas’d;lqwef;ALSKF’;ASLDKa;xkf’a;Slk
I have no words.

Yeah, this was an amazing chapter. :bow

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 4:57 pm 
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Jen,

Oddly enough, I had wondered if Warren would end up cast as Tara's master, so 13 and 14 side by side was a particularly interesting to me; Wilkins seems obvious, though, and I was pissed I hadn't thought of him. Warren and the mayor are two of my favorite villains from Buffy, so it's great so see them both here.

Chapter 13
You know, I had guessed it was Laura who left Tara from their scene together.

Quote:
(my betrayal

she will not come
)

I'm guessing this is cognitive dissonance on Tara's part: she reads people too well. She must know Willow needs vengeance, that spoiling her one pure memory is not just unforgivable: it demands recompense.


Quote:
Alas that she had served the white tea with Imperial Jasmine yesterday to Willow. That particular tea was also this man’s contradiction


This really struck me. It instantly reminded me of Harry Potter at Ollivander's, how his wand was fundamentally connected to Voldemort's. I don't know if it's me over-reaching from the paralel, but it made me wonder if Willow and Warren are tied in this world, if this is foreshadowing that they'll face each other later on. But more than that, it started me thinking about Warren and Willow and about their relationships with power. I'd never thought to compare them before today.

So, congratulations. While you may or may not have intended to set me thinking about those things, what really matters is that you did. And that's awesome.


Quote:
Not for the first time did Tara wish she could just take her own life and be done with it.

One of the things I've found really interesting is this seemingly-contradictory situation Tara is in: on the one hand, the dreams consume Tara's life energy; on the other, she seems to be immortal. They're both ideas you've repeated, so I doubt this is an oversight. I'm looking forward to seeing how they play out.


I enjoyed the conversation between Eva and Tara. I think it was a good balance of referencing the world around enough to inform us readers, but without either telling too much or making it feel like the conversation only existed for our benefit.

Quote:
“How on earth did he find her?” Tara asked vehemently. “She’s a psychic, for God’s sake!”

Confession: I didn't put together that Cassie was short for Cassandra when I saw Help. I read it on Wikipedia and promptly felt like an idiot, though my fiance gloating didn't help. We even didAgamemnon in my 12th grade English class. I saw a whole sock-puppet presentation! (And yes, I live a sufficiently nerdy life that not catching an allusion to an ancient Greek play is grounds for both a) feeling like an idiot and b) being mocked by my fiance.)



Chapter 14

Quote:
Five hundred years ago she had lost Lilith amid the second greatest suffering of her long life.

500 years, you say? I wonder which caused the other: the enslavement or the loss of Lilith?

Quote:
So many of her race had already fallen to him, had surrendered to the collar willingly in exchange for these promises of freedom.

Again, Tara's existence is full of contradiction. If slavery is the path to freedom, what is existence before the collar? (That is actually rhetorical; don't spoil it!)

Quote:
No fantasies, Tara. What secret was Buffy hiding, and why was she hiding it from her closest friends?

Poor Willow. Buffy already knew.

The scene with Wilkins is great. Very well done. When you first had the scene with Laura, I didn't think you really needed it. It wasn't a bad scene, it just felt out of place. But now it falls into place; this threat wouldn't have worked without it: we had to have met Laura, not just know her by name and memory, to really feel it.


Quote:
(as the Queen of Hearts would say, off with their heads!)

:)


Cheers,
Kate

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:33 pm 
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I'm seriously confused now: I'm sure I commented on this last night after reading the last 3 chapters in one row and I'm sure I actually checked my post after pressing submit! I have no idea therefore where my feedback went, but it's suddenly gone now!

Well, let me tell you again how great the last chapters are, that I cried again in front of the computer while reading the conversation between Willow and Xander and that I longed to reach in and get Tara out here to me just to save her from Wilkins! You portray him far more scary than I thought him in canon! There he seemed to have a tiny portion of good left which made him capable of feeling almost fatherly love for Faith, and in many situations I even found him funny. Your Wilkins with his coldhearted threat to have grandma Laura raped and killed made my blood run cold. I feel ashamed to admit that a part of me hopes Laura will soon die peacefully in her bed so this threat looses its power over Tara...
I'm seriously wondering how much more Tara can take before suffering a total mental breakdown and if a vengeance seeking Willow appearing at her doorstep might be the last straw...
I really hope Willow can see past her anger that Tara is no demon, but a victim whose suffering is at least equal to hers, and that in the end they might save each other (and destroy Wilkins).


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 7:40 pm 
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Finally, some fb to fb and then another chapter!

waitnsee - Congrats on the dibs for Chapter 12. I'm glad I spilled the beans about Laura/Laura Roslin. I was terribly upset about her circumstances in BSG so it is quite nice to think of her having a different life. As for the conversation with Xander - I'm enjoying playing off of Season 7 and Season 8 Xander, the one who is all strong in his heart and character. You got the dibs again for Chapter 13, well done! It's interesting seeing your comments about the vials and how you are beginning to understand their purpose. Glad you enjoyed the scene with Harmony - it was an absolute gas to write. And again with the dibs for 14! Some more insight here into the vials - I also wonder what universe Eva sent Principal Flutie to. I'm with you on liking the Mayor as the Big Bad - he was one of the rockingest villains in the series and he's totally awesome to write. So you remember something about Faith once working for him? Hmm (insert evil grin). Creepy conversation about Laura, wasn't it? Thanks for reading and good luck with the continued dibs-domination!

zampsa - Thanks always for reading and commenting. I'm glad you enjoyed the conversation with Xander. It got almost hard to write by the end because even I wanted Willow to just smarten up and stop living in the past! On the next chapter, I will see if I can't devise some messy end for Warren Mears. He's just so slimy and despicable. I also find it scary that Wilkins knows so much about Tara and Laura, and that he waited all this time to mention it. He's one patient scary dude.

be my deputy - Thanks again for the great feedback for Chapter 12. You asked why I keep referring to Jenny as Romany. Simple, really - it's just another way of referring to Jenny when I get tired of using her name. That was it, really. Very interesting point of view on keeping the narrative all on Willow instead of phasing to Giles and Jenny. It was something I pulled from earlier drafts, but your point is well taken. It probably would have been more exciting having Jenny's revelation that way. Thanks for the excellent comments on that and on the other chapters. Your parallel to Harry and Voldemort through Ollivander's was out of the blue and very interesting. I hadn't quite thought of it that way and I love what you mentioned, that Willow and Warren might be connected through the tea. Hmm. I'll get back to you on that one. As for missing the Cassandra connection in Help, I'm sure you can play a 'get out of nerd jail' card on some sort of grounds. You're creative, it'll come to you! Thanks for the comment about Laura's scene, and how it makes more sense now. The reason for Laura's existence will come even clearer throughout the story. Keep reading to find out!

Paint the sky - No worries about the feedback, I'm glad you're still reading. The decision to include a still-alive heartache was a difficult one, especially as back then I didn't really understand what Laura was for. But I am the author and I finally understand Laura now. (It did take me a while, though. She was being all quiet and secretive.) Funny that you reread the old version - you won't have to wait too much longer for some major changes to start popping up. I hope you enjoy them!

vampyregurl - Hey Heather, thanks for the comments. By all means DO NOT read the original until at least Chapter 40 of this new draft - you don't want to spoil some of the surprises in store! Thanks for reading and for dropping me a note.

wills redemption - Don't you hate it when all your work and feedback gets sucked down some cybernetic black hole? Thank you for commenting again, even though you lost your comments earlier. As for your thought on how much Tara can take, we are about to find out in the next chapter, aren't we? Thanks for reading, for commenting, and for everything in between!

Update coming up.

Jen
aka Tara the Phoenix


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 14: Carrot and Stick (Dec 6)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 7:47 pm 
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Oh, we are in the thick of it now! I hope you enjoy another of my personal favourite chapters...

~15~
Clockwork Goddess


Tara wished she could say that the next week passed in a blur. That her activities were muzzy and indistinct. That some cloud of apathy had fogged all her perceptions.

Not so.

Every minute of each day passed in the sharpness of a stropped leather razor. She could feel the implications of her every choice sink into the pores of her skin. That week passed like clockwork, all cogs and precision.

She had only seven days to make up the lack in her quota. The day that Wilkins left her parlour she had stayed up late into the night, making adjustments to her strategies for getting new clients and luring back old ones. She had taken her ideas to Anya for refinement and then unleashed them upon the unwitting populace.

In the last hours before curfew, Tara dressed in a variety of dark and sultry outfits, her hair down over one shoulder highlighting the smooth milk of her neck and throat. She would emerge on the main floor of the poppy den and start passing by the bemused multitude like an ancient goddess.

That man, there.

The magical hours between nightfall and curfew brought a vast array of people into the den. The room was only dimly lit, the smoke from the opiate tinctures wreathing her frame until it appeared she alone produced it, that the dragonsbreath was her own willing slave, and she would wield it like a scarf, lifting it from her own shoulders to place over the shoulders of this chosen one, this wretched one, this fool, the smoke lifting up his chin so she could see into his eyes rimmed with bloodshot and fear.

All around the room the other eyes were upon her, worshipping her as she appeared to them in the dim, in the smoke. An apparition, a goddess.

Her intention was on him alone, and her intention set him apart, marking him as surely as she was marked.

A single word.

Come.

He set down the destructive tincture and rose from the divan, scattering the pillows on the floor. Her fingers, lithe and slender, placed with clockwork precision on his wrist. She felt the altered stirring of blood in his veins, the dragon chasing his worries away.

She led him through the crowd, and suffered their pleading touch on her castoff footprints, their fingers greedily touching the ground she walked on, for she would not allow anything more. No one else existed now in this space. Only he the sacrifice and she the god.

She would leave them to beg and pray for her return, yet the prayers of these lost ones would never leave the building, for she was their god now, and would collect those prayers, sorting and discarding them until the next sacrifice was chosen.

This one, this bleating lamb of a man, she led him upstairs, never losing touch with his skin. Through the beaded curtain which created a waterfall of sound, a baptism of seduction.

Her parlour was altered now, with low and seductive lighting, the brassy armchairs and chintz covered table replaced with a chocolate brown divan and lamps that smouldered and flickered with naphtha, casting indiscriminate shadows upon the walls. Music, so faint as to be nearly imaginary, wafted through the air with the smell of burning incense. Tara lounged first and then pulled the young man beside her and whispered in his ear.

His desires, his fantasies, his dreams and aspirations and intentions, they all emerged from his mouth like struggling worms, pale and imperfect.

She left him there, to dark music that sang to the opium still in his blood. In her workroom she was precise, she was clear, she floated on a stream of sinister consciousness and emerged once more with her false gift, the dream on her tongue and the disc of silence near burning the tip of her thumb.

Bleary eyes met hers as she ran her fingers up his arm, from his wrist to his neck, planting her supple lips on the sacred place between his brows. If he thought it odd that her hand circled his neck, that her thumb was so insistent upon his throat, he could not show it.

His desires, his fantasies, his dreams and aspirations and intentions, they would manifest as moths now, beautiful and miraculous.

Moths helpless to resist her, the flame of her spirit scorching them even as they sought glory in her presence.

This room such a dark womb for his rebirthing as one of her own marked ones, and he did not notice the sudden blackness in her hair, nor the twist of ancient pain in her eyes.

No one looks directly into the eyes of a god.

He shambled forth like a zombii, and there was no money exchanged, no information transferred. She had his name, the disc of his silence, and his fragile and broken heart. That was all she required.

She would see Jonathon Levinson again. She was certain of it. Who could resist this new incarnation of Tara?

There was still an edge of time, and Tara moved down the stairs once more, each step made in total awareness and precision.

Standing in the poppy den, less sparsely populated now that curfew was nigh, and she cast her eyes upon the remnants, the tattered ones, the formless beings who sucked on smoke instead of oxygen. She cast her eyes upon them, and upon Anya who stood behind the counter near the entrance.

Anya, whose eyes were glistening in concert with these remnants, these tattered ones, these formless beings.

And even this Tara noticed with care, with clockwork precision, and set the memory of Anya’s tears next to the deeply buried memory of Willow’s kiss in her heart.

She screamed in the night and collected the ink in the morning. Her restoration performed, she placed droplets into new vials, each manifesting in a range of dark and subtle colours. Mired in present-moment awareness, Tara spent time looking upon the array of vials in her workroom, softening her sight until she could behold all of them at once, and the truth they held. Sparks of gold rampant on a field of dark and as she beheld them she remembered the vial she had hidden in the potted plant and the desperate lie she had borne in its defence, oh so careful, oh so precise.

She would keep Joyce Summers safe as long as it was in her power to do so.

She would keep Laura safe.

Daytime held no subtlety now, no blurring of hard edges through the weaving of poppy smoke. These daylight hours were altered, just like the rest of her, and she had no space in her mind for remorse or shame or even wistfulness over the somewhat pleasant days of the past. She was a god now, and only the now existed in all its great and terrible majesty.

These harsh and brilliant daytime hours, she exerted her own immense force over them, and went among the hoi polloi; to gallery openings, to museum exhibits, to university galas. Whispers of intention and desire followed in her wake, and Anya reported a sudden insurgence of people to the poppy den, until she even had to refuse some at her door.

When those seven days had passed, Mr. Gates came in his van and trundled off with the full quota of ink, plus an extra jug. Detached and omniscient, Tara noticed everything at once: the surprise on his face when he saw her offering, the tinge of disgust as he looked at her. He had no right to judge; he was not a slave. He might even be working for money, wretched pseudo-military man as he was. He was just another mouse in the maw of the great serpent, and he didn’t even know it.

And she was a god, created in her Master’s image and likeness. Brimstone and blessings. Fire and forgiveness.

Sackcloth and salvation.

The evening of the seventh day, and a slow seduction of a matronly woman in the poppy den. Upstairs in the flickering light of the naphtha lamps, Tara felt the woman’s tears scorch her skin. The dream she transferred was immense and glorious, and Tara barely noticed her own tears fall upon the woman’s face.

She had no strength left for another foray into the den. She had purchased Laura’s safety for now. She dressed in her Hunter clothing and got on her bike before realizing that she shouldn’t go to Laura’s house, just in case.

Crisp September evening air called to her. She sparked up her bike and drove to Revello Drive. Once there, she did not linger long upon the sidewalk or the porch. The half-lit street lamps curdled the shadows cast by trees and hedges, and the ceramic gnomes were ominously silent and secretive. The windows to the house were dark, and she opened the front door with a single touch of absolute precision.

Neither did she linger here, in the entryway. There was light and movement upstairs, and the sound of string music. Tara climbed the stairs, consciously overstepping the stair that squeaked.

Here, just shy of the upstairs hallway, is where she lingered. This is where she closed her eyes and listened to the string music, feeling the vibration of this house.

There were pockets of darkness here, swept into the corners of the rooms. Barely perceived pools of regret. Yet something else existed here, something that tingled in Tara’s veins and sent fire up her spine. It was an echo of destiny, of an axis point between the worlds. It was as if an arrow had been shot through the heart of this one place on earth, and that arrow became the centre of all that revolved around it.

Tara could see the golden aura of the woman in her room.

Who then was the real instrument of destiny? The slain bride Buffy Summers, or her gold-manifesting mother?

Deep in reflection, Tara suddenly opened her eyes in time to notice that Joyce had left her bedroom, halting in her doorway. She was wearing a deep red dressing gown, and the light from the room enveloped her in a full-body halo, leaving her facial features softened in shadow.

What’s more, Joyce was looking at her as if she could actually be seen in her Hunter clothing. This house was not consecrated.

“Ghosts in the house again,” the woman murmured before walking past Tara and into Dawn’s room. Tara could hear sounds of searching, and then Joyce emerged with a diary in her hands. Tara dared follow her back to her room and saw Joyce packing a suitcase. A printed travel itinerary was on the bed, and Tara peered at the destination.

Tehran.

She watched as Joyce placed the diary on top of a photo album, which was on top of a sombre selection of clothes. She watched Joyce’s mouth widen into a sad smile as she packed two boxes of Chocolate Pop Tarts into the suitcase. “For Xander,” she murmured.

Grief welled up inside Tara’s stone heart.

“How can you manifest gold and still be so sad?” Tara asked in a whisper, yet the words stuck to the edge of her clothing and stayed there.

Just as well. If Tara had subconsciously hoped for salvation to manifest itself in the form of this golden woman, she was reminded that there was only sackcloth here. A great burlap bag, rent and torn.

The whole of the world was inside it, suffocating.

And just like all the other formless gods before her, Tara was powerless to do anything about it.

~

To be continued with Chapter 16: Earth and Fire (get her out!) either Wednesday or Thursday.

Jen
aka Tara the Phoenix


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 15: Clockwork Goddess (Dec 10)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:45 pm 
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Dibs!! :whip

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 15: Clockwork Goddess (Dec 10)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 5:23 am 
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Yay for excellent update-y goodness... I hope that the meeting with Joyce in the end reminds Tara who she is, so she can keep resisting Wilkins and his minions... I really want to know what Willow has been up to these few weeks. I hope researching the mark and finding out that Tara is not a "demon" but a slave who needs rescuing...

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 15: Clockwork Goddess (Dec 10)
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 10:07 am 
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Quite a short chapter, but very powerful again. This bit captured me the most:

Quote:
She cast her eyes upon them, and upon Anya who stood behind the counter near the entrance.

Anya, whose eyes were glistening in concert with these remnants, these tattered ones, these formless beings.

And even this Tara noticed with care, with clockwork precision, and set the memory of Anya’s tears next to the deeply buried memory of Willow’s kiss in her heart.


You know how bad Tara's condition is when you read that Anya of all (so to speak) people is driven to tears just by looking into her eyes.

I really wonder how Willow will react to this "new" Tara when she finally returns (hopefully soon!). If she hasn't found out in the days we haven't seen her what Tara is and that she is a slave forced into this wretched business, I fear her reaction will be very bad....

So Joyce is going to Teheran to visit Xander... I find it strange that Joyce apparantly has no contact with Willow although they live in the same city. I would have expected that after losing her two blood-daughters Joyce would keep her last, somehow adopted daughter close...
Did Joyce try to do so but Willow drove her away, or does Joyce blame Willow for Buffy's death somehow?

By the way I'm a little confused about your references to Buffy's death: from the description in the dream I thought she suffered a head shot, but then Xander mentioned that Willow didn't hold the sword...and what happened to Willow afterwards that put her in a coma, was she too shot (or stabbed)?

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat until the next chapter, hopefully in it Tara and Willow will finally meet again!


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 15: Clockwork Goddess (Dec 10)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 9:47 am 
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6. Sassy Eggs
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Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2007 1:51 pm
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Location: Edmonton, Alberta
~16~
Earth and Fire
(get her out!)


Nothing was abroad this time of night in Sunnydale. Tara left the house on Revello Drive feeling like her entire world was falling apart; all that held it together was skin and memory. Grief made her eyes heavy, made her lungs choke on the sea-tinted air. She mounted her bike and stared at her hands. Were they even her hands anymore? Or were they his?

How much of Tara did Wilkins even own? Where did she end and he begin? If he could command her hands, her deeds, even circumvent her thoughts and decisions, then she didn’t really exist at all.

These dark thoughts ricocheted off the smooth edges of her skull all her drive back to the poppy den. It was empty now, past curfew. The whole building was dark, all the windows shuttered, blinded. She parked her bike in the shed and locked it. She climbed the metal stairs up to the second level with a dense step, mired now in exhaustion. She ached to scream out the frustrations of the day, of the week, of the five hundred years of bondage and even the brand of slavery that came before her Master and the collar.

At the last step she paused to look up in the sky. She caught sight of the moon, swelling now with putrescence and filth.

Much had changed in these seven days since the night of the thumbnail moon and the boundary. In the relative complacency of the decades since Laura left she had forgotten how destructive and sudden change could be. A sleeping mountain suddenly woken by the fires of the molten core of the earth, destined for volcanic destruction, the spewing of lava and gases, sudden and terrifying and unstoppable.

The marriage of earth and fire was always thus.

(marriage of hand and spirit)

Tara slipped into her apartment and began her precise nightly ritual, inspecting and then locking her workroom, checking the safe where she kept her thousands of dollars, making sure all the windows and doors were locked and barred.

A last inspection of her parlour, walking through the darkness to ensure that the steel bolts of her main entrance were drawn, that her security system had been activated.

An electric lamp flicked on behind her.

Tara whirled around, her heart rearing like some startled beast in her chest.

Willow was standing by the bookshelf, a familiar beloved book in her hands.

At least it looked like Willow.

Sort of.

There was no poppy den virginity here, no hesitation, no soft and seductive brands of designer clothing. This altered Willow was dressed like a mercenary in calf-high black leather boots, Hunter boots even, each topped with the bright hilt of a dagger. She wore tight black pants that clung to every shapely muscle and a simple black tunic with gold embroidery at the hems. The sleeves of her shirt were capped and flaring, baring her tanned and gently muscled biceps. Her autumn hair was braided and whorled into a cunning twist, with soft tendrils escaping to fall in front of her ears. There was an ugly red scar on her right arm, blistering with newness.

Tara continued her instantaneous assessment to notice a dream-familiar rapier belted to her lithe hips, the sword belt riding just a shade too low over the gold-hinted tunic, just enough to accentuate the slimness of her waist, the modest swelling of buttocks and breasts. Willow was standing in profile; a deliberate stance, a calculated stance, from which Tara could see another dagger, possibly a short-sword, sheathed at the very back of the sword belt.

On the floor next to her was a battered knapsack, stained with much use and travel.

The only light in the room came from the lamp Willow had flicked on. Its steady and unflinching light sent shadows screaming into the corners of the room, away from the two terrifying women dressed in black.

Tara also noticed that her new divan had been pushed against the wall along with the little table. There was nothing between the Apothecary and Willow except the Persian rug and betrayal.

“How did you…?” Tara managed to gasp as she reined in her heartbeat.

Willow did not even look at her to respond. She cut Tara off midsentence with, “I temporarily disabled your security system and patched a feed of this empty room to your servers. I’ve also installed several Silencers throughout the apartment, which will disrupt all electronic audio and video frequencies. I didn’t know who else might be watching. This way we won’t be disturbed.”

The voice appeared to belong to Willow, but where the Willow of two weeks ago

(oh another Willow that was)

had been soft and gracile, a blade of grass to bend in the wind, this Willow was all tempered edges and robust bone. In one moment of her piercing and damning clarity, Tara knew exactly what had happened to transform her. She understood the trigger.

(I kissed her on the mouth)

With slow and deliberate precision, Willow turned a page in the book that she was not reading.

The memory of the dream-gone-bad bubbled up from Tara’s innermost depths. It was supposed to be a dream of Buffy-bliss at the fair. It was supposed to be a memory of starshine and fairy lights, of popcorn and cracker jack rings. It was supposed to be Buffy’s reminder to Willow of just how essential she was

(I would walk through fire for you, Willow)

Willow was supposed to leap from the ground, defying all laws of gravity and physics she knew by heart

(I would mount an assault on the very gates of hell)

the purple fingers of twilight caressing her like no earthly lover

(I would dance with the devil himself)

as she flew through the starlit air on wings composed of those beloved assurances, the love and faith of her best friend as the wind beneath.

(because)

Born to fly.

(you’re my Willow, too)

Had Willow ever experienced a betrayal greater than that dealt by Tara’s treacherous lips? This precious, beloved and essential woman had come to her den, had lowered all her stout defences, had allowed Tara a glimpse into her soul, all for a dream, a shining reminder that life was still beautiful, that the world still had merit, that even though Buffy was dead Willow still deserved to live.

As if a hypocrite like Tara could ever impart such lessons.

Deeper than it all was the need to love and be loved.

But Tara kissed her on the mouth instead, and extracted the one price that Willow would never have willingly given. Tara contaminated her dream, made of it a tumorous aberration that had to be surgically removed, the bad with the good.

There was no plastic ring on her pinkie finger.

Looking at this Willow, this terrifying and mysterious sword-bearing Willow

(does she actually know how to use those weapons?)

Tara wanted to weep. Willow’s neck was so rigid, her jaw so tight, her entire body motionless yet vibrating with barely contained energy. Such a small and discreet frown on her face, such an angry red scar on her arm.

(oh I am damned)

The gold-tasselled rapier on her hip.

(we won’t be disturbed)

Tara tested her readiness to speak on her tongue, licked her lips and asked, “Have you come to kill me?” In the periphery of her vision Tara evaluated the bolted door to the stairs, the curtain to her apartment, mapping a possible escape strategy.

A flicker of curiosity. No one had ever broken into her apartment before. Willow had more surprising skills and technology than Tara thought possible.

“Do you deserve to be killed?” Willow replied, still not looking at her, looking at the book instead, those words so artfully arranged to speak of a world of magics and betrayals and Turkish Delight.

“Yes,” Tara replied simply and without hesitation.

Willow put the book down with all the reverence and care she had shown two weeks earlier. She turned to face Tara, her right hand on the hilt of her sword. In the dim light her eyes appeared dark and menacing, crackling with fire and menace. Her face was immaculately made up, her lips a compelling and dark shade of red. Her hair the colour of doomed autumn leaves, a final display of glory before the dead silence of winter.

She was the most beautiful woman Tara had ever laid eyes on.

(I am her winter)

Her eyes constantly on Tara, Willow reached down and into her pack, withdrawing a photograph. She turned it around and Tara was battered by the frozen image of Buffy’s wedding, a duplicate of the picture she had stolen from the Summers residence two weeks earlier.

In Willow’s steady hand the image had even more power than before. Tara could feel her face blistering in the vibration of that photograph and all it implied.

A million universes were snuffed out with Buffy’s last breath, with the unrealized glory of the baby in her womb.

“I understand you need another copy of this picture,” Willow stated. “Joyce certainly did.”

Apparently Tara had no place for secrets anymore. No place to run to, no place to hide. She was naked before all the world, left to clutching the rags of her dignity, the rags of her strength.

The link to her Master trembled just inside her skin.

She could not compel her muscles to move. She could only stand, and stare, and wonder.

Willow let the image fall from her fingers. It did a swan-dive on the way to the Persian rug. There it lay, gasping and shuddering for breath.

“Not so much to say this time?” Willow accused.

Tara did not move, did not utter a sound. She found herself uttering a blasphemous wish in the vault of her mind

(kill me Willow)

There was a steely whisk was Willow pulled the rapier from its scabbard. It looked Napoleonic in origin, with a curved quillon and a single-edge blade. There were engravings on the anchor but Tara couldn’t interpret them in the scant light of the single lamp.

She watched Willow hold the blade with competent grace and understood that Willow was an accomplished warrior. She would be above counting the number of her kills and the pillage for spoils and treasures from dead bodies.

She would not be above the blood-surge that preceded a fight to the death. There would be adrenaline pumping through her blood vessels even now.

Would Willow reveal how she made her millions before killing her?

Willow crossed the scant space between them, her feet making absolutely no sound on the rug.

(doe-skin soles)

She was calm, confident, fiercely determined. When she was two feet away from Tara, she stopped. With a blurred whip-like motion the tip of the sword was suddenly pressing lightly against Tara’s black tunic.

Tara didn’t blink, even as she realized that, had she been an actual enemy, she would already be dead.

(get her out)

Willow’s grim eyes were upon hers, hard green jewels hidden in the murky places of the earth, never restful yet never budging. “Would you have me be your executioner?” Willow asked, her voice thin and deadly.

Which of them truly was the spider, and which was the fly?

And would either of them survive that discovery?

“I would have no other,” Tara whispered. The sight of the photograph had cracked the stone casing formed around Tara’s heart. Her words came out thick, her heart occluding her throat but not because of fear.

Willow could be her sackcloth, her salvation. Willow and the sword in her hand.

“You hate me that much?” Willow growled, but then she abruptly cut herself off, tossing her head slightly to the side, her jaw even tighter.

Tara’s eyes widened; she couldn’t tell Willow that’s not what she meant. She couldn’t say a word while the tip of the rapier pressed against her skin, not while Willow’s pinkie finger was bereft of the cracker jack promise.

(get her out now)

Willow dragged the sword tip down Tara’s blouse, almost snagging the fabric, until the tip hovered near Tara’s bare stomach. “Was it here, Tara, in the dream?” Willow asked.

Tara found she could command some movement, so she used her fingers to answer, taking the flat of the blade and lifting it up a little and to the side. Tara dropped her hands again and the sword stayed where she had placed it, just there in the sweet spot. She could recall the sensation she had felt in the dream, of the cold steel shearing her muscle, shivering her bones, erupting from her back like a bloody geyser.

She did not stop looking at Willow’s eyes. She could almost read something in them, actual words.

(read your enemies eyes and conquer them)

Would this death feel the same as the death in the dream? The cool kiss of steel, followed by the raging pain-fire? Not all the buckets of Aquarius the Water-Bearer would be able to quench the blood-fire.

Not even the King of Cups, though he came bearing an ocean.

The relief she felt at this idea of impending death was intoxicating.

(please kill me, Willow)

This death could not be the same as the death in the illicit dream. In the dream the wound wept blood even as Willow wept tears, her hands desperate and beloved over Tara’s skin, skin she had tasted in so many different places, proving she loved that skin and the soul within.

It could not be the same. The dream-Willow had loved her, had cried for her, had rocked her to death like a babe.

This death, this avalanche of Willow, these rolling boulders and spikes of ice, this death would be as cold and calculated as Tara’s entire existence. This death would mimic the winter in Willow’s eyes, the last great winter with no hope of spring. This death, in all its fury, would be the best, the most, the essential.

Indeed Tara would have no other.

“Do you truly have nothing to say in your defence?” Willow then asked, the quiet of her voice vibrating with intensity.

Tara glanced down at the picture on the floor. Joyce packing her suitcase with diaries and photo albums and Pop Tarts. Buffy’s secret entombed with the newly created foetus in her belly. Pictures hanging on the walls in Laura’s house.

Willow holding the cracker jack ring in her seventeen year old hands.

Remorse pricked Tara’s eyes and a startled tear pooled in her eyelashes before slipping down her face.

(he has me collared

but my decisions are my own)


“No,” Tara replied, her voice as clear as she could manage.

Despite the weight of the steel and the angry scar on her sword-arm, the tip of the rapier did not vacillate at her chest. Willow’s strong muscles held it steady even as her neck and collarbone rippled in concentration.

Tara decided she would not close her eyes to this. If she were lucky, Willow would use this blade to find her heart. Tara could thank Willow for this tremendous gift with her eyes alone while blood bubbled over her lips and her life slid through the cracks of the world. She would find courage again while in the arms of her pure mother.

(I would have no other

but

please hurry!)


A moment of blood-orange silence.

It took several tries for Willow to guide the blade back into its scabbard; when it finally slid home Willow clipped off the scabbard, leaving her low and luscious belt over her hips. She crouched to place the weapon on the floor, and then rose with all the power and majesty of Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

Willow rose, weaponless, and the axis of the universe shifted with her. In the spaces between the worlds, shades and echoes and other sentient beings held their breath.

Willow rose, weaponless, and while so doing the vial of her silence in Tara’s workroom swirled with golden pinpricks of light.

Of these things, Tara was peripherally aware.

Her attention was upon Willow now, and she saw the redhead rise, lick her lips, and then take another step towards Tara. The hollow space between them was radiating with potential and memory, the betrayal as discarded as the photograph, the rapier on the floor.

Tara had not witnessed such bravery in many long centuries.

The universe entire seemed to throb at Willow’s fingertips. She was the god now. Would it be brimstone, or would it be blessings?

The last best step, Willow inside Tara’s space now, the sight of Willow the only landscape that existed, the scent of Willow the only fragrance, the reality of Willow the only constant in a sea of quarks and variables.

(soul-forge!)

The same pendant hung from her neck, resting just below the hollow of Willow’s throat where Tara had stolen a piece of her silence.

(what would she taste like there?)

Now Willow was lifting her hands, and Tara’s attention swerved to Willow’s wrists, all slender and strong perfection that made her feel weak. How she longed to take that wrist, lick it with her tongue, and with her lips feel the precious current of blood that surged within.

Willow was lifting her hands, and Tara wondered if this was another ending now, if this mysterious and sword-bearing Willow could take Tara’s slender neck in her hands and break it.

Willow was lifting her hands, and she placed her hot fingers on the smooth expanse of Tara’s flushed cheeks, her thumbs just under Tara’s chin, and Tara shocked and immobile now, for verily the touch was summer fire, roaring and consuming beyond all dousing efforts of Aquarius, and for Tara it was yet greater relief, for there had been only winter for so long, a winter of boundaries and compulsions and threats, a winter of dreams and ink and money and all the vials of silence that a productive and happy worker could procure.

Willow’s eyes tender now, revealing a lush and fertile forest, greenways teeming with hope and energy, endless pathways of time and memory, and within that forest was a vista too beautiful to be imagined. It was there Tara wished to reside, to walk along those sunlit trails, warmed by the Willow-sun until she could forget that she had ever been enslaved and abandoned.

(please kill me Willow

please)


Willow held Tara’s face in her hands, and her mouth was so very close. If someone were to interrupt them, they would have been mistaken for lovers.

(before I kill you)

“By all the gods, Tara,” Willow whispered, her lips and mouth so close that Tara could feel the words strike and pierce her skin. “What has this world done to you?”

~

To be continued on Wednesday with Chapter 17: Mongrel

Jen
aka Tara the Phoenix


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 16: Earth and Fire (Dec 16)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 11:07 am 
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9. Gay Now
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Location: Kaskinen, Finland. Citizen of Kitopia
Yay for excellent update-y goodness... Big yay for Willow coming back into Tara's life... Can't wait to read about what Willow has been doing during those 2 weeks...

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We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Buggered

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 16: Earth and Fire (Dec 16)
PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 7:18 pm 
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7. Teeny Tinkerbell Light
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This story is really becoming epic can't for next chapter!!!!


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 16: Earth and Fire (Dec 16)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 8:42 pm 
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6. Sassy Eggs
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Location: Edmonton, Alberta
My apologies - I've been away for the holidays, so as a little treat, here are two chapters back to back. Enjoy!


~17~
Mongrel
(no gift)


Four years ago this summer, just after purchasing her mansion and hiring a new Steward, Willow had a contract in Rumania, a rescue and extraction. It had been her first and only visit to that particular country. Her first impressions of Bucuresti had left all her senses in a state of overload; her eyes bombarded by the vibrant greens of the gardens and the unrelenting grey of the cement block tract housing that still predominated the newly-democratic country. Her ears sought to make sense of the romance language that had a tint of Slav in it, and her nose had been lambasted alternately with the smell of baked bread and rotting garbage.

High summer, and the spectacularly roasting sun had slain a goodly number of feral street dogs. Their bodies lay wherever they expired, whether in a field of dry grass or upon the blistering asphalt sidewalk. For over a week Willow walked back and forth past a particular specimen, and watched as its fur was chewed away by maggots, exposed muscles drying and gleaming, the body swelling with insects and decomposition until it burst like chewy fireworks.

The roses were spectacular, as were the fountains and the music. There was fresh baked bread available on every street, and she and Xander gorged themselves on its thick texture. When he discovered the chocolate hazelnut spread known as Finete, he promised to start a new religion based on the worship of bread and chocolate.

Willow vowed to become his High Priestess.

Buffy had stayed in Berlin.

It was only marginally cooler in the subway, and it was here that Willow’s life changed.

She and Xander had been waiting for a train to take them out past Sector Two of the capital city, and she was so hot and moist she wished she could just peel off her skin. She heard a commotion and glanced down the tracks, always on high alert while on a contract, always ready for confrontation, her eyes sorting and analyzing all the workers and students and home-makers.

Look down, way down.

It could have been a boy.

He could have been nearly nine years old.

The masses parted from him like Moses parted the Red Sea. Through the sudden stark space between them, Willow could see that his eyes were glassy and rimmed with blood-fire, and he stank as if he had just emerged from the blown out ribs of that loathsome corpse of a dog. Dirt and oily grime collected in every crevice of skin or ratty clothing.

That was not why Willow suddenly clutched Xander’s hand, why her heart wrenched in pity even as she wished she could draw her sword.

It wasn’t the bag of distilled glue, a punga, in his lap that he used to get high. It wasn’t the shredded bits of cloth that disguised his grotesque nakedness.

It was the fact that he looked like an insect. Sometime in his horrific past, someone had broken both of his arms and both of his legs and then set them backward. His knees and elbows flexed in the wrong direction, and the crippled boy crabbed about on his buttocks or the knuckles of his hands.

A pause, a tug on someone’s pant leg, the hand rocking gesture across his stomach that had been explained as a silent supplication.

(da’m si mie

please give some to me)


He was getting closer, and still Willow clutched Xander’s hand. Now she could see that his teeth had rotted away, leaving only small brown stumps like brackish icicles.

Willow had nearly a million dollars in her bank account, and another near million invested in various stocks and options, plus a couple patents including her Silencer about to reap serious dividends, but she did not give this boy a single leu. She had seen enough of the world to realize that money would be his death sentence; either he would be beaten and robbed of any sympathetic sum, or he would use it to buy more drugs, sniffing his punga until his liver gave out in a great flood of jaundice and his eyes burst in a broken dam of blood.

With the greatest regret, Willow realized that there was nothing she could give him that wouldn’t lead to his downfall, neither clothes nor shoes nor food; each act of compassion would instantly merit retaliation. Robbery. Assault. Murder.

She wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

(God died with Buffy.

Violently.)


Now the boy was here, at her own legs, plucking at her pants, rocking his hand across his stomach and Willow forced down the bile in her throat even as she forced down the urge to squish him like a bug and release him from his obvious torment.

The train finally came, and she tore herself from his scabbed fingers and did not look back. On the train, Xander put his arms around her shoulders and they both stared resolutely ahead, as if to convince their eyes that they had seen nothing.

It was not the first evidence Willow had seen of man’s shameful inhumanity to man.

But it was fuel to stoke the fire within; a fire of rage that only deepened when she completed her contract, and successfully extracted a witch of the Kalderash. They were nearly too late, the woman had been abused, tortured, strung naked upon a tree and left to the elements. Her last violation had been a horrific branding between her shoulder blades, her flesh charred there, weeping with infection and blood.

They were nearly too late. The soul of Janna of the Kalderash flickered between the planes of existence.

They were just in time, and Janna lived because of the singular and miraculous ministrations of Joyce Summers. When the Romany had finally regained her strength she changed her name to Jenny and took an oath of service in Willow’s household, to serve, to protect, and be protected.

This awful world had wronged the crippled Rumanian boy and the Romany witch more than anyone Willow had ever encountered before or since.

(has Giles seen Jenny’s scars?)

Until now.

She wouldn’t have believed it possible two weeks ago, that there was a chance that this Tara, this Apothecary, had been even more tortured and abused than Jenny and the nameless crippled boy. At this point it was only a hypothesis, and had to be tested in a very careful, controlled manner.

She understood now just how dangerous Tara was.

The first steps had been taken, sneaking her way inside Tara’s den, confronting her with a script carefully prepared. Now here she stood, with Tara’s soft skin beneath her fingers and Willow realized that this woman and the boy were one and the same. Could she give anything to Tara that would not lead to her downfall? Could there be any gift that could not be stripped away by those more greedy and powerful than she?

If the boy had asked for it, Willow would have gladly killed him, in the hopes that he would either find peace in the Afterlife or be reincarnated into better circumstances, depending on what he believed. Beyond his silence, beyond his death there could be a heaven, with tree-forts and games of soccer and the shy teasing of bright-cheeked girls.

No more dust and calluses. No more pungas with their high, bright smell. No more enslavement to this prison of flesh and backward bone.

Alas that he did not ask.

(no gift)

Willow had come to the poppy den today prepared to kill. She chose her battle clothes very carefully, planned the entrance and exit, and devised dozens of plans based on various contingencies. All her recent attempts at digital or electronic surveillance failed; there was an energy field surrounding the building that she simply could not penetrate by ordinary means.

Just a week ago she had been able to hack in. What had changed?

So she sent Faith to the black market, and her driver returned with five magical bugs and a black eye. When this desperate attempt at surveillance also failed, Willow understood more of what she was up against. By then she had done her fact-checking, as much research as time and circumstance could allow. She knew what she wanted Tara to be.

She knew that compassion was a gift, and wondered if Tara would be able to receive it.

(no gift)

Now she had come to the great precipice of all her planning; unknown futures spun into existence and died as she touched Tara’s cheeks, as she gazed soulfully into Tara’s slate blue eyes. Within this touch Willow could sense that Tara was about to fight back. The world had hurt her so deeply by its continued abuse that she shied from a soft touch as would any whipped cur. She could not allow Willow nor her empathy. A titanic war waged in Tara’s eyes, a struggle that Willow recognized all too clearly.

She had seen it often enough in her own mirror.

(raise the drawbridge, fortify the walls

repel the invaders)


Willow’s unfathomable compassion was a weapon now, more dire and menacing than the sword on the ground, and in this moment they both knew it.

That was all she could read in Tara’s eyes. The rest was hidden.

(we’re both mongrels here)

Tara shrugged Willow’s hands away and took a haughty step back, leaving Willow’s hands to fall by her sides. The electric lamp was harsh on her features; her mouth was a thin line as she said, “What has this world done to me? You foolish girl, don’t you mean what have I done to it?”

Then Tara laughed, and it was the shrill laughter of the Cordettes in high school, the laughter of her gym-mates in the showers, the laughter of the veterans in the barracks. Within that laughter Willow was a timid geek again, with weenie match-sticks for arms and second hand clothes darned and stitched into their own zombii-like existence, her brains stuffed full of useless information about actinides and lanthanides and a million places of pi.

In the moment that followed, Willow thought of the cracker jack ring, of Buffy’s enduring love for her, and she saw through this laughter, this rather desperate show.

If the Apothecary thought Willow’s opinion could be swayed so easily, then she really knew nothing about her.

(remember the Rumanian boy)

Every gift a dangerous one, and only by being killed could he have been free.

For the sake of the Apothecary and her blighted life, Willow had come this far, bearing steel and dark intentions.

For the sake of the Apothecary, Willow had lain her steel on the floor.

For the sake of the Apothecary, Willow would make Tara choose. Life, or death?

The future would dance and tremble as it may, but nothing could change the symphony of the past. Willow still had the memory of their kiss, sudden and illicit and life changing. Nothing could take that away from her. Certainly not this.

“Do you really believe you can fool me that easily?” Willow replied, staring at Tara directly in the eyes, gambling her life with every passing second. “What is it you are trying so hard to protect me from?”

“Protect you?” Tara laughed again, crossing her arms over her chest in sheer derision. “Look at you. You are nothing to me, Willow. You are just one of thousands who comes to my door. I kiss all of them. There is nothing that makes you special.”

Willow shrugged the words aside, remembering the look of exhausted vulnerability on Tara’s face that first day in the den. She could not be goaded so easily, not with the sliver of truth about Tara’s work and circumstance she had discovered.

Not with the missing picture from Buffy’s bureau, and the intelligence reports from the magical bug hidden in one of Joyce’s garden gnomes.

Willow understood that every word from Tara’s mouth was sackcloth and sacrifice.

While Giles had been strangely permissive, Jenny’s warning rang in her head.

(you have no idea what you’re up against, Willow)

“You’re not as clever as you think you are,” Willow replied, forcing her voice into stropped steel. “But you are telling me the truth, aren’t you? You would have me kill you. You would have no other.”

“You really do hate me, don’t you?” Tara accused. “Perhaps you would rather destroy me than kill me. Some long and slow suffering as payback for everything in your life that went wrong?”

“No less than you deserve, isn’t it?” Willow shot back, injecting the necessary venom into her voice. “How many lives have you destroyed? What possible redemption could exist for your crimes?”

“Then do it, Willow,” Tara said. The woman stooped to pick up the sword in its scabbard, and held it out to Willow as an offering. “Free mankind of me. Make everyone safe. You’re masquerading as some destroying angel, some self-appointed God, with forgiveness in one hand and fire in the other. Go on, wield your justice and prove your mettle.” Tara unsheathed the sword and pressed the hilt into Willow’s palm. “Perhaps you are still just a school girl, all bluster and no bite.”

Willow’s heart burned as her fingers curled on the hilt of the sword, and she used the embers of her temper to thrust the tip of it into the floor, severing the priceless Persian carpet. She let go of the hilt and there the rapier swayed.

“You would prefer the easy way out, then? What if I would rather destroy you slowly, like the Angel of Death that I am?”

“I should have expecting nothing less,” Tara spat.

“You should have expected something more!” Willow shouted. “Do you really think I would punish a whipped mongrel dog before punishing the Master who holds the leash?”

A flash of pure surprise and terror struck Tara’s face, quickly concealed by pronounced firmness. Willow tasted the first bitter sip of triumph, of a game well played. Before the Apothecary could respond, Willow struck again by asking, “Just how long have you been a slave, Tara?”

It was a verbal blow to the gut and Tara seemed winded.

“You need to go, Willow,” Tara hissed. “Right now. Get out.”

(not a chance)

It was time for the coup de grace.

Willow swiftly stepped forward and caught Tara’s wrist in her hand. With the other she yanked up Tara’s sleeve, ripping it in the process, revealing the mark in the crook of her elbow. The tattoo that Jenny had recognized with such hatred and malice.

The Apothecary froze.

Willow’s compassion sliced Tara wide open. Her voice was throbbing with emotion as she said, “This mark, Tara. One of the most closely guarded secrets of the world. Only visible to those who know it exists.” Tugging on Tara’s captive arm, Willow drew her even closer, almost harsh. Her free hand grabbed Tara’s neck.

Her mouth to Tara’s ear, Willow breathed, “You are a genie, Tara, and someone very evil has you collared.”


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapter 16: Earth and Fire (Dec 16)
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 8:45 pm 
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~18~
Flawed Design
(I am dead)


In high school Willow learned that she could obtain nearly everything she desired, as long as she worked hard for it. Beyond chemistry and computer science Willow learned blade-work, small engine repair and the rules for American football. After high school, on the path of her illustrious and amazing career, this belief was strengthened into fact: the universe was not impenetrable, and there was nothing that existed on this earth that couldn’t be hers if she wanted it bad enough.

No secrets too deep, no treasure too guarded.

Perhaps all that remained was the distinction between what Willow wanted and what Willow needed.

She had prepared for this altercation ever since Jenny confessed the truth of the mark to her. She had done all her research, had written a dozen scripts, had prepared dozens of endings, had mapped and plotted every contingency and angle. If some clouds of murk and doubt remained, she blasted through them with sheer determination and a sense of righteousness. This was her job, her passion. She was a professional, and her designs were flawless.

Buffy had accused her of arrogance once.

Willow was still holding Tara’s wrist, tight and forceful. Her other hand was on Tara’s neck; she was close enough to smell some unknown fragrance on Tara’s skin. The fateful words had been spoken, conducting Willow to the crucial juncture of all her planning, all her designs. Beyond this precipice there was little to do but hope.

The apothecary’s face, now that it had been cracked open with shock, filled with dismay. She lifted her hands to grasp Willow’s forearms, and then she squeezed, hard. “Put your dagger at my throat,” Tara growled.

Willow glanced down at Tara’s hands and grimaced as Tara squeezed again, grinding her wrist bones together. Her breath was hot in Willow’s ear as she asked again, “Willow, I’m begging you, put your dagger at my throat.”

Understanding finally dawned. A cryptic injunction by one of Jenny’s relatives became clear

(if she’s collared, her Master will try to protect her)

and Willow quickly let go of Tara’s elbow and neck, reaching for the knife sticking out of her boot.

(she’s trying to protect me!)

She was not fast enough. Tara shoved her, hard, and she stumbled over the thick nap of the Persian rug. Stumbling to regain her footing, she glanced up in time to see Tara plead, “Willow, for the love of God, put your fucking dagger at my throat!”

Willow stood transfixed at the sight now presented to her. Instead of fumbling for her dagger, she watched as Tara’s face flickered with fear and horror. Her lean and sensuous body shuddered into abrupt stillness as her face was subsequently wiped clean of all expression.

This had not been anticipated. This design was flawed.

(zombii!)

A malevolent vapour erupted from the mark in Tara’s elbow, like poppy smoke it was, and it streamed up Tara’s body, coalescing into a band of darkness about her neck before advancing up the smooth lines of skin to invade her mouth, her nostrils. Even her eyes rippled as they became a stygian black, and the madness continued up her forehead, over the crown of her hair, shifting it from crown to tip into neon darkness. Tara shivered once as the vapour overtook her head; she tilted her head upward and closed her eyes to mere slits.

It was a hostile takeover, an evil override.

When she ducked her chin and opened her eyes again, Willow knew that Tara was gone. Only the echo remained.

Tara lifted her booted heel with surprising speed and strength, and then the heel smashed into Willow’s still-bandaged chest. Willow was hurled against the bookshelf; she felt the fiery roar of more broken ribs before she slumped to the ground.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe fell with her, and the spine of the book broke on the floor.

Scrambling to her feet, Willow saw Tara yank the rapier from the rug. The blade was naked and thirsting.

(Jenny’s scars

what is the price of truth?)


There was no hesitation. The Apothecary thrust for Willow’s neck, and Willow deflected the swipe with her arm, the single-edged blade biting deep into her flesh. In the same moment, Willow launched herself from the floor and tumbled away, a cascade of blood drops arcing through the air. She drew the short sword from the back of her sword belt, suddenly glad she had chosen a longer blade for her back-up plans.

Willow was barely able to lift the sword before the rapier came crashing down on it; she used the tiny bit of momentum she had from her tumble to flick the blade away and come fully to her feet. She immediately circled away from the corner of the room; it would not be wise to be caught there.

With a few steps Willow was next to the little table pushed against the wall, the same little table on which she had shared tea and placed her bounty of cash. Tara was stalking her, so Willow picked the table up with her free hand and threw it at Tara’s ankles. Her attacker tripped momentarily over the obstacle, just long enough for Willow to get into fighting stance and take stock of her surroundings.

One massive Tara-kick, and the table shivered into pieces that showered against the bookshelves, prompting another dislodgment of books.

In the cheerless light of the electric lamp, the only light that existed in this parlour-turned-battleground, Willow could see tears etching a ragged course down Tara’s cheeks, even as she lunged at Willow again.

(who holds her leash?)

Willow met her blow for blow, learning her style, dissecting her movements. There was ancient grace in her use of muscle and sinew, techniques so antediluvian that Willow had a hard time opposing them. Not wanting to injure Tara, Willow stayed on the defensive as long as she could.

(sleeping dragon

reed in water

desert soaring)


The Apothecary was extremely skilled in blade-work. She unearthed Willow’s recent injury to ribs, and laid waste to them with the flat of her blade as much as she could. Then she divined the still-pink bullet wound in Willow’s shoulder.

Fear and desperation flooded Willow’s mouth with vinegar.

(she really is trying to kill me!)

A sudden and catastrophic thrust with no accompanying tell from her eyes. Willow pivoted away from the thrust, cursing the Persian rug that tugged at her heels, and she caught Tara’s sword-wrist with one hand, jerking her forward. Tara seemed too well-trained to fall for such a simple ruse; the Apothecary slammed her free elbow into Willow’s face. There was a sickening crack as Willow’s nose broke, more blood streaming from it in a crimson waterfall.

Dazed and blinded, Willow then felt Tara’s shoulders duck underneath her, and a mighty heave into Willow’s twice-broken ribs, sending Willow tumbling once again across the floor, her rib bones splintering against each other.

Tara did not exult over her slim margin; she instantly leaped for Willow and once again Willow scarcely lifted her short sword in time to deflect a killing blow. Prone on the floor, Willow flicked the blade away and instantly thrust for Tara’s leg. A harsh scree of steel as the blades rang against each other, and then Tara thrust for Willow’s heart.

Any lesser warrior would have perished in that moment; as it was, Willow twisted her body enough that the blade only bit into her side. Through the sunburst of agony that ensued, Willow drew a boot-dagger with her free hand and stabbed Tara through the calf with it.

The Apothecary yanked her sword out of Willow’s side as she staggered back, leaning down to draw the dagger out of her muscle. Willow clapped her free hand over the openly pouring wound as she struggled to her feet, a dreaded feeling of faint and blood shock like purple gauze over her eyes.

Barely on her feet, her mouth drowning in blood from her broken nose, she noticed a glint of something in the air as Tara moved.

Reflexes born of sparring six days a week with her Armsmaster saved her again. Tara threw the dagger that had been planted in her calf, and it would have sunk into Willow’s chest. She swung at the missile with her short-sword as if with a baseball bat; the contact sent the dagger spinning into the sulky darkness outside the lamp’s influence.

Tara flinched as the dagger flew over her shoulder, giving Willow enough time to maintain a fighting stance. She looked into Willow’s eyes, a dread smile even through her tears, ignoring the ragged hole in her pant leg that wept dark blood.

For the second time, Willow wondered if she would survive this fight.

(what would Xander do?)

Tara feinted and pivoted as she re-engaged; Willow was watching her eyes and was ready. She followed the course of the feint and lifted her short-sword, knowing she had to get the rapier out of Tara’s all-too-deadly hands. Taking a gamble, Willow dropped her sword and the pressure on the massive cut in her side as she used her thumbs to gouge into Tara’s sword-wrist, seeking the pressure point that linked the wrist to unbearable agony.

Tara gasped, and the salt tears she wept fell on Willow’s skin, and she punched Willow in the jaw with her free hand just before slamming her shoulder once more into Willow’s tortured chest.

Winded and nearly beaten, Willow spun with the movement, only temporarily releasing her hold on Tara’s sword-wrist, wrapping herself around Tara’s unprotected back to come at her from the other side. Once on Tara’s sword-side, she slammed her own elbow into Tara’s throat and grabbed the wrist again with both hands, gouging her thumbs deeply into Tara’s wrist.

Just as Tara wavered, Willow struck Tara’s chest with her own shoulder, pain from her ribs and that gaping wound creating a dizzying flood of purple faint that obscured her vision. There wasn’t much time. One last mighty squeeze with her thumbs and the rapier finally slid from Tara’s nerveless hands.

Even as the sword fell to the ground, the apothecary bent to draw the other dagger from Willow’s boot. Once it was in her hand, she sliced Willow across the belly.

Anticipating the move, the dagger did not quite disembowel her, but the blade still cut into her skin, leaving a smooth edge of cascading blood. Willow staggered back, grasping the hilt of her favourite rapier with her slick bloodied hands, realizing that she had unwittingly engaged an opponent more skilled than her Armsmaster, more skilled than Giles, maybe even more skilled than that Mongolian who nearly killed them all.

No wonder the truth of Tara’s race was the most closely guarded secret in the world. All who spoke of it were immediately silenced.

Willow almost wished Faith would come and help her, even though her instruction to the driver had been clear. Do not come until called, no matter what.

(my silence bleeds red)

Willow stepped back from the belly blow, her arm over the wounds, her hand over the massive cut on her side, blood all warm and gooey on her fingers. She bent over somewhat feigning weakness, and Tara lunged for her again. Willow abruptly stood, stepped forward and thrust the rapier into Tara’s side, the thin blade shearing her muscle just as she had Willow’s.

Just as she had done in that dream, the dream that changed everything.

Tara staggered away, clapping one hand to the wound, but was still able to parry Willow’s following lunge.

(god if you make me kill her)

Tara thrust again for Willow’s belly with the dagger, but Willow had the rapier now. Three swift parries were followed by an even quicker lunge; the women sidestepped each other as they fought. Their blood poured on the Persian carpet, drops bright as cranberries sullied the discarded books.

Blood in Narnia.

(I will hate you forever)

As they fought around the room in that eerie silence, Willow discovered a small weakness on Tara’s already injured left side, a tiny hint of old aches or wounds. Willow baited her, and suddenly pivoted, caught the flat of Tara’s dagger with her rapier and spun it, yanking it from Tara’s grip and flipping it into her own hand. She immediately rapped Tara’s left side with the flat of her blade as she pivoted one more time

(conjuring dawn

oh buffy)


and Tara gasped as Willow spun around her back. Willow threw the rapier aside only to grab a hunk of Tara’s black hair and yank it sharply back. Tara yelped in surprise and pain

(for the love of God put your dagger at my throat)

and stamped Willow’s foot, about to elbow Willow in her sliced gut when Willow laid the edge of her dagger against Tara’s throat. Tara was shocked into stillness; that last minute movement caused Willow to graze the skin of Tara’s throat with her dagger, leaving a thin line of bright blood.

Ritual death. Would it be enough to break the compulsion laid upon her?

(please let it be enough!)

“You are dead, Apothecary,” Willow whispered harshly into Tara’s ear. “I have defeated you.”

(yield Tara, please

I don’t want to kill you)


Willow could not see Tara’s eyes, could not tell if this would be enough to stop the rampage of blood and blade.

If it proved fruitless, Willow would rather die herself and get this farce of a life over with. Death was very close just now, for both of them. Not since the early days had Willow been this grievously injured.

Tara’s body shivered and Willow could feel that subtle thrum inside her own skin, accompanying the warmth of Tara’s blood-soaked shirt.

They were blood-sisters now.

(the bonds of blood are tightest)

Every breath Willow took was agony. Blood faint crept over every atom of her body. One way or another, the end was near.

Willow bit Tara’s ear and repeated, “You are dead, Tara.”

Finally the woman spoke. “I am dead,” she whispered.

Willow could practically hear the subtle click in Tara’s mind as her Master’s hold over her snapped, the true woman returning to the possession of her body.

She barely removed the knife edge from Tara’s throat in time, as Tara collapsed in bloody heap on the floor.

~

To be continued with Chapter 19: Rosewater (sparrow falling)

Jen
aka Tara the Phoenix


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapters 17 and 18
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:12 pm 
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8. Vixen
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dibs.

Ok, I made the mistake of sitting down to read this with a bit of a sandwich and your imagery and my own vivid picturing of this scene, it totally put me off my food...

Quote:
It was the fact that he looked like an insect. Sometime in his horrific past, someone had broken both of his arms and both of his legs and then set them backward. His knees and elbows flexed in the wrong direction, and the crippled boy crabbed about on his buttocks or the knuckles of his hands.

A pause, a tug on someone’s pant leg, the hand rocking gesture across his stomach that had been explained as a silent supplication.

(da’m si mie - please give some to me)

He was getting closer, and still Willow clutched Xander’s hand. Now she could see that his teeth had rotted away, leaving only small brown stumps like brackish icicles.


The fight scene was complete poetry, it flowed so well. This part struck me:

Quote:
Tara thrust again for Willow’s belly with the dagger, but Willow had the rapier now. Three swift parries were followed by an even quicker lunge; the women sidestepped each other as they fought. Their blood poured on the Persian carpet, drops bright as cranberries sullied the discarded books.

Blood in Narnia.


Just excellent imagery again, well done. Looking forward to the next chapter very much.

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapters 17 and 18
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:49 pm 
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7. Teeny Tinkerbell Light
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First: thank you for two updates!! :applause

Second: loved how you did the fight scene and how you presented it. And the boy at the train station is just sad and it's true though you can't help them even though you want too. And you also give more detail about willow's past a little.

Another Great Update!!!! :clap


Last edited by Willow_Friendly on Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapters 17 and 18
PostPosted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 4:28 am 
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9. Gay Now
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Yay for excellent double update-y goodness... I really liked Willow's description of her meeting the boy in Romania and saving Jenny... I absolutely loved your description of the fight between Willow & Master possessed Tara... I truly hope that Tara is now truly free for his evil influence...

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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapters 17 and 18
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 7:17 am 
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4. Extra Flamey

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I've been away over the holidays and only just had time to read the last three chapters. Now I'm overwhelmed. As far as I can tell no major changes from you're first version, but even though it seemed familiar it wasn't less powerful for me. I'm so overwhelmed I don't know what to say apart from: SOMEONE CALL 911, NOW!!!!!!


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 Post subject: Re: The Apothecary - Chapters 17 and 18
PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 7:31 pm 
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Getting very close to the brand new stuff! You should see something new in this chapter, and by the end of Chapter 21, we're in a whole new story. Feedback response before the next update.


~19~
Rosewater
(sparrow falling)


No time to waste.

Willow staggered back as Tara fell unconscious to the floor. She tossed the dagger to the ground and lurched her way to her backpack. Her fingers were numb and crusted with dried blood as she tried, one-handed, to open the flap. She ended up tilting the pack upside down and casting its contents on the tainted ground.

She took a pad of cloth and clasped it against the deep puncture in her side and then fumbled for her phone. She had only to press the number two and Faith answered after a single ring. “I need you up here right now,” Willow panted.

“Sure thing, boss.”

Willow heard the soft growl of the engine before ending the call. Faith had been stationed in the car three blocks away from the den, in an area they determined was less active with the police force enforcing the curfew, even though the car was enchanted. A minute or two of hasty driving and then Faith would be coming up the back stairs and through the private entrance, just as Willow had done minutes after Tara had left earlier in the evening.

Was it even the same evening? Had not a whole month, nay a year passed in this titanic struggle?

Sparks and darkness hovered at the edge of her vision and Willow sprawled back against the bookshelf. She must have experienced a momentary blackout, for when she blinked and opened her eyes she saw Faith coming through the curtain that separated Tara’s living quarters from the den. The driver didn’t pause to curse or ask questions; she slung a pack from her own back and pulled out several items.

The first was a hypo, right into Willow’s neck. As the drug coursed through Willow’s veins, she felt Faith kneel beside her. “This will be quick,” Faith said as she took Willow’s nose in her hands. With a sickening crack and a jab of pain, Willow’s nose was reset. Faith mashed an ointment in and around the area, constricting the blood vessels.

Only then was Willow eased to the ground, head tilted so she wouldn’t choke on her own blood. “Hurry,” Willow begged.

Faith was silent as she ripped the cloth of Willow’s shirt away, baring both wounds, the line across her belly and the gaping hole in her side. She picked up a foam gun and swiftly applied a thick layer over both wounds. It felt cool and pleasant even while it formed a hard crust, and Willow would have enjoyed the sense of relief more if she hadn’t been so concerned for Tara.

A quick layer over the cut on her arm, and that was all Faith could do at the moment. She turned to Tara without Willow even asking, rolling her on her back to take stock of her injuries. Willow saw the thin line of blood on Tara’s throat

(I nearly killed her after all)

and managed to turn her head before vomiting on the Persian rug, coughing and spitting bile and clots of blood.

Faith was applying foam over the entry and exit wounds on Tara’s side, the similar wounds in her calf. Another hypo was thrust into her neck and then discarded. “Hospital or home?” Faith asked as she finished, wiping her hands on a spare piece of cloth.

“Home,” Willow replied, her limbs shaking. Overwhelming agony was barely tamed by the hypo she had been given.

Blood glistened in the black recesses of Tara’s hair. There had been blood in Buffy’s hair.

Willow dry-heaved on her hands and knees, gasping with the pain of her broken ribs even while she coughed and spat. Then Faith helped her up, careful not to step in the mess Willow left behind.

“Pick her up,” Willow gasped, her arm over her side. She left the rapier, her pack, all her weaponry on the floor.

Faith didn’t hesitate. She bent and picked up Tara’s inert body. The woman’s head lolled against Faith’s shoulder and her hand hung down her side, the mark on her elbow half-shadowed.

No time.

“Back door.”

At least some of her designs had been perfect. Stolen blueprints had revealed the floor plan, all the video surveillance, and the odd fact that there was cork between the floors and the walls. Willow had wondered about the cork even as she tried in vain to tap into the internal surveillance network.

The front door was still bolted shut. Willow followed her bodyguard through the veils of shadow in Tara’s apartment, wishing she had the time and light enough to see the realities of Tara’s mortal existence. What pictures were hung on the walls? What music was in the computer system? What flowers were in the vases, and what was the meaning of the large workroom along the back?

She had beheld none of these things while she waited earlier for Tara to return. She would brook no derailment of her plans, would not rummage or peek uninvited. Her focus had been absolute.

So Willow forced herself to stumble after Faith. Down the exit in the back of the building, the sedan parked just outside the feeble radiance of a street lamp. The enchantment to disguise the car from police or other inquisitive eyes had been expensive, but worth every penny.

Even with her burden, Faith arrived at the sedan first and opened the back seat for Willow. Willow groaned as she slid over to the middle of the leather seat. Faith tucked the Apothecary next to Willow, closed the car door and dashed for the front seat.

In moments they were streaming down the empty streets of Sunnydale, the midnight sky a great bowl of darkness above them. Faith drove without headlights, even when they left the city limits and drove through Miller’s Woods. Willow was exquisitely aware of the weight of Tara’s body that leaned against her shoulder, grinding against broken rib bones.

In her haze of delirious pain, Willow heard Faith on the speakerphone with Giles. He already knew what had transpired in the den

(he has my silence

he sees my colour manifest itself)


but decisions were quickly made for cleanup, for containment. By morning the Apothecary’s den had to be pristine and perfect, with a brand new Persian rug identical to the old one, brand new little table.

There could be no replacing of the priceless book. There was blood in Narnia now, in a betrayal far greater than poor Edmund could imagine. He sold his soul for Turkish Delight.

Willow sold hers for a kiss.

Tara was leaning against her shoulder; Willow could both hear and feel the wet rasp of her breath. The pain of Tara’s weight was gaining brilliance. Jagged icicles of bone pressed against her lungs and fire raged along the edges of her many wounds. The stink of blood in the sedan was shiny and insistent.

If Willow was to allow herself a moment to think of truth, she would remember that she had imagined Tara in her sedan, quite a different incarnation of Tara to be frank, a Tara that laughed and smiled and bestowed devastating kisses. Such thoughts were midnight thoughts, in the precious spaces between star-rise and moon-set, and never in her life could she have imagined this perversion instead, a bloody marionette of Tara near lifeless in her sedan pressing against new wounds all wet and thinly veiled with painkiller.

A younger Willow would have taken that moment now, to recall those delicious midnight thoughts.

This Willow did not.

Faith slowed down at the gate to the estate and activated the emergency override, the codes changed every twelve hours and still verified in Willow’s trembling voice. The gates opened quickly and Faith careened down the driveway and around the back of the house, down into the basement garage where Robin and Jenny were waiting.

Their faces were grim in the stalwart electric lights. The world entire was black save for this one neon place.

Robin opened the door just as Faith parked the sedan and his strong gardener hands deftly lifted Tara from her wet and thick perch on Willow’s shoulder. The sudden lack of warmth and rush of pain was almost enough to cause Willow to faint, yet she grounded herself by taking Jenny’s cool palm. While Robin dashed ahead with his unholy burden, Jenny and Faith proceeded to help Willow out of the car.

Willow’s knees buckled the moment she stepped on the smooth concrete, so Faith picked her up in her enormously strong arms and carried her through the echoing garage and into the recovery area near the dojo. Jenny ran ahead, and by the time Faith carried her through the doors, she was scrubbing up and preparing to assist Giles.

Her Steward was sporting latex gloves and an ominous expression. Tara had been placed on a hospital cot lifted to an ideal height for the surgeon’s work.

Steward, surgeon, sword-fighter and spy. Giles was amazing.

Jenny was preparing the curved suture needle and thread as Giles threw the last bloodied rag into the garbage. Faith helped Willow lay down on another cot nearby, and then she stood back right away. Willow’s head spun with faint, so she lifted herself on her elbows to stare at the rag-doll body of the Apothecary. “Is she going to be all right?” Willow asked, her voice wavering.

“We’ll soon find out,” was Giles terse reply. “Jenny, give this injection to Willow.”

“Don’t you dare put me in the tank, Giles,” Willow hissed. “I want you to promise.”

“I promise I won’t put you in the tank,” he immediately replied. With a curt nod, Jenny took an alcohol wipe to Willow’s upper arm and then injected her with some clear liquid.

The prick led to sudden heat.

Then to a veil of moonbeams and stardust between Willow and her battered body.

Swimming in fire-bliss, her ears muffled with down, Willow barely heard Giles give crisp orders to Robin regarding some expected guest and for Faith to stand watch just inside the room should the djinn wake unexpectedly.

Time sputtered in Willow’s reckoning; every time she blinked it seemed minutes had passed, and the impromptu surgery for the Apothecary was abruptly completed. Giles finished by typing the woman’s blood and soon life was flowing back into Tara’s body through a transfusion.

Willow peered at her Steward with glassy eyes, watching as he stripped his gloves, washed his hands in the basin, and then donned a fresh pair of gloves, snapping the latex over his wrists. He sat on a stool next to Willow and Jenny wheeled the little steel cart over.

His face was grim while he inspected Willow’s wounds, the broken ribs, the cut on her bicep, broken nose, puncture wound on her side and the shallow slice over her belly.

His cheek looked like a sinkhole, ready to deepen and swallow his whole face.

(I hurt everyone with my mistakes)

Giles inspected her nose and reported that Faith had done an excellent job of setting the bone. A relief, as Willow didn’t particularly want it to be broken and re-set. From a drawer in the cart he prepped another syringe, and once again Willow tensed up. She had to stay awake. She had to ensure Tara’s safety. If she passed out, what would they do to her?

Would Jenny look at the caged djinn and remember her branding, her scars?

(no tank, Giles)

Her Steward answered the unspoken question on her lips. “It’s just a local anaesthetic, Willow,” he wearily said. He applied it in several locations near her belly at which point Willow turned her head. Long past were the days of fainting at the sight of blood, but she still had a hard time watching someone operate on her.

One layer of stitches and some butterfly tape.

Some time into the sewing of her side, or maybe her bicep, she couldn’t quite tell, Willow finally relaxed, staring at the off-white expanse of her ceiling.

No residue of burning oil lamps here, no thin gray coating of poverty.

It was really quite boring. With all the time she inevitably spent on this cot staring at the ceiling, she should really have something done with it. A mural perhaps. Or a representation of the cosmos. A unicorn or two or five.

Something magnificent.

“Sistine,” Willow murmured, trying to wrap her muddied head around an idea. It danced just outside the range of her thought, mocking her.

“What’s that, Willow?” Jenny asked, somewhere outside the radius of Willow’s fire-bliss world.

“Sistine. I should have a ceiling like Sistine. Bring me Michaelangelo. And a cookie.”

“You’ll get your cookie when I’m done wrapping your ribs and not a moment before,” Giles replied and bless his heart there was a tinge of comedy in his voice, a shred of laughter, mocking the armies of pain and fever marching forth in Willow’s body.

Willow wanted to smile back at him and apologize for everything from the beige ceiling to the crater on his cheek, but cement was pooling on the tips of her eyelashes. She closed her eyes, just for a moment.

When she opened them again she was still in the surgery room, but something had changed. Her own surgeries seemed complete, and she expected the smells of disinfectant and bactine.

There was another smell. Willow sniffed and decided it was rosewater.

She couldn’t see anyone, so she tilted her head to one side. Giles stood in the doorway of the recovery room and there was a small object in his hands. Willow squinted her eyes to get a better glimpse and quickly recognized it. It had come from the Shah’s palace in Persia, where she had requested it as spoils from their victory over the Mongol invasion. It was usually locked in one of the vaults with the other obscenely dangerous magical items.

Giles held it in a particular manner, and a shard of ice pierced Willow’s heart.

He had joined her household four years ago, when he was nearly fifty years old. He had never revealed all his past to her.

When had he become a shaman? And why didn’t he ever tell her?

Rosewater.

Her eyes continued their circuit of the room and fell upon Tara. The Apothecary was still unconscious, her slim body covered with a light blue blanket. Jenny stood on her far side, her brown eyes blazing, her face bleak.

On Tara’s nearer side was a stranger. She was tall and slender with skin so pale it was nearly luminescent. Oak brown hair was lush against her shoulders, creamy and bare with the Victorian dress she wore. She took a step forward, moving from Tara’s feet to her abdomen, trailing her hand along Tara’s body.

The woman had an ethereal and frightening beauty, with high and noble cheekbones. She seemed cast forth from some dark fable, a succubus perhaps, or a fallen angel.

Her teeth were perfect, her lips a crushed red.

Who was this person in her home?

Fear and anger coursed through Willow’s veins like lightning, chasing away the leftover moonbeams and stardust of the painkiller. She looked back at Giles, her mouth opening to chastise him, to demand an explanation.

Nothing emerged.

Her Steward was murmuring and clicking his fingernails against the charm, repetitive, soothing. From her encyclopaedic mind came the name of the incantation he was casting.

(sparrow falling)

Her eyes widened as she realized that Giles and Jenny had betrayed her.

“Damn you, Giles,” she forced through her tongue-blockade, the words slurred with magic. “I trusted you!”

The stranger laughed, a low and dark chuckle. Her long manicured fingernails clicked in time with Giles over the wooden beads of a rosary hanging from her neck as if counting them in a steady fanatical flow.

She was rosewater.

“Too close it was, Willow Rosenberg,” the woman whispered in a Cockney accent, dragging her nails in circles around Tara’s abdomen. Her voice was surprisingly girlish. “You danced with the devil and no one else could hear the music. If you hadn’t been as careful all your insides would have been out and then how could we possibly predict the future? The entrails of the swine only predict for the swineherd.”

Incredulous, Willow watched as the woman peeled back the blanket over Tara’s body, and then she dared lift the plain smock that covered her belly. She placed her palm flat over Tara’s stomach, splaying her fingers wide.

“Hush, little poppet,” the woman crooned. “You are still only a child and should learn to trust your betters.”

Giles finished his incantation. Willow felt all her volition melt away; she couldn’t move, could barely speak.

Consciousness remained.

“Don’t put me in the tank,” she begged again.

Her Steward’s eyes were coldly blazing as those of the Romany woman. “I have my orders, Willow,” he said, his voice firm as glacial sheets. He pressed a button that was on the panel with the light switches. Willow couldn’t turn her head but she didn’t need to. She heard the steel hiss of the wall panel sliding away: it would reveal half a dozen circular tanks filled with a thin green gel. Each was large enough for one human body.

Willow tried to say the plaintive words that summed up all the immediate despair and fear that thickened inside her body but now nothing was released from her mouth.

(you promised)

“That won’t work, you know,” the stranger crooned. “It’s all dark in the house now. You write your thoughts on the madhouse wall and I can read them. The voices of the damned have a song to sing and even if the voices aren’t real, they do have jolly good ideas. Stay sleeping, pet. My head will sing while yours is silent and the orchestra is missing the fiddler.”

“Drusilla,” Jenny growled in warning.

The stranger smiled again, a lunatic twist to her lips. Her hand slid further up under Tara’s shirt, drawing perilously close to her breasts. Willow struggled against her magical bonds.

Then the woman had the temerity to lean forward and with those blood red lips she kissed Tara fully on the mouth. She withdrew slowly, longingly, as if a lover, then traced Tara’s lips with her index finger. “Yes, they call us Drusilla in the night-time, yes they do, and when daylight comes I have a new song to sing.”

Giles snapped his fingers and Willow’s eyes slid shut and stayed shut.

Quiet for a moment in the recovery room. The air reeked of blood and betrayal.

Giles moved first to place the charm back into its leather pouch. Then he took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. With a pocket handkerchief he cleaned the lenses of his glasses and replaced them before going to Willow’s side.

He was acutely aware of both Jenny and the witch Drusilla.

The Romany moved next, advancing until she was across from Giles over Willow’s inert body. “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Permission, forgiveness, neither matters. Not with the weight of the world on our shoulders.”

(Buffy is dead)

He started to pull Willow’s blanket away, but Jenny placed her cool hand on his wrist, halting his movement. His gaze swam up to her weary brown eyes. “She’ll want me to do it, Rupert,” she said softly.

Giles would never tire of hearing his name spoken over her lips. He nodded and stood back from the cot and turned to look at Drusilla. The woman had drawn over a stool and was now sitting at Tara’s side, softly singing an ancient lullaby in a compelling minor tune. Her hand was still on the stomach of the unconscious djinn. He looked back at Jenny to see her holding Willow’s hand, regret etched on her face.

“Did we do the right thing?” he asked.

“Only time will tell,” Jenny replied.

Giles sighed and drew the curtain around Jenny and his employer. A few steps took him to the doorway where Faith stood up from her crouch. She had been eating an apple, cutting off portions with quick strokes of her switchblade.

They both heard drawers open and shut, the rustling of cloth that was Willow’s clothing hitting the floor. A small grunt of exertion and then a machine whirring, mechanical arms to assist Jenny in carrying the unconscious warrior to the top lip of the tank.

A hollow slush of sound, Willow’s naked body descending into the tank. Sharp taps of Jenny’s fingers on the computer, programming it.

Underlying all this was Drusilla’s lullaby, in that minor key, and underneath that was the smell of rosewater.

~

to be continued with Chapter 20: Minotaur

Jen
aka Tara the Phoenix


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