Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda - Chapter 176 - 01/27/14 - COMPLETE

[Katharyn]

Well, Kajun, using Dawn as a model she and Buffy were not 'twins' or clones so I did the same for Hope... They're sisters. But definitely Hope's sister! Not Glory's or Diana's!!

I also choose to interpret (based on knowledge to S5 and I never watched S7 so I don't care what was said in there) that Slayer powers are more like the lottery. Even if you were a twin, you aren't winning that lottery because you have DNA in common. So that should put THAT conspiracy theory to rest. We're facing Glory, another Slayer doesn't give us anything useful

So glad you are waiting for what is 'wrong' because it's a biggie

Snyder Day came from the fact I needed Hope out of school... no other reason, but it is kind of fun. The man has been immortalised (after being part digested and blown up)

I am not sure Giles thinks he is training Tara... I don't think he's that presumptuous. He just sees what works and goes with it. BUT I do agree that she's taking things in as she goes.

Thanks so much

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Two
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: The third part occurring in the window of time known in canon as ‘Crush’
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: So… Crush. Still. Like I said before, there’s a limit on how much comes from canon for these series of chapters and I’m not having Hope/Dawn crushing on someone else just because Spike is gone, so… it’s just what’s happening at the time of Crush of the episode.
That said, the rule remains that if it’s external to the changes that happened earlier in the fic, it has to be dealt with, mentioned or otherwise just happened. And what arrives in Sunnydale is nearly always external…
By the way… if I’ve not already done this by the time you read it, the idea of Buffy and Eddie. Not so far-fetched. I looked the guy who played him up just for reference (since I can’t watch episodes) and… well, even as woman-lovin-woman I’m going to say, yeah, he could’ve dated Buffy… And yes, I have half an eye on the conclusion of the season, even though I don’t quite know how that will go yet.
This first scene would, probably, have been better placed at the end of the last chapter from a dramatic point of view but… it was long enough and ending on Snyder Day? That was just too precious to lose in the middle of the part.



“You never read the Hunchback of Notre Dame?” Willow asked Eddie.

He shrugged. “I like what I like to read. I don’t feel any need to go study some book written hundreds of years ago just because everyone else does. If I read I want to enjoy myself.”

“You would, baby,” Buffy said affectionately . “I mean I was with you. Me and books, we really didn’t get along. I think it came from hanging out in libraries so much. But… this literature class. It’s really opened my eyes.”

“That’s you, not me,” Eddie said. “I’ll catch the remake of the movie.”

“Philistine,” Willow said, making them both of them grin until Eddie turned back to his paper. Coffee was all that had been missing from her breakfast this morning, they’d been in a hurry and to be honest she appreciated it even more later in the day. Coffee after first class… that was the way to enjoy it. Especially with friends.

“So Tara’s taking Hope out?”

“I’m not even sure she’ll have got her out of bed yet,” Willow said. “Your Mom gave her some money too.”

“Yeah, she would. I swear, Willow, that girl… from my Mom’s point of view, it’s like she’s my sister or something. Not Faith’s.”

“Oh, come on. You love it,” Eddie reminded her. “All the benefits of a sister and none of the problems.”

Eddie came from a close, large family even if he was the self-described ‘runt of the litter’. He had older brothers, younger and older sisters. The man spoke from experience when it came to siblings.

“I’ve got to admit, it’s pretty cool. We get to hand her back every time.”

“I don’t think your Mom would ever hand her back, if she had the choice. She misses you needing her to be… you know, a Mom.”

Willow hadn’t needed her Mom to be that for her for a long time either, they were alike in that. But if you were a Slayer, there weren’t many times you needed a Mom. You had to be stronger than that, mostly. A kiss might make it better, but it was rarely a solution to the end of the world. Joyce was just feeling left out.

Finally Eddie closed the paper. “How do you do that?” Willow asked.

“What?”

“Read it backwards.”

“I like to start with sports – hey, have you see this?” he asked. “‘Six found murdered on train at Sunnydale Station.’”

“Six? On a train?”

Maybe for different reasons, but her and Buffy’s ‘professional’ instincts were tweaked.

“Six is a lot,” Buffy said.

“And on a train? That’s unusual,” Willow added. “Even for Sunnydale.”

“Here’s the thing, it was an arriving train, this didn’t happen in Sunnydale,” Eddie said, reading. “Police along the route are ‘debating’ about jurisdiction – probably trying to pass it off rather than grab it.”

“Typical.”

“But for once this wasn’t Sunnydale. Weirdness happens other places too. Who knew?”

“How did they die?” Buffy asked.

Eddie lowered the paper, looking at her. “You see why I love her?” he asked.

“I do. I mean, not in a gay way… but…”

He laughed her micro-babbles off. “I have a girlfriend who hears about six murders and asks ‘how did they die?’”

“You love me?” Buffy asked, leaning forwards, her focus on something different now.

She got the kiss she was looking for by way of an answer.

“Now,” the Slayer said. “How did they die?”

“Neck trauma…” Eddie said, knowing exactly what it meant. “Sunnydale police are leaning towards a gang related evented. Possibly involving - ”

“PCP,” she and Buffy chorused together.

It didn’t take a Master’s degree in Sunnydale to guess what had happened.

“Someone came to town,” Willow said.

“And they couldn’t wait to dine locally.”

----------------------

“You’re making me feel old,” Tara said.

“Oh, you’re not old,” Hope said, flicking through racks of clothes without any real direction. Tara had to admit that some of the stuff Hope was rejecting without more than a glance was actually quite nice looking, even if she’d have needed to be ten pounds lighter and three inches taller to have a hope of pulling them off.

Oh, and five years younger.

Back at Hope’s age, she’d never have dreamed… but now, with a girlfriend and her freedom from the expectations of others? She could at least admit that they would’ve been nice.

And Hope was dismissing them out of hand?

“Thank you.”

“You’re just happy and set in your ways,” Hope grinned at her from behind another rack.

“Nothing about the gay?” Tara asked, trying another rack and holding up a dress for Hope.

The shake of the girl’s head might’ve been about the dress or the gay thing, but only one of those made it vociferous. She put the dress down.

“No,” Hope said. “Your wardrobe is pretty across the board.”

“Thank you,” Tara said. ‘Pretty’ wasn’t bad. ‘Pretty’ she could live with. Hope had been in that wardrobe of course, even borrowed a couple of things until Tara had found out it was for a nineties retrospective. And they were barely into the new century.

“No,” Hope corrected. “I meant… it’s all over the place. Pretty much all across the board, get it? Not… Well, you do have some pretty things, you do - ”

“Don’t try to make it better. Just stop.”

“I mean, I love those boots – they’re not pretty but they’re great and the jacket - ”

“Yes! Everyone loves the boots and the jacket.” No one wanted her to be either/or with the boots and the jacket. Everyone seemed to want her to be both at the same time.

“You mean Willow does,” Hope said, peering round at her.

“She told you?”

“She told me you won’t wear them together,” Hope said.

“Willow talks too much.”

“That’s not news.”

“I guess not.” She drew a breath, she’d been hoping not to do this here, in a store, but… the time felt right. “Look, Hope -

“I knew this was coming.”

“What?”

“The talk.”

“Oh?” Tara asked, slightly disarmed by the fact that Hope had clearly expected it. Had her sister told her? No, Faith wanted this to happen as much as anyone else. They all wanted the best for the girl who hadn’t been a girl a year ago but they all remembered anyway.

“All I did was dress up for once! I got some clothes and I borrowed a few and I dressed up! Why is that bad? I was just trying to look good!”

“It’s not bad,” Tara said.

“So why this? Now?”

“And you did look good,” she insisted, hoping to break through the sudden rush of teen emotions she was being faced with.

“Oh. Right,” Hope said. “Is that my friend or the lesbian talking?”

“Umm… your friend.” Who is a lesbian, of course.

“Oh.” Hope sounded disappointed.

Okay. Was this an entirely different kind of talk? No… couldn’t be. Not a hint. Not a sign and no reason to hide it away - “You want to look good to lesbians?”

“I want to look good, period,” Hope said. “Wanted to. Then. Lesbians are like everyone else right? They like all kinds of things? Well, except men.”

Tara shook her head, eager to dismiss that mistaken assumption. “We like men just fine,” she said. “We just don’t look at them that way or want to be in love with them.”

“Good point,” Hope conceded and held up a pair of barely there cut off shorts more suited to Faith. Probably just for effect. “So… if you’d been a fifteen year old baby-dyke - ”

“Hope!” She could have a mouth like Faith too. Not really as bad but… Yeah.

“Sorry, but if you had…?”

“I’m a bad example,” Tara said.

“No. You were a bad example, but here… I bet some girls, the confident ones, would’ve been all over you like a rash.”

“Maybe,” Tara said, “but they’d have had to find me first. I’d have been home, thinking.”

“Yeah. Thinking… ha!”

There was something, suddenly, sexual about Hope. Not in the same way there was about Faith, a very different thing to that. It was like… she was suddenly a sexually awakened being. No, not awakened. Aware. Let’s go with ‘aware.’ Innocence had dropped away, but hopefully hadn’t been lost.

“You got boys looking at you,” Tara said, finally making her point.

“I know this,” Hope said. “I know how everything works too.”

“I’m sure you do,” Tara was very relieved that she wasn’t supposed to be delivering that talk, the one that Hope had probably assumed she was in for. “You’re good in school and you live with your sister. By now you’d have to know how everything works. That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

“Oh… You mean… I psyched myself up for this for nothing?”

“You knew?”

“Shopping with Anya or Buffy, I could believe that. Shopping with Tara… we’d have been in these little stores, looking for all the things you like, not in the mall.”

“Okay,” Tara admitted. “You got me. We’re not here just to shop and… yeah, I wanted to talk to you.”

“So what did I do? Is a push-up bra so bad?”

“No – umm - Nothing – well, nothing much…” Technically, of course, Hope had never done anything, even the things they remembered.

“Tell me!”

“You didn’t do anything,” Tara promised her, regretting what she’d said a moment before. Because Hope hadn’t. They were… just trying to make sure that she didn’t do something… premature. And something, that for her – and therefore for the whole world – could be dangerous. Hope couldn’t just be what she was… a teenager.

At least that was the way that she was looking at it. A better reason for sticking her nose in somewhere that was really for a Mom, a Dad or a slightly more stable older sister.

“So why are you getting at me?”

“I’m not!” Tara said. “Do we really have to do this here?”

“Hey, you started it,” Hope said, facing her across a rack of clothes. A barrier between them.

“I did not. Look – you showed us all last night - ”

“You want me to get some new clothes, don’t you? You don’t like what - ”

“Hope. No. Look, Buffy’s Mom – Joyce, she and your sister – and me…” How did she put this? It was something no one had ever said to her, something she’d never expected anyone to pass on. But… Hope was a Lehane, she had Faith for a sister and no Mom or parental figures for a lot of her teenage years.

And she had the capacity to be the thing that destroyed the world, which probably gave them all cause to be a little… cautious.

“What?”

“Hope, can’t we do this somewhere – let’s go get a soda or… something.” Something about her face though, it was a very Faith-like expression and kind of unnerving. She was set, she was here and she wasn’t going anywhere until she wanted to. This was exactly what they didn’t need the Key to be.

And I’m making it happen. Yay.

“Okay,” Tara said. “Okay. You’re beautiful.”

“Are you coming onto me?” Hope asked. “Just teasing!”

“This is awkward enough,” Tara told her. “You’re beautiful, you’ve always been beautiful – but now you’ve grown up into it and most important you know you are. Right?”

“I – I don’t know what you mean.”

“Maybe you don’t, but you should, because you need to think about this. You need to think about who you want to be.”

“What – what do you mean?” Hope asked, seeming to be taken aback by this turn of the conversation.

Which was fine, because Tara was still in shock that she was the one who’d been left to do it with her. “You’ve lived with your sister, all this time. You know how she… you know how she lives her life.”

“You mean the boys?”

“And the men and the occasional girl usually called Paige,” Tara said. “I’m not criticising that – no one is.” Maybe that was a little untrue, because Willow and Buffy had, over the years… but that wasn’t why she was here now. They weren’t afraid of Hope turning into Faith. Not exactly. When she was older, if she wanted to sleep around… fine.

“But?”

“But you have a choice,” Tara said.

“Be like her or be like you?” Hope guessed, letting a little bit of anger sneak into her response. The girl thought she knew where this was going, but Tara hoped she was wrong. That once she understood, she’d be thoughtful and more receptive to it.

“You’re never going to be me,” she said. “You’re strong, confident. You won’t sit around and hope no one notices you. You don’t have that in you. And you’re more confident than your sister in some ways. A lot of the time, with Faith, look, you know it’s just bluster. You… you might not be a fighter like she is, but you’re smarter and more willing to look silly if it means you might say something really spot on.”

“You think?”

“That’s what all your school reports say, isn’t it? That you’re not afraid to take a chance?”

“And you think Faith is?” Hope asked, more curious than defensive.

“She’ll charge into battle,” Tara agreed. “But put her hand up and offer ‘I’m a sausage’ in French? No…”

Hope laughed, it was one of her famous mistakes, for all it was just a memory and had never, really happened. Except… it had.

“I – Until I met Willow, I never put myself in the middle of anything. I didn’t draw attention to myself,” Tara said.

“Now look at you,” Hope replied, smiling. “I – I won’t interrupt. Say what you want to.”

The girl could see this wasn’t easy for her and the interruptions weren’t helping at all. “You’re beautiful,” Tara repeated. “And you know it. You want to make the most of what you’ve got. But… do you really want to make the most of it in that?” She pointed to the top Hope was fingering.

“I’m just looking.”

“So… here’s the thing. There are two ways you can go about being the girl everyone wants to be around,” Tara said. “Maybe more, I don’t know. I was never her. I just saw her from the outside…”

“You can be in my clique, if you like,” Hope said, grinning. And that simple joke told Tara that maybe all this wasn’t necessary at all. Hope was already aware of what could happen if she was joking about it.

“Thanks, honey. Look… you can be like Faith. You can exploit what you’ve got, exploit what people can give to you – what you can take from them or you can… take things easy.”

“Take things easy?” Hope asked. “That’s it? I mean, it’s obvious I’m supposed to ‘take things easy.’” The air quotes probably weren’t a good sign.

“No,” Tara disagreed. “You’re supposed to decide for yourself. I’m just saying… you don’t have to be like Faith. Unless you want to be.”

“Would it be so bad?” Hope asked.

Tara shook her head. “She’s my friend. She wouldn’t want to hear me say it, but I love her just as much as Willow loves Buffy.”

“Yeah, even if she liked it, that’d weird her out,” Hope said.

“Yeah, it would. But I do. And we all love you. Your sister’s a Slayer, Hope. I think any normal girl would struggle to keep up with that.”

“And I’m not normal.”

“Yes, you are. Don’t you let anyone tell you you’re not! But… you have – we don’t want you sneaking around on us or putting yourself in danger. Whatever you want to do… we want you to be honest with us. You know.”

“Because if she catches me, it could destroy the world.”

“We can’t ignore it, sweetie,” Tara said. “But – notice I didn’t come here saying that to you. You don’t have to be good because of that. You just have to be honest in your choices and make sure we know where you are and what you’re doing. Maybe that means you need to grow up a little faster than other girls.”

“You mean… I have to be more like Faith?” Hope asked.

And yes, that probably was what she was saying. Faith didn’t feel or show any shame about the way she lived her life. Finally the regret over the truly bad things she’d done had come to the fore and Faith could admit those too. But her personal life? The men? She didn’t apologise for that at all and… why should she?

It wasn’t the same as them but it was always honest and it wasn’t hurting anyone.

“Yeah,” Tara said. “I guess you do. But you make your own choices and… don’t sneak around on us.”

“You do realise what you just told me?” Hope asked.

Oh yes. She did. Hope was young, for all that she was mature, and personally she didn’t want her running around doing the things had sister had and still did. But… like anyone else she got to make her own choices. Better if she was open about those, because if she started hiding things from them… “I’m ready to deal with that.”

So her Dad wouldn’t have thought much of the regime they were putting in place for Hope, but… she wasn’t like other girls. One mistake might end everything. And – they hoped – she had the common sense to chart her own course as well as asking for help.

“And you’ll be here for me?” Hope asked, smiling.

“Not right here,” Tara said, looking around the store. “But you know where to find me. All of us.”

She was reassured that maybe she’d done an okay job with this when Hope rounded the racks that had been between them and kissed her on the cheek. Then that relief receded a little. “Can I have these?” Hope asked.

Jeans. Skinny, skinny jeans… but, bright side, they covered skin. Acceptable trade off versus those hot pants.

“It’s your money from Joyce,” she said. “Are you sure? Don’t you want to try them on?”

“I’ll look good in them,” Hope said with complete self-confidence. It was like shopping with Faith, something she’d done precisely once when Faith had just walked through, picked things off racks in about five minutes and walked out.

Getting her to pay had been the trick that time.

“I guess you will,” Tara said, handing over Joyce’s money.

“You lost a bet to have to do this?” Hope asked. “Right?”

“Or maybe,” Tara said, “I won something else.”

Hope’s grin suggested she thought she knew what that was, but she’d more than likely have been wrong.

Tara waited while Hope was paying and raised her eyebrows when it was obvious the girl was about to ask a question. “So… you all think I’m beautiful?” Hope was trying to be casual about it, but… Yeah, she was growing up.

----------------------------

“I don’t think the police would be very happy with us being in here,” Xander said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Willow pointed out.

“And they’ve already decided what’s happening. Anywhere else in the country, six people dead in a train car, you wouldn’t get near it. But this is Sunnydale. This place looks like it’s going to be back in use tomorrow.”

Apart from all the blood.

Willow knew what Buffy meant, but she really, really hoped that wasn’t it. There were still… possessions too. Some belonging to the people who died, but then there were people who’d run away, she supposed. Six dead didn’t include the three traumatised ones who’d walked in on the bodies on their way through the train when they were about to get off at Sunnydale.

They’d dropped their stuff and ran… Good call.

“Those whacky gangs and their PCP addiction,” Xander commented as they moved through the carriage. None of them knew what they were looking for, but they were just hoping there was something.

Because this wasn’t usual. Vampires – and there was little doubt it hadn’t either been a vampire or some demon that acted very similarly – were territorial. Moving around was a big thing for them, finding new feeding grounds. Getting the rights to hunt there without being staked by the home team. Plus – like everyone else – they got comfortable where they were.

Maybe Sunnydale – attracting more demons anyway – was a little more flexible, but it was also considerably fuller despite the activities of the Slayer. A town this size, Giles once said, shouldn’t have supported more than four or five vampires at a time without being noticed.

There had been periods of weeks where Buffy had slain four or five a night.

Maybe it was the PCP that stopped the locals feeling all the biting that must’ve been going on.

“I think we can conclude,” Xander said, “that the attack happened last night. See, yesterday’s newspaper. A little blood-stained but - ”

“Yeah, we knew that. From today’s paper. Remember? And actually, from when that had to go to print…” Willow said. “We can go with arriving in the evening.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“No,” Willow said. “You made a good point though. For it to come in today’s paper, that vampire must’ve got on the train in daylight. So…?”

“You’re thinking coffin?” Buffy asked.

“I’m thinking coffin. Are you thinking coffin?”

“I’m thinking it makes all kind of sense.”

“You don’t think it could be Dracula again?” Willow wondered. “Travelling by train might have that old timey feel he likes.”

She really didn’t want them to have to deal with Drac again now. It seemed like there was just no putting him down, not permanently and then there was that whole Buffy obsession vampires seemed to have – they either wanted to kill her or sleep with her. Possibly both – but if so then in no particular order.

“Guys,” Xander said.

“Nah, I think he’s more your coach and horses old timey,” Buffy said.

“Guys!”

“It may not be something you noticed,” Buffy said to him. “But we’re not guys.”

“Look, we do have the boobs,” Willow pointed out by way of confirmation. With actual pointing.

“Fine, girls. Whatever. But – I’m not eating bugs again. If it is the Master – if it is Dracula, then you tie me to a chair and leave me there. Because I’m not becoming that Renfield guy again.”

“It’s not Dracula,” Buffy said. “You’d already be snacking on roaches and I’d already… well, I’d already be doing my thing too.”

“But it’s someone willing to cross California landscape, setting off during the day, by train. That takes more guts than most vampires. Or a certain craziness.”

“You had to say that, didn’t you Will?” Xander asked.

“What?”

“Crazy.” He reached into the luggage rack and pulled out… a porcelain doll.

“Uh-oh.”

Yeah… they knew what that meant. It wasn’t a coincidence. Was it? Could it be a coincidence? Had there been some child who’d left it in the panic? Or perhaps some middle aged woman who collected dolls from the home shopping channels?

No… because they generally didn’t paint little dribbles of blood from the corner of her mouth. In fact, they didn’t have little pointy teeth custom made into the dolls head either.

“Drusilla…” Buffy said.

“Is there even any point in trying to predict what she might be doing?” Xander asked.

“She’s insane,” Buffy said. “That’s like the definition of ‘unpredictable’.”

“Actually,” Willow said, “people who repeat things and expect it to end differently, that’s the definition of insanity. So, probably, she’s going to come after us.”

“Especially if she’s found out about Spike…” Buffy said.

*************************

[Kajun]

Katharyn, And after all that worrying the “talk” with Hope went pretty well. She is growing up quick… in some ways. I love Tara so much but.. yeah.. she’s got a pretty Bad Wardrobe thing going on.

“Especially if she’s found out about Spike…” Buffy said.

I actually gasped reading that line. I kept thinking of Dru during the train investigation but I completely forgot about Spike! She is going to be soooo pissed. But will she go after Diana, the one responsible for his demise, or the Slayer? Probably both! Crap.. Dru has premonitions and she’s crazy so she could “see” Hope is a big ball of energy AKA the Key. Buffy and the gang better make sure they keep the girl far away from that wicked vamp and her little doll too ---coz.. creepy! Dru is such an interesting character. Can’t wait to see how this goes!

Can you tell I’m having fun speculating? LOL

[Katharyn]

Oh, damn... Kajun. I hate it when I make people 'gasp' (in a story!). I can't remember how well I followed through on it We'll both have to see!

Hope's a generally good kid. She's not going to cause trouble or do anything silly. She has lots of examples around her to learn from (what to do what not to do!) It's the whole 'anti-Dawn' thing...

I honestly don't remember what and how much I did about Dru (which is distressing when you had good points in your speculation!) But yes, I love her as a character too.

So, question for you... since you're the only person de-lurking with us at the moment...

IF (and I mean if) I were to do a T/W story for this year's Nanowrimo (I promised myself I'd do something else but... hey...) would you rather...
a) An original sequel to the Raiders story from last year
Or...
b) An original T/W urban fantasy...

I have more of an idea already for Raiders but it's not as much the girls as something based in canon would be, which has always bugged me (despite enjoying last year) but I also have this idea in my head about the girls in the big city, caught up in the supernatural. I guess (though I don't like to think of it this way) it'd be more 'Angel' than 'Buffy' but that's just shorthand. It'd actually be more 'any number of urban fantasy novels' than Buffy....

Thoughts? And you won't be either held to account or the sole decider Anyone else out there can weigh in until end of October

More tomorrow for CWS.

Thanks
Katharyn

[Katharyn]

I refer any readers to my comment and question posted in the reply to Kajun above...

And so, to part 133.

Dru.

Katharyn

---------------------

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Three
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: ‘Crush’ continues with the investigation of what happened on the train.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: I finally got with the programme at the end of the last part and added, duh-duh-duh, a cliff-hanger. Like you should… But why? You know what’s going to happen (kind of) and the bits you don’t know are the quieter ones, about the relationships etc. so… I should probably just admit to myself that in a half million word story, structured around canon you guys already know, there’s not much point in worrying about the intricacies of the form of a novel, a serial or even just a totally original fanfic.
Or, you know, I could just pretend I’m George R Martin or something… (Zinger!) Now there’s a man who surpasses even me in wordiness and not getting to the point. Or having a point that emerges sooner than five novels down the line. On the other hand, the man is – somewhat – responsible for Lena Headey being...
Blonde.
Badass.
You know what? Actually, I forgive him.
Thanks to: George R. Martin. Just for the Lena thing. And making me feel better about my writing… See above.



“We definitely shouldn’t be doing this!” Willow hissed.

“Will, if they could hear us, they’d just let us in,” Buffy replied.

She had a point there, Willow had to agree. But they’d done the rounds of Spike and Dru’s old haunts and – surprise surprise – not found the insane vampire there. In fact no one had seen anything… No sign of any more feeding, though Drusilla must’ve been pretty full after pigging out the way they thought she had. Oh, and the sun was only just about to go down.

It was time, Buffy had decided, to make sure that Hope knew the dangers. When the end of the world was at stake – not just your own personal safety – you made double and triple sure.

And she was right there with her best friend. She triple checked she’d got everything in her purse in the morning, let alone when she was messing with the end of the world.

The thing was that - right now - ‘being right there with best friend’ meant breaking into Faith’s apartment. You just knew that couldn’t end well… But the music from inside was so loud that they had no idea if the sisters were in or out. All they knew was that they wouldn’t have wanted to live one of the apartments around the Lehane’s.

“You check Hope’s room, okay?” Buffy said did a one handed pull up to replace the key in its hidey hole beside the door. It was there because – as a Slayer – you never knew how torn up your clothes might get.

Or whose floor you might’ve left them on if you were as slutty as Faith.

“Uh-uh,” Willow said. “You go in first. If Faith hits you you’ll get a bruise. If she hits me, I’ll be in hospital and Tara will be sooo mad.”

Buffy sighed and pushed the door open. The place wasn’t at its tidiest, having steadily degraded again since Joyce had stayed here and moved in some of her ‘homely touches’. In fact it looked like the kind of place that two young women with no parental influence would live. Which was logical enough really…

Couldn’t blame them for that, even if it offended her own sense of neat.

“See? Nothing…”

“I guess we have to check the…” Buffy gestured vaguely towards the bedrooms.

“Dibs on Hope’s,” she said quickly.

“Oh, come on!” Buffy protested. “At least give me rock, paper, scissors.”

“Why?”

“Because… you’re my friend. And you shouldn’t just dibs. Dibs isn’t fair, it’s just being quick.”

The burdens of friendship. Sometimes you had to risk taking one for the team. Even when you were the quickest… “Okay, fine. Just for all the times you saved my life. One – two – three. Paper wraps stone.”

Buffy was always stone.

“Best of three?”

“No way!”

Waved on by Buffy, Willow went to Hope’s room to check it, wincing at the volume of the stereo and the pounding music that seemed to make the whole place shake. Just whose taste was that? What band was it?

Was it really music?

Would it sound better with the volume down?

Where’s it even coming from? Faith’s room?

I used to go out with someone in a band, I used to stand by the speakers. I don’t mind loud music.

I didn’t used to mind it.

Damned kids.

Am I getting old?

No sign in Hope’s room either, other than shopping bags that confirmed Tara’s trip this morning had been successful. Maybe Hope would listen to what Tara had told her – or should’ve told her. She wasn’t here though… It was hardly the place to chill out.

“No sign - ”

She stopped as she noticed Buffy, holding Faith’s door open but very deliberately looking outwards rather than into the room.

“What - ?” she asked, peering past her friend and then took up an identical pose. “Oh my God, I’m blind….”

“Umm… sorry,” Buffy said, apologising to the occupants.

“Yeah, sorry,” Willow stuck her hand back in the door and waved. “And hi… whoever you are. Don’t mind us, just… keep doing what you were doing…”

Buffy hit her on the back, but she didn’t dare to turn around and confront her about it.

“What do you two want?” Faith asked.

Willow thought she heard a moan. And not a disappointed moan. No, it was the kind of moan that said Faith really was keeping doing what she was doing…

Fair enough, we did her to.

I didn’t want to know she could multi-task that way.

“Umm – we – we were just looking for - ”

“Where’s Hope?” Buffy clarified.

“Out.”

“Out - where?”

“How should I know. The Bronze?”

“You let her go alone?” Buffy challenged.

“I’m busy. And… yeah. She’s not a prisoner. She’s a smart and a big girl – No, don’t you move. Keep going.”

The last part obviously wasn’t for them, but the tone of command – demand – in her voice made Willow freeze as well.

“Well, we just wanted to make sure, what with the insane vampire with a grudge that’s out there,” Buffy said.

This time the sigh was Faith’s.

“Aww, fuck. Wait,” she said. “Let me put my pants on. Everything here’s suddenly a bit of a let-down anyway…”

“Sorry…” Willow said softly. If Faith heard her, she ignored it.

Then louder.

“I thought – I thought things were going well with Paige?” she asked, just for something to say. Because what could you say? Buffy hit her on the arm though. ‘What?’ she mouthed.

“They are. Why’d you ask?”

“Oh. No reason,” she said, since that definitely wasn’t Paige in there. “Well, take your time, put a bra on if you think you need to, it’s usually a good idea before Slayer type activities… A top. Clothes, you know. Don’t stop at pants. Please…?”

She hardly dared look as Faith emerged from the room, half-dressed but pretty much all ‘decent’ if you considered a day at the beach and a handful of other clothes in her hand, as ‘decent.’

“Shit, wait.” Faith stuck her head back in the door to her room. “Hey, you, it’s was fun – till everything went limp. There are pop-tarts in the kitchen. Help yourself and be gone when I get back.”

Whoever it was in there said something to her that Willow didn’t catch. It sounded like ‘will you call me?’

Faith just shook her head and walked away. “Don’t you just fucking hate it when they get needy?”

Willow and Buffy looked at each other. Not what they’d intended when they arrived, but on the other hand, it just went to show Tara had been the right choice to speak to Hope…

“Sure. Hate it. Yeah.”

--------------------

Arriving back from shopping with Hope, Tara had been to a couple of classes and then found herself with another of those urgent messages that called her to the Magic Box.

‘Vampire emergency’ had been her greeting and – to be honest – that had surprised her. Vampire related emergencies had been pretty rare because, frankly, despite the natural association of Slayer with vampire, it wasn’t the thing that kept them up at night.

Well, it was, but only because of patrolling. Which was routine.

But an insane vampire was apparently more serious… Certainly this insane vampire sounded to be…

Insane equalled unpredictably. Terrifyingly unpredictable and Buffy was definitely rattled, for all her Slaying and experience and the fact they had a real, live, Hell God in the area threatening to end the world.

This was like the last thing they needed.

Since checking in Tara had been looking around, partly for Hope and partly for evidence of this Drusilla. She’d never met the vampire – and didn’t really want to start that relationship now either – but she’d been told what to look for. Tall. Dark haired with vampire pale skin. Beautiful in a sort of ethereal way.

And crazy like a fox.

Or other really crazy thing…

Combining the two searches had brought her to the Bronze, while she wondered about the fact that they already seemed to have stopped with the twenty-four seven guarding of Hope. Letting her have more of a normal, teenage life as she… well, she was ready to have more of a life and she knew the risks now.

All the different kinds of risks.

The theory was that now she knew everything she’d be more careful. She was a good kid; she could be responsible and cautious.

With the usual problems in Sunnydale.

Ancient Hell Gods.

And with boys.

That was the theory, anyway. Possibly about to be disproven.

See, Glory didn’t know who Hope was. Didn’t even know she was looking for a person. But the boys… yeah, boys knew who Hope was now.

In a place filled with students – fortunately mostly from High School – there were three people here who stood out a mile. She felt like she was one of them, actually, because she wasn’t dressed for a night out, was often fashion impaired and was all alone in her age group.

Another of the three was Hope.

Evidently last night – and this morning’s – talk had inspired Hope to do what she’d been asked to. Make her own choices.

That choice might well have been to live up to her heritage and just admit that she was Faith Lehane’s sister. Dancing with some guy Tara had never seen before, bare arms up above her head – it was the hands that had first caught Tara’s eye - but Hope was keeping him from touching her through sheer presence, Hope was… Yeah, she was every bit a Lehane.

She just used her powers a little differently, at least on this evidence.

There’d be other choices Hope had to make, but… fine. At least she’d found the girl and could keep an eye on her. Or try to. The place was packed, but then it was a Friday night and today had been ‘Snyder Day’. Something about Willow’s ex-teacher who Buffy may or may not have gotten killed.

So that was all fine.

The problem was that she considered that the third person here that was out of place was… very probably Drusilla.

Taller even than Hope – who was in the middle of that late growth spurt in more than one direction – the supposed creature was longer haired and pale enough to be a vampire. Since she wasn’t dressed very Goth, it seemed even more likely.

And this was Sunnydale. While there might be a lot of vampires in town, usually not for long - Slayers being what they were.

This one had to be Drusilla didn’t it? That was the way things worked on TV and here in this town too. The one vampire you were looking for ended up hunting in the same place occupied by the girl who’d end the world if she died in the wrong circumstances.

For Sunnydale that was just obvious.

Even though she was worried about Hope – and the hands of the boy that she was with – Tara’s eye remained largely on the vampire that worried Buffy and the others so much.

The way that Drusilla moved through the crowd – danced through the crowd actually – was almost hypnotic. The ease of it, while she was struggling and apologising to just about everyone, Drusilla just slipped through there. They parted around her.

No belly dancer had ever captivated attention like Drusilla did now and she wasn’t even exposing much skin below her neck. It was the movement, the aura of unpredictability – even though the dance was slow and sensual – that drew attention. Sure, her arms were bare, subtly muscled in a way most vampires of her age and pedigree would not possess, but aside from that her clothing was all very demure. Girlish, even though she was plainly a woman.

Or had been when she died.

But it didn’t matter who you were. Boys, girls… everyone within range was captivated by her and meanwhile Drusilla was totally oblivious of them.

Except no vampire in the company of the living was ever truly oblivious. Tara had read the books Giles had on his shelves. Drusilla would feel the heat. Smell the warmth. The beats of hundreds of hearts would tantalise her appetite, especially as the speed and power of those heartbeats rose with the dancing and the captivation. It was believed that the pheromones of the crowd would be exciting her too. Strong emotions did that and there were a lot of strong emotions here.

For the vampire it was more likely sensory overload rather than oblivion that saw her so calm…

Either that or madness.

Eyes closed and swaying to music only she could hear, Tara could see that the people around the vampire were shifting to Drusilla’s beat. How was she doing that? Magic of some sort?

It wasn’t supposed to be possible for most vampires, but they knew that Dracula and some of the others possessed powers that – any other time – would be attributed to a branch of magic.

This though? It seemed more like some sort of presence that sucked in those who were around her…?

Even she found she was caught up in it, less able to think clearly. Snatching for her mental thread as she got closer to the vampire.

The obvious was her refuge.

Do.

Something.

She clung to that idea, wouldn’t let it go away. Pull the fire alarm perhaps? Yeah, she could do that but that would do more than break the spell, the emotions that would be unleashed – panic - could easily inspire the vampire to unleash her nature.

A vampire as old as Drusilla could tear through this place before more than a handful got out. With the speed and strength of an unbalanced – predatory - mind, it would make the massacre on the train look like a fight between two four year olds over a toy.

And it would’ve been her doing.

So not the fire alarm, not something that would create mass panic. But if Drusilla was as unpredictable as everyone said and – hello – vampire not currently ripping throats out, then she could launch herself into that murderous state at any moment anyway…

What do I do? What do I do? She had all these people to consider. Getting them away from Drusilla wasn’t an option without the alarm, getting Drusilla away from them maybe? Getting the vampire’s attention?

Except… in the hypnotic moments where she’d observed – and felt – the effect of the vampire on the crowd, she’d missed how close Hope and the boy she’d been dancing with/near/in proximity to had gotten to the undead in their midst.

And then she had no chance to be the one that Drusilla was paying attention to. The vampire opened her eyes and they were fixed in one place.

On the oblivious Hope, of course.

She sees her…

----------------------

“So, this Drusilla bitch?” Faith asked.

“What about her?”

“Badass?”

Willow and Buffy looked at each other, both considering their responses.

“Not much of a fighter,” Buffy said. “But she’s a survivor. And she’s just plain crazy too.”

“You’d probably like her,” Willow added.

“You really think she’s at the Bronze though?” Faith pressed.

“Depends if she’s here for us,” Willow suggested. Balance of probability was that they were getting the blame for Spike biting the dust – in a very literal way – and Dru being pissed about that… well there was a good chance about that part too. They’d had a vampire fondness for each other, those two.

After a century or so it must be easy to get set in your ways.

On the other hand, maybe she was so crazy that she didn’t even care or remember?

“And if she is?”

“Sure,” Buffy said. “There are other places. But that was the last one she’d know that we went to a lot. She knew the place and it’s easy to get into, even for a vampire.”

“No cover charge?” Willow said.

“They don’t have to be invited,” Faith corrected.

“And that. There’s the other hand, you know…” Willow said.

“Which other hand?”

“The… other one? The one that’s all ‘this is Sunnydale’?”

“Actually,” Buffy said. “I think ‘this is Sunnydale’ is the first hand, not the other hand. A club full of people that might include the one girl in all the world that can destroy it? That’s Sunnydale right there. Where else would Drusilla be?”

“So… is anyone else worried about this?” Willow asked.

She only had to look at their faces to know the answer.

------------------------

She’s insane.

And we know what that means…

She’s sees Hope for what she really is.

The Key part of her, that was what was fascinating the vampire and drawing her in. Tara couldn’t hear Drusilla, she was too far away. There was too much music and too many other people. But she saw the change.

The spell, whatever it had been, over the other young men and women of the Bronze just dissipated and they barely noticed the difference, they’d just been having a good time. She thought that she’d gained some clarity too, that her own mind cleared a little as well. She’d hardly been immune then.

And now all of Drusilla’s focus was on the girl Tara had to protect.

One girl in all the world that can actually end it…

Where had that come from?

True though…

There had been some speculation – talk she’d stamped on before Faith heard it – that Hope’s death wouldn’t destroy everything. Just if she were used in Glory’s ritual. But… no, they didn’t want to follow that line of thinking.

And Hope was one of them, she had to be protected in her own right.

Protected from this creature.

No, she told herself. She had to get this straight, recognise what this was. Drusilla wasn’t focused on Hope at all. She was only focused on the Key.

She imagined that those red, red lips – stained almost to the colour of drying blood anyway – formed the word ‘Shiny’ as Drusilla made her way through the crowd towards Hope.

There was no more dance, there was no more mood enhancing by the vampire. Some girl got in the vampire’s way and she was removed, violently, screeching as her arm was wrenched from its socket and dislocated. Only her friends even seemed to notice. Hope didn’t… Too much noise, the music was too loud.

This was where it was going to start to get dangerous, for other people. Not just the poor girl who was sobbing on the floor as Tara pushed right past her. She didn’t have time to worry about her, she needed to get to… Hope.

Thinking and worrying about everyone else here meant one thing. Not letting the world end. Everything else came after that.

Once again, as she moved past a column, she considered the fire alarm but it was still too dangerous. What Drusilla could do to everyone else, the simple fact this place had about ten exits and she could easily lose sight of Hope in a panicked crowd.

So what choice did she have?

Tara pushed herself onto the dance floor and – typically – no one got out of her way. “Excuse me. Sorry. Pardon me. Sorry! I just need to – Could I – I really need to get over to – My bad, sorry. Oh, is that your bag? Sorry. Sorry – I didn’t mean to grab you there – It’s really important – Sorry, oh will that wash out? Excuse me!!”

Finally though, she was getting close even though it was probably only because Drusilla was treating this as a hunt, something to be savoured, that she had a chance to get close before the vampire. If she’d wanted to, the demon could’ve torn her away through the crowd in moments and scattered them all.

In pieces and gallons of blood.

It was one last surge, running full body into the crowd – and hoping she wasn’t surfed like you saw at concerts – that let her get in between Drusilla and the oblivious Hope at the very last moment, pushing Faith’s sister behind her.

Obviously being manhandled did finally put Hope on alert and made her lash out, smacking her on the arm. “Oww!” she exclaimed, even though she was face to face with an angry vampire that didn’t want her to be there.

“Tara?”

“Not now, honey. Trouble.”

Hope should know well enough what that would mean, her sister was a Slayer and they’d grown up in… not the best circumstances. Trouble was trouble and –

Drusilla’s eyes shifted to her and she felt the pull now… An unconscious presence, it was all that she could do not to give herself over to the vampire’s mental caress. Knowing, in this moment, that to have the life and the blood sucked out of her by this… dark queen, would be a privilege and it would feel good.

And she knew – feared – actually hoped it was coming. That those lips would deign to drink from her after the teeth had ripped open her throat.

Except… There was only one person who got to bite her. One person she existed for. One person she sustained and sustained her… and she wasn’t here right now. Willow.

No wonder Hope had remained oblivious… what had she made of it? Having that focus on her? Feeling that much… promise?

But what was Drusilla going to do now?

Nothing, she wasn’t about to let her.

But what am I going to say?

What am I going to do?

“What are you?” the vampire asked and Tara was almost aware of the voice being in her head, rather than hearing it over the decibel level of the Bronze dance floor on a busy night.

“You – you should l-leave,” Tara managed to say.

“Sh-should I-I?” The mockery wasn’t especially cruel, not particularly. More like Drusilla was just curious and trying on her way of speaking after her voice had let her down.

Still, way to make an impression, girl.

And if anything you’d have said that it bonded them, when Drusilla took her hand and twirled her to the music. Except the hand was cool, like a dead thing and the laughter was just… off.

Round and round she was sent until she was getting dizzy, about to lose her feet. “Dance with me. Dance with me!”

Tara groped at anything that could help… Fire. Fire would help. She channelled heat into her fingertips and pushing against Drusilla’s grasp on her, then in the middle of her chest. The vampire yelped, looking betrayed that she’d been denied further fun and then shoved her back, sending her sprawling.

Allowing Drusilla to return her attention back to…

“Come here… pretty, pretty…”

********************

[DaddyCatALSO]

Ooooooooooooo............................

[Kajun]

Katharyn, Buffy and Willow playing RPS and calling dibs was too funny! Faith may as well get used to these unwelcome interruptions. That’s just what happens when you are needed. And she really is needed.

You did a great job describing Dru and the weird effect she was having on everyone. I got goosebumps! Then when she saw Hope the goosebumps were replaced with dread. Oh NO! Tara understands that Dru is drawn to the Key, not a teenage hottie enjoying a night out. That’s much more dangerous than a vamp looking for a little snack! I was starting to worry that Tara would eventually fall helplessly under Dru’s influence. The focusing techniques her mom and Diana taught her are paying off big time! Good thing it was Tara searching for a way to help and not me.. I probably would have pulled the fire alarm first, then realized, too late, that was a huge mistake! LOL

Dru better pay for shoving Tara.. GRRRR. Where the heck are Willow, Buffy and Faith??? Where’s Diana?? Her protégé is in danger. Where are the dogs? Somebody better show up soon. ACK!! Tara’s gonna flip out if Dru escapes with Hope. The teen is pretty smart though. If Dru does kidnap the girl, maybe Hope could use her “shininess” as an advantage, turn the tables and mess with Dru’s mind. The vamp can turn into a wailing heap on the floor with the right provocation. Distract her long enough to get away or, at least, stall until the Slayers and Witches come to the rescue!

Story time.. I wouldn’t rule out something completely original. You’ve created plenty of original, and based on, characters and storylines thru the years to draw from. Actually, Diana and the dogs are probably my favorites. That’s a character(s) I would really enjoy reading in a novel. She’s fascinating. But between the two choices I’d vote for the T/W urban fantasy.

[Katharyn]

Is that a ghost Daddycatalso? Nice to know the cliffhanger ending worked. Thanks

Kajun - It's a general rule of life that entering Faith (or Anya's) bedroom without a very clear what is NOT happening there is something you should not experience! It's Sunnydale after all

It just goes to show, I was actually afraid of under-writing Dru... but it seems to have worked for you She's a different kind of vampire and a fave of mine (I made her VW's creator in Sidestep of course) I love too how you are making connections between things I set up ages ago and things that happen here (Diana's meditation) without me making it explicit (Unless I did!?)

I can't say much about the next parts, but safe to say Dru is about to have a bad night...

Re the story: I am not ruling out something original. Not at all. I've spent a couple of days plotting the raiders story and actually - in a pulp movie style - I like how that is going. I've just had vague ideas about the urban fantasy one. I could shortcut some stuff by making it a kinda/sorta sequel to CWS (you wouldn't have had to have read this, but it would feature some of the same characters at least by reference). Nice to have your opinion. I will probably plot that story too before end of October and then whichever sounds more fun for both reader and writer will get the nod.

I can still do the other some other time when I sort out the reasons it lost!

EDITED TO ADD: Gah!!! I have too many ideas... While brainstorming for the possible T/W urban fantasy story I came across a Victorian era story I'd probably write with T/W-like characters (but not them) as well... Too many ideas. Not enough room in head. Not enough time!

PS - next part will post in a a few hours.

Thanks
Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: The final part of ‘Crush’. And there’s still a reason to call it that…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: I had to end the last part a little short – at least in the first draft. It would’ve been too long with what follows attached, or this would’ve been left much shorter than it is. Also, isn’t it a great place to put a cliff-hanger? Especially when, for once, you girls and guys don’t actually know what’s happening. Oh, you can guess… after all, it’s unlikely I’ll kill Hope here (but not impossible) however I’m wondering if anyone will actually guess the conclusion to Crush? The clue’s in the name, really… See now I’d said too much.
I’m indulging myself here… having a little fun and playing with the dead-pool too, which hasn’t been mentioned for a while even though certain people remain convinced a major character is paddling in the shallow end.…
Thanks to: My Mum and Dad who are feeding us today… Oh, we like their company too.




“Well, the place isn’t in chaos with oceans of blood flowing from the door,” Willow said looking at the Bronze now they’d arrived. “That’s a plus.”

“Where do you get this stuff?” Faith demanded. “Oceans of blood? I mean… c’mon.”

“I read.”

“Oh, yeah, I tried that once. Wordy fucking writers who won’t say something in ten words if they can say it in a hundred.”

Willow, feeling quite defensive about it really, recognised this wasn’t really the time or the place to have a debate with Faith on the merits of literature and so left it alone.

Besides, the Slayer was right, even if for the wrong reason. There certainly were some over-wordy writers out there but sometimes they came up with good stuff. Quotable, which was important if you wanted to quip in a literary way rather than just about the TV or movies.

It was a better class of quippiness.

Quips with the Giles seal of approval.

“There,” Buffy said, pointing past the gaggle of people at the entrance. As well as no oceans of blood, there really didn’t seem to be any kind of chaos. But what there was -

Tara, on the ground and Hope in Drusilla’s grasp.

Breathe.

Tara was okay, she was down on her ass but she was moving and didn’t seem hurt. In fact there was the lingering sense of power… fire. Tara had burned Drusilla? Dangerous in the circumstances… and what had it accomplished? On her ass and with Hope in Dru’s tender hands… and she was being tender. Careful.

Controlling but careful…

“That right there, that’s why you don’t let your sister out alone,” Buffy said striding forwards so they both had to hurry to keep up.

Faith grimaced, taking solace in grim humour the same as the other Slayer. “And I thought you were worried she’d start slutting around.” The ‘like me’ went unspoken.

Especially given how they’d found her at the apartment.

“With you I’m worried for the boys,” Buffy said. “But she’s not you.”

“Stop deflecting. If you’d put this vampire down when you had all those chances - ” Faith said.

“Well, maybe if I’d put you down - ”

“Hello?” Willow stepped between them. “We have another priority,” she said. “Maybe we should focus on getting the Key that can destroy the whole universe back from the insane vampire -?”

It was that very moment when Drusilla noticed them. Or at least the Slayers. Probably not her, she hadn’t been much of a hindrance to Spike and Dru the last few times they’d been around. Nope, no reason to remember the redhead…

Except the red hair. Which Dru had once been fascinated by and that was a really scary thing – earning her fascination.

As Hope must be finding out now.

“Ooooh,” Drusilla cooed. “The Slayer’s are here. One – two – buckle my shoe.”

“Let her go, Dru,” Buffy said.

“You don’t get to call me that,” the vampire replied testily. “You’re not my friend.”

“It’s me you want,” Buffy said.

“Do I?” She actually looked unsure, like she was trying to remember if that really was it.

Meanwhile Willow was waving Tara back with little gestures that meant ‘get away from her.’ Tara didn’t need much encouragement, slowly scooting away and still on her butt.

“Are you shiny on the inside too?” Drusilla asked Hope, no longer distracted by their arrival. “Shall we see?”

Buffy swallowed; likely realising she’d have to make herself more attractive as a target, while Hope was whimpering in Dru’s grasp. More so since she’d been called what she was, described as Drusilla saw her.

As only the mentally ill could. Apparently that included the undead.

“I killed Spike,” Buffy lied, but convincingly enough to capture the vampire’s attention for a moment.

“Did you? Oh, my poor boy.”

“Yeah. I killed your boytoy, doesn’t that just make you wanna rip my head off?” Buffy challenged.

Willow winced, given how Dru was holding onto Hope there was a real danger about giving her any ideas along that sort of line.

Buffy’s wince suggested she’d realised that too.

“Don’t you want to… umm, beat me?” she asked. “Or something vengeful. Get the venging out of your system?”

“Oh…” Drusilla said. “I should be sad, but I can’t seem to care. I’ve had such a lovely time with Grandmamma… How do you think this one tastes? She’s so shiny and does shiny taste? Do you know?”

“You’re not finding out - ” Faith surged and Dru flicked Hope’s head sideways, tightening her neck muscles and threatening her spine. Hissing as she threatened to tear that fragile - so fragile - column of bones and nerves right out of Faith’s sister.

Faith didn’t need to be restrained by Buffy. She got the message right away and stopped while her sister whimpered and pleaded with her eyes.

Pleaded for Faith to stop. Pleaded for help too.

And this was why you didn’t go dancing with boys.

Get yourself a nice girlfriend and this just didn’t happen.

“This is mine,” Dru said. “Mine! So shiny… so shiny…” And she went back to stroking Hope’s hair like a favoured pet.

What did they do? Dru had her back to a wall; there was no flanking them or sneaking up on her. There was no dropping down from the lighting gantries above either. No, the roof was lower in this part of the Bronze.

Maybe Tara had an idea though… Willow helped her up after her girl finally inched her way back to her. “You burned her?”

“Hi, to you too,” Tara complained as she brushed herself down, focusing on the unfolding drama now she was back on her feet.

“Oh, hi. You burned her?”

“I tried… It kind of just went smoky though. I don’t do well with fire.”

“What do we – wait – is that Xander?”

Tara nodded, looking past Drusilla, a little to the right and up at the small window. It was barred, of course, mostly just there to make sure that there was some ventilation if the AC gave out, but Xander couldn’t have gotten through it if he wanted to so what was he doing out there?

Craning his neck, for one thing, trying to see Drusilla… Talking to someone else who was out there. Anya? She couldn’t have fit either, and Giles would’ve been more use. Maybe… if they had a crossbow out there then maybe through the window… ? Neither of them was a good enough shot to risk that with Hope in Drusilla’s arms. It could easily go right through the dead flesh of the undead.

No, Xander was gesturing to them.

She checked, Buffy and Faith were still engaged verbally with Drusilla, trying to talk her into a mistake. Not likely when she was insane as well as paranoid.

Not to mention a demon and thus their mortal enemy.

Immortal.

“What does he mean?”

“I think he means…” Tara hesitated, looked at the scene and there was a flash of something big at the window. What the hell was it? “He means – GET DOWN!” Tara finished and ran forwards towards the vampire and its hostage, bent low and threw herself forward to grab Hope by the ankles just as –

The wall shattered behind Drusilla?

What the hell was that? A SWAT team?

What was Tara doing? What had she realised?

No, not a SWAT team, not unless they had giant hands! Oh God, it was… Troll…

Xander had brought a troll.

In her surprise Drusilla must’ve relaxed her grip on Hope enough that Tara’s weight pulled the girl downwards on top of her, even though the vampire still had some sort of hold.

The second blow from the troll’s massive fist wasn’t at the superstructure of the club, instead the backhand smacked Dru and sent her flying.

Then Olaf – who else? - came through the hole he’d created, bricks falling around his ears like rain.

By now people really were panicking, screaming and running but away which was definitely the right thing to do.

Even so, when the troll came through the hole, he had to dodge around the people – and the Tara/Hope tangle on the ground. Hope’s leg was raised though, her ankle in Dru’s grasp after the vampire had kept hold even when she was sent flying. Hope had cried out in pain too.
Obviously Willow’s immediate urge was to go to her lover, but Tara waved her off and indicated that she was okay. Hope seemed intact too, which left Dru…

The vampire was impaled on a piece of rebar that had previously been a part of the column she’d smashed into but was now severed and bent inwards. The vampire had hold of it and was trying to pull herself off of it with one hand while holding onto her shiny by the ankle…

She was insane, what could you do?

It wasn’t a fatal wound, not for a vampire. Not quite in the heart and not wood either. It was just… inconvenient.

“Come here shiny-shiny… Come here precious…”

“Now what?” Buffy asked.

“I don’t know, I wasn’t really planning. How about we just stake the bitch?” Faith suggested.

But there was no time. A troll hammer – which hadn’t actually been used to breach the wall – swung in an arc that took out still more of the structure and didn’t slow down as it mashed Drusilla’s head against what was left of the column behind her and… squished it flat.

Messy.

--------------------

For a long moment everyone looked at each other. It was shock, Tara realised. No one had expected this - except possibly Xander who was just now climbing through the hole in the wall.

The first thing that happened after that was that Hope started to kick at the hand that was still holding onto her ankle. Drusilla hadn’t gone up in a puff of dust, even though… Yeah, her head was distributed between the rubble that had been the wall and the flat of Olaf’s hammer.

And that meant, eventually, it could regrow… but how did anything regrow that kind of damage? Surely it would require blood, lots of blood and someone to actually make sure that she – somehow – ingested it. You were talking tubes for that, surely because… there was no mouth. No teeth.

No face and basically a head you could put through a mailbox.

Hope, shouting abuse at what was left of the twitching vampire, finally disconnected her ankle from its hand and then kicked Drusilla viciously in the side. “Sheesh – I was having a good time, you bitch!”

Faith seemed happy and impressed by that. “How you doing, Hope? You okay?”

Hope? Not Hopeless?

“You mind giving me a hand up?” Tara asked Buffy who was the next one over.

“Sure, Tara. Now what did you think you were doing?” Buffy asked her.

“Umm - ”

“That’s my question,” Willow said, stepping between them. “What did you think you were doing, Tara?”

“Well, I realised - I had to make sure Hope hit the ground,” Tara said.

“You don’t think a Slayer would’ve been the better choice to do that?” Willow demanded. “What if Olaf had hit you? That could’ve been your pretty head.”

“They didn’t get to her,” Tara pointed out, hugging her girl. “I’m okay, we’re all okay.”

“Except Dru,” Buffy said, looking down at her.

“Pretty dress,” Tara said.

“I guess…” Buffy said. “Now what?”

Hope didn’t wait around. She has a stake in her hand, presumably from her sister, and stabbed the vampire in the chest. Through the heart. At least she tried to find the heart. Actually… Dru convulsed but didn’t erupt.

“Oh, honey, it’s a little to the left,” Willow point out.

Hope tried again. Still no dust.

“No, your left,” Tara said.

“Dammit.” Another stab.

“No, that’s still not it. Down a bit,” Buffy said.

One more stab and still nothing.

This was just cruel, or it would’ve been if Drusilla still had a head. Probably, repeated stabbings wouldn’t be bothering her. She didn’t have much by way of a brain to even realise it was happening.

“Here,” Faith said, nudging the point into place and then pressing against the end of it while Hope still had hold. Then, together, they pressed through and the vampire was gone.

“And they wonder why I call you Hopeless?” Faith asked. “What was that? Five times? It’s embarrassing. That’s what it is.”

“Hey, it’s my first time,” Hope said. “How was I supposed to know where her heart was?”

Biology and basic anatomy?

“And now you popped your cherry,” her sister said. “So how’d you feel, kiddo?”

Hope looked around, wondering – probably – how she was supposed to feel. “Umm, dusty… And my knee hurts.”

Faith sighed. “No… you’re really not a Slayer.”

“I should be feeling - ?”

“Never mind,” Tara said firmly, while her girlfriend went to congratulate Xander on getting someone else to save the day. “And never you mind what your sister says you should be feeling.”

Faith grinned. They both knew what they’d been testing for, but since Buffy had never admitted to it – and to be fair no one had really asked her – then there was a good chance that post-slaying horniness was just Faith. Unless evolution had taken a hand…

See, now she knew she’d been with Willow too long. Who thought about that sort of thing? At a time like this?

“Just how dangerous and risky was that?” Willow was asking Xander as she went over to them.

“Worked didn’t it? Death by troll. Wow. We should’ve gotten him to help out earlier.”

“Where did you find him?” she asked, but Xander seemed to miss it as he looked over the damage.

“This place is going to be closed for a month,” he said. “Another month. You don’t suppose they’d hire me on to take care of some of the work?” he wondered.

“I think if they figure out you brought the troll back that did the damage last time then… no,” Willow told him. “And you still have the cast on…”

Xander looked at it, then remembered it was supposed to be itching and wormed his finger under the edge of it.

“I guess its one solution to keeping Hope out of here,” Willow said to her while she saw Faith chatting to the troll. “You don’t think she learned her lesson?”

“I think,” they both looked over at the girl, “maybe she has. You really walked in on Faith?”

“We didn’t have any choice,” Willow protested. “You want to know - ”

“No!”

“Please. Share my pain, baby,” Willow asked.

“No.”

“I have one word for you.”

“No.”

“Straddling,” Willow said. “She likes it on top. I guess you have that in common.”

Not a big surprise.

“That’s more than one word, that’s way more words than I wanted,” Tara said, considering covering her ears and going ‘la-la-la’. Who needed to think of their friend going at it? Especially with some guy? No…. Didn’t matter if it was a guy or Paige. Still didn’t want to go there. “You need to apologise.”

“We did,” Willow said.

“Again.”

“Why? Why bring it up? None of us want to think about it…”

“Come on,” Tara said.

Faith was at the bar. With Olaf. And the way she was playing to stereotype, twirling her hair and letting him look down her top. No. No way. “What are you doing?” Tara hissed, forgetting about the apology for now.

“Dude saved my sister,” Faith said. “I figure I can be nice. Besides… don’t you think he’s kind of cute? He likes wenches and booze after he fights. I like guys and booze… what’s the deal?”

“He’s a troll.”

“I’ve looked down on worse,” Faith said, shrugging. “And just how big do you think he is anyway?”

“We’re leaving,” Tara told her girlfriend. “We’re leaving now. I'm not watching this - I'm not thinking about it.”

As Faith would’ve put it, ‘screw the apology’.

********************

[Kajun]

Katharyn, Wordy writers.. LOL All Bronzers, except Tara and Hope are under Dru’s spell but she seems to be under a spell too. She really wants the key. I didn’t expect her to casually dismiss the news of Spike’s dusting. Who is the Grandmamma she’s talking about? If she ran into Diana she would probably know that the Huntress is much older than herself. That would certainly be a strange conversation.

Dru’s head was fractured on the inside and now it’s got a matching outside. OLAF CRUSH! LOL and EWW.

“Sheesh – I was having a good time, you bitch!”

Hope doesn’t have Faith’s slaying skills but she sure does have some of her sister’s attitude. That was sure nice of the gang to give Hope a little advice regarding the anatomy of a vampire -- hilariously awesome!

Erm.. Faith and the Troll? Ick. Ick. Ick. ick…

Awesome update.. and twist on the episode title. LOL

[Katharyn]

Thanks, Kajun.

Re the episode title, I was thinking 'okay, I have to kill her in some 'special way' because... well, it's Dru. And then I had to think who was going to do it. Xander's involvement wasn't intentional really, just someone who could deliver the unexpected but once I got to the Bronze (which had previously been wrecked) it seemed funny and then obvious to use 'Crush' that way. Sometimes bright ideas just turn out right. Sometimes you tell me what I should've done!

Wordy writers... I am, I know it. But I wrote this just after someone had said (in another thread somewhere) that i was wordy. So... yeah, seemed funnier at the time. But I've reclaimed the word (with many more!)

I honestly hadn't thought everyone there was under Dru's spell - not exactly. More that she could just affect them enough to move easily through them (because I am a clutz and when I am in that kind of place with that many people every single one of them bangs into me and any drinks in my hands arrive half empty) Grace in a crowd is like my top wanna-have superpower.

Grandmamma? It's Darla. No secret there. Bearing the time frames in mind, I am not sure what canon said about Dru going to LA with her yet, but I've decided it happened anyway... We won't be seeing Darla in this story, though I've recently grown to love Julie Benz, I never much liked the character back then.

Hope and Faith-y attitude... well, I think we all pick up things from the people around us (fortunately for Faith she has Slayer healing and resistance for the sort of things she picks up!) and her sister is a big influence... She's nice, kind but... she's a Lehane too. Just one with more common sense. No, that's not quite fair to Faith. Faith might've given more of a damn if she hadn't been the Slayer...

And the anatomy lesson... well, Faith doesn't talk about the heart much!

You're against Faith and Olaf? Flaf. Oaith. Can't we ship it? LOL. Just kidding. But... Faith's very equal opportunity. As long as things are basically compatible which she can assume Olaf is given all the wenching... In fact, Faith probably sees a bit of a kindred spirit there. I mean, he fights then he drinks and wenches. Faith fights, then she drinks and (male equivalent of wenches - is this a thing?)/wenches.

Thanks so much!

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: ‘I was made to love you.’ It’s an episode, not the feeling a writer has for her readers. Well, obviously it is but… you know what I mean.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: Okay, so this is going to be a longer note than usual due to the episode… IWMTLY. Of course I can do so much with that title and probably should. But there are more important things to discuss here, before I start a first draft...
First of all, we’re closing on ‘The Body’ and even at this stage of the first draft I have no idea, no idea at all what I want to do with that. More importantly, I have to know that by the end of this episode – if I was following canon. I mean, I could put it off for ‘The Body’ itself, ignoring the final scene of IWMTLY, but still…
What to do?
My own rules (that I have kept using to justify things) say that if something is external to the group (and the things that changed) then it still happens. If it’s internal to the group and what changed, then it should reflect the changes while remaining kind of faithful. But killing Joyce is a huge thing and pretty much fixes the tone of all the rest of the story. Not killing Joyce is even bigger in its own way though…
Don’t bother telling me what I should do, I’ll have written it a year before you get to see this and you will probably know what I’ve done from other comments, but…
It’s getting to ‘fundamentals of the story’ time and it’s not something that I’ve considered that much as it’s not altering the outcome of the story arc as a whole. Also you lose some of the great W/T elements…
And by saying all that, I guess now I may have built up the ending of THIS ‘episode’ as – though you wouldn’t be surprised – you won’t know which way I go.
Second though, and I have a few days to consider the first… fundamentally in IWMTLY I’m not dealing with a certain character – beyond showing why we’re not going to have to anyway.
Anyway, now I have to think about how I tell this story – which is external and so has to be covered – without that character. Hmm… A more immediate problem and one solution just seems to spring to mind… I hope you forgive me for mentioning the name at all. But you should enjoy the result… Who had this in the pool?
Oh, the cartoon references that keep coming up here and there… Well, I insinuated in Sidestep that Tara loved cartoons. I kept a little of that for here, even if we’ve not focused on it so far. Different Tara, different experiences.
Musical credit: It’s one of those times again, let me just put a shout out for ‘Play Dead’ by Bjork. If you’re too young to remember that, or didn’t go through that period where it was used on just about every advert… GO LISTEN!



Tara hugged her legs as she watched the Slayers in their training session. It wasn’t all that interesting except in the vaguely aesthetic way that watching, say, Olympic athletes could be. Abs, biceps, thighs… She wasn’t perving, not like Willow sometimes admitted to, but she was all there in her general appreciation of the active, female form.

Aside from that side of things, she was actually here because it seemed kind of like her duty. She couldn’t do much actual ‘training’ for ‘her’ Slayer – or get rid of the mental quotes whenever she thought about Faith that way – but she could be here.

And she could worry when Faith was being over-aggressive.

Again.

“We should be fighting each other,” Faith said, frustrated by the fact that they weren’t in the sort of full contact training that had often made Willow wonder just what sort of tensions existed between the pair of them.

Yeah, her girl had whackiest thoughts.

“You’re wounded,” Buffy pointed out. “One good whack and I’d open it up again.”

“Just a little blood,” Faith shrugged. “I’m already bleeding.”

“Okay, but this way instead of going back to the emergency room,” Buffy said, jabbing the punch bag five times in quick succession which was forcing Faith to respond, “you can clean up the blood from the floor. You got back into it too soon. So… no. Tara agrees with me.

“Am I Right, Tara?”

“No – I mean, yes, the answer is no.”

“Well, that’s clear as fucking mud,” Faith breathed, but launched into her own assault on the bag. Rather than holding it for each other, the two of them were counter punching with enough precision to – when they got it right – keep it hanging virtually motionless. The same force being applied at almost the same time in virtually the exact opposite direction.

The challenge was they were trying to set it swinging towards their ‘opponent’ by moving around it.

“I want to hurt someone.”

“You have hurt someone,” Xander pointed out. He was still wearing his ‘fat suit’ which was actually just padding to act as a human target. Not exactly agile, but a little more mobile than the bag. Less predictable too. So far as Tara knew Giles had gotten it from someone selling the stuff to train attack dogs, which explained the big thick arm pads he’d tried to protect himself with.

Of course it had proven that the bigger risk to him had seemed to be dehydration rather than anything else. She’d had to keep squirting water in his mouth, but now he had the gloves off and could water himself… All she had to do was sit here in her general appreciation.

“I don’t know how Glory did it, standing up to you guys,” Xander called over to the Slayers.

“It’s pretty much the heels,” Buffy quipped, despite the fact they’d lost. Badly. “Heels that cute – and expensive - let you face anything with confidence.”

“So why don’t you fight that way?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want to break my ankle and I’m a big opponent of bunions too. Call me vain, but I don’t like the idea of my toes pointing in the wrong directions.”

“I impaled a guy with a spike heeled boot once,” Faith added casually.

“You would… Anyway, Glory’s tougher than you, Xander.” Buffy said.

“Willow’s tougher than he is,” Faith pointed out.

“Hey!” Xander objected on pure instinct, some sort of manly pride that was usually absent but now, somehow, had been stirred.

“She’s right though,” Tara said, patting his arm. “Sorry.”

“Yeah… I know. There’s one thing I’m still good for though.”

All three of them – plus Giles – looked at him. “I guess you should know,” Buffy said to her counterpart after that beat. “You slept with him.”

“Like hell. I didn’t sleep with him,” Faith replied. “I screwed him.” She shrugged as if to say, ‘what else was I supposed to have done?’

“She’s right, she… that. But carpentry,” he said. “I was going to say I can work with the wood.”

“Umm….”

“I’m not sure that’s much better than what they thought you were going to say,” Giles commented.

“Get your minds out of the gutter. All of you. I made all your shelves and before you answer this, please recall that I told you in advance that my guarantee didn’t include attacks by vampires, demons or minions of same but has one of them fallen down?”

“Absolutely not. Top class work. But you’re doing yourself a disservice. You do have another talent.”

“I do?”

“Certainly, that protective suit just fits you perfectly.”

“Oh, ha, ha.”

“It does look pretty funny,” Tara admitted.

“Oh, you’re about as much help as Willow,” Xander complained. “But… you’re not going to tell Anya about this conversation are you?”

Yes, she was meeting his girlfriend later. There was the girlfriend code to consider, after all, but then she got that from both sides and she had to consider where her loyalties would lie. “N-not a word. Your secrets are safe with me.”

------------------------

“Just try to help,” Joyce chided them.

“We are, Mom,” Buffy said, still towelling her hair after freshening up from training. Somehow it just reminded Willow of her girlfriend when she came back from jogging.

Eyes on the prize. Eyes on the prize.

“In all fairness,” Willow said. “I’m not only gay and a witch – and they carry their own stereotypes – but I’ve only recently discovered fashion.”

“You wish,” Hope said, sticking her tongue out after grinning at her.

“Thanks, Hope… And if you missed it, her problem, is that she’s fifteen and turning out to be far too pretty for her own good. Then there’s Buffy,” Willow said.

“What’s wrong with me?” Buffy demanded.

“Well, you’re kind of biased.”

“Am not!”

“Sure you are.”

Joyce sighed, walked into her closet and started looking for something else to wear. Oh… right, they were supposed to have just said she looked ‘nice’ in that outfit for the big date with Brian.

‘Brian’ was always a name that had bothered her, being a little too close to ‘Brain’ for comfort when that was obviously getting into supervillain territory. Only villains called themselves anything to do with ‘Brain.’ Over the years they’d had good reason to become wary of both supervillains and big bads. The name wasn’t what Joyce wanted advice on though. Just the outfit…

“What did I do?” Buffy asked. “I just got here! You two have been at this for - ”

“At least ten whole minutes longer that,” Willow completed.

“So?”

“So… obviously you want your Mom to look nice.”

“Yeah,” Buffy admitted.

“But you just don’t want her to look sexy,” Hope finished for her.

“Hope!”

“I was going to say it another way,” Hope complained in such a way that Willow had a pretty good guess at what that choice of words would’ve been. Imagine if Faith had been here… On that basis, yeah, using the word ‘sexy’ wasn’t too bad.

“She’s right,” Willow told her friend. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but she’s right. I really think you don’t want your Mom to look… Hot. Sexy…”

“You think it’s hot and sexy?” Joyce asked as she emerged. “It seems a little frumpy to me…”

“Were you aiming for sexy?” Buffy asked, looking at them archly.

“I think that’s nice,” Hope said.

Joyce sighed. “We already did nice to death. Tell me, honestly, I look like a Mom, don’t I?”

“You are a Mom. You’re my Mom, which is why I get a say.”

Joyce nodded. “A say, not a veto. You’re at college now, Buffy and… Mom needs a little sugar.”

All three of them sat back in shock. “What?” Joyce asked. “Tara’s the only one who gets to try spicy talk?”

Of course, Willow was well aware of how spicy her girl could be. She talks spicy to me all the time. The mouth on that girl… Tara-mouth… Yes, her eyes were definitely on the prize.

“I just don’t think,” Willow said carefully, “that ‘spicy talk’ is the way to go on a first date, when you’ve been out of the game for a while.”

“See,” Buffy said. “Willow and me, we’re on the same wavelength.”

“Willow and I,” Hope pointed out in a ‘what about me?’ way.

Willow did think there was a difference. Buffy wanted her Mom to be happy in an abstract way, where nothing really had to change. She, on the other hand, was looking at it knowing something would have to. Buffy – despite all the shit the man had put her through – still had this image of her Mom and Dad in her head.

Letting go of that wasn’t going to be easy for her.

“Well, I think I could do with some coaching,” Joyce said. “This really does look Momish doesn’t it.” She lifted the dress off and… her lingerie didn’t look Momish at all.

“Mom! You’ve been - ”

“Shopping at Victoria’s Secret,” Willow said.

“How do you know?”

“I… I… I’ve just browsed the catalogue. Occasionally.”

This time she was the one the receiving end of smirks from the others. It wasn’t a new experience.

“So? A woman likes to feel good about herself,” Joyce said. “Besides, he won’t be seeing these unless things go very well.”

“Mom!”

“Buffy!” Joyce mimicked. “Come on, help me out here. Please.”

“Go try something on,” Buffy said. “Something else. And maybe you want to think about… plain, cotton. Nice girl underwear.”

Joyce sighed. “Buffy, I need help with… I haven’t been on a date since your father.”

Buffy frowned. “Then you’re sure asking the wrong girls.”

“What? Because I’m a lesbian?” Willow wondered.

“No, because your idea of a hetero date was tag-tucking and Tara’s too fricking wonderful for you to even know what a bad date is or how to salvage it,” Buffy said.

Willow grinned. Yes, she was the one with the wonderful girlfriend. This, as the gay one, was to be expected.

“Then there’s Hope, who’s just the high side of fifteen and I know that her sister doesn’t think she’s dating yet,” Buffy continued.

Hope blushed, but pretty much confirmed that she hadn’t been lying to Faith. Much.

“So there’s you,” Joyce called back.

“I know bad dates,” Buffy acknowledged. “I don’t know that me and Eddie is a model… He’s a pretty modern guy. I practically had to pick him up and shake him to get a goodnight kiss. Actually… I did that the first time.”

Joyce emerged with a skirt and top combination that they all ran their eyes over.

“Now that’s sexy,” Willow said.

“Kind of retro,” Hope added.

“Nineteen-ninety-five’s retro to you, but you’ll learn,” Joyce pointed out. “It’s really… sexy?”

“What? Don’t listen to the lesbian about what’s sexy?” Willow asked. “I mean, hello, I spend way more time looking at women and deciding if they’re sexy than all the rest of you combined. Right?”

“Umm… yeah,” Buffy agreed. “I guess. Does Tara know?”

“Okay, now I realise that sounded way more mentally slutty than I thought it did, but… everyone looks, right?”

Slightly embarrassed looks around the room confirmed that idea. It was all about who you were looking at.

“So is this good?” Joyce asked, giving them a twirl.

“Perhaps…” Buffy hedged. “You know you’re not twenty anymore, right Mom?”

“Oh, yes, I know. My twenty year old body pretty much disappeared when I had you, dear”

Ooh. Zinger.

“What’s wrong with it?” Hope asked, not getting what Buffy was referring to.

“You think I’d let my Mom out with a skirt up around her… around her knees?”

“Buffy, it’s only an inch or two above the knee,” Willow pointed out and then turned to her Mom. “But you’ve totally got the legs for it.”

Buffy’s look said that she wasn’t helping.

“What? Look, I usually don’t give fashion advice. I mean… It’s a little rule I have.”

“So don’t start now,” Buffy said to her.

“I don’t like to be blamed,” Willow shrugged. “Besides, with my previous, it’d be kinda hypocritical. You know, I’m still on the Sears mailing list.”

“So this man you’re going out with,” Buffy said, recognising she may well have lost the battle on the skirt already and – Slayer tactics - deciding to change the ground.

“Now, why do you just assume it’s a man?” Willow asked.

“Umm - Because she’s my Mom.”

“And she can’t date girls – women – a woman?”

“She can – but she’s not. You’re not, are you, Mom?”

“First – you all know he’s called Brian,” Joyce said.

So why were they having this conversation at all? Good question.

“Okay, so you said he’s a he but there are probably girls called Brian. You didn’t say how it was spelt. Bryan with a Y, could’ve been very much a girl,” Willow said, though it seemed unlikely. “I just don’t think we should be making assumptions.”

“Second,” Joyce added, “I’m not dating anyone. I’m going for nice meal in the company of a nice man. Perhaps a drink afterwards.”

“But you want to date?” Hope asked.

“It’s been a while,” she said. “But like I said, I need me some sugar. If I can just pluck up the courage.”

“It’s one of those big, scary old things,” Willow agreed. “Dating, not you.”

“So…” Joyce said, tucking her blouse in. “What… what do I do?”

“Don’t put out,” Hope said, quick as a flash. “This girl, in my class, her name’s Abbie Constance and she’s such a wh – Well, she puts out and everyone calls her a ‘slut.’ Not me – except, I just did - ” Hope slowly realised that maybe she was going a little too far. “So… that’s my advice. Don’t put out. You know, on the first date.”

Buffy coughed. “Well, bright side, Hope is Faith’s sister and its good that she knows these things.”

“I think you just called my sister a slut,” Hope complained.

“If the cap fits…” Buffy said under her breath.

“She won’t have any unexpected problems,” Willow finished. Stares. “Oh come on! That’s a zinger! They should have an alarm for how zingy that zinger was.”

Hope broke into a grin. “It was pretty good.”

“Wait… you know about caps?” Joyce asked.

“Well, duh! I do go to school!”

“I had no idea they taught those kinds of things.”

“Moving on,” Buffy said. “Mom, just do something you both enjoy – eating is good.”

“What if we don’t like the same things? What if he’s a vegetarian?”

“Then it’s your lucky night!” Willow said. “Oh… wait… you said vegetarian. I thought, for a moment, you said vag – Never mind what I thought.”

Buffy just glared at her.

“Buffy, you have a boyfriend. Help me. What do we talk about?” Joyce asked.

“You have to find… common ground,” Buffy said. “And if you can’t do that, but he’s cute enough, you just smile and fake it until he gets the idea. I… I don’t’ want to know if he’s cute. I don’t think you can call a guy your age ‘cute.’”

“He is your age, right?” Willow asked. “You don’t have this whole Mrs Robinson thing going on?”

“No,” Joyce said patiently. “He’s my age. I guess.”

“Who’s Mrs Robinson?” Hope asked.

Buffy shrugged, “I don’t know either. But I’m glad you’re keeping it age appropriate. Any more advice required?” Subtext being ‘please say no.’ Buffy was suffering through this, Willow could tell.

“What… what if it’s going wrong? I mean, what if I like him and we can’t find out what we have in common?”

“Well, maybe,” Willow said, “maybe then you put out.”

“Willow!”

Buffy was the one objecting. Joyce just looked thoughtful. In hindsight… not such a zinger. It wasn’t a zinger if she was going to get the blame for it later…

------------------------

“It kind of looks person shaped,” Anya said, looking first at the big indentation in the pathway and then tracing the route back up into the sky.

“I guess it would,” Tara said, following her friend’s gaze.

“I was hoping for a perfect hole in the ground. Like the cartoons,” Anya said. She was more than a little disappointed. “The cartoon with the bird that runs very fast on the road? You know, Meep-meep? Have you seen that?”

“Roadrunner.”

“Yes, I said that. And the shaggy dog who buys substandard products and wonders why they don’t work as intended.”

“It’s a coyote,” Tara said. The clue was in the name, after all.

Anya ignored her though. That was just something you had to get used to with her. Some – much – of the things you said, even as her friend, she just wasn’t interested in.

“There’s a premium on quality, everyone should understand that. You get what you pay for. ACME? Who buys from a company called ACME? Online we can do so much more. I keep telling Giles. Online, I say, we can do so much more. But will he listen?”

“I’ve been online,” Tara said.

“You have a girlfriend who chops things,” Anya nodded sagely.

“Hacks.”

“That too.”

“I really don’t like it,” she explained as they started walking again.

“Why not? There’s so much to buy already and more coming every day!”

She shook her head. Forget shopping there. She was just getting used to the idea of using a credit card instead of cash. Daddy would have a fit if he knew, he hated the idea of debt – even a few dollars and just for as little as a month. He’d have said that she never knew what would happen at the end of that month. With cash you knew where you were.

But that wasn’t the problem. “I find the bad spelling depressing,” Tara explained. “I’m weird that way.”

“You should try online trading. You don’t have to worry about spelling. You just take their money and give a very reasonable cut to the people who take it for you. You don’t talk, you don’t even have to see them! I’ve tripled the money I’ve earned working for Giles.”

“Life’s not all about – wait – you tripled it?”

“Yes – Oh, look, you’re about to get hit on,” Anya said.

“What? No I’m not - ”

“There.”

She looked where Anya was pointing. There was a girl who was staring at them but there was no telling who she was looking at. “Maybe she thinks we’re together?” Tara suggested. She didn’t want to be hit on.

“We are together. See? We’re talking. And walking. I was about to share my money making tips with you.”

“No, I mean, maybe she thinks we’re girlfriends?”

“But I’m not a lesbian.” Anya was confused.

“No… but she doesn’t know that. And… hey, she could be about to hit on you?” she suggested. Partly because it’d mess with Anya but mostly because it could be true. Even if this was what Anya said it was, which seemed unlikely. Not many girls - even those who liked girls – would hit on one half of what they thought was a couple.

Not while they were together.

Okay, so there were some girls who might. And she knew one of them quite well. But two people like Faith in the same area? It seemed unlikely.

“Weren’t you listening? I’m not a lesbian, why would she bother with me? Can’t she see I’m not into that?”

“Well, not everyone can tell,” Tara admitted, dismissing the opportunity to point out what might – or might not – have happened once upon a time with the Brides of Dracula. Plural.

A more-than-two-in-a-plural plural.

And not just [i[once[/i] upon a time.

Of course that didn’t make you a ‘lesbian’ but it certainly expressed a… flexibility.

“Ah, but lesbians can,” Anya said wisely. “It’s called ‘gaydar’. I read about it. Gay men too.”

“I do know what it’s called.”

“But do you have it?” Anya wanted to know.

“I guess… I mean, I saw Willow and…”

“So she’s not an ‘obvious’ lesbian?” Anya asked. “Willow, I mean?”

“Umm… Well, I guess on a scale of one to ten with ten being obvious, she’s about a three. Maybe a four, if you know what to look for.”

“What about when she’s kissing you?” Anya asked.

“That’s not gaydar, that’s just observation.”

“Hmm, no wonder Xander didn’t realise.” Anya seemed quite pleased with that outcome.

“Wait…” Tara said. “What makes you think that girl’s even interested?”

“Well, when you’re in those boots, you must be at least a seven. You know, to your own kind. Wait, look – here she comes.”

And wait a second… Why did everyone think the boots were so… dykey? She hadn’t bought them to make any kind of statement but… Anya wasn’t the first person to say it.

Whatever the boots were doing for her, she was really, really hoping that the girl didn’t come onto either of them. Firstly Anya’s reaction wasn’t something she wanted to guess at - but would probably involve deflecting the girl onto her - and second… Well, she was blissfully taken and she didn’t need the ego boost. She’d never hear the end of this story.

Not with Anya here to tell Willow all about it.

As the girl came up to them, it was easy to tell that she was cheery, perky, pretty and lots of other things ending in ‘y’. Dark haired and about their height, she was probably all the things you wanted a pretty femme girl to be when she came up to you in the street when you didn’t have a girlfriend. Apart from the fact… Not gay.

That she was pretty sure of.

Gaydar don’t let me down.

Be straight. Be straight. Be straight.

And those ‘y’ ending qualities were all superficial anyway. It was like a TV smile, fixed to the girl’s face and never wavering. Also, things didn’t quite move the right away. Not that she’d been looking or made an in depth study of comparable data. But… surgically enhanced? They weren’t huge, but they were… somehow just strange. Nice looking, undoubtedly, but just a little… off.

Maybe just when she walked…

“Have you seen Warren?” the girl asked.

Result! Score one for Maclaydar.

“I’m sorry,” Tara said, relieved. It definitely didn’t sound like an opening line. At least not one she’d use on another girl. “I – I don’t know anyone called – called that.”

“Okay, thank you,” the girl said brightly and went on her way, finding someone else to approach nearby where she asked the same question.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Tara. Are you disappointed?” Anya asked.

“No, not only am I very happy, she’s not my type anyway.” Not with her fixed smile and… She was going to have to apologise to Willow but she’d really had to look. There was definitely something just… ‘off’ with those boobs.

“Well, I’m disappointed,” her friend said.

“You’re not a lesbian,” Tara reminded her.

“Yes, but I thought I might be flexible and pretty enough to get hit on. I’m very attractive to lesbians. They all say so.”

Tara opened her mouth, then closed it. It really was a bad, bad, bad idea to get into that or even/especially to ask who ‘they’ were. “So you say you tripled your money?”

***********************

[Kajun]

Katharyn, UGH. I really, really hate this episode. It won’t be an easy task to make it tolerable but somehow, I think you will manage it. I’m hoping another character goes the way of Spike and Dru.. only bloodier and more painfully. GRRR.

Willow, Buffy and Hope helping prepare Joyce for her first date since the robot Ted fiasco was funny. Will this moment turn bittersweet? There are dark clouds on the horizon so the good stuff feels kinda muted. Nooooooooo…… must not let what will happen if canon is followed to taint what is happening now. Who knows what switcheroo you may have in store for us this time.

I don’t have a problem with Joyce taking Willow’s advice. Not that I want her to be like Faith, but taking a Paige from the not-so-rogue-anymore Slayer’s book wouldn’t hurt! Tara is right; people on the internet can’t spell. LOL

[Katharyn]

I know what you mean, Kajun. Suffice it say that a certain character is NOT going to come out of this well...

I think I've warned you about the whole Joyce thing for a long while... I'm not going to obfuscate on that one. It's really not something I can avoid. But I wanted to enjoy her presence for the time being so, having this kind of fun is... See, now I'm worried it's a little manipulative (though only because the show was) but I think I can enjoy it for what it was. A nice scene and one that - I think - is better for Hope than Dawn. Perhaps even a little less manipulative too.

*cough* Really, Joyce is supposed to take a PAIGE from Faith('s book)? Wow... get on out there Joyce!

It really is a chapter that reflects moments from the episode but just with my own humour in there. The more I think about it now, the less I did... but hey, it's fun to write dialogue around jokes rather than serious stuff.

Thanks!

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Six
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Second chapter paralleling ‘I was made to love you.’
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: I was flicking through an old synopsis website the other day, looking for a refresher on the later episode in the seasons. I came across the ‘Quotes’ page of that and saw just how pop-culture focused this whole show (not the episode) was (remember I haven’t watched an episode for about 11 years now!) My writing doesn’t approach that level of referencing. I’m not worried about it. I’m happy with the voice (when I de-brit them) but the references just aren’t there. I think I go for a different kind of humour and – to be honest – the show is a product of its time. It’s hard enough for me to keep up with what was current back then, what hadn’t been invented, aired or whatever… and I don’t do much of it. Just something I noticed.
Musical credit: So, today, I have just re-discovered the Cranberries. I have to mention this. Not because it’s particularly been a huge musical influence for me but… because. I last listened to their albums before I even knew about Tara and Willow so… no influence there. But it’s ridiculously good stuff to find out is on your girlfriend’s iTunes. (I think I feel I have a duty to the younger members of this little band of readers…) And who – from those days – isn’t going to admit that Delores O’Riordan wasn’t ridiculously hot whether blonde or brunette?



“I let them do that,” Anya said.

Tara just wished that Anya was paying attention to what she was doing rather than Buffy dancing with her boyfriend.

“It’s because I trust them both and Buffy is my friend. Willow is also my friend and if she wished to switch from Eddie to Xander I would not have a problem with that.” That part sounded a little more forced and rehearsed but, Anya was trying.

Sometimes Anya was very trying, but this wasn’t one of those.

“That’s good,” Tara said, trying not to trip on her own dress.

The spring-break dance was a little tradition that she could cheerfully have skipped, but since Buffy and Willow both wanted to come and Anya thought any reason to have money spent on her was a worthy one, here they were. And yeah, sure she’d been having fun. It was just dancing that she’d never been that hot with. Dancing with Willow, sure. That was easy. Press up against her, hold her, sway and feel both the music and her girl’s heartbeat.

Dancing with Anya? That was harder.

“Ow!” Tara complained when Anya caught her toes again. Maybe she should’ve worn her boots, though that might’ve led to some comments from the ex-demon… “What are you doing?”

“Leading.”

“You don’t lead, I lead,” Tara insisted. She thought that would’ve been settled by Anya’s insistence on repeatedly labelling her a lesbian. As the one who was into girls, surely she should be the lead? It made sense, but in hindsight she should’ve just asked. “Look at our hands.”

“I’ve told you, Tara, I’m not that kind of friend.”

“No,” she insisted. “I mean, my hand positions mean that I should be leading.”

“I follow with Xander,” Anya said. “Now I want to lead.”

“No.”

“You always get to lead, you’re the butch.”

“I’m the what?” Tara asked.

“The butch. The top. I’ve been reading, I told you - ”

“If you mention my boots again…” Tara warned, but she was struggling for something better to say to just stop this. It was typical Anya, you just couldn’t call her on it because she was being genuinely curious and never, ever mischievous. And yes, she did a lot of reading.

“Well, you said it. But yes, although you have longer hair than Willow you’re definitely the man,” Anya said. “I’m right aren’t I? I mean, I’ve read that hair length doesn’t mean anything in the power dynamic within the relationship?”

“If you’d been reading, you’d know there is no man in the relationship, we’re both women. That’s what makes us lesbians. It’s kind of what defines us. At least, in reverse - ”

Technically what defined them was appreciation of women, rather than ‘not wanting a man’ but baby-steps with this girl. Baby-steps.

Anya thought about that for a moment. “So would a better way of putting it being that you’re the one who wears the strap-on I bought you? You’d tell me if I made an incorrect assumption, wouldn’t you? Shopping is very important, as when gift giving if I want to get something good back, I want to make the right choices so that’s more likely.”

Fortunately the song ended right then and she could escape and call a halt to the dance, letting all of them go back to their partners without her answering the question. In going back to Xander and – very obviously – reclaiming him by their closeness, it seemed Anya was willing to just forget about it too. Thanks be to any god you cared to mention.

Even the ones that were walking around Sunnydale.

“Please, let’s not do that again,” Tara said in a low voice.

“I thought you liked Anya more than I do?” her girlfriend asked as they sat down beside each other. Mischief laced Willow’s voice.

“I do… but my toes.”

“Awww, poor baby. I’ll kiss them better later.”

“I just danced with a lesbian,” Anya was saying to Xander as they came back to the table too. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“And I hadn’t – until just then,” he said.

“You have that same look in your eye as when I brought home the syrup,” Anya said. “I’m not that flexible.”

“Okay,” Xander said. “So how’s everyone else doing?” He mouthed ‘save me’ when he was sure that Anya couldn’t see him but she wasn’t having any of it and pulled him back towards the dance floor.

-------------------------

“Sometimes I feel sorry for him,” Buffy announced. “Then I remember she’s just about all he wants.”

“She is a force of nature,” Tara agreed.

“Nature?” Willow asked, “really?”

“You’re so mean to her,” Eddie chipped in.

“Okay, You dance with her next time,” Tara said, smiling.

Willow grinned too, it was infectious, a Tara-smile. “Oh, shush. You just had trouble because you like to lead.”

“Don’t you start…”

“Why? What did she say?”

“She called me… butch.”

“Is that so bad?” Willow wondered.

“But I’m not!”

“Really?” Buffy asked.

“No!”

“Oh… you live and learn.”

“I’m not butch,” Tara repeated.

“But she could be,” Willow said, happy to stoke the fires just for the sake of teasing.

“For the record,” Tara said, archly, “these things entirely come down to how you identify.”

“So… you’re what? Femme?” Buffy asked, genuinely interested Willow could tell.

Willow shook her head. “Tara’s… Tara. She identifies as herself.”

“That’s handy,” Eddie said. “That must make it really simple to know who you are.”

“I j-just don’t see the point of labels. I mean, do you sit around thinking about yourself as a straight man?”

Eddie looked around. “I… just am.”

“See?”

That she struggled with her words there was a sign that Tara felt quite strongly about this. And Willow knew what she meant about the labels. There were so many labels and so many of them fit and so many didn’t even though they were all bandied about.

“I’m not here,” Tara continued, “to make it easy for everyone else. Why shouldn’t we be complex?”

“And you are very, very complex,” Willow said, nuzzling her girl’s neck and pressing up against her. “I’m still having fun figuring her out,” she said to Buffy and Eddie.

“You always did love a puzzle, Will.”

“So I’m a puzzle now?” Tara asked.

“No, you’re a mystery,” Willow promised her. The smile said she’d got that right.

“But an open book mystery.”

“Oh, it was a book that was open, I thought Willow said it was something else!” Buffy teased.

Tara got halfway to sticking her tongue out – Willow recognised the signs – but then thought better of it and just sat there. Tara was content, after all. She had a wonderful girlfriend – obviously - and didn’t need to worry about teasing.

“You don’t dance often enough,” Tara said to Buffy.

“Eddie’s a smooth operator,” Buffy replied.

“Ah,” Willow said. “Swept you off your feet did he?”

“Once or twice.”

“I had lessons,” the man himself explained. “When I was young. My Mom wanted me to be a ballroom dancer. I knew that, one day, it’d actually come in useful.”

“I wonder how Joyce’s date is going?” Willow asked.

Buffy frowned. By now, of course, her Mom could’ve gone way further than she was comfortable with. Like making actual physical contact. But even Buffy would have to be happy she was getting back into the swing of things. There hadn’t been a lot of Joycetime after divorcing Buffy’s Dad, so… this was nice. This was good. Just so long as Brian was a nice guy and they got on? Yeah…

“That’s got to be scary,” Eddie said.

“Dating a Summers woman?” Willow asked, nodding sympathetically. “I can see your problem.”

“No, getting into… well, it was scary enough asking Buffy out but if you’ve been married and not dated for so long?”

Even Buffy agreed. “They… long as I can remember, even when Mom and Dad were together, they were going through the motions. They had mostly separate lives. It just happened that my Dad’s mostly separate life involved a twenty-five year old on the side. And then a different one when they actually broke up.”

“Point is though,” Willow said, not wanting them to spoil their night, “your Mom’s showing a lot of courage to go do this. I’m pleased for her.”

“So am I… but you know, it was icky enough when she and Giles were under the influence of that spell of Ethan’s,” Buffy said. “But… soon there might not be any excuse. I’m going to have to deal with my Mom… doing it.”

“Everybody does it,” Tara said.

“Even the birds and the bees do it,” Willow added, but kind of out of tune. It was her fate. Genius. Witch. Lesbian lover. Tone deaf.

“Not helping, Will,” Buffy said. “I’m in the next room to her.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t come home - ” Eddie started to say.

“Seriously, is my boyfriend actually sitting there and saying my Mom will do it in the car?” There was a hint of warning in Buffy’s question. The right answer was obviously ‘no.’

“I think,” Tara stepped in to save Eddie. “I think that it’s great. Whatever happens. She’s – I didn’t know her all that well before, but she seems like a new woman since she recovered from her surgery.”

Willow nodded, that was her thought as well. Joyce was… No. ‘New woman’ pretty much summed it up.

“She does,” Buffy agreed. “She’s… Remember when I died?”

“Who can forget?” Willow, the only one at the table who’d been through those days, agreed.

“When I… when I was back, I… It wasn’t that I didn’t care, it was just like… some things weren’t important anymore.”

“And she doesn’t have to try and protect you now,” Tara said. “She’ll always worry, but she’s accepted that you can handle whatever’s out there and that she can’t help you so…”

Buffy nodded. That was certainly true as well but Tara wasn’t paying attention, at least not at the end of what she was saying.

Willow followed her lover’s gaze and found… a girl? Well, that was something different. Catching Tara looking at a girl was something like a once a year event… except… She wasn’t looking, more like she was seeing the brunette but wasn’t exactly that happy to do so.

“New friend?” Willow asked as the girl walked over to them. All smiles and sweetness and prettiness and… she probably had an apple pie somewhere about her person. Her perky person.

Perky. Perky. Perky.

“Not exactly,” Tara murmured and then, to the girl, “Oh, hey. Remember me?”

“Yes.”

A little blunt, for all that it wasn’t unwelcoming or hostile. Pretty much just a simple yes. “So have you found him yet?” Tara wondered. “She was looking for someone, that’s how me and Anya ran into her.”

Anya and I…

“Who are you looking for?” Willow asked, when it was obvious that the girl hadn’t found… whoever it was. She was till out here, looking around. “Maybe we’ve seen him?”

“My name is April.. I’m looking for Warren. Have you see Warren?” the girl asked. “He is my boyfriend.”

Ummm… She and Buffy shared a look. So, new friend? Hopefully not. This girl seemed to be one card short of a full deck and speaking in curiously precise diction too. And what was up with -

“Warren who?” Buffy asked.

“No. Just Warren.”

“Okay… Honey,” Willow said to her girlfriend. “Maybe you should take me dancing now?”

Tara’s look was like ‘it’d be rude to walk away’ and hers in return was ‘don’t worry about it, a little rude can go a long way.’ That was what she hoped she was showing anyway. It was possible her body language combined with an expression were saying ‘I’d really like a monkey for my birthday.’

Which, for the record, wasn’t true.

“Okay,” Tara agreed, offering her hand before she remembered the things that Anya had been saying and snatched it back. “Just… come on, okay. Nice to see you again, April!”

Buffy didn’t seem impressed to be left with the girl, but she’d moved on in search of her Warren within a few seconds anyway.

“She’s a little…” Tara started.

“Weird.”

“And her – she can’t stop smiling. It’s like… her face got stuck,” Tara said. “I don’t want to be mean but...”

“There’s a long way from you to bitchy,” Willow promised.

“Thanks, but – it just doesn’t seem… natural.”

“Maybe she’s just happy… searching for the boyfriend she lost?” Something about that wasn’t quite right though, was it? “You have a bad feeling don’t you?”

“Not a bad feeling exactly,” Tara replied. “Just not a good one.”

“Well, good…” Willow said, pulling her girl into an embrace they could dance in. “I don’t want you having good feelings when you look at other girls.”

“Green suits you,” Tara said.

“Jealous green goes with fiery red,” she agreed.

Over Tara’s shoulder, Willow kept an eye on April’s progress and winced when – after several attempts – she noticed a guy’s hand stray to her ass.

Then she winced again as April lifted him off his feet by the throat.

And she was still smiling.

---------------------

“Uh, sweetie?” Willow asked.

Willow’s attention had been drawn by something behind them and when Tara turned around she saw someone who looked like they could be a line-back being held up in the air by a girl no bigger than they were.

One handed.

There was something strange there, no matter how familiar a sight it might have become over the past two years.

Since there were precisely two cute girls who should be able to do that and one of them was here and April certainly wasn’t Faith... So unless there was another Slayer – when neither of them had died again – then this was something else.

What though? And was it behind whatever was making her have that not-good feeling?

Perhaps deciding that her territory and privileges were being stepped on, Buffy stepped in before either she or Willow could do much about it.

Obviously only one – or two – people got to do that to the boys around here.

“Put him down,” the Slayer instructed very calmly and firmly. April looked at Buffy and then did as she was asked, not even throwing him across the room, just putting him back on his feet and then smoothing the collar of his shirt. Almost maternally, or like a girlfriend might.

One with super strength.

“He was touching her Buffy,” Willow said as the football player backed off rapidly and to the mockery of his buddies.

“Which explains the ‘why’ and not the ‘how’,” Buffy replied. “Look, April is it?”

“My name is April.”

“Yeah, right. April, I have a nice dress on. I’m here with my boyfriend and my friends and I’m having a good time. I’m not going to ruin it. So here’s what’s going to happen. We’re all going to avoid using our super strength and enjoy the punch.”

Buffy was doing her best to be reasonable, Tara could tell, but there was a hint of a threat behind it. Just in case.

“Only Warren can touch me,” April said. “T-Touch me.”

“She sounds like you, Tara,” Anya said, coming over with Xander.

“Ha ha.” Except April had almost double-taked as she tripped over her words.

“That didn’t sound like you saying you wouldn’t do it again,” Buffy said. “So – HONK – wrong answer. You need to stop worrying about finding your boyfriend and stop throttling people. Take it from me, that’s never a good look at a party.”

Turning away from her like she didn’t exist, April moved on to the next person. “Do you know where Warren is?”

“Just stop, okay?” Buffy said, moving into April’s way. “No one here - ”

Willow would swear that she just blinked but in the time her eyes were closed, Buffy was flying through the air and hitting the wall. Hard. Eddie, naturally enough, ran over as if she might’ve been hurt – which any normal person would’ve been.

“I hope your boyfriend takes care of you,” April said and continued onwards.

----------------------

“Possessed, it’s possessed! I’m telling you!” Xander said. “Possession is nine tenths of the law. More here in Sunnydale.”

“It’s not possessed,” Willow countered. “She’s stuck in a loop; all she can do is follow her instructions. She’s a robot.”

“You think everything’s a robot,” Anya accused, having taking Xander’s side.

“I do not.”

“No, sometimes you think everyone is a lesbian,” then Anya brightened. “Ooh, she could be a lesbian robot.”

“Looking for her boyfriend?” Willow asked, too sarcastically to possible hide it. Bi-sexual robot? She could buy into that.

“I’m sticking with demon,” Tara said. There were groans from all around. “It’s Sunnydale after all.”

“Yes, it’s Sunnydale. And we’ve had robots and werewolves and demons and vampires - ” Xander said before Buffy interrupted him.

“Technically demons,” Buffy pointed out. “And we’ve had… let’s see, preying mantis lady and hyenas and a strangely fishy swim-team. Slutty ghosts too.”

“Hey!” Willow objected. “I was not slutty. I was just… underdressed.

“Buff? Why are you taking her side?” Xander asked.

“It’s Sunnydale. Y’all are fighting this out. I’m just going to deal with whatever it is…”

“Now you sound like Faith. You’re not possessed by her again are you?” Xander asked warily.

“No…”

“Tell me something she doesn’t know.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know… a naughty secret - ” Xander said, just before Anya crossed her arms, all annoyed and (ex)vengeance demony.

“How is that going to help?”

“It won’t… I’m an idiot, so, moving on.”

“Moving on,” Willow said, looking all serious.

“It’s not a lesbian robot is it?”

“I don’t know,” Willow said and Tara went up behind her, looking over her shoulder at the screen where she was looking stuff up on the world wide web. “But this Warren?”

“Yeah?”

“I think he’s dead.”

“Lots of guys called Warren, Will,” Xander reminded her. “And this is Sunnydale as your girlfriend pointed out… Stands to reason some of them are dead Warrens.”

Tara nodded to him, they always had to remember that. But this being Sunnydale… most likely Willow had found the Warren that they – and April the demon/possessed/(possibly bi but she doubted it) robot was looking for. That was another thing about Sunnydale, even when the body count was higher, you usually found the thing you were looking for first time around.

Secrets didn’t stay buried here.

Looking for someone called Warren? The first dead Warren you came to who hadn’t died of natural causes was like as not to be the one you were seeking.

“Go on,” Tara asked, seeing a little of the news headline. At first glance it appeared Willow could be right.

“Umm, this afternoon a guy called Warren was found in a couple of places right here in Sunnydale.”

“When you say ‘a couple of places’, do you mean what I think you mean?” Buffy asked, even though she must’ve known.

“Pieces,” Tara said, reading over her girl’s shoulder. “He was found in pieces.”

“None of them alive,” Willow said.

“Eesh.”

“Yeah… Police are looking – I mean, I shouldn’t know this but they’ve still not done anything about their firewall, even after I sent them an anonymous note to warn them that it was way too easy to get into… Anyway, police are looking for a girl seen leaving the premises.

“One of the premises,” Willow corrected herself. “A girl who kind of looks like…”

“April,” Buffy finished.

“Not the kind of spring break he had planned, I bet,” Xander said.

“More like spring dismemberment,” Willow commented just as Tara looked away from the screen. Now her girlfriend was into the police reports rather than public news outlets… it wasn’t really something she wanted to be looking at. Not after enjoying their night as much as they had to this point. But it was Sunnydale, what else should they have expected?

What else would spring break mean than dismemberment?

“Just how many parts does it have to be to count as dismemberment?” Xander wondered aloud.

“Technically two, I think,” Willow said. “It’s the split, not the number of pieces, that counts. At least I think so.”

“I didn’t expect an answer, it was a whatsit – rhetorical question.”

“Well, I thought you wanted to know. But… he was in much more than two parts.”

Tara, Xander and Buffy looked from one to the other to the other. By unspoken agreement they didn’t stop to ask how many more ‘much more’ was. He was dead, that was the important thing and some weird girl who was looking for him certainly had the strength to have done the crime she was being sought for.

“Well,” Buffy said as they all looked to her for a steer on what to do next, “you can call me selfish if you like but, whatever she is, Warren’s already dead and only guys who try to touch her up are getting thrown around and most of them will have gone home drunk already so… I’m good with leaving this until morning.”

Taken by surprise, Tara blurted out a “What?”

“I have an expensive dress on and I didn’t skimp on what’s underneath either so… Me and Eddie… Yeah. You want to get Faith, be my guest but she won’t leave Hope for the whole night. Just for once, this is my night.”

“You’re serious?” Xander asked.

“I’m not being selfish.”

“No one said ‘selfish’,” Willow promised.

“I wasn’t even thinking it,” Xander said and Tara nodded in agreement.

“I was,” Anya added, “but I’ll bow to peer pressure and back off from my position.”

“Okay…” Buffy allowed, “Maybe I am being a bit selfish, but it’s a known risk, okay. She’s had all day to go on the rampage and apart from one guy getting fresh, she’s not worried about the fact that the guy she’s looking for is in pieces. So… morning will do.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Anya said.

“What?”

“Maybe she lost a piece, you know… an important piece?”

“Honey,” Xander said. “I speak for everyone when I say, please don’t go speculating which piece.”

“I was just going to say that some pieces are more valuable than others and that if I’d dismembered Xander, I’d have saved some keepsakes.”

“And with that,” Buffy said. “I’m going home with my boyfriend. If the apocalypse comes…beep me.”

“Xander and I may beep as well,” Anya said with a smile.

“I still say she’s possessed,” Xander said. “Apart from the super strength and ripping her boyfriend to pieces thing… Seemed like a nice girl. All smiles.”

“But her boobs…” Willow said. “Definitely something up with those. They just weren’t… right? Anyone else notice that? Maybe it was a bad bra?”

*******************

[DaddyCatALSO]

Have to say, it does make a lot more sense that Warren's Aprilbot would have mjaor glitches (like killing him -due to shortcircuit? An errant feedback loop?) than it would to work perfectly as an "ideal" girlfriend. And it does remove him from the equation, which can't be a bad thing. (As much as I resemble Adam B., you can imagine how far down Warren is among my favorites.) and it raises interesting possibilities dot dot dot dot.

I do regret that Shonda Farr never became better known. But her physical type put her in direct competition with Fairuza Balk and Morena Baccarin so it's understandable.

[Rauko]

Hi Katharyn, i'm really behind in the story, a month ago i was mugged, they take my backpack with my laptop and tablet (and cane, why?, who knows) and i'm kinda broke (figuratively and literally, aparently the take me for a man, a gay one, that is why they beat me) right now.
I just read the last part to checkpoint and the X-Files bonus in the tablet of a friend, and reminded me why i really need another tablet .
I really enjoyed Buffy been all badass with the council and the dynamic with Faiths appearance.
And i LOVE the X Files chapter, it really made my day, i was smiling like an idiot the whole chapter, really funny.
I'll catch up with the rest eventually, i really miss this fic, love your writing.
Thanks for sharing and good luck.

[Kajun]

Katharyn, I never thought of Tara as butch even with the boots. And she runs into poles so maybe she shouldn’t lead. LOL For once Xander didn’t have his mind in the gutter until.. Anya opens her mouth! Haha! I’m so glad you didn’t include canon where Willow got caught checking out the robo-chick and then had to reassure a pouting Tara. That part in the show really annoyed me. I hated the implication that Willow had a roving eye, you know? Anyhoo.. I waited long enough and can’t hold it in one second longer…

WHOOHOO!!!!! When you decide to kill off a character you sure don’t mess around do you? ROFLMAO The sicko-bastard probably made a dumb comment about wanting to be seen all over town and his sex-bot took it literally. LOL Or.. there’s a serial killer running around. Either way.. WHOOHOO! You go April bot!!!

Made my day.. oh yes indeed-y! Thanks! WHOOHOOOOOOO!!

Rauko, I'm glad you're still with us..

[Katharyn]

Daddycatalso - I honestly don't remember if I elaborate on April's 'fault' but I entirely agree with you. Whatever it was, he just had to die There was no way in the world I was doing a part with that character in, even mentioning his name set my teeth on edge. But if I deny the existence of anything after the end of S5 then... well, it's easier...

I hope the possibilities you refer to are reflected in what I do... (Probably not, but hey, a girl can dream!)

As much as I will - repeatedly - keep teasing about something being wrong with April's boobs, that in no way reflects actual viewing of the episode. I am sure, in reality, they were absolutely perfect LOL. So, as a disclaimer, nothing wrong with the actors chest!

Thanks

Rauko!! - Wow, I was actually getting to worry about you and not without some cause. So glad you're okay even though bad things happened. So sorry about that. Some people are assholes. This is a truth. But some people are good, which is obvious because... well, you.

Your presence here was a bonus because I know, usually, you read complete stories so I can't take you for granted. I just appreciate you being along for the ride and hope you find and get everything you need to get back up to speed when you can. I'm posting a little faster now, but we've still got 40+ parts to go so plenty of time. Also, no posts for 10 days at start of November so you won't fall further behind there Just teasing. Go at your own pace when you can and I will happily reply to backdated feedback or just enjoy you catching up one day. Whatever, it's good to know you're okay.

Buffy and Faith on the same side is a special thing... I should've made more of it I can think of all sorts of assumptions the Council could've made. LOL.

The X-Files... yeah, that was fun. That was why I did it. And all Kajun's fault. Someone's a Scully fan (Though, honestly, I find Gillian Anderson FAR hotter these days than she was back then and she was... wow, then!)

Catch up when you can, I'll be here even if it's after we finish...

Thanks and good wishes.

Kajun - See, I've never been into labels. They confuse me. I mean, yes, some people LIVE the label that they choose. But that's a choice. Other people, they just do without. To me Tara's always been one of those people. I am not sure she would identify as anything but a lesbian. She's not really one for categories in my writing. The thing is, I think this version of Willow sees the possibilities. Does she want Tara to be your stereotypical butch? Either in attitude or looks? No, she knows who she fell for. BUT... being Willow, she thinks and she's a science girl, she likes to test things. So... maybe she gives Tara - who is now more of a leader than she is - a little encouragement. And that may rub off on others...

Tara's just Tara though. I think she'd be just as confused if someone labelled her femme or anything in between.

I suppose the logical conclusion is that Willow WOULD apply labels because she has an ordered mind where things are supposed to fit in neat boxes (*snicker*) but I've no idea what she'd say about herself or Tara...

I should've made Tara run into a pole. Damn...

Willow couldn't check out robo-chick. A) a moderator reads this fic and she's a b*tch for FAQ and B) Umm, no.

That said, I've insinuated Willow looks. I mean, she's still new to all this. Girls are still a novelty to her in that way. She just doesn't 'rove' as you put it. It's less checking out and more 'shiny'

I knew you'd be pleased, but I couldn't say anything last time about a certain character's fate. You had a good idea there about why it might have happened but... as you will see, not actually... He's not all over town...

This was a gimme in the deadpool, right?

Thanks so much,

Next part in a few minutes as I will be indisposed tomorrow when I would've posted it so you get it early...

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Seven
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Third part of ‘I was made to love you’ where the gang are trying to find out what is going on.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: So… I’ve killed a certain someone I don’t need to name again and torn him into little pieces. Some things are just begging to happen…
Chances are you’ll all have known this story as something else up to now, but I’ve just decided to change it from the working title of ‘Tara and Willow: Hands of the Goddess’ since Diana has receded in the story somewhat – at least for now. But I was thinking ‘Tara and Willow: Coulda – Woulda – Shoulda’ As in, ‘could have happened this way, would have happened this way if that little thing at the start had changed, should have happened this way because – frankly – it’s better for them. I’m sure you already knew that though.
There’s a whole stream of comedy in this part that was added very late – just before posting – because it just worked and needed to be written. I make no apology, even on this board, for overusing the word ‘wang’. I think/hope you’ll enjoy the results…
Thanks to: You guys, for putting up with mention of that certain someone in the cause of… well, better.



“Hey. Need an escort?” Faith asked. The Slayer jogged up beside them and then walked backwards to look at them.

Obviously she’d been on patrol after choosing not to come with them to the dance. Willow couldn’t say she was entirely sorry about that, especially with the way things had turned out. Probably would’ve turned into a brawl and much more damage at local night spots would probably have seen them permanently barred as the common denominator.

After the thing with Olaf and the Bronze.

And then Faith’s thing with Olaf and his… thing. Nope, never ever asking about that.

“Not really,” Willow said.

Faith grinned and nodded, still trotting backwards with effortless coordination and no fear of stumbling. “Yeah, something would have to be pretty badass to go toe to toe with you two, wouldn’t it?”

“See,” Willow said. “I can’t tell. Is that sarcasm or…?” It really was harder to tell these days. Faith was getting more nuanced?

Tara shrugged. “We were just going for Hope.”

“That’s right,” Willow said. “We were just about to collect your sister.”

“Hey, I’ve dusted three vampires and ripped the arm off one of those scaly red things… what do you call them?”

“Just stick with demon,” Willow said, not bothering to go through the catalogue. It was good enough for the purpose. No one ever really kept track of what Faith and Buffy were killing unless a pattern started to emerge.

“I’ll come with anyway,” Faith said.

“You can see,” Willow asked, “that we’ve been to a dance and we’re in pretty dresses and everything?”

“Spring break, I know. So? What do you want me to do? Swoon and fall at your feet?”

Actually I’d like you to swoon and fall at Paige’s feet a bit more often than you do, but… we can’t have everything we want. Maybe something simpler.

“Or just maybe – if you’re done killing things for the night - you could offer to go get Hope yourself?” Willow suggested.

Tara didn’t interfere. She didn’t much, these days. There was a sort of peace between her and Faith, just as there was with Anya. It was pretty much like your girlfriend starting to treat you like a grown-up. Good, but you couldn’t quite believe it all the time.

Am I really?

But it was nice, when you were doing grown-up things with her every chance you got. To be treated that way.

“Nah, see, I call bullshit. Much as you two would usually go off and fuck each other’s dykey brains out, we all know why you’re going to go back there anyway,” Faith said. “Even if you are in pretty dresses.”

“What?” she asked.

“Joyce’s big date. You want to know what happened just as much as the rest of them do.”

“How do you know about that?” Willow asked.

“Because her little sister’s like a megaphone when it comes to all things Joyce,” Tara informed her.

“Oh. Yeah. That.”

“Also, you want to see how Giles did with her.”

“Joyce?” That was way in the past, wasn’t it?

“No, dummy, Hope!” Faith corrected. Giles had been minding the house with her, since it was tough to get a fifteen (or sixteen less a little) year old to agree to be babysat.

But yeah, the big date thing had potential to be pretty funny too. Hearing about it later, it’d lose something compared to being right there at the time Joyce came home.

Assuming she did… Faith was probably right. They were going to the Summers place anyway.

“You know, if you two would get around to securing my place, Giles could have just stayed there.”

“I think he’d be happier at Joyce’s house,” Willow said. For all sorts of reasons, not the least of which would be his curiosity about Joyce’s date. But also, Faith was right. The Summers’ house was all set up with the screechy Hell-God alarms. Neither Giles’s place nor Faith’s apartment had been done yet. It was something they were going to have to get around to if they wanted that flexibility.

“What does that mean?”

“You have a habit,” Willow started, and then wondered how she was going to finish off without getting beaten to a pulp. “Well, you have a habit, after Slaying… you…”

“Oh, that,” Faith said, letting her off the hook easily enough.

“Giles might not have been comfortable,” Willow said. “He is British.”

“Even the Brits do it,” Faith said. “They pretty much have to. Or there’d be no baby Brits.”

“You think? I thought maybe their stiff upper lips made them… I’m going to stop this thought right now,” she said. “You could’ve stopped me,” she pointed out to Tara.

Her girlfriend shrugged. “I could’ve but where was the fun in that?”

“You were doing just fine,” Faith said, amused by them. Or more likely by her. Tara was the one who got some real respect from the previously renegade Slayer. “Anyhow, do you really think I take all these guys back to my place?”

“Don’t you?”

“Occasionally,” Faith clarified after a moment. “But only if it’s closer. The rest… Well, that’s what motels are for.”

“How do you afford - ”

“Vampires have money,” Faith said. “It’s usually stolen anyway. Better it goes to me than burning up.”

“You shake them down?” Tara asked.

“I might suggest I can be bought off, not all the time… one score usually keeps me afloat for a while.”

“And do you let them go?” Willow asked, already knowing the answer.

“What do you think?”

“I can’t believe you lie to - ”

“The blood-sucking, murdering, demon fiends?” Faith finished for her.

“Exactly. Can you believe this?” she asked Tara.

Tara shrugged once again. It wasn’t her most endearing quality. She had a laissez faire attitude to Faith that Willow always found disconcerting. Not judgmental enough for her taste, but even she had to admit it was working.

And that was what mattered.

“I guess… if it means she doesn’t have to take the guys – or all the guys - back around Hope, I’m all for it.”

Paige though, Paige and Hope got on. Take Paige back. See Paige more. Make me right about the two of you.

“See?” Faith asked. “T’s got my back.”

“She would…”

“Hey, Missus S!”

Joyce was just getting out of a car as they rounded the corner of the block and Faith’s shout just totally ignored everyone else on that street who was probably trying to get a good night’s sleep.

“Girls,” Joyce acknowledged after waving goodnight to her date.

“You’re looking hot,” Faith said.

“Well, thank you, Faith. I… feel hot. And believe me, it’s a long time since I felt that way.” Then she patted herself down. “Oh no!”

“What?” Willow asked, looking at the retreating car. It couldn’t have gone that well if he was driving away without being asked in for coffee. No hint of a kiss either… Not smudged makeup or any sign of steamy windows as they’d been walking up.

“I – I think I left my bra in the car!”

Every one of them looked at her, then at each other. Only latterly did she notice that it clearly wasn’t true. “Way to go, Mrs S!” Faith was the one who managed to break the stunned silence.

“I’m kidding,” Joyce said and smiled, very, very pleased with herself. “Your faces… I wish I’d had a camera. It could only have been better if that daughter of mine had been here. Could we try again?”

Tara and Willow looked at each other. One more step on Joyce’s recovery not just from her tumour but from being a single Mom with too many worries to remembering she was a woman.

“That’s not funny.”

“Yes it is. I really was hoping to try it on Buffy but she’s staying with Eddie tonight, right?”

“They wanted some non-crisis time,” Willow confirmed. And obviously a crisis had come up.

“I know how she feels.”

“Do you?” Faith asked, but she had another meaning in mind.

“Not like that. I’m not that kind of girl,” Joyce said. “At least, not yet.”

Faith laughed while Willow found that Tara was joining her in being just a little uncomfortable. Talking with your best friend’s Mom about her hopefully-soon-to-be sex life… that was just a little too weird.

“So how long do you keep them dangling?” Faith asked.

“It always used to depend on how cute they were,” Joyce said, joining Faith in laughter.

“Maybe… maybe we should go inside,” Tara suggested.

“Yes, lets… Please.”

When they walked in it was immediately obvious that Hope was still up, even though she basically had a room that was all but hers here in the house. And if you went in there it was usually littered with her clothes – clean and dirty – as well as books and other stuff.

Right now though, the girl was downstairs. As was Giles.

“Ah, finally!” Giles said, he looked keen to be gone, but being British he couldn’t avoid the pleasantries. “How were your respective evenings?”

“We had a good time,” Tara confirmed. “Thanks for staying with her.”

“Oh, no need to thank me,” Giles said. “It’s been very… educational.”

Hope sat there, looking all sorts of innocent. Way too innocent to actually be innocent.

“I’m sure,” Willow said.

“And your date?” Giles asked.

Awkward, obviously, since neither of them was admitting remembering what that candy of Ethan’s had done to them. And Giles was very likely the last person that Joyce had… been umm intimate with. Not that she wanted to know whether that was true or not.

“Joyce left her bra in the car,” Faith said.

The shock was underwhelming to none-existent. “I think not, surely…” Giles gestured to the shape that the lingerie was giving Joyce.

“Thank you for noticing,” she said, sharing a little moment with him.

“Oh, he’s all kinds of observant,” Willow said. “That’s why they call him a Watcher.”

“Well, this Watcher’s going home.” He looked back at Hope. “I really thought I knew how to deal with teenage girls.”

“Tougher when you can’t command her to Slay for you?” Willow wondered.

“Somewhat.”

“Welcome to my world,” Faith said.

Like Faith didn’t cause problems for Hope? It was tough to know who was the most adult in that relationship between the sisters. Hope was a good kid by any estimation and Faith… wasn’t.

“What happened?” Tara asked.

“Simply an evening of delights,” he said. “First of all she mocked my musical tastes in favour of the worship of music sung – and I use the word advisedly – by boys who were chosen for the ability to dance in a synchronised fashion, look pretty and use lots of hair product.”

“Your musical taste is - ” Willow started.

“Just fine,” Tara soothed, giving her a look.

“Then we browsed celebrity gossip magazines,” Giles continued, “where we found some of those same boys who were all doing their very best to look resolutely heterosexual in the face of the fact that statistically being in such good shape and looking so pretty, at least one of them must’ve been gay.”

“That’s kind of a stereotype,” Willow chided him.

“And I’m a man who has something of an appreciation of show tunes,” he explained.

“Ah.”

“What then?”

“Finally, we ate cookie dough – and I can just feel that cloying stuff stuck to the roof of my mouth even now, and talked about boys. More especially we talked about the girls Hope is competition with for the boys and just who is a ‘bitch’, who ‘puts out’ and who’s oblivious to just how many of the boys want to be with her. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to call my shift… over.”

“Wait,” Tara said as he was gathering his things. “There’s something we need to tell you – both of you I suppose.”

“Is it urgent?”

“Buffy didn’t think so, but… yeah, I think you should know,” Willow confirmed. It seemed safest. Forewarned was forearmed and all that.

“Would you mind if I went first then?” Giles asked, “since your news is less urgent?”

“Sure.”

“I thought of something I wanted to say to you both earlier, not long after I’d arrived, in fact. Now… what was it? Oh, yes.” He moved closer to them, clapped a hand on both their shoulders as he started to walk in between them. “Tag. Your it.”

And then he left, not even waiting to hear about the possessed/demon/robot April… “We’ll reconvene in the morning.”

They turned to Hope, looked hard at her. “What did you do to him?”

“We… we were just talking! Honest!”

-----------------------

“Aha!” Willow cried, around a yawn.

You could imagine the supposed exclamation point, but in truth it was a very tired ‘aha’. And she hadn’t really ‘cried’ it, had she? Not really…

Yes, they agreed to ‘reconvene’ in the morning, but they’d only made ‘morning’ by about ten minutes and now it was well past noon before they got to ‘aha.’

All the same, Buffy had that smile going on that said she’d been to happy places with Eddie the previous night. It was something Tara had only started to recognise and only because others had been pointing it out to her. She did wonder whether she was as obvious about ‘reaching happy places’ as that? Did everyone else know…?

Not this morning they didn’t because, once they’d gotten home, she and Willow had found that the happiest place they could be was bed and for no more than sleep. Dance, bad guys – or girls – or whatever - and following up with Hope and Joyce on their adventures that night? Yeah… they’d been sleepy.

“Aha?” Xander asked, sipping coffee like it was the only thing that was going to wake him up. Faith was the only one of them that looked like she was fit for anything.

But she always did. The girl got by on about three hours sleep as best Tara could tell. She found her relaxation in other ways that most people would’ve found draining.

Maybe she’s a succubus. Like Kassia.

“The jury’s not completely in,” Willow said. “But it’s looking like a robot. I told you it was a robot.”

“Why robot?” Tara asked.

“Hee!”

“Huh?”

“You – you said ‘Why Robot’…” Willow said, realising that no one else had got what she’d found so funny. “Asimov? I Robot – Why Robot? Never mind… Anyway, so this Warren, the Warren who’s in pieces, he went to UC Sunnydale. And he took several courses in robotics as well as advanced artificial intelligence.”

“I always knew our classes had to have practical applications,” Buffy said. “So he built himself a girl robot as a project?”

“No,” Willow said. “I mean, yeah, but not officially. Not on the books. But… it’s pretty amazing to look at, even if she’s a simpering, homicidal girlfriend who likes to pick the wings off her boyfriend…”

“You were thinking way too much about this last night,” Tara said. She was always able to tell when Willow was thinking. She didn’t toss and turn, she just ‘hmm’d’ to herself from time to time.

“Maybe I was, but its amazing technology all the same.”

“Why would he build a robot?” Anya asked.

“Oh, come on!” Xander said.

“What?”

“Guys – I mean… He’s a guy,” Xander explained, “and she’s a girl robot and guys have needs that sometimes their girlfriends – if they have one – aren’t happy with – not that I have that problem – but… Look, it’s obviously a sex-bot.”

“Eww!”

“That may be jumping to…” she started to say.

“Let’s just face it,” Xander said. “He built a sex-bot.”

“We don’t know that,” Willow said. “Maybe he was… lonely.”

Tara suppressed a smile. In her heart Willow knew that Xander was almost certainly right or – even if that hadn’t been it at the start – then it would’ve gotten to that, at least unless this Warren guy was – or rather had been – gay.

“And you can bet that lots of men who have those kinds of skills are also lonely,” Xander pointed out. “They build sex-bots, not cabbage patch dolls…. Which is a whole new level of ‘eww’ if he had. I mean, you saw her right?”

“You can’t just come out - ”

“Hands up if you like girls,” Xander said, pushing his own in the air first of all. A few others crept up, including hers.

“And keep your hands up if you think she was good looking.”

Even she had to leave her hand in the air, though Willow did look to make sure she was before leaving her own up.

“My point exactly,” Xander said. “You don’t build perfect breasts into a ‘let’s be friends’ bot.”

Anya turned on him while more than one person winced. Oooh. Bad news. “You think she has perfect breasts?”

“Not as perfect as yours, obviously,” Xander said quickly.

“Maybe she does,” Tara said, not actually holding that opinion, but she wasn’t the only qualified judge. There’d been something… off about them. “But she practically has genuine moulded plastic stamped on the underside of each one. And on her ass!”

“Tara!”

She shrugged at her girlfriend’s objection. “Spicy talk… You know, I’m still experimenting.”

“Perhaps we could focus, for a moment,” Giles suggested. “if we imagine that he did build himself a… robotic companion. Why did she kill him? If, indeed, she did?”

“Sexbot,” Xander pointed out. “Robotic companion sounds like a dog.”

“Alright, a sexbot, if we must.”

“You said ‘sexbot’,” Willow said with a big grin. “I had that on a list of things we’d never get to hear you say.”

“So happy to have pleased you,” Giles said. “And now to the question at hand?”

“I guess it’s not too hard to figure out why she might’ve killed him,” Buffy said.

Frankly Tara had to agree. How the technology worked, she didn’t know or care really. But…

You build something with brains enough to hold up a conversation, then you were building something with self-awareness and an understanding of self… It/She’d have known what was happening to her. And that felt all kinds of… icky.

Now she was feeling sorry for a machine that’d ripped a man apart?

Yeah… actually she was.

And it wasn’t an ‘it’. It was some kind of ‘her’. That came back to identification too. If she thought of herself as a ‘she’ then in some part – at least – she was a she.

“There’s the thing,” Willow said. “He wasn’t just killed, he was torn to pieces. Lots of pieces. They didn’t even find some of them. Some of… him.”

“I told you,” Anya said. “I told you there were things that had to be kept after a good dismemberment. Often in a pickling jar. You can never have too many pickling jars.”

“Maybe,” Buffy said, changing the subject quickly, “Maybe we should go round there? Do a sort of… what am I thinking of?”

“Crime scene investigation?” Willow suggested,

“Yeah… sure.”

“Do you ever think,” Xander suggested, “that someone will make that sort of thing into a TV show?”

Willow was pretty scornful of the idea. “Bunch of nerds going print by print and fibre by fibre through a room? Where’s the drama in that?”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Xander said as they gathered their things. “What if… I don’t know, what if they were hot women? Bending over a lot, I bet they’d have to bend over a lot to do that job.”

“Even so…”

“Fair enough.”

------------------------------

“This isn’t exactly stealthy,” Faith said.

“You don’t have to come,” Willow told her, just a bit impatient with the sniping.

“What? Sexbot goes bad and dismembers creator? It’s like Frankenstein in reverse. Oh – wait, that’s an idea. Maybe she wasn’t happy with what he was packing and wanted to apply… upgrades.”

“Faith…” Tara warned.

“We should probably look for any other dismemberments. I can point you at a few guys with big - ”

“Faith!”

Willow looked around, surprised at the degree of impatience in Tara’s voice. But if anyone was going to shut Faith up, it was Tara. Not before she had the last word though. “Wangs.”

“Could we stop talking about wangs?” Willow asked, but she didn’t think that was what Tara had been bothered about. She’d been acting a little strange ever since the meeting. “Or I won’t be able to concentrate.”

“I didn’t think you were into wangs anymore?” Anya asked. And she even sounded suspicious. Like the whole lesbian thing with Tara had been ruse to win her trust.

“I’m not – I mean, I never – I can’t concentrate, if you’re talking. Period. You want me to get into his computers then I’ll need a wangless environment.”

“Should Xander wait outside?” Anya asked, apparently absolutely serious.

“I don’t think there’s anything much to worry about there,” Faith chimed in and somehow only Xander seemed worried or about to disagree with the assessment. “It’s still pretty much a wangless environment. With a whatsit? A small margin of error.”

“You should stop picking on Xander,” Anya said to Faith as they got closer.

“Yeah,” Xander agreed. “You should stop picking on Xander. Thank you, honey.”

“We both know he tries his best with what he has,” Anya continued.

“Yeah, wait, what? About the wangless thing? She didn’t mean me.” He glared at Faith, daring her.

Except daring Faith had never got anyone anywhere.

“No,” Faith replied to Anya. “What we both know is that he’s not exactly Olaf the Troll.”

“Now that is true,” Anya agreed, looking a little dreamy.

“Wait, what?” This clearly wasn’t what Xander wanted to hear. Especially not with Faith and Anya being the ones to have the conversation. “Not that there’s a problem with size, but I think we all know it’s not what you’ve got it’s what you do with it. Am I right or am I right?”

He seemed to be asking everyone. Unfortunately everyone else here… didn’t have to worry about it in the same way.

“Are you talking about Olaf?” Faith asked. “I wasn’t talking about size, were you talking about size?

“No. But there is the size,” Anya replied, still sounding a little dreamy about it.

“Course, you knew him before he was a troll,” Faith said.

“Oh, don’t worry, there was still the size. Why do you think I had him turned into a troll?”

“Good call.”

Sensing her boyfriend’s growing distress, Anya moved to reassure him. “Don’t worry I love you for your shortcomings. She doesn’t, but I do.”

“Just for the record,” Xander said slowly. “There’s no short – and there’s no short comings when it comes to that either. You said everything was perfectly adequate. Those were your words.”

“And everything was. Perfectly adequate,” Anya kissed him, but the rest of them could see her rolling her eyes at his insecurity.

Of course with promises like ‘perfectly adequate’ how could he fail to be a little insecure?

Once that was settled Faith settled into place besides Anya, speaking in a more hushed tone. But she could still hear altogether too much. “You let him get away with low standards like that,” the Slayer asked.

“He does try hard,” Anya revealed. “And there are compensations. I guess you wouldn’t have bothered with.”

“Probably - ” Faith said.

“Just stop,” she said, passing between them before that could go any further.

“Not,” Faith finished.

They ducked under the police line, right outside the house. That was what Faith meant by the lack of stealth. But no one seemed to be around, or to care that they were here.

“Why are there little numbers on the floor?” Anya asked.

“No one touch anything,” Xander said.

“Fingerprints?” Buffy asked.

“Especially those of us who have a criminal record…”

Faith put her hands firmly in her pockets. Yeah, that was a good point. She didn’t want to be blamed for a crime she hadn’t – actually – committed.

“The numbers? I asked about the numbers?” Anya reminded them.

“Umm, those would probably be the places that the… parts were found.”

To avoid focusing on the parts and what had been here just a few hours ago, Willow headed for the computer. “Nice set up… Got his own servers, the whole house is hooked up and his security is… just so-so.”

“You got the password?” Xander asked.

She shook her head. “Give me a few minutes and I won’t even need it. But – look at me – I’m like a professional criminal. Surgical gloves. To type! We don’t do this enough!”

“I bet it’d be quicker though,” he said, unimpressed. “To have the password. Look.”

A cup, sat on a piece of paper saying ‘hint’. “Coffee? No… that’s not it.”

“Perhaps he’s a tea drinker,” Xander said.

“Three letters? Hardly what I’d call a password,” Willow commented. “And that’s not it either.”

“April?” Tara wondered.

It didn’t make any sense, but she tried it all the same. “No.”

“This April,” Xander said. “Perfect boobs, you say? How about… what was she… umm, B-cups.”

“They weren’t perfect - ” she started to say, but then tried it anyway even though she had her own ideas of perfect boobs. “Oh, and we’re in,” she said and once she was it was all there, already opened up on screen. “Look at this. Technical drawings, design specifications, functional requirements. Ewww…”

“What?” Tara asked.

“Let’s just say that she was supposed to be… fully functional.”

“I told you!” Xander said. “I told you she was a sex-bot. I mean, kudos to the guy but – so obvious.”

Willow shook her head, scanning the entries in the dead man’s journal. “He started out building a companion, not a girlfriend. She was an exercise in programming and AI. He was talking to the computer though, she didn’t have a body at all back then. Then… yeah, he built a body but it’s not really sex-bot. At least not the first version. Look.”

“Wow, looks like Threepio with boobs,” Xander said. “But I guess some guys could go for it.”

“Some guy with a Kevlar cock,” Faith commented.

“What did I say about wangless environments?” Willow asked.

Faith waved it off and went to look around some more.

“Anyway, she stayed that way for a long while,” Willow noticed as she read the notes, “The problem was skin more than anything else. He’d sorted muscles and things – or what would look like muscle – but skin and flesh and everything – you know – you’d expect to make her ‘fully functional’, that was outside of his skill set, then… from somewhere… upholstery. Like, out of nowhere. No rubber skin that was easy to spot, he just went right to a real, moisturiser using, skin covering.”

“He decided he needed to send her back in time to meet his fifteen year old self?” Buffy guessed.

“No time-travel references,” Willow said, even though she’d started it.

“But that’s when he started banging her right?” Faith asked.

“Do you have to be so crude?” Willow asked.

“Do you have to sound like the Brit? Look, you really want to think this freak was banging the robot version? I told you, he’d need a Kevlar - ”

“Yes, we got it,” Tara said. “Really.”

Willow rolled her eyes, but Faith had a point. When did she start calling anything crude? And, talking of crude… “Yeah, that was when he started… when she was fully functional and… well, realistic. He re-programmed her for more than conversation. To be ‘the perfect girlfriend.’ Funny, I thought I already had that one sewn up.”

“Actually though, she continued a minute later. The programming’s almost worse than… well, what he was doing with her.”

“How so?” Tara asked.

“Well, honey, you’re the perfect girlfriend because you want to be. April? She had everything else stripped from her, and that was all she was left with. His version of what made a girlfriend perfect. And… ewww… video logs. This guys a real… asshole. Oh… ouch.”

“What?”

“Well…” Willow really didn’t know quite what to say. “Let’s just say… April proved she didn’t need to do any more Kegels.”

“Oh… Ouch…” Faith was the one who got it first, followed by the other girls while Xander didn’t get it at all.

“Bagels?”

“Well, almost…” Willow admitted.

“Don’t ask about the cream cheese,” Anya said.

“So what happens then?”

“Well, then Doctor Frankenstein meets a girl. A real girl…”

*******************

[loislane1]

Woohoo! I've been reading this fic for the past two weeels and finally caught up! Thank you for Warren's timely demise at the hands of April. This entire fic has been a pleasure to read so far. I love getting in deeper onto a character's head and their motivations and thoughts. Spike weirdly sort of grew on me when watching the show so I was slightly disappointed he was dusted so early but only very slightly. I love that Eddie lived and Faith was redeemed. Anyway, typing on a Kindle so keeping this short. I've been lurking the last few weeks enjoying your writting. Oh and as far as NaNoWriMo goes I vote for urban fiction with the girls.

[Katharyn]

Wow, Lois Lane is on the story?

Poor attempt at a joke there, sorry loislane1, LOL

Thanks so much for reading and for catching up, that's a lot to read!! Another fan of Warren's place in the deadpool. Funny that...

One thing I do is get into characters heads Too much for some people, but for those who like it I just keep going there LOL

I have a habit of killing Spike as soon as possible in my stories, it's kind of expected of me by now. But, to be honest, even if I hadn't I really wouldn't have done much with him. There are already too many characters competing for attention when you spin a story round to T/W focus and have two slayers. Also, you really don't need that sort of character when - again - you have two Slayers and two witches. You can see how Xander and Anya fade into the background a little...

It seems weird, after so long, that Eddie living (via Diana) kicked off so much change. Diana (too) has slipped into the background recently because of the same problem I mentioned above. Too many leading characters 'on screen' and needing story time. She'll be back though

Another vote for urban fantasy... and after I'd finished plotting an original sequel for my Raiders fic. I'll start on the plot for the urban fantasy and then decide between them Thanks for the vote and thanks for reading it all to here

Katharyn

[loislane1]

I heard the drum cymbal combo with that joke attempt. Childhood nickname as I was a nosey kid always asking, "why?" I actually got involved in journalism for a few years because of that nickname before finding my career home in adult education and corporate training.
Juggling two slayers plus Tara/Willow and supporting cast is a huge amount of individuals so killing Spike and cutting Riley out makes total sense. I do think you have succeeded at not turning the others, even Anya, into charactures of themselves. Eddie is a little two dimensional but part of that is the limits of point of view in this story and part is he is just so normal. I am loving Joyce's sense of humor and really just some of the more humorous quick conversations that happen (wang-free zone cracked me up). Now I will need to take on your sidestep story though if I dive in to NaNoWriMo this year my reading ability will be a bit limited for the month. Alas my writing would not be around the joy that is T/W.
-H.

[Katharyn]

You should absolutely do Nanowrimo. It's a great experience if you've never done it before (have you?) I do think it gets easier though. Year one is all about proving you can. Once you can, it's about the story you actually tell.

I take your point about Eddie but the way I like to look at it is that IF this was still Buffy's story (and you could absolutely write this whole thing from her or Faith's point of view - at least once Faith arrives) then Eddie would've been a much more interesting character. But as I think I said before, right now, he's Buffy's 'piece of strange' which is to say... normal and decent.

Sidestep... well, Sidestep One is shorter than this one. Sidestep 2 is massive and less concept driven, more typical T/W but probably better written after all the practice. Sidestep 3 is actually quite short (which is to say a full length novel LOL). I am proud of them, but they're all products of their times and my writing at that point... they were written over 8 or so years. Be advised!

Humour's a funny thing *ha!* in that I rarely plan it and never really THINK about writing it, somehow it just... happens. Often in redraft. At least the memorable lines people pick out (inc wang-free zone) That said, I really do enjoy those dialogue heavy scenes where the humour comes out. They're just fun to write and tease out.

Thanks again

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: The final chapter reflecting the events of ‘I was made to love you.’
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: So yes, I’m taking a few liberties with the canon here that can’t really be justified by the small change that was made right at the very start of the fic, but I think it’s in a good cause… further breaking down the character who I’ve already dismembered.
And yes, I agonised about the ending to this part for some time… What should or shouldn’t appear here. Whether I was going to go through with it at all or twist in some way… The more I wrote Joyce to keep my options open and to make it mean something – whichever way I went – the closer you get to her as a character and what she means to the characters.
Buffy was obvious, of course, but elaborating on what Joyce meant to the others – and Hope especially – really makes you look at her differently. Or it does for me, anyway.
It’s also the scene that removes my options. Do or die, so to speak, but once the choice is made then it’s gone and I’m left with it. I’m not the kind to go back and overhaul something as fundamental as that. The fact you won’t be reading this until more than a year later doesn’t remove the pressure though, It just means I need to be right earlier.
Thanks to: Anyone who will live with me tweaking the rules slightly. Just for this one thing…


So they’d just found out that the guy who’d been ripped apart had built a sexbot and then gotten himself a real girlfriend. Life was like that, even in Sunnydale, apparently.

“I said, would this be the girl?” Buffy asked.

“Who?”

“Well, there’s a girl coming up the driveway…”

“Do we leave?” Willow asked. She was obviously – and rightly - wary of being here on the wrong side of a police line. Especially in her surgical gloves. Not everyone understood that a bunch of college students without badges were actually legitimate supernatural crime fighters.

Kind of legitimate anyway.

“No time,” Faith said.

When the girl let herself in, Tara could see that she wasn’t a ‘girl’ at all. More your young woman and looked to be older than the late, dismembered Warren too. More to the point, she’d obviously been crying and who wouldn’t… even if your boyfriend was playing hide the salami with a sexbot he’d made in his basement?

Probably she didn’t know about that part.

“What are you doing here?” Faith asked, intercepting her at the door. Bold as anything. Like she had every right to make that challenge.

“I have permission from the - ” the girl said looking the Slayer up and down, at least initially. They she looked over the rest of them. And what they were doing. “Who are you? What are you doing on Warren’s computer.”

“Umm, those are all good questions,” Willow said. “Ones that we definitely should be able to answer. You’d be Katrina, right?”

Willow was pulling at the surgical gloves, but seemed to be having trouble getting them off.

“Yes – who are you?”

“We’re looking for the girl that did this to your boyfriend,” Tara said wincing as she saw the reaction. Maybe she’d been a little too blunt. Given a little too much away.

“Girl? What girl?”

“Umm… Her name is April.”

“What? He was seeing someone else? He was two-timing me with some ‘April’?” Katrina demanded.

“Not exactly,” Willow said. Tara winced again, she could see where this was about to go. Not only had they dropped the girl on her, but now they were about to drop ‘sexbot.’ “She was here first. Sort of…”

“Did she? Did she really do this?”

“We think so,” Buffy said.

“How - ?”

“That’s kind of complicated.”

“Who are you all, anyway? You’re not police. What are you? The junior detective club or something like that?”

Something… It had taken Tara a long while to get over the fact that the people who were supposed to keep them safe in this world… couldn’t. And the people you’d never expect to take responsibility for that… had to.

And she’d been born into weirdness. Things like that had been easier to accept in her world than it would be for Katrina. She’d believe in the police for a long time yet.

No matter what she saw.

“We’re the people trying to make sure she – this girl – she doesn’t hurt anyone else,” Buffy said, the voice of reason and experience. There really was something about her that just inspired confidence that she’d do her very best for you, no matter how flighty she might be in other parts of her life. Luckily most people Buffy came across in her Slaying knew nothing about that side of things.

You really could believe in Buffy when she spoke to you like that.

“You mean me?” Katrina asked. “You think she’d come after - ”

“Maybe… yeah.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Buffy said, looking around for help, but they all thought she was doing just fine. It was true, Katrina could be at risk. “If she tore – if she did this because she found out about you and Warren then you wouldn’t think she’s going to be happy to see you. Right?”

“She’s still - ” How did she say this? “She’s still looking for him,” Tara added.

Katrina was as confused as anyone should be by that. “But you said that she… she did this?”

“She’s not entirely func – She’s not umm, exactly in her right mind,” Willow explained helpfully. “She couldn’t be, right? To do what she did?”

Lies for civilians… They sucked at the telling, which probably made them better people, but that quality didn’t help much in a circumstance like this.

“I’ve been… I live here, that’s why the police let me…” Katrina took a deep breath. “He couldn’t have been cheating on me, I’d have known. He was hardly ever out - ”

Tara didn’t feel qualified, after one – very current – girlfriend to be pessimistic about the likelihood of cheating in a relationship, let alone by a guy. Pretty much it was unimaginable to her, but she knew it happened… to other people.

Willow came through with the goods though, she was still looking on the computer. Katrina’s presence hadn’t stopped her from doing that. “He left her – April I mean, not her you. Her Her.”

“Huh?”

“Need to be a little clearer, sweetie,” Tara said.

“I’ll use my words,” Willow said, smiling up at her a little sadly, it wasn’t the time or place to be making jokes. Not with Katrina here and little numbers still dotted around the place to mark where the pieces had been found. “See, here… He left April behind in his dorm room when he moved in here. With Katrina.”

“He left her?”

“For months…” Willow said.

You wanted motivation for a robot to go mental when she thought she was a real person? A girlfriend? Pinocchio might’ve gone postal if he’d been left that way.

“He thought the batteries would run down eventually,” Willow read. “Oops.”

“Batteries? Hey – what are you saying? She’s what? A homicidal sex addict?”

It took Tara a moment to understand what Katrina was saying. “No, not those kinds of batteries.”

“You’re not a million miles away, but she has bigger batteries,” Faith said, pulling on her jacket. She’d been making no secret of the fact she was bored and there was nothing to hit here. “Later y’all.”

She didn’t try to stop Faith as she left, that would’ve been futile.

“Huh?” Katrina was confused as Faith left and there was the whole battery comment too.

“Katrina – umm, well, here’s how it is. She’s a sex-bot,” Xander filled in since the girl obviously wasn’t making the intuitive leap from ‘my boyfriend has been horribly murdered’ to ‘a sex-bot did it.’ To be fair, most people wouldn’t.

“What?!”

“How can we not tell her?” Tara backed Xander up. Badly put, but good choice. “She’s a robot, April I mean. Warren built her.”

“I know,” Buffy said. “It’s unbelievable.”

At least by civilian standards, when you were dealing with vampires, demons and setting new Hell God alarms on a daily basis… less so. They’d run across an alien after all, but Katrina had every right to be shocked.

“No,” Katrina said, but she wasn’t in denial. “Actually, it all makes a weird kind of sense.”

----------------------

“The thing you have to know about Warren is that he’s – he was clever,” Katrina said, now sitting down after they’d persuaded it that it was the best option. Once she accepted ‘sex-bot’ then she seemed to realise that the usual authorities weren’t going to be much help.

“Obviously.”

“No, I mean he was just clever. He wasn’t a genius, what he did was take things other people had come up with and put them together in new ways, that was his skill. He never really came up with anything on his own.”

Willow nodded, she knew the type. She often wondered if that was her fate, and it wouldn’t have been a bad one, all things considered. That was often where the people who were best remembered came from in terms of their creative contribution to the world.

Anya had drifted off to look around, not really interested in the explanation, but the rest of them were all listening to Katrina explain what she thought would’ve happened. Why not? It might actually help.

At least it might help the girl, even if it didn’t help them. After all, they’d sprung an unpleasant truth on her so they owed her their attention.

“Robotics,” Katrina said. “That was what the kid in him loved, putting things together, but AI was where his real talent lay. I guess he used both together. But… we met – I’m a doctoral student – we met when he was interested in my team’s work on artificial flesh – and I don’t just mean skin. We were developing for people who were burned, scarred or so we could provide grafts without needing to slice it off another part of their bodies like we do now.”

“But he figured out he could use it in other ways?” Buffy guessed.

“We were upfront about the possible applications, they were almost limitless. We had a… he built us a robot hand, for the lab. We gave it flesh, living flesh and he programmed it to give everyone the finger - that was all it would do… We only showed it to the Dean once. That was typical of him.”

Katrina smiled, a happy memory bubbling to the surface, but then slipping away beneath the fact he was dead.

You got a lot of that in Sunnydale.

“I should’ve known…” the girl said.

“That he’d build a fully functional sex-bot? You usually attract that kind of man?” Buffy asked, then held up her hand to apologise for being overly harsh.

“I was in another relationship when we met, you know how it is… guys don’t notice you when you’re in a relationship, they pick up on - ”

Xander shook his head, interrupting. “No, I’m sorry. You may be the smartest person in the room but men - we notice. Maybe we don’t do anything but we do notice. Sorry… not the time. I guess, but just thought I should clear that up.”

It fitted what she’d read on the computer though. After giving April skin, he’d… well, let’s say his experiments had been aimed at tweaking full functionality. Then he broke it off, started dating Katrina and left April… locked her away.

“You – you should all go,” Katrina said. “You should all just go.”

Before they could either agree or argue with her, there was a knock on the door. Katrina, out of habit probably, went to answer it. The thought occurred to everyone at the same time, but Xander was the one who was closer to the door and looked out. “Sex bot attack!”

Faith had left too early.

Here was something to hit.

----------------------

“I’m sorry but I need to resort to violence,” April said as Buffy flew backwards. Willow yelped when her best friend crashed through the desk she’d been sat at.

“Watch out, Will,” Buffy groaned.

“Yeah, thanks for the warning.”

Tara grabbed Willow’s hand and pulled her back to the edge of the room. Putting them right next to something hard – increasing the risk of being caught between a Buffy and a hard place – seemed less of risk than being in the middle of things and getting caught be a stray punch, kick or… fling. It wasn’t like this place was that big.

“However I’m programmed for self-defence and to protect myself. It’s one of my prime directives.”

“Oooh! Ooh!” Willow got all excited at that, Tara had no real idea why though. “April, what are your prime directives?”

The robot kept talking as she took three of Buffy’s punch’s in quick succession.

“Do anything Warren asks,” April said, kick out at Buffy who took it with an ‘oof’ but didn’t go flying this time.

“Willow…” Buffy said.

“Quiet, Buffy, it might help!”

“Keep myself pretty,” April said next, this time punching and missing but it took a chunk out of the wall just behind her. Buffy was getting into this though, anticipating more and more accurately.

“Protect myself from harm so that I can keep doing the other two.”

“Oh,” Willow said, sounding disappointed.

“Oh?” Tara repeated.

“Oh!?” Buffy asked. “Oh, what?”

“I was hoping maybe her prime directives would go into conflict and we could use that to immobilise her or something.”

“Warren often spoke about such things,” April said brightly. “He even left a message for anyone who tried it. ‘We watch the same shows’. I’m not sure what it means?” Then she punched Buffy again, picked her up and sent her flying.

So much for anticipation.

And Tara knew she was going to have to have words with Faith. She’d left and now there was a fight – what she’d been looking for – where someone could get hurt.

While April wasn’t on Glory’s level – or even Adam’s - and Buffy wasn’t being taken apart, the robot did seem tireless and resilient. Those and apologetic. “You shouldn’t have attacked me, I only came to find Warren.”

“You really don’t know?” Buffy asked, circling the kitchen island while the rest of them scrambled to get back into the already smashed den.

“Know what?”

“Warren’s all over the place?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The little numbers on the floor – Warren.”

April stopped, looking all around her at the numbers. “That – that was not real – ”

And Tara thought she’d got it because – no matter how limited her programming – April did have intelligence and feelings. She could be read like a person. Willow was right, there had been a glitch in her programming, she’d been asked to protect herself but to serve and keep herself pretty. Preserve herself, but she’d been left behind without a purpose or anyone to care for her and when she’d come here…

Willow had shown her some of the same shows…

Living with a self-confessed nerd you picked these things up, TV wasn’t all about penguins. Unfortunately how they’d gotten here didn’t seem likely to be of much help. Especially as - “Buffy, look out!”

The Slayer didn’t need her warning, she was already well aware that it was too late to avoid the hand that shot out and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up off the ground. Well aware, too, that beating those hands and arms didn’t do much.

And then…

April stopped.

Stopped dead.

Tara watched as Buffy opened one eye, peering at her adversary who still had hold of her but wasn’t throwing her around or choking the life from her. “What – whaaaat issss happppenning?” April asked.

Slowing down… slowing down…

“Flat battery!” Xander cried.

“No kidding,” Willow said. “That’s the other thing that would save us, you know, on TV? Flat battery or logic conflict. Those were the things. I went with logic conflict, because it’s really a classic.”

“You went for the wrong one?” Tara asked, embracing Willow who was – blessedly – untouched by everything and then everyone clustered around Buffy who was still trying to escape a grip that wasn’t – quite – choking her.

“I couldn’t do anything about the battery,” Willow said, looking April over. “I went with the only one I could help with.”

“I’m not judging.”

“Yes,” Willow said. “You were. You were making insinuations about my nerdy credentials.”

“No, love, I know they’re impeccable. It’s a nerd thing to know the right answer but just pick the wrong one.”

“Umm, some help?” Buffy asked.

“Oh… right… Anyone got a screwdriver?”

“Drinking really isn’t going to help,” Anya deadpanned, held it for a moment and then broke into a grin. “I’m quipping because Buffy has too little air to do it herself.”

“Some help… please?” Buffy asked again.

“Umm, yeah… wait…” Eventually they did manage to prise open those locked fingers, exposing some of the metal under the skin, which both horrified and impressed everyone – including Katrina.

“He really…”

“Yeah,” Willow said. “I wish I hadn’t read it, but I read it. He really…”

“And later, she disassembled him,” Tara said. “Maybe she knew she was going to die.”

“You think it’s sad?” Buffy asked, rubbing her throat.

“I think she never asked for what happened to her,” Tara said. “She was made, she was made as a curiosity, a toy and then she became a slave. We have laws against that, he made her as real as he could, but even though that was what he wanted, he made her a slave anyway. And when he was done with her… he tried to throw her away. How horrible is that?”

“You can’t mean that he deserved to die?”

Tara thought about that but didn’t answer the question. “No. But I just know that she didn’t deserve what happened to her either.”

“What do we do with her?” Willow asked.

A part of Tara understood that Willow would love to study the robot, but they didn’t have the time, the space and… once again, April didn’t deserve that either. She obviously wasn’t just ‘parts’. In her own, flawed, way she’d had a soul. Just like the rest of them. “I don’t know…”

--------------------------

Willow recognised the signs when Tara came back later.

She hadn’t been happy, not really, when Tara had gone off without her – without anyone actually. It seemed like a recipe for inviting trouble, which might’ve been a mixed metaphor but she could mix her damned metaphors if she wanted to.

Once Tara came back though…

“You were with her?”

Tara nodded, stroked her shoulder as she went past the desk and sat on the bed to take off her shoes.

“Was it… bad?”

“It was quiet,” Tara said. “Peaceful, I guess.”

“So the sexbot isn’t a sexbot anymore,” Willow said, but realised right away it had been the wrong thing to say. So wrong that Tara didn’t say anything about it, she was just disappointed.

In her.

And that was like being slapped in the face.

“She’s a girl,” Tara said. “Was a girl. Kind of anyway.”

“So… what happened?” Discovering April had emergency backup power hadn’t been a shock, as a nerd. That she wanted to use it to be with someone when she powered down for the last time? More of a shock.

“We talked.”

Talking with a previously homicidal robot that was winding down towards robo-death? That wasn’t something you could’ve planned for when you got up in the morning. It didn’t surprise her though. “I’m glad you were able to do that,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because… you sound like you’re glad?” Willow guessed. She hadn’t really expected to be asked about it.

“I am.”

“And… I don’t really think that Psych one-oh-one would’ve been much use in dealing with a terminally de-powered robot.”

“Your professor wasn’t exactly the most understanding secret government black ops program leader either,” Tara said. “It was sad actually, really sad… All April wanted was to be a good girlfriend and she did that as best she could. Then she was abandoned, left in a room all on her own. Just waiting for someone who was never coming back? And when she got out, when she found him? She was rejected because he’d found someone less perfect, because none of us are perfect....”

That was what had happened then, but there must’ve been more to it than that. For April not to have remembered what she’d done… she must’ve had a reason to wipe it from her own memory.

Which really just pointed to what Tara had been saying, didn’t it?

“It doesn’t make dismemberment okay,” Willow said quietly. Like Tara didn’t know that.

“No… but it was all done to her. None of it was her fault.”

Willow nodded. “I guess. He gave her super strength. He made her love him, do anything for him and he… abused the trust, I guess. If you can call it that.”

“Just call it abuse,” Tara said. “Animal, person, robot… doesn’t matter really.”

“What… you didn’t just leave her there?”

“Faith and Buffy are taking her to the cemetery tonight, I’m going down. We’re going to put her in an old risen vampire’s plot. Do something about a headstone.”

“Burial?”

“Can’t leave her lying around,” Tara said. “And… we can’t just let someone plug her in and start doing those things to her again. She’s had her time. Besides, maybe someone will tend the grave.”

“Mind if I come with?”

“I think that’d be nice,” Tara said.

“She was what she was made to be,” Willow said.

“No,” Tara said. “She was better than she was made to be. That was what he didn’t get. Or maybe he just didn’t care.”

------------------------

“Someone’s getting serious,” Willow said, bending to smell the roses in the vase in the hallway. “Smell these.”

Tara took a long, deep whiff, appreciating the scent almost as much as the smell.

“Oh, come on, Buffy,” Willow said.

“Red roses?” Buffy asked. “This guy’s moving way too fast. Eddie still hasn’t brought me red roses.”

“Eddie’s in college and doesn’t drive a BMW,” Willow pointed out. “And remember the last time someone got you roses – or petals at least?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Have I ever bought you red roses?” Tara asked.

“No, if you remember I said I preferred the pink.”

Tara giggled. “Oh, yeah.”

“Of course,” Buffy said, “if my Mom’s boyfriend had been poorer then they might’ve done it in the laundry room.”

“We didn’t do it in the laundry room,” Willow said. “At least not until later.”

“Willow!” Tara couldn’t believe that her girlfriend had chosen to reveal that little bit of intimacy. Even to Buffy.

“I was defending our reputations,” her girlfriend said.

“Not much.”

“Every little bit counts.”

She might be right at that. “Buffy’s still embarrassed she got taken in by her Mom saying she left her bra behind.”

“Am not,” Buffy said, ducking her head back out. “Much. Mom?”

“There wasn’t car on the driveway was there?” Tara asked, having a horrible thought about why Joyce might not be answering. Children shouldn’t walk in on their parents. She’d never done it, but for her it was an article of faith. Some things you just knew.

“Did you think, maybe…?” Maybe Buffy hadn’t thought of it. So someone had to say something.

“What?”

“Maybe she’s not alone…” There was just no good way to say that.

But Buffy seemed to accept her suggestion as possible, changing her tone. “Umm… Mom?” Calling up the stairs again, but looking like she – the Slayer – was afraid to go up there.

“Maybe she could bang on the wall if – Never mind.” Willow relented in the face of a look from both of them.

“Bang the wall?” Tara asked.

“It sounded like a good until I thought about it… never mind.”

“Oh, Mom…”

No, Joyce was down here and Buffy’s lack of horror entering the living room was a good sign. No boyfriend. No walking in on things she didn’t want to.

“Mom? What are you doing?”

“Mom…”

Something about the way that Buffy’s voice was changing told Tara that it wasn’t right. Worse, something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Mommy!”

**********************

[loislane1]

Ugh...the feels. At least Buffy has Tara and Willow with her. The Body was one of the most powerful, emotional episodes of any television show I have ever seen. Hit too close to home in some ways for me.

For the rest of chapter 138, I am happy Katrina lived and that April was given a proper burial. I'm also happy there will be no Buffybot due to the rippling changes of Warren and Spike in the dead pool.
-H.

[Katharyn]

Loislane - I get it entirely... I feel the same way and I had to write and redraft it.... Not my favourite thing at all.

It's tough stuff. But it's impossible to ignore the episode without breaking 'the rules' and changing an awful lot of things.

I'll be posting both 139 and 140 together in a couple of days to move past 'The Body' all in one move. I just want it done...

The 138 main events though, how could I not have Katrina survive? And April deserved better... I mean, all she did wrong was tear one hated character apart Hardly anything at all LOL

Katharyn

[Kajun]

Katharyn, Giles didn’t even hesitate before dismissing Faith’s claim that Joyce’s bra was MIA. LOL He probably remembers every single minute of their Band Candy adventure. I totally get Giles take on boy bands And OMG that makes me feel old. Haha.

Katrina’s claim that scumbug put things together in new ways is completely invalid. TED anyone? As a matter of fact, Ted was far more advanced than April. If not for his domineering programing, which created a clash between himself and Buffy, his robotics may never have been discovered. Most people who had even minimal contact with the sexbot knew something was off about her. Ted had a job and apparently dated many women over an extended period of time as evidence by the awful pile of bodies discovered in his basement. There’s only so long a “person” can get by with extremely limited programing and.. when things went south, the scumbag could have easily hit the off button. It’s not as if her programming include the art of deceit so how would she know what he was up to? I refuse to give him credit for anything but being a complete and total waste of space.

I think Willow needs more than rubber gloves. What if a piece of spleen or.. something.. gets stuck in the tread of a sneaker? EWWW. They all need to burn their clothes immediately!

Spicey talk! Tara needs more practice. I’m sure Willow wouldn’t mind.

Giving the sexbot a burial seems so weird. I have hard time feeling sympathy for its destruction. However… one of my favorite movies is Wall-E. I admit to shedding a few tears for the trash compactor and even have a mini Wall-E toy. LOL Still though.. big difference when you consider the sexbot’s source. Also.. Katrina has taste for shit. Anyhoo.. Tara doesn't share my lack of compassion. That's a good thing and part of why she's my hero.

One of the things I’ve been dreading is up next. Bracing for impact coz this is gonna be tough.

[Katharyn]

Wow... 10+ years on and I had completely forgotten about Ted and what he was until you mentioned it. Very true, and the characters should've reflected on that. More to the point, they should've reflected on Ted when Joyce looked to start dating. There'd have been some amusement in that. Ah well, your writer has a poor memory. This should not be news to you.

For the record, I consider it completely canon that Giles and Joyce both remember everything about the band candy... (while Willow merely has strange dreams about band camp)

I will not speculate on what may or may not have gotten stuck in someone's shoe. Or what was small enough...

The thing with spicy talk is that... when you see as much of the girls as we do here, it means a little less. And that's sad. But... spicy talk for other people?

Regarding April's burial... well, if the murder victim is actually the bad guy then the murdering robot has to be the good-guy. Sort of... You're right, Tara has 'compassion' stamped on her... spicy talk

And yes... the next parts? Not great fun. In fact everything will get pretty serious for a fairly long time, as you can imagine...

Thanks so much

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

I will be posting both parts of ‘The Body’ in one go. More on that below.

Katharyn



Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Nine
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: The Body – Part 1.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: So, as I suggested before. This was a very difficult decision to make. I put it off. I even started on a little redrafting from chapter one onwards to give myself more time to think about this before I wrote it. Even after the reveal at the end of the last Chapter, I suspect that some of you might think I’m bringing Joyce back.
Spoiler alert – oh, what the hell. No. I’m not. She’s left us.
Now that I’ve made the decision I think, fundamentally, it’s been the one I had to make. Though I find myself struggling to ‘justify’ it. In story terms it’s obvious. Joyce’s death drives most of the rest of the canon season, Buffy only makes the decisions she does informed by this (and Riley leaving on the side, perhaps if he had been there she’d have done things differently at the end) but even given the changes I’ve made with Hope… It still needs to happen. There are too many story points that just hang off this and I’d be stepping so far away from canon to keep the story what it started out as.
Also if I’m going to live by the rules I set myself, there’s no real way I can say that Joyce’s illness wouldn’t be fatal simply because Diana killed a bunch of vampires who would’ve made Buffy’s life problematic and killed Eddie. There’s just no real connection and I’m be stretching ‘tenuous’ to even try to make it (though I probably could). The last episode and a certain character’s fate could – theoretically – be covered by the same claim, but he deserved it. This? It’s so fundamental to the season and so ‘internal’ in its origins I really can’t see what I would do instead.
So… Joyce was found and now we have a canon episode that’s got some lovely, flashback, moments. Ones I can’t represent as canon did because of the perspective(s) I write within. So… there’s that too. SIGH. Following canon sucks when the quality of it is actually high and there’s problems and you just don’t want to do it. In the end I had to do an outline pass through the rest of the season to find out what hung off this event again, decide where I wanted to go and just what could happen if I didn’t do this…
I’m not at all convinced of how this will work but… here goes.
Posting note: This is the first update of two that will be posted today. This part will be immediately followed by 140 which concludes the parallel of ‘The Body’ as I want to get it all out in one go… It’s not exactly a ‘happy’ episode and not the sort of thing you want dragging on for days or weeks like some canon episodes have been covered in this fic. On the other hand, it will take more than one chapter to do it justice. So. This. Two parts. One day. Then we move on after a brief pause as we will be away from the internets for a few days… (Again, not ideal timing!)




“How…?” Xander’s voice, on the other end of the line, just faded away. It was a pointless question. A question to which the answer was so obvious it wasn’t even worth asking. But then what else did you say at a time like this?

If he’d been in the room Willow would’ve just given him a shrug and a look. No need for words. But he wasn’t and so she had to say something too.

“I got her off to sleep, for a few minutes…” she said. “She was dreaming though.”

“I bet.”

“I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do,” she explained.

She’d stayed here after the ambulance had taken the body away because what else was she going to do?

Tara might even have had the tougher job, she’d gone to tell the others. Giles knew, of course, he was reliable and British and grown up and he was starting to organise things. That was what he did to help, he organised and there were obviously plenty of things to be organised.

He hadn’t shown anyone his list, but she’d seen it all the same.

All he did was keep adding to the list and it was a couple of pages long already. She could respect a good list; a good list got you where you needed to go. But… that was his list. Important to him to have, to make sure everything got done.

Her list had precisely two entries on it. ‘Be there for Buffy’ and ‘Do whatever she needs me to’…

Whatever I can.

She’d have preferred the bigger list, because Buffy was… Not reacting well. It was worrying. If her friend had broken down, sobbed and cried, then that would’ve been one thing. If she’d shut down entirely that would’ve been another. Either would’ve been tough, but understandable.

Relatable.

But this…

It was like Buffy was trying to tough it out but somehow she was vulnerable too. And horribly, horribly practical.

“You want me to come over?” Xander asked.

She really wanted to say ‘yes.’ In Tara’s absence and with Giles immersed in his list, she wanted to have him come over tell funny jokes and make everything feel a little better. But… this wasn’t the time for funny jokes and Buffy certainly didn’t want anyone else around. Buffy didn’t even want her around and all she’d really done to help was clean up after Buffy had thrown up by the door…

Buffy just wanted to be with her Mom…

And she had been for much longer than anyone expected. You kind of assumed, when the paramedics turned up, that was it… They’d do what they could – and they had tried to resuscitate Joyce, but you could see they were only going through motions. Buffy’s Mom had already been cold when they got here.

Buffy had said so…

You grew up believing that those men and women in the uniform were miracle workers. But maybe they were just heroes. Miracles were in short supply when you really needed one.

And they hadn’t taken the body away when they left.

It’d lain there when the paramedics were called to another scene and one hero – Buffy - had wished the other heroes well as they went…

Even though they hadn’t saved her Mom or done anything for her.

You thought they’d take the body away. Why hadn’t they taken the body away?

Intellectually Willow knew that the coroner had to be the one who declared Joyce dead – she knew because of all the times she’d hacked in and read through reports on their computers.

And when the woman had finally turned up she’d been tempted to tell them, tell them to sort their computers out so people like her couldn’t get in and read the reports of someone’s mother, father or child’s death.

Was someone going to hack in and read Joyce’s report? Was there someone else watching the records, to see what happened in Sunnydale? It made her feel dirty just for doing it…

Now that her perspective had been changed by the terrible reality of the things they’d been reading about, laughing about even – at least how easy it was... Why did I laugh about it? Everything in there was a tragedy for someone.

“Will? Do you want me to come over?” Xander repeated.

“No…” Willow realised she’d been drifting on her thoughts, ignoring him. Worrying him. “No. No… they, they took the body now. They took it to the coroner… It’s just me and Buffy.”

“Where’s Tara?” Xander asked.

“She left yours?”

“I – I didn’t ask where she was going,” he admitted. “I – I forgot – or maybe I did and I don’t – I don’t know where she went.”

“It’s okay,” she said. There was plenty of stuff she hadn’t asked.

“I should’ve gone with her, made sure she was okay.”

“She’s fine,” Willow said, knowing it. Feeling it. “Fine apart from – you know.” They’d all been close to Joyce, no matter how little time they’d known her.

Too little.

“I know. Are you sure you don’t want me to come over?”

“Tara will be going to Faith’s…” Willow said. If anyone needed help, it would be her girlfriend. It wasn’t Faith, of course, that would need someone. It was…

“Hope,” he said.

“She’s - ”

“Oh, God. She’s going to take it hard,” he finished for her.

“Do you remember?” Willow asked, looking around the empty dining table. “Do you remember Christmas?”

She knew he’d be smiling, it’d been good times. Brought together, all of them, through Joyce’s kindness and willingness to be the one who did the holidays. Even when you weren’t someone who celebrated those holidays… “Santa Claus,” Xander said.

“Anya ruining that myth for everyone.”

“Making Giles squirm…”

“Joyce didn’t mind though,” Willow said. Talk of the band candy Ethan had conjured for the old Mayor… And what had happened between the two adults. “She wasn’t embarrassed at all. She was different after - ”

After her operation, she wanted nothing more than to live the best life she could. That had made her different. But… Life had been snatched away. It had to be something to do with that, didn’t it?

“I can’t believe she’s…”

“No. I keep waiting for her to walk out of the kitchen and offer me a cookie. One she’d bought, because she always burned the ones she baked,” Willow looked around, at the empty doorway. She wasn’t there. “It was the one Mom thing she couldn’t ever do – Oh! Oh no! How – how could I say that?”

“It doesn’t matter, Will,” Xander said.

“Of course it matters, I just called her a bad cookie maker!”

“She’s gone, Will,” Xander said. “And she was the first to say it. I think she was kind of proud of it. She worked, she was a Mom and she was a friend… She was proud that she did everything, even if she didn’t do it all well.”

Was that right? Maybe… maybe he had that right. Did I never notice she was proud she couldn’t bake cookies? What else did I miss?

“I… don’t know what to do. What do I do, Xander?”

He didn’t know either.

Tara knew, Tara had known what to do… She’d been here, she’d been through this. She’d have known what Buffy needed and when she didn’t need anything. Tara would’ve been useful. Tara should’ve been here.

Now.

But then who would’ve told the others?

Who could’ve managed it?

-------------------

Willow would’ve done this better, Tara was certain of that. She’d have planned her route, assessed those in the greatest need and made her way round most efficiently.

Not just picking out the easiest ones first…

Xander and Anya hadn’t been easy. Not easy at all but… she’d had to get out of the house. Yes, she could have called them – called all of them – but that was how she’d first found out. A call… to school. When they’d pulled her out of class… She’d been pretty certain that neither the administrator nor the principal had even known who she was. Maybe they’d seen the name, but not on sight. When they came into the classroom… They hadn’t known who she was to pick her out.

She’d had to put her hand up and… There was a phone call from Daddy.

He was still on the line, waiting.

But they knew. And she’d been able to read it all over their faces so she’d known too. It hadn’t been a surprise, not really. Mom… It hadn’t been a surprise. Sometimes she even thought, guiltily, that it’d been a relief. An end to something that had gone on far too long. But how could you say that about a life?

About your Mom’s life?

This though… Joyce had been fine. Not just alive but really living. She’d been dating, just tonight. She’d felt and looked great… then…

Xander and Anya had been the first, it’d been a toss-up between them and Eddie and proximity had been what did it in the end. Buffy might need Eddie, but it would’ve taken so much longer to do it the other way around. Besides, she knew that Xander would be there for Willow and…

I left her back there…

Okay, she’d left her with Giles and had come up with some noble excuse for leaving and telling the others, face to face. Yes, she believed in the need for that. Believed it was better this way.

But there was a part of her that wasn’t sure that she could be of any use at all back at the house.

It was still raw, it still hurt. She hadn’t realised how much because… well, life was good now. But with this, yes… it still hurt. And what use was she if she broke down in a quivering heap about something else?

Over something other than the tragedy that had just happened to Buffy and all of the people who loved Joyce?

She’d have been a burden and then people would be feeling bad for her. Here, at least, she had something to do. She did hugs. Everyone had wanted a hug. Xander. Anya – who’d caught her by surprise with her tearful reaction that had set her off again – and then Eddie. All of them had needed a hug.

She felt sorry for Eddie… None of them had any idea what Buffy needed or wanted right now… but he was mystically supposed to because he was her boyfriend?

How did you support someone as strong as Buffy? When did you back off and give her space? There were two sides to her, of course, the Slayer and the girl who’d just lost her Mom. Eddie was dating both of them and his first instinct to rush around there might’ve been the right one.

Or it might not. Making Buffy think of anything or anyone else… Welcome distraction or the most selfish thing in the world when she just wanted to be alone? And if he didn’t go then what? It could destroy the trust Buffy had in him.

And she hadn’t known what to tell him – when he asked what he should do?

It was something she’d not had to struggle with or worry about. She hadn’t had a girlfriend back then… And now that I have, I’m not even with her.

This was surely the roughest part that was coming up though…

She had used the phone, she’d used it to forewarn Faith, calling her from Xander and Anya’s, and making sure she got rid of any ‘company’ that she might’ve had. Strange how you could think about those little things that might get in the way, as a distraction from what was coming up.

She didn’t need some guy – or even Paige – hanging around when she got there.

Not when Hope…

It was a grim task she’d taken on, but this was surely going to be the grimmest part of all.

Faith hadn’t said much since she’d opened the door to her and Tara had wondered whether if, maybe, she’d have told her sister already. Something said ‘no’ though, this kind of thing was way outside her friend’s comfort zone. Outside of the things she’d ever prepared for.

Oh, Faith could’ve told her sister. But she knew enough to realise that she shouldn’t. That it ought to come from someone who understood.

Their Mom – Mrs Lehane - had… the sisters had little reason left to love her by the end of their relationship. But like a few of them, Hope had found someone new to fill that Mom shaped hole in her life and Joyce had done so willingly and lovingly.

Now… Now she was gone.

Was Faith a coward? No, she would have done it if she had to. But it wouldn’t have been done right by anyone else’s measure. So the right thing, from Faith’s perspective, was to wait and let her deal with it.

With the elder sister as her backup, Tara knocked on Hope’s door. The disturbance, from the phone call onwards, couldn’t have been missed but the voice that answered was still tired and sleepy and just a little bit afraid.

From Hope’s point of view, if it’d been urgent then Faith would’ve just burst in, so it wasn’t about protecting her from Glory. If it had been less serious, it would’ve waited until morning. So… this was something to be afraid of, she supposed Hope was right about that.

“Honey, I - we need to talk to you,” Tara said.

“Tara? What are you - ?”

She opened the door, taking the question as permission to do that. It’d been a while since she’d been in here or maybe she’d never really been in here at all. Maybe she just remembered it. One of those things…. Whatever, she remembered it differently to how it was now. Posters, new posters. Fairly tidy, she supposed, not much by way of clothes lying around. Unlike at the Summers house.

And a scared young girl in the bed, hugging her knees as she sat up against the pillows and the wall.

Faith lingered at the door, there but… not really taking part. Not unless she had to stop Hope from going and doing something… silly.

Something that she hoped to avoid provoking, but… grief hit people in different ways. Oh, yes, she knew that.

Sitting down on the end of Hope’s bed, it crossed her mind how relieved she was that Faith was here. Hope knew and could see that her sister was fine. The wound she’d received was healing as only a Slayer could so she wasn’t worried about that either.

So…

“What’s happened?” Hope asked, leaping to the right conclusion.

Tara reached for her hand, not even sure where to start.

“What happened?” The girl was plainly frightened and silence wasn’t helping one bit.

“It’s – Honey, its Joyce,” Tara said.

She’d been intending to say something more, but she didn’t get the chance. Hope flung her arms around her and sobbed.

Hope had never had to deal with death.

The news no one wanted to hear was that it didn’t get any easier second time around. So all Tara could do was to be hugging her too.

-----------------------

There was nothing to do but wait. Tara had been waiting most of the morning. Sleep had eluded her and – strangely – Willow hadn’t even appreciated her presence and comfort when she’d come back last night and been ready to hold her.

One person who didn’t need another hug… No, Willow did need a hug, she just… Something was making her hold back. Like, if she got her hug and if she felt one tiny bit better, then that would be a betrayal of Buffy and Joyce and everyone who couldn’t take even that little bit of comfort.

Tara could’ve used one though. Lying awake – listening to her girlfriend drift in and out of a fitful sleep – left her way too much time to think and thinking hadn’t taken her anywhere good.

Maybe that was what had caused Willow to apologise to her in the morning, but she’d brushed it off not as nothing, but instead as something that was totally understandable and really didn’t matter. What was she going to do? Get offended over how Willow dealt with this? She hadn’t even lost a grandparent… let alone someone as close as Joyce who’d been a regular part of her life for years now.

Her best friend’s Mom.

They couldn’t keep waiting though… Xander and Anya had pulled up outside and they were expected to head down to the morgue together. Honestly, she didn’t think it was the best thing for any of them and certainly not for Hope who’d been taking it hard. But… Buffy had to go and they weren’t letting her go alone so… expedition.

Family expedition.

Before that though, Willow had decide what she was wearing. Tara couldn’t think of one, single occasion on which Willow had worried about that more than now… and the thing was, no one would mind or care whether she was wearing the green blouse or not. Not, probably.

Willow wasn’t happy with it.

Then there was a question of… the telegram.

She hadn’t even known that people still sent telegrams, but after speaking to her Dad – having a sudden need to speak to him even after what he’d done… it had arrived. Sometimes her father surprised her and even in nice ways. She’d told him what had happened, mostly so someone who knew what she’d been through would know what was happening now. Maybe tell her she was doing things right.

Willow knew but she hadn’t been there at the time. He had.

And then the telegram. It was intended for Buffy, of course, but… did she give it to her? Buffy had all but threatened to pummel him – for her – and that had evidently touched something in Tara’s father.

He was ex-military, he could respect something like that. Just like he had respect for the people he’d fought in his career, some of them at least. Men who’d been trying to kill him… Buffy had never reached that point, but between her show of defiance, friendship and what Tara had told him about Joyce…

The telegram. Why couldn’t he just ask her to pass on his sympathies? Why this… piece of paper?

Willow was going to have to help her decide, but Willow couldn’t even decide what she was going to wear for this, the least fashion sensitive occasion…

--------------------------


“The green?” Willow wondered. “Should I just wear the green?”

“The green’s nice,” Tara said.

Why was this so hard? And where was everything else, everything else that she’d rather wear than this green… monstrosity? You couldn’t wear it to the morgue, it wasn’t what you did. Green blouse to the morgue? No…

“Sweetie?”

“I know, I’m coming – I just… I just can’t decide. If I decide and then we leave and then I’m wrong then there’s no coming back, there’s no do-overs and I’ll be the girl who wore the green blouse to go see… her.

Buffy had freaked out, last night, referring to her Mom as ‘the body’. Willow knew what she meant, but… she had to keep telling herself. It was still her. It was still Joyce and – “What?!” Tara was hovering.

She winced at herself, Tara didn’t deserve that. Every little bit of it had been her frustration with herself… but she’d lashed out and… “What… is it, baby?”

“I… My… My Dad sent a telegram.”

“A telegram?”

“For Buffy. He sent it to me, I’m sure he’ll send a card and flowers and everything but – he sent a telegram for now.”

“Your Dad?”

“Yeah…”

“And what do you want me to do about it? Ritually burn it?”

“No,” Tara said, clearly stung when all she’d meant was to ask a question.

Fuck. I am just fucking this up every way I can. Why am I snapping at Tara when I hate myself, right now?

“No… I wondered whether I should give it to Buffy or not. She won’t – she probably won’t even notice but… he asked me to.”

“Let me see,” Willow demanded, holding out her hand. This was what she had to worry about now? A telegram from the asshole that’d wanted to take Tara away and lock her up? That was the most important thing? She’d cheerfully never give the man the time of day again.

“Buffy. Stop. Tara has passed me your sad news. Stop. My heartfelt condolences on your loss. Stop. No one should lose a parent so young. Stop.” And then it was signed.

“It’s full of stops.”

“”That’s – that’s how they come, I guess…”

“It reads – heartfelt condolences?”

“He’s lost someone,” Tara said.

Yes, he had. So had Tara… Did he think something like this would help? Or did he know something like this would help? Maybe if Spike had still been around he could’ve sent flowers or something? Spike had actually known Joyce better than him. Known her at all.

And how stupid would that have been? If he hadn’t been Tara’s father he’d have been ‘the bad guy.’

“I don’t know,” Willow said, rubbing her face. “I don’t know, okay? This – this isn’t the biggest thing I have to think about – There’s much more - ”

What do I wear? How do I show proper respect without depressing everyone? Do I wear black? Tara’s not wearing black? Morbid much… but the green? What about –

“I know… I’m sorry,” Tara put the telegram down, left it on the side.

“No, I’m sorry,” Willow said, just because she knew she shouldn’t lash out, didn’t mean that she could stop it happening. Damn… why was this so hard?

“No apologies,” Tara said. “Not today, love… Everyone gets a pass for everything today.”

“I… I just don’t want to be too depressing – I mean, I don’t want to dress like a funeral home worker but it can’t be cheery either. I mean, that would be disrespectful.”

“No one will mind what you wear,” Tara said.

“I want to wear that blue sweater… You know, the one that Joyce liked?”

“That’d be nice.”

“But I can’t find it,” Willow wailed. “What – maybe I can wear the purple?”

“The colour of royalty,” Tara said absently. She probably wasn’t making a point, she was just saying because just saying things, when you didn’t know what better to say, avoided the uncomfortable silences. Another way in which they were alike.

“I can’t wear that,” she said. “I can’t see Buffy there and be all royal. Oh, I’m the queen of everything, I’m better than you?”

“Not the purple then,” Tara said with way more patience than she deserved. Lots of understanding too.

And love, of course.

“Unless you think I should?”

Tara shook her head. “No, you’re right.”

I’m right. Good sign. Tara thinks I’m right. Not the purple then.

Turning back to her wardrobe, Willow flicked through a few more things. “Why… why can’t I have grown up clothes? Why’s all my stuff got stupid things on them?”

“It doesn’t, love,” Tara said. “You’ll find something.”

No rush or anything. It’s not like someone died…

“Being grownup,” Tara said. “That’s just being there for someone when they need it.”

“Like you were for your brother. Or Hope.”

“Like you always have been for Buffy,” Tara said. “You’re the most grown up person she knows. How many times has she said that?”

“Not as often since she met you,” Willow said. Tara was right though, Buffy needed her and she… she needed to get it together. That was how she was going to help. Being there. Not being a wreck.

“Would you – maybe - hold me for a moment?” Willow asked.

To her it seemed like Tara was relieved, so relieved to be able to do that. I’ve been ignoring my girl? I’ve been pushing her away because feeling better, around her, felt like something that betrayed Joyce and Buffy and…

Tara did hold her, kissing her. It was a kiss that meant everything. Everything from I’m here for you through to I love you and on to you go crazy but I won’t, I’ll be the strong one.

“We can do this,” Tara said between one part of the kiss and the next.

“We’re strong enough… together,” Willow agreed. Together, that was the thing. It was what they’d promised each other. Good times and bad. And this was a very bad time.

“We are.”

“And you’ve had the practice…” she nearly bit her tongue, that was so… ‘Practice’? “Oh, I didn’t mean it – I mean –“

“I know what you meant,” Tara said. “It’s like someone hacked out your heart and you’re empty… you don’t know…”

“That’s how I feel,” Willow agreed, thankful that the girl she loved was so understanding. Knew her well enough to realise that words weren’t her greatest forte. “Like there’s a hole…”

“Then, until it heals, I’ll fill it with love,” Tara promised.

“Will it heal?”

“There’ll always be a gap… but one day we’ll realise that the world’s still turning.”

It shouldn’t be. Everything should change – it feels like everything should’ve changed.

****************