No one is telling nobody nothing.... Think about it...
Part 71 is below kittens.
Enjoy it as much as the mood allows you to. BUt it gets better soonish.
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Getting Out (Part 71)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: The conclusion of Part 70 “Letting Go”
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: None
Notes: This part was originally one with Part 71 but was divided for length.
Thanks To: Jo who is valiantly wading through the beta and even prodding me now for more… This one was a bitch which will teach me to change my writing style half way through constructing a fic. Kerry who is like a rock. In a good way. Xita for the advanced planning in her chosen specialised subject. L… who puts up with a lot.
The Sidestep Chronicle
Getting Out
By
Katharyn Rosser
Tara had fallen into step with the Mayor in the cemetery after he had ‘rescued’ her from Giles and Jenny. She could see that was what he really thought he had done. Perhaps he had done it for himself – to avoid losing his assistant to the anger of the tweed-clad school librarian. She was still instep with him but she was tired of it now. She was tired of trying to figure out what his words and actions really meant.
She was just tired.
“Some people might have thanked me for that little intervention back in the cemetery. But not my Tara,” he observed, not sounding put out by that in the slightest. She actually thought he had been having fun… being the big bad once again. She sometimes thought that he longed to do that – just to come right out and be evil. To be himself. Everyone should feel able to be themselves right?
His sense of public duty got in the way of that though. “No, you looked as if you were going to let him knock you flat – or worse. But for the soon to be Mrs Giles he might have done that. And at a funeral too.” The disapproval in his voice was clear. Richard Wilkins the Third had very clear feelings about right and wrong.
She didn’t say anything. She knew that eventually he would have to ask some questions; she wasn't about to volunteer any information. Not about Faith, what had happened… the investigation. Not even about the failed raid that had led to it all. Or had it been inevitable?
His desire to know those things were probably what his whole presence at the funeral was about – that and his desire to maintain the, not-quite, fiction of his being the heart of Sunnydale. A black rotting heart – but a heart all the same.
The raid had failed… until Willow had gone after Luke and destroyed him herself. When the vampire had told her, no doubt hoping for some reward, she hadn’t been able to celebrate the success. Faith was already dead. Willow had killed her. She hadn’t been able to find an ounce of joy at the fate of Luke. She was glad that she hadn’t.
Her lover had been disappointed by the lack of a reward though. Tara was tired of rewarding Willow for things that were really just… less bad than they might have been.
She was just so tired and there was still so much to do.
“Don’t you think that they will make a
charming couple though?” he asked her as if they were just having a normal conversation about the bride and groom to be.
“Yes I think so,” she found herself answering him in the same manner. He was disarming that way. She had wanted to stay silent, but he had ways of getting her to talk. He just had to be himself. “I h-hope that they’ll be happy.” She hoped that more than anything else now, that they could put all this behind them and have a wonderful life. A long wonderful life together in a Sunnydale that was a better place because of the woman they were mourning.
But her hope was laced through with questions, with doubt, and she wondered if he’d caught the question that she was afraid to ask,
You don’t intend to do anything to them, do you? “I’m sure that they’ll be very happy, now that they have a little more privacy. Now that the much lamented Slayer is no longer staying with them. That had to be tricky for a pair of young lovers just starting their lives together.”
Tara didn’t rise to the bait, she knew him well enough to know what he was trying to do. He was testing her reactions. “The apartment was a bit small for three, but cosy, you know?”
He smiled, admiring her restraint perhaps. “You know what?” he asked. “I was surprised that so many turned out today. Were you surprised Tara?"
Tara nodded and they kept walking, staying quiet. She had been surprised. Some people she had been expected but all of those people… she had never guessed that so many people would remember the one who had helped them. In general the people of Sunnydale lived in steadfast denial, never mentioning in each others polite company the death and the monsters that surrounded them. Perhaps it was only at a time like this that anyone could acknowledge the truth, and join with others in a moment of recognition for one who had made the town a better place. Perhaps that was what made things different.
She wasn't going to tell him that though – that she had ever doubted that people would want to celebrate Faith’s life and pay their respects. She looked on as the Mayor was enjoying the sun beating down on his face. They were back into the centre of town before either of them spoke again.
“You want to stop off and get a hot chocolate?” he asked her. It was a thing that they had sometimes done together, usually after playing golf. They hadn’t done it for a while now though.
“N-no… no thank you.”
Let’s just get this over with.“You know it’s been quite some time since we did anything together outside of the office Tara,” he said. “Oh I know, you found you have your own life and your own friends, but I do miss it. I find myself enjoying this little stroll for example – in good company. Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes,” she replied, keeping the words neutral, but trying for a tone which suggested that she felt the same way. Even one of those, few, friends was in the ground – which he was glad of. There were… there had been times when the Mayor had seemed like the best thing she’d had in her life for a long time. As bad as he was – and as aware of that as she had always been. Then there had been Willow… who had almost been worse. The one good thing in her life that hadn’t been bad was Faith.
Who she had just seen buried.
Faith and Jenny. Her friends. She was glad that Jenny seemed to… well not hate her. That had to be a good thing. Not being hated.
He weighed her careful answer for quite a while as they walked then he continued with a question. They had passed their usual coffee shop by then. Too late for the chocolate. “Were you going to tell me Tara?” he finally asked.
She had been waiting for that question – or something similar.
“I-I suppose that I would have had to,” she admitted to him. It wasn't something that she could keep a secret was it? She knew what crossed his desk. She had carried enough reports to him. Ones that were of interest. Faith, as the Slayer, was someone he had always been interested in.
“Eventually.”
“Yes. Eventually.” It was a good word. It implied that she would have told him – but it excused the fact that she hadn’t. Sort of.
“Instead of you coming to me,” he told her, “I found out that your little friend was dead by having Chief Milton call me to let me know you were in one of her interview rooms.”
It didn’t surprise Tara, but she must have betrayed emotion at that little fact because he felt the need to explain.
“Certain names… certain people are flagged for my attention. Yours and the Slayer’s were both on that list, and when they both turned up together… well you can imagine how surprised I was at receiving that call. Especially at the events that led to it Tara. You should have told me.”
She nodded. She should have told him that she was getting out. She should have got out before this whole Faith thing had ever happened.
“And I was concerned. I knew that she, Miss Reed, had helped you with the vampires, that you dealt with that Master together for me and that you had become friendly with her. But to tell you the truth Tara, for a moment, before I heard the details, I was afraid that she had hurt you.” His concern sounded so real. Maybe he really did feel it. Once again she found that she was tired of the mystery about him.
Tired.
“And the relief when I learned that it was her lying there on the floor with her necked snapped – not you. Well I can tell you, and I probably shouldn’t say this, that it not being you was a more wonderful thing than the fact that she was dead at all.”
He had wanted Faith dead. She had always known that he couldn’t tolerate a Slayer forever. She’d had to convince him that Faith would be useful when the younger woman had arrived in Sunnydale and he had been forced to admit that she was right when Faith had helped both of their objectives. But with so few vampires in town now he was more firmly in control. He didn’t need the Slayer around anymore.
He might not need anyone.
That would make things easier. Very soon now.
She tried to keep her face from displaying her dismay. Her anger. Her pain. As they turned into City Hall she was awash with emotions that would prove destructive if she allowed them free-rein over her. The darkness whispered the possibilities to her. She couldn’t let the darkness have her. She was so close now. But hearing him talk like that, not just any day but today - on the way back from Faith’s funeral; it touched something inside her. Something dark and nasty that was usually so deeply buried that she was hardly aware it was there. Something she hadn’t been near since her parents were killed.
The heart of the darkness.
She struggled against it and swallowed again, as if by doing so she could prevent it from emerging as it threatened to do. To slip now would be utterly pointless. Faith would still be dead. She would still be getting out – and soon. She couldn’t let the darkness have her now. No so close.
You have to stay five by five Tara. Yeah I do.
“Oh come on!” he said seeing her face. “She might have been your friend but she wasn’t at your apartment, to just say ‘Hi!’ now was she? What you said in the interview wasn’t the truth was it? That’s fine – we can’t go around airing our dirty linen, but the police found splinters in her boot and her trousers. She kicked the door in. No one else did that. Just her.”
“She did,” Tara admitted. Somehow she didn’t want him to have the wrong idea. She still wanted him to understand. Even though she was getting out. It was absurd that she even cared what he felt and maybe she didn’t. Maybe she wanted him to understand why she had lied. Why she had hidden that about Faith.
Because it was her fault and she wanted someone to know that. Even someone who would not punish her.
“Then why so down? Survival of the fittest is a wonderful thing when you
are the fittest Tara. Never forget that.” He didn’t even bother to ask
why Faith had come to attack her. He was only concerned that his Tara had won.
His Tara.
Willow’s Kitty.
“So you had to kill her,” he summed up. “I must say you saved me from having to
ask you to do it.” And there was his big beaming smile. “Though I admit I would have expected something a little more… mystical. I guess you must be stronger than you look. Have you been working out?” he asked her with that smile again.
Always he was smiling. When he shouldn’t have been. Tara couldn’t remember when she had last smiled. Maybe the night of the raid. Early on in the evening. Maybe.
“I
didn’t kill her,” Tara told him firmly.
Not with my own hands anyway.“So there really was another person then?” He looked surprised, as if it was something that he had never even considered. That the truth – if only partial – might have been behind the details of the police report. “I just thought that you had been forced to kill her. That’s why I used my… influence to ensure that it your version of events stood – albeit that the Slayer was there as a friend and you were both attacked.”
“There was someone else,” she admitted, as they stepped out of the elevator onto the floor where their offices were located. She managed a wave for Lizzie who looked pleased to see her. It wasn’t Lizzie’s fault.
She couldn’t manage a smile though.
“Someone you can’t identify?” he asked. “Not to the police at least.”
Tara nodded and they went into his office, took their accustomed chairs and sat facing one another. Employer and employee; no more than that, much as he fancied himself in the role of friend or even father.
She’d had friends and he wasn't one. She was going to get out. She was. Today.
Really she was.
“It was this aahh… Willow of yours,” he concluded and she didn’t deny it. “Maybe I should give her a job… if you weren’t so opposed to me employing vampires. But I’m guessing that in her case you,” and he grinned, “would make an exception.”
He really didn’t get it at all. He couldn’t see it in her – that she might not even want to be here anymore, let alone that she couldn’t stand to hear him belittle Faith and her death. “D-Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He appeared a little taken aback by the force of her command and he paused as if waiting for an explanation; waiting to find out what made her think she could tell him what to do.
“Don’t talk about her,” Tara told him. He shouldn’t talk about Faith. Especially not today. Nor about Willow.
She’s mine, and somehow other people talking about her – they always seem to forget that fact. And that I’m hers. Everything that means.She ain’t good for you Tar. Don’t I know it.
“Why ever not? When my girl is out ah…” he searched for a word, “courting the very thing that she hates the most I have to look at that and ask if she is seeing something that I don’t. Then I have to wonder.”
“Wonder what?” she asked slowly, hating to open the door for him to talk more about the vampire that she should hate. He was right about that.
“I have to wonder, my dear, whether it is self-destructive behaviour. Maybe even a cry for help. Well I heard your cry,” he told, coming round the desk and placing his hand on her shoulder. The gesture was both protective and possessive and it made her skin crawl.
Simmering she looked up at him and he snatched his hand from her shoulder as if she was on fire. If he had kept it there a moment longer the darkness might even have made it so. He grinned, probably relishing that depth of feeling and depravity within her.
“You feel very strongly about this Willow don’t you?” he asked.
“I-I love her.” Love. Pity. Hate what she is. What she does. Love.
She’s in me.“Wow… Love. Kids today throw that word around all too much.” He went back to his chair, sat down, held up his hand to stop her when she started to object to the seeming dismissal of what she had said. “But I think you really do. Just the look in your eyes when you glare at me like that.” He laughed, the venom in the look seemed to be forgotten with that laugh. “I had no idea it was so deep. Lilah suggested things but I never pressed you – or her. You were a dark horse.” He examined his fingernails as he held the restraining hand up again. “You know I never actually understood what the dark horse was doing that made it so stealthy, did you? It was a horse, which unless it was small is a pretty big creature. If it were small though wouldn’t it be a pony? And you never hear about the dark pony.”
He was off on one of his tangents again. She was never sure if he did it to relieve tension, distract people or if he really was that scatty. She was tired of trying to figure him out.
Tired.
“I think it was a d-dark horse on a d-dark night,” she told him, trying to get him back to the matter that they still had to discuss. She had to get out – and she hoped that he would let her go.
“Blending in?” he asked and she nodded. “Could be.” Then he was back. “So you let Willow kill the Slayer?”
Tara wanted to jump up and scream that she hadn’t let Willow do anything, that Willow had made her own choice. That she hadn’t asked this of the vampire she loved, hadn’t even known that she was coming that night. That she would have gladly died in the Slayer’s place. That apart from Willow there was nothing for her now that Faith was dead. She had lost Jenny in that moment too. But those were all things he never needed to know. He didn’t deserve to know. So she just nodded, in part because she knew that he spoke the truth.
She had let Willow do that. For Willow’s existence. For her own life even though she had been willing to give it to Faith if the Slayer had to take it.
“I wonder if I should invite you two girls round for a celebratory dinner?” he gave her one of those huge grins, waiting in anticipation for what? Her thanks? Her acceptance? “I’m sure that we could lay our hands on some quality blood for your paramour – she’s not feeding off you is she?” He added that question almost as an afterthought.
“N-No. I don’t let her.” Never that. Only the once when she had needed the vampire to confirm her humanity and that had just been a taste.
How human had it been to allow Willow to do what she had done? Not just to Faith? Perhaps it had been very human. He had been human once if he wasn't now… and he wanted to be a demon.
She had to get out. She just had to.
“Good. It might seem like fun at the time but take it from me it is
very unsanitary. Vampires can carry many more diseases than say a mosquito and you will only get those through being bitten – and surviving the process.”
There were far better reasons than that for not letting Willow feed on her, but again she didn’t argue with him. He didn’t need to know what her reasons were. Not anymore. She was done with it. It was time to get out. The Master was gone… and she had Willow. She’d come to Sunnydale for one reason, had one reason to go on a little while afterwards and had found another to continue since then. Imperfect as that last one might have been.
It was time to get out.
He sat and thought for a moment. “I wonder if I could get you a live vessel for her to feed on. What do you think she would prefer? Does she have special tastes?” Always the considerate host. He would do all of those things. If she told him what Willow liked then he would have laid it on.
If they had been going.
“We won’t be coming to dinner,” she told him quietly, wondering how this conversation would go. Now that she was resolved.
“You can’t be busy, I haven’t told you when it is yet,” he told her. “Unless you’re ashamed of her?”
It was bait and she fell right into the trap. “No!” Instantly she was calmer. “I’m not ashamed of her.”
I’m ashamed of me. What I set out to do and what I have done instead. Fallen for my enemy. Become my enemy.“Then you’ll come. Let me show some of that fatherly concern I feel for you. But I promise I won’t ask her about her intentions towards you,” he laughed.
“No.”
He frowned, probably putting it all together in his head at that moment. “Are you trying to tell me something Tara?”
She nodded.
“You want to leave?” he surmised, sounding unsurprised. Perhaps he had been trying, in his own way, to be nice to her. To be supportive and to try to get her to stay?
Like that?
What else was he supposed to think? She was in love with a vampire. She was working for him… and she had let Willow kill his enemy the Slayer. Her friend Faith.
“Y-yes I do.” There it was. It was that simple. She didn’t want to do this anymore. She had been fulfilling her own mission – but he had made it be
for him and he was not a good person. Not the sort of person that she should have been helping. Not at all. Then there were the things that he
would ask her to do now the vampire problem was so greatly reduced. Now it would all be for him – no pretence of her own justice.
It would start to be for his ends, for his ascension. She couldn’t even pretend that it was for the people of Sunnydale. Killing the Master had helped Richard Wilkins – but it was the people of Sunnydale who were finally able to, still a little carefully, venture out after dark. All she would be doing if she stayed would be feeding him those people she had helped. That Faith had helped. The Books of Ascension were very clear on that. Too clear.
He was going eat this town up in thirty some years.
Why would she help him get there?
“Well now that’s a disappointment. I thought we were making a great team.” Even though he didn’t seem surprised his regret seemed genuine.
Tough.
Faith and I were the great team. Maybe even Willow and I in our way… “I suppose we did,” She told him. It was sort of true. They had accomplished a lot for Sunnydale but all of that was tainted by his reasons and her lack of action over Willow. It was… it was like they were as bad as each other. But he was going to get worse. She knew that. He was going to get her to do things if she stayed. She knew that too. Sometimes it had been kinda nice to have him come around and just talk to her… a bit like a father figure – but with cookies. “Do you mind?” she asked him, needing to know if it could really be as simple as just leaving.
She didn’t care except in as much as she needed him to let her go – otherwise this whole thing could be difficult. She might be forced to fight him and that was not what she was here for. She had to get out… and if she was going to do that she couldn’t be thinking of him or having to be wary of his revenge or anything like that.
“Heck, of course I mind. You’re very special to me Tara and aside from that you have been quite wonderful at your job, I’m not sure I will ever find anyone quite like you. You know unless there’s some Slayer out there willing to work for me,” he laughed at the idea but she could see the possibilities turning over in his head. Not that it would ever happen. One Girl in All the World… and she would have a nobler task to fulfil than anything that he might dream up. The Watchers would see to that. They had the nobility to have ordered her killed.
Even then they were still nobler than she was. Less selfish.
“I can’t change your mind?” he asked, offering her one last chance to back away from her stated intentions.
Faith had offered her a chance. Over and over again.
“N-no you can’t.” There was no clue to what he intended. He might… he might do anything. She didn’t even know what sort of power he had. If any… if it was just ritual then she was safe. She was well protected against rituals. For long enough anyway for it not to matter anymore.
“Well alright then. You know Tara, in some ways it makes me proud that you have made this choice. I gave you your first real job and you performed it absolutely wonderfully. Better than I could have hoped for and now… well now you have outgrown it. You have something else in your life. Love. It’s just what I always said you needed to do – to find something else to care about apart from rev… justice.” He actually sounded as if he was getting upset – which she had never thought would happen.
She had never thought that it would be easy to get away… This would be the last time that she saw him, she knew that now.
“Yes. You told me that.” And he had been right. Look at what it had got her though. A vampire for a lover and a friend in the ground. But what she had in her life, even that, was better than becoming what she had always feared. Truly bad. Evil. Even now she felt that she was wavering… she would be until she got away from him.
Far enough away that she could get out.
It would have been so easy to stay – accept his perks, his money and to help him become something… bad. She might have got to that if she had stayed.
“You realise that the apartment, well it goes with the job. And the city credit card?” He was still trying to persuade her, but half-heartedly. He knew full well that possessions and money meant little to her. They never had. “But you can keep them for a while, until you find something else or you leave town.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t argue, didn’t offer to be out that night and to turn in her card. She had to be practical too. She had no idea what she was going to do, even if she was staying in Sunnydale. It all depended. Willow would want to stay in Sunnydale. It was her territory. Tara could see it the same way. She could help keep the town safe but not have to hunt every night. Not now… she was tired of the hunting.
No. She had to get out.
Willow… she thought that Willow would leave if her Kitty forced the issue… tempted her enough.
And what would she tempt Willow with? Games? Fresh blood elsewhere? Could she inflict that on another town?
No. She had to get out.
That was pretty much Willow summed up. Feeding, play… and feelings of a kind for Tara. Whilst the vampire could hate the Mayor with as much passion as she had Faith and Lilah… why couldn’t Willow manage the opposite? Love?
Why?
And if she
could manage it then what? Then it would make things alright?
In no way right. Never right.
She stood up to go, to leave him there before he could make her realise any more of what she had done. She didn’t need to know that from him. She was fully aware of it. He came around the desk to the door and seemed about to offer her his hand but instead held out his arms for an embrace. Never before had he even attempted that. Now though, happy at getting out, she accepted it. Anything to go.
It was like being hugged by a giant anaconda. At least she imagined so. There, in the hug, she felt powerless and vulnerable, crushed by his power… and he did have power. He had evil. She had known it all along, but she had avoided it until she had to get out.
It was to this that she was leaving the people of Sunnydale. If she did stay… she had thought about that… would she be able to moderate him? As she had Willow? Perhaps she could help him to do things in less destructive ways. But that had assumed that he wanted that. That he would allow it.
And she couldn’t stay. She couldn’t let herself be sucked down any further. She was trying to claw her way out of the hole into which fate had thrown her. A hole that she herself had dug even deeper. Loving a vampire might not seem the obvious way to get out of a hole but love was love… and it raised her - somewhat. Being with him pulled her back down though. Leaving his employment was another big step up… but when he ascended… If she was here or if she saw the results on the news? What then?
That was something she had thought about too.
It was possible that, even if she was long gone. His ascension would hurl her right back in that pit, never to escape. That was the justice. That was the price she might pay for having helped him, and for choosing now to abandon thousands of people to his demonic tenderness. Even her greatest victory for the people of Sunnydale, the defeat of the Master, was tainted by his motivations.
It hadn’t been just personal revenge.
But she couldn’t chance what she had done, nor could she choose to do anything else now. Getting out. She couldn’t do anything but that.
The embrace seemed to just go on and on, as her subjective time seemed to slow. It was clear from the Books of Ascension that there were steps to be taken to his achieving that state of demon-hood. Steps that had been frustrated once… he wouldn’t take any chances the next time. And once he started would anyone be able to stop him? The books mentioned invulnerability… sacrifices.
Children.
How could she let him?
But what else could she do?
Nothing else. She just had to get out. Whether that included taking Willow and leaving Sunnydale, away from… all of it she didn’t know. The part of her that told her she was driven by revenge, had once told her that killing the Master was all she needed to do to be free of evil. Now it shouted in her mind that she should do more. The softer, calmer voice that had reminded her it was justice, and not just for her family, told her that she could not leave him here to destroy Sunnydale.
They had agreed on that, the two sides of her.
What would Faith have done? She had asked herself that.
What would Faith have done if I hadn’t let her die at the hands of my lover…Faith would have kicked his ass. Or died trying – which was a distinct possibility. No one really knew, except for the Mayor himself, what he was; what his powers were.
Faith would have tried anyway. Not just because she was the Slayer, but because she knew what her duty was as a human. Tara had been forced to ask herself if she could do any less.
She had to get out.
It was nearly time to take a kind of rest.
Her grip on him must have stiffened or something. It was involuntary if that was the case but something made him pull back and look at her with a question in his eyes. Maybe the embrace had just reached its natural limit. But the way he looked at her when they broke? It was curiosity that showed there, followed by respect and maybe even a little fear of her.
He saw it. What she had considered. Just for a moment there he had feared her. And that meant he was vulnerable.
But she just had to get out.
“Tara…” he started to say but her expression silenced him, just as much as it had caused him to worry.
It would be a service wouldn’t it… to send him to some dark place? Because that might be the only way she could be certain that he was really gone. She had thought about that. There were always the dark places that could contain him. No matter what he was. Where things crawled, suffered and cried out even if the pain briefly stopped.
Could she send anyone there? No matter who?
But the darkness… she had promised her mother. More important than that she had promised herself. There were things for which the magic was not to be used. Killing was one of those… but she had so often stretched the point, in order to kill vampires and demons, that the line was no longer straight in the sand. The dark places were so much worse than killing. If she went down that route now, even for him… would she ever be able to stop?
Probably not.
“Tara…” he said again. And he saw that she had stepped back and smiled. They both seemed to click back into the people that they had always been with each other. If a little sadder… for different reasons. “I’ll miss you Tara. It was refreshing to have someone young and idealistic around the place. And I want you to stay in touch – breakfast occasionally? Most important meal of the day remember.”
She couldn’t believe that he had suspected what she’d considered doing to him and was still asking her to breakfast. But of course he could… he was superbly adaptable and he knew that he didn’t have anything to fear from her. He knew now that she couldn’t cross that line into the darkness… and ultimately he knew that – with that line inviolate – she wouldn’t be of much further use to him anyway. Even if he did genuinely like her.
Perhaps he had always known.
He put his arm around her as they walked down the corridor to the elevator and she endured it – a small part of her even sorry that this was goodbye to Lizzie too. She liked the Mayor’s secretary. This time she even managed a smile for the older woman. “It’s been a blast!” he summed up. “And I’ll miss you. Promise me that you won’t be a stranger Tara.”
The doors of the elevator started to close on her and she had sudden visions of the bottom vanishing and dropping her into a pit of stakes. Or a long chute straight down to hell. Too many cartoons girl. It was then that he asked her, when it was too late to open the doors and change her mind about him.
“Do you think I should have the Watcher and his fiancée killed now… or should I wait until after the wedding?”
He was serious. He might have shouted “Just kidding!” after her but he was serious. He knew that a Watcher would oppose him. He was taking no chances this time.
It was a good job that she was getting out. Right out. She ran from the building, out into the sunlight and she set off, walking. Anywhere. Anywhere that was out. Away from him.
She knew him well enough – and he knew her.
At least he thought he did.
She was going to get right out.
**************
by Zahir al Daoud » Sun Aug 11, 2002 12:23 am 
