Here you go Kittens... now we are really starting to get there. Really....
Enjoy and have that faith I keep talking about.
Katharyn
-----------------
Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Do What Makes You Happy (Part 75)
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: VW/T together…
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: VW/T – and all that means
Notes: This part is linked very closely to Part 76.
Thanks To: Kerry for stepping in. Xita for everything, Maria Comet for the fix suggestions that start to up come shortly – it seems a long time ago now. Jo – prayers are with you and yours.
The Sidestep Chronicle
Do What Makes You Happy
By
Katharyn Rosser
Faith was dead.
She was still dead and she wouldn’t be coming back. Not ever. Not like Willow. Faith wouldn’t be back. Faith was gone now.
Faith wouldn’t be out there on patrol tonight. Not tomorrow, nor the next day. She wouldn’t be teasing Mr Giles about the stick that was, she had frequently suggested, stuck somewhere it shouldn’t have been. She wouldn’t be tempting Jenny, or Tara herself, into following her into the more dangerous parts of town to have some fun. Not that they were so dangerous anymore. A person had to be careful of course, but it wasn’t necessarily dangerous. Not like it had used to be.
Even back then Faith had taken care of them. Faith had been wild – a force of nature - but she’d been careful with it. Careful for her friends and for her herself.
Sunnydale was safer now.
It was a good legacy for her to have left behind.
Faith shouldn’t have had a legacy yet. It wasn’t her time to have a legacy. But she wouldn’t be saving the world from evil demons anymore.
Faith won’t be my friend anymore.Faith was dead.
That terrible fact just kept going around in her head. Round and round and round. But increasingly that thought had companions in her head, other things, other factors and decisions were joining it there. More things about her life as it was now. The last few days since the funeral she had really just been going through the motions. She had patrolled. She’d been out, but she hadn’t found anything out there that needed killing.
That was what she was. She was a killer.
She had allowed Faith to be killed.
She had allowed Willow, repeatedly, to kill. Over and over again – to stay alive. To stay with her.
It wasn't that she had encouraged Willow to go out and kill, but she’d never tried to stop her either. There was one death she had to think she might have encouraged though – if she was hard on herself. She had got the Mayor, who’d liked her, killed. And she had got Faith killed. There were reasons. Oh there were always reasons. But were they good enough reasons? Maybe as far as the Mayor was concerned they were. He was an evil man who had wanted to take that ‘caring’ form of evil and make himself into a demon.
This whole damned town was his fault. He had damned it himself by choice. He had made the deals that brought many of the demons here. He had built the town for them. After she had seen the plans she could see the influences everywhere. The electrical access, the sewers, the dark places.
All for them.
Just so that he could be as evil as they were. Perhaps he always had been evil. Just evil and human. Even though she knew that the town was better off without him and that he would have killed hundreds of people in time – thousands maybe – was that a good enough reason to have given Willow the impression that she wanted him dead?
Maybe… maybe not. Willow had claimed to have done it for her. She still did say that – Willow expected Tara to play with her because she had done that ‘for her Kitty’
But what about Faith? Nothing was ever worth what had happened to Faith.
What she had allowed to happen to avoid making a choice. When she’d allowed fate to take its course – and she could so easily have intervened, but she had been afraid of losing…
Willow.
Why couldn’t she have figured it out before she had let it happen? Not even Willow was worth that.
Especially not Willow in fact. This was not the Willow that… Just not the real Willow. Faith had been a living, breathing human being. Someone who helped people. Who saved lives. She’d been Tara’s friend.
Tara knew that she had betrayed that for a Willow who was dead and still walking around. A creature. A killer. The sort of creature who had killed Daddy and Donny. Someone who killed for food and sometimes just for fun. Someone who took lives and made those that were left into people who had to suffer the misery.
People other than Tara – who found that she loved Willow. Or at least some part of Willow. Was it a Willow that had been once and was only darkly reflected in this one that she knew?
Tara couldn’t be sure… but it wasn't this Willow.
The Mayor had been found where Willow left him and it appeared that a lot of people were more than happy that he was gone. If he really was gone… Willow had also passed on his message to her. That he had made ‘deals.’ That he might be back. That was the implication. More than that, almost his promise. And that he didn’t seem to blame her.
That had happened on the day of Faith’s funeral and that morning she hadn’t really known what she was going to do. Not then. Now, after she’d spoken to the demon Whistler, after he had laid a few things out for her – albeit rather cryptically – she knew that she really had very few choices left. Next to none if she was going to make anything, at all, right.
That morning, before Faith had been buried, she had cleared the few personal possessions that she had out of her desk. She had written a long letter to the Mayor. Apologetic even. The Master was gone, what other reason did she have to stay? She had thought that she could just give him that and get out. She could take Willow and she could leave Sunnydale to him having done ‘her bit.’
But even as she had signed the letter she had known that was something she should not do. That would have made her as guilty as he was going to be. That would have made her as guilty of that crime as she already was for Faith’s death. The guilt of someone who did nothing – when she knew what would happen.
She couldn’t have allowed him to continue doing what he was doing. And, perhaps subconsciously, she had allowed Willow to pick up on what she needed when they had talked. A conversation about the end of the Mayor… that was guaranteed not to bore Willow and she must have used that without realising it. She must have done – how else could Willow have done what she had and been able to insist that Tara had ‘told’ her to do it? Had she had used her lover’s interest in killing for her own ends? At the time she hadn’t been trying to be subtle… it hadn’t been a conscious thought to get Willow to do that. But now she had to admit to herself that she should have known what effect her words would have had on the vampire. She had made Willow see that she needed a way out - not just for herself but for them. That things would be better if they got out – and Willow… Willow would have seen that as the resumption of playtime. That was probably how she had sold it, but she had meant it for the entire town.
And, Tara now supposed, if Willow had to eat that day – the day that the Slayer she had killed was to be buried – then it was better that it was the Mayor that she made her victim instead of another poor innocent. The Mayor was in no way innocent.
Tara couldn’t feel better about saving that life though because Willow had still killed and Willow had thought that she was doing it for her Kitty.
Tara had never even given her employer the letter of resignation but they had agreed, right at the start, that they would look at things again once she had dealt with the Master. And, with Faith, she had done that. The Master was gone. One evil down. Another one found in public office.
And then, once the thirst for justice had been assuaged, the thing that had dominated her life for so long, she had been forced to really look at things again. To see things for what they really were. To understand what justice really was.
She had looked at her whole life. The job, the Mayor. And then Willow had killed Faith.
And she hadn’t liked what she saw at all. There hadn’t been any new revelations. She hadn’t realised anything that she hadn’t already known somewhere inside herself. It was just that there was nothing left to distract from it now. No more tradeoffs.
Her employer had been pursuing evil aims. She had helped him because it had fitted in with what she had been determined to do anyway. Even Mr Giles had been able to accept that logic – that the Mayor was a vital tool in destroying the Master. The Master had to be considered the primary threat. She had always been good at prioritising. It had kept her alive out there in the night.
The most valuable thing she had found in Sunnydale for doing that though, for finding justice, was Faith. Faith and Tara. Faith had called them the ‘deadly duo.’ She hadn’t really been kidding. She had never needed the Mayor at all. If she had just known that Faith was coming… then they could have been the ‘Deadly Duo’ without her ever needing to set foot in City Hall. They could still have won.
They would still have won.
Maybe Faith would still be dead though. Because there would still have been Willow.
I was too deadly for you Faith. Or rather my life was… I killed you just as surely as I love a part of the thing that actually did the deed.Why had she stayed on after the Master was destroyed?
Standing in for Faith had been a part of that reasoning. If only the Slayer had been more badly injured… then Tara knew that she might have come to this realisation and that might have saved Faith’s life too.
But there would still have been Willow.
The Mayor had been another part of her reason
She’d had a job with him, an agreement, and though they had reached the end of that agreement with the destruction of the Master she knew that she had got comfortable with the routine. She had even begun to be able to ignore the comments that he made. The bad things that he said and then dismissed as a joke.
They weren’t always jokes. But she had laughed.
Being able to dismiss them along with him was not something she had ever thought that she would be able to do. It marked the fact that she was sliding. Sliding towards his level when she had always wanted to hold herself above that. It was her movement through shades of grey, towards the darkness she dreaded. It had become, along with the use of the magic, relentless.
It wasn’t founded in loving Willow but it was made that much more apparent in that.
The letter of resignation was still in her bag. She had seen it this morning when she was looking for the paracetamol. She’d never given it to him. She had never tried to stop him whilst their needs had meshed. She had let him do things that she would never have allowed before coming to town.
She’d been too busy with Willow.
She had chosen another course though – to get away from the evil man.
She had, it seemed, chosen to ask her evil lover to kill that evil man. Wasn't it just a question of what Willow had believed when she had done it? Did it matter what she had consciously intended?
Willow again.
Did that make her anything less than evil herself?
Less evil than Willow?
Perhaps she still was… after all Willow didn’t even care.
Could she just be grey? Could she just be bad rather than evil? Because she certainly wasn’t good was she?
What she, through Willow, had done to him. No one who knew what he was, what he had wanted, was going to say that he didn’t deserve it.
But what did she deserve for causing it? Encouraging and ‘requesting’ it from Willow?
Willow. It came back to Willow again and, through Willow, to her.
Who was she to take that action upon herself? Who’d ever told her that she could be the ‘good’ person? No one. It was just what she had always wanted to be… but aside from anything else how could she be regarded as good when she had caused all those things or at least allowed them to happen?
When there was Willow too?
She looked over at the moonlit bed and its napping occupant who had defended her life – or at least her own play privileges – and who had killed Faith. The occupant who had done as she might have wanted and killed the Mayor. She might never have said the words but Willow knew. Willow said that she always knew what her Kitty wanted.
I got, Tara realised,
exactly what I deserved. I move in a world of monsters. I worked for one. I killed others. I love one… and perhaps this week I became one?Perhaps being human was no defence against being a monster.
With what she’d been thinking how could she doubt it?
Thinking about Willow. Willow had filled her. Only Willow once the thirst for justice was sated. She’d had more justice now than she could stand – and not enough by long way.
Was there still a chance though? To make things right? For everyone? For everyone but Faith at least…
Faith was dead.
Willow had killed her.
She could still do something for her. Not for the Slayer – there was another one of those already – but for Faith. For the people that Faith had cared about. Mr Giles, Jenny… everyone.
Everyone including me.Sitting there in the window it was easy to look out on the town and not see what was really out there. It was just a town. At least it looked that way. But really… it was an evil place full of bad things. Maybe a little less full now. Maybe the evil stayed only the way in which it expressed itself had changed.
Before she had come here…
Before Willow…
She would never have allowed herself even to think of some of the things she had allowed to happen. Chosen to allow. Before she had come here she would never have allowed herself to have feelings for a vampire.
Willow had changed her.
But she hadn’t really changed Willow. There were little things but inside Willow just went on. And on. And on. This Willow was eternal. Eternally damned and irredeemable.
She had always hoped, somewhere deep inside, that it might be possible to do that. To change her. To bring her back. But it wasn’t. Willow couldn’t even love her – she had as much as said it herself. Willow was a vampire. Static. Unchanging. Stagnated in time. All Tara had done was make Willow play a new game – a game in which she pretended to be more human to fool her stupid, selfish, lover into letting her have her fun.
And Tara had gone along with it, because that was the next best thing that she had to Willow’s actual love. The next worst thing to nothing at all? Or was it worse?
This Willow herself was the next best thing to the Willow that she truly felt that she had fallen in love with. Years ago. In her dreams. She had fallen in love with another Willow and when she’d found this one… that love had been twisted to fit. A square peg barely fitting into a round hole.
The good people that she knew, Mr Giles, Jenny… they had slipped through the gaps in that improperly fitting shape. What had she done to them? She had let Faith die because she couldn’t make a choice between her friend and the only physical manifestation of the person that she loved.
Whistler had been right.
It was supposed to have happened another way. She could feel it in her bones and in her heart. That was what had always felt… wrong… about Willow. About herself. About the two of them. Then… if it had… people who were dead might still be alive. Willow… Faith… And if a few people who were alive were supposed to have died… well that had to add up to fewer deaths than had happened in Sunnydale in the last few years. Fewer even than those she had allowed to happen by not stopping Willow.
People that Willow had killed.
She hugged her knees up to her bare chest, staring out of the window for another few minutes. The sway of the traffic signal on its cable, moving in the breeze below her started to lull her into an uneasy sleep as the vampire in her bed slept on without making a sound. Not even breathing.
Willow’s body had even forgotten that now. It had forgotten what it was to be human… just as Tara feared that she was doing in her own mind.
She was afraid of being the monster. Letting the monster into her.
Staying with the monster and becoming one herself. Unless she already was?
But she could only see one way out of that and it was …
She wasn’t sure if she could.
Or should.
Should was so important. She had ignored ‘should’ for far too long. And as she drifted off… the question was in her mind.
Should I?--------------------
THE DREAM Tara opened her eyes or at least that was how it felt, although the scene that met her was far from the darkened room in which she’d fallen asleep. She was in a place that seemed so familiar, even if it didn’t really exist like this in the world that she knew. She couldn’t quite place it, even though she so obviously knew it well.
This was one of those times when she knew that she was dreaming. She had used to look forward to them, the dreams, so much… and why not? They showed her things…
It was early morning and she had things to do. She knew that. Not chores exactly, just things to do. Things like kissing Willow. Always the first thing that she did and the best way to start every single day. So she turned over and placed a tender kiss on her love’s cheek, inadvertently causing the other woman to stir from her slumber with something approaching a splutter.
Oh, very sexy, love of mine.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Tara heard herself saying. I like to watch you sleep. You’re at peace when you sleep. So beautiful.
You’re always beautiful. She didn’t have to explain that. She didn’t have to say it. Willow knew how she felt.
“Yes you did,” Willow accused her sleepily. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have done it.” There was a smile there. Even with her eyes still closed, her Willow was smiling for her. Tara loved her smile; it seemed brighter than the sun.
“Alright I did, just so I could do this.” She kissed Willow again this time softly on the lips. But her hair… her hair was different. Longer, shorter she wasn’t sure. Just different. And her skin… not so pale. Not so cool. Or perhaps… it was the other that was different. What other?
“You can wake me up any day to do that my love,” Willow finally told her.
“Everyday?” Tara asked her wanting a little more than any day. She already knew it… it was just that she loved to hear it said so much.
“That too… till we’re old and grey and it’s a bit like kissing a dried prune,” it wasn’t really a joke when Willow said something like that. She always meant it.
Tara knew how much she meant it because she felt it too. They would always be together. Always. “My prune,” Tara told her.
“And you mine.” Willow kissed her back and then – as always better at the actual getting out of bed thing - Willow roused herself from under the covers as Tara watched her. She was getting lost in the dream. Somehow she knew, clearly, that it
was a dream but it all seemed so real. Surreal maybe. Different but the same. The same but different. Familiar but strange somehow. And ultimately… better. Why was it better? Was it because she had never known anything this good… except in her dreams?
Old and grey though… why would Willow get old and grey? Stupid question… they both would.
Wrinkled, grey. But still in love. That was their fate. Their life…It didn’t seem a bad thing at all.Life…
Willow was alive? Hadn’t she always been alive though? The dream made sense even if she knew it was one. It was real but it wasn’t. Willow was alive. As if to prove it her love opened the curtains and stood, basking in the sunlight. Not burning up. Tara remembered another dream like that. Another time. That had definitely been a dream. There had been horses too.
Sore butts and fun under the branches of a tree. Definitely a dream. Never happened.
“I missed it for so long,” Willow told her. “But you brought me back to the light.”
“D-Did I?” Tara asked, wondering what she was talking about… then she realised it was the sunlight. Willow, her Willow, was basking in the sunlight. She was revelling in its warm touch on her body.
“Don’t you remember sweetie? You will do,” Willow promised her, turning around and presenting her bare front to her love and to feel the sun on her back.
“Remember or bring you back?” Tara was confused, even though the conversation seemed to have a form of logic in her mind.
Was that dream logic?
“Either… Both. I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “Haven’t you done it yet?” she went on to ask, leaning back on the windowsill.
“I don’t know…” Tara just looked at Willow; bathed in sunlight there was a glow around her.
She must have done it or how could Willow be there in the light? But… what had she done? Why would she need to do it?
Because this was a dream and she had to make it real? Or because it was real and she had to find the dream again?
Willow frowned a little, pondering her love’s uncertainty. “Maybe it’s me, maybe I got out of place and arrived too early for you,” Willow told her eventually. “Sorry about that baby.”
Tara smiled at her. Her sweetie never needed to apologise. Not for being with her. “It-It’s not your fault you know, things are all confused in here. It’s a very strange place, a very strange day… night…see I don’t even know which it is,” Tara admitted to her.
“But the sun is outside,” Willow reminded her. Of course that had to make it the daytime. Why would she feel that it was night? That it was dark?
“Just remember,” Willow continued “and this is important… ‘You have to do what makes you happy,’- You remember that right?” she asked.
“No. Who said that?” Tara wondered. It sounded good though. It sounded right. It was the sort of thing that she had always believed.
“You told me that once,” Willow said.
Tara shook her head. “I’m pretty sure that I didn’t. If I had said anything as wonderful as that I’m sure I would’ve remembered,” Tara told her.
She was sure of that at least.
“Maybe I’m confused again… I keep whizzing around between dreams – you keep switching me around,” Willow said with a smile that said that she didn’t mind that at all.Was this just a dream then?
“You should take it easy… you could stay here for a while if you like?” Tara suggested to her. She wanted to stay here with Willow for more than a while. It was forever.
Willow said nothing, but she came back and knelt on the bed beside her. Tara anticipated what was coming and pushed herself up on her elbows for the kiss. A kiss that came as promised but Willow was also stretching over, reaching for something, something behind the bed-head.
“I’m so sorry but…I can’t stay now. This isn’t my place.” Willow said sounding sad as she brought her hand over. “But there are always options you know. Contingencies…”
She saw what was in Willow’s hand and it was bad.There was something bad hidden back there. Something Willow was giving to her in the dream but was untouched now that she was awake. She had forgotten it. And Willow had never known that it was there at all.
She wouldn’t have liked it.
----------------------
Tara awoke with a start, shocking herself into a jolt and a shout. “No!” She looked around the room and for a moment she couldn’t recognise it. Didn’t recognise it. She was disorientated, not knowing why she wasn't where she should have been. This wasn't that room, where she had just been. It wasn't daytime. Willow wasn't kissing her… The vampire was in the bed, awake now, a far lighter sleeper than any human could be, stretching so…
Deliciously.
Willow stretched just like Miss Kitty… it was so obvious that she was enjoying every second of it. Sensually enjoying it. Just as she was enjoying watching that… and she shouldn’t have been. She should have been mad at Willow for Faith. For the Mayor. For everything.
Keep your mind on your job Tara, her Daddy told her.
For the first time in a long time she had to listen to him.
Miss Kitty jumped into her lap, also disturbed by Tara’s cry and demanding a warmer place to sleep now that she had been disturbed. It was Tara’s penance. Just like the pendant was… she could sleep with the pendant hurting her now.
That was bad. It was a bad, bad sign. Once she’d had to take it off to be near Willow and now it was okay to sleep with it around her neck? The body got used to it. Pain. Just like the mind did.
The bed head. She remembered the bed head. Why? What was behind the bed head…? Oh that…
That thing she had been given in her dream. Given by Willow.
That… she could. She could do that thing if she wanted to… and then what? Wanted to? Why would she ever want to? Or did she already want to? Had she always wanted to?
And then what… There were the contingencies and there were the options… Would those help her find her dream? Contingencies… plans that had been made by other people for this sort of thing. There were ways. Just in case. Other people’s plans. She looked at Willow and gave her a tiny hopeful smile, just wanting one in return. Just one. Some comfort. The dream… the dream had seemed so wonderful, then it had turned so bad in the end even though nothing had happened. Nothing but what it had reminded her of.
Why couldn’t Willow just come and hold her? Couldn’t Willow simply see that she was upset and she needed her?
Can’t I just go and hold her?I can… she would let me and she would enjoy it in her own twisted way. But Willow was making it so much clearer what it was that she wanted, as she threw back the covers to reveal her body. As she was touching herself without any shred of modesty.
And Tara knew that Willow’s need, as usual, became her own. It was like they were of one mind and one body when they became involved with each other like this. It was so very near perfect… apart from the whole vampire thing. And the fact that her feelings were not reciprocated – perhaps not even really known – by the other. It was mostly physical for Willow and so little else.
As her body awoke to the possibilities Willow offered, her mind was turning over the other ones. Contingencies. There had to be some. There were some… She knew what they were.
That was what was behind the bed-head. A contingency.
Her mind raced as she stood… not moving directly to the bed, instead diverting to the dresser where Willow had left her four red ribbons the last time they had been a feature of playtime.
The last time when Tara had stopped her from doing what she had wanted to… resulting in days of sulking.
The vampire held her hand out, trailing it along Tara’s flanks as she moved to stand by the bed “Give,” Willow said, waiting for the ribbons to be handed to her. The vampire thought that Tara was apologising… or had changed her mind about the ribbons. Maybe she thought this was finally her reward for dealing with the Mayor.
Maybe she thought Tara owed her something.
No.
Tara looked at the bed-head again. Then closed her eyes briefly before opening them to take in Willow. She didn’t even shake her head. Willow just knew what she was thinking. Maybe the vampire could see it in her eyes. Maybe it was a vampire thing to be able to read the prey.
“You’re different tonight,” Willow told her, looking excited at the prospect of what she thought was going to happen.
Physically excited.
“I’ve changed Willow. We all change. Things we do. Things that happen to us. Things we ask others to do…” Like subconsciously getting the vampire to deal with something that she would not do herself. Dealing with the Mayor like that. That was almost worse. Wanting it.
My hands are clean, but my soul is tainted. She looked down at those hands and the ribbons that hung from them.
The red that dribbled from them was not blood.
Not literally.
“I did what you asked…” Willow purred suggestively. “Now I should get my reward. You kept me waiting long enough. I did patient. Now I want my Kitty back.”
“We all change,” Tara said to no one in particular, ignoring the statement.
“Except me,” Willow told her, obviously growing a little impatient. She wanted her reward. What she had been promised. And Willow hated being ignored too. But that wasn’t going to be a factor here. Willow thought she was going to get something that was her fondest wish… Tara in control of playtime. Letting her Kitty do that meant that ultimately she kept the control. It was just new play to her.
New play with the ribbons too.
Tara looked at her, lying there and she felt… not desire; but intense love for something that had once been – that was remembered in the person in her bed. Her body reacted to the vampire, but she did not desire Willow. Her heart reacted to the vampire, but she did not… yes she did. She really did. This… thing might be the remnant of what she loved. It wasn't what she desired. And so the decision was made. She snapped the ribbons taut.
“Mmmmn Kitty, new play now?” Willow looked delighted when it was clear, to her, that Tara really intended what she had long wanted. So Willow liked resolve, she liked her Kitty to be ruthless?
“New play,” Tara confirmed. Finally… a new game. It was called ‘Contingencies.’ Willow didn’t need to know that bit though. It might make her ask questions… or not.
“You’re so grown up.” Willow grinned lewdly and spread her limbs to allow Tara to take the unfamiliar role of securing her. Willow coaxed her when she faltered. Tara was not uncertain of the game… but she was unsure if her resolve would hold and whether she could see the game through to the end.
But Willow couldn’t know just why she was faltering.
Willow would never understand, not even when the contingency was in place.
Or in her hand.
*****************
by Zahir al Daoud » Fri Aug 23, 2002 10:03 am 
are the 18 hours over already? 
- just kidding. have a nice dinner 
why didn't i think of it sooner (duh! because i was clueless ... or still am?)? or Tara for that matter. i guess VW is in for a hell of a playtime this time 
you did it again Katharyn!
at: 8/26/02 8:57:34 pm