Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle - Getting Close Now (Part 138)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.com Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Nothing is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: They keep making their way into the heart of the nest.
Disclaimer: I 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. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: I just want to add something here – by now you should be realising that this whole section is taking a while… but you know the nest, the vampires, the action that will come – isn’t the point. A little nod to Lethal Weapon in here. Wasn’t Rene Russo just so hot in the third one?
Thanks To: All My Brilliant Beta Readers (AMBBR) Kerry (Forrister) and Jo (Wizpup) who for some reason signed right back up for this fic after seeing the size of the last one. No accounting for madness is there. And Celia (TiredSoul) who should have known better but signed up anyway. *HUGS* and Big Thanks to all of you. This is Celia’s again. I confused her this time – always a sign of going a little off course. It would be nice for every part to be her ‘new favourite’ but its not going to happen.
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle
Getting Close Now
By
Katharyn Rosser
They were getting close now. She hadn’t needed the pain from the pendant to tell her that much. Willow, Tara could tell, was having some of those big thoughts which came to her from time to time. But just as she knew Willow had been right to take the pendant from around her neck – it
didn’t need to hurt any more – she knew that it was also true that she shouldn’t worry about Willow’s big thoughts right now. Or her love having them now. This wasn’t the time for doing anything more than focusing on keeping them all alive and killing all the vampires. Not to mention saving anyone that was alive down here.
Her sweetie was there with her and they had something important that they had to do. That was all that mattered. If big thoughts were what got Willow through this, then fine. Good even. The Goddess knew that Tara was capable of having some pretty big thoughts of her own – and at times like this.
Willow had been right – the pain… It had been too much. Too much to be able to continue to operate… even if she thought that she should have been able too. Perhaps there was even a tiny bit of pride. She’d never taken it off before because it had hurt.
But then she hadn’t really felt that much pain in a long time now. She wasn't sure she ever had… not
so much. Not from the pendant anyway. She wasn’t even sure that she would have been able to focus on the magic whilst she was in that sort of pain. Willow had been right. Even Tinkerbell had flickered as she’d been hit by that wave of agony – and Tinkerbell was a free sprite… simply helping them. All Tara was doing was sustaining her existence on this plane.
It had been a wave that never actually broke. It had just rushed on and on and on. Swamping her – smothering her. There was no relief from that sort of pain, not unless she removed the pendant – which she had been too stubborn to do – or killed all the vampires. Killing the vampires would have been more difficult in that kind of pain. The fact was she was
glad Willow had taken it from her when she had…
She was getting soft…
Or at least that was what she would have thought about herself once. Giving in to the pain – taking the vital pendant off – would just have been weakness. A sign of giving in to the vampires.
Not any more.
Softer she might be, but on the other hand she was actually happy now. Not happy to be down here in the slime, but happy in her life. When she’d felt that kind of determined pride in her stoicism she hadn’t been happy at all. No, she hadn’t been able to say she was happy when she’d been doing this sort of thing across the whole country. Before. Before Willow, life had pretty much been a constant cycle of pain and temporary relief before seeking out the pain again. It was a cycle, which only Willow had stopped. Once again Willow had made the pain go away.
Now she was glad to say pain was the exception rather than the rule. There had once been all kinds of pain. Physical pain – being cold, wet, tired and injured by the very magic she used – if not by the creatures that she hunted with it. Spiritual pain – the pain of being alone, the pain of having nothing in her life – nothing but the pain itself. Pain of loss. Pain of not being able to get close to the dream, a dream that had always seemed better than the reality she was living in back then.
And later…
The pain of finding the dream was actually a nightmare.
All sorts of pain. With Willow, she had gotten beyond it and almost, but not quite, forgotten about it… at least how bad it had been back then. The pendant, the way it had burned her throat tonight, had reminded her of all that though. Not just the physical sensation. She wasn't sure which was more intense, the burning of her skin or the searing of her soul? Perhaps the torture of her mind?
Whichever of those it had actually been, Willow had taken it from her and instantly her mind had been clearer. Once more Willow had taken the pain away.
Once more Willow had made her mind clearer.
Obviously Willow wasn't the only one with the big thoughts.
Without Willow being here, with her, she would have left the pendant on – and eventually she’d have stopped the pain by killing them all – just like she had done all those times before. Times she found it tough to quantify now. It was better this way and if it hadn’t been for Willow she wouldn’t have known that ‘better’ could mean anything other than ‘less vampires.’ Willow was every answer that she ever needed and asked a lot of the questions too. Questions she’d once never dreamed of asking herself. The best thing was that she knew she was the same for Willow. Willow had told her more than once that she was the answer to ‘the only question that mattered.’
They were just as right for each other as the vampires were wrong in the world. They fitted together just as much as the vampire were out of place. More so in fact. Nature abhorred the presence of the undead and, on the other hand, the natural order of things, literally, was she and Willow to be with each other. They were on the right side, the only side they could be on.
There was, and could be, no ‘neutrality’ for them. They couldn’t be like all the other people in the world, going through their lives oblivious to the dangers or living in fear of them. It wasn't that she and Willow were defined by hunting vampires – but if nature was a part of why they were together, fate if you will, then wasn’t the role nature wanted them to play also defined? Wasn’t part of
their nature to hunt down the creatures which eschewed the natural?
If things had been different, say if her parents had never died because of the vampires, wouldn’t she still be both with Willow
and hunting vampires? She had to think she would be, though she couldn’t imagine such a world anymore.
Everything else, in the end, seemed to come back around to being compared to vampires and to Willow. Compared, related, judged by those standards – at the two extreme ends of the spectrum. The very unnatural and the so very, very natural. The evil and the so very, very good.
Better than before where there hadn’t even been Willow in the mix and the only apparent ends of her spectrum had been hunting vampires or hunting vampires after she moped around and watched some cartoons. She just hadn’t known Willow was anything more than a dream.
But it wasn’t quite good enough. She couldn’t just ‘accept’ this without wondering what it might have been liked with the vampires. Willow plus
other things were what were supposed to be up there, in her mind – other things that weren’t vampires. Other things that were like… well, maybe like what sort of shampoo to buy. Things like what they wanted for dinner and where they might want to go for a vacation once they’d graduated… Those were the things that should really be in her head – whilst they were somewhere other than the sewers. Yeah, she supposed that it was those things and things like them, which she should have been thinking about. Along with Willow, of course. Willow was always there, her friends were – but apart from that…
The other things really weren’t. She wasn’t able to think about stuff like that right now as important – even if Willow had wanted her to. She was still buying her shampoo out of habit rather than choice. Dinner was something they planned, but never worried her. It might have been nice to have that as the biggest decision to be made?
Wanted was too strong a word for Willow’s thoughts on the matter. ‘Would have liked it’ was better. Willow would be with her, whatever she was thinking about. And they shared the big thoughts at dangerous times. She wondered if her love could see them on her face – as she could see them on Willow’s? She wasn’t taking Willow’s being with her for granted – she knew it – but Tara didn’t want to rely on that. She could, she really could, but she shouldn’t be doing that. It was never assumed, even though it was one hundred percent certain. She was more than happy to put in the delicious effort…
Willow…
Oh, Willow was the rock of her existence. Without Willow she couldn’t have come back to town and known Rupert, Jenny and their family as she did now. She wouldn’t have known the last blissful four years. And it had been bliss because it had been with Willow and their friends. No matter what else they were having to do. She wouldn’t, in all likelihood, have still been alive without Willow. The odds had always been against her… They would have caught up with her eventually.
But not with the pair of them, the deck was now stacked in their favour. The magic was cooperating rather than ravaging them. They were being careful – and there were two of them, of course. Even this… it was risky, but with Willow here it felt safer than it ever could have done.
And she knew she gave to Willow too – that was how it should be.
How it always would be.
It was all about give and take and she knew that, right now, Willow was doing a heck of a lot more giving than she was – at least when it came to things like this. Willow was putting up with all of this hunting, more than putting up with it. Willow was selflessly helping her – spending the time that they could have used for other things to make Sunnydale a better place for everyone. Themselves, their friends and family. People they didn’t even know and hadn’t even been born yet.
Tara didn’t regret spending that time in the slightest – but she couldn’t not wish that it hadn’t been necessary, and that there had been more hours in a day so she could spend a few more of them snuggling with her sweetie.
Not even snuggling.
Just being together somehow – some way that wasn’t this – would have done Willow nicely. It would have done her nicely too. They got to do things, with friends and together. But when she considered that there was no more perfect moment in the world than when she was alone with Willow and she could lay her hands gently in her love’s and feel their connection... how could she not wish for more? More time to see, smell, taste, hear and
know their connection.
Tara had been realising more and more over the past few days just what sorts of thoughts must be passing through her love’s mind regarding how they were living their lives. Of course… well, she’d known that Willow had been having thoughts along those lines for some time and had even tried to raise the topic a couple of times recently.
This whole thing with Toni had changed things a little. She was now more aware of how seriously Willow was thinking helping someone, like Toni she supposed, who could be a part of their future. Helping in another way. Another other way than this.
Hunting, fighting and killing vampires. It always came back to this.
Tara just wished that she could say she was ready to let go of all this. Willow wasn’t
asking her to drop the hunting and bring a child into their home - and she probably never would. But Willow wanted it all right. At least Willow wanted there to be more to their lives – and less – than this. She wanted their lives to be ‘just so’ as Rupert might have said.
Willow wanted them to help – if they had to – in other ways. Being teachers. Being foster parents – or actual parents. Whatever it was – something that they both actively chose. Something that wasn’t this. Not forever more.
And ‘just so’ didn’t include saving the town, or the world, from vampires – not forever. It was the indefinite commitment that she was sure was getting to Willow rather than anything they were doing
now. Sometimes, when it was just a routine hunt through town, Willow almost seemed to enjoy it.
It was just the longer term which was the problem. It did dominate their lives. There could have been so many other things they could have been doing…
Why couldn’t she just do what Willow wanted? No, it wasn't that her love
wanted it… it was more of what Willow would have liked her to do. There was a big honking difference, as Willow would have put it.
Tara mused as on the thought as she moved slowly down the tunnel. She shouldn’t really be allowing this sort of stuff into her head right now, but she’d always been able to use the slow progress through danger as a meditation. Well, not always. There had been a time it had frazzled her nerves – but she’d learned to deal with that and become more efficient – better at what she did. Focused.
She had to be focused to keep them safe and to make sure that they were able to help all those people but she just couldn’t keep from those thoughts once they were there. It was almost calming to have the real world above, the important world, in her thoughts whilst the reflexive awareness was down here in the sewers, alert for signs of danger.
At least that way, with the big thoughts, she wasn’t over intellectualising the risks they faced – letting her imagination run away with them. It was a technique that had served her well enough in the past – and it had the added bonus of making her extremely truthful with herself.
Willow’s… what was it? Certainly not ‘resentment.’ Perhaps it was ‘discontent’ at this part of their future, if not their now? It was sort of fair, she supposed, because she’d all but refused to talk to Willow about it before and her love hadn’t pushed the issue when maybe she should have done.
Maybe, Tara thought to herself,
I needed to be pushed?Maybe Willow
should have made them confront it together – but she knew Willow really thought that this was something she had to find out for herself – what she wanted and what she could do… What she was going to be happy with. What was going to be ‘enough.’
For herself. For them.
She honestly thought that if she could reach that kind of conclusion then Willow would support it – no matter what it was.
If she knew all that from what Willow hadn’t said… just imagine if they talked about it.
She was finding out… thinking about finding out at least. But…
If it had just been them then maybe Willow would have forced the issue long ago. But it wasn’t. She was sure that Willow could see that as well as she could. She knew it – Willow had such a giving soul, she couldn’t miss what stopping would mean. NO, it wasn’t just them. It was every person in Sunnydale that was in danger from vampires. It was Toni, Ira, Jenny, Rupert, Faith and Ben. It was Principal Flutie and every student in his school. Every one at the mall. Everyone in the store. Everyone buying gas. Everyone who passed through the airport.
Everyone.
It was keeping there from being any more entries on the Sunnydale High Memorial Wall. The Wall of the Dead. Or new graves in the cemeteries that surrounded this town like outposts.
And Tara knew she couldn’t give up on those people when the danger remained so apparent. Look at them now, they’d had the arrogance to assume they’d been somewhere near winning! At least in Sunnydale… and yet here they were.
She knew that Willow understood and respected the reality. If they didn’t do this… no one else would. No one but a Slayer who was hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. Certainly no one would do it
here.Given all that, Willow was willing to help her ensure that no one got hurt – so was Rupert. That was why they were all down here and that was why…
They’d arrived here.
Tara thought that she knew what Willow wanted. Perhaps that was arrogant too – but on the other hand they’d proven time and again how well they knew each other. She thought she knew what the thing Willow wanted was… She had all those thoughts about Willow’s thoughts. Thoughts that they’d never really sat down and discussed because she’d pretty much stifled Willow’s tentative attempts at bringing it all out into the open.
Why had she done that? Maybe she’d been afraid that Willow would have persuaded her? Could have persuaded her… because they really
wanted the same things. They did. It was just Tara knew that sometimes you
couldn’t have what you wanted. Maybe Toni would be dead now if Willow had managed to persuade her? Maybe she’d have been forced to come out of ‘retirement’ to deal with this nest anyway? But quite possibly after lots more people had died…
Tara honestly believed she was right and… she just didn’t want to hurt Willow and Willow didn’t want to hurt her. It wasn’t like they’d have a full-blown argument or anything, but there were things in this that weren’t just about them. If they’d had the talk then Willow might ending up feeling she was being selfish – even if all she wanted was for them to be happy and Tara would feel that she was letting Willow down by not being a little more selfish. In a silly way it would mean that
she was being selfish in another way by saying ‘no.’
And maybe both of them would have been right. If it had just been them then this would have been said long ago. It would have been over long ago and Tara would have happily gone with Willow’s vision of the future. They were so happy now… had been for years. Willow was just looking to the future. She wanted to do that now. But this was
other people. people who deserved a chance to be happy too.
Maybe one day it
could be just them, and on that day she’d rush into Willow’s arms and they’d celebrate the coming of their freedom – probably with some ‘sweet love’ as Barry White would have put it. Willow liked her Barry… But for now there were still other people Tara felt she was responsible for the safety and protection of.
She still owed them all because of what she’d allowed to happen in the past – before there had been this Willow, the real Willow, in her life. And even if she hadn’t owed them a thing – if she considered the debt paid – how could she let people die in Sunnydale and feel that it was okay to sit by with her sweetie watching it all? Watching the body count go up. Watching the funeral industry become the growth sector in the Sunnydale economy once again?
Happy as she was now she wasn't going to just forget that – the past she had helped to form, which she’d allowed to happen – because it was a cautionary tale of what would happen in the future. Or at least could do. There had been another girl called Faith who she’d known and that young woman wasn’t around to see the child who she would have got such a kick out of seeing with her name.
But then maybe their little Faith wouldn’t even have been named Faith if Tara hadn’t chosen to be so selfish back then?
Tara would have much rather had the older Faith around than to have her remembered that way. Rupert and Jenny wouldn’t have called their daughter after a still living Slayer. The other, older, Faith was dead though. It had happened. It was the past and it was very real. As was what Tara had done to bring that to pass. But she’d allowed her friend to die on order to save a Willow that she’d later killed herself.
Yeah, that was a cautionary tale all right. They didn’t get much more cautionary.
Faith, her friend, had been killed because Tara simply hadn’t been able to choose between her and the vampire that had been as near to her love as she’d ever actually been. All that was left, back then, of Willow. She allowed Faith to die. A young woman who could have saved hundreds, thousands of lives more than she already had done. Dead because Tara had been too selfish to realise that it didn’t matter what she felt for the ‘idea’ of the human Willow back then. The Willow who’d been there, who’d done it, hadn’t been the person she’d been in love with anyway.
Close wasn't ever good enough when it came to people’s lives – and losing them.
All of this was why she had to remember what had happened in the past. Once she started making selfish choices, no matter how small they might start out, it was people’s lives that were at risk. And for her to stop hunting would be the ultimate selfish choice. As long as there was a need for the vampires to be destroyed – as long as they risked hurting people in Sunnydale – she had to do this.
She knew it was the truth. She knew she could never be happy, even with Willow, if people were suffering just so she could be comfortable. She wouldn’t even be the woman Willow loved now if she made that kind of choice.
How could she have respect for herself? How could Willow love someone who would do such a thing? She’d just be a different kind of monster if she was so careless of other people’s lives and suffering.
Tara had been able to see the light for a while, in the distance at first – closer in now though. It got brighter as they moved towards it, as light tended to do. But she could see no movements in that light. Neither the light itself, nor anything moving around it – and that was a good thing for them. She knew that the others were aware of it too – how could they not be? In the darkness they’d been moving through for so long, light was the ultimate contrast. Reflecting her careful movements, Rupert and Willow had become more precise in how they were moving too. They were all making sure that they disturbed the water that rested above the bottom coating of slime as little as possible. Actually there was a bottom coating they were standing in and then there was a top coating, she could tell because the surface really wasn't behaving like she would have expected water to do. She was really glad that none of them had slipped and fallen in this. It was probably another benefit of the careful movements.
Okay, yes, there were ripples that would move down toward that light source, but they allowed no great sloshes that would indicate that there was something big down here, at least nothing bigger than the rats which
should have frequented this sewer but which they’d not seen for a while now.
It was a sure sign of vampires, if there hadn’t been all the other clues, no rats in the locality – and this was a sewer. It should have been full of them. Perhaps Willow and Jenny should be tapping into the local exterminator’s computers now, figuring out where there were the fewest reports of rodents? In part it was because vampires didn’t create the waste that people did. Bodily or in terms of junk food, etc. Not unless they were dumping their victims bodies – but such an action would have defeated the object of hiding – which they’d obviously been doing.
Besides that rats were still natural – they abhorred vampires as much as anything else which lived and breathed. The other side of it was that vampires weren't averse to a snack from time to time. Ask them to eat rats and they’d get all haughty. Ask them if they had eaten a rat, and Tara had made that point to the vampire she’d also known as Willow, and you would getting a grudging acceptance of the truth.
Vampires – always thinking with their stomachs.
The vampire she’d taken into her home had been an invaluable look into the minds of those vile creatures.
In retrospect, she supposed the ones that weren’t thinking of their stomachs were the ones that would hide out in sewers for months or even years to avoid detection – sending out for food. Those were clearly the truly dangerous ones and the ones who had to be killed. Well, that was why they were here. They were about to perform that service.
In her past Tara had always eschewed the easy kills, the vampires which were newly risen in the cemeteries and the like, in favour of the vampires who’d demonstrated even the slightest potential to survive. The survivors were the dangerous ones. They were the ones that would hurt more people in the end – even if they weren’t hungry for a meal right at that moment. One vampire who survived for ten years would kill many more people, when you factored in any new vampires they’d created, than twenty vampires who survived only six months. She’d once asked Willow to put a spreadsheet together to work out what she thought one, long surviving, vampire would do in terms of damage to people. Willow had applied her insight… but conservatively. Tara had been forced to ask her love to stop after just a couple of years – never mind a century – the numbers had just got too scary.
It was those survivors they’d come to kill tonight.
The ones who should have been put out of their misery years ago – and so that Willow might never have had to suffer what she had done – at least if that Drusilla had been one of them.
But that wasn’t a road that Tara was willing to go down. She wasn’t going to get into asking herself if they would ever have met if things had been even a little different. Things were what they were – the absolute best that they could do was to look to the future and shaping it for the better. The past was gone – the future was still ahead of them. That was why they were here after all.
There were no shadows being cast across what could now clearly be made out as a tunnel junction up ahead – an artificially lit meeting of at least two tunnels besides this one they were in. Not candles – it was electric lighting. Down here, with potential gas build-ups any sewer could suffer from, perhaps candles wouldn’t have been the best idea. It would have been risky to have candles in any sewers, but there was less air moving in this one than most Tara had experienced. It was probably the way the vampires had been blocking tunnels off for their own purposes.
The electric lights just showed how long they’d been hiding out down here. Tara knew from the maps they’d studied that there were still just tunnels in the area they were in now – no chambers that they could have converted into what Toni had described. At least not unless the vampires had gone in for some wholesale refurbishment on a massive scale. The kind which would lead to collapsed roads and buildings if it was done wrong. The chances were very good that the maps were still accurate and there were just tunnels around here. And for some reason they were still bothering to light it when they could see perfectly well in near pitch darkness.
That suggested either vampires who wanted to see their domain as a human would have done – or perhaps that they had assistance from demons, or even humans, who needed light to see in a way that vampires clearly did not.
From what little Toni had revealed to them there hadn’t seemed to be anything but vampires and their captives down here, which meant that there was probably a vampire here who liked parts of what it was to be human. A vampire who had some pride rather than just hunger. At least unless that ‘other’ had kept itself away from the holding pens.
It was most likely it was a vampire though. Most demons hated or barely tolerated vampires – and Willow hadn’t been able to see Spike working with humans. ‘He’d never lower himself to that,’ her love had said based on what she remembered hearing about him. So if it
was a vampire, then maybe it was one who liked to have a view of ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing’ – one who might like to roam his or her domain in and to see how things looked. How things were in their world.
Lights, to vampires, were an indulgence but vampire still retained some aspects of their humanity. Just as breathing was often a habit in them, light might also be a comfort, rather than any form of a necessity.
It didn’t really matter
why it was lit – just that it was. Light was good for them – with light they could be pretty sure that there were no vampires up there ahead of them, The junction was where they would exit from this filth and seemingly back into the dry, dusty sewers that seemed to criss-cross under most of Sunnydale. If so many sewers were dry then she supposed Sunnydale’s waste had to go somewhere. The mayor had always intended sewers to be the highways for demons in this town and most of those were accordingly dry ones and bigger than person sized. Many of them, rather than being small pipes needed in a sparsely populated neighbourhood, were large enough for a lot bigger things than people.
Now they were going to use all that, the light and the size, against the vampires. This was supposed to be their place – by design and by the modifications they had made, but now it was going to be the vampire hunters place.
The demons thought they could go anywhere, unseen, in the sewers. Well, someone was going to come to them – unseen – through them. Down the demon highways as the old Mayor had delighted in calling them to a city planner as Tara had listened in. They were, if things went to plan, going to get right to the heart of the nest before any vampires had a chance to do anything about it.
There had been a case for just make a sweep from one side to the other – Tara had done something like that before in sewers – she’d even done it in other surroundings and on a smaller scale with Willow – but that left a whole lot of vampires that could escape. Pushing the fleeing vampires ahead of them like that, giving them chance to both be warned and to get out of the nest, wasn’t necessarily a good thing – unless all you were bothered about was saving people or disrupting them. There had been occasions where it had been enough to just get the vampires out. Not this time.
This time they wanted to save people
and kill vampire though. She didn’t want the most powerful vampires, who’d gladly sacrifice the others in order to escape, to get away from them. Yes, they would be able to rescue people, but ultimately it would just delay the problem and could cause new ones. Besides, the vampires could easily have started hurting people before they managed to work their way far enough in to be able to help.
So instead, they’d decided they would work their way straight to the centre, if they could without being detected, and that ought to give them a shot at destroying the powerful vampires first. They’d eliminate any others who were on guard, then deal with the heart of the nest – the bulk of the demons – then sweep outwards to pick up the stragglers, half of which would probably rush to come towards them in the heart of the nest anyway.
Vampires, perhaps because they had once been human, were usually as focused on being at the heart of things as humans were. Only a few Tara had seen over the years had shown the brains to offset the heart of their nest to avoid being taken out by this kind of plan.
Most of them, like people, tended to place the important stuff – food, their own quarters – at the physical centre. The smarter thing would always be to distribute the assets and make what was valuable and had to be guarded inaccessible too. There was a balance between convenience – which if you were immortal shouldn’t really be an issue – and security.
Most vampires were so full of themselves that security wasn’t even an issue. Immortality… for creatures which could exist forever they were always in such a hurry to have what they wanted
now.And again… those that recognised security and the advantages time offered them, they were the dangerous ones. The kind that set traps around the perimeter of the lair and were willing to
wait to try and takeover.
Patient.
They were the ones that were
worth getting. The rest of it was just mopping up after the fact and they could do that when it suited them. As long as they got the bulk of the vampires – especially the leaders and the dangerously vicious ones who might attack innocent people for revenge – then Tara was confident that the people in town still remembered enough about vampires not to get caught out by a the few that would certainly get away.
The three of them knew and had accepted there was no way to catch each and every vampire – some of them would already be out of the nest. Out of reach tonight unless they came back and got caught here. She was sure they would miss at least a few. As for the rest…
Well, they might get away if they didn’t all try to stay and make a fight of it. She’d accept that if it happened.
Now there was light in the tunnels the odds were even. They’d see the shadows move if there was someone there, or if someone came out to try and see what some noise or smell was. The vampires were helping them more than they’d ever dared hoped for. So much so that Tara realised that they didn’t even need Tinkerbell anymore. She murmured a ‘thank you’ under her breath and dismissed the tiny, unknowing, sprite – and she then heard Willow’s own thanks behind her. That was nice. Willow was nothing if not considerate to the benign spirits they sometimes asked for favours. Even if Tinkerbell had owed her a favour which was now repaid.
Willow had learned her lessons from well and then taught Tara more than a few too. The ‘offensive’ magic, as Rupert liked to call it, was largely Willow’s. Offensive in terms of being obviously deadly rather than rude or something. They liked to laugh about that – when they could laugh. It was what her love, with an aptitude for the elements of Fire and Air, had discovered that she could do best. Tara’s own use of Earth – incorporating the things that grew – and Water took longer and had less immediate effect than fire. At least when it came to dealing with vampires.
Water, after all, wasn’t a hostile environment to vampires. There were stories of vampires on ships being cast overboard or abandoning a sinking ship and ‘walking’ along the bottom of oceans to shore.
Tara doubted the truth of them… there were pressures in the ocean which would crush skulls. Creatures which didn’t balk at attacking and devouring dead flesh. Under water a vampire couldn’t move quickly or strike hard to defend itself.
But despite all that, the fact was Water wasn’t a great way to kill vampires.
Fire was dangerous to use though – especially in environments like this one. Aside from this being a confined space, they had no idea what might be stored in the tunnels or in the lair. With the electricity came the question of there being fuel for a generator rather than tapping into the local grid, which might have been detected. If that was the case then they couldn’t risk using Fire – except in very small quantities. The fuel thing was something they’d have to check on if they could – otherwise things could get much hotter than they wanted them to be very quickly.
If they were forced to use Fire then Tara wanted there to be a counter-action to prevent innocent people being hurt – or themselves. They had a plan for that, but not one they could use just anywhere. It took careful placement.
It all meant, at least at the start, that they’d be using the stakes. They’d spent a good few hours sharpening their own preferred styles of flying death. Air effects were certainly valuable to push the vampires back and to hold them down – they were both good at those. Willow might be able to use some, limited, fire when they were very certain of the targets. Tara’s love had a much finer control of Fire – being one of the elements that blessed her – than Tara did. Tara herself could envisage using Water as a distraction if they found some pipelines or were next to the wet sewer tunnels. But once again they, or more importantly the people they were here to save, would be in more danger than the vampires who didn’t need to breath.
And maybe if there were any tree roots that intruded… Well, Tara knew how to make use of those but that took more time and… it was unnecessary. Most of the time a stake would do just fine. Multiple stakes – multiple vampires. There wasn’t a problem unless it looked they were going to get overwhelmed – until then the simple ways were best. Still, she had an idea about how she might be able to make use of the growth of nature… something new. Something which might give the vampires pause.
And they had lots of stakes with them. Maybe not enough for all the vampires – if the pain from the pendant had been any judge – but definitely lots of them. They’d been carving them for ages before the final flurry at lunchtime. They’d flurried when they’d decided to err further on the side of caution. You couldn’t ever have too many pieces of sharpened wood.
And even now it was likely to be too few – but stakes weren't their only weapons. Not any more.
She looked back at her love and her friend. Willow smiled encouragingly and Rupert nodded once more, brandishing his axe and shifting his grip on the long, cord entwined, metal handle. She wouldn’t have chosen it – even back in the days when she hadn’t minded weapons that were a bit bigger than a stake – but it would do the job for him and he was comfortable with it. Being comfortable with the way that you killed vampires was, in her opinion, one of the main things – otherwise you were fighting yourself as well as the creature. And that meant you could lose the more than the fight altogether.
It was easy to lose the war when that happened.
The comfortable way, whatever you found it to be, allowed you to do what you needed to without even thinking too much about it. Reflex could take over to a large extent – freeing your mind for the bigger plans. Which was why she was so much happier when she had a bag full stakes, even though she could use other methods to destroy their enemies.
If you thought about vampires, which were often right in your face, too much… if you had to… well, in that case you could pretty easily end up dead. She’d been lucky to live long enough for certain things to become instinctive – if not reflexive – like surviving itself. Survival was definitely an instinct and it was one that she’d made sure that Willow honed before she even got anywhere near coming out hunting with her. So many things were second nature to Willow, as they were to her.
Willow’s instinct was more directly linked to the use of the elements she was blessed by, rather than stakes. But Willow could see the larger picture as well as she could. Until there was an urgent need Tara’s love wouldn’t put everything at risk.
She wanted Willow around for a long, long time yet. There weren’t enough ‘longs’ to describe how long she intended to be around with Willow. All of Willow’s ‘longs’ she wanted to be with her – she was confident they would be too.
With Rupert’s nod they were ready to go – ready to help some other people survive. People they’d never met and those they would never meet. People who were prisoners down here. Caged and waiting to die.
Just like Toni had been.
People who were up above, living in blissful ignorance, and just had a date with point toothed death one day in the future.
She, Willow and Rupert were going to break that date for them.
Toni was just the most immediate reminder to them of what they were trying to do.
Tara didn’t want to be angry, not with herself, not even with the vampires. Angry wasn't going to help them right now. But sometimes… well, sometimes she just couldn’t help herself. That sort of thing – the vampires hurting and caging people like that not simply to survive but, even worse, to make ‘life’ simpler for themselves. How many of those people were there down here? How many would never walk out again into the sunlight?
What these vampires had done – and were doing – somehow seemed even worse than the ‘normal’ pain inflicted by vampires.
It stopped tonight. It had to.
Of all the things she’d seen and felt – the drive towards ‘mass-production’ by the Master and his Order and now by whatever these vampires were calling themselves – struck her as the worst. She’d been on the receiving end of some of the cruellest games a vampire could play. She’d played some of them herself without realising what game was being played with her. She’d seen countless people die, hundreds of bodies… But automating the process of death struck her as just… wrong. She knew it struck many vampires as wrong too – it was against their nature as much as they were against nature itself.
Okay, vampires were outside of nature – but it was still ultimately a predator/prey thing which was going on. Mass production… wasn’t. That was even sicker. Perhaps it wasn't even mass production – perhaps it was that other very human thing… agriculture.
Agriculture had allowed humans to gather into larger and larger groups – created what humans liked to call civilisation. And what had that brought? War for more territory than any person would ever be able to visit – let alone need. Cities which vampires made into their own giant hunting ground.
Human agriculture had made the modern vampire possible. Not a wanderer moving from farm to farm – but instead a hunter. Able to gather in their own groups – and still be sustained by the humans around them.
Vampires perverted everything they touched – but had humans, in a very real sense, created the conditions? Nature just hadn’t caught up yet, there was still only one Slayer at a time.
And there was the three of them.
Yes, this was the vampire equivalent of agriculture – and Tara knew what it could mean if it caught on. It would be the realisation of the Master’s dream which Willow had been so closely involved in. It would be an evolution of sorts.
And it would still defy nature.
Releasing people into the sewers to hunt them didn’t make it any better at all. Nothing would make it better, but it seemed worse – making those scared, frightened, people play in a rigged game that only Toni had been able to beat. At least as far as they knew.
She was sure it wouldn’t still have been a secret if someone else had made it out. They would have found out. From the police, from someone. They were always looking for signs of vampire and demonic activity. But there had been no hint – at least not
in Sunnydale – until Toni had escaped.
They stepped up to the wall at the near corner of the junction. Light shone down the tunnels to either side of them. There was no hiding in the dark now – even if the vampires couldn’t have seen them before. If something came round that corner before they were ready then they were in trouble, or at least reduced to acting on reflex. On the other hand, they ought to have some warning of that happening.
Their mission statement, at least the private one between herself and Willow, was to keep the vamps as far away from them as possible. Rupert, with his axe, was absolutely their last line of defence – but they didn’t want to be testing him at all if they could help it. Better he never had to do a thing – not because he couldn’t deal with, but because
that close was too close.
Vampires, if they got rushed, would get through to them from one direction or another, but Rupert was supposed to be watching their backs. It was up to she and Willow to watch their fronts – but not in the way she might have preferred to spend this evening. No, they all had to pay close attention to staying and moving together – that was what was going to keep them alive.
There were going to be tunnels, junctions, doors and hidden entrances all around them once they got into the complex itself and that didn’t even take account of what modifications the vampires might have made for themselves. Studying plans from when the sewers were constructed might not have done them any good at all. It would be like a warren – but these were hardly rabbits they were hunting. They were the predators though – which would put the vampires at a disadvantage. More than that, vampires never expected to be attacked in their own lairs, even if they were wary of the Slayer or a pair of one hundred percent in love witches whilst they were out in the open. It all meant that they needed to have eyes in the back of their heads – or rather Rupert was going to have to do that for them.
Though, if he was looking backwards, then perhaps they needed eyes in the front of their heads? Cool. She knew they had those, so they were doing okay. Good start.
Too many Willowthoughts.
They all knew the part that they had to play. They were all ready to go. Everyone had eyes and was using them. Everyone seemed happy enough to get in there and get started on helping people… Then they could go home. Get washed, be with the person they loved and know they’d done some good in the world – or under it.
She could have told Willow without a word – she could have made her feelings known to her love within her thoughts and felt her response – but not so Rupert. If she’d tried, she supposed that she
could have touched his mind – they were all close enough – but there was no need for that. Toni had shown them the way. Maybe none of them had learned how to put too many whole sentences together in sign language yet, at least not properly, but they were proficient enough for what they needed here. Any gestures would have been adequate, but sign offered more possibilities. They’d reviewed it the previous night and again on the way here. They were all clear on what they were going to say to each other – and how.
They were clear about hand signals that they could use to get around the advantage of the vampires’ superior hearing. They might still be heard walking along – but they weren’t going to allow the vampires to know what they wanted to do just because they needed to speak. In tunnels like these, patient vampires could perhaps have overheard their whole plan from a few hundred metres away – if they had discussed it that was. It was a good idea of Rupert’s to use sign as much as they could whilst they were down here – and undetected. Maybe later, when things heated up and or they didn’t have a hand free… but for now they needed to be sneaky – like Miss Kitty.
Even if Miss Kitty wasn’t actually the sneakiest kitty there had ever been. Their cat was much more ‘I am a cat – out of my way,’ personality than one that would sneak around the dorms.
Okay, Tara thought, so there’s a tunnel leading off from this one deeper into the nest… Best way to approach that was just what they’d agreed on – Rupert at the back watching out for any vampires that they missed or who were smart enough to try and blind-side them. She and Willow though? Side by side… She remembered the tactics that she’d once been taught by a Watcher… others that she’d learned from bitterly gained experience as she’d gone along. Everything had needed adapting to the needs and practice of magic – but certain things held true all the same.
Like keeping out of each other’s way, or now fields of fire – and making sure Rupert had all the room he might need for wielding that axe.
She’d always worked alone back then, but she’d applied the same principals… and she’d learned to work with Faith even before Willow had been on, and at, her side like this. It was… better not being alone. It was definitely safer. Certainly not so scary – except in the way that it was scary because now she had to be afraid for
them too.
Well, she supposed didn’t have to be – but she was. She had faith in them – she wouldn’t have let either of them come down here if she hadn’t believed they could handle it. It made her more careful though, being here with Willow and Rupert. She’d admitted to herself a long time ago that she’d been pretty much self-destructive all those years ago. She hadn’t cared about anything beyond killing vampires and had fully expected to die in the process of doing just that. Expecting to die all the time had made death seem… merely
inconvenient to continuing to hunt. She hadn’t ever wanted to die, but accepting its likelihood made it that much more likely. At least as she saw it now.
She supposed it had also taught her to survive.
Now she was careful. She was careful because she had other things in her life, things which she wanted to hold onto and to protect. Now she was fighting not just for herself, but for them too. This way was so much better than the old way. Which was, she supposed, why she was a little less worried about carrying like this than she would have been if she had still been doing this alone…
If she’d been alone she wouldn’t have worried at all. She might even have been feeling more alive than she did at any other time. Now, Willow made her feel more alive than she ever was, or had been, without her.
Willow was, pretty much, her life.
She showed them three fingers to indicate a three count and before she could even get confirmation Willow had darted over the other side of the junction. That had been reckless. They had no idea what was round there – Tara had just been about to take a peek, but she was on the right side of the tunnel to do that without much risk. Willow had become visible and darting through the water she’d been audible too. But on the other hand, Willow had confirmed to her own satisfaction that there wasn’t anything down there that had to worry them – not as far as she could see.
*Corner up ahead* Willow signed around the stake she was holding.
Okay, Tara thought, another corner. It gave them some added time. Added space. They could get out of the water now – maybe stop themselves from leaving a big wet trail for something to track them down along. Good. One less risk for them to take.
Once they got there she flashed them three fingers again, raising her eyebrows to Willow. She knew what she thought that meant, the eyebrows, no heroism. It wasn’t an official sign and she wasn't about to tell Willow off, but she hoped her baby understood what she was ‘saying.’
There was nothing to prove here and no need to make things any more risky than they already were.
Rupert showed her the same three fingers and when Tara looked back to her lover again and saw the same gesture repeated by the red-head and a sheepish smile to go with it. A three count then – and they would be committed. Utterly. Step round this corner and there really was no choice left to them. Willow wrung her fingers around the stake in her hand, betraying some of the nerves that Tara was also very definitely feeling. It had been a long, long time since she or Rupert had tried anything this big – but Willow never really had.
As nervous as they might be, Tara knew there wasn’t a single doubt amongst them about
whether they should be doing this. They were going in and they were going to come out again – after they’d won whatever battles they had to fight. Failure was so far from being an option. The bigger this was, the more important.
One finger.
Two fingers.
And Willow was already around the corner.
She’d gone
on three! That wasn’t what they’d agreed to. They were supposed go to
after the three count. One, two, three - go. Not one, two, go. It seemed she remembered seeing that in a film somewhere – and then they’d had that debate for themselves whilst they were looking for the way in. Even if they’d never tested it out, they had definitely decided.
Rupert hadn’t known the film, but he’d got the point.
One. Two. Three. Go.
They’d agreed on it. That was the way it was supposed to be. She knew why Willow had done something different though. She’d been trying to take a little of the risk on herself, because she knew Tara had been intending to be first round and into that tunnel. She would have waited for three, then gone, but she had been determined to be the first one round there.
At least Willow hadn’t run on ahead.
She shook her head and Rupert gestured for her to go first – well, before him at least. First was already gone. So, there was someone who was following the nearly non-existent plan. Willow could more than handle whatever might be round there and she’d already indicated that there was no immediate danger, but Tara could feel the magic building as her lover prepared herself. She could feel it in the air – feel it being drawn through and around her as Willow called it to herself.
Ready.
Willow needed the power – but Tara couldn’t feel any panic in the woman she loved. It was just cool, collected Willow she could sense. Utterly calm and almost sneaky. Magic was silent – there was no taste, no smell. Nothing to see either, most of the time. And yet it felt as if Willow was trying to keep the very act of preparing her magic a secret. Not from Tara, but from whatever required her to use it.
It wasn't elemental magic either – that had its own unique feel that Tara would have recognised being built by her girlfriend at fifty paces. Willow was planning to use a simpler magic, through the grace of the Elements but not utilising their power. It pretty much had to be getting rid of a vampire. Tara slipped around the corner and headed up towards Willow’s side. She knew that Rupert was going to follow closely behind her.
Willow was at, and peeking round, the corner she’d indicated a couple of metres ahead of them. Tara had been right, Willow held a stake in her open palm ready to let fly. Tara stepped softly, knowing that Willow couldn’t afford to miss because of a suddenly aware vampire’s movements. None of them could afford her to miss. If the alarm went up – well, there was a chance that people were going to die. Maybe even them. If there was going to be an alarm, they all wanted it to be as late as possible.
She didn’t see the stake leave Willow’s hand because she must have blinked, but she was sure that the vampire didn’t know they were there. It would though – through sound, smell, whatever it would have noticed even if they’d just waited around this corner for a little while longer. Willow was doing exactly the right thing. She’d identified a threat to their mission and she was going to neutralise it. She’d stake it. Willow was almost as good as Tara with the stakes and she’d been practising for only about half the time. Willow’s natural affinity had brought her along quicker.
There.
With that ‘whoosh’ one more practice was concluded. What had they been practicing for if not for this? Was this the real thing then? Yeah, it certainly was. It had come time, once more, to put all the practice to good use. But it had been so simple, it might as well have been practice.
The vampire hadn’t even moved.
But then she’d always believed that practice should be
more real than the real thing. The real thing should seem easy by comparison.
Willow turned back to her and gave her the thumbs up. Well, one thumb at least. Tara raised an eyebrow and showed her again what the count should have been. One. Two. Three. Go. Three fingers, two fingers, one finger and that turning into a point after another beat. Willow just added another embarrassed smile to the thumbs up and Tara couldn’t hold it against her. Willow had done the right thing. Waiting, going together, might have alerted that vampire. Even if it had been according to the plan.
Of course there was always the question of just
why Willow had gone early. Had she known about the vampire? How could she have?
Tara thought not. There was no way she could have known. Which made the right choice an accident rather than skill, instinct or even luck.
She made her way to Willow’s side just in time to see the last of the dust from the explosion of the vampire settle to the ground, twinkling for some strange reason in the artificial lighting. Some light just caught vampires… or what was left of them, like that. It was almost pretty, and other times it was just brown, grey, or black dirt. Sometimes, it was practically invisible because it was so finely powdered.
Tara had never figured out the differences, but she’d never much cared either. Just so long as the vampires were dead they could disintegrate how they liked. And she was going to see that many, many more were reduced to just that tonight. They were going to see to it. Except, hopefully, Rupert who should be facing the other way most of the time. They were together in this though.
Willow brushed her hand with her own as they came alongside each other, Rupert watching behind them as they set off down the longer, wider and higher roofed tunnel. There was no cover available to them for quite some distance, but that didn’t really matter. They just had to kill the vampires faster than those same vampires could react to their presence.
The connection with her love assured her that they could do that.
They were together, all of them, and nothing was going to stop them from doing what they had to do in order to help the people who were down here.
Ready.
********************
-------------------------
If I want a little pussy, I got my own to play with.
Chance in
Chance.------------------------
at: 10/16/03 7:03 am
