Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle – Being Watched (Part 154)
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: Tara is being followed by Ethan. Doesn’t that sound like a recipe for fun?
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: This part continues directly from the end of Part 153
Thanks To: All My Brilliant Beta Readers (AMBBR) Kerry (Forrister) 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 one of Celia’s and she wants a cleaner.
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle
Being Watched
By
Katharyn Rosser
It was the strangest feeling she was having, and had been having for some time now. It was like someone was watching her, but each time she turned around and looked about her, there was no one there at all. But the feeling still remained. There
had been a vampire, one that seemed to have been tailing her from a long distance for a while. She’d managed to get around behind it and drive it into a dead end alley – and that had been the end of that. She had no idea why it had been so far behind her though – unless it was just there to watch her.
Which was worrying in it’s own right. Vampire’s weren’t much for watching.
But though the pendant had been burning her throat up until she’d killed that vampire – and that was the only one she’d detected all night – she continued to feel on edge. Uncomfortable that someone, something out there might be, felt to be, watching her every move. And every time she looked around… there was no one and nothing there for her to see. Not on the street, not on the roof tops around her and no one could be watching her from the sewers could they?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t vampires anyway. She’d have felt them through the pendant. Though if it wasn't vampires that didn’t necessarily make it better.
The pendant never failed her. And that’s precisely why she continued to wear it – to prevent what had happened before from ever happening again. Every vampire she did find could be the start of another nest. A nest that would, once she had killed that creature, never be.
Perhaps the edginess was just because of being alone out here whilst she had things on her mind. That in itself wasn’t unusual. She’d patrolled alone often enough and always had things on her mind – and not necessarily worrisome things. Sometimes she was just filled with happy thoughts of Willow.
So perhaps she was subconsciously looking for something else to worry about to distract her from her real worries that
were there. There was the whole Toni situation, of course. She and Willow both had to go, along with Rupert and Jenny, to see Toni’s caseworker from social services tomorrow. Tara actually kind of liked the caseworker – she was an older woman, quite a few years older than Tara’s mother would have been now, but still idealistic – and she seemed to genuinely want the best for Toni.
Which made her okay in Tara’s book, but she still worried about it. Because, what if they had done something wrong that they didn't know about? What if doing their best wasn't good enough?
What if they’d found Toni’s Mom?
Sometimes, looking at what the social services were doing – if she hadn’t been so determined to be a teacher – then she could have definitely seen herself being at home in a job very much like that. She’d have been pretty good at it too, at least other people thought so. It all came back to temperament, she supposed. Her gifts, or so people had told her, lay in the teaching though. How they knew, when she hadn’t really taught any of them, apart from Willow, about anything, she wasn't sure. She didn’t doubt them, as such, it was just what Willow referred to as her ‘modest demeanour’ at work when she denied it.
She’d ben brought up to be modest, on the other hand she’d also been brought up to be a demon who had to be locked up. One of those she could, and had, broken the habit of. The other… not so much.
Tomorrow’s meeting should just be a review, to see how things were going, before the social worker visited Toni herself later in the week. Just a review, that was all it was supposed to be. Tara understood it, the state needed to be certain that Toni was okay with them and that they were okay with Toni. Tara knew that things
were going okay, but there was always the doubt in her mind. Maybe things weren’t quite as perfect as they could be? Or even as they seemed to be.
Perfect was a tall order; Willow had more than taught her how tall perfect was. Though her lover was quite a small package…
She was sure that they, like everyone else who had to go through a home visit, would be running around tidying up on the night before, and the in the morning before the social worker arrived. It was silly really. They knew they’d do it. The social worker knew they’d do it. When she saw that they’d done it, she’d know that they’d done it and they’d know that she knew they’d done it. So why was anyone doing it at all?
Perhaps, as much as anything else, because she’d always been more than a little house-proud.
That trait had very definitely come from her mother. She’d been… well, rightly proud of the house she’d looked after – at least until she’d started to get sick and Tara had taken over more and more of the housekeeping, as well as the other chores, from her. Once she’d been in charge of those duties she’d never let it get into a state no matter how much schoolwork there had been. No matter how much Donny had been acting up. Even when she'd been going to the hospital to visit Mom four or five times a week from school and not getting home until late. It was a trait she’d picked up and she wore it proudly.
When she’d been out there so many years ago, wandering the cities of this country looking for vampires to kill, she’d never failed to roll up her sleeping bag nicely. And when she’d been able to score a room in a motel, the maid never would never have had to do anything more than put new sheets on the bed – which Tara couldn’t really help her with – but she would have if the motel had just given them to her. She might even have preferred it if they had.
And when they’d gone back to the farm, she and Willow, she’d quickly set about making that the wonderful, clean and tidy home that it had always been when people had lived there before. There’d been some time in those first few days whilst Willow was… indisposed, and she’d felt a huge amount of satisfaction from getting the years of dust up and every surface shiny clean again. Especially before Willow was in a fit state to be up and seeing them.
It hadn’t been a thought she remembered having, but there had probably been something there which had said she didn’t want Willow to see it anything less than perfect.
As a place she could feel safe in, when she’d needed it most.
As a home.
And that meant clean.
Their apartment, now, would be spotless just because she couldn’t stand to think of it being any other way.
Then suddenly her senses kicked back into gear.
She was already alert as the sound, as it came, rang out through the street. It sounded something like a bottle being kicked and then rolling down the asphalt, echoing in the silent, dark streets. She’d definitely heard it and there was definitely someone or something out there – not too far away either. Eventually she was able to see the bottle turning slowly, finally stopping at the kerbside across from her, its stillness rendering the streets silent once again. But she didn’t know exactly
where it had rolled from.
Scanning the street though… there really was nothing there. No shadow. No person. No visible demon or creature. Not even a cat. No vampire for certain – the pendant would have been burning her throat long before they could have knocked an old bottle over and she could have heard it. So what was it?
Before the bottle there had just been the sounds of the city. Every city, even in the dead of night when no one was around, had a sound. A unique sound all its own, which came from how it was built and laid out. What the road was made of, the sidewalks and how deep the sewers were. Were the power lines above or below ground? Air conditioning units on office blocks, gas and steam moving through those same sewers and other underground pipes. Was there an underground train system? Far off cars speeding down empty roads. Dumpsters being emptied across town. Trains being connected at the freight yards.
Sounds of the ‘empty’ city were legion and they were all mixed together. No city was ever silent. The bottle had been something else entirely though. There was no wind, so it hadn’t just been disturbed by the natural elements.
Invisible sounds from things that were hidden and far away were… Invisible? Was that it? There were demons that were invisible by nature – at least to human eyes – and there were those that could make themselves invisible for protection or to hunt their prey. Was she something’s prey now? They might think so…
Obviously she’d never seen one, because not being seen was kind of the point of invisibility, but there were rumours in most towns she’d hung around in for any length of time and there were entries in Rupert’s books too. She knew they existed. Willow, as a vampire, had even remembered meeting something like that. The vampire hadn’t asked how they’d done it though. The vampire hadn’t been interested.
Could this be the same thing? Perhaps she needed to ask Willow about that, when she got home.
Of course, all the invisible demons had a bad rep. Anyone who knew that demons actually existed was likely to blame losing anything on an invisible one, in jest at least. Usually in jest. Tara had never really understood why the invisible demons, of whatever species, would be interested in collecting car keys, purses and pairs of glasses.
And usually putting them back somewhere other than where they had gone from.
Poltergeists maybe. Demons no. At least not any of the kinds of demons she’d ever met.
And the thing was that ‘invisible’ didn’t mean insubstantial. Obviously light would pass through them, otherwise they wouldn’t have been invisible at all, and so they wouldn’t cast any shadow. But they would make noises – like that bottle – and they would leave a trail… if you knew what to look for at least.
It would probably be a trail that she couldn’t see though, at least in this environment. When she scanned the street behind her again, she could see there really was nowhere to go and hide. No side streets for a little distance back. No recessed shop doorways. And no trace of living energy either – and she was really looking for it. So what was back there either wasn’t living, wasn't visible to her magical senses for some reason – definitely wasn't a vampire, or… well, maybe it wasn't there at all and she was imagining it.
On the other hand, maybe it
had been a cat. They were certainly sneaky and fast enough to have escaped her detection.
Maybe it had even been Miss Kitty who, living between three widely separated homes, seemed to see all of Sunnydale as her territory. Miss Kitty wouldn’t be stalking her though and that would have had to have been a precariously balanced bottle for a cat, even Miss Kitty, to set it in motion all the way across the street.
Invisible cat perhaps?
Okay. Now she was getting too deep into Willow territory. All it needed was invisible chickens, and telling her love about them, and Willow would be having nightmares for a month. It was also Willow territory because it was slightly ridiculous. In an infinite universe there probably were invisible cats – and chickens – but they weren’t very likely to be here, now, following her and disturbing bottles. What reason would they have for it?
Which took her right back to demons.
Except she couldn’t detect its energy. If it had been a demon, surely she should have been able to see something now? She thought of another spell, calling on nature to reveal itself to her. Which would, at least, remove the element of the natural from her investigations. It would mean certain types of demon – or something beyond the normal classifications. It seemed like a plan so she gathered the energy to herself.
All at once, as soon as she was done casting, there was a tremendous rush of information and insight into the world. The truth be told, she enjoyed some aspects of this spell. Nature was all around her. Pollen carried on the breeze. The moths collecting around the street-lights fluttered and the dust from their wings was apparent to her as well. It was all natural – despite being so deep in a town. There were insects that crawled. Rats and other small mammals under the ground in the pipes. It was all obvious to her now.
It was all actually kind of overwhelming which was why she didn’t try to maintain such a view all the time, attractive as the awareness of living things was in short bursts. So much information. The signature of every single creature and plant. Each blade of grass in the small park area ahead. The worms under the soil there too.
And no, there was no demon she could see.
Apart from vampires, most demons were, in some way, a part of nature. Their species had been in this world since before there had been grass, moths and people. If they could be considered ‘alive’ and a part of this world, this reality, then they were part of nature. The lack of any sign might mean…
Well, a demon from another reality, or equally possible there really was nothing there and a breeze had caught the bottle.
Yeah, right. A breeze that she hadn’t even felt on a really still night.
She trusted her feelings way more than she trusted her logic. Even before the bottle had alerted her, she’d felt that something was definitely out there, the bottle had merely been a proof of that. Just because she couldn’t see it didn’t necessarily mean that it wasn't so, she’d long since learned not to rely on sight – or any one of her conventional senses. Just as she didn't rely on the magic.
Okay, so maybe she couldn’t see it… but she could see – if it was at all physically substantial – a trail whatever it was might leave behind and that small bit of parkland would do nicely. When she’d sensed the life within the parkland she’d also been able to feel the trapped water in the ground as well.
The sprinklers had been on earlier that evening, as they always were here in a town that would naturally have been a relatively barren place. Tomorrow was supposed to be a cool day and she was sure that the grass and the plants wouldn’t mind if she borrowed a little of that water from them. Just enough to… make things more obvious. She promised herself, as she would promise them, that she’d come back, with a watering can if necessary, to give them that water back – if tomorrow turned out to be a very hot day after all. She was coming this way anyway so it would be easily done.
She’d see about making good on her promise then.
Right now she just needed the water, and quickly. She couldn’t slow down or be too obvious about knowing something was there, so she continued walking as she coaxed the little tiny droplet she took from piece of soil to merge with another, and another… and another. On and on across the whole of the park, pushing towards the dry road by natural process along the concentration gradient and by simple gravity on the surface. Before she was past the park the dark stain of moisture was spreading across the road behind her. She didn’t need to look back to know that it was there. She just had to be grateful for the cooperation of the droplets of water she was coaxing into listening to her and the sacrifice the life within the soil, and atop it, was making for her to borrow it.
And now she
did need to hurry. Once she reached the next alley, knowing from long experience of the streets of Sunnydale that she could follow it back around behind the small park then up onto Cromwell Street, she had to hurry. Anything following her couldn’t hurry too much – it would be too obvious, unless there was a silence effect going on too and then it would make too much noise, but she could run – as long as it was dependent on sight alone to follow her.
If it was following her some other way, a way that could see through buildings, or tracking her through scent, then this wasn’t going to be such a good plan. At least if she was to avoid it knowing she knew it was there.
But there wasn’t any other choice whilst she was alone out here.
She might have just waited for it to leave a trail, but she had no way to know what it might be capable of, apart from avoiding her sight by deception or natural ability. All she needed to do now was to get to a place where she could see what came across the wet asphalt – what tracks were left behind without it knowing it had been discovered.
Of course, the plan assumed whatever it was walked on the ground and wasn't flying. No, it was a walker, or else it would have been a lot less likely to have disturbed the bottle. And it would have to go by way of the ground she had prepared, unless it knew she was trying to circle around behind it, and that in itself would give it away too.
Maybe it couldn’t fly, but maybe it was capable of floating. She would have to avoid leaving her own tracks as she circled back.
Of course she’d never been invisible, maybe she wouldn’t have bothered with all these elaborate precautions if she had been.
Such a power probably made a creature feel invulnerable, or at least over-confident it couldn’t be found. It wouldn’t be able to believe that someone could see through its protection or trick – whatever it was. At least she hoped so…
Tara pulled up from her run a little early and forced herself to walk to the street corner just before the park she was about to re-enter from a different direction. She didn’t want to give herself away by being a noisy runner, or by gasping for breath.
Toni might be right after all – starting running a little more often might have been good for her. It wasn't like she was out of shape; it was just that she hadn’t been jogging for a while. Not for a couple of years now. Exercise had come in other, usually more pleasurable, ways and the magic, being safer for her to use now, was something she relied on a little more than had previously been the case.
Now she was feeling the effects of that.
Maybe that was a mistake. It wasn't like she was letting the magic become a crutch or anything – she was very careful about that for both herself and Willow – but it was more than…
Well, if it was stopping her from relying on other talents and fitness, then it was becoming an issue. She’d used to run, through this very town, a lot. She’d felt it was more important, back then, to stay in better shape and be able to be the action girl.
Back then she’d needed to be able to get away when she had to because she couldn’t let herself use more and more magic just to win a victory. A victory through too much of that old magic was really a great defeat. And actually, she had to admit that the exercise had helped her past the headaches even the moderate use of the magics had given her in those years. Then there was the fact she’d needed to do without too much food – even when it was available – so that she didn’t come to rely on that availability.
And yet she’d been using so much energy though the magic that she should have been eating more.
Now she wasn’t quite the stick insect she had sometimes been in those days. Cheerleaders might have loved to have her figure then, but she wasn’t so unhealthy. Now she ate enough to be comfortable and she’d dropped her exercise routine down to just the meditation and stretches. She did more than enough, especially with the magic, to keep her weight from ballooning though – much as she enjoyed a nice meal with Willow. And she was much happier with herself, her body. She felt like a woman now that she wasn't so painfully thin. More importantly she felt like Willow’s woman.
She liked to be a woman felt by Willow.
Perhaps it had gone too far though. A twenty-minute run in the morning, like she used to do, wouldn’t kill her now. But it might stop her from getting hurt – or running out of breath just rushing round the block like that. She’d have to start again, sometime.
Out of breath or not, she was where she needed to be now. Watching. For a while there was nothing to see. Too long, actually, to believe that if someone invisible were following her, then they wouldn’t be around the corner she’d ducked round already and long gone. Gone or coming around the corner after her. She started to wonder if the water was going to dry up, or even if she’d been mistaken.
But then… there was something. The angle was too shallow. She couldn’t see the exact shape of the tracks from the far edge of the water – but she could see they were there, and still being made now. If she focused on the water itself, she could see the waves of disturbance that rippled through the millimetre thin layer that coated the road surface. Only her increased awareness, the temporary legacy of the spell she’d cast, allowed her to recognise it there. Anyone else would certainly have missed it, as was the point of the spell. If this had been a few minutes later, when the had spell dissipated, she would have missed it too.
She could see the fluid in the footprints, assuming it
was feet that were making the tracks, shifting to cover the maximum area that it could before it dried up. It was just what water did, and nothing she wanted to prevent.
As she had many times in the past, she asked the air ahead of her to thicken slightly beneath her feet and she walked along the now silenced path after the invisible whatever-it-was until she could get a proper look at it. ‘Look’ being a catch-all term which might not apply in this circumstance. A reminder of how reliant people were on their eyes. It had taken getting to know w person deprived of a sense to get a full appreciation of how you could compensate in other ways.
The stake in her hand probably wasn’t ideal for non-vampires – but as her friend the Slayer had often said when they’d been after demons,
‘you’d be surprised what a sharp piece of wood will hurt, T’, and anyway it was all she had to hand.
It didn't bother her that this thing had not actually done anything to her, because it
was stalking her. The diversion she had taken proved it, which meant ‘it’ was up to no good. Unless invisibility was its natural state and it was trying to get to talk to her then it was trying to avoid being seen. She wouldn’t hurt it unless she had to, but she wasn’t going to assume ‘it’ was a good ‘it.’
And then there were the prints… She could see them clearly now. Footprints. Feet with shoes on. As far as she knew nothing which was naturally invisible wore shoes. Human style shoes.
The shoes made everything just a little clearer.
Shoes meant it was probably not a demon – though there were many that chose to wear clothes – why would you wear both if you were naturally invisible? And why would the shoes be invisible as well? So, it was probably a human and not on a ‘crush, kill, destroy’ kind of mission. It’s mission, purpose or whim was evidently to follow her.
And now she wanted to know why. She didn't want some creep after her. Or creepiness, she was willing to be even handed about the creepiness of some people.
She had to prove to herself what this was before she was ready to confront it. Just the slightest change to that water, atomising it, and allowing the soft breeze to carry it up into the air, floating along like mist, swirling as air flows converged and merged… until it ran into something that shouldn’t have been there but obviously was when the artificial mist closed around it. She thought she could make out the, not exactly enormous, shape of someone or something there. A man probably, but she couldn’t be sure. Not until…
“You know I’m here, don’t you?” a voice ahead of her asked. It sounded like a man too, and from the sound and the shape in the mist he was facing away from her as he spoke. Combined with the vague shape of the water against his clothes, she could easily imagine him. Stopped, knowing she was behind him without ever turning round. He was being careful not to shock her or make her nervous. She appreciated that, unless it was a bluff on his part.
As careful as he was whilst he followed her. She wasn’t sure just how long he’d been behind her. Or what he wanted.
“Yes.” Well, she knew now that he’d spoken and after the fine mist she’d conjured from the water. Up until then she’d been willing to concede it might have been her imagination or her nerves – not that they had ever bothered her before. She was pleased they hadn’t now.
It didn’t
sound like a demon, male or not. But then she supposed that there must be English demons too. She’d run into Texan demons, New York demons, all sorts of demons. The English must have had their own demons too. They probably liked scones and jellied eels and said ‘God save the Queen’ a lot but they’d be pretty similar to the others. The sound of the voice wasn’t a reliable guide to being a demon or not anyway. Some of them were perfectly capable of human sounding speech.
On the other hand, not every demon was dangerous – or even if they were, they could still be mild mannered and friendly from time to time. It just depended on the species and where they fitted into the food chain really. So even if this was a demon, she wasn’t necessarily going to have to hurt or kill it. Or have the same done to her by it. There were some people who were much worse than most demons.
“Well, that’s a shame… and I thought I was being so clever too,” the voice said – not sounding at all annoyed with her, or with himself either, despite the words. It was more of an observation than a comment on how things were going to be. Disappointed perhaps. And the voice was definitely English – though not like Rupert’s.
Tara chose not to reply to the observation. He’d obviously been following her for a long time, at least given how long she’d been feeling uneasy and what he’d said. They had been feelings that were clearly justified once again. She’d trusted them and it had been proven right once more – which she was pleased about. But she was certainly curious about how he had hidden from the view of nature that should have exposed him.
Always assuming he was alive.
He was either dead, or something was interfering with her sight. The spell, which had revealed nature to her
had worked, the way she’d become aware of the natural world around her proved that. So, it was possible he was totally unnatural – from outside this reality – but she didn’t think so. If he was dead, then he wasn’t a vampire at least. The pendant, at this distance, would have been searing her right now – and she knew that was working too. She’d found and killed a vampire through it this very night.
Zombie maybe? He was a bit too talkative for that though. Zombies weren’t the brainiest of creatures that came back into the world, though this was possibly someone who was risen, rather than an actual zombie in the technical sense.
There were too many possibilities to consider them all at the moment. Maybe she should just… ask and stop worrying about it. “Who are you?”
He paused before speaking and in that time the droplets of water moved as he turned to face her. Tara started to summon the magic that would enable her to drive the stake she was holding into him – just in case he tried to threaten her. It always helped to be prepared for anything that might occur, rather than simply reacting.
“I’m shocked that you don’t know,” he said. “And more than a little hurt that you feel you have to prepare some magic to, what is it you yanks say, ‘nail me’?”
“Not exactly,” Tara said – not wanting to correct him about that, which would mean engaging him on his level of conversation rather than finding out what she needed to. “I can’t even see you,” she went on. “But
you’ve been following me.” Anyone who was looking on would think she was crazy – talking to thin air. There was just the two of them here though and that meant there would be no witnesses if this invisible… thing… tried something against her – and if she was forced to do anything about it. She was ready for him to try, but somehow… Well, his tone suggested that he was happy to ‘chat.’
“Ah, those things,” he acknowledged. If anything, he sounded as if he regretted the necessity of doing them rather than being caught in the process. She supposed he might have thought that would be reassuring.
In a blink of the eye he stood there before her where the mist had highlighted his form. Okay he had been stood there already, but he was visible now, which was the difference. No fade in. No distortion. It was just like turning the light on, moving from dark to light in an instant. And now, she noticed, he did cast a shadow from the streetlights above too. That was a nifty spell or ritual he had there.
More than that she noticed that he appeared human. Utterly so. He was probably as old as Rupert, though not wearing as well as her friend, and he was wearing a… well, she had to say that it was ‘gaudy’ shirt. Definitely gaudy – and it shimmered too. Not in a magical way, it was just the material. It was all shiny and… It looked terrible. It would have looked terrible in the early nineties in a disco, but here and now… It was badly dated.
But it wasn’t dated because he was a vampire. He just had a strange fashion sense. You had to have a fashion sense to wear a shirt like that, just not a very good one. You had to
believe in a shirt like that.
And thoughts about fashion sense from her?? That just proved how bad it was. Though to be fair, both she and Willow had come a long way in their fashion. Once you had the time, and the inclination to worry about it then it was easy to start dressing in ways that other people didn't think were funny. Being in love was a reason for an inclination, though it was the time it mattered the least, not embarrassing a loved one seemed to spur – or restrain – certain choices.
“Yes, sorry about that,” he said as she looked at the shirt, and for a moment she thought that he might be apologising to her for wearing it. But no – there were bigger things to apologise for. Important things, though that shirt really did merit an apology all of its own. “I didn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot.”
Besides, he didn't exactly sound too sincere.
She twisted her hand so that the stake was a little less obvious and pressed on with her questions. “Why
were you following me?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, which was probably not a good sign of getting an honest answer. The truth rolled easily off the tongue, whilst a lie would tie you in knots everytime. “Would you believe me if I told you that your soul was calling out to me across time and space?” he asked.
“No,” she said simply. There was only one soul that did that.
He smiled. “Me neither. I’m really not the kind who gets souls calling to them very often – at least not that I listen to. How about ‘I wasn’t following you at all and I was just out for a walk?’”
“An invisible walk?” she checked with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Maybe I’m shy.”
“I can tell by the shirt,” she couldn’t help saying in reply. It really, really was a
bad shirt. But he could take that either way. Either she didn’t believe him because he could wear a ‘look at me’ shirt like that, or she thought he had cause to be invisible because the shirt was so bad.
One way or the other – she hadn’t been joking about it.
If he was offended, and Tara was so shocked at herself that she’d almost been about to apologise to him, then he didn’t show it. “I rarely have occasion to lie,” he told her. “The truth usually works so much better for my purposes.”
That was good. If it was true. If he was lying about not lying… There was a whole can of worms in that idea, lies about lies and the truth about lies. She wasn't going there, she was just going to see what he said and trust her feelings about that. There was always his aura, which was… strangely confused when she examined it. Confused in a way that wasn’t fooling her. Why would he be hiding that? Unless there was something which needed to be hidden there?
“So?” she wanted an answer to her question.
Just from his tone and demeanour she knew that he seemed to think that following her didn’t matter and that the truth was just a question of efficiency rather than honesty. He’d tell it to her to get this out of the way quickly, and that was the only reason.
“Well, let’s try this – and this one really is true if you choose to believe it,” he said. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been in Sunnydale and your magic is absolutely fascinating to me. Might I ask what you regard as the source of it?”
He was clever in his chattiness and interesting in his questions. She’d found herself almost rising to that – answering his question as a
part of her rebuttal and a refusal to play his game – whatever that was. He would have gotten what he wanted even as she tried to deny it to him. He was smart, she’d give him that. And he obviously knew enough to realise that the source of magic wasn’t necessarily known to the user. “So you’re here because of my magic?” That in itself was unsettling.
“A young woman such as yourself shouldn’t flatter herself so, but please do allow me to flatter you instead.” He smiled that cold smile once again. “The answer to your question is ‘no.’ I’m not here for your magic – though if you would care to give me a demonstration, I really would very much appreciate it…”
Tara just looked at him. She wasn’t performing for him, and she certainly wasn’t teaching him anything.
“Obviously not,” he concluded quite accurately.
Once he’d come to the realisation she wouldn’t be doing what he wanted it seemed best just to ignore the request. For now. “So why
are you here? Why are you following me?” she asked once more, only then realising that he’d never actually given her his name. He’d just been fishing for information about her – making himself appear far more harmless than the magic he’d used actually suggested he would be. At least if he chose to make himself into her enemy.
In other words, if he was bad.
Tara didn't want to rush to judgement thought. She knew that she and Willow would be regarded as ‘dangerous’ if someone looked just at their magic – the potential they had – and the things they were easily capable of. Obviously they were dangerous to vampires and the occasional rampaging demon, but dangerous to people?
Some might think so.
Some had thought so in the past, and look what had happened then. She shouldn’t be so quick to judge by the same, flawed, standards.
It was all about intent, not necessarily the power. She and Willow had more power than they knew what to do with – but they didn't have any intent other than to make things better for everyone.
The Watcher’s Council had thought she could be dangerous – even before this new, virtually unrestricted, magic – and probably still did… But she was past their reasoning now, beyond it. The magic that constantly risked darkness wasn't a part of her anymore, though they probably wouldn’t understand that. They might not understand but she had it on good authority that the Watchers were… well, watching. But not doing anything – or intending to. They probably weren’t happy and they hadn’t lifted the order to have her killed…
But they weren’t pushing Rupert or any of their other people to carry it out either. Perhaps they were just incapable of admitting a mistake. Considering the magic was so unknown she supposed she should be grateful… Most people were afraid of what they didn’t understand, she knew it and understood.
Not that Rupert would do anything for them now… the ties between the Watcher and his Council had been strained to almost breaking ever since they’d ordered him to have Faith, his Slayer, kill her. He wasn’t taking many orders from them nowadays… but he was still using them for information when he could, and they would always have an interest in keeping the Hellmouth under control so they would – grudgingly – supply it when they could.
It seemed to work for them all.
“And who are you?” she pressed.
“We only just met,” he pointed out. “I really don’t think it’s proper of me to spill all my beans at the same time – before we’re more formally introduced I mean – but I don’t want to rush into anything and do that right now. I’d hate to spoil the surprise to come.”
Surprise?
There was supposed to be a surprise coming? What was he going to do? Was it even his surprise? Perhaps he knew about someone else’s surprise. But then, why would that
be a surprise? If he knew…
The concern must have been written on her face. “Oh don’t you worry,” he said, “it’s not actually
your surprise. At least not yet.” He dramatically clasped his hand across his heart in a parody of what children did every day at school. “I swear to you that I’m here for the cause of life. That I can absolutely guarantee.”
Yeah, that made everything clearer. Right.
And sometimes ‘life’ wasn’t a good thing. Life wasn’t nature.
She stood there, considering things. He didn't want to tell her and she wasn’t going to try to force him. So… what could she do? She was actually still dazzled by the shirt and wondering whether that was why he wore something like that – just to distract people and stop them thinking too much about what he was saying perhaps. Well, she was thinking about that as well. She was trying to figure him out from what he said and how he said it. She was trying figure out what, realistically, she could do about it – him – anyway. Until he did something which was bad…
He hadn’t done anything except being mildly creepy and annoying by following her, and even in that she understood him. She’d carried out some sneaky, though not invisible, recon in her time. He was human and she hadn’t even been able to detect a single lie in all of what he said. Though what he’d said made little sense. There were signs when people were lying that could be picked up all the more effectively when the magic was on your side and he wasn't displaying any of them. Okay, so his aura was confused… but it wasn’t actually masked entirely…
It was possible he’d been able to hide any lies from her as effectively as he’d hidden his presence. Or he could be a really, really, good liar.
Or he could be telling the truth – at least as far as it had been stated. If you were careful with the truths you told, it could be as effective as lying and would never even show up – even in the magic.
She couldn’t
do anything anyway. What was she going to do? Take him prisoner, assuming she could, and hold him where? Or perhaps she could stab him with a stake? For what?
No, not unless he tried something first.
How could she warn him off? Could she warn him off? She didn’t even know what he was doing – or going to do. Besides, she didn’t do the tough guy thing very well. They always believed her sincerity when she promised them bad things would happen if they failed to listen, but she wasn't a ‘tough’ person in the way that was likely to…
Have very little effect on him. His personality suggested some word play as she warned him and then totally ignoring her warnings anyway. If he had something he wanted, then he’d stick around for it. He was clearly that kind of person. And he had power, though to what level she couldn’t say. She wasn’t sure she was necessarily in a position to warn him of anything – besides some people took warnings as threats.
Which, of course, they were – but the idea wasn’t to annoy someone with it.
Right now she didn’t think that she even needed to warn him of anything specific – and a general warning wasn’t hers to give. There wasn’t a hint of a threat in anything he’d said or done – apart from following her like that. But his explanation sort of made sense. If she thought back…
If she’d arrived in some town, a few years ago, hunting vampires but finding someone capable of doing magic like she could… She’d have been interested enough – and cautious enough – to follow them, stealthily. It was exactly what she would have done. She had done it, in other places. She wouldn’t have used an invisibility spell to accomplish it, but she wouldn’t have walked up and introduced herself either. She’d have stayed out of sight.
What was his surprise though? He obviously thought it was a big deal.
“I must say how sorry I am about the invisibility and all,” he said cheerfully. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time.” He paused. “Sunnydale is such a dangerous place, don’t you think? At least from what I remember of it.”
And he did seem to be thinking back when he said that. His words suggested he’d last been here before her arrival. Back when Sunnydale had been a terrible place.
“Hellmouths tend to be like that,” she agreed with him but using the word ‘Hellmouth’ to see if he was familiar with the nature of the place he was in. There was no reaction to it though – no surprise, no quizzical look. He knew all right. Had he been invisible even before he saw her then? Was this like his protection against attack? Was this how he had survived the Master and the Order of Aurelius the last time he was here? Had his curiosity about her just overtaken him when he saw her and felt her use of magic?
Invisibility would certainly stop any vampire from getting him. They might smell him and hear him but they were, at their core, bounded by human senses, albeit acute, and very much reliant on sight – as most people were to their detriment.
The vampires wouldn’t have got him like that – which was worth thinking about for her and Willow to exploit. But… she could tell, feel, that his was a ritual based magic as hers had once started out being. She wasn't an expert in that field – even though most of her Mom’s teaching had been in that area and she’d used more than a few rituals to create the pendant, protect places and the like… Ritual magic took time she never usually had available to her when she knew she’d need it. That was the trade off. It wasn't instant – it wasn’t suitable for combat with vampires unless it provided you with a long-term weapon against them – like the pendant.
He’d have to have prepared that invisibility spell, in advance, somewhere calm and quiet with the facilities that he needed to mix the ingredients, probably with some tomes to hand to refer to… Complex, lengthy rituals were required for invisibility – at least as far as she understood the category of magic. It definitely wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.
So either he’d triggered it before he’d even set out and run across her by coincidence… or he’d seen her and then decided to make use of that valuable investment of magical resources. Had she been worth it for some reason? Or did he just have rituals, pre-prepared, to spare?
Or there was the other possibility – that he’d set out to look for her – never intending to get caught. Which again showed he’d been willing to invest that time creating the spell in order to follow her.
And that last possibility was the more worrying to her.
“Besides,” he went on after nodding at her comment about Hellmouths, “I don’t really think devilishly good looks like mine should be hidden away for all that long. Do you?”
Devilishly good looks? She was really, really hoping that was just a turn of phrase. She didn’t fancy dealing with a devil. She’d heard too much about the demons who were traditionally regarded as being one of those mythical beasts.
Her pause must have made him reconsider the comment though – she was probably supposed to come back with a jokey ‘oh no,’ in his mental view of how banter should go. She didn’t know him so she wasn't taking part in his banter. He’d probably be distressed to know – and this was very judgemental – that she just didn’t feel that she would ever really like him. It was just one of those instant reactions which she had learned to trust over time.
He was the sort of person, in her quickly formed opinion, who thought that pretty much everyone would like him. And should like him too. At least initially – until he chose to give them a reason not to. He’d probably try to look quite upset if he thought she didn't like him.
“Though I’m probably not your type,” he completed as if he might have known something about her. She didn't walk like a lesbian, because there really was no lesbian walk. So… what basis did he have for knowing that? Had he been following her for even longer? Had he been told something? This was assuming that’s what he meant by ‘not her type’. The point being it sounded like he thought he knew something he shouldn’t have been able to figure out.
Had that been a slip on his part?
“It’s been an absolute pleasure meeting you though and we really should do this again some time,” he added.
“Do what?” Tara had to ask.
“Meet up, chew the magical fat and enjoy the outside world?” he hazarded.
“We didn’t meet up, we didn’t ‘chew’ anything and we’re just standing in the street. You followed me, remember?” Tara reminded him. “And you still didn’t tell me why.” She knew that she wouldn’t really like him… but he had the strangest manner that she couldn’t help finding amusing. Probably more importantly, from his point of view, was that it was disarming. You might not like him, but it was tough to see him as a threat.
More important still was that she knew and realised that tendency, whether it was natural or deliberate on his part. She was going to be ready for it when he tried to use his easy manner to persuade her of anything that was harmful or untrue.
“Now, please don’t go holding that little thing against me.” He turned to check out the street behind him – then looked the other way again. “Do you think you could tell me where the Jackson Motel is?” he asked after a moment of being apparently perplexed.
Tara pointed back down the street he’d come down. It was a straight line, not at all difficult to find, but then she had turned him around with the trap she’d sprung to get him to reveal himself.
“Thank you.” he said, “Well, it’s been a pleasure as I have said and I will be seeing you again, I’m sure. There are good times ahead for everyone.”
He started to walk away and she was conflicted. Should she try to stop him? Did she need him to answer her questions? What were her questions, beyond the obvious? After all that he hadn’t even told her his name, despite being asked more than once. He’d never admitted why he’d really been following her. Nothing had been said which explained any of this – and yet he was walking away satisfied with whatever he had gotten from following and talking to her. She could tell he was happy with how things had gone – maybe just because she hadn’t staked him. If he’d known who she was, then that might be a reason to be happy.
If he’d had the wrong impression about her. But who might have given him that?
She didn’t know so she stayed silent.
She couldn’t get over the fact that he seemed to think that he
did know her. When he’d referred to her ‘type’ he was, of course, absolutely right… but how did he know that? She knew she didn’t have a big sign pinned to her forehead saying ‘I love Willow who, by the way, is a girl,’ so what did he know? And where had he found it out?
What did he think he knew about her?
Did he somehow know who she was? Had he been looking for her?
Had he been deliberately following her for some reason?
“Love the pendant by the way,” he said turning around. “Very fetching.” He winked. Then he was on his way again, not turning around.
And what did that mean?
Absently she reached up and touched the quiescent pendant. Why had he especially noticed that? It was the only thing she had on her that was magical. Had that drawn his attention? Was it the reason he’d been following her? He had mentioned the magic so he was aware of that much about her.
But what else did he know, or think he knew?
She just wanted to get home to Willow, to find out if she’d seen anything of this magic man with the English accent.
*************************
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If I want a little pussy, I got my own to play with.
Chance in
Chance.------------------------
by Katharyn » Sun Jan 25, 2004 5:09 am 
gotta love her.
(i'm talking about the first Chronicle of course)
anat.
Edited by: Warduke at: 2/11/04 7:12 pm
- with the dew droplets.
could have a turn too.
and now I'm speaking in 
plus tara couldn't say no to her, cuz she will chose it. i mean tara's reasons of not wanting to bring another person into their "twisted" world is that the person will be sucked into it without a choice.. well i can see Toni choosing to stay with w/t, even with a strong desire to help.. 
hhmmm tough decision no? lol