------------------
"i don't get wild, wild on me equals 'spaz'"
"i worship beelzebub! i do his bidding. do you see any goats around? no! because i sacrificed them! all bow before SATAN!
by geekgod » Thu Aug 09, 2001 10:22 pm
------------------
"i don't get wild, wild on me equals 'spaz'"
"i worship beelzebub! i do his bidding. do you see any goats around? no! because i sacrificed them! all bow before SATAN!
by CaptMurdock » Fri Aug 10, 2001 12:35 pm
"I'm sorry I can't offer you anything to drink, but you see...I'm dead!" The ghost of Sarah Winchester cackled at her little joke, while her companion spirit, Brenda, rolled her eyes and shrugged apologetically at Willow and Tara.
Sarah had directed the group to a little-used room of the mansion that was deemed too ordinary to be a part of the tour. She had wiped her hand across a table and looked at the non-existent streaks of dust on her ectoplasmic fingers (for that matter, the dust on the table remained undisturbed. "For a major tourist attraction, they could at least take better care of my house!" she had growled. "But it's probably just as well, 'cause otherwise somebody might have torn it down, or at least tried renovating it, and that would've been disastrous."
Willow, in contrast to her earlier indifference about coming to the house, was at what Tara thought to be a Stage Two Scooby Mode, in other words, asking incessant questions. "So you knew you had built your house on a Hellmouth?" she asked incredulously. "I thought ours was bad, with a high school built on top of it."
"Not at first," Sarah replied, a modicum of defensiveness evident in her voice. "It wasn't as if the surveyor put it on the map: 'Hellmouth here, extra-strong foundation needed.' I don't even know if it's the same thing you described where you come from."
"Well, what exactly do you have here?" Tara asked.
Sarah seemed to consider this. "It's a natural confluence of mystical forces, embodying a space where the walls between dimensions are naturally thin."
Willow and Tara looked at one another, and in perfect sync, said "Hellmouth." Willow continued, "But that doesn't explain about your house. And why are you here?" she added, pointing to Brenda. "Didn't you, like, die at the Brookdale Lodge?"
Brenda nodded. "When the river overflowed upstream, the creek running through the restaurant flooded the entire lodge. I didn't get out." She said this in a rather matter-of-fact way that simply made it all the more chilling. "I found that for whatever reason, I didn't...pass on, I suppose you could say, but instead I was stuck at the lodge. Occasionally, I could make people aware of my presence, but not enough to really do any good.
"Then, one day, I found...I don't know how to describe it, really," Brenda continued, considering a long moment. "It was sort of like finding a secret tunnel, only it wasn't underground, and I couldn't see it, but I went through it, and found myself here."
Sarah took up the story: "Apparently, the house was able to form a natural pathway from her lodge to my house. And so she was able to slip back and forth between places." She looked at Brenda with affection. "She ran across me soon enough, and we've spent years talking together. I can't use the passageway like she can, but she goes through and comes back with some rather interesting gossip."
Willow felt a rush of hot blood to her face as she imagined what sort of things could constitute "interesting gossip" to a pair of ghosts, especially in light of some private activities she and her girlfriend had participated in the night before last. She stole a glance at Tara, and felt a certain relief that her girlfriend was blushing as much as Willow felt she herself was.
Tara nodded and hoped that the redness in her face wasn't too obvious. "Um, that's i-interesting. But you," indicating Brenda again, "said that you were being drawn here, and that, that there was something you needed our help with."
Sarah nodded gravely. "You asked about my house, and why I kept adding onto it year after year, and made the contractors build things that made no sense. Well, after I discovered that the house was built on a...Hellmouth? That's as good a name as any. I made inquiries with every mystic and sorcerer I could find. I even consulted Alastair Crowley - would you like to see the letter he sent me? Probably worth a fortune by now. Anyway, most of those I talked to were fakes, but a few knew what they were doing. One of them told me that the structure of the house could contain and safely dissipate the energies coming from the Hellmouth, but only if I made the house bigger and encouraged construction along certain lines."
Tara caught Willow's eye with a slightly smug look, then asked, "Did it work? Unh, kinda dumb question, but..."
Sarah nodded. "Oh, yes, it worked. It isn't quite like putting a cap on a oilwell, though. The house had to be able to channel the energies in such a way that they would actually work against the Hellmouth opening. That's why there's a staircase that goes up into the ceiling and a door going into a brick wall."
"Wow!" Willow exclaimed. "Mystical judo!" Tara had to smile at that. "And the door that opens ten feet above the kitchen?"
Sarah chuckled. "Oh, that was just me. I thought it was hilarious. Besides, it made keeping an eye on the cook that much easier."
"But waitaminnit," Willow asked. "Why is there a problem now, after - what - most of a century?"
Sarah looked grave, which given the fact that she was dead was hardly a stretch. "The balance of forces keeping the portal closed has always been razor-thin. Unfortunately, less than a month ago, something happened to disrupt the balance, to weaken the natural walls between dimensions and cause the portal to open - letting God knows what through."
"Not only that," Brenda added, "but something is drawing me to this house, whether I want to be here or not. Not that I really love the Brookdale Lodge, but I like having a choice, y'know?" She shrugged in a way that reminded Willow of Dawn...
...and it was then that Willow turned to Tara, who was turning to her with virtually the same expression. "Less than a month ago. Dawn..."
Tara nodded. "The Key. G-Glo--" she choked on the rest.
"Glory," Willow finished, putting her hand on Tara's arm. The blonde was so distraught over the memory of her recent experiences that she didn't pull away. "When the portal was opened in Sunnydale, it must have had some effect here," Willow concluded.
Brenda's eyes opened wide, another gesture that carried an aching familiarity. "You guys have seen another portal open?"
For her part, Sarah had a question of her own. "'The Key?' I've heard of that, but I never believed it was real."
"Oh, definitely in the 'real' column," Willow replied. "How did you hear about it?"
"As I said, I used to consult some fairly knowledgeable people. You sure you don't want to see Alastair Crowley's letters?" Thankfully, she took the wiccans' silence as negation. "I can't believe it. Someone actually used the Key to open the dimensional barriers? Who'd be crazy enough to do something like that?"
Willow looked at Tara, who managed to nod. "Well, it's your basic Long Story..."
**********
If it could be said that the spirits of the formerly-living were capable of looking stunned, then Sarah Winchester and her ersatz ward looked as if someone had beaned them both with two-by-fours by the time Willow and Tara had finished their account of the final battle with Glorificus.
"Well, that explains most of it," Sarah conceded. "Thanks to that stupid bitch of a hellgod, my house is about to get sucked into the ninth circle of hell. Having to endure dozens of construction workers, tromping through the halls, followed by three generations of tourists - all of that, for nothing."
Brenda shook her head. "There must be something we can do."
Sarah took on a somewhat long-suffering air. "I think I explained to you before, my child, the concept of 'dead!' There is very little of the physical world, or even the metaphysical world, that we can affect, in the best conditions. With the Hellmouth's energies out of balance to the point where it's drawing you here from Brookdale, there isn't a thing we can do."
"Uh, hello, still among the living," Willow said, raising her hand as if in class.
Sarah nodded. "Well, yes, that was my plan..."
"My plan," Brenda interjected.
Sarah paused for a second, fixing the other ghost with a piercing stare. "The plan, anyway, to bring you here, once she had managed to find out that you were witches. But I'm afraid that this is beyond your abilities. Sealing a Hellmouth is not something you do every day."
Willow gave her sickle-sharp grin. "Well, actually, now that you mention it..."
Sarah looked at her with new eyes. "You're that good."
Tara looked at Willow, then at Sarah. "Level five."
Willow nodded. "Heck, if we were back in Sunnydale, that's the town we come from, by the way, we'd already be doing research in this magic shop that a friend of ours owns, and Xander, that's another friend, would probably do research and then come up with tactical strategies—"
"I think that's redundant," Tara interrupted.
"Huh?"
"Tactical. Strategies. I-It's redundant. I think."
Willow blinked a couple of times, not entirely in a piqued fashion, before continuing. "Um, anyway, Xander would be doing that, and his girlfriend Anya would probably be making inappropriate comments, but occasionally coming up with good ideas, and Giles, he owns the Magic Shop, he would probably be telling us how extraordinarily dangerous and foolhardy this all was, and then Buffy, she—" Willow stopped, her babbling hitting a brick wall of unpleasant memories.
Brenda looked at them sharply. "What? What's wrong with 'Buffy'?"
Tara swallowed before answering. "She…died. Recently."
Brenda and Sarah made expressions of sympathy. The elder spirit quickly got back on track. "So, can you do it? Stabilize the portal between worlds?"
Willow nodded, confidently if not enthusiastically. "Yeah, we can do it. We might need a few ingredients, and we'll have to call Giles and consult some, y'know, literature by long-distance, but it can be done. We can do it." She looked over at Tara. "Right?"
"Right," Tara replied. "We should do it tonight, after all the staff has gone home. Is there much security here after dark?"
"Not much in the way of people," Brenda piped up, "but they have some kind of automated system with cameras, all hooked up to a computer. How are you going to be able to get past that?"
Willow gave Tara a classic what-are-you-kidding-me look, and replied in her best Darth Vader voice. "Leave that to me."
****************
"You found a what in where with who-hunh?" Xander said over the phone, after the two witches had left the Winchester House, gone to get a few supplies at a magic shop in Santa Cruz, and then returned to their room in the lodge. They called Giles at the Magic Box where, naturally, Anya was, with Xander having gotten in from his construction job. They were expecting Dawn and Spike any minute.
The first minute of the conversation, after the usual pleasantries and badinage, was rather awkward as Willow and Tara kept trading the handset back and forth. The phone in their room was not equipped with a speaker, but a quick incantation from Willow fixed that, and now the voices of the Sunnydale contingent eminated from the air near the phone. "I just hope Verizon doesn't hear about this," Tara said, giving Willow arched eyebrows.
"You're, uh, quite sure it's a Hellmouth?" Giles said. Willow could just imagine him adjusting his glasses nervously.
Willow looked over to Tara, who gave a noncommittal look in return. "Well, it does seem to have similar properties, but I don't think this one is nearly as powerful as the one in Sunnydale. I mean, Sarah, she was able to contain this one for almost a century just by having a black belt in feng shui."
"Yeah, and a brown belt in Cal/OSHA violations," Xander quipped. "Oh, God, I'm doing the seeing-the-world-through-carpenter's-eyes thing again. Kill me now."
"Ah, now, I thought their music was wonderful…" Giles said absently before realizing what Xander meant. "Oh. Sorry."
"Thank you, VH-1."
"I-I think we're getting off-track here," Tara broke in, just barely keeping herself from laughing at the long-distance byplay. "We need to get the incantations you used when those demons tried to open the Hellmouth. Willow told me about that," she added, looking at Willow.
"The Sisterhood of Jhe? Big scary stuff. Giles, do you remember which book we got the counter-spells from?"
Anya broke in. "Oh, you mean Hedron's Almanac. I'll get it!" Sounds of footsteps came over the line as the ex-demon scurried off to get the book.
Xander took the opportunity to rib the girls about their romantic getaway. "You guys still keeping each other busy, or did you have to get outside help?"
An "Oh, dear God" came from the British contingent.
"Xander!" Willow cried. "That fiancée of yours is starting to rub off on you!"
Tara smiled evilly. "A-Actually, Xander, we, we were able to find a couple of female mud-wrestlers to come to our room for a reasonable price."
Willow's jaw hung halfway to the floor as Xander muttered, "The head-movies, oh God, the head-movies," and Anya came back into earshot saying "Xander! I want mud-wrestlers, too! Preferably male." Giles just groaned inarticulately. Tara started laughing.
Suddenly new voices came over the phone. "Hey guys, what's goin' on?"
"Dawn's here!" Anya exclaimed, loudly and unnecessarily. "Hello, Dawn!"
"Hi, Dawnie," Tara called, stifling her laughter.
"Tara! Hi!" the teenager shouted back over Giles' speakerphone. "Are you still up in Santa Cruz?"
"Yeah, we're here," Willow said, recovering from her shock at Tara's joke.
"Well, don't anybody say 'hello' to me," drawled a familiar Cockney accent. After the girls said hello to Spike, the vampire apparently wanted to satisfy his curiosity. "So, are we being frisky little minxes up there in the sticks?"
Anya had just piped up with "Tara was just telling about…" before both Xander and Giles shouted here down. Just barely audible, Dawn could be heard to mutter, "I miss all the good stuff."
"Anyway, Giles," Willow said, taking a second to collect her thoughts, "do you have the Almanac?"
"Yes. I'll bring it up to you on the first flight I can get…"
"No, no, no need to get on a plane," Willow said quickly. "Tara and I can handle this. I just need Xander and Anya," she framed this last part to them, "I need you guys to take the Almanac to my dorm room, use my scanner, Anya, you know how, right?"
"Of course. I'm getting to be quite computer-literate. Did you see the new web page I just designed for the Magic Box? It's…"
"Yeah, I'm sure it’s great. Scan in the incantation and email it to me. I have a holding account," she recited an email address, "you can just dump the pages in there, and I can get them with my laptop."
"I'm sure we can handle this, Mr. Giles," Tara added.
"All right." His reluctance, even over the phone, was palpable. "I want you to call me, day or night, when you've completed this…mission," he finished, for lack of a better word. "And, if I don't hear from you in, oh, a day or so, I'm coming up there."
"So am I," Xander added.
"We'll be careful," Willow assured them.
"You bloody well better be," Spike said, his tone for once neither nasty nor sarcastic.
Dawn called out. "Yeah, what he said. I love you guys."
"We love you. All of you," Tara said.
"I'll scan those pages in for you quick as I can, Willow," Anya said. "You two hurry up and get back here, so can tell me all about the se—" Amazingly, a dial tone sprang up at that exact second.
Willow inhaled slowly, then looked at Tara, who in turn gazed into the redhead's eyes. "Now, we wait."
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"I will say, I've been in some weird places, but this is…another weird place."
[This message has been edited by CaptMurdock (edited August 13, 2001).]
by witchfu » Fri Aug 10, 2001 1:14 pm
by xita » Fri Aug 10, 2001 1:36 pm
And I am wondering if you are gonna have Willow work through her fears somehow. I wish your fic could go on and on...
by JustSomeGuy » Fri Aug 10, 2001 9:14 pm
by tommo » Fri Aug 10, 2001 10:00 pm
------------------
"She looked across at Willow, whose face was filled with light. She had never felt so calm and happy, and strong..." ~ Unseen: Door To Alternity
by Lonewolf » Sat Aug 11, 2001 9:44 am
Lonewolf
by Dr.G » Sat Aug 11, 2001 3:06 pm
by Kalita » Sat Aug 11, 2001 7:16 pm
by CaptMurdock » Tue Aug 14, 2001 12:06 am
Road to Nowhere
Part 9
"H-How long will it take?" Tara asked, a few minutes after the phone connection was broken.
"Hmm?" Willow said distractedly. "Oh, uh, lemme think…I guess, twenty minutes for them to get over to my, uh our dorm room. Maybe five minutes to boot up the computer and the scanner. I hope Anya's as good as she says she is. I wonder if I should have specified just a scanned image, I hope she doesn't try OCR, converting all those old fonts into text is a headache, you should have seen some of the stuff the optical character recognition program came up with when I scanned in the Chronicles of St. Anselmo…"
"How long!" Tara broke in sharply, then waved a hand to indicate her regret at using so sharp a tone. "How long?"
"Half-hour, maybe forty-five minutes." Willow briefly rubbed her temples, the tension in her head mirrored throughout her body. She abruptly stood up and paced to the other side of the room.
"Um, how will we know wh-when it's come through?" Tara asked, still sitting in the same chair.
"Oh….the laptop is still online, through the cellular modem, and the email program is scanning for new messages every five minutes, and it'll notify me when there's something new in my mailbox..."
"Okay, okay, so the laptop will tell us, that's good," Tara said abstractedly. "What about the security system at the Winchester House?"
Willow half-turned and said, "I'm bringing the laptop with me…with us. I can use it to remote-access the security system's mainframe and basically cause it to not see us."
Tara shrugged. "You know more about that than I do."
Willow felt the little switches holding back her temper being flicked off in her brain, and she didn't even try to stop it. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Tara's voice remained level and even. "It means you know more about computers and, and online stuff. What did you think I meant?"
"I am getting so sick of your…morally superior attitude. Not that you don't have a right to feel that way, okay, I screwed up, I admit it, alert the media why don't you, but it seems like every five minutes you make some little comment and what, I'm supposed to just go on my merry way, oh well, I should just take my lumps, 'cause if I don't she going to…" The last few words were swallowed up as Willow started crying.
"I'm going to…what?" Instead of answering, Willow shook her head and turned away. Tara got up and crossed over to her. She put her arms around the smaller girl, and was surprised when Willow shook off her arms and stepped away.
"No, don't-don't do th-that," Willow sobbed, her hitching breath making it difficult to speak without, ironically, sounding a bit like Tara. "I d-d-don't want you to let m-me off the hook out of, of p-pi-pi" A fresh round of tears cut off the sentence.
"Pity?" Tara sighed. Willow nodded through more racking sobs. "Willow, I'm not pitying you, and I am sorry I was such a bitch today." Willow attempted to say something in response to that, but was unable to control herself enough to be anything approaching articulate. Tara made a "wait here" gesture and went to the bathroom for tissues. Handing a half dozen to the redhead, she commanded, "Blow and wipe."
Willow did as she was instructed, making sounds somewhere between Dizzy Gillespie and Jumbo the Elephant. Tara led her over to the bed and had her sit with her back against the headboard. Then she climbed over and made herself comfortable in the same position a handspan away from Willow.
After wiping her eyes for the second time and blowing her nose for the third, Willow had passed the worst of the emotional storm and was able to look over at Tara without breaking down again. "Baby, you weren't a bitch today. Not really. I mean, on the Cordelia scale, barely a three."
Tara smiled. "'Cordelia scale?' She has her own scale?"
"Well, she used to have her own butler, or maybe masseuse, or whatever." Willow shrugged.
"She didn't seem that bad at the wake," Tara countered gently. She knew that Willow had had a lot of history with the girl who had come down with Angel for Buffy's funeral, and found it difficult to merge the charming, if somewhat flighty, young woman with the virtual demoness of Willow's adolescence.
"I think she was being on her best behavior," Willow said, with a shadow of a grin. "Who knows…maybe she realizes that she might have to get into heaven someday."
Tara tsked. "You're terrible," she said, giggling. She sobered as quickly as she could and went on. "Yes, I was m-mad at you for formulating your little plan behind my back. You could, no, should have discussed it with me. I just have issues with p-people treating me like I can't take care of myself; I know I shouldn't get defensive about it, but I do."
"But, you have a right to get defensive about it," Willow said. "And-and now, you're mad at me, and I-I don't know what you're going to do, and I don't know what to say or how to make things right, or even if I should try to make things right because I'll just make you mad again..."
"Sweetie, slow down."
"I don't want you to leave!" Willow blurted out, facing Tara with new tears in her eyes.
Tara's heart nearly broke at that. "Oh, baby…I'm not going to leave you. I think you got more out of that drama class than I thought." Willow managed to chuckle at that even while crying. "Sweetie…you are the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me. I'm so lucky to have you, don't you know that?" Tara looked away for a second, gathering her resolve, then turned back to look her lover again. "You said before how it was because of you that Glory…hurt me. Well, if it wasn't for the fact that you came into my life, and dragged my butt out of my little dark room, I wouldn't have had the courage to face Glory down.
"My father…" Sigh, with a slight chin quiver. "He did everything he could to make me feel worthless, not even worth being human, being weak and blaming it on my 'demon nature.' And I believed him. But you didn't. You believed in me. When we did that astral projection spell, which is way advanced for us at that time, you trusted me to be your anchor."
Willow smiled, even as fresh tears spilled down her face. "I remember. That was the first time we…"
"Yes," Tara replied, her eyes decidedly moist as well. "You trusted me when you had no reason to, whether it was spells or…sharing yourself. Oh, God, this is sounding so sappy," she said, giggling.
"That's okay. I've been lacking my USDA daily requirement of sap." Beat. "That sounded funnier in my head."
Tara laughed, and Willow joined in. The blonde wrapped an arm around the smaller woman's shoulders and pulled her in for a long kiss. For a long, timeless interval there was no sound except for breathing, and maybe a tiny noise in the back of someone's throat, though it would have been hard to tell from whom.
All at once a stentorian voice said, "A question!" following by a strange musical arpeggio.
Tara broke away from Willow with a start. "Wh-wh-what?" she cried, looking around the room for the source of the voice.
The voice continued: "Since before your sun burned hot in space, and before your race was born, I have awaited…a question!"
"Who is that?" Tara asked, wide-eyed, turning towards a surprising calm and somewhat bemused Willow.
"That's the Guardian of Forever. That means I have mail."
"The who of what?"
"It's from a Star Trek episode, silly." Tara stared, then rolled her eyes and guffawed. Willow giggled along with her, and the two of them were practically helpless with laughter for the next two or three minutes. Finally, after regaining their breath, Tara indicated the laptop from where the soundbite had come from. "I guess that's Anya."
Willow nodded. "Uh huh. I gotta go check the pages." However, she didn't move from the bed, putting her arm around Tara's back. "I love you, Tare-Bear," she said, using the pet name that Tara used to hate, then admitted she had grown fond of.
"I love you too, darling." She initiated another kiss, not as long as the last one but every bit as passionate.
Willow made a bit of a sad face. "I wish we could…" She let the thought hang in the comfortable space between them.
Tara nodded. "I know. Me too."
Willow looked over at the laptop, and at the bags of supplies they had gotten at the magic shop in Santa Cruz. "It's time."
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"I will say, I've been in some weird places, but this is…another weird place."
[This message has been edited by CaptMurdock (edited August 14, 2001).]
by xita » Tue Aug 14, 2001 12:36 am
A short peice but oh so wonderful. 
by tommo » Tue Aug 14, 2001 12:38 am
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"She looked across at Willow, whose face was filled with light. She had never felt so calm and happy, and strong..." ~ Unseen: Door To Alternity
by Dr.G » Tue Aug 14, 2001 1:37 am
I cannot praise this fic high enough. You are so very gifted a writer. I am loving it more every time I read it *and* reread it. Keep going please.
by Warduke » Tue Aug 14, 2001 7:14 am
by kpmuse » Tue Aug 14, 2001 8:55 am
Gosh, I can so see this scene with Aly and Amber. So realistic. Thanks Capt!
kris
by Scout » Tue Aug 14, 2001 10:15 am
by Puff » Tue Aug 14, 2001 10:18 am
by Halcyon » Tue Aug 14, 2001 11:04 am
Thank you thank you.
by Bunny » Tue Aug 14, 2001 1:34 pm
by Kalita » Tue Aug 14, 2001 7:39 pm
Loved the Cordy bits.
Also love the .wav on the email. Much better than AOL's.
by CaptMurdock » Wed Aug 15, 2001 6:58 am
quote:
Also love the .wav on the email. Much better than AOL's.
Thank you, Kalita. But I realized I may have made a mistake. Earlier, Tara makes silent note of the fact that Kirk and Spock made several movies after The Original Series ended -- but now she doesn't recognize the Guardian of Forever? That's one of the best episodes! It's like, not recognizing tribbles!
.wav??? Shame on you! Willow drives a PowerBook! None of that PC crap! Hawk Ptui! (Oh, damn. Where's the Windex....?)
Thank you all again for your wonderful comments and support. I'm glad I could put everyone's mind at ease. Now go take your vitamins, run along and play.
P.S. Mac OS 4evah!
------------------
"I will say, I've been in some weird places, but this is…another weird place."
[This message has been edited by CaptMurdock (edited August 15, 2001).]
quote:by Dr.G » Wed Aug 15, 2001 2:50 pm
by Kalita » Thu Aug 16, 2001 7:06 pm
Kal
by wiltar » Thu Aug 16, 2001 11:59 pm
What more could a person want?
Love your story
Patricia
------------------
-I am, you know
What?
-Yours
by tommo » Fri Aug 17, 2001 1:10 am
Ah...dammit...
Please can we have some more? Pretty please? I really really love this!
------------------
"She looked across at Willow, whose face was filled with light. She had never felt so calm and happy, and strong..." ~ Unseen: Door To Alternity
by fell » Fri Aug 17, 2001 10:29 am
I would buy this as a book in a NY second. WAY better than any of the "official" published Buffy novels.
by nika » Fri Aug 17, 2001 11:15 am
I just looove the way the captn keeps sneaking in movie refrences. The emotions and actions of a typical couples fight is priceless. Gotta say i'm loving this fic.
[This message has been edited by nika (edited August 17, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by WillTara (edited August 18, 2001).]
by CaptMurdock » Thu Aug 23, 2001 12:13 am
(Note: some of you may say that my spells are lame. What can I do; my knowledge of magic comes from Marvel Comics ("By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, I feel like a pizza.") I just hope you all like it.)
Road to Nowhere
Part 10
In what Willow hoped was a good omen of things to come, getting past the Winchester House's modern security system proved to be a breeze. Since the system was remote-linked to the security company's headquarters, Willow had a ready-made access using her laptop's cellular modem. She vocalized as she worked: "Dunh, duhn, dunh-dunh, dunh, dunh."
Tara recognized Lalo Schiffin's familiar theme, if not the source. "You liked that movie?"
"What? Movie, nuthin'. Gimme Peter Graves over Tom Cruise any day."
The girls made their way into the mansion, which of course took on an entirely different aspect in the dark of the night. Naturally, neither one of them had thought to pack a flashlight or even buy one while in town, so the Winchester Mystery House truly earned its name as Willow and Tara, with only a couple of candles to guide them, walked through dark corridors wreathed in bloody shadows, punctuated by strange creaks and groans that seemed to come from the very walls.
"D-D-Do you hear that?" Tara whispered, trying to keep her teeth from chattering for reasons that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature.
"Which 'that' would that be?" Willow whispered back. "I mean, this house is shaking and shivering like it's in a hurricane, which is, y'know, strange considering that outside there's maybe a five-mile-an-hour wind, so exactly which unearthly sound are you referring to, I mean, can you be more--"
"Don't you two ever shut up?" came the voice behind them. Tara jumped and shrieked; Willow, the more experienced of the two, merely cried out and dropped her candle, assuming her best fighting stance that might intimidate a ten-year-old with muscular dystrophy.
The spirit of the woman once known as Sarah Winchester stood there, ethereal hands on ethereal hips, a look of weary disgust on her non-existent features. "Dear God, if we had such 'stealth' as yours against the Injuns, this'd still be Injun country! And for God's sake, pick up that candle; you wanna set the house on fire?"
Tara gulped air as if she'd been stuck on the bottom of the UC Sunnydale pool for five minutes. "You s-s-scared the crap outta m-me!"
Sarah looked at her with amused disdain. "I'm a ghost, girl. That's one of the perks." She looked at Willow, who had picked up the candle and straightened her shoulder bag. "Are you two ready? If you're not, too bad; I think things have come to a head. If it doesn't get done tonight, it'll be too late."
Tara looked puzzled in the candlelight. "But, but I thought...I didn't think it was this close to breaking loose!"
"It wasn't before," said another voice, coming up the corner. The figure stepped out of the shadows and revealed itself as Brenda. "It's gotten much worse since this afternoon. Sarah and I can't understand why. It's as if something has further disrupted the balance of forces that keep the portal closed."
Tara wondered if the minor spell she did to "cloak" themselves from the tour group had anything to do with the increasing instability of the barriers keeping the portal closed, but she decided not to say anything. Looking over at Willow in the flickering candlelight, she could see that her girlfriend was mulling over the same disturbing thoughts.
Recovering quickly, Willow replied, "Never mind. We can still do the incantation to close the portal completely. We need a place to set up, someplace where the forces we need to bind the portal are strongest. Do you know where…"
"The ballroom," Sarah answered. "It's the heart of the house. If you cast your spell there, that should stabilize the house's energies and keep this…Hellmouth of yours from breaking loose." The ghost looked away, as if distracted by something, though neither of the witches could see anything. "But you'd better hurry. There's not much time left."
"Before the Hellmouth opens?" Tara asked.
"Among other things," Sarah muttered. When Willow looked about to ask for clarification, the old woman cut her off. "C'mon, time's a-wastin'"
*************
"In the name of the All-Seeing,
In the name of the All-Knowing,
In the name of the All-Forgiving,
And the All-Bestowing.
"Though the shadows now banish
The sun's comforting light,
May the love of the Goddess
Protect us tonight!"
The huge ballroom looked even bigger lit only by the candles that the witches had lit in a circle around them. They sat cross-legged on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder facing opposite directions, like when they had done the astral-projection spell to find out why Buffy had been acting so strangely. Each had the ingredients they needed for the spell; the idea was to cast in two directions simultaneously to be as effective as possible. Synchronicity was essential, more so than when they were struggling to pluck the petals from a mid-air rose.
"Night becomes day,"
Matches light blue and gold candles.
"Fire becomes ice."
Ice cubes held over the flames snuff the candles.
"Elements in balance,
We ask thee twice,"
Fire, air, water, earth. Each of the elements was represented by the ingredients and paraphernalia that Tara and Willow had bought, or by the very words that they spoke, as they charged the spell with air.
All at once, Tara's head snapped up, looking away from Willow's laptop that showed the scanned pages from Heldon's Almanac, as her mystic senses, honed from childhood, twanged with an unexpected increase in eldritch power.
Willow stole a glance over to her partner. "What?"
"W-We have to finish. Now." Tara leaned over to grab the powder formed of each of the elements they had cast, nodding at Willow, who was already doing the same.
Suddenly the air in the room seemed to turn to ice water and flow like the Colorado rapids. The candles surrounding the girls were blown out instantly, plunging the ballroom into almost total darkness.
Tara held onto the powder in her hand for dear life. Her hair blew over her face as the wind seemed to swirl around from every direction at once. She closed her eyes as she gathered her courage. "Willow! Stay still! If we leave the circle the spell will be b-broken! I don't know if we'll get a second chance at this1" She expected an answer, and was frightened when none was forthcoming. She didn't hear Willow get up (and despite her admonition, did not really expect her to leave) but opening her eyes only confirmed what she knew she would find…
Willow was gone.
*******************
"Tara! Tara?" Willow would have sworn she had not moved, and that she had not heard Tara move, but the blonde witch was gone.
The ballroom looked really huge now. Really huge, the walls seemingly light-years away from where Willow sat alone. Okay, what's going on here? Did the room just get bigger? Did I shrink? I mean, I've heard of shrinking violets, but shrinking willows? That's supposed to be "weeping willows," and why the hell am I thinking this now? Where is Tara? She again shouted Tara's name, and looked around for any sign of her or of the two ghosts. Nothing. She remembered that Halloween party in college where she had become separated from the other Scoobies, and had tried that guidance spell with disastrous results. Granted, she was a lot more skilled now, but this house was currently in the middle of a major four-fold cross-rip, and any misplaced magical energy could really bring the house down. Literally.
The wind, which seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, was dying to a manageable level, but Willow began to long for her old Eskimo outfit. At this point, having the harpoon along seemed to be a good idea, too.
I'll have to try thought-casting, she decided. I just hope that doesn't disrupt the portal anymore than it already is. Here's hoping your line ain't busy, "Imzadi." She took a deep breath, trying to center herself while offering a quick prayer to Marina Sirtis, matron of TV telepaths…
…and then heard a voice call her name. Willow looked around in relief for Tara. No, there was still no sign of her lover. She wondered for a second if Tara had had the same idea, to telepathically contact her, but dismissed that; the voice didn't sound quite right. As a matter of fact, Willow mused, it sounds a lot like…
Realization hit her then, like a icepick to the heart. Something akin to a moan, or a whimper escaped unbidden from her lips as the slight figure coalesced out of the deep shadows. Willow knew the silhouette instantly; she had seen the petite torso and lanky stride almost every day for five years…up until about three weeks ago.
"Buffy?"
*******************
While keeping a fistful of the powder necessary for the final step of the spell, Tara managed to tie her hair back. The howling wind was blowing her long locks every which way, getting in her eyes. Twisting her hair around, painfully tight, helped her focus her thoughts.
Willow's still here. I can't see her, hear her, but I feel her. Beyond that, she really couldn't tell much; Willow's high-grade anxiety was getting mixed up, in Tara's head, with her own stark terror. It was one thing to read about this kind of spell in a book, with Miss Kitty Fantastico on your lap and a cup of herbal tea at your elbow, or even practicing it with Willow in her dorm room with the cheap Christmas lights, mainly as foreplay for some hot-and-heavy, since they often practiced this sort of thing in the nude. Tradition, you know.
But this was way beyond her experience. Her mother's teachings, a part of her childhood since almost before she could walk, had little bearing on this Witches of Eastwicke roadshow she was experiencing now.
Now she was getting feeling of major distress from Willow, making Tara herself badly frightened. Whatever could make the Cool Monster Fighter herself…
"Tara?"
The Wiccan became even more terrified, and yet an undercurrent of wonder swept through her. She knew that voice. It was the thread of oral history woven into the fabric of Tara's childhood memories. She still heard that voice sometimes, though for the last three years, it had been relegated to the land of dreams.
"Mama?"
*****************
"Buffy?!?" Willow blinked rapidly and looked again at the apparition coming closer with each step. It was Buffy Summers, all right, apparently back from the dead and needing a place to crash, or something like that. She was dressed in the same outfit that she did the swan dive off the tower in Sunnydale into the dimensional portal, the same clothes that her broken body wore as Willow had cried over it, as Tara held onto her shoulders. The image that had been burned into her memory, that kept resurfacing in dreams for the last three weeks, was now standing in front of her.
"Willow? Oh, thank God, Willow!" Buffy cried out, her hands pressed against some invisible barrier. Oh, of course, Willow thought, the miniature tricorder that she called her brain snapping online. If she's on the other side of the barrier…
"Buffy? Is it…really you?"
"Willow, it is me! I've missed you! Please, help me!"
"Help you…how?"
Desperation played on the deceased Slayer's features. "You can't complete the spell! In a few more minutes, I can cross back over!"
"Wha—What are you talking about?" Willow took deep breaths, the air feeling like molten glass. "Buffy…you're dead!"
****************
"Mama?" Tara stared wild-eyed at the image of her mother, looking almost exactly like she had three years ago…except her hair had not fallen out from the chemotherapy and she was not bone-thin. Despite Tara's best culinary efforts, her mother had wasted away to nearly nothing in the months before she died. Yet here, she looked to be in the bloom of health, the way Tara always liked to remember her, in a summery dress that billowed in the breeze like her golden hair.
"Little angel," the apparition said, "it's so good to see you. I've been away too long."
"Mama," Tara cried, a world of heartache and years of unshed tears making her voice catch. Without realizing it, she had risen to one knee, the hand not holding the powder stretching just to the limit of the protection circle. "Oh, Goddess. Mama."
The woman smiled. "My sweet girl. Don't cry. We'll be together again in a short while."
****************
"Buffy, I have to complete the spell!" Willow felt hot tears forming in her eyes, making it hard to keep control of her voice. "The whole house rests on, uh, a kind of mini-Hellmouth. If I don't complete the spell…" Willow groped for words, and felt her much-vaunted vocabulary fly off to Bermuda for the summer. "…it would be bad," she finished lamely. "And, and anyway, Buffy, you're dead! I saw you die! You're buried, y'know? Great White Hunting Ground and all that. You…"
"Will, please!" the image of Buffy replied. "If you let the barrier stay in place, I really will die!" The eyes seemed to penetrate Willow's heart. "Willow, you're my best friend. I can't believe you'd leave me here, and not allow me a chance to live again! Don’t you want that?"
Willow wavered, and could not answer.
*****************
"Oh, Mama," Tara wept, her outstretched hand shaking with the depth of emotion she felt. "I've m-m-missed you so m-much," she stuttered, for once not caring about it.
"My darling girl," Tara's mother said, smiling in the same crooked way her daughter did. "Just a few moments more, and we can be together again. Like before."
All at once a memory snapped into Tara's brain like a slide changing in a projector in a college classroom: a memory of a moonless night, the light of cold stars and a few candles, the sharp, tangy smell of disturbed sod-grass and the musty odor of fresh earth. Tara's breath froze in her throat, and fresh tears fell from her eyes, but these were not from grief-relieving gladness, but of guilt and remorse.
A pair of ice-blue eyes looked into another, so like her own. "Mama…d-do you f-forgive me?"
****************
"Oh, Willow," Buffy gushed as Willow made to put the powder down. "I knew you wouldn't let me down again."
Again? Horrid realization burned through Willow's brain like a hot meat cleaver. "You're not Buffy. The Buffy Summers I know – I knew -- would not be so selfish as to even remotely endanger the world just for her own life…the life she sacrificed to save the world, on more than one occasion!" She raised the fist containing the powder high, preparing to cast it for the spell's conclusion.
The Buffy-thing screamed in outrage.
******************
"Do you forgive me?" This time, the question came with no hesitation, only resolve as Tara faced not only the image of her mother, but her memory as well.
The woman smiled in confusion. "What would I possibly need to forgive you for?" she asked.
"If you,you are truly my mother," Tara replied, matter-of-factly, "you'd know, wouldn't you?"
"Tara…why would I be mad at you?"
Tara's gaze hardened, so much so that the apparition took step back. "What I did that night went against everything you taught me. How can you – how could she possibly forgive me?" Tara raised the powder high, her voice rising almost to a scream. "When I haven't even forgiven myself!"
******************
As one, two hands cast the powder down. Two voices invoked the spirits of eternal balance, night and day, good and evil, life and death.
The energies flowing from the ersatz Hellmouth, channeled by the outlandish structure of the Winchester House, set themselves in balance with and against each other, rendering the portal to other realms sealed against anything trying to get into this world.
The two demonic shape-shifters, empaths who tried to pick the witches' brains, briefly reverted to their natural, hideous forms before being bounced away by the portal's natural barriers. The illusion they had generated upon Willow and Tara faded away as well.
*******************
"Oh, there you are!" "You're back!" The two witches fell into each others' arms as soon as they were able to see one another. It was almost half a minute before the silence of the house became noticeable.
"Hey…I guess we managed to do it right the first time!" Willow said, looking around and not seeing much due to the candles being out. Tara quickly produced her matchbook and lit a couple so that they could see. "All the weird creaking and groaning noises have stopped. Always a good thing in my book. Hey, you're crying – what's wrong?"
"Um, nothing. Just stress. Y-Your face is wet, too, you okay?"
"Must be that bad old stress. What do you, y'know, feel? Are your spider-senses tingling anymore?"
Tara smiled at the comic-book reference. "I d-don't have spider-sense, I have radar sense, like the guy in the red suit." She concentrated for a moment on the environment in the house. "I-I think everything's okay. Doesn't feel nearly like Sunnydale High anymore."
"Certainly without the carnage and the remnants of fried mayor-snake."
"Oh, I've been meaning to ask – does it taste just like mayor-chicken?"
"Eww. And to reiterate for the audience at home…eewww.." Willow looked around, then suddenly turned back to Tara. "Sarah! And-and Brenda! We gotta check on them!"
After quickly gathering their supplies, the girls hurriedly searched through the house, calling out the names of their ghostly acquaintances. However, no apparitions, friendly or otherwise, materialized.
Willow tried frantically to think of a way to contact them through the Internet, forgetting for a moment that ghosts don't have email. "Although Moloch…" she muttered, then trailed off. Bad memory. "Tara…anything?"
The blonde witch closed her eyes briefly, then shook her head.
*******************
Back at the lodge, they called Giles to tell them of their successful venture. As it turned out, they hadn't even woken him up, which told volumes of the depth of his concern for the two of them.
"You're, uh, quite sure you stabilized this, uh, mini-Hellmouth?" Before either of them could answer, Giles added as an aside: "Oh, the things I hear myself saying in this job."
Tara was the first one to get herself under control, while Willow had trouble with the corners of her mouth. "Um, I'm pretty sure everything's okay. Still, I wish w-we knew what happened to Sarah and Brenda."
Giles cleared his throat. "Well, uh, seeing as they are, well, already dead, I doubt that very much, that is, bad, can happen to them."
Willow nodded. "Good point, Giles." She sighed. "Look, it's late, and we are beat. We'll call you tomorrow." Giles agreed, right through a yawn and said goodnight. After he hung up, Willow hung her head down in exhaustion. "Man, just hit me in the head with a hammer and stash me in bed."
Tara shook her head. "I need a shower first." She was about to ask Willow something when she felt a tingle from her sixth sense. Fighting the urge to say the inevitable four-word soundbite made famous by Haley Joel Osmun, she merely said, "Um, company's here."
Willow looked over to where Tara indicated. At first she saw nothing, then a faint shape coalesced out of the shadows in the far corner of the room. It was Brenda, although she was literally a shadow of her former self, translucent instead of opaque, the patterns of the wallpaper clearly visible through her "body."
"Hi!" the ghost said. Even her voice was oddly attenuated, though clear enough. "It took me a while to get enough energy to manifest even halfway." Off their puzzled looks, the teen spirit (no relation to Nirvana) quipped, "What – you think it's easy, manifesting in the physical world. It ain't cheap."
"What about Sarah?" Tara asked.
Brenda looked rather sober. "I'm not sure…but I think she's, like, gone on. To the next plane of existence, or whatever else lies beyond this world. I think maybe it was her time, or something."
"What about you?" Willow asked. "Are you gonna be okay?"
"Oh, sure. In a month or so, I'll be back to full haunting mode – which won't be much, 'cause most people don't even know I'm there. But at least I can go back and forth from here to the Winchester House whenever I want."
"Well, that's good," Willow enthused. "You can kinda keep an eye on things there, and still have a nice place to crash here!"
Tara piped up. "Oh, and give us a call if the house – oh, wait. You can't use a phone."
Brenda dismissed Tara's concern. "I don't think you have to worry. As long as nobody opens any interdimensional portals, I think the house'll be fine." Brenda smiled, then continued. "Hey, I'm gonna get going. You guys probably have…stuff, to do."
"Bye," Willow said, waving.
"Take care, " Tara added as the ghost faded from sight. She then looked at Willow, a small, sad smile on her lips.
****************
They showered together, more out of a desire for companionship than anything naughty. They faced each other and ran soap over skin while standing under the spray of warm water. Under other circumstances, it would have been rather erotic, but now neither one of them seemed to want anything other than basic affection.
Willow ran her fingers through Tara's wet hair, her other hand in the small of Tara's back, perhaps drifting lazily down the round bottom. Tara's hands rested on Willow's stomach, fingers coming over the ribs and just grazing the underside of the small breasts.
For a long while there was nothing but the sound of their breathing and the rushing of the water from the showerhead, the gurgling of the drain.
Now, a faint vibration, conducted by skin through soapy fingers. "You're shaking," Willow said, looking into Tara's eyes.
"S-so're you," Tara muttered back, resting her forehead against the redhead's. She wrapped her arms around the smaller witch, drawing her in, simultaneously giving strength and getting it as Willow followed suit. All of the pain, the tension, the terror of the past day, had caught up to the both of them at once.
As one, the two nearly fell to their knees, as they both wept under the cascading water, each tasting the other's tears of regret and release.
*******************
Afterwards, they sat on the bed in their robes, Willow combing out Tara's long hair. "We should get to bed. It's a long trip back tomorrow."
Tara half-turned. "W-We gonna go back to Sunnydale tomorrow?"
"Well, yeah."
Tara got up and crossed over to the stack of papers, including the UC Santa Cruz transfer applications and their transcripts. "I, uh, thought we'd go over to the Santa Cruz campus tomorrow."
Willow's expression would have been appropriate to Tara suggesting that the two of them sign up to be strippers in a logging camp. "Tara…why are you…I thought…uh, help me out here."
Tara sat back down next to Willow. "If this, I mean, us m-moving here is really what you want…I'm game," she finished brightly. "You and me…right?"
"Oh, Tara," Willow said, tears in her eyes. "If I start crying again, I think I'll dehydrate! I love that you're willing to do this for me…"
"You've changed your mind?"
Willow cringed the tiniest bit. "Well…I thought that we could just leave Sunnydale and leave that whole mystical, demony, world-about-to-end-so-drink-up situation behind. But I realize, we are who we are, and what we are. No matter where we go, we’re gonna be the go-to gals whenever danger rears its ugly head."
Tara smiled. "I think you're right. And I'm glad you changed your mind; I really didn't want to leave D-Dawn, and Giles, and Xander and Anya. I think I'd even miss Spike."
Willow grinned. "Y'know, so would I. Ol' Billy Idol Batboy. Of course, you tell him I said so, and I'll turn you into a shrimp, and you'll be allergic to yourself!"
Tara did her best to look stern, failing miserably. "Oooh…something tells me that you're getting seduced by the dark side of the Force, my dear." She kissed Willow, then drew back slightly. "Whatever we do, wherever we are. Together. Because, someday, I hope to be Mrs. Willow Rosenberg." Tara drew back a bit as she processed that. "Actually, you would be Mrs. Willow Rosenberg, if we got married."
"You can be Mrs. Tara Rosenberg, if you want. I could be Mrs. Willow Maclay…"
"I've never liked my last name. I've been thinking of dropping it entirely. Be just 'Tara.' Like Cher, or Madonna, or Sting."
"'Sting Rosenberg.' That might look interesting on the mailbox." Willow's finger traced the lapel of Tara's robe, slipping inside to touch the sensitive skin between Tara's breasts. The redhead looked at Tara with hungry eyes. "I need you."
The blonde wiccan undid the tie holding her robe closed, then reached over and did the same for Willow. "I' m yours."
******************
After some intense sessions where the two of them tried to melt together, tried to become one large organism with two mouths, four hands and a whole lot of skin, the couple lay down in preparation for (hopefully) dreamless sleep, Willow with her head on Tara's breast, listening to her heartbeat like an ancient lullaby. Tara had thought that Willow had drifted off, when she heard her lover say sleepily, "Sing to me."
Tara ran her hand down Willow's side. "Wh-what do you wanna hear?"
"Anything."
Tara was about to cajole Willow for something specific, when she suddenly had an inspiration, from a song they had heard a few days ago. Her high, sweet contralto came out, reverberating through her sleepy lover's head:
"Well, we know where we're going,
But we don't know where we've been.
And we know what we're knowing,
But we can't say what we've seen,
"And we're not little children,
And we know what we want.
And the future is certain,
Give us time to work it out."
-Finis-
------------------
"I will say, I've been in some weird places, but this is…another weird place."
[This message has been edited by CaptMurdock (edited August 23, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by CaptMurdock (edited August 23, 2001).]
by legend » Thu Aug 23, 2001 12:44 am
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