by Katharyn » Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:00 pm
Title: The Sidestep Chronicles: Third Chronicle (Part 31 (273))
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler warning: I’m really not going to bother after all this time except to say that this fic will totally spoil my own Sidestep: First Chronicle and Second Chronicle which can be found in the Completed Fics archive (A-M)
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. (This applies to all my stories, fics and particularly to Sidestep Chronicle as a whole.)
Summary: Tara and Jenny find out what’s happening as well, but from a different perspective.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property.
Rating: The earlier Chronicles of Sidestep were much darker and I slapped a blanket R rating on them for occasional content. This series is lighter in tone caution is only recommended for occasional scenes. However to understand absolutely everything that went before you’d have to have read the first two fully so…
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. Rupert and Jenny are also married with a family. Nothing else referred to.
Text convention: We’re occasionally dealing with some deaf characters here and that has to be addressed. Speech inside asterisks is spoken in sign language only. Occasionally people responding to signed speech may do so inside speech marks, which indicates that they are also verbalising as well. Occasionally I might make a mistake and get this wrong but when dealing with a character that only signs, take it as read that they’re doing so when they “speak.”
Notes: Must admit in that last part I wasn’t totally happy with the Master’s ‘voice’ but then I’m past the point I can turn the show back on to check it out…
Thanks to: Kittens who beg… you know who you are (or were by the time your read this!
“There weren’t vampires before then?” Jenny finally asked once they were clear.
Gray shook his head, willing to talk more now that the men and women in blood red tunics had passed them by. In the crowds – even though people tried to let the red tunics through - it’d taken a while and left them trapped beside people who might well have been hunting them.
Or so he said and, having seen them up close, they both tended to believe him.
The ones dressed in red like that – a colour everyone else seemed to be avoiding – were apparently human and demon acolytes of the vampires that controlled the citadel. Gray still seemed surprised that they’d just got here and they already knew what vampires were… most people, she supposed, wouldn’t have done.
“The guys, there are some, who know about that kind of thing – they say this is – it’s a place of the dead. Vampires aren’t that, they’re undead and that’s the difference.”
Tara nodded, it made a certain kind of sense.
Besides, the demons that possessed a person who was drained to death and turned came from yet another place. Not here. “What about the people that vampires used to be?” she asked.
Gray shook his head.
That seemed important too. So…
Okay, they went somewhere else? Then… what about Toni’s Dad? Why would Wolfram and Hart send Willow here if he wasn’t supposed to be here anyway? If that was what Gray had meant…
The young woman’s father had risen from his death near mindless, a violent undead creature of instinct. Unlikely – and unable – to survive but utterly destructive until true death claimed him. And why so different from any other vampire? As best as they could tell he’d been dead at the moment he’d been turned. The soul and the mind had departed; body had lingered long enough to be turned and left him more like the movie zombie than what they’d ordinarily have recognised as a vampire.
And maybe that was it… Maybe what had made the rising as a vampire even more of a tragedy might now have actually made Willow’s quest attainable – if the lawyers hadn’t lied to Toni. He’d died before he’d been a vampire – which sounded obvious but actually it hadn’t been the actually transition to vampire that had killed him.
He’d become a monster. But now… wasn’t it plausible that he was still here in the Halls? Once his mind and soul departed the physical form, they’d have had to go somewhere…
Had Willow already found him? Tara had no sense of success from her wife. But then she didn’t have much of a sense of anything from Willow – unlike in their world. And you better believe that she’d already tried to slip into Willow’s thoughts, to reach out to her. Back home that was something they could do with ease. Here though? Not so much. Even though they did have that sense of each other back, even with a direction.
If Willow was in the giant boob then she should’ve been close enough – in their world – but here? Perhaps something was different.
Magic still worked though, which was important in case they had to fight their way out of here.
And that was one thing they hadn’t admitted to their new friend. Not that it existed, not that they used it.
One of many things... he still thought they were newly dead, though they were probably going to have to admit that truth sooner than later. After all, he only had to catch their skin and the secret would be out.
“But now there is a one,” Tara concluded. Somehow a vampire had gotten in here, where it wasn’t supposed to be.
“Yes, the Master came - .”
“Wait. What did you just say?”
“The Master,” Gray said. “He arrived here and - ”
Tara and Jenny looked at each other and she knew they were sharing a sinking feeling. “Feral vampire, always looks like he’s vamped out?”
“You already sound like you know a lot about vampires,” Gray said, his suspicions obviously rising. “But now you sound kike you know him… if you’re new here then how - ?”
“We ran into vampires back in – well, back in our old lives,” Jenny said fairly smoothly and without actually lying to him. “He was a famous one. Everyone had heard of him where we lived – he actually took over our town. It… it wasn’t pretty…”
It seemed to soothe his suspicions. At least a little. Naturally enough most people went their entire lives not believing in vampires and things that went bump in the night even when they were surrounded by them. It was – after all – the collective human delusion even when faced with what should’ve been incontrovertible evidence. The modern world had made that even more the case. It wasn’t on the mass media so it wasn’t real or true? And couldn’t science explain everything now?
“Is that him though?” Tara pressed. The Master was… an entirely different kettle of fish. And she wasn’t talking about the kind of fish that she and Ira had used to go, well, fishing for. More a shark. A kettle full of shark and… She’d been away from Willow too long. Her thoughts were getting distinctly like those of her wife.
Willow… What would happen if Willow ran into – or was taken to – the Master? That Master? He’d had her turned once, found her useful enough to keep around and make practically make her into his second in command. Third, certainly. Considering how new a vampire she’d been then compared to Luke…
Would the Master want Willow back again?
They’d come here, done this, because of the threat of Toni – or her employers – revoking the bargain that had secured Willow her soul and brought her to life again. Human.
Now they could lose that again regardless of anything the lawyers did…
“Sounds like him,” Gray said. “I try to stay as far away as possible. In fact – why the hell are you heading to the citadel? That’s the easiest place to get to, but the last place anyone should be looking to go.”
“I’m looking for my wife,” Tara said, so caught up in the dangers that the Master posed that she didn’t even realise what she might be giving away.
Too late now though.
“Wife, huh? Cool, man. Cool.”
He might look young, but he was from a different age where that kind of thing hadn’t been possible or even looked like it would be, so she was pleased that it hadn’t caused any more reaction than that. But then Gray had probably met plenty of ‘stranger’ folks around here, given everyone came here. From every age and every part of the world.
Yeah, married women were probably pretty low on his totem pole of strange next to that – and vampires.
Initially she was also glad that he hadn’t latched onto the fact she was looking for someone and starting wondering why.
Except he did.
“She should be with you?” he asked.
“She… came over before me.” True enough, as it went.
“People turn up eventually,” Gray said, probably he intended it to sound reassuring – which was nice of him. “I ran into all sorts of people I used to know passing through here.”
“Passing through?”
“There’s… other places,” he said with a shrug. “Some better, some worse – so they say. I never stuck my ass out there to look.”
“So why don’t you leave? Jenny asked. “I mean, if there’s vampires here now then this can’t be better than many of the other places?”
Tara nodded, in complete agreement with the question. She’d lived somewhere ruled by vampires, seen the effects spread for hundreds of miles and swallow up her family. There were better places, much better places – no matter who this Master was.
“Have you seen it out there?” Gray gestured in the same direction as everyone else who referred to whatever lay beyond this vast cavern. Presumably to the way out, which was useful info… perhaps.
“No.”
“Even this is better,” he said. “For someone like me, even this is better.”
“What’s - ”
“It’s different for everyone,” he said, cutting off Jenny’s question. “Different directions, different eyes. Here though – everything’s pretty much the same no matter who you are and… well, whatever you might thinks’ out there for you.”
“At least it was until the vampire’s got here,” Tara said. Was this behind the prevailing myth of good and bad places? Heaven and hell? Maybe even based in some kind of quantum like thing where you got what you expected? Did he really think that if he stepped out of these caverns then he’d be confronted by… what he deserved? So far he’d been nice to them, helpful. Not that they’d known him long, but she wasn’t sure what he’d have to fear…
“Yeah, there is that.”
“So what happened?”
“This has… You have to understand I didn’t really see much of this, not how it was back in the day. When I first got here… I reacted badly to it. Took me a long time to adjust.
“But this was the only place in this realm that the living were welcome and known. The only place they could be. It’s said they pretty much built this place, brought in things from other places. This is all stuff no one tells you when you first get here. You have to find out over time – some of the folks around here, they’ve been here for a looong time, you know?”
Tara could see how that’d be the case, but the living had once had a place here? Why?
“Stores where people traded. People with skills still made things. Painters painted, sculptors sculpted. Those found their way back to the real world, the living world. Other people made stuff. There was even what sounds like a law firm,” Gray said. “Right over there.” He pointed.
The low building was made out of wood, looked like something from a western. Totally out of place here but the shingle outside was familiar. “Wolfram and Hart,” she said for Jenny’s benefit.
“Don’t bother going over there,” Gray said. “It’s empty, like most other places now. The living are… gone and the dead, well we don’t need the shelter the same way. Something changes, we don’t feel the urge for a roof over our heads or to… own, I guess.”
Despite his observation Tara still went to the window, peering in through it. Empty as he’d described. Not trashed or broken up. Just… empty. She thought back to the building where they’d found these clothes they were using to cover up – mostly stripped, apart from a few things up in the roof space. “Everything’s like this?”
“They – the one’s who went over to him and there’s a lot of thems that were bad enough in life that they did – patrol these places. They know he wants the living and I guess that they think the living are drawn to places with roofs and walls and all that. I guess I would be, if I still had a pulse. You couldn’t get me out of them when I first arrived here, always begging someone to take me in.”
Tara backed off from the window, not wanting to give the impression he was describing. While Gray seemed to be willing to help those he thought were simply – dead – newcomers, asking him to do the same for the living? That might be a very different thing given what he was relating to them.
One thing was not the same as the other, not if the Master wanted the living.
“Why were they here?”
“You mean the living?” He shrugged. “Why were people anywhere? Seems like they were merchants a lot of them, or people who came here wanting to be close to their loved ones after they passed – lots of older folks. Somehow they found a way here and stayed until it was their time.”
There were ways; she and Jenny had proved it. So had Willow. And it made a certain amount of sense. What would people in the know do for someone they loved? Something like get themselves possessed, cross over and then make whatever life they could once they found what they were looking for?
It suggested that people could die here though, that time passed and old age could take them too… What happened then was less clear, but that was a key part of things.
“Why didn’t they leave?” Jenny asked. “Once things started look bad?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t know many of them myself. Enough, I guess, to do a little trading.”
“Who’s doing that now?”
“The Master’s people,” Gray said. “We don’t need much of anything here, but we’re used to it now and thems that pass over like you ladies have some expectations once you see it’s not all purgatory and infernos.”
Tara ignored the implied sexism, perfectly certain that the guys wanted stuff too. Just… different stuff. “So they’re trading?”
“Means he has nearly all the power,” Gray said. “There’s not much we can do about him even if he didn’t have the trade in his pocket.”
“Stake through the heart works pretty well,” Tara said. “I mean – well - that’s what I heard. In the movies.” Not the best recovery, but he didn’t seem to have realised she knew a little much about killing vampires.
“Believe me,” Gray said. “It’s been tried. Obviously we had a bunch of veterans, from all sorts of wars. Some of the old timers were better than the guys from the more recent stuff, you know? They knew how to use knives, spears – like a bayonet you know – and they went after him.”
“And?”
“They and anyone who was close to them is still up there. They die, they come back but they stay up there. Do you understand what I mean?”
Tara sucked in her breath, distressed at the mere thought of it. What a vampire like the Master could do now she knew how things worked around here. Death was not the end. Not the first, the second or the tenth time it happened. They were dead and they couldn’t get any deader – or at least not stay that way.
“Sometimes you can hear the screams and moans from the citadel… if the air’s moving right.”
“How long ago was that?” Tara asked.
“About a year after he arrived here, didn’t take him long to turn from the living - once he’d run out if them - to us. Didn’t take long to move in up there either,” Gray said, pointing up at the citadel. “It was hardly used, barely defended. Some people reckon it was set up by the lord of the underworld, you know back in the day? Some sort of God that’d passed out of people’s minds and left the place behind when there was no one left to believe in him.”
“Is that how it works?” Jenny asked.
“Don’t know, Ma’am. I’ve been dead nearly twice as long as I was alive; I’ve never seen a God or any evidence of one. Not the one from church, not any other neither. If he exists, then he’s not here.”
Tara looked up at the citadel, they were close enough now that it could officially be described as ‘imposing’ and – despite being so close that you couldn’t get a picture of the whole of it – but it was obvious that the thing had been build over time. There were different styles at work – just like in all those unused buildings down here in the city.
“Wait,” she said. “If the buildings are unused then – where does everyone go?”
“Go?”
“When they’re not doing – well, whatever they’re going to do?”
“We work - ”
“What do you do?” Jenny interrupted.
“Wow, you are new here – are you really saying you’ve not figured anything out yet?” Gray asked.
“We are new,” Tara admitted. They were experienced, the two of them, in covering for each other in conversation. More than once it’d saved violence from being committed. Of course that had been a while ago.
“We don’t eat, we don’t drink, and we’re not alive anymore. You must’ve noticed you’re not hungry or tired?”
Actually she was both of those things, very much so, but she nodded all the same. They both did.
“That rules out some of the worst of the work you’d have thought was necessary around any mass of people – no sewage or anything - but there are still things… We’re on the edge of a desert here.”
“A desert?”
“Out there, beyond the caverns is sand and sand and sand… It blows. It fills the place… There are some people here who can remember when a cavern this size, with another citadel, was free of it. It comes in and we hold it back. We build defences that eventually fall, we carry the sand away…”
“And that’s better than some work?”
He nodded. “Could be worse. There’s enough of us - and always more - that what could be an endless task only takes a little time each.”
“And the rest? If you don’t eat – if we don’t eat or drink?”
“Like I said, used to be that people here turned to what they knew. Storytellers. Artists. Musicians.”
Tara had been surprised by that the first time he mentioned it, but then it did make a certain amount of sense. How often did you read about ‘lost masters’ paintings turning up? It wasn’t something she’d considered previously but how else would they pass the time? These were still – basically – the people they’d been when they died. And if there had been trade – in the past – ways to bring paper and instruments and canvas to a place like this why wouldn’t they have the best cultural death that their numbers could provide?
“Not everyone likes it but we have the space, not everyone stays here, and we have the people. You spend your death how you please, but most people contribute. I do.”
“We will too,” Tara said, reassuring him. “Won’t we Jenny?”
“Yeah, absolutely. Me and sand, can’t wait to start shovelling.”
Gray didn’t laugh, she hadn’t heard anyone laugh here. But he smiled, as if taken close to that point. “I’m not stupid,” he said.
“No? I mean – why would you need to say that?” Jenny asked. “I didn’t mean - ”
“I know what you meant. Like I said, I’m not stupid – you’re here to go to up there. It’s all that you want – I can see that. You can barely take your eyes off the place.”
“It’s true,” Tara said. “You’re no fool.”
“You mean to go in there, after a woman you don’t even know for sure is up there.”
“I know,” Tara said. “She is there. There’s no where else she would be.”
“Then she’s either in pain or she’s inflicting it – up there there’s no other choices than that.” Gray touched her arm, seeking to draw her back. Fortunately her skin was covered at the point they connected. “Either way, you might not know her any more. Wife or not.”
Tara didn’t know what to say to that and silence reigned for a little, while they all stared up at the edifice above them. Willow hadn’t been here that long, but she was certain that her wife was within these walls. Everything told her that. Her sense of her woman, experience and – frankly – fate never made it easy for them.
“What happened to the living?” Jenny asked when the brooding got too much for them.
It struck Tara as an unnecessary question, one they didn’t want to know the answers to. Not really. But Gray answered it all the same.
“I’d never heard of a vampire when I was alive, outside of movies and comic books, but I guess those had it pretty right. They were… eaten. Eventually.”
************
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If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.
Chance in *Chance*
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kajun, no search party needed...
i think you are exceptional in your writing sklls. proud to call myself a fan 
boob dome, still kills me..
. Next, W.W. goes all hardcore gangster, lighting V.W.'s hair on fire. Finally, the Master shows up, chokes W.W out, Saves V.W's ass and then tells her she'll go blind if she keeps playing with herself 
..... 
!!!
..nope, I went back and checked. No mention of V.W.
. Tara's thoughts on human/wanatouchie sexual relations made me laugh my ass off 
. I think not!!!