by AntigoneUnbound » Mon Aug 11, 2003 4:26 pm
Hey folks--here's the update. I'll be back in about 2 hours to check it out. Thanks again to all of you, and [b]R[/b] I really appreciate your kind words. More replies to follow.
Disclaimer: I don’t own squat, a fact abundantly well attested to by virtue of the fact that I’m slinking around from one computer to another instead of getting my own.
All other information available upon request, including my little-known but highly regarded manifesto, “John Ashcroft and Saddam Hussein: Mortal Enemies by Day; Impassioned Lovers by Night.”
*****
“What time does her plane get in?” Willow asked, reaching out to hug Beverly as she walked into the hotel room. Tara, close behind her, did likewise.
“Just before three,” Beverly replied, draining the last of her third coffee that day. “I was thinking of leaving in about half an hour.”
Tara looked at her watch. “Are you going by way of Wisconsin? It’s just past one, Bev, and the airport is all of twenty miles away.”
“I just don’t want to be late,” her aunt huffed. “Besides, if it were Willow, you would have slept overnight in the terminal last night just in case the roads were closed today.”
“She’s got a point,” Willow murmured.
“OK—how about we leave at a quarter till two and stop for coffee on the way?” Tara suggested.
“Are you sure that gives us enough time?” Beverly said skeptically. “I’ve heard about the California traffic.”
“Beverly, unless the entire state of Nevada decides to stop by to see the Sunnydale Museum of String Art, we’re in good shape.”
“OK, OK…I know I’m being neurotic.” She smiled slightly; a crooked grin that Willow recognized.
Did Quinn smile like that, too? Except that Beverly isn’t related to them…Except that she is.
Forty-five minutes later, much of which was spent reassuring Beverly that she looked fine, looked great, looked absolutely wonderful and yes, she was a freak but no, not a bad one, they took off in the elder Maclay’s rental car.
*****
They did indeed have plenty of time to spare. “I guess you two should have brought some school stuff to work on,” Beverly said apologetically.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to read ‘War and Peace,’” Tara replied dryly.
Finally, the irredeemably cheerful voice of the airport’s announcer burst over the line to inform them that Southwest Flight 228 from Dallas was now arriving. Beverly jumped to her feet and took up a position perhaps twenty feet from the arrival door.
“Five bucks says I know what they’ll be doing tonight,” Willow nudged Tara as they followed her.
“Ten bucks says we’ll hear what they do tonight,” Tara muttered in reply. “So sometime between now and then we’re picking up some ear plugs because I just don’t need that.”
Tanya St. Clair was a tall, athletic-looking woman with dark brown eyes and a wry grin. When she and Beverly had finally extracted themselves from each other—earning considerable gawk points from their fellow airport patrons in the process—she greeted Willow and Tara with quick hugs.
“I hear you two have been taking great care of Beverly,” she said warmly.
“Yeah, well, we’ve been adequate tour guides, I think,” Tara replied. “But she’s been missing you like crazy.”
“I hear you,” Tanya murmured, pulling Beverly close. Looking quickly around the terminal, where a few travelers were still casting what they thought were subtle glances in their direction, she added, “Don’t get many Black people in Sunnydale, do you?”
“Not as many as we should,” Willow acknowledged ruefully. Thinking of Kendra, she added, “And the ones we do get tend to die.”
“Well that sucks,” Tanya commented dryly.
“But I’m sure they’ll make a special effort for you, Honey,” Beverly said reassuringly.
Tanya shook her head. “You know, if you’re White and gay, you get looks. If you’re Black and straight, you get looks. But girlfriends, if you’re Black and gay—just step right up and prepare to be an object of enduring fascination.”
“I’ve always said you’re timeless,” Beverly said proudly, as the four of them headed out through the sliding glass doors.
*****
Dinner that night looked like any other gathering of four people who are getting to know each other better…Selective reminiscences, political discussions regarding matters of common concern, and ongoing analysis of the impending apocalypse.
Willow and Tara gave Tanya a brief history of their nocturnal activities, and Tanya shared her thoughts on Beverly’s unsolicited call to arms.
“It blows,” she weighed in.
“Tanya, Sweetie, I love it when you talk dirty.” Beverly grinned and twirled some more angel hair pasta onto her fork.
“And now, of course, my inimitable partner here will make a joke, hoping to thereby deflect the solemnity of the moment.” And though she rolled her eyes as she said it, Willow knew that this was a conversation they had had many times over the past five years of their five-month relationship.
“Guilty as charged, and yet so unbelievably cute that you can’t help but love me.” Willow noticed that while Beverly’s right hand was wielding her fork, her left was nowhere to be seen. She had a pretty good idea where it was.
“My love for you has never been the issue, Baby.” Tanya turned back to Willow and Tara. “Let me ask y’all something.”
Willow looked up sharply “Y’all.” Someone has called me that before, but not here. Not in Sunnydale. Maybe an alternate reality? But this wasn’t the time to figure it out.
“You two signed on for this, right? Of your own free will? You go out at least two, three times a week—more in May, it seems—and you stake and you behead and you ax and you curse and probably a slew of other things that you won’t be putting on your curriculum vita when you go out on the job market. And you don’t even get hazard pay?”
“Well, it’s not like we’re in it for the money,” Tara argued.
“I’m not saying that. Of course you’re not in it for the money. What I’m saying is that you give and give and give and if you get hurt, that’s it. Your tough luck. And if the very worst happens, like with Kendra and Miss Calendar, does the Society for the Preservation of the Species pick up the funeral expenses? No, they don’t. Am I right?”
Willow shifted uncomfortably. What could she say?
“Yeah, I know,” Tanya grinned. “I’m just a Summer’s Eve douche commercial of soft focus and sunshine, aren’t I? I’m not trying to be a downer; I just don’t like how everyone’s life gets tossed around croutons on some giant, inter-dimensional salad and we don’t even know who’s holding the tongs.”
Beverly placed her glass carefully back onto its cardboard coaster. “You know what I think?” she asked quietly.
Tanya gazed at her. “What?”
“I think maybe it’s easier to be angry with whatever forces put this stuff in front of us than it is to be angry with me for choosing to go along. Because it is a choice, Babe, when you get right down to it. Nobody held a gun to my head.” She held Tanya’s gaze evenly.
Willow became intensely preoccupied with the parmesan cheese shaker. She felt Tara grip her hand tightly on the seat between them.
“Maybe I am,” Tanya finally conceded. “The thing is, there’s no way you wouldn’t do your part. I know you, Girl. And I chose to stick with you, even though nobody held a gun to my head.” She sighed. “So maybe I’m just railing against everything that makes it seem damn near impossible to get a good night’s sleep in this life.”
Beverly leaned forward and kissed her gently, then whispered something in her ear. Tanya just arched her brows and pushed her away with absolutely no real indignation or force.
Probably something about the likelihood of getting any sleep tonight, Willow thought.
As they walked out to the car afterwards, Tanya lit up a cigarette. Nodding to Willow, who had fallen in step with her behind Tara and Beverly, she said, “Bev’s been after me to give these up since the day we met. I told her that if she does her stint in the Key Protection Service and makes it through, I’ll quit.” Exhaling, she added softly, “She’s risking her life to save the world. I figured I should put something up on the table, too.”
As they lay in bed later, Willow curved back against the warmth of Tara’s body, she asked quietly, “What’s trump?”
She could almost feel Tara’s bemused gaze at the back of her head. “Are we talking Donald or cards?”
Willow turned, sliding her leg between Tara’s. “Cards. What’s trump in this hand? Or, to be more specific, who?”
“Will, Sweetie, walk toward the sound of my voice and then give me the decoder ring to what you’re talking about.”
“OK, see, the monks decide that in order to best protect all of humanity, they’d alter the reality of Goddess-only-knows how many people. Basically, they over-ruled somebody, or something—whatever or whoever had set the previous reality in motion. But are they the final word? Could somebody come along and trump their ace?”
Tara’s palm against her cheek was warm. Had she ever not known the feeling? Was there a reality out there in which that hand never touched her? And if so, could she please, goddess, make sure that it never threatened this one?
“I don’t know, Sweetheart. I wish I could offer you proof that there’s some kind of method to all this madness, but I can’t. The only thing I know for sure is that you’re lying here next to me, and you love me like I love you. I can handle the existential uncertainty of the species so long as that truth holds.”
Willow pressed herself as tightly as she could against Tara’s warmth. “I know,” she sighed. “The whole thing just offends my sense of order and stability.” Kissing Tara’s shoulder, she added, “It’s either arbitrary or it’s cruel. Either way, I’m not a satisfied customer.”
She felt Tara laugh softly against her hair. “Well, we can look into legal action after it’s all over.”
She finally fell asleep, well after Tara had done so; and her dreams were filled with crazy bottle-blondes and books that were suddenly re-written half-way through their plot and finally Tara, feeding her lobster with her fingers. She was grateful, the next morning, that she had spent the longest time in the last scene.
*****
The four of them met for lunch the next day at the same pizza parlor where Beverly had had her “Holy shit, it’s the Key!” epiphany.
“You want to meet the rest of the Scoobies?” Beverly asked Tanya with a grin.
“Only if the ex-demon asks me about our sex life,” Tanya replied easily. “I brought along some videos.”
Beverly’s expression of horror, nano-second in duration though it was, told Willow that just such tapes existed.
I bet Tara would look totally hot in a sexy vid…Wonder if I could get her to go for it?
“When I cringe and run from the restaurant, I’m sure you know it’s not homophobia,” Tara commented. “Just good old-fashioned family boundaries.”
“Yeah—let’s see if the monks can alter reality to erase the last ten seconds,” Beverly muttered. She glanced at her watch and pushed back her chair. “Time to feed the implacable demons of parking. Spare change, if you please.”
Moments later, she was shoving a random assortment of quarters and dimes into the gaping maw of the meter. As she turned to leave, she heard a sudden scuffling in the alley to her left. She took a half-step toward the sound.
“Hey—anybody there? Everything OK?” In lieu of a verbal response came a louder clanging, like metal tumbling about itself. And then she heard—or she could have sworn she heard—a faint gasping, as if someone were fighting to draw breath.
And because she was the kind of person who did things like help strangers and talk to people in elevators and sign on to protect mystical balls of energy, she dashed into the alley to see if someone needed assistance. As the darkness of the space closed in around her, she looked up to see a very short creature with serious skin problems standing on top of a trash dumpster. He was hoisting a club, and seemed intent on bringing it down with no small measure of antipathy upon her head.
“Oh, fu—”
*****
Which was how Beverly came to find herself in Glory’s penthouse. She awoke to hear that Hell God’s shrill voice reaming new and varied orifices into her minions.
“You’re lucky she’s still alive,” she hissed. “If her skull’s cracked or she has some kind of weird brain damage, she’s not going to be of any help to me; and if that happens, you won’t be of any help to me, ever again, because I’ll pull your spleens out through your nose.”
“We’re so blindingly sorry, Most Abundantly Divine One,” came a quivering reply. “We thought that she might prove difficult to subdue, given her special status.”
“As what? A big dyke? She’s a Protector, you worthless lump of idiocy, not a Slayer. You know what her power is? She gets near me, and I get all woozy. To anybody else, she’s just another woman in comfortable shoes.”
“We pathetically beg your most undeserved forgiveness, Oh Stunningly Rapturous Yet Tasteful One. We only wished to be certain of delivering the foul one to you.”
“Hey,” Beverly managed in a hoarse whisperer. “I’m fine with ‘dyke,’ but ‘foul’ just won’t do. Besides,” she added, glancing from one toady to the next, “when was the last time your face saw the business end of an exfoliant?”
Speaking left her nauseous. She dropped her head for a moment, hoping desperately that she didn’t toss her cookies in front of this crew. She could feel ropes cutting into her wrists and ankles, binding her to the hard wooden chair in which she sat. She heard rather than saw Glory take another step away from her, although she was already skulking close to the back of the room.
“Ooh, look—it’s a Protector…left so very unprotected. You know why you’re here, of course.”
“You wanted to ask me to the Prom and didn’t want to do it in front of my friends?”
Oh God, if she’s gonna kill me, please let it be quick. Please.
“No, silly; I don’t play for your team. I don’t really play for any team, to be honest. I’m more of a free agent kinda girl.”
“More like a free agent kinda whack job,” Beverly corrected her, knowing as she did so that Glory probably wasn’t terribly receptive to constructive feedback.
“You say potato, I say tuberous food source first cultivated by the Mayans,” Glory blithely replied. “But let’s cut to the main feature, shall we? You know the identity of the Key, and I need that information. Let’s work together on this one, shall we?”
“Let’s see about getting you eaten by a giant slug, shall we?”
“Oh, honestly…You’re all about empowering women, aren’t you? And what could be more empowering than helping a woman—a God—regain her rightful throne? Let’s face it, Sweetie—it’s right out of Marion Zimmer Bradley.”
“What, they have Barnes and Noble where you’re from?” Keeping her talking, Bev.
Why? she suddenly asked herself. Nobody can beat a Hell God; you’re not going to give her the information she wants. So, what—keep her talking, so you can be good and conscious when she starts to torture you?
I gotta try, she finally knew. Tanya will kick my ass if I get killed.
Glory, meanwhile, was giving a detailed description of the horrors that would ensue if Beverly didn’t divulge the Key’s identity, and showed an impressive knowledge of human anatomy in so doing.
“Listen, Glo—do you mind if I call you ‘Glo’?—let’s just face the fact that we are separated by profound ideological differences. Is there someway we can set aside those differences and just be real with each other? Just be ourselves? Me, a dedicated if somewhat irreverent woman who teaches inner-city school children; you, a profoundly disturbed deity in exile from hell.” Squinting, she could dimly make out Glory huddled at the back of the room. “Ebony, and ivory, live together in perfect harmony…” she sang in a remarkably off-key voice. Beverly knew she had no ear for music.
“What in the name all things unholy is she doing?” Glory demanded, her voice hitting a new octave.
“I believe it’s a popular song from the 1980’s, Thou Most Lusciously Amoral One,” came a helpful voice from behind her. “I believe Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson sang it.
“Michael gets out, and I can’t get back,” Glory muttered.
“Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord…”
“Shut up,” Glory screeched, flinging a vase which shattered inches to her left. “I’m sick of this…Sick of everyone trying to keep me away from what I need. If you were stranded in the desert, don’t you think I’d give you a drink of water?”
“I’m guessing no,” Beverly replied, trying to keep her nausea gauge at half-tank.
“Well, no—I’d probably taunt you and hold the glass just beyond your reach,” Glory admitted. “But that’s because I’m a Hell God. I’m not wired to be beneficent. You—you help the Key; you help strangers in an alley; you help snot-fricken’-nosed kids…but you won’t help me.”
“At the risk of arguing the subjective nature of good and evil, those snot-nosed kids aren’t planning to annihilate the human race. At least not the ones in PS-367.”
“Fine,” Glory hissed. “You think I’m not getting closer? I know the Key’s here. I know it’s in human form. I know it’s one of the newer members of the Slayer’s circle. I can just take them one at a time—the new ones, the old ones…Sooner or later, somebody’s either gonna spill the beans.”
“You don’t know this crowd,” Beverly said evenly.
“I could just keep you here, and kill them one by one until you gave in.”
“Oh, yeah—that would really put me in a helpful mood. Save your breath for your blow-up doll, OK?”
“Or maybe I wouldn’t have to kill them all.” Glory’s voice was suddenly, sickeningly smooth. “I could just take the one. The one who came because she just couldn’t stand to be away from you. You think you might be able to come up with a name if her life depended on it?”
Beverly wondered if they could hear her heart pounding in her chest. Of course they could—it was deafening; cacophonous.
“What’s the matter, Bev? Suddenly you’re very, very quiet, and you were so spirited just a moment ago.”
Beverly felt the nausea cresting again, and this time it had nothing to do with her injuries. This was the worst, and she had done it. How could she have been so stupid? So selfish? To have Tanya come here in the middle of all of this? When Beverly was certain to be a target in one way or another?
“Baby, if you stay, I can’t even pretend that you won’t be at risk. The safest thing would be for you to take off now and find some nice woman who isn’t mixed up in something so crazy…And who manages to balance her check-book,” she added. Maybe if she could laugh about this, her heart wouldn’t rip completely out of her chest with the pain.
And Tanya had stared at her, that searching, fathomless gaze that Beverly now knew was an invitation—an invitation to walk into something real and honest, and not back down, not take refuge in half-truths and irony and easy outs. She stared at Beverly, and asked simply, “Do you love me?”
And Beverly, because she knew that Tanya knew the answer but needed to hear it, had gazed back her and replied, “Yes. With everything I am, I love you.”
“Then I stay,” Tanya had answered in return. “And we don’t ever, ever have this conversation again.”
That had been months ago, right after she had learned she was a Protector. But this—how could she possibly refuse? Could she really stand by and watch Glory kill her partner?
Finally, she looked up, and stared hard at the dim shape of Glory at the far wall. “If you make one move toward her, I’ll terminate my existence,” she said slowly. “I’ll be dead before you can say ‘Questionable Hair Rinse.’”
“Daddy, how come you beat Uncle Quinn and Uncle Nathan so much when you guys play poker? Are you just luckier?”
The eyes were mischievous; the smile, a welcome into a secret. “I’m no luckier than they are, Baby Girl. I just bluff better.”
“You’re lying,” Glory retorted. “Your hands are tied; your feet are tied. You can’t raise a finger to hurt yourself.”
“I don’t have to,” she replied evenly. “It’s mental, and it’s all mine.”
“This is nothing but a pathetic bluff,” Glory shouted.
“Then your decision should be an easy one, shouldn’t it? Just go ahead with your threat, secure in the knowledge that I won’t die right in front of you without ever saying a word.”
When Glory didn’t answer, Beverly could feel confidence edging back into her heart. “But if that isn’t your final answer, then just drop the idea of touching her, even coming near her. Because at that point, my life doesn’t matter and I’ll kill myself just to piss you off. Got that, Oh Skanky Ditzy Compulsively Masturbating One?”
Hey—that was a good one, Maclay.
Then she looked up and even through the darkness and distance she could feel Glory’s fury radiating off her.
Of course, now she’s really angry…
*****
To Be Continued
at: 7/30/03 7:17 pm
Beverly
)
!) No internet access and Tanya's finally showing up - urgh 
. So I'm predicting serious Pens withdrawals... I promise lots o' feedback when I get back.
