Because Kajun begs so sweetly... here is part 11 a few hours (a day really!) early.
Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter Eleven Author: Katharyn Rosser Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story. Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS. Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here. Summary: Buffy seeks out Tara and finds out about what she thinks Diana is. Willow returns in the next part. 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. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers. Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show. Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about. Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence. Notes: Ooh, this was a long one. Long enough I had to split it up. Once again, I just enjoy playing with other people knowing Tara before and better than Willow. And I think it’s quite natural that they’d wonder about her, given that she had the Gem (even if she gave it up without being asked.) This part see’s the introduction of a phrase that you will see over and over and over… I didn’t deliberately plan it that way, it just happened, but in the end I added it as a theme. You’ll know it when you’ve seen it a few times. Finally, one of the benefits of redraft is that you can go back, reading afresh, and pick up on things you pushed in previous parts… So here, I was able to go back to the rumour that Willow started about Parker – and Buffy – that may now have gotten a little out of control. Just for laughs… Thanks to: After several years of giving thanks to various people for lots of things, doing it in every part has led me to some quite bizarre sets of thanks, nothing to do with the story in itself, but that just make my life easier while I’m writing or posting. Now, I’m going to lightly chastise someone instead. I mean, I like word processors, I couldn’t write the way I do without them (I tried to write in my teens on paper but just went back and back over the same page and had to re-write it for every correction because I am so anal about that), but really… Word just breaks at about 400,000 words and a thousand pages. Don’t they realise big fanfic is out there? So thanks for the word processor, let’s just have more capacity please!
“Oh, hi.”
Tara looked up from her books, meeting the face of the girl – the Slayer - she’d given the ring to. It was the first time she’d seen her in the last week – or was it two - since all that had happened.
Troubling weeks no matter how many of them.
“H-Hi, it’s Buffy right?” She looked around. “You were – you were saying ‘hi’ to me, right?”
No one else seemed to be around, but it seemed best to check.
“Oh, sure. Everyone knows Buffy. Everyone’s heard something about Buffy. What have you heard, by the way?”
“J-just your name,” Tara said, confused not only by her sudden appearance but by how this conversation had started out. “You told me, when we met. Should I have heard anything else? I’m sorry if I didn’t – don’t know…”
Okay, she did know that Buffy was the near mythical Slayer and the more she looked into, well, everything mystical the more often a reference to that figure cropped up. The Slayer, like the creatures that she hunted, seemed to be drawn to places like Sunnydale.
It was a chicken and egg thing, she was sure. And even if Buffy sounded surprised to see her, it was easy to think that maybe it wasn’t all that accidental. Did a Slayer really get taken by surprise?
Buffy shook her head. “No. No. There’s nothing else to hear. Nothing at all. And if you do hear something, maybe involving a boy or… well, just know that rumours are rarely true and definitely not true if itching or… anything else like that comes up. Itches. Rashes. Discharge -
“In fact, it’s best if you don’t listen to rumours at all. If you did though… don’t pass it on. Especially not to any cute boys.”
Not knowing any cute boys except by passing them in hallways, she thought that was an easy promise to make. “I promise. No cute boys.” But… what was it she might here? Because it seemed kind of… eww.
Buffy seemed relieved by her promise. “I was hoping to see you again, figured that if you’d been in the library once then you might show up here again.”
“I come here nearly every day,” Tara said. “It’s… the library.” Where else was she supposed to get all the books she needed for her courses and papers?
More to the point where did Buffy get the books she needed?
“Well, what do you know? I guess it takes all sorts. But I wanted to see you so I could thank you, really. I don’t think I did that before. And you were nice when I was a bit… well, I was down. Not rundown and definitely not suffering from anything physical – and I didn’t need medication. For anything. But I was down and you were nice and… you gave me a one of a kind ring that’s pretty special to look after.”
“It-it’s not actually,” Tara said. She’d been looking into it, even after Diana had told her about it.
“Not what?”
“Not actually a one of a kind,” she explained. “Or maybe it is now, but there are lots of references to rings and gems like that, if you know where to look.”
“You don’t know someone called Giles do you? Ex-librarian?” Buffy asked, looking suspicious.
“I d-don’t think so. I think I’d remember.”
“Good. So you… do you know what the ring is? Was? You know about the ring?”
“Rings,” Tara said again, emphasising the plural. “They’re the tears of dying Dryads, caught in the sunlight they set like amber but as hard as diamond. What people did with those later, that’s what gave them the names that they got. Gem of Amara. Ring of the Summer Herald, that sort of thing.”
“Okay, I feel like we’re in the right sort of place to have things explained to me. You wouldn’t believe how big a chunk of my life that is. But… what’s a Dryad? And do you mind if I sit down?”
“We’re not really supposed to talk in here,” Tara said, looking around in case anyone was already bothered.
“Nyah,” Buffy waved her concern off and took a seat anyway.
“But it’s a library…”
“Like I said, I’ve spent more time in libraries than most people, though… not for the same reasons and if I learned one thing it’s that the librarian’s bark is - almost always - worse than his bite.”
Tara wanted to protest further, but what could she do against such a well-constructed argument? Up to now though it hadn’t usually been a problem for her to get people not to talk in her presence. Or just to go away…
What she didn’t really need now was to be questioned about the ring. Looked like it was going to happen though. And that would lead to questions about…
The Goddess.
She hadn’t seen Diana in more than a week, not since the revelation. She’d spent most of that time going about her daily business, studying, looking after her room and things, hanging out with Annie… And every waking moment that wasn’t otherwise occupied wondering about – or researching – the implications of what she’d found out.
There was – as best as she could tell – an ancient Goddess right here in Sunnydale.
And she was leading their Wicca Group.
What was up with that? It definitely hadn’t been part of USC’s college prospectus.
“So, I’m not good with subtle and so I’ll just dive right in. Where’d you get the ring?” Buffy asked.
In a moment of panic, Tara actually considered telling the unvarnished truth. But that’d make her sound like a crazy person or – worse – send the Slayer after the Goddess. Who knew how that would turn out? And was it really so bad to have a Goddess here in Sunnydale? Always assuming that was what Diana really was?
Just because she said she was didn’t make it necessarily so. But then, as Daddy had always said, ‘if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck then sometimes… it’s just a duck.’ He’d been talking about something else, but the point was probably still valid.
Artemis might have been her name, but Diana was easier to live with these days… And the Goddess was right, there had been plenty of names for her through the ages. Until – not that long ago – a fragment of the nascent Wicca movement had constructed itself around her name.
Dianic Wiccanism.
It wasn’t what was practised here at UC Sunnydale, but was the combination of this place and that factor what had drawn her to them? Surely it couldn’t have been belief though because most of the people who had turned up to those early meetings just… well, they hadn’t. She couldn’t believe the previous year had been any different either.
Those girls – and they’d largely been girls – had been there for other reasons. Or was it just that if enough people voiced devotion – even if they didn’t feel it – this was what happened? A Goddess showed up.
The sources – such as they were – conflicted and, being a college library, most of them cast gods – any gods – as little more than myths anyway.
So, really, the ring wasn’t at the forefront of her mind right now. That was officially someone else’s problem.
Not that she could say that to the Slayer.
“There was a v-vampire - ”
“Tall? Blonde hair with a lot of product? Looked like he’d dipped his head in a vat of peroxide too many times?” Buffy asked.
“His name was Sp-Spike,” Tara said, trying to be helpful. “You knew him then?”
“Well enough that I can appreciate him being forcibly put in the past tense.”
“Shhhhh.” The hiss of the dreaded librarian. Tara really didn’t want to test his bite – no matter what Buffy said - and lowered her voice even further.
“Did you know him before he was - ”
“Oh, God no! How old do you think I am?”
“Not that old, I guess,” she said and it seemed to mollify the Slayer. Stupid… no girl over the age of seventeen probably wanted to be thought older than she was. Except if she was trying to order a drink.
What Buffy had said though. ‘God’… Most people, maybe including her, believe in another God. If Diana was real, if she really was the Goddess… what does that mean for everyone else and their beliefs? Might it not turn into an enormous clash? Wars had been fought over much, much less and – reading between the lines – deities hadn’t been immune to fighting amongst themselves either.
In fact they’d seemed to spend most of their time doing just that… The Whole Greek pantheon, later co-opted and renamed by the Romans for political reasons, had come from the Gods who’d turned on their own parents. They’d warred with the Titans and struck them down… And that was before they even started on each other.
Belief in the Goddess had been a nebulous concept for her until now. It wasn’t that’s she didn’t believe, because she had, but the Goddess had never been personified. She’d just been… everywhere. All around them. Plants, animals… nature and the world as a whole. It was the essence of her beliefs and what Momma had taught her. More like Gaia than Diana, really.
But Momma had never expected her little girl to be on first name terms with the Goddess herself.
If that was what was happening. Was that easier to believe? Did she want to believe it on some level? If so… why the doubts?
“He’d been around a while then?” she asked, returning to the conversation about the vampire rather than the one she was having in her head.
“More than a hundred years,” Buffy said. “The last two or three of those being a complete pain in my neck. Pain in the neck, get it?”
“Huh?”
“Vampires, they bite… Never mind. So you got it from him. Did you kill him?”
Buffy had sort of sidled up to that last part, the question. Slipped it in there.
“Not me,” Tara admitted. It was opening up a clear line of enquiry, but… what was she supposed to do? Take credit for something she hadn’t done? It seemed more dangerous to falsely claim to kill vampires than to admit that she’d had no idea if she could even try to do that.
“But you were there?”
She nodded.
“And you took the ring?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon?”
“Yes,” Tara said, a little louder. The librarian seemed to have moved on even if Buffy hadn’t been bothered about him. Talking – loudly at least – in libraries was something you just didn’t do.
“And then you brought it to me, so who told you…?”
“I saw you, from a distance. That night, I mean. You arrived at the crypt just after we – I left. I hope you don’t think I did this – I mean, I’m not much of a fighter. Definitely not when it comes to vampires and things like that – I wouldn’t know where to start. I tried to do self-defence once and… I hurt someone.”
“That can be the idea,” Buffy pointed out.
“She was just watching at the side,” Tara said. “I was supposed to hurt the dummy. There was flailing and… it wasn’t very pretty. They asked me not to come back again until I learned to be coordinated.”
“Sounds like someone I know,” Buffy said, smiling. “She calls herself kind of a spaz. Do you want some pointers on how to kill a vampire?”
This was the Slayer after all, but… “Actually, no,” Tara said. “I… kind of like the idea of not having to do that.” Wasn’t that what Buffy was for? Her purpose? I slay vampires therefore I am?
“This is Sunnydale,” Buffy said with a shrug. “We’re pretty much ground zero for everything that goes bump in the night. In fact, we put the bump into that saying. Without this place there would be no bumping in the night. Wait… Okay, sounded… just wrong. But it’s this place, let’s just leave it at that.”
Tara smiled too. Looked like someone else managed to talk herself into knots from time to time. It was reassuring to know that the super strong, super dextrous girl with the long, beautiful hair wasn’t actually perfect. She talked in libraries too.
“So I have to ask,” Buffy continued. “Wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t. Who did kill Spike? Not that I mind because it’s always a good thing when someone like that is turned to a fine powder, but if it wasn’t you…”
Ah. That. Of course it had been inevitable after she’d given Buffy that opening. And what happened when she answered it?
What happened if she didn’t? What was Buffy going to do, slay her?
One day, maybe… but not just yet. She had at least another birthday before that became an issue. At least she hoped so…
“I-I didn’t even see the ring or know what it was. Not until she told me.”
“Who?”
“Diana.”
“Diana?” Buffy shook her head as if she’d been expecting to hear some other name. “Who’s Diana?”
“Diana”
“I know, I heard you but - I’m sorry, Diana who? Am I supposed to know her?”
Well, she hadn’t considered it either when she’d heard the name, not even when she saw some of the evidence. It wasn’t a simple thing, even in a world of vampires, demons and things that went bump in the night to accept that a Goddess might be walking the earth. Right here amongst them.
“The Diana,” she said. “The famous one.”
“Diane Sawyer? No. She’s – You mean the Princess? She’s ghost?”
“N-no…” How did she put this? How did she start that off? Maybe just keep it simple. “The Goddess.”
It was a relief actually, not to be the only one who knew. It meant she could sigh, some tension left her and she waited for Buffy to come up with the plan that would assure them both that Diana was who she said she was and – more importantly – that she really did have good things in mind. Because whether the Goddess was who Tara thought she was – or not – that didn’t mean she was a good thing. Did it?
All through history people had done both good and bad things in the name of religion – better or worse than the tenets of their faiths. She didn’t suppose for a minute that the Goddess she believed in was the same as the woman who ran the Wicca Group. Because… running a Wicca Group hadn’t ever been part of the Goddess-deal she’d been taught about.
She was already noticing lots of divergence and differences between what she might have expected and the real thing. Over the years she, Momma and everyone else had more than idealised the Goddess, they’d turned her from a person into a concept. Mixed her up with the whole natural world.
The real thing was impatient, didn’t suffer fools – or vampires - and seemed more concerned with ensuring that everything fitted the order that she believed was right than empowering anyone to do things for themselves.
It wasn’t that Diana was a disappointment as such. But she was definitely different and that had led Tara to stay away from her last week. Time to think, an opportunity to do so outside of the woman’s influence… The Goddess’ influence.
“Goddess?”
“Y-Yes.”
“As in God?”
“Yes.”
“You seriously expect me to believe that Spike was killed by God?”
“No, the Goddess. Diana. She was called Artemis by the Greeks.”
“Artawhosisnow?”
“Artemis.”
“So who called her Diana?” Buffy asked.
“The Romans, it’s interesting – actually – the Romans were - ”
“No offence, Lara, but I can get the history lesson from my friends. More than one of them. You’re really sitting there and telling me that there’s a Goddess in town and she killed Spike?”
Tara nodded. “It’s Tara, actually, but don’t worry, everyone gets it wrong.” You can call me Lara if you like.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Look, well, I won’t get it wrong again. Tara-not-Lara. So this Goddess did him in then?”
She nodded.
“Well, get out of here!”
“Y-you believe me?”
Buffy nodded. “I believe that you believe it, whether I believe that your belief is enough for everyone else to believe… Wait, hold on. I’m doing a Willow. Look, if you believe it that’s cool – everyone gets to believe in whatever they choose. Me… I don’t believe in much when it comes to God, Gods or Goddesses. It’s like they said in that movie, whoever is supposed to be in control, they’re like an absentee landlord.”
She must’ve missed that cinematic experience, she supposed, but she took the point anyway.
“I always believed – do you mind me explaining?” Not everyone wanted to hear from her.
“Go right ahead, I’m experience at that – listening.”
Oh… strange thing to say. She took a breath and focused on getting her words out. “I always believed that the Goddess had been real, but like a lot of people it’s the ideals that matter. In Wicca - ”
“You’re a witch?”
“I’m a Wiccan,” Tara corrected. Who is also a witch…
“Isn’t that like, all women who don’t eat meat or shave their legs?” Buffy wondered.
She pressed her calves together beneath her skirt and found that, yes, she was a touch stubbly at the moment. But only since she’d never had much cause – either relationship or fashion based – to be strict about that. She shifted - uncomfortable to prove the assumption - but then ploughed onwards. “I enjoy a steak. But in Wicca, the Goddess is an ideal of our own empowerment. For some that’s about what you might call witchcraft but really it’s more about ritual magic. For others it’s the sisterhood.”
“Uh-uh. With you so far. Sisterhood. Empowerment.”
Tara could tell what she was thinking.
“Female power isn’t the same as… well, it’s not the same as being a lesbian,” she pointed out. She was quite content with her sexuality but she’d have to admit that since Momma died the other side of that statement had been lacking. “And Wicca isn’t an exclusively female thing anyway. Mostly, but not exclusively. There’s no reason it needs to be.”
“There are brothers in the sisterhood?”
“Umm, yeah.”
“And now this Goddess of yours is here…?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you, Tara,” Buffy said. “See – I got your name right. That’s how much I believe.You look honest, you don’t look insane and the ring bought you a lot of credit. I thanked you for that right? It’s going to do a lot of good for a friend of mine, but I’ve seen too much to think that some woman who walks up and claims to be a Roman Goddess is going to be the real thing. Most likely she’s running some sort of scam.”
“She has power,” Tara said. “I’ve seen it.”
“My friend can make a pencil spin in the air,” Buffy said, “Without touching it, I mean. It’s easy to be impressed by something like this.”
Tara clamped her mouth shut, mostly because she couldn’t prove what she was saying, but more because there was one, very good, reason that she didn’t want to admit what she knew about real power and why vampires and witches and demons didn’t shock her like they would most people.
If she didn’t – totally – trust the woman who now claimed to be the Goddess that she’d always been taught to revere the example of, well that meant she couldn’t just trust the Slayer either. Someone who might easily be sworn to do something about… Well, someone like her.
It sounded like the sort of thing a Slayer would be sworn to. Killing demons.
No one must know Tara, you know how they’ll treat you if they do.
But there had always been rumours about their family, more than a few whispers that had ascribed religious significance to the problem. Or at least religious fears.
Witches hadn’t just been hunted down in New England and the fear remained amongst those who practised that those days could come again… The tyranny of the intolerant.
Maybe in California, maybe here in Sunnydale, a girl could spin a pencil with just the power of her mind, but where she came from… that was something you kept to yourself and hid away in your room like your guiltiest secret. The only time you brought the magic out was around someone you could trust implicitly or when the need was really great and there was just no other way to do something really important and selfless.
That was what they said, that most of the women who’d been burned and persecuted hadn’t even been witches at all. Just people who knew to use the environment to heal or perhaps knew how to make the wrong enemies. In her cruder moments, Momma had suggested that as most were women there were a good portion of them who’d probably refused to open their legs. Either at all or to certain, powerful men.
The men and women who’d really had the power though… they’d gone underground quick enough or simply stopped practising.
Only letting their daughters in on the secret and then telling them not to show the world what they were unless the need was great. And why daughters? Why not sons?
Well, just look at Donny…
“Whoever this woman is, Tara,” Buffy said. “I don’t think she’s what she says she is. I’ve been wrong, I’ve been wrong plenty of times about what I know. But I’m usually right about what I feel… At least until a few days ago. Point is, if she’s a Goddess I’ll eat my shoe.”
“Wh-what is she then?”
“A demon perhaps?” Buffy suggested. Looking around for effect. “They can look like anything you know? Even a Goddess. Or… maybe us. There could be a demon in here right now and I wouldn’t necessarily have a clue.”
Tara tried very hard to keep her face neutral, not to either freeze up nor to run away. “There are sp-spells that can track a demon.”
“Really?” Buffy asked. “Wow. That could’ve made things so much easier the last few years. What was up with Will not knowing that?”
“It’s not something you just know,” Tara said. “A lot of what we used to know was lost… handed down from person to person, not in books.”
“I guess. Slayer lore too. There’s all this stuff I’m supposed to know, but I just lost it. Seemed easier somehow to hit, kick and stab things and then worry about the rest later.”
Tara smiled, using it to hide her concern. The conversation had taken a turn she’d vaguely feared but hadn’t thought would come about. That’d been short-sighted, obviously. It was like Daddy said, she always had to be on her guard. Especially when he wasn’t here to look out for her.
“You know, Tara, if this Goddess of yours is causing trouble then… might be I have to do something about it.”
“I-I think that if she’s causing trouble then you can probably rule out her being what I think she is.”
“I’m glad we understand each other.”
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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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