Laragh:
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This is so good. I love that it's unexpected for Kathryn as well. I can't wait to see a Maclay tag team to save Willow!
Oh yay, thank you!!
Wills-redemption:
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So Tara's mom is an escort service for the souls of dead witches?
Did she get bored in her Afterlife? Joke aside, I'm wondering whereto she escorts the souls.
Well, she'd dead, not a nun
She is escorting the witches to the Summerland, a Wiccan-y version of afterlife.
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So Tara gets her wish to "connect" with her mom fulfilled. The circumstances are certainly unexpected. Now hopefully Tara and her mom can bring both Willow and Tara herself safely back to the mortal world (and help all the "poltergeisty" panicking ghosts to get back onto the "right" side of the veil as well).
It is definitely unexpected, but Tara now gets to have some in-person time with her mom.
taranwillow4ever:
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Can't wait for Tara to see her mom. Maybe this will yield some closure and peace.
Thanks for feedbacking!!
Rating: PG (might change
)
Feedback: Yes please!!
Do I own the characters? Nope.
Distribution: please ask, but probably yes
Enjoy!
Ch 8
Surreal. It was all Buffy could think as she turned the corner from the alley onto Main Street. The humans, the ones alive, were predictably terrified, tripping over themselves, each other and anything in their way in a mad dash to get away. The dead skittered about in an agitated fugue, walking through objects and cars, some occupied, and overloading streetlights with an unworldly energy causing several to spark like tiny fireworks. And then, moving at a leisurely pace, eerily discordant to the chaos around them, vampires, approaching from all sides. It was every horror movie in real life 3-D.
Lucky for them, Buffy thought, I don’t do horror trope. She ran into the fray, her pinned red devil’s tail swishing against her thighs, gladiator boots clacking against the pavement. She’d thought the boots apropos and the costume ironic, now she was glad to have worn her peacoat over her outfit. Fighting in a skintight bodysuit, would be helpful actually, but embarrassing. At least she’d ditched the horns early on.
Her keen hearing caught the
woosh of an axe, and Buffy spun to see Xander hurtling toward a clump of vampires. Giles emerged from the Magic Box, sword in hand. Buffy gave him a single nod and turned into the fray. The gang was outnumbered, faced with at least twenty vamps. The fight was on.
Xander had killed two, one by luck. Giles had deftly defeated three, and Buffy had taken out five but now they were at a stalemate. Three children stood before them terrified, caught in the remaining vampires clutches, frightened tears fighting their way through oily Halloween make-up. Two adults, most likely the parents, were held off to the side by a pair of vampires in police uniform. They were fighting like hell, to no avail, but Buffy appreciated their moxie.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let them all go,” Buffy was using her best slayer voice, standing her best Slayer stance, trying to threaten her way to safety for the captured.
“You must be the Slayer,” a small but built vampire stepped out, running his yellowed gaze down then up Buffy’s form.
“The one and only-ish.”
“Nice outfit,” he leered, gesturing to the gap in Buffy’s coat, “you feeling devil-ish tonight?”
“Just wicked enough to kick your ass,” the Slayer quipped, trying desperately to both look confident and hastily re-button her coat. “And it’s Halloween, moron, rules say you take the night off.”
The vampire sent a knowing look to his brethren, receiving chuckles and grunts in reply. “Oh yes, the rules,” he drew out the last word, stretching it until it lost meaning. “Mortal hang-ups. We’ve been shown there is a better path, one that represents our true nature.”
“Delusion?”
“Chaos.” the vamp announced, grandstanding like he’d found religion.
Buffy sent a glance at Giles and found he was already looking at her with a mix of alarm and exasperation. They’d reached the same conclusion.
………………………………...
Ch 9
First there was the door, a glowing rectangle in green. Within her mind’s eye, she had stepped through, her astral body following the visualization, crossing the planes. It had taken Tara years to get over the panic of feeling disembodied, of knowing her body lay without its essence. Now, driven with purpose, she had only a vague awareness of it, on the rooftop, sprawled next to Willow’s form, watched over by Dawn.
She passed into mist, so thick and dull that Tara it took moments for her eyes to adjust. She stepped forward onto mossy green. Felt her weight sink slightly into the moist ground. She prepared herself to move, and then she heard her name being called.
It wasn’t the voice she was looking for, but she knew it just as well. Her heart pounded even as her mind went blank, unable to comprehend beyond that flash of recognition. Her ears rang and her eyes unfocused until the sound of her being called again beckoned her.
“Tara?”
Through the fog, her blue eyes found the blue-gray of her mother’s and a sob tore from her throat. “Mama?”
Tara ran toward her mother, tears flowing freely, stopping abruptly when her mother stepped back, hands raised in warning.
“Mom?” Tara questioned, her expressive face revealing her confusion.
“Oh, my Tara. My precious girl.” Kathryn soothed.
Tara ached to be held by those strong arms, and though her mind had already deduced that something about this place forbade contact, her voice hitched in disappointment. “I can’t touch you.”
“Not while the veil is closed it’s not safe for you, oh Tara you shouldn’t be here.”
Tara felt her throat close, the sound of the tentative, apologetic warning bringing unwanted memories of a mother who had only been trying to protect her. She shook her head, clearing the thoughts, focusing on the present. Her mother was trying to keep her safe now too, but Tara didn’t care about safe, she cared about finding Willow. Tara looked into her mother’s eyes conveying through her gaze endless love and steely determination. “I have to find someone.”
Tara watched the skin knit between Kathryn’s brow, as if something had just occurred to her.
“How did you cross?”
“A friend,” Tara rushed, “please Mom, I need to find Willow.”
Tara’s steady confidence drew a small smile from Kathryn, thoughtful and proud. Studying her daughter for a moment more, Kathryn gestured for Tara to follow.
“Of course. She’s here.”
“She’s here? Is she okay?” Tara pleaded, searching the surroundings wildly. Kathryn nodded her head in the direction of the copse of trees, appearing merely like distant shadows within the fog. Tara fell into a nervous, quick step beside her.
“Come, she’s this way.”
“Mom? Is she okay?” Tara asked again, firmer this time. Her face paled when she saw Kathryn tighten her lips as if trying to delay the words.
“She needs to cross back, her energy is depleted. Tara, " Kathryn paused thoughtfully, "your Willow? Where does she get her source?”
Two things caused Tara’s heart to thud in her chest. Her mother saying ‘your Willow’ being the first. Tara wasn’t surprised that Kathryn knew, she had always been highly empathic, supernaturally tuned in to people’s emotions. But that her mother had met her love caused waves of thrumming joy through her body.
The other was the question. Her mother had been very strict on sources, teaching Tara carefully to only draw from nature. Tara had tried to interest Willow in working that way, but Willow was so innately powerful and good, that Tara had accepted that there were other ways, other sources just as safe. A thousand doubts flooded her, “Sh- she um, she’s self-taught, and has a l-lot of n-natural power.”
Hearing Tara’s pained stammer, Kathryn nearly reached out, wanting to hold and comfort her daughter. Instead, she cupped her hand around Tara’s cheek, a hair’s breadth of air separating contact. She smiled wistfully, “Tara, darling, I ask because there is a tree here. It’s roots connect the worlds and for sensitives, witches, it serves as a source of energy. But only if one has made connection with the earth.”
Tara looked at the ground beneath her, mist floating around her feet, “It’s not helping?”
“Not enough, we need to get her back. Soon.”
The seriousness of her mother’s tone sparked Tara's determination again and a fire lit in eyes, this wasn’t the end.
“Then we will.”
Tara ran toward the copse of trees, she couldn’t feel Willow here, but her heart knew exactly where to go.