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beer_good_foamyWelcome To The Slaughterhouse - Part 2 of the annotated version (chapters 6-8)
Continued from here.
Chapter 6: Squeal Like A Pig
Chapter title from the movie Deliverance. You know, the one with the banjo and the canoes.
"No, Pa, PLEASE, LET HER GO!"
As Willow was dragged along the corridor, from behind her she heard Tara's father slam the door and Tara scream and she wanted to reply, tell Tara not to worry, she'd be back as soon as she could, but Donnie's hand over her mouth made it impossible. She tried to get loose, but it seemed Tara’s brother had done this sort of thing before; somehow he'd manage to grab her in a way that locked both her arms and kept her just enough off balance so she couldn't kick.
"You take good care of our guest, now, son", Tara's father called out as he went into one of the other rooms.
"You got it, Pa."
Willow bristled, too angry to be scared. Oooh, just you wait until I come back with Buffy. You'll wish you... hey, why are we going UPstairs?
Tara's half-hearted attempt to tell Willow exactly what her family is about... well, as much as Willow dislikes her in-laws, she's hardly going to expect to get executed and eaten.
Indeed, instead of taking her downstairs and throwing her out, Donnie was now pulling her up a rickety staircase at the end of the hallway. Just what the heck was
(my family, they're... they're dangerous)
going on here? Half-fullness of glass: rickety staircases have railings. She hooked her feet around one of the posts and yanked as hard as she could as Donnie pulled her in the other direction, forcing him off balance, and as he shifted his grip she bit down hard on his hand.
"OW! You fuckin' bitch!"
He lost his hold and she got free, but before she could get away he kicked her hard in the ass and she went tumbling down the steps. She hit her head and within seconds he was on her again, pinning her down.
"OK, nice try, girly, I'll give ya that. Guess that answers who wears the pants between you and my sis. Ya smack her around too? She likes that, 's I recall. Least I never heard her complain."
Back to the "smack her til she thanks you" thing from chapter 1. And again, please believe me when I say writing stuff like this squicks me more than the big gory finale did. Are we hating Donnie yet?
Willow stared up at him, furious. "Then I guess when Buffy gets here, we'll see if it's a family trait."
"Buffy?" Donnie grinned. "That the li'l blonde? Because if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath. My brother done took care of her. Said she had a big knife or somethin' and still put up less of a fight than you're doing right now. But enough talkin', dontchathink?"
"Wha...?" Willow's head was already spinning when he punched her, and she didn't struggle when he started dragging her back up the stairs by her upper arm. He's lying. He's gotta be. OK, so Buffy wasn't taking this very seriously, but still...
This is supposed to be violent, physical. After all, it's about meat.
Donnie still kept talking. "Now, I seem to recall invitin' you over for dinner earlier, and no one's goin' to say we don't take care of our guests here. We been in the meat trade for generations, and we never really bought into all them modern methods they use in the slaughterhouses these days... prefer to do it the ol-fashioned way. 'Course, since the cows died, we have to make do with whatever meat we can find..."
They reached the top of the stairs, another corridor with a couple of doors, and Donnie's talking trailed off as he noticed Willow dizzily fumbling with something in her pocket. "Whatcha got there?" He yanked her hand out and forced it open. The doll's eye crystal.
Hellooo Mr McGuffin.
"Hey! Where the fuck d'ya get this? This was my mom's!" He backhanded her painfully into one of the walls. "You a thief too, huh? I guess I'm really going to enjoy this. HEY! OLD MAN! WAKE UP!" Donnie grabbed her again, kicking one of the doors open. "Hey Grandpa, we're gonna let you have this one!"
Which is a TCM quote to introduce another character straight out of TCM: Grandpa, the near-mummy.
The stench in the small room he dragged Willow into was overpowering, making her gag. Her first thought was that it had to come from the corpse sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, but then it... he lifted his head and she realized that though the man was ancient, dirty and seemingly barely conscious of his surroundings, he wasn't quite dead. The best proof of this being that the stench came from him sitting in several weeks' worth of his own filth.
Donnie followed her gaze. "Yeah, no one can really be bothered to help him with that. That'll be your girlfriend's job once everything's back to normal. First I'll let you two get acquainted — don't worry, it's been a while, but Grandpa's still the best the slaughterhouse ever had. It won't hurt... much." He ran his fingers through her hair almost tenderly, stopping at the back of her neck. "Right here. Right above the brainstem. One crack o' the hammer and you'll be out like a light." This, of course, is where Willow started struggling and screaming for help, which only earned her another suckerpunch. Donnie put his hand over her mouth and held on to her as he dragged a large metal bucket towards the chair with his foot, picked up a small sledgehammer from it which he handed to the old man and then bent her over the bucket. "Show'er how it's done, Grandpa! Bash the bitch's head in and I'll make sure you get the best bits!"
The senile old man looked at the scene in front of him with dull eyes, not seeming to comprehend. He dropped the hammer once and Donnie had to hand it to him again. He swung feebly, only brushing against Willow's head, but on the third attempt he actually managed to land a decent hit... on Donnie's hand. The young man yelped in surprise and let go of Willow for an instant that she did not waste; she managed to worm free and as she scrambled backwards, her hand found something that had fallen on the floor.
The crystal.
Willow grabbed it and struck out at Donnie's face as he advanced on her, jamming it as hard as she could into his eye, feeling something pop and a warm liquid spurt out over her hand. The noise that came out of his throat started out as a puzzled "Huh?" and quickly mutated into a high-pitched wail as he fumbled blindly for her and toppled backwards, head-first into the bucket.
Go Willow.
Something about the sound woke up old memories in his grandfather's cobwebbed brain. How he'd started out slaughtering pigs for his old man way back during the depression... somehow it seemed like only yesterday. The way the sun had beat down on his tanned skin, the way his muscles had ached after working for twelve hours straight, the way the pigs would always squeal in terror as they were held down, and then you'd just grab the hammer hard and... The hammer came down with force this time, cracking Donnie's skull like an egg. Maclay Senior blinked in confusion as a jet of blood hit him square in the face, then licked his lips, relishing the taste.
I love this bit. Very gratifying to write. Felt like taking a shower. Goodbyeee Donnie.
For a few seconds Willow could only stare at the scene - the blood, the shit, Donnie's right foot twitching like a dying fish. Then she stumbled to her feet and didn't look back, just tore out into the hallway and down the stairs to Tara's room. She tried the handle, but the door was securely locked. "Tara?"
In her room, Tara jumped to her feet and ran to the door. "Willow? Oh thank Goddess, are you OK?"
"I..." Willow shook her head, feeling like she'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. "I think so. Do you know where your Dad keeps the key to this door? Because I could try and break it down, but-"
"NO!" Tara thought she could feel her heart actually physically breaking, but she just couldn't bear the idea of Willow staying in this house a second longer. "Just go, Will, please, get out of here before they get a hold of you again. They won't hurt me any worse than they already have, but you they'd... please, just GO!"
Willow heard a door open further down the corridor, and for the first time she allowed herself to think rationally of what was happening. They had tried to kill her, actually really murder her, and... she clenched her teeth and pounded her fist on the door. "I'll be back, Tara. I'll get help and come back. I-I love you."
"I love you too, Will... so much... but please..."
A bit sugary perhaps, but hey, considering what I do to them before it's over...
And Willow was off towards the staircase leading down, trying to come up with a plan as she ran. Get outside. Get rid of the protection spell. Get Buffy, or Xander, or Giles. Get back in. Get Tara. Get her out. Get even.
Willow, the boss of us.
She still held on to the slimy crystal, feeling the power it held, both her own and Tara’s mother’s. As she half-ran, half-stumbled down the dark stairs she saw someone coming out into the hallway below, and as the other person stepped into the light of the single lightbulb down there and his face became visible, she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Xander, thank God! Come on, we have to get Ta..."
She froze. The figure in front of her definitely had Xander's face, but there was something... off about it.
"Off" indeed. As in "cut". Leatherface with Xander's face on him is a bit... ghaaa. Hopefully.
And his body. And the fact that he was wearing a red-soaked butcher's apron and carrying a huge knife... She went white as a sheet as she realized that the only Xanderness about the man blocking her way out of the house was her best friend's face, worn like an ill-fitting halloween mask over the big man's own, a stranger's eyes glaring at her through two empty holes where Xander’s eyes should be. Unsure if she was screaming, cursing or simply whimpering she ran for the door, trying to duck around the man who wailed some gibberish and struck out with the knife. Willow felt an intense pain in her stomach, did a full 360 on one of her heels before getting some kind of balance and darting out onto the porch, down the steps and finally hitting the ground hard out on the driveway.
Xander gets the hammer, Anya gets the hook, Buffy the chainsaw and Willow gets knifed.
No, there's no point to that.I just like hurting people. Just keeping score, is all.
She tried to get up, but the pain was too much; putting her hand to her belly she felt something warm, sticky and snakelike coming out and instinctively tried to push it back in as she struggled to remember what it was she was supposed to be doing, it was something important, what was it what was it what was it...
You can't write splatter and NOT have a scene in which someone is trying to hold their guts in with their hands. It's the law.
She raised her eyes and looked up, seeing a dark window on the second floor. She hoped it was Tara's window and raised the hand not holding her guts in to it, as if to wave goodbye. The crystal grasped tightly in it began to glow and she remembered why she had been in such a hurry.
"Solvere."
Willow gasped the word, almost inaudible, as if her body thought it was the last breath it would ever take and didn't want to let it out. The crystal glowed stronger, shone bright for a second, then blinked out again. And everything went dark.
Tara's mother helping out a bit from beyond the grave, lifting her own spell. Originally, this was going to be Willow's big death scene, but... I realized I was running out of Scoobies, and at this rate I wouldn't have any left to kill the bad guys. So this scene is deliberately vague.
Chapter 7: Protection
Chapter title: Massive Attack song. And so...
"But if you hurt what's mine
I'll sure as hell retaliate"
- Massive Attack
Massive Attack used to be so good. What happened? Bring Mushroom back!
After Willow ran off Tara sank to the floor, leaned her back against the doorframe and closed her eyes. She heard her girlfriend's footsteps disappear down the hall and fade away, and then she was once again completely alone.
The walls were thick in this house. For most of her childhood, that had been a source of comfort, something that made it possible to sleep; few of the screams from downstairs got in, and none of the sobs from in here got out. Now it felt like a curse — anything could be happening to Willow just downstairs and she wouldn't hear it, wouldn't know, wouldn't be able to help in any way. She couldn't handle that. She had to do something.
Crossing her legs and straightening her back, Tara tried to focus. She'd read lots of different protection spells over the years; some which were supposed to work, others which had not worked for centuries... she was too upset to recall any of them word for word, but of course magic didn't work in this house anyway as long as her mother's curse was still upon it, and as far as Tara knew that hadn't changed.
Of course, it has been lifted.
But maybe prayers did.
I'm vague on this. What, technically, is the difference between a prayer and a spell? You call upon a supernatural being to do you a favour... OK, not wanting to get into a religious debate.
And so she improvised, mixing in bits and pieces of protection spells while calling on any reasonably benevolent Goddess she could think of — Isis, Artemis, Freya, Demeter, Minerva, Lakshmi... praying, pleading, begging, demanding, promising to do anything; to sacrifice, to give back to the Earth, even to stay here and take care of her family forever... just as long as Willow was safe from harm tonight.
Tara makes a big promise here, and of course she ends up keeping it. And "Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight" is from Massive Attack's "Protection", of course.
* * *
Dawn awoke from unconsciousness slowly, as if drifting up from deep underwater. Even after she was fully awake, it was a long time before her shell-shocked brain remembered how to move her muscles. She looked at her surroundings; a dark basement, reeking of things she didn't want to think about, all sorts of junk strewn around... she wasn't tied up, but the door looked pretty tough. And of course, in one corner, there was Giles hunched over Willow's body. Dawn watched them for several minutes before she spoke. "Is she alive?"
Dawn, of course, is a bit thrown by having her sister filéd.
Giles had checked Willow’s pulse at least a dozen times in the first hour after they threw her in with him and Dawn, but in the last two hours he hadn’t dared to. Now he steeled himself and once again put his fingers on her neck. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. "She’s fine." That was a lie, of course; apart from the very faint pulse, the hardly noticeable breath she'd draw now and then, and the steel grip she still held on a small bloodied object in her hand, Willow lay perfectly still and might as well be...
"She doesn’t look fine. She looks dead." Dawn's voice was oddly flat when she scooted over to Willow’s side. Before Giles could stop her, she lifted the blood-soaked shirt he had wrapped around the deathly pale redhead's belly. "Yup. Dead. No way she'll survive that."
Giles couldn't really disagree; after all, he could see right into Willow's innards, she had lost a huge amount of blood and he supposed she was slipping into coma territory; he honestly couldn't understand why she hadn't died hours ago.
Whaddyaknow, one of Tara's spells must have done something... Willow's not at all doing well, but she's in sort of suspended animation or something.
Still, part of him wanted to scream at Dawn for speaking so bluntly; while he'd been keeping watch over Willow, doing all he could (though it wasn't much) to keep her alive, that... THING masquerading as Buffy's sister had just been lying unconscious in a corner.
Oh yeah, that's right, Giles is currently the only person in the world who knows Dawn is Da Key. That must mean he will live a long and healthy life, right?
And to add to his grief and confusion, part of him had been just as afraid for her as he was for Willow; after all, he had five years' worth of memories of Dawn growing up, and knowing they were false didn't mean they felt any less real. Until three days ago, he had thought of Dawn as one of his
(children)
charges, and as much as the Watcher in him wanted to look at her objectively as just another mission, the man in him couldn't. He bit back on his angry reply, gently re-dressed Willow's wound and then turned to Dawn. "How are you feeling?"
I'm pretty satisfied with this whole exchange, two very traumatized people. And also, let's play up Giles' father role.
Dawn was still staring at Willow as if looking right through her, and now she hugged her own knees and rocked gently back and forth. "She's always taken care of me, Giles. My whole life. I was always so mean to her and she always took care of me and I-I was yelling at her and telling her she was going to get us killed and then I ran away and now she's dead and it's all my fault and I couldn't help her and she's dead and now we're all-"
"Dawn... what are you talking about?" Giles put his hands on the teen's shoulders to try and soothe her before she became completely hysterical. "She is not dead. We need to get her to a hospital soon, but if she's made it this long I'm sure she'll be fine." He didn't believe that himself, but he took Dawn's hand and placed her fingertips on Willow's neck. "See? She's alive."
"Not her. Buffy." Dawn looked as if she had just had to explain to him that 2+2=4. "Buffy's dead."
For the longest while Giles just stared at her. "No." He shook his head. "You're lying." He'd seen Dawn tell lies enough times
(no you haven't)
to know that she was telling the truth now, but he refused to believe it. "You're LYING!"
If Dawn felt him grabbing her harder and shaking her, she didn't show it. She just kept staring past him, sobbing and almost giggling with terror. "Big chainsaw. Wrrooooom. Can't get any deader than that. She screamed, Giles, she screamed, it hurt so bad that she screamed and I couldn't help her, I ran..."
If there had been any doubt in his mind that Dawn was telling the truth, he knew now. Maybe he'd known on some level ever since he and Willow heard the scream last night, but... before he realized what he was doing he had slapped Dawn. He wanted to hurt her, to expose her for the lie she was. "Shut up. Shut up. You don't get to... you're not even... you're just..." But when he looked into her shocked eyes he couldn't bring himself to say it. As it turned out, he didn't have time anyway.
"Spare the rod, spoil the child." They both looked up to see Tara's father standing in the doorway, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands and looking like he hadn't slept a wink; hair on end, murderous calm in his bloodshot eyes. "Glad to see you at least know how to discipline your daughter." He pointed to Willow. "She still alive?"
Giles judged the distance to the door; no way he could get to the man before he had time to turn the gun on him. "Yes."
"Good for you. That means you get to live until she's out of the woods, and you better pray hard she makes it. I take no pleasure in killin', there's just some things you gotta do, don't mean you have to like it..."
TCM quote.
Mr Maclay spoke through gritted teeth, but then his composure suddenly vanished as he pointed to Willow, his face a mask of grief and fury. "But that little WHORE killed my SON! As if it wasn't enough for her to corrupt my daughter... dying's too good for her! As God is my witness, she's going to suffer for a long time before I put her out of her misery and send her to the hell where she belongs!"
In the interest of fairness, I tried to portray Mr Maclay as actually in some pretty heavy grief here. I hope no one's feeling sorry for him. But just to make sure of that... let's throw some hints of pedophilia into the mix as well.
Calming down somewhat, he turned to Dawn. "As for you, though, young lady... we were going to keep you. Donnie is... was looking for a wife, and he thought you'd make a good one. Of course, now that he's... he's... we don't really have any use for you. BUBBA!"
The doorway darkened as Leatherface entered, a sledgehammer in his hand. His father pointed to Dawn while keeping the shotgun aimed at Willow and Giles. "Kill her."
Seeing Buffy's killer coming towards her, Dawn lost it completely. She scrambled madly backwards on all fours, screaming, pleading and whimpering, unable to form a coherent thought. Leatherface raised his hammer... and then stopped and lowered it again, as if confused.
Canon is key, but keys are canon.
His father cleared his throat. "Bubba, you know I don't like repeating myself." Leatherface answered in an anxious stream of gibberish that only served to anger Mr Maclay further. "What do you mean 'pretty green glow'? KILL the little bitch!" He walked up to Leatherface and slapped him hard. "I thought I'd beaten that nonsense out of you years ago. As long as you're under my roof you live by my rules, and when I tell you to kill, you kill!"
Starting to hint that, well, just because Leatherface is an insane killer doesn't necessarily mean he's not a victim in some way.
Leatherface cowered and didn't meet his father's stare, looked at Dawn as if in awe and still refused to go any closer to her. Furious, Mr Maclay slapped him again. "You're useless! Get out of here, go make dinner or something. I'm ashamed to call you my son." As Leatherface slinked out of the basement, his father cocked the shotgun and pointed it at Dawn. "That's family for you, always a disappointment. If you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself."
But he had taken his eyes off Giles. And when the Brit got to his feet, it wasn't as a Watcher trying to protect a mystical Key; Watchers aren't supposed to be soldiers or bodyguards, not supposed to throw themselves in front of guns. Watchers take care of their Slayers, teach them, keep them in the game until they die, and then their job is done.
A father's job, on the other hand, is never done as long as one of his children is alive, and adopted fathers are no different. Giles tackled Maclay head-on and Dawn kept screaming as the gun went off and she was splattered with both men's blood.
Chapter 8: Nobody Messes With My Girl
Chapter title: Tara's words upon saving Willow's life in "Bargaining".
At some point, Tara's prayers faded and she leaned back against the door, drifting off to tired half-sleep and a dream...
This little flashback is slightly misplaced, but... it serves a few purposes. First, another Faith misdirect. I mention Faith and Riley a few times, trying to keep them in people's minds and hope for a deus ex machina savior to show up at the last second (which, of course, would make this even more anti-Joss than it already is, haha). Second, make Buffy a little more likable (retroactively) as I had her a bit too take-chargy earlier. Third, underline Dawn's neediness. Fourth, establish just how much Willow doesn't know about how tough it must be to grow up in an abusive family – say, a gang of cannibals. Fifth, hey, anything for a pre-s5 Dawn memory.
Everyone stopped talking and Xander scooted over on the couch as Buffy came back into Giles' living room. "So, what's the news from LA, Buff?"
The Slayer plopped down beside him, shifting uncomfortably and not meeting anyone’s eyes. "25 to life. She pleaded guilty to everything."
The gang took this in in silence, except Dawn who sat up straight. "25 years? That's it? Faith gets to kill a bunch of people and she's out before she's Mom's age?"
"They said there were, uh, midisomething circumstances." Buffy kept fidgeting with the portable phone. "There was some stuff... about her childhood."
Buffy never gets the big words right. Also, I like the idea of Buffy, who never really quite has gotten out of the "Faith is the bad one" mindset, would get some really scary facts about Faith served up – and no, I'm not going into details; it's not important to the story, so let's leave it vague and have the readers fill in the blanks themselves – and being really shook up by it.
"Oh dear." Giles looked at her with concern. "Did they say-"
"I'll tell you later." Buffy very obviously avoided looking at her little sister, who rolled her eyes and snorted with derision.
Tara wasn't surprised but still cringed inside when Willow mirrored Dawn's reaction. "I'm sorry, but I officially don't care. If you're old enough to kill people, you're old enough to take responsibility for it yourself instead of blaming it on 'Mwaaah, my parents didn't love me'. I say good riddance to her."
Willow doesn't like Faith. At all.
Buffy didn’t answer. Tara still was not completely clear all that had happened between the two Slayers — Faith was a very sore spot with Willow — but the tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. "Buffy? A-are you OK?"
For a few seconds, Buffy just kept staring at her hands. Then she looked up at her watcher. "Giles, you have to talk to the council. I mean, if something happens to me... there has to be a Slayer, and no matter what Faith did, I don't want them to..."
It's one of the bigger plot holes of the Buffyverse, IMO (not that I mind it, I love Faith, but I can't explain it). Faith, the active Slayer, spends 8 months in a coma and then 3 years in jail; as far as we know, the big bad council makes not ONE attempt to bump her off except during the few days she's out running around.
Giles put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll try. I don't know if I have any pull with them anymore, but I'll try."
"What do you mean ‘if something happens’?" Dawn cut in. "Nothing happens to you, you’re the Slayer."
"No I’m not." Buffy finally looked at her sister. "Dawnie, I haven't been THE Slayer in three years. I'm a... a... parrot box?"
"Paradox." Giles corrected her automatically.
"Right. I did my time and the line passed to Kendra. If I die —"
"You're not going to die!" Dawn's volume knob was turned up to about eight now, and all treble and tremble.
"If I die again, Dawn, we can't be sure that anyone takes my place. The only way there’ll be a Slayer then is either if they let Faith out or if they... and they've tried to kill her before."
"So have you!" The thirteen-year-old, very upset by now, didn’t sound like she thought this was a particularly bad idea. "The heck with Faith, Buffy, you’re the Slayer and you're not going to die, so stop talking about-"
Buffy put her hands over her ears. "GOD, Dawnie, shut UP! You're the only person I know who can whine in frequencies that only dogs can hear!"
Which is a nice segue into...
Tara awoke knowing it wasn’t a dream. That exact scene had taken place about a week after the scoobies had defeated Adam, and had been one of few bleak spots on an otherwise blissful summer; she and Willow had had their first almost-spat afterwards when Tara had suggested that maybe Willow didn't have to spend the whole day reciting The Evil Deeds Of Faith, Parts I-XXV, and that sometimes there could be more to it than just "my parents didn't love me" — something Willow had refused to even discuss. And Dawn had sulked for days even though no one brought up the possibility of Buffy maybe not living to 106 around her again.
I'm not 100% sure anymore, but I think the figure 106 may come from a character in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. Not the most pop of pop culture references, but hey.
Tara hadn't thought about it since, but the dream was vivid — so vivid, in fact, she thought she could still hear Dawn pleading hysterically.
Then she sat up straight from where she'd fallen asleep by the door and realized it wasn't the dream. The wails were coming from inside the house — very faint, separated from her by a couple of thick walls, but loud and high-pitched enough that she could just about recognize them. Dawn was here, she was in trouble, and Tara was locked in here, helpless... BANG. She pounded her fist against the door in frustration. "Gods damn you, OPEN!"
I think that counts as a spell, don't you?
There was a crack of splintering wood as the door flew open so fast that it ripped loose of its hinges and crashed into the opposite side of the hallway. One of the hinges did several surprised turns in the air before falling to the floor.
Tara got to her feet, staring in disbelief at the doorway. How...? She pointed at the fallen hinge. "Levitare." It rose off the carpet, hovering in mid-air until she let it drop again.
The protection spell was lifted.
And with the door gone, Tara could hear Dawn's sobbing cries from the basement clearly and didn't hesitate. She had gotten halfway down the stairs when she heard the noise of the old rusty meatgrinder; her brother was busy in the kitchen, which meant he wouldn't be paying attention to much else.
That's Buffy in the grinder, btw.
Good. But that still meant she might have to get persuasive with her father and Donnie, and she had never learned much in the way of fighting magic. She needed protection... her eyes fell on something sitting on top of the table in the hallway. Oh yes. That should do.
Chainsaw!Tara makes me happy.
* * *
In the basement, Dawn slowly managed to get a hold of herself and crept over to the two men lying still on top of each other. The pool of red that had formed around them was seeping slowly into the dirt floor. "Giles?" She grabbed the Englishman by the shoulder and shook him. "Giles, come o-" Then she yelped as Giles' body rolled over on its back, his unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling and blood trickling listlessly from the gaping red maw in his chest. The shotgun blast had more or less obliterated the left half of his chest and even though Dawn managed to look away, the image — bone fragments, flesh, blood around the hole in his undershirt — was burned into her eyes. Whimpering, she started crawling towards Willow, who had remained perfectly still throughout the whole thing, when she heard a wet cough behind her.
"Giles?" She turned around, hoping against hope. No, not Giles. At least part of the shotgun blast had hit the Texan and he was bleeding badly from his side and his left arm, but Mr Maclay was coming to, already fumbling for the gun. Dawn tried to get up, but her legs seemed to have gone on strike and wouldn't obey her.
No, I have no idea if it's technically possible for two people struggling for control of a sawed-off shotgun to both get hit by the same blast. In my Buffyverse, it is.
"You... little... bitch." Maclay panted as he sat halfway up against the wall, cracked the shotgun open and started rifling through his pockets for shells. "You'll pay for that." One of the shells fell out of his hand and Dawn watched it bounce a couple of times and then roll towards her. She stared curiously as it came to a halt against her foot, then slowly reached out and grasped it, holding it up to her eyes. She'd never seen a bullet of any kind before. Could something as toy-looking as this really be dangerous? Could something like this really have killed Giles?
Apart from the fact that I like this scene – sort of a little oasis of horrified serenity in the middle of all the gore – it's a very vague foreshadow of the alternate ending. Maybe.
"Yeah. You just hang on to that, if you think it'll do you any good." Maclay managed to load the shotgun. With a grunt of pain he snapped it shut, used it as a cane to raise himself to his knees and started turning it towards Dawn. "If you're the praying sort, now would be-" Then he froze as he felt the blade of the chainsaw against his neck.
"P-p-put the g-gun down, Pa." Tara was standing behind him, all white-knuckled hands and trembling muscles as she held up the heavy chainsaw.
Tara is stuttering again. Hey, she's standing up to her father and is threatening to chainsaw his head off; who wouldn't stutter in that situation?
Her father coughed and spat a red-tinged blob on the floor, but sounded as assertive as ever when he spoke. "Don't be silly, Tara. You don't even know how to work that thing."
She put her hand on the clutch, pulled the strap and the well-oiled engine roared to life. All she had to do now was literally lift a finger and the blade would start spinning. "Th-think so? I spent 18 years in this house, P-pa. I pick things up. Now put the gun d-DOWN!"
Well, she's literally picked the chainsaw up... and also, of course, picking up the family tradition.
Maclay swallowed as the blade poked him a little extra in the neck; after all, he was probably one of the world's leading experts on how much damage a chainsaw could do to a person. But he didn't lower the gun. "Tara.. I know you and I know you're not going to do this. I'm your father. For eighteen years your family has taken care of you, supported you, fed you —"
"On human flesh, Pa!"
Start with a quote from "Family", end on the image of Tara chowing down on an unsuspecting tourist... I get my kicks on route 66.
Her father's voice had grown softer, almost tender. "I did what I had to to take care of you. And then you fell in with the wrong crowd and they've made you forget who you really are, turned you against your own family... but I forgive you, and like the prodigal son, I welcome you back with open arms. I can make it better." He patted the shotgun. "It'll be just like ripping off a band-aid, Tara, it hurts for a second and then we can go back to when everything was good."
The idea that maybe, in his sick way, he really does care for his children. And honestly believes he's doing what's best for them.
There was no telling if the noise that escaped Tara's lips was a sob or a bitter laugh. "When was it ever good, Pa? When you beat Mom, or when you and Donnie beat me? When you tortured Bubba for years for being retarded? When you had him kill all those people?"
Pointing out, again, that Leatherface isn't the favourite son.
"I-I-I'm not perfect, Tara. I know that. I'm just a lowly sinner like everyone else. But you were always the best of us, and now that you've been returned to me I know you don't have it in you. 'And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry.' You will put the saw away, Tara, you will let me deal with this, and then we will be alright again."
Quoting Luke 15:23 – the aforementioned prodigal son.
Tara's hands were shaking, her vision was blurred with tears and the saw seemed to weigh a ton. She almost let it drop. But when she looked at Dawn, crumbled up in fear, and Willow lying there as if dead, she shook her head and held it tighter and there was no stutter when she spoke again. "No. I made a promise last night to take care of my family. And you're no longer a part of that, P... Eugene. So just put the gun down. Please, I-I don't want to do this..."
"Eugene"? Well, why not. This is, of course, much the same payoff as the end of "Family"; Tara being accepted by the rest of the scoobies (of which there are a lot fewer now, of course) as part of that family rather than the one she happened to be born into. Except in this case the other way around; Tara needs to take that step herself, more assertive than on the show. Her father isn't "Pa" anymore; he's just another adult.
"I'm sorry, Tara. But I know that once they're gone you'll see things clearer."
The rest was a blur as everything happened at once. Eugene Maclay swung the shotgun towards Willow. Tara may have cried out something, but if she did it was drowned in the roar of the chainsaw as she released the clutch. Her arms shook wildly as the saw met resistance and something warm and sticky sprayed across her dress. There was a thud as something round hit the floor and bounced off into a corner. Then Tara turned off the chainsaw and there was deafening silence for a few seconds before she fell to her knees and threw up violently over her father's twitching corpse.
There's a sentence you don't get to write every day.
Continued here.
Continued from here.
Chapter 6: Squeal Like A Pig
Chapter title from the movie Deliverance. You know, the one with the banjo and the canoes.
"No, Pa, PLEASE, LET HER GO!"
As Willow was dragged along the corridor, from behind her she heard Tara's father slam the door and Tara scream and she wanted to reply, tell Tara not to worry, she'd be back as soon as she could, but Donnie's hand over her mouth made it impossible. She tried to get loose, but it seemed Tara’s brother had done this sort of thing before; somehow he'd manage to grab her in a way that locked both her arms and kept her just enough off balance so she couldn't kick.
"You take good care of our guest, now, son", Tara's father called out as he went into one of the other rooms.
"You got it, Pa."
Willow bristled, too angry to be scared. Oooh, just you wait until I come back with Buffy. You'll wish you... hey, why are we going UPstairs?
Tara's half-hearted attempt to tell Willow exactly what her family is about... well, as much as Willow dislikes her in-laws, she's hardly going to expect to get executed and eaten.
Indeed, instead of taking her downstairs and throwing her out, Donnie was now pulling her up a rickety staircase at the end of the hallway. Just what the heck was
(my family, they're... they're dangerous)
going on here? Half-fullness of glass: rickety staircases have railings. She hooked her feet around one of the posts and yanked as hard as she could as Donnie pulled her in the other direction, forcing him off balance, and as he shifted his grip she bit down hard on his hand.
"OW! You fuckin' bitch!"
He lost his hold and she got free, but before she could get away he kicked her hard in the ass and she went tumbling down the steps. She hit her head and within seconds he was on her again, pinning her down.
"OK, nice try, girly, I'll give ya that. Guess that answers who wears the pants between you and my sis. Ya smack her around too? She likes that, 's I recall. Least I never heard her complain."
Back to the "smack her til she thanks you" thing from chapter 1. And again, please believe me when I say writing stuff like this squicks me more than the big gory finale did. Are we hating Donnie yet?
Willow stared up at him, furious. "Then I guess when Buffy gets here, we'll see if it's a family trait."
"Buffy?" Donnie grinned. "That the li'l blonde? Because if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath. My brother done took care of her. Said she had a big knife or somethin' and still put up less of a fight than you're doing right now. But enough talkin', dontchathink?"
"Wha...?" Willow's head was already spinning when he punched her, and she didn't struggle when he started dragging her back up the stairs by her upper arm. He's lying. He's gotta be. OK, so Buffy wasn't taking this very seriously, but still...
This is supposed to be violent, physical. After all, it's about meat.
Donnie still kept talking. "Now, I seem to recall invitin' you over for dinner earlier, and no one's goin' to say we don't take care of our guests here. We been in the meat trade for generations, and we never really bought into all them modern methods they use in the slaughterhouses these days... prefer to do it the ol-fashioned way. 'Course, since the cows died, we have to make do with whatever meat we can find..."
They reached the top of the stairs, another corridor with a couple of doors, and Donnie's talking trailed off as he noticed Willow dizzily fumbling with something in her pocket. "Whatcha got there?" He yanked her hand out and forced it open. The doll's eye crystal.
Hellooo Mr McGuffin.
"Hey! Where the fuck d'ya get this? This was my mom's!" He backhanded her painfully into one of the walls. "You a thief too, huh? I guess I'm really going to enjoy this. HEY! OLD MAN! WAKE UP!" Donnie grabbed her again, kicking one of the doors open. "Hey Grandpa, we're gonna let you have this one!"
Which is a TCM quote to introduce another character straight out of TCM: Grandpa, the near-mummy.
The stench in the small room he dragged Willow into was overpowering, making her gag. Her first thought was that it had to come from the corpse sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, but then it... he lifted his head and she realized that though the man was ancient, dirty and seemingly barely conscious of his surroundings, he wasn't quite dead. The best proof of this being that the stench came from him sitting in several weeks' worth of his own filth.
Donnie followed her gaze. "Yeah, no one can really be bothered to help him with that. That'll be your girlfriend's job once everything's back to normal. First I'll let you two get acquainted — don't worry, it's been a while, but Grandpa's still the best the slaughterhouse ever had. It won't hurt... much." He ran his fingers through her hair almost tenderly, stopping at the back of her neck. "Right here. Right above the brainstem. One crack o' the hammer and you'll be out like a light." This, of course, is where Willow started struggling and screaming for help, which only earned her another suckerpunch. Donnie put his hand over her mouth and held on to her as he dragged a large metal bucket towards the chair with his foot, picked up a small sledgehammer from it which he handed to the old man and then bent her over the bucket. "Show'er how it's done, Grandpa! Bash the bitch's head in and I'll make sure you get the best bits!"
The senile old man looked at the scene in front of him with dull eyes, not seeming to comprehend. He dropped the hammer once and Donnie had to hand it to him again. He swung feebly, only brushing against Willow's head, but on the third attempt he actually managed to land a decent hit... on Donnie's hand. The young man yelped in surprise and let go of Willow for an instant that she did not waste; she managed to worm free and as she scrambled backwards, her hand found something that had fallen on the floor.
The crystal.
Willow grabbed it and struck out at Donnie's face as he advanced on her, jamming it as hard as she could into his eye, feeling something pop and a warm liquid spurt out over her hand. The noise that came out of his throat started out as a puzzled "Huh?" and quickly mutated into a high-pitched wail as he fumbled blindly for her and toppled backwards, head-first into the bucket.
Go Willow.
Something about the sound woke up old memories in his grandfather's cobwebbed brain. How he'd started out slaughtering pigs for his old man way back during the depression... somehow it seemed like only yesterday. The way the sun had beat down on his tanned skin, the way his muscles had ached after working for twelve hours straight, the way the pigs would always squeal in terror as they were held down, and then you'd just grab the hammer hard and... The hammer came down with force this time, cracking Donnie's skull like an egg. Maclay Senior blinked in confusion as a jet of blood hit him square in the face, then licked his lips, relishing the taste.
I love this bit. Very gratifying to write. Felt like taking a shower. Goodbyeee Donnie.
For a few seconds Willow could only stare at the scene - the blood, the shit, Donnie's right foot twitching like a dying fish. Then she stumbled to her feet and didn't look back, just tore out into the hallway and down the stairs to Tara's room. She tried the handle, but the door was securely locked. "Tara?"
In her room, Tara jumped to her feet and ran to the door. "Willow? Oh thank Goddess, are you OK?"
"I..." Willow shook her head, feeling like she'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. "I think so. Do you know where your Dad keeps the key to this door? Because I could try and break it down, but-"
"NO!" Tara thought she could feel her heart actually physically breaking, but she just couldn't bear the idea of Willow staying in this house a second longer. "Just go, Will, please, get out of here before they get a hold of you again. They won't hurt me any worse than they already have, but you they'd... please, just GO!"
Willow heard a door open further down the corridor, and for the first time she allowed herself to think rationally of what was happening. They had tried to kill her, actually really murder her, and... she clenched her teeth and pounded her fist on the door. "I'll be back, Tara. I'll get help and come back. I-I love you."
"I love you too, Will... so much... but please..."
A bit sugary perhaps, but hey, considering what I do to them before it's over...
And Willow was off towards the staircase leading down, trying to come up with a plan as she ran. Get outside. Get rid of the protection spell. Get Buffy, or Xander, or Giles. Get back in. Get Tara. Get her out. Get even.
Willow, the boss of us.
She still held on to the slimy crystal, feeling the power it held, both her own and Tara’s mother’s. As she half-ran, half-stumbled down the dark stairs she saw someone coming out into the hallway below, and as the other person stepped into the light of the single lightbulb down there and his face became visible, she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Xander, thank God! Come on, we have to get Ta..."
She froze. The figure in front of her definitely had Xander's face, but there was something... off about it.
"Off" indeed. As in "cut". Leatherface with Xander's face on him is a bit... ghaaa. Hopefully.
And his body. And the fact that he was wearing a red-soaked butcher's apron and carrying a huge knife... She went white as a sheet as she realized that the only Xanderness about the man blocking her way out of the house was her best friend's face, worn like an ill-fitting halloween mask over the big man's own, a stranger's eyes glaring at her through two empty holes where Xander’s eyes should be. Unsure if she was screaming, cursing or simply whimpering she ran for the door, trying to duck around the man who wailed some gibberish and struck out with the knife. Willow felt an intense pain in her stomach, did a full 360 on one of her heels before getting some kind of balance and darting out onto the porch, down the steps and finally hitting the ground hard out on the driveway.
Xander gets the hammer, Anya gets the hook, Buffy the chainsaw and Willow gets knifed.
No, there's no point to that.
She tried to get up, but the pain was too much; putting her hand to her belly she felt something warm, sticky and snakelike coming out and instinctively tried to push it back in as she struggled to remember what it was she was supposed to be doing, it was something important, what was it what was it what was it...
You can't write splatter and NOT have a scene in which someone is trying to hold their guts in with their hands. It's the law.
She raised her eyes and looked up, seeing a dark window on the second floor. She hoped it was Tara's window and raised the hand not holding her guts in to it, as if to wave goodbye. The crystal grasped tightly in it began to glow and she remembered why she had been in such a hurry.
"Solvere."
Willow gasped the word, almost inaudible, as if her body thought it was the last breath it would ever take and didn't want to let it out. The crystal glowed stronger, shone bright for a second, then blinked out again. And everything went dark.
Tara's mother helping out a bit from beyond the grave, lifting her own spell. Originally, this was going to be Willow's big death scene, but... I realized I was running out of Scoobies, and at this rate I wouldn't have any left to kill the bad guys. So this scene is deliberately vague.
Chapter 7: Protection
Chapter title: Massive Attack song. And so...
"But if you hurt what's mine
I'll sure as hell retaliate"
- Massive Attack
Massive Attack used to be so good. What happened? Bring Mushroom back!
After Willow ran off Tara sank to the floor, leaned her back against the doorframe and closed her eyes. She heard her girlfriend's footsteps disappear down the hall and fade away, and then she was once again completely alone.
The walls were thick in this house. For most of her childhood, that had been a source of comfort, something that made it possible to sleep; few of the screams from downstairs got in, and none of the sobs from in here got out. Now it felt like a curse — anything could be happening to Willow just downstairs and she wouldn't hear it, wouldn't know, wouldn't be able to help in any way. She couldn't handle that. She had to do something.
Crossing her legs and straightening her back, Tara tried to focus. She'd read lots of different protection spells over the years; some which were supposed to work, others which had not worked for centuries... she was too upset to recall any of them word for word, but of course magic didn't work in this house anyway as long as her mother's curse was still upon it, and as far as Tara knew that hadn't changed.
Of course, it has been lifted.
But maybe prayers did.
I'm vague on this. What, technically, is the difference between a prayer and a spell? You call upon a supernatural being to do you a favour... OK, not wanting to get into a religious debate.
And so she improvised, mixing in bits and pieces of protection spells while calling on any reasonably benevolent Goddess she could think of — Isis, Artemis, Freya, Demeter, Minerva, Lakshmi... praying, pleading, begging, demanding, promising to do anything; to sacrifice, to give back to the Earth, even to stay here and take care of her family forever... just as long as Willow was safe from harm tonight.
Tara makes a big promise here, and of course she ends up keeping it. And "Just as long as my baby's safe from harm tonight" is from Massive Attack's "Protection", of course.
Dawn awoke from unconsciousness slowly, as if drifting up from deep underwater. Even after she was fully awake, it was a long time before her shell-shocked brain remembered how to move her muscles. She looked at her surroundings; a dark basement, reeking of things she didn't want to think about, all sorts of junk strewn around... she wasn't tied up, but the door looked pretty tough. And of course, in one corner, there was Giles hunched over Willow's body. Dawn watched them for several minutes before she spoke. "Is she alive?"
Dawn, of course, is a bit thrown by having her sister filéd.
Giles had checked Willow’s pulse at least a dozen times in the first hour after they threw her in with him and Dawn, but in the last two hours he hadn’t dared to. Now he steeled himself and once again put his fingers on her neck. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. "She’s fine." That was a lie, of course; apart from the very faint pulse, the hardly noticeable breath she'd draw now and then, and the steel grip she still held on a small bloodied object in her hand, Willow lay perfectly still and might as well be...
"She doesn’t look fine. She looks dead." Dawn's voice was oddly flat when she scooted over to Willow’s side. Before Giles could stop her, she lifted the blood-soaked shirt he had wrapped around the deathly pale redhead's belly. "Yup. Dead. No way she'll survive that."
Giles couldn't really disagree; after all, he could see right into Willow's innards, she had lost a huge amount of blood and he supposed she was slipping into coma territory; he honestly couldn't understand why she hadn't died hours ago.
Whaddyaknow, one of Tara's spells must have done something... Willow's not at all doing well, but she's in sort of suspended animation or something.
Still, part of him wanted to scream at Dawn for speaking so bluntly; while he'd been keeping watch over Willow, doing all he could (though it wasn't much) to keep her alive, that... THING masquerading as Buffy's sister had just been lying unconscious in a corner.
Oh yeah, that's right, Giles is currently the only person in the world who knows Dawn is Da Key. That must mean he will live a long and healthy life, right?
And to add to his grief and confusion, part of him had been just as afraid for her as he was for Willow; after all, he had five years' worth of memories of Dawn growing up, and knowing they were false didn't mean they felt any less real. Until three days ago, he had thought of Dawn as one of his
(children)
charges, and as much as the Watcher in him wanted to look at her objectively as just another mission, the man in him couldn't. He bit back on his angry reply, gently re-dressed Willow's wound and then turned to Dawn. "How are you feeling?"
I'm pretty satisfied with this whole exchange, two very traumatized people. And also, let's play up Giles' father role.
Dawn was still staring at Willow as if looking right through her, and now she hugged her own knees and rocked gently back and forth. "She's always taken care of me, Giles. My whole life. I was always so mean to her and she always took care of me and I-I was yelling at her and telling her she was going to get us killed and then I ran away and now she's dead and it's all my fault and I couldn't help her and she's dead and now we're all-"
"Dawn... what are you talking about?" Giles put his hands on the teen's shoulders to try and soothe her before she became completely hysterical. "She is not dead. We need to get her to a hospital soon, but if she's made it this long I'm sure she'll be fine." He didn't believe that himself, but he took Dawn's hand and placed her fingertips on Willow's neck. "See? She's alive."
"Not her. Buffy." Dawn looked as if she had just had to explain to him that 2+2=4. "Buffy's dead."
For the longest while Giles just stared at her. "No." He shook his head. "You're lying." He'd seen Dawn tell lies enough times
(no you haven't)
to know that she was telling the truth now, but he refused to believe it. "You're LYING!"
If Dawn felt him grabbing her harder and shaking her, she didn't show it. She just kept staring past him, sobbing and almost giggling with terror. "Big chainsaw. Wrrooooom. Can't get any deader than that. She screamed, Giles, she screamed, it hurt so bad that she screamed and I couldn't help her, I ran..."
If there had been any doubt in his mind that Dawn was telling the truth, he knew now. Maybe he'd known on some level ever since he and Willow heard the scream last night, but... before he realized what he was doing he had slapped Dawn. He wanted to hurt her, to expose her for the lie she was. "Shut up. Shut up. You don't get to... you're not even... you're just..." But when he looked into her shocked eyes he couldn't bring himself to say it. As it turned out, he didn't have time anyway.
"Spare the rod, spoil the child." They both looked up to see Tara's father standing in the doorway, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands and looking like he hadn't slept a wink; hair on end, murderous calm in his bloodshot eyes. "Glad to see you at least know how to discipline your daughter." He pointed to Willow. "She still alive?"
Giles judged the distance to the door; no way he could get to the man before he had time to turn the gun on him. "Yes."
"Good for you. That means you get to live until she's out of the woods, and you better pray hard she makes it. I take no pleasure in killin', there's just some things you gotta do, don't mean you have to like it..."
TCM quote.
Mr Maclay spoke through gritted teeth, but then his composure suddenly vanished as he pointed to Willow, his face a mask of grief and fury. "But that little WHORE killed my SON! As if it wasn't enough for her to corrupt my daughter... dying's too good for her! As God is my witness, she's going to suffer for a long time before I put her out of her misery and send her to the hell where she belongs!"
In the interest of fairness, I tried to portray Mr Maclay as actually in some pretty heavy grief here. I hope no one's feeling sorry for him. But just to make sure of that... let's throw some hints of pedophilia into the mix as well.
Calming down somewhat, he turned to Dawn. "As for you, though, young lady... we were going to keep you. Donnie is... was looking for a wife, and he thought you'd make a good one. Of course, now that he's... he's... we don't really have any use for you. BUBBA!"
The doorway darkened as Leatherface entered, a sledgehammer in his hand. His father pointed to Dawn while keeping the shotgun aimed at Willow and Giles. "Kill her."
Seeing Buffy's killer coming towards her, Dawn lost it completely. She scrambled madly backwards on all fours, screaming, pleading and whimpering, unable to form a coherent thought. Leatherface raised his hammer... and then stopped and lowered it again, as if confused.
Canon is key, but keys are canon.
His father cleared his throat. "Bubba, you know I don't like repeating myself." Leatherface answered in an anxious stream of gibberish that only served to anger Mr Maclay further. "What do you mean 'pretty green glow'? KILL the little bitch!" He walked up to Leatherface and slapped him hard. "I thought I'd beaten that nonsense out of you years ago. As long as you're under my roof you live by my rules, and when I tell you to kill, you kill!"
Starting to hint that, well, just because Leatherface is an insane killer doesn't necessarily mean he's not a victim in some way.
Leatherface cowered and didn't meet his father's stare, looked at Dawn as if in awe and still refused to go any closer to her. Furious, Mr Maclay slapped him again. "You're useless! Get out of here, go make dinner or something. I'm ashamed to call you my son." As Leatherface slinked out of the basement, his father cocked the shotgun and pointed it at Dawn. "That's family for you, always a disappointment. If you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself."
But he had taken his eyes off Giles. And when the Brit got to his feet, it wasn't as a Watcher trying to protect a mystical Key; Watchers aren't supposed to be soldiers or bodyguards, not supposed to throw themselves in front of guns. Watchers take care of their Slayers, teach them, keep them in the game until they die, and then their job is done.
A father's job, on the other hand, is never done as long as one of his children is alive, and adopted fathers are no different. Giles tackled Maclay head-on and Dawn kept screaming as the gun went off and she was splattered with both men's blood.
Chapter 8: Nobody Messes With My Girl
Chapter title: Tara's words upon saving Willow's life in "Bargaining".
At some point, Tara's prayers faded and she leaned back against the door, drifting off to tired half-sleep and a dream...
This little flashback is slightly misplaced, but... it serves a few purposes. First, another Faith misdirect. I mention Faith and Riley a few times, trying to keep them in people's minds and hope for a deus ex machina savior to show up at the last second (which, of course, would make this even more anti-Joss than it already is, haha). Second, make Buffy a little more likable (retroactively) as I had her a bit too take-chargy earlier. Third, underline Dawn's neediness. Fourth, establish just how much Willow doesn't know about how tough it must be to grow up in an abusive family – say, a gang of cannibals. Fifth, hey, anything for a pre-s5 Dawn memory.
Everyone stopped talking and Xander scooted over on the couch as Buffy came back into Giles' living room. "So, what's the news from LA, Buff?"
The Slayer plopped down beside him, shifting uncomfortably and not meeting anyone’s eyes. "25 to life. She pleaded guilty to everything."
The gang took this in in silence, except Dawn who sat up straight. "25 years? That's it? Faith gets to kill a bunch of people and she's out before she's Mom's age?"
"They said there were, uh, midisomething circumstances." Buffy kept fidgeting with the portable phone. "There was some stuff... about her childhood."
Buffy never gets the big words right. Also, I like the idea of Buffy, who never really quite has gotten out of the "Faith is the bad one" mindset, would get some really scary facts about Faith served up – and no, I'm not going into details; it's not important to the story, so let's leave it vague and have the readers fill in the blanks themselves – and being really shook up by it.
"Oh dear." Giles looked at her with concern. "Did they say-"
"I'll tell you later." Buffy very obviously avoided looking at her little sister, who rolled her eyes and snorted with derision.
Tara wasn't surprised but still cringed inside when Willow mirrored Dawn's reaction. "I'm sorry, but I officially don't care. If you're old enough to kill people, you're old enough to take responsibility for it yourself instead of blaming it on 'Mwaaah, my parents didn't love me'. I say good riddance to her."
Willow doesn't like Faith. At all.
Buffy didn’t answer. Tara still was not completely clear all that had happened between the two Slayers — Faith was a very sore spot with Willow — but the tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. "Buffy? A-are you OK?"
For a few seconds, Buffy just kept staring at her hands. Then she looked up at her watcher. "Giles, you have to talk to the council. I mean, if something happens to me... there has to be a Slayer, and no matter what Faith did, I don't want them to..."
It's one of the bigger plot holes of the Buffyverse, IMO (not that I mind it, I love Faith, but I can't explain it). Faith, the active Slayer, spends 8 months in a coma and then 3 years in jail; as far as we know, the big bad council makes not ONE attempt to bump her off except during the few days she's out running around.
Giles put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll try. I don't know if I have any pull with them anymore, but I'll try."
"What do you mean ‘if something happens’?" Dawn cut in. "Nothing happens to you, you’re the Slayer."
"No I’m not." Buffy finally looked at her sister. "Dawnie, I haven't been THE Slayer in three years. I'm a... a... parrot box?"
"Paradox." Giles corrected her automatically.
"Right. I did my time and the line passed to Kendra. If I die —"
"You're not going to die!" Dawn's volume knob was turned up to about eight now, and all treble and tremble.
"If I die again, Dawn, we can't be sure that anyone takes my place. The only way there’ll be a Slayer then is either if they let Faith out or if they... and they've tried to kill her before."
"So have you!" The thirteen-year-old, very upset by now, didn’t sound like she thought this was a particularly bad idea. "The heck with Faith, Buffy, you’re the Slayer and you're not going to die, so stop talking about-"
Buffy put her hands over her ears. "GOD, Dawnie, shut UP! You're the only person I know who can whine in frequencies that only dogs can hear!"
Which is a nice segue into...
Tara awoke knowing it wasn’t a dream. That exact scene had taken place about a week after the scoobies had defeated Adam, and had been one of few bleak spots on an otherwise blissful summer; she and Willow had had their first almost-spat afterwards when Tara had suggested that maybe Willow didn't have to spend the whole day reciting The Evil Deeds Of Faith, Parts I-XXV, and that sometimes there could be more to it than just "my parents didn't love me" — something Willow had refused to even discuss. And Dawn had sulked for days even though no one brought up the possibility of Buffy maybe not living to 106 around her again.
I'm not 100% sure anymore, but I think the figure 106 may come from a character in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. Not the most pop of pop culture references, but hey.
Tara hadn't thought about it since, but the dream was vivid — so vivid, in fact, she thought she could still hear Dawn pleading hysterically.
Then she sat up straight from where she'd fallen asleep by the door and realized it wasn't the dream. The wails were coming from inside the house — very faint, separated from her by a couple of thick walls, but loud and high-pitched enough that she could just about recognize them. Dawn was here, she was in trouble, and Tara was locked in here, helpless... BANG. She pounded her fist against the door in frustration. "Gods damn you, OPEN!"
I think that counts as a spell, don't you?
There was a crack of splintering wood as the door flew open so fast that it ripped loose of its hinges and crashed into the opposite side of the hallway. One of the hinges did several surprised turns in the air before falling to the floor.
Tara got to her feet, staring in disbelief at the doorway. How...? She pointed at the fallen hinge. "Levitare." It rose off the carpet, hovering in mid-air until she let it drop again.
The protection spell was lifted.
And with the door gone, Tara could hear Dawn's sobbing cries from the basement clearly and didn't hesitate. She had gotten halfway down the stairs when she heard the noise of the old rusty meatgrinder; her brother was busy in the kitchen, which meant he wouldn't be paying attention to much else.
That's Buffy in the grinder, btw.
Good. But that still meant she might have to get persuasive with her father and Donnie, and she had never learned much in the way of fighting magic. She needed protection... her eyes fell on something sitting on top of the table in the hallway. Oh yes. That should do.
Chainsaw!Tara makes me happy.
In the basement, Dawn slowly managed to get a hold of herself and crept over to the two men lying still on top of each other. The pool of red that had formed around them was seeping slowly into the dirt floor. "Giles?" She grabbed the Englishman by the shoulder and shook him. "Giles, come o-" Then she yelped as Giles' body rolled over on its back, his unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling and blood trickling listlessly from the gaping red maw in his chest. The shotgun blast had more or less obliterated the left half of his chest and even though Dawn managed to look away, the image — bone fragments, flesh, blood around the hole in his undershirt — was burned into her eyes. Whimpering, she started crawling towards Willow, who had remained perfectly still throughout the whole thing, when she heard a wet cough behind her.
"Giles?" She turned around, hoping against hope. No, not Giles. At least part of the shotgun blast had hit the Texan and he was bleeding badly from his side and his left arm, but Mr Maclay was coming to, already fumbling for the gun. Dawn tried to get up, but her legs seemed to have gone on strike and wouldn't obey her.
No, I have no idea if it's technically possible for two people struggling for control of a sawed-off shotgun to both get hit by the same blast. In my Buffyverse, it is.
"You... little... bitch." Maclay panted as he sat halfway up against the wall, cracked the shotgun open and started rifling through his pockets for shells. "You'll pay for that." One of the shells fell out of his hand and Dawn watched it bounce a couple of times and then roll towards her. She stared curiously as it came to a halt against her foot, then slowly reached out and grasped it, holding it up to her eyes. She'd never seen a bullet of any kind before. Could something as toy-looking as this really be dangerous? Could something like this really have killed Giles?
Apart from the fact that I like this scene – sort of a little oasis of horrified serenity in the middle of all the gore – it's a very vague foreshadow of the alternate ending. Maybe.
"Yeah. You just hang on to that, if you think it'll do you any good." Maclay managed to load the shotgun. With a grunt of pain he snapped it shut, used it as a cane to raise himself to his knees and started turning it towards Dawn. "If you're the praying sort, now would be-" Then he froze as he felt the blade of the chainsaw against his neck.
"P-p-put the g-gun down, Pa." Tara was standing behind him, all white-knuckled hands and trembling muscles as she held up the heavy chainsaw.
Tara is stuttering again. Hey, she's standing up to her father and is threatening to chainsaw his head off; who wouldn't stutter in that situation?
Her father coughed and spat a red-tinged blob on the floor, but sounded as assertive as ever when he spoke. "Don't be silly, Tara. You don't even know how to work that thing."
She put her hand on the clutch, pulled the strap and the well-oiled engine roared to life. All she had to do now was literally lift a finger and the blade would start spinning. "Th-think so? I spent 18 years in this house, P-pa. I pick things up. Now put the gun d-DOWN!"
Well, she's literally picked the chainsaw up... and also, of course, picking up the family tradition.
Maclay swallowed as the blade poked him a little extra in the neck; after all, he was probably one of the world's leading experts on how much damage a chainsaw could do to a person. But he didn't lower the gun. "Tara.. I know you and I know you're not going to do this. I'm your father. For eighteen years your family has taken care of you, supported you, fed you —"
"On human flesh, Pa!"
Start with a quote from "Family", end on the image of Tara chowing down on an unsuspecting tourist... I get my kicks on route 66.
Her father's voice had grown softer, almost tender. "I did what I had to to take care of you. And then you fell in with the wrong crowd and they've made you forget who you really are, turned you against your own family... but I forgive you, and like the prodigal son, I welcome you back with open arms. I can make it better." He patted the shotgun. "It'll be just like ripping off a band-aid, Tara, it hurts for a second and then we can go back to when everything was good."
The idea that maybe, in his sick way, he really does care for his children. And honestly believes he's doing what's best for them.
There was no telling if the noise that escaped Tara's lips was a sob or a bitter laugh. "When was it ever good, Pa? When you beat Mom, or when you and Donnie beat me? When you tortured Bubba for years for being retarded? When you had him kill all those people?"
Pointing out, again, that Leatherface isn't the favourite son.
"I-I-I'm not perfect, Tara. I know that. I'm just a lowly sinner like everyone else. But you were always the best of us, and now that you've been returned to me I know you don't have it in you. 'And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry.' You will put the saw away, Tara, you will let me deal with this, and then we will be alright again."
Quoting Luke 15:23 – the aforementioned prodigal son.
Tara's hands were shaking, her vision was blurred with tears and the saw seemed to weigh a ton. She almost let it drop. But when she looked at Dawn, crumbled up in fear, and Willow lying there as if dead, she shook her head and held it tighter and there was no stutter when she spoke again. "No. I made a promise last night to take care of my family. And you're no longer a part of that, P... Eugene. So just put the gun down. Please, I-I don't want to do this..."
"Eugene"? Well, why not. This is, of course, much the same payoff as the end of "Family"; Tara being accepted by the rest of the scoobies (of which there are a lot fewer now, of course) as part of that family rather than the one she happened to be born into. Except in this case the other way around; Tara needs to take that step herself, more assertive than on the show. Her father isn't "Pa" anymore; he's just another adult.
"I'm sorry, Tara. But I know that once they're gone you'll see things clearer."
The rest was a blur as everything happened at once. Eugene Maclay swung the shotgun towards Willow. Tara may have cried out something, but if she did it was drowned in the roar of the chainsaw as she released the clutch. Her arms shook wildly as the saw met resistance and something warm and sticky sprayed across her dress. There was a thud as something round hit the floor and bounced off into a corner. Then Tara turned off the chainsaw and there was deafening silence for a few seconds before she fell to her knees and threw up violently over her father's twitching corpse.
There's a sentence you don't get to write every day.
Continued here.
