1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale, California, End of January 2003 (Tuesday Fandom Time)

[brat_inslayage]

Just because the First was still laying low or whatever it was doing was no excuse to sit around and do nothing, and with the Council destroyed, they were short on information. With Fandom still cut off despite her most stubborn attempts to get through, Kennedy-- who kept on trying half so people wouldn't assume the worst-- couldn't leverage what she was sure would be a whole mess of information in the library. That meant research, and a whole lot of it, and also a whole lot of dead ends.

Kennedy was so not a fan of research, but if the younger Potentials were going to do it she might as well be example-y, and at least it kept her busy. Granted, most of the time it was pretty boring stuff, poking at websites (on her phone, so the poking was literal) and leafing through ancient books or the occasional printout, so getting asked to retrieve a CD-R from Willow's desk drawer? Totally welcome change of pace. That, at least, was something she could do with her hands.

Sauntering over to the desk, she pulled open the drawer and started digging through, a slight grin crossing her face at how neatly organized everything was. God, that was cute. The stack of CD-Rs wasn't hard to find, and all of them being labeled and in alphabetical order meant this was a piece of cake. She was about two discs from the one she was looking for when her fingers brushed up against a piece of paper, or something, wedged into the next stack back. And okay, she couldn't help being curious, so she pulled it out.

It was a photograph: that much was obvious from the weight of the paper stock and the glossy surface against her fingertips. But what was it doing back here in the clearly demarcated land of digitally archived data?

Kennedy looked at the back of the picture (Kodak Gold, proclaimed the insignia stamped all over) for a moment before turning it over in her hands to get a good look at--

"Oh, god."

She nearly fell over and barely managed to drop into the chair before her knees gave out; getting punched in the stomach by the Turok-Han repeatedly might have been more pleasant. She hadn’t forgotten how the other Xander back in Fandom had called it such a surreal experience when he'd found her and Tara talking to the other Willow.

Now she got why.

"Oh, god. No." This had to be another doppelganger trick, Fandom style, right? Because there was no way this was happening, but they'd hit it off so well that time and it all made sense in some weird fucked up way and Kennedy really wanted to declare war on sense-making right now.

Maybe if she just sat here long enough she'd realize she was hallucinating this whole thing. Right?

Xander	Bathroom door. New lock. Seriously. Hell, Xander was giving deep thought to new bathroom, but Tito didn't seem to be returning calls these days, and Xander didn't trust his own plumbing skills quite that far. Yet. New lock, though, which required him being upstairs and in hearing range when people said things like Oh God from Willow's room? Yes. "Will?" Hadn't sounded like her voice, but it still took a glance into the room to be sure; that glance turned into a worried stare when he got a look at the girl on the chair. "Kennedy?"
Kennedy	Kennedy's first thought was to say something like Go away, but that required a kind of sullen defensiveness incompatible with the way her head was sort of spinning. "Yeah... I'm going back downstairs, I just need a minute," she said instead, vaguely, because the aforementioned head-spinning thing precluded getting out of this chair, too.
Xander	"You okay?" What with the not sounding or looking okay...
Kennedy	Well, because she wasn't, really. Kennedy twitched the photo in her hands and turned to look at him, and hey, possibly the completely lost look on her face might indicate that. "Only if you can tell me this isn't who I think it is?" Context would help. Context wasn't a priority at the moment.
Xander	"If that's a naked picture of Willow, please tell me now so I can practice pretending I never saw it," Xander said as he walked over to take a closer look.
Kennedy	"If it was, I'd be speechless and enthusiastic," Kennedy replied, but without any of the sarcasm she tended to put into smartass backtalk. "Mostly I'm waiting for someone to tell me this is a freaky lookalike coincidence."
Xander	Close enough to see it now, Xander looked down at the photo, then back up at Kennedy, confused. "That's Tara. Willow's..." Well. Not exactly ex. "I told you about her."
Kennedy	"Nobody's mentioned her name so far." Which was some kind of minor miracle, but it wasn't as if that would have gone over well, either. "Tara Maclay," Kennedy replied in a tone of tell me I'm wrong. "Grew up being told she was part demon, been practicing witchcraft her whole life..." It'd be nice if he'd correct her or say she was way off-base, but she was beginning to get the feeling that wasn't going to happen.
Xander	"Willow got talky, huh?" Which was probably good, Xander thought, if so. But didn't explain the something-sploded-in-my-face ...face.
Kennedy	Usually she liked being right. Right now she kind of hated it in the face. Speaking of faces, Kennedy wasn't really looking Xander in his. Muttering, "No, more like I dated her for a year and a half in high school," but not looking him in the face. Mostly because she was closer to crying than she was willing to let him see, granted.
Xander	"And lo, the people said '...buh?'" Xander dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed. "Pretty sure she'd have mentioned going to some weird high school in Maryland with a gay mirror-universe me."
Kennedy	"Mirror-universe you could've said something," Kennedy grumbled, which sounded dumb as soon as she said it. "God, I hate alternate dimensions. I swear, I saw her weeks before I came here." She rubbed a hand over her face and inhaled slowly. "This is so not right."
Xander	"You're telling me." Not that he couldn't see how much it was freaking her out, but Xander was having a little brainfreeze of his own too. "Tara's been dead since last spring."
Kennedy	"I'm gonna need a little time to work up to the 'since last spring' part," Kennedy admitted. Oh, hell, now she sounded like she wanted to cry. "Still having trouble with the first bit."
Xander	"Hey, whoa, just..." Xander scrubbed one hand through his hair. Crying girls, he was usually ok with, but Kennedy was not exactly the girliest of girls. She was exactly the punchiest in the faciest if you tried to treat her like a crying girliest of girls. "This is freaky, but... it's not the same girl here. It can't be."
Kennedy	"Can't be. Hell, the one I know probably hasn't even graduated yet." Which... was helping as much as it was hurting her head. Alternate-universe-wacky was a double-edged sword that way. Kennedy took another breath, tried to compose herself, and finally made an effort to look at him again. "Close enough to suck a lot, though, huh?"
Xander	"I guess. The worst memory I ever had to compete with was a guy Anya turned into a troll, not somebody I'd dated. Granted all my dead exes tried to kill me at some point, so the nostalgia factor would be pretty low anyway." That was supposed to sound more comforting and also straighter.
Kennedy	Welcome to dating on the Hellmouth, Kennedy. "..." Kennedy would be giving him some epic you sure other-you isn't the only non-straight one? side-eye if she were in a better mood, but as it was he was going to get a pretty good bit of raised eyebrow anyway. "And suddenly I'm thinking I'm not gonna offer to trade you." Not that she would've.
Xander	"What, you're not into demons, psychos, mummies, bug chicks and ...cheerleaders?" Not that Cordelia was evil or dead. ...Right?
Kennedy	Kennedy couldn't help laughing at that, just a little bit. "Only as friends." She turned the picture over in her hands one more time, then tucked it back into the drawer it'd come from. "...pretty sure I don't know any mummies, though."
Xander	"You never can tell; they don't always wear Band-Aid couture." Xander watched Kennedy's careful handling of the photo and waited a moment before saying, "She was good people. Tara, not the mummy." Though the mummy had been kind of sweet when she wasn't trying to suck the life out of him, and let's just focus on Kennedy's lovelife instead of exploring how much of Xander's that statement could apply to.
Kennedy	Kennedy briefly considered trying to lump in the Caritas zombies with mummies because of the duct tape, but technically that wasn't the same, and they hadn't even counted as acquaintances anyway. "To massively understate things, yeah, she is. Was. Something." The past tense still threw her, and really, it was that bit of cognitive dissonance that kept this piece of breaking news from living up to the 'breaking' part of its name. Though wondering about Xander and the mummy was a tiny distraction, too. "Can't blame Willow for still being a mess about it, you know?" Everything about Homecoming her senior year made a lot more sense now; Tara and the other Willow had really gotten along in that one brief encounter. "I can totally see them being good together."
Xander	"Things went a little south last year when..." Xander paused. "I wouldn't even know where to start. Those two just got things together again when Warren decided to turn this place into a shooting gallery. So... yeah. Not ending the world mess anymore, but ..."
Kennedy	"Warren?" Kennedy repeated, and a strange look crossed her face for a moment before she shook her head. "Sorry. Weird mental image for a second there. We had a friend named..." The thought, however confused, of Warren Worthington III on a murderous rampage was so beyond preposterous she couldn't have sustained it for more than a second anyway. Yay, one more little layer of brainbreaky to add to everything. But then there was this other Warren and his shitty, shitty timing; there was how she had to use the phrase shot to death in conjunction with Tara's name to understand what had happened, and the only conclusion she could come to was: "No wonder she skinned the guy alive."
Xander	"I can't see you being friends with this dude even in the bizarro universe. Unless your Warren was into building sexbots, I think it's just a name thing."
Kennedy	No, if Kennedy had ever met Topher she'd have said that was more likely to be his thing, but she'd never met him, which was probably for the best. "Yeah, no. The guy we know, nicest guy ever, so definitely not." She absently fiddled with her phone, then pulled up the photo gallery to show him a picture of herself and Tara from Christmas at Sookie's house two years ago. "Good thing, huh? 'cause as freaky coincidences go I think I'm at my limit."
Xander	"Holy crap. That's her, yeah." Said he, oh so intelligently, like she hadn't figured that out. Seeing it was different, though.
Kennedy	"First serious girlfriend ever," Kennedy told him, adding wryly, "which was a surprise to me too, yeah. Explaining this is going to be fun."
Xander	Give Xander a minute or a lifetime to process that concept. "...To Willow?"
Kennedy	Sure, say it out loud, Xander. That made it even more intimidating, not to mention brought out the bad-idea-ness of it. Kennedy groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "And let it be said I have no idea how I'm gonna deal with that. I mean-- so not a busting in to go 'Guess what?' thing, given, but if it comes up eventually, what am I going to do, lie?"
Kennedy	"As opposed to telling her 'your dead girlfriend is still alive back at my old high school?' Not seeing that one go over well no matter how you pretty it up."
Kennedy	"God, why didn't someone in Fandom teach a class on how to deal with this kind of thing?" Kennedy grumbled, glossing over how Professor Skywalker'd touched on the subject in Ethics class in favor of being able to vent. "We had weird classes in everything else." She shot Xander a more miserable look than anyone in this house had been privy to, at least from her, yet. "I'm so totally screwed." Plus in way too deep to back out now. So, yay.
Xander	Xander caught enough of that last feeling -- the unvoiced one, to smile a little. "You're really into her, huh."
Kennedy	It would have been a lot easier if he wasn't right. Easy seemed to be off the table as a general option these days. "What, was I actually kinda subtle about that bit?" Kennedy meant it mostly as a joke, but look, she'd actually be surprised if she had been.
Xander	"No, but, there's into and there's into." NOT DIRTY. GOD, KENNEDY. Xander blew a bit of sawdust from the new hole he'd had to cut in the bathroom door off his arm. "Willow's been my best friend since before we... well, since before I could tie my shoes."
Kennedy	Yeah, thinking about the dirty kind of into felt so wrong at the moment. "Tara's been mine since..." She couldn't really say, actually, if that had happened before they started dating or afterward or at some nebulous point in between. Anyway, there was no competing for longevity here. "Not nearly as long, for all it matters now that I can't even get in touch with that dimension any more." Which sort of solved the problem? Maybe? "But--" She shrugged, gave him a halfhearted half-smile. "Given you've known her practically forever, can you blame me if I am? I mean, I could totally grill you on what she's like, you know, when the world isn't trying to end, but I'm not really up for that today."
Xander	"Can't blame you, don't want to stop you; sort of where I was going there. Just..." Xander Harris, crusader for truth, justice and the American way? Yeeeeah. Ask Willow whether she ever said kick his ass. "Think hard about whether you want to tell her this. I get that it's freaky, I get that it's messing you up, but... I've seen Willow messed up. You don't want to."
Kennedy	"Not by me, she's not going to be." Oh, hey, there was some of Kennedy's usual spark. "I'm not going to do anything stupid--" Okay, she got how that promise from her could be a yeeeeeeeeeeah okay then thing. "--and I need to figure out how I'm gonna handle this... and I'm kind of crazy glad this came up now, messed up as that is."
Xander	"Well, yeah. I mean, seeing that picture for the first time with Willow in the room, that'd be awkward. Even before you get to the part where you have to explain why you're looking in her underwear drawer."
Xander	"I am not!" Kennedy started to blurt out. "Hey, she asked me to come look for this CD!" She shot him a mock-glare. "You're a pain, you know that?" Funny how that didn't sound at all like a complaint. "...and I really should probably get this back down there before someone thinks I got eaten by something."
Xander	"Sidekick to Slayers; pain's in the job description." Xander grinned. "Right after making sure you can take a shower without Andrew walking in on you."
Kennedy	It went against all logic that laughing at that comment felt like such a relief, but it was. "Oh my god, you're a hero." Kennedy was still chuckling a little as she flipped through the drawer to actually find the CD she'd been sent up here for, pausing just for a moment when she brushed against the edge of the photo again. "Still the fastest shower in the history of ever, but the hero thing stands." They might live to regret the lock when Andrew got a hold of a video camera down the line, but hey.

[[warning for discussion of past character death. ...yeah, i waited until after the bde to pull out the angst. at least it's the only post from me today? thanks to the prodigious needsaparrot for the preplay. and for making me cry. nfi/nfb/ooc is tasty like eggnog.]]

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[life_inshadow]

[.... ouch. Beautiful, but ouch, poor Kennedy! And somewhere, Tara's ears are burning and she doesn't know why.]