Willow (and Kennedy)'s Room, Sunnydale, California, Late March 2003 (An Hour or Two Later)

[brat_inslayage]

The spell had worked. Spike had found the demon, tossed its body through the portal, and they'd gotten Buffy back. Big success, cause for celebration.

At the moment, Kennedy hardly cared.

"It's important that you know what I am. What I'm like when I'm... like that," Willow told her as they headed upstairs.

She had told Kennedy, who'd accepted it with a nod at the time and-- typically-- hadn't thought the implications through. "I thought it would be, I don't know, cool," she admitted, anger leaking into her already shaky voice. "I already said I don't have a problem with you using my energy, but you could have asked, Will. I would've been fine with it if you did." It sounded stupid as soon as she said it, because Willow's hair had gone as black as her eyes during the spell, and she had sort of said something that sounded like she was okay with it, and if the magic was driving the way Tara had explained what felt like forever ago...

("Whatever you need," she'd said the first time Willow had explained this, meaning it even if she hadn't thought of this possibility. "I'm here for you." She thought she still meant it, but... Jesus, what had she gotten herself into here?)

Willow swallowed and ducked her head, and Kennedy felt bad about getting that reaction out of her but she couldn't just let this go.

"I'm really sorry," Willow said quietly. "But you were the most powerful person nearby..." Funny; under almost any other circumstances that would have been a compliment. Maybe it still was, but it was hard to take as one right now.

"...and that's how it works. That's how I work." Willow looked straight at Kennedy as she said that, a little scared but unwilling to pull any punches, and in its own messed-up way it was such a courageous thing to do that Kennedy just loved her more for it. But she couldn't just blow that off, and with the lingering chill she couldn't shake she didn't think she could sleep beside Willow tonight.

"I got that," she answered quietly. "You told me." She paused with her hand on the doorknob and added pointedly, "You should go check in on Buffy... I'll see you in the morning."

Willow nodded and, without adding a word, went on down the hallway as Kennedy went into their room (and she'd only just started thinking of it that way) to get her things, maybe find a place to crash downstairs with the other girls. The sound of the latch clicking shut behind her hurt, too.

***

Tara -- No, wait.	Once the door was closed and Kennedy looked over to the bed, she'd see Tara -- or something that looked like Tara, anyhow -- sitting there, smiling half a sad smile. "Hey, honey," she said sympathetically. "It's okay. I get it. You always had a hard time handling magic, and Willow jumped right into the deep end on that one. But it'll blow over."
Kennedy	Kennedy froze with her hand still on the doorknob. She knew better, knew what the First could do, but there was that smile and that tone of voice and that reassuring thing she really wanted to hear, and-- "Tara?" She looked older than Kennedy remembered. It was just jarring enough to keep her wary, but not enough to keep her from... sort of hoping.
The First Evil	Tara quirked her mouth. (And yes, she looked a little older -- early 20s, maybe -- and was dressed in clothes Kennedy never would have seen.) "Kind of?" she offered, a familiar slightly anxious tinge in her voice. "Not -- not exactly your Tara. She wasn't the one who died here. But ... I've been watching you. I wish I'd gotten together with you. It probably would have gone better than ... well, than it did for me." She shot a glance to the door. "Wonder where Willow went."
Kennedy	It was one thing to have the First show up as someone she didn't know all that well, and threaten to kill them all. This was a complete mindfuck. "Stay away from her," Kennedy bit out, and it came out too shaky to be the kind of warning she'd wanted to give. "Don't even try and mess with her like this, not now. You're not my Tara, but you're not hers, either." Listening to the First was a bad, bad idea, but... "What's that supposed to mean, anyway? Would have gone better?"
The First Evil	"Oh, sweetie," Tara sighed, completely ignoring the first part of what Kennedy had said. "You're so young. I know how it goes. I loved her too. Still do, a little." She sighed nostalgically, clasping her hands in her lap. "Willow looks at you with those huge eyes and that wibbly little mouth and you want to do anything, j-just to be close to her. But the thing is -- she's poison. Her boyfriend ended up a werewolf. She cheated on him with Xander, and his girlfriend dumped him. Now that girl's part demon and in a coma." Which had nothing to do with Willow, of course, but the First did not need to be strictly accurate. "And then there was me. Y'know, she, uh ... she couldn't even admit she was into me for months. She almost got me killed, like, a lot. Then she basically raped my mind so she could keep abusing magic. And now I'm dead." "But hey," she added, still all sympathy. "It ... might just all have been bad luck. With you, maybe it's true love."
Kennedy	"Little soon to make that leap," Kennedy said defensively-- god, there was something about this that felt so wrong. She still felt cold after that portal spell. This wasn't helping. "She did all that to you?" It was hard to keep pronouns accurate when the First was so good at being whoever it wanted to be, more so now than when it had been Eve or Chloe. The idea of the First pretending to be Tara made her sick, but then again... so did the idea of Willow treating Tara that way. "That's not how she put it." Willow had mentioned it, in a halting, circuitous sort of way, and Kennedy had been inclined to believe her. But then there was everything Dawn had said a few days ago. And now this. She shouldn't be listening, but why did the First have to go and show up looking like the person she trusted more than anyone?
The First Evil	"Of course not. Nothing's ever Willow's fault," Tara answered lightly. "Ask her about Lethe's bramble. Ask Dawn about it. Or Spike. She thought she had good intentions, but..." Tara -- no, the thing wearing Tara's face and voice and body like a glove -- shrugged. "She's like a drug addict, and now she's sneaking back down to the bad part of the park to buy another hit. And Buffy's ... pretty much giving her the money for it, because Buffy can't see what's right in front of her."
Kennedy	Kennedy really, really wanted to say something about how ridiculous that sounded, except that out of all the random little details about magic for her to remember, Lethe's bramble was one of them; the shock of realizing magic like that existed had stuck with her. "It's not like that," she insisted, finding a little of the spark to fight back now, because she was convinced this wasn't the kind of thing Tara would say. "She's stronger than that. She--" Had used Kennedy to power that spell. "It's not," she repeated stubbornly.
The First Evil	Tara's smile was sad. "But it is. She's already grabbing at your energy without asking. For what? For a portal?" She made a noise as if to imply safer portal spells grew on every tree. "This time it didn't kill you. But it could have. I mean -- she's already got a body count. What's one more dead girlfriend to her?"
Kennedy	"Shut up," Kennedy snapped, perfectly aware that she couldn't make an argument on technical terms. "You're not Tara, and-- and just shut up. You don't get to run your nonexistent mouth off and tear Willow down looking like that."
The First Evil	"Oooooh," the First -- not Tara at all, even if it still looked like her -- mocked. "You can't argue with something you know is true, so you're just going to get angry. A-a-are y-y-you g-g-going to try to hit me now?" It delivered the last in an exaggeration of Tara's stutter, which it dropped as quickly as it had picked it up. The thing stood easily, unfolding itself to seem to take a step toward Kennedy. "It's not like you understand any problem you can't solve with a punch. Sweetie. But maybe you and Willow match now that you killed Chloe." The thing mock-gasped. "Maybe that's why she turns you on!"
Kennedy	"Get away from me." And saying that in and of itself was horrible, even if this thing that looked like Tara wasn't in any way the girl she-- and Willow-- had loved. "I didn't do that, it wasn't my fault!" The guilty look that crossed her face said she had second thoughts about that, though. "It's not gonna work, you know." She took a step back and found herself up against the door. "I know what you're trying to do."
The First Evil	"Guess I pushed too fast," the First said ruefully. "I'll remember that next time. But Chloe would have lasted a little bit longer without your drill sergeant baby butch act. That's just true." She glanced down at Tara's body, taking it in. "I could get used to looking this way, y'know. What do you think Willow would think if I cuddled up to her tonight and whispered a couple sweet nothings in her ear?"
Kennedy	That part was true, enough so that Kennedy flinched visibly. "Stay the hell away from her," she snarled again, her own guilt over Chloe's death taking second place to her protective instincts, and maybe she wasn't going anywhere tonight after all. "And quit looking like that. You don't deserve to."
The First Evil	"I deserve to look however I want. Besides, it's not what she really looked like at the end anyhow," the First confided softly, feigning sadness. "At the end it was more like this." Her appearance shifted subtly, and she brought her hands down from in front of her chest, revealing a bloody bullet entry wound. The red ooze from it seemed to spread as she stood there, and she looked down at it. "The mortal wound hurt so much."
Kennedy	It had been easy enough to picture that without the visual aid. She'd been hanging on to the idea that her Tara was still all right, but this made her grip just a little more tenuous. There were a dozen smartass comments she could make, and none of them were coming to her now. "Stop it." Managing to say that little took what felt like a monumental effort, and Kennedy's voice was just this side of pleading.
The First Evil	"Believe me, honey," the First said. "When I'm done with all of you, you'll wish what killed you was a nice neat gunshot to the heart. Your precious Tara got off easy. Nobody else will." On that cheerful thought, she waggled her fingers in a wave. "... toodles!" And then the thing was gone.

Kennedy stayed where she was for several minutes longer, pressed up against the door; the knob dug painfully into her side, but it was a welcome sensation, something to draw her focus away from what she'd just seen. She'd never expected those calming techniques Constance had insisted on teaching her would ever come in handy, and here she was, absurdly grateful for them right now, because as it was she was shaking so hard she barely made it over to the bed without falling over. Sitting down was not a graceful performance. Oh well.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, even though it did nothing to fight the lingering chill. It was kind of pathetic, the way she was sort of huddled there, maybe rocking back and forth a little bit, but did she care right now if it was? Really, really not.

However long it was she sat there, she didn't know, but it was enough time to ask herself, like for the first time in her life really ask herself, if this was what she wanted.

Not that the answer had changed. So.

The door finally opened and Willow slipped in, and she obviously hadn't expected to see Kennedy still there; her startled expression faded into a guilty one, then a questioning look.

"Hey," Kennedy ventured softly, by way of an answer. "Guess we really kinda need to talk."

[[nfi/nfb, ooc-okay; takes place after the end of btvs 7x15, "get it done," though the first part contains dialogue from said episode. yet another scene i wish had happened in canon, preplayed with the superlative life_inshadow as... oh god we're so going to hell for this.

semi-flippant warning for bad drug metaphors, season six references, and some strong language. non-flippant warning for discussion of nonconsensual behavior and textual/graphical references to violent death. not kidding, this one is kind of harsh and omg i'm sorry but it had to happen.]]

Comments

[dollpocalypse]

[[OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

By which I mean holy CRAP tears everywhere. YOU TWO ARE MEAN.]]

[thatsamilkshake]

[SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB. Both as a verb and an acronym.]

[brat_inslayage]

[[sooooo... i'm taking that as you cursing my name?]]