The Preserve, Saturday Morning

[brat_inslayage]

So, her portal ended up delayed (someone was going to get yelled at for this later, and she might even drop in a lawsuit threat this time) but at least it let her out in the right place, and so here Kennedy was. Still holding out a faint hope that she'd actually felt drawn here because things had worked out differently in another timeline, and that was what she was going to find out, but one way or another she had to know. Knowing would be some kind of relief, even if it was a messed up one.

She vaguely remembered something like this happening before when she was a student here, at what was a contender for the weirdest high school that wasn't on a Hellmouth. It didn't affect her at the time, though, and she hadn't given it much thought. But now, that was what, almost six years ago for her with timeline funkiness? Six years of occasionally terrifying, sometimes just fucking weird and random tangos with the supernatural? Long enough now to make things blur together a little bit. The complete roll call of everyone who went to Bon Temps with Sookie (no, not that time, the other one, no, the other other one), whether Umbridge's alternate-universe reign of terror had been before or after she graduated, all that.

Anyway, yeah, Kennedy might be kind of iffy on the actual order of events in her high school highlight reel, but some things were harder to forget -- like the weekly Reserves routine that had finally, finally taken her excess energy and her pent-up eagerness to get into it and kick evil's ass and channeled them into something useful. And then hanging out to watch the magic and support types every week? Even if she'd mostly been there to watch Tara do her thing, go figure, it turned out to teach her some useful life skills in the end after all. She was thinking about that as she crossed the causeway and headed into town, one side of her mouth quirked into a faint but thoughtful smile -- close enough to her old habitual cocky smirk, but softened just enough to make her look more mature. Which would probably have a really freaky effect on people who'd known her back then.

With that on her mind, it didn't surprise her that she ended up going into the preserve, and she almost didn't have to try at all to make her way to the old spot where the Magic and Support Reserves used to meet up the most.

She and Tara had met at one of those meetings. She might be fuzzy on details of a lot of memories now, but there was no way she could forget that.

("W-what do you think of this?"

"It's all still pretty unreal to me.")

Hey, was that the same tree she always used to lean up against while she watched during meetings? It looked like it, with that one funky branch sticking out right there, and it might be the wrong time of day for it but when she leaned up against the tree with her arms crossed it even felt familiar. If this had to go the way she suspected it would then maybe... at least she picked a fitting place.

Tara	Tara didn't really want to think about how she was back. It hardly mattered, anyhow; what mattered was that she got another few days to feel sun on her face and arms, hear birds, watch squirrels arguing over bottles of rum... That last one might be a little Fandom-specific. She hadn't realized she was looking for Kennedy until she found her. "Hey," she said, gently and with a smile. "Same old tree, huh?"
Kennedy	And there was that kick in the gut, yeah. "Same old tree. Kinda felt like the place to go," Kennedy answered, which was as far as she got before she had to pause and swallow, hard. Not that she'd expected this to be easy, but, well. How did you even prepare yourself for something like this? Still, she pushed away from the tree a little bit and smiled. "It's, uh. Good to see you. You know. Again."
Tara	"It's a good tree," Tara said, and patted the bark as she tried to figure out what to say. Sorry I went back to Sunnydale? Sorry I died? How's Willow? "And it's great to see you," she finally added. "All grown up and slayer-y and everything. I just wish it was, y'know. Less weird."
Kennedy	There was a lot that Kennedy wanted to say, too. Maybe it was another sign that she'd grown up that she wasn't saying any of it. "Do either of us even know what 'less weird' is like any more?" she asked instead, with a shaky laugh. "I'm not gonna argue, much. God, look at you, you look older than I remember --" But, Kennedy realized with a wince, as old as she was ever going to get. Okay, maybe her brain-to-mouth filter was always going to be a work in progress.
Tara	Tara laughed nervously. "Me, old? You're the old lady here. I'm a baby next to you now." The fact she'd stopped aging and Kennedy hadn't -- though,Goddess,she still looked fantastic -- was uncomfortable. But it wasn't going to get less uncomfortable if they tiptoed around it. "And 'less weird' is probably a thing for other people."
Kennedy	"People who are so not us," Kennedy agreed, "and hey. Technically I was already ten years older than you because timeline wacky, but I'm not actually sure if that backs up my point or not. Or... what my point even is." She ran a hand through her hair. "I'm pretty much stuck on 'wow, you're here,' but kinda wish the circumstances were different, you know?"
Tara	Tara shrugged, smiled at her shoes. "If things were too different, you wouldn't have a Willow," she pointed out. "And ... Willow. She's kind of essential."
Kennedy	The expression didn't come without a twinge of guilt, but Kennedy couldn't help breaking out into a (subdued) grin at that. "She kinda is, yeah. And I'm gonna -- I mean, I try to take care of her for you. Not that she really needs... you know what I mean, right?" Yeah, Willow's tendency to babble had definitely rubbed off on her the last couple of years. Kennedy exhaled slowly and ran a hand through her hair. "God, I wish she could be here." Her Willow or Tara's, she wasn't really sure. Maybe both. "Seems kind of wrong that I'm the one who gets the chance."
Tara	"This is going to sound all Wiccan of me?" Tara said, nibbling on her lower lip. "But -- I think that when stuff like this happens, it pretty much happens the way it's supposed to. I'm supposed to be here for you, not her." A pause. "Just -- when you get home, tell her I love her and I forgive her. She needs that once in a while."
Kennedy	"I'll tell her. Promise." Kennedy laughed softly, but it was a bittersweet sound. "I had a feeling you'd say something like that. And... I believe you. You're -- you were usually right about this stuff. Besides, if I really think about it? I'm the one who's been hanging on to the idea that you were gonna make it all this time." Dammit. There were other things she couldn't ever really forget, like a gun pointed at her and how stupidly bright and cheerful the backyard had been that day and the raw grief on a stranger's face that was still unmistakably Willow's, and now her eyes were stinging enough that she had to rub a hand across them. So no, Willow wasn't the one who had to come to terms with this any more. Go figure. "Three years in the Slayer business and you'd think I would get it by now, that we can't save everyone, but dammit, I hoped..." To hell with not crying. No one said she had to be all Stoic Tough Girl right now.
Tara	"You didn't know?" Tara asked, going a little fluttery because somehow she'd thought Kennedy would. Not that the expectation made much sense if she thought about it, but dying was a big deal. You expected it to get around the multiverse. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I would have figured out a gentler way to tell you if I could have." And then she went for the hug, because there was a crying ex-girlfriend here.
Kennedy	At least Kennedy was used enough to her Slayer strength by now that she remembered not to hug Tara back too hard, right? "I knew there was a chance, but I didn't want to admit it," she admitted in a choked voice. "So I was kinda letting myself think that maybe it'd be different for once. Pretty dumb, huh?"
Tara	"Sweet," Tara decided, letting her fingers wander up to play with the ends of Kennedy's hair. It didn't mean anything; it just felt good to hold her again. "Not dumb. I'd -- rather not be dead in people's heads if I don't have to be. Alive's way nicer."
Kennedy	And hey, if Kennedy had to accept this as reality instead of a happened-in-a-different-timeline hypothetical, at least she could hug Tara one more time. She leaned forward to tuck her chin against Tara's shoulder and tried to get her breathing back under control. "I like you being alive in my head too, yeah. I sort of have way too many memories of you for you not to be, you know?" She huffed a shaky laugh. "...also I'm really glad I'm hugging you right now, because a noncorporeal big bad looking like you to mess with my head? Not an experience I want to repeat."
Tara	"A noncorporeal who with the what now?" Tara asked, then laughed a gentle laugh. "Y'know, I don't even need to know. I'm just glad to give you a couple days away from that kind of weirdness." She made a face. "Except for the weirdness of me being here at all, but, um ... surprise?"
Kennedy	"That was a while ago. It was a whole..." Kennedy waved a hand. "Yeah, you know, never mind. Even if I explained it, it wouldn't make any sense." Because then she'd have to explain how, exactly, collapsing the entire town into the Hellmouth had actually stopped the apocalypse and there was no coherent explanation for it, because nobody had figured out yet why, exactly, it worked. She pulled back and gave Tara a crooked half-grin. "Weirdness of the you-being-here variety is totally okay with me, though. Like a mini off-season homecoming weekend."
Tara	"You could just say 'Sunnydale' and that would probably cover it," Tara joked. "And ... yeah. Like Homecoming, but without the dance. Or the rah-rah." Not that Fandom was a rah-rah kind of school, really.
Kennedy	"You have to admit," Kennedy said thoughtfully, "if some of the stuff we did here got turned into a competitive sport, we would have walked away with all the division titles. Like... varsity gremlin-dodging or whatever." Willow's goofy tendencies were contagious, apparently.
Tara	They made Tara giggle, wherever they came from. "Y-you could come up with a whole slate of events," she suggested. "Maybe some that aren't even sports. Like -- who turns into the cutest animal, and best at not making eye contact after one of those weekends." The kind that had led to her throwing herself at Jono. That kind of weekend.
Kennedy	"Like the Fandom Olympics, except without actually calling it that unless someone loves lawsuits?" asked Kennedy, and no matter how weird this was there was something familiar and comforting about knowing it was still so easy for them to fall into a conversation like this. Might as well enjoy that one more time, huh? "Oh, yeah. Those weekends." She put a knowing inflection into her voice and nodded. "Any of those ever follow you to Sunnydale?"
Tara	"There was the time I started a fan club for Jonathan," Tara said, rolling her eyes a little. "Ooh, and the time Willow accidentally gave us all amnesia.And one time Buffy was engaged to Spike. But otherwise, nah. Totally normal." It really was way too easy to just start chatting away.
Kennedy	"But not the definition of normal anywhere else in the world, I'm guessing. I heard about the fan club," Kennedy said, shaking her head a little bit in amusement. "Also the Spike thing. Not so much the amnesia, though." She idly trailed her fingertips along the trunk of the tree, tracing a scar in the bark. "The wacky's not the same any more now that we're all spread out."
Tara	"The amnesia wasn't exactly a wacky fun time," Tara said, also getting very interested in the tree. "But I know, it's not. Not that I'd want to be 17 forever, but ..." She trailed off there. Saying you didn't want to be 17 forever felt dumb when you were going to be 21 forever. "But we had something special here," she finished, finally.
Kennedy	Yeah, that was probably why Kennedy hadn't heard anything about it. "All the fun of world-saving, less of the complicated stuff?" Kennedy's voice was less certain than usual -- her brain had unhelpfully pointed out pretty much exactly what Tara was thinking -- but she played it off with a slight laugh. "Yeah. We did. I mean, I love what I do. Wouldn't give that up for anything. But --" She inhaled slowly, turned to look at Tara with a sad smile that wouldn't have been in her repertoire at 18. "If something big and bad's going down, and we don't know how to stop it, it's not like I can just say 'Hey, no big, everything should be back to normal by the time I wake up on Monday.'" Hell, even the time Raven had died, that had been temporary.
Tara	"And kids don't just appear and look cute and kind of take care of themselves, and we aren't going to get a weekend to be six, and there aren't grown-ups we can call when things get scary because we;re them," Tara added. "Yeah. I get it. We're probably remembering it better than it was, but -- we had something special here."
Kennedy	"And spontaneously turning into a guy isn't nearly as funny any more," Kennedy added mostly under her breath. (And there was one bit of Fandom weirdness that she was glad hadn't followed her back to her world after the first time.) Someone still had a grudge, and Amy Madison had better not come within 500 miles of Kennedy basically ever, but never mind that. "Sometimes it feels like a million years ago, huh?" she asked. "But this is me, refusing to let it make me feel old. Well, much." She looked up toward the treetops for a moment, then added, "Seems like you had something pretty special in Sunnydale, too, though. I mean..." She cracked a smile. "You know. So I've heard."
Tara	Tara smiled back shyly. "Yeah. I did. Even the bad parts were special." She couldn't completely forgive all of Willow's dark magic, but death had given Tara a different perspective. "I don't even just mean the girlfriend parts," she added. "It was like ... I was the Wiccan I was supposed to be. Even more than I was here."
Kennedy	"I wasn't there very long, but I can see that. Kinda hard to miss how Sunnydale's the kind of place that can bring that out of you. If you're not big into denial, anyway," Kennedy agreed, and chuckled. "You have no idea how many times people told me about how amazing you are. Or, um, were? No offense."
Tara	"None taken," Tara assured her. "I ... wow. I don't know how I feel about that." She laughed at the awkwardness. "Sad. And proud. And -- can we talk about something else?"
Kennedy	"Yes," Kennedy said quickly. "Absolutely. Anything." How did you have a 'so, what's new?' conversation in this situation? She didn't think she could wing her way through it this time, and fumbling around for something to say next was a weird and unfamiliar sensation. She was not a fan. "Damn, I should've brought Bailey with me. He would have loved to see you." Oh, good one, Kennedy. Really good.
Tara	"You should have!" Tara told her gratefully. Cute animals were a much better subject than sad friends. "I should call Natalie, too, and find out if Moxy's still around. Do you ever see her?"
Kennedy	"Can't say I do," Kennedy admitted. "I didn't really know her too well, and as far as keeping in touch with pretty much anyone at all goes, I've kinda blown at that lately. It's been busy."
Tara	"I know how that goes," Tara said ruefully. "Funny, I was good about it my first year away, but then -- Dawn was around, Warren was gone, then Buffy was dead,and then, um ... stuff was just sort of falling apart."
Kennedy	From what she'd been told, 'sort of falling apart' was putting it lightly. "Yeah, I think I sort of dropped out of contact with you a little while after the creepy no-voices thing. Which..." Kennedy shook her head, then grinned teasingly. "Your schedule got a lot more eventful after that. So I'll let you slide on it."
Tara	Well, Tara always had been a mistress of understatement. "You'll forgive me?" Her tone was teasing again. "Especially if I come back from the afterlife to say howdy every couple years?"
Kennedy	There was no good way to sum up that entire stretch of time concisely without understating it, to be fair. "Well, when you put it that way..." Kennedy laughed at that. She couldn't help it. "Nah. This is totally no-strings forgiveness."
Tara	"And all I had to do was get shot," Tara mused. "I missed you, baby."
Kennedy	"I missed you too," Kennedy told her, sadness flickering briefly across her face despite her smile. "And hey, you would have been off the hook for it anyway, even if that jackass..." It was probably a good thing she couldn't get a hold of Warren Mears any more. And he was in no way creepily alive and skinless in the crater that was Sunnydale. She exhaled slowly. "Back on topic. How long are you here for, a couple of days? That's how these things usually work, right? I mean, we have a lot of catching up to cram in there."
Tara	"A few days," Tara agreed. "I think. I ... haven't really had to think about time in a while." She leaned her head back, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face. "Not nearly long enough."
Kennedy	Kennedy just watched her for a moment. "It's never long enough, huh?" she asked quietly. "Just have to make the most of it. Which, if super Hallmark-y, is still true."
Tara	"That is kind of the deal," Tara said, with a crooked smile and sad eyes. "So we should maybe ... leave our favorite tree be and start on that."
Kennedy	"This is why you were always the brains of the operation," Kennedy told her. "Also, I'm starving, so we could maybe get started over food? You probably haven't had that in a while..."
Tara	"Huh, I hadn't even thought about that," Tara said. "Excellent idea. Chinese? I miss egg rolls."
Kennedy	Kennedy opened her mouth to respond, but her stomach growled loudly enough that she snapped her mouth shut with a sheepish expression. "...I'm thinking that's a yes. Maybe we can work our way through all the restaurants in town? Somehow I don't think calories are a huge concern for you."
Tara	"No, but an upset tummy might be," Tara said, going vaguely green at the thought. "But -- it's been a while. Maybe now I can match slayer hunger." She reached out her hand to take Kennedy's."Want to?"
Kennedy	"You even have to ask?" Kennedy curled her fingers lightly around Tara's hand, a gesture that still felt surprisingly familiar. "Let's go do the thing." Who knew, there could possibly be gossiping about Willow over dessert or something, too.

[[preplayed with the still-awesome life_inshadow, who aids and abets my terribleness. coded with thanks to ana's happy preplay coder. also, "empire of our state" is absolutely my soundtrack for this post. because i love pain.]]