by You-Know-Who and Drucilla
Tara hunched over in her flimsy, second-hand coat as she walked the five blocks to the bus stop. It was unusually cold tonight, and the wind was hitting the backs of her legs hard enough to make them numb and buckle. Cold as she was, she still convinced herself that a new start would do her some good. Already, she missed Dawn and felt guilty about abandoning her. She concentrated on not even thinking about Willow. After the accident and Dawn's protracted stay in the hospital, Tara had left Sunnydale. She couldn't stand to just sit by and watch Willow destroy herself, and she had too much sense of self-preservation to try to help and be drawn into her love's downward spiral.
Willow hadn't been exactly receptive to the idea of giving up magic and facing reality, and while Tara could certainly understand it, she could never condone it. She hoped that maybe her leaving would give Willow a wake-up call, some sort of insight and understanding into her problems. Tara felt a little guilty, but she also felt relieved no longer to be worrying about them.
Still, Tara was starting to wonder if she'd made the right decision. Los Angeles was a big city, different from what she'd been used to, and she was finding it very cold, very harsh, and very lonely. Now what? was the question that pushed itself to the forefront of her mind as she shivered and pulled her coat more firmly around her. She'd gotten to LA, found a reasonable (crummy, her mind whispered) apartment and a reasonable (hellish) job, and found herself with nowhere to go, no plans for the future. She'd always made so many plans with Willow, even if they were silly and not likely to be fulfilled, that now she found herself very much at loose ends and missing the wild speculation.
She had loved being around Willow, Dawn, and the others around as well. They had become her family and her support. Here, she wasn't sure how she would take care of herself and very much doubted she'd have the chance to do the same for anyone else. And she was starting to find that she missed it. She thought briefly about volunteering at a soup kitchen, but even that most likely wouldn't provide her with the family she had always wanted, and found in the Scooby gang.
She had been tempted to call them, but knew better. She would have been on the next bus out there and that would do none of them any good. She cared about all of them too much to go back to the way things had been as though nothing had happened.
So instead she was standing here, at an ice-cold bus stop waiting for a perpetually late bus on her way back to her roach-infested apartment from a greasy job with a boss who kept eyeing her in a way she really didn't like. Not that she had recieved many decent looks here. She only could hope things got better for the Scooby gang and for herself. Maybe she just needed more time to get used to the ways LA worked, but then she still wasn't sure she wanted to.
When the vampires swarmed her from the alley behind the bus stop her first thought was I know I wanted to go back home, but I didn't want home to come here like this! She looked around for anything that might be useful against them as they moved closer. Unfortunately, lacking Slayer strength she didn't think she'd be able to break the wooden bench, and nothing else around her looked movable or hit-nasty-things-trying-to-kill-her-able. She'd even stopped carrying stakes in her purse, thinking that in LA she'd worry more about muggers than vampires. Tara contemplated running but that would leave her back wide open to them. She was sorely tempted to use her magic on them. So much for things getting better, they were getting progressively worse.
The one grabbing her in a choke-hold and sinking fangs into her neck from behind took her entirely by surprise, as did his sudden explosion into dust before he'd had a chance to do more than tear her neck. She sank onto her knees choking and clutching her neck. Her vision blurred as she looked around for whatever had just saved her. With her luck, it was an even worse monster than merely wanted the vampires out of the way to get at her more easily.
Her luck actually seemed to be holding, she realized after the first few minutes. Whatever it was, it had dispatched three of the vampires in short order, and was sending the fourth one flying... straight into her, she realized too late to duck. She winced as the vampire slammed into her and whimpered as she heard what she thought to be bones breaking. She blinked and attempted to weakly shove the body off of her.
One of the last vampires, having successfully dodged her rescuer, grabbed her in a last-ditch effort to drink her or use her as a human shield, she wasn't sure which. Then again, it didn't seem like her rescuer was intent on actually rescuing her so much as killing the vampires. Can't have everything, she thought wryly. She tried to shake him weakly wincing and clutching her chest. Would be nice if he would actively rescue her at the moment however, she thought grimacing in pain.
As though hearing her thoughts, whoever-it-was bodily picked up the vampire and sent him flying into a wall. A quick motion later, and he was brushing the dust from his jacket. Tara shivered more from pain and uncertainty than the cold. She hoped that whoever this was wasn't going to attack her now that the others were taken care of. She tried to decide whether to thank whoever-it-was now or wait til she was certain she was in fact safe.
Which, she thought with alarm as she saw the whatever-it-was coming closer, she was about to find out. Her eyes wouldn't focus and it was getting harder to stay awake, which didn't make her feel any better about her situation. She clutched her head blinking to try to clear her vision and look up at her rescuer and make out his face.
He looked human enough, maybe she could reason with him. "P-please don't hurt me," she managed to stammer out, but it made her chest hurt, a lot, so she stopped. And anyway, she was sounding pathetic and whiny. She whimpered softly and strained her eyes to try and see more clearly.
The man just stared down at her, watching her, thinking or waiting for something. He didn't seem to be dangerous. At least not in the way she had been expecting. "T-thank you," she said softly feeling a little bad for leaping to the conclusion that he would hurt her. Not to say it wasn't a logical one.
He knelt down beside her and poked and prodded at her ribcage, gently but firmly, like a doctor. Tara hoped he was a doctor. She had the sinking feeling she needed one. She bit her lip to keep down her whimperings of pain and closed her eyes feeling her vision blurring even more than before.
He made a noise that could have been a curse or just muttering to himself, then reached around behind her, slowly maneuvering her into a position where she could be picked up. She found the silence slightly unnerving but also found it too hard to form any words, concentrating only on the pain in her chest, the swelling bruises on her neck, and keeping herself conscious. At the first sudden jolting movement he made, however, she knew it was a losing battle. She closed her eyes reluctantly bracing herself against more pain and giving in to the evitable. Praying that he wasn't taking her to a situation even worse than her current one, Tara slowly sank into blessed, pain-free unconsciousness.