A/N: You know, I've had this ready since I posted the first chapter. Just had to wonder if anyone would get antsy for this :D.
I'm aging Tara to be about nineteen. You know, Will's senior year of high school and all, Tara's roughly a year older…
Hey, guess what! Parallels with Spike's backstory! Spot 'em if you can! Also, what may seem to be prejudice towards religion; I just see the Maclay family like zealots. I mean, come on. It may seem offensive, but I do not pick on any religion, especially my own :D!
So, embarrassing update. I was halfway through this chapter and I'm like SHIT WRONG POINT ON THE TIMELINE. Anywayyy, in case you don't read memo's unless there's caps lock, this is the beginning of the story. Y'know, poor Tawa all stuck at home wif mean scawy daddy.
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Yeah, I've always been bad, Tara thought to herself as she looked in on the slumbering redhead in the house. Tell her I smoke. Drink. Go to raves and drain chicks in the bathroom. Haha, plot twist, this was all while I was still human. Heh, wonder if she'll get the dirty jokes.
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Tara's breath was rapid. And almost making her chest explode from both its absence and its presence. She couldn't help it, what was happening was terrifying. All to a poor nine-year-old.
"Oh, relax," the woman behind her whispered soothingly in her ear. "Tara, sweetie, you're fine. See? Oh, I promise, it all comes out. Okay? We don't have to try again."
She took in another whimpering breath, biting back tears. "Okay, mommy."
Mrs. Maclay, known more to the world as Macy Maclay, sat down behind her bawling daughter and pulled her into her lap. "Relax. Wood can't hurt you, sweetie. It's nothing but nature. Okay? I know it hurts now. Here, gimme your poor little finger."
Little Tara squirmed as the splinter was removed with a careful pair of tweezers. "There. You want me to kiss it better?"
Tara nodded. "Tank you, mammy," she said, sounding as innocent as ever. That damned speech impediment had always been there. It just developed into a stutter around seventeen. Whenever that horrible night was, anyway.
Macy stood, picking up her daughter – a mirror image of herself, grace, womanly, with sleek, flowing hair and baby-blue eyes – and spun her around the room. It was filled with the little that Macy managed to salvage for her daughter. Their father controlled everything, but Macy still took opportunities like pennies that rolled beneath the table as they came. Over time, the change manifested into secondhand stuffed animals, posters of kittens and stickers of butterflies pasted around the room, and color pages artfully scribbled in for a nine-year-old.
Tara giggled, the splinter received from her hand-carved wooden pull-ducky completely forgotten.
"Macy! You get down here!" her father shouted.
The eldest Maclay paled instantly, but didn't let her daughter see. So far, her daughter was completely innocent. She would fight like a true Amazon to keep it that was as long as possible. So she swirled once more, gently swinging her daughter onto the bed. "Goodnight, sweetie. Sweet dreams."
"Ni'night, mammy," Tara said, cuddling into her pillows.
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"Fucking bastard," Tara mumbled to herself, watching as the redhead slowly began to twitch in her sleep.
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Tara had a sweet, innocent life growing up. She'd always been shy around new people, but around her mother, she was a precious little life. Her life was amazing as she blossomed into a teenager.
Everything on the carnival truck cartwheeled into an explosive fire at fifteen.
She came home a little later than usual from study group. It was around five in the afternoon. Normally, on Wednesdays, she came home around six, because she tutored some students behind in Biology and English. That fateful day, study group was dismissed because there was a storm coming to New Jersey that wouldn't have been uncommon in the hurricane season.
Tara wasn't worried, of course. She hurried home, hoping to avoid getting wet. Normally, she loved nature, but it was deep into the fall and she would've frozen to death in a ditch if she went that route.
She didn't knock. She just quietly slipped inside.
That was the first time he hit her. Square across the face, with the television remote. It made a smacking sound, then a strange pop as her jaw was nearly dislocated. She screamed in muted pain, clutching at the bone and staring at her mother's bruised body on the floor.
"You bitches," the man would say, "You screw everything up. I come home for peace and quiet and I find your mother doing this, this…"
Mr. Maclay paused as he searched for the words, like his pain of confusion exceeded his daughter's fresh bruise and his wife's broken hip. "This thing! Sitting there, promoting sin like it's acceptable!"
"Addy," she garbled, still holding the bruise, which only intensified her impediment, "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong!" he screamed. "Your mother! Supporting them like they're human!"
Her father was drunk. Even later, much later, when her teeth went sharp and her face went lumpy, she had no idea what he was so pissed about. She really didn't care either.
That night, she went to bed holding her pillow, thinking about her mother who was rushed to the hospital. Oh, doctor, she fell down the stairs. I brought her here as quickly as possible.
She and Donny were the only people in the house. Of course, it couldn't possibly get worse, but it did.
Donny had a talking-to with his dad. He was to keep Tara in line while he suckered the doctors and had the insurance cover it all with a lawsuit against such-and-such for screwing everything up. That meant, if he wanted something done, it would get done, no questions asked.
"Hey Tara! Get in here!"
She heard the shouting coming from downstairs. She found him at the kitchen table, finishing his dinner while he looked over his homework. Failing Algebra II for the second time. Hardly scraping by in English. Dropping out of his history class to replace it with a bunny class.
"Don?" she asked. Her face was starting to swell painfully.
He was hunched over his textbook. "Gotta do my homework or I'm not allowed to got to Prom. Got me a nice little piece'a work. Do the dishes for me."
Tara glanced over at his dirtied plate. Her dad had forced her mom to make Donny a 'simple steak dinner' before they left. Of course, Tara wasn't offered anything. She thought about that. She thought nothing of it as she rinsed the plate off in the sink, quickly scrubbing it clean and placing it on the drying towel.
"Watch it, fatass," he grumbled as she bumped into the foldable table, causing it to sway.
She almost froze up inside, if it weren't for the fact she'd heard it before. Big woman, big hips, but a beautiful soul, her mother would say. And then she'd say that Tara was beautiful because of it.
But she'd never heard it from family before.
For the next few nights, she'd go into the bathroom and really look at herself in the mirror. After a while, she would give up and shrug it off. But she'd be back the next night, still squinting at her reflection.
One day, without thinking about it, she rushed to the bathroom before the quarter-mile walk to school. She pulled up the neck of her long-sleeved sweater, tugging it down around the edges. She ran out without thinking much about the entire process.
In school, she'd duck her head and walk on by. She slowly began to hear the snickers and see the points. She'd never done anything too stupid, so she didn't see why they'd poke fun at her. Other than the stumbling in gym class. Or tripping over the stairs. Or tripping over her own feet and scattering her papers everywhere. And then she would slowly notice how no one stopped to help her.
It stayed that way for quite a while. She'd go home, occasionally it hit, more closely together as time went on. It got to the point where she would always wear long sleeves and pull them down over her wrists. When she'd always have her head downward, her long hair covering her eyes.
Age sixteen rolled around. The beatings weren't in drunken fits but the terrible sobriety between. Apologies weren't given anymore unless bones were broken. Still, Macy and Tara were as close as possible.
Tara wasn't expecting much change in her junior year. She'd have classes, excel in them, go home, and get hit. She'd trace the stars in the sky with her fingers, looking for new shapes to map out. During the day, she'd be bored but busy, cleaning around the house where her mother's injuries made it impossible to function. Like handling heavy loads of laundry or cleaning the broken glass from beneath the couch.
Naturally, that cycle wouldn't have been broken without outside forces. Her mother introduced her to Wicca around the time she met her game-changer midway through junior year. She'd just turned seventeen in October.
Everyone was in costumes on her birthday, since school let out for fall break two weeks before Halloween. Tara loved that schedule. It gave only three days for Thanksgiving, which meant less family time.
She was heading to English class, where she would quietly do her work before heading to lunch, returning a half-hour later to finish her work.
Had her teacher not decided in spontaneity to pair everyone up to explain the reasoning behind their costume, if they had any, and if not, the studies about Samhain and the cultural impact it had on the world.
Tara hated group assignments. Mostly because her class was full of haughty jerks, but also because her speech was getting worse.
"So, what are you?" a voice asked. She mentally cringed, risking a glance from her graffiti-covered desk to the voice's face. He was a tall kid. Very tall. She felt small for the first time in her life and began to slink down in her chair. "Alright, don't answer."
"Sorry," she whispered.
There was an uncomfortable pause as people around the room chattered about how the costume was just to pick up some cute stranger at a club later on. She tried to block out all the noise and work up the courage to do her assignment, but the stare she was receiving from the tall kid weren't to encouraging.
Oh, no, she thought the moment as realization flashed over her partner's features.
"You're that Maclay girl, aren't you?" he asked, his southern twang sounding disgustingly familiar.
She nodded. "You're Donny's friend," she said in a voice that didn't pass a whisper. "Evan."
Evan was like her father's own son. He was just as misbehaved as Donny, but still got away with whatever he wanted on the Maclay's farm. He was raised in Alabama before being sent to New Jersey to a foster family for breaking his sister's arm.
Yep, just like Donny.
Unlike Donny, however, he was a sophomore that had been held back twice.
"So, do you think Donny would mind if I came over tonight?" he asked.
No, she shook her head.
She already dreaded the coming night. The two boys pissing around and Tara getting screamed at for some reason or the other.
Dolefully, she picked up her pencil and began to make up a story as why she was dressing as a never-heard-of musical artist and tried to clear her mind.
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Oddly enough, that night was the best thing that ever happened to her.
It was horrible to begin with, since she was already behind on the assignment for her AP course that, if passed, would land her with a scholarship and a ticked out of hell, but it ended miraculously.
Evan blew in the door around six, toting an insane amount of alcohol. As if her dad didn't know about Donny's stash hidden in the cellar. He and Donny proceeded to get trashed. Well, Donny was trashed, but Evan stayed as soberly-insane as ever.
Tara had her door shut, and since her father had taken out the doorknob to prevent her from doing 'ungodly, unsupervised things', had a door-stopper wedged beneath it. She was studiously flipping through her textbook, occasionally passing her glance over bold-faced text.
A draft blew in through the cracked window. She shivered, shrugging her jacket on over her floral top.
She tried to go back to reading contently, but the room was getting even colder. Tara sighed, pushing away from her desk. She slammed the window shut, thinking the latch without a second thought.
When she turned back for her desk, she jumped out of her skin. Evan was perched on the desk, his gaze flittering around the room. There was a picture of her mother on the wall, the one of her two weeks before she was put into a coma, three before she passed. A month ago.
"That your mommy, Tara?" he asked, his voice mocking.
She just stared. She didn't notice she was backing up until the wall startled her. "Um… s-s-she was. Is."
Evan seemed to take in the box beneath Tara's bed. She swore that she had it stashed so far that no mortal man's sight could find it without rifling through discarded clothes and dust bunnies.
He dove for it at the same time she did. She went flying backwards when he slammed into her, only for him to tear the box open with disappointment. "Aw, man. Thought this's where'd he'd keep 'at gun."
Tara watched in horror as he pulled a pendulum on a long silver chain from the box. Everything in there was her mother's. They were sacred, expensive witchcraft ingredients. She knew she was screwed over.
"So. A witch, just like your momma. You wiccans, you're all a bunch'a whores." Tara ducked her head. "You wouldn't know real power from cheatin'."
"H-h-how is m-m-m-magic cheating?" Tara asked, offended at his blunt remark.
"Real power is some'pin you otta suffer for."
She was about to blast him with a hex, if her speed coordinated, when she was grabbed by the throat. His face was gone, replaced with disease. Long teeth, pretty as a shark's in need of braces. Yellow eyes. Lots of bumps. His hand muffled her scream.
He talked to himself as he went to work. "Hmmm… what I otta do with you? Real hungry, but lemme tell you. I'm real in the mood for some real woman."
Her face exploded into a violent red at his intentions. Of course, he wouldn't know. No one in her family knew, except for her mother, even though she never really told her. He bit into her, draining her with ease. She let out a gasp of pain and went weak in the knees.
She crumpled to the floor as a mass of useless limbs and throbbing veins. He shrugged off his shirt, dragged his nails across his chest, and pulled her mouth to the wound.
The liquid invading her mouth was tepid. She knew it was blood, but it was tainted. Like rusted iron. She tried to spit out and turn away, but after a minute of the feeding, there was a spark.
Tara took one precautionary nip with her teeth, only for him to shout in surprise.
Evan jumped back, staring at her. "Wow. Already changed, huh? Must've been that magic-stuff. Now why don't ya do yourself an' me a favor–?"
The wall shook as he hit it. Tara, disgusted at herself, but more with Evan, ripped a post from her bedframe.
Seventeen years of hell was pent up inside her. All those unanswered whispers. All those lies. She wasn't on some righteous vengeance quest – she was fucking pissed. That's all there was to it. The post hit Evan's head with a crunching noise. He fell over to the side, blocking his head and neck.
It smacked down into his side. It cracked his ribs. Then his pelvis. She didn't know at that point that it would take one hell of a hitting arm to break anything of a vampire's, and was even less aware at just how strong a creature she had turned into. He was bleeding profusely from the section of skull she caved in. After seven blows, that battering ram turned into a massive knife, jabbing into his writhing body. "Oh, it's just a splinter, you fucking baby!"
By sheer luck, she staked him. His body turned to dust in front of her eyes, the skeleton lingering for a spilt-second. She stared at the wood in her hand, then chucked it to the side.
Tara barreled downstairs, looking for wherever in the hell her brother was. His entire posse was gathered around the television, watching a wrestling tournament. But, of course, the one teenager she wanted to strangle was elsewhere.
"Where's Donny?" she asked, her voice placid. It was the first time she had been able to speak without her voice breaking. From beside the stairs, she was right beside the forty-two inch flatscreen that her father could afford a week ago, even though he couldn't pay for life-support that was traditionally half the price.
It crashed to the ground when she got no response. "Where. Is. Donny?"
They stared at her like she was insane.
Cousin Mark stood up, a Corona in his hands. "What the hell're you doin', woman? Get back upstairs and get somethin' to clean up yer mess!" That damned accent rang out. Most of the Maclays grew up in the Deep South. Except her mother. Her damn mother, who her fucking family killed.
She tore a section of railing from the staircase behind her. It sailed over Mark's head, only to strike another one of the men in the forehead, leaving a gaping gash.
Within two minutes, they were all bleeding on the carpet. There was one left, a whimpering girlfriend of one of the friends. "You might wanna run, sweetheart."
She bolted.
Tara gorged on the bleeding, immobilized teenagers. Some were still alive. Some were so shit-faced she could taste the beer in their bloodstream.
Before Donny and her father arrived from the store, where they were buying more booze, she was gone.
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A/N: Yep, I'm done for now. R&R, please.