Family
Disclaimer: Definitely no money being made, all original characters belong to the God Joss Whedon and ME. I own nothing except for the characters I made up for the story.
Distribution: You want it, take it. Let me know where and I may visit it from time to time.
Spoilers: Pretty much taking the majority of BTVS the way it went with a few major differences.
Feedback: Please! I will take any and all feedback. This is my first time writing fiction and I am hoping everyone will enjoy the story.
Pairing: W/T, A/X, B?
Author's Notes: Everything is un-beta'd. Any and all misspellings, grammar, typos etc... are all my fault. Please go gently on me. The differences to the story are as follows. Other little inconsequential things I am sure will come up in the story - but these are the main items that I wanted to make sure everyone understands. BEWARE MARY-SUE WARNINGS IN EFFECT - :)
1. Tara didn't die!
2. Willow didn't go all black magic woman.
3. Willow and Tara helped Buffy and Faith defeat the First without activating the SIT's.
4. Anya didn't die.
5. It's a couple years later.
Summary: Life goes on as usual at the Hellmouth. Unexpected arrivals, love in the air, family members showing up, patrols, fighting evil and eventually Big Bads! Sit back, buckle up and hopefully enjoy the ride.
Chapter 1
Tara is sitting in the Magic Box grading the papers of the test she had given today to her students. For some reason she's been feeling a bit 'off' lately. She's feeling a little on edge and she can't figure out quite why yet. Willow was worried about it - afraid that another BIG BAD would be coming to town, but Tara had explained to her that it wasn't that type of feeling - just that something was going to happen - but not in a bad way...
"Xander, I want to go home and have orgasms!" Anya stated in her characteristic blunt tones.
"Ahn, it's the middle of the afternoon and I need to finish making these additional shelves for the new shipment of books Giles sent." Xander states calmly, after all these years he has finally realized that no matter what he says - Anya was Anya and she wasn't going to change. He was just happy that she took him back after him being a complete idiot.
Tara just smirks to herself - she can sympathize with Anya, she wouldn't mind for her red headed love to show up so they could make up some 'excuse' to head home for some quality alone time. Even after being together for over five years, their love hasn't diminished. If anything it's grown stronger.
The bell over the door into the shop jangles and Anya says "Welcome to the Magic Box, please come in and spend your hard earned cash. It would be greatly appreciated!"
Tara looks up and sees a tall, dark haired woman standing at the door wearing camouflage pants and a tight black t-shirt with the Marines logo on it. The woman has a duffel bag thrown over her shoulder and that's when Tara realizes that the woman is staring at her very intently.
The woman glances at Anya but turns back to Tara saying, "Thanks, I probably will be spending a lot of cash here, especially since you have such beautiful women gracing your shop, especially ones of such beautiful light - right LITTLE LIGHT?" She emphasizes Little Light strongly, hoping that Tara would remember - but it's been so many years...
"K-Kelly?" Tara stutters slightly, not believing that it could be her, after all this time.
Just as Tara is slowly getting out of her chair, Buffy walks in from the training room to get a bottle of water. Buffy watches as Tara all of a sudden runs up to the strange woman standing at the bottom of the steps by the door, and throws herself on her crying and literally wraps her arms and legs around the tall woman. 'Whoa, Wills is going to be seriously pissed about this', Buffy thinks to herself. Who the hell is this woman, anyway?
Buffy watches as the tall woman just wraps her arms around Tara and holds her and starts crying with her.
"I didn't know if you would remember me, Tar. It's been almost 17 years since you've seen me. Actually, I didn't even know if you wanted to see me again after all this time" stated Kelly softly to Tara.
"What? Why wouldn't I want to see you? I love you, Kelly. Just because you've been gone for so long, doesn't mean I love you any less" Tara says in between sniffs clinging all the tighter to Kelly while she's saying this.
All of a sudden the bell rings over the door again, and in walks Willow. Uh, Oh. Buffy thinks to herself - this is going to get ugly, quick. Thinking that maybe this Kelly woman was an old flame.
"Umm, Tara?" squeaked Willow when she realizes it's her girlfriend wrapped around some Amazon looking warrior woman. That she is seriously thinking about turning into a toad!
"Sweetie, come here, I want you to meet someone." Tara slowly releases her legs from around Kelly's waist and smiles brightly at Willow while she reaches to hold Kelly's hand. "Willow, I want you to meet my sister, Kelly. Kelly, this is my..."
Kelly interrupts her at this point and says "Little Light, I think I can see for myself who this lovely young woman is. Willow, welcome to the family. I would say you better be taking good care of my baby sister, but looking at her and seeing you two together for myself, that would seem a little redundant!" Kelly gives a low chuckle then snatches the red head up into a quick embrace.
Willow realizes that she's probably about a foot off the ground, being held in the arms of her love's sister? Sister? Finally the Amazon woman sets her back on the floor and Willow looks at Tara and says "SISTER? Since when do you have a sister, and why am I just finding out you have a sister, and is she like the rest of your family, because if she is I am going to have a serious talking to her about the way they treated you-" at this point Tara gives her lover a quick kiss on the lips to stop the Willow-babble.
"Sweetie, I'll explain everything to you, I promise. It's a long story and honestly, I didn't think I would ever see her again." Tara gives her lop-sided grin at her lover and then looks at Kelly and just grabs Kelly into another hug. "But, boy am I glad that you're here Kel. I've missed you so much. We have a lot of catching up to do."
"Uh, hmmm." Buffy interrupts trying to hint that the rest of the group would like to know what the hell was going on.
"Oh, sorry, Buffy. Umm, everyone, this is my sister Kelly. Kelly - the impatient one is Buffy, Anya is the lady behind the cash register and the man standing beside her is her boyfriend Xander" Tara introduced everyone.
"Hi Buffy, Anya and Xander" Kelly says with a slight grin. Looks like her baby sister did good for herself - she had some very protective friends. That cute little blonde, Buffy, was shooting major daggers at her like she would be happy to do some serious damage to her for daring to touch Tara.
"Hiya, it's good to meet you" Xander says with his best 'pretty girl in the house' smile.
"Hello, Xander is my boyfriend, you can't have him" stated Anya in clear, precise tones.
"OOOOkay" Kelly says with a slight question in her tone. "I'll remember that - don't worry."
"Don't worry about Anya, she's like that to everyone she perceives as a possible threat to taking her Xander away" laughed Buffy as she came over to shake Kelly's hand. "It's good to meet you. If I do say so, you seem quite different from the rest of Tara's family."
Buffy watched as Kelly seemed to close off and stiffen when she made the comment. Uh, oh. Something's definitely up here.
"Umm, Buffy. Kelly is actually my half sister. We share - shared the same mother." Tara stated quietly.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize..." Buffy kind of shook her head in apology for putting her foot in her mouth, as usual.
"That's okay, Buffy. There will be a lot of talking and explaining to do, I'm sure." Kelly said with a slightly tense smile. "Well, can anyone point me in the direction of a decent motel so that I can get a shower and get some clean clothes on? I've been traveling for the last 28 hours straight and am feeling a little less than fresh." Kelly joked lightly.
"Kelly, if you think I'm going to let you stay at some flea-bag motel, you have another thing coming!" Tara said firmly. "Now, first things first, it's starting to get dark out and..." Tara looks at Buffy with a slight lift to her eyebrow silently asking if she could warn Kelly about the dangers of the town of Sunnydale.
Before Buffy and Tara could say anything, however, Kelly spoke up and said "Sis, I can't believe you settled on a Hellmouth of all places! What in the hell were you thinking about when you moved here? Or didn't you realize it? I know our talents run along different lines and I wasn't home long enough to know your strengths and weaknesses..." All of a sudden she realized that everyone was looking at her with their mouths slightly open "I guess you all know this already, huh? I suppose I don't need to explain to you that there are evil beings in this world and they're all not human, either? Bogeymen do exist, so do Vampires and Demons, Hell Gods, etc.."
"Uh, nope, you don't have to explain about those type of things to us, no sirree bob. We know all about the things that go bump in the night. The question is, how do you know all about those things that go bump in the night and the Hellmouth and Hell Gods and Vampires, Demons, and all the other craziness that is in this world?" Willow babbled with a very serious note in her voice.
"Well, let's just say that while I was in the Marine's we didn't just fight other countries!" laughed Kelly lightly. "I was sort of in this special ops group that got called in to take out nests of demons, vampires and whatever other nasties that we came across."
"Oh, God not the Initiative" whined Buffy. "I thought they were finally gone."
"No, Buffy, I didn't work for the Initiative. That was a major fuck-up if there ever was one. Wait a minute - how... ooohh Buffy - Vampire Slayer? Got it. Anyhow, the group I was with was in effect long before the Initiative came to be and we didn't play the games those sick bastards like to play. My group was/is strictly a seek and destroy group. We went after the bad guys and wiped them out. We actually had a couple of demons that worked with us. You're probably aware that there are good demons as well as bad demons, right?" Kelly asked with a slight note of concern in her voice.
"Oh, yeah. We know there are good demons, we pretty much take each demon on their own merits. If they don't bother humans, we don't bother them. It actually works out quite well. Some of the demons that are good guys, actually help out quite frequently." Buffy said with a grin on her face. "Your group is definitely different from the Initiative if you actually worked with demons!"
"Hey, guys. We can all do this later. How about we head out and get Kelly situated at the house. Oh, Goddess, where is she going to sleep, we haven't finished with the house yet, we only have our bedroom and Willow's office situated so far." Tara states with a slight hint of worry in her voice.
"Don't worry about it Tara. I have your old room at the house that Kelly is more than welcome to stay in, that is if you don't mind?" Buffy asks Tara's sister. Thinking to herself she would like to get a little more information from her while she's staying at her house. After all Dawn wouldn't be home for Christmas break for another week and that would give her a little time to pump Kelly for information about exactly what she knows.
Kelly looks from Tara to Buffy and shrugs her shoulders "I don't mind, if you don't. I can sleep about anywhere - part of being in the Marines. You don't get to be picky about sleeping accommodations! Just give me a corner somewhere and I'll be happy."
"Well, I think we can do better than a corner. Come on, I'll take you to the house. Pizza at Casa De Summers tonight guys? My treat." Buffy says looking at everyone questioningly.
"Of course, me and Tara will definitely be there - How about you two Anya?" Willow asks Anya and Xander.
"Actually, Anya and I have plans for tonight. We'll definitely get together again later and get all the gossip!" Xander states with one of his goofy grins.
"Okay, the rest of us will meet at my house in say, two hours? That will give Kelly time to get cleaned up and settled in a little bit and give me time to order pizzas. Will, Tara, do you have your vehicle or do we need to walk you home to be on the safe side?" Buffy asks questioningly.
"We're okay Buffy. I brought the vehicle with me since it was getting so late. I don't like chancing anything happening to my baby." Willow says as she lightly kisses Tara's cheek.
Tara smiles at her lover and looks at Kelly. "Buffy will take good care of you Kel. We'll see you in a couple hours, I love you." Tara gives Kelly another quick hug and kiss on her chin.
Kelly gives her a quick grin while hugging her back and a quick peck on the tip of her nose. "I've missed you Little Light. We have a lot of catching up to do. I'll see you later."