BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Marvel U by the parent company and its many artists/writers.

Tara's mother's death was unspecified in canon. For several reasons, many of them plot-related, I'm giving her trans-ischemic attacks (TIAs) as a symptom. My dad (1918-2011) had them, although as a part of a very different medical history over a large span of years. I'm sort of putting myself in Tara's shoes to write her reactions on a new family member showing up out of the blue. The quote from Tara's mom during an attack was, more or less, something my dad said during one of his, although, thankfully, one he recovered from. It also dovetails weirdly with 'Seeing Red.'

In a plush suite across town from the Espresso Pump, a female voice muttered words of pain and fear.

"I see you awoke," spoke a short and rough skinned demon in a wheedling voice. "Your esteemed Glorificus."

"Glory," his boss said, a tinge of annoyed sanity creeping into her voice. "What is it, Murk?"

"You slept in, your eminent emanation. I was worried for your sanity, so I took the liberty of preparing a meal."

With those words he stepped aside to reveal a man in a doctor's uniform, gagged and bound to a chair.

"Awww... Breakfast," Glory said, approaching the prisoner with a cat-like grace. "Or is it brunch? Teatime? Whatever. Any last words," she asked as she placed her hands on the heavy cloth over the man's mouth and tore the bindings in half with superhuman strength.

"I don't know who you are, but you'll never get away with this," the doctor snarled.

"Oh please, could you get any more cliché?"

"... Probably not," the man admitted, before he cried out in pain.

Without breaking the skin, Glory had plunged her hands into the bound man's skull, up to her wrists, and begun to feed.

"I know what you mean," Remy said, with a hard edge to his voice. "I met them, before I came here. They're a real piece of work. No-one has the right t' treat someone else like that, let alone family."

"It wasn't the best, even before," Tara said. "But after, without mom, living in a house where every decision you made was second guessed, where you were told you had no future, where your life and hopes were dismissed as some sort of phase you'd grow out of. They had me convinced that who I was, what I could do, how I felt meant I was some sort of demon..."

Hearing what she was saying, she trailed off. "You... Those eyes of yours, they don't go away do they?" She looked up to see Remy already shaking his head. "Oh."

"Eh, down in Orleans there was a legend identifying a with babe these eyes as le Diable Blanc, one of the reasons I changed hands so much, I expect," he said, shaking his head. "I go by 'Gambit' these days. Ah. If it helps, I stole dad's car on the way up here. Left it in an impound lot somewheres in Texas."

"Yeah," Tara said as she relaxed back into her seat. "It does some."

"See," Willow said, nudging Tara's arm. "We're making progress."

Tara and Remy glanced at Willow's interruption, then back at each other.

Tara gave a slight shrug.

Remy sighed.

"So," he said, turning to include the redhead in the conversation. "Word on on the street is that Tara's a... spellcaster. I've seen you do some stuff. You guys start off together, or..."

"Mom taught me some stuff," Tara said, before Willow could speak. "I didn't exactly get into the bigger stuff before I came here though. Willow started before I met her. She didn't grow up with magic like I did, but she's advancing at a very high rate."

"Comes with the territory," Willow said. "Oh, we're Wiccans, by the way. Very big with the Wicca."

"Good to know," Remy said as he squared his shoulders and leaned slightly into the table. "So, dat is if you're okay t' talk about it, what did exactly happen to mom?"

"She had a series of mini-strokes. They must have been going on for awhile, before we," Tara said, shaking her head. "Before we noticed. There's three phases of treatment doctors go through, with different combination of medicines, to try to limit tee eye ayes and keep massive... damaging strokes from happening. She only made it to the second phase before the first big one hit. After that, she just wasn't... She died two months later. I, I don't think it was big as the first one, but it was in a bad spot."

"I'm sorry," Remy said. "You'd think it'd be easier t' heal people by callin' on... powers, but it's one of the rarest things out there."

"Yeah," Tara said. "If we all lived in a video game, I could just... I miss her. A lot. She was just a bright spot in my life. She... She took me horseback riding... wh-when we had horses."

Feeling like a third wheel, Willow shifted slightly in her seat.

"When I said my dad tried to keep me at home," Tara said, eying Remy warily. "Through shame... By making me think I was a demon... I mean that literally. I was supposed to turn into a terribly evil demon on my twentieth birthday."

"I'm not somethin' that goes bump in the night," Remy said, with a slight shake of his head. "Left t' myself, I can charge things until they explode in interesting ways, but I've had that power suppressed by certain things that jus' don't work on demons... Oh," he said, glancing up curiously. "When was dis unblessed event supposed to happen?"

"About two weeks ago."

"Happy Birthday."

##

"Oh, about that," Willow asked Remy. "How old are you anyway?"

"Well," he answered, his eyes glinting darkly. "How old do I look?"

"Late twenties," Tara said.

"Early thirties," Willow said, speaking at the same time as Tara.

Both women frowned slightly, as if something was missing.

"As far as my birthday goes, th' trail kinda goes dead in a hospital ward in New Orleans. Dat's where my... adoptive father stole me. I don't know how I ended up there as literally hours before I was going t' open the box wi' the last surviving records in it, he'd paid t' have them destroyed."

"Ouch," Tara said. "That's just... mean."

"I don't think he did it to hurt me, or to protect himself, but... he's manipulated me a lot. He took me in the first place because a local bigwig, a real believer in the legend apparently about me, paid him to. Didn't take too long before my adoptive father, his name be Jean-Luc, stole me back from the man's collection... Fer fear of the 'rescue' being linked back t' him, I was left on the street under the care of th' low tier of his organization. It took him years to 'accidentally' bump into me and officially bring me into his family. I think part of the wait was that he jus' wanted to make me so grateful for a warm home I'd adopt the LeBeau family philosophy and do anything they said."

"Oh. That's where LeBeau comes from," Willow said, nodding her head. "And here I was just thinking you were just walking around, calling yourself 'The Beautiful' because... Sorry. Just talking out loud."

"That's okay," Tara said. "I want you here for this. I don't want new massive developments to happen in my life without you being there with me."

##

"I... If I'd have known about Samantha and you," Remy said to Tara, once the witches had stopped staring warmly into each others' eyes. "I'd have been there, and I don't mean just when she was sick. I'd have been there when you were growing up. Not living in the same house, mind you, but I'd visit on holidays and mebbe had you spend summer vacations wi' me wherever I ended up."

"Heh," she said with a half-smile and a slight shake of her head. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

In the plush suite, the doctor sat, still tied to the chair, his blank gaze fixed on the ceiling.

"Radishes keen greenly," he muttered to himself, the sanity having been leached from him by Glory's hunger. "The blood in them can't be transferred to rocks."

The doctor's eyes suddenly focused on the brown-haired man who had walked into the room.

"Ben," the doctor said. "Persimmons falling far from the tree?"

"Dr. Solus? Oh, Hell," Ben snarled, recognizing the bound man. "She can't do this to me! She can't be feeding where I work!"

"Ben," Dr. Solus shouted, the anger in Ben's voice agitating what was left of his mind. "Glory and Ben! Ben and Glory!"

"Shut up," Ben snarled.

Dr. Solus' cries only rose in volume, the pitch steadily creeping higher and higher.

"Shut up. I said... Shut up!"

Ben screamed into the bound man's face and backhanded him. The chair tipped over and the doctor fell with it, hitting the back of his head hard on the ground.

"Ben chicken Glory," Dr. Solus said, in a merely conversational tone. "Glory lunch Ben sandwich?"

"I-" Ben began to ask, before he was interrupted by the doctor's high pitched screaming. "I can't let you go back to the hospital," Ben said with a mixture of anger and regret. "I can't." His voice grew softer and worlds more weary. "Just shut up."

Pulling a plush pillow from the expensive couch, Ben held the pillow to the bound man's face and, despite the older man's struggles, pressed down hard.

After a bit, Ben relaxed and stood up. He bent over the dead man and checked for a pulse.

Turning around, Ben emptied the contents of his stomach onto the thick carpeted floor of the suite.

As he stood there, panting, nearly falling off his feet, a demon in a brown robe approached him from behind.

"Glory's not going to appreciate the mess," Murk said. "She's going to-"

Ben spun around, grabbed the minion by the shoulders and pulled up.

"She's going to what," Ben yelled into the shorter creature's face.

"I meant the body. The body, he of the most sacred blood," Murk screamed. "By 'mess' I meant the body!"

"Hmph," Ben said, letting go, allowing Murk to regain his balance. "I guess you'll just have to think of something to do with it. Well, maybe this was a good thing in the long run. I suppose you should only ask others to do things you are prepared to do yourself."

"What was that," Murk asked weakly.

"Oh," Ben said, as he broke off from staring at the body. "Nothing. Just that this is another example of the destruction my sister leaves in her wake. Starting tomorrow I'm going to have to take on more... responsibility. That's tomorrow though. Right now, I'm late for my shift."

"Oh," Tara said as she sat forward and nodded towards the clock on the wall. "We've class shortly. I'm sorry, uh..."

"Hey," Remy said. "I'm in town. I'm not gonna leave anytime soon."

"We're usually at our dorms or at the Magic Box," Willow said as she and Tara stood up from their chairs. "You have the phone numbers, right?"

"Right here," he said, patting one of his pockets.

"Oh," Tara said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a folded booklet. "This is the program for the play I'm in tonight. I'm mainly behind-the-scenes, painting the city was some of my best work, but I have a few lines. If you wanted..."

"I'd be honored."

"Anyway... You know the lie," Tara said, adjusting her coat about her shoulders. "About me becoming a demon?"

"Yeah?"

"I can't for the life of me understand why my mom backed my dad up on it if it wasn't supposed to be true," she said in a rush. After a calming breath, she continued speaking at a slower rate. "Oh, you know what the last thing she said to me was?"

Remy cringed slightly, catching the undertones of resentment and sadness. "Can't say as I do."

"It- you have to understand that she was okay mentally an hour before the last one hit, and this was near the end, very near the end." Tara stared him down, her eyes pleading: 'why weren't you there?' "It was: I'll give you money. All the money in the world. But don't buy a new shirt."

Remy took this as it was meant, an expression of the pain and trauma both Tara and Samantha had to go through without him.

Not wanting to dwell on that at the moment, he raised an eyebrow. "You know, seeing as there's no telling what's going t' happen between now and then, I'd kinda hate for that to be the last words we say t' each other."

"... Good point."

There was a moment of silence.

"Uh," Remy said, awkwardly. "My eyes would be brown if... Dat's one thing not directly obvious about me and a memory I hold close."

"Oh," Willow said, perking up suddenly. "We have a cat."

"Yeah." Tara's bittersweet smile grew larger as she wrapped her arm around Willow. "A precious little black and white kitten, all cuddly and soft. Female."

"Now that's a look I like," Remy said, grinning himself. "I'm glad she brings you two some happiness. What do you call her?"

"Miss Kitty Fantastico."

##

"Right," Remy said with a sigh. "Only in California."