Fic: Sights Unseed (4/?)
Three: Exposition Interrupted
He really was trying to pay attention. Honest. He had his forehead skin all scrunchy and he made sure to nod at random intervals. He didn’t let more than half a minute go by without uttering an “Uh-huh” or a “Hmmm.” Sometimes he would even pepper in a “Really?”
It was just that Tara, for all of her wonderful traits, wasn’t really much of a storyteller. She was going on about Churches and Orders and Trials and Prophecies and all kinds of stuff, but Xander found it impossible to keep it all straight in his head.
“Xander, do you understand what I’m saying? We can’t stay here long. They’ll k-kill you.”
He couldn’t really blame Tara, however. She might not have been the most dynamic storyteller of all time, and yeah, sure, she stammered over some of the “They’re gonna kill you” parts, but it wasn’t really her fault. It was just so darn distracting to try and listen to her story while that thing was still there.
“Really?” Xander peppered, his eye trailing past Tara’s face to the shelf behind her. The thing was blue. Only it wasn’t really blue, it was more of a bluish kind of orange, except it was the kind of orange that was more about being wavy than about being any real color. And now that he thought about it,t he waviness was really more of a choppiness, which made sense because it was really all just planks of wood, and somebody would have had to chopped those logs at some point, even if the logs were actually ropes that were holding up a sail that billowed out into a starry night sky that was filled with-
“Xander!”
Xander blinked and found himself looking at Tara’s face instead of the night sky. Her small hands were pressed against the sides of his face and she was forcibly keeping his head from looking away from her.
“Yeah?” Xander asked. “What’s up, Tar?”
His eye tried to look past her to look at the thing, but her head moved to track his gaze and blocked his view. That was when he noticed Tara’s forehead skin was just as scrunchy as his head been, if not scrunchier. That made him furrow his brow, but without a mirror he couldn’t check who was scrunchiest.
“Xander, try to focus, okay? Can you do that?”
“Sure,” he said agreeably. He nodded twice, causing her hands to slide against the stubble on his face, and then he took a deep breath in preparation for focusing. The inhalation caused tiny pokers to jab against his chest, and he winced before putting a palm against his solar plexus. When he looked down, he could see a tiny work-gang of demons attacking his chest with pickaxes. He watched with astonishment as two little demons swung their pickaxes at his chest, creating a tiny hole. Then two more demons rushed up and filled the hole with what looked like blood-red tar. Once the tar was in place two more demons came out with what looked like bristle-less push brooms, and they smoothed over the tar. It made everything look a little more uniform, but it did nothing to stop the burning pain from the tar or the stabbing pain from the pickaxes.
He shut his eye and let his open hand slide against his chest. He told himself he didn’t feel little demons. He didn’t hear them shouting at him to “Watch it!” as his hand knocked them away. They weren’t real. What he was feeling were bandages. He was feeling scars, scabs, and barely-healed wounds.
When he opened his eye the demons were gone. Licking his suddenly dry lips, Xander looked back to Tara. Her hands were still on his face, and here eyes were fixated on him. Her look of concern was, of course, still present. That never seemed to go away.
“I’m sorry,” Xander said. He tried to take steady, slow breaths. The pain was sharp but not overwhelming. “It keeps creeping up on me.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said at once. That made him smile.
“It’s a little my fault. Xander Harris’s fault, at least.”
“It’s not your fault,” she repeated, stressing each word a little more. “You’re not him.”
“Maybe,” he replied. He wasn’t as convinced as she was. Before she could argue with him he said, “There’s something behind you.”
Her hands slid away from his face and she glanced over her shoulder, towards the rickety wooden shelf that looked to be hardly anything more than a few poorly split logs fashioned together. It wasn’t the logs that fascinated him. It was the thing on the shelf. It was a very strange thing. It was blue, except it wasn’t really blue, it was more of a-
Her hand was on his cheek again, gently pushing his face away from the thing. He blinked and tried to fight the urge to push her away so he could stare at it some more.
“It’s an aural painting,” Tara said. “It’s very intricate. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s blue,” Xander told her. “Only it’s not really blue.”
Her smile was almost patronizing, but there was a genuine sense of innocent good humor in there as well. “It’s not,” she agreed. “It’s a, um, kind of a reflection, I guess. Of your own aura.”
“Oh. Does that mean I’m not really blue?”
“It means-”
She was interrupted when the door at the front of the hut swung slowly open. Xander turned his head to look at it and squinted at the sudden glare from the daylight outside. Jonselm stood in the doorway. He looked to Xander first, and Xander felt that same sense of pity he always got from Jonselm. It became even more noticeable when his expression changed to one of awe when he looked to Tara.
“Sister Tara,” he said, his voice quavering slightly. “The time approaches. I cannot sway them against it. I-I spoke of the Fire Beast and of the Abom-, of Brother Xander’s poaning of it. They shall not hear it. They say...”
He licked his lips and lowered his eyes. “They say they will begin the Trials at the first light. I am so totally sorry. For a sureness, I have never grieved for anything so strongly.”
Xander frowned and tried to figure out just what Jonselm was trying to say. While he was doing that, another figure stepped in the door behind Jonselm. Xander felt a brief thrill of excitement at the thought that she might be real.
But then Cordelia Chase stepped directly behind Jonselm and stuck her head over his shoulder to look at the side of his face. Jonselm didn’t appear to notice. Cordelia looked from him to Xander and then shook her head.
“Wow,” she said. “You are so boned.”
“Boned?” Xander said, a slight squeak to his voice.
“Poaned?” Jonselm echoed back at him, looking puzzled.
“What?” Xander asked.
“I am not understanding,” Jonselm said, scratching the top of his head.
“Pleased to meet you, Not Understanding,” Xander said, a grin twitching at his mouth. “I’m Xander.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Cordelia said, rolling her eyes. “Make jokes when they’re going to kill you and torture you.”
“Wouldn’t that be the other way around?” Xander asked her.
“S-Sister Tara?” Jonselm said in a pleading tone, his eyes flicking from Xander to her. A nervous sweat had broken on his forehead and he swallowed loudly.
“It’s okay, Jonselm,” Tara said. She put a hand around Xander’s upper arm and squeezed gently. The touch startled Xander, who had forgotten Tara could do stuff like that again. He turned his attention from Cordelia and gave it to Tara. She had her serious-face on. “Xander, we h-have to go. We can’t stay here.”
“Because of the killing and torturing - sorry, I mean: because of the torturing and killing?”
She furrowed her brow before nodding slowly. “Yes. Right, because of that. The Trials, Xander. Remember I just told you about them?”
Oh crap. She had just told him something, hadn’t she? All at once he felt as if he were back in school and Ms. Calendar was asking him what hexadecimal meant. She’d smiled a little when he’d asked, “Is that like when you curse the filing cabinets at the library?”
In fact, it was the same smile Ms. Calendar was currently offering him at that very moment. She stood just behind Tara, that gentle, almost approving smile on her face. Xander had always suspected Ms. Calendar secretly liked his answers. It never felt quite as bad to be wrong in her class.
“They’re going to put you on trial for having only one eye, Xander,” Ms. Calendar said as her smile turned from good-natured to sympathetic. “They’re going to kill you.”
“Kill me?” Xander asked her, then remembered Tara was still there in front of him. He looked back to her. “They’re going to kill me?”
Tara nodded. “Yes. That’s why we have to go.”
“But why? What’d I ever do to them?”
Wesley spoke up from the other side of the room. He was looking around warily, and seemed loathe to get close to any of the primitive and usually dirt-covered furnishings of the small hut. He didn’t look at Xander as he said, “Historically, religious fanatics haven’t required heathens, infidels, and other unholy persons to do anything in particular to merit a torturous death. Still, you have to expect that the Church of the Seer is going to be rather a bit concerned about the presence of someone with only one eye.”
“But I’m the Seer! I’m See-Guy! I’m seeing you right now! How is killing me even remotely fair?”
“It’s not,” Tara said, reaching a hand up to touch the side of his face and turn his attention back to her. “It’s not, Xander. But we can’t d-do anything about it. So we have to go before they come. You don’t want to hurt anyone, do you?”
Boba Fett stepped up beside Ms. Calendar and pulled his blaster out of its holster. He gestured to it silently as if reminding Xander it was there. Xander stared at him for a moment, and tried to figure out how Anya could fit into that armor. Boba wasn’t exactly giving on Anya vibes. Had he hallucinated that? Could you even hallucinate something that was already a hallucination?
Shaking his head, Xander turned his eye back to Tara. “No,” he decided. “Of course not.”
“Then I need you to go lie down for a little while, okay, Xander?” She gave him an earnest look. “While I get everything ready. You need to get as much rest as you can. W-we’re going to have to leave at dawn.”
“Leave? I don’t even know where we are. Where do we leave to?”
“The Valley of the Sun,” Jonselm said.
“No,” Tara said, shaking her head firmly. “You said that the Church of the Seers is in charge there. They’d try to kill him too.”
“I’m definitely against the place-where-they’ll-kill-me idea,” Xander added.
“You must,” Jonselm urged. “It is destiny, for a sureness. You are the Seer, Sister Tara. You must find the path that begins at the Valley of the Sun. It is your truest purpose!”
“Jonselm, I’m not the One Who Sees. I t-told you that.”
“The auras are yours to witness, is this not a certainty? You read the lines. You gaze upon the facets of reality.” He pointed a bony finger towards the thing that had so distracted Xander. “The aural painting sings to you!”
“It’s not me,” Tara insisted. “I see what Xander sees.” Her eyes lowered. “I-I mean, I s-see what he’s supposed to see. It doesn’t make sense.”
Her eyes lifted and now Xander could see the fear in them. “I’m not even supposed to be alive.”
“Now that’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day,” a new voice said, causing Xander to look towards the door. A figure, a familiar figure, seemed to walk straight into the hut through the wall beside the door. Xander’s throat tightened. He recognized the person.
It was Tara. It was Tara as he had known her for the last few months. It was Tara dressed in a pale green dress. It was Tara moving without sound. It was Tara who did not cause so much as a ripple in the air as she moved. It was Tara as she’d appeared to him in his White Room.
“You,” this Tara said, pointing at the other Tara, the one dressed in brown patchwork clothing like everyone else in the little village. “Are definitely not supposed to be here.”
“Great,” Xander said. “As if my hallucinations weren’t confusing enough as...it...”
He trailed off as the realization came to him. Xander wasn’t the only one staring at this new version of Tara. Jonselm was staring at her with wide eyes, and he was shaking slightly. Tara, the brown-clothes Tara, had her mouth slightly agape as she stared as well.
They saw her too.