Current mood:

tired

Title: Beginning To End
Rating: PG
Pairing: A little Kennedy/Willow and Kennedy/Other
Word count: 2,591
Notes: I wrote a Kennedy fic. I hate Kennedy. *headdesk* It’s not so much a story; I just suddenly felt that Kennedy needed a history,and a possible future, and then perhaps I would like her more. It didn’t work. >_<

Beginning To End

1.
Eight years old and Kennedy is riding Sox in lazy figure-eights around the paddock, half-heartedly considering taking him over a few jumps. But the sun is warm on her back and the air smells of pollen and she really can’t be bothered to put that much effort into it. She sings gently to herself and imagines that she’s a princess, riding across a wild and far away land to fight a vicious, fire-breathing dragon.

She looks up and notices a man dressed in a worn Barbour jacket standing by the fence off to her left. She doesn’t recognise him, but she’s not worried. Marcus the gardener is mowing the lawn on the other side of the hedge, and one shout would bring him running. She brings Sox down to a trot and stops a little way from the stranger.

“Aren’t you too hot?” she demands, staring at his thick, waxy coat.

He’s looking at her in a way she doesn’t quite like, his eyes crinkled against the sun. “Hello, Kennedy,” he says, and his accent surprises her.

“Hi,” she finds herself saying automatically. Perhaps this is some friend of her parents that she doesn’t remember. There are so many faces, she is used to smiling and shaking hands and having her cheeks pinched by people she barely recognises. She always finds it faintly weird to be told how much she’s grown by someone who clearly wouldn’t know who she was without being introduced.

She’s aware that he seems to be examining her, as though he’s looking for something that might be hidden on her somewhere. She feels uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

“Are you a pervert?” she says doubtfully. His face cracks into an unnerving smile, so she carries on hurriedly. “Because Mom says I’m not s’posed to talk to strange men in case they’re perverts.”

“No, Kennedy, I’m not a pervert,” he replies, his voice warm and edged with laughter. “My name is Peter Dickens. I need to have a word with your Mum and Dad. Do you know if they’re home?”

So she had been right, he was a family friend. “Sure. I think they’re having breakfast. I can take you there?” He nods and she dismounts easily, taking the pony’s reigns, and starting to lead the way to the stables, then on up to the house.

“You’re from England, right?” she asks as they walk. “I went there once on vacation, but I don’t really remember it.”

He nods again, absently, her chatter barely seeming to register. Kennedy doesn’t like silence much, so she struggles to remember the kinds of things her parents say to people they don’t know very well. Inspiration hits.

“What do you do in England? Do you have a job?”

His attention caught, he glances down. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he tells her. “I’m a Watcher.”

2.
Twelve years old and Kennedy has run away from home again. She was supposed to have crossbow practice this afternoon, but she’s sick of it. Just once, she wanted to be able to spend the afternoon doing what she wanted to do, not doing Peter’s stupid training. She’s only a few blocks away from the house on Central Park West, sitting on a bench, looking across the Hudson River, but it’s evening now, and she knows Peter will be getting worried about her. If he wasn’t around, she wonders how long it would take anyone to notice that she’s gone.

Living here with Dad and Belinda and Belinda’s brat daughter Emily isn’t turning out to be as much fun as she thought it would. Kennedy has been warned again and again to be especially nice to ten-year-old Emily, because Emily is jealous of all the “cool training stuff” that Kennedy gets to do with Peter. Kennedy sometimes wishes that Emily could be the one doing the training as well, so she could see how hard it really is.

She wishes too, that things could go back to being how they were before all the fighting started. Her and Mom and Dad all living together, and Peter lodging in one of the spare rooms. Or even the way it had been until really recently, with her and Mom and Peter living in the summer house in the Hamptons, that Mom had got after the divorce. But then Mom’s new boyfriend didn’t like Mom living with another man in the house, so Mom has gone to live with him in Boston for the winter, and Kennedy and Peter have come back to New York. Mom obviously feels guilty about it because Kennedy has already been sent three designer outfits, a Gucci watch, and a new TV for her room, even though the old one worked fine.

She shivers slightly as a gust of wind comes in from the river, and notices that it has been getting dark a lot faster than she was expecting it to. She knows about what comes out after dark; it’s all part of her training. She’s never actually seen one, but Peter has told her about them until she can repeat his lectures verbatim. Fumbling in her pocket for a weapon of some sort, just in case, she stands up. Peter will be mad at her for missing her lesson when she gets in, but she suddenly really doesn’t want to be out here on her own any more.

She hasn’t a stake, but there’s a spare crossbow bolt tucked into the inside pocket of her jacket. It has begun to rain, tiny, icy drops that make her walk fast, head bowed. She’s about half way head home when some instinct makes her look up, and she finds herself face to face with a large man in a dirty white T-shirt.

Her heart jolts into her throat as he looks down at her and smiles, and she can imagine his forehead creasing and his teeth elongating, just like she’s seen in that picture Peter showed her. Without waiting to see what really happens, she lets out a sobbing gasp of fear, lets the crossbow bolt clatter to the pavement, and dives past him, running full tilt for home.

She can see the house, but it seems so far away. Running so hard that she can feel her heat pounding behind her eyes, she seems to be covering the ground painfully slowly, until suddenly she’s there and she flings herself against the doorbell, falling inside at the feet of the stunned maid who opened the door.

Wet, terrified and exhausted, she’s crying too hard to speak when Dad rushes into the hallway. “Ken? What’s the matter? Kenny, honey…” He fusses over her, frantic with worry. “Kennedy?”

And then Peter arrives and gathers her into his arms. He doesn’t say anything, just holds her, warm and familiar and safe, until she calms down.

3.
Fifteen years old and Kennedy is in a pink-and-white little-girly room on the Upper East Side with Kathy, who’s pretty and amiable and funny and smells really, really good. They’re watching Gone With The Wind, lying on Kathy’s double bed, just that little bit closer together than is necessary.

As the credits roll, she leans on her elbow, facing her friend, and starts up a conversation about the hotness of Scarlet. When Kathy doesn’t blanch, Kennedy leans over and kisses her, lightly, innocently, on the lips. And then Kathy kisses Kennedy, lightly, innocently, on the lips.

Kathy is sugar-sweet and soft and over the coming weeks, Kennedy learns that this is addictive. They don’t talk about it much, but spend more and more time together, when Kennedy can get away from her rigorous training sessions, each gradually becoming bolder in her kisses and touches. Kathy is the first girl that Kennedy has ever kissed, but she is already fairly sure that she won’t be the last.

This cheerful arrangement lasts until one day, after school, when they are so absorbed in their activities that neither of them hears Kathy’s mother knock on the bedroom door. They both look up simultaneously, in time to see her face drain of colour. Kathy blushes a bright and attractive shade of pink, and looks down to button her blouse, but Kennedy refuses to be cowed, meeting the woman’s gaze defiantly.

Kathy’s mother calls Kennedy’s father, and Kennedy eavesdrops on the conversation with a sort of delighted horror, but it is Peter who arrives to take her home. He is polite and distant, both with Kathy’s mother and with Kennedy herself, until they reach the street and the door has shut behind them.

They walk in silence for a while, and Kennedy looks at him out of the corner of her eyes, trying to catch his attention. Finally, he stops and looks at her. She waits for the tirade, and is pleasantly surprised when he lets out a shout of laughter.

“Honestly, Kennedy,” he says, shaking his head with disbelief. “You could have been more careful. That woman…” he succumbs to giggles again, and Kennedy grins.

“How’s Dad taking it?”

Peter shrugs. “Give him some time. He’ll be fine.” He paused. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

Kennedy frowns. “I guess so. I mean, it is at the moment.”

“So he’ll get used to it. Your father is a good man, and he wants you to be happy.”

She squints at him suspiciously. “So ‘give him some time’ is short for ‘he’s gone ballistic’, right?”

Peter smiles and puts an arm around her shoulders. “Well, yes, but he’ll get over it. And your mother’s taking it quite admirably…”

Her jaw drops. “He called Mom already? Oh crap.”

“Kennedy. Language.”

4.
Eighteen years old and Kennedy has skived off training for the night to take Emily to a club to celebrate Emily’s sixteenth birthday. Emily got a lot easier to deal with once Dad and Belinda had realised that it wasn’t a good idea to try to make them bond by getting them to share a bathroom. Kennedy did Emily’s makeup earlier that evening to make sure the kid looked twenty-one to match her fake ID, and she really thinks she’s done rather a good job of it.

Peter doesn’t worry about her so much now that she’s older, and he doesn’t seem to mind letting her training slide once in a while. He says that it’s because at least he knows she’s better able to take care of herself than most of the girls on the streets. She knows that he thinks it’s unlikely that she’ll be Called now, when it happens to most girls at the age of fifteen or sixteen, even though he doesn’t say anything about it. She still carries a stake in her back pocket, but she’s never had to use it.

Kennedy sometimes wonders if she should be disappointed that she’ll probably never be the Slayer. It’s hard to be disappointed about something you never quite believed was going to happen in the first place. She figures she’ll start to concentrate more on real life now, especially as she’s been offered a place at UCLA next year and Mom and Dad have agreed to buy her her own apartment over there. She wonders what Peter will do when she moves out. Get his own place, maybe. Perhaps even go back to England. She doesn’t like to think about that much.

Right now she’s not thinking about it. She’s slightly drunk, wandering up Central Park West from the subway to her house, carrying her shoes because her feet are blistered from dancing, and arm in arm with a giggling Emily, who’s in a similar state.

Right now she doesn’t know that in a moment she’ll look ahead and see the blue flashing lights. Doesn’t know that she’ll feel a lurch of panic and start to run blindly for the house, only to be stopped dead by a burly policeman with an outstretched arm. That she’ll squirm and shout and shove past him just in time to see the body carried out on a stretcher. It will be covered with a white sheet, and a crimson stain spreading, right about where the neck would be, and she’ll dive for it and rip the sheet back, expecting puncture wounds.

Peter’s face is pale, and smeared with red. There is so much blood, but no bite mark. His throat has been slit; a deep, smooth gash, and Kennedy can barely breathe. There are hands on her shoulders, pulling her away, and she stumbles, landing in a heap on the sidewalk.

She looks up, through the legs of the crowd, and sees a man standing there. Except she knows he isn’t really a man. Even in the dark she can see that there’s something wrong with his eyes. She blinks and he’s gone.

Kennedy never tells anyone about how she feels in the months that follow, not even Willow.

Everything happens far too quickly. She has barely arrived home from the morgue when she receives a phone call from a Rupert Giles, telling her she has to leave at once; she’s putting everyone around her in danger. She doesn’t ask how he knows what’s going on. Peter always told her that the Council has eyes everywhere. She gets on a plane to California the next day, meeting Mr Giles and two English girls in LA and travelling with them to Sunnydale.

She plays the spoiled brat. It’s who she is, She doesn’t know how to be anything else. And it’s all a cover-up. Because perhaps, if she can act fine, one day she really will be.

“And if this thing is the root of all evil, isn't the hellmouth its number one vacation spot? I mean, don't you think we should be hiding our asses on the other side of the globe?”

5.
Twenty-one years old, curled in a shivering ball on the lino floor of their tiny apartment in Rio, and Kennedy knows that it’s true. Your life really does flash before your eyes right before you die. Willow is standing above her, eyes black as the end of the world, and there’s nothing a Slayer can do to stop her.

Kennedy is too weak even to stand up now. She’s fought and slayed and found enough new Slayers to start her own army, if she had been so inclined. She’s learned to live with more girls that she cares to think about, and to live on her own when necessary. She knows what it’s like to lose someone you care about, and she’s learned how to live without him. And she’s fallen in love.

The girl she fell in love with was strong and intelligent and beautiful and good. And Kennedy was there with her when she cast a spell and went all white and glowy and everyone thought she would be ok now. But the past caught up with her again and Kennedy has been watching her falling deeper and deeper into old addictions.

They went through a stage where they fought about it constantly. Kennedy wasn’t exactly one to sit there and passively watch it happen, but this was one occasion when the self-confessed spoiled brat didn’t get what she wanted. Three years ago she learned that the worst feeling in the world is being helpless to save the person you love.

She just never imagined that it would happen again.

So she takes one last look at her gorgeous black-eyed girl, closes her eyes, and remembers the summer’s day when she rode Sox in lazy figure-eights and met a man called Peter.