Okay, kittens, here we go. But be patient...there's still a lot of ground to cover before we get to the big moments I am sure you are waiting for.... In other words, there is a Cliffhanger of sorts here. (Thanks, Puff, for reminding me to say this).
Title: Terra Firma. Chapter 4: “In the Flesh.”
Author: Tulipp
Email address:
tulipp30@yahoo.comFeedback: Please.
Distribution: Please let me know.
Spoilers: Everything.
Rating: PG-13 for now.
Pairing: W/T.
Disclaimer: These are not my characters; they and various plot events that set up this story belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc, and I am grateful to have them.
Summary: Tara tries to figure out what is going on; the Magic Box re-opens after the summer; Giles has some things to tell Willow about his past and magick. Previously: Willow and Dawn returned home from a summer at a coven in England, Dawn's mysterious headaches continued, Doc performed the ritual to bring back Glory's essence, Willow tried to deal with being home, and Tara came back to life.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Ruby for reading and encouraging. Thanks to J, who wrote her dissertation in front of “Guiding Light” and knows a thing or two about plotting.
Terra Firma
Chapter 4: In the Flesh
“Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come.”
--William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
“My head,” Tara said again, but the tremor passed, the sense of a wrinkle faded, and she felt…fine. She felt wonderful, in fact. Whole. And new. As if in these last days with Willow, she had grown a new skin. Been reborn.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror, at the long-sleeved blue shirt, the inch of skin visible above the waistband of her cotton pants. That was her body. She didn’t know why this basic knowledge, this simple recognition, should seem so profound, but it did. She felt it deeply.
Watching herself in the mirror, she touched her face with her hands. Her skin felt warm. She slid her hands down to her neck, felt the pulse. She drew her fingers further downward, smoothed them over her breasts, her stomach, her hips. She traced the path that other hands had so recently traced. This was her body; this was…Willow’s body.
Tara flushed, remembering the past two nights. Tangled sheets. Rough carpet. Damp skin. Willow’s head in her lap. Her lips. Nothing, nothing had ever felt as good as the first touch of those lips after months of separation. Except maybe the second. And then the third. In the fierce reunion of those first caresses, the rest of it—the anger, the betrayal, the hurt—had all been stripped away. Leaving only need. And desire.
How had they managed those empty months apart? She wondered that now. But she knew the separation had been necessary. Willow had needed the time to gain perspective, balance. And she had needed time to get in touch with herself again. It had been so easy to lose herself in Willow.
But now she had found herself in Willow again.
It seemed so fresh. She could almost feel the imprint of Willow’s hands on her skin, the brush of fine red hair on her neck. And it was fresh, she thought; it had only been a matter of minutes…surely…since she had last slid her hands up. . . .
Tara shook herself, opened her eyes.
Where was Willow? Hadn’t she been here just a moment ago?
Look at me, Tara smiled. I’m so addled, I can’t think straight. She moved away from the mirror. As she passed the bureau, she pushed an open drawer shut, and she went to find Willow.
****
Willow and Dawn were paging half-heartedly through the reference books Giles had spread out on the research table. Buffy glanced over at them at every break in the stream of customers who pressed at the front counter. They sat close together, not touching, but close. Neither seemed to be finding out anything about headaches.
Willow sat there, Buffy suspected, because it gave her a reason to hide out from the customers. Dawn…well, she thought Dawn was pretending that she sat there because Buffy had insisted she rest after the headache episode. But Buffy had noticed Dawn’s quick glance at Willow before she sat down, and it had given her a moment of pause.
Customers had crowded the Magic Box all day. It seemed that most of magically-inclined Sunnydale had run out of supplies over the summer. Now they were intent on restocking and didn’t care how much money they had to spend to do it.
The shop looked like new after the months that Xander and his crew had spent restoring the destroyed interior. They had had to replace walls, rebuild the staircase, hang new windows. Once the crew had moved on to its next job, Xander had stayed behind to make some private improvements. He’d extended the shelf space in the loft. Added built-in, locking weapons cabinets in the training room.
Giles had hidden extra protection charms in the areas where the more volatile books were kept. It wouldn’t prevent powerful magick users from finding what they needed, but quick access to their reference sources, Giles had reassured Buffy, was their first priority.
Buffy had worked hard in the Magic Box all summer, as well. From the moment it had become clear that Giles planned to stay in Sunnydale permanently, Buffy had quit her job at the Doublemeat. Even after the debris had been cleared away, there was still a great deal to do. Books had had to be rebound, supplies fixed or cleaned or thrown away. Plans made.
“Why can’t Anya be here to do this,” Buffy grumbled now as she made bagged a deck of tarot cards. “She’s supposed to be all, ‘yay, customers.’”
Xander handed Giles another box of essential oils for the display rack near the front counter. “Vengeance duty calls,” he said shortly. “She doesn’t get to pick and choose. She goes where she’s assigned.”
“Well, bully for her, but she’s missing all the money. And this is, like, her favorite part.” Buffy glanced again at Willow, slumped over the books. An untouched sandwich sat on the table beside her.
Xander headed with his own box of books for the alcove near the front door. “Well, when I see her, I’ll tell her,” he said over his shoulder.
Buffy closed the cash register and looked up to greet the next customer. “Giles,” she said softly. “It’s slowing down. Maybe Dawn and I could finish that, and you could…you know.”
Giles looked at Buffy sharply and nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Quite right.” He handed the last bottles to her and, removing his glasses to rub them with a handkerchief, approached the research table.
Buffy watched him go. She and Giles had talked a lot over the summer; she had learned things—about him, about the Watchers Council. Some of what Giles had told Buffy had been for her, she knew, for her growth as the Slayer and for her relationship to Giles and her friends.
But some of the telling had been almost like practice. She’d known that. Some of the telling—the hardest part—was meant for Willow.
****
Willow wasn’t there.
The house felt still. As Tara walked down the hallway, glancing into empty bedrooms and descending the stairs, she began to feel a whisper of concern. Where was everyone? Had something happened?
At the base of the stairs, she caught sight of the clock. It was much later than she’d thought. Had she and Willow taken a nap? That seemed…unlikely. Granted, they had stayed in bed all morning. But where had the rest of the day gone? Willow had only just left the room. Hadn’t she?
As she turned toward the silent living room—no cartoons on the television, no feet on the coffee table—an unfamiliar frame caught her eye, and she crossed to the wall to look at it more closely. A photograph of herself, one she’d never seen before, hung near the front door. She looked…serene. Tara didn’t often think of herself as particularly photogenic, but in this picture, she looked happy. When had Buffy hung this photo? Or had Willow put it there during the months that Tara had not been living at the house? Tara puzzled over this. Wouldn’t she have noticed it before now?
Then again, she hadn’t spent the last few days looking at the house. Or at anything other than Willow.
In the kitchen, there were dry dishes in the rack, coffee cups in the sink, a mostly-empty glass of something thick and orange on the counter.
A red light flashed on the answering machine. She pushed the button and heard Xander’s voice. “Hey, where are you guys? I hope this means you’ve already left; I guess I’ll just see you over at the Magic Box.” Tara frowned. Surely she would have known about this, remembered this? Willow and the others wouldn’t have left without telling her?
Unless….
Unless something had happened, something bad. Maybe they had had a lead on Warren and Jonathan and that other guy, the blonde one. It must have been serious for them to have left so suddenly.
But Xander didn’t sound at all worried, just normal. Tara played the message again. No, he sounded fine. And the kitchen looked awfully tidy to have been deserted suddenly.
Reluctantly, she considered the possibility of a spell…magick. That strange orange concoction. She sniffed the oily liquid tentatively. She smelled chamomile…that suggested calming or healing. Lavender, definitely…for peace, or the lifting of despair. And orange bergamot…that was supposed to soothe anxiety. It was a logical combination, even if it did smell a little odd. Any of those ingredients might be used as a mild relaxant. It was harmless.
She set the glass back down, relieved but a little ashamed. It might not be Willow’s drink. She scolded herself for thinking that Willow would have misused magick again. That wasn’t even a question. Those days were behind them. She shook the thought from her head.
At least Xander’s message had told her something. With a last glance around the kitchen, Tara left the kitchen. She paused one more time by the photo of herself in the entryway, looked at it speculatively.
Then she pulled the front door closed behind her and headed for the Magic Box.
****
When Giles slid into Dawn’s chair at the research table, Willow shrank back. He wanted to talk. She’d half been expecting this, half dreading it. Giles had, with the others, sent her off to the coven without recrimination and without expecting anything from her. She’d known even then, wrapped in her quilt of despair, that it was a kind gesture. One of the kindest of her life.
But she was back now. And it was only fair to expect that she would need to explain, to start making reparations. She had done things, after all. Terrible things.
“Willow,” he said quietly. “We must talk.”
Willow swallowed. She knew they had to talk. She had tried hard to avoid talking, even thinking, about…that night, the night after Tara died. And the Guides hadn’t pushed her.
But it had itched at her anyway, prickled at her skin from within. As drained as she had been, the dark magicks had left an edgy energy inside her, a restlessness. It had sometimes felt like the night sweats she remembered from the previous months, sometimes like insects, crawling just under her skin.
“It’s there, isn’t it?” her Guide had said to her during one of her first meditation sessions. Willow and the Guide sat cross-legged on the heath, facing one another. It had been very early, not yet dawn.
Willow tried so hard to concentrate as she was told, to become calm, to let the pain drift away, if only for a moment. But always, always, there was this irritation under the skin. She remembered, with uncomfortable clarity, the connection she had felt after Giles had infused her with the pure magicks. She had felt—as a living, pulsing organism—an oppressive, suffering darkness. The pain of the world.
She could feel the echoes of it still. In the cells of her body. In the blood. In the flesh.
“It’s not going to go away,” the Guide had said. “It will stay with you. You must learn to accept it, to embrace it.”
But embracing had only made Willow think of Tara. And there had been no meditating that morning.
Giles touched her shoulder gently. “Willow,” he said again, and she pulled herself back to the present moment, rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. “There are some things I want to tell you…not right now, but soon. Things I should have told you long ago.”
Willow frowned. This was not what she had expected, not what she had prepared for. “Things?” she repeated.
“I am so very sorry,” Giles continued, “that I didn’t realize long ago how much alike we are, you and I.” He looked into her face, caught her eye. Willow held his gaze.
“I want to tell you about my past,” he said. “And about magick.”
****
Willow would be at the Magic Box. Tara repeated this to herself as she walked.
The night was warm. It seemed almost like autumn, not late spring. California could be confusing that way. But it was a nice evening for a walk, and the sun hadn’t set. Again, Tara’s brow furrowed. How could it possibly be evening? She hoped that the others would have some answers. Whatever else was going on, she was clearly missing some time.
At least, that’s what she told herself at first. But as Tara walked down the street toward the Magic Box, she began to be aware of small signs that here, in Sunnydale, it was most definitely not spring. It was awfully brown, for one thing, and the leaves on trees she passed looked tired, wilted. Maybe she was being ridiculous, seeing things that weren’t there.
But no. There were other things. A “Back to School” sign hung in the window of a clothing shop. Stapled to a telephone pole was a poster for an Oktoberfest promotion. And when she stopped to look more closely at it, she saw another flier for a Labor Day parade. How strange. Those things were months away.
No, Tara corrected herself. They should have been months away, but they weren’t. She thought backward, adding up the evidence: the ads, the landscape, the clean kitchen, the photograph on the wall. Willow’s absence. And she looked around her again. Her sense of unease grew.
There was a convenience store on the next block; she walked toward it quickly. Just inside the glass doors was a stack of newspapers. She grabbed one and stared at the print for a moment. No. That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t. But it was right there in black and white.
Cliches always did come from somewhere, she thought to herself ridiculously.
Tara dropped the newspaper back on the stack, her hand shaking a little. She pushed back through the doors and, once on the street, wrapped her arms around herself. She felt suddenly chilled.
Three months.
Three months were missing, gone. Okay, Tara, think, think. She took a breath and focused on calming her racing mind. Breathe, Tara, she told herself. Breathe. This was Sunnydale, so it could have been any number of things. A wish. A curse. A time loop. A dimensional portal opening. An alternate reality. A demon kidnapping. Willow.
Willow was missing. All her friends were missing. She had to find them. She had to find Willow. Willow might be just as confused as she was, not understanding what had happened. She might be hurt. She might be. . . .
Tara broke into a run as she covered the last blocks to the Magic Box.
****
The last of the customers had finally gone. Buffy leaned on her elbows on the counter, exhausted. She looked over at the research table, where Giles was talking to Willow in a low voice. “Soon,” he was saying. “We’ll talk soon. Once you’ve had a chance to settle in.” Willow just nodded. She looked drained.
And then, with no fanfare, no commotion, Anya was there, standing next to Willow at the table. Willow flinched.
“Hey, it’s our local vengeance demon, in the flesh,” Xander said, lifting his chin off his hand.
“Xander,” Anya said. “You say that every. Single. Time.”
“Perfect,” Xander went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “What would a party be without a mysterious unexpected guest showing up out of nowhere.”
Anya leaned forward, onto the table. “Willow, you’re back,” she said. “Welcome home.” She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes critically. “You look awful,” she said. “Where’s Dawn?”
Dawn started toward Anya, but the sound of the bell ringing over the front door interrupted her. “We’re closed,” she called out. “You’ll have to. . . .” Her voice caught, then died. She stared, uncomprehending, at the woman who stood just inside the door.
“Thank God you’re all here,” Tara said, hurrying forward. “Listen, something’s happened. Something bad.”
No one spoke. No one moved.
And then Anya turned back to Willow, slowly, reluctantly. “Willow,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
To be continued in Chapter 5, “Missing Time.”
Edited by: Tulipp at: 7/5/02 11:19:13 am
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