Spoilers: "The Gift"
Distribution: Just ask. I'll probably say yes.
Disclaimer: The usual stuff about Joss, Mutant Enemy, Sand Dollar productions, UPN, the San Pedro Beach Bums…just seeing if your paying attention.
Feedback: I have greatly appreciated the feedback I've gotten so far. This one I'm taking a little longer to write, as even Mrs. CaptMurdock, loyal literary critic that she is, has intimated that my previous stories were a little abrupt. So be it. You've been warned.
Notes: This takes place a few weeks after the events of "The Gift." This is a multi-part story, so check back here for more story after a few days.
Summary: Willow and Tara decide to take a vacation up north, though Willow has an ulterior motive…
Rating: PG-13 for "spicy talk," as opposed to "potty mouth."
Road to Nowhere.
Willow waited almost two hours after her last exam for Tara, in the dorm room that was ostensibly Willow's but that they really both lived in. This situation was rendered more permanent, as Tara's dorm room now had a rather alfresco feeling, thanks to a now-departed hellgod with superhuman strength and Lee Press-On nails.
The blonde witch finally walked in, shoulder bag full of books weighing her down a bit more than usual, frown lines starting to etch themselves permanently in her face. Tara threw down her book bag and threw herself on the bed beside Willow, who was reading A Wrinkle in Time. She blew out her breath through pursed lips, ending with a growl in her throat.
Oh boy. Willow looked up from her book. This can't be good. She cleared her throat ostentatiously and asked in her cheeriest tone, "How did your Lit final go?"
"It went lousy!" Tara almost shouted back, not even looking at Willow. The redhead actually jumped a bit. The slight motion on the bed was enough to alert Tara that she might have crossed a line here or there. She turned slowly with as contrite an expression as she could manage. "D-did I just s-snap at you?"
Willow was not really mad at Tara, but felt that a little mock-sternness was in order. "Yes. You did. How could you?" Then she saw Tara blanch and couldn't keep the pretense up any longer. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Don't join a convent, okay? I take it the final didn't go well."
"I don't know. Maybe. My brain is so fried I think I could mistake Flaubert and Bronte, and they didn't even write in the same language!"
"Which Bronte?"
"Any Bronte. I could go for two weeks without reading anything deeper than Calvin & Hobbes." Both girls, in the wake of the Glory situation and Buffy Summers' funeral, had been involved in a hodge-podge of make-up classes, lab work and exams. Fortunately, the college administration had bought into the 'drug-cult' cover story, including Tara's 'forced ingestion of psychotropic substances' by 'escaped mental patients.' That, plus the administration's sympathy over their friend's tragic 'suicide,' had enabled the rules to be bent enough so that the girls would not lose their GPAs, if they could make up the work within a horrendously short time.
"B-Buffy gives her life to save the world, but does that cut us any slack?" Tara had asked once during an all-nighter. "Shouldn't we get, like, I dunno, automatic passing grades because our friend…uh…"
Willow jumped in before she could finish that sentence. "I caught that movie on cable. Total stinkburger. I would've walked out on that one if I saw it on an airplane."
"Huh?"
"Dead Man on Campus. Way bad movie."
Now Tara flopped over onto her stomach, burying her head under her arms and letting out a pathetic kill-me-now moan. Willow put her book on the nightstand and crawled over to straddle her girlfriend's hips. "Oh, my poor baby," the redhead exclaimed. "Let Willow Rosenberg, M.D., see what can be done." She started rubbing Tara's shoulders. "Very tight there. Indicative of stress and other bad things."
"'M.D.', huh?" Tara replied, putting arms under her head. "I didn't know you were even pre-med….oooooohhh," she moaned as Willow's fingers kneaded her shoulder blade area.
"Of course. M.D. stands for Doctor of Massages." She chuckled.
"Mmmm. Willowhand – The Best Medicine," the blonde replied dreamily. Willow didn't say anything in return, but lifted Tara's shirt to rub the fair skin underneath. Tara shivered at her girlfriend's touch, which moved up and down her back, interrupted only by the elastic brassiere strap. Willow, however, was not in a patient mood, so her fingers soon diverted to the hooks holding the bra in place. This did not go unnoticed. "Oh, now, I see your evil plan. Get me in a, a helpless position and then ravish me." Tara rolled partially onto her side – carefully, as to not throw Willow on the floor beside the bed – and looked at her lover, blue eyes boring into green, her trademark lopsided grin growing into a full-blown sexy smile that made her nose crinkle in that way that made Willow's knees weak.
Willow leaned down to kiss Tara, what Spike would have called a full-blown snog instead of the usual peck, then broke it off and got out of bed. This earned her a patented Tara-Pout, which with her full lips was quite impressive. The slim redhead turned and smiled at her lover. "I have a surprise for you."
Tara tilted her head down and gazed upward, her eyebrows peaked, her best Sultry Look. "Umm…does this involve chocolate, or things that make interesting buzzing noises?"
"Neither…although that's not a bad combination to try on a future date, that I haven't planned yet, but you can rest assured I will, missy. No, actually, what with our finishing up our finals, I say we've earned ourselves a little vacation."
Tara sat up, a startled expression. "V-vacation?"
"Sure, why not?" Willow responded. "Get out of Dodge for a week. Hey, even Marshall Dylan must've taken some R&R some time or other. We just missed that episode, or they may not have put it in syndication for some reason. Old TV shows, that happens sometimes."
Tara rolled her eyes. "That's it. I'm cutting you off from TV Land marathons. You have a Rerun Monkey on your back!"
Willow put her hands on her hips in mock outrage. "This coming from the woman who stayed up all night for a Bewitched marathon!"
Tara shrugged. "That was different. That was, uh, business." She waggled her fingers in a circle around the room, indicating various Wiccan objects and by extension their shared lifestyle. "Y'know…business."
"Learning to wiggle your nose like Samantha Stevens does not qualify as 'business!'" By way of answer, Tara attempted the famous nose wiggle, failing to make more than her mouth and chin move side to side.
She stood up and walked over to Willow. "So, uh, where do you have in mind for our 'vacation?' London? Paris? Vienna?" She paused for a second, then blurted out "Burbank!" with a grin.
"Nope!" Willow responded with a grin of her own. She snatched some papers off the desk next to her PowerBook. "Santa Cruz!" she said, displaying several printed web pages of geographical and municipal information.
"Santa Cruz?" Tara said, her brow wrinkling as she scanned the pages Willow was thrusting almost under her nose. "Isn't that some hippie/New Age/mystic/surfer hangout up near the Bay Area?"
Willow chuckled. "Yeah, you'll so stick out like a sore thumb there, won't you? But it's also a bedroom community for Silicon Valley…"
"Ohhhhh," the blonde Wiccan interjected. "I think I get it. This is your big chance to visit Apple Computer. A pilgrimage to your Holy Land."
"OK, kinda busted on that one. But Santa Cruz has a boardwalk, and beaches and forests with real trees –"
"Something we never see here in Sunnydale," Tara said, smiling.
Willow rolled her eyes. The enthusiasm that she had hoped for from Tara was taking its time coming. "Well, there's also the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, just up the road."
Tara's eyes widened. "You mean that big house owned by a crazy rich lady who kept adding onto it, with the doors that lead to nowhere, and stairs that just up to the ceiling, and…"
"Yeah! Oh, come on, Tara, it'll be fun! And, we can, like, have some Alone Time together. We really haven't since…you know." Buffy Summers funeral was three weeks in the past, and still Willow could barely bring herself to mention her deceased best friend. "I mean, all we've done for three weeks is college catch-up work, with the occasionally Scoobie mission as a kind of snack. Oh – Scoobie snacks!" They laughed at Willow's dumb pun.
"Willow," Tara said, stifling her laughter with an effort, "how are we supposed to pay for this?"
"Already taken care of, courtesy of the Sheila Rosenberg Foundation," Willow said, beaming.
"Oh, Willow, you shouldn't impose on your moth—Waitaminnit. You've already paid for this? You set this up already? Willow, why didn't you ask me if I wanted to take off for a week?" Tara crossed her arms and glared, perhaps a bit more harshly than she truly intended.
Willow looked contrite and sad, like whenever one of her ideas was shot down. "I thought you might like to get away from it all for a week. With your bad case of Finals Burnout, I thought you'd appreciate this." Willow sat down in the chair next to the desk, her head hanging low. Tara sighed and squatted down, lifting her girlfriend's chin to look in her eyes.
"Sweetie, I do appreciate it. Really. I just think…I want to be asked, okay?" The redhead nodded without saying anything. "And, I think, we should, you know, make sure Giles and the others are okay with this first."
Willow swung away from Tara and stood up, an irritated grunt escaping her. After several seconds, during which Tara also stood, Willow turned around, her expression dark. "Y'know, I would like to have a relationship with you, that does not involve six constant companions!" A pause for mental recalculation. "Five. Five constant companions. I mean, what do they need us for anyway? Besides the spells and stuff, which, I'm sure, Giles and Anya, between the two of them, can handle most of that stuff anyway. Giles is much better now that he's out of "Lost In Space Weekend" mode. Dawn, she's doing better, going to summer school, gotten back into that good ol' Summers Work Ethic." She smiled. "Xander and Anya are busy planning the Wedding O' The Century, when they aren't busy…well, you know what busy beavers they are doing that stuff, and could I have picked a less appropriate animal metaphor there?" Tara giggled. "And Spike is…well, Spike is Spike. Nuff said." Willow then gave her pouty-lip and puppy-eyes a workout. "Can't we just go away? I think they can manage without us." Blink. "For a week."
Tara smiled. "Okay, you talked me into it. Not that you really, really had to. I take you've already figured out our transportation and accommodations and stuff?"
"Yeah! We take the train up, rent a car from the local Avis, and I got us a room at the Brookdale Lodge. It sounds great from the web page! It's got a restaurant that has a creek running right through the middle of it!"
Tara blinked a little at that. "That might put a damper on dessert. But I'm sure it's fine. Speaking of damp, I need a shower in the worst way."
Willow sauntered saucily up to her girlfriend and wrapped her arms around her midriff. "Mmmm. Want some company in there? Showers can be hazardous places. Never hurts to have a shower buddy with ya."
"Well, it does when the shower buddy uses all the shampoo." Over Willow's indignant expression, Tara smiled and pecked her on the lips. "But it's worth it with you." She gave Willow a squeeze, then disengaged herself to get her robe, hanging on a hook on the bathroom door next to Willow's. "Coming?"
"Right behind you," Willow said, slapping Tara playfully on the rump as she went into the bathroom. After the door closed, Willow went to check on the documents that were tucked discretely under her laptop.
One set of pages was the procedure of transferring academic credits to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Two other sets were college transcripts, labeled ROSENBERG, WILLOW D. and MACLAY, TARA J. The last set was selections from an apartment-rentals search engine, for Santa Cruz, California.
Satisfied that everything was in place, Willow slipped the papers into her laptop carrier, and went to join Tara, who hopefully wouldn't use all the shampoo, just because she had longer hair.
**************************************
Spedoinkle! Does Willow have a plan involving their transcripts and UC Santa Cruz? Will Tara discover the dastardly scheme of her True Love? Is this the end of Little Rico? (Wait. Sorry. Wrong movie.) See what happens in the next exciting (or, at least, mildly interesting) chapter.
Oh, by the way, after watching the rerun of "The Body," that Willow's dorm room has a door that suspiciously looks like a bathroom door. It's got a robe hanging on it, and we know it's not the closet.
Road to Nowhere
Part 2
"We're on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin' that ride to nowhere
We'll take that ride"
"I'm feelin' okay this mornin'
And you know,
We're on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go"
"Allmmost theeerrre," Tara drawled with a distinct Star Wars rebel-pilot-attacking-the-Death-Star inflection, driving their rented Mercury Grand Marquis (they had actually reserved a Sable, but luck had given them a free upgrade, so the two vacationing wiccans were stylin').
"Stay On Target," Willow answered back, riding shotgun and clutching her MapQuest direction pages. The road they were on was lined with more trees than Willow had ever seen in her life. Total Forest Primeval. She now had to take back some of the more nasty thoughts she had expressed about those kids in The Blair Witch Project ("How the hell can you get lost less than two hours from civilization? Hello, cell phones, anyone?") Looking at the immense screen of trees whipping past their car, impeding the view more than ten yards out of the window, she had to admit that she would not want to get lost out there without a Boy Scout troop, a fully-equipped tank and a satellite uplink.
"Isn't it gorgeous up here?" Willow said, hiding her nervousness behind a cheery demeanor. "All natural, and non-citified, and untouched by the hand of man. Well, except for the paved road, and the quite-helpful signs pointing in the right directions..."
Tara smiled and took her right hand off the wheel to pat Willow's knee. "Honey, you're so City Girl. I would think you would go nuts out here in the sticks. Y'know, w-where Starbucks fears to tread. If you don't have access to at least three different types of psuedo-coffee, you go nuts."
Willow smiled tightly. "You never know, I might surprise you."
"Continuously. Oh, I think this is it!" Tara turned into the driveway of the Brookdale Lodge. It turned out to be a large group of one-story buildings, the front facade having a kind of turn-of-the-century feeling. Tara parked the Grand Marquis near what looked to be the entrance to the registration area and turned off the engine. "Here at last."
"Here at last," echoed Willow. The two girls looked at one another, and, as one, cried, "Thank God Almighty, here at last!" They kissed in a chorus of giggles, then popped open doors and climbed out of the Marquis.
"Ohhh...legs!" Willow exclaimed, stiff from being in the car immediately after getting off the train, four hours from Sunnydale. Tara, having recently renewed her license by mail, had driven the rented car from the Avis stand to Brookdale, a small community inland from Santa Cruz. The blonde stretched out her long, skirt-clad legs, silently thanking the gods for cruise control.
"It's really nice here. Reminds me of home." The blonde noticed her girlfriend's reaction, understandable given her reaction to Tara's family. "In a...in a good way. The place I grew up looked something like this."
"Oh," Willow replied, retrieving her purse and various papers scattered on the dashboard. "So, you think you could feel at home in a place like this?"
Tara blinked. "Think I just said something like that, didn't I? I-I mean, not to stay or anything, right?"
"Right-right-right," Willow agreed, nodding vigorously. "Just being my weirdly inquisitive self. Let's go in and get bunked down. Getting late, and tomorrow 's Lotsa-Stuff-to-See-Day."
"Willow, we have five days. Let's pace ourselves."
The lobby of the lodge was quaint, small and almost people-free. Willow rang the small bell for almost half a minute before the deskman apologetically showed up to confirm their reservation. Tara amused herself with the antiques on display around the lobby, including an old operator switchboard like those she had seen in old movies and Laugh-In reruns. "One ringy-dingy," she whispered, holding an imaginary headset to her head.
What did you say?
Tara started, thinking someone had spotted her being goofy. Turning around, she saw that no one was there.
She turned back to where the deskman was looking at Willow's confirmation printout. The redhead was chatting with him amiably, and did not seem to have recently directed a comment at Tara. Besides, the voice did not sound at all like Willow. Way too young, for one thing.
Tara walked down the corridor leading off the lobby towards the restaurant, now closed. There was a bar open, that a brief glance told her was also empty. Interestingly, the lodge's swimming pool was adjacent to the bar, where a large glass window gave any prospective elbow-benders a view at any swimmers in the pool. Tara smiled at the thought of what Willow might think of being spied upon whilst taking a dip.
Quite suddenly, she had the feeling she was not alone in the room. She glanced behind her -- nothing. Still, a small hiccup of sound, like the echo of a footstep, came to her ears. It seemed to come from the closed restaurant. She stepped towards the French doors, through which she could hear the rushing water of the creek Willow had mentioned before. Maybe that was what she had heard.
Somehow she did not hear the footsteps until it was too late, and the hand dropped on her shoulder...
"Whatcha doin' sweetie?" Willow chirped as Tara, avoiding coronary thrombosis by the slimmest of margins, turned around to face her.
"Wh-wh-wha -- I-I thought I h-heard someone. S-someone over here. I-in there," she blurted, pointing towards the restaurant.
"Did you find anyone?"
"N-no. There doesn't seem to be..."
Willow instantly snapped into Scooby Mode. "Trouble?" she asked.
Tara shook her head. "I don't think so. Look, I'm beat from the train and driving. No need, y'know, to go to Purple Alert."
Willow shrugged. "If you say so. I got the key," she said (and it was an actual key, not those electronic cards that hotels everywhere were using.) "Let's see what we got." As they walked towards the car, something occurred to Willow. "Purple Alert? What's that?"
"W-well, you said we needed different alerts for different grades of emergency," Tara said brightly.
"Yeah, but purple? Now that's just plain silly. Purple is not an 'alert' color. More like a 'hey, everybody, something neat-o is happening' color."
****
As it turned it, the room was pretty nice. Besides the huge bed, there was decent closet space, a small kitchenette, a nice view of the mountains, and, best of all, an extra-large circular bathtub, which the girls just had to try out.
"Sweetie, it's not that I mind doing this," Tara said as she gently glided the Gillette razor down Willow's shaving-cream-covered leg, "b-but wouldn't it be easier to use Nair or something like that?" The two wiccans sat in the bathtub on opposite sides, Willow's left leg up where Tara could shave it. She carefully manuevered the razor around the slender ankle, then swished the razor around in the warm water which filled the tub two-thirds full. "There. All done."
"Thank ye, gracious lady," Willow replied in a posh accent. "No, I tried one of those on Buffy's..." she slowed down a bit, then continued with resolve: "...on Buffy's advice, and all I can say was: YEOW!"
Tara raised her eyebrows. "Did it b-burn you?"
Willow nodded. "I thought at that moment, I had solved the mystery of spontaneous human combustion."
Tara laughed. She picked up the large can of Barbasol shaving cream sitting on the side of the tub. "Isn't this the brand they used in Jurassic Park?"
"You got it. Gives you a smooth, close shave, and it's excellent for transporting stolen dinosaur embryos!"
Tara laughed again. When she stopped, she got a sly look on her face, then leaned forward towards her lover, shaving cream can in hand. She depressed the button and aimed the spout at Willow's chest.
The redhead looked nonplussed as her girlfriend manuevered the can over her chest, like a gangbanger tagging a wall with graffitti. "Tara, may I ask what you think you're doing?"
Tara drew a circle on Willow's chest. It wasn't a perfect circle as Willow's small but perky breasts spoiled the symmetry, but Tara liked it anyway. She added two dots near the top of the circle and a small curve near the bottom. "I'm making a happy face!" she announced brightly when she was done. She giggled at the amazed expression on Willow's face.
However, Willow was nothing if not quick to recover. In her sweetest voice, she asked "May I?" with an outstretched hand. Tara dutifully, if not prudently, passed over the can. Willow began to squirt shaving cream onto her hand, taking great pains to look as if she was trying to create a difficult design. Despite herself, Tara actually tried to guess what Willow might be attempting to draw, even thought a lot of cream was ending up in Willow's hand. "There!" She proudly held up her hand upon which a small mountain of shaving cream sat.
Tara asked, "What is it supposed to be?" leaning forward before the first hint that this might be a setup crossed her brain. Her world went briefly white before her blink reflex kicked in, as Willow quickly nailed her in the face with shaving cream.
Willow giggled naughtily, as she watched her girlfriend, looking as if she had just stepped into a Three Stooges short, carefully wipe shaving cream from her eyes. Blue orbs blazed as Tara fought to keep the laughter that threatened to spill out inside. She ostentatiously blew air from her mouth, clearing a way through the white stuff covering that portion of her face, and said, "Death is far too good for you!"
Willow shrieked as Tara made a grab for the shaving cream can. She managed to use her legs to pin Tara to the other side of the tub, keeping her hands from snagging the can, while Willow held the can as far away from Tara as possible...
...which turned out to be a tactical mistake, as Tara noticed, in between struggles against Willow's legs, that the shaving cream can was upside down and pointed directly at Willow's head. Time for a little magic, I think, and ethics can take a holiday! She concentrated on the red plastic button on the can that incorporated the spout, and mentally invoked a relatively minor spell.
Willow's first indication of something amiss was when the plastic doodad hit the top of her head and bounced onto the floor. She looked up at exactly the wrong time. "What the heAAAARRLLLLPP!" she said as the contents of the can delivered themselves under pressure onto Willow's head. Her features quickly disappeared under the onslaught of shaving cream.
Tara's squeal of triumph lasted only until Willow had the presence of mind to turn the can on her. "Will--NOOOOO!" she screamed as streams of white covered her face, hair and body.
The two struggled until the can was spent, leaving them looking like two shapely snowwomen and the bathtub looking like an extra-large cream pie. They laughed and got onto their knees, hugging one another and trying to clear each others faces without much success. Gradually, they discovered that in this situation, with the shaving cream on their bodies heightening every sensation, that they didn't really need eyes. Just hands.
Fifteen minutes later, washed off as well as they could be, they rested against one another, completely spent and satiated. They surveyed the incredible mess around the bathroom, then in perfect wordless communication, mutually decided that it had been worth it.
"Th-that was intense," Tara finally said, breaking the companionable silence.
"Yeah," Willow said. "I'd like to see Xander and Anya top this." At her girlfriend's bemused expression, she amended herself. "No, I don't mean I want to see them do anything like this. I don't want to see them do anything more intimate than holding hands and making goo-goo eyes at each other. Even that's kinda sick-making."
"What, we make goo-goo eyes at each other," Tara countered, locating the shampoo bottle and preparing to give herself a good lathering.
"Yeah. But when we do it -- Major Cuteness ensues."
****
Yes, lots of cuteness in this chapter. I guarentee a little more angst in upcoming segments.
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Road to Nowhere, Part 3
As it turned out, the bathtub incident was but a prelude to an intense evening for Willow and Tara. In contrast to the almost frenzied sex they had performed on one another while covered in shaving cream, the next several hours in bed were spent in quiet, almost prayerful communion upon one another, until they were both exhausted enough to fall asleep.
Some hours later, Willow woke from a very strange but somehow amusing dream of Spike in a karaoke bar full of demons, singing "House of the Rising Sun" to a mortified Buffy. Stirring slightly, she noted that it was still dark out, and she was still spooned up against Tara, her bare chest against Tara's bare back, her loins against Tara's warm bottom. Willow was wondering what could have woken her up when she felt Tara stiffen, then shudder.
"Mmmh…n-n-no…noooo," Tara moaned. Willow started, then responded by wrapping her arm around Tara's waist. She wondered what particular nightmare her girlfriend might be having…
"No, I d-didn't…stop, that hurts!" Tara almost shouted. Her right hand shot out from under the covers, the hand that Tara still had use a squeezy-ball as part of her rehabilitative therapy. The hand Glory crushed as part of her attempt to find the Key. Now Tara was shaking it back and forth as if it was in the grip of an invisible monster. "P-p-please…no…don't d-d-do that to..."
"Shhh…baby, shhhh…you're okay, you're safe, I love you," Willow whispered, trying to calm her while in the verge of tears herself. "Oh, God, Tara, you're okay, it's over," she whispered, trying to brush the hair from Tara's eyes.
As Willow's fingers touched her temple, Tara reacted as if a live electric wire had jabbed her. She flailed about, throwing the covers off herself and Willow, crying out inarticulately. Willow flashed back to those horrible nights when Tara was brain-sucked, when she had to use the restraints the hospital provided ostensibly for her "comfort."
Restraints. Such a nice euphemism for straightjacket. Or, as Xander had put so wonderfully after driving the two of them to the dorm, "the ol' wrap-around canvas tuxedo." Willow hadn't come that close to punching his lights out since he blithely announced he had slept with Faith.
Finally, Willow was able to wrap both arms around her, simultaneously whispering, "Tara, it's Willow, please be with me, I love you."
Tara's breathing became slower, deeper, as the nightmare subsided. "W-will…"
"I'm here, baby," Willow replied. She felt Tara snuggle back against her and sigh. Within minutes, she was breathing deeply, back in alpha sleep. Willow, once she was certain that Tara was not dreaming and would not wake, got out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Closing the door, she sat on the toilet and let herself shed the tears she had been holding back.
Along with the pain and grief concerning Tara, she had a flash of déjà vu: sitting in the girls' bathroom at Sunnydale High, crying her eyes out for a love that never was and now never would be. Xander had crossed the ultimate line, even worse than when she had found him kissing Cordelia Chase. He had actually slept with Faith. After that, any lingering attraction she had ever felt for him was gone. She could give herself to Oz and never look back…
…and look at how well that turned out, she thought ruefully. Actually, when all was said and done, things turned out all right. At the wake after Buffy's funeral, Oz had been there with his new girlfriend Randi, who (surprise, surprise) was a werewolf, too. Not at all like the skanky (and departed) Veruca. Buffy would have liked her, Willow had thought at the time. There were some wistful glances between the two former lovers, but mostly it was wishes of luck and happiness, and promises to keep in touch (Willow tactfully reminded Oz of several large Internet providers that did not require a fixed address, or even a personal computer). But they both knew that their mutual account was closed.
When Tara had been taken away from her by Glory, Willow had been consumed with guilt, that she had driven the woman she loved right into danger, that she would never be able to tell her she was sorry and that she loved her and would never leave her for woman or man. Her guilt increased as the time for the final battle neared, because she was afraid that if they failed to stop Glory she would never see Tara, whole and entire, again. Her joy at Tara's recovery was overlaid by grief at the death of her best friend, and her secret guilt that she had been, deep down where she could barely admit it to herself, glad that someone else besides Tara had been the one to be sacrificed, as Willow had been sure that someone would have to give up his or her life to save the world. Herself, she had been willing to take the chance, even if it meant she would die never seeing Tara well again. But to live the rest of her life, with only the memory of her love -- that would have been too much to take.
The sobs seemed dredged up from the very bottom of her soul, but finally they slowed, then stopped. Willow stood and faced the mirror, using the Kleenex provided in the handy dispenser by the lodge to wipe the tears from her face. In the harsh light over the bathroom sink, her face was puffy from crying, but that would hopefully be gone by morning.
"You know what you have to do. You can't ever let her get hurt like that again. She's not gonna like this at first, but you gotta convince her." With her voice thick with sleep, she could barely recognize herself. "I'm sorry, Buffy. But I have to do what's right for me and Tara now. Whatever I owed you for saving my life, and making me a stronger person, I've paid it in full." Fresh tears started, as she prepared to separate her heart from her dead friend. "This is the end of The Fantastic Four, okay? I quit."
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I'm getting there, I'm getting there. It's just taking me longer than I thought. As Shemp once said, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Syracuse.
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Road to Nowhere
Part 4
"You want some whipped cream to go with those waffles, miss?" the brunette waitress at the Brookdale Lodge coffee shop asked. She became rather mystified when the petite redhead and the curvy blonde looked at one another in silence, then burst into giggles. The waitress was vacillating between confusion and annoyance when Red, in a sweet-as-pie voice, said no, thank you. Bemused, she went back through the virtually empty coffee shop back to the kitchen. If those two cuties aren't doing each other, I'm a Chinese jet pilot.
Tara was still laughing when the waitress disappeared. "You are so the bad influence on me, Willow!" She scooped up another forkful of her veggie omelet and shoveled it in.
Auburn eyebrows arched like a St. Louis monument as Willow looked up from doing major surgery on the enormous waffle on her plate. "Me? You started it."
Tara hadn't quite finished her mouthful of eggs. "Drue. I dind 'ear you gomplain doo lou'ly." A couple of final chews and she swallowed. "Of course, it was hard to tell if you were complaining – you were just b-being loud." She chuckled again as she reached for her wheat toast.
"And here I thought you liked applause," Willow said before popping syrup-and-strawberry-preserve-laden waffle in her mouth. "Mmmmm-mmm. Man, this is good. I woke up starving." Both girls had forgone their usual light breakfasts in favor of the large selection that the coffee shop had on the menu. Besides her omelet and toast, Tara had a short stack of hotcakes, now mostly gone. Willow had managed to down a nicely-done slab of ham in addition to her waffle. Coffee and orange juice were also in evidence.
"Among other things," Tara said with a twinkle in her eye, remembering the morning "session" in addition to the lovemaking of the previous night. "I don't know, sweetie. With all this fresh air fueling us, at the rate we're going, we're not gonna live long enough to get back to Sunnydale."
Willow didn't quite choke, but she did start enough to cough. Covering her mouth to keep from spraying Tara with half-chewed waffle, she managed to keep from having the Heimlich Maneuver done on herself.
"You okay, honey?" Tara was concerned, but also slightly suspicious, for reasons that she could not quite identify. It was one of those below-the-surface vibes that she had learned to trust over the years, especially after she had moved to college and found out that it was "University On The Hellmouth."
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just, just thought that was funny. See, this is me, tee-hee-hee, here we are in the forest primeval, shagging like bunnies!" Knock off the stupid babbling, Rosenberg, this is your girlfriend who can spot you trying to hide a fib a mile away! Cover, cover! "You got anyplace special you want to see today?"
Tara shrugged. "Just the Winchester House. But that can wait. I know you're dying to see Apple Computer."
That earned Tara a cheeky grin from Willow. "Yay! Maybe if I'm lucky, Steve Jobs'll be there, and I'll get to talk to him, let him know that I think his new interface has a few problems, but I've worked them out, see, and – and your eyes are glazing over."
Tara shook her head. "It's all fascinating, darling. But we better get going; it's almost noon."
Willow was astonished. "We slept in that late?"
"It wasn't just the sleep, remember?"
"Oh, yeah."
Tara scooped up the last of her omelet, then stopped before she ate it. "Oh, I called Xander while you where in the bathroom."
"Oh?" Willow asked. Gee, why not a octave higher, Rosenberg, there are a few windows in here that didn't shatter from the sound of your voice! "What'd he have to say?"
"Actually, he s-said something kinda weird," Tara said, a puzzled expression on her face.
Willow schooled herself to remain nonchalant. What could Xander say – or know, for that matter? "Uh-huh?"
"He said that if we happened to be passing back through Oxnard, and just happened to stop into a place called the Skin Flute," a little uncertainty crept into Tara's voice at that part, "to say hi to a guy named Raul. Do you know what he's talking about?"
Willow chuckled, partly out of relief. "Well, it has to do with something Buffy told me when we were dormmates, something Xander told her when he came back from his road trip. Better hold onto your hat there, missy."
******
After paying the breakfast bill and driving for about an hour in the Marquis, Willow and Tara came to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California – the home of Apple Computer, Inc.
Needless to say, Willow was in awe. To see her stare at the beige buildings, one would think that she was gazing at the Emerald City in the Land of Oz (no pun intended). "It's, it's fantastic. This is, like, Camelot!"
Tara could not resist an opening line like that. "It's only a model," she replied in a squeaky English voice.
"Shhh!" replied Willow, also in character. She smiled and beckoned to her girlfriend. "Come, let's all go to Camelot!" They marched together in step, singing "We're knights of the Round Table…" in search of the public relations office where they could arrange a tour. "Y'know who we show screen that movie for? Anya!"
Tara considered that suggestion. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail? I dunno. She'll probably go through the entire movie pointing out, um, inaccuracies in the clothes and the food, or tell us that King Arthur was actually some slob of a guy with terminal acne on his face." Her expression twisted as she remembered Tim the Enchanter's warning about the "foul beast" guarding the cave. "Oh, Willow, that-that's terrible!"
Willow giggled. "I know!"
"She'll have nightmares for weeks about the killer rabbit! Xander will kill you!"
Willow doubled over in laughter. It took her a second to get the breath to say, "It'd be so worth it!" She adopted Tim the Enchanter's Scottish accent. "If ya do doubt yar courage, come nah farther, for Death awaits ye, with great, nasty pointy teeth!"
Tara shook her head. "I don't understand why you h-hate her so much."
Willow stopped laughing a second after she heard that. "I-I don't hate Anya." Tara raised an eyebrow at that, her patented tell-me-another-one expression. "Really. Okay, so she's not one of my favorite people in the whole universe, but, hey, considering she was a vengeance demon called forth by my worst enemy in high school who tried to wish all of us into a parallel universe where Buffy never came to Sunnydale and Xander and I got turned into vampires, can you say eww, I knew you could, and then later, she tried to use me to get me to get her powers back, and she managed to get my evil skanky ga— ah, sadistic vampire self into this dimension, and was ready to help Evil Dead Me into recreating Vampire World, okay, then she did give us some info on the demon that the Mayor was turning into, of course she then wanted to get out of town before the Ascension, and only came back after it was all over because she wanted to sleep with Xander, considering all that, I think I treat her all right."
Tara smiled. "Great soliloquy, honey. I think the oxygen-rich atmosphere is affecting you in other ways." She looked down at her toes. "I think – Anya and I are kinda like, um, the Scooby Wives Club. We've sort of bonded that way. I think Riley would have been the t-treasurer, or sergeant-at-arms, but he left."
"Tara," Willow sighed. "How many times have I told you? You're part –"
"—Part of the team, I know, you've told me," Tara finished. "I suppose I am, but Anya and I got brought into this not because of who we are, but who we're dating. Y'know, Oz felt the same way."
Willow blinked. "How would you know that?"
"I talked to him. At the wake." Tara reached out and touched Willow's shoulder. "It's okay. He said he didn't feel like an outsider. I don't either." Willow nodded. Tara saw that her girlfriend's enthusiasm for the tour had gone. "C'mon, you gotta show these guys what they're doing wrong."
*********
After the tour, and after Willow filled out about twenty suggestion cards ("What?!? They shouldn't've gotten rid of CyberDog!"), Tara had decided that it was a little late in the day to head over to the Winchester House. After a brief discussion, they drove back to Santa Cruz. They found the Santa Cruz boardwalk, with the pier jutting out almost a mile into the ocean, shopped in a dozen little stores for souvenirs to bring back for everybody, and ate dinner in a seafood restaurant that had apparently been a family concern for most of a century.
"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Willow asked. "I don't want you to get sick…"
"I'm allergic to shrimp, baby, not fish," Tara replied, browsing through the menu. "And I haven't had salmon steak in years."
"That sounds of the Yum."
After dinner, they walked to the end of the pier to watch the sun set. With so few tourists in the town, they had the whole area to themselves, and so treated themselves with a few unselfconscious public smooches. Arms around each other, they settled against the railing, looking out to the sea while the breeze blew their hair around until Tara's dark blonde tresses mixed with Willow's auburn hair.
"You know what I want to see sometime this week?" Willow piped up. "U.C. Santa Cruz!"
Tara frowned. "Do-don't we have something like that at home? Y'know, lots of buildings, grassy fields, library, chemistry labs, dorms and lots of teachers?"
Willow nodded. "Hopefully without the secret government demon-containment facility and the occasional roving vampire. I'm just interested in, y'know, how the other half lives, see what kinda courses they have, or don't have, and then I can laugh the Laugh of I Mock Your Inferior School. Of course, they might even have some courses that U.C. Sunnydale doesn't have, but, hey, let's take that chance."
Tara shrugged. "Well, it might be interesting and fun. I'm sure it will be, if I'm with you."
Willow reached up to brush some hair out of Tara's eyes. "Hey, I gotta tell you something. I love you."
Tara smiled and gazed at her. "I love you, too."
Willow jumped in quick after that. "I know. I'm trying to say…I've been doing a lot of thinking since you…uh, had your problem…"
"What Glory did." Tara's reply was very flat, in contrast to the depth of the pain that Willow knew she still felt.
"Yeah. I mean, I came so close to losing you. There were so many times when you'd…like, be almost normal, you'd be Tara, my Tara, and then…" Willow paused to swallow back a sob. "It was so frustrating, but I knew, if I was patient, if I took care of you, even if took the rest of my life, you'd come back for good."
"Baby, I am back. I am here," Tara replied. "What are you trying to say?"
"From now on, it's you and me. Whatever we do, wherever we are, we're together. Okay?"
"Oh yes." Tara kissed Willow, then took a half-step back. "Willow…are-are you p-proposing to me?"
Willow couldn't keep a short bark of laughter from escaping her mouth, even as she had to blink back tears. "Ah, ah, no, not as such, no. But, y'know, maybe someday in the future, probably after college, we could conceivably stand up, in front of all our friends, in a rather broadminded little synagogue or chapel…wait a second, I'm seeing Sad Face; why am I seeing Sad Face?"
Tara looked down before answering. "B-because someday you might…want ch-children. I can't give you that, Willow. When we had that fight, you did touch on the f-fact that I'm…afraid that someday you might children. You might need a man. I can't be one."
Willow rolled her eyes. "Then we can adopt, or use artificial insemination, or genetic engineering, or win one on a game show." Tara chuckled. "We'll work it out. Together. We can give the kid one of those shirts that say 'My Mommies Love Me.'" The two of them laughed this time. "This is all in the future, y'know, when we've got warp drive, replicators, we're living in a condo on Mars, right next to a big canal with hoverboats…"
"Sounds great," Tara said. She looked out over the ocean where the last light of the setting sun was dying out. "We should get back to the Lodge."
Willow frowned and took a quick look around the general area. "You thinkin' vampire activity?"
"Well, I'm thinking of some k-kinda activity. But it won't get started till we get back to our room." Tara had her lopsided grin, which combined with her rather bold pass made Willow giggle.
"Hmmph. And you were something about me being affected by the fresh, foresty air. You are getting to be such the tart."
******
Some hours later, Tara lay in bed while Willow was taking a shower. She had asked Tara if she wanted to keep her company. "No, thanks, sweetie, I'm really beat." Willow had smiled, said something about a beating a record, and went to the bathroom in search of soap and shampoo.
Tara drifted in the nether state between wakefulness and sleep, her breathing slow and steady, the warmth of the sheets and blankets on her skin keeping off the chill…
Tara opened her eyes. It did seem a little cold in the room. Not see-your-own-breath cold, mind you, but a little cold considering the amount of activity that that had taken place within the last few hours, and that none of the windows were open and it was summer.
The lights were off, so Tara could only make out the general shape of the room, which incidentally was much bigger than the usual sort of oversized closet that passed for a hotel room these days. Their luggage, including Willow's laptop case, was on the far side of the room, wreathed in shadows. There was faint light escaping from the closed bathroom door, where the sounds of Willowshower could be heard.
Again the feeling of a presence seized Tara, stronger than in the lobby the previous day. Tara tried to peer through the gloom but could see nothing, or rather no one. Just then, she heard a sound over by their luggage, the sound of something shifting on the low dresser.
A burglar? Tara was frightened, not merely for herself but for Willow, who being in the shower was vulnerable to a predator. Tara mentally readied herself to hurl a defensive spell at any intruder who might be in the room. Okay, now I need to see what I'm up against. If I skooch over to turn on the lamp, he might hear me. I need the element of surprise here. A moment's concentration was all it took to make the lamp switch itself on to reveal…
…no one in the room except Tara herself.
Frowning, she started to get out of bed to go check out the other side of the room. She stopped herself when she remembered she was naked. Ordinarily that wouldn't bother her (and with Willow it could lead to a very interesting time) but she felt more selfconscious than usual. Her extra-large Babylon 5 nightshirt was laying on the bedspread; she grabbed it and pulled it on.
A quick examination showed nothing missing or largely out of place. Willow's laptop carrier, however, seemed to teeter on the edge of the dresser, so she set it back so that it would not fall to the carpet. As Tara did this, her fingers brushed a small sheaf of papers that were partially hanging out of one of the zippered pockets. She frowned as she tried to remember if they were showing before or not. It seemed unlikely that a burglar (if there had been one) would be interested in Willow's web pages.
Her curiosity momentarily got the better of her as she hauled out the papers, telling herself that it was so she could straighten them out, and was only glancing at them to keep them organized. However, her organization became less efficient as she saw that some of the papers were college transcripts.
Some of the papers were her college transcripts.
All at once it hit her. Willow. Getting away for "a week." Wanting to see U.C. Santa Cruz. How "comfortable" Tara felt here. Being together "just you and me."
Tara sat down, not sure whether it was the hot blood in her face or the cold nausea in her stomach that made her feel worse.
Willow emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, wearing her robe and toweling her hair off. "Oh!" she said, surprised. "I thought you'd be zonked out by now. Why didn’t you come in?" No answer, combined with Tara staring off into space, made Willow worried. "Tara, is something wrong?"
Tara tossed the transcripts and the transfer application web pages onto the table. "Y-you wanna tell me a s-story about this?" she asked, finally locking eyes with Willow, who for the first time in a year and a half did not regard it as a pleasant experience.
------------------
Road to Nowhere
Part 5
Willow stood there in shock, her damp hair doing nothing to dispell the chill that was sweeping through her. She had hoped that another day or two would have passed before she broached the subject with Tara, but the papers on the little table and the ice-blue eyes boring in her pretty much kiboshed any delays.
"Um, where did you get those?" Willow asked, stalling for time. Where was her celebrated glibness now? This was no time to have Oz-like brevity in her speech.
Tara, regardless of her obvious anger, almost looked amused at that question. "Ah, are you going to tr-try to tell me that you don't know about these?"
Make no mistake, Take-Charge Tara was open for business.
"This isn't the way I planned this," Willow began lamely, sitting in the chair opposite Tara.
"Planned what?" Tara shot back, putting across in no uncertain terms that she was not going to tolerate any more stalling.
Willow swallowed once, then plunged in. "I think we need to relocate. To here. I mean, Santa Cruz, not this hotel, not that I don't like it..." All of Willow's carefully planned speeches had apparently decided to fly off to Borneo. "Anyway, out of Sunnydale. You and me."
"Um, I kinda guessed that. When w-were you planning on telling me? Sometime after our first month here?" Tara covered her eyes with her hand, squeezing them shut, then looking again at her girlfriend. "Please tell me that this is not some, uh, elaborate kidnapping scheme."
Willow's jaw dropped halfway to the table. "Of course it's not! Is that what you think? Tara, I could never do anything like that to you! I love you, don't you know that, I'd never..."
"Go behind my back -- again! You did it when you showed Dawn which magic book to grab, and you're doing it now!" Tara's voice was louder now than Willow could ever remember hearing it. "Th-this is 'Willow knows best, so I'll just, just get around dumb ol' Tara--'"
"Oh! So not true!" Willow shot back, losing her temper, but partly because she felt guilty; Tara had hit home a little more than Willow would like to admit. "I have never said or, ever thought you were dumb! I'm sorry you feel that I don't tell you every damn thing, but I'm doing this for you!" Willow started to choke up on her last few words. She stood up and walked over to the other side of the room. "Please, Tara, baby, I don't want to fight."
"Well, I'm s-sorry, but I need to you to be honest with me n-now. Why do you want us to move here?"
Willow took a deep breath, trying to control the sobs that threatened to burst out of her. "I want us to live here, away from Sunnydale. Away from vampires and demons and hellgods and danger and death," she paused to choke back a sob, "I don't want you getting hurt anymore, I don't want you to ever get hurt again."
Tara stared at her lover for a long moment before standing and walking over in Willow's direction (though stopping, Willow noticed, a hands-span too far to touch). "Honey, what happened to me with G-Glory, that wasn't your fault..."
"Yes it was!" Willow shouted back. "Okay, even if we hadn't had that fight, she only went after you because you were Buffy's friend, she knew the Slayer was hiding the Key, she went after the one person who was 'new,' which you were, I suppose, there was no way she could know that Dawn hadn't been there all along, and..." she stopped as the sobs finally burst forth. "I can't let anything happen to you. You're...you're my life, don't you see that? Oh, God, crying now!"
"W-Willow," Tara said, sniffling back a few tears herself, despite the fact that she was still angry, "I know you, um, want to take care of me, but, but I've been taking care of myself since I left home. I knew what I was getting into when I started hanging out with you and Buffy and the others."
Willow shook her head. "No, it was stupid and foolish of me. I made it all sound so exciting, just because I got all excited when I first knew Buffy, and I almost got killed by a blond bimbo vampire in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform," Tara raised her eyebrows at that. "Don't ask. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I want us to have a life for ourselves, that doesn't involve the Hellmouth and the next Big Bad that's going to blow through Sunnydale."
Tara stood still for a moment, then slowly nodded. "I'm listening."
Willow wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Okay, we transfer our academic credits to UC Santa Cruz. That's why I brought the transcripts, so we could fill out applications and enroll while we're here, then we can go back to Sunnydale and arrange the move. I think we can find a nice apartment off-campus, a place that takes pets so we can have Miss Kitty out in the open. I can probably get a job in one of the Silicon Valley firms, they're all over the place, and hey, we'll be only a hour or so from San Francisco, nice big city with a sizable gay and lesbian population..."
Tara sighed, her blue eyes closing in exasperation. "Y'know, this-this all sounds great, but..." Willow made an impatient "What?" gesture. "I think you're running away from, well, Buffy."
The redhead made a growling sound that Spike would have given a six out of ten. "No! This has nothing to do with Buffy! Yes, she was my best friend, and I loved her, and she's dead, and I miss her, but I have to live my life for me and for you now. I can't keep fighting demons for the rest of my life just because she might want me to...and I'm not even sure of that!" Tears rolled down Willow's face, her eyes stinging. "Even Kirk and Spock went home at the end of the five year mission. Well, it's been five years and I've had enough!"
Tara chose not to bring up the fact that Kirk and Spock came back for six movies. She decided to stay on topic. "What about the others? Xander, Anya, Giles, Dawn? How can you leave Dawn? She's lost her mother, her sister...her father is still God-Knows-Where..."
"Giles'll take care of her," Willow countered, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as well as Tara. "She's a Summers, she's a survivor. Before you know it, she'll be going toff to college anyway. Xander, he's getting good at construction, he and Anya can move somewhere else, too, a good carpenter can get a job anywhere, right? And, and we'll be there for their wedding, I never said we would never see any of them again, and hey, Spike, he was taking care of himself for a century before we were born, he'll be all right, right?" Willow wiped her face again, then moved forward towards Tara and took her hands in her own. "I just want us to have a chance for a normal life. Haven't we, like, earned it by now?"
Tara said nothing for a long moment. Abruptly, she pulled her hands away from Willow's, to the other's dismay. "D-did it ever occur to you that I m-might not want to leave these people? That maybe they mean something to me? That I might consider them f-family, because they accepted me even I... All you thought of, was how to cure your guilt over what happ-happened to me. Not about what I want. You, you're so busy trying to protect me from skinning my knees, you don't even care about my feelings enough to even ask me if I want to do this!" She turned away from Willow to look for her jeans. Slipping them on, she turned back to Willow. "You keep on trying to f-fix the world, Willow, and you keep messing up because you're trying to fix what isn't broke! When are you going to learn?"
"Where are you going?" Willow whispered, as Tara found and slipped on her shoes.
"I don't know. I j-just can't stay with someone who feels she has to keep things from me."
At that point, Willow's temper reached the redline. "You mean, things like the family you were too embarrassed to tell me about? Oh, wait, that was you, wasn't it?"
Wrong thing to say. If Willow had spit in Tara's face, she probably could not have gotten a more hurt, more betrayed expression. "D-don't wait up for me." She grabbed her key and billfold and just managed to not slam the door on her way out.
Willow sat on the edge of the bed, for a long moment too stunned to cry.
***********
After midnight, the crowd in the Lodge bar was still going fairly strong, dancing to a mix of 80s and 90s hits. Tara, however, was in no mood for crowds, so she headed for the restaurant.
It turned out to be a huge, elegant, multi-level dining area with, incongruously, a rushing creek running over rocks, surrounded on both sides by bricked enclosures. The effect was somewhat Old World, and the noise of the water could preclude quiet conversation, but Tara could see how this would be a nice getaway spot for young couples on a honeymoon, or even celebrities trying to "get away from it all."
Of course, as she had said to Willow before, she would hate to be around if there was a flood. She had read on one of the newspapers in the glass-fronted display cases in the lobby that back in the early seventies, the entire lodge had been flooded when the creek overflowed. One young girl went missing, presumed drowned, although the body was never found. Since then, there had been hints of unnatural phenomena, but nothing concrete for psychic investigators to pinpoint. Tara had idly wondered if the mysterious presence she felt earlier could be connected to these events.
Right now, the restaurant was deserted, except for Tara, nursing a cup of coffee and a chocolate cheesecake. The coffee helped keep her awake and on edge; the cheesecake, her usual placebo for The Blues, was doing little to assuage her anger.
Damn her anyway! she thought, stabbing another piece of cake. Almost all my life, people have been "taking care of me," which was their nice way of telling me I was too stupid to talk care of myself. I know I'm quiet and shy and my stutter doesn't help, but I can take care of myself. I don't need her telling me, "Hey baby, here's the deal, take it or leave it!"
Having articulated that thought, she realized she was being a little unfair to Willow. Granted, her lover had no right to go behind her back, but it wasn't as if Tara had been kidnapped by her. If anything, that sounds like the start of a kinky and fun scenario, but I probably better not give Willow any ideas. Willow, as usual, was doing as she thought best, and was simply used to doing things her way. Being the smartest kid in class, she was used to being right all the time.
Besides, Tara knew that finding Willow Rosenberg, against odds that would make Heisenberg's nose bleed, was the best thing that ever happened to her, and it was going to take more than a minor subterfuge for Tara to toss Willow away. Not without a fairly stern lecture, of course. Can't let her get the idea that she can get away with this stuff all the time. I'm lucky to have her, but I've got my pride and my standards, y'know.
With resolve and forebearance in her heart, she finished the last of her cheesecake, then craned her neck to see if she could spot the waitress to get the check. Nope. Probably would have to go find her...
"You have to come," said the voice just her right.
Startled, Tara turned to see the young girl sitting at the table to her right, the girl that had not been there a second ago. She was about Dawn's age, give or take, and in fact reminded Tara quite a bit of the teenager. However, her hair was a shade blonder, the lips thinner, the eyes almost as brown as Xander's. The stranger sat in the chair wearing a denim shirt and jeans, which for a reason Tara could not identify, looked wrong somehow. The cut was very loose, for one thing, and yet the fabric clung somewhat to the girl's skin, as if...
As if it were damp, Tara realized with a shudder. The young girl, presumed drowned. This is her.
The girl spoke again. "You have to come to the house. Soon. There isn't much time left."
"Wh-what h-house?" Tara replied, trying to remain calm and simultaneously deal with what she was seeing and thinking.
"It's just up the road aways. You were planning on going there anyway, you and your friend. We need your help."
Tara's brow furrowed. Even in her extremity of fear, her nurturing instinct pushed outward. "Help? H-how can I help you? You're..." She could not bring herself to say the word.
The girl did not seem to care, however. "You're the first one in so long who even knew I was here. Please, it's only a short time before I'm drawn back there. You and your friend, you must help us. Before it's too late."
"Too late for what? I don't understand--"
"Tara?" Willow's voice made her involuntarily snap around, to see her girlfriend at the entrance of the restaurant. She turned back only to find the girl had vanished. Getting up, she looked around the chair for any sign that anyone had sat there.
Willow, on the other hand, was miffed that Tara had not acknowledged her presence. She made her way over to the table where Tara was moving around, looking as if she had lost a contact lens or something. "Hey, Tara, c'mon talk to me! I kno