Spoilers: "The Gift"
Rating: PG-13 I think….
Disclaimer: Joss owns these characters, I’m merely borrowing. Don’t sue me for I have no money.
Pairing: W/T
Summary: After "The Gift" Tara finds that she needs to discuss a few things with Willow. Ref. “Tough Love” and "Forever". Somewhat in response to some thoughts on the Kitty Board.
Feedback: Yes, of course. It's probably not long enough, but I was writing this in between times I was pretending to work, so...
Distribution: Sure, why not? Not like they're my characters. Well, ask first.
Unfinished Business
It would have been nice to be able to sleep. God knows she was exhausted, she had ran around all day giving comfort and making arrangements for the funeral and shopping for quickie microwavable dinners for Dawn and procuring chicken blood for Spike (he had made a face, muttered something about “preferring B-negative,” but in the end had thanked her with a sincerity that would have made her eyes water on a normal day). She had visited Anya in the hospital, along with Xander who kept a vigil over his barely-conscious girlfriend (fiancée, Tara corrected herself). Giles came by as well, mumbling that he needed his best little worker back, but he was clearly not all there; he tended to leave sentences half-finished, trailing off into a pain-wracked silence. Tara instinctively stepped in to make the funeral arrangements, cutting off her own grief and fatigue and only occasionally asking Giles for advice and a credit card number.
Her right hand was still sore, now wrapped in a new bandage because she had, in her Glory-induced brainsucked state had pulled the old plaster cast off. The doctor expressed some concern that taking the cast off so soon might have keep the bones from knitting properly, and that she might not regain full function of her hand. In the last two days, she had had her mental functions jarringly restored (she had had a headache for nearly a day afterward, but considering the alternative, well thank God for Tylenol), been witness to a barely-averted apocalypse, watch three friends be injured (okay, two and a half friends, considering that Spike was still kinda on probation)…
…and watched Buffy Summers die.
That, above all else, hit her in the gut like a cinderblock. Even when she had screwed up with that demon-invisibility spell, Buffy had stood by her. Over the last several months, they had become friends, spending time between classes talking about all manner of things. Buffy had even (with barely-concealed glee) shown Tara pictures of Willow in high school, which they both knew Willow would be horribly embarrassed about. Buffy had been the member of Tara’s new family. Now, she was gone.
How wonderful it would have been to simply lie down and go to sleep, and please God not dream about any of this. Even with bad dreams, she was so tired that sleep was the only thing she wanted right now…
….except she could not. Something else was bothering Tara, beyond her ability to simply push it away like the pain and fatigue and grief of the last few days. It hung in her brain like a paper cut on a finger, sometimes ebbing away but returning to full sting mode at unexpected times. And until she could get rid of this, she would not sleep.
She looked over at Willow, sleeping on the other side of the bed, curled up in her usual semi-fetal position, thankfully undisturbed by nightmares. Over the last two days, Tara had held Willow countless times as she cried, tears staining both shoulders of Tara’s blouse, the scent of Willow’s hair in her nostrils, needing to give Willow the comfort as much as Willow needed to get it. All the while, snippets of a previous conversation tried to intrude into Tara’s brain, but she shoved them away with a steadily-weakening resolve.
She had almost caved into the desire when they made the trip to Los Angeles, to tell Angel about Buffy. Tara had waited discreetly in the back, and after all was said and done, and introductions all around and invitations for the funeral were made, the two of them had driven back to Sunnydale in Xander’s borrowed car. Willow had curled up in the passenger seat again, silently weeping again, only now, she explained between gasping sobs, it now for the doomed love that Buffy and Angel shared, now doomed forever.
Then back in the dorm room, Willow wanting to make love to Tara, needing the release from pain and loss and frustration of the past week when Tara was There/Not-There. Tara, wanting and needing as much as Willow, nevertheless had gently deflected Willow’s advance, turning it to comforting hugs and kisses and tummy rubs that made Willow fall asleep. As much as she craved physical love, she could not allow it to happen until she cleared the air.
Tara noticed the change in her girlfriend’s breathing: she was awake. Willow raised herself up on elbows and peered over, noticing Tara’s open eyes. "Hey. Couldn’t sleep?"
Tara drew in a breath. "Willow, I need to talk to you."
"Two ears, no waiting." No response from Tara, which worried the redhead. "So, talk." In response, the blonde sat up and switched on the bedside lamp, throwing into stark relief the two of them clad in p.j.’s and nightshirt. "Urggh!" she cried, shading her eyes. "Now I know why vampires hate the sun!" She expected a chuckle from Tara and was surprised to get none. Uh-oh.
Tara blinked a few times before looking her lover in the eye and taking her hand. "Willow…God, where to start. Okay. Y-you don't know how grateful I am that you risked your life the way you did, restoring my sanity. You don't even want to know what a bad place I was in…I-I don't even remember all of it, and that's a good thing, believe me."
"Sweetie, I would have risked anything to get you back…." Willow started, but Tara gently put a finger to her lips.
"I know. That's kinda part of what I'm talking about. It's just...I didn't want to seem like I wasn't grateful, and I am. See, it's also got to do with that fight we had, right before…Glory…"
"Shhh, don't talk about that. I wanna forget that fight ever happened! I was so stupid…"
"I don't want to forget it. I can't forget it." Tara's quiet pronouncement stopped Willow in her tracks, her mouth open and no sound coming out of it. Alert the press, some part of Tara's mind quipped, but she shoved that away. Now was not the time for levity.
"When I said that the progress in your magic frightened me, I didn't mean I was frightened of you. I'm frightened for you. You've been heading into very dark territory and you're not keeping your eyes wide open." Deep breath. "Sometimes, you're so concerned about whether or not you can do some spell, you don't stop to consider whether you should."
"What are you talking about?" Willow asked, a bit more defensive than she would have liked to admit.
"Your 'tinkering' with spells. Sometimes a spell has a…specific effect for a reason. Then you come along and decide to 'hack' it, like it's a computer program. That's not what we do. Or rather, that's not what Wiccans do."
Willow became flustered, which added to the defensiveness. "What – there's no experimentation in magic? No exploration, no innovation? How do these spells get written down in the first place? Did they all come from the archangel Gabriel with a copyright notice and a 'Thou Shalt Not Screw Around With This'?"
Tara was not going to let Willow bait her into getting angry. "That's not what I mean. There are ethical considerations in just about every spell. It's not just balancing the forces of nature, it's about balancing right and wrong in the human heart."
"Okay, so I changed a illumination spell!" Willow shot back, now getting angry. "Oh my God! Better call the Mojo Squad! Hey, do ya think they'll take away my license to practice magic?"
"What about when you helped Dawn find the resurrection spell?" Tara replied, letting her girlfriend's anger wash over without reacting to it. Willow, caught off balance, opened her mouth to deny anything of the sort, when she saw Tara's impression of her own Resolve Face. "I didn't say anything that night, but I was pretty sure Dawn would have had no idea which book of ours to look in – unless you helped her." Willow said nothing, then finally nodded miserably like a child guilty of stealing a cookie. Tara's heart wanted to reach out to her, so cute and contrite, but she needed some answers first. "Whatever possessed you – wait, wait, bad choice of words. Why would you do that? B-behind my back?"
Willow's defensive tone came back, this time without the anger. "Dawn looked so sad, so alone. I just wanted to help her. I just wanted to make things better for her. I mean, I don't know if I really meant for her to actually do the resurrection spell, but…I guess I wanted, you know, for her to know stuff about it, and maybe make her own choice, and not…" She trailed off again.
"And not me…making the choice for her," Tara finished.
"Yes! I mean, you were good with the comforting, and the 'It's gonna get better,' and the 'You make a special place in your heart' stuff. And then you were all 'ethics' and 'Wiccan oaths' and coming off all…"
"Knowledge Woman?"
"Yes!" Willow then realized her slip. "I don't mean that…"
"Y-yes, you do," Tara countered. "This is partly about you not being…the s-smartest kid in class. It's not all about knowledge or power, Willow. This is a way of life, not a goddamn hobby." Willow blinked at Tara's rare use of Spicy Talk. "You can't fix everything, Willow, and you can't hack into the forces of nature like you're going after some computer in the Pentagon. You need to learn why we do the things we do, not just how."
"O-okay." Willow swallowed, then continued brightly. "But Dawn, she didn't go through with the resurrection spell, right? No harm done there, right?"
After she had called Buffy to warn her about what Dawn was intending, she and Willow had dashed over to the house on Revello Drive as fast as they could, to find the two sisters on their knees, hugging one another and crying. Willow had run in and put her arms around them both, and they had wrapped her in a clumsy three-way embrace. Tara, as yet unnoticed, had hung back to stare at something the other three had not seen: several clods of damp dirt, making a trail along the side of the front porch past the large window and stopping in front of the front door. The obvious inference gave her a cold sharp jab in her heart. As surreptitiously as she could, she scattered the dirt into the front planter. None of the other three noticed, and Tara kneeled to put her arms around Dawn, while Willow continued to comfort Buffy.
"M'sorry," Dawn had mumbled into Tara's ear.
"Shh, sweetie, it's okay. I know. Believe me, I do." An image of her own mother had flashed in her mind, and she suppressed it with an ache in her heart.
"No, no harm done." Tara smiled at her girlfriend. It was hard to stay mad at Willow, now that she had gotten things off her chest.
Willow smiled back. "So…are we good?"
"For the most part. Uh, there was one thing…about that comment you made about, about 'Lesbo S-street Credentials.' So outta line."
"I said 'Cred' not 'Credentials'. I mean, if you gonna nail me for stuff I said, you should be accurate, y'know…" Willow saw from Tara's deadpan expression that she was digging herself a hole again. "Okay. I'm sorry."
Tara inched closer to her girlfriend. "Okay. You wanna make up the oral exam?" It took Willow a second to get the sassy joke, and then she laughed for the first time in who knew how long. That got Tara giggling, and the two of them were helpless from laughter for the next five minutes. Finally, the two lay back down in bed and caught their breath, stomach and cheek muscles sore from the workout.
"Haven't done that in a while," Willow whispered.
Tara nodded. "I think we're overdue for something else," she replied, reaching over to undo buttons on Willow's pyjama top. Quickly, pyjama bottoms and a nightshirt were flung aside, as the two met skin with skin, feeling as that first night with nothing but the feel of one another and the smell of a newly-blown-out candle.
Business finished.
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I loved tara taking charge. And i feel you got the characters very well. I agree with everything MiniShrink said
excellent.