Lusciousbr: Yes, my updates have been coming a little more slowly these last few weeks, but the next ones shouldn’t be so delayed. As for Tara and Xander…it needed to happen, I think. And you know, Tara has some more standing up to do in the next chapter or so… and I love that Fatboy Slim song. What a nice thing to say. Now take care of that wrist!
Mm: Thanks, you.
And now, some people might say there’s a kind of mini-cliffhanger here, but I wouldn’t. Well, maybe. And some people might also say that the next few chapters have some angst. And that I would agree with.
Title: Terra Firma Chapter 15: The Poet and the Pendulum.
Author: Tulipp. Email:
tulipp30@yahoo.comFeedback: Please. Distribution: Please let me know.
Spoilers: Everything.
Rating: PG-13 in this part.
Pairing: W/T.
Summary: Buffy and Willow deal with things that just won’t go away.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings here were created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, but I am borrowing them to do my own thing. No money involved, only some necessary revisions.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Ruth. You are such a good reader. And it really, really helps. And this time to darkmagicwillow for your thoughts. And to J. for plotting.
Terra Firma
Chapter 15: The Poet and the Pendulum
It seems I am still waiting
for them to make some clear demand
some articulate sound or gesture,
for release to come from anywhere
but from inside myself.
--Adrienne Rich, “Toward the Solstice”
Tara could see them, two thin figures clutching one another in a shadowed corner of the alley. One holding the other up. And two others, standing back, watching. Fear hit her: a fist in the stomach. Willow was hurt. Willow couldn’t stand up straight. Willow had cast, and without her, it had gone wrong . She stopped still for a second, paralyzed, as Xander ran ahead.
She had grown uneasy in the Summers house, alone with Xander and his scars, alone without Willow. Too much time had passed. Something was wrong. She shouldn’t have let Willow go out without her; it was too soon. She had tried to focus her mind, to find Willow in their old way, but she had felt too anxious to cast a finding spell, too distracted, and so they had set out on foot, toward the Magick Box.
And she had been right, it seemed. Willow was in trouble. Willow couldn’t stand alone. Willow needed help. And Tara felt afraid.
But when Xander reached the huddled figures ahead of her, and they looked up, she realized she’d had it all wrong. It was Buffy who was limp. And it was Willow who was holding her up. Tara closed the remaining distance between them on a wave of relief, reaching her arms around both girls in a brief, hard hug.
Tara caught Willow’s eye, and the look she saw there was calm enough, peaceful enough, to let her breathe again. It was okay. Over Willow’s shoulder, she saw Anya reach for Xander’s hand but then curl her fingers into a fist and let her arm drop.
“Dawnie,” Willow said, nodding her head toward the alley wall, and Tara turned to see Dawn, standing rigid against a brick wall, staring into space. Tara went to her, touched her, and Dawn seemed to shake herself.
“What…what happened?” Dawn asked slowly. She glanced around, confused.
Tara frowned and glanced uncertainly at Buffy. Xander had taken her other arm, but she seemed calmer already, standing up straight. Willow had an arm around Buffy’s shoulders and was talking softly to her, but she was watching Tara.
“Did you have a headache? What do you remember?” she asked Dawn softly, touching her arm.
Dawn bit her lip. “Spike was here,” she said finally. “And he…I think he wanted Buffy to kill him, but she wouldn’t, and Willow’s eyes were all dark, and then….” Tara’s throat tightened at that, but she kept her voice calm.
“Then what, sweetie?” she asked softly. “You can tell me; it’s okay. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
But Dawn shook her head. “That’s all I remember,” she said. “And now you’re here.”
****
“I want to know what happened,” Dawn said again, more insistently this time. “Buffy, please. Where did Spike go?”
Tara had fussed over Buffy when they’d arrived home, running her a hot bath and insisting that she eat a piece of toast and drink hot tea. She didn’t ask any questions, just seemed to know that Buffy wanted to feel quiet and clean and warm and full. Buffy had missed being cared for like that. It felt good.
Now—Buffy thought it was only right—Tara’s attention had turned back to Willow; she had settled into the corner of the sofa and pulled Willow to her, wrapped her arms around her, and Buffy watched both girls’ eyes close for a moment as their bodies touched. She could almost feel the sigh that passed through them both, that drew Willow’s back to Tara’s chest. At the contact.
It had never been like that, with Spike. It had been contact, and she had wanted it for awhile, but it hadn’t been a sigh. More of a gasp. Like seeing him again had been a gasp. She wanted to explain it, to tell the others what had happened, but she couldn’t find the words. She was still, a little, in the gasp.
Buffy had thought first of powerlessness. It felt like the white of enamel bathtub in the small of her back. It felt like the black of slick leather pulled like a blanket over her nakedness. It felt like the cold gray of a crypt. Or the final gray of the tombstone over your head. Or the paralyzing gray of not knowing what to do.
The weak lamp light had flattened the alley into grays, blurred the flat edges of black and white like an old movie. That was unusual; Buffy usually found that her Slayer vision was 20/20, clear and focused and seeing right through to the sharp heart of a situation. But at the moment, the only thing that looked sharp was Mr. Pointy.
She was aware of Willow and Dawn, standing back and to her left. She heard one of them gasp and knew that they had seen what she had just seen: Spike, kneeling in front of her, holding his shirt open over his bare chest, blurred with blood and bruises.
It came back, all of it, a movie seen long ago and played now on rewind. The great empty hole of her life and the way that she’d used Spike to fill it. Sex that left her splintered. Rage and wanting; lust and anger. The aching relief of telling him no. The surprise—and how much had she had to will herself to forget in order to feel that shocking, cold surprise?—when he wouldn’t listen.
“He wouldn’t listen,” Willow was saying, and Buffy jerked herself back to the present. “He said horrible things. He was taunting her. He was…God, he was lewd. It made me so….”
Xander shook his head. He flexed a wrist against the mantle. “Why didn’t you just beat the crap out of him? He deserved it after what he did to you.”
Buffy glanced at Willow, who smiled at her gently, and Tara, who looked keenly at her but said nothing. “Xander,” she said. She didn’t know how to explain. “That’s what he wanted. That’s why he came.” She swallowed against the memory of his eyes, blackened by torment. Against his cheekbones, angled with shame.
“Sorry, Buff, I don’t get it,” Xander went on. “Spike’s back in town, only instead of banging heads, he’s doing poetry slams? And by the way, does anyone else think it’s strange that we had two showdowns in two days, and I missed them both?”
Buffy sighed, remembering. “He wanted me to kill him,” she said. “He was trying to provoke me…to make me mad enough to stake him. Only….”
“Only what?” Dawn asked, her voice tiny.
“Only…” Buffy said again, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“Only he’s human,” Anya said from the doorway. She smiled broadly, and it occurred to Buffy that she liked poofing in and out of rooms.
“Jesus, Anya,” Xander said tiredly. “Can’t you just use the door like everyone else?”
She glanced at him. “He’s human,” she said again, patiently. “He made a deal to be restored to how he was before. He was trying to get rid of the chip, but what he was before was human. But he remembers everything. And now he’s crazy with guilt, insane. D’Hoffryn’s theory is that Spike was reciting poetry to try to block his vampire life from his mind.”
Buffy saw Xander roll his eyes. “D’Hoffryn says,” he muttered quietly. Anya just looked at him, impassive.
“He used to write poetry,” Buffy said quietly. “Before he was turned. He told me about it once. Love poems.” When he was human. When he was William. When he was a….
“… coward,” she had called him, her voice full of contempt. “After everything, after what you tried to do to me, I still trusted you with Dawn. I still thought there was some hope for you. And you ran.”
Why was it that she remembered only what she had said? Why was it that even now, Spike was fading, fading like the lines of a poem she’d once had memorized but now could barely remember? He had spoken, she knew he had spoken to her, but the words were gone.
She’d laughed at him, incredulous. “But you didn’t destroy me,” she’d said. “You didn’t destroy anything. Spike, look around. You have no victims here.” She had gestured at Willow, standing next to her, at Anya and Dawn, a few paces off. Survivors. Women unbroken, in the end, by men. Or vampires. Or gods. Or grief.
“You have no victims here ,” she’d said again, and she’d known as she heard the words that it was true. “Save your atonement for the people you really hurt.”
She had reached down then and grabbed his shirt, pulled him easily to his feet. She’d looked past the bruises to his eyes, past Spike to William, and she remembered, deep in her bones, looking past Angelus to Angel, when he’d come back, in that painful moment before she’d killed him. She knew that suffering. And then she had pulled him down and kissed him—lightly, so lightly—on the forehead. And then she let go.
“Get out of Sunnydale, Spike,” she had said. “Go to L.A. Go back to England. Go somewhere, anywhere. Go spend your life doing something good. Atoning. But not here. Not with me.”
She thought he’d lifted his chin then, thought that his eyes sparked finally with understanding. He had looked at her for a long moment, looked past her to Dawn with something like longing.
And then he turned. And he walked away, out of the alley and into the night. And Buffy had watched him go, watched the sloping back of the vampire who had never known how to love her straighten into the back of the man who would spend a lifetime regretting it.
The others were quiet when Buffy stopped talking, reflective. For a moment, no one said a word, not even Xander. But Buffy glanced over at the sofa to Willow and Tara, and she saw two sets of eyes wet with understanding. They understood different things, perhaps, but they understood.
“But why did he stop?” Dawn asked. “I don’t get it. What made him stop?”
Buffy lifted her hands and let them fall back into her lap. She looked at Willow for help.
“Something changed,” Willow said slowly. “I don’t know…I walked over, and then Anya showed up, and she and Buffy were talking, and then we looked over and Spike was…different. Like the fire had gone out. He listened. It was kind of weird, I guess. Now that you mention it.” Buffy nodded. That was how she remembered it, too.
“And that’s it?” Xander asked finally. “We’ve been hearing about the poet for days, and he turns out to be Spike, and that’s all we get?” He looked at Buffy helplessly, his eyes red with wanting to help. “No ass-kicking, no yelling, Jesus…. What kind of…what kind of closure is that?”
Buffy shrugged and opened her mouth, but it was Anya who spoke, touching Xander’s arm and speaking quietly and evenly, with what Buffy knew was the wisdom of a thousand years of vengeance, a thousand years of love, a thousand years of good-byes to people you thought you’d known, once.
“Sometimes,” she said, “it’s the only kind you get.”
****
“I get it,” Tara said slowly, and Willow leaned back into her, let her head fall against the curve of Tara’s neck, felt the warmth of Tara’s arms around her waist. “But Will…were you tempted? Dawn said your eyes were dark.”
The others had drifted off to the kitchen, but Tara and Willow remained on the sofa, each unwilling to let the other go. And here, safely encircled, Willow remembered, and she told Tara.
Willow had thought first of powerlessness. It was the white fingers of Glory like lightning in her brain. It was the black itch of temptation and the cold black of grief. It was the damp gray of night sweats in a lonely bed. And the ashen gray of skin. And the endless gray of not knowing what to do.
Willow felt the rush. The blood in her head, the tensing of her arm, the narrowing of her eyes. She felt it all, sudden and complete. And for a moment—for one terrifying moment—she thought she was powerless against it, that the magicks would take her over. She saw it happen, a movie played on fast-forward. She would cast against Spike, and she would kill him for what he’d tried to do to Buffy. And she wouldn’t be able to stop, and Buffy and Dawn would turn on her, and she would be alone. She would be punished. Tara would die again. And it would all begin again.
But a recollection pushed its way through the haze of fear and inevitability. She remembered the evening Dawn had told her about Spike.
They had been walking, and she had been half-listening as Dawn told her the news from Sunnydale, about Buffy and Xander and Giles and Anya and Janice.
Willow had hardly noticed the omission. They had walked on, with just the tickle of something missing, and then she had turned to Dawn suddenly. “What about Spike?” she had asked.
And so Dawn had told her.
Willow had felt it then, the hot, wet boiling up of emotion through the flat and dusty prairie of her grief. She didn’t even recognize it at first, could only see it as the magicks, could only understand it as a return to darkness and evil and pain.
She had gone stumbling to find one of the Guides, crying so violently she could hardly see, terrified of the magicks that had become her enemies. She’d once thought that dying would only keep her from Tara temporarily, but now she knew that their separation was utterly final. Tara was somewhere peaceful and light, with her mother maybe, but Willow would only pass out of this world into a hell dimension of endless torment, some dark city of fire and suffering where she would be forever alone.
“It’s back,” she had screamed at the Guide, clawing at her chest and arms, sobbing. She’d been unable to breathe, unable to stand, images of Tara and Spike and a bruised Buffy crowding her mind. She had felt wild. Uncontrollable. It had scared the hell out of her. And out of Dawn, who had followed her and was weeping softly in the doorway.
“Willow,” the Guide had said quietly, her voice wrapping calmly around Willow, a blanket around a shock victim, “that’s not the magicks you’re feeling. Listen. Take a breath and listen to your body and your mind. Come.”
She had put a hand on each of Willow’s shoulders and had breathed, and eventually Willow had breathed with her, and she had tried to listen, tried to see through that haze of pain and blackness. And she had, in the end, heard it.
It wasn’t the magicks. It had never been the magicks.
It was anger. That Buffy had been hurt. That Tara had been ripped away from her. That she would be alone in life and alone after death.
And it was anger that Willow had felt tonight, anger at Spike for hurting Buffy. Anger at him for daring to show his face in Sunnydale after what he’d done. And maybe…maybe somewhere buried deep…anger with herself that she hadn’t been a good enough friend to earn Buffy’s confidence all those months ago.
And realizing it, she had dropped her hand, and shook her head until she could feel her vision clear, and she had walked up to Buffy and stood next to her friend.
Tara had started to cry into Willow’s hair, but Willow pressed on. “It’s a good thing,” she said, although her throat caught on the words. “I looked at Spike, and I felt all that anger boiling up, but…I don’t know…it was like I understood the difference. Finally. Between the anger and the magick. I would have used a spell to separate Spike and Buffy if I’d had to, you know, but…but it was okay. Buffy handled it.”
“Willow,” Tara whispered. “I’m proud of you.” Willow felt Tara’s arms tighten around her, and she closed her eyes with relief. It was a step. It was a tiny step, but it was a step. And she had done it. With no help from anyone, with no spells and nobody holding her hand. All by herself. Just for a moment, that felt good.
At the sound of footsteps, she opened her eyes again to see Dawn standing just inside the living room, looking uncomfortable.
“Dawnie, are you okay?” she asked, sitting up and glancing at Tara, who wiped at her eyes.
“I remembered something,” Dawn said, biting her lip. “Something else. It was…it was just the last thing I saw. Before I kind of blacked out or whatever. Your necklace….”
Willow touched the pendulum around her neck and felt Tara stiffen next to her. She glanced over, but Tara looked away, wouldn’t meet her eye.
“Dawn, just spit it out,” she said, sitting up. She felt a little dizzy.
“It changed color,” Dawn said quietly. “When you pointed at Spike, your necklace changed color.”
For a moment, the words sat in the air, innocent. Harmless. But then they sank in, and the world seemed to fade to gray again as Willow felt the relief seep away, felt Tara’s pride in her—that rare, wonderful, warming thing—seep away. Felt her strength, her self, seep away.
To be continued in Chapter 16, “A Charmed Life”
Edited by: Tulipp at: 9/5/02 7:22:51 pm
by SlayerTazz » Mon Aug 26, 2002 5:43 am 
at: 8/27/02 3:52:43 pm
Does my little Wiccan heart good! 
I love the theme of gray throughout as well. It's such a neutral color, so much like magick itself. When people ask me about black and white magick I always say the same thing. "There is no black or white - only intent." Gray, I guess you could say. As for the pendulum and Willow and especially Tara's reaction to it.... 
I am very very intrigued!! Bravo!!
They're too busy giving us what we need to do actual research. But I'm not bitter. I'm too young to be bitter. 
