At any rate, here's the first part. I'm posting it in the hope that doing so will serve as a kick in the rear to get me going on the rest and have it finished by, at the latest, Monday evening. Wish me luck. I still have a whole crapload of shopping to do tomorrow. *forehead slapping noise*
Title: Coming Home
Author: Dumbsaint
Disclaimer: Mutant Enemy. Joss. Grr. Arrgh.
Pairings: W/T, X/A, it's kinda ensemble-y.
Rating: PG. Might go up to PG-13ish at some point, not quite sure. What the hell is my problem lately anyways? Where oh where has my little smut muse gone? I miss her so.
Spoilers: Season 6, up through Wrecked.
Summary: "It's Christmas, baby. Please. Come home." That goes for you, too, smut muse.
"Coming Home," by Dumbsaint
“Are you sure, Tara?” Buffy asked gently, waving a hand to silence Dawn, who stood nearby, poised to argue against the sad defeat she saw written in her older sister’s eyes. The elder Summers sadly shook her head, reinforcing that this just wasn’t the time to be pushing and hoping that her body language translated properly into fifteen year old, praying that she hadn’t done more damage than good in asking.
Tara’s voice came over the line full of such resolve as to even give ‘Willow resolve face’ a run for its money.
“Yes, but thank you, Buffy,” the blonde Wiccan answered a shade too politely. “It’s n-nice- it’s nice of you to think of me, but-” she faltered. “I don’t think that’s really a good idea… right now.”
“Tell her Willow is better!” Dawn hissed. “She’ll listen to you. Tell her about giving up the magic-”
Two flashing blue eyes and a firmly set mouth finally did succeed in silencing the teenager, who stalked a few feet off to flop, disheartened, on to the sofa. Buffy had already told Tara about all that over coffee a few weeks back, and the looks on the gentle blonde’s face, of competing sorrow and destroyed hope just begging to be allowed to live again had touched Buffy deeply. Slowly, feeling had begun to trickle back in to her shell-shocked body, her numbed heart, and Tara’s pain had registered itself on a previously forgotten level. Other people’s bewildered disappointment. Other people’s hurt.
It felt good to feel compassion again, simple human compassion. Not the mission statement, blanketing protectiveness she felt for all people as the slayer, but that shared sense of aching for things to be made right in their lives. She’d felt that sitting across the table from Tara, and she felt it again now, creeping up behind the girl’s insistent tone.
“Um,” came her voice again. “Tell Dawn I’m sorry.” Her voice betrayed a soft wistfulness.
“She understands, Tare,” Buffy offered kindly. “We all do. But if you change your mind, we’d still love to have you. You don’t have to call or anything, just show up. We’ll be here.”
“Th-thanks.” If she wasn’t already in tears, she was close to them, Buffy could tell. “I um, I’ve got to go-”
“Sure. Sure.” The slayer found herself nodding reassuringly, as though the girl would be able to pick up on that from across town. She rolled her eyes at herself derisively and added, “Merry Christmas, Tara.”
“To you, too. Buffy.” The witch hesitated for just a moment and then ended the conversation. “Goodbye.”
The line clicked and gave way to the monotonous drone of the dial tone. Buffy listened to it for a bit, just standing there, letting the sound stretch on indefinitely, opening up cavernous canyons of distance in her mind. She could feel herself slipping away again, into the place where the world spun quickly around her, where the worst of the pain couldn’t touch her, where everything faded to a dull ache. It was quiet there. Not the peaceful warmth she had known in- but it was something. Something to hold on to.
But no. She couldn’t linger on there. She couldn’t let herself. Not now. There was someone she needed to be holding on to. Someone who needed her terribly, needed her to be here . She snapped back into the knowledge that she was standing in her living room, the sound of cars on the street outside, the wind in the trees- she clung determinedly to those things, pulling herself hand over hand from the quicksand mire of timelessness.
Slowly, she hung up the phone, struggling with the simple action, willing it to bring her back to this moment. A glance over to the sofa showed Dawn listlessly sprawled there, quiet tears trickling down her face.
Dawn. Crying. Hurting.
Steeling herself against the familiar tide of numbness, Buffy forced it away, letting the feelings rise up and fill her. It was all or nothing, and though the pain that laced her love for her sister threatened to completely overwhelm all other emotion, she pressed on, letting it all come. She could do this, for Dawn.
She settled herself on the couch next to the silent, weeping girl and reached for her, the teen instantly entangling herself in her sister’s arms, accepting the comfort she offered with a grateful sigh. Buffy laid her face against silky hair and closed her eyes, her own grief welling up to the surface. She let herself feel it, but more importantly, she let herself hope. They could do this. They’d all be alright. Somehow.
*****
The room she rented in the old house was quiet, the voices of the old couple who had lived there for forty years coming, hushed, from other rooms from time to time. At first the high ceilings had made her feel smaller, the walls looming above her, threateningly far away. This room was bigger than her dorm room had been, bigger than the room she had shared with Willow in the Summers’ home. In her home. It had been. Hers. Theirs.
She didn’t wake up afraid, wondering where she was anymore, and the pale walls that stretched on, seeking upwards no longer made her feel tiny or lost beneath the empty space between herself and the slanted ceiling. There was a small but wide window over her bed, very high up near where the rest of the ceiling sloped upwards to the highest point in the room. The first week she’d been here there had been a new moon. Appropriate, that, she knew. But the increased darkness had made it scarier, the newness of being here, until gradually, bit by bit, moonlight started come through that high window, washing down over her in healing draughts that increased, nightly, until the pale luminescence of the full moon found its way to her in her new place. It had lit up this new world with its familiar sheen of silvery softness, somehow chasing away the last of the lingering shadows, making the room safe at last. Safe for her. Announcing that she had been there for two full weeks, fourteen days away from her Willow. It had been six weeks now, and another full moon loomed in the nighttime sky tonight. Tara tried to take comfort in the faithfulness of that cycle, the steady familiarity of waning and waxing light, waning and waxing life. She tried, but all she could see were the weeks and months stretching out ahead of her. Alone. Far away tomorrows which night find her still cut off from the people she had come to see as her family. From Buffy, Xander, and Anya, who had finally accepted her as one of their own this past year. From Dawn, who was so much like a sister to her, nearly a daughter.
The ache of missing Willow was an ever-present wound, the betrayal and disappointment, the shock of being hurt so much by the only person she had ever trusted completely with her heart, all of it mixed together in a churning knot of pain that never gave her peace. Always it tugged her back downwards into a sea of grief if she started to momentarily forget, never letting her lose herself entirely in her studies or in the novels she read hungrily, trying to distract herself.
She tried to sleep, her arms wrapped around a pillow. It was a poor substitute for what she had grown so accustomed to holding in her arms as she drifted off at night, but better than giving in completely to the emptiness of this bed. Still, she lay awake for a long while, too exhausted to think or feel much except for the lingering sadness that was always with her now. Yet again.
When her mother had died she had lain like this in the room she shared with Beth, listening to the steady rise and fall of the other girl’s breath, wondering how she could sleep so peacefully, breathe so easily, this cousin who had come to live with them when mom first got sick, to help out around the house. How could she, herself, keep breathing, keep going, she had wondered. How could anyone go on living in this world when her mother was no longer in it?
But no, something had whispered to her those nights, something familiar and soft in the back of her mind. There was a place there where a voice spoke to her in her darkest moments. The same place where something smiled, infinitely patient and kind, loving, watching over her through joy and sorrow alike. Someone.
“You make a place for her,” she had told Dawn on the day of Joyce’s funeral, “in your heart.”
Someone who promised that love was alive and well in the world, and waiting to find her again. That love was strong enough to survive all things, all pain. Even death no match for the boundless strength of love.
The moonlight wrapped around her like a blanket, Tara let her mind drift into warmth. Memories of being held by loving arms, of resting safe in the circle of perfect trust, seeped into her in a steady rhythm that, gradually, her breath began to match. The need of her body, her spirit, for rest overriding the pain that claimed her so greedily during her waking hours, finally, she slept.
*****
Xander lay flat on his back on the floor of the Magic Box, his arms splayed out at his sides. He was too exhausted to do more than blink up at the ceiling occasionally, having just spent ten hours on his feet, running around assisting last minute holiday shoppers stock up on eye of newt and essence of monkey toe candles. Really, working his butt off at the construction site had nothing on working retail. How did Anya do this every day? Granted the shop had been much busier than usual today, what with the final rush of last minute Christmas shopping.
And what was up with the Christmas rush at a magic shop anyways? He had thought that people swingin’ with the whole Wiccan thing didn’t celebrate Christmas. So much for that idea. Willow had never been much for it, that’s for sure. ‘Course she was raised Jewish before she converted to Wicca. Tara liked Christmas, though, and she was like… third generation Wiccan, at least. Last year she had made a big deal out of it, he remembered, making gifts by hand for the Scoobies and generally making with the merry. In fact, last year was the first time he remembered Willow getting excited about Christmas. Tara’s enthusiasm for it had infected her utterly, getting his favorite redhead all excited about giving gifts and decorating their dorm rooms. The witchy duo had spent some quality time under the mistletoe after Joyce’s dinner that night, too.
God, poor Buffy and Dawn. This would be their first Christmas without her. It was going to be hard on all of them; Joyce had been a surrogate mother to both himself and Willow, too. And Willow without Tara now- yeah, this year had the makings of a very depressing holiday.
Xander frowned. There had to be something he could do about that. The problem was, what? His exhausted brain tumbled like an empty washing machine stuck on spin cycle, thumping about in futile circles.
A soft weight sinking down onto him brought him abruptly back into the moment. Anya had settled herself atop him, smiling down at him fondly.
“You done doing your Capitalist dance thingee now, Ahn?” he asked, his voice sleepy.
The ex-demon wrinkled her nose distastefully before answering, “Ever since the Broadway review demon incident, it just hasn’t seemed as entertaining.” She fitted herself snugly against his body, laying her head on his chest. “Besides, I’m not really in the mood for gloating about all the money I made today, anyways.”
“Why’s that do you think?” He asked as he threaded his fingers through her hair, delicately scratching her scalp the way she liked him to. She purred like a cat, stretching her neck and leaning into the caress, and wrapped her arms more tightly around him.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice taking on a bewildered tone. “It’s very upsetting to not feel giddy after such an economically successful day.” Anya hauled herself up on one elbow, propping her chin up so that she could look down at him again. She eyed him irritatedly. “Actually, it’s your fault.”
This elicited another frown from the hapless construction worker, who wished for the ten billionth time since meeting Anya that he could more easily follow her sometimes inscrutable ex-demony logic. “My fault?” He tried to keep his tone light, knowing that she often said things she didn’t entirely mean, or that they just came out kinda sounding wrong.
“Yes,” she pouted. “Your friends are all… sad. And I care about them. They’re my friends now, too, so... so it’s making me sad, that they’re unhappy. So much that even my brand new money brings me no joy. Just this kind of… hollow feeling. Almost like-” she struggled to explain what she felt. Used to this, Xander continued to stroke her hair, patiently waiting for her to find the words she was looking for. “It’s making me look at my money differently, them being sad when all the commercials and songs on the radio say that everyone should be happy at this time. All the signs point to buying things in order to make everything better but… it doesn’t, really, does it? We can’t just spend the new money on them and make them happy with… things. It should just be that simple,” she insisted. “But it’s not. I don’t like that at all.”
A slow grin crept to Xander’s face. “Anya, you didn’t happen to be visited by three ghosts while I was passed out here on the floor, did you?”
“Ha!” Anya crowed. “I happen to recognize that reference, for once, and no, I am not having an Ebenezer Scrooge type realization about how money can’t buy happiness and that there are more important things in life-”
The blonde’s face fell suddenly, a sullen expression settling itself on her lip. Xander laughed softly and was rewarded with a light smack on the arm.
“Okay, so I maybe I am having a Scrooger moment,” she conceded, sighing disconsolately.
“Scrooger? You mean Scrooge,” Xander offered helpfully.
“No, I mean Scrooger. He’s another guy who the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future did their mojo on. It was always us capitalist types they went after. They were Marxist thinkers, you know. Stinking socialist apparitions,” spat the ex-demon rather acidly.
“Are you telling me that those ghosts actually exist?” Xander had long since grown used to hearing the inside scoop on the paranormal world from his thousand year old fiancé, but she still managed to shock him now and then with the information she was privy to.
“Well, used to exist.” She yawned, settling herself back down against him.
“What happened to them? They were just like they are in the story?” He kissed her forehead, smiling at the warmth and closeness of her.
“Yeah, pretty much. They were assigned every year to visit a couple of humans on Christmas Eve. But they got fired back in ’96 when they failed to get the president of the Starbucks corporation to mend his capitalist tycoon ways.” Her tone was smug relating this last bit, her smile practically shouting, ‘Yay capitalist tycoon man!’
“Wow!” Xander marveled. “The president of Starbucks is human?! I had that guy figured for hellspawn for sure.”
“Mhmm,” she nodded absently. “Xander, we should lock up and go home or we’re going to fall asleep right here and wake up too sore tomorrow from sleeping on the floor to have wake up sex.”
“Ah, the wake up sex. Paling in comparison only to the make-up sex,” he quipped, kissing the tip of her nose before moving his hands to her waist to help her up off of him. She rose and returned the favor, hauling him up beside her and kissing him sweetly. Her face was still drawn into sad lines.
“You okay?” He asked, cupping her face in his hands.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about Tara spending Christmas alone. Buffy invited her to be with all of us, but she doesn’t feel comfortable, because of everything that has happened. You know, her and Willow. Which is awful, really, because…” she trailed off sadly. “We’re all she has. And I think she thinks that she doesn’t have us anymore, that since they broke up she isn’t our friend any longer.”
“That’s silly,” Xander insisted.
“I know!” The ex-demon fumed, frustrated for her friend, and at her. Silly shy Wiccan, all insecure and… Anya sighed. She just couldn’t be mad at Tara, sweet, loving, always getting knocked down just when she started to gain some self-confidence Tara. Boy, if she had her powers back, she’d sure like to have a go at Tara’s father, that manipulative, bullying, misogynistic jerk.
Xander continued to watch Anya’s face, the blonde having grown silent over the past few moments. Now an almost ridiculously vindictive grin affixed itself to her mouth. Xander suppressed a chuckle, knowing exactly what the smile meant. She was reliving her glory days.
“Have you been hanging out with Tara?” He prompted, trying to gently draw her back into the conversation.
It worked. “I went over to her new place the other day, and she doesn’t have any lights up or a tree or anything. She was so into all that last year…” The blonde heaved a sigh.
Xander cocked his head at her, smoothing her cheek with the back of his fingers. “We’ll think of something to cheer her up, Ahn. All of ‘em. You just wait and see.”
“Something involving buying things with the new money?” She asked wistfully, clearly aching for her money to be allowed to redeem itself after the evening’s allotment of disillusionment.
He grinned. “Maybe.” And then he got an idea. “Hey!” He kissed her again, soundly. “You’re a genius, you know that?”
“Well,” she hesitated before breaking into a great big smile. “As a matter of fact, yes!”
“C’mon,” Xander prompted, pulling her forwards towards the door. “We gotta go talk to Buffy and Willow.”
“Now?” Anya pouted. “Can’t we go home and have orgasms first?”
“After. I promise.” Xander crossed his heart, shooting his wife-to-be a teasing glance, as she stopped just before they had reached the door. He waited a moment, expectantly, for her to get out her keys and lock up, but she was looking at him with an almost shy grin, something rather unusual for Anya.
“What is it?” He asked, curious.
She gestured to the green sprig of herbs over the door. “Will you kiss me under the mistletoe?” Her voice was as wistful as he’d ever heard it.
Grinning silly at her, he pulled her close to him, hauling the both of them into the doorway. They came up for air about five minutes later, Anya leaning into him, swaying dangerously on legs gone wonky in the aftermath of the kissage.
Panting slightly, her voice low, she asked, “Now can we go home?” She ran one hand lingeringly over his chest.
“After Buffy’s!” He insisted, dragging her behind him.
“Xander!” She protested, whining halfway down the street.
------------------
Little drummer girl.
[This message has been edited by Dumbsaint (edited December 24, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Dumbsaint (edited December 24, 2001).]
AWWWWW!!! Joss, take careful note... Tara + family = good. Julia, this is really lovely... more please!