by Sassette » Tue Apr 02, 2002 8:27 am
Oh, Geeze, Ruth ... Dancing Queen? Everytime I think I've escaped Joel's Thrall, you say something like this. And it just starts all over again.
Here's the next bit.
AD 42b
Answering Darkness – Give Part 2
"I, umm … thank you," Tara said, thinking over the offer for just a moment before deciding it sounded like a good idea. Spell or no spell, she and Willow needed the time together.
"Right then," Giles said with a nod, taking the tray from Tara's hands. "I'll make the arrangements."
They walked back into the living room, and Giles set the tray down on the table when Xander helpfully cleared an area, pushing aside books and papers. He passed out the coffee, handing Willow the bright blue mug, then secured the tea for himself.
Tara reclaimed her seat next to Willow, sharing a smile with the girl when she looked up.
“How’s it going?” Tara asked softly.
“It’s … frustrating. Kinda’ slow,” Willow said with a shrug that didn’t come off as nonchalant as she had intended. Giles’ Rebel Englishmen had sent over tons and tons of files – far too many pages to read within their new time limits. Willow was running the documents through a language parser she had set up, hopiong to narrow down the reading material to a manageable size, but so far had found nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Tara said, unable to stop the slight quaver in her voice. She had so much to apologize for – so much to tell Willow, but how could she? And why should she? Why dredge up things that were over and done with, when there were so many other things they needed to discuss and to learn, to keep Willow safe?
“What for?” Willow asked, her brow furrowing as she looked carefully at Tara. She looked far too serious to be talking about Willow’s mild grumblings at the glacial crawl her program was currently running at, but Willow couldn’t even begin to guess what else was on Tara’s mind.
“I, umm … nothing,” Tara said finally, her lips pursed as she shook her head gently, her hair bouncing around her shoulders. “I’ll, uhh … let you get back to it,” she finally said, picking her book back up and pouring over the spell. Again.
“Something’s up,” Willow whispered, her face conveying her concern. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“It’s … it’s really nothing,” Tara whispered back, casting nervous glances at the assembled Scoobies, grateful to see them all absorbed in their research.
“It’s not nothing,” Willow protested. “I can see that.”
“Please, not now,” Tara pleaded.
For a moment, Willow looked like she was going to press further, but she paused, her lips a thin line across her face. She nodded shortly. “Okay,” she said slowly, turning back to her computer and trying to hide the stab of hurt she felt. But she would give Tara the space she needed. She owed her that. She owed her more than that, and she would just keep on giving for as long as it took for Tara to trust her again. It was the only way, Willow figured, she could possibly regain what she had lost.
Tara turned back to her book, her mind racing. The last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt Willow. And this … this thing going on inside her head would hurt her. She didn’t want to be a burden, or a hassle – a source of pain. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but believe that if she was different – weaker and less sure – Willow wouldn’t want her around anyway.
She had been so surprised when Willow had stood up for her against her family. There was a part of her that was still surprised that Willow had championed her so easily. But that was once. Problem over. Problem solved. Would Willow stay if she had to deal with all the little bits of baggage Tara carted around with her?
And that wouldn’t even mean that Willow didn’t love her – just that things would get to the point where everything was too much. She didn’t want to be too much to Willow. On one level, she thought that Willow’s love would keep Willow at her side forever, if she wanted it … but hadn’t Willow’s magick use become too much? Hadn’t she left Willow?
She couldn’t bear it if the same happened in reverse, and a fresh wave of guilt washed over her.
And it wouldn’t be fair, not really. Willow had already done so much, and she was afraid that if she continued to need more – that if she continued taking from Willow – they couldn’t possibly last. Willow would eventually feel like there was nothing left of herself, having given it all to Tara, and Tara was determined to see that that day never came.
“Hey, Giles,” Xander said, looking up from his book and gaining the Englishman’s attention. He had found something, and if it meant what he thought it meant, he really REALLY didn’t like it. “You wanna’ take a look at this?” he asked, handing over an open book. “Second page, about halfway down,” he explained.
With a frown at the interruption, Giles took the book, settling it over the Book of Dark also open in front of him and began to read what had caused Xander pause. He trailed over a few paragraphs about auras and their colors, assuming that this hadn’t been what Xander was referring to.
He stopped and read carefully. Reading an aura’s power was tricky. Most people had some gradient of gray, the hue indicating their balance between light and dark, and the size of the aura indicating the magnitude.
Willow, he knew, was nothing of the sort. Or, rather, her aura was nothing of the sort. Mary Ellen had described to him in great detail what she had seen so that he could more effectively research it further than her knowledge allowed her to explain at the time.
There was a thread – well, a chord, really – of darkness coming from an external source, feeding into her aura an inky blackness. Her natural aura, though, was an almost pure white, the dark specks filtering through the layer of power and out to the edges, making a dark shell around her. That description was consistent with what Anya had spoken of earlier, and so he wasn’t sure what had caused Xander alarm.
He frowned and read on.
After the next paragraph, he paused, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, then read it again. He looked up sharply, his gaze finding Xander’s face, then looking over at Tara who was sitting pensively, pouring over that spell once again.
Tara had a Shadow in her aura. Buffy had described it as this large pulsing black thing that was “icky”.
Giles read the next section, his eyebrows slowly climbing up his brow at each sentence.
This was certainly … unexpected. And it didn’t bode well for anyone, least of all Tara. The Shadow had no discernible external source, and so it was as much a part of Tara as her arms or her legs. And it represented her capacity for Darkness.
“Dear Lord,” he uttered automatically, wincing slightly when he saw that every eye in the room turned to look at him.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Xander asked slowly. “Damn, I knew it was bad. Why do I always have to find the bad things? Why can’t I find the nice happy things?”
“I’m sure you don’t always find bad things,” Giles said slowly, stalling for time as every face in the room was looking at him expectantly.
“What is it?” Tara finally asked, a fearful look in her eye.
“I think … I think you should read this for yourself,” Giles said after a long moment, handing the book over.
“But … what is it?” Dawn asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“If Tara feels like telling anyone, she will,” Giles said sternly, looking over at Dawn. It was merely the potential for Darkness, not any Darkness itself. Actual Darkness or evil intent of any kind muddied the aura, interacting with the rest of it and creating the shades of gray discussed briefly in the text Tara was now reading. As long as she was careful, it would never be an issue, and he knew that Tara would be careful.
Willow started to lean in to read over Tara’s shoulder, but stopped when Giles addressed Dawn, pulling back with a look of uncertainty on her face. Did she have the right to just read it with Tara? Wouldn’t Tara tell her if she wanted her to know?
Willow chewed on her bottom lip and shifted, moving her mouse around aimlessly. What if it was something bad and Tara never told her? Then again – after what she had done, how could she expect Tara to confide in her, really? It was her job to be there for Tara, to love her and hold her and make all the bad stuff go away, but only if Tara wanted her to. Wasn’t it her selfish need to make the bad things go away what started this whole thing in the first place?
Tara found and read the passage Giles had been referring to, her face paling. Immediately, she thought of the demon, then dismissed the thought. That wasn’t possible, was it? Spike had punched her in the nose. She was human – she was as human as the rest of the Scoobies, and not a demon at all.
But what if she was wrong?
Doubt crept in, and an icy chill ran up her spine.
“It … it could refer to your, umm … knowledge,” Giles said softly, indicating the Book of Dark in front of him, ready to offer up any possibility that popped into his head.
“It could,” Tara said after a long moment. And it really could, she decided, if one interpreted the vague text in certain ways. She had a cast store of Dark Magickal knowledge in her head, and so, potentially, she could be a force of great evil. But that was true of anyone who practiced magick and read dark texts, wasn’t it? And this one indicated that a Shadow was rather rare, and in the cases where one existed, it was so small it was hard to detect.
“Is it … I mean,” Willow began uncertainly, cursing herself for prying even as she found herself unable to stop.
Willow went on, and for the first time ever, Tara tuned out her endearing babblings, lost in her own thoughts.
There were lots of possibilities, Tara mused. Her knowledge. Her power. These could lend themselves to Darkness if she fell into that pit. She’d just have to be careful. She’d just have to avoid it. And if she saw it coming, she could do that.
But what if she didn’t see it coming? Willow certainly hadn’t anticipated Glory’s attack. Would she, Tara, have done the same in Willow’s place? She honestly didn’t know.
But a demon? She had laid that lie to rest – even her father no longer believed it. But maybe he didn’t believe it because she hadn’t changed, and maybe she hadn’t changed because she was careful not to go down that road.
Perhaps the demon existed after all, but rather than just taking over on a certain date, it … needed to be invited out. It made a certain amount of sense in a totally logical way, but Tara’s heart rebelled at the thought. She wasn’t … evil … was she?
But if she wasn’t evil, then what had she done to deserve all the things that had happened to her? The abuse of her family, the death of her mother, and the betrayal of her lover all crowded into her mind. On some cosmic level, had she deserved these things? If not for something she had done in the past, then perhaps for some sin of the future?
She felt like something was trying to bust out of her skull, her head throbbed so badly. So many questions and old doubts and fears rose up – things she had thought herself long past.
But if she were evil, how had she deserved Willow’s love in the first place? Maybe she hadn’t. She certainly never really felt like she had.
It was all too confusing and all too raw, and still her mind skirted around the thought that filled her with the most dread. She dodged it, hiding behind the demon, behind the magick, behind the books.
But it caught her, and her jaw clenched.
She was human, she knew that.
Maybe there was, in fact, no demon. Maybe the Shadow was all her.
And that, she realized, was her greatest fear. That there was a very real, very dark part of her buried deep that could one day escape, terrible in its humanity in a way that something demonic never could be. Hadn’t she read somewhere that victims of abuse often became abusers themselves? Their fear and hurt would manifest itself in anger, and they would lash out. She would lash out.
“Tara?”
The fear in Willow’s voice snapped Tara out of her mental cringings, and she jumped a little, her wide-eyes finding Willow’s face. She quickly looked away, noting with a glance that the Scoobies had vacated the room.
“Tara, something’s going on, and dammit, I wanna’ know,” Willow said with a frown. “I mean, it’s… you … I don’t want to be all prying girl, and I know I kinda’ don’t have the right to push, but I … something wrong. Really wrong. And I can feel it, in here,” she said, patting her tummy where a full-on rumblings was going on.
“I just … I’m scared,” Tara finally confessed, her shoulders hunching, and her hair falling forward to obscure her face. She wanted to just crawl into a ball and disappear, because then no one would see her. They wouldn’t see her, and they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know about the things she could do, and the ways she could hurt them if she lost control.
“Baby?” Willow asked, her lower lip trembling as she brushed a lock of Tara’s hair behind her ear, leaning forward so she could see her profile. “Baby, talk to me,” Willow urged.
Tara made a decision then. A promise to herself, that no matter what happened, she would keep a reign on whatever darkness dwelled within her. She would be who and what Willow needed, and never fall short in her eyes. Maybe she was making a mistake, and maybe she would regret it later, but how could she tell Willow? How could she explain that Willow was living through Tara’s worst fear – that of losing control of her power and sliding into darkness?
And Willow was being so brave and so strong, fighting against it in ways Tara doubted she could if she ever went that far. Maybe it was selfish, but she just couldn’t find the words to tell Willow. She honestly didn’t have the words.
“What’s scaring you? Please, talk to me,” Willow pleaded, her eyes filling up with tears as her heart was breaking.
Tara knew she had to say something – anything – to make the pain in Willow’s eyes go away. Slowly, she shut the book, placing it on the table and pushing it away.
“There’s a spell,” Tara said slowly.
“I can’t cast. You know that,” Willow said miserably, hating the idea that Tara needed something from her that she couldn’t give.
“You wouldn’t have to,” Tara explained, handing over the Book of Light that still lay open in her lap. “Here, read it,” she said uncertainly.
Gingerly, Willow took the book, her eyes drifting shut for a moment. Even touching a spellbook was closer than Willow wanted to be to magick right now, but Tara had asked, and it didn’t involve casting, so she opened her eyes and read the spell.
“You, umm … you want to … try … this?” Willow asked weakly, after reading the spell through twice.
“Do you?” Tara asked, facing Willow completely and searching her face for any sign of fear or doubt.
“I think it … it could work, but …”
“Then we don’t have to,” Tara said with an air of finality. “I don’t want you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.”
“Wait a minute,” Willow said, holding up a hand. “I have to think about it. I mean, can’t I have a little time to think about it? I don’t know … I … there’s no way of knowing what …”
“It could go bad, I know,” Tara said softly, her hand finding Willow’s and grasping it lightly, rubbing her thumb over Willow’s knuckles.
“No, I don’t think it can,” Willow said, a soft smile crossing her face. “Not this. Not this, with you,” she explained, her voice a whisper.
The tone was one Tara knew well, and it sent a little giddy thrill down her spine that settled in her belly, chasing away all thoughts of darkness.
“So you, umm … you want to?” Tara finally asked, losing herself in Willow’s eyes.
“When?”
“We’re kind of short on time,” Tara said, a little frown tugging at her lips. “I … I can’t lose you, Willow. I just can’t. Not like this.”
“You won’t,” Willow said fiercely, claiming Tara’s mouth in a slow kiss that shocked her with its suddenness and intensity.
Tara responded, staking her own claim and raising a hand to cup the back of Willow’s neck, holding her still as she took control of the kiss and ravaged her mouth. When Willow whimpered, she pulled back, resting their foreheads together and taking deep breaths, trying to calm the pounding of her heart.
“Wow,” Willow said weakly, a smile spreading across her face.
Tara laughed, her own smile growing. “Yeah, wow,” she agreed solemnly.
“So,” Willow said after a moment. “When?”
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” Tara asked.
“Well, yeah, I mean … we always have dinner together,” Willow responded automatically, then noticed the expression on Tara’s face. “Don’t we?” she tacked on uncertainly.
“Yeah, we do,” Tara said, rolling her eyes and grinning. “But I mean, like, just us. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“You want to go out?” Willow asked, wondering when her unofficial house arrest had ended.
“Nope,” Tara said, shaking her head. “I happen to know that a certain watcher, slayer, and teenager will be gone tomorrow night and part of Saturday.”
“Oh,” Willow said, nodding. “Oh! Just us, a house, dinner, and maybe this spell?”
“Right,” Tara confirmed.
“Then I would love to have dinner with you,” Willow said, kissing Tara again briefly.
“And you can change your mind anytime,” Tara said hurriedly. “I mean, about the spell. Anytime.”
“So that’s what was bothering you?” Willow wondered aloud, feeling like she was missing something. “The spell?”
“Actually, not completely,” Tara confessed, pulling back and worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
“Is it … I mean, do you want to … talk about it?” Willow offered softly, taking both of Tara’s hands and cradling them in her own. “You don’t have to, I mean, you can … you can have secrets, but … I … I’ll always listen. And be here. If you need to talk.”
A little furrow formed between Tara’s brows as she carefully considered the offer. She liked to think she wasn’t stupid, and that she learned from her mistakes. And hadn’t she made this mistake the first time, and endangered the Scoobies because she was afraid they would find out what she was?
She still couldn’t tell Willow about her flashbacks to that horrible time with Glory. That would serve no purpose, not really. It would just make Willow blame herself. She couldn’t do that to her.
But the Shadow? How could she keep that to herself? But how could she live with seeing disillusionment in Willow’s face?
“Do you … do you remember that, ummm… the uh, Shadow thing? In my aura?” Tara asked slowly.
Willow just nodded in response, waiting patiently for Tara to finish.
“Xander found some stuff about it. It’s, umm … it’s me. It’s w-what could h-h-happen,” she said, stumbling over the words, hoping that she somehow tripped across the right ones. “It’s my potential for, umm, bad stuff,” she said on a whisper. “It’s possible that it, uh. I-it could be the, um, demon.”
“There’s no demon,” Willow responded forcefully. “There is nothing, and I mean nothing, evil about you.”
“But there is,” Tara said, her face falling. “The Shadow is the … it’s the bad part of me.”
“And it’s buried so deep and surrounded by so much good stuff it can’t get out,” Willow shot back. “You couldn’t hurt a fly. Well, you could, I mean, you’re physically able to, but you wouldn’t. You’re not mentally able to. You’re the best person I know.”
“It scares me,” Tara said in a small voice. Willow’s response was immediate as she pulled Tara into her arms, holding her gently.
“You’re, umm … you’re afraid you’ll … be like me?” Willow asked uncertainly, a world of pain flashing in the depths of her eyes.
Tara shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I’m afraid I won’t be like you. That if it takes over, I won’t have the strength to fight my way back.”
“Sweetheart, you’re stronger than I could ever be. You’re stronger than ten Willows. And it will never take over,” Willow whispered into her ear, her throat tight with emotion. “Because you’ll always be careful. Because you’re always guarding against it.”
“I’m dangerous,” Tara choked out. “I could h-hurt somebody.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Willow said softly. “I trust you.”
Tara felt a wave of relief wash over her, and she clung to Willow, whispering her thanks to Willow, grateful for her gift of trust even as she wondered if she could trust herself enough to take it.
