Rating: R
Copyright Disclaimer: All the unoriginal characters don’t belong to me. They’re kind of borrowed, but with a great deal of love and respect. Especially Willow & Tara. I promise, I would never do anything really horrible to them…ever…angry glares
Setting: This story is set between Seasons Five & Six. Buffy is dead and Willow & Tara have already moved in with Dawn at the Summer’s House. All the other major characters are still present, but the Buffy Bot hasn’t been reactivated yet.
Notes: Also, I just want to mention that this all stems from my reaction to events of the Season Six episode Tabula Rasa. I know, I’m kind of late with the angst, but this is a story I just had to tell…and I’m honestly not over that episode yet…whimpers. Also, I expect this to get kind of long; it’s just a warning.
Special Thanks: I just wanted to expressly thank Ruth. She's helped me to make this fic really wonderful, both with her ideas and her great beta reading skills. And also to Xita, because she's hosting my avatar...and this would be no fun without an avatar.
"Tara?” The voice resonated with a cherry sweetness in Tara’s cloudy, confused head.
Blue eyes spread open to a rosy wonderland of pink mistiness and silvery bubbles. Lips drew up into a knowing Tara-grin. “This must be a dream.” The words trickled from the blonde’s open mouth as she looked in wonder at the wild landscape around her. Directions became meaningless as she watched salmon peaks descend organically into awe-inspiring valleys littered with hundreds of flowery folds and creases. The wetness in the air, at first cool and refreshing, seemed to gain in steaminess with each moment. And everything smelled red, like strawberries and red licorice and valentine roses. “My favorite kind of dream,” she whispered.
“Baby?” came her lover’s voice again, this time with a hint of uncertainty. The softness of Willow’s voice struck a natural protective chord in the blonde girl; Tara reverberated with the intense desire to grab her girl and hold her close.
“What is it?” she called out to Willow, turning from side to side with expectant eyes. She was waiting for her girlfriend to appear. Her eyes watered with anticipation, and Tara knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep from breaking into a storm of loving tears at the sight of her red-headed witch. She wouldn’t hold back this time. Not in this fairytale land.
“Baby, I’m so scared. Where are you?” The way Willow asked, so worried, tore apart Tara’s tender dreaminess and sent shivers through her body. The air around her turned immediately frigid and still and the promised storm gained a menacing edge. Windy howls roared angrily around the blonde girl, making her lover’s next words barely audible. Something about help? My baby needs help!
Tara’s long locks whipped around her from their dead state as her head snapped into action, searching the changing surroundings for any hint of her Willow. It was no use, though, she realized in a teary panic. “Willow, baby, I can’t find you! Where are you?” Everywhere she looked the world changed, until she turned full circle to find herself somewhere else entirely. The only thing that remained constant was the new smell of burning wood. “What are you trying to tell me?” she screamed out into the void of her dream state.
Willow’s gurgling scream rang out in harsh reply, making Tara’s heart buckle. The blonde’s head rose upwards instinctively and her open eyes widened to let the tears drip out as she struggled to make sense of what she saw. A huge willow tree hung suspended upside down above her, planted in the earthy ceiling of the sky and awash with a brilliant shield of scarlet leaves. But darker burgundy flames danced around the tree…around Willow, Tara realized! And as they rose up predatorily, alive and hissing like terrible serpents, Willow screamed again. The blonde witch wrapped her arms around her numb body and began to shake her head from side to side. One of the flames bit daringly into Willow’s trunk, and the rest of the pack soon descended on her hungrily, ignoring their victim’s desperate screams and pleas for help…and for Tara.
The streams of wetness pouring from the helpless blonde’s eyes erupted into a flood of terror-filled, salty heat. “No,” Tara begged as she trembled. “Oh Goddess, please! No! This can’t be real.” As she watched, the flames overwhelmed her love’s tender branches, breaking them. Tara’s face twisted in disgust as the deep red snake-things, now bristling with ebony scales and deathly-white fangs, set about devouring all the sweet, red leaves that had adorned her sacred Willow tree. “Goddess no!”
Tara finally broke away from the horrible sight, turning from the sounds of her love being tortured. The witch wanted to help her girl, but she didn’t know how! All around her darkness seeped from the fabric of her surreal terrain. Tara just shook her head and closed her eyes. No. None of this was real! Tara asserted her hope shakily and willed it all to disappear…and it did. When she opened her eyes again, the smell of wood on fire was gone from the air, and Willow’s screams had vanished. There was only blackness, everywhere. But she hadn’t woken up.
Looking around, her blue eyes finally settled on a form drifting slowly up towards her feet. “Willow?” Tara asked in a broken voice. She saw red hair billowing beneath her and excitedly willed her body down to it; but she was shocked to find that she couldn’t move. Helpless. I’m always so helpless.
The blonde watched, paralyzed, as the form of a girl finally materialized from the inkyness. The body was stiff and painfully pale. Slowly, over what seemed like many minutes, the head of the waterlogged girl dragged backwards and Tara’s heart broke all over again. She struggled again to move, but it felt like she was in a thick, syrupy goo. She wanted so badly to get down to her love, to that face that stared up at her with wide, silent green eyes and its mouth agape. “Baby?” Tara tried to cry, but her lips wouldn’t open.
One of Willow’s languid arms slowly rose up as if reaching for Tara, and the blonde girl saw fingers clench in a useless grasp inches from her toes. “Tara? Why didn’t you save me?” asked lifeless eyes.
“I couldn’t,” Tara replied with her stare. “I tried baby, but I couldn’t. I was so scared.” An overwhelming sadness swept through her.
“I trusted you,” Willow echoed back, the words hauntingly familiar. “I trusted you more than anyone else in my life.” Tara’s heart ached as she looked into her girl’s pallid face, into those eyes that seemed to burn with hurt. “Was all of that just lies?”
Willow’s words struck a well of shame in Tara, and the blonde tried again to move, to do anything. “No,” she tried to explain in frustration. “It wasn’t baby. I promise. I won’t let you down.” Cold eyes watched Tara unmoved as the body’s slow drifting began to halt. “Just come back with me, Willow. Come back and we can be happy and I’ll never let anyone hurt you, ever! I swear it, baby.” But it was too late. Willow began to drift back down, away, and even more tears welled up in Tara as she begged the Goddess and everything she held sacred in her life not to take Willow away. But there was nothing Tara could do except struggle, powerless, as her one true love disappeared into the nothingness that was beyond her sight.
Tracy’s body tensed at the sound of the loud gasp. The librarian’s fear turned quickly to concern, though, as the low, moaning sobs followed. Discarding her red marking pen randomly among the logs and papers that lived in clutter on her desk, she quickly pushed her chair back so that it swiveled out from under the oak monstrosity. Rising quickly, Tracy glided towards the crying.
As she walked briskly through the seventh aisle of the modern fiction section, the librarian peeked through the books to look for the cause of the disturbance. A young blonde woman, it seemed. As she rounded the corner, efficiently sweeping up a displaced copy of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the librarian studied the sniffling girl with her puffy, sore eyes and lemon frown. The clothes the blonde wore were unusually interesting, and immediately caught Tracy’s imagination. Her eyes wandered up from earthy sandals and a crinkled, forest-green skirt to a warm, corn-colored sweater that only heightened her subject’s vulnerability.
Opening her heart a little, Tracy walked slowly closer to the crying girl. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Blue eyes, filled with hurt and shame, radiated a near-audible fear at the sound of Tracy’s voice. “I…I, uh, I’m o-okay..” she finally made out between stressed breaths. The terror in her gaze gradually melted into exhaustion. “I’m so s-s-sorry,” she added, with a look that begged for forgiveness.
Tracy felt immediately guilty for scaring this fragile creature “What’s your name? And why were you crying…are you okay?”
The blonde girl nodded as she made the sound of her name leave her throat. “Tara.” She stated it so simply, like a little girl might.
“And the crying, Tara?” The librarian pushed a mahogany bang from her apple cheeks as she watched the girl, who reminded her of a Greek nymph, shift uncomfortably in her seat.
The blonde creature just shook her head as her breathing steadied. “It was just…a bad dream?” The words felt like a question. “I’m sorry for…the noise…and, for falling asleep. I d-d-didn’t mean t-to.” Tracy just watched as Tara went about packing her things in silence. Books on ancient and pre-history lay scattered across the table, along with a few volumes of art—one a general survey of Italian Renaissance works and the other on Romantic painting—and a couple other random books. She smiled to herself as she spotted a child’s eraser, shaped like a unicorn, nestled in the open spine of a book of fairy-tales.
“Don’t be sorry,” Tracy finally admonished. “There’s never anyone here at this time of night, and you shouldn’t be sorry for things that are out of your control. Bad dreams aren’t your fault.”
“This time of night?” Tara spoke up with worry. “W-w-what time is it?” she looked like she was on the verge of weeping again. The librarian couldn’t help but feel sorry for the tired sorrow that draped on those delicate lids. She looked like a soul who’d been stretched too far, and was near breaking.
“It’s not that late, honey!” she reassured. “It’s just a little after nine. We were closing in a few minutes anyway.” Tracy shook her head back and forth as she spoke the words, trying to get across to the blonde girl that she didn’t do anything wrong.
“I…I have to go! Oh my Goddess…” she stopped and whimpered, shaking her head from side to side, in disappointment. “Willow will be so mad at me. I was s-s-supposed to watch Dawn.” Her shoulders fell as moisture gathered at the corners of her ragged eyes.
“Willow?” Tracy asked with surprise. “Willow Rosenberg? The red-headed bookworm with hair about this short?” Tracy used two fingers to motion to some point on her neck above her shoulders and below her own stylishly-chaotic, reddish masterpiece. “I thought she’d transferred away or something! I haven’t seen her in here for months.”
“You know…Will-Willow?” Tara questioned cautiously.
Tracy smiled warmly. “Of course I do! How could I not. Do you know how many books that girl has checked out since she started school here? It’s a crazy big number.”
Tara just nodded and rose up.
Tracy continued, barely acknowledging Tara’s move. “What shocked me most was that she never returned even one of those books late!”
“I’m sorry. I just h-h-have to go. I’m so…so l-late.” Tara turned her eyes down to the ground and moved quickly past Tracy, before the librarian, the shorter of the two women, could say another word. It felt to Tracy like she was running away from something, and the librarian hoped it wasn’t her or something she had said.
Tracy turned back to the table and began to close and sort the books so she could reshelve them quickly. Her face, covered with wondering questions, flashed with sudden regret. “Tara! You silly, silly girl. You left your eraser!” The librarian scooped the treasure up and briefly considered chasing the blonde down to give it back to her. Tara was probably so far away by now, though. She decided instead just to keep the eraser and give it to her next time she came in. Grabbing some books, Tracy set about her work methodically.
at: 5/7/02 1:00:47 am
