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Unparalleled Love Author : Lovers4Ever Feedback: Sure, why not? Distribution: I guess it’s okay, just let me know first. Spoilers: This story takes place shortly after the conclusion of the last season of BtVS, season 7. There’s an ever so slight crossover with Angel. Rating: R Pairing: W/T Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. They belong to someone who, by all rights, should be periodically applying palm to forehead while uttering the phrase, “What were we thinking?” Summary: This is a highly angsty story of reunion and healing. It starts a few months after the last season of Buffy. This story was written as a cathartic exercise to help me deal with the Tara and Willow storyline. Tara’s resurrection has been done many times and by far more capable writers than I; so I brought her back a different way. There’s a lot of emotional bloodletting, as it were, but there will be warm fuzzies in the end. Really. Also, there’s a slight diversion from canon: for purposes of this story (and my own psyche.) A special thank you goes to TKOLove, Beta Reader Extraordinaire, for her encouragement and expertise. I could not have done this without you.
UNPARALLELED LOVE
Chapter One
Los Angeles, California
Fall, 2003
Angel and Buffy stood near Angel’s desk staring at the phone. They’d been in these positions for a good while.
“I so do not want to make this call,” said Buffy.
“We can wait, but...” Angel offered, trying not to force any issues or sway her decision.
“She’d want to know. If it were me, I’d want to know... and I’d want her there to help me through it.”
Angel nodded wordlessly as both sets of eyes traveled back to the phone. He gave Buffy a brief, comforting smile before leaving the office.
--
In a town near San Diego, California . . .
Willow leaned against the kitchen counter in Xander’s house making sandwiches, while Xander sat at the table reliving his most recent cabinet making adventure.
“…and then she asks if I could make cabinets out of bamboo. Bamboo? What kind of a person wants bamboo kitchen cabinets?”
“Gilligan and the Skipper?” Willow offered. “Do you have any mustard? I couldn’t find any in the fridge.”
“I think so,” he replied. “Just let me check the pantry – which , by the way, is constructed out of boring old oak.”
The phone rang as he handed the mustard to Willow and he went to answer it.
“Hello. Buffy, hey! How’s tricks? Nothin’ much. Willow’s visiting and I’m just regaling her with stories from the wide world of cabinetry.”
Without stopping her sandwich construction, Willow craned her neck toward Xander and shouted, “Hi Buffy! I can’t wait to hear about your visit with Giles!”
“She says ‘hey’ right back at ya Will,” relayed Xander as he walked around the kitchen with the phone to his ear. As Buffy talked to Xander, his relaxed expression gradually gave way to one of distress, which was picked up by Willow before he had the presence of mind to turn away. Xander quickly forced his features into a relaxed grin as he sidled out of the kitchen and into the living room.
"Okay," Willow thought as she put the final touches on the sandwiches. "This is weird. What would Xander hear from Buffy that I can’t know about? I should respect his private conversation but I need to know if he wants provolone or cheddar…"
Willow followed Xander's voice into the living room. She didn’t want to know things she’s not supposed to know, but she was starting to worry about Buffy just a little.
“ …so you’re at Angel’s offices now?” Willow heard a concerned Xander ask.
“Xander,” Willow asked hurriedly and timidly, “provolone or cheddar?”
“Just a minute, Buff,” Xander said into the phone before he gave his full attention to Willow. The look on Xander’s face made Willow step back and then forward again. His face was pained and he moved to answer her but stopped himself. He stared at her for a moment as if considering a question far heavier than choices of cheese. Finally he said, “Cheddar is fine, thanks.”
“Xander, what’s wrong? Is it Buffy? Giles? Please tell me,” Willow pleaded as she stood in the living room holding a mayonnaise-smeared butter knife in her hand.
“Everyone’s fine. Promise,” he answered in an unconvincingly casual voice.
Willow didn’t move. She didn’t think he was lying about everyone being fine, but something was up.
“Cheddar’s the cheese for me, Will,” Xander said in a friendly but dismissive tone. “I’ll be off the phone in a sec and I’ll give you the whole Buffy update.”
Will grudgingly left the living room to return to the kitchen. "I’ve got to trust Xander," she kept chanting to herself. "He said everyone’s fine. So, everyone’s fine. End of story. We’re all fine. This is probably nothing, just dangerous muck that has everything to do with the baddies Angel battles and nothing to do with me." She prodded the butter knife through the air in a fashion that punctuated her agitated state.
She finished making Xander’s sandwich and carried it and a glass of milk into the living room. "I’m just delivering a sandwich," she told herself. "I’m not trying to horn in on his phone conversation. Any minute now he’ll pass the phone to me and it’ll be my opportunity to be all ‘secretive gal’ about whatever it is Buffy has to say."
But Willow never had the opportunity to talk on the phone. As she entered the living room, she heard Xander say, “All bets are off. This isn’t just anyone, Buff, this is Tara.”
Willow stopped all forward movement. Xander still didn’t know she was in the room. Her mind raced to replay what she just heard. It replayed and replayed like a stuck record. All this happened in the blink of an eye. Willow had been exhaling slowly and with the last bit of breath left in her lungs, she uttered one word.
“Tara?”
Xander heard Willow’s voice and pivoted quickly, wondering how much Willow overheard. But Willow was no longer in the room.
She was no longer in Xander’s house.
**
In Angel’s office, Buffy was pacing the floor with the phone to her ear. She wanted to blurt out everything at once to Xander, but there was just too much to tell and it was very important that she do this right. Xander was going to have to give the news to Willow and, Willow being Willow, she would have questions. Ask any professor in Willow’s wake. There would be questions.
“…We’re talking about a different dimension, a different world. It’s not my world or Willow’s world. Are we doing the right thing Xander?”
“Most definitely. Probably. God, I hope so,” he replied. Then, with far more resolve, he added, “All bets are off. This isn’t just anyone, Buff, this is Tara.”
“I know,” Buffy agreed in a sad voice. Neither of them spoke for a moment.
And in that moment Willow abruptly appeared before Buffy, still holding a turkey sandwich and a glass of milk. Without explanation or hesitation, Willow blurted out the question she figured Buffy – her best friend in all the world – had to answer, “What about Tara?”
**
Most anyone else would have been completely unnerved by the sudden appearance of a person out of thin air. Buffy wasn’t all that surprised that Willow would react this way; she just wasn’t expecting her so soon. She took a moment to size up Willow and her prepared meal before deciding how to react.
“Will, I thought you stopped teleporting…you know, turning down the volume on your magic since you don’t live on a Hellmouth anymore, etc.,” Buffy admonished, trying desperately to keep the conversation light until the obvious, anvil-weighted subject had to be broached.
In her defense, Willow looked as stunned to be in a different location as Buffy. “Something yanked me over here. It was probably just a visceral reaction to hearing you and Xander talk about Tara.” Her voice grew more and more terse as she continued. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t he use the present tense?”
Buffy gave Willow a melancholy smile while trying to figure out how to start. Willow looked down at the food still in her hands and quickly put the sandwich and milk on Angel’s desk. She wanted to look as no-nonsense as possible right now, and she didn’t think that was possible while still holding Xander’s teleported lunch. The slayer opened her mouth to speak but stopped when she heard Xander yelling her name from the phone still in her hand.
“Xander…Xander, stop yelling. Willow’s here. She’s okay. Well, she’s in one piece, anyway…and we’re gonna talk.”
Willow looked down, feeling slightly guilty about how she might have frightened Xander by disappearing like that. “Tell him he can have my sandwich.”
“She says you can have her sandwich.”
Quickly, Willow mumbled, “But tell him he’ll have to switch cheeses; mine has provolone.”
Buffy sighed and relayed the message, adding that he’d better hurry on up to LA.
Thinking about how to proceed, Buffy quickly gathered Willow up into a hug. “It’s good to see you.”
Willow wasn’t sure if the hug was a stalling device or something to give them strength for the impending discussion. Sometimes a hug is just a hug, she told herself as she returned the embrace.
Buffy went on to say, “You realize, of course, I’ll be cracking jokes for a while about you 'popping in' and just 'turning up.'"
“Please stop,” Willow said, removing any possibility for levity in the conversation. She didn’t know where this conversation about Tara would lead, but she knew her own capacity to blow things out of proportion given just a little bit of time. She could feel her heart race and emotions welling to the surface.
“Okay, Will. I’m just going to jump right in,” said Buffy, trying to keep eye contact and a steady voice. “Yesterday, Angel and some of his people tracked down a demon who was bee-boppin’ through dimensions, slaughtering humans. He was hard to track, but they nailed him in a dimension that appeared to be some sort of parallel universe or something.”
“You mean identical to ours?” Willow asked.
“Pretty much. Same time frame and everything. It’s spooky. Anyway, this demon was in the process of creating some major havoc when they destroyed it. A human from this parallel dimension thingy was injured during the fight and they had to bring her back with them through the dimension portal.”
Willow listened to all of this, trying to figure out where Tara fit in. “If this dimension is truly parallel, then Tara’s dead. What does this have to do with her?” Willow had a fleeting thought of Tara dying again, in another dimension, and pushed it away.
“I said it was ‘pretty much’ identical.” Buffy could think of no way to say it but to just say it. “The human they rescued…it was Tara.” She watched for Willow’s reaction once the words sunk in.
As hard as she tried, Willow couldn’t or wouldn’t allow herself to immediately process Buffy’s statement. And just as suddenly, her mind was sent reeling.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. That means somewhere nearby, possibly in this building, there’s a Tara. Not my Tara, but a Tara. An animated, undead Tara.
Sliding to the floor, Willow sat slumped against the desk, and stared at nothing in particular.
“Will?” Buffy asked, bending over her and touching her arm. “Are you okay?” Willow whipped her head in Buffy’s direction with a lost yet intense look. “Okay," Buffy said, "I get the Stupid Question Award for the day."
Willow wanted to stay in the moment. She really did, but she was getting lost in a flood of Tara moments. Then there was the whole idea that another Willow was experiencing the same Tara moments in some parallel world.
Slowing standing up, Willow launched an emotional verbal assault on Buffy. “So why even tell me about this? I mean…there must be a duplicate Willow in this other, parallel world going nuts because her Tara was snatched out of nowhere. You need to send her back!” Willow began to cry at the injustice of it all. “Buffy, I can’t be doomed to lose Tara in every dimension, can I? What kind of crappy cosmic joke would that be?”
Willow considered her outburst for a moment and cautiously continued, “There is another Willow, right? In this other dimensional copy, or whatever…we find each other, right?”
Buffy was stunned by Willow’s question. Not because she found it arrogant in the slightest, but because she didn’t know until that moment how cognizant her best friend was that she and Tara were soul mates, bound together throughout eternity and in other dimensions. Now it was Buffy’s eyes that held tears.
“Yes,” she replied, “you and Tara are together in this other dimension as well.”
“We talked about this once.” Willow said. “Remember when that demon was created with you when we performed your resurrection spell? Well, that night we talked about the probability of our finding each other in any world where we co-existed.”
Everyone was sleeping in the Summers' household, relieved at defeating the wispy but lethal demon who had been created by Buffy’s resurrection spell. Willow, however, was the lone exception to the sleepyheads. She was standing and staring out of Tara’s and her bedroom window contemplating different universes and dimensions. Willow’s absence was discovered by Tara’s sleeping form when her body reached across to her lover’s side of the bed only to discover it empty. Sensing Willow’s reverie and uneasiness, Tara stood up, snuggled behind her girlfriend, and snaked her arms around Willow’s waist. She sighed into Willow’s hair and waited. Before long Willow asked, “Do you think you and I exist anywhere else? Like in a different dimension or parallel universe?”
“I hope so.”
“Me too. I think…I think we probably exist in other worlds and I think we definitely find each other every time, don’t you?”
Tara took her eyes off the night sky to nuzzle Willow’s neck and pull her closer. “I like to think of our love like the double mirror effect. You look into a mirror reflected into another mirror, you know? It looks like the image is repeated forever. Does that make sense?” Tara asked.
“No, I get it,” Willow nodded. “It makes me all warm inside to think of you and me in various stages of finding each other in possibly other life forms. Somewhere out there we could be calling out to each other.”
“I don’t know about that, but I do know that certain parts of my body are calling out for certain parts of yours… “
Willow turned her body towards Tara without releasing the embrace. She saw that Tara’s flirty comment belied the deep need for connection that was smoldering in her eyes. The same need was in Willow, too, as she ran her hands slowly up and then down Tara’s arms. “I always considered myself a pretty imaginative person and I guess it could happen, but I just can’t allow for the possibility that there’s a more beautiful being in any universe than the one in my arms right now.” Willow slid her palms over each side of Tara’s face, feeling the soft contours of her cheeks rising to majestic cheekbones. They gazed at each other for a small eternity, thinking the same thoughts, sharing the same destiny. Willow opened her mouth to profess her love in every linguistic way she knew, only to have Tara place a finger over her lips. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
And she did.
Can something that incredibly special happen in more than one world? Willow had obsessed over questions like this since Tara was murdered. Sometimes, in the voids that envelop her in the middle of the night, she almost doubts that it actually happened in this one.
“So why tell me about this? This is just great!” she barked in a sarcastic tone, “‘Hey Will, we have a copy of the love of your life right here. Wanna meet her? Wanna compare notes? Wanna give her tips on how to spot those times when the other Willow is getting ready to put a spell on her?’ Or maybe I should tell her which windows to avoid standing near.” Willow had been pacing the floor, gesticulating wildly, but at this last comment, she wrapped her arms around herself and stood perfectly still. “This is almost cruel in a way. Yes, it’s great knowing that somewhere in the vast universe there’s a version of me who gets to live the happy life with the most wonderful woman --“ Willow stopped and looked at Buffy with the look of someone haunted. “I didn’t need to come here to see Tara, or any version of Tara.” Willow stood stoic and fragile as she spoke. “I see her every time I close my eyes…and for that I consider myself lucky.” At this admission, Willow sat down in the desk chair and stared out the window.
Buffy wiped her eyes and walked over to where she could look right at Willow before she continued speaking.
Making sure she had Willow’s attention, Buffy said, “You’re right, this is all kinds of cruel. Since this technically doesn’t involve our world, we wouldn’t normally be told about it. But this Tara is different in two big ways.”
Buffy blew out a tension-relieving breath to steel herself for what she was about to say. “For starters, obviously, she’s alive.”
This statement made Willow sob inwardly. Buffy gently took Willow’s hands in her own as she held Willow’s intense gaze. “And second, this Tara is broken --“ Seeing Willow’s distress, Buffy quickly continued, “Not broken, like she has a broken back or broken bones. Well, she did suffer a concussion and some cuts on her legs that required stitches…but what I mean is, she’s broken inside. She’s…beyond despair.”
Willow considered this last bit of information and racked her brain to see what Buffy was getting at.
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Willow stood up abruptly and started pacing the room. “This other me screwed things up horribly for me, er, her and Tara. Oh god, I bet she did a spell on Tara. A spell Tara could never forgive. This stupid Willow, OTHER WILLOW, let’s just call her O-W. That’s just swell! Ow! My name spells pain for Tara in all dimensions.”
“Willow!” Buffy cut in before Willow could invent any more ways to beat herself up or acronyms that would result in making Buffy a feminine hygiene product or Xander a large, dumb animal. “You’re right, in a way, about being the cause of this Tara’s sad state. Well, not you, of course, but the other Willow.”
“I knew it!” Willow said, with an odd sense of misplaced smugness.
“But Willow,” Buffy continued, “you’ve got the scenario all wrong. This other Willow didn’t do anything horrible to Tara.”
“Then I don’t get it,” Willow said defeatedly.
Speaking as softly and gently as she could, Buffy said, “Willow, honey…the dimension-hopping demon…it killed you.”
TBC
Edited by: Warduke at: 4/18/04 10:02 am
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