Author name Millerchip77
Rating PG13 - no smut - yet
Disclaimer I don't own Willow or Tara or anyone; they belong to ME etc
Feedback Definitely - feedback rules
Summary After the first story I wrote, which was Willow centred, a few people were interested in me writing a Tara-centred story. I wanted to give Tara a bit more of a back story than we got on BtVS, so this first chapter is about her early years, before she moved to Sunnydale - therefore there's no Willow in this part, but she will arrive if y'all want me to continue...
Notes I hope I managed to speak with Tara's voice effectively. I'm hoping to continue the story and give Tara's perspective on the 'Family' episode. Here goes...
Chapter One: Going Home
You learn a lot when you’re young. Small stuff at first, like how to hold your head up, or to sit up and walk, to communicate through grunts and later words. There’s big stuff too, recognising your parents, learning how to behave, what love feels like, what makes you laugh or cry and how to tell the difference between those things. There’s official stuff like reading, writing, math and phys. ed. and unofficial stuff like knowing when dad’s angry or when mom’s in the mood to show you secret things. You are taught by teachers and your parents and you teach yourself things, like how to hide when dad’s angry, that your hair can act as a shield and how to avoid words that make you, words that, that make you, to avoid saying things that make you s-st…s…st-st-stammer. These are the things I have learned.
My mom was special. I mean all moms are special, most of them anyway. But my mom could do special things, secret things. I was really young when I became aware of this, maybe five or six. We lived in the country, and like most of the kids in my neighbourhood, I learned to ride. I felt so free on a horse, confident in a way that my stammer and otherwise awkwardness didn’t allow. I could focus; become one with the animal, the earth the wind, the trees. Mom would watch me and always she would tell me how good I was at riding and how proud she was of me. Mom knew I wanted a horse of my own, though I knew better than to ask for one. One night, as I was getting into bed, she came in to my room. She helped me into my pyjamas and into bed. “Tara you are a special girl, not just because you’re my girl, but because of what’s inside you”.
“Y-Y-You mean like my t-t-tummy, mommy?” She laughed her gentle laugh then and took my hand in hers. “Tara I have a special gift that I want to pass on to you. But it must be our secret, do you understand? You can’t tell your father or your brother, it’s a special, mommy and Tara thing. Do you understand?” I nodded, my eyes widening with wonder. “Tara everything in this world is connected. The trees, the sky, the grass, the moon, the clouds, the sun, the soil, and us. We’re all joined together, knotted together like rope”. I noticed then that she had with her a bag, and from the bag she took a candle, like a church candle, and a shiny stone like a crystal. “Tara if we feel our way along that rope, finding where things meet and where our place in the weave is, we can learn how everything works and we can learn how to use the power of all the things in nature.” She taught me then how to carve a picture of something I desired into the candle. It was always a horse when I was young, later my carvings became more abstract, but as a child it was a horse. Mom would light the candle for me, and I would hold the stone and think very hard about that thing, my desire, and stare into the flame. In this way I became one with the thing that I desired. It became a nightly ritual and though I may have never got my horse, this simple spell became my guide, it taught me how to focus and was my first step into a larger and more colourful world.
While mom saw the world with open eyes, my father was angry and intolerant; my shyness maddened him, and my stammer seemed to encapsulate all of his disappointment in me. Dad ruled his house with an iron fist, a literal iron fist. He had a bad temper which often boiled over at me when I dropped something or took too long to tell him about my day. Mom would try to stop him but this meant that he took his rage out on her too. My brother is my father’s son and learned how to bully me to show dad how much of a man he is, how like his father he is. The outward respectability made me sick; sitting in church, praying to God, whilst he made my mom’s and my life a misery, where was our salvation? We found it within each other, and in the magic she taught me when we were alone.
School was something I endured. The other kids seemed so harsh and their noisy games seemed to grate on me somehow. I was so shy; I preferred to blend into the background rather than to push myself forward. By junior high I was among the last to be picked for teams (“You have fat Sera, I’ll take tuh-tuh-Tara”), and by high school I had become an expert at not being noticed. I mean I did have friends; I was stronger than I gave myself credit for. Me and the other misfits hung together, eating lunch in quiet company meant you were less likely to be noticed.
I loved to learn though; mom awakened this in me that night when I was young. I was especially good at English, always acing tests and doing well at creative writing. I remember my 10th grade English teacher telling dad, “Tara has a vivid and exciting imagination Mr. Maclay”. I felt so proud of myself then, but dad replied, “That’s the problem”.
A lot happened in my seventeenth year, I learned a lot about myself. Lesson one: it is a terrible thing, to lose your mother. I know this because I did, my mom died. She got a rare form of breast cancer. So ironic that this life-giving body part was the part that took her away. She was so strong, she fought like a Trojan, but there was no surprise attack that could save her and slowly I watched her fade away, her face turning into a barley-recognisable mask of pain and defeat. Dad stopped me visiting about a week before she died. He was trying to protect me I guess, but I will never forgive him for denying me my chance to say goodbye.
Grief is such a powerful emotion; it changes you in ways you don’t expect. I had always felt so much but the grief I felt at mom’s death left me numb. It was like there was too much to feel all at once: confusion, rage, guilt, gratitude and a bottomless pit of sorrow. I lost sight of all she’d taught me, of all the times we’d talked about everything being connected, about the knot and how the dead are part of it. All I knew was that she had been taken from me and that I was lost. I hated the world and everything in it. The colour mom had taught me to see drained away and everything seemed so pallid, so grey.
I started skipping school, wanting to be totally alone. I would visit mom’s grave and just stare at the stone with her name, not really believing that she was there, under the ground, becoming one with it. I used to go to the park and aimlessly wander, hours would pass unnoticed. One day my wandering was interrupted. A girl who had recently started at my school was there too. We faced each other and she spoke to me, “Tara, right?” I nodded, not wanting the silence in my head to be broken and besides, I was s-s-so b-b-bad at m-m…so b-bad at m….at m-m-m-meeting new p…p-people. But she was persistent and as I walked away she said after me, “Wait. Want some company?” I didn’t really but I nodded anyway. She talked and I kinda zoned in and out, she told me that her name was Dale, that she’d moved to our town from Texas two months ago, that her father was a salesman and that she thought ‘school totally sucks’. I nodded my way through her monologue until she lit a cigarette and offered it to me. I took it, feeling rebellious. I sucked in and felt my lungs set alight and simultaneously collapse in my chest. I hacked, spitting the cigarette onto the floor. In between coughs I tried to apologise, but what with the coughing and my stammer this was an impossible task. But when I looked at Dale she was laughing. I hadn’t heard laughter since mom died three months before and the raucous, kind sound it made in her throat was infectious and before I knew it I was laughing too, in between coughs.
We became friends after that, meeting at the park and wandering together. She seemed not to notice my stammer and was the first person I ever spoke with, apart from mom, who didn’t try to finish my sentences for me. She made me feel safe and I could talk to her about anything, I told her about my parents, about dad’s anger and mom dying and how empty I felt, and she listened to me, she really listened.
One day we were sitting on the swings just talking and laughing, she was smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke rings – at this point I should say that I thought she was the coolest person I’d ever met. Her hair was cool, her clothes were cool, the way she spoke was cool, her eyes, her ears, her legs, her mouth – all cool. There was a pause in our chatter and Dale looked at me, as if regarding me for the first time. “Tara?” I nodded in response, “have you ever been in love?”
“N-No. I-I mean I h-h-haven’t had a b-boyfriend. You know th-that right?”
“Yeah I know that. But’cha don’t have to have a boyfriend to be in love. You know that, right?” She winked at me to let me know she was teasing. Goddess she was beautiful. “H-Have you?”
“What?”
“Ever b-been in love.” She sighed and replied, “I am in love, Tara”. I looked at the floor through my hair, thinking that she was about to tell me that she’d fallen for the captain of the baseball or worse, the football team. But she didn’t and what she would say next would change my life forever for the better and would ultimately lead me to her. But I will come to her later. For now Dale said, “Tara, look at me”. I raised my head, “I’m in love with you”. I felt my face redden, how was this possible? I stammered, my dad picked out my clothes; I was a nerd, how? I didn’t know what to say so I blurted out, “A-Are you sure?” Dale threw her head back and laughed at me. Then she got off of her swing and stood in front of me. The breeze caught her dark hair and blew it away from her face. She lifted up my chin with her hand and looked at me, I mean really looked at me. Then she leant down and kissed me. I’d never felt anything like it. I tasted her lipbalm (Carmex) and her cigarette (Lucky Strike); her mouth was so soft, so warm. Everything in the world seemed to tilt and was both crazier and more sensical, and I felt as though I had been purposefully led to this moment. Dale broke of the kiss and almost whispered, “I’m sure” before kissing me again.
We were caught ditching of course. The high school sent a letter to my dad who gave me the hiding of my life and then muttered some apology about mom and ‘wanting us to be a proper family’. I didn’t care though, I had Dale and for the first time since mom died I could feel. Dale and I kissed a lot after school in the park and cemented our union with hands held under the table in math class, by sharing lunches and glances over books in the library. But it came to an end when we got caught. Her folks were out at a Church meeting one night and we were careless. We were so glad to be alone and indoors that we left her bedroom door open and her mom came in and found me on top of her daughter, my hands under her shirt, our lips entwined. “Get out of my house you little heathen!” Her mom yelled at me. Dale couldn’t look at me as I scrambled away from her down the stairs and out of the house.
She told me the next day at school that she had begged her mom not to tell either of our fathers, her mom had agreed but only because Dale had told her about how dad could get. She betrayed my confidence, I felt so ashamed, so let down. She told me that they were moving away, her father followed the work. She said, “I can’t ever see you again Tara, not like that. What we did was wrong, it’s a sin, I know that now. I wanna get married some day and no man will ever want me if I’m dirty. It was a phase and it’s over”. I didn’t quite believe her, it sounded so rehearsed, but I didn’t protest. I knew I’d never be able to get the words out fast enough anyway and I vowed from that moment to work on my speech, to try to stammer less. Though my heart was broken she left me sure of one thing: I liked girls and even if I shouldn’t I didn’t care, girls do it for me so I guess that makes me gay.
Dale left and life got grey again. Not only did I miss mom more every day, I missed Dale too. I missed having someone to talk to who listened to me. I hadn’t practiced magic since mom got taken to hospital; it felt so wrong to do it alone, without my guide, my anchor. I realised though that I missed it, I missed the confidence it gave me, the feeling of one-ness.
It was my eighteenth birthday and my final year of high school. I had gotten the usual gifts, a prayerbook from my cousin, nothing from my brother and some ‘suitable clothing’ from dad. I went to bed that night feeling so alone, like I was adrift in an endless grey sea, the clouds threatening but never bursting. I wept into my pillow, longing for my mom and wondering when it would all just end. I couldn’t sleep and I longed to be unconscious, and I remembered the magic book I kept hidden underneath my mattress. I took it out and opened it and saw a letter addressed to me. It was mom’s writing. With shaking hands I opened it and read:
Tara,
You are my daughter and I love you more than anything. I know how sick I am and I’m so tired of fighting. I know I have to leave the physical world but Tara, know that I will always be with you darling, always. I am so proud of you, you know what you want from life and that makes you braver than I could ever be. Never hide Tara, never hide who you are. Your father doesn’t understand this about you but learn to forgive him, he is weak and scared but he loves you in his way. I know though that you will never be able to do this unless you leave his house.
I want you to do what I never could; I want you to get away from here, from your father before he wears you down like he wore me down. I have been saving for you to do this since you were born, I sensed your power while you were still inside me, you gave me strength, you always gave me strength. Enclosed in this letter is a key to a safety deposit box where your money is, use it to get out of here, to live your life the way you choose to. Love will find you Tara; I have never in my life known anyone to be so deserving of love as you. Walk in the sun my child but never fear the darkness.
I will always be with you, never forget this truth, and it hurts me more than I can bear to know that I will have to see from far away the beautiful woman I know you’ll become.
Once again I love you,
Mom x
A silent sob wracked my body and I emitted a guttural, primal sound. My mommy was gone. I cried for hours that night, purging myself of the emotions I’d kept inside for so long. I grieved my mom and the insurmountable loss I felt at her passing. I grieved all the times we sat up late and talked or did spells. I grieved Dale and the loss of the closeness I’d had with her. I cried until I reached exhaustion and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I woke the next morning I felt resolute. I would do what my mom wanted for me. I would apply to college and leave my fathers house.
So this is how I came to live in Sunnydale. Mom wanted me to walk in the sun and so I thought what better place to go than a place with ‘sunny’ in its name? I studied really hard to catch up on all that I had missed during my Brief Rebellious Phase and got the grades I needed to get into college. I would major in English. I couldn’t wait to lose myself in literature and in the new experiences I would have. I learned a lot of magic too, how to float small stuff and how to make a tiny little light that shone in the darkness. I practiced my speech too; I taught myself how to reign in my stammer in my regular speech. It was still there and probably always would be but I learned how not to become p-p-p-paralysed by my n-n-n-nerves. I would imagine that I was meditating using the candle and quartz desires spell, I would calm myself and pretty soon I c-could almost get out a whole sentence without st-stammering. I was ready.
I planned to leave without a word. I barely spoke to my family anyway. Just the obligatory ‘yes sir’ when dad asked me a question or gave me an instruction. It was clear that he expected me to step into mom’s shoes and ‘look after him’ like she did. I got everything ready and sent a lot of my stuff to the campus at UC Sunnydale. All I would have to carry were some clothes. Mom had left me enough money to pay my tuition and have a little left over for spending so I wouldn’t need my father for anything. I couldn’t wait to get away. My excitement made me careless though and I left my college acceptance letter from out in my room on the day I planned to leave. I wanted to make sure that it was real.
I had gone out to get toiletries. As I was leaving without dad knowing I needed all my stuff to be where it should be. But when I got home that day dad was waiting for me. “Do you think I wouldn’t find out Tara?”
“F-find out what, sir?” I replied, noticing the letter he held in his hand.
“I will never allow you to leave, Tara. I can’t allow you to leave”.
“I w-w-wasn’t…”
“Don’t interrupt me. This isn’t a two-way conversation. You will listen to me. I know all about you and your mother. About your ‘secret’. I know she was teaching you her dark ways. You will never leave this house because of what you are, Tara”. I had heard enough, “D-Dad please, y-you don’t understand…”
“I said don’t interrupt me. Your mother had special powers because of what she was. She begged me to keep this from you but I can’t. You are part demon, Tara, that’s why I’ve had to be so hard on you. When you turn twenty-one this part will come to the surface, you will be disfigured. You are not fully human and the world you live in now will reject you. Your family are the only people that will still be able to look at you”. I turned and ran upstairs, “You can’t run away from this, you hear me?”
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it. Had my mom lied to me? Was all that she said untrue? Was it possible that I could do magic because I was part demon? I knew that I couldn’t trust my father; he had beaten that out of me years before. But there was a small part of me that believed him; maybe this was why he hated me so much. My desire to get out was stronger than ever though. I hurredly shoved my remaining things into my bag, I checked I had my bus ticket, wallet and my magic book – mom’s letter took up permanent residence there, and I walked out of my room. My father was standing at the bottom of the stairs between me and the front door. He was furious and spoke through gritted teeth “You are not leaving this house”. There was no point in talking to him, I had tried so many times over the years to communicate with him and I always ended up feeling so powerless. I lifted my left hand and, focusing all the energy I had, said, “Pulsus!” Dad was thrown against the wall and I took the chance to get past him, through the door and out. I ran, tears streaming down my face. “I will find you, you hear me?” I heard him call after me. I kept running…
An hour later I was sat on the bus, pulling out of the station and looking back on my hometown for the last time. I felt a pull inside me, as though my body couldn’t get to Sunnydale fast enough. I was being pulled towards her, towards she, the one who would make me complete, who loved me as I loved her and who filled me with wonder. I was going home for the first time.
but you know, in the end, you should write what you want to write & what feels right for you