****
Willow couldn't seem to tear her eyes from the fuzzy pink between them. It didn't make any sense. This just wasn't rational.
Tara is here. With me. And the mitten is…in her hand. Her bare hand that doesn't have any glove on it and must be really cold out here in all the freezy weather.
"It w-was…I found it in, um, Mr. Giles' chair. I w-would have given it back earlier, but, um…" she stopped and shrugged, her gaze dropping to the snowy ground.
Okay, not rational. We are now totally on another dimension of anti-rational where pink mittens just show up with gorgeous Taras attached and…
"You came all the way in the snow and it's so cold and you don't even have gloves to bring me my mitten?" The words tumbled out of her and she stood shaking her head at her own jumbled sentence.
Tara looked up, her forehead furrowing in confusion, her head tilted slightly to the right. "I, um, no. Did you not w-want it?"
"No! I mean, yes! I want." She said, but Tara still looked confused. "It. The mitten! 'Cause, you know, socks should really go on feet or, you know, for puppets with button eyes and there's no thumb, which makes it hard to do the opposable thumb higher primate thing," she finished awkwardly and winced. Her mouth was definitely travelling too fast for her brain tonight. There was another awkward silence and Tara looked down at the mitten still extended between them before looking back up to Willow's eyes.
"Oh! Yes!" She smiled awkwardly and took the mitten from Tara, returning the sock to her pocket. The mitten was still warm from Tara's coat.
Tara Warmth
She felt the smile widen on her face and blushed, looking quickly away into the multi-colored flames.
"Better?"
Nodding, she forced herself to turn back to the blonde whose beautiful hands had returned to the pockets of her worn pea coat.
"Much," she said and watched Tara nod slightly, looking down again. There was something about the blonde's movements that felt like a retreat. As if she could turn and leave at any moment. Willow began to panic at the thought of losing Tara this quickly. There was so much to talk about, so many important things she needed to ask…to explain. "And look," she held the two mittens up with a smile that felt forced, wondering again why she couldn't stop babbling. This was definitely not the explanation she had intended. "They're much happier now, because, well, they were made for each other at the mitten-making factory and…yeah." She trailed off realizing too late the double meaning of her little speech. Tara looked up briefly, tears in her eyes before hunching into herself.
There was another terrible silence while they both looked at the ground, the fire -- anything but each other.
"Willow, I um…" Tara began but stopped, her forehead furrowing in concentration. "I know you probably, um, d-don't want to t-talk to me, you know," the blonde dipped her head and let her hair fall in front of her face. "Ever ag-gain…"
"No, Tara," Willow tried to interrupt, but the beautiful blonde crossed her arms and hunched even further.
"It's o-okay. I mean, I unders-stand I just…" Tara paused and nodded again before looking up through the veil of blonde to meet Willow's desperate gaze. "We found out something, um, about the, uh, prophecy…actually Anya did…and I, well everyone, needs your, uh, help?"
"Oh.." Willow didn't know whether to be happy that they -- that Tara -- had come to her for help with the Apocalypse or upset that the blonde hadn't come after her for personal reasons.
Who cares! She's here! Which is more than I can say for my so-called friends…
She could feel her face tighten painfully into a hard frown at the thought of her friends sending Tara out into the cold to find her instead of coming themselves.
"I'm sorry. It wasn't f-fair of me to ask…" Tara said suddenly and turned to leave obviously misreading the redhead's expression.
"No!" Willow said, reaching automatically for the blonde's arm to stop her. "Please. I want to…" She wanted to…she wanted to go back in time and change everything. Stop the argument and the leaving. But more than anything, she just wanted to hug the blonde and forget everything. Instead she released her arm and took a half step back. "You know, with the helping. If I can."
Tara turned slowly to her, but her eyes never left the ground. "Anya thinks…well Old Norse, or a, um, v-variation of it, was her native tongue."
"Oh. Really?" Willow was stunned. She had never thought to even ask the ex-demon about her human heritage, about the girl she had been before D'Hoffryn's offer.
Okay, how terrible am I that I never even bothered to ask her? Pretty terrible…except, hello, skanky ex-demon who tricked me into bringing my evil vampire doppel…
The redhead stopped her inner rant and took a deep breath. The Anya problem could wait. Right now there were bigger problems. Apocalypse-sized. And she wasn't thinking about Ragnarok. Tara stole a look up at her, before nodding and glancing quickly away and Willow felt her stomach flip over. It took only moments for her to process the implications of the blonde's revelation.
"So Anya interpreted the prophecy and I'm thinking it's different that my interpretation and not in the good kinda way?"
Blonde hair nodded again and Willow stood transfixed as slender, pale hands clasped each other. "Yes. Different." Tara stole another look and their eyes met momentarily. "I, um, Anya th-thinks that it's not so much 'broken spell' as a spell that wasn't completed? You know, not closed for some reason?"
"Oh. Not good." Willow felt her forehead tightening into a hard frown. "But," she looked around at the frozen scene around her, the snow covering the normally warm and arid ground. "Really not good. This must have been some powerful spell, I mean, 'cause, you know, snow in Sunnydale sort of not the usual."
Tara smiled slightly and looked up to meet her eyes. "Yeah, some powerful spell or s-some powerful spell caster."
Willow held the blonde's gaze and swallowed hard. In the flickering light from the bonfire, Tara's eyes were like the deep blue of the sky during a storm. "I, um…" she struggled to break the spell of those eyes and finally shook her head dramatically to return to the problem. "Oh, so you think there's someone new in town? Some kind of sorcerer and you want me to help find them?"
"It c-c-ould be." Tara nodded. "But someone that powerful would probably draw attention to th-themselves or, um, leave a magical signature and no one h-has."
"Oh," Willow said, noticing that the blonde looked down again. And her stutter was gettting worse, which was never a good sign. She could feel the fire behind her making her backside uncomfortably hot and the front too cold. She really should turn, but that would leave her with her back to Tara so…no to that. "So, do you have an alternate theory?"
Tara continued to look at her hands, finally nodding again and looking up. "Willow, have you…" she stopped and looked away again. "Have you c-cast any, um, spells lately…w-without me?"
It took her a few moments again to process what the blonde was telling her. Or asking.
They think…Tara thinks I did this. She and them and everyone thinks I went all crazy again and cast some spell and started an Apocalypse and…great, they still don't trust me.
She could feel her throat tightening with grief and a little anger. It was only one stupid spell and she would never live it down. No matter how many cookies she baked or how many times said 'sorry'.
"You think I did this?" She asked, wincing as her voice cracked.
Don't cry. Don't cry.
Tara's eyes now met hers, wet with tears. "No, Willow." One pale hand reached out for her and stopped in the space between them, falling slowly back to the blonde's side. "I don't think you did it…not int-tentionally anyway. But you're the only one powerful enough."
"What?" It was all too much for the redhead. The cold and heat, the emotional drain of the altercation at Giles' and now Tara standing in front of her accusing her of setting off an Apocalypse. Like she was even powerful enough. She knew she should be angry, but she just felt sad and hurt. "Tara I'm not…I know you think special, but I could so not have done something this big. I mean this is big magic big -- huge magic -- and I'm just a little tiny me." She realized somewhere in the middle of the rambling that her vision was blurred by tears. "And I haven't cast a spell without you since the soda machines! Because it just isn't, I mean, why would I want to when I could with the hand-holding and you?"
Tara held her eyes for a moment before looking down again, her hands working nervously against each other. "Willow I…"
"You have to believe me Tara. I would never…" she pleaded. "I would just…never. Even if I could. Which I can't."
"I believe you," Tara said loudly, her eyes once again meeting Willow's and the redhead felt her own body relax slightly, the sobs stopping under the blonde's gaze. But she didn't say anything else.
"Oh. Really?" Could it really be that simple? Tara just nodded and looked at the ground again.
"But, um, I n-need to ask you a question ab-bout a spell we cast."
"Okay," Willow said nervously and shifted slightly, taking a step forward away from the scalding heat of the bonfire.
"The, um, the fairy lights spell?" the blonde said, her eyes widening slightly as the redhead stepped toward her. "You know, the one that, um, fizzled?"
Willow nodded, waiting for the blonde to continue.
"Where did you get the spell?" Tara asked finally. "I c-can't seem to find a copy of it."
It took her only a moment to remember with photographic accuracy the yellowing pages. That book was tucked carefully into the duffle bag still in the dorm lobby. But she did have her notes in the bookbag at her feet. Bending automatically, she pulled off the mittens and rifled through the contents, finally pulling several immaculate sheets of note paper from an older grimoire. The spell was written in blue ink and she smiled slightly as she extended them to Tara with a sniffle.
The blonde took them with another slight nod and began reading, her forehead crinkling up adorably.
Okay, no staring, Rosenburg. No matter how cute Tara is, she hurt you and she thinks you're likes super-powerful apocalypse starting girl. No matter how unbelievably cute it is when she bites her lip…like that.
"It was in Gaelic?" Tara frowned and looked up at Willow who shook her head slightly to clear the Tara-thoughts.
"Um, yeah!" The redhead blurted out, then softened. "Why? Is that not okay?"
"No, I j-just…" Tara began, looking back at the pages in her hand. "I thought it was in English…it seemed so f-familiar when we cast it." Frowning harder, she returned her attention to the paper.
"Tara you don't think…" the redhead began, suddenly understanding the blonde's line of reasoning: incomplete spell, firefly spell that fizzled. "I mean, it's just…a few lines to make sparkly stuff happen. No big magic here." She motioned at the pages with a weak smile.
Tara looked up, her eyes still distant in thought. "I, um, big magic doesn't just come from big spells," she said wistfully before looking back at Willow's notes. There were a few more moments of awkward silence as she studied the pages, biting her lip again. "Is this…" she asked suddenly. "This l-line seems to refer…" she trailed off. "Are you sure part of the spell isn't m-missing?"
Willow felt her own forehead crinkling into a frown as she brought the yellowing pages up in her mind. This was the hard part. Tara had warned her repeatedly about the dangers of modifying spells and she had promised to be careful. But this was a harmless spell. "Not so much missing as, you know, edited?" she admitted finally and the blue eyes went a little wider.
She expected a lecture or at least some harsh words of warning, but Tara just nodded again and looked at the fire that was currently blasting the back of the redhead's legs with heat. "Do you have the original?"
Willow nodded and picked up her bookbag. "It's in my suitcase, in the lobby," she said and turned without another word to walk back to the dorm. After a few steps, she realized that the blonde wasn't following her and turned to see what was holding her up. Tara stood in the same spot, her eyes wide as she stared at Willow, her hands loose at her side.
"Suitcase?" Tara said finally and Willow felt her stomach turn over.
Stupid mouth!
Her brain raced through a thousand different explanations or excuses, but for once the redhead managed to keep her babbling impulse under control.
"Yeah. It's in the lobby." Hello, you already said that! and Tara was still staring at her. "I was waiting for a taxi, but it's too cold for the batteries or something and…" she stopped abruptly as the blonde lowered her head, folding her hands carefully in her pockets.
"It's okay, Willow. You d-don't owe me any explanation," the blonde nearly whispered as she walked past Willow into the frigid lobby.
"No, Tara. It's not that I don't want to explain and I do owe you," she said, scrambling to catch up with the blonde who was now standing next to her suitcase. "It's just, I mean, first there was the mitten and then the whole prophecy thing and…okay, I'm leaving...going home." She finished abruptly and bent down to open her suitcase. "I was going to go to my parents' house first for a few weeks," she mumbled as her fingers seemed to work with a mind of their own picking through the folded clothes searching for the book. "And then transfer to someplace, you know…else."
There was no sound behind her, the blonde was completely silent, but she could still feel her comforting presence behind her. Willow finally found the rough leather surface of the book and pulled it from its resting place between two t-shirts. The spell was still bookmarked and she opened the book to find hearts drawn around Tara's name on the pale pink slip of the mark. Blushing, she quickly pulled the bookmark out and stuffed it into her pocket before handing the open book to Tara, who sniffed once before accepting it with shaking hands.
"Maybe we should sit?" Willow said and gestured to the empty couches. The blonde nodded once, hiding behind a thick curtain of hair. As soon as they were seated, Tara bent over the book, obviously deeply engrossed and the redhead found herself studying those beautiful hands. Long, slender pale fingers, that held the ancient pages with such reverence and care.
"Witch fingers," she thought out loud.
"What?" Tara looked up finally through the curtain of hair and Willow swallowed.
"Nothing. Sorry?" she shrugged and hoped the blonde hadn't heard. Tara looked down at the text again briefly and frowned.
"Willow, this isn't the, um, the s-same spell," she said finally, her voice cracking slightly.
"Yes it is," the redhead said and pointed out a particular stanza near the end. "See, I only needed this part." Tara inhaled and looked up at Willow, her eyes full of fear and disbelief. Trying not to panic, she began a hurried explanation. "I know you said I should be careful about modifying and I was. Really. It's just, I only needed that little piece."
"Willow, this is a…it's a very powerful spell. Or it can be," Tara said calmly, looking back to the text.
"But I thought it was just a rites of spring type spell," she pointed at a few words. "You know, a kind of celebratory ritual. I mean, it says Beltane in here somewhere."
"It's a, um, it…" Tara stopped and took a deep breath. "It's a sort of enj-joining spell. Coven's use it to c-consolidate their power. Or…" she stopped and the redhead thought she heard a sniff. "To affirm their c-connection to each other." She said quietly, her head bowed. "The fairy lights are just, um, d-decoration?"
"Oh." Was all that Willow could manage. She wasn't that familiar with enjoining spells. It wasn't something they had ever needed fighting demons. She had stumbled across it when she was researching the my-will-be-done fiasco. "Is that bad? I mean could that…that couldn't have caused the hell's chance in snowball winter out there could it?"
The blonde head shook over the text and those beautiful hands were shaking, she noticed. "I don't…I don't know. Magic is…unpredictable. And this, this is…" she stopped abruptly and blue, tear-filled eyes looked into Willow's. "Why did you… why did you b-break the connection…when we did the s-spell?"
Willow felt her face heat up immediately before she had even really processed the question. The spell. That sexy fairy lights spell. It had been so overwhelming, the feelings. And she wasn't ready for it, too wrapped up in her anger and grief over Oz. Of course, she couldn't tell Tara that.
With the memories came a series of other images: the dream. Sexy, intimate images that made her heart pound and everything get a little warmer.
"It's okay. You don't have t-to… I know you saw the demon in me Willow." Tara said, her voice so soft the redhead had to strain to hear it. "Anya was wrong." A painful, sad half-smile graced those perfect lips and Willow nearly cried out. "I know what I am."
"No. No!" she said too loudly and put her mittened hands over Tara's. "No demon! That is so not the reason I…stopped." A single tear rolled down Tara's pale cheek and Willow felt her own throat tighten with grief in response. Softening her voice she held the slender hands in her own. They were so cold she could feel it through the wool of her mitten. "I know I shouldn't have…with the spell and I want to tell you about why I…pulled away, but it's sort of, um personal."
"You didn't," she began, her voice tight with emotion. "Um, you didn't feel the demon?"
"Not even a tiny bit," she smiled and squeezed the hands that hung limp in her own. "All Tara goodness." Very goodness. Too much goodness…if there is such a thing as too much Tara goodness and I think emphatically, no.
A tiny sob escaped the blonde as she looked away, her hands finally holding Willow's tightly. "I…I'm so s-sorry."
"You, Missy, have nothing to be sorry about," Willow said softly and lowered her head to look up though the veil of blonde hair into those beautiful, tear-filled eyes. "Me, on the other hand, well apparently I've set off an apocalypse, so…do you really think I did?" she asked suddenly, unable to keep up the cheerfulness. "I'm so sorry Tara, I should have listened…"
"No Willow, I don't know anything really," Tara sniffed again and gently removed her hand from Willow's to wipe her nose. "I just h-have this, um feeling…"
Tara's 'feelings' she was learning were never to be taken lightly. "Okay, what do we need to do to complete the spell and stop the end of the world? Teacher."
The blonde looked up at her in surprise, then looked away. "Well, we need to go to m-my room where we originally did the, um, spell and…" she trailed off, looking at the floor.
"What? We don't need a human sacrifice or, wait, there are no frogs involved are there?"
The blonde actually smiled a little and a familiar warmth spread through Willow's body. "No frogs. Just, um…" she trailed off and the redhead thought she would remain silent or worse, pull away. After an excruciating silence, the blonde finally looked into her eyes and took a deep breath. "We have to learn to...to t-trust each other again."
Edited by: lipkandy at: 5/24/04 8:00 pm
that was absolutely gorgeous. 
Alcy 
oh, it's all just too perfect. how do you weave these worlds together so damn seamlessly? I got so into the willow/scoobies fight, the tara/faith mind meld, and the faith rescue, that I completely FORGOT about the apocalypse! silly me. I don't remember if I told you before how much I liked anya's contribution to this story, with the whole mistranslation issue and the "unfinished" vs. "broken" spell...and the resolution before us of w/t having to come together & finally, really open up to each other-- not just for their own sakes, but the save the whole damn world! as I said, perfect. one of the things I love about reading your stories, my dear, is that you are not only a master of characterization, but you also have a way of creating and unfolding these incredibly compelling and provocative plots, that are both subtle in their execution and gigantic in their explorations into a theme-- you do a dance with your stories. 
I've loved all the TFs so far. As to the current installment, I'm loving the fact that Buffy and Faith don't fall immediately in bed with each other the way they do sometimes in fanfic. They are so obviously for one another, but both are just so incredibly stubborn, and they have a lot of old grudges to get through. Thank you for giving them the time they need. And W&T? Yeah, trust is the thing. Not only for each other, but for themselves. Thanks for the fix; looking forward to another soon, please? It's June, and I live in Florida with no AC, and it's hot as 
here; so reading a story about someplace cold is somewhat comforting.
hey girl! I am actually WICKED psyched to hear that there will be another story coming after AZ, so I'm not mad at all about the delay. also not mad cause I've barely even had the chance to go online since the last update-- drivin' cross-country and now getting ready for a summer of fun at radical socialist/youth labor activist summer camp! on our first night of staff training we wrestkled in jello 
Months, aparently it's been months. But the other day I stumbled on a lovely little folder on my PC labeled "Tempus Fugit" turns out I had saved the first 9 bits of TF Absolute Zero & have now oficially become re-adiccted to your fic... again.
*shrugs* Also, and I know I'm echoing someone's post earlier (not sure who's) but I think it's worth repeating. What you've essentially done, is capture "my Tara" perfectly. Or at least you've given shape to all of the things that in my mind at least, are Tara. I'm not sure I can pinpoint it exactly, maybe it's how she is so willing to put her own needs aside for those of the ones she loves...
I mean, come on! Bad ass w/a tough image begging for some love & attention, a body to die for & add to that the black & the leather...
Can you blame me? True, she didn't have too much of a role here, but what can I say ever since "This years girl" I am forever a sucker of chapped Faith lips... Ummm, errr, a sucker for chapped Faith lips! Yes, that's what I meant!
(freudian slip) They break my heart, 'nuff said. You've caught the F/B moments perfectly too, touching but not too mushy, as that would just be all wrong, after all they wanted to kill each other not too long ago. And the lip gloss...
I dunno why, but I loved that one!
Oh, look it's Willow sneakin' the chance to be all pervy w/Tara's scarf! 
