Thanks everyone for the comments, it was really nice to see that people are reading and enjoying this fic. And finally, the awaited for not-so-eagerly, Part 2. I'm sorry that it is a little angst-filled, but to quote Tara "There's so much to work through."
Part 2 – RealisationThe mists swirled around Tara, enveloping her in a cold, harsh frame. Struggling to free herself from the tightening tendrils of darkness, Tara faintly heard Willow’s voice calling her name, a panicking, terrified tone to it. The only time that she had ever heard Willow sound that scared was during a nightmare that she’d had after Buffy died. Tara had held her in her arms, soothing her, stroking the fiery red hair and listening the beating of her lover’s heart. They’d stayed in that position for a long time, neither moving or speaking, just seeking comfort in each other’s company and the fact that they were both alive and safe.
Straining to free herself from the darkness that seemed to surround her, Tara once more sought the strength and hope that Willow’s love gave her, and for a moment the fiery pain surrounding her eased. Then tiredness overwhelmed her once more and agonies of pain hit her everywhere, her head, her limbs, but mostly her heart as she was torn away from Willow.
Tara screamed, dry sobs shaking her frame as exhaustion, sorrow, loss and horror hit her all at once. The pain had eased up a little, she noticed, but the feeling of being torn away from all that she loved was unbearable. Willow, Dawnie, Buffy, Anya, Giles, Xander, even Spike, she needed them all, and they needed her.
It didn’t matter what that person did in the Scooby Gang, Tara thought with stunning realisation. They were all part of it, like each person was a cog in a well-oiled machine, and if a cog went missing, the machine might still work but the products made in the end were completely different. She would be missed when she died as much as Buffy was.
Because she was dying – or dead -, Tara was sure of that. She was leaving this life to go on to the next one, and she was scared.
The pain had completely dissipated now, and Tara closed her eyes as the pure blackness was replaced by a pure, sweet, blinding light, not unlike the ‘Big ball o’ sunshine’ that she and Willow had finally managed to conjure. After three attempts, one ending with a troll, another with a broken window and the final one succeeding but ending in a hurry as they realised Spike was present. “Willow,” Tara whimpered. She needed to find Willow.
“Willow is not here, Tara.”
She hadn’t seen the mists moving, twisting and turning to form the body of a person whom she had known very well in life, a person whose death she had never stopped mourning.
“Hello?” Tara whispered, her voice cracking and shaking as she realised who stood before her. “Mama?”
********************************************************************
Willow slowly made her way down the stairs, gripping the handrail tightly should she lose her balance. Buffy and Dawn were talking in the kitchen, she could see Dawn’s hair flying out in all directions as she shook her head empathetically. Tara had always loved Dawn’s hair, it was the same beautiful brown that hers had been until she coloured it, and Tara had always regretted that decision.
“No, no, no!” Dawn was exclaiming. “He wouldn’t be, Buffy, he said that he – hey! Hi, Willow.”
Buffy glanced up and smiled. “Hey, Will. Feeling better?” Buffy was referring to a slight incident that morning when Willow had lost her balance and landed very firmly on her bottom whilst trying to get her pants on. Buffy had laughed along with a slightly confused Willow, but really the accident had made her realise that Giles was the best person to help Willow. What had happened when the girl who aced every test ever invented couldn’t get her pants on?
Willow nodded her head in affirmation. “Uh – Will, actually, we need to talk.”
“That sounds ominous,” Willow said, her eyes widening. “I swear Buffy, I took my meds. I promise.”
“I know you did, Will,” Buffy reassured her instantly. “Let’s go into the lounge, okay? It’s comfier in there.” Willow nodded again, turning and walking into the lounge as Buffy followed her. Dawn stopped at the door, leaning on the doorframe as her guardian and closest friend sat on the couch, Willow perched carefully on the very edge. Buffy turned to look at Willow, taking her friends cold hands into hers as she noticed her twisting them nervously. “It’s about Giles, and you.”
“Is he mad?” Willow asked fearfully, her green eyes huge in her face. “Did I do something wrong?”
Dawn cut in sharply. “No, Willow, you didn’t do anything wrong. I promise. It’s just that we think that you should go and stay in England with Giles for a while.” As usual, Dawn’s lack of tact brought the conversation to the issues concerned. If it had been anything else, talking to anyone else, Buffy would have been furious. In this case, she was just relieved that it was out in the open and they could find out Willow’s reaction to being ‘shipped off’, as Xander had put it bitterly when they broached the subject to him.
“I – you want me to go?” the redhead realised. “What did I do?” Buffy closed her eyes, fighting back tears. All of the insecurities that Willow had suffered as a teenager which had been reduced greatly with the entrance of Tara into their lives, seemed to have surfaced again, and she hated seeing the lack of faith that her best friend had in herself.
“No! Oh, god, no. I don’t want you to go, Willow, you’re my best friend. I’m gonna miss you so much. It’s just…,” Buffy searched her mind for the right words, frustrated at her inability to express her thoughts. “We’re not helping you, Will. Being here isn’t helping you, and we want you to get better. Giles can help you, we know that. We just want our happy, hack-ery, babbling Willow back. I need you to be well again, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes to help you. Even if it does mean you have to go away for a while.”
“Do I have to?” Willow asked pitifully, looking pleadingly at Buffy. Dawn slipped quietly out of the room and up the stairs as she realised that her sister and best friend needed to talk this out alone.
Buffy gasped. “Oh, no, honey,” she told her, moving to sit on the coffee table in front of the redhead. “You don’t have to do anything you want to, not ever. But you want to see Giles, don’t you? He’s not mad, Will. He’s forgiven you like we all have, and he wants to see you. So yes, you do need to go, but we’re not going to force you. If you don’t want to see Giles, then we won’t make you. It’s your decision, Willow.”
Willow swallowed hard, a thousand memories rushing through her. The strongest memory was of him leaving the first time, and that had hurt so much. His job was done once Buffy was dead, she’d told Xander bitterly. The other two people that he’d known every bit as long as Buffy? It wasn’t his job to stay and look after them, so he was going to go, love and friendship be damned. Then he’d called her a rank, arrogant amateur, and that had really put a damper on any affection she still had for him. But he loved her. He’d said so. Willow nodded.
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“How?”
That was all Tara could manage at the moment, but her heart soared as she watched the woman that she’d always adored walk towards her. She remembered her holding her gently in her arms after a particularly brutal beating from her father, watching her mother perform healing spells that she would later teach Willow. Her mother looked exactly the same as she had before the cancer – brown hair shining in the light, blue eyes dancing with the same happiness that Tara’s held. Suddenly she was in her arms, sobbing with happiness, letting all of her emotions overtake her body until she finally slipped into a peaceful, dreamless sleep, as Delyth Maclay cradled her daughter in her arms as though she was still a young baby.
“I didn’t think you slept when you were dead.”
Her daughter’s words brought Delyth to her side where Tara lay, stretched out across the grassy meadows that she had practically grown up in. “You weren’t sleeping, Tare-bear,” she told her daughter fondly. “Your body needed to rest, and so it stopped working for a while. Most people stay like that, living only through their dreams as they think of those that they love, but I had no doubt that you would be called to the Elders.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Tara said, surprised. “I thought they were a myth. Aren’t they the Wiccan goddesses and gods?” Her mother nodded in affirmation, so Tara continued. "When a Wiccan dies, if they have spent their lives giving and loving, they are called to the Elders, either to be reincarnated or to become an Elder themselves.”
“You’ve continued with your studies, I see,” Delyth smiled. “The Elders also decide if a Wiccan is to be reincarnated or return to their original bodies if they have been called before their time.”
“Was I called before my time?” Tara asked, surprised. “I thought that when you were called, that was it. Your life was over.”
Her mother sniffed. “That’s a myth. People that go against their duty in life sometimes cause others, who have yet to achieve their goals, to be taken before your time. That’s what Warren did.”
Shocked, Tara turned to face her mother. “You know about Warren? Have you been watching me, then?”
“Since the day I died, sweetie,” Delyth told her fondly. “I watched you graduate high school, and I cried when you left home and made a life for yourself. Then you met Willow, and I knew right then that you’d achieved your most desired goal.”
Tara was silent. She’d always hoped that in a way, her mother had been watching over her. In another way, she’d prayed that she hadn’t been, that her mother hadn’t stood by and watched her father make her life a living hell. Pushing herself up on one elbow as she watched her mother lie down on the grass beside her, Tara asked her “Why didn’t you do anything? If you wanted to, you could have spoken to me, influenced my life, couldn’t you?” Tara searched her memory for information that she had read about the Elders, realising that in fact her mother had the power to return to earth and watch over her as another being – an animal, or a human body that had been taken before it’s time, unlike her mother’s own.
Delyth closed her eyes, wishing she’d heeded the warnings of the other Elders when they’d told her Tara would have many questions about why her childhood had been so unhappy, and why it had to be like that. “I wasn’t allowed to, Tara. Believe me. I wanted to, I wanted to so much. I begged every time he hurt you for them to let me go to you, but I couldn’t. I watched you from above the first time he hit you, the day of my funeral, and I had to let it happen.”
Tears started to roll down Tara’s porcelain cheeks as her mother described what had come to be the beginning of the worst three years she had ever experienced. “Why couldn’t you?” Tara firmly held up a hand as her mother began to repeat herself. “Just tell me why they wouldn’t let you.”
“Because it made you what you are, Tara,” her mother told her gently, pushing herself up on her hands and sitting cross-legged in her daughter’s trademark position. Tara followed her example, but flinched away as Delyth pushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, blue eyes accusing. “What your father did to you, Tara, was so wrong, and cruel and hurtful, and I hated the Elders the moment I became one and they told me what would happen to you in order for you to become the woman you are. It made you strong, it made you leave and go to Sunnydale. That was your duty.”
“My duty was to go to Sunnydale?” Tara asked doubtfully.
“Yes. Going to Sunnydale meant that you met Willow and there was so much you were supposed to do. I don’t know whether the Elders will allow you to return or not, but your duty is unfulfilled. There was so much more you were meant to be, Tara.”
Tara’s eyes widened. “Return? But – I don’t want to lose you again,” she whined, unwittingly using the words that she had used at the age of twelve when her mother had informed her of yet another operation.
“I can’t stay here, Tara,” Delyth said, gently, hating what she was about to say. “This is not the plain on which the Elders stay. I must return soon, this isn’t the work that I am supposed to do. They allowed me to accompany you on the journey here only because you need to be aware of what lies in store for you.”
“You’re not staying?” Tara demanded, leaping to her feet. Her eyes, earlier filled with tears, now flashed with anger. “I can’t be with you or Willow? Who can I be with?”
“You can be with your memories, Tara. And my love will always be here with you, as will Willow’s.” Even as she said it, Delyth knew it was a pitiful attempt at consoling her daughter, and the expression on Tara’s face showed that she agreed. She didn’t have a temper, but being torn away from the woman she loved only a few days after finding her again, and then losing her mother, didn’t inspire a lot of patience and understanding.
Tara sat down again, a pout that she’d learnt from Willow and later Dawn firmly fixed on her lips. “When do you have to leave?” she asked quietly, realising that being childish was not the best way to deal with a very adult situation.
“The Elders have allowed me to stay until you undertake the journey either home, or to the plain of the living dead.”
“Vampires?” Tara demanded, alarmed. “You’re gonna send me to stay with vamps? Can I stake them?”
Delyth chuckled. “No, Tare-bear. The devil takes care of his own. I mean that you will travel to stay with those like you – those who are lost. There will be none of our family there,” she told her daughter gently. “The women in our family have always aspired to become Elders, but for you that is not an option. Your duty in life…” Tara raised an eyebrow, and her mother obligingly closed her mouth.
“I don’t like heaven,” Tara announced suddenly, in a way returning to the young, innocent, outspoken young child that she had been until her mother’s illness, and Delyth smiled slightly to hear it again, even as she frowned, knowing that the illusion her daughter was under must be rectified.
She looked at her daughter, catching blue eyes with blue. “What makes you think this is Heaven, my Tare-bear?”
“It’s not?” Tara asked slowly, furrowing her brow in concentration. “Well, where else could I…” She stopped talking suddenly, and leaped to her feet in alarm, swaying and grabbing hold of a tree for support. “I’m in hell?”
Delyth’s silence told Tara all she needed to know.
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at: 10/14/02 2:30:08 pm
and i like this a lot. gilesspeak, 
way to go. 
Loving the whole "had to experience darkness" factor. more soon??