Okay, I am sorry that I disappeared for so long. It has been a long long long work week. I am eager to get on to the Willow. Tara reunion and I will try to get that done soon but not yet. Thanks for all your comments. I do want to respond to them personally but I also want to get this post up. SO one of these days, I will respond to all you wonderful people.
As for the question that I asked, thanks for your thoughful comments. I know when I get to that part, it will come out as it is supposed. I hope. If not, oops.
Well, enough of my babble, I am tired and headed for bed. I hope this makes sense. I did not edit this as much as I would have liked but I wanted to get something up for yo u patient kitties. The Tara/ Buffy/ Dawn meeting will be finished tomorrow and we will see Willow soon. Really, this is a Willow/ Tara (not Terri) fiction.
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The two had been driving in silence for the last hour. Everything had been talked out. They had prepared to meet their old friend. They had rehearsed lines and known what they were going to say. Both women were very nervous. Both were very jumpy. They had silently agreed to remain quiet, lost in their own thoughts. Neither of their nerves could take conversation.
Dawn remembered the first morning that Tara had made funny shaped pancakes for her. Two weeks had past since Buffy's death. The last of the boxes for Tara and Willow's stuff had been emptied and they had officially moved into the house. It was early in the morning and Dawn had finally decided to get up and go downstairs. She couldn't remember the last time that she had gone downstairs. All she had wanted to do was sleep. She would wake up and see that someone had brought a tray food for her. She would eat a little and go back to sleep. But on that day, she could not stand to be in her room. She heard noise downstairs and sought it out. She did not want to be alone. She found Tara in the kitchen and she coughed.
Tara nearly jumped out of her skin as she turned to face noise. There was fear on her face that quickly turned to relief. "Morning Dawn. I didn't hear you come down. You scared me."
"Sorry. It's really early, what are you doing awake?"
"Sleep has not been something I have been really big on lately. I am afraid to close my eyes. I am afraid I will go back to that place in my head that Glory sent me. You know that I wasn't banished anywhere. I was just shut in my brain and all reason was taken away from me. I am so afraid that I am going to find my way back to that scary place. I am afraid that once there again, I won't find my way out. I know it isn't really reasonable but that is where I am right now. I am afraid to sleep."
"I guess I am the opposite. Sleep has been the only comforting thing I have. I dread waking up." Dawn appreciated talking to Tara because unlike everyone else, Tara did not try to solve the problem. She understood this time. She understood the raw pain that Dawn was growing through. She knew that there was no cure. And she did not hide her pain from Dawn.
"Well, coffee has been my friend. It helps three hours of sleep seem like six hours." Tara started to open drawers and cupboards taking supplies out.
"What are you doing?"
"I am going to make pancakes and you are going to help me eat them. I haven't had access to a kitchen for two years? The kitchen's that they have in the dorms are just not convenient for cooking. So I am going to take advantage of your kitchen. And you are going to help me because I just can't mix the batter with this baseball glove on my hand."
Tara held up her hand to show that she was helpless. Dawn knew that Tara was resourceful enough to find a way to mix the batter without her help but she decided she would help. "I have never made pancakes."
"What? Never? Really, you never have made pancakes. Then it is my duty to show you how. Come on over, and lets get mixing."
They proceeded to make the pancake batter. Dawn excitedly made her first pancake. "Well, am I doing this right?"
"Technically you are doing it correctly but you are truly lacking style. Here let me show you. You see, yours is round and it does look the way a pancake should technically look but what is it really saying?" Dawn looked at Tara as if she had two heads but stepped away from the stove. She watched her teacher awkwardly held the ladle full of batter in her cast-covered hand. She watched as Tara dripped and dragged the batter across the pan. Dawn could not figure out what was being created but eventually, explained. "I like to call this my Willow pancake."
Dawn looked at the pancake and thought it did not look like Willow, it looked like a tree. "Oh I get it, it is a willow tree. What else can you make?"
Tara began to create again. She had the tip of her tongue sticking out as she concentrated on the pancake. She frowned and then smiled, added some batter and waited a moment. "This pancake would be especially for Anya." Tara held up the pan to show Dawn that she was making a rabbit pancake. "I was trying to make a Miss Kitty pancake but then I realized it was a bunny."
Dawn started to laugh at the possibilities of different shapes that they could make. "Could you imagine if we served her a plate full of bunny pancakes. Tara, we could seriously warp everyone. We could give Anya a plate of bunny pancakes, Willow a plate of frog pancakes and what would we give Giles and Xander?"
For the next hour, Dawn and Tara made pancakes. Different shaped pancakes. They laughed and argued about the plan and designs of different pancakes. They ended up throwing most of the pancakes away to the birds but that was okay. For an hour, they both laughed and thought about nothing but pancakes. For Dawn, it was the first day that she noticed the sun was still shining. The pain was still present but the sun was definitely out. Ironically, six years after that silly morning, Tara's funny shaped pancakes were the things that helped them reunite. She believed it was a sign that everything was going to be alright now.
Buffy sat in the passenger seat, unaware of what Dawn was thinking about. Instead she was remembering an evening about three months before Tara disappeared. It was the night she confessed her affair with Spike. Somehow, she ended up with her head in Tara's lap begging not to be forgiven. She couldn't remember ever crying that much. She cried for her mother, for Dawn, for herself, for her friends, and even for Spike. She cried because she was alive and she cried because she knew what death was a like. Sometime during her breakdown, Tara had switched positions and slid onto the floor, leaning against the couch. She did this so she could hug her friend.
Finally, the tears started to stop and Buffy sat up and leaned against the couch. She closed her eyes and let her head lean back on the couch. She felt so drained, in both a good and bad way. Tara sat next to her, patiently allowing her to cry, not interrupting. After many moments, Tara spoke up. "So, why were you crying?"
Buffy looked at Tara and thought that usually her friend was more sensitive. She thought she had clearly expressed why she was crying. She was crying because she was ashamed that she had been sleeping with Spike. She was ashamed that she had been using him to feel something. She was ashamed that he was the only one who made her feel anything. And then she began to understand why Tara had asked her that question.
"Because I am sad, ashamed, and feeling guilty."
"And" Tara prodded her friend.
"And I guess that means that I am alive and feeling things. I guess that means I am not dead."
"Or different. No, that is not true. You are different Buffy. You will always be different because you have seen so much but that does not mean that you are dead. You just proved how deeply you are feeling. Life is hard. You have said that. But you are strong and
"You aren't going to lecture me about sleeping with Spike"
"Well, I would like to say ewe but I am not sure if that is because he is a vampire or if it is just because he is a man and has a penis. You know, I just have never been one for the penis thing. He has done some good things and he has done some horrid things. I have known him post-chip. So I never saw how murderous he can be. What I don't like is that he hurts you and you let him. Don't let him hurt you. You are too precious."
She looked at her friend and thought about the word that had just been used to describe her. Precious. China was precious. Gems were precious. Buffy was not precious. She never thought of herself as precious. Maybe valuable, useful but not precious. But at that moment, she felt precious. And at that moment, she also knew that she was alive. She felt alive.
She thought of that moment, that time of realization. It was soon after that conversation that she started to notice the people around her. She began to connect with Dawn again. It was around that time that she started hanging out more with her friends. She started to feel more a live and she began to be silly again. She did not stop sleeping with Spike right away but she know longer felt as out of control. She no longer felt as guilty. She started to see promise and life.
She knew now that her friend Tara had patiently helped remind her of who she was. Now, she hoped for the opportunity to do the same. She was so afraid of messing up this meeting. Her stomach began to drop when saw the sign for thier destination. They were only five miles away.
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