Title: Kaleidoscope
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Author: LadyCallie
Website/Distribution: My LJ and AO3. Please ask if you want to repost elsewhere; I'm very agreeable.
Setting/Summary: After Tough Love but before The Gift. Tara lays awake at night.
Note: Written for Whedonland's Last Author Standing challenge with the prompt 'shadow', must feature a female character and a word limit of 300.
Disclaimer: Not mine
The shadows mock her tears, crooked fingers jeering. The darkness creeps over her like insects, itching, pinching, biting. She cries, hands uncooperative, pushing them away. She can’t see well, shadow shapes on the wall taunt her. Big day, places to be. She can’t get free, always being held back, held down. She screams, places, places, places to be, why don’t you understand? Bugs in her hair, clicking, clacking, crawling, beetles in her brain, a sour taste on her tongue.
She draws her knees to her chest, curling into a ball, muttering fragments of a song she once knew. She sings the broken lyrics until her lips are tired and dry; the sky outside the window has slowly turned from darkest blue to purple, finally glowing pink and yellow.
She watches the light gather, grow and for a moment, just a moment, when the sun playfully peeks over the windowsill, golden light spilling into the room, Tara’s mind bursts free, understanding floods through her, a bursting geyser. She sits upright and sees…
Willow… beside her, Willow with sleep rumpled clothes and tired, sad eyes. Willow, rising on one arm, Willow radiant in the breaking dawn, hair on fire, ribbons of red, copper and bronze streaming in the blaze of sunlight. She wasn’t alone. Willow’s hands brush her cheek and they are nothing like beetles, they are Willow hands, smooth and cool and sturdy.
Willow’s eyes are like moss, sorrow damped and dreary until she sees Tara, mouth falling in a little o. For a moment they are glorious, surrounded by light and love and the shadows in Tara’s mind are silenced.
But the daylight climbs, abandoning the windowsill, whisking its golden train higher, and Tara follows, childlike, awareness fading like a dream, Willow’s tears sparkling like dewdrops in the morning sun.
~ fin
