Title: Changing your goals
Author: Cyteach
Rating: PG-13 for now, NC 17 eventually
Pairing: W/T (soon!)
Spoilers: None, completely AU
Feedback: Please!
Summary: Tara is leaving her comfortable life to pursue her life's goals. Before she leaves to do so, she meets Willow Rosenberg. What will happen when the women's paths intersect?
Notes: I've been lurking on the board for about a year since I first discovered it. This is my first attempt at a fic, and I hope it doesn't desperately suck! If it does, just tell me... I can take it!
Chapter 1: The Break-up
The huddled women sat closely together over the remnants of an Italian dinner. As the harried waitress came to clear the finished meal, she winced inwardly over the clearly anguished conversation she heard snippets of.
"No! We can work on this, Tara. I refuse to leave it like this. I can't live my life without you, baby," the dark haired woman pleaded. She was frantically twisting the burgundy cloth napkin in her desperation.
"We've been through this, Lana, I can't take it anymore. I'm t-taking my life back. I'm following my dreams. And to do that, I have to leave my comfort zone. We're both festering here. You don't love me... We're both just afraid to go out there in that big scary world and LIVE." Tara sighed as tears slowly rolled down her partner's bronzed cheeks.
"Don't cry. Just please, take a step back and think. When's the last time you felt those flittering feelings in your tummy when I've walked into a room? When have you felt like you couldn't breathe if you didn't touch my skin? It's been a while, Lana, admit it to yourself." Tara gently wiped the tears from her lover's face.
The women came together in a heated passionate relationship in their third year of college. Since that igniting spark six years before, they had built a life together--albeit one of convenience over the past two years.
Tara couldn't remember how to live without the security blanket that was Lana. She didn't want complacency or to settle for a safe love anymore. And she had loved Lana. A long time ago now, it seemed. They fit well together-- Tara with her quiet, undemanding nature, and Lana with her self-confident theatrical personality. Tara knew that part of Lana's demeanour was showing itself now with the tears and her pleading. Tara knew Lana would come to see the logical nature of her decision in the morning.
Oblivious to the mixed stares of the restaurants other patrons, Tara gently took Lana's larger hand within the warmth of her own tapered ones. "Look at it this way, sweetie, now you can finally go after Michelle Rodriguez and fulfill you're sexual fantasies," Tara joked with a lop-sided grin in an attempt to alleviate the tension radiating from Lana.
"Tara! How can you sit there so calmly as you end our relationship? What about the house? The cats? Our things?! Baby, this is just silly. Look, I know you want to focus on your novel, but we can work this out. I'll just take on some extra clients at the firm and you can take a sabbatical from the school. This is just a case of a mid-mid life crisis. I know our thirties are looming and getting older scares the shit out of you, but you can't leave me!" Lana desperately pleaded, gripping Tara's hands and bringing them to her lips. She began kissing Tara's hand, moving slowly over the outside to place loving pecks on the inside of her wrist.
Slowly, Tara pulled her hand away and rested it in her lap. She began to fiddle with the package she brought with her to the restaurant. This was a decision Tara had been struggling with for the better part of six months, she was not leaving Lana on a whimsical disillusionment. After all, she was a teacher, seeing something from all angles and dissecting information so that her students could take it in was something she had spent her adult life working on.
"Lana, I've thought this through. I think it is the best thing for the both of us. We're smothering each other and I can't stand to think that I am responsible for extinguishing that light in your eyes that made fall so desperately in love with you." Tara placed the thick folder on the table between them and slowly pushed it toward the over-wrought woman.
A part of her felt sinister for handling things out in the open of one of their favorite restaurants, but if Tara had learned anything from the past six years by Lana's side was that the woman had a flair for dramatic displays. Here, surrounded by mutual acquaintances and clients, Tara felt they could both deal with the inevitable situation in a sensible manner without breaking dishes or throwing vases. It was the safest for everyone's well-being.
"Tara? What is this?" Lana whispered, afraid to look inside.
"It's the deed to the house and a draft of potential divisions of our assets. You can have the house. I've made up my mind about this, so don't argue," Tara held up her hand toward Lana as she was on the verge of protesting.
"I'm not staying in Chicago," Tara admitted. "You keep the house. If it's too much, sell it and start over at another place. But I want you to have it. As for the cats, you keep them for now until I settle down. Then, if you agree, I'll send for Ginger when I settle down. Right now, I don't even know where I'm going so I will be leaving almost everything behind," Tara added in what she hoped was a calm, diplomatic manner.
Lana slowly flipped through the well-detailed documents in a haze. Her lawyer's mind noted the clarity and detailed nature of the impersonal pages before her. "Tara...How--what? Lana stuttered while pushing her ebony locks back from her shocked face. "Where did you get these? Is this what our life together boils down to? Fifteen pages of type-written legalese?!" Lana's mouthed silently opened and closed in disbelief. "I can't believe you! You, you heartless, cold bitch! Why are you doing this? Here of all places?" she whispered furiously from her seat across the table. The lone candle that cast such an intimate glow on their dinner earlier in the evening slowly flickered its last flame and silently extinguished, leaving the two women in shadows.
Tara, knowing the woman she lived with for the past five years well, had been expecting a reaction like this one from Lana. "Look, Lana, I know this seems callous to you now but it's for the best for both of us." Tara sighed. "I'm going. There's nothing to argue about. And you can sit there and throw insults at me until they call the police to drag us both out of here, but, after six years together I don't want to leave here and never see or speak to you again. You're my best friend, Lana. Don't you see? I'll always love you, sweetie, how could I not?" Tara shifted her chair closer to Lana. "But we're not in love with each other anymore, Lan, and one of these days you or I will come home to find the other has up and left without a word. I don't want that. I refuse to let that happen. You'll always be a huge part of my life. But now is the time to close this chapter of our lives and move on to something bigger and better."
Tara lovingly smoothed back Lana's hair from her face and cupped her still damp check. Moving her thumb in slow circles, Tara leaned in and placed a soft kiss on Lana's full lips. "Read over the papers, Lana," Tara said as she gracefully rose from her seat, placing her napkin on the table top.
"I'm staying with Buffy tonight to give you some space. Call me tomorrow when you are ready to discuss the options," Tara said as she walked backwards toward the bar to pay the bill. "Sleep on it, sweetie, and you'll see that this is the best thing for us." Tara finally turned and made her way to pay and glanced over her shoulder one last time before dropping her head lowly and exiting the restaurant into the dark autumn night.
Their waitress from earlier discretely made her way over to Lana with a supply of Kleenex from her staff locker. "Here, hon, dry those pretty eyes of yours," she intoned while placing the box on the now empty table and gliding away to wait on her other tables.
The quietly beautiful woman with the big sad blue eyes left a generous tip--paying for their meal twice over to ensure that tall slim woman with the caramel skin and tear-stained doe eyes could stay at the table until she was ready to leave. Normally Carmen's heartless manager would see to it that the patron's were hurriedly whisked out of the restaurant after paying, bur Carmen would gladly see to it that she could see stay as long as she needed--even if it meant giving up her own tips and ordering more food for the woman so the manager would not catch on to the situation.
Carmen didn't know why, but she saw something of a kindred spirit in the desolate woman that Friday night in October sitting at one of her tables.
************
As Tara aimlessly shuffled her way down the busy city street, being jostled by groups of people as they made their way past her on the cracked sidewalk, she finally let the tears slide soundlessly down her cold cheeks as the wind tore through the thin overcoat she wore. She resolutely wiped the tears away as they reached her quivering chin and pulled her coat closer to her trembling body. Looking up at the waving street signs through her tear-clouded vision, she flagged down a cab and made her way to Buffy's house.
Tara paid the fare to her driver as he pulled up to a faded brownstone house on a quiet street. She thanked him quietly and made her way in a daze to her friend's door. Buffy, knowing of Tara's plan for that evening hurriedly opened up the front door and quickly enveloped her friend in a squeezing embrace.
"Oh, Tara," Buffy hushed as she pulled the sobbing woman inside. "Sssh, honey, it's okay, let it all out, Buffy's got you now."
The door closed on the women as Buffy huddled the shaking woman to the couch and placed a blanket gently around her. "Let's get you out of those clothes and into something comfy. I've got your bag in the spare room. Do you want me to help you change?" Buffy asked quietly ask the tremors wracking Tara's body slowly subsided.
"No, I'll be alright," Tara answered slowly. "I need a minute alone to process. I'll be back shortly," she replied ask she gingerly rose from the confines of Buffy's leather couch and made her way down the dim hallway to the spare bedroom where she left her things earlier that day.
As Tara robotically removed her coat and slipped her knee-length brown boots from her feet, she took in her appearance in the gilded floor length mirror opposite her. Tara's honey colored hair hung limply at her chin--a casualty to the swift and unforgiving Chicago wind. Her floral printed dress still clung to the curves of her womanly hips and chest-- unfazed by the night's developments. She slowly lowered the zipper of the dress and let it glide soundlessly to the floor in a heap. She stood rooted to the spot, unable to command her aching body to retrieve her pyjamas from her overnight bag lying on the floor near the discarded dress.
*********
In an eccentrically designed apartment in downtown Manhattan, Dr. Willow Rosenberg sat at the mahogany desk in her home office surrounded by papers. She flipped through the documents with her trusty collection of different colored pens at the ready to make the necessary notations on her itinerary. Willow was a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Columbia and, in addition to her teaching duties, she made yearly trips to various locations around the globe to participate in field work and compile research.
"Hmmm... If I switch my flight plan out of New York to include a two-day stopover in Chicago, I'll be able to surprise Buffy for her birthday before heading to London," Willow mumbled to herself as she rearranged her schedule.
Willow's childhood friend had relocated to Chicago after completing her degree in teaching from their hometown of Sunnydale, California. Willow and Buffy--inseparable since childhood drifted slowly away from one another as their careers took them to different parts of the country.
"This is just what we need," Willow glowed to herself in appreciation of her clandestine plans. She plugged her impromptu trip into her planner as she booted up her the laptop on her desk and smiled to herself in anticipation of the reunion to come.
*********
TBC
So....should I post more?
.... But if I do that, then it'll take longer for updates...
as much as the next one (and believe me, there will be plenty in the future!), I wanted the story to start off slow... with some conflicting issues thrown in there so our favorite girls had to fight for each other.
