Time Heals All: a Willow/Tara fic with a terrible title
Author: Big_Pineapple
Feedback: Yes, including title suggestions, line edits, and general comments
Spoilers: vague reference to all seasons
Setting: Pre-season six and onward, AU.
Rating: PG-13ish (slight gore)
Part XXII: Beauty and the Beasts
Giles wasn’t certain what to say when he opened the door and found Tara standing on the stoop. Based on her silence and her nervous smile, she didn’t know, either. He let her in and went back to scrubbing the eyes of his stove. Tara looked around the apartment, which seemed cavernous now.
“It’s pretty empty in here,” she said finally.
“Yes, I suppose it is. Not quite as strange to me, perhaps; this is how I found it six years ago.”
Tara cocked her head. “It hasn’t changed at all in six years?”
“Well,” Giles said, looking around. “The windows and doors have all been replaced at least once. Oh, and that banister there. I tore it off when Ethan Rayne turned me into a demon. And there is of course the occasional knife or arrow damage along the walls. All in all, though, it’s…” He shook his head. “It’s completely alien to me. Everything feels that way now.”
He watched Tara scan the ceiling, as if she were reading it somehow, then rinsed the kitchen cleaner off his hands and gestured to the counter.
“These charms here are yours.”
Tara stepped up to the counter and started turning a small golden dragon in her hands.
“For now.”
Giles wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Tara knew, more acutely than he had when Buffy was called, how all of this would end. It was a relief to him, to hand off all the debris of his time as Watcher, but he felt a twinge of guilt for burying the young woman with it. She closed her hand around the dragon, gripped it tightly, then set it aside and began examining a star-shaped chunk of lapis lazuli, and Giles knew there was nothing he could say.
“Given my own way, I would simply disappear. I have grown so dreadfully tired of goodbyes. But Willow deserves them, so I suppose vanishing into the early morning mist is not an option.”
Tara looked up at him, concerned. “Oh. W-would you rather I not say goodbye? Because I can just go.”
“You’re not coming to the airport tomorrow?”
Tara looked at the floor.
Giles reached across the counter to touch her shoulder. “No one blames you, Tara. You’re an important part of this group, and they need you to…”
“It’s not the group,” Tara told them. “I know I’m still a Scooby. It’s… It’s Willow. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in an airport, actually, but, I see them on movies, and all this dramatic stuff happens there, and there are people egging you on, because they’re bored and grumpy, and somebody needs to be happy, so bring on the romantic drama, and she’s leaving, so it’s all emotional and my god I don’t think I’ve ever talked this much all at once.”
She blushed, and when Giles smiled at her, she chuckled. “My dad always said I didn’t need the devil to lead me into temptation; I find it well enough on my own.”
“Surely you know she’s changed. That this isn’t an illusion.”
Tara nodded. “She has changed. That means I’m not sure who she is anymore.”
Giles didn’t ask her anything else. She looked embarrassed to have revealed so much, and she refused to meet his eye, looking instead at the scrapes and burns on the hardwood floor.
“Would you like some scotch?” Giles offered. Tara gave him a crooked smile, and he poured each of them a glass. He was about to apologize that there was no furniture to sit on, but Tara suddenly started digging in her bag.
“I brought you something,” she said. “Like, a memento?” She tugged a lumpy stuffed thing from her bag and held it out to Giles. “I um, I was trying to remember how to sew, because it’ll come in handy to patch up Faith’s clothes.”
Giles admired the lumpy creature without reaching to touch it. It had button eyes, and little fangs peeking out from a mouth that was embroidered crookedly into its face. “You made this?”
“It’s supposed to be a vampire. But the cuddly kind.” Tara moved it up and down in an awkward dancing motion. “Grr, argh.”
Laughing and on the verge of tears, Giles came around to Tara’s side of the counter and pulled her into his arms.
“You’re going to be a wonderful Watcher,” he told her, because he couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye.
“So, is she coming back, or not?”
Amy shook her head. “I don’t know, but I don’t see why she wouldn’t.”
Warren groaned. “How can we seriously still have no clue what her next move is? Or even her current one? It’s like playing checkers in the dark.”
“It’s not like we haven’t been busy,” Andrew said, putting a hand on Warren’s shoulder. “Moving is a big job.”
“Yeah, and so is finding twenty-four hour streaming porn,” Amy added. “Impressive amount of work put into that.”
“Like you don’t enjoy it as much as the rest of us!” Warren snapped, nearly rising from his chair.
Amy made a small noise, an audible shrug, and leaned against the array of televisions lined against the living room wall. In her own house, backlit and relaxed, she looked more dangerous than the Trio had ever seen her. Warren settled back in his chair.
“I also enjoy giving you a hideout that hasn’t been busted yet, routing free water and electricity, and coming up with a way to distract those meddling kids while you get what you need for your newest little toy.”
Jonathan shook his head. “We’re still in the testing phase for the freeze ray. And I asked for some of the parts we need for Hanukkah, so we have to ride that out. My parents tend to give the most expensive presents last, so we’re talking December seventeenth before we start assembly, and…”
“And I get that,” Amy interrupted, “but tonight’s the full moon, which is optimal casting time, and it’ll take a day or two for the curse to set. And frankly, the Doublemeat Palace plan was a bust, and I’m bored. You can only bake so many pans of brownies.”
Andrew smiled. “Could you maybe make one more?”
“Could you maybe make them yourself?”
“I don’t know if I can get away with any evil schemes this week,” Jonathan said. “My parents have bigger parties every night on the high holy days, and they always expect me to be there.”
Warren smacked him on the back of the head. “Who said evil schemes had to involve you, Skippy?” He turned his swivel chair to Amy and looked her up and down. “What kind of rabbits do you have in your hat, witch?”
Amy cast her spell that night, pouring a toxic-smelling potion over the roof of a dollhouse. It dripped down the back and made a puddle on the plastic back porch. Andrew and Jonathan ran from the room when it ate through the plastic and began to spread on the porch. Warren watched Amy stare at it, and he matched her twisted smile when she looked up at him.
Dawn and Faith left early to meet Willow and Giles at the airport. Tara waved to them from the porch, then went into the kitchen to get a broom. Leaves had gathered in the back yard over the past few months, and with December in full swing, and winter break started, Tara had time to sweep the porches and rake the yards. It was nice to have the house to herself for a while, to do something that was rhythmic and quiet. She let her mind wander and didn’t pull it back, even when it lingered over Willow.
“I really don’t get why you’re not going for it,” Faith had pressed her the night before. “Life’s too short to hold off on what you want.”
“Your life is not going to be short, Faith, and neither is mine.”
Faith cracked a faint smile. “Pretty sure that’s not what I meant. Come on, T, don’t you want something good in your life for once?”
“That’s what you’re for.”
Tara didn’t run over the long list of thing she still didn’t know about Willow, like she had the night after she left the Doublemeat Palace, and the first day of Hanukkah, when she’d sent Dawn and Faith to Willow’s dorm room with a basket of cookies and no card. She reached down into the earth and let her thoughts feed it like it fed her. She strained toward a spiritual feeling she’d been doing without since the older Willow had gone. She let her worries about that Willow, the one she was trying to save (or was she trying to destroy her?) scatter like the dead leaves she swept off the porch.
The earth sent out a pulse she had never felt before. Tara paused in her work and looked out into the yard, and she saw something, camouflaged by the brown and yellow leaves, try to move toward her.
Growing up as she did, Tara knew an injured animal when she saw one. Still, this was Sunnydale; she hefted her broom and approached, prepared to strike if the injured thing wasn’t an animal.
As far as she could tell, it was a cat. Its ears were mangled, and there was only bright orange fur growing in tufts and patches over skin that looked burned, almost cracked. The ribs that stood out on its sides looked ready to stab through the blackened crust. A whip-like tail lay behind the creature, with a tuft of fur that was crusted to a point. It didn’t seem to have any teeth in its panting mouth.
Tara wasn’t sure there was anything she could do, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. The thing didn’t look strong enough to move, let alone hurt her, so she set her broom down and reached to pick it up. Faster than she could comprehend, the cat buried its claws in her wrist.
Pulling away dragged the claws across her arm, leaving four deep slashes. She clutched the injury to her chest, clenching her teeth against the pain, and breathed deeply until she could bear it.
“Poor kitty,” she whimpered, and she reached out again, gathering the thing to her chest. “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll take care of you.”
Miss Kitty Fantastico arched her back and scurried away sideways, hissing and spitting, when Tara brought the thing into the house.
“Probably better that you stay away, Kitty. This poor baby might be sick.”
Tara settled the thing on the couch, and wrapped towels around it to keep it warm. She poured water into a dish and held it while the thing drank. She called Miss Kitty’s veterinarian, but he refused to let her bring the creature in. It wouldn’t survive the night.
Disgusted, Tara hung up on him and went upstairs to change out of her blood-soaked shirt.
“The fuck is that?” Faith yelled when she came back from the airport.
“It’s hurt,” Tara said, cradling the thing closer.
Dawn reached over to touch it, but Faith pulled her away.
“Thing’s diseased, sis. I’ll take it out and shoot it for you if you want. T.”
“You will not!” Tara yelled, and Faith jerked away from her. “God, how can you be so insensitive?”
Faith shoved her hands in her pockets and looked at Tara for a long moment. She was petting what little fur there was on the cat, and she seemed to have calmed down as quickly as she had become angry. Maybe Donny had done something to a cat once.
“Sorry, T,” Faith grumbled. “Just being a jackass.”
She and Dawn found their own lunches, and they didn’t bother to talk about their trip to the airport. Tara slipped outside just before dinner, and Dawn and Faith put leftovers in the microwave when she’d been gone for over an hour.
“Needed cat food,” Tara said when they asked her where she’d been.
“Focus on the space between your body and the chair, and move down. We’ve reached the floor before, but try to pull deeper.”
Faith was unconvinced that magic would be of any use to her as a Slayer, but Tara said this connecting to the earth hocus-pocus would give her more stamina, and that was something she could use. Of course, a longer attention span would help more. Tara had rigged talismans to rise and sink in vases of water, based on the depth of connections. Dawn could hit the roots of the trees, but Faith hadn’t made it past the floor of the Magic Box. Every time a customer came in, her attention would float to the sound of the bell, and he well-endowed talisman would float to the surface of the water. Faith snickered. Tara had made the mistake of allowing them to pick their own talismans, and she had chosen the one with the biggest dick she could find.
“Where are you, Faith?” Tara demanded.
Faith opened her eyes and grinned. “Don’t think it’s the earth, exactly, but it’s a pretty dirty place.”
She expected Tara to blush and laugh, flick water in her face. But she slammed her fist down on the table, making the Slayer and everyone else in the shop jump.
“This is important, Faith, but if you don’t want to put in the effort, I have better things to do!” Faith found herself alarmed and apologizing for the second time in as many days. It was Dawn, not her, who picked up on the strangeness of what Tara had said.
“I thought training was the most important thing we could do. Since you’re a Watcher and all?”
“The cat needs me,” Tara muttered. “He’s sick.”
Anya leaned over the counter, trying to peer into the box Tara had by her feet. Nestled among the pillows, towels, and toys, the cat looked like a horrible stain.
“I really don’t think it’s a cat,” Anya said for the third time since they’d arrived in the shop that morning. “Also, I really don’t think I should let you come in here with it. Probably violates some health codes.”
“Which would be a problem if this were a restaurant.” There was no trace of amusement or kindness, or even sarcasm in Tara’s voice.
“Are you upset because you didn’t see Willow yesterday?” Dawn asked.
Anya beamed. “I’ve heard that lesbians frequently attach themselves to animals when they lack sexual partners. I wonder if Willow will find a cat. Or maybe she’ll find a sexual partner and bring her back! She didn’t seem upset that you weren’t there, you know. Didn’t even mention it. I think she’s moved on.”
“Maybe she’s moving back to Xander,” Tara suggested, and she snatched up the box by her side and walked out of the shop, muttering about feeding the cat. Faith followed her.
Anya watched her go, then turned to Dawn.
“I really don’t think it’s a cat.”
Faith caught up to Tara easily, and she fell in stride with her.
“Look, I’m sorry I…”
“I know that.” They waited at a street corner until it was safe to cross. Tara started to walk, but Faith grabbed her wrist. Yelping in pain, Tara jerked away and tried to keep the box in her arms steady. The cat yowled. Faith snatched the box away and set it on the ground, then took Tara’s hand and pulled her coat and shirt sleeves up.
Scabs had formed on the cuts, but Faith’s grip had broken them, and they were oozing fresh blood. They were deep and lined with red. Orange fur was crusted in them.
“Did that thing do this to you?” Faith demanded.
Tara glared at her. “He was scared.”
“So am I!” Faith shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me about this kind of thing? It doesn’t even look like you washed it. Do you realize it could be infected? There’s no telling what kind of crap that thing has on its feet. It could have rabies!”
Tara’s eyes were burning with rage. She swung her arm out of Faith’s grasp and picked the box off the ground.
“Rabies would explain why you’ve been a bitch all day,” Faith said.
When Tara stormed off, Faith let her go.
It was Dawn, coming home just before dinner that night, who found the bloody bones and feathers in the kitchen garbage can.
Warren let Amy watch him work for an hour before he said anything to her. He had expected her to go away.
“Like what you see?” he asked when she didn’t.
Amy pushed off from her place leaning against the wall and approached the worktable, not answering. She knelt beside him, so close he could smell her shampoo, and she examined the welder in his hand, his gloved fingers gripping it, like she was reading a difficult text. No matter where her eyes seemed focused, Warren knew she was watching him. Ever since they’d moved into her house, he had felt watched.
“Here,” Warren said, flipping up his welder’s mask. He ran a wire through some bolts and washers, and held it out to Amy. “It’s a cat.”
Amy turned it over in her hands, then set it on the table and blew on it. It stood and galloped around the table on stiff legs, and Warren shuddered. Amy smiled.
“You’re a strange, twisted little jerk,” Amy said. “Charming, in the creepiest of ways. And I have this nagging feeling that you have your own agenda.”
Warren leaned back in his chair and swiveled it to face her fully. She was watching the cat lope around.
“I could say the same about you.”
Amy made a squeaking noise that might have been agreement.
“The girl that got cursed,” Warren said. “You were aiming for her. First thing you said when you got here was that you hate Willow. Not really sure what that’s about, but I’m sure Willow loves this girl. Thing is, the hellcat can’t kill her, and her friends’ll figure it out soon enough. It buys us time for what we’re doing tonight, sure. But how does it hurt Willow if she doesn’t even have to know about it? It’ll all be over in a day or two.”
Amy looked him in the eye, and Warren shuddered again.
“You’re right,” she said. “I guess it will be.”
The cat lumbered onto her hand when Amy held it against the edge of the table. She stroked the living wire as she walked away.
Dawn found nothing out from Tara when she asked about the bones and feathers. Tara was cradling the hellcat and singing to it, and she told her there were leftovers in the fridge when asked what the plans for dinner were.
“We ate the leftovers last night,” Dawn said, and she was given permission to order pizza.
Faith didn’t come by that night, but she was around the next morning, brewing coffee. It hadn’t occurred to Dawn until just then that she hadn’t seen Miss Kitty Fantastico around for a couple days, but she was batting at Faith’s ankles and mewling. When she tried to sink her claws into Faith’s leather pants, Faith picked her up and set her on the island.
“Tara won’t like you doing that,” Dawn said. She sat down on a stool, and Miss Kitty started pawing her hair.
“Tara’s asleep, so who has to know?” Faith paused, looking toward the kitchen door as if Tara might come through it at any moment. “Ain’t she usually an earlier bird than this?”
Dawn remembered the bloody feathers in the garbage and shivered. The trash had been taken out, though, so there were no remains. As she sat up, she noticed that Miss Kitty had no food or water. She picked the little cat up and dropped her gently onto the floor.
“So that’s what you’re so upset about, huh? Tara hasn’t come down to feed you yet.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen those bowls empty before,” Faith said. Dawn hadn’t either.
Miss Kitty ate so quickly when she was fed that Dawn was afraid she’d choke or make herself sick. She purred and cried while she chewed.
A door opened upstairs, and Miss Kitty looked suddenly alert. She crouched low and crept toward the kitchen door. Tara came through, carrying the hellcat. She set it down on the island while she poured herself some coffee, and it lay there. Only its eyes moved, and it made a horrible sound when it looked at Faith.
“Shhh, it’s okay, kitty,” Tara crooned, stroking its furless head.
Miss Kitty hissed and tiptoed around the island. She got a clear view of the hellcat and sprang, claws extended. Tara kicked her out of the air.
“Bad kitty!” she barked, stomping her foot. Miss Kitty staggered upright and slunk out of the room.
“Jesus, T, what’d you do that for?”
Tara pulled the hellcat into her arms, took her mug of coffee, and walked back upstairs without a word.
Faith started pulling cereal boxes out of the cabinets and slid Dawn’s favorite kind across the counter to her, along with a bowl and spoon.
“We’re out of eggs,” she said, and she stood listening while Dawn ate. Upstairs, the shower started, and Faith reached across the island and took Dawn’s hand in hers. “You stay close to me today, alright sis?”
She stood in the doorway of Dawn’s bedroom with her back turned while Dawn changed, then tossed her a coat and dragged her to the Magic Box.
“How’s the not-a-cat thing?” Anya asked when the came inside.
Faith tramped over to the books and started grabbing anything she thought might help them off the shelves. “Definitely not a cat. I think it poisoned her or something. It scratched her.”
Anya looked interested. “Venomous. Most demons are perfectly edible, if not particularly flavorful, but there are also quite a few that are venomous, meaning they can cause harm through bites, scratches, or stings.”
“Whatever. Tell me about them.”
“Based on the look of the thing,” Anya said, flipping through her books, “Here! Mrudok demon, scratches its victims and causes them to lose all their hair and nails.”
Dawn wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Why?”
“So it can eat it. Nowadays, Mrudok demons tend to take up residence with humans who work at hair salons. They’re wonderful at cleaning up after a long day’s work. Is Tara’s hair falling out?”
Faith hauled another armload of books to the table and dropped them. “Nah. She’s just…”
“Mean?” Dawn offered.
“She kicked the cat. The real one, not the one that looks like it died two months ago. God, why did she even go near that thing?”
Faith answered her own question: Tara wasn’t afraid of ugly things. That was why she wanted to be Faith’s Watcher in the first place. She would have been right next to Diana, her first Watcher, hugging the orphaned Salamanders and goat-headed humanoids. She would have followed that weird, corkscrew-shaped demon kid straight into Kakistos’s lair, answering some cry for help or other, the details of which Faith would never know. But she would not die like Diana had.
Faith nearly tore the pages of the books as she turned them, searching for an answer.
Xander came to the shop that evening after work. Anya was reading and ringing up customers at the same time, and Dawn was trying to focus through a splitting headache born of not eating anything all day. Faith was throwing another book across the room, adding the word useless to a string of expletives. He nodded at their explanation of what was happening to Tara.
“No luck finding out what’s wrong, though, huh?” he said. “Has anyone checked on her since this morning? Maybe something’s happened.”
Faith jumped up and charged toward the door. Dawn used the last of her energy to follow her.
Tara was in the kitchen, humming to herself and chopping something on the counter. The hellcat raised its head and hissed at them when they opened the back door, and Tara turned sharply. A rabbit’s head was sitting on the counter, and Tara’s hands were coated in blood. The hellcat licked a drop of it off her fingers before hissing at them again.
“Go to the Magic Box,” Faith said, and Dawn bolted out the door.
Blood squelched between her fingers when Tara tightened her grip on the butcher knife. Her sleeves were rolled up, revealing the almost purple wound on her wrist.
“You shouldn’t leave her alone at night,” Tara said. “Watcher’s orders. Better obey them.”
“Tara, listen to me. You’re sick. That thing…” Faith pointed at the hellcat, and Tara lunged for her.
Faith barely dodged, and she was too caught up in trying not to hurt Tara to disarm her. She knocked a stool from the island down between them and gained a moment to assess. Tara moved in predictable ways, here as much as in training. She was quick and elusive, but only so skilled, and not very strong. Barring magic. Tara hadn’t used magic against her in a fight yet.
The stool was swept out of the way without Tara ever touching it, and Faith braced herself for something a bit less predictable than she was used to. When Tara swung her knife, Faith blocked with her arm, striking across the scratched wrist; Tara’s powerful grip loosened for a second in pain, and Faith disarmed her, throwing the butcher knife into the sink. Tara spun into her and threw her to the floor. Faith scrambled forward and grabbed a pepper shaker from the island. In full Slayer mode, she hurled it at Tara’s face. It was swept away and crashed through a pane of glass in the back door.
Tara turned her gaze to the rack of knives on the far counter, and Faith slammed into the middle of her. Frantic, while Tara weaseled her way out of her grasp over and over, Faith tried to pin her to the wall. She caught her trying to make eye contact with something in the kitchen, and she clapped a hand over her eyes before managing to hold her arms against the wall over her head and secure her legs with one of her own. Faith pressed her Watcher into the wall and watched her smile.
“Is this how you like it?” Tara teased. “Now that Willow’s away, you’re going to confirm her fears?” She writhed in Faith’s grip, but not exactly to get away. Faith almost let her go so she could pull back.
“I thought you told me all your deepest, darkest secrets. Like the one girl you really did want. Tell me, Faith, do I compare?”
Faith squeezed Tara’s wrists until the smile left her face and the crusted blood on her hands crackled. “Stop it.”
Tara laughed and pushed her hips forward. “Haven’t even started.”
When Faith pulled her back and slammed her against the wall again, words rushed out in a puff of air. She understood too late that something was about to happen. Fog boiled out of Tara’s hands and stung Faith’s eyes like fire. She tried to close them, but the pain wouldn’t subside. She uncovered Tara’s eyes to cover her own, which allowed Tara to shove her backward with a rush of magic, grab the hellcat, and vanish in the fog.
Faith was shaking when she stumbled out of the house, and she barely managed to pull her punch when Dawn grabbed her shoulder.
“I told you to go to the Magic Box!” she yelled.
Dawn had braced for the blow, and she opened one eye slowly and looked around before she relaxed. “I know,” she said. “But I thought of something. I saw bones in the garbage yesterday, and I thought, hey, maybe it’s more rabbits. We could figure out how often this thing needs to eat, and maybe that’d help us figure out what it is.”
“And?”
“I didn’t find rabbits. I found a bird and a squirrel. Squirrel doesn’t stink quite as bad, so I’m guessing it’s fresher. So, bird, squirrel, rabbit. It’s eating bigger things every day.”
Faith sighed and clapped Dawn on the shoulder. “Good work, Sherlock.”
“What happened?” Xander asked, offering a carton of Chinese take-out. Dawn washed herself to the elbow in the bathroom, then took the food gratefully.
“Tara killed a rabbit,” she said.
Anya was ecstatic. “Good for her!” The others stared at her, and she wilted. “But, out of the ordinary and probably a bad sign. Was it the only one?”
Dawn detailed what she’d found in the trash, and Anya nodded, thumbing through a book. “I’ve heard of this! We were looking for demons, but that’s all wrong. It’s a parasite!” Anya presented a book to the group, with a perfect mug shot of the hellcat.
“A misnomer, actually. Humans tend to call them cats because they bear more resemblance to them than any other living thing. Then again, they resemble a dead thing more than anything else. Demons call them sangui, from the Latin word for leech. They only have enough strength to strike a host, then the host cares for them, feeding them bigger and bigger things until the sangui’s strong enough to devour the host. At that point it has enough energy to reproduce.”
Xander rubbed his face. “So what you’re saying is, this thing is going to eat Tara?”
“Well, not any time soon. If it’s eating rabbit tonight, that’s a good bit away from a full-grown human. We should have at least four days to find a cure.”
Faith was pacing and popping her knuckles. “Great. So how do we do that?”
Anya shrugged. “The only one who can break the spell of the sangui is the host. One of us could kill it, but it might… break her, somehow. There’s no way to be sure.”
“Great, convince Tara to kill the thing she’s been carrying around and feeding fresh meat she caught and butchered with her bare hands. While she’s insane. Sounds like a plan.” Xander sighed.
“She attacks anyone who looks at it funny, and she’s more dangerous than you’d expect,” Faith said. “So talking ain’t an option.”
“It could be,” Anya said. “There might be a… clarity spell, or something. We could get through to her?”
Faith nodded.
“Should we go out and look for her?” Dawn asked.
“She won’t put herself at risk while she has to deal with the cat. She’s been eating and all that.” Faith shrugged. “She’ll probably go home when she’s sure I’m gone.”
“Which means you’re not going home tonight,” Xander told Dawn.
Dawn turned to Faith. “Can I stay with you?”
For a moment, Faith hesitated, wondering if the day could screw with her head any more than it already had.
“Sure,” she said.
“We could send Spike out to make sure Tara’s safe,” Anya offered. “He’s strong enough to fight her if he has to, and no one really cares if he gets hurt.”
“Could we trust him not to hurt her?” Xander asked.
“Just tell him to send her home, and not to get between her and the cat,” Faith said. “I’ll feel better if I know she’s safe.”
Xander agreed. “You guys work on that spell thingy. I’ll drive out to the crypt.”
“Be careful,” Anya told him, and she kissed him before he left.
Spike wandered into the Magic Box at nearly eleven o’clock, announcing, “Bird’s in the nest, safe and sound. Well, not exactly sound, but you lot knew that.”
Dawn held a book out to him. “Can you read this? I can tell it’s something important, but I’m not sure what.”
Spike took the book and glanced at it, then looked at Dawn. “When’d you learn Arabic, nibblet?”
“Just picked it up, I guess.”
“Right. Look, how about this? You get some sleep, and I’ll see if I can work out what you’ve picked up here?”
Faith laughed. “That chip in your head really mushed you up inside, didn’t it Spike?”
He shot her a look that had as much pain in it as anger, and she backed off. She knew why he watched over Dawn.
“Come on, kid,” she said, pulling Dawn to her feet. “Catch you guys here tomorrow?”
“We’ll be working on it,” Xander said.
“Do we have to work on it all night?” Anya whined. “Why do they get to go home and we don’t?”
The night was cold. Faith watched her breath curl in front of her and tried not to worry about Tara. She’d stay in the house; she hadn’t gone wandering before. She’d started hunting a little earlier each day, so there was no reason to expect she would try anything tonight.
“What’s bigger than a rabbit?” Dawn asked.
Faith shrugged. “Possum. Raccoon, maybe.”
When they reached Faith’s hotel, Dawn got a toothbrush from the man behind the counter, who simply pointed to a basket of them without looking up from his late night television. Dawn brushed her teeth, scrubbed her face, and slipped on the oversized t-shirt Faith offered her.
“Is this what you sleep in usually?” she asked.
Faith chuckled. “Nah, I usually sleep in the skinny. But tonight I’ll spare you the view.”
Dawn looked around the room for a moment, bewildered. “I should have asked that guy for pillows,” she mumbled.
“Take the bed,” Faith said. “Not like I’m sleeping.”
Too tired to protest, Dawn tucked herself in and went to sleep. Faith turned out the light and stood just outside the door, watching her breath and waiting for morning.
Jonathan gasped when Amy submerged his hand in a bathtub filled with cold water.
“It’s too hot!” he hissed, but she ignored him, watching the ice that encased the freeze ray and half of his arm crack. She uncurled his fingers and pulled the freeze ray out of the tub, and told Jonathan to stay where he was.
“You broke it!” Warren snarled when she handed him the waterlogged weapon. She shrugged.
“How much more time do you need for this new thing?” Amy asked, flicking her eyes to the diamond on Warren’s worktable.
Warren rubbed his hands together. “Let’s just say, it’s gonna be a happy new year.”
“We haven’t found anything that’s workable yet,” Xander said the next morning. “Every clarity spell requires way more power than any of us has, except for the one Dawn found, and that has to be performed by a relative.”
“Spike dropped by the house again just before dawn, called and said Tara’s sleeping with the thing in her bed. Something tells me Joyce would not approve.”
“Mom let the zombie cat in the house,” Dawn said.
Faith groaned and stretched. “Hunt’s probably gonna be later tonight, based on the prey. I should stick close when she goes out, in case she runs into trouble.” She stood, swinging her arms and saying something about a punch break. In the back room, she sat on a pile of mats, taped one hand, and fell asleep halfway through taping the other.
“Maybe Tara has relatives who are nice,” Dawn suggested. “You know, witch relatives, who don’t think they’re the spawn of Satan?”
Xander frowned. “Maybe, but how do we find them? Call up her brother and say, ‘Hey beard buddy, got any witches laying around we can borrow?’ Oh yeah, that’d be interesting.”
“There has to be another spell. Clarity spells are common! Only problem is, it’s generally the person performing the spell who’s seeking the clarity. Hey, we could marry her to someone and have her husband perform the ritual!” Anya said.
“Have anyone in mind?”
Anya continued flipping through the books.
When the group ordered lunch, Dawn went in to check on Faith. The Slayer woke with a start and stared at Dawn.
“What’s bigger than a rabbit?” she asked.
“Um, a possum or a raccoon, or…” Dawn’s eyes went wide. “Miss Kitty!”
Faith nodded. “She’ll never forgive herself.” She dashed into the shop, calling, “Okay, added urgency! Tara’s gonna kill the cat. This Exorcist act stops today.”
“How?” Anya demanded.
Dawn was making connections. “Naissa, the cat people! The second Slayer’s mom tried to protect her. That’s like a Watcher, right?”
“Maybe,” Anya said. “The Watcher’s Council formed in my lifetime, but it’s a destiny thing, so it’s possible the origins go back that far. Still, the parallel’s pretty weak.”
Faith shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You could go into a coma.”
Xander countered, “Of course, you recover from those fairly well, so on the whole, not much damage done.”
“We’ll do it, then.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“I thought of that,” Xander said, and he ran down the steps into the basement.
Anya watched him go, then turned back to the table. “In her moment of clarity, it might help to have someone she knows nearby, to talk her through it. Might help her process.”
“That your job then?” Faith asked.
“I should probably stay with you. I have more magical experience, and I know what it looks like when a trance is going wrong. I might be able to pull you out of it before you go into a coma, and then we won’t have to go back to living without a Slayer until you come around again.”
Dawn shuffled her feet. “So that means me. I have to go and talk to Tara.”
“I’m not sure that’s…” Faith started to say, but Xander reappeared. “The tranq gun.”
“If all else fails,” Xander said.
The trance was complicated and took almost two hours to prepare. Faith insisted Xander and Dawn wait until she’d begun before they went to the house; there was less time for something to go wrong on their end that way, and the clarity moment wouldn’t help if Tara was unconscious when it happened.
Faith settled herself on the Magic Box floor at half past three, with a translation of the spell in her lap. Anya poured sand around her counter-clockwise and nodded. Xander and Dawn left as quietly as they could.
When they opened the door, they could hear Tara calling, “Here, kitty kitty kitty.”
“Tara?”
She appeared at the top of the stairs and smiled. “Dawnie. Where were you last night?”
“I spent the night with a friend,” Dawn said. “I told you, but I guess you were busy.”
Tara waved to Xander, who was struggling to hide the tranq gun behind his back. The hellcat flicked its tail and hissed. Tara shushed it.
“Have you seen Miss Kitty?” she asked. “It’s time for dinner.”
“Kind of early for dinner, don’t you think?”
Tara shrugged. “Treats.”
Faith was struggling to fall into the trance. She recited the spell over and over until her throat was dry, and then the scratchiness of her throat made her want to stop and drink, and the thought distracted her more. There was no good place to settle; when she tried to blank her mind, the strangest things floated through, like the draft coming under the door of the shop, and questions about how much money was in the cash register, and if Tara came out of this intact, would she remember what she’d done?
She shook her head. She had to get in the zone, like she did with Slaying. Again, she started the chant, but she punctuated the words with thoughts of her best fights, the motions she went through. There was no way to empty her mind, but extreme focus might get her there. Faith fell into a rhythm: see, stake, dust, over and over, twitching her shoulders and hands. She closed her eyes, the chant imprinted on her mind, and imagined the flow of fighting with Buffy, the connection she’d felt. She constructed every detail of her sister Slayer until it felt like she was alive again, and when she whirled to stake an ambushing vamp, she found Tara, fuzzy around the edges, but fighting by her side.
Tara let the hellcat nest in a pallet of silk scarves along the living room wall when she saw Miss Kitty slink up the basement steps.
“There you are,” she crooned, and Miss Kitty sniffed her outstretched hand. Dawn saw her summon a knife, and she dove for the cat. Xander slammed the door shut and brought the tranq gun to his shoulder. Tara’s hands closed around the knife, and she glared at them.
“Give me my kitty, Dawnie,” Tara said, stepping forward.
Xander warned her, “I’ll shoot this, I swear.”
“Violence, violence,” Tara murmured.
Dawn backed up until her heels hit the couch, and she sat suddenly. Miss Kitty was squirming in her arms, and Tara snatched at her. Xander fired and missed. The hellcat hissed and tried to stand.
“T? You there?”
“Five by five,” Faith’s vision answered. Faith wasn’t sure if that meant the spell was working or not. She gave up chanting the spell and repeated, “The orange cat is evil, don’t kill Miss Kitty,” hoping that somehow this would get through.
Tara swung at a vamp that came at her, and to Faith’s horror, she hissed. The hellcat was draped around her shoulders. Faith tried to grab it and found herself engaged in a fight again. She took the easy way out and punched Tara in the face.
Tara yanked the gun out of Xander’s hand with magic and threw it across the room. Dawn was huddled on the couch, nearly stifling Miss Kitty, begging Tara to stop what she was doing.
As if she would cut through Dawn’s knees to reach the cat, Tara raised her knife. Then, she blinked, staggered, and hurled the blade in the opposite direction.
The hellcat yowled, skewered to the wall, and hissed at them all before exploding and spattering them with blood.
Gasping, Tara fell onto the couch. Miss Kitty scratched Dawn’s chin and sprinted back to the basement.
“Dawn,” Tara said, wiping blood out of the girl’s face. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Dawn stared at her. “Tara?”
“What was that thing?”
“It worked!” Dawn shrieked, and she grabbed Tara’s wrist. Tara jerked away, wincing, and pulled up the sleeve of her shirt. The cuts on her arm were swollen and red, weeping puss and blood.
“Oh god,” she said. “This is definitely infected. Possibly diseased. I-I need to go to the hospital, or…”
Xander put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s a demonic wound. Ahn has an ointment on the way for you, but until then, soap and Neosporin should do the trick. There are some things modern medicine isn’t prepared for.”
Tara nodded vaguely. “Soap. Right. A-and possibly shampoo, since we all seem to be coated in… guts. I-I um…” Tara stood and staggered upstairs. Dawn and Xander winced when they heard her retching.
“So she has no idea what happened?” Faith asked. Xander was in the Magic Box bathroom, trying to rinse hellcat gore out of his hair.
“Not a clue,” he answered. “We told her what we had to, but we left out the slaughtering of small animals bit.”
Anya nodded. “Because that’s tactful. That’s what tact is, right?”
“In this case, I’d call it mercy. She pukes just seeing blood. To think of herself as a butcher? I’m not sure she’d ever eat again.”
Faith agreed to clean the mess in the living room so Tara wouldn’t have to look at it. When she woke up the morning after the job was done, Tara climbed out of bed eager to be able to sit in her own living room without getting sick to her stomach. She paused, though, when she heard noises coming from Buffy’s bedroom. The robot was staying at the Magic Box so Faith would have something to spar with that matched her skill; Tara was almost afraid to find out what was rustling around in the room.
She peered around the doorframe and saw Dawn rifling through the contents of one of Buffy’s desk drawers.
“What are you up to?” Tara asked her, standing just outside the door. It felt like to cross the threshold would be to intrude on a sacred space.
Dawn added a bottle of holy water to a pile of weapons, a bottle of nail polish to a jumbled stack of useful things, and an empty bottle of Tylenol to the garbage can beside the desk.
“I get the bigger room,” she said. “Faith can have mine.”
“Faith?”
Dawn unearthed a stack of photographs, stared at the top one, and set them all aside. “She’s family.”
Tara smiled. Uncertain what to say, she asked if there was anything she could do to help. Dawn shook her head, so Tara watched her a moment, then left her to her work.
Jet lag was not something Willow experienced. She reveled in the newness of the coven’s land, covered in trees and snow. The horses were stabled, and she dared herself to peek at them through the door, but she never had to enter. Outside, the air was crisp and fresh, and there was a fireplace in every room inside. For the first week, they asked nothing of her except to set the table and join them in prayers. It reminded her of the Wicca group at UC Sunnydale, except that the power of the circle pulsed when they gathered.
Tomorrow, Sister Helen would begin teaching her to connect to the earth, so Willow set out to enjoy herself. She sledded on a tray she’d found in the kitchen, getting snow in her pants when she hit a rock and tumbled off. Her clothes dried nicely on a rack beside the fire, and she dressed herself in clothes she’d left to heat up before she went out. Her hair was dripping wet, so she pulled it into a sloppy pony tail and set out to explore the South wing of the building. When she arrived, she’d explored the central area, with the great hall, the parlor, and a ring of small temples. On clear days, she wandered the outlying areas, and when it snowed heavily, she explored the wings, which contained kitchens and storage, bedrooms, and locked doors that she ached to open.
The South wing was where visitors came in. As she approached, she heard voices. One of them was male, and distinctly not British. She walked down the long corridor, following the sound, which became more and more familiar the closer she got to it.
It didn’t surprise her. She had expected to hear that voice again, in Sunnydale, in the mountains of Tibet, around a corner in Istanbul. And here it was, wafting out of a snow-dusted chamber in a secluded haven in rural England. The speaking stopped, and she heard sniffing. Her scent would be as familiar to him as his voice was to her, she thought as she stepped into the room, grinning.
“Hi Oz.”
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Hello all.
This late update is the result of a happy reunion with my girlfriend, so I must admit I'm not as sorry as I would usually be. We'll see if getting back on a regular schedule life-wise will make my updates more consistent as well.
Enjoy this installment, and as always, critiques are welcome and desired. Happy September.
Kay
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