Rating: PG-13 but might change later
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy and I am making no money from this fanfiction.
Summary: After somebody raises Tara from the grave, Willow and the Scoobies must find a way to truely restore her to life.
Notes-This is a very angsty fic, but it will have a happy ending as my friends helped me come up with a way to give the fic a happy ending and restore Tara back to life by the end.Otherwise it would not be ok on Pens.
Chapter One-I Was In Heaven
Willow sat sobbing with her head in her hands.
She’s gone. Tara’s gone; I’ll never see her again in this world. If I committed suicide, would she be waiting for me on the other side? No, she would be in heaven and as a suicide I’d never get there. I could cast a spell on Dawnie or Buffy so that to me they looked and sounded like Tara and they would never know. But what use would that be? I’d have to keep it up constantly and wouldn’t have time for anything else. And it’s not as if I could ever hold such a Tara in my arms and kiss her, or hear her tell me how much she loves me, or go to sleep with her warm body in my arms after an evening of passionate lovemaking. There are other girls out there, Buffy says, but which one of them could possibly be as good as her? They are like stars to her bright blazing sun.
I would do anything to have her back, I would give up my magic, my name, and I would even become a boy.
She pulled out one of her wands from her belt, a long metal one with a copper star on the end. In the hands of most people, it would appear to be a child’s plaything or a prop from a fancy dress shop for those who wanted to dress as a wizard or a fairy, but in Willow’s hands it was as deadly as any revolver and had turned many a vampire into dust when it was her turn to go out slaying with Buffy or Faith. She looked at her favourite picture of Tara, with herself with her arms around Tara’s waist and her smiling face resting on Tara’s shoulder, and placed the tip of her wand in her mouth, tasting the metallic copper taste.
All I have to do now is to say the right spell and I will be with Tara in the Otherworld.
She was about to say the spell that would send fifty thousand volts of magical lightning into her brain, when there was a knock on the door.
Damm it. I had better go and answer the door, and if it turns out to be a salesman I’ll fry him.
She sheathed her wand and opened the door, and her mouth dropped open in shock. In front of her, pale and tired looking, clad in her thin grave clothes that were never meant for living people to wear and offered no real protection against the cold, was Tara Maclay.
Willow grinned. “TARA…..you’re…back.” She rushed forward to hug her and Tara raised her hand and delivered a short sharp slap to Willow’s cheek. Willow backed away nervously. “Tara…baby…what’s wrong? Why did you hit me?”
“I was in heaven,” Tara said sadly. “And then you summoned me back and it didn’t work, not properly. I have no heartbeat, feel me, don’t worry, I am not going to hit you again.” Often in happier times when they had been cuddling together after a particularly energetic bout of lovemaking, Willow had felt Tara’s heartbeat as they snuggled, but now when she touched the area above her heart she felt nothing. Tara raised the dress she had been buried in and Willow saw a sewn up but still clearly visible bullet wound. “Willow, I’m undead.”
“Tara, I’ll call Giles at once, if anybody in the world knows how to bring you back to life it’s him. But even if you can’t be healed, I’ll still love you. I’d rather have you as an undead girlfriend then not have you at all.” She leaned in and kissed Tara’s cold lips softly.
“Really?,” Tara asked. “What about when I go all dark and evil and start attacking innocent people? Will you still love me then? How about when my veins and arteries all turn a nice shade of blue-green and my body smells like I haven’t showered for a week? Or when my brain rots and I end up with the mental level of…”
“Tara, don’t talk like that, you’re scaring me.” Willow dialled Giles’s number. “Rupert, there is good news and bad news. Tara’s back. Just her presence makes me smile. The bad news is…she’s undead. No, she’s not trying to kill and eat me and she’s not a vampire. Yes, I need you and the rest of the Scoobies here as quickly as possible.” She put the phone down. “Don’t worry, Tara, our friends will be here soon and they’ll have you fully in the land of the living soon enough.”
It was not long before Giles, Xander and Spike were sitting with Willow and Tara in Willow’s house. “The Slayers can’t be here as they are out slaying. From what I have heard from Willow, a person or persons unknown raised you. Willow flatly denies having any part of it,” Giles said to Tara. “First we need to know the exact spell that raised you if possible so I can find out what the results are. The problem is that there are three dozen known spells that can be used for raising the dead, each of them with a slightly different result, and none of them with a pleasant result.”
“I know this might seem a bit strange,” said Xander, “but please could I see your bullet wound?”
Willow looked away when Tara showed Xander the wound, which had been roughly stitched up by a mortician when her body was being prepared for burial.
As long as I don’t have to look at that horrible wound I can pretend Tara is fully alive.
“I’m not a mage, but I’ve seen a wound like that before,” Xander said. “Remember my struggle with Jack O’Toole and his gang of zombies? O’Toole had been knifed, stabbed to death, yet he looked as if he was still alive. He told me something about a rabbit foot and that the stars were in the right alignment for him but not for his friends, which was why they were decaying whilst his body was as fresh as the moment he was killed. He said he had been alive for weeks.”
“Oh no,” said Giles. “I’ve heard of that spell, I was tempted to cast it once myself on a close friend, but if the person was evil during his or her life, it boosts it so they become psychopathic.”
“Tara has never done anything evil in her life,” Willow protested.
“If they were good, then they will rot within days, and turn into your typical shambling brain dead greedy zombie within a week, with a hunger for food which includes human flesh. We can't just leave Tara undead, we have to find a way to bring her back to life and quickly.”
