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Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter One Hundred and Forty
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: The Body – Part 2
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: Second update of two that will be posted today to get ‘The Body’ all handled in one swoop. It’s too long for a single post, so I’ve kept the split in the usual places… Now that I am so far through this ‘episode’ I have to say that I couldn’t have skipped this. Apart from adding a new scene that never existed before – a true missing scene – this perhaps takes the most from canon without changing it or anything… but it’s difficult to see what else could’ve been done. It couldn’t just be skipped and I wouldn’t want to mess with the dialogue.
In truth I always had trouble understanding the ritual descent on the morgue by them all anyway… but since the canon has it there’s not much of a way to ignore it.
Thanks to: Everyone who will put up with these dark days…
Xander and Anya just walked in with a knock, but Tara wasn’t letting go of Willow. Not yet… Her girl needed this, needed to be held – just like everyone else at this time. Needed to hear that one day it’d feel better.
And it would… Oh, it still hurt when you thought about it – perhaps a little less as time went by, but because…
You got used to the fact they were gone. It felt terrible to understand that but it was the best way she could think of it. You still felt the ache, the hole when you thought about the person you lost… but you got used to that being there, it became a part of your reality. Other things happened in the world, your life and you had to get on with them and – one day – you realised you’d not even thought about your Mom for a few days…
Not even to wonder how she and Willow would’ve gotten along.
She remembered that it’d still hurt when she came to college, but not as badly as it had in the first days, weeks and months. But Willow had been the conclusion of the healing process for her. Willow had made her a whole person again – not by replacing her Mom, but instead by filling the void where she used to exist.
“Hey,” she said to the newcomers. It was about all anyone could think of as they broke from the hug and Willow went back to looking for something to wear. It was her thing of the moment, there was always something and it was the thing that was helping her girl not break down and sob uncontrollably.
This time it was finding the right outfit. It would help Willow cope, gave her something else to think about.
“I – I don’t know,” Anya said. “I don’t know what it is that Xander and I will be expected to do. Xander won’t say or he doesn’t know but – I don’t know.”
Xander tried to wave it away; he was only barely holding it together himself. Never exactly the big, tough guy but that was okay; even big, tough guys had feelings.
“I don’t know,” Willow sighed. “I don’t know either.”
“Whatever it is,” Tara said. “We just do it, okay?”
Only then, with the silence and the moment broken, did Willow and Xander hug while she and Anya stood back and watched. Nothing, this time, about jealousy. Tara could see that, no matter what she said, Anya got it.
Joyce had meant more to all of them than their own parents – at least in the sense of being around. Xander had his longstanding problems at home, couldn’t wait to get out. Willow’s folks – much as she loved Ira especially – had rarely been there the last few years and Anya… Well, Anya’s mother had been dead hundreds of years. In a totally different time.
And in that disconnection from their traditional families, they’d found each other and Buffy and Joyce… Joyce, the single Mom struggling with the fact her own daughter was a Slayer, had taken in a witch, an ex-demon and a… guy. Hope, of course.
And her… Joyce had been really good to her too.
It wasn’t just Buffy’s arrival in Sunnydale that had changed everything for these people. Joyce had a big part to play too.
“Get off me,” Willow said, beating Xander’s chest with a friendly fist. “I’m afraid I’ll start to cry again.”
“Xander cried at the apartment,” Anya said.
Of course, he and Anya – along with Hope – that hadn’t been there last night. Hadn’t seen the body… Her.
“It was weird,” Anya finished.
No one said anything. Not good weird. Not bad weird. Not something to talk about. Just one more thing that connected them all. No matter what Anya said, you could tell just by looking that they’d all cried.
“What’s going to happen?” Anya asked.
“We’ll meet the others at the morgue,” Tara said when no one else was able to deal with it and say anything. “Giles will already be there, he went with the coroner.”
“Hope?” Willow asked. “What about Hope?”
“Faith will bring her,” Tara promised. Always assuming Hope was up to it. She’d been hit hard, really hard – even though her whole world looked like it should’ve fallen apart when she found out she was The Key, somehow it’d stayed together. Hope had remained the girl they’d known and Joyce had a part in that too, keeping the girl’s feet on the ground.
Safe.
She’d had practice, of course. Raising a Slayer these last few years.
“Faith? She can’t - ”
“She’ll be okay,” Tara said. Her friend had been supporting Hope – at least in her memories – all her life. They were sisters. They knew how to be that for each other, no matter what you thought of the elder Lehane.
“I… I need to change again,” Willow said.
Tara took a breath, understanding it was the way Willow was coping and said nothing about it.
“So…” Xander looked around, already looking for allies, even though he’d not shared what was on his mind. “Was it natural?”
Like I know?
“I think so,” she said. She could see where this was going. Donny had… Donny had lashed out against anybody and everybody, throwing blame around like confetti and hoping some would stick so that he could fight back and punish someone.
Now Xander? That was how he was going to cope? Maybe it was a male thing? A young male thing at least?
“What if it was Glory?”
Tara shook her head. “No. If it’d been Glory, she’d have wanted us to know it. It’s not a warning unless… Unless we know it was her.”
“Maybe we do, maybe we missed the signs? No one was really looking – no one was - ”
“No. It wasn’t her.”
“The doctors then?” he asked.
She could see that he was upsetting Willow, but her girl wasn’t prepared to tell him to shut up. Not just yet.
“They didn’t take good enough care of her, I mean, of course they didn’t, she’s dead and we’re about to visit her in the morgue. How can they have taken care of her?”
“No!” Tara said, making them look at her. Making him, especially, stop with that line of blame. Donny had been down that line, he’d been a long way down it and she wasn’t having that again. “They do their best,” she said. “They always do their best.”
“It just happened,” Willow said sadly, but seeming distracted by her need to find something more appropriate to wear.
“This is Sunnydale,” Xander said. “Things don’t just happen. There’s something – always something. There’s always something responsible – something to blame.”
“Something to fight back against,” Tara said, knowing what he really wanted.
“Yes!”
“Fine,” Willow said. “Let’s go.”
“What?”
“You want to fight something, just fight me.”
“I don’t want - ”
“Better me than Faith. She’ll kick your ass. Better than Buffy, you don’t want to do that to her. So come on, let’s go…”
Tara watched him deflate, certain in her own mind that Willow had been quite ready to fight him. Something else that would’ve taken her mind away from the hurt. Something to help someone else. But she’d served her purpose without it going that far.
“You know I can’t…” he said.
“I know,” Willow replied, letting him hug her again.
“I can’t take you anyway.”
“Damn straight you can’t.”
Anya, Tara could see, was feeling kind of like the fifth wheel and she was still confused about what was happening. It was easy to forget that this whole world was kind of new to her, she was discovering things as she went along. Not that everyone had to make allowances for that but… it made it easier to see why she said some of the things she did. Like now…
“Are we going to see the body?”
Her. Joyce. Not it. It’s not ‘the body.’ It’s her…
No one answered and Tara reached out to touch Willow, reassuringly. She was still here…
“I – I want that blue sweater,” Willow said. “I – I think that’s the best. Baby, would you check the laundry room for me?”
What could she say but “Of course.”
----------------------
Willow swallowed. She was trying, she was really trying…
“Will Joyce’s body be cut open?”
No prizes for guessing who that would be. Xander wasn’t helping keep Anya quiet and if she couldn’t blame him for wanting to fight back, she could blame him for that… Why couldn’t he keep Anya quiet? Who else as supposed to do it? Me?
“Why won’t anyone answer me?!”
“Just… stop talking, Anya,” she said. “Just shut your mouth, just for once.” She was trying so very, very hard… Tara had been out of the room for less than a minute and she was already jumping all over Anya… but that was what the girl did to her sometimes.
When I let her.
“Then tell me – help me understand it!”
“Xander…” Willow appealed, but he was in no fit state so... “You can’t say this stuff – you especially can’t say this stuff when we get to the morgue.”
Buffy will tear your head off…Right now, I wish I could. But she really will.
“Why?!”
“Because it’s not okay to say these things! You’ve got inappropriate dialled all the way up to eleven – as usual – and I can’t – we can’t – you just can’t say this stuff!”
“No one – no one will tell me why Joyce has to be dead,” Anya complained and then shrugged off Xander’s belated attempt to comfort her. He wasn’t helping… but neither had she. Instead Anya went and sat in the corner on her own.
The corner looked… it looked kind of appealing. Closed in… Safe.
The bad world was blocked out on at least two sides.
“We don’t know,” she said, after taking a deep breath. “We don’t know… We don’t know how it works or who makes the decisions or what to do about it. We. Don’t. Know. Okay?”
They stood or sat there then and waited for Tara. They couldn’t go anywhere until she knew, knew for sure whether the blue sweater was… She wanted the blue sweater, which Joyce had always liked and… she couldn’t finish changing until either Tara found it or she knew she’d have to pick something else. Something not purple. Something not green. Something that didn’t have silly stuff all over it. Something respectful…
She really, really hoped it was the blue sweater. With nothing to do though… It was hard not to think of Joyce, of all of them together… Maybe that was why Xander took a swing at the wall. Maybe it was the silence that did it. Maybe that was why he punched through it and got his hand stuck.
And there goes our security deposit…
Fuck it.
He still had his hand stuck there when Tara came back. “I missed something?”
“Xander decided to blame the wall,” Anya said as he pulled his hand out.
There was blood, but Tara was… Tara. She took control, dressing the wound for him. “You should know better,” she said. “The break’s only just healed.”
“No one said I was smart,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Come help me, Anya,” Tara asked and Willow recognised it for what it was, giving Anya something to do. It’d never occurred to her, but it would to Tara. She was… she just knew how to deal with people.
“You didn’t find the sweater?” she asked.
“Sorry, love.”
“It doesn’t matter… I guess, I guess we should go.”
She just picked up the first sweater she found. Suddenly it didn’t seem that important, but as they were walking out of the door, she went back and picked up the telegram Tara had received from the side, folded it carefully and put it into her pocket.
Buffy ought to have it.
--------------------
Mysteries.
They were this group of friend’s – this family’s really – stock in trade. They wanted to solve them, they solved them to keep people safe and now… someone else was solving it for them.
Gathered around, everyone was there, listening to a doctor tell them why Joyce was dead. Why she was on a slab in the other room after being on the couch cold and not moving.
It’d been a mystery, something to blame other people – or things – for. Something that made them feel like if we just knew, then we could do something about it.
That was the way things usually worked.
Except finding out, knowing, gave them nothing. No peace. Maybe it removed the need for revenge or justice, but it didn’t make any of them feel one bit better.
‘It just happened.’
Things did. Even here. The universe was full of things that ‘just happened’ but when it was something like this, you wanted something better than that as your answer.
‘An aneurysm.’
‘A known risk of the surgery Joyce had been through.’
Your doctor will have explained it to you then. Weren’t you listening?
‘Most likely related to the surgery, given the location.’
‘But it could happen to anyone. Any time.’
‘No one could’ve done… anything. Not even if they’d been stood right there at the very moment. A brain surgeon couldn’t have saved her then.’
‘I think we can be almost positive that she didn’t suffer.’
Almost positive? What sort of reassurance was that? Suffering… She’d seen real suffering at first hand though. She’d seen the effect of the drugs that were meant to help. She understood how, sometimes, pain – even that much pain – could be the lesser of two evils if you lost who you were. If you were just blitzed, out and unconscious… what was the point?
Better this way… perhaps, but she didn’t dare say it. Without seeing what she’d seen, who’d understand that point of view?
I wouldn’t have understood it. Three years ago.
‘Almost positive.’
Almost.
There were forms to be signed, of course. Always forms. Forms about forms. Forms to confirm that other forms had been signed satisfactorily. Witnessed. Giles had offered and Buffy had taken him up on it – probably not even grasping what he was talking about – but she’d only have to complete the ones that absolutely had to have Joyce’s next of kin’s signature. Until then though, he was off with the papers. And they were all…
What?
Waiting for what? Giles perhaps, but no one was making a move to leave and she certainly wasn’t going to be the one who suggested it. There was some reassurance that, if they were here, then they could all help each other be okay… As okay as they could manage right now anyway.
Buffy and Hope especially. They weren’t sisters, Joyce hadn’t been Hope’s mother but… you might’ve believed it, hard as the younger girl was taking this. And Buffy…
“I think she’s taking it worse than Buffy,” Willow murmured.
“Just more obviously,” Tara said. That was it. Buffy was rocked to her very core by what had happened. Who wouldn’t be? But she was hiding it better – or deeper. Buffy had lots of practice at being the one who had to be in control. Now that she wasn’t…
Willow made a little noise, like she was thinking about that, and went back to her silent musings.
Faith had brought Hope down, as expected and she was – almost – the most respectful of them all in how she was dressed. Black filled her wardrobe, but this was a different kind of black. A shirt she’d got from somewhere but Tara had never seen her wear.
Hope… looked like she’d just thrown whatever clothes hadn’t been too dirty on. Thought had been pretty much absent, she was strictly about function.
“I – I wish Joyce wasn’t dead,” Anya suddenly said. “She was nice.”
Willow, Tara could tell, was ready to explode – just to let off steam. But before she could even move her finger to warn her from doing that, how unfair it would be, Buffy had already thanked Anya.
The girl was trying her best. They were all trying their best… They all had to, because it hit everyone differently and everyone needed something different to get through it.
“Why don’t you go with Anya and Xander, baby,” Tara said. “Go get us all something to eat. We… I guess we need to keep our strength up.”
The look on Buffy’s face almost asked ‘what for?’ but when she looked over at Hope, she was sure she could see that resolve reform. She knew what for. Glory wasn’t going to stop… and yes, Hope had Faith. But they all – the whole world – still needed Buffy too.
It was rotten. It was terrible and it wasn’t fair. But there it was. And Buffy knew it too – which was why she agreed.
Maybe Buffy also agreed because once Willow had left with the others, her friend came and sat with her. Buffy who had barely moved unbidden in the last few hours and now…
“I’m sorry for making you go through this,” Buffy said, keeping herself very much to herself in the chair.
Tara shook her head, considering taking her hand but it seemed presumptuous. “Me? No, don’t worry about me.”
Buffy looked around, looked at the corridor that Willow, Anya and Xander had gone down. “Everyone wants to help.”
“Everyone always does.”
“I – I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what I need help with. I don’t know what they can do. Can they do anything? Should I let them?” The unspoken part was ‘maybe then they’ll feel better.’ As if it wasn’t really going to help Buffy at all.
“I don’t know.”
“But - ” Buffy let the thought die away.
“I went through it, yes,” Tara said. “I was seventeen. But… my Dad was around. The rest of the family.”
“I have family… don’t I?” Buffy asked.
“Yes. Yes, you do.” This time Tara did take her hand, squeezed it gently and felt some of the tension flow from the Slayer. Not all of it, not even most, but some…
“It’s not – stuff I… I feel – I don’t know.”
“That’s it,” Tara said. “When she passed… I had thoughts, I had feelings that I didn’t understand. No one I could tell them to, no one who I thought would understand. So… if you need to talk?”
“Was it sudden?” Buffy asked.
Was it sudden like this?
Tara shook her head. “No… and yes.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the end… it was almost a relief. And I couldn’t understand why I could feel that – even after the months… How could it be a relief that I was never going to see her again? But… in another way… it’s always sudden.”
-------------------
“Where’s Hope?” Willow asked as she came back with snacks. She was hoping that a selection of her favourites would tempt her, along with everyone else.
“I think she went to the rest room,” Faith said “But that was a while…” The Slayer pulled a face. “Shit – I mean damn, I mean – she talked about seeing the – about seeing her. I said she couldn’t… Little – she snuck off on me.”
Buffy stood up from beside Tara, a resigned look on her face. Willow knew it well. She was weary, going through the motions, but even twenty-five percent Buffy was better than a hundred percent of most people.
‘All I asked you to do…’ That was what Buffy should’ve been saying to her counterpart, but she didn’t.
I would’ve.
For now though, anything could’ve been happening. The world might’ve been about to end. “Let’s go find her,” Willow said.
“This is Sunnydale,” Tara pointed out.
“Things are bound to be going bad.”
“Dead people,” Faith said, then looked at Buffy. “Sorry – but, there are dead people, she was heading over there… Where is it?”
“Follow me,” Buffy said, suddenly animated if not enthusiastic.
They were asking her, Willow understood, to go back to the room where her Mom was – or near it at least – to find Hope and make sure nothing had happened. Last time it’d taken a few minutes to get psyched up and this time they didn’t have that luxury.
Going from room to room down the hallway, they made short working of checking the other places she could be and Buffy only barely hesitated outside the door where Joyce was…
And slowly she pushed the door open, refusing to let Faith go first after her sister.
Willow watched the anger flash onto her friend’s face before she went inside. But she could still hear Buffy. “You dare!? You dare?!”
“Don’t shout at her - ” Willow started, trying to push past and follow Buffy.
Except it wasn’t Hope that Buffy was shouting at was it?
Hope had spun around, alerted by Buffy’s arrival. Just in the nick of time, because this was Sunnydale after all… Behind Hope, on another table, was something that wasn’t as dead as it should have been. Another body, one that had been covered with a sheet the same as Joyce but… now was sat upright.
“Vampire,” Willow said, ducking her head back out of the door. “Vampire!”
No mistaking it, the feral need in its face as it spied its rising meal.
And it didn’t know enough to be afraid of the Slayer yet.
Maybe it’d have chance to gain a few seconds understanding.
Buffy had already crossed the space from the door to the table and thrown it off that perch into a heap in the corner. Willow followed, with Faith pressing up close behind her, trying to get in. Once she was inside though, she turned her attention to Hope, pushing her back into the opposite corner and away from what was happening.
Faith, she could see, was taking in the situation. One vampire, Buffy had it. No other tables. No other bodies but Joyce’s and so they knew… No other danger.
The darker haired Slayer interposed herself between Buffy, already pounding on the vampire’s face, and Joyce but then made no further move. She recognised something in Buffy, same as Willow did.
Buffy was screaming at the vampire as she beat it. It could’ve been put out of its rapidly increasing misery at any moment and in any number of ways. Right now Buffy could probably have twisted its head right off like a bottle top but she didn’t.
The shouting, the yelling was scaring Hope who was clinging to her, but that was fine. Maybe the girl – the Key – needed a scare. She couldn’t just go wandering off. Not even today. This was Sunnydale and she was very, very important.
And not just to them…
Didn’t stop her putting an arm around Hope though. The frustration, the anger and the pain… it was intended for the vampire, by now Buffy was barely aware of anyone or anything else.
Occasionally it was possible to make out something of what she was yelling at it. The hapless vampire, put here by virtue of bureaucracy and timing rather than any evil plan, was being taken apart piece by piece and Buffy was challenging it, demanding to know how it dared even be here. Now.
But the only answer she was interested in was the sound of pain or perhaps breaking bones. Another punch took out a number of its ribs after she’d already done the same on the other side.
Did it know that other dead body was its attacker’s mother? If it was aware of anything at all, then yes it did. Now. It probably regretted being in the same room just as much as Buffy didn’t want it here.
It didn’t take long but also far too long… Faith held them back from interfering – even though there was no danger of the vampire moving under its own power anymore. Seemed that she was a two way road block and Willow looked at Tara more than once. Are you going to let this go on?
Looked like the answer was ‘yes’ and so, with those two opposed to stepping in, Willow let it happen. Hope didn’t look, but she could hear all the same and the human – or once human – body made some terrible sounds when it was being deconstructed from the inside out.
Vampires, especially new ones, didn’t bleed much but… It was reduced to a pulp. Inside and out. Buffy wasn’t capable at the moment, not of being truly systematic about it, but all the same she’d done the same sort of damage as you might if you were setting out to crush but not kill it… Every limb was broken, more than once. The ribs… some were poking through its skin. The face was a mess, long since returned to a human form but looking even more distorted than when the demon was obvious. Broken nose, sunken skin where the cheeks and chin had been smashed.
And Buffy was still hitting it.
Willow almost missed it, but Tara did step up eventually, went to Faith and said… something. The other Slayer shrugged and instead of intervening handed over a stake. Tara gave her a look, then went to Buffy and – Willow thought for a moment Buffy might lash out at her, she caught her breath, but their friend had more control than that and let Tara past her…
First attempt, Tara slid the stake into the unprotesting vampire’s chest and pulled it out again before the stake could be caught up in its destruction. Precise.
Gone.
And that left Buffy… looking at her mother’s table, undisturbed. Still covered.
“She’s gone…” Buffy said, hugging Hope to her.
-------------------------
“I don’t remember my mother,” Diana said.
“I remember mine,” Tara said.
“I was never a girl,” the Goddess said. “I am now as I always was.”
Callisto moved up beside her, nuzzling for attention like her counterpart which Tara gladly gave an animal that would – up on its hind legs – be taller than she was. There wasn’t much saying no, not really. But she tended to think that Diana’s hunting dogs knew. They understood better than their mistress.
Dogs did that, they picked up on moods and recognised when a member of the pack needed sympathy or comfort, just as they knew when a quick nip or warning growl was required. They were great judges of energy.
“You summoned me,” Tara said.
It was the first time. Diana had been conspicuous by her absence these past months. Ever since Glory had come to town, ever since the earlier warning had been confirmed, she’d been seen infrequently. Wicca Group proceeded without either of them now, even though it was genuinely more magically focused than it had been. But a new intake of would-be wiccans only had the word of their older peers that, last year, something truly amazing had happened.
Tara couldn’t help thinking that Diana was afraid. That Glory had the beating of her. She’d already been in a battle and lost it – but against Glory, survival seemed like a victory.
Now this?
“That I did and you came.”
What choice did I have? Even now?
“The Key,” Diana said. “The girl.”
“Her name’s Hope.”
“She’s going to ask me,” Diana said.
“What?”
“What would you ask me, in her place? At her age?”
What Hope should ask was where Diana had been? Why she wasn’t helping? Why Diana wasn’t keeping her safe or hidden?
It wasn’t just Hope that should’ve been asking those questions, but – she supposed – it was tough to demand answers of your Goddess when you were face to face with her. Harder than anonymous protests to the heavens above.
Being disappointed with your Goddess… that was something she’d been building up to. Never more so than now though.
“What will you say?” Tara asked.
“To the girl? Or to The Key?”
***************
This story will next be updated on Saturday 9th November. Road trip. Laptops banned!
Have fun without me
K
