TITILE: GOOD THINGS
AUTHOR: Sinfaery
DISTRIBUTION: Sure. Ask.
SUMMARY: A Tara-centric romp through the past, and future.
RATING: PG, So far >evil wiggling of eyebrows<.
SPOILERS: Anything is fair game.
DISCLAIMER: Absolutely nothing belongs to me, and the music bounces all over from The Cure, Tori, and SLeater-Kinney
Part 1
The dreamy guitars and swirling melody filled the room as Tara stared at the ceiling. “If only I’d found the right word, I wouldn’t be breaking apart all my pictures of you,” Robert Smith crooned. Sighing, Tara blinked away the tears hanging on the edge of her eyes. This little ritual of filling the emptiness of her room with music and living out of her mind, through memories and daydreams, was consuming more and more of her free time lately.
A habit developing during the awkward years of high school, she would forever associate it with her fumbling journey into adulthood. It gave her space, from the world and even to some extent her own thoughts. The constant internal questioning and analyzing took a toll on her emotions until all she could do was lie back and let the music wash over her, awaiting the calming of her head when images and reminiscences emerged.
In the semi-darkness of the room, the CD player clicked and spun. A new song, this one presenting a rhythmic piano melody, pushed new images forward. “Thought that was a good solution: Hanging with the raisin girls.” Flashes of high school came. Perfect girls with dagger eyes gossiping around every corner. An awkward teenaged self trying to slip past as inconspicuously as possible.
Tara rolled over onto her side, glancing at the stereo. “They must have paid her a nice price. She’s putting on her string bean love.” Will loves this song. Loved this song. Loves. “This is not real, this is not really happening. You bet your life it is! You bet your li-” She punched the fast forward button on the remote and rolled back to her previous position, fixing her eyes on the ceiling again as the sinister bluesy guitar riffs chased the silence away.
The visions of a certain red head recede into the background slightly as Tara concentrated on the song. She wanted desperately to think of anything other than Willow. Now she’s invaded this too, Tara grimaced internally. This is mine. This is me. Just me. “Yours.” The familiar feelings of regret, sadness, and anger with a splash of disgust permeated her.
Since leaving the Summers’ house, Tara had grown accustomed to this reoccurring bundle of emotions. The break-up cocktail she tried to joke with herself. Out of all of the emotions though it was the anger that Tara dwelt on. She was still angry at Willow, still angry at herself, still angry at the whole situations. She had thought she was fine, having moved past the rage that had swept through her when Xander accidentally broke Willow’s disastrous forget spell. The idea of her lover, the one person who lived and breathed the closest to her heart and mind would continue to disregard her wishes, her trust, because it was easier. Easier to fix me. Easier to put everyone in danger. Tara remember the fury and heartbreak swirling inside of her so violently that burning tears teemed in her eyes, mercifully unfocusing the world.
But she had thought, later as she moved silently around their room filling boxes, that her anger had evaporated, that the sadness rooting at the base of her spine, making her back ache, was all that was left. She thought her rage drowned in the bile that rose in her throat from the disgust for herself at the remembrance of the intoxicating lust pumping through her body as Willow’s warm form pressed her down into the rough ground in the sewer moments before the spell’s veil on her mind was lifted.
Now however Tara realized that is wasn’t the self-loathing that had given her the strength to carry box after box down to the Summers’ porch. Tara recognized that it wasn’t her sadness that made her deaf and dumb to Willow’s teary pleas as she separated and packed her possessions. No, in plain and simple true it was her anger, her rage, her fury.
It was her anger that had frozen her heart, numbing her as a sobbing Willow disappeared into another part of the house; her anger that didn’t let her chase the wounded Dawn to try and explain. Tara continued to breathe and move, to exist due to her anger, the feared unfamiliar emotion.
But the time away was good,…Until…Tara’s eyes narrowed as she remember the morning. Seeing Willow, so beautiful, so simply Willow, had make Tara nervous, about fifty different emotions ready to jump the gun, causing her speech to dissolve into a stutter.
Then the heartbreak began as she focused on the girl standing next to Willow. “Amy! Amy the rat?” Relief and confusion! Crushing devastation and heartbreak back in line, please.
“And Willow! She's a freaking amazing witch now. I couldn't even keep up with her last night.” Just like that, a simple statement, and Tara felt her rage returning with homicidal velocity. Two choices: walk away or explode. And I walked away, she mused, vaguely recalling without a word stomping past a confused-looking Buffy.
Her anger kept resurfacing and it worried her. Tara could count the times she had been truly, blindly, passionately angry before all of this on one hand. How can I feel so damned empty and sad and angry and confused all at once? It didn’t make sense. But then again when does anything make sense?
“I won’t have it in my house!”
“She deserves to know her heritage!”
“Heritage?!? The same ‘heritage’ that’s brought nothing but trouble and chaos under our roof,…” The irate sounds of her parents’ argument drifted up the stairs. Tara cringed inside. The same fight as always escalated with the passage of each day. It didn’t make sense. Tara has never seen her mother use magic for anything other than helping others. But the sight of any magical accouterments would send her father into a rage.
Trying to drown out the arguing, she looked back down at her math homework. The numbers faded before her eyes as her attention strayed to the commotion downstairs.
“No more magic. I forbid it! And I forbid you to teach Tara anymore of that nonsense!”
“Nonsense!!! That same ‘nonsense’ has been in my family since before,…” her mother’s words became unintelligible as Tara, giving up on her homework, pushed her hands through her long blonde hair, pressing her palms momentarily to the sides of her head. Her eyes darted around her room. Ah, man, she mentally kicked herself for leaving her schoolbag downstairs.
Quickly weighing the value of retrieving her bag containing her precious walkman versus braving the minefield of familial strife, Tara rose quietly from her desk and crept out of her room. Stopping at the top of the stairs to judge the situation again, Tara bent and craned her neck, finally catching an oblique view of her parents.
“It’s not a healthy influence for the girl!”
“It was a perfectly healthy influence for me as a child,” her mother retorted taking a shaky step forward.
“Think about her future! Where this could lead her! How can you call yourself a loving mother!” Tara slowly inched down the stairs.
“I am thinking about her future, you pompous bastard! And if you can’t see that, then,…well,” her mother flustered, turned and grabbed her purse. Tara froze as her mother attempted to push past her father.
Swiftly reaching out, he grabbed her mother’s wrist and roughly yanked her back to him. “Don’t dare walk away from me!” From her perch Tara could feel the anger vibrating in her father’s voice.
Her mother paused taking a deep calming breath. “I need to go to the market before dinner,” she said through a clenched jaw. After a long moment, he released her. Tara watched her father stand there a moment the slamming of the front door finally bring him back to life as he sank onto the sofa, resting his head in his hands.
Taking a shallow breath, Tara slowly slid on the stairs. Reaching the final stair, she misstepped and the baseboard let out a stifled moan. She froze as her father’s head snapped up, her own blue eyes reflected back at her with a whirlwind of emotions as he focused on her.
“Tara!” he roared, standing up.
“Y-y-yes, sir?”
“Have you finished your homework yet?” the question was laced with barbed wire.
“N-n-no, sir. I n-n-need a book from, from my bag.”
He eyed her, his face a ruddy unreadable mask, and stood. Rooted to her stop, Tara watched as her father grabbed her schoolbag, walked over, and presented it to her. Her eyes quickly darted between his ominous enigmatic face and her schoolbag. She carefully reached out and grabbed it. His blue eyes burning into her as his fist remained clenched over the material. Tara felt fear and intimidation drying up her throat as she stood perfectly still, too petrified of the possibility of the next few moments.
“Be a good girl and finish by the time your mother gets back so you can help her with dinner,” her father sighed finally, releasing the bag, the flush fading from his face.
“Y-y-yes, sir,” she uttered quietly and quickly retreated up the stairs to the haven of homework and the solace of her walkman.
“It’s fine, when it’s all mine. It’s on my wall, it’s in my head. Memorize it ‘till I’m dead. It’s yours, now I’m so bored,” the stereo whispered into the mid morning light before bursting into a flurry of refined female rock fury.
Tara jolted awake at the sound of crashing cymbals and sonic guitars. Rubbing her eyes and glancing at the clock, she sighed to discover not only was it nearly 10:45 but that she had fallen asleep fully clothed, again. Rolling out of bed, Tara shut off the stereo and sought out the comforting warmth of a shower.
Just then the phone erupted in a high pitched electronic ring, further grinding Tara’s nerves. Pausing, she answered.
“Uh, Tara?”
“Hey, Buffy,” her voice warmed. “How are you?”
“Fine, fine. Um, listen, some,…stuff happened last night,…”
Part 2
Sitting amid the lunch time rush at the Espresso Pump, she waited at tall bistro table for Buffy. After having a strangled conversation with the slayer, who kept dropping her voice to an inaudible whisper as she tried to relay the recent events without alerting the rest of the household, Tara had suggested they met for coffee to further discuss the “incident.”
Surveying the entrance for any sign of Buffy, she went over again what she had gathered from the conversation. - ’Willow’s into something dark, and dangerous’ – okay, bad. ‘But she’s sworn off magic.’ Good, very good. ‘Dawn’s arm’s in a cast but the doctors say she’ll be fine.’ Bad. ‘I didn’t know. I mean, I guess it makes sense that something was up, ya know, but I just- I shoulda,…’ Upset confused Buffy, Bad, very bad. -
Tara wrapped her hands around her warm mug of vanilla chia and waited. She swirled the mugs contents, smiling slightly as she thought of the “One cup limit” rule on chia tea that she had instituted last semester when she had watched Willow consume three grande servings of chia during a study break. - She insisted that it would be the best mnemonic device ever for physics if I’d just lay back and help test Newton’s Laws. ‘You know, an object in motion with stay in motion,’ she had stated, pulling me closer and lightly kissing me. ‘Until acted on by an equal or opposing force.’ ‘Will, we really, really need to study,…’ ‘I know, and this would be studying! Fun with education!’ seductive Willowgrin, ‘See I’ve been thinking about inertia and friction,…and I thought maybe you could help me in the mnemonics department,…’ -
Her smile faded as she came back to the present and sadly took a spill of her tea. - No, no, that was a good memory. And of the past. But that’s ok. Memories are allowed to be good, fond and warm - Tara had already promised herself that she wouldn’t let the bad parts of her and Willow tainted the good parts. - Just because things don’t always turn out spectacularly, doesn’t make the entire experience negative –
___________________________________________
“I’m not like them, but I can pretend. The sun is gone but I have a light. The day is done but I’m having fun. I think I’m dumb, or maybe just happy. Think I’m just happy, think I’m just happy,…” Ignoring the music piping over the music store’s overhead speakers, Tara delicately rooted through the used record bin. She didn’t have a lot of time before she needed to be home to start supper, but she was sure that she’d seen a dirt-cheap copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors last time she had stopped into the music store.
“I can’t believe they keep sayin’ this guy is the voice of a generation,” a voice commented to her.
Startled, Tara looked up at through a veil of blonde hair. “W-w-what?”
A boy about her age with a sloppy stock of black hair and flashing eyes gave her a lazy grin. “Cobain,” not seeing a change in her expression, he tilted his head towards the overhead speaker.
“Oh, um, I don’t r-r-really listen to, ah, them, N-nirvana, I mean,” Tara glanced around nervously, making sure the boy was actually addressing her.
“Nah, me neither. I’m more into the real deal,” he gestured quickly to the back of his studded black leather jacket.
“D-dead Kennedys?” Tara read the hand painted logo on his back.
“A classic group from the Bay area. Yep. The real deal.”
“Um, o-okay,” she nodded still not quite sure why this random boy was talking to her. Admittedly he did look familiar. Maybe one of the punk kids that went to her high school. They were a noticeable if marginal segment of the student body.
As if on cue, he turned around and the lazy grin over took his face again. “You go to my school, don’t ya? You’re a junior, right?”
She nodded mutely and glanced around the store again.
“Cool. I’m David. I’m a senior,” he extended his hand.
“Um, Tara,” she shook his hand then shoved her hands into her hooded sweatshirt’s pockets.
“Nice to met ya, Tara,” he said, leaning against the record bin. “So what are you into?”
“Ahh,…”
“Ya know, musically?”
_________________________________________
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Buffy said, placing her mug on the table before boosting herself up into the high chair opposite Tara.
“I-it’s fine,” Tara smiled, coming out of her memory.
Buffy paused, looking past her for a second. “So, I wanted to ask you a couple of things. About dark magic.”
Tara nodded, figuring that the slayer had probably relayed all the crucial information about the events of last night and didn’t want to upset her by delving into it detail for detail. “What do you want to know? It’s destructive and addicting.”
“Exactly. How addictive? Isn’t there something you can, we can do for her? Like bind her or something?”
“It’s not that simple, Buffy,” she began slowly. “It’s addicting because it makes everything easier, convenient.” – At least for Willow – she pushed the bitter thought away. “And it’s seductive, powerful.”
The slayer nodded attentively. “But there’s a cure, right?”
“It’s, it’s not something like that. It’s not like smoking where you can quit in get the patch,” Tara sighed. “We can’t help her. She needs to do it herself. She not just using darker magicks; she abusing magic in general. I-I-I-“ Flustered Tara paused. “Be supportive. All you can do is be there for her.”
“All we can do, right?” Buffy looked questioning across the table.
“I-“ Tara paused, returning her gaze. “I don’t know if I can do that right now. I mean, I want to but I-“
Buffy shook her head. “It’s okay, Tara. It’s okay.”
Silence settled between them. Buffy sipped her coffee. Tara looked down into her half-full mug and swirled the contents again. The lunch time rush had passed, and a busboy was busy clean the table next to theirs.
“I-I-I’ve class soon. Would it be okay if I stop by later, to visit Dawn,” Tara stood and grabbed her bag.
“Yeah, I’m sure she’d like that. You still have your key?”
“Uh, yeah,” Tara nodded. “I keep m-meaning to drop it off-“
Buffy shrugged. “Keep it. Just in case.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later,…”
The slayer was gazing into her coffee. “Yeah, later. Have a good class.”
Tara paused for a moment, her hand reaching out to squeeze Buffy’s arm in affection. She stopped herself, taking in the slayer’s concentrated countenance, then turned and walked away.
Part 3
The winter sun warmed Tara’s back as she turned down the sidewalk in front of UC Sunnydale and headed in the direction of Revello Drive. Class had passed quickly and offered enough stimulation to pull her out of her thoughts. But now as her eyes focused on the indiscriminate divots in the sidewalk that pasted under her feet her pensive mood returned.
Pale sunlight streamed through the window as Tara pulled the photo album off the shelf. Turning to the bed, she curled up next to her mother and open the album.
Gazing over grainy black and white childhood pictures, she felt her mother’s soft hands brush through her long blonde hair. A life time of photos and memories rested between the album’s leather cover, her mother’s life time, and now, more than ever, Tara hungered for the knowledge of the older woman’s experiences. “And that’s you at Grandma’s house?” Tara asked, pointing at a small black and white snapshot.
“Yes,” her mother said, smiling and continuing to stroke her hair. “Me and your Aunt Rose. We were about fourteen or fifteen, I think.”
Tara leaned back carefully into her mother’s frail frame, contemplating the picture. She traced her finger over the image of her mother’s face, framed by long flaxen hair and still slightly pudgy with baby fat yet pretty none the less. Tara turned the page, watching as her mother changed from a pretty young girl into a graceful beautiful woman. She stopped abruptly.
“Is, is that Daddy?” she asked in slight disbelief, pointing to a color photo of her mother, in her twenties, dressed in a tie-dye sun dress with her hair in two thick braids held in place with a beaded headband. Standing next to her, arm over her shoulder and flashing a peace sign, was a young man with shaggy light brown hair, wearing lovebeads and a grungy poncho. Tara knew her mother had kinda been a hippie in her youth; it was obvious from her record collection. But her father, a peace-loving non-conformist?
Her mother let out a small chuckle. “Don’t sound so surprised. We actually met at a love-in.” She smiled as Tara’s eyes grew round. “He was quite the stud back then.”
“Mom!” Tara squeaked. Her mother let out another chuckle before a thick cough racked through her chest.
Tara shifted from against her mother, slipping the album quickly from her lap, and reached for a glass of water on the night stand next to her. “Mommy, here,” she whispered, bringing the glass to her mother.
After a moment her mother caught her breath, smiling slightly as she handed the glass back to Tara. Slipping her thin arm around her waist, her mother gently nudged Tara back next to her. “Thank you, baby,” she murmured, softly kissing Tara silky hair.
“So, you and Daddy were hippies?” Tara asked quietly.
Her mother nodded. “That photo was taken about a month before he was drafted.”
“But if you both were involved in the Peace Movement,…?”
“Well, your father disagreed with what the government was doing but he wanted to stay true to his principles, feeling that dodging the draft would break the more important code of civic responsibility.” Her mother turned the page and pointed to a picture of her father in the dress uniform of the Marine Corps. “I didn’t want him to go, but he insisted on his personal principles,” she shook her head, smiling slightly, a sad note faintly resonating in her tone. “The war was over before he even finished basic training.”
They sat quietly after that, as the pale sunlight crested into a golden afternoon glow. Tara turned the page. Resting her palm flat on the page, she angled her gaze to her mother’s face. “Is that when,…it got,…different?” she ventured, unsure of her words.
“Got different?” her mother repeated, frowning. After a long moment, her mother sighed, running her fingers through Tara’s hair again. “Baby, people grow and change,” she began slowly. “And love doesn’t stop. The moment you love becomes eternal. Love can fade sometimes, but it never ceases to be,…it-it’s always there. And sometimes, I think, the true test of living, living your life well, is to keep loving,…Do, do you understand, Tara?”
Tara quietly absorbed her mother’s words, mulling over her mother’s meaning and the battles and unspoken reconciliations that constituted her parents’ marriage. She nodded and rested her head against her mother’s shoulder. “Yes, Mommy, I, I understand,” she said quietly.
Her mother’s thin arm tightened around her. “Good, baby, good.”
Climbing up the steps to the Summers’ front porch, Tara dug in her bag for her key. Slipping the key into the lock, she hesitated and took a deep breath, vaguely unsure of her reserve. –- Okay, breathe, Tara, breathe and turn the key. – She rested her head for a moment against the door of her former residence. – Still coming home. Willow. It’s okay, just,…You’re here to see Dawn. Here for Dawnie. Breathe -- She turned the key and slipped into the house.
Tara stopped at the bottom of the stairs, glancing into the vacant living room. A familiar guitar riff drifted down from the second story, filling the nervous empty air surrounding her. As she ascended the stairs, a second guitar picked up the melody.
Stepping into the second story hallway, the larger than life voice of a siren emanated from Dawn’s room. “Got this feeling when I heard your name the other day. Couldn’t say it, couldn’t make it go away.”
Tara drifted towards the music slipping from the open door of the teen-ager’s room. A click at the end of the hallway drew her eyes.
A startled Willow froze with her hand still on the doorknob. “It’s a hard place, can’t be friends we can’t be enemies. It’s just too much, feel the weight crushing down on my face.”
Tara’s gaze locked onto the redhead. The other woman looked haggard, fading dark circles ringing her emerald eyes. -- She looks like crap -- Willow glanced down and quickly returned her stare to Tara’s eyes. -- God, she’s beautiful. Breathe. -- Tara felt her reserve quaking, part of her longing to take the worn woman into her arms.
Willow finally released the doorknob and took a hesitant step forward. Tara opened her mouth – Willow – as her stomach started a familiar tingle. “The hardest part is things already said. Getting better worse I cannot tell. Why do good things never wanna stay. Some things you lose, some things you give away,” the song flooded over her, sadness with its longing and confusion with its fury twisting up her throat.
Tara ripped her gaze away from Willow, blinking and taking a deep breath. “Broken pieces, try to make it good again,” she heard Willow’s muffled footfall as she took another unsure step.
“Is it worth it? Will it make me sick today?” Tara glanced up again, immobilizing the redhead, and took a step forward, slipping into Dawn’s room.
“It’s an old mistake but we always make it. Why do we?” The girl was sitting next to the window, enveloped in the winter sunlight. Dawn looked up with puffy red eyes as Tara quickly cross the room.
“Why do good things never wanna stay? Some things you lose, some things you give away.” Reaching up Dawn wrapped her undamaged arm tightly around her waist. Tara gently passed her hand through the girl’s long thick hair as Dawn’s shoulders began to tremble.
“This time it’ll be alright. This time it’ll be okay,” Tara sank to her knees and pulled the younger girl into a hug. “This time it’ll be alright. This time it’ll be okay.” As the song began to fade, Tara breathed and their tears blended.