Chapter 5Tara came rushing down the stairs, looking for a towel. However she had no idea where to find one is this unfamiliar place. When she entered the kitchen she opened a kitchen-cupboard. With a loud bang a plastic dish hit the floor. Apparently opened the cupboard a little to fast.
The bang that sounded seemed at least four times louder now everyone was asleep and there were almost no sounds in the house. Tara hoped she hadn’t woken anyone, because of the noise it made.
She grabbed the dish and carefully put it back in the cupboard.
In another cupboard beneath the sink, she found a towel. She wetted it and folded it.
Tara’s worries showed in her face. It looked like the spark she felt between her and Willow was growing stronger the longer she away from her.
She wondered why Willow suddenly felt so icky, but she also decided not the worry about that right now. She wanted to go back upstairs to calm down Willow a little and to make sure she’d get some sleep.
Willow was fed up with it, she shouldn’t make a fool of herself like that, at least that was what she said to herself. She’d made Tara worry, just because of some little headache. She tried to convince herself that it was just a little headache, nothing more, nothing less. When she believed it herself, it might be easier to convince Tara it was really true.
The reason why she didn’t want Tara to worry, was a mystery, even to herself. She had the feeling she needed to be the strong one, not weak little Willow.
Willow was lost in these thoughts when she heard footsteps on the stairs: It was Tara coming back.
“Be strong!” she encouraged herself and so she did.
“Hey” Tara said when she came back “A little better already? I’ve gotten you a wet towel. It took a while, because I couldn’t find everything.”
“I’m fine, thanks! Willow said “The pain is less now. Doesn’t mean a thing. I’m sure it’s over tomorrow morning!”
The way Willow acted everything sounded rather convincing, though Tara didn’t believe her. It didn’t feel good to just go back to bed and to believe everything would be fine in the morning.
She walked around the bed, to the side where Willow was lying. She pressed the towel against Willow’s forehead.
The towel felt good against her head. Willow let out a sigh when she felt the wetness of the towel and felt the chill. No matter how bad she was fooling herself, she could tell it worked. The pressure in her head was decreasing.
Tara walked back to her side of the bed and crawled under the sheets. She turned her face over to Willow’s, so she could keep an eye on the redhead next to her. She wanted to know when things would go worse, but that wasn’t going to happen. Willow didn’t show anything and soon both witches were fast asleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The next morning some people awoke early in the Summers’ house.
Joan was the first to wake up. She walked down feeling a little awkward. She didn’t want to wake the people sleeping on the couch, but she really needed some water, so she decided to go down and get herself a glass of water.
When she came downstairs she quickly noticed that Giles and Anya were awake as well.
“Good morning” she said with a slight smile on her face when she noticed Giles’ sleepy head
“Slept well?” she added with a cynical tone in her voice
“Not at all!” Anya exclaimed “This couch really sucks! And Tara woke us last night when she was making a hell of a noise in the kitchen!”
“Tara was awake?” Joan was surprised.
“Yeah she was awake” Giles calmly said “She was looking for something in the kitchen and it sounded like she dropped something. Ever since we haven’t slept that much.”
“That much? That much?” Anya yelled “You better say not at all! Everyone’s got a bed and what do we get? The couch! Great really great! Perfect just perfect.”
Anya really sounded like someone with a big lack of sleep, and like someone who was dealing a big amount of morning crossness.
Joan decided to not pay attention to it, she was already used to Anya’s behaviour once in a while. Yesterday she had considered mentioning it, for a couple of times, but she decided it was better not to do that.
She slowly walked towards the kitchen, she left Anya and her rage behind.
In the kitchen she’d quickly found the coffee machine so she decided to go back and ask if the others would like to have some as well. They really looked like they had a big lack of caffeine
Joan opened the kitchen door and walked back towards the living room.
Anya had calmed down already
“Does anyone of you like to have some coffee?” she asked
“Oh yeah! I’d love to” Anya said with a longing tone in her voice. Joan was right when she thought she could use some.
Giles on the other hand didn’t want any coffee, but , how else…tea
In the meanwhile Willow had awoken upstairs. She hadn’t slept that much that night so she felt everything but rested, but her headache was gone.
She stretched herself and when she did that she touched Tara’s arm, who was still asleep.
“Hmm Willow?” Tara asked with a big yawn “How do you feel?
“I feel really great!” Willow answered “I told you everything would be okay in the morning. I was just stressed out, nothing more.”
“I think so too” Tara said, though she wasn’t convinced “But I still think it’s weird you were glowing like that. It was really like you had a fever.”
“Yeah” Willow said “but I didn’t feel like I had a fever.” Now she felt better, she didn’t feel the urge of being the strong one and so she decided to confess how she’d felt.
“I felt everything yesterday” she started “It was like there were a million of bugs crawling through my brain, they left a big pressure in my head, but I didn’t feel cold and shaky like when you have a fever. Must have been the stress.”
“Bugs?” Tara asked “You felt bugs crawling through your brain and you accidentally forgot to mention that?” Tara was visibly freaked out when she realized Willow’s headache wasn’t just a regular headache.
“Do you have that more often?” she asked
“Uhm… could be” Willow answered “I think I know just as much about me as you do at this moment, so I can’t tell exactly.”
“Yeah you might have a point there” Tara said “We need to find out more about us soon.” She accentuated the word us a little more then she intended to. She noticed her mistake
“I-I mean, maybe you’re on medication, maybe things go wrong when you don’t take them on time and is that why you felt so bad last night.”
“No!” Willow loudly said “I don’t think I’m on medication! I would have seen something around here that looks like medication, but I haven’t, have you?”
“No” Tara said “Haven’t seen anything” She realized Willow must be right here, but still she didn’t feel comfortable in the situation
“Let’s get some breakfast.” She finally said
Willow started to laugh a little and said: “Let’s have a look and see if there is anything to have for breakfast” She gave the blonde a wink and she grinned back.
When they came downstairs there was a funny show going on. Anya sat on the couch as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. She was leaning into Giles who was trying to sip on his tea, but at the moment Anya moved he slightly burned his mouth.
“Honey” he said while she spitted the tea back into the glass “Please be a little more careful.”
“Whoops sorry” Anya said. Her voice sounded sincere.
Willow softly laughed. “What a weird couple they are. I wonder how they met” she thought to herself.
Joan was the first one to notice the ladies’ presence, when she heard Willow laughing.
“You guys want some coffee or tea?” she asked.
Willow and Tara both took a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch.
“I heard you were haunting in the kitchen last night Tara?” Joan asked.
Tara had hoped no one had heard her and that she hadn’t woken anyone up, but unfortunately…
“I uhmm” she started “Willow didn’t feel that good last night, so I went to find a towel and I dropped the dish.” She said. She had to explain what she as doing out of bed in the middle of the night before people started to think weird things about her.
“Willow didn’t feel that good?” Giles asked “What was wrong?”
“Oh just a little headache” Willow replied careless.
“It wasn’t just a headache!” Tara said a little too fast.
When she saw Willow’s face she knew Willow wasn’t waiting to share this with everyone around. She realized she needed to make it up.
“I mean… she… it… it looked like she had a fever. She was glowing a little, so I went to get something cold to put on her face, but this morning everything was okay again. So nothing to worry about.” She was worried all the way. Feeling bugs crawling through your brain wasn’t nothing, but obviously it wasn’t time for Willow to talk about it.
“I’m sorry I woke you up for that.” Tara said with her head down.
“Ooh that doesn’t matter” Anya exaggerated “When some isn’t feeling good, you need to take care of them. That was very nice of you.” It sounded fake and if they wouldn’t have known Anya for a day, they would probably have thought she was nuts, but now they knew her a little, they knew she probably would have meant it.
Joan was listening with her mouth open to the words that were coming from Anya’s mouth. Twenty minutes before she was really pissed of because she hadn’t had a proper nigh sleep and now all of a sudden everything was fine.
“Some kind of a weird woman she is” Joan thought.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Upstairs, Dawn woke up. After she had properly stretched herself she decided to do some research in her room, maybe she would found out a little more about who she was that way.
On her desk she found a journal. She grabbed it, walked towards her bed and crashed on it.
“This must be important” she thought
“The youngest of the gang found something important! But if I take it downstairs with me, they take it from me! No doubt about that!” She decided she didn’t want that. The people in this house didn’t feel like the ones, with whom she wanted to share her deepest secrets.
She wanted to read what it said for herself first. If there were things in it, that she didn’t want to share, she could tear the pages and then show them her journal.
She opened the journal on the first page and read the date. It wasn’t even 3 months ago since she started this journal.
“There must be more journals then” she thought.
She got up and started to search for more journals, but she wasn’t lucky. After a while she decided it’s been enough. She wanted to know what was in her journal. She started to read:
Everything’s broken, nothing is the same, now Buffy isn’t around anymore. Everyone around me is sad and it’s all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened.
Willow’s been sad for weeks, because Tara lost her mind, because of me!
Anya got hurt, because of me!
Miss Kitty is gone, because of me!
Buffy gave her life, for me! She died, because of me!
First mom, now Buffy… everybody leaves me…“Oh my God” Dawn got scared of what she was reading, though she didn’t understand the half of it.
“What am I!” she thought
“I hurt my friends! What did I do?” She hardly dared to read more, afraid of what would come next, but something deep inside her said she had to read, this would probably be the only way to get some information. She was the missing link now. She could amaze the rest of the gang with the info she’d found. She bended her head and started to read again.
The Buffybot is a little useful, but it isn’t the same as the real Buffy. My Buffy didn’t need to be recharged every night or to be programmed when something went wrong. My Buffy’d been my sister. This is a robot. I could cry with my sister, when this one cries it gets rusty.
Willow and Tara are such sweethearts. I’m really glad Tara is alright again. She’s been a little icky for a couple of days, but you can’t blame her. A hellgod’s been stirring in her brain with her fingers. That’s not nothing.
Willow went incredibly mad when it happened, she even scared me with her scary black eyes. All alone she went after Glory. None of us had ever noticed Willow becoming so powerfull.
The only positive thing about this is that those two are still together! I love those guys.Dawn started to cry. She didn’t understand all of it, but she’d read something what she didn’t want to read. She threw the journal away. With a bang it landed against to wall. She pulled the sheets above her head and cried.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Downstairs the rest of the gang was still drinking coffee and tea. It was Tara who stood up first.
“I think I’m going to take a shower” she said “I think it’s gonna be a long day again and I’ve sat still enough for today, this can’t continue like this forever!”
“You’re right” Joan said.
“OH!”she suddenly yelled “We have a bath-tub!!! If you’ve had your shower I’m going to go in it for an hour, but don’t rush!”
Tara walked upstairs. The thought of a long warm bath soothed her. In the bedroom she started looking for some clean clothes.
Next to the bed, there was a picture of her and Willow. She grabbed the picture and carefully looked at it.
She got warm inside, just looking at the picture. “God I wish this was true” she thought as she let out a sigh. The thought of her and Willow being a couple made her feel warm from head to toe, but at the same time she was nervous. There were so many things she didn’t know yet…
On a shelve in the closet she found a jar with green bath salts, she put the jar on the bed next to the rest of her stuff.
When she’d collected everything she headed to the bathroom to take a nice bath.
She turned on the tab and started to undress. She let the warm water touch her hand to check the temperature of the water.
When the bath tub was halfway filled with water she added the bath salts. She turned away and carefully put the rest of her stuff away on a chair.
When she turned around again to step in the bath tub something scared the crap out of her.
Tara started to scream…
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Jeez, Dawn is playing sleepyhead” Joan said “I think the bed bugs have bitten her and now she can’t wake up anymore.”
“At least one of us had a proper night sleep” Anya said.
“I’m going to check on her” Joan said “It’s almost afternoon!”
“Afternoon?!” Xander yelled as he watched the clock “oh” was all he noticed the clock saying 11:45 am.
Joan walked along the stairs. When she stood in front of Dawn’s bedroom door, she stretched her arm, ready to knock on the door, until she heard a soft cry.
She knocked on the door.
“Dawn?” she carefully asked “ Dawnie are you alright?”
There was no reaction. Joan hesitated, could she just walk in? She decided to do so.
She opened the door carefully. She saw the teenager laying on her bed in foetus position.
“Dawn?” she asked again, while she sat down at the edge of the bed “What’s wrong?” she added when she still didn’t get any reply.
Dawn didn’t say a thing, she wasn’t able to. She pointed at the journal laying against the wall.
Joan stood up and walked towards the journal. She picked it up and started to check it out.
“It’s your journal” She surprisingly said.
Dawn awoke “NO!!! Don’t open it!” she yelled when she noticed Joan was about the read it’s content. “Don’t read it! You can’t read it! You don’t want to read it!”
Joan got a little scared and gave back the journal.
“I’m sorry” she quickly said “I didn’t want to… it’s yours… sorry”
She wanted to ask so many question, she opened her mouth to start with the first one, but at that moment she got startled by a horrible scream coming from the bathroom.
She left Dawn and started running towards the bathroom.
“TARA!” she yelled while she was banging on the door “Tara what are you doing? Open up! Open up NOW!”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
TBC
feedback is highly appreciated *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Aww, baby, want me to rub your tummy? She likes it when I...stop explaining things."-Tara
Amber Online www.amberbenson-online.cjb.net
Edited by: Eelzuhtjuh at: 2/18/04 1:19 pm
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don't worry is all I can say now 
