Oh goodness. I awoke this morning with a burning need to write a W/T Christmas fic. Really, I dunno what's wrong with me. Christmas fic. *shakes her head, wondering what the world is coming to* I swear I meant to knock off the fan fic thing for a good week or two, at least, and work on something that could actually lead to me getting paid someday, but... alas, the pull of the Buffyverse is just too strong. It's official. I'm doomed.

At any rate, here's the first part. I'm posting it in the hope that doing so will serve as a kick in the rear to get me going on the rest and have it finished by, at the latest, Monday evening. Wish me luck. I still have a whole crapload of shopping to do tomorrow. *forehead slapping noise*



Title: Coming Home

Author: Dumbsaint

Disclaimer: Mutant Enemy. Joss. Grr. Arrgh.

Pairings: W/T, X/A, it's kinda ensemble-y.

Rating: PG. Might go up to PG-13ish at some point, not quite sure. What the hell is my problem lately anyways? Where oh where has my little smut muse gone? I miss her so.

Spoilers: Season 6, up through Wrecked.

Summary: "It's Christmas, baby. Please. Come home." That goes for you, too, smut muse.



"Coming Home," by Dumbsaint



“Are you sure, Tara?” Buffy asked gently, waving a hand to silence Dawn, who stood nearby, poised to argue against the sad defeat she saw written in her older sister’s eyes. The elder Summers sadly shook her head, reinforcing that this just wasn’t the time to be pushing and hoping that her body language translated properly into fifteen year old, praying that she hadn’t done more damage than good in asking.



Tara’s voice came over the line full of such resolve as to even give ‘Willow resolve face’ a run for its money.



“Yes, but thank you, Buffy,” the blonde Wiccan answered a shade too politely. “It’s n-nice- it’s nice of you to think of me, but-” she faltered. “I don’t think that’s really a good idea… right now.”



“Tell her Willow is better!” Dawn hissed. “She’ll listen to you. Tell her about giving up the magic-”



Two flashing blue eyes and a firmly set mouth finally did succeed in silencing the teenager, who stalked a few feet off to flop, disheartened, on to the sofa. Buffy had already told Tara about all that over coffee a few weeks back, and the looks on the gentle blonde’s face, of competing sorrow and destroyed hope just begging to be allowed to live again had touched Buffy deeply. Slowly, feeling had begun to trickle back in to her shell-shocked body, her numbed heart, and Tara’s pain had registered itself on a previously forgotten level. Other people’s bewildered disappointment. Other people’s hurt.



It felt good to feel compassion again, simple human compassion. Not the mission statement, blanketing protectiveness she felt for all people as the slayer, but that shared sense of aching for things to be made right in their lives. She’d felt that sitting across the table from Tara, and she felt it again now, creeping up behind the girl’s insistent tone.



“Um,” came her voice again. “Tell Dawn I’m sorry.” Her voice betrayed a soft wistfulness.



“She understands, Tare,” Buffy offered kindly. “We all do. But if you change your mind, we’d still love to have you. You don’t have to call or anything, just show up. We’ll be here.”



“Th-thanks.” If she wasn’t already in tears, she was close to them, Buffy could tell. “I um, I’ve got to go-”



“Sure. Sure.” The slayer found herself nodding reassuringly, as though the girl would be able to pick up on that from across town. She rolled her eyes at herself derisively and added, “Merry Christmas, Tara.”



“To you, too. Buffy.” The witch hesitated for just a moment and then ended the conversation. “Goodbye.”



The line clicked and gave way to the monotonous drone of the dial tone. Buffy listened to it for a bit, just standing there, letting the sound stretch on indefinitely, opening up cavernous canyons of distance in her mind. She could feel herself slipping away again, into the place where the world spun quickly around her, where the worst of the pain couldn’t touch her, where everything faded to a dull ache. It was quiet there. Not the peaceful warmth she had known in- but it was something. Something to hold on to.



But no. She couldn’t linger on there. She couldn’t let herself. Not now. There was someone she needed to be holding on to. Someone who needed her terribly, needed her to be here . She snapped back into the knowledge that she was standing in her living room, the sound of cars on the street outside, the wind in the trees- she clung determinedly to those things, pulling herself hand over hand from the quicksand mire of timelessness.



Slowly, she hung up the phone, struggling with the simple action, willing it to bring her back to this moment. A glance over to the sofa showed Dawn listlessly sprawled there, quiet tears trickling down her face.



Dawn. Crying. Hurting.



Steeling herself against the familiar tide of numbness, Buffy forced it away, letting the feelings rise up and fill her. It was all or nothing, and though the pain that laced her love for her sister threatened to completely overwhelm all other emotion, she pressed on, letting it all come. She could do this, for Dawn.



She settled herself on the couch next to the silent, weeping girl and reached for her, the teen instantly entangling herself in her sister’s arms, accepting the comfort she offered with a grateful sigh. Buffy laid her face against silky hair and closed her eyes, her own grief welling up to the surface. She let herself feel it, but more importantly, she let herself hope. They could do this. They’d all be alright. Somehow.



*****



The room she rented in the old house was quiet, the voices of the old couple who had lived there for forty years coming, hushed, from other rooms from time to time. At first the high ceilings had made her feel smaller, the walls looming above her, threateningly far away. This room was bigger than her dorm room had been, bigger than the room she had shared with Willow in the Summers’ home. In her home. It had been. Hers. Theirs.



She didn’t wake up afraid, wondering where she was anymore, and the pale walls that stretched on, seeking upwards no longer made her feel tiny or lost beneath the empty space between herself and the slanted ceiling. There was a small but wide window over her bed, very high up near where the rest of the ceiling sloped upwards to the highest point in the room. The first week she’d been here there had been a new moon. Appropriate, that, she knew. But the increased darkness had made it scarier, the newness of being here, until gradually, bit by bit, moonlight started come through that high window, washing down over her in healing draughts that increased, nightly, until the pale luminescence of the full moon found its way to her in her new place. It had lit up this new world with its familiar sheen of silvery softness, somehow chasing away the last of the lingering shadows, making the room safe at last. Safe for her. Announcing that she had been there for two full weeks, fourteen days away from her Willow. It had been six weeks now, and another full moon loomed in the nighttime sky tonight. Tara tried to take comfort in the faithfulness of that cycle, the steady familiarity of waning and waxing light, waning and waxing life. She tried, but all she could see were the weeks and months stretching out ahead of her. Alone. Far away tomorrows which night find her still cut off from the people she had come to see as her family. From Buffy, Xander, and Anya, who had finally accepted her as one of their own this past year. From Dawn, who was so much like a sister to her, nearly a daughter.



The ache of missing Willow was an ever-present wound, the betrayal and disappointment, the shock of being hurt so much by the only person she had ever trusted completely with her heart, all of it mixed together in a churning knot of pain that never gave her peace. Always it tugged her back downwards into a sea of grief if she started to momentarily forget, never letting her lose herself entirely in her studies or in the novels she read hungrily, trying to distract herself.



She tried to sleep, her arms wrapped around a pillow. It was a poor substitute for what she had grown so accustomed to holding in her arms as she drifted off at night, but better than giving in completely to the emptiness of this bed. Still, she lay awake for a long while, too exhausted to think or feel much except for the lingering sadness that was always with her now. Yet again.



When her mother had died she had lain like this in the room she shared with Beth, listening to the steady rise and fall of the other girl’s breath, wondering how she could sleep so peacefully, breathe so easily, this cousin who had come to live with them when mom first got sick, to help out around the house. How could she, herself, keep breathing, keep going, she had wondered. How could anyone go on living in this world when her mother was no longer in it?



But no, something had whispered to her those nights, something familiar and soft in the back of her mind. There was a place there where a voice spoke to her in her darkest moments. The same place where something smiled, infinitely patient and kind, loving, watching over her through joy and sorrow alike. Someone.



“You make a place for her,” she had told Dawn on the day of Joyce’s funeral, “in your heart.”



Someone who promised that love was alive and well in the world, and waiting to find her again. That love was strong enough to survive all things, all pain. Even death no match for the boundless strength of love.



The moonlight wrapped around her like a blanket, Tara let her mind drift into warmth. Memories of being held by loving arms, of resting safe in the circle of perfect trust, seeped into her in a steady rhythm that, gradually, her breath began to match. The need of her body, her spirit, for rest overriding the pain that claimed her so greedily during her waking hours, finally, she slept.



*****



Xander lay flat on his back on the floor of the Magic Box, his arms splayed out at his sides. He was too exhausted to do more than blink up at the ceiling occasionally, having just spent ten hours on his feet, running around assisting last minute holiday shoppers stock up on eye of newt and essence of monkey toe candles. Really, working his butt off at the construction site had nothing on working retail. How did Anya do this every day? Granted the shop had been much busier than usual today, what with the final rush of last minute Christmas shopping.



And what was up with the Christmas rush at a magic shop anyways? He had thought that people swingin’ with the whole Wiccan thing didn’t celebrate Christmas. So much for that idea. Willow had never been much for it, that’s for sure. ‘Course she was raised Jewish before she converted to Wicca. Tara liked Christmas, though, and she was like… third generation Wiccan, at least. Last year she had made a big deal out of it, he remembered, making gifts by hand for the Scoobies and generally making with the merry. In fact, last year was the first time he remembered Willow getting excited about Christmas. Tara’s enthusiasm for it had infected her utterly, getting his favorite redhead all excited about giving gifts and decorating their dorm rooms. The witchy duo had spent some quality time under the mistletoe after Joyce’s dinner that night, too.



God, poor Buffy and Dawn. This would be their first Christmas without her. It was going to be hard on all of them; Joyce had been a surrogate mother to both himself and Willow, too. And Willow without Tara now- yeah, this year had the makings of a very depressing holiday.



Xander frowned. There had to be something he could do about that. The problem was, what? His exhausted brain tumbled like an empty washing machine stuck on spin cycle, thumping about in futile circles.



A soft weight sinking down onto him brought him abruptly back into the moment. Anya had settled herself atop him, smiling down at him fondly.



“You done doing your Capitalist dance thingee now, Ahn?” he asked, his voice sleepy.



The ex-demon wrinkled her nose distastefully before answering, “Ever since the Broadway review demon incident, it just hasn’t seemed as entertaining.” She fitted herself snugly against his body, laying her head on his chest. “Besides, I’m not really in the mood for gloating about all the money I made today, anyways.”



“Why’s that do you think?” He asked as he threaded his fingers through her hair, delicately scratching her scalp the way she liked him to. She purred like a cat, stretching her neck and leaning into the caress, and wrapped her arms more tightly around him.



“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice taking on a bewildered tone. “It’s very upsetting to not feel giddy after such an economically successful day.” Anya hauled herself up on one elbow, propping her chin up so that she could look down at him again. She eyed him irritatedly. “Actually, it’s your fault.”



This elicited another frown from the hapless construction worker, who wished for the ten billionth time since meeting Anya that he could more easily follow her sometimes inscrutable ex-demony logic. “My fault?” He tried to keep his tone light, knowing that she often said things she didn’t entirely mean, or that they just came out kinda sounding wrong.



“Yes,” she pouted. “Your friends are all… sad. And I care about them. They’re my friends now, too, so... so it’s making me sad, that they’re unhappy. So much that even my brand new money brings me no joy. Just this kind of… hollow feeling. Almost like-” she struggled to explain what she felt. Used to this, Xander continued to stroke her hair, patiently waiting for her to find the words she was looking for. “It’s making me look at my money differently, them being sad when all the commercials and songs on the radio say that everyone should be happy at this time. All the signs point to buying things in order to make everything better but… it doesn’t, really, does it? We can’t just spend the new money on them and make them happy with… things. It should just be that simple,” she insisted. “But it’s not. I don’t like that at all.”



A slow grin crept to Xander’s face. “Anya, you didn’t happen to be visited by three ghosts while I was passed out here on the floor, did you?”



“Ha!” Anya crowed. “I happen to recognize that reference, for once, and no, I am not having an Ebenezer Scrooge type realization about how money can’t buy happiness and that there are more important things in life-”



The blonde’s face fell suddenly, a sullen expression settling itself on her lip. Xander laughed softly and was rewarded with a light smack on the arm.



“Okay, so I maybe I am having a Scrooger moment,” she conceded, sighing disconsolately.



“Scrooger? You mean Scrooge,” Xander offered helpfully.



“No, I mean Scrooger. He’s another guy who the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future did their mojo on. It was always us capitalist types they went after. They were Marxist thinkers, you know. Stinking socialist apparitions,” spat the ex-demon rather acidly.



“Are you telling me that those ghosts actually exist?” Xander had long since grown used to hearing the inside scoop on the paranormal world from his thousand year old fiancé, but she still managed to shock him now and then with the information she was privy to.



“Well, used to exist.” She yawned, settling herself back down against him.



“What happened to them? They were just like they are in the story?” He kissed her forehead, smiling at the warmth and closeness of her.



“Yeah, pretty much. They were assigned every year to visit a couple of humans on Christmas Eve. But they got fired back in ’96 when they failed to get the president of the Starbucks corporation to mend his capitalist tycoon ways.” Her tone was smug relating this last bit, her smile practically shouting, ‘Yay capitalist tycoon man!’



“Wow!” Xander marveled. “The president of Starbucks is human?! I had that guy figured for hellspawn for sure.”



“Mhmm,” she nodded absently. “Xander, we should lock up and go home or we’re going to fall asleep right here and wake up too sore tomorrow from sleeping on the floor to have wake up sex.”



“Ah, the wake up sex. Paling in comparison only to the make-up sex,” he quipped, kissing the tip of her nose before moving his hands to her waist to help her up off of him. She rose and returned the favor, hauling him up beside her and kissing him sweetly. Her face was still drawn into sad lines.



“You okay?” He asked, cupping her face in his hands.



“Yeah, I was just thinking about Tara spending Christmas alone. Buffy invited her to be with all of us, but she doesn’t feel comfortable, because of everything that has happened. You know, her and Willow. Which is awful, really, because…” she trailed off sadly. “We’re all she has. And I think she thinks that she doesn’t have us anymore, that since they broke up she isn’t our friend any longer.”



“That’s silly,” Xander insisted.



“I know!” The ex-demon fumed, frustrated for her friend, and at her. Silly shy Wiccan, all insecure and… Anya sighed. She just couldn’t be mad at Tara, sweet, loving, always getting knocked down just when she started to gain some self-confidence Tara. Boy, if she had her powers back, she’d sure like to have a go at Tara’s father, that manipulative, bullying, misogynistic jerk.



Xander continued to watch Anya’s face, the blonde having grown silent over the past few moments. Now an almost ridiculously vindictive grin affixed itself to her mouth. Xander suppressed a chuckle, knowing exactly what the smile meant. She was reliving her glory days.



“Have you been hanging out with Tara?” He prompted, trying to gently draw her back into the conversation.



It worked. “I went over to her new place the other day, and she doesn’t have any lights up or a tree or anything. She was so into all that last year…” The blonde heaved a sigh.



Xander cocked his head at her, smoothing her cheek with the back of his fingers. “We’ll think of something to cheer her up, Ahn. All of ‘em. You just wait and see.”



“Something involving buying things with the new money?” She asked wistfully, clearly aching for her money to be allowed to redeem itself after the evening’s allotment of disillusionment.



He grinned. “Maybe.” And then he got an idea. “Hey!” He kissed her again, soundly. “You’re a genius, you know that?”



“Well,” she hesitated before breaking into a great big smile. “As a matter of fact, yes!”



“C’mon,” Xander prompted, pulling her forwards towards the door. “We gotta go talk to Buffy and Willow.”



“Now?” Anya pouted. “Can’t we go home and have orgasms first?”



“After. I promise.” Xander crossed his heart, shooting his wife-to-be a teasing glance, as she stopped just before they had reached the door. He waited a moment, expectantly, for her to get out her keys and lock up, but she was looking at him with an almost shy grin, something rather unusual for Anya.



“What is it?” He asked, curious.



She gestured to the green sprig of herbs over the door. “Will you kiss me under the mistletoe?” Her voice was as wistful as he’d ever heard it.



Grinning silly at her, he pulled her close to him, hauling the both of them into the doorway. They came up for air about five minutes later, Anya leaning into him, swaying dangerously on legs gone wonky in the aftermath of the kissage.



Panting slightly, her voice low, she asked, “Now can we go home?” She ran one hand lingeringly over his chest.



“After Buffy’s!” He insisted, dragging her behind him.



“Xander!” She protested, whining halfway down the street.





Part 2





“’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Hellmouth, not a creature was stirring, not even a-” he trailed off, shifting the weight of his rather unwieldy burden in his arms. “Ahn, honey, what’s a demon that rhymes with Hellmouth?”



“Shhh!” Buffy’s eyes flashed with warning as she fumbled for the key in her pocket. “You’ll wake everybody up!”



A giggle sounded in the darkness behind Xander, followed by a hushed voice. “You look like a talking shrub from the world without casseroles.”



“There’s a world without casseroles?” Buffy asked as she continued to fish around in her pants pocket for the key to the front door of the house.



“With talking foliage?” Xander added, peeking out from behind the dwarf Douglas fir they’d picked up earlier in the day. Anya had a box full of lights and decorations in her arms, and another rested at Buffy’s feet. He chuckled softly before continuing. “Ooh! Do they say, ‘Nih!’?”



In the darkness, Xander could see his fiancé’s eyes flashing with ire. “Stop talking about that horrific movie, you jerk! Or I’ll tell you all about the world without breasts again! And again and again!”



That cowed him quickly enough, a full-body shudder wracking his tall frame. A hint of a satisfied smirk appeared on Anya’s face, which almost immediately turned into a scowl of petulant impatience. “You know, Buffy, for someone with Slayer prowess, it’s taking an awfully long time to find that key.”



“Shh!” Buffy hissed. Suddenly the sound came of a lock mechanism working, and the doorknob started to turn. Someone was opening it from inside.



The three of them froze, wide-eyed.



“Hey there, you kids,” came a quiet, cheerful voice. Mr. McCabe, the old man who owned the house stood in the doorway in his bathrobe, smiling and beckoning them forward.



“I’m sorry, we didn’t wake you, did we?” Buffy winced, hauling her box back up into her arms and stepping past him.



“No, no. I was just getting up to have a cuppa and heard you lot out there,” he reassured them, standing back to let the rest of them in, and grinning benevolently at them. Such nice kids, he thought, to try to cheer Tara up. Such a sweet girl, that one. “Go on up. You know the way?”



Anya nodded, smiling back at the nice old fogey. “Yes, thank you for letting us into your home in the middle of the night.”



Mr. McCabe scratched at the side of his face, at a loss to answer the strange blonde woman. She seemed nice enough, though. He nodded politely, closing the door behind the lad carrying the tree.



“This way,” the strange one whispered to her friends.



He watched them pad quietly towards the stairs with a fond expression. “Nice kids,” he said under his breath as he made his way over to the cupboard.



Anya led her co-conspirators up two short flights of stairs and down the hallway to the second door on the left. Mrs. McCabe had assured her over the phone that Tara never kept her door locked at night. Very, very carefully, the ex-demon turned the knob with painstaking slowness and pushed the door open. She slipped into the room quickly, holding the door wide open so that Xander could follow without having to worry about the branches scratching against it, making noise that might wake Tara up.



Too bad Willow wasn’t there to cast a silence spell for them, Anya started to think, catching herself immediately. It was so weird that Willow didn’t do magic anymore. Weird, but good. Things had calmed down a lot for all of them since the night Dawn had gotten hurt, and Willow had sworn off her powers. Anya was really impressed over that. Would she have been able to give up her vengeance demon powers in a similar situation? Would she have, for Xander’s sake?



She spared a glance over to where Tara was asleep in her bed. There was enough light in the room that Anya could just make out the blonde’s features, the fingers of one hand curled against her face. Her breath came slow and even.



“She’s a sound sleeper,” Willow had told them back at the house the night before. “You guys shouldn’t have too much trouble, I think, as long as you’re pretty quiet. If you were like… demons or something, her spidey sense would wake her up, but since you’re people she loves and trusts-” There the redhead had trailed off sadly, looking down away from them. You could pretty much hear her wondering if she still counted as one of those kinds of people in Tara’s life. After a moment she had continued. “She’ll probably sense that you’re there on some level. She does that. But once she’s out for the night, unless she senses danger or has a nightmare…” Again she’d gotten choked up, and stopped mid-sentence. Anya had felt so bad for her that she’d spontaneously hugged her.



Poor Willow, Anya thought now, watching as Tara slept on peacefully. Poor both of them. They all knew how much the hacker wished she could be a part of their little Christmas Eve fieldtrip. She’d hadn’t asked to, though, and they’d been sort of relieved at that. But Buffy had encouraged her to help pick out decorations amongst the boxes and boxes of stuff Joyce and the girls had accumulated over the years. Willow had even brought down some stuff from her and Tara’s room, a few crystals and other odds and ends, and sat down with a glue gun and made ornaments from scratch to be put on Tara’s tree. Meanwhile Dawn had helped out by stringing popcorn on a long thread, along with the occasionally interspersed green gummi bear. Buffy had asked her what that was all about and the teen had just giggled enigmatically and kept on garlanding, popping the other colors of bears into her mouth and chewing contentedly.



Xander and Buffy chose a place for the tree directly across the room from Tara’s bed. There was a free outlet there for the lights to be plugged into. Quickly they set about decorating, managing to be quiet on a level that impressed all three of them. With three people working it took about twenty minutes to set everything up.



Finally satisfied that they had done all they could, they snuck out of the room one by one, closing the door softly behind them. Buffy was the last one out, and kept her eyes trained on Tara’s face as long as she could until the door was closed, still expecting her to wake up suddenly and the surprise to be ruined.



But then the door was closed and they were tiptoeing down the stairs again, all giggling softly in companionable giddiness. Buffy found, rather to her own surprise, that she couldn’t wipe the silly grin off her face. For a moment it felt like they were back in high school again. She and Xander and Willow. Willow. God, she wished Will was here right now to enjoy this. But she’d go home and wake her up, tell her all about it.



The car door slammed shut as Xander got in, Anya, too. Buffy just smiled, glad to feel glad. Glad to feel. She settled back into the seat and let her mind drift in the sensation of feeling, testing the borders of her mind for tender places. The places that hurt were still there, but she was finally finding a balance within herself, one that grew stronger every day now.



“I think I’m going to be okay,” she murmured under her breath.



“You say something, Buff?” Xander prompted, catching her eye in the rearview mirror.



She shook her head, a gentle, tired smile on her face. Buffy gazed out the window at the world that slipped past as they drove by, and for a change, felt herself truly glad to be back in it.



Part 3



Sunlight streamed in through the window overhead, and bit by bit, the world of Tara’s dreams receded, leaving the impossible brightness of daylight in her protesting eyes, and a curiously familiar smell in the air of her room, sharply green. Piney green. Out of the corner of her eye, a repetitively blinking flash of colored light caught her attention, the waking world staking its claim in her mind once more with decisive insistence.



She sat up in bed, clutching the covers around herself to ward off the chill of the morning that nipped at her bare shoulders, and blinked, herself, in surprise at the sight that awaited her. A smile of childlike delight lighting up her face, she started to crawl forwards down the length of the bed, sliding off of it onto all fours at the foot of a Christmas tree. Her Christmas tree, decked in blue and purple lights and white ones shaped like little stars. The popcorn garlands had her giggling at first sight, Dawn’s unique signature stamped all over them.



And ornaments. The branches were practically weighed down with all manner of ornaments, all shapes and sizes; there were rocking horses and fat, rosy-cheeked Santas, icicles and little drummer boys, brilliantly colored orbs, a tiny menorah, shards of amethyst and rose quartz, and pictures! There were pictures in little construction paper frames hung all over the tree. Anya in Xander’s lap, the blonde entrepreneur looking at her husband-to-be with her characteristically simultaneous mix of irritation and fond affection. Buffy and Dawn hamming it up for the camera, their hands in each other’s faces, mouths wide open, goofily grimacing. Giles smiling rakishly, as he was prone to doing, looking up from an open book he held in one hand, his glasses clutched loosely in the other. Miss Kitty peeking out from under an upturned shoebox. One of Tara, herself, looking down at something she held in her hands with a soft smile on her face and Willow next to her, watching her face intently, her expression one of pure adoration.



Tara swallowed futilely at the lump in her throat at seeing that one, but her heart leapt in her chest at the next picture she saw. It was one of all of them together from last Christmas, Joyce and Giles, too. And written at the bottom, in glittery blue ink, the words: “Your family.”



Tears of pure love and gratitude blazed trails down the witch’s cheeks as she ran her hands lovingly over some of the pictures, over the wrapped packages that crowded the bottom of the tree. Swiping at her cheeks and nose with the back of one hand, she reached with the other for the pink cardboard baker’s box sitting on top of one of the presents and found it full of fresh-baked raspberry-walnut muffins from the bakery down the street from the Magic Box- her favorite. A note was tape to the inside top of the box, decorated with drawn sprigs of mistletoe.



“Okay, so more stirred in your house last night than just mice. Wish you were here, but if we couldn’t have you for today, just thought we’d bring Christmas to you. Thanks for all that you give us, for all that you do. We love you. Merry Christmas, Tara. Love, your family.”



She traced their signed names with shaky fingers, gulping back a breathy sob. That they had done this for her, gone to all this trouble. Just for her. She looked up again at the tree, the presents, read the note again. And again. And the decision was made before she realized she had made it.



It wasn’t Christmas. Not really. Not unless she was prepared to share it with the people she loved, and who more clearly than ever loved her, too.



No more worries about months or weeks from now, or even tomorrow. No more what ifs. The future be damned, it could take care of itself for once. Even if just for today.



She was packing up all these presents, along with the gifts she had wrapped and waiting for all of them, and she was going home for Christmas. Where she belonged.



Part 4



Tara stood before the front door of her former home, watching over her shoulder as Mr. McCabe pulled away from the curb, waving to her one last time. Voices came from inside, Dawn giggling, Xander chiding someone teasingly. Here she was. Home, she sighed, closing her eyes for a moment against the turmoil in her heart. It felt right to be here, and she didn’t regret coming. But at the same time, she knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Still, she’d never know for sure until she… Taking a deep breath, she gathered her strength and knocked softly but firmly on the door.



“She’s here, she’s here!” Dawn’s voice came immediately, crowing in exultation, the teenager deciding even before the door was opened who was standing behind it.



“Dawn-” came the warning from a concerned Buffy.



But then the door was being yanked nearly off its hinges in youthful exuberance, and Dawn was throwing herself into Tara’s arms.



“I knew you would come,” the younger girl insisted, laughing and holding her tight. “I knew it!”



Tara had to chuckle at the enthusiastic welcome, her arms wrapping tenderly around the girl’s slighter frame to hug her affectionately. And then, looking up over Dawn’s shoulder, Tara’s breath caught.



There was Willow, standing a few feet behind and looking at her with such a mix of hope and desperate love and sorrow. Tara swallowed convulsively, torn in a thousand directions at once. Should she run and throw her arms around the redhead as she had ached to do for weeks now or should she keep her distance? Would it be too much? Too soon?



“It is Tara?” Buffy’s cheerful voice cut through the intensity of the moment, relief coloring it to an almost absurd degree. “Thank God! Someone who knows how to cook.”



Anya’s voice came immediately after, positively indignant. “Hey! I resent that!” A sudden clanging crash of pots sounded from the kitchen, followed by a string of colorful ex-demony type oaths.



Willow’s nose crinkled, laughter dancing in her emerald eyes. Tara laughed softly, too, finally extricating herself from Dawn’s arms, the initial moment of tension broken.



“Well, come in, come in!” The youngest Summers grabbed hold on Tara’s elbow, trying to forcibly haul her inside.



But Tara hesitated, gesturing to the shopping bags full of presents at her feet. There were more than she could carry by herself. She’d had to make three trips back and forth between the car and the front porch upon arriving, insisting that Mr. McCabe not trouble himself to get out and help her.



“Ooh! More presents!” Dawn squealed excitedly, stepping around Tara to heft a bunch of them into her arms.



“Oh, let me help!” Willow finally spoke, rushing forward, eager to be of any assistance.



Tara’s brain told her feet to move, to step aside and make more room in the doorway for her lover, ex-lover, love. But somehow, the signal didn’t quite seem to make it all the way down there, caught instead bouncing around in the confused jumble of emotions crowding through her all at once. Her mind swam, there not being nearly enough time to sort through the sudden onslaught of conflicting thoughts and feelings before Willow, in the haste of the moment, loomed dangerously close, nearly crashing into Tara where she stood rooted in place, watching her come.



Instinctively reaching out to steady her, Tara caught Willow about the shoulders, her fingers curling protectively around the hacker’s upper arm. She braced herself for the impact, unable to help but long for the familiar brush of Willow’s body against her own. But it never came, the other girl’s forward momentum falling away with strange suddenness. Still, there she was, her Willow, mere inches away, the closeness, the electricity of her touch, the purity of the longing in that emerald regard- all of it settling at the base of Tara’s throat in an insistent ache that would allow for nothing short of-



Tara wrapped her arms around the woman she loved, settling her face in the hollow of Willow’s throat, inhaling her scent and letting the rest of the world just fall away. Willow stood for a moment, trembling, hands clenched down at her sides, her terrible fear all too evident. But Tara only pulled her closer still, holding on to her more fiercely and nuzzling into the warmth of her skin and hair.



“Willow…” She spoke the name pleadingly, her voice thick with need.



Something seemed to break inside of the redhead then, and she reached up, clinging just as tightly to Tara. Her Tara.



“Baby?” The redhead whispered, questioning, a sob wracking her slight frame.



Dawn had the good sense to take her armful of gifts into the house, giving the lovers some privacy. Xander had started towards the door with the intention of greeting Tara, but the teenager yanked him around by the arm nearly wrenching it out of its socket.



“Ow! Dawn, what’s up with the Slayer junior strength today?” He protested as he rubbed his shoulder gingerly.



“Let’s go into the kitchen and help Anya and Buffy,” she said loudly, dragging him off with her.



But the two outside were completely oblivious to anything but the nearness of one another, their shared hurt, and the overwhelming relief that came with finding that in the six weeks they had been apart, after all that had been said and done, their love for each other was still there. Still there and seemingly stronger than ever, binding the two of them together as closely as ever. Closer still. They pressed into one another with all the raw need and ferocity that came with having come so terribly close to losing each other.



“I’m sorry,” Willow managed to get out, speaking haltingly through the tears that simply wouldn’t stop coming. “I’m so sorry, Tara. I didn’t see- I didn’t want to see what I was doing- to you, to myself, to everyone. But especially you. I know now there’s nothing worse I could have ever done to you. And I’m so sorry, baby.” She pulled back a bit, just enough to look into Tara’s eyes, her own full of remorse.



Tara smoothed away the tears as they came, leaning her own cheek into Willow’s, letting their salt mingle on their skin where their faces met. She just nodded at first, accepting the rushed explanation and communicating her understanding in the caressing motions of her hands and lips. She wasn’t trailing kisses so much as tracing the planes of Willow’s face with her mouth. It was as if she needed to make sure each line, each curve, each hollow, was exactly how she had left it.



“I know, love,” she finally murmured, threading the fingers of one hand through Willow’s hair, its familiar texture a welcome softness against her palm. “I had to go. I had to wait until you realized everything for yourself. Me. The magic. About yourself. I knew when you were sick, from giving it up. I could feel it, and I’m so sorry that I couldn’t be here to help you. I wanted to so much…”



Willow shook her head insistently, brushing her fingers over Tara’s lips. “No, Tara- I know. I understand that you had to leave, and I don’t blame you. Not at all. I just-”



They pulled apart again, needing, hungrily, the sight of each other. Willow’s lower lip trembled, her eyes welling up with tears again. “I missed you so much, baby.”



Tara whimpered at the pain in her love’s face, the way her voice broke with hurt and need. Before either of them understood the purpose of the motion, Tara’s mouth brushed tentatively against Willow’s, the gentleness giving away almost immediately to a series of fiercely passionate kisses. Their arms blazed new paths across each other’s shoulders, up and down sides, grasping, tangling.



And then a slightly irritated voice sounded behind them, from the doorway.



“You’re not doing it right,” Anya commented petulantly. “The mistletoe is over here.” She punctuated her last statement with a jab of her finger upwards, but a telltale half-smile played on her lips.



“ANYA!” Three voices from inside scolded the ex-demon all at once.



“Oh, alright, alright, I’m coming. Back to the kitchen. Like I’m your SLAVE.” Anya sniffed indignantly as she turned on her heel and headed back inside.



Willow and Tara merely giggled into each other’s shoulders, hands still trailing possessively over their favorite places of one another’s bodies. Tara gathered Willow again into her arms, both of their tears finally having ceased, the joy of the reunion washing over her. Over her shoulder she eyed the hanging swing off to her right.



“You think they’d mind if we just stayed out here for a while?” she asked, gesturing with her head to the loveseat.



“Tara, I was just kidding about needing you in the kitchen!” Buffy called suddenly, startling the both of them. “Sorry, slayer hearing. You guys forget that the rest of us are even here. In fact, I order you! Stay out there as long as you want. Until spring if necessary. Shutting up now!”



The two girls settled into the swing, curling up in each other’s arms and just enjoying the silence between them. The understanding that the worst was behind them, that they had made it through the darkness and back to one another at last seeping into their minds. There was nothing that needed to be done for the moment but to sate themselves with the physical closeness they had gone so long without, starved as they were for each other’s touch.



Back in the kitchen, the four Scoobs went about their tasks with irrepressibly large grins, trying to keep their voices hushed so as not to disturb the girls outside. But they knew, they all knew, Willow and Tara had found one another again.



~~~~~



It was Dawn’s idea to start the Christmas photo album. She announced it over breakfast, a huge book that they’d fill a few more pages from every year. Buffy greeted the idea approvingly, her enthusiasm muted, thinking sadly of new traditions as she silently ached for ones that had died with her mother on a spring afternoon a year ago.



Still she knew that this was how the healing would continue, and she was grateful to Dawn for having a heart big enough to make room for the life that stretched out before the both of them. It didn’t seem quite so scary, the years that loomed ahead of her, knowing she didn’t have to blaze the path on her own.



“So you think it’s an okay idea?” Her sister’s voice anchored Buffy, the plaintive note not lost on her, seeking her approval.



Her mouth moved slowly, but she let the smile come on strong. “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she concluded, her friends quickly adding their assent as well.



Tara was holding Willow’s upturned hand in her own atop the table, tracing the lines on her palm. It seemed an infinitely entrancing task. The blonde Wiccan had been at it for about half an hour, her attention only straying when the sudden flash of a camera interrupted the movement of her thumb across Willow’s skin.



“Dawnie,” Tara laughed, “you’re starting already?”



“No time like the present,” the youngster replied sagely.



Throughout the rest of the day and evening Dawnie caught other memorable moments on camera. There was Buffy frowning cutely at the pie she had baked, which had come out rather lop-sided. The slayer’s lower lip protruded in such an expressive pout that even Anya had giggled at seeing it.



The next picture taken was of Buffy chasing Anya around the living room with a rolling pin, the slayer’s face contorted into a grimace of gleeful silliness.



Another one showed a grinning Anya pretending to struggle in Xander’s arms, a big cheesy grin lighting up his face as he dipped her backwards preparing to kiss her, yet again, under the mistletoe. He’d made a mission of doing it at every available opportunity, just to tease her good and proper.



Someone, probably Xand, had caught Dawnie leering over her present from Tara before she was allowed to unwrap it. The photographer had snapped the picture just as the teenager looked up, her guilty expression not entirely masked by the hasty, and toothy grin that had spread across her features.



There was one of Buffy hugging Xander to her affectionately, resting her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. And another one of Dawn laying with her head in her sister’s lap where she sat on the living room floor against the couch, one of Buffy’s hands caressing Dawn’s hair.



Another showed Tara and Willow giggling over a shared joke. Tara’s nose was crinkled. Willow’s eyes were bright with mischief, her hand pushing playfully at her lover’s shoulder.



And finally, the one they had taken using the timer setting on Dawn’s camera of all of them piled onto the sofa together. It wasn’t the kind of proper, sitting up straight with cheesy or wooden smiles family picture that they were used to seeing. They were all sitting and half-laying on each other so that everyone would fit in the frame, and the resultant laughter had contorted their faces goofily. But they all looked happy, grinning into the camera, or at each other. That one was carefully placed in the album by Dawn, last among the pictures from that year. She had captioned it at the bottom, “Christmas 2001. My weird (but cool) family.”



The End