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Time Heals All: a Willow/Tara fic with a terrible title
Author: Big_Pineapple
Feedback: Yes, including title suggestions, line edits, and general comments
Spoilers: vague reference to all seasons
Setting: Pre-season six and onward, AU.
Rating: PG-13, I think
Disclaimer: Copyright law. My girlfriend explained it to me once, but we were both falling asleep. Thank you, Mutant Enemy, for giving me Tara, but you jumped the shark.
Summary: The trio strikes.
Part XIV: Life Serial
Willow couldn’t decide whether her shaking the cat toy for Miss Kitty was playful or compulsive. Her wrist tingled when she stopped, but Miss Kitty also looked put out. She rested her elbow on the arm of Giles’s couch. Two weeks seemed to border on overstaying her welcome; she cooked, cleaned, and tried to make herself invisible to make Giles feel as unbothered as possible. Not that she’d actually become invisible. That was a huge no, especially after she’d been doing so well. But she was bored, and the only person she could talk to besides the Buffybot was Giles, who was buried in yet another book about witchcraft. He’d been bringing them one by one from the Magic Box, and he refused to let her see them.
For the past several days, mostly just to give her something to do, she and Giles had packed up her things from the Summers house and moved it into Giles’s apartment, in the corner where the books and magic supplies had been. They would only be in his way until school started up and Willow moved into a dorm room, possibly a double, because it wasn’t good for her to be alone. With that done, and no evil brewing, there wasn’t much to do.
Except go out. That wasn’t something she’d done at all.
“I still don’t get why we’re doing this,” Andrew said, watching Willow scrounge for change to pay for her coffee at the Expresso Pump. He lowered the binoculars from the van window and turned to Warren, who was experimenting with different ways to put on a baseball cap.
Jonathan agreed. “The Slayer’s the real problem. We’re lucky she didn’t try to bust us during that bank heist.”
Warren pulled the cap down low and rubbed his hands together. “The Slayer isn’t the problem. She’s nothing. It’s the witch that’s trouble.”
“You don’t know Buffy.”
“I know the future, Skippy!” Warren shouted at Jonathan. “We are the future, as long as we keep that witch off balance and don’t make her mad.”
Andrew raised a timid hand. “Don’t you think this stuff we’re doing is gonna make her mad?”
“No.” Warren rolled his eyes. “We’ve been watching her for days already. She doesn’t do magic. This is gonna be, like, pent-up mojo, and she’ll run around trying to figure out what’s wrong with her while we take over the town!”
“What about the Slayer?”
“The M’Fashnik will take care of the Slayer!”
“Or she’ll take care of him,” Jonathan grumbled.
“Either way, it’s one less thing we have to worry about.” Warren slipped out the driver’s door of the van, using it as a shield between him and the Expresso Pump, and circled around the block through alleys and side streets. He appeared at the café from a direction completely opposite the van.
Willow was sitting at a tall table at the edge of the café, stirring her mocha and scowling at the dissolving whipped cream. She didn’t see the man who slammed into her until he had already passed. Poop head, she thought, but she didn’t shout it at him. His coffee had spilled on his hands; that was enough.
After a while, she raised the mocha to her lips, the quickly spit it out. She hadn’t thought she’d been sitting so long, but the drink was stone cold. Frustrated, she threw it away and headed for home, checking in each direction before stepping into the street. The next thing she knew, there was a horn blaring, and her palms were flat on the hood of a car.
“What the hell are you doing?” the driver shouted at her. “Standing in the middle of the road! Jesus!”
Willow backed away and rushed across the street.
“Are you trying to kill her?” Jonathan hissed. Warren waved him away.
It was nearly dark when Willow reached Giles’s flat. She must have lost track of a lot of time. Giles was startled when she tumbled through the door.
“Are you alright?” he asked, and Willow explained to him about the car. He told her to look out for herself. She turned away from him, and when she turned back, he was closing a book he’d been only a little ways through. He stood, and he jumped when he saw her still standing there.
“Perhaps you need some tea. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Giles, if vampires don’t send me into shock, a car sure won’t. And fingers probably don’t help when you’re checking for it, anyway.”
“Right, well,” Giles stood straighter. “It’s late. You should rest.”
Willow shrugged. Her body seemed to insist that is was still early afternoon, and she’d gotten up late.
“How was the book?”
Giles told her it was fine, but nothing else. Willow hated this, that he didn’t trust her to even talk about magic theory, even though it was taking up so much of his time. He told her goodnight, and she slumped on the couch and shut her eyes. They snapped open at the sound of a teakettle whistling, and bright sunlight through the curtains stung her eyes. She didn’t think it was humanly possible to sleep that suddenly and deeply, even when she was exhausted. And for years, it had been tricky for her to sleep so well under any circumstances. Oddly, though, she didn’t feel refreshed. She felt like she had blinked.
She rolled off the couch and sat at a stool at the bar, watching Giles pour a cup of tea.
“I…” Giles began. “I think I should, tell you something.”
Then he stood, staring expectantly at her.
“What?”
“Xander,” he repeated. “He’s asked about you twice now.”
Willow dove off the stool and snatched up the phone. “He’ll talk to me then, right? He won’t hang up on me.” She was dialing his number while she asked, not waiting for an answer. Two weeks without Xander was longer than she’d ever gone.
“Hello?” she heard him say.
“Punch it,” Warren said. Time lurched.
Andrew sighed. “How long is this going to go on?”
Jonathan smiled. “Until she takes off her clothes.”
“Xander!” Silence. “Xander?”
A dial tone droned out from the phone. Willow stormed out of the house.
Two of the neighbors came down the stairs, then rocketed past her. Another, from the door behind her, nearly ran into her. And then it was noon. Willow ran inside.
“Giles?”
He turned, and then he gave her an odd look.
“It’s noon,” she said, and he approached her.
“It took you that long to tell me that?”
Long? she thought, and she glanced at the clock. It whirred through two minutes right before her eyes.
“Giles,” she whispered. “I think there’s something really weird going on here!”
She tried to explain what had happened as quickly as she could, afraid a time gap would swallow it whole somehow.
“I need to check on this at the Magic Box,” Giles said, snatching his coat, “I’ll call if I have any news. Just, don’t go out while this persists.”
He left her standing bewildered in his flat, alone save for the book he’d read the night before.
“Ahn?” Xander called when Anya came through the door that night. “Were you expecting a phone call?”
“No. My friends don’t really need the phone to reach me.” She settled on the couch next to him and kissed him. “Why?”
Xander shrugged with his uninjured shoulder. “I picked up the phone, but no one said anything. I waited.”
“For what?”
“Does Giles talk to you about Willow?”
Anya stood up and stalked into the kitchen. She pulled dinner supplies out of cabinets and slammed them shut. “No,” she snarled. “He knows better than that.”
“He said she was doing okay,” Xander ventured. “Look, what happened was bad, but it was bad for everyone. Willow’s in pain, and there’s something in her that she can’t shake. It’s not completely her fault.”
“How is this not her fault?” Anya shouted.
Xander sat still for a moment, braced for her to continue, but she didn’t. She stood in the kitchen, chest heaving with rage, and stared at him.
“It’s been this way since the beginning. We all let it happen. You, me, Tara, the gang. This is our fault, too.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “Because you know so much about magic.”
“The first spell I saw her do, she sat bolt upright in a hospital bed with her eyes blacked out and her head snapped back,” Xander said. “Try to tell me that’s healthy.”
Anya advanced on him, and for a moment Xander was afraid. “She destroyed our car, she hurt you, and she cost you your job!” Anya dropped onto the couch beside him again, and gripped his good shoulder with her hand. “If I’d lost you, Xander, I…”
“I didn’t,” Xander interrupted. “Lose my job. If I start going in next week, I can do paperwork and supervision until I can lift again. There aren’t as many construction workers in Sunnydale as there are repair jobs.” He pulled Anya close to him and held her there, trying to hug the fury out of her. “We’re okay. Everything’s okay.”
Anya shook her head, but she was quiet. “No, it’s not.”
Willow snatched the book off Giles’s desk and hid in her bedroom with it before time could whir by and put him in her way. She curled up on the bed and read the beginning of the biography of Hilda V. Danes, snapping her reading lamp on within minutes of beginning. The sun rose and fell at a rate that would have been almost sickening if Willow had been watching. Giles came and went suddenly, leaving food Willow nibbled at or tossed out the window. He was worried, seeing the girl sitting in the same place on her bed, day after day after day, in the same clothes, as if she simply hadn’t moved. He considered snatching the book away from her, but then, his refusal to give her information had led them to this. Perhaps letting her know what was happening would help. He didn’t know what else to do.
The book told the story of a witch with tremendous power, who had been seduced by her ability to control, and who burned herself down with the rest of her remote village when she lost control in a fit of terror brought on by a nest of hornets in the corner of her home. Modern science chalked the crater up to a meteor impact, and there was no outside record of the lost town, because warlocks from the area had come and removed the bones. An afterward warned of dangers such as these, and gave a list of others who had died this way, either by loss of emotional control or simple overextension of power. It seemed to assume that to become addicted was to be a dead man walking.
Willow let the volume fall from her hands when she’d finished it. Night had come, Willow didn’t know how many times, but she felt like she had been working for a full day, and her head rang with doom. She pulled her shirt over her head and flung it into the corner to be washed.
“That’s it,” Warren sighed. “It won’t hold up to water.” He punched the destruct button and climbed into the back of the van. “Okay, score me.”
Andrew and Jonathan looked thoughtful.
“Fifty points for ingenuity, thirty since it involved actual contact…”
“But you did cover yourself in coffee, and the swearing risked voice ID, so… maybe ten for the contact?” Andrew offered.
Jonathan agreed. “Fifty points for length, and it definitely scores a five on the freakometer.”
“Oh come on!” Warren protested. “That was a seven, easy! And it scared Giles, too.”
Jonathan and Andrew conferred. “Split the diff, call it a six,” Jonathan said.
“And twenty for finding free cable porn to watch while she was just sitting there.”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “I could have done without sitting on my ass for five days, watching her read a book while we pretend it’s her and Buffy screwing on the big screen.”
“How many points for getting in position so we could watch her take off her shirt?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?”
Jonathan shrugged. “She had her back to us.”
“So that’s a total of… Two hundred ten points.”
“Ha! Beat that!” Warren declared.
Andrew straightened up and shot him a look. “Oh, I will.”
“Hey lady! This is a hard hat area, no public access.”
Xander turned and saw Willow pleading with one of his workers. He sent the man off to work and pulled Willow into his unhurt arm.
“God, it’s good to see you.”
Willow nearly cried. “I’m so sorry, Xander. I never wanted to hurt you, or anyone. I just…”
“I know,” Xander told her. “It’s okay.”
“Really? Good. ‘Cause, when I called you, you hung up, and I came here with sort of a last-ditch agenda.”
“It was you calling?” Xander said.
Willow muttered something about time that Xander didn’t understand. He hugged her again. Someone yelled for him.
“Listen, Wil,” he said. “I’m kinda hanging by a thread here. Can you stick around for half an hour?”
“Sure,” Willow said, and he bolted across the site.
Willow lingered near the fence, letting the buzz of Xander’s affection override the panic she felt from being out of control again. She had agonized all night instead of sleeping, staring at the boxed up remains of her life stacked against the wall. Was that what had triggered the problem? she wondered. Had facing the reality of Tara’s rejection sent her over the edge?
She turned away from those problems while she waited for Xander, who loved her, and found herself face to face with a giant green demon who seemed to have a squid for a head. When she turned to run, two more closed in. She fled into the construction site, screaming for Xander, but there was equipment running all around her, and no one bothered to look up. One of the demons grabbed her sleeve, and she let it rip the cloth away. They were heavy, and slow enough that Willow could turn a corner and lose them. She dove into a massive steel pipe and hid there.
For a moment, everything was quiet except her mind, which asked if she had ever seen these demons before, if she had made them and brought them here. Then they started banging on the sides of the pipe. The vibrations deafened her, and her legs shook when she crawled out the other side. Focused on banging, the demons didn’t realize she was gone until they lifted the pipe and flung it. That was when the construction workers started to take notice.
There was a hallway in the half-finished building that was lined with thick plastic. Willow ran through it until shadows appeared at the end, too hulking even to be construction workers. She dropped to the ground, uncertain what to do. What had she ever learned about fighting? Buffy had killer moves, but none Willow could pull off. Jackie Chan was also useless, and Xena was faked.
Gabrielle, though. What could she do? Willow rewound her memory to the first episode Gabrielle had ever fought in. What had Xena told her? “If you’re in danger, run. If you’re outnumbered, let them fight each other while you run.” Okay. Right.
Willow stood up and waved her arms. The demons came barreling toward her. They dove through the plastic, and Willow hit the deck and rolled away. Blinded by the plastic over their faces, the demons grappled each other to the ground, rolling, punching, and snarling, until they both burst into goo and vanished into the ground.
Brushing sawdust off her jeans, Willow took only a second to admire her work. There was a third one, somewhere. She hurried out of the plastic room, calling again for Xander.
The demon found her before Xander could. He saw her from the second floor of the building, shooting at the green thing with a staple gun. Xander ran downstairs and started swiping at it with a hammer. The demon seemed annoyed, but not injured by their efforts. Xander fell over when the monster tried to hit him, and he landed on his bad shoulder. Willow’s gun ran out of staples, and the monster charged her. She unplugged the gun and tried to whip it with the cord. Alongside the gun, a table saw was plugged in.
“Xander!” she shouted, and pointed to it. Xander struggled to his feet.
Being whipped by a cord had almost no effect on the demon. Willow ran up a flight of rickety stairs, then leapt off halfway up and led the demon around to the saw. She jumped up and landed precariously on the end of the table. This made the demon lunge for her, but Willow jumped again, upsetting the table and sending the saw into the demon’s face. She landed face-first on the ground at Xander’s feet. He was in too much pain to help her up.
“Are you okay?” she asked when she was on her feet again. Most of the workers on the site were around them, scratching their heads, making up explanations for what they had just seen.
Xander looked up and sighed.
“You need to go.”
The registrar at UC Sunnydale was having a hard time keeping up with the details she needed. Next time, she swore, there would be a lot less vodka in the frozen strawberries she served at the annual Fourth of July weekend picnic.
“And the single room accommodation is for…”
“Trauma,” the girl said. “The same trauma that kept me from registering for college until now.”
“Right.” The registrar took a swig of coffee and rubbed her eyes. “And we’re still missing your high school transcript.”
The girl shifted in her chair. “I just brought that in. It was late because the school blew up.”
“Right. Such a tragedy, the mayor and all those students.” The registrar shuffled a stack of non-existent papers on her desk, then handed the girl some forms to sign. “And I’m sorry you’ve suffered, too. We’ll be happy to have you with us, Miss Madison.”
The girl looked her in the eye as she handed back the forms. There was something remarkable about her eyes.
“Please,” she said. “Call me Amy.”
Willow stood for a long time, watching the cars on Main Street pass her while she wavered on the doorstep of the Magic Box. Three weeks had passed according to the calendar, but only a little more than two according to her psyche. In that time, she had never considered going back to this place. All the sources she found online about the consequences of losing emotional control, all the conjuring sites, had referred to books that could only be found here, unless she wanted to catch a bus to another town. It was Giles’s day off, and she hadn’t told him where she was going. He had tried to talk to her, but she didn’t want to admit what was happening. She’d gotten herself into this mess, after all; why should she expect his help, or anyone’s? If she went to Giles, it would be with answers, not questions.
The bell jangled when Willow swung open the door and plunged through it. That wasn’t so hard, she thought, but then Anya fixed her with a stare that pinned her to the wall.
Tara wandered bewildered into the visiting room of the prison, greeting the guard, Harry, in a haze.
“What’s up, T?”
“Michael’s gone,” Tara said. “He just… vanished. He left a note in the van, but it was for Dawn. I don’t um, I don’t think it said anything about where he went.”
She pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged in the chair, then stared at her shoe laces.
“Cordelia says maybe he had another sister. His mom wouldn’t remember him, so she wouldn’t think to um, to tell him. His uncle might, though. I just… I wish he’d left me with something other than ‘You’re good with troubled kids.’ He didn’t even say goodbye.”
Humor was the only answer Faith had to Tara’s distress.
“You’re not wishing you drove stick, are you?” she teased.
Tara blinked. “What? N-no, no. I just. He was um, he was really nice. I thought he would, you know, stick around?” She looked away. “It’d be nice to have someone who’d stay.”
For lack any way to respond, Faith complained about her cellmate, saying she wished she could get rid of her. She snored and thought she was tough because she did push-ups in the morning. It was disgusting. To Faith’s relief, Tara laughed through her rendition of a conversation on what it would take to bust out, which her cellmate believed could be done through a combination of seduction and brute force.
“Like these jumpsuits are sexy?” Faith sneered. “C’mon, are you attracted to me?”
“I um,” Tara squirmed. “I’m not really on the market for…”
“That’s a lame excuse. You want to get out of the question, give me a real reason.”
Tara cocked her head. “W-what do you mean?”
“I mean, ‘I’m not on the market’ is an excuse. ‘Talking about other girls being sexy feels like cheating on my not-girlfriend’ is a reason. Just not one you want to admit.”
“So um,” Tara said after a moment, “I’m not hungry is an excuse, but I’m too nervous to eat is a reason.”
“Yeah. Or, I’m tired is an excuse, but I can’t get it up is a reason.”
Tara laughed. “Faith!”
She met Tara’s eyes, and they were filled with so much affection she had to look away. She couldn’t put her finger on the reason why. Tara waved a hand in the air, and every other noise in the room disappeared. She leaned in close to Faith.
“H-how about this one? Because it’s what I deserve is an excuse. Because I’m afraid to go out in the world again is a reason.”
Faith looked up, and Tara’s eyes were intent and questioning.
“That changed fast,” she said.
“We have to talk about this, Faith. I’m going to be here for two more weeks. That’s all. How are we going to get you back to Sunnydale?”
“I’m not going back to Sunnydale,” Faith snapped.
“We need you!” Tara insisted. “I need you. Please. You’re the Slayer. It’s who you are.”
“You realize you’re asking me to die for you?”
Tara flinched and dropped her gaze. It hardened as Faith continued.
“The Slayer fights, the Slayer dies. That’s who the Slayer is.”
“And when you die here at eighty-two, barring apocalypse, who will you be then?”
Tara raised her head, and when Faith didn’t answer, she stood. She hesitated for a moment, then waved her hand again. Faith bit back the urge to ask her not to go.
Willow stood for a long time, watching the cars on Main Street pass her while she wavered on the doorstep of the Magic Box. Green Honda, yellow convertible, black van, white Jeep, déjà vu. The breath she took to get in the door, the sound of the bell, and Anya’s evil stare were all familiar.
“What do you want?” the ex-demon growled, at exactly the moment Willow expected her to.
“I need to research something,” Willow said again, and tacked on a hesitant, “Please?”
The doorstep and the cars again. Something was wrong.
“Anya?” she called, pushing open the door. “I need some books. Can I stay here for a while?”
“No.”
Willow walked in the door again, saying, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Go to hell.”
Counting to ten in her head to hold back her frustration, Willow countered, “Can I take some books with me?”
Once more through the door. This time, Willow barreled in, shouting, “What kind of vengeance ploy is this?”
Green Honda, yellow convertible, black van, white Jeep. Willow threw her hands in the air and stomped down the block in a rage. She turned the corner and found herself at the Magic Box again.
The trio howled from their seats in the van.
“She’ll never figure this one out!” Jonathan crowed.
“Seriously,” Andrew agreed. “How are you supposed to apologize to a vengeance demon?”
Warren shrugged. “Not bad, shorty.”
Willow slumped on the doorstep. A customer tripped on her outstretched leg and complained to Anya, who chased her off with a broom. The next time around, Willow tiptoed around back and tried to sneak up to the books. Anya caught her, and the moment their eyes met, she was on the doorstep again.
“God!” Willow shouted. “What in the frilly heck do you expect me to do?”
She cringed the moment the words hit the air. It was obvious what Anya expected her to do. What had made her think she could come in here at all? She slunk down the block in shame, and when she was confronted with the Magic Box again, she slipped inside and walked, head hung low to avoid Anya’s deadly gaze, to the counter.
“Anya,” she started. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? For how you hurt my future husband? For destroying our car? Or maybe for blanking everyone’s memory and driving off two of my friends.”
Willow sighed. “All of it.”
Anya leaned low over the counter and looked her in the eye. “Sorry won’t bring Tara back. Nothing will.”
For a moment, Willow gripped the counter, but she lost it and lunged at Anya. Her momentum flung her into the Magic Box door.
Green Honda, yellow convertible, black van, white Jeep.
What appeased Anya? Blood and guts. Sex. Money. None of that was an option. But it had to be set right. She was doing this to herself, and it obviously wasn’t going to stop until Anya gave her some quarter.
Willow fished around in her pocket and brought up five dollars and two quarters. She bought coffee. Anya dumped nightshade leaves in it and handed it back to her. The money was in her pocket again the next time around. Chocolate didn’t help, and neither did the pitiful bunch of flowers she could afford with five fifty.
The smoke from the flowers Anya had lit on fire wafted across the shop. Willow turned to go and spotted the computer, buried in stock receipts and covered in a sheen of black goo.
“Anya, is that…”
“It was eye of newt,” Anya snapped. “Someone almost as stupid as you dropped it, and it’ll cost a fortune to fix the computer. I think I have enough problems without you hanging around.”
“I could fix it!” Willow blurted.
For a moment, Anya glared at her. “Get out,” she said, but with less violence than she’d had before.
Willow found herself at the doorstep again. “Anya,” she said, ignoring the harsh stare. “I heard your computer got all messed up, and I was thinking, well…” She swallowed hard and braced herself. “Listen. I owe you, a lot, and I know fixing your computer won’t erase that, but…”
Anya slapped a rag on the counter. “Clean up the eye of newt. Think you can handle that, drug girl?”
Shaking with rage, Willow snatched the rag and began wiping the horrible sludge off the computer table. The morning slipped quietly into afternoon, and the dried crust of eye of newt clung to the table, the monitor and the keyboard. It had dripped onto the floor, and a slow ooze of it clogged the computer tower. Willow traded permission to borrow books for the cost of steel wool, and she left with as much as she could carry.
“Two hundred, even.”
“What?” Jonathan shouted. “It took her hours to figure that out! It lasted almost as long as yours did, and it scared her more.”
Warren shrugged. “It only took a minute for Anya.”
“That’s how we’re measuring? Who said?”
“Should we deduct more points for bad sportsmanship?” Andrew suggested.
Jonathan sagged in his bean bag chair. “So how long have we thrown her off for?”
“Long enough to finish the designs. The numbers are a little off, and there are some things you just don’t want to screw up.”
“Ooh, and we have a campaign to finish!” Andrew added.
Warren put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Gentlemen, let’s mark this a victory and celebrate. The trio is gonna rule this town!”
Giles was waiting when Willow came home.
“I know you’ve been avoiding me, but Willow, there’s something we must discuss.”
“Like the fact that I might be dying?” Willow held the books out to him. “I noticed.”
Giles rubbed his glasses on a handkerchief and gestured toward the couch. “You’re not dying; I would be far more active in my interventions if I believed…”
“I screwed up time, Giles. I conjured demons, and I went all ‘Groundhog Day’ on myself. Something’s wrong.”
Giles let her tell him what had happened in the past three days, stopping her only when she began a rant about how the first problem had thrown off her menstrual cycle. That, he assured her, was not a problem.
“But I’ve been perfectly regular for the past eight years! I’m ruining everything!”
“I wish I could fix these things for you,” he said, “but they’re done. All we can do now is analyze this, try to work out the triggers that lead to this erratic behavior, and get them under control.”
Willow sighed. “That sounds easy.”
“At least it’s a start.” Giles sat for a moment, staring at the empty bookshelves across the room. “I’m sorry I haven’t been discussing these things with you. They’re… troubling, and I didn’t think stress would help you let go of your addiction. And, frankly, I was afraid to admit that I’m at rather a loss as to what to do.” He squeezed her hand. “You are not dying. If you truly believed that, there’d be a lot more chaos than there is. The only trouble is that no one else has turned their back on this before. No one is as strong as you.”
Willow pulled her hand away. “Then I’m strong enough for the truth.”
“Yes. Yes, you are.”
“So, we’ll make with the research. Conjuring, time loops, and loss of control. In the meantime, I get to manage my emotions by cleaning up Anya’s computer every day.” Willow groaned. “This is a disaster.”
Giles smiled. “At least disaster’s nothing new.”
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