All characters belong to Mutant Enemy & company. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. I'm Not Over You Violet
The shriek of metal grinding on concrete and bone slammed into Tara across two dozen miles. At first she didn't want to look. Stupid, she thought, drawing her knees up to her chest underneath her thin butterfly-printed sheets. She'd seen sudden death. Sudden violent death, and anyway Willow wasn't dead, because she would know. She knew. But she had to look all the same.
"So we can always find each other," she whispered to herself, and made it happen. Her insides twinged and twisted and seared apart. Then she was outside it, feeling nothing but the sizzle and speed of electricity. She was nothing but a single point of light.
Tara made herself look and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as she'd imagined. The front of the car was crumpled, but not crushed; the windshield wasn't even completely shattered. There wasn't much blood. Willow was still in the driver's seat, hands helplessly flat in her lap. Her eyes were coals dropped in the snow, and her breathing was weak and arrhythmic. Still, she was breathing. Tara would almost have breathed a sigh of relief if she could. And then the pain hit her.
It wasn't Willow. Willow was stunned and stoned and there was something awful crawling under her skin, and her eyes--but stubbornly, childishly, Tara went back to the thought: She's all right. Then another wave came in and Tara pulled her vision back from Willow's face and saw. If there had been a sigh in her it would have frozen.
Dawn's small hand clutched her slender round arm, her face and walk all one big wince. It probably wasn't bad, but it hurt. Tara thought: Oh, Dawn, it must hurt like Hell. Tara almost went to her, before she remembered that she wasn't supposed to be there. This spell was supposed to be broken. Fast after that the demon came, all claws and growls and darkness and Dawn was just a little girl. And Tara thought she'd go. She'd get in her car and speed across town, and gods willing get there before it's too late. She felt her body pull, was on the verge of slipping back. And just before she was gone there was Buffy.
Whatever Willow had forgotten, whatever Dawn had learned, wherever Giles had gone, wherever Buffy had been, she was still the Slayer. It was easy for Tara to forget that when she'd seen Buffy so many times, chewing a pencil or sorting her laundry or picking olives off a slice of pizza. But it was impossible to forget when she saw Buffy in action. She could still take a demon like it was a scarecrow. Still whipped out that crazy, kind of scary preternatural power. So it wasn't really surprising to watch her rip into the monster. And after the summer it wasn't surprising to see Spike instantly kneeling at Dawn's side.
Tara hovered closer to them, wanting hands to reach out to them, wanting breath to whisper that it would be all right. An inhumanly rapid flicker of lashes to light, and she saw herself reflected in Spike's eyes. Acts of kindness weren't his style, weren't in his blood--what blood? Tara thought, veering crazily sideways and up and over--but he sensed her, blinked and slid his arm around Dawn's shoulders. Dawn started crying in jagged, hysterical bursts, collapsing on herself, but Spike was there.
The demon froze and then went up in flames. Tara swerved and thought it was too soon, and so did Buffy, judging by her hesitation. But then Buffy ran to her sister and Dawn was framed by the two of them. They looked like a family. A family reflected in funhouse mirrors and black glass, but a family anyway. Tara would have swallowed then to keep her throat from closing, if she could. She ached to be there, wondered where Xander and Anya were. And she wondered, selfish and almost ashamed, if they'd ever needed her, if she'd only been riding the coattails of other people's fate.
Spike and Buffy were drawing Dawn gently up, half-guiding, half carrying her back toward the street. Tara trailed after them, not too close, not too bright. If she was with her throat, her heart would have leapt into it. Because Willow was climbing out of the car, shaking and crackling, all shadow and red glow. Her face fallen as she limped after the family unit, calling, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
Tara wanted to fly to her and shine in her eyes and lead her home. Wanted to stroke her hair and lay her down, taste her tears and her sweat and the soft skin around her navel. No magic, no mystery. Nothing but bodies. And Tara wanted her voice to shout: You're not sorry, you're not sorry. She thought she could have forgiven Willow anything, if Willow was sorry. She could have forgiven being fucked with, if there was room to feel safe again. And she knew they'd all wanted Buffy back, it was only Willow who had the power and the guts. In the end it wasn't the damage that Willow had done; it was the lies that she had told. And that made it so human and mundane and horrible that Tara hated it more.
She watched Willow standing in the streetlight, staring at the empty space Buffy and Spike and Dawn had left. Willow's shoulders shook and Tara waited, terrified, for her to turn. She prayed quietly to everything she'd ever believed in to avoid that. Not to see Willow's eyes burned out, even though she'd never forget what she'd already seen. Willow shifted slightly, almost turning. Every particle of Tara screamed soundlessly, and Willow straightened, lifted her head and ran after Buffy. She didn't look back.
Tara crashed through space and back into her body, unable to move for a few seconds, wired and wildly shaking inside her own calmed form. Then soul and body reconnected and she was sweating, seizing up, and so nauseous she was afraid to stand. She rolled sideways off her bed, onto the floor, crawled across the carpet in the dark. The checked beige tile in the bathroom froze her knees. She rested her forehead on the cold toilet seat, wishing she could throw up, wishing the blood would stop beating against her skull. It hurt. Everything hurt.
It was such a stupid story: there was this girl I loved and she lied to me and I still love her so much, maybe more because I can't do anything to help her. Tragedy, yes, but no magic. Behind her there was nothing but the stuffy silence of the one-room apartment, unshelved groceries and unfolded laundry. And in front of her, she thought, it would hurt forever. She'd never been good at making new friends, before Willow. She'd never been anybody before.
She curled up on the tile, head pillowed on one bent arm, too tired even to pray for peace. It was over, she thought, and it would never end. She splayed her other hand across her stomach, breathing slowly, carefully, and thought about wounds healing. She pictured living another fifty or seventy years without a single point of light.
"So we can always find each other," she whispered to herself. The tears slid out of her eyes and soaked her cheeks, and dried there, salty and sour. She didn't move even to wipe them away. Sometime before morning, sleep closed in around Tara, took her by the arms, and drew her up, up and away.