Author: Rae (starlitefaeriegrrrl on the board)
Email: saltedtears@hotmail.com
Website:http://gurlpages.com/rae_n_kay
Feedback:pretty, pretty please.
Distribution: ask, I'll probably say yes.
Spoilers: end of season sux, I guess.
Rating: PG.
Pairing: W/T discussion
Disclaimer: The show Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, the story excerpt is from Francesca Lia Block’s Missing Angel Juan. The characters of Willow and Tara are lovely and beautiful and an inspiration to lil’ baby-dykes like me, and I thank Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson for portraying these characters so amazingly. BtVS won’t be the same without Tara, and I'm only going to be watching it for Alyson H., Emma Caulfield and Anthony Stewart Head. The rest of you poorly portrayed characters? Dead to me!
Summary: Willow tries to deal with her pain. There's two more parts, it gets less angsty, I swear.
Note: This takes place in a AU where Buffy actually gives a shit about someone other than herself.
***
I don’t really know what to do with myself lately.
It’s been three? four? five? days since I tried to destroy the world, since Xander talked me back with memories of yellow crayons and a time when no one I knew ever had to die. I’m not really sure how I feel about the world being all in one piece yet. I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to fill my days now that Tara’s gone- even when we’d broken up I could fill my days with planning ways to win her back in my life.
It’s so quiet at Buffy’s. Xander is staying over, sleeping on the floor of my room every night. But we all walk around like someone’s sleeping, all day and all night everyone tiptoes and whispers and makes as little sound as possible. Dawn hasn’t watched any TV since I’ve been here, and when I venture outside my room for a moment or two they’re all doing something like playing a board game or flipping through magazines in Buffy’s room. It's never-ending quiet time at the Summer's House.
Today I’m doing my usual thing, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling. It’s not a very interesting ceiling, really. Looks like every other ceiling that I’ve ever seen. Smooth white plaster, nice but nothing special. But every day I lie here and stare upwards, because what else am I supposed to do?
Tara was my air, my water, my sun, my moon, my tree, my flower, my patch of grass. Without her I can’t breath, can’t sleep, can’t swallow, can’t wake. I just drift through these days, neither awake nor asleep. And that may sound tacky to other people, but it’s exactly how I feel-cheesy or not. I never considered seriously that she might die, because if I had I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I would have grabbed her and held her down in bed under the covers with me so that we’d be safe, we would be unreachable, we would be together forever and ever and ever.
and ever and ever and ever and ever...
Every morning when I wake up, this feeling comes over me. For a second- just as long as it takes for me to open my eyes and turn my head to see her- I forget that there was ever something wrong. Every single morning I do this, because every night she and I are together in my dreams. I look over and see the bed empty next to me, I see that and wonder where she’s gone. Is she feeding Miss Kitty F? Had she padded downstairs in her fluffy purple slippers to make us breakfast? These thoughts zip so quickly through my brain. Then I remember and I feel like...like... you know when you have something important to do that you’ve forgotten to, and then you finally remember and it’s a horrible horrible moment as you consider the consequences of your forgetting? That’s been me, every single morning since Tara was taken from me, her life ripped away from mine, her body grabbed out of my arms.
And I hate myself, and I hate the world, a world that would take her from my life so violently and suddenly. What the hell, a world that would take her from me at all.
There’s a light knock at my door and then it opens. Buffy peeks her head in, peering at me worrisomely through the short bob-y curtain of her blond hair. She’s sweet, the way she takes care of me now. She wants me to eat so she brings food up to my room, but she doesn’t mention it when I barely eat half. She plays Candy Land with me as we sip from teas she’s made for us. She gives me lots of hugs.
Looking at the clock, I wonder: Is it Candy Land time already? Then, no- it’s barely two o’clock and we usually spend time together at three. Between whenever I wake up and five pm is my worst time. If I’m going to cry, it’ll be then. “Hey Wills.” Her voice sounds so soft. Her tiny body seems even tinier when she comes up here to deal with my sadness, like she shrinks from the depressive energy that I'm putting out. I think that she wishes she could absorb all my hurting. I don’t wish that though, she has enough of her own as it is, she and Tara had begun to get pretty friendly before she and I had gotten back together.
She didn't cry when I told her what had happened, but I've heard her cry since. I never go to her when she cries, but Dawn does and then I imagine that they curl up on Buffy's bed and Buffy cries while Dawn brushes away her hair and whispers soothing words. I'd say that Buffy and Dawn showed the most pain over this, after me of course.
I nod at her.
“I was thinking about...” she trails off, looks kind of intimidated. “I understand if you don’t want to but it’s been a week and a half-” Really? I think, That long? Who knew. “- and I would like to talk to you about her.”
I frown at that slightly. “Talk about what, exactly?”
“I found something.” She steps into the room and sits down cross-legged on the floor. “I was going through the boxes of Tara’s things. I know that it’ll be incredibly hard to go and see all her stuff, but if I was with you-”
I was dreading this, I didn’t know how I would handle this. It was worse than Oz leaving, Xander and Cordelia fooling around secretly and then finding out in the library, any and every fight Tara and I had in the past, the worst death I’d ever had to deal with in my long history of death dealingness, a million billion trillion and a half times worse. But it’ll need to be done and I might as well do it while Buffy’s around to stay by my side. So I nod again, unsure if I can form words even if I want to.
She gets up, leaves, brings in a large cardboard box and sets it down in the middle of the floor. Then she asks, “Tea?”
“Please.”
She leaves and then there it is, me and the box of what remains from Tara’s life are alone in my room. I eye it, thinking it's going to leap forward and bite me. To be honest, I prefer that stuff in a box than to be still up and filling up Tara’s room like a lie, like as though she’s going to come back home, turn on some Mazzy Star and off the lights, curl up in bed reading up on spells or one of her favorite books.
I stare at the cardboard, it seems to be mocking me slightly. You won’t look inside me, Willow, you won’t be able to handle it. So I sit down on the floor next to the box and reach in, pulling out the first thing on top. It’s her address book. She was too shy to have all that many friends, but the one she had were all listed in here. I hold the small book in my hand, staring down at the kitty cat images that cover it. Different kitties in different backgrounds, doing different little cute kitty things. My eyes are watering alarmingly fast as I gaze down at the smooth cover.
When Buffy comes back with the tea, that’s exactly how she finds me, staring down at the address book and sniffling.
“I put extra sugar in yours,” she tells me.
I gesture that she should sit next to me and she does, putting the tea down on the floor in front of us. Then, as she turns to face me, I plead, “Hugs?”
And then she is, she’s hugging me and for a moment things are okay, not great or the way they should be, but okay because it feels like high school when Buffy hadn’t died quite so many times yet and I had no idea my soulmate was a girl, when our biggest non-big bad related concern was what college would Buffy go to and if we’d all still be together by the time September rolled around.
How could anyone have known that the shy witch-girl I met when we were under attack by The Gentlemen would have become so important to my world?
“Buffy?” I ask, my face buried against Buffy’s back, making my words come out all muffled. I pull back a bit so that she’ll understand me. “Do you think Tara was my soulmate?”
“Of course I do,” she says, her brow crinkling up as she stares at me strangely. “How can you even ask that?”
“Because,” I say, full speed Willowbabble ahead, “because if she was my soulmate then why would she be dead since how am I supposed to stay with the person my soul is mated to if they’re dead?”
Of course, as expected, Buffy has no answer for me. How could she, really? No one can answer me.
She looks at me for a really long time. Just looks and stares and thinks. I know that she really misses Tara too, that Tara being gone is really unbelievable to her. Finally she tells me, “I guess it’s not so much about how long your physical bodies are together, maybe it’s more about your souls connecting?”
I think about what she’s said. “Do you really-?” I begin but don’t know what I’m trying to say. “Why would The Gods take her away from me?” I ask and I don’t know how much longer I can keep my voice steady. “They’re all-seeing, so they must know I can’t do this without her.”
She leans in slightly and presses a kiss to my forehead. “If they are all-seeing, they must know that you can.” She gives me a small-smile. It’s meant to be reassuring, I think. It’s not really working, although muchly appreciated.
***
What I found in the box: Tara’s Elton John Greatest Hits album. I listened to two songs on a loop: Rocket Man and Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, but in most I found some small bit of Tara and myself. Your Song, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Daniel, Candle In the Wind- all of them caused me to curl up in bed clutching a pillow and remembering how we used to be. A photo album of us from when we’d first got together. We looked so young, wow, and so happy. It was also fun to see how the pictures went from us just smiling at the camera to smiling and holding hands, to finally kissing. Body glitter that she used to put on her eyelids for special occasions, lipsticks, lip glosses, dark colored nailpolish. I found all her Book of Shadows from since when she’d been a kid- in them she’d written vegetarian recipes, spells, journal entries, information on the eight Sabbaths and all the moon phases and what they meant. Tara was always the more serious of us two. I was focused on spells, she was focused on what brought the spells together- moon phases, candle colors, Sabbaths, doing right by the Gods. I found candles, books on The Craft, notes we’d written to each other when we’d first met, stories she’d been writing, another photo album from before she’d met me- back home she’d worn only baggy clothes and got around on a skateboard. In all the pictures her face was obscured by her hair, her eyes were never on the camera.
***
While I’d been fighting demons with Buffy and Xander, she’d been skating around to the library, taking out four books a week and pouring through them. While I’d been with Oz, she’d dated one girl in her town- secretly they snuck around for two months, stealing kisses and touches here and there. While I was being teased for being shy and quiet and a geek, kids were teasing her for being shy and quiet and gay.
Was she really my soulmate, I’d asked Buffy. How could anyone else be my soulmate?
I remember when Oz left. ‘I feel like i’ve been split down the center,’ I told her. ‘And half of me is lost.’ Now, though, without Tara I felt as though all of me was lost. How did I get so lost?
When Buffy comes in to check on how I’m doing, I’m busy reading a book I’d found all the way at the bottom of the box. It was a book I hadn’t even known Tara had- Missing Angel Juan by Francesca Lia Block.
Buffy looks tired as she ambles in wearing her silk pajamas. “Will, it’s late. You should go to bed.”
I nod without looking up. “I will. I’m just finishing this.”
“I’ve been hearing this song all night, are you listening to anything else?” It’s Rocket Man again.
I look up at her finally. “Buff, please?”
With a sigh, she turns to leave, calling over her shoulder, “G’night.”
“Goodnight, Buffy.”
She shuts the door and I glance at the cloch. 3: 34 am. Wow, I don’t even feel tired. Back to the book.
When I finally go to bed it’s almost four and all I can think about is the book. The story stays with me, words dancing through my brain.
When your soul, it writes, -whatever that is anyway- something so alive when you make music or love and so mysteriously hidden most of the rest of the time, so colorful and big but without color or shape- when your soul finds another soul it can recognize before the rest of you knows about it. The rest of you just feels sweaty and jumpy at first. And your souls get married without even meaning to- even if you can’t be together for some reason in real life, your souls just go ahead and make wedding plans. A soul’s wedding must be too beautiful to even look at. It must be blinding. it must be like all the weddings in the world- gondolas with canopies of doves, champagne glasses shattering, wings of veils, drums beating, flutes and trumpets, showers of roses. And after that happens you know- that’s it, this is it. But sometimes you have to let that person go...which doesn’t mean they’re not the one. it just means you’ve got to do whatever you have to do for you alone. You’ve got to believe in your magic and face right up to the mean nasty part of yourself that wants to keep the one you love locked up in a place in you where no one else can touch them or even see them. Just the way when somebody you love dies you don’t stop loving them but you don’t lock up their soul inside you. You turn that love into something else, give it to somebody else...
I cry in bed, then, but for the first time in so very long it’s not tears of heart-wrenching, agonizing sobs. I cry because I know what I have to do, I have to keep Tara in my mind and in my heart, love her always, but I have to move on and live my life, do what I have to do alone. Be by myself for however long it takes for Tara and I to find our way back to one another. But I’m not lost anymore, I know where I am, I just happen to be standing there solo.
end.
but also very touching and sad 
at: 10/1/02 3:51:10 am