Tara struggled to raise the axe again to block, wishing she knew any other way. Her arms trembled from all the blows absorbed and the few delivered. She had been doing this for an hour, barely keeping up. She had prepared, wearing her rarely-worn exercise clothes, a sport bra top and biker shorts, but her entire body was still soaked in sweat and yet she still felt flush. Her hair had been tied back beforehand but still wisps freed themselves and stuck to her forehead, distracting always when she needed to pay close attention to avoid losing an arm from the great sweeps of the sword. She needed to do this, she couldn’t let Buffy down. As she looked her opponent in the eye, she hoped she wouldn’t have to.

“Did I mention that Giles called?” Buffy remarked as the sword she wielded casually swept back towards Tara.

“No. What did he say?” Tara barely managed to swing the axe back around, blocking the sword badly with her axe’s shaft. It barely had any force to it, but Buffy dutifully allowed herself to be blocked and moved her sword back to the next attack in the drill pattern.

“He spent the first five minutes apologizing for not reaching me on my birthday until I told him that the house had been magically sealed off. Then I spent the next five minutes convincing him that I was positive that…” Buffy’s voice wandered off, as if deciding how often she could say the name.

“...a demon acquaintance of Anya was responsible.” Tara could see she had said the right thing by the thankful smile that stole across Buffy’s face. She wondered how she and everyone had missed how rare an event that had become. Everyone had been traveling in their own worlds so much that they had lost sight, even Tara herself.

She wondered if she should make a point of getting involved with Anya and Xander’s wedding plans. They seemed to have it well in hand, but that is what everyone still thought about Buffy.

Her distracted musings almost got her cut by another gentle sweep of Buffy’s sword, but her body responded to the pattern that Buffy had already drilled into her over the past hour and managed to block it. She felt a small thrill at successfully defending herself, a rarely felt sensation.

This had been Buffy’s idea, actually. Every since Buffy confessed her... relationship with Spike, Tara had been spending time with Buffy, separate from Dawn. But Tara wasn’t comfortable about stopping by the house and Buffy was uncomfortable about asking her to. She sensed that her presence at Buffy’s birthday party was the result of careful tiptoeing, whispered conversations and over-enthusiastic agreements.

So Buffy when had carefully and casually suggested working out with Tara, she gratefully took the excuse to meet Buffy regularly without having to worry about the awkwardness of stopping by the house.

Importantly, the only other alternative they discussed involved shopping. Tara knew that her dress style and fashion sense so outraged Buffy on a spiritual level that a trip to the mall would ultimately be far more terrifying for her than merely sparring in the Magic Shop’s workout room.

Willow was next to Dawn, half working on her assignments and trying to keep an eye on Dawn’s work, promising herself she would only butt in if Dawn got stuck. She was trying not to be too pushy Dawn. Willow hadn't realized just how much Dawn's image of her had been part of her and Tara's coupledom and the whole car crash had sort of evaporated the rest of Willow's individual coolness with Dawn. She could feel that she was getting some of her rope back from Dawn but knew it was still very short. Willow didn't know how to be without knowing what Dawn felt.

Anya was locking up the Magic Shop for the evening, she opened the door to the workout room in the back for a moment to flip on the newly installed alarm system, scowling at the blissfully unaware Dawn as she did so. In that moment the sound of steel on steel rang until the soundproofed (mostly) door swung shut. Willow started, immediately thinking of enforcing a layered magical defense so that can research can be done. A few moments of indecision as she forced back the instinctive invocation of a nearby hearth spirit to erect it as both the sprawled back Spike and Dawn looked at her. Their casualness reassured her that nothing really unexpected was happening. She was oddly disappointed, the sudden need for casting now buzzing under her eyelids.

"Buffy practicing with Xander?" Wonder if she should be hurt that no one had mentioned that Xander was here. Usually when Anya such speed in closing, with her already making a beeline out the door, that meant Anya was running late for her early evening quickie with Xander. Willow thought she was regaining enough trust for something as simple...

"Nope." Dawn looked from Spike's slightly smirking face to Willow's, rebelled against him and with a look of a parent deciding to gift a child a toy that they had been pestering about...

"Buffy is practicing with Tara...."

Willow didn't really hear anything after the name.

Tara, tara, TARA, Tara

She knew she could repeat the name for hours (and had) but was still amazed it never sounded the same.

"Oh"

....

"That's nice"

Oh, she wasn't fooling anybody. Spike's stock smirk grew but he seemed to be waiting, refraining from distractions. Dawn waiting to see if Willow did anything, with a suspicious glare, as if already regretting the gift.

Still. Calm into stillness.

…hold and caress and cry until everything goes away and safe and loved and...

Dawn was testing her, in her eyes an audit in progress.

Tara was just on the other side of the door.

And far further away.

Physics theorem: Light travels between two points in the shortest amount of time, not distance.

Brightly, "I'm glad Buffy has someone to practice with." And with that she turned back to her book, trying to focus on the page but the page proving elusive, a daze of no focus, straining instead to hear what noises that escaped from the next room (none, why none? So now the soundproofing seems to work?) Spike's snort of disbelief was immediate but it took long seconds for Willow to hear Dawn turning the pages of her text.

Give it another moment, Willow fidgeted in her seat and settled back down, to get more comfy of course, but wow, the door to the back room now happens to be in sight. One has to make sacrifices (No sacrifices! No forfeitures!)

Did Tara like this shirt?

When was the last time I cut my hair? Tara loves to run her hand through my hair.

I'm not wearing a bra! Will that say available and waiting or hello, I’m a slut, just want anyone to feel, touch me.

I just want her to touch me.

Oh, casual talk! Umm, weather? No, too cliché. Buffy’s weapon's practice? That’ll be short, that’s a sharp piece of metal you have there! School, maybe, but no pushiness. Hacking the registrar to find out Tara’s schedule wasn't pushy, or stalkery, was it?

And for the first time in days, Willow stopped thinking about magic.

Well, for the next two minutes at least.

This is good.

Well, I have an unusual advantage. I didn't touch (or even see) this for 5-6 years, so I am able to edit (and thus improve) this with almost an entirely impartial eye...

I'm digging it

Thanks, I am going to post around one POV a day, until I catch up until I had previously written, probably then as I write new material drop back to once or twice a week.

Fortunately for Tara's arms and other major muscle groups, the time allotted for their ‘training' session was just about over, so after a few passes last Buffy suggested they stretch out to finish, something she was more than happy to agree with.

Tara only had some half remembered some basic stretches from high school gym class, but Buffy revealed being a cheerleader before Sunnydale and becoming a Slayer, where being flexible was a must. She knew dozens of stretching exercises, almost as sword forms. Tara couldn't remember if anyone had ever mentioned that to her before, but it made sense in a way that things only have in hindsight. The sort of wistfulness and weary acceptance that Buffy had with being the Slayer, even before dying, only came from someone who was in the spotlight and had to give it up. Not because she wasn't good enough to stay there, but because she was given no choice. And Spike...

They were facing each other on the mats, stretching their quads (it was all sore leg muscles to Tara) when Tara asked the question whose answer Buffy’s silence on spoke volumes.

"Do you like spending time with him?"

"He's evil! I can't... like him."

"That's not what I asked.” Buffy bleak look changed to guarded confusion. "Do you just like talking or spending time with him?" Tara was hoping that Buffy wouldn't lie, because if she did, there was nothing anyone could do to help her.

"Stretch the other leg, this way." Tara maintained her even gaze on Buffy, to keep the pressure while Buffy used the stretch to buy her time to think.

Eventually Buffy deflated, "Maybe I did at first. It was just, after I came back, I couldn't talk about with the Gang all about what happened since you all had worked so hard to bring me back. Dawn couldn't know, it would kill her to think I didn’t want to be alive. Giles was at first gone and then I needed to prove that I could get a handle things without him. That didn't work out as well as I hoped."

A quick verbal prod before the thought fled "But Spike..."

"But he wasn't anybody." A look that begged forgiveness crossed Buffy's face and Tara at once granted it with a softened set of eyes and a nod that Buffy accepted. "I could talk to him because it didn't matter. I didn't care what he thought."

With a pause and off Tara's implacable look she pressed on. "Then there was Sweet and the singing and dancing. Talking wasn't enough anymore."

"Did it help?"

"Yes... no. For a bit, maybe? At least while we are... occupied."

Tara tried to fill in blanks. Buffy hadn't found someone to help her because her friends, the only ones she could talk about her secret-filled life, were responsible for her confusion. Spike treated her as the center of his world, probably something Buffy hadn’t felt since she became the Slayer. What would make sense to her...

"When I first saw her, I wanted to know more about her." Tara bowed her head, her hair shielding her face, her eyes, her vulnerabilities. "And when I knew more about her, I knew that I wanted her. In every way. But then she told me about her missing boyfriend and her high school crush and I knew, knew that the world was teaching me another one of its hard lessons."

Tara forced her eyes up to face Buffy, her stretch forgotten. "But I still wanted to be near her, even if she didn’t want what I wanted, even just to listen to her breathing as she tortured me by sleeping in my room rather than risking the walk across campus at night."

Remembering that first kiss, the fumbling of clothes, the exploring of Willow's every taste, the desire on her face to touch Tara in turn, Tara had forbidden herself that moment that memory for so long. "I was willing to be her secret, you know. No one else had to know. Never to deny what we felt for each other, but if that alone was what she gave, it would have been enough for me."

Was that her mistake? To have been so blinded by the fact that her fate was no longer pre-ordained to be imprisoned by her (continued...)

( continues...) family, that she threw herself onto the new one that unfolded in front of her without ever realizing that she should have guided and shaped it also?

"But wasn't the way it turned out. She wanted more for me, things that I never dared to want for myself." Tara felt herself ease out of her reverie, the reality of it having been a true memory better than any dream. Buffy was paying attention. She needed to pay attention. Tara wasn't sure she could say this again.

"Are you saying I should want things for..."

"No," a needed interruption. "I'm just sharing what we wanted and how we got it, for a time. You are you. Spike is Spike. Discovering what you want and what you need from going to him, that will tell you what you should do." I hope it does, I hope so much for you, Tara silently added.

erikaj, Laga, in retrospect I think I may have come off a little brusquely yesterday in my responses. I don't know how I can feel so needful for feedback but yet be unappreciative when I receive it.

I hope that you both can continue to help give me direction to improve this story.

I didn't get brusqueness at all, CaBil. I really am enjoying the story. In my head it's real (or, a real episode).