Buffy was the Slayer and probably still resented Willow for bringing her back.

Xander, well Xander had grown up when she was distracted, now with a job and a looming marriage.

Giles didn't even stay for Buffy, what chance did she have?

She was just Willow. ole' willow. dependable willow. geek willow. willow that was left behind. willow that no one noticed.

Tara noticed her.

If Tara needed her, she would be that Willow, the one that was needed.

And without that need, she was left with the other willow. The willow she didn't want to be anymore yet couldn’t avoid.

Still no noise from the training room. Would asking as compared to commanding a spirit to bring the words spoken from that room to her ears break faith with her rejection of magic? Willow knew the answer but let the thought play in her mind until it needed to be diverted before she started working out the phrasing the request.

She glanced at the clock. It was around the time that Buffy started her patrol, beginning in the sewers, with Spike tagging along, going aboveground when night fell. Before she left she would try to have a conversation with Dawn, then secure the Magic Shop as Willow would leave with Dawn walking home in silence. Each time she had hoped for a word about Tara, whom Willow knew Dawn saw regularly but who she hadn't been mentioned to Willow since the accident, until today at least.

Maybe Tara would come out. What would Willow say? She had spent hours preparing for Buffy’s birthday, and after all preparation her words fled the moment she saw Tara. Looking so good in her new clothes. She hadn't known what she should say.

It wasn't until later, when they were alone in the kitchen, with the smell of burnt spell components in the air and Tara cleaning the residue, that the smells reminded Willow of an evening a month before Oz returned. She had known by then something was happening between her and Tara but hadn’t ferreted out what it was yet. It was then she had watched Tara clean after one of their joint lessons and was seized with the sudden desire to discover how Tara’s lips tasted (would it be different from Oz or Xander?) In that moment in the now, it was only with that feeling of safety and wonder that Willow could relax and confess to her.

Tara forgave her

Something that Willow feared would never happen.

A moment of chance. Of opportunity. But one that she had no idea how to follow up on. What to say next?

Well, hello maybe.

Maybe Tara would go out the back of the Magic Shop. Maybe Willow wouldn't have to think because Tara wouldn’t give her a chance.

She couldn't believe that she was afraid to speak with Tara.

But maybe she would only make it worse. Maybe Tara needed more time. Maybe Willow needed to atone more. Maybe...

Willow was so enraptured with all the maybes and excuses that she almost missed the fact that the door was opening.

No, that was a lie. She couldn’t afford the luxury of lying to herself about Tara. Willow could never overlook any of her own desires.

Despite knowing how much it had cost Buffy, Tara also knew she was still just a touch envious. Even after stretching, Tara felt stiff with her entire body still feeling damp from the exertion despite already having toweled off, the sweat still pooling at the edges of her clothes. Buffy, on the other hand, just splashed some water on her face and retied her hair and was ready to start patrolling. Despite Buffy’s urge to escape Tara’s uncomfortable questions she still sat and talked. In an attempt to avoid talking about Spike or mentioning Willow, Buffy kept bringing up Dawn, and Tara realized that was the only other thing that Buffy knew that Tara was interested in and understood herself. How they could be this connected through friendship and found family but still know so little about each other? It was partially Tara’s her own fault for until the revelation that she wasn’t a demon, she had tried to only interact with Willow. The others needed to not know too much about her, in case...

There were two letters Tara kept in her room as a different kind of reminder. One letter that she had composed again and again all during that first summer Tara and Willow were a couple, secretly rewriting and crying over it ever time it needed to be updated. She had to prepare for what was coming, for her inevitable change.

In the letter Tara told Willow that she never really cared for her, it was all an experiment and that Tara was going home to her family.

The other letter paired with it had been all too easy to write, succinct and to the point.

A letter to Buffy and Xander telling them all she knew about the demon she would become and all the folklore and legend her family had ‘known.’ With a request that they would give the other letter to Willow.

After they destroyed her, of course.

It would be easier for everyone but Willow if she was a stranger, just a demon masquerading as a human to deceive their friend. Better for Willow, also, thinking Tara had left rather having to destroy the demon herself.

Tara was fooling herself, of course. If Tara had been truly honest, she would have never let herself walk down the primrose path towards Willow.

But that look in Willow’s eyes when she got distracted, unfocused, where they suddenly seemed so deep, they had pulled her in and drowned all of her sense.

It was the most selfish thing Tara had ever done.

As the summer wore on, Willow dragged her more often to ‘Scooby Gang’ activities, Tara felt… complete so she let herself forget about the letters, the last versions crumpled up in an old notebook.

When Tara’s family arrived, the lies she had told herself were broken in a panic. She thought of leaving the letter with Buffy and running, running from both of her families.

She did something worse instead.

She knows she was lucky beyond all imagining in keeping the family that accepted her.

But between that and what shortly happened with Glory....

...crawling insects under the skin eating the eyeballs puking in the mouth endless and refreshing with every chitter bad and alone and deservedly...

...afterwards. Well, Buffy dying did make it hard to find out where she fell on the great funny shaped versus round pancake debate.

That is why Tara allowed herself to debate over whether or not to tell the others. Despite everything, she still didn’t believe absent any immediate sign of danger from Willow, she had the right to speak to the others, to challenge Willow to her best friends. This luxury of indecisiveness was one that Tara permitted herself.

Until the call came from Buffy one night, voiced her now normal scary sense of detachment that Dawn was in the ER. Karen, from a few dorm rooms down, gave her ride. As Tara stroked Dawn's hair as she whimpered quietly, so not to further upset the pacing Buffy, Tara got in pieces what happened. That Dawn had gotten hurt when Willow lost all control in a magic surge. Tara had suffered one while she was still young, but her Mother was there to help her balance between the conflicting energies until Tara learned how to control the flow of her own power.

Tara berated herself for each unpleasant noise that Dawn made because she should have spoken up and prevented this. When Xander picked them up at the hospital, she was already planning her response. If she was going to confront Willow, she needed to be prepared. Tara let herself be dropped off first, too wrapped in her own plans to notice that everyone else was silently making their own. When she got back to the dorm, she pulled out the satchel she had prepared the night she had left Willow.

Tara wasn't sure that Willow could be made to see by her but she had to try. Herbs, essences and a spirit she had apologetically bound, everything was ready as she could make it. She debated a spell to cut off her emotions, isolating herself so she could do what she had to. Then she realized if her worst case happened, she would never want to remove it.

Prepared, shielded, she followed Willow’s red string of fate (all the while trying not to think why it was so easy for Tara find it) to the house the next morning, only to be nearly run over by an exiting and frustrated Dawn. Upon seeing Tara she immediately unloaded how unreasonable it was, that Willow admitted she had a problem, agreed to renounce magic but still every single magic item had to be taken out of the house and how fair was that to her?

At the time Tara should have realized that Dawn’s concern was odd, that it was really over having her stash of pickpocketed items found, but instead Tara just listened, nodded and made encouraging noises. As soon Dawn was out of sight Tara threw up behind the bushes.

She went back to her dorm and remained numb for a while.

Later she apologetically released the bound spirit with her thanks and paid it no mind as it still returned a petty vengeance on her by melting all of her candles into a single puddle of wax.

If Willow was really trying to get better, if she was going to stay away from magic, she needed everyone's support. They were all suspicious enough, their auras screaming it anytime they got close to Willow the next time Tara saw them, that mentioning what happened to her, what had started it all, didn't seem to help anyone.

Tara thought she would then just fade away, that without the shared connection through Willow they would just forget her. But even without Willow, they still wanted to include her and then Buffy needed someone to confess to. To help her deal with the problem that was...

"Spike."

Before Willow had even had a chance to process that it was Buffy in the doorway and register the mild disappointment that she wasn't going to see Tara, Spike had bounced out of his chair.

"Ready for a bit of the rough and tumble, Slayer?

Willow was actually surprised to see Buffy's discomforted. Spike had made worse innuendo last year to Buffy last year while patrolling but Buffy always put him nastily back into his place.

"You want to patrol today…?"

"Why not? We should every day, you know. Work out the kinks and all that."

"But... "

“Jeesh, Buffy, just go out and patrol with Spike already. You'll feel better once beat something up." Dawn butted in with an exasperated voice as she packed her stuff.

"Yep, she always seems so relaxed after we’re done."

Willow had already begun grabbing her own material to walk Dawn home when she got that twitchiness under her skin that she was missing something. She had been getting that a lot lately since without magic everything seemed like a secret where it once was an open book.

Willow was sure that this paranoid feeling would go away soon enough.

Tara was still out of sight and far more important to Willow. She doesn't want to see me, Willow wailed inside her mind. She's right, I don't deserve to even be seen....

But I need her to see me so badly...

So she missed the look that Buffy shot back into the rear room.

I'm going to NYComicCon, so I have skip posting for a few days. I will be back posting by Tuesday latest...

perfect! That's when I'll be back. I look forward to reading more.

it's been good, so far.

Thanks, I appreciate it!

Spacey on pain meds. Can't sleep. Someone please point me to appropriate fanfic for this state (i.e. with lots of appeal at a really shallow level, not too dark). Supernatural, Reaper, Pushing Daisies, Firefly, Angel, Buffy, Batman, Dr. Who, Torchwood, Smallville.

back, though I may not have something for tomorrow...

---------------

Which Tara had no problem in catching, already alerted by Spike's name.

Buffy needed time to stop and think about what they had talked about, otherwise in thirty minutes she won't be thinking at all and soon after that she would not want to think about anything other than her own self-loathing.

Plus Tara had discovered how fun and easy it was to tease Spike at Buffy’s birthday party.

“I don’t know Spike, I hear that you can beat on things pretty well all by yourself.” Tara tried to casually retort as she came up to the door behind Buffy. “One man show and prefer it that way.”

...and the rest of her banter was forgotten when she saw Willow there...

...Tara flinched...

Forgotten, she forgot, was she forced to forget?!?

A quick glance at her wrist showed it still blank, still clear, still free.

Spike took her distraction to forge ahead “Either way, we need to start patrolling the sewers now if we are going to be ready later tonight, Buffy...”

And Tara felt rather than saw Buffy’s shoulders droop and she couldn’t let it happen, not now, not when Buffy had a chance to...

“You can’t Spike, Buffy is taking Dawn home.”

“What?

“I am?”

“Cool! Can we stop at the Expresso Pump?”

…don’t look at Willow…

“I thought that was Red’s job?”

…this is the right, no only, thing to do for Buffy…

“I need to ask Willow about a few things.”

With that, Tara turned away from the door, whispering to Buffy as she went, to just think about what they had spoken of. She could feel Dawn’s excitement, Buffy thankfulness, Spike’s frustration over not being able to follow due to the daylight and having to find Buffy later. And Willow’s...

I can remember for five minutes. Just five minutes. That’s all it will take. I can protect myself from her magic.

Just not from her.