Title: A Possible Fairy Tale (1/?)
Author: rae.
Rating: Totally G, I think. Or PG cuz it deals with death? Either/or.
Pairing: Willow/Tara. Willow alone right now, but later...
Disclaimer: characters are Joss’. But I treat them much better than he does, I think.
Author’s Note: This was written when my girlfriend was gone for nine days and I was an empty heartbroken mess. I don’t even want to imagine if I lost her like Willow lost Tara. So this is for Kenda, and also my friend Anne who told me the real version of The Little Mermaid. Also, guys, it's full on angst ahead but since it will be a series, expect happiness later on.
Turning the pages, skimming the words, the images leave the soft paper and enter my mind. Feels so smooth against my fingers, soft and the words welcome me with their possibilities.
Reading just might be my favorite thing to do in the world these days, more than hacking, more than magick. Wow, computer hacking. I do that so rarely now, barely ever and never for my own fun, and it seems like back when I did used to it was a whole other life. Someone else’s life; like I was Little Hacker Willow, scouring the net for all sorts of naughty, illegal fun.
Through it all though, through hacking and magick there was still always reading. It might have been less enjoyable to me after I met Buffy- reading was research, means to an end. Read to become a better hacker, read to defeat monsters, divert badness, learn more about magick. Other things too. I remember, red-faced so much that I’m sure I matched my hair, after I met Tara, after I fell for her, taking out some random lesbian book from the Sunnydale Library. Not a novel, though, just a lesbian studies type deal.
It keeps me busy, keeps me sane, seems I can’t have a moment to think since Tara’s gone. Cause, see, thinking leads to remembering which leads to loneliness which leads to misery despair unhappiness depression and, finally, tears. Tears are bad. Too much tears.
I’ve cried more than Whiny-Post-Death-Buffy.
I’ve cried much more than when she left, packed her bags and whoops! gone.
There has been enough tear-shed to last me the next three or four lifetimes. Sometimes, three four five six times a day I lock myself up in my room the bathroom the basement, I go to the backroom of The Magic Box the forest the derserted crumbling drive-thru that hasn’t been running since I was in ninth grade.
Too much crying too much crying too much crying...
I can hear through my open door Dawn, Buffy and Xander are downstairs and making dinner. They seem to be in a okay mood. I hear laughter; Xander making lame jokes. I want to join them but I know it’s pointless, I probably won’t ever laugh again. I just can’t imagine it, you know? Nothing seems funny really, anymore. It’s all about perspective, you see, and my perspective is of a Gloomy Gus sort. Party-poopin’ Willow, that’s what they call me. I can’t laugh at things because even something like Dawn dropping a piece of toast on the floor is a misfortune. Misfortune equals bad. It’s not funny to me.
Do you understand? I’ll put it another way. If somebody is walking along and a bird poops on their head, that could be considered funny in you’re not the person who it happened to. Some people will laugh themselves like ‘what are the chances!’ and find it great and easily washable. A more sensitive, look-conscious kind of person might freeze. Their smile of only seconds before might slowly turn downward in a grimace, their eyes might take on a hollow, defeated glaze. The most heartbreaking then might be that they will reach up there with the sweater they probably had tied around their waste and use their clean, maybe even favorite sweatshirt to wipe it off. Thinking about it makes me queasy again, so moving on...
You know how when someone’s gone, like really gone and you loved them so much that they had become you, somewhat? Not in a losing-your-identity sort of way, just that you were Willow and Tara, Tara and Willow, a couple, a team, soulmates, always and forever. So it feels like half of me is gone now. My left side or, wait, maybe my right, has been chopped up and tossed aside like firewood that’s declared to be unusable. Can firewood be unusuable? Like, too skinny, too fat, just no good? I have no idea. My heart is actually that old cliche of being broken, no, really, I can feel that it’s smaller than it was, the beat is weaker, it barely follows a pattern anymore. Breathing can get hard sometimes.
Putting aside the book I’m reading I decide to make myself some coffee. I leave the room but when I get to the stairs I change my mind and decide I’ll just refill the glass of water that’s in my room because the water has gotten sort of warm and old-tasting it’s been there for so long. So I start back to my room but as I reach the doorway my eyes fall on the almost-empty glass and I think, ‘What’s the point? I’m only just waiting for this all to end, why should I bother hydrating myself?’ and I grip onto the plaster doorway as hard as I can to keep from falling over with the weakness and neusea I’m suddenly feeling.
I raise my hands to my mouth and suddenly I’m sobbing, crying and shaking so hard that I have to slide down to the floor and my hands close tighter around my mouth to keep the others from hearing.
“Shh,” I hear and hands are on my back, rubbing me and then holding me tightly. I wish it were Tara but it doesn’t feel like her, smell like her, sound like her. But I hug back and I hear Anya’s soft voice whisper, “Try to be strong.”
She’s heard me again, what with her vengeance demon-y powers. I probably can’t mutter bad words under my breath anymore without Anya feeling my pain. “I miss her so much,” I tell her pitifully, between sobs. She nods and continues rubbing my back.
It seems unfair to Anya but I really wish it wasn’t her arms around me, her voice soothing me, her hands steadying me. I miss the smell of Tara’s apple blossom shampoo as she’d lean in, her smell like jasmine and rosemary insense. I miss looking at this girl through bleary eyes and knowing she’s pretty much seen every crying fit I’ve had for the past three years, she’s been the one to kiss away the wet streaks and tell me funny stories to cheer me up.
I continue, though, unable to stop, “And they don’t understand, none of them and they don’t even try. It wasn’t the same when Oz left because at least I knew he was still out there somewhere, and it wasn’t the same with Buffy and Angel because she knew she would have to kill him, she was prepared.” I wipe at my eyes but more tears just keep streaming. “I never even got to say-”
“Yes, her death was rather brutal and shocking,” Anya admits in her usual blunt way. I look up at her, my face probably red and my nose runny. It’s the first time anyone has been so honest about the death to me. Everyone seems unable to say it, they tiptoe around me.
“You are so very innapropriate,” I tell her.
She gives me a small, shy smile. “I get the feeling you need that.” She brushes my hair behind my shoulders. “You two were a fairy tale. A beautiful, wonderful fairy tale with minor bumps in the road that was supposed to end happily ever after. I’d use the magick addiction with some wicked witch analogy but, well, I doubt that would be appreciated.”
“Not really,” I agree. I think about what she’d said. A fairy tale. That makes me smile. She would be the cool, strong, brave princess and I would be the princess up in the tower awaiting saving from heartbreak. “Tara was my princess.”
“I think honesty is important right now,” Anya continues. “To everyone. Heck, even tell me to get lost if you need to!”
I shake my head and hug her tighter. “Thank you.”
She asks if I need to be teleported anywhere but I reply that I’ll do it alone. The old bus-and-walking routine. So she leaves, disappears quick as light, and I head down the stairs and out the door. When Buffy calls after me I tell her I’ll be back later tonight. She yells again that I should call. I yell back that I promise to.
And I leave to do what I should have ages ago.
***
I have a cigarette while I wait for the bus. Once again, Little Wacky Sweet Willow doing something no one expects. I’ve started smoking since, I don’t know, a few days. They’re expensive! Who knew that they were so expensive? Not me, that’s for sure. But they make me feel rebellious and not like myself, and lately I just can’t handle being myself. Being Willow involves too much baggage.
Plus, if it speeds along my death that means less time waiting for it. Not a bad thing.
When the bus slows down and then stops in front of me, I toss the half-smoked cigarette to the ground and go on my way.
***
When my mom opens the door she looks surprised to see me. But that might be only because she’s forgotten in all this time that she had a daughter. Wouldn’t suprise me.
“Willow,” she says, her voice equal parts surprise and confusion.
I dart in quickly so that she can’t turn me away when she hears what I’ve come to tell her. Sitting down on the couch, I keep my eyes trained on her. She smiles politely as she shuts the door and then takes the seat next to me. Darn, I think, close enough that if she freaks out I’m right in the war path. My mom doesn’t freak out much, but when she does... It’s not pretty. The MOO Incident, for example. Oh wouldn’t she love to know how I nearly killed everyone using my magicks?
“Mommy?” I say. I hadn’t meant to come out so needy, it had kind of just slipped.
She smiles, actually smiles and I haven’t seen emotion like that from her since I was a kid. “Can I tell you something? Something important to me?”
She nods.
“I mean, I know we don’t really do the whole “talking thing” much but I really-”
“Wills?” I haven’t heard her call me that since I was a kid. She smiles. “Just say it.”
“I was in love with a girl, Mom. For three years we were together. She loved me and I lover her and we took take of each other. After Oz left I thought I would die and she saved me.”
There’s a pause in which I expect her to grab at me and start ringing my neck. Or maybe just look at me with a big fat disappointment face. Her features don’t register any kind of emotion. Not surprise, which is what I’d expected. “But?”
“She died. She just died.”
My mom moves closer and pulls me into her arms. She feels soft and warm and smells of sandlewood and baking. Her non-reaction makes me feel tears building and I whimper, “Are you surprised? Do you hate me?”
“You were always an open, beautiful person, Willow.” Her voice sounds like she might be smiling but I can’t see because my head is resting against her chest. “I could believe you fell in love with anyone and that it was real and wonderful.”
“Why did you stop paying attention to me?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” And there’s nothing else to say about that, I guess. She doesn’t know, I don’t. It just happened. She pulls back and looks at me. “Would you like to stay for dinner? I’ll make you whatever you like. We can even go grocery shopping together if I don’t have ingrediants.”
I nod and give her a small smile.
She adds, “And don’t take this to mean I want details, but I would like to hear about this girl. What’s her name?”
“Tara.”
“Tara,” she repeats like she’s trying it out. A smile teases up her lips before she gets to her feet. “Let’s go make dinner.”
When I get up and follow her into the kitchen I wonder if, even though I lost my soulmate, maybe this happening between my mom and me could be a sort of happily ever after. Old fairy tales, the real non-Disneyfied ones, didn’t usually have happily ever afters anyway- The Little Mermaid got to be human but felt like she was walking on knives and would bleed. Then she had the choice of killing her prince and living, or dying and turning into sea foam. Well, since sea foam exists she couldn’t do it, the story goes, so she died and the bad guys won, love lost. Fairy tales can be a sad thing. The Little Mermaid lost her love and had to deal with the consequences. I would be like her, I guess.
end of first part.
Edited by: starlitefaeriegrrrl at: 11/9/02 1:55:41 pm
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And i'm sad, that it's over so fast!