by AntigoneUnbound » Thu Feb 20, 2003 10:19 pm
Gods Served and Abandoned
Note: Here’s the second part of the 13th installment. It picks up where 13a ended. Part 14 will go up on Monday.
Disclaimers:
Haiku for ownership:
These girls are not mine.
Who can hope to own the stars?
Blame those ME stiffs.
Spoilers:
Up to season 5. I’ve played slightly with the timing of a certain Big Bad’s appearance, with some implications for Dawn’s entrance.
Rating:
R for now; if it changes, I’ll give heads-up.
Distribution:
Sure, with acknowledgement.
Feedback:
Even more sure! Bring it on!
*****
Part 13b
*****
Willow’s mind scrambled like a child on a jungle gym, trying to find some reassuring angle from which to consider all of this.
"How do we even know your father wrote this?" she asked Tara, gripping her shoulder. "It could be something Donnie just made up—"
"It’s Daddy’s hand-writing," Tara replied dully. "I recognize it."She looked up to see Donnie grinning with malicious glee. You found me, didn’t you, Donnie? You’ll never let me go. Eyes narrowing suddenly, she asked, "How did you know about this? And when did you find out?"
Donnie leaned back casually, apparently more than willing to supply any information they asked of him since all the information he had would, he knew, be painful to them.
"It was right after Mom died. I woke up in the middle of the night; heard something moving around down stairs. I grabbed a ball bat and went down to check it out. And what do I see? Daddy, standin’ there in front of the fireplace, readin’ this letter and just cryin’ like a baby. Big ol’ tears just runnin’ down his face. He gets done readin’, and makes as if he’s gonna chuck the letter in the fire, but then he changes his mind and folds it back up, puts it back in the envelope. He locks the box back up and then hides the key between two loose stones in the hearth. I guess Mom must have known where he kept the key, since the letter was to her," Donnie added almost as an afterthought.
Tara stared at him. "So you just decided to help yourself to his private things? Things that could make him cry at night after his wife had just died? God, Donnie, is there anybody you don’t hate?"
His mouth twisted suddenly, and then his trademark plastic smile was back in place. "If I think of anybody, I’ll let you know." He chuckled at his own words. "Yeah, I watched him pick up the box and head back toward the stairs. I high-tailed it back to my room, and listened from the doorway. He just went straight back to his room, so I knew it had to be in there somewhere. First chance I got, I took a look around."
He looked off, reliving the experience. "When I read that letter, you could have knocked me over with the tail-feather of a sparrow. So it wasn’t Mom who was demon; it was Daddy. And that meant I was part demon, too." He smiled as he spoke.
"And you liked it," Willow muttered with shock. "You liked knowing you had something scary and evil inside you." She felt Tara wrench suddenly under her hand, and realized with sick regret what she had just said. "I mean, you liked knowing that maybe you had…" She trailed off, uncertain where to go.
"Oh yeah, I loved it," Donnie replied easily, and then caught her look at Tara. "Complicates stuff, doesn’t it? First Tara lies about having any demon in her, then everybody thinks she doesn’t have demon in her; and now…Sorta throws a wrench into the child-bearing plans, although who knows what you two were gonna try with that anyway." He laughed at the image in his mind.
Willow practically jumped to her feet, unconsciously placing herself between Donnie and Tara. "How do you explain what happened at the Magic Shop?" she demanded angrily. "Huh? How come Spike couldn’t hit Tara without his chip setting off fireworks?"
"Hell if I know," Donnie shrugged nonchalantly. "Maybe it only kicks in at a certain age. We don’t even know what kind of demon it is." He seemed happy to consider the myriad possibilities.
Tara, meanwhile, was struggling to find her voice. I can’t go back. I can’t go through this again. Not now; not when I’m finally living the life I want to lead. I can’t lose Willow. Whatever I have to do, I can’t lose her.
Looking at her brother, Tara finally asked, "Why didn’t Daddy say anything about this before? At the Magic Box? Why did he just turn around and leave?"
Again, Donnie only shrugged. "Got me. I kept waitin’ for him to speak up, tell you the truth. Whether you got it from Mom or Daddy, doesn’t really matter, does it? But he just turned around and practically crawled out to the camper. I finally decided that one of us had to act like a man."
Willow snorted. "No, you decided to act like a child throwing a temper tantrum because you didn’t get your wish."
Donnie glared at her. "What do you know about it? Don’t matter what you do or who you do it with, you still ain’t got the equipment you need to take care of a woman."
Willow again had to fight the urge to fling magic at him with just the barest flick of her wrist and two, maybe three quickly chanted words. I can’t do it. It’s not what Tara wants…I think. Instead, she replied, "I know what you need. You need a good roll in the hay with a big, husky construction worker you call ‘Daddy.’ All this macho shit is just repressed—"
But Tara silenced them both using neither magic nor force. Holding a hand out to Willow, she turned to Donnie. "What about the stone? What does it have to do with anything?’
Donnie looked confused at her question. "Hell, I don’t know," he muttered. "It’s a damn rock. As whipped as Daddy was, he probably saw it on the ground on his first date with Mom and kept it for sentimental reasons." He scowled. "I never dreamed Daddy was such a pussy. Can you believe all that shit about droppin’ his umbrella just to meet some bitch—"
It happened so fast that Willow wondered if she had imagined it, but the angry, red flares along Donnie’s right cheek told her otherwise. Tara had slapped him, hard; and she looked ready to do it again.
"If you ever talk about her that way again, I’ll do more than that. She gave birth to you, Donnie. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? And aren’t you glad to know that your parents loved each other?"
"Not if it made Daddy so miserable," Donnie shot back, rubbing his cheek. "Christ, Tara, did it look like they loved each other when we were growin’ up? Did you ever see ’em hug or kiss or anything like that?"
Tara had no real answer for this. For a moment, the room was silent. Finally, Willow spoke, trying to keep her voice somewhere close to civil.
"Donnie, why are you doing this? Do you really want Tara to come back home? Is that what you want?" Even as she asked it, she felt her voice hardening.
Donnie had dropped even the pretense of brotherly love. "You bet I do," he muttered.
Tears finally made their way to Tara’s eyes and began to spill down her cheeks. "Why? Why don’t you want me gone? You hate me, Donnie. Why have me anywhere around you?"
Donnie was staring at Tara now with a quiet bitterness that frightened her more than his rages. "Because you ain’t goin’ off and leavin’ me there alone. You don’t get to leave, Tara, and just act like you don’t even belong to this family. You don’t get to head off to college and leave your white-trash family behind like you’re too good for us."
For one, excruciating moment, Tara dropped her head, gazing at the floor with a resignation that Willow hadn’t seen in months. But then she straightened, pulling herself to her full height, and gazed at Donnie until he was forced to lower his own gaze under the weight of hers.
"I’m not going back, Donnie. No matter what, I’m not going back. If you have any sense, you’ll leave, too. But I’m gone; I always have been."
*****
It was well past lunch-time, but neither Willow nor Tara could imagine eating anything. Donnie had finally left, taking the box with him, but not before Willow snatched the small stone from its confines, ignoring his protests.
"This was in there for a reason. I’m going to find out what it is," she told him defiantly.
"Fine, whatever," he had muttered. "You know I'll be back, Tara. Why not make things simple and just pack your stuff?" And then he had slouched out the door, slamming it shut behind him.
Willow was completely at a loss. She wanted to comfort Tara, but had no idea how to do so. What could she say—"Don’t worry, Baby. I still love you, even if you are a demon"?
And that, she realized, was the problem. Would she still love Tara if Tara was a demon? Love her in the active sense of the word, not the abstract, from-a-safe-distance version? Could she go through that again, what she had suffered through with Oz? What if the demon aspect was hidden, or latent, until a certain age? Tara’s father had certainly seemed to grow colder, more angry over time. What if that happened to Tara? Nathan Maclay’s letter to his wife had been so full of love, even if his actions were profoundly misguided. What if Tara became bitter and resentful over time? Could she even imagine it?
And what if Tara one day felt the pull to one of her own, someone more like her—as Oz had done? Willow feared she might vomit at the thought. She couldn’t have imagined being closer to someone, more kindred in spirit, than she was with Tara. But couldn’t that change? If Tara did have demon in her, who could say that it wouldn’t grow stronger and wilder until one day she, too, could no longer resist its pull and left Willow alone once more, just when she had grown to believe that she might never be left alone again?
Could she risk it? If this all proved to be true, could she stay with Tara?
And then, so abruptly that she almost gasped at the impact, she realized that the question was moot beyond words. Even if she did have to consider all of these questions, was there really any chance that she would choose to walk away from Tara? Was there really any chance that she would look into those eyes, into that soul that she loved beyond her capacity to describe it, and leave her?
Of course not.
It really was a matter of how, not if. And though this realization didn’t exactly comfort her, it did somehow manage to lower the raging confusion within her mind and her heart.
She drew a deep breath, and pulled Tara gently into her arms. "Baby, we’ll figure this out. You know Donnie would do anything to hurt you. We just have to—" She was stunned to feel Tara wrench violently out of her grasp.
"Yes, he would do anything to hurt me, because apparently he’s part-demon. He has ‘something evil and scary’ inside him—remember?"
Willow took an involuntary step back under the force of Tara’s hurt and anger. "Baby, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, or at least I wasn’t thinking about you. Tara, you’re the least scary, evil person I’ve ever met."
"Well, maybe not for long. Maybe Donnie’s right; maybe it’s dormant until a certain age. Who knows when it might kick in? When I might just turn evil and hurtful and destructive?" She began to shake as she talked.
Willow reached out one tentative hand and, meeting no resistance, gently stroked Tara’s arm. "What—you’re saying you’ll go all ‘Black Magic Tara’ on me? That one day you’ll go evil and try to destroy the world? And—what else?—oh, maybe your hair and your eyes will turn black and you'll hurt the people you love? Tara, that’s ridiculous. That’s the kind of stuff asinine TV plot twists are made of." She felt Tara calming, just slightly, under her touch.
Finally, Tara allowed herself to be enfolded in Willow’s arms. "Oh God, Willow…I’m sorry. I just—I can’t go through this again; I can’t. I finally let myself believe it’s over, that I’ve gotten away from my family, and now this. It’s like they show up every time I start to believe I can be happy, and they try to take it away from me." Willow felt hot tears trickle down her neck as Tara wept softly against her.
"Baby, I don’t know what the truth is, but I do know that they can’t take you away from me. No matter what we find out, we’re in this together, OK? You don’t do any blind Cadria spells, and I don’t turn Donnie into a sentient toilet plunger. At least until you give me the go-ahead," she added meaningfully.
Tara pulled back slightly and gazed at her, tears hanging unshed from her thick lashes. Willow thought that she had never looked more beautiful. How could she be a demon? How could I not love her, even if she is?
"I think we should tell Giles and the others about this," Tara was saying. "We need to know if it’s possible that the demon aspect hasn’t been…activated yet."
"Or if there’s some other explanation for this," Willow reminded her. "Just remember—I’m with you, no matter what we find out. What the goddess has joined together, let no disturbed brother put asunder."
Tara managed a weak grin. "Ain’t nobody puttin’ us under, Sweetie. C’mon, let’s go see that tea-drinking bastion of wisdom."
*****
"You say you’re sure the letter was written by your father?" Giles’ tone was a mixture of confusion and curiosity. They were talking in the back room of the Magic Box while Anya took money up front and commended herself on contributing to the betterment of the nation’s economy.
"Positive," Tara replied promptly. "I know his writing, and I know Donnie’s, and this was his. Besides, Donnie would have misspelled half the words in there, including ‘the.’"
"Fascinating," Giles murmured. "And more than a little upsetting to you," he added quickly, seeing Tara’s expression.
"You could say that," she replied heavily.
"And it was dated in February of 1978? What was going on at that time? In your family?"
Willow watched Tara bite her lower lip, an unconscious habit when she was concentrating. "’78…Let’s see…Donnie was born that October; I’m guessing Mom had just found out she was pregnant."
"So maybe your dad wrote the letter to her because he realized the stakes had gone up: he was going to be a father; the demon blood had passed into the next generation." Willow said this last part reluctantly, knowing how the implications would hit Tara.
"The next generation…" Tara echoed. "Nice legacy, Daddy."
"Yes, well, Willow may have a point," Giles said quickly. "If your father realized that he now needed to be watchful about someone besides himself, he might feel a particular urgency in writing the letter."
"But then he didn’t give it to her," Willow argued, shaking her head. "He didn’t intend for her to see it unless he died first, because then he wouldn’t have to deal with her reaction. He wanted her to be set free of thinking she was demon, but only if it didn’t cost him his marriage." She suddenly felt even more deeply for Tara’s mother, who had gone to her grave thinking that she was demon, that she had passed that demon on to her beloved daughter.
"You’re right, Willow. He tried to hide the truth from her so that he wouldn’t ever have to risk losing her. It was a selfish thing to do." Tara’s eyes were sad as she spoke, and Willow realized that she was remembering the spell she had cast only recently. She took Tara’s hand urgently into hers, trying to tell her through touch and gaze that she was not her father.
"Tara, when were your parents married?" Giles asked suddenly, and again, she chewed on her lower lip for a moment before replying.
"1972. They met in 1971, Mama told me, and got married the next year."
"And Donnie was their first child?" Giles asked, almost as an afterthought. But Tara shook her head.
"No; Mama had a miscarriage in 1975. It hit her really hard, she said. She was sure that it was a boy; she already had a name picked out for him, even though she lost him in the second month."
Giles tilted his head at this information, as if trying to reassemble a picture within his mind.
"So Nathan meets Julia in 1971, and apparently falls quite hard for her. They get married in 1972, conceive but lose a child in 1975, and then your mother gives birth to Donnie in October of 1978. And you were born in November of 1980," he finished.
"Right," Tara concurred.
Willow picked up the narrative. "And in February of 1978, Nathan writes a letter to Julia telling her the truth, but clearly doesn’t expect to give it to her himself. Julia dies before he does, and she never learns the truth." Willow looked sadly at Tara as she said this, knowing that she only had a dim sense of how much this must hurt her girl. Right now, probably everything hurts her.
"If Daddy did write the letter because he had just found out Mom was pregnant, why didn’t he do it the first time she was pregnant?"
"I can’t imagine," Giles murmured. "In fact, all of this seems incredibly mysterious." He sipped his tea absently.
"The biggest mystery to me is why Spike went into a limbic system melt-down when he hit Tara," Willow pointed out.
"I agree," Giles replied. "What we know is that Spike cannot hurt any living human without intense neuralgia in the cerebrum."
"You mean brain pain," Willow clarified.
"Well, yes. I just hated the way it rhymed," he admitted stiffly.
"That’s my Giles," Willow said affectionately. "Ever the crusader against malice, mayhem, and monosyllabism."
"Giles, is it possible that I have demon in me that hasn’t been…activated yet? Like some kind of latent or dormant strain?" Though she asked the question openly, Willow knew that inside, Tara was screaming for the answer to be no.
At Giles’ sigh, Willow knew that the wish would go unanswered. "As much as it pains me to say this, Tara, I’m afraid there are instances of hidden demon aspects that do not emerge until the creature—er, the person is of a certain age, or under a particular set of circumstances. This is particularly true when the person isn't a full-blooded demon. Sometimes," he added, in a more hopeful tone, "the demon doesn’t emerge at all."
"So I just have to walk around being very, very careful not to—well, we don’t know what I need to avoid, do we? We don’t even know what kind of demon we’re talking about. Once we find that out, I just live my life in a plastic bubble, avoiding all known activating agents." Tara’s voice was more bitter than Willow had ever heard. Suddenly she remembered sitting with Oz in his van, protesting that the wolf had emerged because she had upset him. "Well, so we’re safe then," he had replied, in his ironic style, "cause you’ll never do that again."
How do I go through this again? Goddess, why is everything so hard?
She realized that Tara was looking at her intently, her blue eyes cloudy with sadness and fear. Willow smiled at her gently, forcing her own fears to the back of her mind.
"There’s something else I don’t understand," Giles said, as if unaware of the painful dance that the two women before him were trying to navigate. "Why didn’t your father say anything about this in the Magic Box when he came to take you home? After he admitted that your mother had no demon in her, why not tell you then?"
"Well, for one thing, he didn’t know Donnie knew. He still doesn’t. Maybe he was planning to regroup. I don’t think he seriously considered that I wouldn’t go back with him. That you all would stand up for me," she added softly, squeezing Willow’s hand gently.
"Always," Willow murmured in response, and knew that it was true.
"Yes, it was clear he was a man not used to being questioned, much less defied," Giles nodded.
"And yet, that letter…I’ve never, ever heard my father talk like that. I certainly never saw him show anything like that kind of devotion when Mom was alive. But—I mean, what he did was so wrong, to deceive her like that, make her question her own soul; but in its own way, that was a love letter. He was crazy about Mom when he wrote that." Tara’s voice sounded almost desperate with the need to understand all of this.
"Yes, well, I’m afraid that right now, we have far more questions than answers," Giles sighed.
"Ooh—the rock!" Willow dug into her pocket and pulled out the small, red-tinged stone.
"Mmm…It appears to be, um, well…" Giles trailed off.
"A rock," Willow finished for him. "And you don’t have to worry about rhyming it with anything, like ‘dock’ or ‘frock’ or ‘cock’ and howabout we just forget that last one, OK?"
"Gladly," the librarian and the lesbian sang out in unison.
"It doesn’t appear terribly unique; then again, appearances can be deceiving," Giles mused, turning the stone over in his palm.
"True," Willow nodded. "I looked straight there for a while."
"Let’s hear it for deceiving appearances," Tara replied, with a reasonable facsimile of her usual smile.
"Well, I’d like to study it more," Giles said, moving over to his desk and pulling out two musty texts. "We can discuss everything further tonight, since we already have a meeting scheduled. In the meantime, I suggest that the two of you try to get some food in you and maybe even some rest if you can. This has already been a traumatic day and it’s not even mid-afternoon."
"Yeah, but in New Zealand, it’s way past sundown," Willow said philosophically, though it was hard to know which philosophy she was drawing on.
"Yes, well…Imagine me making a suitable reply, if you would. I’m unable to do so myself right now." Reaching out, he folded Tara into a surprising but very welcome hug. "We’ll resolve this, Tara; you’ll not be taken away from us," he murmured softly.
Moments later, they emerged into the sunlight and turned down the sidewalk to head back to campus. Both of them were preoccupied with unsettling thoughts, and the walk home was an unusually quiet one.
*****
To be continued
way!).
Donny might seem a useful tool if *I* was a vain and not too picky "Hell God."
at: 2/20/03 8:57:32 pm
as I'm more centred on the girl on girl action.
at: 2/22/03 2:55:09 am
).
, and even with Willow's mind racing through all the possible scenarios there was no doubt in my mind that Willow would stick by Tara, after all it’s Tara!! However, I did have a laugh at the thought of Tara going all black magic and trying to destroy the world 
