Disclaimers, et. al., are the same as before. You don't really need to read those all again, do you?Chapter 3 (continued)
Approaching the outside the conference room, Tara's empathic senses were overwhelmed by waves of grief, distress and horror, an avalanche of emotion that threatened to knock her off her feet and smother her. She took a few deep breaths, trying to center her inner being as her mother had taught her long ago, long before…
The hand she held in hers was cool and dry, so familiar yet lacking in the quiet strength Tara had known from infancy. The arm, once thin and graceful but now emaciated, lay on the bed next to the chair Tara had sat in for hours, days. Up past the shoulder clad in silk was the face she loved so much…Tara shook her head violently. Now was not the time to indulge in past pain. Someone needed her in the present. Sighing, she headed towards the doors and watched them part.
The conference room was just light enough for Tara to pick out the table with the chairs grouped around it. In one of the chairs at the far end sat the young woman in the antiquated Starfleet uniform, the maroon jacket that was so militaristic seeming rather comical on this particular science officer.
All she needs is a fur hat and a saber by her side, Tara thought with amusement, then discarded the idea. The last thing Willow needed, judging by the wracking sobs convulsing her, was to be given fashion tips.
The conference room doors hissed shut, alerting Willow to the fact someone had entered the room. Her tear-streaked face jerked up to see Tara standing by the door, holding a PADD under one arm, looking uncomfortable and trying hard not to look as if she was. "Oh, uh, hi, Tara, I, uh…"
"I-I'm sorry. I know this is a b-bad time, but-but I, uh, wanted to check and see if you were all right." Tara mentally slapped her forehead for sounding so hesitant. Just what was it about Willow that reduced her to a blathering idiot?
Willow attempted a smile. The effect should have been ghastly, although Tara, hardly the most objective judge, found it endearing nonetheless. "No, I'm okay. Really, I'm dealing with…" She paused only to breathe, but that was enough to shatter any verbal momentum she might have had. Her face twisted as it fell into her hands; her shoulders shook as she started weeping again.
Tara crossed over to the small table next to the wall and found a cloth. She handed it to Willow and brought over a chair to sit next to her. Hesitantly, Tara placed her hand on Willow's wrist, keeping her grip gentle, conscious of any discomfort she might pick up. It was an effort to keep Willow's despair from overwhelming her control. Breathing deeply, she put her other hand on Willow's shoulder.
After a few minutes, Willow subsided again. She looked up at Tara's face, receptive and patient. "Sorry," she whispered, trying to control her hitching breath.
Tara shook her head. "Don't be. You've b-been through a lot, and you feel so out of place…"
Now Willow shook her head. "It's not that," she said, picking up the PADD that Captain Murdock had given her in his ready room. "It's…Buffy and-and Xander, I mean, I kinda figured, well, ninety years, but…but…" she trailed off as fresh tears cascaded from her eyes.
Tara took the PADD from unresisting fingers and accessed the information within, first calling up the record of Ensign Alexander Harris. Apparently, about four months after Willow's disappearance (by Tara's quick mental calculation), Harris had resigned his Starfleet commission and returned to his homeworld of Centaurus…
"So, uh, Xander was from Centaurus, too. Did you know each other, I-I mean, before you were on the
Hannibal?"
Willow nodded. "We grew up together, in Sunnydale – oh, that's the small town we came from. It's just outside of McIverton, which is on the west coast of New America, Centaurus' biggest continent. Usually, when my parents went off-planet to some seminar on Earth or Vulcan or whatever, they left me with Xander's family." Willow smiled. "He was so floored when I told him I was applying for Starfleet Academy. He said that I would just get into trouble without him around – probably right, as he was always getting me out of one scrape or another."
Tara grinned. "Sounds like a good friend."
"Yeah. I was so amazed when he showed up with me to the entrance exams…made a big fuss about 'giving me moral support,' then he goes and takes the exam too. I don't know which one of us was more amazed that he passed, but he was always smarter than most people ever gave him credit for. Including him." A pause, then a whisper. "Including me."
"So he went with you to the Academy…" prompted Tara.
Willow nodded. "He still had trouble with some of the courses. He really had a problem with tensor calculus…"
"Which part?" Tara asked. She recalled how brutal some of the higher mathematics courses at the Academy were.
Willow looked amused for the first time. "The tensor calculus. But, actually, he had a real gift for spatial relationships, and he could reroute a plasma conduit like makin' a ham sandwich." She looked towards the far corner of the room, seeing not the decorative prints but vignettes of memory. "That's where we met Buffy – at the Academy, I mean. She was my roommate, and Xander went totally ga-ga over her five nanoseconds after meeting her. You didn't exactly need a tricorder to measure his pulse and blood pressure, know what I mean?" She frowned a bit, prompting Tara to ask something not completely in line with her professional ethics.
"W-were you jealous of her?"
"No!" replied Willow sharply. Then, rolling her eyes, she clarified, "Okay, I admit, it kinda peeved me that Xander made such a huge deal out of her. But, she never led him on, and she really wasn't interested in him, except as a friend. And she was just the nicest person, I couldn't enjoy hating her and who the hell needs that?" She smiled wistfully. "The three of us were kinda like the Three Musketeers…or maybe the Three Stooges, I dunno. But we stuck together through the Academy, and then we, uh, ended up on the
Hannibal together."
Tara wanted to clear up a couple of points; for one, how they managed to have all three of them assigned to the same ship right out of the Academy; for another, who these "Three Stooges" might be.
An obscure biblical reference? she conjectured. However, the need to console Willow overrode minor curiosities such as that. "What happened to Xander after you, um, left?"
The struggle for Willow to control herself was all too obvious. She gestured half-heartedly towards the PADD. "It says there…he went back to Sunnydale, became a civil engineer, got married, had half a dozen kids, two dozen grand- and great-grandkids..." Willow shook her head, trying not to break down again. "He…died three years ago…" Another round of tears made her trail off.
Tara squeezed Willow's hand. "He must've been about a hundred and twenty years old. Th-that's a pretty good run, even these days," she added, with a wan smile. She looked down, unsure if her instinct to go forward at this point was accurate. "I-I-I'm sure h-he held on as long as he could."
Willow turned her face towards Tara's, confusion pushing grief to the back burner. "Wha—I mean… Huh?"
"I-I just m-meant," Tara stammered, wondering if there was some way to beam the foot in her mouth out into space, "he would never have given up hope, y'know? I bet that every day of those eighty-nine years, he expected you to … you would just show up on his doorstep."
Willow managed to grin a little at that. "Yeah. That'd be one for the photo archives: 'Hi, Xander, I'm back from the Great Beyond and need a place to stay; got an extra room?' And then his wife would say, 'Honey, who is this? An old girlfriend of yours?'" Despite herself, Willow began to chuckle at the mental image.
Tara couldn't resist. "'Why no, honey. This is my old friend, Willow,'" she intoned in a deep singsong voice. "'I told you about her…the one who got lost in a temporal anomaly!'"
That cracked Willow up. Tara joined in, amazed that for once her attempting humor (usually ending in disaster or at least cringing silence) met with success. Willow tried to control herself long enough to ask, "Do you…" Laughter. "You think his, uh, his wife would've bought that?"
After gasping for breath, Tara answered, "Not in a billion years!" For a full minute longer the two of them pretty much lost it. Something in the back of Tara's mind asked how long it had been since she had laughed, really laughed, and got no answer.
Finally, the laughter tapered down to hitchings and gaspings. Willow winced and put a hand on her stomach. "Oooh, ow-ee."
"M-my mama used to say that was a sign th-that it's been too long since you laughed," Tara said, wiping her eyes as a last giggle escaped her. She looked up at Willow, only to see the stricken expression. "Oh, I'm s-sorry, I didn't m-mean…"
Willow shook her head, waving Tara off. "Yeah, I know, it's been ninety years since my last case of Kids-at-Camp Giggles, don't sweat it." She gestured towards the PADD again. "It's just…at least, Xander, he had a pretty good life, so I don't begrudge him…not being around. Really, it's okay, I…" She visibly forced herself to go on. "But-but, Buffy, she…" Abruptly she stood up out of the chair and crossed to the far wall. "She…she…"
Tara stood and walked over to Willow, stopping just over an arm's length away. "Willow, what happened?"
"Some…some kind of Romulan secret offensive or something…about a year after I-- Buffy managed to intercept these Romulan agents…" Willow's speech began to shatter as emotion overrode her self-control. "Didn't read all the, you know, little details…oh, God, she…" With the last of her control, she forced herself to speak. "She saved a colony near the Neutral Zone, but she d-d-d—"
Tara breathed out, sensing the depth of Willow's pain and grief. "God." She took a half-step forward. "Willow, she gave her life to save others. She probably knew the risks and-and accepted them. You know that she would have taken that on willingly…"
Willow rounded on her then, fury etched on her face. "
But I wasn't there! I wasn't goddamn there! She died because I wasn't there to watch her back!"Tara stepped back, but her resolve did not retreat. "Y-You can't know that, Willow. Buffy might've been by herself; you might have been somewhere else entirely…"
"No!" roared Willow. "We were supposed to be together, it was my responsibility to keep us together; because of me, Xander left Starfleet and Buffy…Buffy…" Rage and grief warred through her very being.
Tara crossed her arms, altering her stance and demeanor, injecting a more professional tone into her voice. "You can't take responsibility for her, Willow. She was a grown woman, and Xander was a grown man. You all knew the risks. And besides, did you really think the three of you would be on the same ship forever? It doesn't always work out like that. And it wouldn't have been necessary." Her tone softened as Willow's anger subsided. "You wouldn't have needed to stay on the same ship to be friends for life. Sometimes, people drift apart, they can drift so far apart, but distance doesn't always have anything to do with it. Sometimes just the opposite."
Willow nodded wearily. "I just feel so…I feel like I've been left behind. And, I don't know how I can just go through my days without having them to talk to at night, y'know?"
"I know," replied Tara, her mind flashing for an instant to the memory of the figure on the bed, "but, y-you make a special place for them, in your heart. Just as, I know they did the same for you." She stepped forward again, into Willow's space, feeling her breath and her distress cascade over her.
Wet green eyes looked into calm, sympathetic blue. "Tara, I…I don't know if I can do this. Just, start over."
"You-you can." Tara placed her hands on Willow's shoulders. An sudden impulse to brush her lips against Willow's, an impulse that skewed well outside the boundaries of professional etiquette twirled through Tara's mind. With a sad determination, she squashed the impulse. "We make the places we land in our own. You can do this. You can be strong; you
are strong."
Willow asked, in the voice of a child, "Strong like an Amazon?"
"Strong like an Amazon, right." Tara smiled slightly, then drew Willow to her. The young woman let herself collapse into her arms. "It's going to be all right, Willow," she said, feeling Willow sob against her, tears coming at last from her own eyes. "I s-swear to you, it-it's going to be all right."
TBC.
______________________
"I love you all. I love you more than life itself. You're all f***ing mad." -- Ozzy as "The Dad," THE OSBOURNES.
i'm sure Tara will make things better though 
by pikescoob » Sun Oct 06, 2002 5:10 pm 
Thanks for the update 
can do what he likes with that. 
