A Post Season 6 Speculation Adventure
Note slight change in title. I was calling this a Season 7 adventure, but it's pretty clear by now that's not what this story is about.
Disclaimer: JW, ME, blah, blah…I’m just borrowing some of your characters, I’ll return them when I’m good and done.
Premise: This story takes place shortly after the end of Season 6 of BtVS. For those who take offence at this, who feel that TV-“Buffy” ended shortly before the end of “Seeing Red”, at the end of “Entropy” or at the end of S5, please accept my apologies. These are all valid points of view. But for the purposes of this story, accept for just a moment that rather than utterly ruining a show we used to enjoy, the end of S6 opens the door to a long and, I think, very interesting story arc, with abundant potential for adventure, romance, and lots of yummy W/T goodness. Assume for just a moment that the creators at ME recognise this and are going to make it right in the 7th and final season, rather than continue on their current path to apparent ruin.
The title is in fact the premise of the story, which is that in S7, ME will fulfil its mission statement with respect to Willow and Tara. The key elements are:
1) W/T is a “real deal relationship”
2) The path of true love never ran smoothly
3) Terrible, terrible things will happen to W/T along the way
4) Amber/Tara is not going anywhere
Other Authors: Are absolutely welcome and encouraged to set episodes and adventures (and smutfics if so inclined) within this story arc.
Rating: R18+ In parts. High level violence, explicit sexual references, adult themes. Some scenes and concepts will be too intense for younger and/or more sensitive Kittens. Darkness and despair will be encountered.
Spoilers: 100%. Up to the end of Season 6 and in isolated instances, beyond. I don't care.
Episode 1.1 Back in the Box
Teaser
Late on a slow afternoon, Willow stood mournfully behind the counter of the Magic Box. Now I think I understand why Buffy was so unhappy for the first few months after we brought her back. I finally truly understand what she meant when she used to talk about her life sucking beyond the telling. That’s a contradictory statement, by the way. Sad And Apathetic Buffy – SAAB. And I was the Bad Mojo Willow, the black BMW, and didn’t we have us a mighty car crash. Some of us walked away without a scratch. I think my airbag failed. I needed more than a few airsickness bags on the way over to England. Awful flight, awful Watchers’ Council people. Giles was nice, I guess. He let me go out for walks with him around Bath once he was sure I wasn’t going to kill anyone or myself.
“You’re doing a marvellous job,” Anya interrupted, as she breezed in from the training room at the back of the shop. She looked around and noticed that the shop was empty of customers. Frowning, she said, “You haven’t been chasing away the customers with your gloomy demeanour, I trust?”
Willow looked up and shook her head. “No-one’s been in,” she said flatly.
“Oh, good. No, actually, it’s still bad, it’s just not your fault,” Anya smiled warmly, stepped briskly behind the counter and began leafing through the back orders book, an activity that always cheered her up. Willow returned to what she had been doing, ruminating and doodling in red pen on a pad of note paper.
“Xander said he’d be by later,” Anya piped up after a short but uncomfortable silence.
“Are you guys back together?” Willow asked, though she really did not care one way or the other.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Anya said, the image of naked Xander popping into her head, as it always did when she talked about him. That, and her, naked, having sex with him. She shook her head to regain her train of thought. “I still haven’t decided on a proper act of vengeance, and I think he deserves one after all.”
“Preaching to the choir,” Willow murmured. She was grateful to Xander for helping to save her life, and the world, but did he have to act so insufferably superior about it? It had been bad enough when Willow had been struggling with her magic addiction; Xander had always been the first to blame and the last to forgive. Now he was even worse, a veritable Casanova of the tough love genre, and to be honest, Xander was probably the last person of Willow’s acquaintance that she wanted to act as any sort of sponsor for her reluctant rehabilitation into life. “Goddess, he annoys me sometimes. And I think he was always a little jealous of what I have – had, with Tara.”
On mentioning Tara’s name, Willow dropped her red pen and began to doodle with a blue one. She looked around the shop, letting her hand and the pen do what they wanted. Willow gazed over at the chair where Tara had used to sit, researching, helping Dawn with her homework, concocting spells. The redhead slipped into a reverie, feeling gently comforted by the recollection of the soul mate who had been so cruelly and unfairly ripped out of her life. She forgot where she was for a moment, forgot Anya, the shop, her current miserable excuse for a life. All that existed for her at that moment was herself and the space where Tara used to be.
“I wish Tara was…,” Willow murmured, almost inaudibly, “even if only ….”
(To be continued)
Edited by: Bagheera
at: 12/30/02 2:23:52 pm
Maybe?