Chapter 29
God is in the why
“I will tell you everything, Willow, right now. But do you mind if I freshen up first?” Tara asked. She was supremely comfortable, her nerves afire with delight, but her bladder was quite full and insistent. Willow let her go but slowly, drawing her fingers over Tara as Tara slowly got up. Tara sat on the edge of the hospital bed and looked down at her love; Willow was blushing a little and looked incredibly sexy lying on her side, her nipples poking through the thin hospital robe. Tara was expecting great screechings of pain from her battered body, but she felt remarkably well rested, the pain within her bare murmurs compared to the hideous yowls of yesterday. If all it took was sleeping in Willow's arms, the intoxication of Willow's touch to banish her pain, then Tara knew where she would be every night for the rest of her life.
She walked carefully to the bathroom, used the facility, then washed her hands and face. Drying herself with a towel, Tara looked in the mirror. She chuckled; she was sparkling this morning. Radiant. Even this most mundane of mirrors showed it. Tara had a slight wish that she was in the privacy of her home, so that she could take care of her most aching need; Willow's caresses had ignited her, she was awash in desire and the unfulfillment of that desire was driving her mad.
Tara straightened her clothes, running her hand over her bellybutton with a faint smile, then she returned to Willow's bedside. Always the emerald eyes of her girl followed her, just as they had yesterday. First she drew the curtains; the sun would soon be blazing with glory into this most hallowed space and once in bed again with Willow, she didn't want to leave. Ever. Willow was patting the bed again and Tara almost shyly returned to her side. Climbing in, facing Willow, she felt Willow draw the sheet and blanket over them again. Then Willow spread her legs and hooked her ankle over Tara's pant leg, drawing Tara's leg between hers again, shuffling a bit closer to her. There was a slight gape of pain on her face as she did so, and Tara said, “I don't want to hurt you.”
“Nonsense,” Willow replied. They now faced each other on the thin hospital pillow, eye to eye, their fingers as tangled as their legs. Willow waited, and Tara knew what she was waiting for.
Everything, Tara.
“I guess it starts with my patient, Peter Whitney,” Tara began softly. As she thought of the day that Peter Whitney died, how he had thanked her in his mind-garden, Tara realized that it all started much much before that. “Actually, no,” she corrected. “This whole story has to do with what I am, and what I can do.
“I told you earlier that I am a healer.” Tara paused, searching for some way to explain her special gift, and was surprised when Willow spoke.
“Althanea told me a little about your gifts,” she said. “She said that you can take pain, absorb it into your own body, and that you also send your own cells into the person that you are healing. You take it both ways, Tara, don't you?”
Tara nodded. “My family has always served the goddess Aranaea, and we are one of the few who have had access to her throughout her age-long exile. The gifts of Aranaea are psionic gifts, the gifts of the mind, and we have been blessed with many of them, including healing by sacrifice.”
“Is there any other kind of healing?” Willow wondered.
“I think so,” Tara replied pensively. “I have heard of some witches who are supplicants of Panacea, and she has the pure healing magic that requires no sacrifice at all, nor the use of the element of Earth that you've learned to use. Sometimes I wonder why our magic comes from Aranaea instead of Panacea, but then I'm just glad I have any power at all.”
Willow was rubbing her thumb over Tara's hand, and Tara smiled, then grew wistful. “The day Peter Whitney died I was able to go in to his mind and meet with him there.” As Willow's eyes widened in amazement, Tara explained, “My mother called it mindsurfing. By having my fingers touch someone, I can seep into their consciousness and enter their mind.” Willow looked intrigued, so Tara chuckled and said, “I can show you later if you like.”
“Sure,” Willow said. “Go on?”
“I know exactly how sick someone is by creating a tree for them in my own mind, then taking that tree into theirs. How fast the tree sickens, the leaves falling off and dying, is how close to death that person is. When I last saw Peter, he had only three leaves left.” Tara's voice trailed off in memory of that innocent and gentle man, the joy he had given her, the contentment she felt in his company. She was a little astonished by how much her life had changed since that day. “I was able to say goodbye,” Tara continued, “and then I got out and called his family in time. They were there as he died.”
“How many patients have you lost?” Willow asked softly.
“Three,” Tara said, remembering them in her mind. Poor young Chris, he was a mere child, and then Cynthia, and finally Peter.
“That afternoon I went home, and I had a message from my brother Donny that he was bringing me a rabbit.” Tara saw Willow's eyes widen as she said rabbit, and realized that Willow probably didn't know yet how Tara's family dealt with the pain they leeched from those they healed. “I'll explain soon, sweetie,” Tara promised. She took another breath, and continued, “I took a nap, and that's when I dreamt of you for the first time.”
Willow looked entranced, and Tara remembered the dream she had only yesterday morning after her night of agony, when goddess-Willow had come to her yet again. “We were at UC Sunnydale, where I had applied and been accepted, but I chose instead to go to San Francisco. You were holding the scythe, and you asked me what part I would play.
“And you know how it is in dreams. Some things you just know. And I knew this, even though I'd never read the script or seen the ending. I knew my part to play, the part I was born to play.” Tara looked closely at Willow, and repeated what she had said minutes earlier, “I am the lamb.”
Willow opened her mouth, but closed it again. Tara could tell that Willow was teeming with questions, and she was so adorable in trying to keep from overwhelming Tara with them that Tara chuckled. “Do you want to ask me something, Willow?” she teased.
“No, I don't want to interrupt,” Willow said staunchly. She firmly closed her mouth then, but her green eyes twinkled in devilry.
Tara's heart softened even more. This was coming out easier than she thought. It hurt, but it was a good hurt, like pulling out a festering splinter. “I didn't know who you were, of course, just that you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” Willow smiled and squeezed Tara's fingers. “And your hair was white, in my dream.”
Willow mouthed the word, “White,” and Tara waited. Willow finally continued, saying, “When I used the scythe to activate the potential Slayers, my hair turned white, and I think it stayed white even as I hunted down the Bringers.” She looked at the red strands of her hair. “When did it turn back?”
Tara smiled. “You're getting ahead of yourself.” Willow snuggled into Tara, and made to lay her head on Tara's chest when she suddenly recoiled. Tara quickly assured her, “It's all right, Willow, please lay on me softly.”
(Please, oh, please be on me and in me and through me and save me) Willow must have seen her unspoken plea, for she carefully laid her head on Tara's chest, wrapping her arm around Tara's waist. After allowing herself a moment to calm down again
(Willow, you have no idea what your touch does to me....) she continued with her story.
“After I woke, Donny was downstairs with the rabbit. He wanted me to come home for a visit, especially since I had a mandatory week off after Peter had died, but I didn't want to go.” Not wanting to delve into those reasons, Tara plowed on, “We use the animals to rid ourselves of the pain we take. My mother had drummed it into me from a very young age. She always told me, 'If you're going to take it, you're going to give it away'. I usually used rabbits because they were larger than mice and could take more of the pain I needed to give away, yet they weren't as intelligent as a cat or a dog. I felt guilty in using them, I always did and I always will, but I understood what their purpose was.
“So I used the rabbit, and fed the cancer pain that I had taken from Mr. Whitney into it, and when the rabbit was dead, I felt much better.” Tara was almost glad she couldn't see Willow's face now, Willow's face that was pillowed so comfortingly against her chest. She didn't want to see a possible look of consternation, a look of disapproval.
“Ethan, well, Dr. Daniels, he called me back to the hospice that very night, and handed me a file. Your file. He told me that you were the only survivor of the Sunnydale implosion, and that an anonymous British man had specially requested me to be your nurse. They apparently offered the hospice a great deal of money, since Ethan decided to have me take your file, and cancel my mandatory week off.”
Running her hand through Willow's hair and down her back, Tara continued in a near whisper. “A-and then I saw your picture, Willow, and I just about broke down. It was undeniably the same woman from my dream, and I remember thinking to myself that this kind of thing just wasn't possible. Not for me.”
Willow squeezed her lightly in response, and Tara went on. “You arrived the next morning, and I deliberately brought you into the same room that Peter Whitney had stayed in. There was a lot of love in this space, and I knew I needed a lot of help in healing you.
“You were so beat up, Willow.” Her voice broke, and Willow raised her head from her Tara-pillow to look at her softly. Willow lifted her hand to touch Tara's face, and Tara cupped that hand in her own, closed her eyes and melted into the touch. When she opened her eyes again, she was almost astonished by the heat in Willow's gaze, and Tara realized that Willow wasn't staring at her eyes anymore. Willow was staring unabashedly at her lips, and Tara's hand fell off of Willow's as Willow's fingers trailed softly down her demon-ravaged face, lightly touching her lips.
Kiss me, Willow. Please.
But Willow only looked at her, and Tara finally continued. “I don't want to bore you with the details,” she began, but Willow swiftly interrupted her.
“Tara,” she said firmly. “Bore me with the details.”
“I never wanted you to know,” Tara choked.
“And I think I understand why,” Willow replied, still looking firmly at her. Willow's hand had returned to its home on Tara's waist. “You knew I would feel in debt to you, yet you want me to be free to live my own life. You didn't want to shackle me with concern for you, you wanted to trivialize it, and pretend that anyone would have done the same.”
Once again Willow astounded Tara with the sheer level of her insight. Even Tara had never put her tempestuous feelings into such order. But as Willow explained, it made perfect sense to her, and she knew that those were the exact reasons why she wanted to keep silent.
“On some level, you didn't want me to get it,” Willow relentlessly continued. “You didn't want me to fully understand your sacrifice. If I understood too much, I might have fallen in love with you. There would have been joy, Tara.”
Tara started to weep.
“But joy, peace, happiness, these are things alien to you, aren't they baby?” Willow whispered. “You needed the familiar, the mundane, the pain even. You needed the darkness, you needed to be the one left behind. You needed to be the martyr.” Willow lifted her hand again to touch the tears on Tara's cheek, rubbing them softly away. “You lived your life in shadows, never the sun on your face,” Willow whispered.
Tara closed her eyes and sobbed. Willow allowed it for a while, then insisted, “Tara, look at me.” Opening her bleary eyes, Tara gazed at the woman she continually underestimated, the woman who had her heart and her soul. Her everything.
“The joy scares you. You never thought you deserved happiness. So you thought you'd feed me a story, and lessen my debt to you. But there is something going on here that you don't seem to understand.”
Tara trembled and shook, her heart expanding in coruscating light, a fierce joy rising from deep in her middle. She could scarcely understand the words erupting from Willow's mouth; she was captivated by them, and the truth of them settled deep into the atoms of her body, rearranging her.
(Once you are empty, be careful of what you put back in.)Willow's gaze was soft and proud and triumphant. “I already understand too much.”
Does she mean what I think she means? No, impossible.
(If I understood too much, I might have fallen in love with you.)“Tara, dearest Tara,” Willow whispered. “You have sacrificed so much for me. You've put your life at risk for me. You took my pains and brought me out of my coma. You have served me so diligently, even after pain so great you've fainted. Maybe you think that anyone would have done the same, but that's simply not true. And I know it.”
Willow lifted Tara's hand to her lips and gently kissed it, and her other hand tucked a strand of brown hair back behind Tara's ear, caressing her scalp. Then, holding Tara's hand in one hand, Tara's head with the other, Willow softly said, “I will find a way to save you, Tara Maclay.”
And just like her earlier words, this phrase also rang with conviction, and it undid her. Tara began crying softly once more, but this time the tears were of joy, and the glorious future she had been shown began to come into focus. Perhaps it was possible for Willow to save her. Perhaps she even deserved to be saved.
Willow simply held her for a while, and Tara luxuriated in that feeling as she regained her composure. “Uh, what were we talking about?” she asked.
“Bore me with the details, baby,” Willow said, resettling herself on Tara's chest, her arm coming strong around Tara's waist. Tara's eyes widened again at the 'baby', but she didn't want to call attention to it, so she simply rolled it around her mind a few more times before beginning her story again.
“There were gashes on your face, a laceration on your forehead. Your skull was broken, and your scalp was also lacerated. Your left lung had collapsed and you had several broken ribs. There was a vampire bite on your neck, a really bad one. A sword had pierced your lower right side through and through, and the gash across your abdomen was deeply infected. There was a horrific scrape over your right breast, also filled with pus and infected. Various cuts and scrapes on your shoulder blades, the cuts on your upper arms and scrapes on your knuckles.” Tara took a breath, recalling those hours she spent when she first met Willow, cleaning the wounds, her heart aching over each and every one of them. “And then your legs, all riddled with deep cuts and scrapes.”
“And you took it all,” Willow responded in a voice of wonder. “Why, Tara?”
Tara heard the quiver in Willow's voice, the depth behind the innocent question. She recalled her feelings of that day, as she stood in the sunlit room and ached over Willow's wounds, determining that some good would yet come of it all. After all, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Why do bad things happen to good people?
(God is in the why.)For a moment Tara was going to respond, but she just couldn't. Not yet. She hoped Willow would understand, and she continued with her narrative as if Willow hadn't just asked the most important question of all.
“After I had cleaned your wounds, I prepared to go into your mind and see if I could find you,” Tara continued. “So I made a tree for you and brought it in.” Tara paused a moment, reflecting on that instant she first encountered Willow's mind. The world as she had known it shattered. “Like I suspected, the tree wilted very badly, all the leaves blackened but they didn't fall from the tree. I noticed someone sitting on the ground underneath the tree and I tried to pretend it was you, but I knew it wasn't.
“It was the goddess Aranaea.”
Willow drew back then, her eyes filled with wonder. “She answered my call?” Willow asked.
“It was her presence in your mind that turned your hair white,” Tara explained. “She's a child-goddess you know, just a little girl. With your call, with your need, she had finally broken her exile. It was there, sitting under your hell-blasted tree that I first learned who you were, who your great enemy was, and how important it was for you to live.” Tara touched Willow's face, then intoned the words that became her greatest assignment, “Save Willow, so Willow can save the world.”
“Go me,” Willow joked. Instead of laying again on Tara's chest, Willow faced her now and settled into the pillow, her eyes intent on every word shaped by Tara's comely mouth.
But Tara trembled to continue. “Take it slow,” Willow advised, holding Tara's hand.
“Even then, I knew what I had to do,” Tara said softly, looking carefully at Willow. “She told me to heal you, she didn't exactly say how, but she also told me that I would be her sacrifice to save the world. This time I would be the rabbit,” and Willow's eyes widened in horror. “I would be the lamb.”
Again Willow looked like she wanted to say something, but she obstinately kept her mouth shut. Tara was aching to continue, it would hurt more to stop now, so she said, “Aranaea had the scythe with her; it had been subsumed by you when you invoked its power,” Tara recalled slowly. “And the preacher came.”
“Caleb.” Willow shuddered, and Tara wondered if Willow was remembering the streets, and the scalpel.
“Yes, Caleb. I put my fingers on the scythe and inhaled it, and its power came over me. When I returned to my senses, Aranaea had fled, and Caleb had arrived. I tried to get away, to return to the outside world, but he had somehow chained me. That had never happened before, my mother never told me that could happen, and I nearly panicked. He blasted portions of your tree, then he opened a window, and he showed me, he showed...” and Tara stopped.
“What did he show you?” Willow gently asked.
“You,” Tara said, squeezing Willow's fingers. “You were crashing through the streets of Sunnydale, you were bleeding, and you were being hunted. He showed me only a glimpse of what he was doing to you in your mind while he held you hostage, and it nearly killed me.” Tara took a deep breath, and continued. “I felt a pinprick, and then I finally came out. The hospital room was chaos. When Aranaea fled your mind, your hair returned to its normal colour. And when Caleb shattered branches of your tree, you went into cardiac arrest. And I didn't even know. I was still stuck in your mind, chained by Caleb.
“Ethan saved your life,” Tara concluded. “He brought you back to life, and then gave me a shot of adrenaline which finally pulled me out of your mind.” She noticed that Willow had a strange expression on her face when she said Ethan's name, and she wondered if Ethan had said anything to her girl last night. She didn't know; she had fallen asleep so quickly. After nearly no sleep the night before, hollowed by pain the whole of the day, Tara had been exhausted. “What is it, Willow?”
“He loves you, doesn't he?” Willow asked in a small voice, looking softly at her.
“He does,” Tara agreed, blushing.
“You are very easy to love,” Willow replied, staring once again at Tara's lips. Tara shivered with goosebumps, a flush of heat cascaded through her and her core began to pound with blood. Willow seemed unaware of Tara's reaction, so Tara swallowed and continued her story.
“I was distraught by what I saw in your mind, so Ethan drove me home. Once there, I received instruction from Aranaea, and she told me to tell Ethan everything. Everything about me, about being a witch and a healer, and everything about you. He's never been quite the same since.”
“This world changes people,” Willow said softly. “Not everyone can handle it.”
“Angel said much the same thing,” Tara replied. “Aranaea told me that Angel had the Amulet of Thespia, which I needed in order to pull Caleb out of you. At work that day I healed your gut wound, and it was kinda bad.” Tara smiled wryly in remembrance of the Mardi Gras party her cells had been enjoying as they partied over to Willow's body, the subsequent agony she felt as she drove to L.A. to meet with Angel.
Willow looked searchingly at her, so Tara shrugged and went on. “I met with Angel in a cemetery and he gave me the Amulet after I told him what I needed it for. He was very excited to find out you were alive. It,” and Tara looked away before looking back, shy, “i-it made me kind of jealous.”
Willow smiled broadly and squeezed Tara's hand. “It was just after he gave me the Amulet that we were attacked by three demons. Angel turned into a vampire, which he neglected to tell me that he was, and I ran for my life. One of them caught up to me, though, and after slashing me I turned my magic inside out on it, and fed all your pain into it, and set it on fire, and killed it.” Her voice got lower and lower.
“So that's what they meant by demon,” Willow wondered aloud.
“What?” Tara asked.
Willow blushed, and said, “Never mind. Then what happened?”
Tara looked at Willow for just a moment, then said, “I woke up in an L.A. hospital. It was midday on Saturday. My wounds were pretty bad, and the nurse told me that they had called Donny. He was... upset when he came. He's always having to rescue me.” Tara looked chagrined. “He brought me another magic lesson, one that my mom said I wasn't ready for when she died. He taught me that I could heal myself of my own injuries by sucking the life force from another human.”
Tara shifted a bit, her arm falling asleep under her. “So I used Donny,” she continued in a near whisper. “And I got out of control, and I took too much from him for my face, but it barely helped my chest. He was angry,Willow, so he hit me.”
Willow's eyes grew hard; Tara believed she could cut through sheet metal with them. Willow disentangled her fingers from Tara long enough to touch her face. “The black eye,” Willow said.
“Yes,” Tara replied, “but I don't blame him. He left me, giving me a letter from my mother before he did. After I read it, I was angry. My mother and Aranaea had conspired to give me the most horrible life imaginable, just to give me enough depth to heal you.” Willow's eyes were gleaming with unshed tears. “At that moment, Willow, I didn't want to heal you anymore,” Tara admitted sadly. “I just wanted a normal life, and believed I couldn't have one with you. I threw myself a pity party, got mad at Aranaea, and then I finally drove back here to the hospice, just as the sun was rising the next day.
“And all I had to do was look at you once more before I wanted to save you again. That I would do whatever it took to save you.” Willow sobbed a little, and Tara held her close, stroking her hair and her back.
“So the next day Ethan helped me prepare the spell that would transfer Caleb from your mind into my own.” Tara suddenly stopped in her narrative as the woman with the breakfast tray came into Willow's room. Tara recognized her, of course, and wondered what the woman was thinking as she put the tray down, her mouth in a thin line of disapproval. Tara was pleasantly surprised to find out she simply didn't care what the woman thought. The woman left without saying a word, leaving Tara alone again with her love.
“Go on,” Willow urged.
“I called upon the power of three goddesses for this task,” Tara continued. “Aranaea would provide me with the physical strength to overcome Caleb. Thespia would provide the power to bind him, and Maia would protect my heart from invasion. So I entered your mind, and Caleb came, and I fought him, and struck him down with the scythe, and then inhaled him into my own body.” There came a sharp stab of pain in her temple when she said this, and Tara winced.
“What is it?” Willow asked.
“He's a little ticked off,” Tara said wryly.
“You can feel him?”
“Oh yes,” Tara breathed. “With the amulet on, he cannot get free, but that doesn't stop him from being an unwelcome houseguest.”
Willow was looking at Tara in wonder. “You did all this for me,” she said softly, touching Tara's cheek once again. After a moment, she asked, “Then what happened?”
“The wall of your prison had burst with his death, and I found you by a tree in a Sunnydale park, and I held you for the first time.” Willow's face constricted, as if she was trying to force the memory to return. Tara looked at her girl, noticing how the sun was rising higher and higher, suffusing her cheeks with its evanescent light. “Willow, you should eat your breakfast before it gets entirely cold,” Tara said, turning into nurse mode.
“But I'm so comfy,” Willow complained, burrowing softly once again into Tara's chest. Tara tapped her on the shoulder, and Willow looked up.
“I'm your nurse, I command you to eat,” she said, waggling her finger.
“But what are you going to eat?” Willow countered, her face triumphant. “You need to eat, too, you are way too thin.”
“I'll run to the cafeteria for a bagel and come right back, I promise,” Tara said, trying to ease out of Willow's grip.
Willow had locked on to her tight, though. Tara laughed then, and decided not to fight it. Instead, she hugged Willow, and held on to her for a pleasantly long minute or two. Willow finally lifted her face again, and her proximity to Tara was making her senses whirl. Her hands still tight across Tara's waist, Willow's face hovered mere inches from Tara's own.
Tara's heart began to beat a crazy dance of delight.
Willow's face was thoughtful, pensive, and she softly bit her lower lip. “What is it, darling?” Tara asked.
“Just why did you do all this for me, Tara?” Willow whispered. Tara reigned in her desire to sink into Willow's mind and read just exactly what was going on in there. Part of Willow looked unworthy, and crushed, and desperate to find why Tara did what she did. The little Tara knew of Willow's previous romantic relationships, Tara thought she might be able to understand Willow's motivation in asking such a loaded question.
Could Tara answer truthfully this time? She had ignored Willow's first plea, she couldn't do it again. But the real reason
(Because I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, because my need of you overwhelms me, because my life is empty without you, because it's you, Willow, it's always been you...)Willow had insinuated her love, but she hadn't said it yet. What would happen if Tara said those fateful words first?
And Tara found that she just couldn't. Not yet. She needed to hear it from Willow first.
So she imparted the wisdom that Willow had helped her discover. “Willow, God is in the why.”
And Tara swore that Willow saw right through her desperate subterfuge. For Willow's face, inches from her own, constricted in great emotion. Then her fingers, those exquisite and teasing fingers, cupped the back of Tara's neck, tilting up her chin. It was a hot and naked gaze that latched on to Tara's lips, and then those chapped lips found hers, after so long she found her again, and Tara melted into them, just as she had before.
TBC on January 4 with Chapter 30: Gifts
Phoenix
).
I've always found "unsure" Willow to be quite endearing.
was good... Tara disappearing is definately not good, I hope that Caleb soon gets a messy ending... now Willow needs to find a way to find Tara and save her without killing her...
