hey kitties,
yes, an update and I barely made my deadline. mad props and love go out to my beta, witchpunk, and special guest star, jenny (jewwitch), whose contribution should become evident as you read about W/T (mentioning it here would spoil things for some so...)
angst warning is HIGH.
*the usual disclaimers and copyrights apply.
Finale - Part IAs Faith’s ‘fucked up idea’ screamed to life, Dawn took the stairs two at a time behind Xander to get into position in the upstairs bedrooms. The files of dolphin, bat and whale sounds she had downloaded and ripped from nature CDs had been high EQ’d for maximum sonic impact and were now at ear-splitting levels. And on top of it all was some hard techno song loop the slayer had insisted she add to the mix. It sounded like a rave in hell. Which it kind of was.
"I am so ready for my action hero moment!" Faith yelled as she approached the front line of demons with both swords drawn. Dawn quickly got into position at her bedroom window and hoisted the crossbow to her shoulder. The high frequency sonic assault was definitely having the desired effect on the demons. They seemed disoriented as the Slayer hacked her way through four of them with barely any resistance. Spike was busy dismembering a fifth on the other side of the yard. It almost seemed cruel. Until she thought about what was at stake. What they would do to them if they caught them.
Aiming the way Xander and Faith had shown her, she let a wooden bolt fly and yelled in frustrated rage as it splintered against the demon’s hard armor. "Fuck."
Oh my god, I have to stop with the cursing before Buffy gets home or she’s gonna kill me.
If Buffy gets home…
She started to yell for Xander for advice and realized that he wouldn’t hear her over the noise.
"Are you feeling me?" But she could still hear the Slayer as she slashed her way through a still-disoriented crowd of demons, her swords cutting through the air in blinding silver streaks of light. "’Cause I’m feeling you…oh yeah, you too baby." The now-familiar metallic screams made her skin crawl, but at least there were no more gunshots. Or the terribly ghostly wails of Willow’s grief to remind her that the redhead probably didn’t want to come back here. To this house where Tara wasn't. "Say my name bitch!"
She smiled a guilty smile at the Slayer’s comments. It was like some kind of slaying-induced Tourette’s Syndrome.
There was a small bundle of aluminum bolts near her foot that Xander had found stashed in the basement with some old photos. Not much use for metallic bolts when you were facing vampires. She dipped one in the coffee can full of lighter fluid and pulled Spike’s Zippo from her pocket. Remembering Xander’s instructions she let the shaft burn until it was too hot to hold. Carefully fitting it into the bow she lined up the shot as well as she could through the flickering blue flames and pulled the trigger. There was a terrible moment when she worried that she had aimed too close to Faith, but the Slayer continued unfazed. Dawn realized that she had missed. The demon she was aiming for moved and the precious bolt was wasted. She was about to pick up another one when a flare of light caught her eye. Another demon was flailing wildly with clawed hands as liquid fire poured from its chest. There was no explosion, no pyrotechnic display, but the demon, at least was an easy target for Faith who decapitated with one stroke.
Dawn gave herself a loud congratulatory yelp that was swallowed up in the cacophony of the battle before carefully lighting up another arrow. After setting up the shot, she watched panicked as the flaming bolt was deflected into a nearby bush that promptly burst into flames. Well, at least she could see a little better now.
"You feeling me now? Huh?"
She could see Spike and Faith cutting down demons with relative ease although the Slayer’s left arm was lowered slightly as if she was tired. Or the wound, maybe she was protecting it. Despite the problems it was definitely the smackdown the Slayer had predicted. Maybe they had a chance after all.
The sudden unmistakable sound of electronic feedback brought her gaze up to the trees on her right where they had tied one of the speakers. One of the Vra’al’s flying giant bat things was engaged in an epic battle with the inanimate black box. And if they took out that speaker, that meant the line to the backyard speakers would be broken and Anya would be alone with god-knows how many well-organized demons.
She raised the barrel of her crossbow and aimed at the winged demon and with a silent prayer to Tara and Mom and everyone she could think of, let the bolt fly. She didn’t see it hit the bat demon, but the loud scream and insane flapping as the inkblot thing struggled to the ground were confirmation enough.
Before she could congratulate herself another winged shadow replaced it. And with growing horror she saw that the other speakers were being attacked as well.
"Xander!" she screamed and knocked a wooden bolt into the shaft. No reason to waste metal bolts on these guys. They seemed pretty soft and not so flammable.
"Dawn!" She let the bolt fly as Xander stomped up behind her and allowed herself another victory squeal as it hit home.
"The speakers!" That was all she had to say. He fired two arrows before she had a chance to prepare another one. Two more shadows dropped, but there seemed to be a swarm of them. More like silent bees than birds. Or bat bees. Xander dropped three more of the winged shadows before a piercing electronic feedback scream tore through the demonic soundtrack and the right side of the yard fell silent. Dawn actually checked her ear before realizing that it was the speaker. And that meant…
"Holy frikkin’…okay, who turned off the music?" Anya screamed from the backyard before a loud hiss and the unmistakable drop in her voice as she got her vengeance demon on.
"Oh shit," Dawn muttered and fumbled with another arrow. There were only two speakers left and that meant the odds were definitely tilting in the other direction. A loud yelp brought her attention down to the yard where Faith dragged the shorter sword at her side from her injured arm.
"Go D!" Faith yelled with her usual bravado. Dawn could here the smile in her voice. That cocky, I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass smile that even now had the demons circling carefully. It was clear from their movements that the demons were communicating again. She thought she heard it a few times above the speakers that were still screaming that unholy soundtrack. The hiss and knock of an arrow from above and another winged demon fell from the sky.
"Flaming arrows Dawnie," Xander yelled in halting speech as he knocked two more arrows and let them fly. "Help Faith."
With a nod, she let the wooden bolt fly and heard the scream of another demon. It wasn’t a mortal wound, but the bat thing was forced to the ground where it could do no more damage to the speaker. Then it was the time-consuming process of lighting up arrows. This time three at once burned with a yellow flame as Dawn marveled at Xander’s skill with the crossbow. For every one she killed he took down at least four.
See Buffy, if you had just let me train with the rest of you I’d know how to fight! I wouldn’t be a useless arrow-lighting betty!
The arrow had burned too long and it singed her fingertips as she placed it in the shaft and lined up the shot. Faith may have been injured, but she was definitely holding her own. Two more demons lay at her feet while the others circled and the Slayer taunted.
" Yeah, you feeling me now." That jaunty head nod that made Dawn smile. One of the demons she noticed was squaring up on Faith’s left side, probably trying to take advantage of her injury. But his body was turned at an odd angle so she chose a bigger target to Faith’s right. Just as she pulled the trigger, he sprang falling on Faith in a screaming flaming heap. The Slayer extricated herself quickly, cutting off the arm of another as she leapt to her feet. "See boys, you mess with me, you mess with my whole fucking crew!"
More arrows sang through the air above her as Xander continued his own incredibly accurate version of Fiery Death from Above. He was chanting something as he effortlessly picked flying shadows from the air around them. With singed fingers Dawn knocked another flaming arrow and lined up a shot, this time aiming at one of the demon’s targeting Spike since Faith seemed to have everything temporarily under control.
"Come on Willow. Come on," she heard it just barely as the mp3 sequence reached the end of a loop. Guess everybody’s praying tonight.
It made her feel lighter for some reason knowing that Xander was praying for Willow. Cheering her on after everything. She joined the chant and let the arrow fly. It didn’t hit the demon’s broad chest where she was aiming, but ended up sticking out of its right eye. Which was good enough.
"Come on Willow!" she screamed and gingerly grabbed another burning shaft. Xander she noticed, had stopped and was now regarding her with a rueful smile. Their eyes locked for a moment. Dawn shrugged and both of them began cheering with gusto. "Go Willow! Woo hoo! Come on Buffy!"
Four more shadows screamed to the earth as Xander and Dawn cheered in rhythm. "Brrr, it’s cold in here. There must be some Scoobies in the atmosphere!"
Another flaming arrow found its mark…well, almost. The shaft was buried deep in the thigh of a very angry demon who clawed at it with agonized screams as the flames spread over its armor. Faith dispatched him with one deep sword thrust and looked up at their impromptu cheering with a smirk.
"Come on B!" She brought her injured sword arm around surprising the demon to her left and decapitating him with ease. "You better hurry or you’re gonna miss all the fun!"
Dawn knocked another arrow and began a new cheer surprised when Xander joined in. "Go Slayer, go Slayer go…"
Faith seemed to find a reserve of energy somewhere turning on the circling demons with renewed fury. It was like the cemetery again. The scene was lit by the moonlight and the eerie flicker of the burning hedges as the Slayer attacked the demons with everything – head, elbows, shins and metal. Anything and everything she had went into the battle as the lizard men continued to fall. Dawn’s newfound enthusiasm began to fade as she watched more demons wander in to replace their fallen brothers. Or sisters. Or…whatever. They were still coming which meant there was a portal open somewhere. She aimed at one of the newly-arrived demons hitting him squarely in the chest.
"Go Dawnie!" Xander yelled with a smile and fired another arrow. Dawn couldn’t help but smile. She was definitely getting better at this. Maybe she was making a difference after all.
A piercing scream tore through the house from the backyard and every muscle in Dawn’s body locked up at the inhuman, but still familiar voice.
"Anya!" Xander dropped his crossbow, his eyes wide as he picked up a double-headed axe near the door ran down the hall.
"Oh god," Dawn turned back to the window, but her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t seem to aim. The sound of an enormous crash ripped through the house. Xander. He hadn’t wasted time on the stairs, crashing through the windows in her room into the backyard to save his ex-fiancée.
Dawn took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. There were so many demons now and more seemed to be arriving every second. Another loud feedback scream and they were left with only one speaker obscured by a cloud of black shadowy figures. The speaker’s output was barely enough to cover the sounds of the battle now. She could hear the Slayer’s grunts and the ring of swords against hard body armor. And worse, now she could hear Willow’s terrible wailing above it all.
She aimed at the swarm around the speakers and hesitated. There was no reason to waste precious ammunition on the puny speaker that remained. Better to help Faith and Spike. Through the shimmering heat of the arrow she lined up the shot and took down a demon approaching the Slayer from behind. She reached quickly for another bolt trying to emulate Xander’s lightning-fast reload technique.
"Xander are you insane!" Anya’s desperate and terrified scream cut through the room like a knife. " You have far too many soft parts to be down here…"
"An…"
The rest of the conversation was lost as the window exploded around her in a shower of glass and wood splinters. Still in shock and blinded by the dust and shrapnel from the explosion, Dawn huddled against the bed frame blinking wildly as she tried to understand what had happened. A bomb? Magic?
"Dawn!" Faith was screaming her name between the grunts of battle, but the teen couldn’t see the window much less the yard. Feeling her way across the floor to the window, Dawn felt the debris and shards of glass digging and cutting into her knees and hands. And her face was on fire.
"Faith?" she croaked and then felt something like iron cut deeply into her shoulders then pressure hot and hard. She tried not to but she couldn’t seem to help screaming as she was lifted by that terrible pain in her shoulders up and out of the room. And for the second time in that long night she found herself airborne, screaming her guts out, but this time she was blind and Faith couldn’t rescue her now. She heard the Slayer’s voice growing faint as the demon carried her farther and farther from home.
****
They had been lying naked together in the circle for minutes and days. Willow could feel the golden heat of Tara’s skin, could hear the low indistinct murmuring of her voice. The words were indecipherable, but she knew that there were ‘I love you’s and ‘forevers’ in every soft syllable. Bare legs were entwined and Willow felt soft lips flutter over her eyelids and cheek. She wanted more contact, but knew she would never find the energy to make it happen. But the connection, there was no need for words with Tara. With a smile she imagined the blonde kissing her, on top of her, inside her and heard a low chuckle.
"I don’t think that’s part of the ritual." Then soft lips on her own. She wanted to argue or prove her wrong, but the world had gone all hazy and warm. Reason and words were useless in this place of raw floating sensation. Because she was almost gone, slipping in and out of consciousness as time breathed around them. So she focused on the bright standout things that she could still touch. Salty kisses and the wet slide of skin. And singing. Tara singing something light and sweet. Maybe a lullaby although it was one she had never heard her sing before.
Another warm slip and she was, for a moment, in a different room with Tara, but the same. A different time then. An awkward first kiss that wasn’t the one they had shared. A new impossible memory. With a deep inhale she rolled back into consciousness. Dying. She was dying. That’s what this was.
And she knew what the song was now. It was an incantation and they were slipping into that other realm of dreams and super-dimensions. Tara guiding her gently out of herself. Willow wanted to stay in the physical, but she couldn’t find the place to hold on to. All the edges that made things real had become slippery and vague. As she drifted away from the physical plane she felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was so much easier here and Tara was everywhere. Both of them home in this space where everything was energy that spoke in the languages of color and constants.
But there was one constant that would no longer be. Because Tara would be nowhere again after this. There would be a world without her where time crept along in cold hard steps. And that was wrong. Willow began reflexively to pull away in terror and in that moment she saw it. The other solution to this impossible equation. It was so beautifully simple because she was there already. She watched with growing detachment as her own essence curled away from her in a thin glowing spiral and mingled with the Heart’s dark magic. It would be so easy to control it. The Heart. She could give them any future they wanted. Anything. And it was her destiny. She felt it. Somehow she was tied inextricably with this device and it’s terrible spell. She and Tara. Everything in her life had led to this point. All the deaths and love and grief dragging her inexorably to this place where realities and magic were boiling into a sea of potential. This was where she belonged. This was the reason it felt so familiar. The Heart was hers.
In the way of that dimensionless space, the more she thought about the Heart’s center the closer it became. And the more her connection to Tara diminished. She could feel the blonde’s fear and shock flare bright and then grow faint as the swirling dark of the Heart engulfed her in its metallic cold. It was necessary she knew, to sever their connection briefly for this to work. For her to become one with her fate and keep Tara safe. Then she could be with her love forever. And it would be so easy. She was already growing stronger, more powerful. The flow of energy reversed as the dark magic flowed into her.
Through the lens of the Heart’s magic she could see time opening up in every direction. Folding out around her like a three-dimensional kaleidoscope that she could step into with just a thought. She could see it all. The Willow that was and could be. The Tara that might have been. The two of them that should have equaled always. And it was all hers like vague memories that grew more distinct and tangible as she focused on the details. This was the fulfillment of all the promises the dark had whispered to her. This was the power she had glimpsed in terrifying hints and glances. And it wasn’t evil. How could it be when it led her back to Tara?
As the power roared into and through her, she reached out to taste the universe in all of its potentialities. Spinning through events that had and hadn’t occurred, that would and would not be she felt a glitch in what should have been the most perfect moment – their first kiss. As she focused down the déjà vu loop of that point in time made everything stand still. The Heart. She had used it before and forgotten. The memory erased by the spell’s reordering of time and events. Their first kiss hadn’t happened at all. She and Tara hadn’t….but they had.
That’s why Tara was studying Occum’s Heart. She knew somehow…without any memory she knew. My beautiful brilliant girl…
It was like losing the blonde all over again. Willow stretched out with her mind to see the immensity of she and Tara that brought the glowing blur to a screaming pause. In almost every possible universe they were together in some way. But the Heart had altered things and it sat now buried inside its own spell creating another feedback loop that she hadn’t seen. That didn’t appear on any map because it wasn’t supposed to exist.
This is not good. So not good. I could have killed us all. Who am I kidding? I still could. I mean, hello, end of the world stuff here…
A familiar warmth passed through her, engulfed her briefly and was gone. Tara. The blonde had taken advantage of that small moment of indecision to break through. But just for a moment. Leaving Willow with nothing but the Heart’s frigid dark. All those past and future memories and no Tara.
She knew in that moment what was so familiar about this place and its magic. It was grief. It was that terrible night of retribution and sorrow bound and compressed into a space so small it could warp time. It was the utter and complete absence of the warmth and light that was Tara. And she was about to give herself to it again.
She didn’t have the strength to pull away, but she could continue with her original plan, unmake herself and change everything. With what little strength she had left, Willow began the steps that would separate her magic from the Heart’s and allow her to die safely inside the world she had made with the Heart’s magic. The first and most difficult obstacle was the dark magic now pouring into her. Her own indecision and Tara’s brief intervention had slowed the onslaught, but it was there. Tempting and terrifying and she knew she couldn’t stop it completely. So she worked around it. Literally. Withdrawing her own energies from the spell, allowing this fragile space to contract slowly. It was excruciatingly tedious work because the sudden removal of her energy would be disastrous. She worked carefully to retract herself from the spell, but she was quickly reaching the threshold. That point on the event horizon of this place from which there was no return. That line that separated life and death. And not just her own death. The end of an entire reality.
The darkness still surrounded her still streaked through with golden red remnants of her own energy. The last shreds of herself that had to be removed before the darkness and the end would finally claim her. And that seemed appropriate somehow after everything she had done. All of her failures. Her deepest wish was another chance to say goodbye to Tara and she was denied even that. Because she had given in. Again.
How many times can I fail you Tara?
The deep cold of the dream space around her blurred and shifted into the barren landscape of her childhood nightmare -- the cold endless world of alone. Willow stood on a long, low plain, the dark thunder clouds of the spell’s energy gathering above her as the deep red sun slipped slowly toward the horizon. Nice cliché she thought and cleared her mind for the final withdrawal from the world.
Oseh shalom bim'romav, hu ya'aseh shalom, aleinu v'al kol yisrael v'al kol yoshvey teveil, v'imru amein.
It came unbidden to her mind, the mourner’s kaddish. Not for herself. For the world that was dying with her. For everything and everyone she had lost. Tara, Joyce….Buffy.
Oseh shalom bim'romav, hu ya'aseh shalom, aleinu v'al kol yisrael v'al kol yoshvey teveil, v'imru amein.
It was all she could remember from the kaddish and all she needed. Its sad tones echoed back to her in the voices of her grandmothers, her father and finally her own voice clear and small. As she slipped the last of herself from the knot of the Heart’s magic she repeated the prayer in her mind like an incantation. Her final spell.
May the one who maketh peace in the high places, make peace for us and for all Israel and all who dwell in the world, and let us say, amen.
The heavy sing-song of it echoed over the empty surfaces of that world and she knew that she was crying somewhere. Maybe in that circle with Tara back in that perfect room. Maybe everywhere in every time.
Blessed be.
As the sun slipped below the dream horizon and the storm began its steady collapse around her a faint glow filled the sky golden and shimmering and…Tara. Everywhere and always.
Amein.
TBC in Parts II and III of the Finale thanks again jenny for the kaddish...
Edited by: lipkandy at: 3/30/03 11:38:52 pm
by witchpunk » Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:19 am 
and the tickling is both a threat and a promise. thought the other mel may get jealous. or not cause there's nothing to be jealous of. hehe... 
I hope to see part II soon!
Poor Willow, such inner turmoil and sacrifice, but Tara will make it better??
I'm with Rane, I want the rest of this fic, but I don't want it to end. 
