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Chapter 39
The Shadow
Even as a child, Willow was peripherally aware that there was something wrong with Sunnydale. Unexplained neck ruptures, people going missing, a dozen cemeteries with hundreds of missing corpses; Willow had known it wasn't the norm. It was as if the town had gone malignant, that it was an oozing pus-filled sore on California's cheek. How much evil could one town contain?
Then Buffy had come, and brought with her a new life. Willow remembered thinking that Buffy had knocked the wind out of her, that fateful day they sat in the library and discussed vampires for the first time. Vampires, and the Hellmouth, and the Slayer, all part of a daylight conversation in the library with an Oxford trained librarian who had a penchant for medieval weapons hidden in the book cage.
Between Jesse and the coming of the Master, Willow had once opened a door in the high school and found the punctured and blood stained bodies of her high school classmates. She felt helpless. Later, Willow remembered holding the telephone and slumping to the ground as a disembodied voice told her that Jenny Calendar was dead. She felt helpless. Buffy's body cracked over construction materials, a fallen star, lifeless once again. Willow felt helpless. A party in Xander's eye socket, and everyone invited.
Helpless.
Here a little and there a little, Willow gained power. Not just mad hacking skills (though those came in mighty handy on more than one incident of Scoobyage), but powers granted by the gods. Magic. Her mother would never believe her. Her father would ignore her. Her friends would rely on her, and she would fail them, again and again, until they died.
It seemed that to live was her curse.
She should have died, dozens of times over, but something always kept her alive. Freaking Fate, on her ever freaking Wheel, Willow pinned there to keep revolving, up and down, to the end of days. Others would come on her wheel, and fall off dead, and yet she would remain. Cursed to live.
And now Tara would join the Scoobies again, far before Willow ever would. Buffy cradling Tara's body in her arms, vowing to care for her. Another plaque in the jertfa mausoleum, another stone corpse.
And even though she had downloaded more power from the gods than the world's biggest iPod, Willow still felt helpless.
What good were these gifts if Willow couldn't save her? Why bother gifting her at all? What agenda had the gods this time? Willow wanted to rage at them, curse them, fight them. But it still wouldn't stop Tara from dying. Ethan had made that bloody clear. Sitting there, looking at the scans, Tara like a ghost already between them, saying nary a word. Will wondered if Tara really understood the awful significance, since she hadn't said the words out loud. Maybe admitting the truth would be too much. Maybe she was afraid to speak, afraid the words would corrode her tongue like acid.
Because the very words themselves were malignant. Grade IV astrocytoma. Glioblastoma multiforme. The words snuck into Willow's skull and rattled there like unhappy inmates. Medical jargon aside, the layman terms were just as awful. Brain tumour. Inoperable. Prognosis grim. Radiation. Chemotherapy.
How much time?
(Raising her voice. Grasping his starched white lapels. He had balled his fists. “Ethan, how much time?”)Four months. Maybe five. Maybe less.
Helpless.
It was early Monday afternoon. They had fled the hospital, that refuge for the damned, that place that harboured Death in an unspoken pact, where Death leered from every mirror, hung in the shadows on the walls. Waiting for the moment the great purple curtain would fall, the show finally over, the audience sated on beauty and bile alike, leaving the auditorium until only Death and his victim remained. The hospice reeked of Death, and it wasn't the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh; it was the tang of bleach, industrial cleaner, the whiff of illness. It permeated Willow's skin, invaded her mouth and nostrils, layered her in filth.
Tara didn't want to go home. She needed to feel beauty on her skin, taste beauty in her mouth, rinse away the filth of the words she just couldn't speak. To utter them would make them real. Far better to be silent, and pretend that the world would go on as it had. Slain by the shadow, Willow would do anything Tara asked. So they drove to a place Willow had never been before, but she recognized with a heartfelt pang.
A ravine, cascading water, and a Willow tree. Willow looked at it and remembered,
(sweet grass, red poppies, blue flax somehow the same cerulean as the angel's eyes
an emerald pendant above the angel's brow, seed pearls woven in her hair, mist alighting upon her skin like delicate moths
resting against Tara's bosom, Tara's arms encircling her waist, her voice soft in her ear
“They are all dead, Willow, all except for Faith.”
“I saved the world, Tara, but not for me. Never for me.”
“No, Willow. Love and pleasure beyond imagining await you. You have only to wish it.”
I wish I had more time. Just time.
Just this.)Forward and back, Willow could see the great play of her life, the farce, the show. Back, to a time when she was a Scooby, surrounded by friends, companions in intrigue, soulmates in struggle. Buffy, who was never afraid of the fangs of the world, the hidden world that tainted and blessed her every living moment. Giles, Willow's first protector, helping her negotiate the pitfalls and dangers of the dark universe, the turn of a coin, the shadow cast by light. And Xander, whose heart was as big as the world, who saw to the truth of things, even with only a single eye.
With their passing a shadow was cast over her life. Great hulking beasts of midnight, they left holes so great in her soul she thought she'd fall into them and be lost forever. She could have made it her life's work to mourn them, to sit aimlessly in a chair, twiddling her fingers, remembering them until they faded like photos exposed too long to the sun. Willow could have found certain twisted comfort in this, wrapping their shadows about her, letting the great void sink into her skin and drive her mad.
Broken. Helpless. Enslaved by the past in chains far greater than Jacob Marley had ever known.
That's what would have been, if not for Tara.
Tara, who shone a light into her life. Who blazed like the very sun in the firmament. With a single touch, a single caress, Tara had proved that life could still be meaningful. The show could go on, even without the lead actors. Tara hadn't merely saved her life, she had saved Willow's soul.
Willow thought she had a lifetime.
No time, not now. Death had followed them from the hospice, had dug into Tara's skin with gnarled claws, wrapped around her; a lover far more intent than Willow could ever be. They should have been two. Tara and Willow. By Tara's choice, they were three. And now, by Caleb's gift, they were four. Death had come along for the ride.
Tara, so innocent. So sweet. She stood by the ravine as Willow set out a yellow blanket, as Willow conjured many little dishes of food to tempt her capricious appetite. Tara stood by the ravine and when Willow was ready, Willow stood and simply looked at her.
The mist formed a rainbow, but Willow knew that God had no promises for her. He was the biggest farce of all. From the dust He formed Tara, poured vileness and filth into her veins, gifted her with pain that never ended, and He would sacrifice her on the altar of the world to suit His own desires. God, the proprietor of the big joke shop in the sky.
The mist formed a rainbow, and a halo about Tara's head. Her hair glistened with the light sheen, and she must have felt Willow's eyes on her, for she turned.
Three pale lines down her face. Her blue eyes soft, tenderised by pain and much sorrow. Lips full and supple; did they know how many words remained to be spoken? Her brown hair lifted by the gentle fingers of the wind, now stroking her neck, now flying away.
It seemed impossible that Willow could be looking at her like this. Looking at her and wondering which breath would be her last. Looking at her and knowing there was nothing she could do to stop this monstrous tide. Looking at her, and feeling her soul fracture in unimaginable pain. Tara brought her from the abyss. When Willow woke and found out that she was alone, that she was left behind to live in the ugly world that had snatched her friends from her, she would have gone mad if not for Tara.
Willow looked at Tara, and the words that Tara would not say hung between them, a chasm of unspeakable depth.
Tara came to her, and Willow sat her down on the spry yellow blanket and fussed over her, conjuring whatever foodstuff Tara thought she could stomach. Misuse of magic no longer worried her. Only that expanding shadow in Tara's mind. Despite her fasting for the medical tests, Tara could not eat much. They spoke but a little, and looked at each other often.
A single moment of unutterable pain, when Tara slowly placed her empty fork back on the ground and looked beyond Willow, to the shimmering green curtain of the Willow tree under which they sprawled. Something crossed Tara's face, and her body settled into absolute stillness. Willow had come to learn what that stillness meant. A flash of pain in Tara's open eyes, and she held herself so carefully, so very very still, that Willow knew she was in the grip of the pain-fiend, the agony monster, the long preacher. She longed to touch her, but held herself back for fear of hurting her. Tara's face rippled with surprise and shock, and Willow's heart plummeted as she asked, “Tara, are you all right?”
Her body did not move. Her neck swivelled with infinite care, and Tara looked upon Willow, taking a shallow, gasping breath. “You mean right now?” Tara whispered, and a single tear coursed down her cheek. Willow could almost see the pain-fiend gouging her, the knifings of her head, the bombardment of her stomach, the assault on her senses so intense it took every ounce of strength in her body to be still. Any touch, movement, or sound would destroy her.
The yellow blanket, dotted with crumbs. The glowing green curtain. Tara, her love, her soul, sitting across from her, so close she could smell the fragrance of her skin, yet so far she was unattainable. Caleb had snatched her away, began her on a road that had only one destination: dirt clods on a coffin. It was a road that Willow wished she could travel. All her friends had gone down it, one by one, losing themselves in the ending, leaving her behind.
And now Tara.
God, now Tara!
She had shone in Willow's life like the very sun. She had shown Willow a universe of love and feeling she had never experienced before. Without her, Willow would have sunk into madness upon learning the fates of her friends. Tara kept her from that abyss.
Willow's heart burned.
Fear bloomed within it, a black rose with razor thorns. She had felt fear before, so often at times that it was a numb feeling of little note. What else to expect from a Scooby, whose every night was perilous and whose every day was mere anticipation of the night? But this fear, this new fear born of her love of Tara, it sapped her strength, made her stupid, made her weak. She sat across from Tara, who sat so carefully, so still, and the fear turned her bones to jelly.
Fear of losing her.
Losing her!
She had just found her!
With a single wave of her hand, Willow cleared the yellow blanket of all its bits of food and crumbs. Tara continued to breathe shallow, slow. Willow extended her hands and Tara took them; with a soft pull, Willow drew Tara to her and laid her down on the blanket, a quickly conjured pillow underneath her head.
Tara lay on her back, her breasts rising and falling with her short and shallow breaths, the spokes of the amulet conspicuous under her shirt. Willow lay on her side next to her, shuffling until the length of her was against the length of Tara. Propping herself up on one elbow, Willow put her other hand gently on Tara's stomach. Tara's hand immediately took hers, entwined her fingers with Willow's.
Tara's eyes were closed, her cheeks pale and wet. Fine droplets of sweat on her brow. How was it possible that Tara grew more beautiful with every passing minute? How was it possible for Tara to become so sweet, so transparent? The great purple curtain behind Tara's eyes was getting thinner and thinner; Death waited off stage for his moment of glory. Tara's eyes were closed, and Willow allowed herself to look on her lover with all the sadness in her soul.
Helpless.
Freaking Fate, on her freaking Wheel. Tara had revolved into her life, and before Willow could do more than merely taste her, Fate was about to usher her off. Tara should have been a feast, a banquet of kingly proportions to last a lifetime. Instead, Tara was a mouthful, a single taste, hinting at all the richness in the world and gone too quickly.
Her light was fading. The shadow grew.
Willow lay next to Tara, her hand on her stomach, feeling the slow steady beating of her heart. How much time did they have? How many nights could Willow hold Tara in her arms? How many days could they spend in each other's company? How much pain would the gods allow Tara to suffer before the end?
Willow tried to hold it back in her, afraid of jarring Tara with the sound, but the sob ripped from her as if it had desperate life of its own. She tried to swallow it down, but more came with it, Willow's chest convulsing from the effort of trying to hold them in, her eyes burning.
(Just what does Tara mean to you, Willow?)There were no words. Only Tara. My love. My always.
My soul.
Tara opened her eyes and turned to look at her. Her eyelashes were damp with tears. Her face was calm, still. There was no wall behind her eyes. She looked at Willow and Willow saw herself. Tara looked at Willow, and Willow suddenly made sense. She saw herself through a lover's eyes, and saw her worth. Willow's own soul, tempered by much fire, stretched by loss, refined now by love, more precious than diamonds. Willow. Worth living for.
(Mochas in the courtyard.)
(Books in the library.)
(Jelly donuts before the apocalypse.)
(Hot fingers trailing down a hungry breast, skin feasting on Tara's touch, hot fingers dipping lower, but it wasn't about fingers, or about exquisite release by Tara's hand, it was about the whispered words, feather light in her ear.)
(Willow, I love you.)Willow, seeing herself through her lover's eyes, saw all this, and more. Willow's soul, tempered by delight, stretched by joy, refined now by loss, more precious than sapphires. Willow. Worth dying for.
Again.
(Giles.)Again.
(Buffy.)And again.
(Xander.)Willow. Worth it all. Tara looked at Willow, and in her eyes Willow saw wasting illness and dirt clods on her mother's coffin. Willow saw the bloodied fists of her father. Willow saw the rabbits, the rabbits, the rabbits. Willow saw the amulet, the great and terrible shadow.
Willow. Worth the price, no matter how high the cost.
Worth even this.
Tara's voice, brought to Willow's ears with the delicacy of a moth's wing. Eyes open, showing Willow her worth, showing her soul. “Will,” Tara said, and the universe beckoned. A breath of beauty. “I'm dying, aren't I?”
Pause. Words to bridge the chasm, to erode the tongue, dissolve the world.
“Yes,” Willow answered, her heart tearing even further.
Soft crying from Tara then, the words releasing the future. Stark. Empty. No Tara in it. Just another big hole, and there could be no more Saviours for Willow. No more Tara's to save her soul. Even here and now, Tara in her arms, tears on both their cheeks, Willow could feel Tara slipping away from her like sand through her clenched fist. Joyce had died just like this, natural and cruel, and there was nothing any of them could have done to stop it.
Tara would continue to slip away, become thinner, more transparent, and a moment would soon come when she wouldn't breathe any more. No more lifted eyebrows, no more soft hands, no indescribable kisses. The die had been cast, the outcome irrefutable. With Caleb burrowing a shadow in her brain, with the great adamant wall keeping Willow out, the certain knowledge of Tara's death was a sledge hammer, driving Willow into the ground.
This was a moment of great despair. Willow cried, and clutched Tara to her, almost ferociously wrapping her arms around her, feeling Tara's fingers almost gouge into her skin so tightly did they cling. Ever weeping, sobs tearing from her with choked and hiccupping breaths, Willow wryly concluded that she would never die. Freaking Fate would keep her pinned to the freaking Wheel for all time, doomed to love and lose time and again until she was only a shadow of a human, cynical and broken. There could be no love again, not after Tara. She would store up her memories of her love, reflect on them until they dissolved, and when they were gone she would have nothing else to live for.
Yet she would still live.
Pinned to the freaking Wheel, for all eternity.
Helpless.
Tara in her arms, skin soft and fragrant, body supple and pliant. Her love, her angel, her reason for being, dying. The number of her breaths was counted, finite. Her heart revolved ever downwards, not knowing which beat would be her last. And when it was all said and done, when the purple curtain fell and the audience clapped and left, Tara's body would moulder in the ground with all the other Scoobies. Tara Maclay, friend, sister, lover.
Saviour.
(The choice was mine, and mine completely.)Now that they knew the truth, Willow berated herself that she should have seen it all along. The signs were there, all of them. The headaches, the fainting, the seizure, the blood in the ear. Loss of appetite, loss of memory. The shadow crept up on them, and they were chilled by it, but they never knew the full extent of its devastation.
Cataclysm now. Had Tara known all along that this would be her sacrifice?
(“I am close, Tara.”
“And I am the lamb.”)When she saved Willow, did she know she was condemning herself to death?
(Yes, oh yes.)Willow couldn't bear it. She had failed, again. The Council had sent Tara to her for a purpose. They knew she would fall in love with her. They knew she would save her. Willow would once again pull off the impossible, she would solve the riddle, she would sift out the truth, she would stop at nothing until she prevailed.
But she failed.
She failed, and if Althanea was right, then the world was doomed. Tara would die, and Caleb would be reborn, and the skies would flower with demons, and the earth would vomit up the bones of the ancients, and the Old Ones would repopulate the planet. Once half the world bowed their knee to unquenchable evil, The First would embrace flesh, and rule the world for a thousand years of torment. The voices of the innocent would cry from the dust, Willow's soul would be reaved from her body, and she would be sentenced to an eternity writhing in the regrets and remorse of the damned.
Because Tara was dying. And there was nothing Willow could do to stop it.
It was too much. Willow pulled back, just enough to kiss Tara's lips. Once, twice, soft and yielding. Then volcanic, bruising, need and desire. They kissed again and again, tasting each other's tears. Kissing born of desperation, of shattered hope. The end was nigh. The shadow had fallen, and the whole world was dark because of it.
Prone on the ground, holding Tara close, tight, Willow asked the question for the last time. “Why, Tara? Why did you do this?”
No riddles. “Willow, this is what I was born to do. I – I think I was always meant to be yours.”
Mine. I've never had anything be just mine.
Tara continued. “I knew from the moment I saw you that I needed to save you. This would be my part to play.”
The Lamb. Jertfa. The Sacrifice.
Realization without illumination. Truth born of shadow.
“You had to be healed. You were the only one with the power to save the world. I did what I had to do, and I did it by choice.”
Crying. Soft. Defeated.
“And Willow?”
Kiss on the lips, butterfly sweet.
“There is no more time. You have to know what you need to do.”
Truth poured from Tara's mouth, and Willow drowned in it. The second Seal of Danzalthar. The scythe. And blood. Tara's blood.
Could this paltry world be worth the price they had to pay?
Devastation. Willow was aware that she should be the one doing the comforting, doing the holding, as she wasn't the one dying a brain tumour for god's sake! But it was Tara who remained the anchor, the calm in the eye of the storm. After speaking of the plan, Tara held Willow for a long time, then continued, “Will, I need to go home.”
Willow snuffled, and asked, “Back to your house?”
Still in Willow's arms, Tara shook her head. “No. Home. The farm. I need to tell my father, and – and Donny.”
Willow felt small and helpless. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, realising that she knew very little about Tara's family. Tara didn't speak of them at all. Willow knew her mother had passed away, that her brother once hit her when she was in the hospital, and that there was something about her father that froze her to the bone.
“I couldn't imagine facing them without you beside me,” Tara replied, squeezing Willow's hand.
“How long will it take us to get there?” Willow asked, not looking forward to a long drive.
“Could you try to teleport us there?” Tara asked, blinking and ducking her head.
God, she was adorable.
“Of course. When do you want to go?”
Control, Willow. Keep it together.
“Right away. I want to get this over with.”
Willow understood. The sooner she took Tara to see her family, the sooner they could come back home. Willow had definite plans shaping up for how she wanted to spend their evening together.
Skin. And skin.
The clock was ticking, but in a way neither of them could have comprehended. There were no months, weeks, or even days. In just under 24 hours, Tara would be killed, and not by cancer.
By Willow.
TBC between Friday and Tuesday, Feb. 26 with Chapter 40: Sir
Phoenix
by Tara the Phoenix » Sun Feb 03, 2008 8:29 am 
