Title:
Terra Firma. Chapter 1: Horizon.
Author: Tulipp
Email address:
tulipp30@yahoo.comFeedback:Please.
Distribution: Please let me know.
Spoilers:Everything through season 6.
Rating: Generally PG-13, R in a few chapters.
Pairing: W/T in spirit and in flashbacks and soon in the flesh.
Disclaimer: These are not my characters; Willow and Tara, the other characters, and various plot events that set up this story belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc, and I am grateful to have them.
Summary of chapter 1: Willow and Dawn return from a summer in England, and the other Scoobies prepare for their reunion.
Note: This is a multi-parter (18 chapters).I have big plans for Tara and her HAPPY FUTURE WITH WILLOW, but it will take a few chapters for this to happen.If you like this first part, please stick around for more.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Ruby for reading and encouraging.Thanks to all who write the good stuff, especially Katharyn, Tommo, and Sassette.They don't know me, but I have enjoyed reading their fanfic very much. And thanks to J.
Terra FirmaChapter 1: Horizon
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
--Rainer Maria Rilke The blue suited her, Willow thought wryly, looking down at the long sleeves of her t-shirt. The shirt had been pink once, but an early experiment of Dawn’s had gone wrong and turned all of the clothes they’d taken with them to England the same shade of murky blue. Dawn had minded, at first, but Willow hadn’t cared.What difference did it make, after all, what she looked like? And she didn’t think Dawn had thought about it since.Willow thought perhaps that Dawn, like herself, found it appropriate somehow. Clothes of mourning.
It would be morning in Sunnydale now, Willow thought.Dawn was asleep beside her, and they had endless hours of flight time ahead of them. They were going … home.
It hurt even to think that. Home was Sunnydale, yes; home was the Scoobies; home was her friends, but home also was…home used to be…Tara. The name sliced her open, as it always did, and she felt the familiar steel grip her chest. She couldn’t not think about her, of course.Thoughts of Tara were, these days, the only wound.But thoughts of Tara were also the only cure.
At the prospect of returning to a home without Tara, though, she felt the panic rising, and, as always, she had to fight to resist it taking her over.
She resisted now, uncrossing her legs, resting her hands palm up on her lap, closing her eyes. She breathed in and out, in and out. She focused on seeing a pinprick of light in the dark of her eyelids, a single point on a black horizon, and as she slowed her breath—in, out, in, out—she approached that pinprick and let it grow until everything was light. Then, in that soft, solid white place, the memory could come.
The spell had worked. Willow had crossed into the nether realm and saw what she needed to see.She didn’t move there, didn’t think, simply was, and she could see the answers clearly. It was a warm place, earthy and damp and familiar, though she’d never been there before.She wanted to stay forever.
After, Tara had called to her through the pink haze of the nether realm and brought her back. For a moment, Willow had lain where she’d fallen back on the pillow, her chest heaving. All her nerve endings felt alive; her fingers tingled. Then Tara had leaned forward and placed her hand over Willow’s heart. Willow could feel the blood racing in Tara’s palm. Something had passed between them.When Tara took her hand away, she had held a tiny ball of light in her fingers.
They were both soaked with sweat.
Tara had taken Willow by the hand then, led her through the deserted dorm hallway to the bathroom. In the shower stall, they had undressed without speaking and stepped under the spray.They had washed each other. It was a chaste kind of touching, but Willow’s skin crackled wherever Tara’s hands passed over her. They had stayed there for a long time, the water washing over both of them, their fingers washing over one another.In that wet and quiet moment, everything was ahead of them.It would all happen. It was happening already.
Willow had never felt so clean.
Willow’s eyes were wet, but she stayed in the memory until the last trace of panic had tucked itself away again. It was not gone, it was never entirely gone, but she’d learned that she could sometimes make it subside a little. It left in its place one of the other constant companions of her last few months, a vast and consuming emptiness.
She opened her eyes and found Dawn watching her carefully.
“You were thinking about her, weren’t you,” Dawn said. It wasn’t really a question.
Willow smiled weakly. “I’m always thinking about her, Dawnie,” she said. She wiped at her eyes.She had once thought that surely she would cry herself out eventually, that there would be no tears left. But they needled at the backs of her eyelids, always fresh.Always new.A shot through the heart every time.
“But sometimes it hurts more than others,” Dawn said. She looked down, twisted her beaded bracelet. “Will it always hurt this much?”
Willow looked at the teenager with whom she’d spent so much of the last few months and wished again that she could lie to her, wished she could say that the movies were right and that time would make everything okay again. But these words of comfort caught in her throat.
Instead, she reached for the in-flight program. “Maybe we should see what the first movie is going to be, Dawnie,” she said.
* * * *
“We should go see a movie,” Xander said. “You know, something to do to take our minds off…you know.” He and Giles were sitting with Buffy in her living room. The plane wasn’t due to arrive for hours and hours, but they were sitting. Waiting.
“I hear they’re doing a Steve Martin revival downtown,” Xander continued brightly. “You know, “My Blue Heaven,” “L.A. Story.” We could catch a double-feature before we go to the airport, you know, kill some time.”
Giles looked up, his teacup halfway to his lips. “I’m not sure I understood Steve Martin the first time around, Xander,” he said carefully. “Perhaps a revival will only confuse matters more.”
“Besides,” Buffy said, leaning back and resting her feet on the new coffee table that Xander had finished only the week before. “I kill enough already.I don’t want to kill time, too.”
Giles and Xander both looked at her.
“Okay, okay, not one of my most original puns,” she said huffily.
Xander leaned forward. “Um, Buff,” he said, “Granted, your jokes usually slay me.” Giles rolled his eyes. “Okay, my point is, I may not be Mr. Knowledge, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t actually a pun.”
Buffy sighed. “Whatever.Look, I am definitely not up for the Steve-a-dore.Find me something better, and I’ll consider it.”
A movie actually didn’t sound like a bad idea. Although she was trying not to show it, Buffy was anxious about seeing Willow and Dawn again. It would be hard, she knew. Not that the summer hadn’t been hard. The past months had been difficult beyond the telling. They had all had to rebuild. They had all tried. But constructing anything out of the rubble they were left with after Tara died had been painful for everyone.And slow-going.
For Buffy, it had been an odd summer. She had felt the grief of Tara’s death, of course, and she had ached for Willow, but underneath that pain she had been aware of a renewed sense of life, a vigor that had been missing since she had come back. She had often felt a little guilty about that, as if it were wrong to feel any kind of peace when Tara was dead and Willow was lost and alone. But if Buffy was honest with herself, a kind of peace was there.
And it had been a necessary peace. Without it, she wouldn’t have been able to remain strong for the rest of her family, crushed by grief and destruction. She wouldn’t have been able to comfort and soothe her sister, who had seen too many people close to her die.And she wouldn’t have been able to take care of Willow those first days, when she had been so fragile. Shattered. Buffy hated to think of it even now.
Knocking on the bathroom door. Calling quietly, “Willow? Willow, you’ve been in there for a long time.” No answer. “Willow, I’m coming in.” Turning the knob and crossing the room to the slight figure huddled in the tub. The liquid grip of panic in the pit of her stomach at the flash of steel in Willow’s hand. Kneeling in front of the tub to turn Willow’s arms over. The flood of relief that the skin on Willow’s wrists was unbroken.
“Willow, this is not an answer,” she had said gently, taking the razor away from her friend and putting her hands on the knees jutting out of the water. “This isn’t you.”
“I couldn’t even do that right,” Willow had said desperately. She wasshivering; the water had grown cold.
Buffy reached into the water and pulled the plug. She slipped her hands under Willow’s arms and lifted her out of the water. She reached for a towel and wrapped Willow in it, rubbed her dry, led her into her own bedroom, sat her on the bed.
Willow was still shivering. “Buffy…” she had whispered, “I can’t do this, I can’t get through this.” Buffy had swallowed back the urge to cry; she had needed to be strong for Willow right then.She had to be an anchor.
“Willow, I know how hard it is now, but you have to hang on.You have to let us help you.”
“No!” Willow had sobbed then, tears spilling down her cheeks. “No, I can’t.”Her shoulders shook. “When I close my eyes…I see it over and over again…the blood, the falling.” She took a shuddering breath.“So I open my eyes, but then I see all of your faces, and I remember the rest of it, and…God, Buffy, it hurts, it hurts.”Willow clutched at her chest, gasping the words out.“God, it hurts too much.I can’t live through this.I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”It was the most she’d spoken since before the funeral.
Buffy had recognized the hysteria coming and slipped a gentle hand behind Willow’s neck. “Put your head down for a second, Will,” she’d said softly. She pressed, and Willow let her head drop to her knees. Willow was gasping for breath, keening. Buffy rubbed her neck softly, trying to calm her.
Eventually, with the pressure of Buffy’s hand on her neck, Willow’s labored breathing had slowed, and she’d lifted her head. “Buffy, I have to go away,” she had choked out.“ I have to be somewhere else, anywhere else.Please let me go.”
They had looked at each other for a long moment, Willow’s eyes pleading, Buffy’s eyes searching and understanding. A promise passed between them, a wordless agreement that Buffy would let Willow go, and that Willow would come back. “Let me talk to Giles,” Buffy had said, and Willow had started to weep again, but with relief as well as the despair that had colored her every moment since she had crumpled into Xander’s arms on the bluff.
Willow had allowed Buffy to button her into pajamas and comb her wet hair. She had accepted a sleeping pill without protest, obediently swallowing it with the water Buffy handed over. She had allowed herself to be tucked into Buffy’s bed.
Buffy had looked at Willow, at her pale face and trembling body, and then she had climbed into the bed herself and gathered Willow in her arms. She had hummed something tuneless and held her friend, stroking her red hair. And Willow had gradually faded into a drugged blackness, her cheeks still wet.
“Buffy?” Xander said, and Buffy jerked herself out of the memory.
“What?” she turned to see him peering at her suspiciously.
“I said, maybe before the movie you want to go see what we’ve done with the new and improved Magic Box?” Xander narrowed his eyes at her. “The grand re-opening is tomorrow night, you know, but maybe you deserve a sneak preview?” Giles was watching her, too. Buffy sat up, stretched her arms out in front of her.
“Sounds great,” she said, trying for cheer. “Let me just change, okay?”
“Oh sure, no problem,” Xander said, throwing his hands up and reaching for the remote control. “Now’s a great time to change…why not color and curl your hair while you’re at it?”
Twenty minutes later, in the car, Buffy tuned out Xander’s enthusiastic description of the most recent changes to the Magic Box. She would see them soon enough. She was still thinking about Willow. Two months was kind of a long time, and her phone calls with Dawn over the summer had assured her that Willow wasn’t about to do harm to herself or anyone else, but still.
She looked east, trying to identify the point on the horizon from which the plane bringing Dawn and Willow home would come. She felt sad and uneasy. She knew that Willow was still living a minute at a time, and she didn’t know what to do to make it better. After all her experience with death, she didn’t know how to kill this kind of demon.
* * * *
The hours on the airplane dragged, but they drugged themselves with movies, watching one after another as the time crawled and Sunnydale grew closer. Meals arrived, and Dawn watched Willow push her food around her tray as she always did, these days.
“Willow, please eat a little bit,” Dawn said, as she always did, and Willow obediently pushed a few forkfuls of pasta into her mouth. But Dawn knew that ten minutes later, Willow would be unable to say what had been on her plate. Dawn sighed and turned back to her own tray. It didn’t actually look that good; it was kind of orange. She unwrapped her small, square brownie instead and finished it in a couple of bites.
Willow took her headphones off suddenly and turned to Dawn. “Tell me a story about Tara, Dawn,” she said.
It was a habit they’d gotten into, in England, when the day’s training was over and the evening stretched in front of them, empty and aching. They would walk, anywhere—everywhere—and they would talk about Tara.
Now, Dawn settled back into her narrow seat now and thought. “Did you know that Tara came to see me the night my arm got broken?” Willow shook her head slowly. Every detail of that night was tattooed onto her memory; it was needle-fresh.
“She did,” Dawn said. “She said not to tell you,” she added hastily, apologetically, glancing at Willow. She thought suddenly that maybe there was a reason she’d never mentioned this particular visit before. But Willow smiled faintly, nodded, and settled her head against the back of her seat.
“She brought me a milkshake,” Dawn said now, smiling. “I think maybe she’d been crying, but she pretended she wasn’t, and she told me a story about a camel. Wait,” her brow furrowed. “Maybe it was…could it have been half a camel?Yeah. Anyway, she sat by my bed, and she held my hand, and she told me that I should forgive you.”
Willow lifted her head again.“What?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
Dawn glanced at her worriedly. The Guides at the coven had told her that remembering was good for Willow and for her, and that she should talk about Tara whenever she wanted. Still, it felt weird sometimes, and she knew it was hard for Willow. But Giles had told them both from the moment they’d left that the Guides knew what they were talking about. And Giles knew best of anyone.
“She did, she said I should forgive you, that you would never hurt me on purpose. She said what you needed most was for me to show you I loved you.” Dawn was quiet for a moment, remembering. “She said she had forgiven you,” she finished, her voice low.
The flight attendant arrived at their row then, and Dawn felt grateful that there was the business of packing up trays and handing them over to distract them both .But after the cart had rolled past and they were alone again, Dawn looked over at Willow.
Willow’s face was calm, her eyes dry. But she reached for Dawn’s hand and squeezed it in her own, and then she turned her face toward the window, toward the blue sky, and folded, as she always did eventually, into her own private grief.
All Dawn could do was hold her hand. So she always did. That’s why she’d come in the first place, wasn’t it?
Dawn had been standing in the doorway when Buffy came downstairs after checking on Willow. She’d been gone a long time, and they had all heard the sobbing from upstairs. Xander had cried again, although he’d pretended he hadn’t, and gone to find a measuring tape to start planning the new coffee table.
“She’s asleep,” Buffy had said quietly, sliding into a chair and dropping her head into her hands. Dawn drew back a little, into a shadow. Sometimes the others talked more freely when they thought she wasn’t listening.
“Cup of tea?” Giles had asked, not waiting for an answer before setting a steaming mug in front of Buffy.She had wrapped her hands around it.
“Giles, she’s not getting any better,” she had said.
Xander had come back then. “Buffy, it’s only been a week,” he’d said, too sharply. “Willow’s world just ended; she might not be able to get over it to fit into…” He had stopped then, backpedaled. “Hey, I’m sorry, I just mean it’s going to take time.”
Buffy had nodded. “I meant she’s not getting any better here,” she said. “It’s hard for her to be here. After…you know… after everything she did. This house, Sunnydale…it’s all hell for her right now.”
Giles had sat next to Buffy, put a hand on her arm. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I think we should send her somewhere,” she said slowly. “I don’t know where, but I think we have to listen to her. She says she needs to go." She looked around the room, met Xander’s and Giles’ eyes. Dawn had just listened.
“I don’t know, Buff,” Xander had said. “I mean, it’s great that Willow’s talking at all, let alone actually saying she wants something, but…I don’t know. Maybe she won’t get all world-endy on us again, but she shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Buffy had shaken her head. “I remember how I felt after Angel died,” she had said quietly. “I had to be alone; I had to get away.I kind of know how she feels.”
Giles had taken off his glasses, wiped them with the tail of his shirt. “Xander, I understand what you’re saying, but Willow couldn’t do anything truly terrible right now even if she wanted to.The pure magick infusion took a toll. She’s very weak.”
“All the more reason not to send her off alone, then,” Xander had said, his voice echoing in the quiet room. “She’s not strong enough to be on her own.”
Giles had shaken his head thoughtfully. “There is a place,” he said slowly. “I can’t promise anything, but there is a coven in England that might be interested in working with Willow… helping her and…perhaps training her.”
Xander leaned on the table.“What, a little witchy therapy?”
“Well, Xander,” Giles said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I wouldn’t go quite that far, but the coven might give Willow a safe place to go, and we would, well, we would know where she was.”
Buffy had nodded. “That could work,” she had said slowly. “I’m sure the coven knows what it’s doing.”
Xander wasn’t sure. “I don’t care if Dr. Ruth Wicca-heimer herself is there,” he said. “I’m not sending Willow off on her own.She feels abandoned enough already.”
Giles had tilted his head. “Unfortunately,” he had said, “the coven doesn’t take men, and I’m not sure Buffy should leave her duties here just now, so I don’t….”
Dawn had seen her chance. “Let me go,” she had said, uncrossing her arms and stepping into the room. “Buffy, let me go.”
She’d been right. They’d forgotten she was there. She took advantage of their surprise to push on. “Buffy, you said yourself that you wanted to show me the world, right? Well, this is the world.” They had all hesitated. Dawn had crossed her arms over her chest. “Buffy, Willow isn’t going to hurt me. Be real here. I’m the only one who can go.”
Buffy had looked at Giles. Xander had looked at Giles. Giles had looked at Dawn and nodded.
“Buffy, Dawn may have a point,” he said. “And she…well, she was closer to Tara than any of us.”
Buffy frowned. “What if Willow doesn’t want Dawn to go?” she asked.
Giles poured more tea. “I don’t think,” he said firmly, “that she has a choice in the matter.”
And so it had been decided. Buffy had packed and dug up passports; Xander had bought comic books for the flight. Giles had called the coven and arranged to bring Willow and Dawn for the summer. The coven agreed to let Giles stay long enough to settle them in. A few days later, Giles, Dawn, and Willow left for England.
And now, three months later, Dawn and Willow were going home.
Dawn smiled to herself, allowed herself a tiny hop in her seat. They were going home. She would see Giles and Anya and Xander and Janice…and Buffy. She could sleep in her own bed. She could wear something that wasn’t blue! It had been a long summer.
She reached for her discarded headphones and prepared to settle in for another movie. She slipped the headphones over her ears and reached for the volume, then stiffened. It was happening again.
Her hands clutched the headphones to her ears as her mind filled with a screaming white noise that pierced her eardrums from both sides. She clawed at her head, ripping the headphones off, but the screaming continued. “Oh, ow,” Dawn cried, pressing her hands against her ears to make it stop. It was heavy metal guitar pitched high, nails on chalkboards, wailing sirens. And underneath the fever pitch that turned her vision to solid white was the other part, the low pounding. It had a rhythm, a voice almost.
Dawn lost any sense of how long it had been going on; the pain was endless. Then, from somewhere outside the white place, she felt a familiar hand on her arm, and on the horizon, a dark spot emerged, and Dawn yearned toward it with every ounce of energy she had. The voice was mumbling at her, mumbling, mumbling, but she ignored it and reached for the horizon. It came closer, and the noise faded, and the white receded, and she was alone again in her mind.
But not really alone. “Dawnie?” Willow said beside her. Willow had leaned forward and was brushing Dawn’s hair back from her forehead. “Dawnie, did it happen again?” Dawn opened her eyes and looked into Willow’s worried face.
“She’s coming, Willow,” she whispered, letting her head fall back against the seat. She was exhausted. Drained.
“Who, Dawnie?” Willow asked. She handed Dawn a bottle of water. “They’re getting worse, aren’t they? The headaches?”
Dawn swallowed. “I don’t know who she is, Willow. I don’t understand it. But she’s coming.”
To be continued in chapter 2, “Rebuilding.”Edited by: Tulipp at: 11/1/02 6:03:28 am