Grimaldi, take care of your head. Get rest.
Xita, thanks. Anya and Xander are tricky right now, and I honestly can't decide what should or will happen between them. The way I've written it, it almost seems like Anya is reaching out more than Xander, but I don't know if that's how it should be.
Eccentrictulip, did you say Willowbabble? Go for it. “Heart-perforating” is a wonderful phrase…powerful itself. Thanks.
Here’s the next chapter. Some angst, tiny little cliffhanger.
Title: Terra Firma Chapter 16: A Charmed Life.
Author: Tulipp. Email:
tulipp30@yahoo.comFeedback: Please. Distribution: Please let me know.
Spoilers: Everything.
Rating: PG-13 in this part.
Pairing: W/T.
Summary. Charms and secrets.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings here were created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, but I am borrowing them to do my own thing. No money involved, only some necessary revisions.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Ruth, who saw the choices before I did. And to TromDeGray: I’m not sure I got it exactly right, but you really helped. And J., who still knows when to say, “How many times do I have to say it? Take that damn line out.”
Terra Firma
Chapter 16: A Charmed Life
Life to life—
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,
And feel as safe as guarded by a charm
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife
Are weak to injure.
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the Portugese”
Tara was dreaming, and the dream was white on white. She was in a white place without landscape. A white moment without time. There was no shape, no form, no dimension. She was simply embossed on the surface of a wrinkle.
She had come to this place—the part of herself that stood apart and observed the dream knew this—on a tide of red. Crimson sheets on a bed. And the feather touch of red hair. A splash of scarlet on a white blouse.
And then just a white blouse.
And then just white.
In this place, she just…was. Like paper, she was blank and unwritten. Like ash in a cold fireplace, she was a collection of remnants without shape or temperature. Like snow after it forms into crystals from rain but before it hits the ground, she was always whole and always separate and always falling and always still.
She was white.
And the white went on and on. It was all colors. It was complete. But something was missing here, something important, something red, like a heart. And some of the time…or in some of the places…there was something else. A pull, but without gravity. A call, but without voice.
There was a kind of desire to respond, to say “I’m coming.” But there were no sentences here. There were no words to form. There were no questions to answer. There was no place to go to and no place to leave from.
There was just the white.
And then….something changed. It was almost white; it was ivory or vanilla. It was a doorway in the middle of the white. She felt…did she feel now? were there feelings here?…that the door was to be gone through, that she should go through it. On the other side of the door there was more white…white in a bowl. White in the air. But there was also…
Red. A pinprick of color on the horizon that was the doorway. A point of focus. Something to move toward. And somewhere else…there was a voice.
“Tara,” it said. “Tara.”
****
“Tara.”
Tara woke with a start into the absence of color. Black. It chilled her, for a moment. She lay still, breathing deeply, and gradually, the room adjusted itself back to the gray of night, curtained against the weak moonlight. She glanced beside her and was disconcerted to find herself alone in a bed that wasn’t hers. It was obvious that only half the bed had been slept in. That only one pillow bore the impression of a sleeping head. Was she alone after all? Had she gone from that neutral white to something else, to another place without Willow?
Where was Willow? And what was that dream? Tara had a sudden uneasy, overwhelming sense of déjà vu. What if she had fallen asleep and missed three more months? What if she had somehow died again? What if she had never gone back to life but was instead passing through one doorway after another? Versions of a life with Willow. Visions of a life without her. No kind of life at all.
But no. Of course not. She remembered, almost as quickly as she had forgotten, that the bed looked half empty because it had been half empty, because she and Willow had slept so close, pressed so tightly against one another that they had needed only half. Only one pillow. They would have crawled inside each other if they could.
“Tara.”
She heard the voice again; she had forgotten it already in the darkness. The door stood half-open, and Tara could see Dawn in the hallway, her long hair falling onto the shoulders of her pajamas.
Tara slid out of bed and padded softly to the doorway. Dawn didn’t move. This, too, seemed familiar. “Sweetie?” she asked. She touched Dawn’s arm gently, and Dawn blinked and turned her head. Her stiff arm softened at Tara’s touch.
“Tara,” she said again, surprised. “What are you doing up?”
Tara tilted her head, confused. “You called me,” she said. “I was sleeping, and you woke me up. Just…just now. Didn’t you?”
Dawn glanced past Tara at the darkened bedroom, then looked back over her shoulder at the door to her own room, which was shut. She frowned. “That’s weird,” she said. “I don’t remember closing that door.”
Tara opened her mouth to speak, but then she heard another sound, a soft and desperate weeping from the bathroom. She would recognize that sound anywhere, and her first thought was immense relief, immense gratitude. Willow was all right. And that meant that she, herself, was really alive.
Her body yearned toward the sound.
Almost reluctantly, she turned back to Dawn, who was still looking at her closed door as if she couldn’t quite place it. “Dawnie,” Tara said, squeezing her shoulder. “Go back to bed.” Dawn nodded and turned and wandered back down the hallway without speaking.
Tara knocked softly on the bathroom door and turned the knob without waiting for an answer. The room was dim; only the night light burned. Willow was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bathtub, her knees pulled up to her chest, her fingers clutching at the sides of her face, handfuls of hair caught up in them.
Tara felt sorrow rise from her stomach to choke at her throat. Maybe Willow had been right. Maybe they didn’t get easy. Maybe Tara would dream of white and wake into confusion every night forever. Maybe Willow would cry every night forever. For what she had lost. For what they had lost.
But that was forever. Right now, Willow needed her, and she would make it better.
She closed the door behind her, and at the soft click, Willow looked up, her face shimmering wet in the weak glow of the night light. “I didn’t want to wake you,” her breath came in gasps between the words. “You were so tired.” She wiped the red sleeve of her bathrobe across her nose and eyes.
“Willow,” Tara murmured, sinking to her knees and sliding her arms around the tensed shoulders, pulling the red head against her chest with a gentle pressure of fingers. “I’m sorry, honey. I should have said something about the necklace. I just…I thought if it was a protection charm, a little extra help, it couldn’t hurt. I should have said….”
“No,” Willow sobbed helplessly. “I don’t care about that. It’s just…I thought it was me. I thought I…I finally did something right, something worthy of you,” her breath came out in a soft, high moan, “and it was that necklace.” Tara tightened her grasp on Willow, felt the shoulder trembling with disappointment and the face wet with self-loathing beneath her fingers, saw the white of her own knuckles gripping Willow.
“My poor baby,” Tara whispered. “I remember…I remember when you could lift us both right off the dance floor. You were so strong, so sure.” Tara could feel Willow recoiling at her words, pulling herself away. She tried to touch the red, but Willow’s hair slipped through her fingers. Just out of reach.
“That wasn’t me,” Willow choked out. “That was the magick; it was always the magick. I’m weak.” She lifted her face, and Tara’s heart constricted at the pain she saw in her lover’s eyes. It was naked. “I’ll never be more than that, Tara,” Willow cried. “I can’t ever be more than that, not again.”
“Willow, how can you say that?” Tara felt Willow’s disgust with herself as a fist in her own stomach. “Look what we’ve,” Tara used the word instinctively, but it rang false in her ears, “look what you’ve been through. You had to do it all alone. No one’s had to be stronger than you.” She reached for Willow’s hand, but it pulled out of her grasp, and Tara bit her lip.
“That wasn’t strength,” Willow said thickly. “That was just waiting. And I….” She stopped abruptly, folding herself against the tub, shrinking from Tara.
“Willow, what is it?” Tara’s voice came out a whisper. There was something else; she could feel it, and she didn’t like it. She wanted to be able to take away Willow’s shame, to comfort her, but…there was something else. “Willow, please talk to me. Please,” she heard the desperation in her own voice.
Willow looked up at her through her tears, through a strand of red hair that fell across her face. “Tara,” she wept. “Tara, don’t you see?” She pushed at her hair impatiently, pressing her lips together against the tears. “When I’m strong, you get hurt. When I’m strong, you die.….”
Tara didn’t hear the end of the sentence. She sat back on her heels, lightheaded and breathless. She squeezed her eyes shut, and for a moment, she saw white. Paper. Snow. Ash. She gripped Willow’s hand to remind herself where she was, and she opened her eyes. The bathroom. She breathed.
“Is that what you think?” she asked finally, and her voice sounded distant, tiny. “You think I died because you did something wrong?” She concentrated on feeling the backs of her heels pressing into her thighs. Heels had a shape, so if she could feel them, then she was really here. And Willow’s hair had color, so if she could see it, then she was really here. She reached out a trembling hand and touched Willow’s hair.
“Am I just an accessory?” she asked quietly, but she felt panic rising in her throat. “Am I just a prop in your life? My death was just to punish you, and my life is some…some way to keep you weak? To keep you safe?”
For a moment, Tara felt terrified and empty. Was that true? Was that what she was to Willow? Was that what she was in death and in life? Was that what she was for? To be a charm?
And then Willow’s fingers closed around her hand, and she looked through the white haze of her confusion and her shock to see fear in her lover’s eyes. And worry. She saw Willow’s other hand reach toward her, and when the fingers touched her cheek, she realized that her face was wet, that she was crying.
“Is that all I am, Willow?” she asked through her tears. “Am I inside your head? Am I alive? Am I even here now? Am I just extra?”
“Baby, no, no” Willow said fiercely, and Tara felt herself gathered up by the strong arms she remembered. She let her head fall against Willow’s neck, let herself be cradled, let Willow whisper soft words into her hair and onto her cheeks. She let Willow’s fingers press reassurance and safety into her back.
And in a moment, the terrified feeling passed, and Tara was just herself again, crying against Willow’s neck. The panic, the emptiness that had felt so real only a moment before seemed ridiculous to her compared to Willow’s solid arms, Willow’s soothing fingers.
Of course she didn’t exist to make Willow behave one way or another. Of course she was herself, a separate person. She half-laughed through her tears. It was just…sometimes she felt so close to Willow it scared her. And these last few days…it was like they were connected. Braided.
“Hey, who’s comforting whom?” she half-laughed through her slowing tears.
“I can be comforty, too” Willow murmured, her voice hoarse. She sighed, and Tara leaned into her. The tile was cold under her hip, but Willow’s bathrobe was warm. “I think you just reminded me.”
For a moment, they sat in silence, exhausted. Tara closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against Willow’s skin. This was real. They were real. After awhile, Willow spoke, and her voice was calmer than it had been.
“Tara, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been so selfish,” Tara heard the words catch in Willow’s throat. She felt Willow’s hand in her hair.
“I feel so strange,” Tara whispered finally. “I don’t know where I was. I don’t know how I came back. I don’t…I don’t really know who I am anymore. I only know that I need to be with you.” Saying it out loud helped.
Willow’s fingers sifted through her hair, and Tara was again relieved that she could feel the pull of the fingers. She could feel the weight of Willow’s hand on her back. She could see the bone of Willow’s wrist in the dim light. She could feel the cold tile against the bare skin of her thigh. She could hear the drip in the faucet.
“I know who you are,” Willow murmured. Tara tilted her head back so she could look up at her lover, so that she could see the tear-streaked face and the eyes shimmering in the dark. “You’re everything. You’re part of us, and us is everything.”
The words sank into Tara’s skin like memory. Like truth. But not the whole truth.
“The magick is us, too, Willow,” she said softly. “That’s who we are. You can’t fight that to protect us.”
Willow met her gaze at that, and as Tara felt the green of her eyes chase away the last haunting tendrils of white, she realized they had both stopped crying. She tucked her head back into the crook of Willow’s neck and felt the familiar face press into her hair. They held onto each other until the tile became too cold, the enamel of the bathtub too hard, the sheer effort of sitting up too exhausting.
And then they went back to bed, wrapping their arms tightly around one another, their heads curled together on one pillow. The room was black, and the sheets were white, and Tara knew somewhere in the back of her mind, as they drifted into sleep, that it was the sleep of lovers who have shared their deepest secrets.
It was the sleep of the charmed.
****
“Charming,” Buffy sighed into the phone. “Well, Xander, you’re just going to have to watch the shop until one of us can get there. It shouldn’t be long; I think we’re nearly finished here.”
Willow sipped at her coffee as Buffy finished her phone call. It tasted odd, smoky. She’d forgotten how things tasted over the last few months: sweet or bitter or sour or salty. But it was a cool morning, and the coffee warmed her. Or maybe it was Tara’s watchful gaze that did that. Or her hand on Willow’s knee.
“So?” Dawn said as Buffy hung up the phone and leaned against the kitchen wall, her hands on her hips. She nodded at the pendulum; it glinted silver on the table. “It’s what, some kind of magickal mood ring?”
Giles sighed and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “That’s one way to put it, I suppose,” he said. He had explained that the pendulum was a relatively simple charm, one which changed color in response to the emotions of its wearer. Its color changed if the wearer felt anger, or pain, or sorrow, anything that might—Giles had said it proudly—trigger the use of magicks.
“You see,” he had said excitedly, gesturing at the pendulum that Willow had held out to him, her eyes asking the question. “It doesn’t influence your behavior in any way; it doesn’t change your choices whatsoever. It merely reflects your emotional state.”
“You mean,” Willow had said slowly, trying to understand. “You mean it didn’t stop me from casting?” The relief had been immense. Consuming. She had done one thing after all. That one thing.
“No,” Giles had said, glancing at her with surprise. “No, you did that. But, you see, this could help you if you’re tempted to cast again. It can help you, or others, to know how you’re feeling. So that you can control situations.”
“But Giles,” Buffy said now, and Willow thought she sounded tired. “Why didn’t you just tell Willow it was a charm? Why the big secret?”
“I….I don’t know, really,” he said, glancing at her. “I suppose I thought that it would be a useful training tool. I didn’t think you would run into a tempting situation quite so soon….I….”
“You didn’t think she’d be able to see it,” Tara interrupted flatly. “If she wears it around her neck, then she wouldn’t know. The rest of us could see it. You could see it. But not Willow.” Tara’s hand had stiffened against Willow’s knee.
Willow closed her eyes against the disappointment. It was always the same. Giles might love her, but in the end, he didn’t trust her. He had never trusted her. It had been that way since the beginning. He talked about balance, and pendulums, and walking the line, but in the end…he didn’t trust her.
But when she opened her eyes again, Giles was looking at her, and his eyes were soft and regretful, and Willow instantly felt sorry. It only made sense that he would want to protect her from herself. He was only trying to protect them all. That was all he had ever tried to do.
Tara was watching her, too. Everyone was watching her. Like everyone would always be watching her if she wore the pendant. Like she would always be watching herself. Always aware of every emotion, always second-guessing, always wondering what would be the next trigger. Just thinking about it, Willow shrank back in her chair. Away from the collective gaze, the endless scrutiny of her friends. And of herself.
But as she sank back, Tara snapped forward.
“Willow’s not going to wear that pendulum anymore,” she said quietly.
“Tara, I…I really don’t think you’ve thought this through properly,” Giles said. “It’s a simple precaution, a way for us to monitor….”
“Giles,” Tara said again, calmly, and Willow blinked. She had never heard Tara call him just Giles before, never. Tara spoke slowly, firmly, and she looked straight at him. “Willow is not going to wear that pendulum any more.”
Giles pulled his glass off and turned to Buffy. “Surely,” he said, and Willow wondered when she’d ever heard that tone in his voice before. Beseeching. Almost pleading. “Surely we should make it easier for Willow if we can. I of all people know how hard this can be.”
The room crackled with tension, and Willow shifted uncomfortably. She felt Buffy’s eyes on her and looked up to meet her friend’s gaze. Buffy studied her for a moment, tilting her head and really looking at her. Perhaps Buffy would decide, would take the weight of this decision from her.
But Buffy, finally, shook her head slightly, so slightly. “Giles, I think that Willow gets to choose,” she said gently. “I know this is hard; I know that, but…but you don’t get to choose for her.” She crossed the room to look up at him.
“Giles, we’ve talked about this,” Buffy said quietly. “Being my Watcher…being our Watcher…it doesn’t mean you get to decide for us. You said it yourself; you said I had to grow up. Well, Willow has to grow up, too, and you have to let her. You have to let this be her choice.”
After what seemed like a long time, Giles nodded, and he touched Buffy’s shoulder. “I forget sometimes,” he said, and Willow thought how like a father he looked at that moment. When he looked at her again—his eyes wary but knowing, uncertain but hopeful—she realized with a start that there was no one left but herself. She was going to have to decide. She was going to have to choose.
Swallowing against her instinctive panic, she looked to Tara, who was watching her with a firm face and soft, soft eyes.
“I trust you,” Tara said.
“But,” Willow started to say. She opened her mouth to speak.
“I trust you,” Tara said again, and Willow remembered with a start. She remembered everything. She remembered when Tara was new, and love was new, and magick was new, when she felt new. Before confusion and death and killing. When trusting people…when trusting herself…was easier.
The others were watching her. They were waiting for her to say something, to make a decision. Willow glanced at the pendulum, and she glanced around the room at their faces and she looked at Tara.
“I…” she began, “I want to try. I want to try it without any charms. I want to try.” And as she said it, she realized it was true.
“But Willow,” Dawn burst out, excited. She’d been so quiet, tucked into the corner by the refrigerator, that Willow had almost forgotten she was there. “Of course you do.” Willow looked at her, confused.
“It’s in your nature,” Dawn continued. “You’re already doing it.”
And Willow froze. For a moment, her vision blurred, and she gripped the countertop so hard that her knuckles turned white.
“What?” she said. She blinked rapidly. “What did you say?”
Dawn shrugged. “You’re already doing it?” she said slowly.
“No, before that,” Willow said. She’d heard those words before. Those very words. Exactly like that.
“Um, I don’t know,” Dawn said, glancing at Tara quizzically. She bit her lip and shifted her weight to her other hip, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You said ‘it’s in your nature.’” Willow said slowly. “Where did you hear that?”
Willow remembered getting out of bed at the coven…only she wasn’t sure she’d actually gotten out of bed. She remembered the hum of the voice, the white shimmer of a woman’s face. She remembered that the woman had woken her up.
“You have your friends,” the hum grew a little, purred, deep and rhythmic. It surrounded Willow. It licked at her. “They need you, Willow. The girl needs you. You must rebuild.” Willow tried to shake her head. She still sat, calmly.
I won’t, she thought. I am done.
The voice grew louder. The wind blew Willow’s hair back, away from her face. It glinted red. The tops of the heather quivered. “You can’t help it,” the voice purred. “You can’t stop it. It’s in your nature.”
No, Willow thought. She’d meant it to be desperate, but it seeped out of her as calmly as before. No.
“Look at your hands.” The hum was back, lessening, low musical notes fading away at the end of a song. “You’re already doing it.”
Willow blinked.
Willow blinked.
The memory played in her mind like a video in black and white. The moment when she had forced herself to live. The moment afterward when she had gotten out of bed—eaten—for the first time in days. Before that moment, she had wanted only to die. And after that moment…well, she had still wanted to die, but she had known that she would live.
Willow stared at Dawn, her mouth slightly open, her throat dry. Tara put a hand around her shoulder.
“Willow, what is it?” she asked softly.
Willow shook her head slowly. “Dawnie, how…how did you know about that?” she asked. Her voice shook. She remembered the woman in her…had it been a vision? a dream?…whose face she had never seen. She remembered peeling herself out of bed afterward and finding Dawn standing right outside the door to her room. She remembered the headaches that had started immediately afterward.
Dawn looked back at her, and a current of understanding passed between them. “I know because…” Dawn’s face twisted, and she touched her head with one hand. “I know because…I was there.”
Willow saw it happen. And she knew, with a shock, what it meant. With a stab of headache, with a wrinkle on the smooth landscape of her forehead, Dawn remembered.
To be continued in chapter 17, “Synchronicity.”
Edited by: Tulipp at: 9/7/02 1:46:28 pm
by snippygal » Mon Sep 02, 2002 12:23 am 
at: 9/3/02 6:23:31 am
Your character insights are superb - You write one of the most sympathetic and appealing characterizations of Buffy I have ever read, making her that emotional touchstone you always hoped she'd be on the show. You put the collective writing staff at ME to shame. 
it came from Giles - kidding. c'mon Tulipp 
at: 9/7/02 1:00:23 pm