by AntigoneUnbound » Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:02 pm
Gods Served and Abandoned
Disclaimers:
If I owned these lovely and amazing creatures, you can bet we’d all be a hell of a lot happier than we are right now.
Spoilers:
Up to season 5. I’ve played slightly with the timing of a certain Big Bad’s appearance, with some implications for Dawn’s entrance.
Rating:
R for now; if it changes, I’ll give heads-up.
Distribution:
Sure, with acknowledgement.
Feedback:
Even more sure! Bring it on!
*****
Part 19
*****
One small part of Tara’s mind took in the sight of the camper and wanted to laugh: Of course he’s here…We’re gathering at the mansion for the big denouement scene.
Another, much larger part wanted to shut down, drive away, do anything to avoid what could only lead to chaos and anger.
Pulling rather abruptly to a halt, Buffy turned to look at Tara. "Do you want to just leave now? I can throw this thing in reverse and we can be back on the main road in less than ten minutes."
"Or you could just run over him," Dawn suggested hopefully.
Tara gave serious thought to Buffy’s suggestion, and let herself reflect briefly on Dawn’s. No…Let’s get this over with. If all the players are on the stage, let’s finish this scene. She looked at Willow, who reached out to brush her hair back from her face.
"I think I should do this, Will. It’s time."
Willow gave her a gentle smile. "It’s your call, Baby. I’m right here with you…We all are."
Tara leaned over for a much-needed kiss, and then nodded to her beloved, who popped open the door. As they all tumbled out of the SUV, Donnie emerged from the house, followed closely by his father. He looked at Tara, and then at Nathan, and finally back at Tara again. Even from several yards away, Tara could see his jaw clenching; and then she saw his fists do likewise. After a moment, he started toward her.
I don’t have to be afraid. I can stand tall, and I have people who love me here beside me. I don’t have to run from him anymore.
As he neared her, she pulled herself to her full height and felt an unexpected but profound calm settle over her. She was powerful. She was strong. She loved, and was loved.
What is there to fear? I know what I need to say to him.
And she would have said it, too, except that he was no longer in front of her. He was, in fact, now flying several yards away, his face contorted with rage and budding fear. Turning, Tara saw Willow, one hand extended and trembling. Her breathing seemed almost ragged.
"Never. Again. You will never touch her again." The words were expelled with a venom that Tara hadn’t imagined her sweet Willow possessed.
She reached out and put her hand on Willow’s raised arm. The flesh pulsed with heat and power, and Willow’s eyes shimmered with fury. Looking into those eyes, Tara felt her throat tighten. "Willow, Sweetie—it’s OK. Thank you, for protecting me. But…" She stumbled, trying to find words. "But with you here, for the first time I feel like I can protect myself."
Willow hesitated, and then nodded reluctantly. She lowered her hand, extending it to clasp Tara’s. "I just—Baby, it’s so hard not to hurt him." Her eyes had become gentler, it seemed, and now brimmed with tears.
"I know…I’d feel the same way if someone wanted to hurt you." She squeezed Willow’s hand, feeling her mate’s energy return to normal.
Behind them, Donnie rose unsteadily to his feet. "Fucking dyke witch!" he swore hoarsely. As if unable to believe he might be subdued a second time, he took a threatening step toward her.
"Oh no, Dickless Wonder—I’m next," Buffy interjected darkly, edging in front of Willow. "I’m not a dyke. I’m not a witch. I’m not even fucking at this particular moment. I’m just a little slip of a girl—who will rip your arms out of their sockets and beat you with them if you so much as think about it."
Donnie stared at her in disbelief. "What is this? Why are you even here?" he demanded, gesturing to the entire group.
Meanwhile, Dawn had managed to sidle up next to Buffy and was now trying to wrest free of her sister’s restraining grip. "C’mon—I wanna piece of that beer-bellied slime-ball!" she hissed menacingly. Tara stared at the slight teenager with a mixture of shock and love.
"I mean it," Dawn was saying. "I may not be a witch and I may not be fucking either, but I can take your scruffy ass." Buffy looked at her sharply, whether because of her language or because of her conspicuous absence of clarification regarding her own sexual orientation, Tara wasn’t sure.
"Dawn, you can’t go after him," Buffy whispered tersely.
"Why not?" came the defiant reply.
"Because," Xander piped up, stepping forward himself, "if we’re gonna go Mike Tyson on this Aryan Nation reject, we’re doing it in order of age, which means you go last."
And Tara, who was peaceful and loving and gentle and gracious, felt her heart grow warm and happy at the sight of so many people lining up to beat her brother into a soggy mass of quivering flesh.
Donnie seemed unable to comprehend the scene before him…all these people so willing—so eager, it would appear—to pound him into the ground. He looked from one ominous face to another, his stupefaction rendering him uncharacteristically mute—for a moment.
"What the hell are you all thinking? Do you have any idea what a freak she is? This is—" He stopped, fumbling in his agitation. "She’s a fucking weirdo lezzie who’s only here in the first place because our mom was whoring around with her brother-in-law."
He knows. He knows everything, she thought, even as she gripped Willow’s hand tightly and whispered, "As you have done, receive." She watched as Donnie sank to his knees, clutching his chest in agony. He looked up at her, his face filled with anguish and confusion.
"Does it hurt, Donnie?" she asked shakily. "Does your heart feel like it’s going to rip out of your chest?" She held his gaze for a moment more, before muttering, "Release." At the word, Donnie slumped forward, ashen and struggling for breath.
Donnie stared at her, tears spilling over his cheeks and splashing onto the cracked gray sidewalk. He shook his head dumbly, and when he finally spoke, his voice was broken and raw.
"She took me with her, Tara. She threw me in a car seat and dragged me to some abandoned house so she could screw Dad’s brother." He rose slowly to his feet, anger spilling back into his eyes. "It’s not fair, damn it! It’s not fair…" His voice choked on his grief and rage.
~~~
Upstairs, forgotten by her uncle and pondering the death of her father, she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel and at first assumed that Tara and her friends had returned. The familiar spluttering cough of the engine as it cut off, however, told her that Donnie was back.
Donnie…None of this would have happened if she hadn’t agreed to help Donnie. Did she wish she could go back and do it differently? Go back to when she thought her father was at least still alive somewhere and that none of his affairs had involved Tara’s mother? When she didn’t know that Tara was her sister?
She heard Donnie’s harsh voice carrying over the yard and into the house, and decided not to go downstairs just yet.
~~~
"No, it’s not fair," Tara replied, her voice breaking. "It was wrong and she was wrong and I’m sorry, Donnie, I’m so sorry that you went through that. And I’m sorry that you were beaten because of his twisted reasoning and I’m sorry that when you were upset they didn’t hold you and try to figure out what you needed. I’m sorry, Donnie, I am, but it wasn’t my fault! I didn’t do any of it! I was the one person who couldn’t hurt you, and you decided to hurt
me. And that was wrong too, Donnie." She was sobbing now, Donnie a dim blur through her tears.
"Fuck her," Donnie’s voice sounded raspily in her ears. "Fuck that lying, cheating slut—"
"Donald, stop it!" Nathan’s voice called out sharply. "Don’t…don’t talk about her that way." He walked toward them slowly, and some distant part of Tara’s mind realized that he was getting older.
Donnie wheeled about, gaping with disbelief. "What the…Daddy, are you defending her? After everything you just told me? After everything she did to you? Did to me?"
"She’s still your mother, Donald. And she was my wife." Exhaustion radiated from Nathan’s eyes.
"A wife who cheated on you, Daddy! How can you stand up for her?" Donnie’s face was pale and drawn as he looked at his father in shock.
"Because I love her. I always did; I always will." The tone of his voice suggested that this answer sufficed entirely.
Donnie stared at him a moment longer, and then laughed weakly, the sound tinged with despair. "And her?" he asked, gesturing to Tara. "Do you love her, too?"
Tara realized with a swift shock that she desperately wanted to know the answer.
It shouldn’t matter. You don’t belong here. He’s not even your father…
Of course it matters. He’s the only father you’ve known; the only father you’ll ever know.
She found herself looking reluctantly at Nathan, dreading his answer. He gazed at her for several moments, his eyes filled with messages Tara couldn’t decipher.
Finally, he replied quietly, "Every time I look at you, Tara, I see your father."
Oh goddess…
"And then I look at you again and I see your mother."
His face was suddenly filled with a grief that left Tara almost breathless. "You’re so much like her, Tara—the way you look, the way you think…the way you tilt your head when you’re lost in thought…You have her smile, and her gentleness."
Tara could barely see him through her tears.
"It breaks my heart to have you here, and it breaks my heart to watch you leave." He fell silent, his head dropping slightly.
Beside her, Tara could hear Willow’s own muted crying. The hand in hers squeezed tightly, as if trying to convey immeasurable love and strength through the rhythmic flexing of her fingers.
"But you have her restlessness, too, at least where home is concerned," Nathan continued after a moment. "I couldn’t keep her, and I knew when you were just a little girl that I wouldn’t be able to keep you either. I knew you’d get away, just like she did."
Tara found her voice, and prayed for steadiness. "But you talk about her as if she were some kind of animal that you wanted to keep penned up. I—I don’t think it works like that."
Nathan looked at her with a kind of puzzled resignation. "But she would have left, Tara. She would have taken all that light and spirit and gone away. I wasn’t enough to keep her here. And I couldn’t lose her," he trailed off helplessly.
"But you did," Tara replied simply. "You lost her heart, and her spirit and her light and everything that you loved about her because you tried so hard to make her believe she was evil." Her voice shook as she thought about her mother dying with that belief. "She deserved better. And Donnie deserved better than being beaten because you wanted to keep him in line, too."
Turning to her half-brother, she added, "I can’t believe I’m sticking up for you, Donnie, but if he hadn’t beaten you, I don’t think you would have beaten me."
"You don’t know that," Nathan said quickly. "He does have demon in him—just like me."
"He was also brutalized by the man who should have protected him," Tara snapped back. "You don’t know if he’s so mean and angry because of the demon or because of what you did."
Halting abruptly with the force of her sudden uncertainty, she stared at Nathan. "Are you even sure you’re a demon?"
Nathan seemed taken aback by the question. "What do you mean, am I sure? I was telling you the truth about my mother and what happened."
"You told me what your mother told you. But did you ever see anything? Did you ever witness your father being evil or destructive or cruel?"
Nathan’s eyes grew cloudy as he struggled to remember. "No—but then, who’s to say he didn’t deceive me in some way, or take away my memory of it?"
"And who’s to say he did?" Tara replied.
Nathan shook his head as if trying to force his thoughts into something cohesive and trustworthy. "But why would my mother lie?" he finally asked.
"Who knows?" Tara shrugged helplessly. "And I’m not saying she did. But look around you—has anything good at all come out of believing it without question? You didn’t trust yourself, you didn’t trust your son…"
"I trusted my wife," Nathan said simply. "And she betrayed that trust."
"Yes, she did," Tara replied, feeling her heart ache with the concession. "And she’s the one person you knew wasn’t a demon. So tell me how it all adds up to make any sense?"
In the silence that followed, Tara could hear Donnie’s ragged breath. Turning, she saw that he was struggling to keep from crying.Biting his lip so hard that she thought he might draw blood, he said quietly, "You shouldn’t have hit me, Daddy. You never had the right to hit me."
Nathan looked at him, his expression a mixture of remorse and obstinance. "I thought I was doing what was best, Donnie. I—I didn’t know."
Donnie continued speaking as if he hadn’t heard his father’s voice. "It wouldn’t have been that hard, Daddy, just to talk to me like I wasn’t some dog." He seemed to be looking at something beyond his father.
~~~
When she heard the rumble of a second vehicle, she knew that Tara was back. Standing, she moved slowly about the room and peered at the various pictures and certificates and awards yet again. She knew them all, could practically recite the various inscriptions from memory.
She looked closely at a framed picture of Tara and her mother at Tara’s eighth-grade graduation. Did Tara look like her father? She had a hard time remembering him clearly. She didn’t think he had blond hair, but she was fairly sure that he had been taller than his brother and that he’d had long, graceful fingers.
As she heard the voices rising and falling below her, she walked slowly back to the bed and sat down. Maybe she would wait up here just a little bit longer.
~~~
As Tara felt the reassuring pressure of Willow’s fingers interlocked with her own, she let herself feel the first wave of exhaustion from the day’s chaos and upheaval. She wanted desperately to be alone with Willow, who she knew would help her begin to make sense of it all, wrapped within the comfort of her arms. Willow, who celebrated her strength and spirit—helped her find it and trust it, even—instead of trying to cage her or break her like a wild horse that she wanted to bend to her will.
Do I really need to say anything else? Is there anything else that I need to hear from them? Looking at the faces of those who had come to protect her, she realized that it was time to be with her family.
Taking a slight step forward, she said, "I have to go. It’s time for me to leave."
Grief flashed across Nathan’s face before he could hide it.
Donnie turned to her as if just remembering that she was there.
Steadying herself with Willow’s presence, she continued, "There are probably other things we need to talk about at some point, but I can’t do it now. And heaven knows you two need to talk," she added, glancing between the two men who stood angry and defeated before her.
"Are—are you sure you have to go?" Nathan’s voice sounded smaller than Tara had ever heard it.
She couldn’t bring herself to comfort him, and she couldn’t bring herself to strike him down. She could only meet his eyes and reply, "Yes. I do...Daddy." The appellation was out of her mouth before she could stop herself, and she wasn’t sure she would have stopped it anyway. Was he her father? Did she even have one? She only knew that this was what she had always called him, and though she wasn’t sure she would call him that in the future, it was what she would call him now.
She saw him start at the word, and watched as his jaw worked furiously. Another man might well have cried, just a little.
Turning to Donnie, she said quietly, "I meant what I said earlier—I am sorry about everything you went through. But I don’t want you to call me or come see me or interfere in my life in any way. I mean that just as much." Looking back at the others, she felt a tiny smile ripple over her face. "And in case you couldn’t tell, they meant what they said, too."
She felt the warmth of Willow’s fingers, of her spirit, sliding along her veins, warming her and giving her the strength to walk away. The others followed quietly behind her. Nathan and Donnie stood mutely, their eyes alternately trailing her and stealing back to the other, as if unsure of the threat they faced from one another.
When she reached the SUV, she remembered something. She turned and looked at Nathan. "The rock--what does that mean?"
He started at the sound of her voice, and then a ghost of a smile twisted across his mouth. "My father gave that to me. It was the week before we left. He said if you held it up to the light, you could see a bear in its markings. I could never see it…But I kept it. I thought maybe one day I'd be able to."
Not trusting herself to speak, Tara just nodded. She held his gaze for what felt like a very long time, before turning and climbing into the car.
~~~
Listening to Tara drive away, she glanced at the clock above the desk. Donnie had arrived just after the group had left the first time. So she knew her uncle hadn’t eaten any supper.
She moved slowly to the door and walked out into the hallway, wondering whether he would prefer chicken or pot roast tonight.
*****
To be continued
Edited by: AntigoneUnbound at: 3/13/03 5:37:55 pm
, which probably wasn't appropriate while reading this 
.
at: 3/12/03 8:24:48 pm
) about not posting feedback for the last couple of parts... I have, as I said, buckets of paper-writing to do (more than 30 pages in total, and 6 in Spanish!), so I don't have much free time till next week. I want to say, though, that even if I don't write a novel about it this time, your work is fabulous as always and that you always bring a smile (in the gloriously realist sort of way) to my face-- I'm glad that the fault is being distributed, and that no one gets away with their hands clean! You provoke much thought, but in a good kind of not-at-all-relating-to-Hobbes kind of way! With many bitchy salutations-- Nora 
I think a proper thrashing could be very therapeutic. At least it would be therapeutic for me. Although he has been a catalyst for what appears to be some long due truth telling, he still needs to get a serious ass whooping. I digress.
