The Dark Rose

By darkmagickwillow

Copyright © May 2003

Chapter 15 (Old Friends)

As the door to Tara's room closed behind her, Willow's chest tightened, constricting her breathing. While she was in there with Tara, she could believe that everything would work out after what had happened today in the cemetery, but as she walked away, she felt that belief slipping away from her. How could Tara want to be with her?

With each step down the corridor away from Tara's room, she felt colder. Tara was her sun and she was a lonely comet that had shone gloriously in her reflected light but which was now receding ever further away from the source of its splendor.

Willow walked out of the dorm into the quiet twilight of the UC Sunnydale campus. It was mostly empty, with a few students hurrying back to their dorms before the sunlight was completely gone. The desolate campus mirrored her mood.

Why couldn't she trust that Tara would love her no matter what? She was so uncertain. She tried to reassure herself that Tara had seen the depths of her darkness today and not rejected her, but Tara had left her for less once before. And Tara had been taken from her. Twice. How would she react once she had time to think about what she'd learned today?

Another problem came to mind. Did Tara understand what she had asked Willow to give up today? Willow was confident that she could handle herself in any situation, but Tara didn't have her protections and now could never have them. The spells that protected Willow from time and wounds were blood sacrifices. Admittedly, the sacrifice was a demon, not a person, but even the most liberal interpretation of her promise prohibited her from using those spells.

Willow didn't mind the thought of growing old with Tara; in fact, she loved the idea. However, she wanted Tara to live long enough to grow old with her and that wasn't a given on the Hellmouth. On the other hand, drawing the runes of protection in demon ichor on Tara's body wasn't an idea she relished. She shuddered as she recalled the pain of the demon's blood burning into her own flesh and the soul-deep coldness that had remained after the pain ebbed away.

She wished that they didn't have so much history between them, that they lived someplace safe where they didn't have to worry about vampires and demons. But it wasn't that simple to make wishes come true, and even when they did, you didn't always get what you expected.

Once the spell of summoning was complete, the demon of the wish appeared in a cloud of smoke confined within the boundaries of the circle she had prepared for it. In her head, Willow once again went over the wish she had prepared as she calmly waited for the smoke to dissipate.

"Anya!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide with surprise as the smoke cleared, revealing the demon she had conjured.

"Anyanka," the demon corrected her in its rough voice. Its hideously scarred visage made it clear that this wasn't the young woman she had known in Sunnydale. Once more, she wore the silver and black stone talisman of the wish.

"I didn't summon you-" Willow began.

"You called a vengeance demon," Anyanka said in an even tone. "I'm a vengeance demon. I chose to answer the call."

"How?"

"d'Hoffryn offered me my job back after Xander dumped me," Anyanka answered brusquely. The impatient look the demon gave Willow would have scared someone less determined. "Now your wish? I have other customers, you know."

Willow paused a moment, then rejected her original plan to extract a wish. A wish granted willingly would work better than one tricked or coerced out of the demon. She and Anya had never liked each other, but Tara had been Anya's friend. Even as a demon again, Willow didn't think Anya would willingly harm Tara.

"You know what I want," Willow said, looking into Anya's eyes, searching for the person who had been Tara's friend.

"I know," Anyanka nodded. Though her voice was steady, her eyes betrayed the sadness and loss normally hidden behind the inhuman visage.

"Can you do it?" Willow asked, reassured by what she saw in Anya's eyes. Little was written about what vengeance demons could accomplish, but she only needed the smallest of changes to the past to save Tara. Surely a wish could accomplish what she wanted.

"I can change the past enough to save Tara," Anyanka answered in her rough voice. "There will be a price though. Reality is a complex web of threads, and even the smallest change to one affects all the others."

"Don't you control that?" Willow asked, her brow furrowed as she regarded Anya suspiciously.

"To some extent," Anyanka said. "But it's not that simple. My talisman is a conduit to the lower beings who have the power to reweave the fabric of reality. The final choice is theirs. I've seen what can happen when you try to help someone without hurting anyone." Her face twisted and she turned away from Willow.

Surprised by Anya's reaction, Willow reached out to touch her, breaking the protection of the magic circle. "Your heart's not in the vengeance anymore, is it?" Willow asked softly in a surprised tone of voice, finding more sympathy for Anya than she ever had before. They shared something now in their loss and solitude.

"What do you care?" Anyanka snapped as she turned back to Willow.

Willow jerked her hand away from Anya's arm, stung by her words.

"You don't care about anyone but yourself," Anyanka said harshly. "You left all your friends behind without a word. Xander's been worried sick about-"

"Like you care about Xander," Willow interrupted hotly.

"I do," Anyanka said, her voice softening. Her eyes were full of pain. "I just can't be with him. I can't take that risk again."

"Even if you're not willing to risk again, I am," Willow said. "Help me get Tara back." Her tone softened with those words as her eyes pleaded with Anya to help her.

"There will be a price," Anyanka warned again, but her tone was businesslike. "What's your wish?"

"I wish Tara hadn't been in the path of any of Warren's bullets the day Warren shot Buffy," Willow said, stating the wish she had carefully prepared. It was simple and direct, affecting only the proximate cause of Tara's death so there was little the demon could do to twist her words.

"Done," Anyanka said, her tone final.

Everything faded out of focus.

The world changed.

As the room came back into focus, Willow found herself exactly as she was before the wish. She looked down and saw that was dressed the same, standing by the same circle of protection where she had made her wish.

Where was Tara?

Shouldn't they be back in Sunnydale together? Why was she still here?

As Willow looked around the room again, she suddenly realized what she had seen, but not taken in at first. The demonic form of Anyanka had been replaced by Anya, the pretty young woman she had known from Sunnydale. There was no sign of the demon's talisman that carried the power of the wish.

"What happened?" Willow asked in a strangled voice. "Where is she?"

"Tara broke my talisman to reverse the wish," Anya answered, sounding shocked and saddened, but there was a hint of relief underlying that as if she didn't mind losing her demonhood.

"Why?" Willow asked, her face a mask of anguished shock. She reached for the wall to support herself.

"You were the one standing in front of the window that day. Warren shot you instead of Tara," Anya explained, her voice distant as she tried to recall a world that no longer existed, one that only she remembered. "Both you and Buffy died, but not before you mentioned something about wishing to Tara. Tara figured it out quickly and came to me. I tried to explain to her why you had made the wish, but she didn't care. She said that she would die for you."

"And she did," Willow said. She bent over, sick with grief, covering her face with her hands, pressing hard to force her incipient tears back.

Wishes were tricky and subtle. She hadn't tried another after that. It had been too much to have Tara back then lose her again, even in an alternate reality that she couldn't remember and hadn't survived in.

She had helped Anya find her way back to Sunnydale. The wish had been her fault, not Anya's. She wondered if Anya had gotten back together with Xander. Were they still together? Did they have a normal life with a house and children now?

She found herself missing her old friends more and more often now that she had Tara back in her life. It would be good to have friends to talk to about what had happened today. That wasn't possible, but there was one person she could talk to who had once been a friend, the person who had caused all of this.

She definitely had things to say to him.

Standing in front of Giles's apartment door in the fading twilight, Willow raised a hand as if to cast a spell. She paused a moment to reconsider with her hand still in the air, shook her head, and knocked on it sharply three times instead.

After a few moments, Giles answered the door and looked at her without surprise. Then he stood back and beckoned her inside, "Come in, Willow."

Disarmed by his welcome, Willow entered the apartment's living room without saying a word. It was much like his old one, comfortable yet neatly organized with the exception of a few books on the coffee table. Bookcases full of familiar tomes lined the walls as always but there was a collection of music disks on one shelf which implied that Giles might be entering the 20th century a little too late.

He closed the door behind her. "Would you like some tea?" he asked. "The water's already hot." His eyes flicked away from her quickly, never quite meeting hers.

Turning back to face him, she examined his expression closely before nodding her assent. He looked old, his hair completely silver and his face lined from all the nights he'd spent worrying about the fate of the world. She wondered what he thought about the contrast with her own youthful appearance. As she thought about this, Giles hurried from the room to fetch the tea from the kitchen.

As she gazed around the room, she thought that this conversation wasn't starting at all as she expected. It felt like a dream where she was back in college visiting Giles for advice as she always did when something was wrong. Any minute now, Buffy and Xander would come through that door, talking and joking. Giles would come from the kitchen with tea and snacks, chiding them about their lack of seriousness, and soon they would all be buried in musty old tomes, figuring out how to defeat the latest evil to trouble Sunnydale.

Then Giles did return, breaking her fantasy. Buffy would never come through those doors again. She was dead. Xander was gone. Giles was no longer her friend and mentor. They would never get back together. He was a stranger to her now, someone who had betrayed her and hurt Tara.

He gestured for her to sit down on the couch as he carried a white ceramic pot of tea and two steaming cups on a tray into the room. Once she sat down, he placed one cup of tea on a saucer in front of her. Giles put the tray with the pot of tea on the other end of the coffee table, taking his own tea and sitting down in a chair facing her. Willow picked up her cup and took a sip of tea to gain some time.

They watched each other silently for several moments, both of them slowly sipping their tea. "It's been a long time," Giles finally said.

"I never wanted to come back here, Giles," Willow replied. She wasn't sure whether she was attempting to apologize for returning to Sunnydale or trying to explain why she hadn't returned earlier. Her jaw tightened as she decided she didn't care; he didn't deserve her apologies or explanations.

Her hand trembled, almost spilling her tea. She looked furiously at the betraying hand until it became steady again. She couldn't show any weakness in front of Giles.

"No, I don't imagine you did," Giles said thoughtfully without seeming to notice the tremor. "But when you learned about Tara, what else could you do?"

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Giles. "How long have you known?" she asked.

"I only discovered the truth about Tara in the last week," he confessed. "I felt rather embarrassed when I finally figured it out. It was so obvious and she had been right there in front of my eyes for months." He shrugged. "But who expects this kind of thing to happen?"

His nonchalant attitude infuriated her. She'd had enough of pretending that this was a friendly social call. She slammed down her cup, spilling tea onto the coffee table and cracking the saucer underneath the cup. "Why?" she asked angrily. "Why did you do it? Do you hate me so much that you would hurt her to get to me?"

Giles stiffened at her accusation. He stared at her coldly for a moment before answering in a deliberately calm voice. "I don't hate you, Willow, but Tara needed to know the truth about her past and yours. She-"

Willow pulled off her sunglasses, revealing dark eyes that flashed angrily at Giles as she interrupted him, "You mean you told her your version of the truth. You left out so much, including the fact that I saved your life at the Watcher's Council."

He jumped up from his chair, his face flushed with anger. "How dare you try to claim credit for saving one life on a night where you killed scores of people?" he shouted. "You destroyed the culmination of centuries of work fighting the darkness and you sit there claiming that you did something good."

Willow stood up slowly, dark energies crackling between her fingers. "They were corrupt and dark as what they claimed to fight," she said coldly. "Anyway, it was them or me. I chose me."

A short barking laugh came from Giles. "And when it comes to a choice between you and Tara," he said. "Who will you choose then?"

The darkness in Willow's eyes grew as she stared at him, swallowing up the traces of white at the edges of her eyes. "I love her more than the world," she said in a still colder voice. Deliberately she advanced on Giles, one slow step at a time, the dark energies arcing up her forearms. "She's my everything," she said. "I'd die before hurting her."

Giles backed away from her until the backs of his legs hit the chair behind him. Then his eyes softened as he looked at her. "I know you love her Willow," he said sadly. "But are you the right person for her? You're not the young woman I knew so long ago. Even though you don't want to hurt her, what will become of her if you bring her into your darkness?" He held his breath as he watched for Willow's reaction.

Looking down and opening her hands, Willow grounded the energies with an explosive crackling sound. When she looked back at Giles, the darkness in her eyes had receded to its normal extent. "She's my only hope, Giles," she said in a lost voice. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost her again."

He extended a hand to console her, but she ducked away from his touch. Her gaze cold once again, she said in a toneless voice, "I can't leave her." She looked down for a long moment before adding in a more normal voice, "Magic couldn't bring her back, but fate has. This was meant to be, Giles. It will work out." Under her breath so that only she could hear, she added softly, "It has to." With those words, she picked up her sunglasses and left his apartment.

Giles stood silently as he watched her leave, his uncertainty about how he had handled this situation obvious in his eyes. After he watched her walk out of sight, he closed the door and went to the telephone.

He had some calls to make.

Amy pushed her chair back and rubbed her eyes. They were dry and achy after hours of laborious translation. The rite was almost complete though. There were only a few more fragments to translate and piece together.

The spell would shake the foundations of Sunnydale as no previous apocalypse ever had. It would be more than enough to impress the Master. And it would push him another step closer to his doom. She was beginning to understand the dangers of the Heart. It would inevitably consume the Master, but by that time she should know how to shield herself from its corrupting influence.

She had always expected magic to change her life for the better, but it never had. It had always made her life worse, starting with her mother taking over her body. Once she freed herself from her mother's possession, she started using magic at school, but that had led to being blackmailed by Xander, then burned at the stake. She had escaped that fate by transforming herself into a rat. It had seemed like the only way out at the time.

The thought led her mind to Willow, the source of all her problems. Amy had always wanted Willow to be her friend, but Willow kept her as a rat in a cage while she missed high school then university, ignoring her in favor of her real friends.

It had take her some time to regain her memories from her time as a rodent, but Amy had seen everything from her little cage. They might not have paid much attention to her, but she had watched them. She had kept score.

Willow had risked her life time and time again for friends who ignored her in favor of their own issues. Finally, Willow focused on herself and woke up to the magic and what she could do with it, but instead of turning to Amy, Willow found a new friend to do spells with. Tara.

Tara had pretended to be sympathetic when Willow told her Amy's story, but Amy had seen the look in her eyes. She knew Tara was envious of her greater abilities, of the connection she and Willow could have shared. Tara was careful to always seem nice, but she had revealed her true colors when she got that cat to torment Amy. Even today she couldn't abide the creatures.

Finally, when Tara and the rest of Willow's friends deserted her, afraid of being overshadowed by her growing power, Willow had deigned to think about Amy the rat. Once she had bothered to think about it, it had only taken Willow a few minutes to break the spell. She could've done that at any time.

Amy had been willing to overlook that to be Willow's friend again. They had so much potential together. She had shown Willow the possibilities inherent in her magic, even introduced her to her teacher Rack. Everything had been going great, then Willow rejected her again for her little girlfriend Tara.

Amy had seen Willow taking care of Tara after she had lost her mind, feeding her and cleaning her, then spending all night searching for a spell to bring her back. Then Tara had abandoned Willow over one little spell. How could Willow have gone back to someone who rejected such devotion?

What kind of a witch was Tara anyway, making Willow promise not to do any more spells? Tara hadn't understood Willow like she had. She had seen the glow of accomplishment when Willow mastered a new spell. They could have shared that together, glorying in the magic instead of fearing it like Tara.

She had been glad when that little bitch had gotten shot, thinking that would make Willow return to her senses and realize that the magic was her destiny. She had been right about Willow returning to the magic, but as always, Willow made things worse for her, killing Rack on her rampage after Tara's death. Then she left town, leaving Amy alone, without anyone to teach her or share the magic.

She shook her head, trying to clear her head of thoughts of Willow. Willow was gone now, probably dead. She didn't matter any more. Her problems were of the past.

Her powers had grown slowly after Rack died. Learning from books was so slow. She didn't have the patience to teach herself the ancient languages and learn the spells on her own. She had learned how to steal the magic from others though, but borrowed power didn't last. It was an easier, faster path, but she had to keep finding new donors and stolen magic didn't flow naturally. It grated like something forced in where it didn't belong. She only had to look in the mirror to see the price she paid.

Her life was about to change though. She had discovered the secret of the Heart. It wasn't a tool of destruction, but one of creation, of restoration. With it, she would get back the life that Willow Rosenberg had stolen from her. She would be young again and powerful like her mother, like Willow. It would be her second chance.

This time she would do everything right.

Tara jiggled the key in the lock impatiently before attempting to turn it again. This time she was rewarded by the clicking sound of the door unlocking. She groped in the darkness for the doorknob. Finding it, she quietly pushed the door open and slipped into the dark confines of Giles's office. She closed the door behind her.

Walking slowly towards where she remembered his desk to be, she banged her shin into something in the darkness. It crashed to the ground with a jarringly loud sound. She froze, afraid to even breathe. After long moments of undisturbed waiting, she finally let her breath out in a long sigh. Either the school wasn't well guarded at night or the crash hadn't been as loud as she thought it had been.

Turning on her flashlight, Tara discovered that she had simply knocked over Giles's chair. She pointed the light at his desk and began examining the papers and books scattered on it, looking for the one that had caught her eye this afternoon before his story had distracted her. Finding it, she opened the leather-bound tome and began flipping through the pages until she found the section on memory.

Reading quickly under the pale light of her flashlight, Tara soon found what she needed--a spell to see memories of a past life. After checking the list of ingredients, she was disappointed when she realized that she couldn't cast the spell tonight. There were several items that she'd have to purchase at the magic shop tomorrow. Closing the book, she tried to push down her disappointment.

She had to find something in her shared past with Willow that wasn't all blood and dark magic. Her throat tightened as she pressed her lips together. She just had to. The image of Willow dressed all in black, her face hidden, reaching up with clawed hands to bring down the towers of the Watcher's Council, each one full of screaming people, haunted her. She knew that the Watchers weren't all good people like Mr. Giles, but she saw that terrible image each time she closed her eyes.

She didn't know how to reconcile that haunting image with her deep attraction for Willow. Which was the real Willow? The smiling young woman she'd flirted with over coffee or the terrible dark witch who killed without a second thought?

She shook her head. That wasn't fair. Willow regretted what she had done at the Watcher's Council, but felt that she hadn't had any other choice. That was scary too. Willow's first instinct was to destroy utterly anything that threatened her. Even on the Hellmouth that wasn't always the best course of action.

Almost as disturbing as what Willow had talked about was what she hadn't mentioned. She talked freely about vampires, demons, and worse, but she hadn't told her about the times when it was just two of them together like in her dreams. Why hadn't she talked about those? Perhaps it was some misguided overcompensation for not telling her about the dark times before. But what if it was because she didn't remember or if there weren't that many? Maybe she'd already dreamed all the good parts.

She sniffled as a single tear fell on the open page of the book. There had to be more to their relationship than what she learned about today and she was going to find it. She closed the book before more tears could fall and stowed it safely in her backpack. She wiped away the remaining tears with the back of her hand.

Before slipping out of the office, she righted Giles's chair so he wouldn't know she had been here tonight. As she walked away, her footsteps echoed disturbingly behind her in the quiet dark corridors of the school. She kept looking over her shoulder for someone pursuing her. Each time she did, she told herself it was just the guilt she was feeling over the book. She promised herself that she would return it as soon as she cast the spell.

Finally she reached the exit. Pushing the door open she emerged into the coolness of the night. The starry sky was wonderfully open after the claustrophobic darkness of the school. She looked up at the familiar patterns of the stars in the night sky and was reassured by their seeming permanence. The darker the night, the brighter the stars seemed to shine.

With that hope in mind, she began her walk home by the pale light of the waxing moon.

Continued...