The Dark Rose

By darkmagickwillow

Copyright © May 2003

Chapter 20 (Three Small Words)

Tara steadily sorted the heaps of clothes on the floor of Willow's bedroom into colors and whites, normals and delicates. When she had awakened this morning, she had decided to create some order in here. Willow had readily agreed to her plan, sounding as happy as she was to be doing something as mundane as cleaning house with her. They'd been working up here until a few minutes ago when Willow had gone downstairs to put a new load of clothes in the washer and find some lunch for the two of them.

Knowing Willow, lunch was either going to be sandwiches or delivery food. She wasn't into cooking, claiming that she'd sustained herself on magic alone for months at a time, and Tara hadn't gotten around to exploring the kitchen of the mansion yet. Knowing that vampires lived here for years before Willow, she thought it might require a considerable amount of work to make it serviceable.

As she pulled a pair of jeans from her current pile, the adjacent heap of clothes collapsed. A small black leather bound book fell out, opening to a page near the beginning. She glanced down at the open page and saw a poem in Willow's handwriting. It was short, and she couldn't stop herself from reading it even as she realized that this book was Willow's diary.

Glorious was the sun that shone Now darkness falls, light is gone The grieving moon weeps for the light But forever is the dark of this night Sleep's solace forbidden me A nightmare of eternity

Her throat was tight and she felt like she was about to cry as she finished the poem. How had Willow found the strength to make it through all those years alone? That kind of dedication, to live without home, friends, or even eating was difficult to imagine. It wasn't something that Tara thought that she could do herself. And she didn't know if anyone, much less herself, could be worthy of such devotion.

Most of the time, Tara forgot the years that divided them, but then something like this would happen to remind her, tearing her out of her happy world with Willow in the present. One moment she was folding clothes; the next she was reading about Willow's grief over her death, a grief that had gone on for Tara's whole life, almost the nightmare of eternity the poem spoke of.

The darkness surrounding Willow wasn't simply that of the magic. Willow was shrouded by years of grief and loneliness that Tara could feel every time they touched. Those feelings lightened with her presence, but never went away entirely, and as she read Willow's journal she could feel the shadows of those feelings seeping into her.

She wondered what Willow thought of the years between them. What would it take for their weight to be lifted from her? Why wasn't finding Tara again enough? Was there anything in this journal that would stop those shadows from haunting the two of them?

Did Willow think of her as one and the same as the Tara of old or were there two different Tara's in her mind? She had difficulty seeing the difference herself sometimes, but more than anything she wanted Willow to love her for herself, not for the memories or obligations of the past.

Tara looked down at the poem again. This little book held so many of the answers she was seeking, maybe even the one to her most important question. Did Willow love her for yourself? Should she invade Willow's privacy and read it? The obvious answer was no, but this diary could be the key to pulling Willow out of the darkness, to bringing them together without barriers. How could she not read it?

Tara felt that they could only put the past behind them and move forward if she actually knew what had happened. Her visions had shown her some of it, but she felt that she was still missing too much. Willow wasn't very helpful, talking about the places she'd visited and the things she'd learned, but only rarely discussing the people she'd met. She was even reluctant to discuss the other Tara with her. Why? What did that mean about how Willow saw her? Somewhere in Willow's recollections of the past, Tara felt that she could find what she needed to reconcile her two identities. Now that information was sitting in front of her in a little book.

She flipped forward through the journal, her hands seemingly moving of their own volition as if she hadn't made a conscious decision to do this. She skimmed past more poetry and short, heartbreaking descriptions of grief that Willow hadn't been able to share with anyone. Who would she have had to share them with? She had left home and family behind her. One particularly poignant entry stopped her for a moment.

I realized today that I can't remember how she smelled. I used to love how she smelled. There were the scents of incense and herbs from her rituals and spices from cooking and something undefinably Tara underlying it all, but I can only describe it now. I can't bring forth the smell in my mind any longer. It's only been a year, and I miss you so much, Tara. I will bring you back. I promise.

Tara wondered if she still smelled the same. Then she wondered if she wanted to. It had been disturbing enough looking at a picture of a young woman who could have been her sister and being told that it was her. Did she want to smell the same too? Would there be anything left of her that was hers alone?

Yet how could she not want to answer that cry of grief? It made her want to fold Willow close in her arms and tell her that everything was all right, that she was back and that she would never leave Willow again. She wanted to be able to do even more than that. She wished she could have been there for Willow all those years she'd been without her, but that would mean that she'd never lived her life. How could she give up her life, her family, everything that was her, even for Willow?

As she thought about Willow being alone all the years of Tara's life, for the first time it really hit her what that meant. When she had her first birthday party, Willow had been writing this journal entry in solitary grief. When she was in high school, Willow had been in Hell looking for her as she had seen in her vision. For every happy moment of her life, playing, reading, learning magic from her mother, there had been a dark, grieving one in Willow's.

Tara put the book down and stood up, unable to read any further. The aching in her throat and the tightness in her chest made her feel like she couldn't breathe. This dark revelation kept sinking deeper into her, piling its weight of grief on her heart, as if it had no end. She blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. Looking down at the leather bound pages, she realized that it wasn't simply a book. It was a repository for all the grief that Willow had felt over the years.

The journal seemed unnaturally heavy, weighed down by its contents of grief and despair, as she picked it up again and placed it in her lap as she sat back down on the bed. She looked down on the book without turning the page for a long moment.

It had to be enough, for her, for Willow, that they had found each other in this life. There had to be a reason that fate had brought them together when no amount of magic, dark or light, could have, but no matter how many times she told herself this she still worried that Willow couldn't accept her this way. Willow had been so attached to the past. Her whole life had been wrapped around righting what had happened that terrible day.

Tara slowly turned the page and began reading again, unable to tear herself away from the journal despite the pain it brought her. She felt compelled to understand what Willow had gone through. A long entry caught her attention about a quarter of the way through the book.

I have left her.

I didn't think it would be so hard. Why does it hurt? I didn't love her. We came together for comfort. We made no promises. Should I feel guilty about that? We had both lost so much. We were the same.

Or were we? She was so beautiful, so persuasive. I learned more of the art from her than I had from anyone. Step-by-step, naturally I felt, I came to share her dream. Of dreams. To open the Sea of Dreams and let the stuff of dreams into reality. Together we would reshape the world. All of heaven and earth she promised.

Would it have worked? Can dreams be harnessed to serve our conscious mind or would the sharp, bitter clarity of reality have been dissolved forever into the fuzzy insubstantiality of dreams? I don't know. It doesn't matter now. Without me she cannot open the gates of horn and ivory.

As we worked towards our goal, side by side in her library, we talked about our dreams. At first all I said was Tara, but Arien kept asking me questions. Wouldn't I have liked Tara not to have left me for using dark magicks? Wouldn't I have like Tara to be more beautiful? Each question seemed reasonable by itself, yet step-by-step my image of Tara changed into one of Arien. Did she love me? I think that she did. Yet that wouldn't have stopped her from using me to open the portal of dreams any more than any feeling on my part would stop me from resurrecting Tara.

In the end, I realized that a dream, however beautiful or substantial, wasn't the Tara that I loved. It has to be the real Tara, no matter what the price. But I wonder, when I find her, will I be like Arien, lost too deep in the dark for her to love me?

Tara's first feeling was jealousy, sharp and hot. Did coming together for comfort mean what she thought it did? What had happened to Willow's supposedly undying devotion to her?

No, she was jumping to conclusions. She didn't know for certain what had happened. Then another thought stopped her. She wanted Willow to have had some comfort in all those years of solitude and grief. How could she resent Willow for having found that? Suddenly she felt very selfish and guilty. And there was the last line showing that Willow had wanted the real Tara, her soulmate, not an illusion or a better version of her.

But was she the real Tara?

That was her real question. Was she the real Tara that Willow loved?

She flipped to the last entry in the journal, searching for answers in the book that had only brought her more questions, hoping that in the ending there would be the answers that Willow had found in her dark journey. She began reading.

After all these years I found her and I don't know what to do. I hadn't given this part much thought. It was supposed to be a fairy tale ending where we lived happily ever after. At the very least, I expected her recognize me. It's her, yet it isn't her.

This part was comforting in an odd way. She had been so deeply immersed in her own confusion that she hadn't thought about Willow's. Willow had all these expectations about their reunion and nothing had happened as she had envisioned it. That had to be confusing and painful. Maybe they could find their answers together. She liked that idea.

It hurt to read about Willow's disappointment at meeting her. It wasn't her fault that she hadn't recognized Willow. If she had been able to see her face she might have recognized her from her dreams, but her dreams had never given her a name to go with that face. Still, she had to admit that she would have felt the same if Willow hadn't recognized her.

There was no resurrection. A resurrection is a returning. This is a new turning. Yet I could still perform the resurrection, return her soul to Tara's body. Would it be saving her life or the most terrible crime I've ever committed? Would she love me if I did such a thing?

Her blood chilled as she read this paragraph. Had Willow really thought of doing that to her? She read on, desperate to find a different answer in Willow's journal.

Whether or not she would, I can't do it. She's too much of the Tara I love.

She sighed with relief, feeling her shoulders unknot as she did so, as she read those words. Willow hadn't really thought about doing that to her after all. Still, a sense of unease lingered over her from reading those words in Willow's handwriting. She hurried on to the last sentence, trying to dispel her uneasiness.

Yet can I love her? Would I be faithful to my Tara if I did?

Her face fell as she finished reading the entry. She had her answer. Willow did think of her and the past Tara as separate, but she didn't love her and wasn't sure that she ever could. Unable to dismiss the shadow of the past as mere memory any longer, she shivered as she felt her heart enveloped by its chill embrace. Her fingers cold and almost numb, she let the cruel book slip out of her fingers to land on the floor with a thump.

"What was all the key business about with Dawn last night?" Tara asked. They were folding clothes together, the dryer having completed its cycle while they were eating lunch. The piles of untidy clothes on the floor were gradually diminishing as they created new piles of clean, folded clothes on the neatly made bed.

Tara wished she could talk with Willow about what she had read in the journal this morning. She was certain it would help Willow too. But she couldn't, not when she'd read it without asking Willow.

She tried to push thoughts of the journal out of her mind with the repetitious movements of the familiar tasks of washing and folding clothes, but the feelings still haunted her. They couldn't be driven away by the scents of freshly washed laundry or the familiar ritual of folding clothes. She felt uneasy and depressed, as if she had taken on some of the burden of grief from the book.

Willow didn't seem to hear Tara for a moment as she continued folding the shirts in front of her, trying to figure out how to tell Tara about Dawn. It was complicated, and she didn't want Tara to misunderstand. Tara patiently continued folding the clothes from her pile too as she waited for Willow to answer.

"She's mystical energy transformed into a person," Willow said at last. "She was sent to Buffy to be protected from Glory. I know it sounds weird, but the monks who changed her gave all of us, including you, memories of Dawn so that we thought that she had been there all along."

Tara paused in her work and her brow furrowed as she tried to figure this out. "So she's not really Buffy's sister?" Tara said.

"She is," Willow said firmly. "She was made from Buffy's flesh and blood."

"I like Dawn," Tara said, reaching over to gently stroke the back of Willow's hand, her instinctive urge to reassure Willow overcoming her reservations from this morning. "I wouldn't want to hurt her. I'm just trying to understand."

Willow took Tara's hand in hers. "I know," she said, squeezing Tara's hand gently. "It's just ... if you ever said anything like that to Dawn."

Tara returned the squeeze. "I wouldn't," she said. "But could I ask you another question?"

"Sure," Willow said. Then her eyes narrowed, and she gave Tara an unconvincing frown. "Unless this is just a way to get out of folding clothes." She gave Tara's hand another soft squeeze to let her know that she was kidding.

Tara stiffened for a moment, Willow's narrowed eyes instantaneously bringing back that piercing sensation of cold she'd had as she read about Willow's thoughts about resurrecting her predecessor. Then she relaxed, knowing Willow wouldn't hurt her, at least not in that way.

"Hey!" Tara said, raising her eyebrows in an attempt to respond to Willow's teasing as if nothing had happened. "They're your clothes." She glanced down at their clasped hands for a moment before looking back up at Willow's face. "And it's sort of hard to fold clothes with only one hand." She made an awkward attempt to fold a shirt to demonstrate her point. It ended up in an ugly tangle.

Willow reluctantly pulled her hand away, sliding her fingertips along the length of Tara's hand as she did so. "If you insist," she said teasingly.

"I'll get you for that later," Tara said, but her teasing tone fell flat and her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.

"What's wrong?" Willow asked tenderly, her voice full of concern.

"Why does it have to be blood?" Tara asked, her eyes shadowed with worry.

"Blood is life," Willow answered. Her eyes were distant as her mind filled with thoughts of the past, of the night when she first heard those words. She'd lost her best friend that night, but she'd gotten Tara back. Now she had Tara back again, and she was resolved not to lose anyone, not Tara, not anyone, when she confronted the Master. "It's what makes us alive, what makes us feel," she continued, returning to the present. "Dawn isn't a witch. She doesn't do magic. She is magic, incarnate as flesh, and she needs to shed blood to release her power."

"Isn't there another way?" Tara asked. "Can't you break the Heart somehow?"

"It's older than the world," Willow answered. "I don't think anything could break it, but we can throw it into the Void. I could create a portal to another world, but Dawn can open the Void that lies between them."

"But what if someone finds it there?" Tara asked.

"The Void is infinite. It's not like anyone could stumble across it," Willow answered. She cocked her head as she looked at Tara. "Why do you have so many objections anyway?"

"Blood magic seems dark to me," Tara said. She paused a moment, biting her lower lip as she tried to figure out how to say this to Willow. "I was afraid that night with the Master," she confessed in a hesitant voice, letting her hair fall forward to hide her face. "You came so close to using the darkness. I'm afraid that if you do that, you won't ever come back."

Willow looked down, unable to face Tara directly with the knowledge that she planned to use dark magic once more in her mind. She wished she could tell the truth, but Tara had left her the last time she had broken such a promise and she couldn't risk losing her again.

Yet the Master was too powerful to ignore, and she had to stop him before Tara was hurt. Willow was caught between two wrong choices; lying to Tara seemed to be the lesser of two evils. She just couldn't ignore the Master as she had Warren, knowing the cost of that all too well.

"I will always come back," Willow promised, looking up into Tara's face with determination in her eyes. It was the most she could truthfully promise Tara. She reached over to take both of Tara's hands in her own. "And Dawn's power isn't in any way dark. You can talk with her about it if it worries you."

"I believe you," Tara's said, squeezing Willow's hand. "But I'm still worried about what happened with the Master."

"I just-" Willow began and then broke off. She swallowed convulsively. "I can't lose you again."

"You won't," Tara promised, taking both of Willow's hands in her own and looking steadily into her dark eyes. "You don't need dark magic to keep me. You just need to love me." She looked deep into Willow's dark eyes, searching for a hint of the love that she felt for Willow being returned. "I need you to be just mine. I don't want to share you with the past or the magic."

"I am, you know," Willow said, looking up into Tara's blue eyes then nervously looking away, her heart beating too rapidly. She thought Tara loved her, but she was afraid of saying those three small words too soon. Willow had enough courage to offer Tara these words instead. They meant as much to her, but they were safer. She had treasured them for a lifetime and their memory had kept her going when despair was all around her. She hoped Tara could accept this gift for what it was. A promise of a future together.

"What?" Tara asked, perplexed by the emphasis Willow was placing on her words. She could see how nervous Willow was, but she didn't understand why. Was this when Willow would tell her that she couldn't love her, that she only could love the past Tara?

"Yours," Willow promised in a whisper, needing all her courage to look into Tara's eyes to see her reaction.

She could feel the importance of Willow's words, but they rang hollow to her. There was something withheld from her in Willow's dark eyes. She couldn't believe Willow after what she'd read in her journal. She wasn't Willow's Tara; she was just a shadow of that memory that Willow was willing to settle for.

"Are you?" Tara asked, her eyes full of doubts. "Aren't you hers?" She dropped Willow's hands and stepped back from her.

"Whose?" Willow asked, her brow knit with puzzlement and hurt. Willow felt the caustic words of Tara's rejection burn deeply into her unprotected heart. She had been worried about Tara rejecting her, but she felt completely blindsided by the vehemence of Tara's response. Who could Tara be talking about? There hadn't been anyone else ... not for years and years.

"The other Tara," Tara said harshly, her voice rough with anger and pain. Her expression was bleak, empty of hope, as all the emotions she'd pent up came tumbling out. "The old one. She's the one that you love, not me." She swept her hands out abruptly in a short, jagged gesture as if snapping the thread connecting them, knocking over one of the piles of neatly folded clothes. This issue had been eating at her for weeks. Willow's incredulous face made her all the more angry when she knew from reading her journal that Willow had been thinking just this.

"Tara, no," Willow said, her voice catching in her throat. She reached out to take Tara's hand in her own, but Tara slipped away from her. She gazed at Tara, her eyes full of hurt and her hands empty and slack at her sides. "What happened? Why are you saying these things?"

Driven by her anger, Tara bent down and yanked Willow's journal out from under the bed where she had slipped it this morning. She slammed it down on the bed, knocking over another pile of folded clothes. "I read it in your own handwriting," Tara said, her voice sharp and loud with anger. "Tell me that you love me," she challenged. "You told me that you love her, but you've never said those three small words to me."

Willow focused on the journal for a moment, her heart contracting painfully as she felt a shadow of the grief she'd thought safely bound between those covers fall over her. The thought that Tara would dig up her old pain and use it against her made her feel hurt at first, then angry. She looked back up at Tara, her eyes flashing with anger. "How did you find that?" she demanded. "You had no right-"

"No, I didn't" Tara admitted, cutting Willow off with a short, sharp gesture. "You're avoiding my question," she said. She turned half away from Willow, shrugging as she did so. "But I guess already know the answer," she said in a soft, sad voice.

"Tara, you're still the same person," Willow said. "I never stopped loving you." Her tone was impatient, as if the truth of her words should have been obvious to anyone.

Tara whirled back to face Willow, her blonde hair splashing about wildly. "But I'm not," she said. "I'm me, a real person, not just an extension of the past." She raised her hands as if to plead with Willow, then realizing what she was doing, curled her fingers into fists and brought her hands back to her sides. "Why can't you understand that?"

"I-" Willow began.

Tara shook her head, her eyes dull with pain and despair. "It doesn't matter," she said in a low, despondent voice. She grabbed her jacket and start out the door.

"Tara, wait!" Willow pleaded, her expression desperate and fearful. Her anger fled in the face of her fear as her mind worked feverishly trying to understand why Tara was suddenly so upset. What had Tara read in her journal? If she could just get Tara to talk with her, even argue with her, she could fix things. She reached for Tara's shoulder.

Tara shrugged off Willow's hand, leaving the room with long brisk strides. Looking back over her shoulder, she said "Just leave me alone," her voice cold and hard. Willow followed Tara to the door, desperately seeking the words that would stop her from leaving, but Tara walked out the door without a backward glance.

Willow stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind her as she watched Tara walk away. She reached out in a hopeless gesture, but only the fingers of her shadow touched Tara. Then they slipped away, unable to hold onto her.

In a shadowy room illuminated by a single black candle, Amy Madison sat in the center of concentric circles of blood red sand. Between the circles writhed the strange and malevolent shapes of mystical symbols written in some dark, sticky fluid. A black crossbow bolt lay on the floor before her. She held an athame in her left hand and extended her other hand above a small porphyry bowl. A small silver stylus lay beside the bowl.

She cut open her palm with a deft, practiced motion and squeezed blood out of her fisted hand into the bowl. Blood slowly dripped into bowl from her hand. Once the flow stopped, she put the athame aside and picked up the stylus. Dipping it into the bowl, she began to meticulously scribe tiny runes on the bolt in her own blood. "By my blood and thy name, I thee slay," she chanted over and over as she wrote until the bolt was covered in runes of dried blood that spelled death for the one it was destined for.

Looking down at her handiwork, Amy smiled. The lengthy process of preparation was finally complete. No shields or protections could save Willow from a spell enclosing her true name. The slightest contact with the bolt would be fatal.

All she had to do was say three small words.

Willow sat on the bed staring into her bedroom mirror, her eyes red from crying. The mirror was new. She'd just moved it in here today, finally believing that she could keep something so fragile and breakable close to her. Her reflection flickered as the single red candle illuminating the room began to gutter and die out.

She had stared into the mirror for hours, wondering who the person in the mirror was. She had known the person she'd seen in the mirror this morning. That had been Tara's Willow, the Willow of Willow and Tara. The two names felt so right when she said them together.

Now she didn't know who she was. She had given everything, leaving nothing for herself, to get that feeling back. She thought again and realized that that wasn't true. There was grief. And despair. Her old companions had returned when Tara had left.

A single thought echoed over and over in her mind. Tara was gone. She didn't want Willow any longer.

Willow couldn't blame her. She knew it was her fault. If only she hadn't gotten angry, if only she hadn't hesitated to say those three small words. She was foolish to have thought that someone like Tara would want her.

The years in the darkness had marked her. She didn't have the right to bring such darkness down on someone so bright, but there was something she could do. Tara was alive and Willow could ensure that she stayed that way. Tonight she would destroy the Master.

She slowly stood up and began undressing, looking down at the black leathers she had removed from their trunk and neatly laid out on the empty bed beside her. Clean and once neatly folded clothes lay in a tangled mass by the bed. Deliberately, article by article, she replaced her clothes of the day with the black leathers. After stretching her fingers into black leather gloves, she picked up the final article of clothing from the bed and turned to face the mirror.

Years alone had made the image she saw now in the mirror familiar to her. The dark witch in the mirror looked right. Strong, powerful, mysterious. But also alone, grieving, and despondent.

It was how she was meant to be, she told herself. She looked into the mirror and saw a person who could defeat the Master, but there was something missing in her eyes. Where there once always been the smallest of hopes underlying the steely determination, there was nothing now.

Looking deeply into the mirror, she said "Goodbye," whether to herself or to Tara she wasn't sure. Then she placed the black mask over her face. The candle guttered out and the image in the mirror faded to black.

Continued...