“Buffy?” Tara sighed
and hammered on the shut door. “Please, honey, I just want to check in
with you before I head out.” She tapped on the door again and then laid
her hand over it. “Please, Buffy. I want to say goodbye.” Tara strained
her ears and heard a shuffling noise. Buffy had become even more of a
ghostly presence in the house since they had dragged Dawn crying from her
arms. Tara’s stomach tightened at the memory of the sobbing sisters
clinging to each other and begging for a few more moments. But their father
had been adamant about getting back on the road, so Dawn had been torn from
the only real family she knew and bundled into the car. Buffy had stood with
her skinny hands plastered to the window, weeping as Dawn placed her hands
against them from the inside.
“Buffy,
please…I really need to see you.” Tara rattled the door handle, hoping
it would turn. Her head shot up as she heard a muffled thump. “Buffy?”
She wrung her hands, hating this sadness that permeated the entire house.
Spike’s
death had been the catalyst and she was terrified it was going to get worse
for them all. Tara ran her hands through her fair hair and tried to work out
how she could help Buffy heal. She knew that the Slayer was devastated; even
Xander had accepted that his best friend was crushed by the vampire’s
death. But she had no idea what to say or do – it seemed like Xander or
Anya were also at a loss. Anya had also revealed to Tara in a theatrical
whisper that Willow had moved into her parents and had holed herself up with
grimoires and spell books that could make a saint sin.
“Tara,
its okay. Go on your field
trip, I’ll be fine.” Buffy’s voice sounded muffled and tired. She had
been holed up in her room for so long that she had lost track of time. She
had hidden herself in Spike’s journals again, obsessively reading all her
favourite bits over and over. Trying to glean some happiness from them, but
instead, all she could hear was Dawn crying and pleading to stay with her.
Buffy shivered and pulled the covers over her head, wishing Tara would just
leave already.
“Buffy,
please don’t make me kick in this door! You know I will.” Tara tried not
to smile at her empty threat. She had a fleeting mental image of her
breaking her foot on the door and Buffy having to take her to the ER.
There
was a pregnant silence and then a small giggle.
“Was
that a giggle I heard?” Tara teased, hoping that maybe she could coax
Buffy into a better mindset.
There
was a thump and a pad of bare feet on carpet and finally a click. The door
swung open, a waft of jasmine from the candles burning in Buffy’s bedroom.
Tara slipped in through the door and blinked. Instead of the mess she’d
expected, the room was filled with soft candlelight and leather bound books
lay all over the floor. She looked over at the Buffy shaped lump under the
covers and tiptoed around the journals to get to her.
She
curled up next to Buffy’s huddled form, the two of them nose to nose.
Buffy’s red-rimmed eyes were massive in her thin face; Tara reached over
and wrapped an arm around her and hugged her. “It’ll be okay.” She
smoothed the tangled hair off her friend’s face and rocked her as best she
could. “I hate that this has all happened. I am so sorry, honey. I know
it’ll get better…”
“Will
it?” Buffy whispered hoarsely. All she could hear was the disappointment
in her dad’s voice. When he
had finally spoken to her, all he had said was that she had let him down
again. Even The Kroger Monster had been shocked by his attitude. She had
even tried to diffuse the tension by mentioning that Dawn was a minor and
his responsibility and not her older sibling’s, and Buffy had barely
managed not to hug the woman for saying what she had wondered so many times.
The social worker had then ripped into him about lack of financial support
for the two girls since their mother’s death and that there would be a
deeper review into his finances. This threat made the errant Mr Summers
blanche and his hands tighten into fists.
Then
to Buffy’s utter shock, the woman had winked at her and calmly reminded
him that the mortgage needed paying off on the house and that from their
minor audits of his finances they had discovered that he could well afford
it and that they expected a speedy resolution to that. She had muttered
under her breath about how this was the least she could do for the sisters.
Buffy had just stared in shock at the plump woman until Dawn burst into
tears.
“The
goddess will guide us, I know it. Buffy, I wish I could turn back time and
change things, but I can’t. All we can do is be here for each other.”
Tara smiled lopsidedly at her.
The
gentle wiccan spoke, but all Buffy could hear over and over was ‘turn back
time and change things’, stuck on repeat in her exhausted mind. She
wondered if it could be done. Pasting
a weak smile on her face, she tried to focus on Tara’s gentle mothering
instead of giving into the impulse of sobbing her brains out. Her Mom was
gone, heaven was gone, Dawn was gone, Daddy didn’t want her and Spike…oh
god, Spike.
“You
still in there?” Tara waved a hand in front of Buffy’s unfocused gaze.
“Yeah…Sorry,”
Buffy sighed.
“I’ll
be gone until Sunday night. I’ve left food in the fridge. Buffy, please
eat, you’re getting real skinny,” Tara begged gently as she prodded
Buffy’s empty stomach with an insistent finger.
“I’ll
try.” Buffy returned Tara’s hug and then let her eyelashes flutter
shut.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Willow,
honey, your father and I are very disappointed in you.”
Willow
looked up from the grimoire she was reading in surprise; her mom was home
and talking with her? She shifted on the couch and curled her legs up under
her and marked the page with her finger.
“Do
you have anything to say about this?” The older Rosenberg held out a
letter, waving it demandingly under her child’s nose.
“What
is that?” Willow took the paper and frowned down at the contents of the
letter. A flash of black shot through her eyes and she glanced up at her
mom. “Why are you opening my mail?”
“It
was re-directed here from your last place, and I thought it was for me.
Willow, your father and I spend a lot of money on fees and you are not
honouring the agreement. Remember?”
Willow
frowned at the less than stellar grades and tapped the sheet with her
fingers. It wasn’t as if it were all her fault, she’d been looking after
brainsucky Tara – burying Buffy and then grieving for her. Finals had come
and gone within a flash of an eye and Willow had barely made it to all of
them. She had not studied and had relied on accumulated knowledge She had
barely scraped through by the skin of her teeth.
“Willow?
Remember we had a non-verbal agreement, we would fund your higher education
and you would maintain an excellent GPA.
We are so disappointed in you.” Her mother sounded so dissaprroving
that Willow was transported back to the time when she’d tried to burn her
at the stake for being a witch. ‘Little do you know, how powerful I am
now, Mom…betcha would be book burning and tossing me on the pyre if you
knew.’
“Willow really, I do
think that it’s the same problem as before. That girl Bunny is just a bad
influence on you and also this dabbling in being a lesbian. I may have
supported your right to choose but now I have to say I am disappointed at
the lack of application to your studies. Sex is something that is secondary
to knowledge. You have let us both down so badly. You should be ashamed.”
Willow
stared at her mother in disbelief; didn’t she know how upset she was? Tara
had broken up with her; she’d been kicked out of Buffy’s and then
Xander’s and had come in a humiliating circle back home to her
parents.
“Willow,
you will be respectful to your mother and I and engage in a viable discourse
with us.” Mr Rosenberg sat down next to his wife, a united front of
disapproval. “We had such high hopes for you, and you have not only let us
down, you have let yourself and your tutors down. How are you planning to
rectify this situation?” He placed a firm hand on his wife’s knee and
stared at their silent daughter.
“Indeed,
Willow, we are eager to discuss this with you. Now that you have returned to
the nurturing environment of your home, I am sure we can all work together
to achieve our mutual goals.” Willow’s mom smiled at her.
She
stared at both of them, wondering if they were really her blood relations.
The pseudo-psychobabble they used all her life had not been missed since she
had moved out, and now she had to put up with again? ‘I think not…’
Willow stared accusingly
at the grades on the crumpled sheet of paper clenched in her hand. Her eyes
turned into black pools and as she whispered an incantation under her
breath, the grades all switched to straight A’s. She then flickered her
fingers at the morons who were staring at her and they shivered briefly.
“Now,
where were we?” Willow’s mother blinked and leaned forward.
“Congratulating
our daughter on her keeping her end of our educational bargain,”
Willow’s father replied. They both focused on their daughter and smiled
plastically.
“Much
better,” Willow grumbled and returned their plastic fantastic smiles.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She
was electric. All blonde hair and sassy-mouthed with an arse like a peach.
She wriggled it all over the dance floor in that shithole of a club, getting
the spotty gits all horny. She’s a corker, that one.
Can’t wait to have a good fight with her.
Buffy
giggled at the words. She
wondered if Spike had any idea then that he would love her? She flipped onto
another entry from the same year and ran her fingers over the writing.
Dru
had sulked for hours when I got back from that first fight in the school.
One of the sodding minions had whispered nasties in her lughole about her
‘Daddy’ being there – sent my girl into a frenzy. But for some reason,
I wasn’t bothered. That
Slayer had been a right tasty morsel and then her mother had brained me with
an axe – got to respect a bint who knows her weapons!
But
that Slayer – she was ruddy fast with the quips and her fists. Bit of
alright for a mortal. Be a pity to drain her straight off. Might have a good
dance or two first, then go for the kill.
Buffy
rolled her eyes at the Spikey posturing as a faint smile lingered over his
respect for her mom. Seemed like her axe to dumb hard-headed vampire had
made a lasting impression. She flipped the page and carried on reading about
his headache and how a lump the size of a baseball had popped up. Buffy
frowned as a sudden tummy rumble interrupted her concentrated reading.
“Oh…food.”
She reached over and pulled on the red shirt that had replaced her dressing
gown. She rubbed her face on the collar and inhaled the scents of oak,
tobacco and cologne. She padded out of her room and headed to the kitchen,
hoping Tara had left something easy for her to heat. The house was dark and
so quiet. Buffy sighed loudly, wishing that Dawn were still here. “Miss
you so much, Dawnie.”
She
sat eating her solitary meal and hating every moment of it. Once the house
had been filled with voices and now, nothing. Spike and his explosive
entries, smoke billowing out from under his blanket, Dawn and her teen
hormones making her voice high pitched and excitable. Willow and Tara
chattering away.
“Willow!”
Buffy exclaimed and sat bolt upright. “Willow and the magic!” Buffy’s
fork clattered on the floor as she leapt up and ran for the phone. “She
can fix it – I know she can.”
“Willow?
Hi…we need to talk. Can you come over?”