POV Buffy
I hadn’t wanted to climb the stairs, so afraid of being the one that would have to tell Willow everything that had happened, all of the things that had gone wrong. It was difficult not to feel immersed in the guilt, to feel the responsibility for ever letting the two of them go with Spike. It just seemed… I don’t know, in that moment it had seemed like the only thing to do. To get them away from the beast, never realizing that Spike was an even bigger beast. The threat that he posed. That we were being fooled right from the start.
The responsibility is mine to bear for so much more than that as well, I totally understand that. I accept that. If it wasn’t for me… if it wasn’t for the things that I have done, then I am certain that this wouldn’t have happened. If I had never let Spike touch me, then maybe this wouldn’t have played out quite like this. But I guess we’ll never know for sure, I still haven‘t swapped my slayer sight for hindsight, and Spike is gone now. I don’t know how to feel about that. A lot of me wants to feel the jubilation, the absolute relief that comes with knowing that I had finally been strong enough to finish that which I had never meant to start. To wipe his touches from my body by turning him to nothing more than dust. But how could I even think of jubilation and relief when there was still so much left at stake? I couldn’t. So I adopted sombre as I had climbed the stairs, letting Dawn pull excitedly at my hand as she led me the way to our waking witch. Me not willing to sca re my baby sister with the severity of all of the things which could still come to pass. Not answering questions about Tara, just concentrating on Willow.
Xander and Anya had been at her side by the bed, their hands soothing strokes across her head as she came back to us, her eyes dazed and confused as she looked slowly around the room. I avoided her gaze, I wouldn’t meet her eyes for that first moment, because I wasn’t yet ready to speak about everything that we knew. So I caught the other’s eyes instead. Saw their questions, heard their words.
“Buff?”
“Not now Xander, okay?”
“Did you… is she?”
“I said not now.” I tried to keep my voice full of the strength which so often puts me in charge of the situation, and sought to dismiss them from the room. I wanted to do this alone, I believed, or maybe I hoped, that if it was just me and her, then I would have a better chance at controlling her reactions. I should have known that nothing would make a difference, that eventually nothing would stop her from reacting in the worst possible way. In the expected way.
“Buffy..?”
“Hey Wills, it’s me.”
I had sought a place next to her on the bed, my eyes drawn to the bandage which marked her fragile neck, covering the place where Spike had taken her blood, solid proof of what I had let happen. I wanted so much to make it better, to rewind the time and to find a new strategy. To do anything other than offering my best friends up to an un-neutered vampire. It was too late for that though, the bandage was already there, and there was where it would stay.
“How are you doing?”
“I… I don’t…” She was looking about confused, her hand finally darting up to the wound at her neck, her eyes spreading their widest as she grasped onto the reality that we could never escape. “…Tara… where’s Tara?”
“Will…”
“Where’s Tara?”
I could see the emotions fighting for dominance on her face as she relived whatever had happened with Spike. As she realised that Tara wasn’t here. That Tara was gone. There was the horror, and the pain, the anger… and finally something like control. Something which allowed her to tell me what had happened when I had asked. Explaining how she hadn’t known it was coming, how they had had no time to react. One minute they were walking and the next minute she was falling to the ground, the sounds of the blood rushing from her veins the last thing that she had heard. I had reached out for her hand and tried to squeeze it better. Had tried to compose my voice to answer her questions as she asked what was going to happen, as she spoke about how we had to go to Spike, we had to get Tara back. We had to stop him from hurting her. I knew that my downcast eyes were betraying the answers already, but I just couldn’t meet her gaze, I couldn’t bring myself to see how telling her the tr uth would destroy her. Could destroy all of us.
“We went to Spike’s…”
“So where is she..?”
“We’re going to get her back, we just need to plan…”
“Where is she Buffy?”
I knew that she wouldn’t stop asking, but what was there to tell her? ‘Oh Warren has your girlfriend, and he’s waiting for you to go and open the big evil leech infested portal before he gives her back?’ To me it had sounded like the wrong words, so I had searched instead for different ones, for any ones except for those.
“She’s okay Willow, just relax… me and Faith are going to get her back.”
She had risen from the bed as I had continued to deflect any straight answers. Eventually not asking anything, just walking around me and getting herself dressed. I had tried to appeal to her that she needed to rest, that she wasn’t in any state to be up from bed, let alone taking part in a forthcoming rescue. But her eyes had just looked at me dead, the colour not draining from them, not yet, but the shine which had always been so apparent was so obviously now dulled. Her voice nothing but an empty monotone as she finally took the time to stare me down.
“No Buffy, I don’t need rest, I need Tara.”
And I understood that. It was why I was so worried.
I followed her from the room to the stairs, passed the waiting others on the way and didn’t speak a word. I didn’t have the words, all that I had was the desire to be ready, the desire to be able to stop whatever it was that was going to happen, because I knew that something would be happening soon. The air was so thick was it, my senses driving me crazy, the impending doom wrapping each of my limbs in a world weary heaviness. I could only offer silent prayers with each of our steps that Faith had gotten somewhere with Andrew, that she had a real plan, that she had real answers. I was still barely believing that he had been a cause of any of the bad stuff. He was just a boy, a geeky, pathetic, gibbering wreck of a boy. It didn’t make sense. Nothing had made sense.
We could hear them talking as we approached the front room, my hand again going out to Willow to stop her from hearing, from knowing. To try and protect her from the sight of the betrayal. It didn’t work though, of course it didn’t, she shrugged me off as if I wasn’t there and primed her ears, like mine, to hear the truth. Hearing Faith’s words the loudest as they cut into the snivels and whimpers that were coming from the boy.
“You better fucking know! Will he hurt her, will he hurt Tara?”
“I… I don’t know… he just, he just wants Willow…”
I witnessed the confusion as it crossed her empty eyes, the way that she had glanced back to me and mouthed his name. Not believing it herself, having to walk the final steps to see.
“Andrew.”
He had spun from his spot on the sofa, cowering into the cushions to keep away from the menacing form of Faith, not having any idea that Faith was now the least of his worries.
“Red, I’ve got this, it’s okay.”
But the words fell flat, no one caring for them, all of us focusing instead as Willow had strode the distance to the boy in the chair. She was no longer weak from blood loss, but strong with rage. With pain.
“You? What the hell.? What have you done..?”
“I…uh, I…”
“What have you done?” Her tone sinking to become more of a growl, each word spat at him with vicious succinctness.
“I didn’t… I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know…”
Her hand cracked down across his crumbling face with a force that even I would have been proud of. Flaming red against his cheek as he attempted to pull away from her. It all made him cower more, made him cower in the right direction.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do it… I’m sorry…”
Over and over, but meaning nothing to any of us. Not then. He would have to hope that Tara was okay through this, it was the only way that he would get any form of respite. Maybe the only way that he would survive. When Giles had spoken it had made Willow draw back from him, had made her blend herself into the walls and not make a sound. All of us gathering to hear the words of Andrew. The things which Warren had done, the power which he had been cultivating. It was such scary stuff, such crazy stuff. As if we didn’t have enough trouble keeping evil in check without humans feeling the need to give it a helping hand. Hearing the details of how he had enlisted Spike… and all of it courtesy of the boy in front of us. So sorry now. So pointless now. When he had reached into the waistband of his pants and pulled out the vial of poison, Faith had almost launched herself at him again. Had cursed him with her voice all the way to hell and back, held his mouth open and threatened t o make him ingest it himself. We were all so angry. At him and at our selves. We had let him in, it felt like we had let this happen.
As his words had finally ended with silence, it was like a false calm settled over the room, no one speaking for fear of what would happen, looking to the pensive witch and wondering what would be next. Xander was the one who had gone to her, holding her as close as he could, not feeling how ramrod straight and tense she had stayed. Not taking comfort, not taking anything. Just staring back at Andrew, her eyes boring into him with silent intensity. If I was him I would have been terrified, I was me and I was terrified.
There was no rest for our nerves, me and Faith looking to each other and understanding the wordless signals, understanding that we had to stay primed, had to stay ready for action. We had descended slowly to the kitchen for refreshments, taking a moment to replenish our tired bodies just a little before we went back on the hunt. We were two for two for the evening, beating both the beast and Spike, but that didn’t mean that the signs of too much fighting wasn’t showing on our bodies, in the exhausted set of our shoulders. The situation was making the tenseness show between us as well, both of us in the mode to fight, not to explore the love which was growing steadily between us. Not to find comfort when we couldn’t offer anything to Willow. I had passed the food and drinks from the fridge without looking, the only words finding their way from our mouths being words which spoke of our duty, of our mission.
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know Faith, you call LA again? Anything that Angel can tell us… anything, god knows we need it.”
“I don’t think he has anything else… all that he said was ‘don’t let the portal open’. Kinda obvious stuff really.” I heard the sigh that she let out as her hands slipped through her hair, saw the futility in her gaze.
“We’re fucked B, we have to go in there blind, all on the say so of Andrew. We have nothing to work with, no plan, no secret weapons...”
“If we can keep Wills away then we have a chance, Warren is still just a guy…”
“Wrong answer. Andrew reckons he’s packing serious strength, something about bonding with the creepy monster leech. Angel said that it’s possible, that the monk had done the same…”
“Great. We’re still slayers though, it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“And there’s another one, Johnathan, or something?”
“Johnathan!?”
I had almost chocked in shock, surely not little Johnathan?
“Yeah, he does the mumbo jumbo magic stuff, seems that’s why shit keeps on disappearing. No new super power for me, just fucked up illusions.”
I was still trying to process Johnathan. It was too strange. I thought that he had learnt his lesson, had realised that he wasn’t super evil material.
“So we have a super strong Warren, and a magic making Johnathan… I’m still pretty confident.”
“And they have the demon chick.”
“Huh?”
“From your birthday gig, Halfreak or something?”
It was all too much. Trying to grab onto those tiny crumbs of knowledge and make sense from them all. Two boys from school and a wish demon. It still seemed doable, still seemed like something that me and Faith could handle. And I still believed then that we would save Tara. Even as we heard the shouts from the front room I believed that we could do it. As the walls shook with the force of something that could only ever be supernatural, could only ever be the strongest outpouring of grief and of rage. It was the sound of Willow coming into her own, accepting the belief in what she thought she had to do, the lengths that she would go to, to save the girl that she loved. The fact that I had expected it, did nothing to quell the shock and the fear. I had told Faith that we couldn’t handle Willow, and at that moment I thought it again.
We had both rushed forth without thinking to see what was happening, what was making the house shake with evil intent. Both of us rendered paralysed by the look of undiluted pain in Willow’s eyes as she held Andrew aloft in her small yet ferocious grasp.
“Will, this isn’t the way.”
I had spoken it knowing that it would make no difference, knowing that my words to her would mean nothing, that anything any of us could say would mean nothing.
“Stay out of it Buffy, this isn’t your fight, this is mine…”
She held out the hand that wasn’t holding onto Andrew and thrust her energy at all of us, at all of her friends. Shimmering light letting us know that we couldn’t approach her, that there was nothing we could do to reach either her or her captive.
“Red, let it go… we can do this together, all of us…”
“NO!”
“Messing with forces you can’t control will not help Tara, you need…”
“Do not tell me what I need! You don’t know what I need!”
It had sounded like hate flew from her mouth along with her words, such rage directing at me and at Faith, directing at Giles. Aimed at all of us. I felt the rip in my heart as she turned her back, as the front door flew from it’s hinges without a touch and allowed her to leave the house. All of us knowing where she was going, none of us daring to predict the outcome. It was too severe.
“Buffy..?”
“It’s okay Dawn, it’s okay.”
My placating tone did nothing to combat the panic, nothing to stop the dread which had coated her young eyes. I turned again to Faith then, I knew that this rested upon me and upon her, that it would be us together that would either stop this or we would fail. Saving the world. The same old routine. I had tried to feed from the strength in her eyes as she solidly held my gaze, tried my damn hardest to offer her some of the same in return. We only had each other to rely on now, no one else could make a difference.
“You ready to roll?”
“Ready”
“Wait… both of you, you can’t just go in there without a plan, we need to discuss this, we need to decide exactly what it is we could be facing…”
“No Giles, there is no ‘we’… this is me and Faith, you’re staying here…”
“Hold up Buff, I know you love the hero moments but this is Willow we’re talking about … this is all of our fight.”
There was such honesty in Xander’s eyes, the way that he wanted to stand strong in the way that he always found to stand strong for us. Anya ready at his side to accept whatever he thought was the best thing to do. We couldn’t allow it though… as slayers we HAD to do this… whatever it would entail, and there was no way that I would put it onto my friends. The options were too unclear, the chance that we may have to take out Willow, the chance that the whole world was about to come crashing down around us. I wanted them away from that, could feel the energy from Faith that spoke the same.
“You can’t come Xander, any of you. Not this time, I won’t have you there. I can’t do this if you’re there.”
“Do you really think that it’s wise to go alone?”
“I know it is Giles. It’s the only way it’s happening.”
“What do you want us to do?”
How the hell did I know? I looked yet again to Faith, appealed for something, for anything, that she could take some of the burden and offer words of wisdom, maybe a sense of direction where I was finding none.
“Get back on the phone to Angel, tell him it’s too late, ask him how the fuck we close a portal without…”
“Without?”
I understood the pause before the rest of them. Of course I did. Only seconds before Dawn though, just seconds until she caught everyone up to the harsh reality of our thinking.
“Without killing Willow..? That’s right isn’t it Buffy? You’re gonna have to hurt Willow.”
“I don’t…”
“Buff?”
“Xander…” I turned my body fully towards him, he had to realise that I would never do that without every other option being explored… that I could never do it without breaking my own heart. I loved her too. “…I won’t… I’ll save her okay? We’ll save her.”
He stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around me in a hug that I wished I could hold onto, always such normality within his hold. Just a boy, just a man. Forgetting his anger of earlier, no longer recriminating me, but assuring me.
“I’ll speak to Angel, you girls go do your thing, and we’ll do all that we can… we’ll be there… just, just please..?”
“We won’t hurt her.”
Faith’s words had cut into the moment, the urgency not leaving her stance, practically straining to be gone through the open doorway. She didn’t add the unspoken ‘unless…’ she didn’t need to. It hung as heavy in the air as any sorrow we had ever felt. This was Willow. She was ours, and we would go in there with the intent of saving them both, of bringing them both home. Silently leaving the house then with all of their eyes resting upon us, so much burden. So much to bear.
The growing light outside had spoken to us of an approaching dawn, the promise of a new day, the sun inching slowly up over a distant horizon. It meant nothing to us, the only thing that we could feel was the insistent buzzing through our bodies, the call to take a direction that we hadn’t walked before, trusting implicitly in the power which we held to take us to where we needed to go. Until finally we ended up in a road that looked no different to any other, a cul-de-sac, a family street.
“This is it B.”
“No kidding.”
“Well the apocalyptic wind chill is bit of a give away, the electric storm over that house down there…”
I didn’t need to follow her finger, my eyes had already rested upon the abnormality, had already accepted the truth in her words. The wind was whipping up into a frenzy as we spoke, the heavens opening in a way which could never be predicted on the local weather station. Howling through us, the clouds darkening faster than the dawn could ever beat them back.
“So what do we do? Do we just go in there?”
“Well we could try knocking on the front door…”
The scream which pierced our ears stole any last banter we were finding to soften the harshness, and we knew that this was it. That we couldn’t put it off no matter how much we didn’t want to face it. The end of the world was beckoning and it was our job to answer the call.
We approached the hatch to a basement and accepted the glow from within as an invitation to enter. Slowly and surely, eyes adjusting to the light as quick as they could, taking in the players, the foes and the friends. Tara bound to the wall at the back, next to the demon from my party. Willow stood tall with her hands still latching onto Andrew. And the then the boys. Warren and Johnathan at the centre of the room as if they were the conductors to all that was happening around them. Warren’s voice not sounding like anything human, the look in his eyes definitely not human.
“Do you accept it witch, do you understand what you must do!?”
“Give me Tara or I’ll end you all.”
Johnathan was chanting some ridiculous words, his shaking hands trying desperately hard to hold onto the charms in front of him. Warren’s eyes crackling with an energy that shone in the strangest way… sliding blackness across them, like Willow’s before. A film that coated his vision with such obvious evil. Our arrival was barely noted, barely seemed to make a difference to anything that was playing out before us. I stepped up, I knew without a doubt that it was my place to.
“Warren, back down… if you stop now, we can end this…”
“Back down?” He turned at last to face me as his laughter assaulted my ears. I silently wished that it hadn’t, it was a sound which chilled me, which had me wanting to do nothing more than to cling onto the hand at my side, to find the feel of Faith and to lose all of this insanity within her presence. “I have no need to back down slayer, this is all that I have waited for… all that I have planned for…”
“Quiet! All of you quiet!”
“Red, don’t do this.”
I felt the emptiness in Faith’s plea, knowing without a doubt that the pleas wouldn’t work, maybe it was the darkness that was enveloping Willow’s own eyes, the way that the world seemed to hush as she turned her attention to the forms bound to the wall that let me know it. She threw Andrew from her then, tossed him to the ground to free up both of her arms, slowly turning to face down Johnathan. His body seeming to shake even more as he found himself beneath her glare.
“Let them go… let both of them go… now.”
“I… I can’t…”
“Do it!”
Energy crackled from her fingertips and smashed straight into him as her words filled the room, sending him to the floor the same way she had sent Andrew. I heard him shriek, heard the pain that her blow had inflicted. Heard again as Warren laughed, his manic chuckles rising up even stronger than before.
“You think it matters about him, you think I care about him?”
“I said let them go.”
“And I told you only when the portal is opened.”
She thrust her energy at Johnathan again, raised him up into the air and slammed his body down upon the ground with a sickening thud, his pitiful cry doing nothing to soften the darkness of her gaze. I wanted to step forwards, I wanted to prevent her from crossing the boundaries that I wouldn’t know how to bring her back from. There wasn’t time though, already Warren was taking care of it for me. Picking the boy back up with strength that he shouldn’t possess, caressing him softly and then with a sickening smile twisting his hands, and twisting Johnathan’s neck.
“You can’t hurt me witch, no one can hurt me… now share your power or I will kill them all.” He threw the lifeless body away from him and started to stalk towards the wall where Tara was bound, that smile still twisting his lips, and me still standing there useless, not sure what my purpose would be. If either me or Faith would even have a purpose here. We stayed deathly still as Willow’s head had swung back towards the prisoner again, the blackness seeming to clear for just a moment as her voice cracked over her words.
“Baby..? Tara..?”
But she couldn’t answer, her mouth bound by cloth, her own words imprisoned in the same way that she was.
“It’s the only way witch, you give me what I want and I’ll release her, and if you don’t?” His arm outstretched then and pointed at the tied form of our friend, thrusting forth some energy of his own. Wrapping up and around her, making her body tense as the pain overtook her. “If you don’t then she will die.”
“Wills no, please..?”
Another pointless plea, more words which wouldn’t be heard.
Her eyes had swung once more to the woman she loved, and then the last of the girl that we knew had disappeared from her face, clearing the way for the evil that wanted so badly to sit there. Her feet moving her forwards and her hands reaching up to connect with Warren’s. An ear splitting moment filled with sonic booms, when I would’ve believed that everything was truly lost. Too much noise, and too much power. It had shimmered in front of us slowly, starting out as nothing more than a pinprick of glowing light, gradually growing to encompass the whole space of the far wall. And I knew what it was, the only thing that it could be. The portal that we couldn’t let open. Warren with the words and Willow with the power.
I don’t know what was supposed to happen when this thing opened, what the chain of events was supposed to be, but I know I never expected the oozing tendrils of slime which crept outwards from the wall and gradually across the floor towards us all.
“Holy fuck B… are you ready to fight this?”
But my eyes were getting lost in the hole, trying to put solid form to the shadow I could see in the background, a mass of blackness from where the creeping sinews sprang. Warren’s chants were growing louder as his whole body was gradually encompassed in the glow of Willow’s power, her body straining with overwrought tension as she fought to keep a hold, to keep her view pointed at the portal, her end of the bargain.
I had known that I had to break my gaze, had to use my own power to try and stop the strength of the other on display. We had to stop this thing, we had to stop Warren, and more than any of that, we had to stop Willow. I cracked my gaze to Faith, slid every business note into my voice to cover the fear, issued my orders at her as if she should follow them.
“Try and break their connection, I’ll get Tara…”
And she was already moving, my eyes leaving hers to go do my own bidding, spinning to face the bound women and dashing my way towards them. I took in their forms, Tara’s eyes as they shone with desolation, the demon’s eyes as they shone with fury. It was easy to get to them now that Johnathan was gone, the magic of his binds being broken, to leave nothing but normal rope. I ripped at the gag that tied tight across her mouth, and gave her back the power of speech, prayed in my heart that it wasn’t too late, that this wasn’t the end.
“Tara? Are you okay… are you hurt?”
“I’m okay, please… help her.”
She was gesturing with her head to Halfrek, and I didn’t have the time to question or to argue, I just turned and released her too, gave her a chance at getting away. But she didn’t turn and flee, not straight away. She looked me dead in the eye with confusion instead, brought her hands up to shield the near nakedness of her body.
“You freed me?”
“Yeah… crazy I know, now if I was you I’d get out of here…”
I didn’t give her a second glance, assumed that she would be gone before I had even finished speaking, turning my attention instead back to Faith, to the struggle that she faced in trying to break the union between our friend and our biggest foe. All the time the creeping slime drenched tendrils winding across the floor to try and engulf us all. To take the first bite from the soul of humanity. Faith couldn’t get near them, the pulsating force of their conjoined power keeping her from ever being able to get close enough to help. It was as if we could do nothing, like it truly was time for the world to end. Willow was committed now, not able to hear my final appeal, frozen in the bond she had created with Warren. When words had come they were not mine.
“Willow stop!”
A power in a voice that we hadn’t considered. Sweet and docile tones being replaced with a strength that I had never heard there before, would never have expected to hear there with such force. Slowly turning to witness Tara as she stood strong and proud, commanding the room as if it was her job to do so. It shocked Willow into breaking her hold on Warren, in reality the force in her voice had shocked us all.
“Tara..?”
It was almost as if the lightness that had surrounded her was enough to break the darkness which had imprisoned her girlfriend’s eyes. Making them clear now, making them shine with horror as she looked and realised what she had done. Her feet trying to drag her back from the close proximity she shared with Warren.
“You’re too late bitch, it’s too late…”
I didn’t know what to do, where to go. Looked to my sister slayer as she pulled Andrew up from his place and the floor and freed him from the slime that was looking to feast upon him. I could see it touching her too, spreading further outwards as the power that had been flowing from our Witch and the crazy Warren was stemmed. The sounds which had emanated then from the portal had been so drenched in what sounded like rage and anger, only matched by the screams which were starting to wrack Warren’s body. Inhuman screeches, his skin bubbling as the thing had then looked to lock it’s hold onto him. Making him slip closer and closer to the portal. Not even trying to hold back at first, just shocked by the fact that his plan may not work. He still needed Willow, without her power he would be useless.
“B, we’ve gotta get everyone back… you remember what Angel said?”
I tore my eyes from him and gave them to her. “Don’t let the portal open?”
“Got it in one. That thing ain’t going down without a fight, without it’s breakfast…”
I had remembered back to the story about the monk, how he had opened the portal, but when he hadn’t the power to bring anything out, it had closed and taken him with it. I looked around now as more tendrils shot forth, felt as my own legs were encased with the first of their touches. I managed to pull myself back easy enough though, I have the strength of the slayer, but I knew that the others would not be so easy. Willow was standing frozen as if she didn’t know what the hell she had done, what was happening. Tara was edging towards her but trying to keep away from the ever closer shoots of darkness. I wanted to warn her, had opened my mouth to do so.
“Tara no! Get out, we’ll get Will, just get the hell out!”
The scream behind me shocked my head into turning again, so much to try and keep a hold on, so many people to worry about. It was the demon again, not having fled when I expected her to, and now being sucked up by the thing which wanted us all. It seemed as if she was stuck fast to her place, being forced to watch the events unfold, the portal unfold. Her hand had lifted slowly, her eyes connecting with me in pain, pointing something out to me, making me turn with a dread in my heart, sweatiness suddenly making my hands seem soaked.
“Faith!”
Warren had grabbed his hands onto her, his inhuman strength pulling her backwards with him, his mouth letting loose words which I had no clue towards, dragging her nearer and nearer and her not being able to do a thing to stop it. At the same time Willow was being touched by tendrils of her own, slowly creeping up her legs and bringing back the blackness in her eyes, as if it wanted the evil, the thing which it could feed upon. I appealed to her to fight it, to do something to stop it, but she just shook her head. She looked exhausted, like she had no fight left. All of her power spent now that her connection with Warren was broken.
I had thought in that moment that I would have to choose. Had thought that I would have to save one or the other. As it was, maybe I should have known, maybe the way that Willow would have done anything to save Tara, should have told me that in return she would do anything to save Willow. I never expected it though. Even after witnessing the unknown strength in her voice, the way that she had held herself firm and broken the connection which none of us could break, I still didn’t expect what happened next. Wasn’t prepared as she had charged past me, towards the portal, not away from it. As she had attacked Warren with only her hands as a weapon, as he had let go of Faith, to bring his still inhuman eyes to her.
“No! You’re nothing, let go of me… you’re nothing!”
“Tara! NO!”
They were Faith’s words, they became Willow’s words. They became all of our dashes towards her as she seemed to fall through the hole alongside him. Nothing pulling her in except the force with which she had tackled him, the screeching which had emanated from his body becoming more and more as they disappeared from our view.
All of us frozen.
“Baby..?”
No longer a sound.
“Tara..?”
The light growing softer and softer until nothing remained except for the wall itself. No portal. No nothing. No Warren and no Tara.
“Oh my god…” I had been first to run my hands over the spot, first to feel the heat and nothing else. “…Faith? What the hell?”
But of course she had no answer. Not expecting a moment of such bravery and self sacrifice. Not expecting that it would be Tara who gave herself to save the world. It had felt as if my stomach dropped down to the floor, as if I needed to be sick, to expel the feeling. Not having tears in that moment, not having anything except a stared disbelief at a wall. At nothing.
“Tara… oh goddess no, Tara…?”
Willow was on her knees, her eyes as red as they had been black, tears and grief streaming down across her face. She had tried to bring strength back to her tone, had started to chant words which meant nothing to me, screaming words, pounding on the wall with her fists until the skin had broken, until her body had collapsed from the force of her futile efforts.
“Wills..?”
I slipped down beside her and tried to put my arms around her, sense dictating that we should get up and leave, not processing a want to stay and to try and find her. What was left to find?
“Buffy no… Tara… I can’t, oh goddess, I can’t…”
Over and over, finally making the tears spring into my eyes as the realisation of what we had lost hit me hard in the heart. Trying to contain my best friends grief as mine found a place on my face. My arms rocking her as her hands still fought to scratch at the wall in front of us. To bring her back.
“B, come on… we have to get her home.”
Faith had sunk down next to us, her own eyes shining with loss and with pain. I looked at her and wanted so bad to find peace and to find solace, to find anything other than the feeling in my chest, but there was nothing. It was as if we were all empty now. Broken now.
“Help me get her up?”
“Sure thing, the others are outside…”
“Others?”
“Andrew, the demon… they’re waiting for us.”
I had forgotten about them, didn’t even know how long we had been sat there rocking. How long since it seemed that the world had ended. Or our world at least.
We had picked her up between us and made our way up into a day that burst forth sunshine, a day which had no clouds to cover the brightness. Letting it mock us as we trudged our way past crowds of smiling people to arrive back at our home. To our expecting friends, to the looks upon their faces as they had counted who was there and who wasn’t. Had seen clearly who it was that we hadn’t saved.
I carried Willow myself up the stairs to my room. I couldn’t bear to place on her the bed which she had shared with Tara, which would always now be missing her presence. A room which missed my mother, and now a room that would also miss her. As I laid her down and watched her empty eyes closed, I just cried. I had nothing else. It all hurt so damn much. Just holding onto her cold hands as she dropped down into an exhausted restless sleep. Trying to soothe a brow which was soaked in feverish sweat. Trying to hold my body firm instead of giving into the sobs which so badly wanted to wrack me.
I couldn’t think yet, couldn’t process a feeling other than the physical one. The one which felt as if it was killing me. I know that I had almost longed for death again myself, because this pain was just so much.
“Buffy..?”
Her voice sounded like a lifeline. Again. Breaking firmly through my torment to turn my head away from Willow.
“Hey.”
“How’s she doing?”
“I don’t know Faith. I don’t know how she’s gonna do this… god, I don’t know how any of us are going to do this.”
She walked softly into the room, coming to stand at my side and looked upon the girl who’s brow I still stroked. The girl who was starting to moan in her sleep with the pain of expelling yet more darkness from her over loaded system.
“Why don’t you come down B? Xander wants to come sit with her, you need to take a break… you’re exhausted…”
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.” Her fingers had slid slowly to my face to wipe at tears I had no chance of stopping. To tuck a fallen strand of hair behind my ear. “Come on, just take a break yeah? Just a minute…”
I let her bring me up, a soft moan escaping my lips as I had let my touch go from Willow.
“Why Tara, Faith..? God… why did she do it?”
But I knew why. She did it for love. She did it to save Willow. To save all of us.
We descended the stairs slowly, holding onto each other in a useless grab at finding something like strength. I met the eyes of all of our friends, and saw that they had been told everything. That they knew what had happened in the basement. All of them glistening tears at me, not able to find any words to say to make anything better.
“How is she?”
“She’s sleeping Xander, will you sit with her?”
“Of course I will.”
He went from the room with Anya at his side, pausing only to take the time to wrap his arms around me again. Not able to absolve any of the guilt which was beginning to creep back into my mind. The beginnings of fault which wanted so badly to wrap me up in it’s hold. My memory flashing to all of the things which I could have done different, to everything which highlighted my failure. It brought me to the now. To being sat upon the sofa with Dawn at my side. Watching as Faith and Giles embroiled themselves in conversation across the room, their eyes flicking to me often, but not including me in what was being said.
And I can’t care.
All that I could do now was to hold onto Dawn and let her tears take precedence over mine. She is innocent in all of this. Just like Tara was.
I didn’t move as Faith came to stand in front of me, could barely meet her eyes as she spoke my name, as she scooted Dawn along the sofa to find her place next to me.
“You need to get some rest B, why don’t you go lay down and I’ll keep an eye on Dawn, I’ll look after her…”
“I said I’m okay.”
“And I said you’re not.”
Her own fatigue was there for me to see, and I refused to let her push it all aside for my sake. “I’m fine, really… why don’t you go home Faith? You need to rest too.”
“You want me to go?”
No. But do I deserve you to stay?
I didn’t speak my words. I didn’t speak anything. I just looked at her and I crumbled and I cried. I lost myself as her arms wrapped solidly around me and I just cried. It felt so pathetic, but I have nothing else.
We were supposed to save the world, and then we were going to save ourselves. It had been such a good plan. And now I have to wonder if there is anything left to save. I failed, we may have saved the world, but I didn’t save Tara. And now I just don’t know if I have the energy anymore to save myself. If I even care anymore if I can save myself.
She held onto me tightly as I shook with the force of it all, as if she could feel my desolation and wanted to protect me from it. Wanted to hold me back from it. Her words whispering into my ears, over and over. A mantra made just for me.
“It’ll be okay Buffy, it’ll all be okay.”
But how could it be okay? How could any of this ever be okay again?
Chapter 27
POV Faith
Too many fucking days, too many fucking hours. Too much crap that makes me say ‘fucking’ for all of the wrong reasons. If I had ever believed in my life that everything had gone to shit, well now I know it for sure. This should never have happened, this should never have been allowed to happen. Not Tara, not the girl amongst us all that was just so good, the one that radiated enough fucking light to keep all of our darkness at bay. No. Me and Buffy are the slayers… we are the ones charged with the duty of keeping this world safe, not her. This truly should never have happened.
I’m not stupid, I’m not ignorant, I know why she did it… it’s fucking obvious why she did it… but could we have done more? Standing in that dumb basement like two frozen statues, letting evil dictate the pace, whilst we sat back and did nothing. When B had told me to separate them, I had thought I would be strong enough, had thought that I was slayer enough to accomplish the task, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get near them, not a chance. The energy they were producing stronger than anything I could even ever hope of producing. So I had done nothing. Just a frozen statue.
And after that, when the slinky slime had waded it’s way across the floor, when Warren had held me in his grasp and pulled me backwards… should I have let him? Should I have taken the tumble that Buffy took last year and gained my absolution in a minute of final sacrifice?
Fuck me, I just don’t know.
Then I had thought ‘no’. Had tried to fight him off of me, had utilised my pointless strength in an effort to rip him from me. But all that I had done was lay the way clear for Tara to do the job that I was sent here to do. I had always wanted to know my purpose for life, had spent hours agonising over whether I was good enough, whether I was strong enough… and I guess now I know. I wasn’t good enough and I damn sure wasn’t strong enough. I let her take the place that should have been mine. I let her sacrifice herself, because I wasn’t brave enough to let it all go.
We heard the screams as the portal closed, heard the torment that lay beyond the wall we couldn’t break through, and now in my dreams, the screams are all hers. Doesn’t matter if the screams were already there, if hell already existed beyond our reach… in my head now, it’s her hell. It’s a place that we let her go to.
These thoughts aren’t only mine, the grief isn’t only mine, it’s there for all of us. It’s in the empty eyes that reside in Revello drive, it’s in the faces that look like they may never smile again. It’s in the screams and the tears that have become the only sounds from Willow… and maybe more personal to me… it’s in the way that Buffy can’t even look me in the eyes no more.
Fucking great right?
We had a plan, a damn fine kick ass plan, we were going to save the world and then we were going to save ourselves. Fuck it, we had already started saving ourselves. We were falling in love, for the first time in my life I was believing that everything would be okay. Not just me, not just selfish okay, but okay for everyone. Me and B, and Dawn, we were going to be a family. Those guys were going to be my friends… and now it’s all just gone. Not glass half empty, the glass is on the floor in fucking shards and all of us are dancing right through them. It hurts. It hurts so god damn much.
I get Buffy’s guilt, of course I get the guilt, I’ve been living with guilt for a long couple of years now, so yes, I know it. But it’s so wrong. It can’t be all her fault, because if it’s all her fault, then how comes the rest of us are feeling so damn guilty too? And it’s not even like we feel it the worst… imagine being Red right now? Imagine knowing that your actions had directly caused the opening of the fucking portal in the first place. Forget Spike and Warren, cos I know that they don’t matter to her… she opened it, and Tara went through it. End of story. I tried to placate her just like the others, I tried to hold her in my arms that felt like jelly now, no strength left, and I felt the way that she is feeling. I heard the screaming first hand, I helped Buffy restrain her that first night, all for her own good. Holding her hair back as she vomited and vomited again, as she tried to free herself long enough to take herself to the place that Tara was, that Tara is. She wants to go to hell too, and it took everything we had to hold her back.
I watched as the eyes that shine green, clouded with more of that sick looking black stuff, I felt the verbal blows that she threw our way. The hurt and the hate that she was redirecting in any kind of effort to stop the pain from being so utterly soul destroying. Words which haunt me. Which hurt me. Pointing out our failure as if we needed it pointing out. Berating us for what we couldn’t do. Hating us for what we couldn’t do. She saved the worst for B, calling her out as the whore and the liar, diatribes about fucking Spike, about letting the sick son of a bitch touch her… pointing blame. Hiding from her own.
It lessened as the sickness abated. As her body shook and she found tears again, as she begged us for a forgiveness that wasn’t there to give. We can’t absolve her, it’s too fucking hard trying to absolve ourselves. Everything is oh so fucking hard. I even had the nerve to attack Angel, to scream at Cordy down the phone in a futile effort at making myself hurt just one iota less. It didn’t work. It’s not their fault. They were working the info hard at their end, all we had to do was to stop the portal from opening… the fucking obvious thing, and we damn well couldn’t do it.
It’s all so crap. It’s all so hard. And all I want to do is to make it better.
I look around this room now, and all I see are walls. It doesn’t feel like a home, it doesn’t feel like love… it just feels like bricks and mortar. Nothing personal. Nothing at all. It’s claustrophobic, as if the silence is mocking, as if the foundations which keep the bricks standing are there only to taunt us. The same old house when nothing is the same. It drives me fucking crazy, yet I try and stand it for her. For Dawn. For any fucker that needs me. I spoke to Giles not long after we got back the other day, and I damn well told him that if he even thinks about trying to leave them again, I will fucking crush his skull and perform my own lobotomy ‘slayer style’. He gets it, it’s not about wanting to hurt him… it’s about helping the others. About being here for Buffy like he’s fucking supposed to be here, about providing a father for two girls, that have no one else. He said that he had no intention of leaving, but I had just wanted to make sure. To make it better.
And how do I make it better when she can’t even look me in the eyes?
That first day she had let me hold her, she damn well clang to me as I held her. Let me whisper words of okay into her ears in a way that had me believing in it too. But the next day? Yeah… the next day was different. Yesterday was different. Freezing up as I offered her something which to me felt like comfort, her body so tense, her words so clipped. And it wasn’t like I didn’t question her… I know how fucked up everything is, how the feelings are all swirling and mixing, how everything is messed… but this is me! I get it! It makes me want to scream and to shout, to punch and to kick every damn inanimate object around me… but more than that it makes me want to grab her and press my lips so firm against hers in a way which makes her see it too. Feel it too. And that’s the sickest right? Everyone else is consuming themselves in grief, and I still have the hankerings of getting my nasty little naughty on. I still want the ‘fucking’ to be for all of the right reasons. Still w ant to lose the harshness of this screwed up world all in the beauty of her. So maybe it’s best if she holds herself away from me, because I know that it isn’t what she needs. That she doesn’t find comfort in the same way that I do. That she doesn’t need me in the way which I need her. Another harsh and hardened dose of reality.
“Hey?”
Huh?
“You okay Faith, you look kinda… antsy?”
I had forgotten that I was here for a minute, forgotten that people were looking to me to see what my reactions are. Still looking for a strength which I think I left in that basement.
“I’m cool Dawn, just ya know… thinking.”
“About Tara?”
“About a lot of shit, about all of this shit.”
“You wanna talk some?”
At least ‘her’ eyes aren’t empty to me. I remember Tara teasing about hero worship, and now it just hurts too. Dawn shouldn’t be offering me anything, I should be the one doing the offering. She is still just a kid, and she is still being thrown more shit than any kid should ever have to go through. Maybe even more than I went through. And it sucks. It sucks a whole barrel load of shit.
“Do ‘you’ want to talk? Are you doing okay?”
I pat the sofa next to me and invite her into my isolated space. Throw an arm around her shoulders and hope that it gives her something to hold onto.
“I’m okay… I just, I wonder Faith, do you think that we’re cursed..? I mean… with mom, with Buffy, and now Tara… why does everyone get taken? I hate that everyone keeps… keeps dying. It’s not fair.”
I hold on tighter, I could tell her everything about not fair, but I won’t. I’ll try and soothe the child in her that still thinks that life should even be fair. “No kid, not cursed… definitely not fair, but not cursed. It’ll be okay, just wait and see.”
“You always say that.”
“What?”
“That it’ll be okay, since you got here you said that… it gets harder to believe.”
“You don’t believe me?”
She shrugs a little. Sighs a lot more.
“It sounds better than when Buffy says it… you sound like you mean it. Like there’s hope.”
“You want me to start punning on my name?”
“Not if you want me to keep taking you seriously.”
So I hold back for the moment on the ‘keeping the faith’, cos it does sound a lot like bullshit. “It’s just gonna take time kiddo, losing people… it’s never easy, but you just have to remember who you have left. It’s not right, and it isn’t fair, but it’s something. Something to believe in.”
“You think that Willow is going to be okay?”
No. And no again. A whole fucking lifetime of no.
“Sure she will, you wait and see… she has you and B, she has Xander…”
“And you.”
“Yeah… right, see? Just give her time…”
I remember how hard we had to work at restraining her and I know that it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than time to be okay. It’s gonna take a fucking miracle, and I know that I’m not the girl to work them. Not even close.
“I just want things to be better, I want… I want to be happy again. I want Tara back.”
I hold onto her as the tears come again. So many tears, too many tears. My peaceful tones trying to break through and assure, when my own eyes are feeling dusty too. My arm trying to wipe away what I know she doesn’t need to see. I hold her for as long as she needs me, till the teenager in her gets the embarrassment from being so exposed. And then I let her go, watch as she climbs the stairs to her room to try and find comfort in being alone. I know it doesn’t work, of course it doesn’t work, but I let her go. I need a little space too. More time to think about the comfort which I can’t have. More aching to feel Buffy’s arms around me in the way that I want to wrap my arms around her. Private want, useless want. Fucked up want.
My eyes rise again as I hear her tread upon the stairs, knowing it is her in the way that I know everything to me is her. Trying so hard to catch a gaze she won’t give me. And I want to scream again. I want to punch and kick again.
“You alright B?”
My words falling heavy from my lips, scared to sound light, almost scared to be heard.
“Huh?”
“I said… I said are you alright?”
“Peachy Faith. You?”
“Yeah, great… flying high.”
I follow her with my eyes as she walks right by, not stopping to engage in anything other than the bullshit phrases which just fell from her mouth. Nothing personal, nothing close to anything she has been sharing with me before this. Like she’s empty again. Like she doesn’t care again. Like I’m nothing to her.
And I AM going to punch something.
I pick myself up from the sofa and follow her out to the kitchen, just rest myself back against the side and watch her gathering some food. A tray for Red I guess. A pointless tray for a girl who won’t eat anything. I know that she knows I’m watching her, and I wonder how hard it is to not acknowledge me… maybe how easy it is.
“I’m gonna go back to mine.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe get washed up, get something to eat… gonna get some training done.”
“Right.”
“Maybe dance naked for a while, invite the neighbours round for a good old fashioned orgy…”
“Okay.”
And I know she doesn’t even hear me. It makes me slam my hand down hard, makes me jump as much as her as the crack resounds through the room. My eyes as wide as hers as finally she connects with me. As finally she looks me in the fucking face for the first time in days. I see her mouth gaping like a fish, words not forthcoming now that she feels like she’s on the spot. Now that she has to find words.
“You got something to say B?”
“Careful of the sides, I can’t afford to replace them.”
“You’re fucking joking me?”
“No Faith, I don’t have the time for jokes.”
And I see the slip slide, the flash of something in her eyes other than the emptiness that she has never ever really fooled me with. It makes me take a step closer, makes me reach out a hand to glide across her cheek, makes me sigh so fucking hard as she pulls herself back from me.
“I can’t… don’t you get it? We can’t.”
And I know I have no place to argue. What would I say?
‘Forget all the pain, forget the fact that the world has gone to shit… we’ll just carry on anyway? We’ll find happiness in a place where there is no room for happy?’
No. I don’t say anything. I just sigh that fucking sigh again and turn to go. Fuck goodbye, and fuck everything. I just need something to punch.
POV Buffy
I watch her go with downcast eyes that refuse to meet her face. Feel the tear as it rips right through me again, the twist in my heart as she leaves like I made her leave. Like I have to make her leave. I’m finding it hard enough to live with myself right now… if I look her in the eyes, then she will see the truth, and that is even harder for me to think about.
How can it be that when the whole world has gone to crap, I can still want nothing as much as I want to lose myself inside everything that is her? How can I even think that I have the right to want so much, when everyone else has been left with so little? When so much of it is all my fault? I can’t want. But I do want. And so I try to hide it all from her. I try to be strong Buffy, dutiful Buffy… the Buffy I should have been in the first place. The girl that would never have let this happen.
I stand here now piling pointless food onto a pointless tray and yet it still feels as if it is the ‘right’ thing to do. To carry it upstairs and argue the point with a best friend that has lost her whole point to life. That is so torn in the grief and the hurt and the guilt, that all she can do is to cry. To not hear my words as I try and make it sound better, as I offer false promises of a time when things will be okay… no. She knows that it is crap as much as I do, so she treats it like crap. She just fixes me with eyes which are still staining black, and dismisses me with her tears. Not letting me hold her. Barely letting me touch her.
She lets Xander hold her… she lets Dawnie soothe her brow, she even listens as Giles speaks in his fatherly tones to her… but not me. She won’t hear me. And I get that. The words that she shared that first day make me understand it in ways which I wish I didn’t have to understand. The dirty whore, the fucking bitch, the slut who let Spike touch her. The one who was wrong, who came back dirty. I heard all of the words and they sounded like the thoughts I had been berating myself with for months. Words which Faith had chased away, but now words which haunt me again. So tell me… how the hell can I wish to lose all of this in Faith?
That first night after, I had begged Hallie to make use of something like power, to grant a wish that would take us back, would make it different… but she couldn’t. Her power gone as long as D’Hoffryn is gone. More crap. What’s the point in having power if you can’t damn well use it?
And that’s a good laugh, right from my top drawer of laughs. I stood in that basement and I let everything happen around me and I didn’t use my power. I could have taken the dive through the wall… I have experience, I know what death feels like… but no. I decided that I wanted life too much to even think the possibility. I thought I could save them all, I didn’t realise that we would have to sacrifice anyone. That we would have to lose her. Maybe if I had known, if the hindsight had been given, then I would have been the one who had taken Warren out… but I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I don’t understand anything anymore. Everything was going so well, everything was getting better… and I was the fool to believe it. I should know by now that life is only about hurting. Look it up in the dictionary, I swear it’s what it will say. Forget the good times, the happy times… they have nothing on the hard times. On these times.
I look at the virtual feast I have prepared for Wills, and it doesn’t even tempt me. Only Faith tempts me, right? Yes. Pathetic, but true. I have eaten as much as Willow these last days, and my tummy doesn’t even care… everything within me is calling out to find Faith. To touch Faith. To taste Faith. It is all that I want to consume… and the thought just makes me sick at myself. It forces me into this penance of casting my eyes down from her. Of pretending that I don’t hear the words that she speaks to me. But I hear every one, I feel every one. I know that she is hurting like I am.
Oh god.
Can someone not just tell me what to do?
I pick up the tray and walk the stairs. Back to my room, back to the endless pain in Will’s eyes, the sight of the anguish on her face. I worry for her… I worry that she will try to do what she did with me, touching more darkness. I worry that she will try to join Tara wherever she is. That first day me and Faith had had to use all of our strength to restrain her… to hold her back from the path which would have taken her life. Her hurt gone, but ours magnified. Maybe we should have let her, who the hell are we to hold her back?
“Hey Wills, I brought you lunch…”
And she doesn’t look up. Her eyes dead as they stare from my window. Silent tears mapping a path down her face.
“You gonna eat something?”
I place it in the space where all of the untouched trays have lain and try to find my own spot next to her, glancing out at the view to see what captivates her so. Not expecting the words to come from her mouth. My ears assaulted by the depth of her torment.
“Look at the sun Buffy… do you see the sun?”
“Yeah… I see it.”
“It reminds me of her… all that light, all of that goodness burning so bright. It reminds me of her.”
I don’t know what to say. I say nothing.
“Without the sun, everything would die. Do you ever think that? Do you ever consider that?”
I still say nothing.
“Without the sun there can’t be life… it’s just darkness and death Buffy, it’s just nothing. And it feels… it feels like the sun has gone. I look at it… I look at it till my eyes burn… but it still feels like it has gone… like everything has died…”
Her shoulders are shaking again, her eyes clenching shut as she rips them from the view. And I can’t touch her… I know that if I touch her she will shake me from her, will shrug off any touch that I have to offer. So I lean over her instead, hope that my actions are the right ones. Slowly drawing the blinds to keep the view at bay.
And she doesn’t even register, her eyes flick up again and now she stares at the blinds in the same empty way that she stared at the sun. No more words to say, no more answers to any questions I could dare to ask. I know that she won’t be okay… I don’t need to form the words that would speak it. I turn instead as the door softly opens, register the worried look in Giles’s gaze as he takes us both in. I don’t know if he means to worry about me, or if the look just seeps from Willow, and I catch the leftovers. It doesn’t matter… I don’t want his worry. There is only one thing that I want now, that I need now. My selfishness enough to leave a bitter taste coating the roof of my mouth.
“Buffy..?”
“Yeah?”
“Could I have a quick word please?”
I think long and hard about it, let the minutes fill with a silence I can’t bring myself to break. Eventually nodding as I tear myself away from the companionship of another broken heart. “I’ll be back in a minute Will, try and eat something, okay?”
Leaving the room knowing that I won’t get an answer. That she doesn’t hear my words. I follow Giles instead, past Dawn’s closed door, down to my mom’s room. The empty room.
“What is it?”
“I’m worried.”
“Catch the newsflash… we’re all worried.”
“Not about Willow, I’m worried about you Buffy.”
“Nice sentiment, but I don’t need it… I’m fine. Peachy.”
It’s a line that I keep repeating. I don’t know if the fleshy fruit works as a cover, but it’s the word that keeps springing to my lips. A word that I keep finding no matter how broken down I feel inside. No matter how much my guilt and shame is eating me alive. Maybe like a peach… maybe I am the peach…
“You don’t need to keep the act with me, I understand that you want to reassure your friends, that you want to assure your sister, but this is me Buffy… you don’t need to hide the truth from me.”
“Who says I’m hiding?”
“Everything about you says that you are hiding. I know you haven’t eaten anything, I know that you have barely taken the time to sleep…”
“Sleep when you’re dead Giles, I know all about that.”
The chipper is all forced, and I see that he does know that. The firmness that he inserts into his words. The forcefulness of his gaze.
“For gods sake, can you not admit that you’re hurting too? Nobody expects you to bear this alone, no one expects anything from you… we are all hurting!”
“No, you’re wrong… I expect this from me. I have to be strong, I…”
His hand is warm as it finds my own, it’s roughness dwarfing mine as he attempts to comfort me. I should tell him that it isn’t his touch that I need. But I don’t. I let him hold on and speak his words. I expect me to be strong. Even for him.
“Buffy, it’s admirable what you are trying to do, but if you carry on, then what will happen when you break? Because you will break, no one can do this to themselves and not suffer. No one, not even a slayer.”
“Maybe I deserve to suffer? Did ya think of that one?”
He looks at me sadly. I smile back.
“Quit worrying about me, seriously… I’ve got this. I’m gonna be here for Wills, for Dawn… and maybe when they are feeling better, I’ll start to worry about myself. Okay?”
“And what about Faith?”
That stops me smiling. It brings the tears that I am fighting every minute of every day right back up to my surface. Don’t call me on that one Giles. Don’t make me tell you how much I need her… how much my selfish little want is encompassing everything else that I feel.
“What about her?” I go for steely. I know that she doesn’t deserve it.
“Why won’t you let her share the burden? You have to know that she wants to, that she is here for you.”
I know that it is stupid, I know that it is a lie, but I still look around the room in a dumb attempt at showmanship. “Well where is she then? I don’t see her here.”
And now he sighs. I can make everyone sigh.
“You have to stop pushing her away, I see what you do, and believe it or not I understand why you are doing it…”
No you don’t.
“…but it’s okay. It’s okay to want her, even when things are bad. That’s what love is Buffy, an ability to make it better. Why won’t you let her make it better?”
I can feel my head shaking, side to side. Adamantly no.
“You don’t understand! We said… god, we said that we would save the world Giles, and we lied. Do you get that? And now I can’t go to her, I can’t save ourselves when I let Tara go… I can’t do better, I can’t be better!”
“You didn’t let Tara go, Tara made her own decision, a very brave decision, don’t take that away from her.”
“She never should have been in a position to make it though, should she? That’s what I’m here for… remember? One girl, facing evil, stopping the tide? All the things that you taught me Giles, and now you’re telling me that it’s crap? That this isn’t my fault?”
I try and draw breath back into my body. Clench my fists tight to rein it all in. He makes another grab for me, another fatherly touch that I just can’t feel.
“That’s precisely what I’m saying Buffy. This is not your fault, it doesn’t matter how much you punish yourself, it isn’t your fault!”
Now his hands go to my shoulders, forcing me to look him in the eye, to hear the words no matter how much I try not to.
“It isn’t your fault, or Faith’s fault, or Willow’s fault… it isn’t even Andrew’s fault…”
Damn! I was sharing a little of my blame with Andrew. He knows it as well. He may be back home with mommy, but he knows that I have some blame waiting for him on his return. A talk that needs to be had. Anger that needs to be sated. I try and focus back on the words. On the eyes.
“…it’s nobody’s fault Buffy. It’s evil, it’s what evil does, and I know that it hurts… god knows I’ve felt the hurt, but we keep on going. We keep on fighting. It’s the best that we can do, and I know how good you’re best can be.”
His eyes are shining for me. Perhaps for Jenny too. For Tara. The list would be endless if we started to count everyone that we have lost to evil.
“I’m tired Giles… I just… I’m so tired.”
I let go as he holds me, as his arms envelope me in the way that I had wished for for months. Endless days when I had longed for his return, longed for him to pull me back from my slipping spiral of badness. I hold on tight now, I let the tears for all of that time fall onto his shoulder. And it shocks me… I had thought that I only needed Faith, and now I see that comfort can come from many places. That it isn’t only selfish want that consumes me.
“You can’t give up Buffy, no matter what… you can’t give up. I won’t let you give up.”
“What if I really, really want to?”
“Not even then.”
And it feels good to accept that. Maybe it’s parental, maybe it’s the thing that I have missed since mom… went. Whatever it is, I let it make me smile in truth. Let it fill me with something other than the bad stuff. I slowly break the hold as my thoughts turn back towards Will, towards sitting with her and trying to bring her some of the comfort I had just been given.
“Thank you for that, I needed it…”
“Yes you did.”
“I’m gonna get back to Willow, try and get her to eat something, to talk maybe…”
“No Buffy, I’m going to sit with Willow.”
“Okay, I’ll go hang with Dawn.”
“You really are bloody pain in the arse.”
“Huh?”
Because you what?
“You’re going to go to Faith, and when you get there, you are going to sit down and talk all of this through with her.”
“No I’m not.”
“Don’t make me shout.”
And I laugh.
“Oh come on Giles, you can’t shout at me anymore, I’m all grown up!”
“Well start acting like it then. I know how much you need each other, how much you can help each other… now bloody well go to her!”
“But… but what about Will, Dawn…”
“I’m perfectly capable of looking after them myself.”
I remember all of the times that I have abandoned them for my own selfish desire, for the wants which I had no control over, wants which I didn’t even try and control… and I won’t do that again. I won’t leave them again.
“No Giles, it’s my responsibility, I won’t leave them. Not again.”
“And I am not giving you the choice, I’ll watch over them Buffy, I’ll watch over them like I always should have done…”
I catch as his eyes go shifty, as they sink to the floor along with his tone.
“…if you want to apportion blame, then I have to accept some as well.”
“You what?”
“I never should have left when I did, I know that… who knows how things would have turned out if I hadn’t have left, if I was here for all of you whilst all of this was happening?”
I just shake my head. I don’t blame him. It hurts that he left me, that he left us… but I don’t blame him.
“It’s okay Giles, it’s past now.”
“I know that, but I want to be here now, for you… for all of you, and that includes Faith. Now just trust me Buffy, and go to her. Please?”
And how can I refuse an offer like that? It makes me smile in a way that I haven’t found to smile in days. In a way which I didn’t believe I would be able to smile again. And it doesn’t feel so selfish, it feels… I don’t know? Right?
“Okay, I’ll go… but only because you’re forcing me, not because I want to go more than anything, right?”
“Your secret’s safe, I won’t tell anyone.”
He offers me the look that always felt paternal, and draws me back into a hug. More seeds being planted that we can find a way through all of this, that if we just stick together instead of pushing people away, then it will be okay. That we can make things better.
“I won’t be long…”
“Take as long as you need.”
I give him a last smile, a perky wave, and I turn from the room. Turn to accept everything that I want, everything that I need.
I turn to Faith.
POV Faith
How hard can I punch? How hard can I push? Nothing hard enough, nothing enough to wipe the feeling from my body. Her dismissal, her lack of feeling. Her lack of anything. I push through all of it. I push through the hurt and the pain, the loss and the sadness… I am a slayer, I don’t need anyone. Or some other bullshit. Whatever. I just push harder. My makeshift punch bag standing up well to the torrent of blows I am raining down upon it. And it beats the alternative, it beats standing in front of her and demanding answers where she has none, demanding comfort that she can’t offer me. Won’t offer me.
Still too many hours, too many minutes and seconds that all smash together to leave me feeling lost and confused. Maybe torn and a little bit broken. I tried to ring Angel, tried to ring Cordy, tried to get a semblance of something other than this fucked up feeling, but all that I got was the answer machine. Leaving messages that sounded too bright, cracking jokes that sounded too forced. Fuck knows where they are, what they are doing… I just know that they are not there. That no one is there. Another reason to punch this hard, to push this hard. It doesn’t make a difference, but it stops me from thinking too much. From feeling too much.
I don’t even care that I didn’t strap my hands, that the pain is becoming more physical as I take the skin from my knuckles. Not enough to draw blood, I’m not fucking stupid, but enough to sting. To make me hiss as I keep up the relentlessness of my work out. Training for a fight that is already lost.
It’s like a rhythm I can dance to, the bang, bang, banging offering the same feel as a hypnotic dance number. Seeping through my skin, past my bones and down to my core. Keeping me standing, moving in a way that my body appreciates. Footwork perfect, arms in sync. It makes me miss the door at first. An unwelcome interruption, a beat which doesn’t sit the same. My ears hearing before my body can react, missing a punch. My head turning. And why can’t the world just fuck off?
Grabbing a towel as I head for the door, fixing a scowl that I’ll show to whichever fucker has found the time to come knocking at my door. I don’t collect encyclopaedias, I don’t wanna join the watch tower… my face says it all. Swinging the door open like I want to swing my punches. Hard and fast. Unforgiving.
“Hey.”
And slap my ass, and bring on the oxygen, cos I swear I just stopped breathing.
“You gonna invite me in?”
“Yeah, sure, of course… you wanna come in?”
And fuck hello, and all other forms of intelligible greeting, because I have nothing. Except a towel. And kinda grazed knuckles. And a look which may be surprised, or could be dumbstruck. Hell, it could just be plain old dumb.
“So you didn’t get the neighbours in for the naked dancing then?”
I see the twinkle in her eye and I wonder what I have missed. What the hell has happened between the then and the now, the thing which has her looking me straight in the eyes, and looking like she cares.
“I didn’t think you heard that B, fuck… I didn’t think you heard anything.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
Because I know nothing. As in the kind of nothing that equals zero. It’s not a heck of a lot.
“I know that I’ve been… distant?”
“Missing in action.”
She’s following me as I back my way into the front room. All the time those eyes not moving, not leaving me. Locking me into her gaze and keeping me prisoner. It makes it fucking hard to not want to take her, to do all of the things which I have berated myself for wanting to do…
“Yeah, I guess I’ve been out of the game…”
“I don’t want games B.”
“Then what do you want?”
Holy fuck.
I feel as my knees hit the back of the sofa, as I have no where else left to go except forwards. My mouth now doing the gaping fish, trying to find words which aren’t inappropriate… which won’t make her turn and run with distaste for my desire.
“Uh… talk? Yeah… you wanna sit?”
I let my legs collapse my weight and bring myself down to sitting. Nervously patting beside me in an offer at something controlled. Just talking… working through the shit. Trying to find some comfort in the words.
“I don’t know… I could sit, sitting would be okay… but what I want, what I need?”
She is standing before me, her eyes ablaze with what I am feeling, with what I am needing… and I don’t understand…
“Buffy..?”
“No, wrong answer.”
She kneels her way in front of me, my legs parting to let her come closer. To let her run her fingers across the exposed skin of my legs, up to my thighs. Gentle circles. Testing circles. And I can’t speak… I don’t know what to say.
“I want you Faith… I need you, is that okay? Can I… have you?”
I hear the way that her voice wavers, the shakyness beneath the seductiveness… the unsurity, the uncertainty. And maybe I do understand. Maybe I know that she has fought this feeling as long and as hard as I have… this feeling that won’t go away even amongst all of the hurt and all of the pain, that is perhaps stronger now through the hurt and the pain. And there is only one word that I know, one word that means anything here in this moment. Our moment.
“Yes.”
I speak it and I feel it. As her body closes the distance to bring her lips up against mine. Such soft kisses. Reacquainting kisses. Her tongue barely poking out to taste the sweat from my lips, to taste the work out that I had just pounded furiously against the punch bag. I let my arms reach forwards to bring her into me, feeling her skin shiver beneath her top as I find a way to edge her closer. Shift my own ass on the seat to edge myself closer. I feel it as it starts to burn through me, as my heart beats faster, and the blood flows like a river through my veins. All one way traffic, heating up a centre that has been so fucking desperate to come to life. Making my hips grind against any part of her it can gain purchase on. Deepening the kiss to make it more real, more urgent. Everything that I want. And I don’t care for thoughts or petty admonishments, don’t care for voices telling me that we don’t deserve this, that we haven’t earned this, because I don’t fucking care anymore. All that I care about is here in this instant. I break the stream of the hello kisses to show her satisfaction in my smile, to offer the hoarseness that sits within my voice.
“You wanna take this to the bedroom B?”
“I wanna take you in the bedroom F.”
And I force my legs to gain feeling, to not permanently buckle from the words I have longed to hear. Standing up and in front of her, not able to stop touching her. Her eyebrows imitating mine with all sorts of hidden promise. My lips crush hard against lips, my hand sliding up to grab her head from behind, to bring her tight in against me, my tongue duelling with hers as we edge our way back. Knocking into the table and not giving a shit, reaching the doorframe and having to pause. She fits so well against it, I fit so well against her. My hands are pulling at her shirt, as my mouth doesn’t let her go. Her own hands reaching my skin first, making me hiss in something other than pain now… her lips sliding from mine to trace a path across my jaw and to my neck… sucking softly, fingers teasing flesh as she lets them travel up across my navel…
I grab at her again, pin my knee firmly between her thighs, trapping her hand against the skin of my stomach. I want to touch her too… I want to feel her too. I hear her gasp as my hands slide under her top, grazing across the expanse of her back to meet the clasp of a bra… and it’s so fucking easy, an unspoken skill as I release it from it’s burden, as I feel it go limp under my touch… my fingers slipping around, pulling myself back to give myself the room move… to bring my touch to the front of her, under the lace which I’m sure looks so pretty, to breasts which I know feel so good.
“Oh god… Faith…”
Her mouth calling me back. Her neck tipping as she exposes skin to me, as she lets the breath fall from her mouth as urgently as her words. And it’s so fucking intoxicating… making me grind harder, making me want more. And I can’t care for fucking sweet and slow, and doorframes and waiting… I slam myself hard into her, crushing her body against me as I find a way to pick her up, her legs wrapping around me in ways which insist that she doesn’t need sweet and slow either… that she just needs this.
I don’t know if I have words, if the mumblings I whisper against her neck mean anything other than the need to have her. To throw her down upon the bed and pull the top clean from my body, standing above her with my naked intent written all over me, not just in my eyes now, but in the sight of my skin. Her eyes are making all of the right comments, praising me before her mouth even opens, consuming me without the use of her lips… and I know that I smile the cocky smile, I know that my tongue traces my own lips in ways which I am going to trace hers… lasciviously… it’s a word that I love.
“You see what you want B?”
Energy crackling between our eyes, the lust so fucking plain to see. Her head’s nodding slowly as she tries to bring herself up from the position that I have thrown her down into. But I don’t want that… I want this… snaking my way up and across her, teasing her with my almost nakedness as I hold her arms firm beneath me, gasping as she raises her head to flick her tongue out at my breasts, a warm moist graze which makes my nipples ache, makes me groan in need as I lower myself down to her. I kiss at her neck, sucking harshly against the pulse which I know beats faster for me, letting it make the wetness gather beneath the only clothes I have left, no need for panties here, when a workout demands only shorts.
“Faith… oh god, let me up…I want to touch…”
And no. I silence her requests with the force of my kiss, plunging my tongue deep inside her mouth, feeling her teeth, feeling her own force as she tries to gain back control… letting her suck on my tongue as I draw slowly away…
“Why do ya wanna get up B? You don’t want this?”
I tease her again with the sway of my breasts, teasing myself more as her mouth catches on and sucks deep, torturing both of us by pulling away, smiling my smile. And I know that wanting to touch is jack shit to do with it, I know that as another slayer she wants to ride on top… but I got here first, and it damn well makes me grin. Makes me smile some more as she recognises that I know… that the same blood scorches through my veins as scorches through hers. The fucking chosen two.
I bring her arms together above her head to free up a hand, letting it fall fast to the skin which peeks from beneath her top, ripping it away, tearing at the seams which are desperate to give… the loosened bra as easy to remove as she is to hold in place, finally feeling the joy as my flesh burns against hers, as I feel the aching touch of my nipples pressing firm now against nipples, biting my lips to stop from screaming out the feeling, the desire to slide past the niceties and just take her like I need to… to feel my fingers pumping at the walls inside of her…
“Tell me you want me…”
I grind into her as I say it, not flesh against flesh, not there yet, still cloth against cloth… still wetness pooling where it should run free… the harshness of a seam as it grinds against a straining clit… and I see her own lips biting, her eyes scrunching shut as I push down with all that I have…
“I, oh…”
Pushing harder, the rhythm as obvious as our connection, binding us in the moment, her hips meeting mine in a desperate bid to feel more, and I’m so sick of restraints now, of clothes keeping us in, when all I that want is to get out. To break free.
“Say it for me…”
Breathing it out into her ears, as my hand travels down to find a zip, to wrestle a button, to hear her own gasped reply as my fingers slip against the warm feel of heated panties, moist through with the proof of everything that she wants.
“I want you Faith, god… I so want you…”
And it’s so fucking hot to hear her saying it now, and god, it makes me want so much more. I wanna hear those tones stoking my lust in the same way that her skin is burning me like fire, desperate to hear that pretty mouth speak to me everything that she needs… how she needs it. I pull myself back to make the room to manoeuvre, to give my hands every space needed to strip her of the pants that constrict my way, that hint at the dampness without revealing the wetness. And I want the wetness, I wanna fucking drown in it. Wanna dive so god damn deep that I never hear the sounds of the real world again. My words are coated in throatiness as I speak, practically growling it out into the softness of her neck, pulling back to find her eyes…
“Tell me what you want B…”
Letting go of her arms as I travel back down her body, my mouth pouring urgent kisses across her flesh, sucking at the pinkness of the nipples which are reaching up to meet me. Finding a path across her stomach and then breaking away, looking into those deep green eyes again, pleading with her, longing for her words…
“Tell me how you want it…”
Lifting her ass like an expert as her pants take the trip down, her hips rising to accommodate me, yet her mouth clamping shut, her eyes wide as she shows me her vulnerability. As she struggles to find the words I need to hear.
“Tell you..?”
And it makes me pause in my movements, makes me slowly slide my skin against hers as I make my way back, until we are laying together, length to length, all points of contact screaming at me to take. My breathing harsh in my throat as I seek to control what I’ve never been so good at controlling… “Please Buffy…”
My eyes locking tight into hers, trying to offer promise, trying to set her free. “…tell me.”
I let my hips remind themselves to grind again, nudging her onwards, feeling as her hips strike the same. Just panties and shorts. Hearing as our breathing becomes heavy and heated, almost losing the will to have more, so fucking good it feels just sliding against her like this. As I raise myself up onto elbows I feel the ache growing heavier as my breasts graze against hers again, and it’s enough to almost have me crying out… almost, but no… oh fuck, keeping a lid on it, dipping down to taste her lips again, her mouth so hot and wet for me. Her whole body in tune with me.
“I want you… uh…” Letting my hand travel down across her sweat covered stomach as I predict the outcome of her unspoken request, her breath hitching over and over as I rub a rhythm across the front of panties that have soaked themselves through with need. Teasing the edges, touches so close, yet remaining so far.
“Do you want this..?”
Just underneath, just the beginning of tightly trimmed curls pulling me closer, hips bucking harder demanding that I give. That I take. But I want the words, I want her voice telling me that she wants me to…
“God Faith… please… fuck me, please…?”
And I let that tone in her voice be all that I’ve ever needed to hear, ripping the slight cotton panties from her body to remove the final barrier, my hand cupping her fully just to catch everything that she has for me, pooling in my palm, the heat in her pussy burning my fingers as they touch. And I lose words again, don’t even know what my voice is speaking, no chance of hearing what it is that she says… I heard all that I needed and now I have everything that I wanted… sliding lips apart as she hisses against my shoulder, so soft, so gentle… I think I exclaim at her wetness, cos she is so fucking wet for me, her clit standing taut as it begs me to touch… round and around, back and forth, knowing that harder is what she desires as her own fingers clench tight against my back… as her words becomes hitches, sighs, moans…
“Faith…”
Over and over, my name on her lips.
It urges me to go deeper, to slide down, to find an entrance to the girl that I’ve never stopped loving, so open to me now… legs spreading without any request, hips bucking as I push my way into space that I swear was made just for me… so fucking tight, and so fucking wet, clenching against me, pulling me in… and I’m fuckiing living it, my whole god damn being centred upon her centre, my existence nothing past the feel of her pussy widening to accommodate my touch, another finger… another sigh, another breath which calls my name…
“God B, you feel so fucking good…”
Speaking words I can’t hear, just sounds, just visions… trying to focus on her eyes as they strain to stay open, all my strength needed not to just lose it here. I widen my touch as I thrust my fingers further inside, her response all kinds of eager as I fill her completely… her own cries of god, of so fucking good. Harder and faster, reality passed as she bites down on my shoulder… as her teeth make me buck my thigh hard against my hand, reaffirming a rhythm so deep. And I know that she’s there, I know it as much as I feel it, sliding through me, ripping through me… her body going wild against mine as I hook my fingers against places that I know they’ll work best, my whole arm screaming with the force of her contractions, her mouth fucking screaming as she gives up her all. Exploding against me, around me… the world spinning as I pound harder, as I beg for more… words, sounds, fucking pleading with her to give me everything…
“God Faith…”
“Yes Faith…”
“Harder Faith…”
I hear it all, I give her it all. Her legs wrapping so tight around me as she rides out the climax, my heart pounding in my ears, moans falling from my lips at will. Feeling the throb and taking it slower, sliding to gentle as she pants out my name now, as her eyes lock into mine again, and I show her the way down, softly, smoothly down. Speech nothing as meaningful as the look that we are sharing. As the thing that I am feeling. And I have to kiss her. My fingers buried knuckle deep inside her pulsating pussy, and I have to kiss her. Have to taste the lips which made me take her, have to show her how god damn much this means to me. How much she means to me. Invading her mouth with my tongue in a final act of penetration. Of love. Not scared of crushing her beneath me, just needing her to touch every part of me. Needing to prolong this moment for all that it is worth.
Until it slows, until my heart beats in a way that lets me hear again. Until lips tickle me softly with kisses that are verging now on innocence, until I feel safe enough to release myself from her, sliding my fingers free. And I catch her little moan, the soft sigh that drips from her lips as my hand pulls away. And I kiss her again. Reassurance for both of us. That’s just how it feels.
I roll to the side to allow her to breathe, to allow me to see… her face, her body, the flush that sits in sheen against her skin. So fucking beautiful. She is so fucking beautiful, and I have to tell her. It would be wrong not to tell her.
“You’re beautiful B, you know that? You are so fucking beautiful…”
Her eyes sparkle for me and the corners of her mouth rise up into a smile. “No Faith, that was beautiful… god was it beautiful.” She grins at me mischievously, her lips twitching, her smile stretching. “And uh…pretty wicked cool?”
And I laugh, or I chuckle, fuck knows what it is. But I smile and I nod and I speak. “Yeah B, wicked fucking cool.”
My back hits the bed as I roll over more, staring up at the ceiling and wondering if I can see heaven from here. Knowing that I feel it as she rolls her body close to mine. Nestling against me… fingers tickling a way across my own sweat sheened skin.
“Did you notice..?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve still got your pants on!”
And this time I know that I full on belly laugh. How fucked up is that? I guess I just lost track of my own pair of pants.
“I’m still taking it slow B, don’t wanna go too fast, ya know..?”
I tense my stomach as her fingers ease their way across, circling my navel, dipping inside the shorts which I should have lost ages ago. Teasing me, taunting me…
“So… did you want to lose them, or is that ‘too fast’, cos I’m all for the slow, if that’s what you want?”
I want her.
“Is that what you want Buffy?”
Cos I can play this game too. I fucking invented this game. Not prepared for her answer. Not prepared as her eyes take on a look which surprises me, her mouth giving out a heavy sigh which reminds me that this moment isn’t every moment, that the world still exists after all. As if the air suddenly blows with an unwelcome chill, as if somehow reality just pricked at her consciousness.
“I do… you know that I do… but can we… I don’t know, can we talk Faith? I just… is that okay, for a while… can we just talk for a bit?”
“Whoa… you got your rocks off and now you wanna talk?”
My teasing tone doesn’t stop her now solemn nod, and I know that my body should protest, fuck it, I know that every damn part of me should protest… but I can’t. I may be the horniest damn girl in this whole existing world, but at this moment I’m also the happiest. My smile sliding wide across my lips as I nod my head to confirm it. Yes I want her, yes I want those teasing fingers to show me everything that they’ve got, I want my mouth to travel that hot as fuck body and bury my tongue deep inside the pussy which I’ve only just met… but I don’t know. Hearing her words, it just touches me. More than touches me. Because in her tone I hear my own hidden sadness, in her tone I hear my own hidden need. Not for sex, for fucking, but for us. To share the things that only we can share. To share the things that I have needed to share since the world went to shit in a basement. We have a lifetime for us, for me to get my rocks off, we are the lucky ones… but now this moment is for ta lking. For healing.
I hear her words and I get that. And I want to talk. I want to make it better with more than touches. I let my hand go to hers to steady it in its movements, knowing I won’t be able to talk for long if her fingers don’t stop in the downward spiral they seem so intent upon travelling. Rolling again to bring us both onto our sides. Face to face, body to body. And if it didn’t sound so fucking soppy, I guess I’d say heart to heart.
“We can talk as long as you need to B, as long as we need to.”
Her smile is all the reward that I need right now. Calming my pulse, soothing my body. Clearing my head as I make the room to hear her words, as I make the room to form my own. I glance to the window and appreciate the onset of dusk. We have all night and I plan to use it well. To talk it out, to sound it out, to say everything that needs to be said to make the world quiet. To give me the hush that I need to tell her the truth of everything. To tell her I love her, and to hope that it helps.
I know that she knows it, feels it too, her sated smile shining with it. But I have to tell her. As I look across into eyes that stare deep back at mine, I can’t wait to tell her. To say the words which I hope can begin to make it all better.
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