Title: Bitter Truth
Author: Wanderlustlover
Email: PG-13
Category:
Disclaimer: Nothing here is mine, as usual. I do this purely out of love and respect for the series and the characters.
Archive: Ask first, though I will usually concede.
The broken pieces of her bracelet lay on the floor still. Pieces of it had shattered on contact with the concrete. It had happened about twenty minutes ago when Tara had moved to stand up from the park bench. It had caught on the armrest and all the tiny pieces, perfect and flawless, had gone flying. It was a tiny thing that shouldn't have caused her any worry, except the next moment her throat had gone dry and tears had started falling.
It was only a bracelet. Only a bracelet that Willow had bought the small beads for and strung herself. It was only a bracelet she'd worn since the first week after Willow had finally made her choice and chosen Tara. Not some boy in a flannel or who was an already made part of her Scooby Gang. But she'd chosen Tara herself, who'd waited patiently, honestly expecting that the 'mostly straight' girl she had a crush on would never see her the way she longed to be seen.
And those first days, weeks, even months had been amazing.
Until things started going weird with Willow. She started delving into magical books of ancient Arcanum like they were the only air she could breathe. She started making comments about how she wanted to 'actually' be useful. She couldn't and wouldn't hear it when anyone told her she was helpful and she did a whole lot.
She definitely didn't seem to think they loved her just for being herself.
Nothing mattered but magic.
Gods, how could she even think that about her Willow? Her Willow, who wore toe socks with little faces on them to sleep because she said her toes looked friendlier when she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Her Willow, whose eyes peeked out beautifully from her bangs, sparkling the best when she learned something new and wonderful that she had to share.
But when was the last time she'd done even one of those amazingly cute Willow things she used to do almost two or three times an hour?
Nothing mattered but magic.
Willow went into terrors about the idea anytime someone said she was doing enough or even had been doing enough. Or if anyone suggested she needed to back off of the inter fold into magic that her utter attention had turned to. She seemed to think that she wasn't worth anyone's time if she couldn't become part of the fighting scene's and the power plays.
And it reminded Tara of her mother. Watching her mother slowly fade away, piece by piece, from the world where she could touch and hold her hand, into a world she couldn't follow into. And all she could do was sit there and watch it happen.
Except that wasn't the truth.
Her mother had been dying and her girl friend wasn't dying, she was addicted to power. So addicted that she'd cast a spell on her girlfriend because they'd had a fight about her addiction to magic and power. And Tara knew what she had to do. Because she wasn't a victim. She'd been a victim all her life to her family. And if she played the victim to her girl friend she did it now willingly, which was not what Willow and Scooby Gang had taught her to have courage and a backbone for.
So red-rim eyed and sniffling Tara sat on the park bench trying to steal herself since that one clear moment when she'd realized she had to break up with the love of her life for the betterment of her life.