Author: 9kodama aka LonelyTara
Summary: A Christmas miracle brings two lovers back together.
Disclaimer: BtVS belongs to Joss Whedon, ME, and Fox. Please don't sue.
Rating: PG to PG-13
In From the Cold
She didn't know how long she'd wandered. When she'd fled her father's house the sun was lost behind a sky thick with gray, which had quickly given way to flurries of clinging snow. As the sun dropped below the mountain line, the snow grew heavier and heavier, till she was left slogging through drifts up to her knees. She couldn't feel her feet anymore, and she was tired, so tired.
"Merry Christmas," she murmured to herself, her voice sucked away by the howl of the wind. "Keep moving, Tara."
The shivering girl pushed one step after the other, praying to all the gods and goddesses that she knew for some shelter from the cold. With every step she took, Tara counted in her head, a silent tally of her weariness and woe. And when she took her forty-seventh step, the world changed.
It was almost as if her prayers had been heard. The snow began to thin, soften, revealing the thick spread of evergreens all around her. The trees parted into a glade, and on the far side there was a small wooden structure.
Cabin, Tara's weary mind provided. Shelter. She walked across the glade. She could see snow clinging against a small windowpane set in the sidewall of the cabin, fragile and glimmering with its coat of frost. Just a little bit farther, Tara thought to herself.
There was a flash of red and Tara's heart leapt. Fire, she thought to herself. Fire and warmth. She moved closer to the rough little cabin, closer, till she was pressed right up against the bark of the pine timbers. She looked through the window and saw several candles, flickering dimly around the room. But there was a fire, she thought. I know I saw a fire. And then she saw the girl.
The fire was the girl, and the girl was the fire, auburn hair flying as the girl danced in the flickering shadows cast by the candles. Every movement of her body seemed an amazing blend of purpose and instinct, immeasurable in its elegance.
Beautiful, Tara thought. Her chest tightened almost painfully. So beautiful.
In that moment Tara felt it would be okay if she died there, in the snow, because she had seen a sacred thing. A thing of such grace that she knew her heart would keep it safe forever.
The instant she had the thought the red haired girl stopped dancing. She stood, facing the window, locked eye to eye with Tara.
Tara tensed, thought about running back out into the snow, into the dark and her loneliness, but she couldn't move. The pressure, the heat, of the dancing girl's gaze kept her locked to the spot.
'Don't go,' the girl mouthed. 'Please don't go.'
Tara could only nod.
In an instant the girl was standing next to her in the snow, shivering in dark trousers and a thick, hand-knit, cream-colored sweater. She held out alabaster hands and Tara raised her own to meet them, let the girl's supple, warm fingers wrap around her own.
"I've been waiting for you," the red haired girl whispered. Her voice was high, sweet. "Please, come inside. You must be freezing."
Tara didn't understand, but she nodded, entranced by the beautiful young woman. The dancer led Tara through the snow, into the candlelight-kissed shadows of the cabin. As soon as they stepped inside Tara felt her hands squeezed gently, and then released. She watched, feeling numb, almost dreamy, as the girl barred the door with a thick oaken plank. With that task done, she dashed across the room light as air, perched on her tiptoes, to snag a blanket that she wrapped with tender care around Tara's shoulders.
"You were w-waiting for me?" Tara asked softly, pulling the blanket more tightly around her herself. She stared down at the rough unfinished plank floor of the cabin.
"I've been waiting for you for years, Tara," the dancer replied softly.
Tara felt a delicate hand run over her cheek, under her chin, gently tilting her head back till she was looking the dancing girl in the eye. In her green eyes, rich as summer grass.
"Willow?" Tara asked plaintively, her voice cracking with emotion.
"Yes," the red haired dancer replied, beaming. "I'm Willow."
How can she be Willow? Tara looked at the vision of supple grace in front of her, confident and beaming, and tried to reconcile her with the memory of her first and only love. She and Willow Rosenberg had been gangly girls together, neighbors, best friends and then girlfriends. They had been outcasts together, with Willow's shy awkwardness matched by Tara's nervous stutter. Twelve years, Tara thought. She reached out and brought a shaking hand to Willow's cheek. Willow's eyes closed as she smiled and leaned into the touch. The girl I loved is a woman, and I love her just the same. Each second of those twelve years have made her so much more beautiful. Tara wished she could say the same for herself.
"I wrote every day for a fourteen months," Willow said. There was no recrimination in her voice, but her smile was sad. "They always came back."
"My father, Tara replied. "He wouldn't let me keep them."
"I understand." Willow nodded, and even that tiny movement had a poetry to it, her neck bowing and extending like a swan.
"W-What happened to you?" Tara asked softly, stroking Willow's cheek.
Willow reached up and took Tara's hand, squeezing it gently and pressing it to her heart.
"I'll tell you, I promise," she vowed. "But first we need to get you warmed up." Willow walked over toward the center of the field of candles, where a long, low couch, thick with cushions, sat with more blankets folded over the back of it.
She helped Tara settle onto the sofa, piling more blankets around her shoulders. When that was done, she slipped Tara's boots off, revealing snow-dampened socks beneath.
"You don't have to do that," Tara said as Willow peeled off each sock. Her feet were white, the edges of her toenails purple-blue with cold.
"Shush," Willow soothed. "Think warm thoughts." She took a blanket and began to gently rub heat and life back into Tara's feet. The blonde gasped as pins and needles shot from her knees to her toes. "I'm sorry, I know it must hurt," Willow murmured.
"No," Tara said, reaching out from under the blankets to squeeze Willow's shoulder. "No, it's all right. Thank you, Willow."
They sat in silence, for how long Tara couldn't say. When Willow finished warming Tara's feet she left them wrapped in a blanket, moving on to gently rub Tara's hands. The heat and Willow's gentle caresses left Tara feeling drowsy, feeling safe for the first time in a long time. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, snapping back open as Willow began to speak.
"When Mom and Dad…when their plane went down," Willow said, her voice thick with emotion, "And social services took me, I was sent to live with Rosalie, my father's sister." She paused, stroking from Tara's wrists to the tips of her fingers, gentle and sure. "She's a dancer. She did ballet as a girl, but then she switched to modern."
"She taught you," Tara said. She couldn't help but admire the slender woman's toned frame.
Willow nodded, smiling, still staring down at Tara's hands. "Of course I thought I would be terrible, I was so clumsy. But Aunt Rosalie was patient, and before I knew it, I found this other Willow hidden in me.
"Like the crystal in a geode," Tara murmured. "Bright and beautiful."
Willow blushed, finally looking up at Tara. She smiled when she met Tara's eyes, and it was breathtaking.
"I can't imagine not dancing. I went to Julliard—can you believe it? I work with a dance company back in New York. It's wonderful."
"New York?" Tara asked. The redhead's admission brought the strangeness of the situation crashing back home. Willow lived in New York, but here they were, together, in an isolated track of forest in eastern Oregon. "How did you get here?" She whispered. "How did you know where to find me?"
Willow just watched her for a moment, a little smile curving her beautiful lips. Her smile widened and she lifted Tara's hands to her mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to her fingers.
"I want to tell you," Willow replied, but let me show you something first?"
She nodded and Willow stood. She moved out of the candlelight, into one of the darkened corners of the cabin, and returned with a little cotton-wrapped bundle held in her arms. A few steps brought her back to the couch and Willow dropped her knees in front of Tara, holding out her hands, resting them lightly in Tara's lap.
Tara peeled back the layers of fabric, revealing a cloth doll. She wore a white pinafore dress with candy-cane striped stockings, legs capped with little knitted booties made of white yarn. There was a line red line of stitching on her face, curved in a crooked smile, and her eyes were blue buttons, sapphire bright. The finishing touch was a wealth of honey-gold yarn hair, pulled into pigtails.
"You kept her?" Tara breathed, reached out with a shaking hand to trace the hand-stitched smile.
"Of course I kept my Tara doll," Willow replied. "Your mother made her, and it was the last thing you gave to me, before—"
"Before you had to go away," Tara finished softly.
"Yes," Willow agreed, voice laced with regret. She laid the doll down on the couch next to Tara's leg and took hold of Tara's hands again, cradling them between her own. "I didn't want to leave you."
"I know," Tara whispered. She felt a tear well, slide down her cheek.
The day of the funeral, the day they put Willow's family in the earth, social services came to take her into custody. Tara's mother, the reps from DCF, had to literally pull the weeping girls apart, both thrashing and screaming as they cried out for one another, to be allowed to stay together.
"I used to hold that doll every night to get to sleep," Willow murmured, running her thumbs over Tara's knuckles in slow, gentle sweeps. "And every night I dreamed of you, Tara. I saw you at school, taking walks in the woods, hiding out in our old fort to read. There were times I felt like I was close enough to touch you." She squeezed Tara's hands gently, as if assuring herself the blonde was really there. "I tried to talk to you, but you never heard me."
"No I did," Tara replied. She slipped her hands free of Willow's and took the redhead's face in my hands. "I heard your voice every night when I slept. It made me feel safe, Willow. It made me feel like I wasn't alone." She learned forward and placed a gentle kiss on the girl's forehead, pulling her into a hug. "I thought about you every day."
The slender girl began to tremble in Tara's arms. "Did you stop thinking of me?" Willow breathed tearfully. "Is that why the dreams stopped?"
"N-No," Tara said shakily. She leaned out of their embrace and took Willow's face in her hands again. "No," her voice was firm, earnest. "I stopped hoping, Willow. After M-Mom died, and I was left with Dad and Donny, I just stopped hoping." She took a deep breath, forced herself to keep her head up, to keep her eyes on Willow. "Before three nights ago I hadn't dreamed in years. I thought I was going to die in that place."
"But Monday night," Willow said, reaching out to smooth a piece of the doll's yarn hair in place. "Monday night you dreamed?"
"I did," Tara replied, nodding. She felt a blush creep into her cheeks and dropped her gaze to the floor. "I dreamed of you," she whispered. She'd dreamed of their first kiss, the sweet and tender warmth of it, sheltered in their fort in the old oak tree on the back of her parents' farm.
"I think I saw it, Tara," Willow said, her voice laced with wonder. "When I went to sleep that night I dreamed of you, of us." A flush brightened her cheeks—clear even in the candlelight. "The day you kissed me in the fort."
"How is that possible?" Tara asked. "How could you know?"
"Rosalie's gone," Willow said. Tara's brow furrowed in confusion, but she didn't interrupt, trusting that Willow would explain. "She's going to teach for a few weeks at a school in Paris, and so we got together on Monday to celebrate the solstice—" Willow's lips quirked in a wry grin. "She doesn't do Hanukkah. We usually just have a meal together, but this year she brought me a present." Her lovely eyes slipped from Tara's, down to the doll lying on the couch.
"The doll?" Tara asked.
Willow nodded, smiling, still staring down at it. "I just moved into my own place six months ago, to be closer to the studio. I accidentally left her behind. Aunt Rosalie found her sitting on the dresser in my old room, and so she decided to give her to me."
"That was sweet of her," Tara said.
"She called it the gift of memory," Willow replied. "And that night, I don't know what possessed me, but I took the doll to bed with me, just like I did when I was little."
"And you dreamed?" Tara asked. Her heart was pounding. "You dreamed of me?"
"We dreamed," Willow corrected. "Of us." She squeezed Tara's hands. "I knew I had to come home. When I woke up the next morning I got the first flight into Oregon. I knew I had to find you, that you were waiting."
Tara felt dizzy. The heat of and the weight of the blankets were too much with the confusion and excitement coursing through her. She slipped her hands free of Willow's and pushed the blankets off, then reached out again, pulling the redhead up to sit next to her on the couch.
"How did you end up here?"
"This was my dad's fishing cabin," Willow said. "There's a lake about ten minutes hike from here. He used to take me in the summertime, remember?" She asked, giving a little chuckle. "When he caught a fish I always used to cry, it was so sad to see them all floppy and gasping, and so he'd just let them go."
"He was a sweet man," Tara replied. Willow's father had been a little, balding bundle of energy, always ready to offer a hug or a tell a bedtime story.
"I wanted to feel close to them," Willow told her, leaning against Tara so that their cheeks touched. The redhead smelled wonderful, a heady blend of mint and strawberries. "And I was going to go to the farm first thing in the morning, so it made good sense—the cabin's only about thirty minutes away by car."
Willow gave a little start, sitting up to look at the blonde. "My god, that means you were trudging through the snow for hours. Tara, what were you thinking? You could've died out there."
"I couldn't take anymore," Tara said.
For the first time since her mother's death, since her father burned all the notebooks she wrote in, Tara told a story. She told Willow of the deepening of her father and brother's cruelty after her mother's death. Of being forced to sacrifice a full scholarship to Linfield College to take care of two men who saw her as a servant, not as a part of their family. It was a terrible tapestry of wasted years, of loneliness and silence.
She fell quiet, blushing, shaking her head with shame and frustration. Tara felt like such a fool, especially sitting sheltered in the warmth of this lovely woman, who had pursued her dreams with such success.
As if she could hear her, Willow draped an arm over Tara's shoulders. "It's never too late, Tare. Please, just talk to me."
Tara smiled at the sound of her old pet name. "I don't know. After I dreamed of you, it finally hit me, I guess. I realized how much I'd given up."
She took another deep shuddering breath. Giving secrets away; pouring her them from her heart like water, made her feel lighter, feel free. Tara looked at Willow, the light shining from those gorgeous eyes, the gentle curve of smile. Suddenly Tara felt like she was back in the old fort with Willow, she had to fight the urge to check them both for skinned knees. Maybe she was still her Willow. I want to kiss her, Tara thought.
"You okay?" Willow asked.
Tara nodded, tried to put the thought of kissing the beautiful woman next to her into the back of her mind.
"Tonight when they went to sleep, I left," she whispered. "I couldn't take the truck, it's in my father's name, so I was going to walk out to the highway, try to catch a bus. I got turned around." I got lost, she thought. For so long.
"I want you to come back to New York with me."
Willow said it so softly at first that Tara wasn't sure what she'd heard. But then the slender redhead said it again, loud and clear, staring into Tara's eyes.
"Come back to New York with me."
"W-Willow," Tara stammered, filled in the same instant with a blazing hope and a horrifying dread. "What?"
"I bought two return tickets," Willow told her, flashing that brilliant smile. "We've been apart for too long, Tare. We aren't little kids. There's nothing that can keep us apart anymore."
She wanted to say yes. Oh god, goddess, and everything holy, Tara wanted to say yes. She wanted to throw herself into Willow's arms, to kiss her, to run her hands over the warmth of that freckled alabaster. But it wouldn't be fair to Willow.
"You don't know what you're asking," Tara said in a tiny voice.
"I do," Willow insisted. "I'm asking you to trust me, to trust the fate that brought us back together, in the middle of nowhere, during a blizzard."
"I'm the same," Tara said dully. She crossed her arms tight over her chest, tried to fight the tears burning in her eyes.
"You're my Tara," Willow said shakily. "You've always been my Tara."
"That's j-just it, Willow," Tara cried, tears finally falling free. "I'm still the s-same scared, s-stammering girl I was when you left. But you," Tara said. She paused, reached out again to cup Willow's warm, silken cheek in her palm. "You're a woman. You've transformed yourself. You shouldn't be burdened with someone who is only a memory."
A tear rolled down Willow's cheek to dampen Tara's palm. The little redhead's face crumpled, but then she began to laugh, even as she cried.
"I might not be clumsy, Tara, but I'm still me. I'm still shy, spastic Willow. Every time I have to go on stage in front of an audience I get nauseous. I chant to myself over and over that I don't have to throw up, and somehow, once I'm out there, it all falls way, and I'm just moving."
Tara had seen her move, had been drawn like a moth to the flame of her body. How could she not see herself? How could she not see the wonder that she had evoked in Tara?
"I'll prove it, Willow murmured. She lifted the hem of her sweater and began to pull it off.
"What are you doing?" Tara asked, feeling strangely calm.
"Let me show you," Willow said, smiling gently. She lifted off her sweater and Tara's mouth dropped open. "You see?" Willow asked.
Tara began to laugh. Beneath the sweater, Willow as wearing a thin white baby doll t-shirt. The front of the shirt was covered in a puffy, cartoon pancake with a big cheesy grin. The pancake had huge googly eyes, and trails of butter ran down from a huge cube of the stuff on the top of the pancake's head. Curly text swirled underneath the graphic: Visit Krazy Katie's Kajun Pancakes, NYC.
It was adorable, it was hilarious, and it was totally and utterly Willow.
"Willow," Tara gasped, pulling the redhead into her arms. "Oh Will, I missed you. I missed you so much."
"I missed you too, Tare." When she spoke again it was in a whisper that roared ocean-loud in Tara's ears. "And I love you, Tara. Always have, always will. There's never been anyone else, not for me."
"You sh-shouldn't," Tara groaned, even as her heart raced with the joy of it, even as she pulled Willow closer. "You d-deserve b-better."
Willow leaned back out of Tara's embrace and took the blonde's face in her hands, staring into her eyes solemnly.
"How can you not see yourself?" Willow asked. Tara's eyes widened, shocked to hear her own earlier thought slip from the redhead's mouth. "The girl I had to leave behind never would've left home, Tara. She wouldn't have dared. You did that, baby. You set yourself free."
"Free?" Tara echoed. I'm free.
"You never have to go back there," Willow choked back a sob. "They never get to hurt you again. You don't have to come with me if you don't want to, I'll send you anywhere in the world you want to go. Just don't go back there."
In the silence of the snow-lulled night, in the flickering glow of a dozen candles—one for every year they spent apart—Tara leaned forward and pressed her lips against Willow's. The kiss was tender, hungry, holding the weight of years apart, and the promise of a future together. She felt Willow's hands snake up into her hair and pulled the slender dancer closer, reveling in her warmth. When they finally parted, Tara said ten words that would change her life forever.
"There is nowhere I would rather be than with you."