Note: Offensive language/terminology.
Re-Make/Re-Model
She's about to head downstairs, but the bedroom door near the landing is open. Her mom's room. Willow and Tara's room now. Tara's sitting cross-legged against the headboard, frowning studiously at the book lying open in front of her.
Tara looks up, so Buffy can't pretend she isn't there.
She leans against the door frame instead. "What'cha readin'?"
With a crooked smile, Tara lifts the book for her to see. Something about witchcraft and feminism. Buffy hesitates, but she's only going downstairs to find something to do anyway, now that she's up. Maybe lie on the couch and go back to sleep. A nice change of lack-of-pace. She enters the room and drops onto the end of the bed with a bounce she doesn't feel.
"Any good?"
"It's a little heavy at times, but … interesting."
"Does burning witches at the stake come up? 'Cause, been there, and happy to come down firmly on the side of not much fun."
Tara smiles again. "Not so much with the unpleasant burning … or drowning."
"Been there too – again, not fun."
A picture flashes in her mind then, sudden, unwelcome and brutal: Her hands around Tara's throat, squeezing, bearing down on her, demanding to know.
Why didn't you stop it? Out of all of them, you should have known. What did she do to make you —
"Buffy?"
"Huh?" She barely moves, but it feels like her body's snapping to attention. Her fingers dig into the bedspread.
The other woman reaches over and covers one of Buffy's hands with her own. "Are you okay?"
"Abso-positively." She gestures to the book again with a nod. "So, if it's not railing against ye olden days patriarchy, what's it about?"
Tara's still looking at her, perpetually sleepy blue eyes filled with compassion and sympathy, even when she doesn't know what she's showing sympathy for.
"I'm fine, really," Buffy says, then almost flinches at the loss of contact as Tara gives her the benefit of the doubt Buffy can see flicker briefly in those same eyes, and moves her hand to turn the book around.
"Um, yeah, there's railing, but mostly ye modern days."
Buffy stares down at the pages. Lots of words. Not too small, but there're so many of them and, at that moment, all she wants is to lie on the couch with a blanket on top of her, a box of cookies and some Tab on the coffee table, and maybe a soap opera on TV that she can try to follow until her brain gets too tired to bother.
Something catches her attention on the page and her eyebrows rise. "Is that the C-word?" She looks at the other woman, lets her mouth drop in mock-scandal. "Why, Tara, I never."
"Um, I think it's one of those reclaiming things," says Tara with a tiny grimace.
Buffy imagines Tara reading out loud, stuttering the word out when she comes to it. Tara doesn't stutter much anymore, but maybe she would for that.
"Does that ever work?" Buffy asks. "The reclaiming thingy?"
"I'm not sure," the other woman says with a shrug. "Sometimes, I guess?"
Buffy wonders just how much Tara guesses. Tara's a lesbian. A dyke. A homo. Muff Diver. Tara eats pussy. She likes sticking her fingers and tongue into other girls' cunts and she likes it when they do it to her. Maybe that's it. Buffy's not dead anymore because Tara was shy once and she likes fucking girls.
Buffy glances briefly at the book again, then turns her gaze back to the other woman.
"Before Willow …" she starts to ask, then pauses, changing her mind. She'll sound like a pervert. "… gets back, were you just gonna stay here and read?"
"Actually, I think it's almost lunchtime. Why don't I make us something?" Tara closes the book over and untangles her legs to slide off the bed. "What would you like?"
"Soup?" Buffy asks. Easy. One syllable. "Do we have some?"
"Just canned, I think. Is that okay?"
"It comes not in cans?" Buffy follows Tara downstairs and into the kitchen.
She takes a couple of plates from the cupboard, spoons from the drawer, sits on a stool and watches Tara stand by the stove, stirring the contents of a Campbell's can into a small, non-stick pot.
"You took care of Dawn when I was gone," Buffy says. "Thank you."
Tara turns, eyes wide. "Oh, you don't have to … it was nothing. Really. Spike helped … and Xander and Mr Giles … everyone did."
Buffy smiles. "Even Anya?"
Tara grins. "There might have been a few free child-labor issues, but yeah, Anya was there for her too."
"But, mostly you," Buffy says. It's not a question because, despite a lack of hard evidence, she knows it's true. More than once she's come back from patrol to find her fifteen year old sister curled up on the couch in Tara's arms, head resting against soft, pillowy breasts, Tara's fingers combing through her hair. She thinks for a moment how odd it should be that it's not Tara she envies when she sees them like that. Tara's only a few months older than Buffy, but sometimes it seems like years separate them. Maybe even more now. Tara's a grown-up in a way that Buffy isn't. And Tara hasn't hugged her since she stopped being dead.
She watches the other woman pour their lunch into the plates and they carry the soup and some crackers through to the living room and sit on the couch to eat.
The last time Buffy knew her, Tara was an imbecile. A retard in moon‑covered pajama pants and a knitted hoodie, with a bandage that made her hand look like a paw. Who spoke in random murmurs and outbursts and had to take medication and couldn't feed or bathe herself.
Buffy isn't dead anymore because they missed her, because Faith's a fuck up, because they think she was in hell, because Willow's powerful enough to have brought her back.
Buffy isn't dead anymore because Tara was shy once and she likes fucking girls.
Because Tara was an imbecile and now she's not.
Tara tucks her hair behind her ear. "Willow doesn't like this soup," she says with a smile, dipping her spoon. "It's one of my favorite kinds."
Buffy smiles back, because Willow's creation has a few glitches.
Because Tara still has a mind of her own.