Disclaimer: I do not own BTVS or the title to this story. Joss owns BTVS, and LordoftheFaye owns the title.

A/N: This is a oneshot response to LordoftheFaye's ABC's challenge, where I'm writing a story based on the title "Silence Tells the Truth". I hope you like it, really more of a silly drabble than a story, it's barely more than a page long. Actually, it is a page long.

Willow's POV

When I first looked at her I saw a shy, talented girl that could very possible be a witch. I could feel this link—this connection—and somehow I knew I needed to see her again. Tara. She was special.

Then I talked to her, after all the drama with the Gentlemen, and I knew that I'd been right about the bond we had. We were both so innocent. I visited her, did spells with her, and I fell in love with her. I don't even know when I fell in love, just that it happened and she was mine. It was hard to tell Buffy, and later the other Scoobies, but they all accepted it because they could see Tara was a good person. She became part of me, and they all loved me, so they loved her.

She never told me about her family, not ever. It just wasn't something that we talked about, our families. We talked about magic, witches we knew, Miss Kitty, the Scoobies, demons, and each other. I don't think I thought of her as having family at all.

Her face when she saw her brother…it shook me. She looked so scared and helpless. The way she started to ask how he'd found her, then corrected it, but not soon enough. How everyone in her family kept mentioning her twentieth birthday. I felt how tense she was, how on edge she was, but I didn't say anything because I knew she didn't want it complicated.

I wonder if her dad even knew she was with me. At first I thought maybe that was why he was so cold to her, and why she called him "sir" like he owned her. I had been grateful when my parents took it well; I assumed that Tara's parents didn't like her being a lesbian. In my mind that was their problem, not hers.

And then she did the spell to make us unable to see demons, afraid her "inner demon" would surface on her twentieth birthday, afraid I wouldn't love her anymore. It broke my heart to see her crying and telling us all over and over how sorry she was, that she would go with her Dad. I wouldn't have let her if she really tried to leave, because I could fell that she didn't.

Now I was snuggled up in bed with her, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathed easily. What gets me is that she'd had this horrible childhood (or so I assume) and she never once told me, never did what she thought would be burdening me with her problems. Not even when I got teary-eyed over what Oz had done, or ranted on about how my life sucked. She always comforted me, told me it was going to be okay, but she didn't ever tell me how bad her life was. Thinking about that made me a little mad at first, but I was so proud of her for being who she is today, so sweet and gentle and caring. Caring for every single person besides herself. She's selfless. She's more than I'll ever deserve.

That's why her silence tells the truth.