AN: So this is a little more intense than anything else I've written. Hopefully you guys like it though. It doesn't really fit in anywhere, but I guess it could go somewhere in late season 4 or early season 5. Anyways. Enjoy!
AN2: Warning there are mentions of physical and sexual abuse in this. Y'all have been warned.
AN3: Obviously none of these characters belong to me. If they did, Willow and Tara would have gotten their happily ever after.
Wallflower. That's the word I like to use to describe myself. There's something elegant about it. Like the beautiful plants that used to grow along the walls of my mother's garden, their branches twisting amongst the old wrought iron fence. That was my favorite place as a child. It was where I took my first steps, where I learned to read and where I cast my first spell. The only time I felt like myself was when I was with my mother in her garden. It was my shelter, the one place I felt safe. It was the place I went to laugh, the place I went to cry, the place I went whenever I needed to clear my head. After my mother died, it felt like my world had crumpled right in front of my eyes. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even think. The only person who loved me had been ripped out of my life. My father and brother and the rest of them moved on so quickly, like she had never existed, but I was frozen, unable to function. I couldn't imagine a world without her in it. The day I saw my father moving her stuff out of the house, I broke down for the first time since her death. That was the last time I ever cried about something. I was seventeen.
The day of my mother's funeral was the first time he hit me. It was a beautiful autumn day; the leaves had changed color, but it was still warm enough to be outside. I wanted to leave the house, to spend some time by myself, away from all the people. He grabbed my arm as I opened the door and when I resisted, the palm of his hand met my cheek. I spent the rest of the week in my room. When he caught me sneaking out to the garden in the middle of the night, he forbade me from ever going out there again and slapped me once more. After that it only got worse. An open hand soon became a fist. Once that wasn't enough, his fist became a belt hitting my back, my shoulders, the backs of my legs, leaving welts the size of grape fruits, preventing me from even moving, let alone walking. The week I graduated from high school was the first, and only, time he raped me. I was sitting on my bed reading a book when he walked in. I could tell right away that he was drunk. I braced myself for the beating I would take, it was always worse when he drank. But instead, it was one quick blow to my head, effectively knocking me on my back, completely disoriented. The next thing I knew, he was on top of me. Before I could scream, he covered my mouth with his hand. I froze. I couldn't even fight back. My body was spent and I was already hanging on by a thread. After about five minutes, I passed out.
When I woke up, it was morning. My body was throbbing in pain and my head hurt badly enough to make me sick. It was then that I decided I wanted to die; at least then I would be with my mother instead of my controlling, abusive father and my chauvinistic pig of a brother. I knew my father had pain killers for his back. Once he and Donny left the house, I snuck into his room and grabbed a handful. Sure I would get in trouble, but I would also be dead if this worked so I didn't care. I still had a black eye from the week before and bruises at different stages of healing covering my body. It wasn't until I was standing over the bathroom sink, looking at myself in the mirror that I realized what would happen if I swallowed those pills. I would be free of this family sure, but what would my mother say to me if she were still alive? How disappointed would she be in me for just giving up? That was something she had drilled into my head as a child. Whether we were reading or practicing magic or laying in the grass watching the stars, she would stop whatever she was doing and look at me with those cobalt eyes that mirrored mine and she would say: "Tara honey. I want you to listen to me. Life is hard and you're going to want to give up every now and then. If that happens I want you to remember this. You are beautiful and you are loved and you are going to make a difference in this world." Then she would go back to whatever it was we were doing as if she had never said anything in the first place. Those were the words that came to my head as I stood in front of that mirror. Those were the words that made me put the pills down. Those were the words that saved my life.
Instead of killing myself, I decided to run. I couldn't stay in that house any longer. I didn't care where I went, just as long as it was as far away as possible. I knew I had enough money to leave and I had applied to a few colleges in California; one of them had even given me a full scholarship. Thank God it wasn't too late. Within minutes, everything had been worked out and I was on my way to UC Sunnydale. It was still early and they wouldn't be back until dinner time. If I moved fast enough I could be out of the state by then. It took me two hours to throw all of my stuff into the back of the old, beat up truck that had been given to me for my sixteenth birthday. Before I left though, I went to her garden one last time. When I opened the gate, it was like she was there with me. Even though most everything had died, I took one of the dried up roses. The color had faded, but it was still the same yellow it had been when we planted them the year before. I left before I started to cry. I was determined to put as much distance between myself and this town as possible and crying wouldn't help me do that. I left that house and never looked back.
I like to think that my mother is with me wherever I go. I mean, I see her everywhere: in the old, worn down pages of books, in the flowers scattered around the campus, in the constellations I made up when I was six. Mostly though, I see her every time I look in the mirror, in the quiet strength that comes when you learn to take care of yourself, when you learn to quiet the nightmares and not let your fear define you. Like I said, wallflower. Someone who sees without judgement. Some one who can be trusted. Someone who understands that this world can be a terrible place, yet chooses to live in it anyway. Wallflower. I think it's a good word, better than any other word I can come up with.
Willow sat unmoving, with tears streaming down her face. She had no idea any of this had happened. How could Tara hide something like this from her? They could tell each other anything, that was the deal. Willow read it once more. She had to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her or something. She didn't even notice Tara come in the room.
"Hey Will how was class?" Tara looked up to see Willow sitting on their bed, eyes red from crying.
"Oh God. Willow what's wrong? What happened?" Tara let her stuff fall to the floor and quickly closed the space between them.
"H-How come you never told me?" Tara didn't have the slightest idea what Willow was talking about. It wasn't until she saw the piece of paper in Willow's hand. She had written it for her English class and then chickened out and replaced it with something else.
"Oh. Oh God. Willow. I-I'm so sorry."
"Why didn't you tell me? We tell each other everything." Tara had never seen Willow so shaken up. She hated seeing Willow cry and it was even worse knowing she was the cause.
"I-I thought" Tara sucked in a breath. "I-I thought I w-would lose y-you if you ever f-found out." It took all of her energy to hold back the tears that were threatening to escape her eyes.
"Baby, what makes you think you would lose me?" Willows sat confused. She wiped the remaining tears from her eyes and waited for an explanation.
"I-I thought you would t-take one look at m-my mess of a past and run the other w-way."
"Well my dear, that's just silly. Why would I do that? I love you. Nothing is ever going to change that." Tara had no response. Of course Willow would say something like that. She couldn't hold it in any more; she had been doing it since she was seventeen. Tara let herself cry. All the while Willow held her and whispered soft nothings in her ear. After a few minutes, her sobs subsided and she sat up so she and Willow were at eye level.
"God Willow. I love you so much." Within seconds lips came crashing together in a bruising kiss. Each one of them desperate to make the other's pain go away. Tara moved her hands from Willow's neck down to her back searching for bare skin; she desperately needed to feel close to her. Before Tara could get any further, she felt Willow's hand on her own.
"Baby what's wrong."
"Tara. We need to talk about this."
"No we don't. Less talking more kissing."
"No. Kissing me won't make this go away." Tara felt a surge of anger rush through her at those words.
"Nothing will make it go away Willow! Nothing! It happened and I left and now I'm here. Nothing either of us says will ever get rid of what my father did to me." Tara began to stand up, but stopped when Willow's hand grabbed her own.
"Tara.." Willow trailed off. It was something in the look on her face, beaten and broken as she had ever seen, that made Tara sit back down.
"Tara just, just hear me out okay? I-I know that there's nothing we can do to change what happened and I hate that you had to live with that. But, reading that and seeing you now, how brave and how strong you are, I'm amazed. Amazed that someone could experience something that traumatic and still come out the other side even stronger than they were before. It makes me so proud. So unbelievably proud of you. So, we don't have to talk about it right now if you don't want to, but whenever you want to, if you ever want to, I'm always gonna be here to listen. Even if you have to pull me out of the library by my hair." Both girls managed to laugh at that one.
Tara took a deep breath to quell the laughter that was threatening to choke her. Sure that was funny, but it wasn't that funny. I guess that' was what happened when you found yourself going from tears to anger and then to laughter all within a matter of minutes.
"Willow." Tara let go of a breath she didn't know she had been holding. "Will, I know you think that talking about something is the best way to work things out and most of the time it is. Just, from my experience, talking about this in particular doesn't help me any. I've tried."
"Then what does help?" It was funny seeing Willow confused. It didn't happen often, but whenever it did it brought out some of the cutest faces Tara had ever seen. Even though she tried ducking her head, the smile that escaped didn't go unnoticed.
"What. What's so funny?" There was that look again.
"Nothing." But Tara burst into a fit of laughter.
"No obviously it's not nothing. Really. What's so funny?"
"It's just," Tara paused to laugh yet again. "It's just whenever you're confused you get the cutest look on your face."
"Oh haha very funny. You still didn't answer my question missy."
"Oh. Yeah. Right. Well it's just stuff like this. Stuff like this really helps me."
"I'm still lost." For someone so smart, she really was struggling with this. Tara leaned over and kissed her.
"Living honey. Going about my life and doing all the thing we do. Like school or helping with patrol or doing spells with you and lots of other things." Tara got a mischievous look on her face.
"Oh yeah. Like what other things?"
"I think you know."