TITLE: "The Waiting Season (1/3)"

AUTHOR: Annie Sewell-Jennings

E-MAIL: anniesj@comcast.net

SUMMARY: The summer of waiting and awakening.

RATING: R

SPOILERS: Through "Grave"

DISTRIBUTION: Wherever it is wanted; it will be posted to fanfiction.net

DISCLAIMER: The characters within this story are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions, and I infringe upon the almighty copyright laws for the sake of angsty smut. Do you think that argument would hold up in a court of law? The lyrics are courtesy of Mary Chapin Carpenter, from her brilliant, heartbreaking song "Where Time Stands Still" from _Stones in the Road_; Travis's elegant and spare "Slide Show" from _The Man Who_; and "Mad World" by Tears for Fears, though I credit Gary Jules's superior, haunting piano version from the _Donnie Darko_ soundtrack. It's what I listened to, and the original is, IMHO, crap on a synthesizer.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Feedback is always appreciated, and I'm making a better effort to reply to all of it. Really, I am. Don't hurt me. This is a prequel to my next big epic WIP, "Waking the Dead", and it's kind of necessary to read this first. Enjoy!

Thanks very, very much to Devil Piglet, who provided encouragement and good grammar and style. :)

*****

The Waiting Season

*****

Chapter One: All the Candles Burning Bright

*****

"Baby, where's that place where time stands still?

I remember like a lover can

But I forget it like a leaver will

It's no place you can get to by yourself

You've got to love someone

And they love you

Time will stop for nothing else"

--Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Where Time Stands Still"

*****

In the dimming light of dusk, Willow draws the curtains and turns off the lights, and begins to light the candles.

They were banished from her hands for a long time, too long, paying for her crimes in the basement of the house. Collecting dust, making penance. She knows how they feel. Now they have air, no more must and dampness, no more living in shoeboxes or wasting away in cardboard. They can burn again. After all, it isn't their fault that everything shattered.

//Eye to eye, nose to nose, they stare at each other on the dirty floor of the sewer, a breath away from a kiss that will never happen. Memory rushes back in a whirlwind of badness, and as Willow pushes herself off of Tara, she looks at her lover's eyes and knows that it is over.//

Sandalwood. Mulberry. Cinnamon. Orange rind. The long, scratchy scrape of match striking flame, and then the warm, familiar smell of burning things wafts to her nostrils, warming her heart. Once upon a time, she used to burn candles and paint dreams on her lover's tummy as they snuggled in and watched the rain fall against the glass, water streaking down everywhere.

Scent is a part of sense memory; she learned this in psychology, back when she was interested in things other than how to levitate in the air or which blend of herbs and crystals could make the dead walk on solid ground. Back when she was content to let the words remain in the binding of books rather than let the ink and meaning swarm through her veins. Back when she was beautiful and not so. Well, not so broken.

Willow has not spoken since that morning.

Voices travel from downstairs, but she listens not with her ears, but with other senses. Murmured whisperings, rushing worries, and she knows what they are saying. What to do with Willow now? Scarred and wicked Willow, the rock, the geyser. Old Reliable gone off the deep end. They want her away. She cannot blame them, because she knows that they love her, and they are concerned, but she cannot move yet. Moving. It taxes her.

Besides, she has things to do.

//"I have places to be!" Tara exclaims abruptly, and then she shivers, crawls back into herself, hugging her knees like a little child and tucking her chin down as she whimpers nonsense under her breath. The haunted look in her eyes, the way that she sees but doesn't see, everything all muddled and glazed. It tugs at Willow's heart like nothing else before.//

There are things left behind, souvenirs tucked into the back of the closet where no one else could see. Not the magical things, not the incense and crystals, but the simpler, more mundane objects that are tools of the heart rather than of the spirit. Boxes of Tara, snippets of sorcery and sugar, packaged and stored away for safekeeping and hopeful returns. Flowing silk dresses and glittery hair clips, worn-out novels read too many times, photographs and postcards from the edge of romance.

That last night, the night before everything crumbled and slipped away from her, Willow watched as Tara lay sleeping and brought out the box again, smiling with the silly dreams of naïve girls who didn't realize that life was a cruelty and not always a comfort. //I knew it,// she thought to herself. //I knew that she'd come back. I was right all along.//

//Barefoot and dressed in nothing but the tumbled red sheet, Tara shifts her weight from foot to foot and nervously tucks her mussed hair behind her ear. "Do you... Do you have something I can wear?" she asks a little shyly, and Willow smirks.

"I think you look great just as you are," she says archly, slyly, hands traveling underneath the folds of crimson linen to where the creamy, baby- smooth skin of her lover lies.

Sotto chuckling, and the slightest of moans when Willow's fingers dance across a damp patch of flesh. "Oh," Tara sighs, lolling her head back so that cornsilk strands brush across her bare shoulders, "but think of the scandal. Scantily-clad lesbian streaks across campus after all-night sexfest. I'd be a tramp." But then all thoughts of modesty are laid to rest, and the sheet puddles on the floor...//

With steady fingers, Willow picks up the first item in the small box, and the candlelight catches in the faceted glass beads of the Victorian-style necklace. It is a dainty little trinket, a gift she gave to Tara on their second night together, back when they were so fragile and girlish. When she wore bright and colorful things, fuzzy sweaters and silly duckies embroidered into skirts.

Willow is all grown-up now. No more orange hats or purple overalls. No more Victorian jewelry. Still, it would be nice to keep the necklace.

All of these things must be packed away, shipped off to her family in Mississippi. Her dormitory room is already vacant, her shiny love beads and moody Christmas lights taken down. Willow snuck out of the house a couple of nights ago to see it, to stand in the barren single and look at blank walls where angels and charms once hung, to see the mattress where they first made love, stripped of all of its sheets. And the candles...

//When they make love for the first time, it's by the light of a dozen candles, the room plunged into darkness by lack of electricity, but they create all the light that they need in their bed. Surprises, secrets revealed as Willow widens her eyes to drink in the nude figure of Tara. Soft, round breasts, curve of her belly, skin brocaded by roseate light. She's everything holy and sacred, and when she smiles, Willow is in love.//

Mundane little items follow, like the tube of toothpaste she forgot in their bathroom, or a suede pouch filled with tumbled gemstones. These little things are easy to give up, effortlessly packed away in the box, because they aren't the essence of Tara. They're just things. It's the pair of silk stockings, the single garnet earring, the pair of russet silk panties... Well, her parents won't want her underwear anyway.

Calmly, without wavering or weeping, Willow places these items into boxes and files them away. Her parents would never know about this box of things, and she knows that she could probably keep all of these little possessions and no one would ever be the wiser, but the fact is that it doesn't matter. The measure of a woman cannot be found in stockings or an earring. That's not where Tara lives. All of her memories, her wonderful memories... That's where Tara is buried.

//Arms wrapped around each other, they smile and dance to the music, surrounded by people yet entirely alone, secluded in the paradise they built for each other, and neither is surprised when their feet leave the ground. After all, they've been existing above the earth ever since they met.//

Concealed beneath a flap of cardboard, she finds what she has been looking for in this box. Carefully, Willow removes the stack of photographs that she has of the two of them, and sighs when she sees how young they used to be. They were taken in that first radiant summer together, in their old dorm at the school, shot after twilight and in the nude. There were several pictures, but they each selected two to keep, just to "remember ourselves by". It's excruciatingly painful to look at the first picture, the one of Tara reclining on the bed, her head cocked to the side and her eyes so dewy and ethereal that it fools her into believing that Tara is still alive.

//Laughing, Tara tosses her hair and gives Willow a dirty little smirk, her hand cupping her left breast and thumb pushing over the nipple. "How about this?" she asked. "We can send these into Playboy and become porn stars."

Giggling, Willow lowers the camera and gives her lover a lascivious look, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. "Cause hey, there's nothing more fun than having porno names," she says, and Tara throws her head back, laughing uproariously as the flash illuminates the room...//

There is a knock at the door suddenly, and Willow jumps a bit, startled out of her reverie. "Will?" Uncertain, male, worried. Xander. "Are... Are you in there? You decent?" She says nothing, but then again, she never says anything, not to any of them. Not after what she... They should not have to listen to her. A brittle laugh, and then, "Stupid me. You're doing the silent treatment thing."

He refuses to leave. Buffy and Giles have tried to make him go home, tried to make him rest, but he will not leave. Sometimes, he sleeps on the floor outside of her bedroom, but deeply enough so that he cannot hear her when she climbs out on the roof and watches the stars, like she used to do with Tara. Still, Willow understands why Xander can't go home. It's the same reason why she promised Tara her life when Glory ravaged her mind, why she swore that she would never leave. The bonds of love are unbreakable, no matter what kind of love it is.

Sighing, Willow pushes the box back into the closet and stands up, padding barefoot across the carpeting to the door and opening it. There he stands, ragged and red-eyed, a relieved smile on his face as he stares at her. It startles her sometimes to see him now, because it's difficult to see the little boy from her childhood in his eyes. Shadows hang where humor used to ring, and he looks like he has seen too much in his life for any average person. Average. That's what everyone always called Xander Harris.

She knows he's anything but.

Gently, Xander reaches out his hand and strokes her cheek, a fond smile on his face. She averts her eyes, as always, because she remembers what she tried to do to him. Tried to kill him, tried to rid the world of a man like Xander, tried to rob the earth of his warm heart and loyal nature. "Hey," he says softly, and he arches his eyebrows at her. "Is it... Can we talk?" He winces, running his hand through his dark hair. "Let me rephrase that. Can I talk while you listen?" His brow furrows with worry. "Can you... Can you even listen?"

She says nothing, just looks down at her bare feet, and Xander sighs, placing his hand at the small of her back and guiding her towards the bed. "Come on, sit down for a minute with me," he says, and she appreciates the way that he talks to her. Buffy talks over her, about her, but never to her. Giles speaks to her like she is still a child, and Dawn will not look at her at all. But Xander. Well, they've always known how to talk to each other.

Side by side, they sit on the edge of the bed, Willow folding her hands neatly in her lap as Xander speaks. "I miss you," he says in his gentle voice. "I really do. It's been. Well, it's been pretty weird, what with the whole ending of the world stuff, but." He sighs, frustrated. "I wish you'd say something, Will, anything. It's kind of freaking all of us out. Major wiggins below. But I guess you need your space. Lots of space."

He turns towards her now, takes her limp hands from her lap and covers them with his large, callused worker's hands. They're so warm; everything about him is warm. Not hot, not scorching, not like she is. Just. Warm. "Giles wants you to go back to England with him," he says. "He says that the coven up there can help you get the magic under control, teach you how to use it, and he'll be Watcher guy for you. And. I think he's right, Willow. They can help you and I. Well, all I can do is love you."

And he does; he loves her so much that she can feel it transferring from his hands to her heart. They have known each other for the whole of their lives, and Willow does not have any memories without Xander in them. Playing in sandboxes, bemoaning growing pains, fighting the forces of evil. They're all in it together. It's good, this love that they have for each other, and she lets her hands rest in his for a while longer, warming herself by his fire.

Xander is talking again. "Will, everything got so screwed up somewhere. How did we let it go this far? Anya, Tara, and, oh God, Buffy. And you. Everything's so different, so changed. I'm not big on the change. Static guy, that's me. But I guess that you knew that. You know everything about me. And I... I still know everything about you. I know who you are, and what you are, and I love you for it. You don't have to keep this bottled up inside. We love you, even if you do want to start a couple of apocalypses every now and then. It doesn't change who you are."

Licking his lips, Xander shakes his head and then wraps her in his arms, engulfing her like he did eight days ago on that bright, blistering morning before an effigy of disaster. All of his love for her surrounds her, blankets and comforts her, and Willow wilts in his embrace. Grief and guilt overwhelm her, all of her sins lit ablaze, and she feels like weeping like she did that dawning day.

But she does not, and he pulls away, disappointed and a little shattered. He sighs, rakes his hand through his hair and gives her that wonderful, quirky Xander-grin, and then kisses her forehead. "We'll wait for you," he promises, and she says nothing. Nothing at all, not even as he walks out of the bedroom and leaves her alone with her thoughts.

For a few moments, Willow does not move. She simply remains on the bed, arms loose by her sides and eyes not really registering all that she sees. Pillow, blanket, carpet, curtains. All that she can see is what she has done, the blood on her hands and the fury in her soul, and the way that she tried to destroy everything that she loves. Herself included.

The photographs are waiting for her in the little box in the closet, and Willow moves towards them with open hands, kneeling once again on the floor and pulling out the box. Shiny celluloid gleams in her palms as she looks at the picture of herself, the one that Tara took and the one that she liked best at the time. Bright, redheaded nymphet shaking her shorn hair proudly, chin tilted and smile bright and deadly. For the first time, Willow sees the arrogance in her posture, the conceit in her eyes, and feels nauseous. This is who she has been for a long time. This is what she loved about herself.

Power. Control. The feeling that she knows what is best, that she knows what is right, and she can fix anything and everything. Capability and confidence, and violence lurking underneath delicate bones and skin. This is the photograph that she selected, her pick.

//"Don't leave me," Willow says in a dull, hollow voice as Tara packs her belongings up, her motions slow and heavy. "I mean it. Don't. Don't go. I know I screwed up, but I can do better. I'm strong like that."

"Oh, you're strong," Tara says bitterly, her words as hot and sour as lemon and vodka. "I just didn't know how strong you really were." She can't be leaving, because it's not fair. Everyone makes mistakes, and Willow can fix it. She knows how to repair the damage that she's done, and if that doesn't work, then there's always the spells. Always the magic.

"Don't go," Willow says again, and it's not a request. It's a command. "Don't."//

It is change that scares her, just like Xander, because their world is so unsteady in the first place. They live on the edge of the world and walk on a mad blade, teetering back and forth between good and evil. If she can keep everything the same, then she can handle the monsters and the darkness. She can handle it just fine, so long as Buffy still slays the vampires and goes shopping, and so long as Tara loves her.

Everything changes, and she is beginning to accept that. The people that she loves are growing up into different people, and where she once rebelled against that thought, she now understands it. They have gone through ravaging events in their lives; it would be impossible for them to still skip along eating lollipops and trading snappy jibes. Life is harrowing, and it is vicious, and it can be unbearably cruel. It can take away the people that she loves, and it can weather her and strip her down into nothing at all.

For the first time, Willow understands why Buffy jumped.

Yet even as she sits here, holding a photograph of herself taken merely two years ago and contemplating crying, she feels the energy and the muted joy from below her. The love inside of Buffy Summers, the rapture that she feels when she looks outside of a window and sees the world stretched out around her, even after everything that has happened. Bliss is not impossible, and there is a girl who has been torn out of heaven who is smiling downstairs, even after all of this. Even after, and it gives her happiness.

//Fine sunlight beams down onto their entwined bodies, just a little morning delight, chuckling and sighing as the two women stroke hands across hips, fingers across tummies, lips across warm, wet places. Love is everywhere, tying them together, binding them with the radiance of romance renewed. They are happy here, in their bed of dreams, with the sounds of birds awakening and the fragile light peeking through glass, showering them in sun.//

The wispy curtains push away with ease, and Willow peers out the window at the backyard laid out before her eyes. The sunlight has faded into night all of a sudden, and she does not remember when that happened, but it is all right. The twilight is gorgeous, soaked in sapphire and violet, and she wants to go out and dance underneath the stars. She thinks that Tara would have liked that.

But there is more packing to be done, and Willow resumes her task with renewed energy, with a sense of purpose rather than obligation, placing clothing into suitcases and fragile mementos in packaging peanuts. There is a world out there that is filled with the kind of joy that her friend feels downstairs, and a globe scattered with the memories that she so badly needs to hold onto. Her mind is made up. She knows what she must do.

She has to change, too.

Smiling, Willow slips into her denim jacket and then pats the pockets, careful not to rumple the delicate photographs that she carries with her. Little Tara and Willow from years past, from happier times, and she can remember how they were, how lovely and young they used to be.

After all, love is but a memory preserved above all others.

When the others come upstairs later on, they find that she is gone, as is half of her closet and mementos. There is a small cardboard box sitting peacefully on the bed, simply labeled "For Tara's Family", and a slip of lavender stationary tucked into the flap.

"Don't worry. Everything will be fine. Wait for me."

*****

"So, baby, where's that place where time stands still?

I remember like a lover can

I forget it like a leaver will

It's the first time that you held my hand

It's the smell, and the taste

And the fear and the thrill

It's everything I understand

And all the things I never will"

--Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Where Time Stands Still"

*****

(end)

*****