Title: Going Home
Author: Hope
E-mail: xForgottenTearsx@aol.com
Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/delusional_youth
Rated: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing here! Its all Joss and ME
Description: Willow's thoughts when she's going home. Just a short lil fic that I began writing during "Beneath You".

"But they won't understand. I mean, what if they-" A thought races through my head and I lower my voice. "What if they're still mad? What if they don't forgive me? People have tried to burn me at the stake before Giles, it's not fun." I plead to him one last time. Pulling me into a tight embrace, no more words to be said between us, Giles gives me a kiss on the head and a smile, then motions me to go to the gate where my plane to SunnyDale is already boarding. I don't want to go back. Oh god, do I not want to go back.

I had spent the whole summer here in England, with Giles, with the coven. I had spent my whole time here learning how to control the magic that was now within me forever...I had also learned how to mourn Tara the proper way. A week after I had gotten there, Xander had called to tell Giles that they had had Tara's funeral.

It was a nice funeral, from what Giles had relayed to me at least, it sounded nice. Her family hadn't come. Did they even know? And if they did, did they blame me? They all blamed me.... Xander hadn't talked to me when he called. No one but Giles had talked to me since it had happened. Did they all hate me? They must all hate me. I tried to kill them, why wouldn't they hate me? I had threatened to turn Dawn back into the key. I had done things that people are put to death for. Could I ever go back to just being Willow?

Although I pray for it to happen, I know that things can never go back to normal. The one person that made life normal for me, she's gone forever. No magic can bring her back. I hand my boarding pass to the woman standing at the gate. She takes it, rips part of it off and hands it back to me, telling me to have a nice flight home, that she hoped I had a good vacation.

Before turning to the small hallway that leads into the plane, I give a final wave and a weak smile to Giles. I turn and walk onto the plane. With each step I walk further away from any kind of stability I've known since Tara died, while at the same time, getting clsoer and closer to the friends I had left behind.

Seat 14c, 14c. My eyes scan the numbers on the paneling as I walk towards the back of the large aircraft. "14c..." I say to myself aloud as I look back down at my ticket, making sure that I'm playing the right number over and over in my head.

"Excuse me?" I hear the voice, my heart skips a beat.

"Tara?" I turn around to see an old woman calling me, telling me that she heard me say I was 14c and that I had passed it, that it was the seat next to her.

It had sounded so much like Tara..."T-thank you, ma'am." I stutter as I walk back over to the 14 row and slide into my seat. I didn't understand how I had passed it in the first place.

I wasn't surprised that I thought I had heard Tara. I wish that I was surprised...all summer I had been having nightmares, visions, I would be out riding with Giles, or even in the middle of one of my lessons with the coven. And I would see her. I would hear her, I could even sense her aura around me. She had always been such a strong person, even in the beginning when I had just met her. When she still let the delusions her family had set in her mind about her being a demon rule her life.

So Giles would say somthing, Miss Hartness would be trying to teach me, and it would just sound like her. No, it wouldn't sound like her, it would be her. I kept it to myself though. I was afraid that they were just hallucinations, my mind playing tricks on me. Thats what they would tell me if I had gotten up the courage to tell them. They would tell me it was all in my head.

But I'd like to believe that the dead really do look after you...that she is still with me.

I place my bag under the seat in front of me and open the shutter for the window. "Going back home?" The old woman asked, trying to make conversation. I turn my head and attempt to give the old woman a smile. "Yea." I say, then turning my head back towards the window.

I look out the window, we've already taken off into the light blue sky, leaving England behind us. "I'm going home..."



The End