AN: Well this is it the last chapter are you ready for my surprise.
Dawn never could quite remember how the next few seconds went. She heard Willow's cry that almost seemed to shake the earth beneath her. She saw Buffy start toward her. And then she saw the flash.
A flash like Jezebel's lightning, only not blue-white. This one was gold.
And so bright Dawn felt that the sun had exploded in front of her eyes. All she could make out for several seconds were whirling colors. And then she saw something in the middle of the clearing, near the chimney stack. Something white, shaped like the ghosts, only more solid looking. Something small and huddled that had to be anything but what her eyes were telling her it looked like.
Because it looked like a slender naked girl trembling on the forest floor. A girl with golden hair.
It looked like Tara.
Not the glowing, candle-lit Tara of the spirit world and not the fiercely lit Tara that was the Warren witch. This was a Tara whose creamy skin was blotching pink and showing gooseflesh under the spatter of the rain. A Tara who looked bewildered as she slowly raised her head and gazed around her, as if all the familiar things in the clearing wee unfamiliar to her.
It's an illusion. Either that or they gave her a few minutes to say good-bye. Dawn kept telling herself that, but she couldn't make herself believe it.
"Dawnie?" said a voice uncertainly. A voice that wasn't like wind chimes at all. The voice of a frightened young girl.
Dawn's knees gave out. A wild feeling was growing inside her. She tried to push it away, not daring to even examine it yet. She just watched Tara.
Tara touched the grass in front of her. Hesitantly at first, then more and more firmly, quicker and quicker. She picked up a leaf in fingers that seemed clumsy, put it down, and patted the ground. Snatched it up again. She grabbed a whole handful of wet leaves, held them to her, smelled them. She looked up at Dawn, the leaves scattering away.
For a moment, they just knelt and stared at each other from the distance of a few feet. Then, tremulously, Dawn stretched out her hand. She couldn't breathe. The feeling was growing and growing.
Tara's hand came up in turn. Reached toward Dawn's. Their fingers touched.
Real fingers. In the real world. Where they both were.
Dawn gave a kind of scream and threw herself on Tara.
In a minute she was patting her everywhere in a frenzy, with wild, disbelieving delight. And Tara was solid. She was wet from the rain and she was shivering and Dawn's hands didn't go through her. Bits of damp leaf and crumbs of soil were clinging to Tara's hair.
"You're here," she sobbed. "I can touch you, Tara!"
"Tara gasped back, "I can touch you! I'm here!" She grabbed the leaves again. "I can touch the ground!"
"I can see you touching it!" They might have kept this up indefinitely, but Buffy interrupted. She was standing a few steps away, staring, her green eyes enormous, her face white. She made a choking sound.
"Buffy!" Tara turned to her and held out handfuls of leaves. She opened her arms.
Buffy, who had been able to cope when Tara became the spirit guardian of Rose, when Tara had materialized in the clearing like an angel, just stood there, shaking. She looked about to faint.
"Buffy, she's solid! You can touch her! See? Dawn pummeled Tara again joyfully.
Buffy didn't move. She whispered, "It's impossible"
"It's true! See? It's true!" Dawn was getting hysterical. She knew she was, and she didn't care. If anyone had a right to get hysterical, it was her. "It's true, it's true, she caroled. "Buffy, come see."
Buffy, who had been staring at Tara all this while, made another choked sound. Then, with one motion, she flung herself down on Tara. She touched her, found that her hand met the resistance of flesh. She looked into Tara's face. And then she burst into uncontrollable tears.
She cried and cried her head on Tara's naked shoulder.
Dawn gleefully patted both of them.
"Don't you think she'd better put something on?" said a voice, and Dawn looked up to see Faith calmly, standing in her jeans and t-shirt.
Buffy and Dawn pulled the jacket around Tara. She looked small inside it, wet and somehow unnatural, as if she wasn't used to clothing anymore. But it was some protection from the elements, anyway.
Then Tara whispered, "Willow."
She turned. Willow was standing there, with Conner, Xander, and Spike, a little a part from the others. She was just watching her. As if not only her breath, but her life was held, waiting.
Tara got up and took a tottery step to her, and then another and another. Slim and newly fragile inside her borrowed jacket, she wavered as she moved toward her. Like the little mermaid learning how to use her legs, Dawn thought.
Willow let her get almost all the way there, just staring, before she stumbled toward her. They ended in a rush and then fell to the ground together, arms locked around each other, each holding on as tightly as possible. Neither of them said a word.
At last Tara pulled back to look at Willow, and she cupped her face between her hands, just gazing back at her. Tara laughed aloud for sheer joy, opening and closing her own fingers looking at them in delight before burying them in Willow's hair. Then they kissed.
Dawn watched unabashedly, feeling some of the heady joy spill over into tears. Her own throat ached, but these were sweet tears, not the salt tears of pain, and she was still smiling. She was filthy, she was soaking wet, she had never been so happy in her life. She felt as if she wanted to dance and sing and do all sorts of crazy things.
Some time later Tara looked up from Willow to all of them, her face almost as bright as when she'd floated in the clearing like an angel. Shinning like starlight. No one will ever call her shy again, Dawn thought.
"My friends," Tara said. It was all she said, but it was enough, that and the queer little sob she gave as she held out a hand to them. They were around her in a second, swarming her, all trying to embrace at once. Even Victoria.
Then she grasped a sturdy brown hand and held it briefly to her cheek. "Conner," she said and he smiled at her, brown eyes swimming. But not with misery at seeing her, Dawn thought. Just now Conner's face expressed only happiness.
A shadow fell over the little group, coming between them and the moonlight. Buffy looked up and held out her hand.
"Faith," she said.
The clear light and shining love in Buffy's face was irresistible. Or should have been irresistible, Dawn thought. But Faith stepped forward unsmiling, her black eyes as bottomless and unfathomable as ever. None of the starlight that shone from Tara reflected back from them.
Buffy looked up at her fearlessly, as she'd looked into the painful brilliance of Tara's golden brightness. Then, never looking away, offered her hand. Dawn stepped forward and offered hers also.
Faith stood gazing down at her sisters, to two open fearless faces, the mute offer of their hands. The offer of connection, warmth, humanity. Nothing showed in her own face, and she was utterly motionless herself.
"Come on, Faith." Conner said softly. Dawn looked at him quickly, and saw that the brown eyes were intent now as they looked at the shadowed balancers face.
Faith spoke without moving. "I'm not like you."
"You're not as different from us as you want to think," Xander said. "Look," he added, and odd note of challenge in his voice, "I know you protected or tried to protect Joyce and Buffy from Jezebel the first time she attacked, because I was there. You're more like us than you admit, Faith. The only thing I don't know is why you didn't stop Jezebel from taking your grandmother."
Faith napped, almost automatically, "Because I was frozen!"
Memory swept over Dawn. Herself standing next to Buffy, while she yelled at Faith, and Faith not moving.
"But how did Jezebel get past the shields?" she began, following her own train of thought.
"They were down," Faith said tersely. "Jezebel was well prepared. That night she was in the house and Grandma was gone before I knew what had happened I was paralyzed."
"Why didn't you call for Buffy?" Spike said. Their was no accusation in his voice. It was a simple question.
"Because there was nothing she could have done! Buffy would have only gotten herself killed."
"You see I'm not like you," she said to her husband.
"It doesn't matter," Buffy had still not withdrawn her hand. Neither had Dawn.
Faith stared at sisters and then slowly joined hands with them stepping into the warmth. Victoria smiled and joined her hands in to. All that was missing was Joyce from this moment.
Tara and Willow wordlessly joined hands again, and Tara's golden head dropped to Willow shoulder. Over her head Willow watched the sister's reunion.
Dawn shook her head, feeling a catch in her throat. It was eased as something touched her arm and she looked up at Conner. Even soaking wet, even covered with bits of moss and fern, he was a beautiful sight. She smiled at him, feeling her wonder and joy a the night. The giddy, dizzy excitement as she thought about what had happened tonight. Buffy and Xander were smiling too, and in an impulsive burst Dawn seized Conner's hands and whirled him into a dance. In the middle of the clearing they kicked up wet leaves and spun and laughed. They were alive, and they were, young, and it was the summer solstice. And for a long time in the clearing there was only rejoicing.
One year later.
The small blond child bent her head to blow out the single candle on her birthday cake and then clapped to the delight of everyone around. Buffy smiled and looked up smiling and glanced at Giles who was massaging a second trimester pregnant Jenny. Buffy knew they were happy, as she glanced at her mother and grandmother, sitting down laughing as Rose smashed the cake. Spike came through the kitchen door supporting a very pregnant Faith, who went over to compare bellies with an equally pregnant Dawn, Buffy laughed, then smiled when Conner kissed the back of Dawn's neck. She glanced at the kitchen door as Willow and Tara came through. Buffy smiled again as she thought of Tara's getting used to the world again. Xander smiled as he laid a hand on Buffy's still flat stomach. Buffy looked at her family and thought maybe it's time to pass the fight along to the new champions of the world. Tara Rose, the Champion, Dawn's daughters the future slayer and next Warren Witch, and finally Faith's child, the future balancer. They had survived that night in the forest, and that proved they could survive anything.
The End.
AN: Well that's it folks, this series is done. I had a great time writing it, and a lot of tear jerking moments in it. A special thanks goes out to Penguins Evil Pawn, You have stuck through me, through all four stories. You are truly a great fan. Look for other stories from me.