There is a chorus of protestations, people clamoring loudly over one another, but in the end Tara shouts, which is enough to grab everyone's attention. She blushes, but does not apologize, and repeats in a clear, calm voice—that leaves no room for argument—that she is going for a walk, and that she is going to do it by herself.
It's surprising to her how stifled she feels in the house. After months alone in an empty world craving the people she missed the most, it is suddenly overwhelming and smothering. Willow doesn't make eye contact with her, though Tara feels her staring hungrily out the corners of her eyes. Willow doesn't touch her, rarely approaches her, and keeps her distance is much as possible. It feels wrong to admit to herself, but this comes as a relief. Unsure about her own conflicted feelings—torn between her anger, hurt, grief, and love—it's easier to have some distance.
Tara sighs as she makes her way down the street, confusion and uncertainty tying her stomach in knots.
And other concerns plague her, a deeper nagging doubt that grows stronger by the hour. What if she is dangerous? What if Buffy was right, that first night?
Could she be the thing that she has always feared the most? Something ugly and evil—like her father always told her she was—that will hurt the people she loves? Has she come this far only to have come back wrong? Is she even in control of herself? She stops briefly on the sidewalk and rubs her temple, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes until she sees stars.
There is no rustle of bushes or sound of footsteps, but the hairs on the back of Tara's neck stand up.
"H-hello?" she calls out warily. Defensive spells fly to mind, and she sends a quick tendril of herself into the earth, checking to see that her connection to magic is still present and can be called forth. Reassured at the familiar presence, she calls out again, feeling stronger, confident, with the safety of magic at her side. "Show yourself," she demands.
This time the bush does rustle, but it's Buffy who steps out from it, ducking through the branches and looking very sheepish. "Hi," she waves lamely.
"Buffy," Tara exhales in relief before the briefest flash of irritation flares. "What are you doing here?" she asks, crossing her arms.
"Um. Not following you?" Buffy attempts lamely. Tara raises an eyebrow and Buffy drops the act. "Following you," she admits guiltily. Seeing Tara's mouth open to protest, Buffy quickly continues with a quirked brow of her own, "Oh come on, like we were going to let you go out alone? At night? In Sunnydale? Besides, I wasn't gonna interrupt, you never would have known I was here."
Tara's eyebrow jumps further up her forehead. "Sorry," Buffy looks sheepish again. "Am I interrupting? 'Cause I can—" she gestures backwards with her thumb, indicating an exit.
Questions and uncertainties hang heavily over her and Tara thinks maybe she's had enough alone time for the night. Now that Buffy is here, she doesn't want to see her go. Hugging herself, Tara shakes her head, "No, it's fine."
"Y'sure?"
Tara nods again. They resume walking, falling into step next to each other in a companionable silence, though Tara's fears hover on her shoulder, haunting not far behind.
"Alright, spill," Buffy blurts not a few minutes later. "I've done the resurrected back-from-the-dead thing a few times now. There's . . . stuff to deal with. I've also had my ex-boyfriend come back from the dead too—or, undead, I guess—so no matter which way you look at it, that kinda makes me the expert, here."
Tara sighs loudly, not even knowing where to begin.
"It's weird, isn't it?" Buffy says. "The way the world just kept going, without you in it and when you come back, it's speeding so fast you can't get back on."
"How did you do it?"
"Not sure I'm the best example here, what with the clinical depression, sleeping with Spike—," Buffy counts out each item with a finger, and she's ready to keep going, but Tara interrupts her.
"No, I mean—how did you forgive Willow?" Embarrassed and almost surprised at the admission, Tara hugs herself tightly, looking away from Buffy and hiding behind a veil of hair. It's an old gesture, but one she clings to in this moment nonetheless.
Just as Tara thinks Buffy's not going to say anything at all, she speaks. "I've been the Slayer for a long time now and almost given up more times than I'd like. But Willow and Xander were always there, helping me save the world. She had a million reasons to leave Sunnydale, but she chose to stay here, fighting evil. And fighting evil is hard, trust me. Especially when it's yourself. Sometimes the people we need to save are each other."
Buffy takes a breath, and the next words come out pained. "I wasn't here last year, Tara. I should have known what was going on with Willow. Been there for Dawn. For you. I should've stopped Warren and the others way sooner. You died because of me. Forgiving Willow was easy in the face of that. Plus," she adds with characteristic cheerfulness, lightening the seriousness of her previous words, "I figure if you help save the world four or five times, the sixth one's gotta be free."
Tara is contemplative, chewing on Buffy's words quietly as she speaks. But buried in there was an admission of guilt she has no reason to apologize for. Tara looks sharply over, displeasure across her face. "Whose gun was it?" she presses resolutely once Buffy finishes.
Buffy blinks, confused, "Sorry?"
"The one that killed me." She hates that the freshness of it makes her nearly stammer over the truth. But this is too important for such trivialities. "Whose was it?"
"Um, Warren's, I guess. Maybe Jonathan or the other one? I don't know, wh—"
Tara interrupts, because this is crucial, and she wants her to know it. Buffy has always carried too much of her burden alone; this shouldn't ever be one of them. "His gun, Buffy. He pulled the trigger. Not you. It was no one's fault but his." Tara hopes it's enough, that her words can somehow penetrate the armor of guilt her friend carries.
Buffy bites her lip, looks up at the moon; Tara searches her face. A moment passes. "Let's go home, Tara," she says finally, eyes wet. At the battle-weary look on Buffy's face, Tara thinks maybe, just maybe, she's made a dent.
There's no rushing yeast.
Tara sighs in relief—the bag of yeast is still in the back of the freezer where she left it last year. Crumpled and wedged behind boxes of frozen dinners and containers of ice cream, but still there. The other ingredients –sugar, flour, salt—are presumably also untouched since Tara's departure.
She made a lot of bread the summer after Buffy died. Unable to sleep, waking in the early morning hours—sometimes before dawn—with a panicked sweat slicked down her back and nightmares of Glory echoing in her ears. There was no sleep for Tara those mornings. Gingerly she'd sneak out of bed as to not wake Willow, who had often helped quiet her back to sleep from earlier nightmares, and head downstairs to the kitchen.
Tara felt closest to her mother, then. Her mother, who had lived with a quiet dignity and strength and died without it—her mind and body stolen by sickness. Her mother, who had braided her hair and patched her scratches and iced the bruises and made Tara promise—promise—to get out once she could. Who had seen the love Tara had in her heart and made her vow to give it to someone worthy.
Sometimes Tara missed her so much it made her want to punch something with the unfairness of it. To take the anger and hurt and grief and push it as far away as she could because it was just too much for one person to hold. It hurts, she'd said to Xander. She remembered that release of pain, grateful to feel it somewhere else for a moment, instead of strangling her heart.
Bread takes time. It has to be kneaded, massaged, and left alone to prove, only to be beaten down again for a second rise. Only time will help it reinflate, to help it forgive and forget what was done to it; to be made into something more.
Tara thinks they've all been beaten enough. She just wants to be left alone to rise.
"Are you ok?" Dawn mumbles sleepily from her pillow, curled up under the blanket toward the wall. Tara cringes. She thought she'd snuck in quietly.
"I'm fine Dawnie, go back to sleep," she whispers, trying to change into pajamas as quietly as possible. Tara slips under the covers, trying not to jostle the bed too much. With no further motion from the shoulders on other side of the bed, she lets out a long sigh, as much in relief to have not woken Dawn as the exhaustion of the day catching up with her.
Tara can sense long hours of tired restlessness ahead but is still startled when, without stirring, Dawn's voice suddenly breaks through the night, gentle and sincere in the darkness. "I was angry too, when she came back."
Tara sighs. It's too much and all too confusing. "Dawn-" she barely begins to chastise before the next words chill her to her bones.
"But I wasn't angry she killed him. I'm glad he's dead." Dawn's voice is hard and cold. The tone is final, leaving no room for conversation. She still hasn't moved. Silence presses. Tara swallow and blinks into the blackness. Sleep doesn't come for a long, long time.
"You're gonna run out of flour eventually, you know."
Tara smiles against her better judgement. Spike saunters around the counter, pulling her from her thoughts. "Y'not uh, hiding out in here by any chance, are you?" He jerks his thumb towards the dining room, where Willow hasn't moved from research mode in hours.
Tara flushes in embarrassment at being called out so accurately and she punches the dough a little harder than is strictly necessary. "No," she shoots back defensively, immediately feeling bad for snapping. "No," she repeats more gently. "Maybe a little," she admits.
"Lot tougher now that it's real, innit?"
"I didn't think it would be this hard."
"Can't hide from things when they're right in front of you. Well, you can, but not forever." He pulls out a cigarette, slips it behind his ear. "I've tried."
The anger comes more easily than she ever expected it to. "I can barely look at her without thinking about what she did."
"Trust me, she can't either."
"Why are you doing this?"
He shrugs. "I've been in love with something I didn't deserve. More th'n once. Been on both sides of this one."
After everything, after finally having making it back, things are more broken between them than they ever were. She just wanted to come home. She'd given Willow her heart a long time ago. The trust she'd been earning back carefully all those months ago, gone; crumbled in the wake of her passing. Can it ever be rebuilt again? And now, a question Tara never wanted to ask—Should it?
She's come so far, finding home again in Dawn and Buffy's arms. In Xander, Anya, and Giles. Miracles she never thought she'd have again. She wants more than anything to find similar solace in Willow's arms, to be soothed by Willow's hands. Hands that floated roses and freed her mind. Hands that have now stripped flesh and crushed bone. Murdered. Hands she can't even look at. "I don't know how things can ever be the same." It feels like her heart is breaking.
"They won't be. Nothing ever is."
Tara finds she doesn't have much to say to that. She dips her hands in flour and kneads.