Thankyou to all my reviewers, especially devianttart, pezgirl1 and Lil428.
Your reviews inspired me when I was getting into the dreaded ending writers block. You know, when you don't want to end the story and so you refuse to update. Lol.
The onlookers slowly left the room, to give the two girls time together. For many long minutes they just looked at each other, holding hands, drinking in each other's presence without words.
"Tell me how you're here."
"Tell me what's wrong."
"How can you be here?"
Tara blushed and looked down. "I'm a gift."
"I don't deserve one."
"I think…I think Buffy brought me back."
"You're her gift?" Willow asked innocently, then, worried. "But you're not like her? You didn't…" Willow lowered her voice, "Dig out of your grave? I swore I wouldn't do that to anyone."
"No. I'm glad to be here. I don't remember where I was before, just that I was happy. I'm happy here too." Tara looked at Willow.
"Are you really happy?"
"Do you even have to ask?"
"Tara…Tara I did things. Bad things."
Tara shook her head sadly.
"I know. I saw."
"You watched?"
"I tried to reach you, to talk to you, but I couldn't get through…"
Willow looked down, tears forming. "I'm sorry."
Tara took her hand. "Look at me."
Willow slowly raised her brown eyes to meet Tara's.
"I can't forgive you. You have to forgive yourself."
Willow nodded, and looked away. "And if I can't?"
"I won't lose you again." Tara said firmly. Then she blushed. "I mean, if you…you don't have to…"
"Tara!" Willow said overloudly, turning red herself. "Of course. It's only you. It's always been you."
She hesitated, and Tara caught her eyes again, trying to look into them and see the Willow she remembered.
"I couldn't. That's why. I mean, I did it. That's why she would get so angry. I couldn't love her the way she wanted me to."
"No sweetie. It's not your fault. None of that is your fault."
Willow shook her had sadly and looked at the taller girl as though she pitied her. "You really can't see?"
"See what? I can see you Will."
"It's everything. I hurt you. I violated your mind, and my friends, and then you died and I couldn't save you."
Tara wanted to interrupt, but Willow ploughed on regardless.
"Then I killed Warren. He didn't mean it. He didn't want to kill you, not even Buffy. He was just a stupid messed up guy and I was so angry and I killed him. And I feel so bad because I don't…if it happened again I'd do the same. I'd kill him."
Tara drew back in shock, but regretted it as Willow noticed and let out a sob.
"And I destroyed her…Kennedy. She wasn't like this. It's the spell I did. I made her a slayer when she should never have been. She should have been a kid, in college, kissing her girlfriend without bruising her lips. I did that to Kennedy, and to all those other girls. So many girls, trapped in a life they didn't ask for. All because of me."
Tara reached out tentatively, part of her wondering how she missed seeing all the guilt her girlfriend carried, all the anger and fear that must have always been waiting for a catalyst to emerge.
"I love you Willow." Tara said softly, slowly, half afraid it wouldn't be enough.
The softly spoken words reached Willow's ears, and she looked up through a tangle of hair in a way that reminded Tara of herself, a bittersweet resemblance.
"And I love you."
Silence descended like a long black cloak. Tara stirred first, as if the long months she'd been gone she'd been still, and she got up from the floor with new grace. Carefully, she extended a hand, and helped Willow up. They walked hand in hand through the house, to the living room where Buffy, Faith and Xander sat quietly talking.
The three looked at them, smiling, and stood. Xander and Tara hugged, and she smiled at him gratefully as Buffy and Willow hugged. Faith smiled, watching them.
"I'm really sorry about Anya." Tara said in the carpenter's ear. He looked at her with his eye gilded with tears.
"I'm glad you're back," he replied.
Tara tired quickly, and Buffy, remembering her own experience was quick to insist that Tara went to sleep. She put her in Dawn's room. Willow stood in the doorway, watching the witch sleep until Xander lead her away. Downstairs, they sat on the couch, and she put her head in his lap, and he stroked her hair until she too, fell asleep.
Faith watched the entire goings on quietly, from the front porch, west facing, shaded. When she was certain that Willow was asleep, that Xander was sitting quietly beside his best friend, she sat down on the steps, lit a cigarette, and breathed out.
"You could get cancer from that."
Buffy came down the stairs and seated herself next to Faith.
The dark slayer grinned. "I'm a slayer. We don't live long enough to worry about the big C."
Buffy grimaced but let it pass. "I tried to call Dawn but apparently she and 'Dad' are out sailing…"
"What about Giles?"
Buffy nodded seriously. "I thought maybe you'd like to call him…"
Faith smiled and blew another smoke cloud. "Why me?"
"Why not you?"
"I'm glad Tara is back." Faith said, changing the subject. "You, and Xander, and Blondie can look after Red. The only think I want to do is take care of Kennedy but…who knows where she's gone?"
Buffy tried to take the younger girl's hand but Faith moved it away, firmly. Buffy frowned.
"Faith…"
"Look B. it's nothing personal. I just…I'm thinking, you know?"
"Yeah?"
"And, I mean, why am I here? What good am I doing? I said, way back then, that when all this was over, Apocalypse done, I'd go back to jail. I'd do my time, plus the extra for escaping in the first place. Then I just, when it was over, when we were running in the magic school bus I just let it slip to the back of my mind. I kept going, figuring that you'd need me to help with the cleanup, with patching them slayers and sending them somewhere safe. Well X-man and Oxford are doing that, aren't they? Got 'em all in some kind of slayer boarding school…."
Though Faith's tone hadn't changed throughout, she stopped looking at Buffy and intensely studied her hands.
"And then this stuff with Red…I figured I could help with that, since she wouldn't tell you about it…wouldn't let me just beat Kennedy into the ground…but its done. Kennedy's gone, Tara is here, and however that happened it means that I'm done. "
Her tone was bleak, and soft as a sigh. "There's nothing for me here."
Buffy frowned. "If I am nothing."
"I can't do it B. I can't just hang on here, giving you sex and nothing else."
"You think that's all we are?" Buffy asked angrily.
"Not we. Me. I'm a criminal B, a killer, and I came to Sunnyhell because I was needed. But I'm not now. Not even by you. I won't survive here B."
Shocked into silence by the last sentence, Buffy just listened, though anger and sadness warred inside her for dominance.
"I have to pay for what I've done, and keep on paying. If I stay, if I stay here where not even you trust me, I'll…do something. Kill someone. Or myself."
"I trust you." Buffy protested.
"With your body, yeah. But as a slayer? Heck, not even the New Council wants me. I'm not even the spare, now that there's so many. At least before I could be your shadow, I could be the runner up to your Miss World, but now I'm nothing. I'm shit. I patrol, in this town with one, maybe two vampires a week, and I can't even protect Willow, and she fucking lives with me! I'm a slayer B, and I don't have a purpose. That's what I am, that's what you are, and I can't live as anything else."
Buffy stared at her. "But I want you here." She said.
"But you don't need me here."
"Where do you think you'll go if you leave? Back to the streets? Back to Angel?" Buffy asked sharply.
"Angel. It always comes back to him doesn't it? No, B. not Angel. I'll leave him to pine away for you until the day you decide you're ready to let him back in." Faith replied angrily, standing up.
"The day you fuck him again and his soul stays because he's been waiting so long that not even you back can make him perfectly happy."
Buffy slapped her. "Don't talk to me about him." She said, electricity sparking from each word. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Still mouthing off about things you don't understand." Faith said venomously, deliberately echoing Buffy's own words from long ago, when they were teenagers. She returned the slap with all her strength, punching Buffy in the jaw. They were silent, staring at each other for a long time.
"I'm sorry." Buffy said first.
Faith scuffed the ground with her boots. "Me too."
Buffy clasped her hands, squeezing them. Faith moved her hands away, kissed Buffy on the forehead and walked back into the house. "I'm sorry, but I have to go."
There was a pause. Then a clicking sound. The echoing of the long distance call was minimal.
Hearing the concern in Giles' voice, and eventually, after talking to Buffy, Willow, and Tara herself, his delight, Faith was glad she'd rung him. After a long time, passing the phone around to the gathered girls, Buffy had passed the phone back to her, saying "He wants to talk to you."
"Faith. How are you feeling?"
Confused, Faith reiterated similar things to the others. "It's great Tara is back. Wow. Etc."
Faith could almost see him taking off his glasses and polishing them.
"That's nice Faith, but I wanted to know about you."
Faith breathed out slowly, confused. "I'm good. You know. Killing time. Thinking its time I got back to prison, y'know? B don't need me here….. now the world didn't end."
Giles either ignored or didn't pick up on the bitterness.
"Yes, well, quite. Ah, I wonder if you'd like an alternative. Not, of course, that these are your only options, but, ah."
Faith interrupted, amused at his awkwardness. "I get'cha Watcher man. What's up?"
"I was wondering if you'd like to come to England and help me."
"Huh?"
"In your capacity as the slayer, you could assist the girls we have over here, provide insight into some of the realities of this life that I, and the various watchers I've managed to round up are unaware of."
Faith debated with herself silently. My escape route. No. Stuck teaching a bunch of snotty Kennedy clones. Or worse, little Buffy's.
"You'd be housed separately from the girls of course, who live in dormitory style accommodation mostly. I sold my flat to move out here, and Xander and I live in what the girls call the HQ. Where they report for patrol, for training, to record their dreams. So you-"
"Why me?" Faith asked abruptly cutting off his next sentence, and ignoring a chance to say something crude.
"Pardon?"
"Why aren't you asking Buffy to do it?"
Giles sighed. "I thought you'd like to. You connected much better with the Potentials, and I am confident that you will make an excellent trainer for these girls. "
Warmed by his compliment, Faith couldn't help but smile. Xander, who until that moment had been talking loudly with Willow and Tara, who hadn't dropped hands since they woke up, laughed out loud and crowed "Faith did a goofy grin!"
"Now she's death staring me!" he mock cowered behind his small redheaded friend as she aimed a light hearted swat at him.
"Hey X-man, you are heading to merry old England again aren't ya?" Faith asked, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.
"Yeah, "he looked affectionately at Tara and Willow, "But not for a few weeks."
"Well, how do you feel about me coming over to show you and Giles how it's done?"
Xander did an exaggerated doubletake, thought for a moment, and gave her a thumbs up.
Tara and Willow exchanged concerned glances. Buffy's smile froze on her face.
Though Giles' first impulse had been to jump on a plane, dash back to his kids and make sure Willow was alright, he'd managed to restrain himself, knowing his slayers in England needed him. Talking to Buffy, he'd a sense that she was hiding something from him, but she reassured him that it was not about Tara, and that he didn't have to worry that Willow had fallen off the wagon so to speak, in order to bring her girlfriend back.
He enquired politely about Kennedy, and was surprised at the hostility he'd heard when Buffy told him the younger slayer had left, they weren't sure where. Willow sounded like she was going to cry when he asked her, and so he didn't press. Seven years amongst the Scoobies had taught him when not to ask.
Talking to Faith, he'd been surprised at her bitterness, at her sad and resigned talk of returning to jail, of having no place in the brave new world forming. It took a few moments of conversation, carefully avoiding Buffy's name before he realised that whatever was wrong with Buffy involved Faith, and vice versa.
"I wish I could celebrate with you tonight, but know that I am very happy for you, and very glad you got your miracle. You deserve it Willow."
Willow smiled sadly and didn't reply. Tara squeezed her hand.
Xander didn't take them out to dinner that night. Instead he sent Willow, Tara and Faith to the garden whilst he and Buffy cooked. Well, Buffy set the table, lit candles, and poured the wine while Xander cooked.
When all was ready, dusk had descended, and as they took their places at the table the candles cast lights into their eyes, making everyone there glow. Xander took the head of the table, and smiled around at his friends, genuine joy on his face.
Inside, Tara wondered if he was, or would be, bitter because of Anya, because she did not return, but if he felt anything like that he kept it hidden.
She sat on his left, with Willow next to her, and they held hands all through dinner. On Xander's right, sat Buffy, in a cloud of mixed emotions that settled, at least for this one meal. Faith sat next to her, and though she and Buffy exchanged glances frequently, neither talked to the other, Faith directing her jokes and sardonic comments on the conversation to Willow or Xander.
After dinner, Dawn finally returned Buffy's call, and when Tara answered the phone, Dawn squealed down the phone so loudly she could be heard from the next room. She then panicked, convinced that Willow had done this somehow, that Tara would be like Buffy. Tara moved away, out of earshot in order to spare Willow's feelings, and explained, calming Dawn down, that no one was sure how she came, or why, least of all Tara herself, but that she was pretty sure that it was Buffy's wish. When she was at last able to get off the phone, after having Dawn babble excitedly for hours, and everyone present getting a screech and a long distance hug from Dawn, Tara returned to the living room.
Only Willow was present.
"Xander went to bed." She explained awkwardly. "So did Buffy. I think Faith went to patrol."
Tara nodded calmly. She took Willow hand, drew her up, and kissed her.
"I'm taller than you." She informed the other girl.
Willow nodded. "I know. You used to slouch, like you didn't want to be."
"I like it." Tara informed her. "I can see the top of your head. It's cute."
"I have a cute head?"
"A very cute head. With cute hair. And sexy ears."
Willow laughed, and covered the aforementioned ears. "They're funny. No-one has sexy ears."
"Funny-sexy. Like Jack Sparrow."
"I have Jack Sparrow ears?"
Tara laughed, and took her hand.
"I missed you. I remember that. Wherever I was, it was Willow-less."
"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you." Still, guilt stained her tone.
They walked up the stairs together, and hesitated. Willow stepped towards her own room, and Tara followed. "I'm gonna protect you from now on." She said, not stuttering. Willow remembered thinking how cute Tara's stutter was, but thought this quiet confidence made the girl so bright, so glowing. Maybe it's because she's an angel.
Tara drew Willow down beside her, and they lay quietly in each others arms for a long time, staring up at the ceiling. Soft lips grazed Willow's eyebrows, traced a path down to her lips. A tear fell from her brown eyes, and traced a silver path down her cheeks. Tara wiped it away gently with her thumb.
"I love you."
And that's it! Except for a small Epilogue type thing, A Love Returned is over. Please, review. I finished a story. I stopped procrastinating long enough. I feel happy. Willow and Tara's journey isn't over, of course, but they are together again, and Willow can see the sun in all the darkness.
I am planning on a sequel, although it will have to wait until I find a job.
Then Willow, Tara, B and F, as well as Kennedy's futures will be explored.
Epilogue coming soon...