Disclaimer: I own nothing…yet.
Chapter 9
"We're home!" The red-head giggled. Tara dumped her bags, and her child, on the floor, in need of a good stretch. Willow took this opportunity to jump onto the witch's double-bed, getting dirt marks all over the coverlet.
"Whewe awe we going to put all my new clothes?" The child asked after a while, finally settling down.
"That's a good question…" The blonde hadn't really considered that before she bought everything, "I-I guess we'll stuff as much as possible in here and then put the rest in you-I mean, Buffy's room."
Willow looked contemplative, examining the stained sheets. As she stared at the muddy lines, tears began forming in her teal eyes.
"What is it, baby?" The maternal woman rushed to her 'daughter's' side.
"I'I made the sh-sheets diwty!" She cried.
"Oh, Willow, honey, it's okay." Tara hugged the wailing girl, "I didn't like these covers anyway."
"Awe you suwe?" The four-year-old wiped her wet face on the witch's sleeve.
"Yes-I'm sure." The college student didn't care about some crummy sheets; she had bigger things to deal with.
It took a little while for the little doppelganger to calm down, but when she did, exhausted from the day's events, she fell sound asleep, cradled in her foster mother's arms. Gazing down at the pretty cherub, Tara silently questioned her odd mood swings, and especially her changing appearance. As far as she knew, Willow hadn't been restrained as a child, as her parents didn't have the time to pay attention to her, and had probably been given little to no restrictions as to what she could and could not do. That explained the red-head's rebellious taking-matters-into-your-own-hands attitude, but the guilt? The tears over a little mud? That wasn't like her. In fact that was a lot more like…Tara. She had always been scared and teary-eyed as a little girl, terrified of her abusive father. Could that be it? Was it possible that Willow's replica was changing into a combination of the two witches? The blonde gently pried the sleeping child's fingers from her shirt, quietly heading for the dorm room door. There was only one way to find out.
Buffy was just getting ready to leave. She had the appropriate amount of stakes and crosses, as well as the proper fighting attire…if you called 2-inch heeled leather boots vamp-fighting-approved. At least they were sharp enough to kill-that was a bonus. The Slayer tied her golden locks into a well-styled pony-tail; she was ready. Heading out into the hall, she almost forgot her most important task.
"Ugh." Turning back towards the room she had grown to both love and detest, the young woman set about her one obligation. Willow had no problem using spells to tidy up the pigsty of their dorm, but she hadn't yet come across a way to use magic to vanish the garbage. The last time she tried a temporal fold sucked it up, promptly reopening over a certain blonde's head, making her newly-showered smell become something a tad more rancid. Nonetheless; from that day on, the witch had been forbidden from any 'garbage-related' spells, and Buffy had agreed to the formidable task of taking out the trash.
"Come on, Buffy. You can do this." The college student tried to convince herself, "G-d;this stuff reeks." The Summers girl really didn't know why the small amount of trash collected each week created such a strong odor, and she dreaded the one day of a week she had to face it alone. Sighing, and pinching her burning nose, the Slayer tied up the plastic bag, holding it as far from her face as possible.
"Willow so owes me for this." And with that, she promptly left for the dumpster outside, and to attend to her supernatural duties.
Tara, in the meantime, had cast a spell on herself. The very one, in fact, that Willow had created when she forgot to add blueberries to the color-changing spell cast on Miss Kitty Fantastico. Thus, she was unseen by Buffy who walked right past her on her way to slay, holding an offending item far from her nose. The witch smiled; it wasn't often that she performed spells without her girlfriend, and to be successful on her own was a very empowering feeling. Hence, in her invisible successfulness, the blonde crept into the Slayer's room, which, in her hurry to rid herself of the waste in her hand, she had forgotten to lock. Not that it mattered. A locked door wasn't a match for magic.
Looking around the room, Tara, much like her girlfriend's roommate, noticed the unseemly mess on Willow's desk. Little Willow's doing, no doubt. Regardless, a lot of information could be found in a pile of unorganized papers, so the witch wasted no time in sifting through it. After a careful hour-long inspection, the blonde deemed the desk's contents insignificant, and proceeded to move on to her girlfriend's end table. A fifteen minute search of all miniature texts contained therein proved them unworthy of attention. The twin beds shielded no important facts either, much like the shared closet, and the Slayer's practically unused desk. Her head in her hands, Tara kneeled on the floor. Had she not done this, she would not have seen that which, upon lowering her hands, so clearly led her to a conclusion about the whereabouts of little Willow's origin.
The blonde witch had seen Willow casting the spell that preceded their predicament. Therefore, she also observed the blood, and the various herbs, and all other obvious aspects of the spell. But numerous sets of ingredients are utilized in a number of different enchantments, so Tara had no way of knowing what her girlfriend was attempting to do. But the phenomenon she observed before her, caught and half-hidden by the room's sole rug, put it all into place…sort of.
The witch grabbed the piece of parchment, reading it as if her life depended on it. The language was Latin, a common choice for spells and particularly easy for her to read. Unfortunately, the small, bloodstained fragment held a variety of mismatched words, which could only be made sense of if the other pieces were present. Groaning in defeat, about to give up the search as a lost cause; something occurred to the young woman. What if Buffy had thrown them out? Tara knew of Willow and her roommate's scarcely-occurring dorm-cleaning, but she also knew that if Willow had been casting a spell that needed blood; it was probably messy. She also knew that after a certain amount of messiness, the Slayer was apt to clean the place herself, and if that had been the case… she probably threw out the spell! The witch grinned at her superior knowledge, and headed over to the room's garbage can, letting her jaw drop when she found it empty. Was it possible that the garbage was what Buffy was cautiously shipping from the room? There seemed to be no other explanation. Tara knew what she had to do.
Rising from her seat on Willow's bed, she made for the door, which opened to reveal none other than the Slayer, who threw her things on her bed and locked it behind her.
"What a night." She muttered to herself. Tara had to agree.