Prompt: Soul

Willow pushed open the door to her house. It was still her house, her and Tara looked after Dawn in this house for 147 days while Willow perfected the spell. And Buffy had suggested that Willow should move back to her dorm. She said nothing about Tara, just Willow. Tara had even been in the room when Buffy had suggested it, not a single look at Tara or a single comment about her having to leave too. Why would there be, Buffy loves Tara. The kind of love that required two tendrils. She didn't even get that from Tara. Sure, sometimes in that deep red of love she saw the yellow of sympathy. But that's not exactly what she was going for.

She didn't even know why people thought she needed sympathy. She'd done nothing wrong. Giles was wrong. She wasn't weak, she wasn't arrogant, and she wasn't an amateur. And she didn't need anyone's sympathy.

She knew deep down that she should care more about the tendrils. She should care that the room was full of blue when she left. But she felt more, inconvenienced. Annoyed. Not because the colour was blue. But because it was in the way.

She pushed into the kitchen, where she found Buffy sitting at the counter, starring into a glass of orange juice. Willow would have laughed at the irony of following the orange coloured tendril to the orange glass if the situation wasn't painful. Buffy didn't physically react to the extra person in the room, but her defences sprung up. Black sharp barbs formed around her, almost like they covered the table themselves.

Not one of them said a word.

Silence ticked on by, and Willow remembered the day she first met Tara. The day of silence and wrenching hearts out of innocents. She buries the memory in her own coloured tendril of dark green. Jealousy. Of herself. Of a time when Tara could be seen without looking through a blue mist. Not that she had this power before, but she was certain it was not like that before. Buffy had no idea what Willow had given up to bring her back, but one of these days, her patience would snap, and Buffy would find out.

Willow pushed off the wall where she was meant and opened the fridge. Orange juice, apple juice, cider, water, blood, milk, Dawn's afternoon milkshake. She fished out a glass of apple juice and closed the fridge door, moving to leave the kitchen. As she neared the door, she felt a barb caress her spine, and more smaller ones threaten to break the skin on her back. Buffy.

"Next time I die, don't bring me back."

Willow riled. She couldn't take the pain from these barbs. She wanted to see Buffy choke in her own baby blue barbs of guilt and dark yellow of shock to wrap around her and recoil over the dark barbs at her back. She turned slowly to face the Slayer, not a hint of blue mist around her. Willow locked eyes with the blonde.

"I couldn't even if I wanted to. I can't give my soul away twice."

And she left, surrounded by an explosion of every colour possible emanated from the Slayer, and she laughed.