Chapter Two

Dreamer

Oh so quiet, and oh so still, Tara waited for Peter Whitney to die. In her most precious heart she recalled the moments of happiness he had given her in the past year, the wisdom and advice he had shared with her. Feeling utterly wretched at wanting his death, yet anxious for his great pains to finally be finished, she listened carefully to the sounds coming from beyond the curtain. Finally the blessed monitor flatlined, and Tara rushed to the bed. Whipping her stethoscope to her ears, she barely noticed the resigned faces of his family as she closed her eyes and listened.

Blessed silence.

"It's over," Tara said, hoping to convey with her voice the gladness that he had died without pain and yet the sorrow that his passing was to her. As Widow Whitney nodded, Tara thought she understood.

The door opened; Tara knew it would be her supervisor, Ethan Daniels. The nurse's station would have been notified the minute the monitor flatlined, and Ethan was here to take the rest of the burden from her. With a wave of his hand, he sent her to the staff room as he began to explain the papers and procedures Mrs. Whitney would have to follow.

Half an hour later, Ethan found Tara in the staff room, sitting in her favourite bright yellow easy chair, nursing a cup of coffee and staring out the window. He sat down across from her, pushing his tousled hair out of his eyes, and said, "You did good work, Tara."

"He was a g-good man," Tara replied, looking over at him. Her eyes were soft, tenderised by pain and much remorse.

"Well, you've got the mandatory week off," Ethan said, stretching out his legs, hoping to hide his look of concern. The policy had been in place at Los Osos Hospice for years, as a way to make sure the overworked nurses had time to rest before taking on a new charge. He knew enough about Tara, though, to know that the mandatory week off would be a burden to her, not a blessing. She had no family she cared to speak of, and her house still echoed with the remembered frolics of her dead cat.

Tara didn't say anything, just turned her head and looked out the window. After a few long, uncomfortable moments, Ethan got up, grasped her shoulder and said, "Get some rest," and then left.

Tara felt glued to the chair. The cup of coffee was now cold and near empty in her hands. With a great effort she lifted herself from her chair, poured the coffee down the sink, and pulled on her light jacket. It was early summer in central California, and Tara knew the cool tang of the air.

Once in the parking lot, Tara took a deep breath of the salty air of the sea. The hospice was a little removed from the town proper, halfway up a hill, and Tara could see the protruding mass of the Morro Rock in the distance. The estuary was filled with boats as the summer tourist season began to heat up. She walked to her car, a sensible little Honda, and started her drive home.

Her house was ancient, on a street with old oak trees, and it was blessedly cool and dark, as she had remembered to draw all the blinds before she left for work yesterday morning. She debated opening them, flooding the kitchen with light and fixing herself some breakfast, but decided against it. She was too exhausted. Setting her keys on a counter, she gasped as another large gnarl of pain broke out on her lower back. She shuffled to the medicine cabinet and dry-swallowed a couple aspirin, noticing that she had a message on her answering machine. Tara pressed the button and heard the familiar dreaded voice of her older brother, Donny.

"Tara? It's Donny. It's been a month. I'm coming up tomorrow, whether you're working or not, and you will take this stinking animal, whether you like it or not. Call me if you want to, but nothing you say will make me stop coming by tomorrow." Tara cringed at the implied threat in his voice. Why did he always have to be this way? She hadn't refused an animal in years. Besides, she needed an animal, badly, and Donny knew it. The machine blurted out the date in its dry, disinterested woman's voice, and Tara realised that he called yesterday. Which meant he was coming today.

Thank goodness her house was clean. Donny could report that to their father.

Deciding against the bath (no time to waste, Tara), she merely took off her shoes and climbed right into bed, scrubs and all. The room was pleasantly dark and cool, and she fell asleep quickly, despite the pain in her back.

And dreamt.

Tara was wearing her favourite burgundy dress with the wide floral sash, her brown hair was invitingly up, and her eyelids glittered in modest gold; she felt young and pretty. She was strolling arm in arm with the mother of her youth, the Anna of the golden hair and wide dimpled smile. The campus of UC Sunnydale opened invitingly before them, raw in its youthful exuberance, pulsing with the collective heartbeats of a thousand students. Tara could feel a palpable weight lift from her body, as the chains of restraint her father forged for her were undone.

"It would have been so different," Anna murmured, and a sliver of sleeping Tara reflected on her decision not to come to UC Sunnydale, even though she had been accepted, choosing to go to San Francisco for nursing school instead.

And in the distance, a goddess made flesh walked unerringly towards them. Towards her.

The goddess was the embodiment of youth and beauty. She was clad in a shimmering white gown spun of fiery starlight and her face radiated a power deeper than Tara had ever felt. It was a magical power, a mystical power, one that dwarfed the considerable power of the woman on Tara's arm, and Tara heard her mother gasp with the knowledge of it. Every step the goddess took toward her, Tara felt she was drawing nearer to the reason for her own existence. Suddenly everything began to make sense to her; the horror of her father's abuse, the pain of her mother's death, the emptiness of her current existence, it all led faithfully to this one divine moment. The hardened bud of her embittered life began to unfurl, her vessel began to open, and the future, always a desolate and fearsome place, began to bloom like the lilies of Mr. Whitney's garden. Tara trembled, knowing that the sole purpose of her whole being must surely be this single encounter with a being composed entirely of love.

The goddess floated closer, until Tara realised that she was scarcely more than a girl. Who, despite the ageless wisdom glimmering from the depths of her eyes, could be no older than Tara herself.

So Tara slid into love, no more able to stop it than to stop the tides.

Tara felt a deep pull of desire, a near-painful exquisite ache that radiated from deep within her. It was a single emotion more powerful than any she had ever felt in her life; surely her last girlfriend

(sad sad sue)

had never affected her like this. She felt that a part of her that had always been missing was suddenly found, and she rejoiced in the discovery. Tara longed to touch the pristine unnaturally white hair that fell like snow over the woman's shoulders, to run her fingers through it, to smell the sandalwood and rose infusion of it. She ached to place her hot fingers on the back of the woman's neck, to tilt the woman's lovely head, to place searing kisses of surpassing tenderness on the woman's delicious lips, to feel the woman's breath on her cheek.

And she wept with the longing, with the heart-breaking ache that rent her soul.

The mindless students endlessly milling through this sunny campus plaza didn't seem to notice the approach of the goddess/woman, yet they still gave her wide berth. Tara knew she was the sole intention of this woman, that no force on earth or in the nether-realms could halt this woman's steady advance toward her, and her heart wept in gratitude. Finally the woman stopped directly before Tara and Anna. The woman lifted strong, lithe hands and displayed them to Tara, palms up. A mysterious weapon winked into existence in her waiting hands. It was an axe, or a scythe, a deep burnished red with a gleaming silver edge and Tara looked at it in surprise. The goddess gripped it in both of her hands like the fate of the universe rested upon her; her eyes suddenly brimming with unshed tears.

The woman gazed upon Tara with a softness and vulnerability that shocked Tara to the core. No one had ever trusted her that fully and Tara drowned in the depths of those sea green eyes. "What part will you play?" the goddess asked Tara softly.

And some part of Tara knew it, even though she had never seen the script or read the ending. Her part in these events would be a natural extension of her own soul; it would fulfil the end of her very creation. She would be the tool, the bridge,

(the lamb)

Enchanted and beginning to feel lost and dizzy, Tara dared, oh yes, she dared! to lift her ungainly hands and take the wicked gleaming weapon from the goddess. Tara concentrated on the weapon and employed her strongest, finest offensive. Tara sharply inhaled, and the weapon dissolved into so much colourful dust. Then Tara was lifting her trembling fingers to the woman's perfect face. She wiped away the offending tears, caressed the woman's cheek and felt suffused with love. Tara then held the woman's chin and said, without a ghost of a stutter, "I am the lamb."

The woman's face lifted in hope, and Tara was filled with desire. A part of her knew she was dreaming, and ached for a single kiss before she woke. Her eyes fluttered shut as their lips drew closer and Tara knew this was the moment she had been waiting a lifetime for.

But she was violently pulled away by her mother, and the goddess' face crumpled in despair, and she reached imploringly for Tara. Tara stared at her mother in astonishment, wondering why would Anna stop her, Anna knew, she knew the truth about her, her little private war and the surrender to the only thing that felt right to her, and that was a woman's lips, it was a woman's touch, a woman's desire. Tara shuddered as Anna cried in a voice of doom, "For you, dearest daughter, the truth."

The sky darkened as night swept over the campus. The students fled, screaming. The ground rumbled underneath Tara's feet; she stumbled back as the ground underneath the goddess erupted in a massive profusion of bloated bodies. The goddess lurched upon that mound of crumpled limbs, and Tara knew with startling clarity, the clarity only found in dreams, that they were her dead friends, and out of the well of the worlds names came to her: Buffy, Dawn, Xander, Giles, and Anya. Their blood began to seep into the hem of her immaculate gown. And underneath the surface of the streets of Sunnydale was a twisted warren of evil

(I am the first)

that Tara could feel, could feel the inky reek of wickedness slide along her bones and into her mouth, tasting of sharp copper and bile. It was a fanged, malevolent presence that lurked beneath every crypt, every manhole cover, and called out to its minions.

And in the night that had completely swallowed Tara, Anna, and the woman, the minions answered. Waves of them emerged from their lairs, scenting fear and despair and feeding on it like wild dogs, yapping and snarling, encapsulating the three of them, fencing them in, surrounding them.

The woman cried out, tossing her head, her white hair shimmering like sheets of rain, and Tara turned to see the crumpled bodies of the woman's dead friends grabbing at her, pulling her down into the ground to be with them, and Tara also somehow knew that a part of this woman desired it. Tara wanted to shout out to her, but her mouth was stopped agape as she watched a swollen purpleness bloom on the woman's abdomen, staining the gown with liquid terror and desolation, spreading like a cancer over her entire body, until she stood dripping with anguish. Above and beyond them all Tara could hear a deep maniacal laughter

(I AM THE FIRST)

and she cringed to hear it.

"Can you save me?" the woman cried.

"I will," Tara promised. "For I am your lamb."

And her brave heart never faltering, her purpose shining clear, Tara strode confidently up to the woman. And as she advanced she faced down the hordes of her own private despairs, the twisting fingers of her father, the bloodied fists of her brother, the dirtied coffin of her mother. They rose up like armies before her, but her determined resolve shone through them. And the sweet sweet light of Peter Whitney sustained her; his tunnel was her tunnel, and tasting exaltation on her tongue Tara advanced.

For this was her purpose. This was her being. This made sense of it all.

Tara finally reached the waning goddess. Tara extended her eager hands and she took the woman in her arms, tucked the woman's head protectively in the little hollow by her shoulder and embraced her with fierce compassion. The deep, yawning pit of desire in her stomach lurched as the woman's hands clung to her with an ardent intensity. A delicious pain constricted her throat and for a moment she could scarcely breathe, drowning in a vast ocean of need.

And with every ounce of love in her body, she used every teaching her mother had ever imparted her, splaying her fingers wide and pressing them firmly on the woman's bare back. She closed her eyes and just wallowed in the luxurious feeling of a warm womanly body against hers, she could feel the woman's tears in the hollow of her neck, the woman's fingers clutching so desperately on her back, and the glory of the woman's breasts pressed so firmly against her own. Tara sharply inhaled. The stain began to retreat from the woman's body as Tara's fingers greedily sucked it in, transferring it to Tara's own body, until Tara choked on it as it formed clot-like throughout her very soul.

And this time the tunnel, and the light, was for her.

As Tara kept taking the stain, the darkness, the evil,

(the first)

the goddess began again to shine brighter and brighter, until the hordes of cackling vampires and demons began to disintegrate before them. Shocking rays of sunlight streamed from their entwined bodies and Tara wished she could stay thus forever, stay part of this joyous union that made her whole worthless existence suddenly worthwhile.

But no, there was

(the tunnel, the purple)

the light, and she tasted the foul purple stain on her tongue, and she felt it hardening like cement in the veins of her body. Satiated to the point of death, she finally tore herself away from the woman, whose brightness now exceeded the very sun in the firmament, whose face now rose to look upon Tara with endless gratitude and love. It was payment enough for Tara, to see her beloved once again at peace, even though she herself was inundated with the dreaded purple stain, and could verily feel the weakening beats of her steadfast heart. The two women clasped hands, and still Tara could feel her fingers thrilling at the other woman's touch, and her desperation for a single kiss overwhelmed her.

"For the love of this woman, you will surely die," Tara heard her mother prophesy. It hurt to look away from the goddess, but Tara did so, hearing a twinge of pain in her mother's voice. Still holding hands with the goddess, Tara watched in shock as her mother's body wilted, corn-silk hair shucked from her scalp, body withering under chemotherapy, skin drying to paper thinness. Tara now beheld the mother who had died in her arms six years earlier.

"You took too much, Tara," her mother said. "You took it, and you can't give it away."

A gust of wind, and her mother's frame crumbled into dust and was borne away, leaving Tara alone with the unknown goddess who shone with a piercing liquid light. The goddess stared at her cleansed body, at their conjoined hands, then looked at Tara with awe and wonder on her face. Even in the midst of her euphoria, her desperate love, Tara could feel the purple stain that she had taken from the goddess, could feel the inky blackness burrow deep in her bones, poisoning her to the point of death.

"Why, oh why?" the goddess whispered, endless sorrow in her green eyes, clutching at Tara's hands, starting to pull Tara again to her, frantic to reverse the spell, to take it all back, because it wasn't supposed to end like this, no, not like this.

And the god-light beckoned to Tara, and she could see the gossamer threads of heaven's highway extending towards her, and the sweetness flooded her soiled mouth, tasting like sunshine and Peter Whitney's lilies. It didn't matter now that she had taken it all; she had saved her. The woman would live.

"Because I am your lamb," Tara whispered, finally at peace.

And Tara felt her consciousness begin to lift, just as the woman wrapped her arms about Tara, vainly trying to hold her in, but it was too late.

Tara exploded with a great burst of light.

And woke.