Chapter Twelve

The Confessions of Dr. Daniels

Tara flushed the toilet and then washed her hands thoroughly in the sink. As she washed, she stared at her reflection. No amount of concealer or foundation could erase the hideous black eye and the three furrows down her cheek, so she didn't bother trying. At the staff meeting this morning her appearance was met with general outcry and she had to embellish the story of her attack in a non-demon fashion. Ethan dealt with some other hospice matters, but the meat of the staff meeting was to honour the request Tara made of him last night. For reasons Ethan and Tara couldn't really explain to the other nursing staff, Willow's room would be off-limits to everyone today, and no amount of emergency would be tolerated to open the door to her room. Ethan explained that Tara had just been authorized to carry out a very controversial and experimental coma treatment on her patient. He also explained that he had to be in the room the entire time to monitor the treatment.

Tara couldn't help but smile throughout his explanation. It was so close to the truth, yet so far. If any of them knew that they were going to perform magic in order to bring Willow out of her coma… Well, it was a subterfuge, and it had better work.

Tara carefully picked up the large duffel bag that she hadn't allowed to leave her sight since arriving at work this Monday morning, wincing as muscles pulled in her chest. She walked into Willow's room, noticing that Ethan was already there with the equipment she had requested. Closing the door firmly behind her she walked into the room and shut the blinds, but then drew back the white curtain so the whole room was open. They would need a lot of space for this spell to work.

"Are you nervous?" she asked Ethan as she set down her duffle bag. He was preparing an IV hep lock for Tara, and his face was pale.

"Let's see, am I nervous? I'm about to participate in a magic spell, which magic apparently does exist and not in a Harry Potter kind of way, and I'm also being asked to kill you if something goes wrong. So yes, I'm a little nervous," he replied, fussing his short brown hair and compulsively straightening the items on the tray.

Tara went right over to him and took his shaking hand. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Thank you, Ethan," she said softly.

"Tara, there's something I need to tell you," he said urgently, opening his eyes and taking her hands in his. She saw something in his eyes, a tiny bit of her father, and she suppressed a shiver.

"Wh-what is it?" she stammered, her heart pounding in her chest.

Ethan lifted one of his trembling hands and touched her hair, then ran his fingers down the length of it. His other hand continued to tremble in hers, and she grew a little afraid. With the same hand he used to caress her hair he lifted her chin and said, "I'm in love with you, Tara."

Oh, no.

Tara closed her eyes in sorrow. "I know I shouldn't," he continued, his voice a little wild. "You don't know how I've tried to stop, knowing what I know about you." As he pulled his hands away from her, she opened her eyes again to follow his manic pacing across the floor. "I'm in love with you, you're in love with her," and his wildly gesticulating hand pointed at Willow, "and who knows, maybe she's in love with me. She is straight, after all."

Tara's heart stopped. "What did you say?" she whispered. Her mind was numb, as even her last remaining link to Willow was severed. As her last daydream faded from her mind, a single tear trickled down her cheek. So. The goddess had lied after all. Lied in every way possible. She should have known there would be no hope of a future with Willow, no space between Willow's healing and Willow killing her. After all, she was Willow's nurse. Unethical, Tara, unethical. And now impossible.

No.

"How do you know this?" she asked wildly.

Ethan caught the note of helplessness in her voice and returned to clutch at her hands again. "We got so busy talking last night about the spell and what I had to do to help you, I forgot to tell you I heard from her family."

"What?" she stammered. "Tell me!"

Ethan guided her to the low brown couch and they both sat. In the extremes of her grief, Tara allowed Ethan to sit next to her, and put his arm about her shoulders, and his hand on her knee. With his finger he traced the pattern of the yummy sushi on her scrubs. She looked up at his kind, gentle face and wondered why he loved her. He really was adorable, with long eyelashes and playful brown hair; he could have any woman in the state fall for him. Why, oh why would he choose her?

"It was Saturday morning," Ethan was explaining. "I got an emergency call transferred to my cell phone, and when I answered it was a near hysterical woman. She explained that her name was Sheila Rosenberg, and that she was looking for her daughter. I immediately reassured her that we had her daughter in our care, under the most fabulous of nurses," and he gave her knee a quiet squeeze. Tara could only hang her head.

Ethan frowned as he continued. "She told me that she and her husband had been in Israel, and when the Sunnydale implosion happened a week and a half ago they hadn't heard about it immediately. When she did hear, she pestered local law enforcement, but there seemed to be a mix-up. Everywhere she phoned people kept telling her that Willow was dead.

"But then early Saturday morning she received a phone call from someone named Angel, who claimed to know where Willow was."

Tara's head shot up, her eyes red-rimmed. "Angel found Willow's parents?" she asked.

"Angel was your contact in L.A., right?" Ethan asked.

As Tara nodded, Ethan shook his head in astonishment. "This is an amazing world you belong to, Tara." Noting her disapproval, he then said, "Suffice it to say that Sheila tracked me down, demanded information, and then told me that she and her husband would be flying home as soon as possible. They will be in town tomorrow."

"But how do you know… about Willow… um?" Tara gulped.

"Sheila said she saw the names of the deceased, and Willow's boyfriend was one of them. She then asked if we had somehow saved him, too, but I had to tell her no."

"What was his name?" Tara asked, her head still hanging.

"Tara, don't do this to yourself," Ethan pleaded, once again raising her chin with his hand. Her eyes were swimming in grief and pain; she felt the stinging across the scabs on her face.

Tara sat so quiet, so still, an unmoving statue, as her heart froze. Or tried to. But always, always Tara could feel the emanations of peace from the woman on the hospital bed, rays of hope and encouragement that continually softened her embittered soul.

"We've got work to do," Tara said grimly, wiping her tears carefully, aware of the pounding pain in her eye where Donny had hit her. She got up from the couch and went to her duffel bag, and she could feel Ethan's eyes on her.

"Don't you understand, Tara?" Ethan said, following her, twirling her around, grabbing her arms. "I love you! I don't want to see you hurt. You don't have to do this."

Tara allowed herself to look into his eyes, and grief overwhelmed her again. "I have to," she whispered. "I'm the only one who can, and it must be done. Besides, you're right. I am in love with her."

"Why?" he begged, still holding her arms. "Why must you do it? Why must it be done at all? What is going on in there?"

Last night Tara had kept back some information, not wanting to burden Ethan more than necessary, already feeling so responsible for his loss of innocence, so now she clasped his hands and cast in her mind for the explanation. How to explain that this small woman would save the world, and that if she died, the whole world would too? But her magic, disturbed by the wild concentration of items in the duffel, by her tempestuous feelings, and by the ever-emanating waves of goodness from Willow, seeped unbidden into his mind. Through the contact of her fingers with the skin of his arms, a tendril of Tara's thought invaded Ethan's thoughts, and what she saw there crushed her.

Oh, no. Who now do I trust?

And Ethan's eyes widened, and she knew he sensed her invasion, as she found out his plan. "I only wanted to save you," he whispered.

"Oh, God, Ethan," Tara gasped. "If I can't trust you, who can I trust?" She wrenched herself away from him, from his mind, and stumbled over the duffel bag on the floor.

"I can't just stand here and watch you die," Ethan said. "I know that there is no hope for us, no reason for me to believe that I could be anything but a friend to you, but at least you'd still be alive!"

Tara looked over at Willow's bed, agonizing. Every minute that passed Willow remained in her mind-prison, forced to endure unimaginable torments, and witness unspeakable atrocities. And Caleb, her jailer, her prisoner, walked through the burning streets of her mind, his eyes ablaze, always hunting her, catching her, reaving her flesh from her bones with delicious contentment, bearing down on her, taking from her what had never been taken by force before.

"Ethan, can I tell you everything? Please? You must understand why we're doing this, why I'm sacrificing myself for this unknown girl," Tara said, her mind whirling over the betrayal she witnessed in Ethan's mind, a betrayal she actually understood.

Just because Willow couldn't love her didn't mean she couldn't be in love with Willow. Looking inside herself, Tara realised that yes, she would betray someone to save her true love. She would do just about anything. She cast her mind back on the last several days

(her cells pouring into the dreadful gut wound of Willow Rosenberg)

(watching the demon's eyes as they burst)

(feeding on the healthy farmer's body of her brother to serve her own needs)

(resisting every effort of the goddess)

and sadly realised that she had gone so far down this path that there was no hope of turning back. No hope for her, but plenty of hope for Willow.

And that was okay.

With the light of her conviction shining behind her eyes, her soul dancing with the desire to save Willow, Tara once again sat down on the couch with Ethan. "Ethan, I understand that you would do just about anything to save me, even sabotaging my spell," and he hung his head a bit in remorse. Tara wouldn't have it, and lifted his chin with her hand. "It's okay," she said. "I understand now. But I'm going to tell you the truth now, and all of the truth that I possess. I need you, Ethan. Without your help I won't survive this spell at all. I need to trust you."

Ethan gulped, and then nodded.

Tara rallied her thoughts, and then began. "There is an evil which calls itself the First. It has existed since before the creation of this world. It is timeless, and it is eternal. It is the balance on the scale. This world was not built as a paradise ~it first belonged to the races of demons called the Old Ones. But when the gods made man in their own image they wanted to purify the earth and give it to their new children. A council of the gods was formed, 99 of them to be exact, and together they combined their magics to force the First, the root of all evil, to another plane or dimension. Therein lay their genius, and their chief sorrow. Evil cannot be destroyed, not ever, but with their banishment evil could no longer physically walk on the earth; it could only influence by whisper, nightmare, or demonic possession.

"There are places on earth where the filter between the demon dimension of the Old Ones and our own dimension is thin. These places are called hellmouths, for reasons I'm sure you can understand. From beneath you it devours, and any hellmouth became a locus for evil activity. There was one such hellmouth in Sunnydale.

"For the past year the First has been waging war on the world, centering it's offensive in Sunnydale on the very location of the hellmouth. They were trying to break free of the filter and physically invade the earth once again and rework it into a demon paradise. Every horror that man has unleashed on man, war, plague, bombs, terrorism, will be as nothing compared to the horrors the Old Ones would unleash on our earth. They would bathe in our blood, and feed on our horror, and delight in it."

Ethan's face was turning ashen. Tara continued, "Into every generation there is born a woman who is called the Slayer. She is the one destined to fight the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness. She and a group of her friends, including Willow," and Tara waved at the prone woman in the hospital bed, "fought the First evil all this year. Last week they rallied together and used their formidable combat skills as well as the fiercest magics to collapse the hellmouth in Sunnydale and stop the invasion.

"There were dozens of them, Ethan, mostly girls, for only girls can be Slayers, and they all died. Every last one. Except Willow. They were willing to lay down their lives to protect the earth, and not a single one of us knew it."

Heart-wrenching sorrow welled up inside her, and Tara felt a great lump form in her throat. She had been so oblivious, she and the rest of the world, daring to go on with their lives as if all was normal, as if they weren't standing on the brink of annihilation.

A few moments passed in the silence of Willow's hospital room, and Tara wept. Finally Tara continued once more. "Willow was supposed to use the mystical power of a weapon called the scythe to banish the last manifestation of the First on earth, a man imbued with all the power the First could offer. A preacher named Caleb. But she was attacked before she could fight this mystical battle. A goddess named Aranaea used her magic to imprison Caleb so he couldn't rally another army, a prison of flesh and bone. A prison right there," and she pointed once again at Willow, Ethan's gaze helplessly following.

"The only access point to our reality that remains to the First is through that woman. If she dies, Caleb's prison dissolves, and he is free to wreak his terrible vengeance. That's why she must live."

"But what is your part in all this?" Ethan asked. "Why are you so convinced you are going to die?"

Tara looked at her duffel bag on the floor that she had filled this morning with all the components of the spell she was about to perform. Her heart swelling in love for Willow, she returned her gaze to Ethan. "Willow is the most powerful witch on earth. Only she has the power to defeat the First completely, to utterly banish them back to the other plane of existence. But she can't do a single thing while she is in a coma. Caleb is holding her mind hostage. But not for long.

"Today I will call on the goddess Thespia to bind Caleb with chains of adamant, and we will transfer him. From Willow's mind, into my own. With the amulet of Thespia around my neck, Caleb shouldn't have enough power to overcome my mind; he will be safely locked away. That's one reason that you're here, though," she said sadly.

"You told me that if your head pops up and your eyes are completely black, that I'll have to kill you," Ethan replied, with a dawning sense of understanding.

"It will mean that he has broken free of his bonds. While my hands are connected to Willow's head you will kill me, and he will be forced back into Willow. If that happens, it's really the end. No one else on earth has the power to do this for Willow." Tara noted the shock in Ethan's face and continued, grasping his chill hand, "It's not going to happen, Ethan. The power of Thespia and her amulet is strong. Caleb will not overpower me. But now you see why I need you so badly."

Ethan nodded, and then said, "But you still haven't told me why you're convinced you're going to die."

Tara tucked strands of her chocolate brown hair back behind her ears and sat a little straighter on the couch. "Every act of magic has a consequence, a sacrifice. When Willow regains her strength and sets out to destroy the manifestation of the First she will have to kill both me and the preacher in my mind simultaneously. Just as the dozens of girls died to close the hellmouth in Sunnydale, so will I become the sacrifice for this act of magic."

"And if you don't, the entire world is doomed," Ethan replied, his voice breaking. "I get it now, Tara." He suddenly pushed himself off the couch. "God, how can you live like this?" he asked. "How can you possibly go on, knowing what you do?"

Tara stood and walked over to Willow's blanketed body. Allowing every ounce of love and compassion she felt for this woman to wash over her, cloaking her in radiance, Tara stood by Willow's feet and gently grasped one of them with her hand, softly squeezing. "Because I choose to," she replied.

And just beyond the grey filter, just beyond sight, occupying the same space but in another dimension, the council of the gods rejoiced. Ninety-nine of them together lifted their voices in song and celebration. "Finally, she has made the choice," Thespia said to her little sister. "No thanks to you, Aranaea. You should know by now that you can't force human will." Thespia watched as Tara touched Willow in love, and said, "Now we can save them both."