Chapter Twenty Seven
Ethics
Willow was crying.
Tara stood by the doorway and her face was white. The greedy pain fiend had moved inside her skull and was methodically scraping and gnawing every bit of her. She looked on her girl, and Willow's mouth was slightly open, tears were trickling down her cheeks, her hands lay at her sides and her eyes, oh her eyes were calling her name, without words they were calling her name.
The entire day had felt surreal to Tara. It was a sense of self-preservation that had her almost rebuild the wall behind her eyes again when she first moved down the halls to Willow's room this morning. Floating on her near-angelic experience with Goddess Willow, Tara was almost nervous about entering real Willow's room. But her concern that she was in love with a figment dissolved the moment she looked into her girl's eyes. Habit is hard to break, and it took a great deal of effort for Tara to keep the wall down the entire day, to keep her gaze clear and honest. The pain had removed her somewhat from the world and she floated like a nebula down those halls and into Willow's room.
There was no mistaking the delight she saw in Willow's eyes. And neither of them spoke a single word as the long hours of the day passed them by. Tara couldn't keep her hands off her patient; she needed to be touching her somehow, all day long. And Willow couldn't keep her eyes off Tara, and everywhere she went she felt the gaze of Willow Rosenberg. A gaze that started curious, went confused, went calculating, and then went scorching hot.
And now, despite Willow's tears, the eyes that fluttered beneath wet eyelashes were looking on Tara with a desire that melted her to her core. It was a look that Tara wasn't sure she would get in the waking world, and it meant so much more to her here. She almost pinched herself to be sure that she was on the outside; she was awake, not dreaming. There she stood in her scrubs and Willow was crying for her.
Tara could see what would happen next.
She would close the door behind her. She would walk to Willow's bedside, where Willow would slide over enough to give her a place to sit. Sitting down, she would use her thumbs to gently wipe away Willow's tears. Her thumbs would follow the swell of Willow's delicate cheekbones, her fingers would extend to wrap around Willow's ears.
And Willow would kiss her. With her chapped lips and broken body Willow would kiss her. She would lean into her, and her warm breath would be a caress on Tara's skin, her watery eyes would stay open, tracking Tara's lips, guiding them unerringly on hers. And once Willow kissed her, Willow would remember it all, every moment stolen from them by the coma, and the tentative and hesitant love showing now in Willow's eyes would be transformed in the soulfire of memory.
So she took a step to her, then two, because this was the moment she'd been waiting for. Her life would begin again the moment she kissed those lips.
But there was a tap on her shoulder and Tara about jumped out of her skin. She turned around, blushing furiously, heart pounding, blinking at Penny. Penny looked apologetic, but she said in her neat southern drawl, "Tara, there is a phone call for you. It's Althanea?" Penny hastily retreated and Tara looked back at Willow. What could she say?
In the same near-magical hush that had encapsulated them all day, there was nothing to say.
And her brave girl, sitting on the bed, she knew how important Althanea was, so she wiped her tears and she waved Tara away.
So Tara turned, and left Willow bathing in her own tears, and her heart broke as she did so. There was a tiny measure of relief as she strode down the hallway; she had been far too close to crossing the line. If she had gone to Willow then something
(kissing rapture)
would have happened for certain. Ethan was already worried; in their ill-fated lunch conversation yesterday he had warned her about getting too close to Willow. Ethics, morality, crossing the line, getting fired even, it worried Tara a little. For all her adult life her job had defined her and given her a purpose when she had no other. There was joy in the blood-debt, a pleasure in the pain. As much as she desired to take Willow in her arms and kiss her senseless, Tara knew that she had to be careful if she wanted to keep her job. And her job was important, wasn't it?
"Althanea?" she asked after picking up the slim phone at the nurse's station.
"Tara, are you all right?" Althanea immediately asked. "I felt so bad leaving you last night."
"I'm okay," Tara said, only partly lying. "Are you all right? Did you find..." and Tara looked at the other nurses working near the station and revised her question, "What you were looking for?"
"When you don't want demons, they're everywhere. Look for them and they disappear," Althanea replied glumly. "Don't worry, we'll keep looking. We'll find one for you, I promise."
"Althanea, please be careful," Tara pleaded.
"My dear, don't worry," the witch replied. Tara could hear some whispering in the background, and Althanea's palm must have covered the phone before she said, "Angel wishes to speak to you for a moment, Tara."
"Oh, all right," Tara said, surprised.
"Tara, how is Willow doing?" he asked immediately.
Tara surged in jealousy again and forced it down. He's an old friend, Tara. He's worked with her for seven years. Of course he wants to know how she is doing. "She's doing really well, Angel," Tara said. "She's healing herself very quickly."
"When will she be released?"
Never. I'm keeping her forever.
"Another week, perhaps," Tara replied.
"My friends and I finally located the scythe," Angel continued. "We'll have it ready for her."
The scythe. How could Tara have forgotten about the scythe? There was a strange ringing in her ears, and she floated through the rest of her conversation with Angel without knowing what exactly he said. She finally hung up the phone and stood at the edge of the nurse's station, trembling.
"Tara, are you all right?"
It was a nebulous question, floating to her from beyond a great wall, beyond a great fog. The scythe, the terrible scythe, the one that Willow would hold in her hands, raise up beyond her shoulders; it would speed down to crunch through Tara's neck bones. As she pictured this horror, there was a great and victorious yowl in her mind, and she was mercilessly jolted with a sharp stab of mental lightning.
Staggering, Tara clutched at the counter at the nurse's station. She was barely aware of the hands that encircled her shoulders, of the voices calling in her ears, for she was sliding down a great black chute and Caleb was at the bottom. Standing there, pristine in his black clothes, the white spot at his throat glowing with the luminescence of long-dead algae, his eyes black, his arms open wide in a grand benediction.
Hello again, Tara. Would you like to play? There's all sorts of fun to be had and the reaver is coming. With the scythe she is coming. To kill you she is coming. How's about we practice for a spell, first? Don't want to disappoint the reaver now, do we?
(scalpel)
Tara would have screamed.
But she was already unconscious on the floor.
Tara had no idea how long she was in the grip of Caleb, how long he tortured her in the darkness, how long she screamed in his maniacal clutches, but her poor pathetic soul thought it may have been years. When she finally opened her eyes again she began to weep with relief, and then with horror. The world seemed muzzy and indistinct, but she could smell the hospice smells, and feel cool linen underneath her. "Thank God," she heard Ethan say.
She looked at him through teary eyes. She was in an unoccupied room, laying in a hospital bed. "Tara, you have got to stop doing this to me," he said, his voice shaking. "I know you can't love me the way I love you but it's tearing me apart to see you like this!" She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but he continued like a freight train. "Is it because of what you did for Willow? Is it because of Caleb?"
"Yes," Tara breathed.
"This isn't normal, Tara," Ethan continued. "I want to do some tests, okay? Something is going on inside you that we don't understand."
Tara froze. She fully understood Willow's trepidation earlier about the tests; sometimes it was easier to live without knowing. What if they found something in the tests, something abnormal? Her hopes and dreams, already precarious, already thinning under the onslaught of Caleb's scalpel, would vanish like moonbeams. "Can you wait, please?" she asked softly. "Wait until after I try the demon?"
He ran his hand through his hair and she smiled to see the familiar gesture. "Promise me, Tara," he said earnestly, "Promise me that if the demon doesn't work, we'll try some tests."
"I promise," she said. Trembling with exhaustion, her limbs leaden with fatigue, Tara closed her eyes again and rested against the thin hospital-issue pillow. The first image that passed through her mind was one of Caleb, of his grasping her head between his hands and twisting... Tara shook her head and forced herself to think of something else.
Willow. She left Willow. She needed to go back. The plea that was in Willow's eyes as Tara stood in the doorway, the clock ticking past six o'clock, the anxiety written plainly over her face, and Tara had just left her. What was her girl thinking? Could Willow be thinking that Tara didn't care? She would be wondering why Tara didn't return right away after the phone call. She would be expecting Tara to tell her what Althanea had said. She would be confused, crying again even.
"What time is it?" Tara asked, opening her eyes.
"Eight o'clock," Ethan replied. "Do you want me to take you home?"
Tara made up her mind. In a way, her fainting attack and subsequent torture by Caleb had opened her heart to something. What cared she about her job? She needed Willow. She needed something that only Willow could provide. And finally, finally Tara was beginning to hope that she might be worth something to Willow. Maybe she didn't always have to be a paragon. Tara recalled the moment under the willow tree, when she allowed herself to be vulnerable, to be protected, and the memory filled her with longing.
Hiding all the pain she felt from Willow seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now it made no sense to her at all. She knew if the circumstances were reversed that she would feel hurt (devastated!) if Willow didn't ask for her help, for Tara to be with her during her ordeal. Tara finally dared to believe that she didn't have to suffer alone.
Tara remembered Sue, how Sue didn't even notice that Tara was dying. And now that Tara felt like dying again, the pain fiend hollowing her, she didn't have the strength to go it alone. After all, where was her love?
(I am close, Tara.)
Tara looked at Ethan then, at the softness in his brown eyes, and she wished him only happiness. "No, Ethan," she softly intoned. "I'm going to stay here tonight. With Willow."
He was confused. "On the couch?" he asked. She had done it before, with almost every one of her patients. He could allow that. She could sleep on the couch.
"No, Ethan," she replied, blushing. "I need her to hold me tonight."
Ethan's face fell, and she could see the war within him. "Tara, please," he said. "You know I can't allow, I mean, it's against policy... you know, Tara!"
"I know." Her eyes were luminous and determined.
He stood, and his face was clearly conflicted. "I can talk to the other staff, especially John," he said quietly, "but I'll have to write you an official reprimand."
"I know."
"Why are you doing this? You just can't wait? Willow is getting better so quickly. In another week she may be discharged," he said, anguished. "Tara, I don't want to fire you. Your work has been exemplary, everyone likes you, you are so incredibly gifted, why are you willing to throw it all away? Please, Tara, just wait!"
Tara couldn't answer. All she could see was Willow's face, the tears trickling down her cheeks, the eyes that had finally looked upon her with desire. She had answered Althanea's similar question by showing her what happened under the tree, but there was no way she was sharing those memories with Ethan. It would break him. And she loved him too much for that.
She needed Willow. And by the response Willow gave her today, by her actions that spoke louder than any words ever could, she knew that Willow would understand. She could stand in Willow's doorway, and walk slowly to her bed, and crawl in beside her, and Willow wouldn't turn her away.
And though Caleb would have her quivering with fear, despairing in a loss of hope, she held on to the one thing that was certain in her life: she loved Willow. It was time to discover if Willow loved her back. There was no cocoon of coma anymore to protect them both. A long time ago it seemed to her that she stood by Willow's bed for the first time, vowing to do anything it would take. She didn't know back then that she would be sacrificing everything for Willow, even her job.
But the pain was too much, she was hollowed. Time to fill her up again, with the love of the woman who was finally ready to share it with her, and ethics be damned.
