She was tired. So very tired.
"Tisk, tisk. Our little lamb is dead on her feet. This won't do at all."
Tara can't help but smile at the thinly laced scolding left unsaid but not unfelt as those dark eyes hold hers as she lowers herself into yet another of her closer guarded memories.
"Maybe this will bring you back to us." The elder across from her says as a freshly drained glass of blood is set in front of her. "I made sure the poor little thing didn't suffer so. Remembered how you said the fear spoils the flavor."
"Thank you…." Tara sighed drinking the offering down greedily. Even then she'd been using herself up too much to bother hunting 'regularly'
"I'm going by Dru again now." Her 'grand-sire' says with a shy kind of smile over the rim of her already filled and red-tented wine glass. "I've gone too long by another I've missed the sound of my own name."
Tara nodes once "It fits you more," she agrees. It always shocks her these times when just for a second, she catches that childlike wonder that had first caught Willow's attention oh so long ago.
"You're missing her again." Not a question. "Why torment yourself so. My pet wouldn't want this for you." The dark-haired elder reminds over the rim of her glass as she takes another measure of blood from it.
"I've always wondered something," Tara says changing the conversation before the offering of turning the latest incarnation of her lost sire could be brought up.
"You often do whenever I choose to stop in to check on you." Dru says with a giggled laugh as she holds her now empty glass up between her slim fingers. "I don't like the taste of cold wine."
Tara was already looking away when as if on command their lingering waiter offered his wrist over the held glass. Her breathing stops when the blade in his other hand cuts even deeper than before of his next slashed cut to his arm refilling the cup with blood.
"This one is a poet." Dru smiles twirling the blood glass around slowly between her fingers. "But in answer to your question, that new one is a little more like ours was. Artistic, passionate. But so wrong too."
Tara nodes in quiet agreement.
"I had dropped in thinking of using her for a replacement." Dru confesses "It's been far too long since I've had my favored pet to play with. She was such a wild one my Willow was and it'd finally stop you sulking around so and spoiling the fun of what we are."
"My, Willow." Tara corrects despite the fact she was now glaring down the vampire who'd actually turned her beloved sire into the fisty temptress Tara had first fallen in love with so, so long ago. Her face immediately changes too at the mention of turning even the copy of her sire still sketching unaware of the danger in the park across from where the pair sat stalking her. "She can never be replaced." Tara snarls
"Not that you haven't tried huh?" the military-dressed man sitting backward in a chair opposite them scoffed as he watched yet another memory scene play out around them. "All these years. All these other Willows. What the hell are you waiting for?"
Dru's face shifts as well in answer to Tara's ill-advised challenge. Yet she could see in the elder's yellowed eyes she also understood Tara's angry hesitancy as they stared one another down. "She'd also not want you to suffer so with this heartsickness. Makes you truly waste away. spoils her dark gift to let you do such a foolish thing all for the sake of missing someone not yet truly gone."
An almost spent Tara sages against the seat attempting poorly to hide the crushing strain of her torment back as she finally gives an answer. "Her. I'm waiting for her."
"What's your name, why is the Initiative so interested in you? What's Tara's favorite color seeing as you're so interested in stealing my sister away."
Gaea's tail thrashed as she made the running jump onto the sofa with a claws in batted paw hissed in Anya's direction while the dark-haired teenager they'd brought back instead of Tara curled even more into herself at the other side as far away from Anya's probing glare as she was able.
"What? Come on it's just like Tara to want to pick up another stray but I for one am not calling her my baby sister until I have more information other than her magic-scented aura and sweet girl smile. Unlike Tar, I'm not swayed so easily. I mean has Tara not told you about that time she stopped off for that summer in the GRT?"
Gaea gave a huffed-sounding mew in answer whilst the others shared matching puzzled looks between themselves.
"Yeah, I know right? Almost as if we didn't already know she had a thing for redheads we did after that little trip—what was her name anyway? Kat? Mel? Emily?"
Gaea's tail flicked at Anya's current topic change when she like the others noticed Willow listening in from the doorway to Tara's bedroom. Even Dawn noticed the tabby's next broken string of mews sounded more than a little chastising toward the end.
"Nicole yeah that's it." Anya nodes seemingly unphased by the glare her currently cat-embodied mother is sending her way."
"Redhead?" William guesses carding his fingers in Buffy's hair as she goes back to resharpening her blade.
"Yeap." Anya nodes "but that is until Officer tall, Haught, and law-abiding found herself an actual angel to follow around like a cute puppy after leaving their surprisingly nicer version of the Initiative to join the police force." She adds with a grin. "but before you go crazy, Red, Tar and Nic got together long before that reincarnation of you showed up so don't even think of holding it against her." Anya adds jabbing one of her throwing knives in Willow's general direction before sliding it back into the sheath strapped to her leg.
"What's the GRT?" the teenager questions while reaching out a tentative hand toward the grumpy-looking tabby now flicking its tail in obvious annoyance while balancing on the arm of the sofa beside her.
"Ghost River Triangle. Think Sunnydale only with way more things that bump back when the sun goes down." Anya shrugs kicking her feet up on the edge of the coffee table. "How they managed that is a mystery considering we're sitting on an actual Hellmouth but hey it's not a competition."
"And how is any of this going to help us get Tara back?" Willow asks
"We only have one slayer Will. They have….. well a heck of a lot more firepower."
"Good thing we've got an idea on how to even the playing field then." Willow smiles casting a glance towards the shadowed outlines of her carefully picked out past lives whilst her more vampiric self just looked both bord and energized all at the same time as Willow then attempted to explain her newly thought up strategy.
