Flashes of yellow dapples the car's interior as they pass underneath streetlights, dazzling Tara's water-clogged vision until The Sunnydale Motor Inn finally makes its appearance; a squat building lit by blue lights and neon signs with a twenty-four-hour diner sharing the opposite side of the lot.
Tara's throat tightens, coiling around the tears she's trying desperately to stop. Every tear brings Buffy and Spike's attention down on her and while she knows they care and want to help, she wants to be ignored. Wants to suffer in silence as she thinks on the dark holes of Willow's eyes. The black tips of her fingers that spiderwebbed into wicked lines across her skin. Something dark is in her, and it breaks her heart.
"I'm going to save you, baby," she whispers to herself, sniffing quietly as Spike brings the car to a stop in the almost abandoned lot.
They file out of the car, Spike grabbing the duffle bags out of the trunk as Buffy wraps an arm around Tara's shoulders. She's stopped shaking, stopped sniffling, and is now just exhaustedly mute as she lets herself be steered into the reception room that smells like old cigarettes and antiseptic spray.
A tall, curly-haired man wearing a white tank with a badge that reads 'manager' pinned to it has his sneakers up on the desk, watching the TV attached to the reception wall. He struggles up as they close the door behind them.
"Checking in?" he asks and Buffy nods.
"Yes," she answers.
"How many beds?" the manager asks, cocking an eyebrow back at Spike with a dirty leer. "Just the one?" He winks and Spike glares.
"Read the room, mate," he growls.
"Three," Buffy says with a sigh, cutting across Spike's aggressive attitude.
The manager raises his hands in a don't-shoot/tough-crowd gesture and flips open a ledger. "Gotta double and a single, or three singles."
"Probably the double and the single," Buffy replies. "'Less you wanna bunk with us, Tar?"
Tara raises her head and shakes it bravely. "I-I'll be fine. J-just n…n-need some s-sleep."
Spike frowns at her worsening stutter as the manager marks the rooms off in the ledger.
"Fantastic," he mutters with obvious boredom. "That's sixty for the double, forty-five for the single. Check out at eleven, or let us know by ten if you wanna stay another night."
Buffy fumbles in her shoulder bag for her purse to pay, but Spike gets there first and hands across a handful of bills. The manager takes it without comment, counts out Spike's change, and slides across two room keys. Number 3 and number 8.
"Thanks," mumbles Buffy to Spike, who squeezes her shoulder.
"You're welcome," grunts the manager, assuming she means him. He slumps back into his chair, propping his feet back up on the desk and scratching his gut for all the world like they were no longer there.
They cross the parking lot, Spike's arm wrapped around Buffy's shoulders. He catches Tara glancing over to the twenty-four-hour diner, worrying at her lip.
"Hungry?" he asks and she jerks her head, jumping like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't.
"N-no," she says, shaking her head hard.
They open the door to number three, discovering a single bed, walls painted in garish 70s brown with washed-out watercolor scenes of the old West framed on the walls. A desk with a mirror and a chair takes up one side of the small room, and a tall dresser takes up the other.
"It'll probably look better with the lights off," says Buffy with a goading chuckle and Tara shrugs.
"I-it's fine. Thanks." She takes her bag out of Spike's hands.
"We're in number eight if you need us, yeah?" He reminds her. "Could probably just holler."
Tara nods again, accepting a hug from Buffy before they close the door on their way out.
She waits, listening to the sound of their dwindling footsteps crossing the parking lot. The muffled clack of a door closing. She watches from her window. After a minute or two Buffy slips back out again heading for the diner. About five minutes later she's back out again, slumping with tired legs towards her room. The door shuts.
Tara waits some more.
Counting the seconds.
Biting her lips.
Wringing her hands.
When she feels like enough time has passed, when it's likely that Buffy and Spike are either asleep or distracted enough not to be watching the windows anymore, she slips back out, crossing the lot to the diner.
It's almost empty when she shuffles inside, wincing at the tinkling bell announcing her presence. Just one burly man drinking coffee at the end of the counter, but he doesn't look up.
She sits down at a booth and waits. After a few minutes, a waitress appears out of the swinging doors leading to the kitchens, a pad in her hand.
"What can I get you hun?" she asks, chewing the gum in her mouth and moving it to the other side, tucking it into a cheek.
"Uh…" Tara mumbles. "Can I… can I get a chamomile tea?"
"Sure," says the waitress, jotting it down.
"A-and, can I have the tea bag outside the cup? N-not in the water? I like it weak," Tara adds.
The waitress nods. "Anything else?"
"Y-yes…" Tara chews her lip nervously. "An egg?"
"You want that scrambled, or fried, or what?" The waitress prompts, her pen poised.
"...Raw," Tara says. "S-still in the shell?"
The waitress pauses, her eyes flicking in confusion. "Just a whole raw egg?" she asks like she's misunderstood.
"Yes," confirms Tara.
The waitress studies her for a minute, eyes narrowing, before she mutters 'gross' under her breath and turns to leave. Tara holds herself still until the waitress disappears back into the kitchen area again, and then as nonchalantly as possible, slips the salt shaker from the table into her pocket.
The waitress returns with a steaming mug. "One tea," she confirms, setting the mug and a chamomile tea bag still in its paper envelope down in front of Tara.
"And one… egg." She hands a large brown egg out to Tara who takes it carefully.
"Thank you."
"...That'll be three-fifty."
Tara hands her five dollars and mutters, "Keep the change," waiting as the waitress rings it up at the til and pockets the coins before disappearing out the back again.
She drops the chamomile tea bag into her pocket with the pilfered salt shaker and heads out, the mug of hot water in her hand. She empties it in the parking lot, letting the water splash on the asphalt, walking fast back to her room.
She keeps the lights off, sliding the chain into the lock before rummaging in her bag and extracting a small almost burned-down nub of a candle and a disposable lighter.
At the desk, she lights the candle, dropping a couple of dots of wax onto the polished wood to hold it in place in front of the mirror, its image reflecting and illuminating her face; tear-streaked and red eyes. She takes the salt shaker from her pocket, unscrews it, and tips the entire contents out. She smooths the salt into a streak of granules, and with her little finger draws a sun; a wide circle clear of salt with waves branching off.
"Theia, Lucina, Eos, Sol… I beg of thee." She cracks the egg carefully into the stolen mug and with gentle fingers extracts the yolk in one piece, placing it in the center of the salt-sun. "Bring me out of the darkness…accept my offering." She tears open the envelope containing the tea bag, rips it open, and tips the chamomile flowers into her hand. "Light my way…Show me my path."
She blows the flowers towards the candle. They swirl into the air like snowflakes, defying gravity, and ignite into bright pinpricks of light, floating down gently, sinking towards the egg yolk which glows a bright white. Sparkling tendrils of electricity surge out, crackling around the mirror, glowing brighter, and Tara holds her breath, waiting for an answer.
In the mirror, as if rising out of a dark fog, an image appears. She and Willow, sitting opposite each other on her dorm room floor, a rose floating gently between them.
"...Oh," Tara breathes out, new tears stinging her eyes but she doesn't look away. She waits for the memory to continue but it doesn't. Instead of the spell unfolding how she remembered it, the image of herself and Willow turn to face her—
She jerks in fright as their gaze focuses on her. The rose glows brighter but it seems to cast them both into darkness rather than illuminating them.
"Take it," her mirror image implores and Tara gasps as the words land in her head without traveling through the airwaves.
"Take it?" Tara asks in apprehension. The rose looks like it's about to catch fire, embers swirling around it.
"Take it," says Willow, her voice less commanding, more pleading.
Tara wets her lip and reaches towards the mirror. It cracks as her fingers touch the surface, but as she pushes further it ripples like water, freezing her skin but she keeps going. All the way up to her forearm until she can wrap her fingers around the rose stem, where a sudden heat warms her fingertips.
As she pulls the rose towards her it elongates like it's made of toffee, becoming two roses; the one in her hand, and the one floating between mirror-Tara and Willow. As the last tendril breaks, separating the two roses, the one left behind vibrates and shivers, breaking apart and crumbling into particles of light.
Tara pulls her hand free of the mirror, holding the rose in her hand, shaking as the mirror dulls, returning to just her own reflection.
The candle sputters out, leaving her in the dark.
Buffy dumps her bag on the room's chair, looking longingly at the double bed despite the off-putting swamp green color this room has been decorated with. Their bed comes with a bedside lamp on a table that Spike flicks on as she turns off the overhead light and admittedly that does do something for the decor but she still can't sink into the bed like she wants to.
The clock on the dashboard of Spike's car had read 1 AM so it can't be more than a quarter past now.
She sighs, cracking her neck.
"I better call Giles from the payphone in the diner," she mutters. "Tell him we've got a Willow on the loose."
"He probably knows, pet," Spike says but hands her the change out of his pocket.
"Thanks," she says, and then, when the sight of Spike's quarters and dimes in her hand causes a surge of gratitude she can't fully comprehend, she slips underneath his arm and hugs him hard. "Really thank you. Super thank you."
He hugs her back, laying a kiss on the top of her head before she heads back out into the cold parking lot.
She enters the diner and finds the payphone. She drops the quarters in the slot to activate the dial tone and reverses the charges as she keys in the number she's had stashed in her wallet since Willow had been frog-marched across the Atlantic. Frog… flown?
It rings for a while before Giles picks up.
"Giles?" Buffy prompts and he takes a relieved breath
"Buffy!" he answers, sounding exasperated. "Thank God you called, we've got a problem—."
"If it's a missing witch I've got the answer," she says, twining the phone's cord in her hands.
"Willow—?"
"Magicked her way back here," she fills in. "Then poofed right out again. Could be anywhere."
"I think not."
"You think not?" Buffy repeats.
"She'll be in Sunnydale, I'm sure of it," he answers. "Where are you all now?"
"Xander's where he normally is, ditto for Anya, and Dawn's with them. Me, Spike, and Tara are camping out at the Sunnydale Motor Inn."
"Oh good Lord, I'm sorry," Giles mutters, distaste audibly curling his lip, and Buffy anticipates that statement comes with glasses-polishing. "I'm on the earliest flight back. Keep your ear to the ground, but I doubt Willow will be missing for long."
"Okay," Buffy nods. "Good… I mean good you're coming back, not everything else good, but yay you're coming back good so... I'm rambling—"
"You should get some sleep," Giles instructs, gently.
"I should get some sleep," she agrees, rubbing her eyes. "I'll call Xander in the morning and give him the heads up on everything, and we can linger here until you're back?"
"Alright. Goodnight, Buffy."
"Goodnight," she says and ends the call.