you remind me of a song i used to love - btvs: sundays (willow/tara, pg)

you remind me of a song i used to love - btvs: sundays (willow/tara, pg)

in our bedroom after the war

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btvs: sundays (willow/tara, pg)

[Oct. 1st, 2006|12:54 pm]

[	Tags	\|	buffy, fiction, willow/tara	]
[	mood	\|	at last	]
[	music	\|	joni mitchell - a case of you	]

title: Sundays
fandom: btvs
pairing: willow/tara
rating: pg-13
summary: Tara studied Willow on Sundays.
word count: 1,731 words
prompt: how do Willow and Tara deal with Buffy's death, and taking care of Dawn by themselves?
disclaimer: joss whedon’s, not mine.
notes: 08.26.06 / written for whichwillow, my first attempt at participating at any ficathon, so yeah, nervous. *grin* Willow, Tara, Dawn, post-Gift.

Tara studied Willow on Sundays.

It felt as if these were the only days that were quiet enough, Tara thought, and often, she’d find herself staring at Willow, her fire red hair in a ponytail, sweat lining her brow lightly as she went about the house, checking door knobs and tightening screws.

Tara had always wanted to ask why Willow wouldn’t just leave them alone – but then, lately, there weren’t many questions being thrown around. Willow had grown quieter these days.

These days. The days following Buffy’s death were, to Tara’s memory, the hardest to wade through – the silences were too thick, and Dawnie’s sobs, too suffocating.

That night following Buffy’s funeral, Anya and Xander decided to get out of town – to where, they didn’t really explain. Giles flew to England, as expected. Soon it became clear, this was how it was going to be – she, Willow and Dawn, in a house too big for three.

“What are we going to do?” Willow had asked that night. The lights were out and Dawn was between them, all cried out, spent and sleeping.

Tara had reached over, tentatively, tracing lightly on Willow’s arm. “I don’t know,” she’d just said. It was a long drawn out sigh.

*

Looking at Willow that Sunday, folding clothes from the laundry in the bedroom, Tara silently counted the months, the weeks, the days. Tara remembered having held Willow’s hands as she cried, those first few days after Buffy, whispering, “Sweetie, we’ll take it a day at a time.”

And so that was what they did – Willow got a part-time job at the University, and insisted that Tara didn’t have to get one herself. “I’ve got it covered,” was how she phrased it, punctuating it with a kiss -- soft, chaste, and ultimately – Tara could only know so well – tired. Tara could not help but concede.

They sent Dawnie to a school outside Sunnydale – because, “Nothing beats a good education,” Willow had tried hard to beam, only to end up with a pale glow. She had painstakingly collected over the Internet during her spare time, choices in nearby places, scholarship grants from well-known high schools.

“Her sister died saving the world,” it was Willow’s attempt at humor, one night, between toothbrush strokes. “Won’t that at least count to her favor?” To which Tara had just smiled in response, affectionately rubbing away with her thumb stray toothpaste from the corner of Willow’s mouth.

Dawn got the scholarship not because she was the Slayer’s sister, but because she also had Buffy’s IQ level. The letter arrived weeks after she took the exam. Dawn received it herself – a mix of glee and non-glee, Willow would have called it.

“Does this mean I’ll have to move out?” she had asked, unable to hide her anxiety.

“It’s a four-hour drive, Dawnie—” Willow had begun saying, only to leave the sentence hanging, off Tara’s look.

“This will always be your house, sweetie, and you will never have to move out,” Tara said gently, picking up where Willow left off. “But it’s going to be very hard to go to school in a place hours away, don’t you think?” At the corner of her eye, Tara thought she saw Willow heave a sigh of relief discreetly.

They started packing that weekend, just random things -- clothes mostly, an assortment of Dawnie-colors and Dawnie-stripes, Dawnie-stars, folded neatly into a suitcase. Willow kept to herself in the adjacent room, settling for listening to random and brief bursts of giggling and laughing from the other side of the wall.

“Where’s Will?” Dawnie had asked in the middle.

“Oh, reading,” was what Tara had said in reply. But then she knew Willow very well to know that was a lie.

That night, Tara came to bed with a soft, “Will, are you all right?” as she settled behind the redhead, unsure of this closeness, as had been the case most nights after Buffy’s death – Willow, in bed with her, but so far away. “Will?”

Willow took a moment before she turned around, slowly, and the rustling of her pajamas against the sheets echoed off the walls, into this silence around them. “Yeah,” she just said, just as softly. “I guess.”

“It’s Dawnie, isn’t it?”

A slight nod, reluctant but there. “It’s the right thing to do, I know that,” she began, casting her eye off Tara’s shoulder, and Tara brushed aside the feeling, how it stung because Willow was not looking, had not looked at her since… Tara couldn’t remember, but she could feel how it had been a long time. A long time. “But you know. Dawn’s been here for as long… for as long as I remember, and tomorrow, I’m driving her—”

“WE’RE driving her, Will,” Tara corrected gently. “I’m going with you, we’re going to make sure she’s settled in just fine, and then we’ll drive all the way back, you and me, Willow,” Tara bit her lip. “Remember me, Tara? Your girlfriend who has been here all along?”

With what little filtered moonlight seeping into their room’s window, Tara saw the features on Willow’s face soften, a sort of surrender, a sort of grief. “I’m sorry I haven’t been Ms. Accessible lately,” she just said, her voice very much like a child’s. “You know… you know I’m not good at this, not good enough…”

“Sweetie,” Tara said, touching, after much thought, the side of Willow’s face lightly with her fingertips.

It was an act that hardly needed any effort or thought before – touching Willow had been something so easy and natural, almost like reflex. To touch her brow whenever she laughed, or to touch her cheek whenever she said something funny, even if the others didn’t get it. To touch the space behind her earlobes whenever she blushed from embarrassment, to touch the underside of her wrists whenever she got that far away look in her eye, the slight frown on her lips.

To touch Willow, to trace the path down the side of her throat, to her collarbone, down the valley between two breasts, the contours of her stomach, the rim of her navel. Touching Willow had been one of life’s surer things.

And then Buffy died. All of a sudden, there was Dawn to support, the laundry to get done, meals to be cooked, groceries to be picked up. They were keeping it together, making do – the effort may not have been flawless and throughout stellar, but then, bird by bird, Willow used to say. Piece by piece.

Until one day, Tara woke up, asking herself: Am I losing her to this effort?

Is Willow slipping away?

“Willow,” Tara just said again, stroking the side of Willow’s face lightly, somewhat even surprised at her boldness, this time.

Willow closed her eyes. “I know,” she just said. “It will get better, give it time.” Whether she had been referring to Dawn and school, or to the two of them, Tara couldn’t decide at first – but then again, eventually, Tara always knew what it was Willow had meant.

*

That day they drove Dawn to school, Tara had to practically drag Willow away from Dawn’s dorm room doorway – it looked as if there was no convincing Willow it was safe enough for a girl Dawn’s age.

“Will, these are dorms made for girls like me,” Dawn had soothed her, smiling. “How can I be not fine?”

Will leaned against the doorway, tired from unloading all of Dawn’s things a few moments before – boxes and suitcases and grocery bags to last her for ages. But apparently, not too weak to be stubborn, persistent. “But you’re not—”

“Willow,” Tara was quick to interrupt, for she knew what it was Willow had wanted to say – that Dawn was not a girl ‘like everybody else,’ that she was who she was – Buffy’s sister. Her best friend’s sister. Their immediate ward. Tara put a hand protectively on Willow’s shoulder. “She’s going to be all right,” she whispered into Willow’s ear.

“But what if they come back for her? We’d be, what, four—five hours away, and-and what if she… runs out of snacks?” Willow finished softly, turning to face Tara, half-smiling, half-crying – and there it was, Tara saw: the shy uncertain girl she’d met a few years back, in a Wicca meeting in university, fidgeting and… scared.

Not the I’m-running-away-from-this-scary-thing kind, or the Oh-shit-hide-me-now kind of scared, but more the I’m-scared-but-I-know-I-have-to-do-this-anyway-I-just-want-you-to-know-I-am kind.

And it was, in every way, the kind of scared Tara had grown to love all these years.

“Dawn’s strong,” Tara just said, smiling wider, cupping Willow’s face gently.

“Like an Amazon?” Willow asked back, smiling herself, remembering the time they had looked for that shirt.

“Like all the Summers women we know.”

*

And so Tara studied Willow on Sundays. Because Sundays were quiet and because on Sundays, she and Willow were at home, alone.

Sundays were when Tara could watch by the doorway silently as Willow folded the laundry and sorted it in piles, the look in her eye no less determined, as if she were doing this to save the world. The thought made Tara laugh lightly, amused by her own observation.

“Hey,” Willow looked up, suddenly aware of Tara’s gaze. “What are you doing, Tar?”

Tara lowered her head, trying to hide her mischievous smile – like a kid caught with her hand in the jar. “Nothing really,” she smiled nevertheless, biting her lip. “Just… watching. You.”

“Fold our clothes?” Willow narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion.

Tara bit her lip harder, swallowing down a laugh. “Sort of, yeah.”

Willow raised a brow. “Am I doing it wrong?” the tone in Willow’s voice was playful, and there were attempts to maintain the serious look on her face.

When was the last time the banter was like this? Tara mused silently. “No, honey, you’re doing it just right.”

And then -- Willow looked up and beamed. “What day is it?” she asked, her smile no longer the pale moon’s glow, but the sun’s rays, bright and warm.

Tara pushed herself off the doorway and moved toward the bed, sitting across the pile of clothes. “It’s Sunday, Will.”

Willow breathed in. “Let’s go get some ice cream,” she just said.

And Tara found herself laughing as she hadn’t for a very long time—feeling a certain kind of spark inside her re-ignite, ticklish and alive.

link

Comments:

From:

kallie_kat
2006-10-01 05:17 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Whether she had been referring to Dawn and school, or to the two of them, Tara couldn’t decide at first – but then again, eventually, Tara always knew what it was Willow had meant.

I loved that line. It exactly describes the natural, unforced relationship that Tara and Willow shared. You did a great job with the story--very well written, and great characterization.

(Reply) (Thread)

From:

daneorange
2006-10-02 04:25 am (UTC)

(Link)

thank you for the comment *glee* i'm glad you liked it :) i was very nervous about coming out with this, and i'm just happy somebody thinks it's nice :)

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