Title: Tempus Fugit S7

Disclaimers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox and minions.

Copyright: You know it. The story and all original material belongs to me. To quote the fabulous Missy Elliot "copywritten so...don't copy me."

*note Meant to be read with Tempus Fugit S4, a lighter ride than this one.

Spoilers: S6 spoilery, but diverges from canon after S6. I started writing it in the summer of 2002 so there is no crossover with S7.

Feedback: yes, please. [email protected]

Thanks/Acknowledgement: mad props to all the Kittens, to Jenny Jewwitch for the kaddish and the constant support and to Melissa (witchpunk), my wonderful rocking beta/editor.

Part 1: Introductions

Willow looked up from her laptop and scanned the room with unfocused eyes. For the past hour she had worked on the same email, but still sat staring at two short words and a blinking cursor on a field of white.

Dear Giles,

Slowly her eyes focused on her surroundings and she felt a deep frown crease her forehead. It was a familiar room, the guest room in the Summer's house, but it had been altered. All of the furniture, everything that had been theirs – hers and Tara's – was gone. Erased. Removed to the basement where no one could stumble on it accidentally and injure themselves. She knew why they had done it. For her. And probably for themselves as well, but now that the familiar four-poster bed, paintings and rugs had been replaced by cheap catalog furniture the room just felt sterile as if someone had scoured it with antiseptic to remove a deadly infection.

Her fingers moved in a blur over the keyboard finally coming to rest on the cool laminate surface of the desk.

Dear Giles,

Xander is too friendly, too accommodating and full of self-help book inspired advice. Buffy can't look at me. Dawn doesn't even see me and when she does her eyes are full of blame and anger. And everything in this terrible town reminds me of her.

How was your day?

The cursor slowly backed over the words on the screen as the redhead released a long sigh. It wasn't fair to unload on Giles. He had done so much for her over the past months, had been the only one to truly accept and forgive her. To ask her to forgive him. Because, as he explained it she had needed a Watcher, a mentor desperately, but he had been so focused on his Slayer that he let her growing power go un-schooled. Willow's case had been an eye-opener for the Council. They had even begun a new Watcher program with the redhead as test case. Witchy Watchers was the term she used in private with Giles to make him smile. The old Willow could make everyone smile and she had begun to practice on him hoping to find pieces of that old Willow again.

Old Willow. She cycled through the words that would describe her old self: Hacker. Best Friend. Nerd. Sidekick. Junior Scientist.

So much for me being the scientist, she thought ruefully. Now it's Willow Rosenburg, guinea pig.

Another long sigh and her eyes fell on the hard, ugly lines of a cheap Ikea knockoff bookshelf. Tara would never have allowed such a monstrosity near the Summers house. She permitted herself a small smile at the memory of the gentle look of disapproval Tara would only occasionally allow herself to express.

Tara.

But she isn't here. She'll never be here again...

It terrified her sometimes. All of the great novels about love lost and grief spoke of the haunting afterward. Seeing their ghost everywhere. But she was back in Sunnydale, back in the same room where she and Tara had shared so much -- love, lust and pain, everything – but there was nothing now. The connection was gone. Wasn't their love supposed to last forever even after death?

But it hadn't. It had died in this room with a bullet and a god and that was the terrible thing, the thing that couldn't be discussed or shared with anyone because it meant she had failed. The dark magic she had unleashed had somehow managed to sever her tie to the only thing that had ever really mattered in her life. The only light.

Tara.

How many times can I fail you?

For the thousandth time since her arrival she considered rushing down to the basement and dragging up every piece of furniture until the room was bursting with it. At least then she would have something of Tara around her. Objects that had been touched by Tara's hands, pieces of the past that possibly even smelled like her still. But she knew this exorcism was not just for her, it was for Dawn too. The teenager still couldn't discuss the blonde without crying. Twice Willow had stumbled on the girl speaking quietly to a framed photo of Tara that hung in the hall.

Dawn had always confided in Tara and now there was no one. And the black hole that Tara's death had torn into the fabric of their lives continued to pull at them all with its terrible gravity. Weighing them down. They were all trying to escape its pull, to regain what they had lost with jokes and everyday acts, but there was no way to reverse the process that brought them here. No way to turn that black hole back into the bright star it had once been. Entropy. First law of the universe. Every system tends toward disorder. Chaos. But this system had found a terrible order that was artificial and suffocating. Unnatural.

Willow looked once again at her laptop. Maybe it wasn't a black hole for her anymore. It hadn't really been since that day on the hillside when she had tried to take away everyone's pain for good. Since then the place in her heart where Tara had been felt more like a blank. A white space. Like the agonizing white of the blank email.

Dear Giles,

White is the color of mourning in the East.

Realizing that the email was not going to get done, she shut the laptop with one shaky hand and looked at the clean lines of the box springs and mattress they called a bed. She was so tired. Exhausted. But she knew what that bed meant -- dreams and nightmares. She could handle the nightmares, the endless visions of blood and power that always began with that one line, "Willow your shirt." She was a Scooby after all, used to waking up shaking with fear.

It was the dream that tore at her soul and left her sobbing in desperation. The same dream. It always began in impressionistic gasps, the fractured sensations of waking. Waking in Tara's arms. It started with the warmth of her body against Willow's, the perfect Tara-shaped landscape of flesh fitted against her own, an arm thrown across her chest. The weight of Tara's arm was warmth and home. The temperature of love. And then it became a world of Tara smell. The blonde witch's personal chemistry mingled with jasmine and sandalwood and something else. Something uniquely Tara that spoke directly to the deepest place in Willow's mind. The primitive brain that searched for the simple things – food, sex, shelter, comfort. The things that mattered.

And then sound. The gentle flutter of her love's breath through red hair, breezing over sensitive ears. A sleepy sigh falling on her own lips like a kiss. Because she was that close in the dream. Her breath mingling with Tara's, the air of the room passing through one body and into the other. It was always at this point that her dreaming self began to run through the possibilities: stay still, open her eyes and watch Tara sleep? Or wake her with slow easy kisses, fingers and open mouths. Her hands would begin to roam, moving lightly over soft skin eliciting another breathy sigh. Feeling the flush and braille of her lover's arousal as her fingers made their slow and steady progress. This was the story of their love written in skin and breath, sighs and wet and Willow wanted to read it all, but there would be no open eyes. That was the dream and the dark and the end. No vision, no sight. She would never see her love again. Not even in sleep.

Willow took a deep breath to cleanse her mind before laying her head down wearily on the cool plastic surface of her desk to rest. Not to sleep.

*****

Buffy tilted her head back to look up at the stars, rubbing the well-worn wood of her favorite stake between her palms. It was a slow night. Her Slayer senses picked up no supernatural activity, just the endless burrowing of earthworms beneath her, the gentle movement of the breeze around her.

But this was the place. She knew it from the vivid dreams that had haunted her nights since Willow's return.

Willow.

The thought of the redhead made her grimace, her forehead becoming deeply lined. She hadn't had these morbid thoughts since Willow's departure to England. but since her return the Slayer had found her thoughts drifting back to that dark empty place she had fallen into after her resurrection. Because they had brought her back to make things the same, but nothing had been. Nothing. Especially not her friendship. The powerful magic her best friend summoned to bring her back had damaged their relationship irrevocably, had increased the distance between them to a space so much larger than the line between life and death. And there was no magic that could span that gap.

She felt her jaw clenching in anger at all she had lost. Angel. Riley. Tara. Her mother. Even Faith. But the loss she couldn't seem to get over was Willow because she had been there for the Slayer through everything. And then she wasn't. And worse, the redhead was there in the house haunting her. A ghost she couldn't touch or see clearly. A reminder of everything she had lost and could never retrieve. Because that wasn't her Willow. The demon with the dark hair and eyes had swept her Willow away and no matter how much therapy she had received in England, Buffy could see her still in the familiar green eyes. And a small part of her blamed Tara, but the larger part blamed herself. She was the Slayer. It was her job to protect her family from evil.

The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand at the memory of that other Willow. The demon of grief and anger. The only enemy Buffy had faced and failed to defeat.

All the therapy in the world isn't going to make Willow right, she thought bitterly. That was the worst part, that she would never really be able to understand what had happened. Why Willow had gone all black magic. But then she hadn't really felt close to Willow in a long time. Long before the resurrection. And some of it was Tara and that made her feel guilty. Because it had been different than Oz. Even when Willow was deeply involved with the guitarist she had always made time for Buffy, but as soon as Tara entered the picture Buffy had felt like an outsider.

Not like you tried really hard, she chastised herself. She knew she hadn't made time for her best friend, but there were good reasons. Riley reasons and then resurrection reasons and finally Tara. It was hard to admit, but she had begun to prize her friendship with the blonde. She found herself sneaking around to meet Tara for coffee in secret and not to talk about Willow or to help Willow. To help herself. Because Willow looked for solutions when you talked to her about problems. And sometimes she wasn't looking for a solution. But she found that she could tell Tara her secrets and problems and Tara would just let them be. She would take in Buffy's nightmares with that deep blue gaze and give comfort not answers. She felt the tears well up in her eyes at the thought of the sweet blonde.

Tara I'm so sorry

A hard blow to the back of her head sent the Slayer to her knees. As she tried to regain her balance, the sounds of a loud scuffle became audible behind her.