Disclaimer – Don't own the recognisables.

A/N – I actually don't like Tabby/Amara as a couple, but I was in the mood to write femslash without going into an intricate backstory. Tabby/Amara seems accepted enough in the fandom that I can get away with being lazy. Reviews would still be nice, though. Hint hint.

Death and the Maidens

© Scribbler, August 2005.

"Tabby?"

The lights are off and the curtains are drawn. The room smells a little – old cheese and anchovies. Amara hates anchovies, always picks them off pizza, but Tabby loves them. She tops up her slices with what everyone else discards.

Amara steps cautiously in, not wanting to disturb such private grief. She was so young when her own mother died that the woman is little more than a name and a curious inflection in her father's voice. It still hurts him to mention her at any great length.

"Are you in here?"

Something moves in the gloom. Amara squints at the bed, all messy sheets half tipped onto the floor, bare mattress partly on view. The smell is coming from over there. Tabby lifts her head from her huddle, and though it's dark Amara knows she still hasn't washed the mascara from her cheeks.

"Baby?" Tabby says in a hoarse voice. It's obvious she hasn't been asleep like Amara thought.

"Can I come in?"

"I … yeah. Sure."

She tiptoes daintily over the piles of books, make-up and clothes that should be on hangers. Printouts from Tabby's dissertation sit in a pile on the dresser. Nobody ever thought she'd be smart enough to go to college. The bed dips when she sits down, abused springs creaking a little at the double weight.

The air is thick with heartache. It isn't an emotion Tabby wears well; more like a badly fitting sweater given as a birthday gift, which has to be worn because it has to. It makes Amara twist one thumb into her other fist and wait so long to speak that her eyes become totally adjusted to the darkness.

The springs creak again. Tabby leans across, all her weight on one fist. Her mouth hangs open as though she is about to speak, but no words come out. Close up, she smells faintly of saltwater, smoke and that ylang-ylang antiperspirant that is nearly all gone and she has to buy more of.

Amara feels she should say something, even at the risk of sounding hollow. She turns, but her words are cut off with a jabbing kiss.

The feel of Tabby's mouth against her own is still enough to make the palms of her hands tingle. Every kiss takes part of her back to that ill-fated cruise years ago, when she was nearly lost to the volcano. The first exploratory touch in her cabin, the feel of gloss on her lips when she never wore it, the trail of saliva connecting them, twitching every time someone went past in case they were discovered – each part strikes a chord in her memory.

When Tabby shoves her tongue inside her mouth she nearly gags at the roughness of it, and she understands that this time is not about making love or pleasure, but the expulsion of a pain so great that it can't ever be put into words. She leans back, drawing her legs onto the bed. Sometimes loving someone means letting yourself be used a little.

Tabby's room has always been the one they go to when they're horny; her bed always the one they fall into when they make it that far. Amara's room is made for short kisses and conversation, but Tabby's is made for involuntary vowel sounds, none with any meaning beyond physical need. Both places are important in different ways.

There are specific memories attached to the furniture in here, though. There has never been a time when Tabby sat in that wicker chair in the corner without Amara in her lap, naked and legs spread wide. The desk over there is where Amara lay after Scott and Jean's wedding and Tabby drank her dry. The corner near the door is where Tabby learned that Amara is not so innocent. The window seat is where Tabby tested out the strap-on she bought from the sex shop in the part of town Amara never goes, and where Amara screamed so loud that Logan heard and burst in thinking she was being murdered.

Amara knows that she will not want to remember this time, because Tabby is already beginning to cry again, her tears wetting their skins as she brutally kisses her way down her body. She wants to say she's sorry, because she is – sorry that Tabby has to feel this way, sorry that there was nothing any of them could do, sorry that they don't live close enough for drop-in visits and cups of sugar. She wants to say that it's okay, even though it isn't.

"Tabby," she starts to say, but she's being kissed again, and Tabby already has her top off and is working her way out of her bra one-handed.

They fall back, a tangle of limbs. At one point Amara rolls onto her back and feels the slice of stale pizza she could smell jabbing into her side. It goes soft as she is pressed against it; her body heat making it stick to her, so that when she sits up it's smeared into her new blouse and the bottom of her hair.

Tabby's pain is too raw to wait for them to get all their clothes off. When the point of no return is reached, Amara is propped up against the pillows with her skirt pushed up and her blouse falling open on either side of her small brown breasts. Tabby's fly is undone, but the stonewash jeans, of the kind she's loved since her early teens, cling resolutely to her rounded hips.

Amara tilts her narrower hips upward and digs too-short nails into Tabby's scalp. She understands in some way she can't explain that it's important to Tabby that they do it this way. She's still hurting, but in this she can get some control back. She can feel like she's not totally at sea with her life.

And at least right now, in this, Amara can make the pain go away for a while. She may only be here for sex, but afterwards she can curl up next to Tabby, stroke her damp hair and let her fall asleep in the space between her hand and hip. And when she's asleep, she can hold her close. Tabby needs to be held. She needs to have someone be there when she wakes up, so that she knows she may hurt, but there are those who will willingly share her pain to ease it.

In the morning they will see each other with the curtains open.

In the afterglow, when Tabby is crying again, Amara shushes her softly. Tabby looks up at her with huge blue eyes, liquid and impossible in the gloom. "Thank you," she whispers.

Amara's smile is small. She bends her head to press her lips against Tabby's own. They're brackish with sweat and her own juices. "You're welcome."

"Please … don't leave me." There's something inherently pathetic about the way it is said, as though she is afraid some otherworldly force will spirit her girlfriend away in the night.

"Never." And she means it. Tabby's mother was a pill-popper, but she raised a girl to be proud of – a girl Amara loves more than she ever would have thought possible when she arrived in America. For that, she sends up a silent prayer to her own gods, that they might aid the woman's final journey.

Tabby sighs and her breathing evens out into sleep. Amara stays awake, blinking into a darkness that smells of old cheese, anchovies and sex.

FINIS.

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