Endless Moments: Destiny

by Dark Magic Willow

Copyright © 2003

darkmagickwillow@yahoo.com

Rating: R
Disclaimer: The characters of Willow and Tara belong to the producers and writers of BtVS, while the characters of Destiny and Death were created by Neil Gaiman.
Distribution: The Mystic Muse    http://mysticmuse.net
Please ask.
Spoilers: Through Entropy.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Author's Note: Thanks to my beta readers Triscuit and Tulipp.
Pairing: Willow/Tara

Part 1    Part 2    Part 3

Part 1
Child of Destiny

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
Destiny is made known silently.
—Agnes DeMille

"I hope so," Tara said as she smiled at her girl. "That's the best part..."

My girl, Tara thought. She liked the sound of that phrase as it reverberated in her head. She could call Willow that again, she realized. My girl. Our room. Phrases she hadn't been able to use for so long. Now she could say them again and not just in the privacy of her own head.

Everything was falling back together.

She felt more alive today than she had in months. While she had learned to not simply exist but to actually live and grow without Willow, those months apart hadn't been easy. The holidays had been the worst. Eating Thanksgiving dinner alone in a small university cafeteria. Celebrating Solstice with the campus Wiccan group, where she had just begun to make friends. Attempting to avoid noticing all the happy couples on Valentine's Day. It had been hard, but she had grown and learned that she could stand on her own. She had forged new friendships, and she had discovered her family, her true family.

Tara suddenly realized that Willow hadn't said anything in response to her teasing quip about how they'd spent the last night. And most of today. She had been hoping for some sort of teasing response in return, if not another round of making up.

Something was wrong.

Willow wasn't just silent. She wasn't moving. She stood completely still, posed like a statue mid-motion as she was taking something from the chest of drawers.

As Tara took a step toward Willow, something else struck her—the world was utterly silent. The background sounds of cars driving down the street and birds chirping in the trees were gone. The air was eerily still, and her breathing, suddenly loud in her ears, was the only sound in the world.

It felt like the entire world had stopped. Except for her.

The door opened.

A tall figure cloaked in grey stepped across the threshold. A leather-bound tome, ancient and thick, was chained to his arm in the way that books had once been chained to their cases in monasteries before the advent of the printing press. He looked like a monk too, his eyes hidden under his hood as he pointed behind her.

"Father," Tara breathed, memories flooding back to her.

Tara's stride unconsciously quickened until she was almost running as she fled the dormitory behind her, leaving boxes, books, and clothes strewn messily across the floor of her new room. She had to get away. She couldn't bear the thought of trying to make a home without Willow. It was too much, too soon. Tears blinded her eyes, but her feet guided her surely to the place where she instinctively went when she was troubled.

The hedge maze.

She had always found insight and comfort in places like this, wandering the hidden paths of the woods with her mother and doodling labyrinths on paper when she was in class. She had been so overwhelmed her first day in Sunnydale, her first time away from the uneasy familiarity of the house that had somehow ceased to be home with her mother's passing. The university had seemed too large and too full of people after the smallness of her hometown. She had wandered the campus, searching for a place where she could be herself alone, and then she had found this, almost too perfect to be believed, a real hedge maze like the ones she had only read about in books.

Tara needed to know if she had made the right choice, if leaving Willow had been the right thing to do. It felt so wrong, fleeing her heart's desire, like leaving half of herself behind, but she couldn't stay and remain herself, never knowing if what she forgot was real or if what she remembered was imaginary. The maze would tell her if she had done the right thing, for the nature of this place was choice.

The labyrinth would offer her choice after choice, rights and lefts, curved passages and straight ones, until she was lost in its embrace. If she could find her way to the center and find her way out again, then she would know that she could do the same with her life. She'd know that she could find her way out of the despair that embraced and surrounded her like an endless grey mist.

She blinked the tears from her eyes and willed the insubstantial fog of despair from her mind. She needed to see clearly. At the entrance, she paused a moment to take a deep breath. She let it go shakily, then stepped across the threshold.

The first choice was always simple: right or left.

She went left.

Right.

Left.

Left again.

Was she taking too many lefts? She'd read once that you should thread a maze by always making the same choice of direction at every intersection. To her, that idea seemed to miss to the point. Why go in at all if every choice you made was the same?

Left.

Right.

Four choices of direction this time. She went straight ahead, uncertain where her path was taking her but determined to follow it nonetheless.

Left.

A long curving passage that seemed to take her back to where she had come from, but different somehow. It felt like it wasn't the maze that had changed, but herself: she was reversed, her left become right, her past become future.

Right.

Right again.

Left.

As she neared the center, the labyrinth grew strange, the hedges taller and thicker than they'd appeared from the outside, their ancient brambles tangled and thorny. Resembling the undergrowth of the primeval forest, these brambles presented an impenetrable barrier, too thick to push through and too tall to climb over. Even as she recognized the strangeness, a deep sense of familiarity welled up within her heart. She had been here before.

Left.

Left again.

Right.

Left.

Tangled brambles turned to tall, old walls of irregular stones, their edges worn smooth and the mortar between them brittle and crumbling with age. Any chance of cheating the maze was gone. There was only the path that had been followed behind and choices to make ahead.

Right.

Right again.

A third right.

Left.

A footbridge of white marble, its stones marred with age but enduring nonetheless, crossed a small stream. As she crossed the stream, a small voice in her head reminded her that no stream flowed into or out of the hedge maze, but a deeper intuition within her told her that she was on the correct path, that this strangeness was to be expected.

She emerged from the hedge maze into a garden, beautiful but ancient beyond comprehension. Ruins, stone arches and fragments of walls like the ones she'd seen in pictures of Greece and Rome, were dotted across the landscape. Above, the sun was huge, red and bloated with age.

"Welcome, daughter," the grey-robed man read from the book bound to his arm before looking up at her, his eyes hidden beneath the fringe of his hood.

Tara embraced the man who wasn't a man but who somehow was her father. He had never explained his relationship with her mother, and only in this place, the place that was at the center of all mazes, the garden where every person walked its paths all the days of their lives without ever seeing them, had she ever seen him. She shared a tiny fragment of her father's gift which allowed her to find her way through any labyrinth to the garden.

"I am sorry." His left arm wrapped around her awkwardly. He smelled faintly of ancient books as he embraced her.

Tara stepped back and looked up into her father's pale face as she asked, "Did I do the right thing? Could I have made it right if I had stayed?" She didn't have to explain what had happened to him. It was all in his book, every choice that had ever been made and every choice that ever would be made.

"I am Destiny. I am what is and what must happen. I cannot tell you what might have been."

"Why does everything good have to end?"

"My sister would say that beginnings and endings are essential to make life meaningful."

"But your life won't ever end."

"I am the eldest of the Endless and I do not have a life, but when the universe comes to an end, I will close my book and pass with it.

Tara was uncertain what to make of this proclamation. Destiny rarely revealed anything about himself, and her mother's journal had told her little more than how to find him. "What do you mean?"

"I watch over the paths of others," he said, "but I have no path of my own."

"But mother ... and me?" Tara asked, a confused look on her face. "Aren't we a choice, a path?"

"The threefold goddess came to my garden, telling me that your mother had asked them to be blessed with a daughter after learning she could have no more children. I consulted my book to determine the meaning of their visit and discovered that while she and I would never touch, it was our path to have you."

"Didn't you love her?"

Destiny paused a moment to think. "She was an interesting woman," he said in measured tones, as if he knew the answer she sought but couldn't bring himself to tell her anything other than the bare truth. "I always looked forward to the days when she brought you with her to see me."

"But then she stopped bringing me here and I forgot."

"I knew you would, as I knew that you would in time discover the truth and return home to confront Nathaniel Maclay, causing him to deny that you were his daughter, and finally leading you to your mother's journal."

"How could you ... she let me believe that for all those years?"

"She believed it best if you thought yourself a normal girl."

"And am I?"

"I told you before that you were not a demon," he said. "Your father feared you, sensing that you were not his, but there's nothing for you to worry about. No child of the Endless is likely to be ordinary, but you are a unique human being, no more, no less."

"No child?" Tara asked. "Do I have any brothers or sisters?"

"I have no other children, but my brothers and sisters have had children."

"Do you love me?" Tara asked with a quaver in her voice. He had always been kind to her, considerate of her thoughts and feelings, and she had no one else now. No friends. No family. No Willow.

"I care for you deeply, my daughter," Destiny said. The tone of his voice did not change, but he placed his left arm around her shoulders. "I love all my family."

"Will I ever meet them? Your brothers and sisters." Tara asked. "I'm a bit scared of them."

"You've already visited each of them save my youngest brother in their own realms," he said, "but we can talk more of that later. For now, you are tired and hungry. Come with me." He turned toward his citadel, a massive and ageless stone structure, Romanesque in appearance, where he dwelt when he was not watching over the garden.

"How long can I stay?" Tara asked.

"You have a path to return to," he said, "but you may stay as long as you like."

Tara started to go with him, then paused, knowing there would be no more answers once she left the twisting paths of the garden. "Will I ever get her back?" she asked. Her heart pounded in her chest as she wondered if she really wanted to hear the answer to her question.

Destiny stared at her for a long moment before answering. "You will," he said before turning away.

Tara couldn't help wondering as she followed him if that had really been a tear falling down his cheek when he answered her, but the joy of his affirmation of her hopes made her forget her question almost as quickly as it had come to mind.

Her mind full of surprise at seeing her father come to her in the real world for the first time, Tara turned to look in the direction he was pointing. One pane of the window was shattered, fragments of glass suspended in the process of falling to the floor. A bullet stopped midair in its flight path directly toward her heart. She was going to die, she realized.

"You came to change this?" she asked, hoping beyond hope.

"I came to say goodbye, my daughter."

Part 2
Blind Destiny

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee ...
—John Donne

His words were so innocent, bloodless on their surface, that she would have missed the pronouncement of her fate had she not already seen the bullet poised to pierce her heart. She had seen it though. There was no avoiding what was about to happen. Her final destiny was just moments away.

She could have made any of a thousand choices that wouldn't have brought her here in front of this window at this moment of time. Big choices like getting back together with Willow later or sooner. Choosing another school. Staying home and not going to college. Small choices like spending a few extra minutes in the shower. Going out for breakfast instead of staying in. Picking up her clothes from her dorm room.

Any different turn in the maze of choices would have brought her to another place in this fatal moment of time. She could have followed a path through the Garden of Destiny other than this one.

But she hadn't.

She had made the choices that she had, and she couldn't change them now. She had made her choices out of her own heart and mind, following a path that inexorably led her to this moment of her death. There wasn't anything else she could have done. Was there?

Destiny was blind.

One afternoon she had talked with her father about choice and free will, how life wasn't as simple as that choice between two seemingly opposite ideas made it seem. He had even let her read from the Book of Destiny for a moment. At the time, it had been a philosophical exercise, an idea to play with and debate.

Now the idea of immutable fate felt too real.

Tara was looking forward to seeing her father again as she walked through the hedge maze. Quiet and thoughtful, he was so different from the tense, angry man her mother had allowed her to think was her father. Nathan. She had always had to choose her words carefully with him, each conversation like defusing a bomb as the slightest mistake could cause that tension to explode into hateful words and actions. Often no matter what she said, it was a mistake. If she told him the cow was too sick to milk, he'd yell at her for not taking better care of the animals, but if she didn't tell him, he'd scream at her because she was lying.

Reminding herself that she wasn't a part of that past any longer, Tara turned right at a junction where she had made a left last time. The chains of her past couldn't bind her. The farm was something she didn't have to worry about any more. Today she had another chance to better know her real father. Destiny. She wished that she had discovered her mother's journal sooner so that she could've left the farm earlier, leaving behind the house that had ceased to be a home after her mother's death, but she supposed that he would say that things happened in the only way that they could.

Following the consequences of her choice, Tara walked along a narrow passage covered with mosaics, their elaborate patterns forming a convoluted network of paths of their own on the walls of the maze. Drawn to their complexity, Tara traced a path with her finger through the labyrinth on the wall, wondering as she did so if the movements of her finger mirrored the path she walked through the maze with her feet. Shaking her head, Tara turned away from the diversion and returned to walking the labyrinth, letting instinct guide her to its center.

It was good to have family again, to have something of her own, especially after losing the family she had thought she'd had with Willow's friends in Sunnydale. But they had been just that. Willow's friends. Not hers. After her relationship with Willow ended, they had forgotten about her. Dawn was the only one of them that she had much contact with, and there she had to be the one who gave support, trying to make up for what the young girl wasn't getting from Buffy.

Lost in her thoughts, Tara suddenly found herself out of the maze in the ruddy sunlight of the garden. Her father was standing on the path before her, awaiting her arrival as he always did. Nothing ever surprised him, but today something surprised her. Her eyes widened as she saw that Destiny, eldest of the Endless, ancient and powerful beyond mortal comprehension, was carrying a picnic basket.

"You said you wanted to see where you used to visit me with your mother," Destiny said. "We'll go there today." He turned to follow a curving path paved with crushed stones deeper into the garden. The edges of the walkway were marked with rectangular stones of white marble, while above them the intertwined branches of the oak and linden trees planted along opposite sides of the path provided shade from the sun.

When Destiny spoke, his voice was the sound of inevitability. He didn't ask her if she wanted to come with him, or whether she would, yet his pronouncement wasn't a command either. It was simply what was going to happen. His foreknowledge was odd and even a bit creepy, but he was also considerate, anticipating her desire, for she had planned to ask him to visit the picnic spot from her childhood today.

Tara followed him into the garden, walking past the crumbling brick ruins of a long building or series of buildings. She couldn't tell which. Unsure of what to say, she let her eyes wander from side to side, taking in the scenery. She wondered why the structures of the garden were in such disrepair when the trees planted at even intervals along the sides of the path were well kempt and the precisely placed boundary stones were unbroken and polished to the point of reflecting her own image in their smooth white surfaces as if they had been set yesterday.

"How was your day?" Tara asked awkwardly to break the silence. The words had sounded innocuous as they ran through her mind, but as she spoke them, she realized how stupid they must sound.

"The same as all days," he replied. "I fulfilled my responsibilities as I must. I created new paths in my garden, ended old ones, offered hints of prophecy to oracles and mystics."

"What do you do though?" Tara said, hurrying to keep up with his long stride which quickly outdistanced her despite his deliberate pace. "Do you make the decisions for us? Is everything we do predetermined?"

"It's not that simple," he said. "Every day of your life, you walk the paths of this garden, your past shadowy and indistinct behind you, your future shrouded in darkness ahead of you."

"There's no one here but us."

"You simply don't see them," Destiny said. He lightly closed her eyes with his fingertips.

Suddenly the garden was full of thousands upon thousands of translucent people, each one following their own course, each path threading the labyrinth in its own fashion and marked with a different hue. The paths intersected and intertwined, creating a maze of intricate detail as they wove through the garden, none of them remotely straight as every choice, small or large, marked a change of direction.

Some people were accompanied by others who followed closely linked paths, while others walked in solitude. She thought she must be following one of the lonely paths now, but even though she was accustomed to such paths, it was hard now that she knew what it was like to walk beside someone else through your days, to rest beside them at night in the secure knowledge that their face would greet you first thing in the morning.

She wondered whether one of the threads she saw was hers and whether one of them was Willow's. If she could find their paths, could she see where they were going? And if she could see, could she do anything about it, touch those insubstantial threads with her finger and change them? Frightened of her own thoughts, Tara opened her eyes again and they were gone, all the colored threads and their people.

"I am the garden," he explained. "All the paths you and everyone else make."

"Isn't that strange?" Tara asked, tilting her head. Most of the time she could forget what Destiny was, having seen so many things that appeared much stranger on the surface in Sunnydale, then a statement like this one would remind her that he wasn't a man, that in fact, he wasn't a person at all.

"It is what I have been since the beginning." He looked around at the grassy knoll they stood on and the small lake at the bottom of one slope. "Here is our destination."

Giving up on her attempt to understand the deeper nature of Destiny, Tara looked around her at the vista of her childhood. The landscape was precisely as she recalled it from her dreams, which had turned out to not have been dreams at all. The clear blue waters of the lake which was shaped like a figure eight, the well-manicured lawns and hedges, the broken sheets of green-swirled pale marble that had once sheathed the now bare slate of the ruins of an ancient octagonal bath. It was all the same.

She turned back to her father to see that he had spread a red and black checkered blanket across the short grass of the knoll and had begun unpacking the wicker basket. A bottle of red wine with two crystal glasses. A wedge of soft white cheese with blue-green veins running through it. Plump red grapes. A loaf of warm, freshly baked brown bread.

"It looks lovely," Tara said.

"You'll like it," he said, pouring the wine into the two glasses with his left hand.

"Do you ever take that off?" Tara asked, pointing at the shackles that chained his right wrist to the book. She took a glass from him.

"Never. It is a part of me, as much as the Garden," he said. "Long ago though, someone stole it from me."

"What happened?" Tara said, ripping a chunk of steaming bread from the loaf. "Why did he do it?"

"Tonga of Etaf was a great wizard, but like many men, he increasingly feared death as he grew older. He tried spell after spell to discover when and how he was going to die; however, his divinations, while discerning of the fates of others, could not reveal the details of his own fate, and no other wizard was powerful enough to read his fate for him. He thought that if he knew how he was destined to die, he could use his magic to escape his fate. So he plotted to steal my book."

"How did he do it?" Tara asked between bites of fruit and bread. "I mean, you knew he was going to try to take the book, right?"

"It was written in the book that he would take it, so there was nothing that I could do. Though Tonga was exceedingly cunning and powerful, what was different about his attempt was that he was destined to succeed where all others had failed. However, he did not enjoy the fruits of his success once he understood the true nature of what he had taken. Reading his fate from the book, he discovered that his fate was to take the book and read from it, that, in fact, his attempt to escape his destiny was his destiny. No one can escape their fate, for in running from what must be, you only embrace what you think to flee."

Destiny's gaze seemed speculative as he regarded Tara for a moment in silence.

"What happened in the end?" Tara asked after a moment, wanting to be free of his scrutiny as she recalled her earlier thoughts about changing her and Willow's paths.

"He tried many things, magic and mundane, to change his fate only to find time after time that the events of his life turned out just as the book said they would. Every night he would read the passage describing his death over and over, seeking a way out, but he found none. Night after night the knowledge of his inevitable doom gnawed at him until he took his own life in the time and manner that it was written he would," he finished.

Tara shivered. "So that's why you won't let me read my future?"

"To know the certain future is never a blessing," he said as he cut a piece of bread off the end of the loaf with meticulous precision.

"But you told me that I would get back together with Willow," Tara objected.

"Yes, but not how or when or why, all of which the book would tell you in complete detail." he answered slowly.

"What about freedom of choice?" Tara asked, taking a quick bite of her bread. She shifted it restlessly from hand to hand while she waited for him to answer her question.

"What about it?"

"Does it exist? If everything we do is written down ahead of time, we're just zombies following a preordained path."

"That's one way of looking at things," Destiny said. He picked up a grape from the small bowl of polished cherry wood, raised it to head height and dropped it. "Events have consequences, from the beginning of time to the end. They cannot be avoided, but they're not the whole story."

"What's the other way?"

"Could you return to Willow today?" he asked calmly, sipping from his glass of wine.

"No," Tara said. "I mean, I could. I love her, but I haven't forgiven her and she hasn't changed ... or at least, I can't trust that she has yet."

"See—your choice flows out of who you are, what you have become through past choices and their consequences. You couldn't make a different choice without being someone else. Is that being forced to follow a path that's not yours or is that being true to the path that is yours? Destiny or free will?"

Tara chewed a new chunk of bread thoughtfully for a few moments, ignoring the flavors of her food in favor of the intricacies of her thoughts. Finally, she shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I also don't know how I can trust Willow enough to come back to her after what she did."

"Trust is not something I have. I cannot hope for the best or worry about the worst, as I know what must happen, good or bad. But I can show you a piece of your shared past with Willow so that you can decide for yourself whether you can trust her or not."

"Is it safe?" Tara asked, wary after his warnings of the dangers of reading from the book.

"Knowledge is power, and thus always fraught with danger. I offer you this gift freely though. You may choose to read it or not."

"But you already know what I'll choose?"

"Yes."

"Let me see the book," Tara said, putting down her glass as she gave up on second guessing her decisions. It didn't matter what her destiny was—she had to make her choices based on her own heart.

Destiny flipped backward through his book, pages rustling gently until he found the passage for which he was searching. Instead of showing her the page as Tara expected, he pointed behind her.

Following his finger, Tara found herself looking at ... herself, asleep with Willow in their old room together.

Tara woke up suddenly, panting and gasping for breath. Her eyes were wide, frantic with barely controlled anxiety as she looked up and down her body, which was covered in a cold sweat. She clapped her hands to her ears, clawing with her fingers again and again at her ears and face as if trying to tear away invisible tormentors.

Waking up beside her, Willow quickly sat up and gently took Tara's hands in her own as if this was something she had done many times before. Her eyes were bleary from lack of sleep, but her voice was calm and tender as she whispered reassuringly, "It's okay, Tara, it's okay. It was just another dream. It's not real. I found you. It's safe." Over and over she repeated her words until Tara's breathing slowed and she stopped struggling to claw at her face. Tara slumped against Willow, allowing her to securely enclose her in her arms.

"I can't go on like this," Tara said after a long period of silence. Looking into Willow's haggard face, she continued, "We can't go on like this."

"It'll be okay, baby." Willow squeezed Tara tightly to her chest. "She can't hurt you. It's over."

"It's not over," Tara insisted. Her voice was full of strain as she roughly pulled away to look into Willow's green eyes. "It's getting worse ... even with the sleeping pills the doctor gave me. I don't know what to do." She buried her face in Willow's shoulder again and began sobbing softly. "Every time I go to sleep, I see her, I see that place she sent me to. It's dark and noisy and those little pinching things are crawling all over me, trying to slither inside me, my nose, my ears, my mouth. I can't stand it anymore."

"I-I have an idea," Willow said. The hesitancy in Willow's voice made it clear that this wasn't an idea she wanted to bring up. "I've been doing some research, and there's a spell that might help, but I've been afraid to try it."

"You do?" Tara asked, looking up at Willow with eyes that were red and swollen from crying. "What is it?"

"It's a spell to forget bad memories. I think I can take away all the memories of what Glory did to you. You won't even remember me casting the spell."

"Do it."

"Tara?" Willow asked, her voice breaking with shock. "You haven't even seen the spell."

"I trust you."

"It's not like anything I've ever-"

"I trust you." Tara's reddened eyes pleaded with Willow to understand her need.

"Okay," Willow said, her green eyes shadowed with doubts. She disentangled herself from Tara and got out of bed, then padded over to her desk in bare feet. She took an oddly shaped dried flower from a glass bowl on the desk—Lethe's bramble—before walking back to Tara.

"Are you sure?" Willow asked, her tone still uncertain. "We can still do more research, find another way-"

"Just do it," Tara said, the dark shadows under her eyes betraying her exhaustion.

Willow bent over to kiss Tara softly on the lips. "If it's what you really need," she whispered. "I'll do it." Willow stood back up and murmured, "Forget," causing the dried plant to glow momentarily as she crumbled it in her hand.

Tara blinked and shook her head confusedly. "What happened?"

"Go back to sleep," Willow said, sitting down beside Tara on the bed and putting an arm around her shoulders. "You had a nightmare."

"I did?" Tara asked, scrunching up her nose. "I don't remember."

"It's alright now. Don't worry about it," Willow said soothingly. "I'll watch over you until you fall asleep again."

Tara smiled up at Willow, her eyes clear and peaceful, free of any memory of her nightmares and what had stopped them. "I love you so much."

"I love you too, baby." There was a hint of regret in Willow's eyes, almost as if she felt unworthy of saying those words after what she had done.

Tara curled up against Willow's side with Willow's arms around her, the lines of her face smooth and unworried, and closed her eyes. The change from her earlier haunted and terrified appearance was dramatic. She looked tranquil now, almost serene, secure in the knowledge that she rested in the arms of someone who loved her absolutely.

Willow watched Tara as her inhalations and exhalations slowed, tenderly stroking her hair as she relaxed fully into the embrace of slumber and dreams instead of fighting it as she must have for so long. Tears of relief glimmered in Willow's eyes, then spilled over to run down her cheeks. "I'll keep you safe Tara," she promised, kissing Tara's brow with a fierce protectiveness. "No matter what."

The scene faded as Destiny closed his book with a soft thud of thick pages.

"I asked her to do that," Tara said, the stiff awkwardness of her posture betraying how much this revelation had shocked her. "I never knew."

"As you wished, you forgot all about it: Glory, and the spell itself."

"But ... I-" Tara trailed off, unsure of how this discovery made her feel. She had seen what had happened, but what she didn't know was what Willow had felt while she had made such a momentous change in their relationship, in Tara herself, even though it was at her request. No matter what Willow's feelings were, they didn't make her later actions right, but she now understood how Willow could have contemplated doing what she had done.

"Even for events you do remember, it is sometimes startling to read them from the objective viewpoint of the book," Destiny added after she had been silent for a while. He cradled the book in the crook of his elbow, his long fingers reaching around to hold the front cover as if he was restraining it from opening of its own accord. "Perhaps it's best not to look at any more scenes of the past for today though."

As Tara's disbelief that she had actually asked for such a spell to be cast on herself ebbed, she found her buried anger at Willow's betrayal of her trust diminishing too. Perhaps she could forgive Willow and learn to trust her again after all. "Did she think she was protecting me when she made me forget a second time?" Tara asked finally.

"That I cannot tell you," Destiny said, seeming as calm as she wasn't. "The book tells me what happens, what choices people make, but not why they made them."

His words had seemed important to her at time, that at least the reasons for her choices were securely her own, unknown unless she decided to share them, but as she considered the bullet rushing toward her, any comfort that thought had once held for her was torn away. Her choices felt meaningless. Nothing that she had ever done mattered. For it was all going to be taken away from her in a single senseless act.

The door opened again.

A pale woman, dressed all in black from her sleeveless black shirt to her studded black leather belt and black boots with heels, stepped through. She wore a silver ankh on a chain around her neck. Looking into her eyes, Tara saw infinite compassion and empathy, as if this woman knew her deeply and would accept and love her no matter what she did or said.

"Sister," Destiny greeted her.

Suddenly Tara knew just who this was.

"Death."

Part 3
Choice of Destiny

Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
All things are subject to change and we change with them
— anonymous, often attributed to Ovid

Death's eyes seemed to fill the world as she looked into them.

Her gaze wasn't terrible or empty as Tara might have once feared. Instead, Tara felt as if she was falling into those limpid eyes, like she could drown in that sea of understanding and compassion. For just a moment, she wanted to forget, let go, and to do just that.

Almost unwillingly, forcing herself to remember whose eyes she was looking into, Tara looked away from that gaze, holding onto thoughts of Willow. Willow, who she had just found again. Willow, who she intended to hold and protect for as long as she lived. Willow, who told her stories by candlelight to get her to fall asleep, who had spoken softly of a Jewish legend of the Angel of Death, an angel who was so beautiful that your soul would be drawn out of your body simply by looking into her eyes.

Tara could feel that pull now, as she had once before while looking at a portrait on Destiny's wall.

"These are my siblings, your aunts and uncles, Tara," Destiny said as he unbarred and opened the double doors, which had always been securely closed before. They led into a long hallway with portraits along one wall. "Each of us represents an aspect of existence."

The portraits were large, the individual figures within them life size. The people in the first couple were dressed in the formal styles of the 17th century, but they looked so lifelike that Tara half-expected them to step out of the pictures and into the hallway where she was standing with her father. Tara could sense something in this place, something deeper and older than magic. This was family. It had roots far deeper than her own lifetime.

The first canvas held the image of a woman of about Tara's own age. Her pale skin was accentuated by the absolute black of everything around her. Her dress. Her wide-brim hat. Her parasol. The only bit of color about her was a silver ankh on a chain around her neck. She was saved from looking too proper by the tiniest quirk of her lips that betrayed a bit of mirth, as if she couldn't take all this formality seriously.

"She's so beautiful," Tara exclaimed, as she leaned forward to look more closely into the woman's eyes which seemed so full of emotion. "Is she love?"

"She's Death."

"Death?" Tara exclaimed, jerking back from the picture. "Isn't Death supposed to be a skeleton with a scythe?"

"People have a tendency to see what they expect to see, and as they needlessly fear her, they imagine her as a horrifying apparition."

"Needlessly?" Tara asked, arching an eyebrow in surprise.

"Birth and death are transitions, entangled aspects of existence which couldn't be without each other. My sister governs these changes, ensuring that people have a guide as they enter and depart their lives."

The idea appealed to Tara, her mother having taught her about the interwoven nature of life and death, but she still didn't want to spend too long with this particular aunt of hers, so she walked to the next picture. "Who is this?"

It was a slender, pale man wearing a tricorne hat and a billowing black cape. One hand was on his hip, while the other held a carved walking stick as he looked sternly out of the picture. As Tara peered closer in an attempt to discern detail in the shades of darkness, she realized he had no eyes.

"This is my brother, Dream, whose realm you visit every night."

Destiny walked past the next portrait, which was shrouded by heavy, velvet curtains, without a word, his stride the smallest bit faster than usual. Tara lagged behind, curious about what could have so affected her imperturbable father. She halted in front of the curtains, wanting to see what they concealed but afraid to open them without permission.

"Why do you have this picture covered?"

When Destiny turned back to face Tara, his face was impassive, betraying no sign that the hidden portrait disturbed him. "It is covered because he is no longer part of the family."

"How? Why?" Tara exclaimed. She didn't think her father was like that.

"He abandoned his realm, his responsibilities, feeling that it should be no one's responsibility to control his domain."

"And that bothers you?" Tara asked with a tinge of challenge in her voice, then added in a softer, calmer voice, "I mean, I know your responsibilities are important to you, but..."

Destiny stood quietly for a moment, his fingers playing on the bindings of his book as if he wanted to open it and read his words from its pages instead of coming to them of his own accord. "It was his destiny," he said finally. "And I am Destiny so it cannot bother me." He started to resume their walk down the hallway.

"What was his name?"

"Destruction," Destiny said. "Nothing new can be created without destroying the old. His responsibility was ... change." He said that last word reluctantly as if it were the name of a demon which would manifest upon its utterance.

"Change?"

"Something that you can experience, but which I never can," Destiny replied. Despite his uneasiness with the word, his voice held a hint of longing for what he could never have.

When he turned away again, it had a sense of finality so Tara followed him down the corridor to the next portrait. It turned out that the next portrait was actually two paintings, hung close together. They shocked her speechless. In the first one stood the most beautiful woman Tara had ever seen, a devilish smile on her face. She was dressed in black leather like a dominatrix. Beside her stood a hideous, squat woman wearing nothing at all. Her eyes were grey and her teeth were tusks.

"The twins: Desire and Despair," Destiny introduced them.

Tara shuddered, unsure which one of her aunts she feared the most. There was nothing safe or loving in the face of Desire, but her heart plummeted when she looked into the grim, doubting eyes of Despair.

This time it was Tara who moved on to the next portrait.

The last painting was of a young girl of Dawn's age, standing in the middle of a grassy field with rolling hills behind her in an idyllic countryside. She wore a simple dress of pale blue and held a bouquet of flowers in her hands as she smiled out at Tara.

"What's her name?" Tara asked, unable to keep from mirroring the happy young girl's smile.

"Delirium who was once Delight. The youngest of the Endless."

Tara stepped closer to the portrait, feeling sympathy for the girl who seemed so innocent and carefree in the picture. She knew that the girl was older than gods or worlds, but it must be an oppressive burden to carry such a name after having once had one so fair. "What happened to her?"

"Some things are not written in my book. She was very happy when she received an offer of marriage, but something went wrong and the wedding never happened."

"That seems to be a common theme lately."

"Ah, yes, Anya's wedding. Did you enjoy yourself?"

"The groom bailed out, demons attacked, Willow had to save me-"

"I mean, how did it go with Willow?" Destiny said, interrupting the litany of disasters.

"We didn't get to talk much with everything going on, but ... it went well." Tara smiled broadly. "Really well."

"So you've made your decision?"

Tara knew which decision he was asking about. It was something she had tried to avoid thinking about too much, but she could feel change blossoming deep inside herself, sending out new green shoots of feeling and desire. She had felt giddy and excited at the wedding, unable to focus when Willow was around. None of the problems—demons, obnoxious relatives, missing grooms—none of them had mattered compared to the opportunity to see and touch Willow again.

She hadn't realized it until now, but she had made her decision that day amidst the chaos of the wedding. Somehow it seemed appropriate that their rekindled love had emerged from such chaos and sadness as life and hope always emerged from destruction and despair. Even after the seemingly total destruction of a forest fire, new life would sprout from the embers. She would take Willow back. It might not be today, or tomorrow, and it wouldn't happen all at once, but she had already accepted Willow back within her heart. The rest was as inevitable as destiny.

"I have."

Tara had tried to explain her decision, her reasons, her feelings, to Willow last night when she couldn't wait any longer to be rejoined with her. But their love, their need for each other, had been too urgent, too powerful, and she had thought that she had all the time in the world. Looking in Death's eyes, she realized that she had no time at all.

"Hello, Tara," Death said.

"Hello, Aunt," Tara answered, trying to keep her voice from shaking without complete success.

"So you know who I am?"

Tara nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat. "Can I-can I at least say goodbye?" she asked. Though her choice had led her to this moment, she wouldn't take it back. Willow was her heart. Her destiny. She couldn't have made any other decision. All she wanted was one more moment in her beloved's arms to say farewell.

"I'm sorry, Tara," Death shook her head sadly. "I can't let you do that."

"It's not fair," Tara protested, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. "We had so little time together." There were so many moments that she was going to miss. Graduation. Moving into their first home alone together. Children. All the tiny moments that made up a life.

"It's never fair, Tara," Death said softly. She held out her hands. "Just take my hand."

"What will happen then? Where will you take me?"

"You'll find out."

"Why can't I just tell her goodbye?" Tara's voice was full of anguish.

"Too much weighs in the balance in this moment for me to change how you die."

"How I die?" Tara asked softly, then whirled to face her father. "Why does that matter?"

Destiny looked down at his book for guidance, as he always did in those rare instances when he felt uncomfortable with a situation. "Your death-" he began in his usual impassive tones, then broke off, looking down at his book again. There was a long moment of silence where no one spoke before he began again, sounding more human than she had ever heard him.

"There are consequences," he said, his voice full of pain. "This time Willow will go deeper into the dark magicks than she did when Glory sent you to the realm of my youngest sister, and the world will hang in the balance."

"But-then I need to speak to her, let her know that..." Tara started, her eyes flooded with urgent worry and need. She didn't know what she could tell Willow that make her death seem okay; she could barely face this moment herself, but she had to do something. "I mean ... I've got to change this."

"You cannot," Destiny said. "No matter what you do in this timeless span between moments, you will find yourself in front of that window where you started when time resumes."

"But why?" Tara cried. "Why me? Why now?"

"The bullet was just an accident, but its results are essential to the Story."

"So it's meaningless?" Tara said bitterly. "My life was just a way to force Willow to follow what's written in your book."

"I am Destiny. I am what is-"

"I know what you are," Tara shouted. "But you're also my father. I'm your daughter, not a fictional character following a meaningless, predestined path. How do my choices mean anything if they come to this?"

"We cannot control every aspect of our stories, my daughter," Destiny said. "But your life is not meaningless. I remember seeing you the day you were born. It changed my existence forever-"

"But you weren't there," Tara protested. "You're never there when I need you."

"In a sense, I'm everywhere," he said, quickly continuing before Tara could interrupt again, "but I know that is not the same for you. Nor for me. I read the stories about you in my book over and over, from your first steps and first words to your discovery of Willow, knowing that I'd have to wait to see you directly and always stopping before the end I knew must come."

"That doesn't do me any good," Tara said harshly. "If you love me, change this."

"I loved you the moment I saw you, seeing what your mother and I had created together," Destiny continued as if she hadn't interrupted. "Yet you also made me uneasy as I saw all the potential for change you contained within yourself. I am Destiny, first of and apart from my brothers and sisters; I do not sleep or dream, and without dreams, neither desire nor despair have a hold on me. I have not the luxury or tragedy of delirium, and I know when and how I must die."

"But somehow you taught me to dream, to know desire as I wanted you to live and to feel despair when I saw how short your time was, and your life and inevitable death have tempted me to the edge of delirium to avoid experiencing what I knew must happen. You brought me change, and that was unexpected for all that I had read in my book. Of all my siblings, only one have I ever dreaded: Destruction, for he governs change and that is one thing I cannot do."

"Yet he has left his realm behind, wild and ungoverned, leaving the choice to change within each of us, human or Endless."

Destiny looked down, seemingly exhausted after his speech. It was more than Tara had ever heard him say about himself, and she didn't know what to make of it. She sensed something important in his words, something that might save her from this moment, though she wasn't sure what it was.

"Big brother," Death said, placing her slender hand on his arm. "You cannot change the future."

"But I can," he said softly, his gaze unreadable as he turned from his sister to Tara. He took a pen from Willow's desk; the modern instrument looked anachronistic in his ancient hands as he used it to savagely strike out a passage from the yellowed page of vellum to which the book was open. "It's all I can do."

Tara, her heart pounding, felt vaguely uneasy at her father's words, watched as Destiny scribbled words in the book to replace those he had struck out. He held the pen awkwardly as he wrote, as if he had never written anything before. Then he was done. He dropped the pen back to the surface of the desk, the sound echoing eerily in the silent, timeless moment wherein her fate was being decided.

"It is done," he said. "Goodbye, Tara." He hugged her awkwardly.

"But you-" Tara began, completely confused. What had happened? Was she going to live or die?

"I don't know your future any longer, Tara," he said. "Or anyone's. It's all changed. But you won't die today."

"Thank you," she said, hugging him tightly. Her gaze was still uncertain. "But w-what did you do?"

"It's over, Tara. I wish there could have been another way, but there was nothing else I could do." He disentangled himself from her embrace, leaving her still uncertain of what was happening. He slowly unlocked the manacle that secured the book to his arm. Holding it open, he stared at it for a long moment, then dropped it to the desk upon which he also laid down his book with a curious mixture of reluctance and relief. When he stood again, he seemed straighter, taller than Tara ever recalled seeing him, as if he had been freed from a terrible burden. "It's over," he repeated.

"Destiny," Death said. Her voice was gentle, but sad. "Take my hand."

"No!" Tara shouted, still not comprehending but realizing that something was wrong. She ran to cross the room before he could take her hand.

As Death drew her brother close, her touch full of compassion, Tara felt like she was running in a dream, pumping her arms and legs as fast as she could without getting anywhere. Darkness hid what happened next; all Tara could hear was the beating of mighty wings. Then he was gone, and Death stood alone.

"What did you do?" Tara demanded.

"Nothing. He made his choice."

"And he died for it?"

"I didn't want to take him, but Destiny was the book, all the paths, past and future. He couldn't make a choice that violated that without unmaking all of that, unmaking himself."

"But-"

"I-I have other people to see." Death said. "And you have a life to return to." She vanished, leaving behind a dark silhouette, a hole in reality shaped like a young woman that faded after a moment as if it had all been a dream.

Tara instinctively threw herself to the floor even before she heard the crack of the window shattering behind her. She lay on the floor for a moment, her heart pounding with reaction, wondering if she was alive or dead, until the steady rapid beat of her heart and the panting of her breath told her that she was alive.

Fate wasn't immutable after all. Destiny had changed. For her, and for Willow.

"Tara!" Willow said, almost sobbing as she knelt beside Tara, frantically pulling her close. "Baby! Are you okay? Did you get hit?"

"No, I-I'm-" Tara began, looking down at her unblemished blue shirt. "I'm fine," she said, bursting into tears.

The End