My Lazarus Stance by ObliqueReference

Summary: Somewhere in the dark of the Louisiana Bayous, someone wants something with a very special corpse. Kennedy and Willow head to investigate.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
-William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

"Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away."

"'It is demonstrable,' said he, 'that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles.'"

The flesh on Tara's hand was her only barrier. What she felt, she felt fully. Some envied her empathy, some admired it. She hated it. No, that wasn't true; she hated the assault she endured. She couldn't turn it off; there was no volume knob that let her not feel as much. Not off, just muted a bit. She just wanted the emotional barrier other people had; the layer of flesh between them and the rest of the world.

The wood of the chair bit her back, the buttons on her jeans twisting into her stomach at oblique angles. The t-shirt she wore hung loose off her shoulders, weeks of stress boiling her stomach shedding pounds. She looked sadly pale in the mirror, almost luminescent but for the dark circles under her eyes. Hot baths, hot meals and a warm bed were in order. She wanted her bed, she wanted her bathroom, but they lay at the bottom of a hole in southern California. It didn't stop her wanting it, though: in her heart it felt like she should have been able to walk down the street and into her house. No matter how many times she told herself that it was impossible, the wanting made it so.

Tara redefined wanting. Wanting came with feeling, but hers was a chaste wanting. The mad, reason destroying wanting, the animal need for things came with numbness. Tara wanted, felt her wanting acutely, and suffered through the inaction empathy forced on her. She wanted to take Willow to bed, make love to her or maybe scream at her, make her own up to the things she did to her, maybe just walk out the front door again and never come back. Her desire renewed, her skin crackled with love and anger and confusion whenever Willow looked at her. Tara could only look back, frozen in space by ten thousand wants.

Willow reached across the intervening space and touched her hand. The redhead smiled, the curve at the corners of her mouth twitching. The frown lines on her face and eyes were deeper than Tara remembered them. Maybe it was the bad lighting. Tara smiled back, knowing that her own face was unlined, her lips sanguine and her eyes blue like the sea. She wore her body well, having missed out on a year an a half of pain and stress. She studied the worried arch of Willow's eyebrows, the way her eyes drooped at the far corners when she was upset, the deep forest green gaze that watched her without scrutinizing.

"What was that?" Willow's smile faded, her eyebrows stretching her fear across her entire face like a cotton mask pulled taut.

"Nothing," Tara said, squeezed Willow's hand, and went back to watching her fingers. The muffled drumbeat of boots marched a strong, slender set of legs over to her. She looked at the black cargo pants, the buttons shiny and new. The knees bent, suddenly, like a bridge collapsing. Kennedy dropped into the chair across from Tara, her twin braids swaying like pendulums as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs.

Her eyes were big and dark, red-rimmed and shadowed by dark circles. She had the harried look of the damned; her youthful face a blithe mask, slipping in increments every time she had to meet Tara or Willow's eyes. Kennedy took a deep breath, letting it out through parted lips, the scar at the corner of her mouth three forks in a river. Those wouldn't fade, and she would bear them until her second death and reclamation. Tara wanted to weep for her. Tara wanted a lot of things.

"Giles knows," Willow watched a family wander around, looking for their terminal. "I'm not sure what he told Buffy and Dawn. We'll just play it by ear."

Kennedy nodded, staring right through Tara like she wasn't even there. The slayer knit her hands together, squeezed them and swallowed. "Good. I don't want them looking at me…they way they would."

"Sweetie," Tara copied Willow's gesture from earlier, reaching out to squeeze Kennedy's hand, "You went crew-cut diesel. You're gonna get looks." The young woman just rolled her eyes and huffed half a laugh out. She touched the scar on her cheek with the gentleness of a wind brushing her face, making her blink it away.

"I, um," Willow pointed vaguely in her direction, "you bought new clothes. You look like me on a bender."

"When are they getting in?" Tara asked. The topic needed changing. Kennedy had been holding on by a thread the past three days. Last night, Tara thought she heard crying in the hotel bathroom. When Kennedy came out, she curled up on the opposite side of the queen sized bed and wrapped her arms around herself so hard the bed rattled. Willow slept between them, her back to Tara. She reached an arm out to Kennedy, running her fingers along her spine. The touch was like an electric shock, and the tan young woman tensed and scooted farther away. Tara wanted to walk over to her and comfort her, hold her and tell her it would be all right. The scales were balanced between them. Both loved the same woman, both died and left her heartbroken, both came back to find her in the arms of their rival. She wanted to love Kennedy, and some part of her wanted that not as a sister or a friend. Tara spent the night watching the girl shudder into the morning.

Willow looked at the clock, tastefully black with white hands. "It'll be a little while." She started to pace, wiping the sweat off her palms. "Um, listen: I know it's really early, and we just got through what easily goes into the worst experience of my life category, but there are some things we need to talk about."

Kennedy leaned back into the chair, pressing her head against the post that marked the boundary of the airport coffee shop. "I don't know what to say," she spoke.

The redhead stopped pacing for a second, opened her mouth to speak. "Well, for starters, let's talk about you. I mean, okay, appreciate the save and all but – "

"Don't judge me," Kennedy interrupted, the power of her words absent from her voice. "You can't. You don't have the right."

The chair rocked back and the barista glared as Willow dropped into her seat. She sighed, running her hands through her hair. "I don't know what to say either. You just – " Tara shot Willow a warning glance. The redhead reined her self in. "I just don't understand why-I mean…you know what? I don't know what I mean. What can I say?"

"Well," Tara spoke up, threads of tension weaving into, under, and over the conversation. "For starters you could tell her you love her."

"She knows that!" Willow yelled at Tara, then, without a beat, turned to Kennedy. "You know that!"

"I don't know that," Kennedy snorted. "You'll barely look at me and when you do…" She swallowed hard. "And when you do…you look at me like I'm some kind of monster."

"What?" Willow's russet brows knit, her mouth open- Tara knew it as her shock face.

Seconds ticked by on the wall clock. The barista leaned over her station, straining her ears for the answer. Tara watched the exchange, the feeling and wanting doubly raw, those same strings of tension wrapping around her throat and choking her.

"Sometimes," Willow turned her face away, ashamed. "Sometimes when you're doing something little. Like, the way you brush your teeth starting with the front, or when you drink water in big gulps. I'm in love with you then."

"But you're in love with Tara all the time," Kennedy scoffed. "And that's what it boils down to."

"Willow," Kennedy's voice cracked. "Willow, Willow..." Her impossibly deep eyes locked on her lover, her entire body as still as a statue.

Tara stood up, the pressure ramming down her throat igniting a spark, a draught of blood once dormant. She stepped between the two women, felt the waves of loss, a kind of loss she couldn't even begin to understand, and set her hands on her hips.

"Okay," she said, cutting through the lines that tied Kennedy and Willow to their private world. Her next words snapped those lines to herself. "I am sick and tired of people treating me like a bargaining chip. Everyone treats me like what I'm doing or where I'm going is a forgone conclusion. Have either of you thought for one second that I might have my own life to pick up? I have to graduate college, I have to figure out how the hell I'm going to explain my leave of absence. What if I want to go and do that? Where does that leave you?"

"Tara, baby, I don't understand," Willow looked from Kennedy to Tara, desperately searching for answers. "If-if you want to go, and, and do those things, then I want you to go and do those things. And-and you're right! You're right, I didn't think about what you're doing now. And I'm sorry for, you know, being all possessive-y."

"I did," Kennedy said. "But I just put myself in your shoes and I knew exactly where I'd be if I had the choice."

"Kennedy, sweetheart," Tara crouched to eye level with her. She ran her fingertips across the lightning fork of her scar. "I meant what I said on the riverfront. You are very dear to me, and what you did for Willow – for both of us – it was the noblest thing I've ever heard anyone doing ever. But you're not me."

She sat back down in her chair uncomfortably as her pants twisted and bunched, her nose scrunching as she worried that the formless white shifts she spent a month wearing had grown on her. Her fingers drummed out a military march on the armrest. Willow sat literally on the edge of her chair, the threat of a topple preeminent in Tara's mind.

"So," Kennedy broke the weighty silence. Tara thought she heard the coffee jockey exhale. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," Tara tossed her hand out with the statement. "I don't know. Willow wants some kind of happy ending, you want a straight answer so you can start punishing yourself – don't give me that look – and all I want to do right now is have dinner with Dawnie and Mr. Giles and Buffy. So that's what I'm going to do."

"What about us?" Tara repeated. She stalled, then held up her hands in retreat. "I didn't mean to sound that, um, flippant. I'm just saying, why are you both in such a hurry? Just give things sometime to sort themselves out, okay? A week. Just to, you know, figure things out?"

Willow nodded as well, her frown titanic on her round face. Her furrowed brow smoothed, the frown melted into a smile. Two loud 'thuds' twisted Tara's head around. Kennedy straightened her posture.

Buffy dropped the two carryon bags she held, the mass of makeup and other necessities leaving craters in the airport floor. Her tiny frame quivered momentarily, as the potential for violence passed through her. Her eyes were wide, her hand covering her mouth. Dawn stood next to her, a full head higher, her expression a caricature of Buffy's, both her hands clasped over her mouth, her blue eyes taking up the rest of her face.

"Dear Lord," Giles spoke first, the rugged lines of his face slack. He too went to cover his mouth, but saw the two women doing it and restrained himself.

Tara stood up, pushing her chair in and flattening the wrinkles in her shirt. Her grin started at one side, screwing the corner of her mouth up until it forced its way across the rest of her face. She spread her arms out and shrugged: 'well, here I am.' Exactly what you say to people who thought you were dead could be problematic.

Buffy glanced to Tara, then snapped over to Kennedy. "Kennedy, what did Will – oh my god, what did you do to your hair? And why are you dressed like Marilyn Manson?"

"Buffy, it's me," Tara said, her smile unfazed. "I'm…uhm. I'm back, I guess." She gave a little laugh and bashful bob of her head.

Dawn shot in like a rocket, wrapping her arms around the blonde's waist, pushing the air from her lungs with a 'whoof'. The young girl buried her face in Tara's chest, leaving damp spots where her tears touched her shirt. Tara wrapped her arms around Dawn, cooing and rocking her slowly. She extended an arm to Buffy, waving her over.

"O-okay," the elder Slayer said, "but if you're some kind of evil demon Tara impersonating thingy, I am so killing you extra hard." She cautiously walked to the blonde, who drew her into the embrace. Tara kissed the top of Buffy's head.

The end came in eruptions. Earthquakes, grinding tectonic plates of people moving past and through and around each other. Molten rock flowing like thick blood through the pores, little trembling of pressure and heat. A week of micro-quakes. And then, the eruptions.

But maybe the eruptions happened a month ago, in a shitty hotel just three miles down the road. The month between was just the amount of time it took for the magma to flow down the mountain. The explosions there, the bullet holes and blood and brain-splattered walls, those were the mushroom cloud three miles high above Mount Saint Helens, and everything else between then and now was just damage control.

Either way, the week passed as it did. Xander came in on a flight. Tara didn't know he lost an eye, and she made the face she made that Kennedy labeled her 'sympathy-face'. She labeled it thus with the divorced interest of a bibliophile noting a new edition of a book: not unexpected, but of interest. After the initial shock faded, it was amazing how quickly everyone fell into their rote roles around Tara. Xander joked with her; Tara shared her condolences over Anya's death. It was all very touching.

Seriously, it was. That, in and of itself, Kennedy found more than a little surprising. Her newfound somber suits of customary black aside, she expected some kind of huge personality shift: like the process of death and rebirth would fundamentally change her outlook. Maybe she'd start writing poetry, or better yet, start reading poetry. Maybe she'd feel like a ghost passing through the world, and everything and everyone in it would just be swirls and motes of dust. When she was freshly reborn, that's how it felt: nothing had names, no mass or inertia of their own.

Fact of the matter was that she forgot her death quickly, at least when she was awake. She had a nightmare or two, but other than that, she felt about as normal as a superhero trapped in a love triangle could feel. She enjoyed everything she used to, from the fajitas they ordered on Monday to the fluffy Marriott carpet in their room. Given, it may have been a little odd for Willow to watch her curl her toes in the carpet for the better part of an hour, but she stopped caring what people were thinking about her.

Tectonic plates. It all came down to immovable objects slamming into each other. Giles and the rest could only sit back and watch what they thought was inevitable. Every thirty minutes, Kennedy caught a pitying glance from one of the others. It made her want to punch someone. On the other hand, they all thought they knew the score: they thought that Willow and Tara would run back into each other's arms, never looking back. They remembered the sweet and perfect relationship that Kennedy only heard about. She knew better, she knew Tara better. The woman hid every little slight against her, her armor of compassion absorbing all but the most hideous of violations. Dawn idolized her. In death, at least. In life, the young woman's eyes held old accusations, fears that had dried up and were now getting watered. And the blonde's attitude wasn't helping. She actually told Buffy to shut up the other day. It was quite funny, in a vaudevillian way. Buffy was rattling off about something or another, something meaningless. Noise to choke the airwaves. Tara sat in the corner, reading through a worn out novel. After smiling and nodding Buffy away for the tenth time, she finally just turned to her and said:

"Sweetie, I'm kind of in the middle of something, so could you just…shut up for a minute?"

Buffy looked so shocked that Kennedy pitied her. Obviously the Slayer was getting her paradigm forcefully re-aligned. She stammered an apology and scurried off. Kennedy smiled thinly as she passed: that's right, bitch. Little Tara's not anyone's punching bag anymore. She sauntered into the hotel lobby, plopping into the plush monstrosity they called a chair, a device so comfortable she yawned the minute she came to a rest.

"'John Carter of Mars'," Kennedy read through the yellow cracks. "Can't say I expected that. Any good?"

Tara curled a lip, a new expression that, had the couch not been more voluminous than a cloud in the sky, Kennedy would have set to memory. Maybe with a kiss. No, she had to focus. Tara sighed loudly and set the book in her lap, cocking an eyebrow.

"Nothing. I just want some peace and quite. Between Giles asking me how I'm feeling, Buffy filling me in on a year and a half worth of gossip, Xander making cute little references about me getting back together with Willow, and Dawn swinging between being attached to the hip and staring daggers into my back, I think a few hours of blissful silence isn't too much."

"Willow's upstairs pacing a hole in the ground," Kennedy said. "She's probably overanalyzing ever single word you've said since Sunday."

"I can't help that," Tara pulled her knees to her chest. "Why aren't you up there?"

"I don't know," Kennedy rocked herself to her feet. She slid into the loveseat with Tara, scratching her head. Silky strands of hair filtered through her fingers. "Being around her sort of consists of cruel and unusual punishment at this point, you know?"

Tara twisted her mouth from side to side, like an amusement park Viking ship, swinging from its pendulum. "Yeah. I guess. I'm not – " Tara wriggled into the floral print upholstery a little deeper.

Tara's stoicism melted. "I want to, Kennedy. I really, really want to. It's just that, if I stay with her, I'm always gonna be 'Willow's Tara.'"

"No!" Tara withered under Kennedy's smirk. "Well, a little. There's a lot between us that never got worked out."

"She," Tara flitted her hands around as she tried to explain, "She squeezes the toothpaste from the bottom every single time."

"Isn't that how you're supposed to do it?" Kennedy squeezed the air in demonstration. "That's how I always learned."

"It's not that, it's that she does it the same way every single time. Without fail. She practically gets out calipers and measures the proper squeeze pressure. And that's – that's not the point." Tara dropped her hands in her lap, twitching her nose like a mouse in a maze. "She changed so much. I feel like I've just been standing still. And that's not even counting the time I was dead. And now I have this new start – and I'm just s-so tired. Of all the drama and the death and adventure and whatnot. She's not the woman I fell in love with."

Kennedy burst from her perch, on her feet and looming over Tara before she had a chance to blink.

Tara pushed herself out of her seat, pulled forward be the force of her jaw hitting the ground.

"I mean, listen to yourself," Kennedy slowed her speaking to a less confrontational level. "Will's the same girl she's always been. And you love her; I see it every time she speaks to you. So don't go saying that you don't love her anymore."

"I didn't m-mean that," Tara dropped her head, "You're right. I'm not sure what my place is here anymore."

"Fine!" Kennedy turned to pace, but changed her mind and instead spun in place, ending facing Tara. "Fine! So go, do your walkabout. Learn about the 'real you'. Contemplate your navel. But don't pretend that you're any less in love with her."

Kennedy rolled her eyes. "Don't go getting all maudlin on me, okay? No one but us corpses here anyway."

"Yeah," Kennedy absently ran her fingertips across the back of Tara's hand, "Dead Chicks Anonymous."

Tara watched Kennedy's hand work its weird brushing. Asia Minor bumped into Europe.

Kennedy pulled her hands away and shoved them in her pockets, just in case they escaped her control again and did something extreme. "I'm sorry."

"We're not – together, Kennedy. I know I probably come off as old fashioned, but – "

"I know," Kennedy grinned and shook her head so that her braids swished across her collarbones. "I've heard this speech before. But I have this feeling that after this week I won't see you again for a while."

"This isn't about Willow," the wayward hands managed to bribe a guard into assisting their escape. She took Tara's hands in hers, noting the slender lengths of her fingers. What those hands could do…

Kennedy pulled Tara's hands to her hips, then slid her own to wrap around the woman's waist. She didn't fight, didn't pull away or stiffen or start stuttering. She didn't even blush when Kennedy worked her thumbs underneath the cotton folds of her t-shirt, stroking the taut flesh beneath. She felt earthquakes go through Tara.

Her eyes were the softest blue she had ever seen, deep and fathomless in the center and radiating into an April sky around the edges. It was a depth that wasn't for her, not today. All she could do is dip her toes into that water. Anything else…well, anything else could set off tidal waves.

It was Tara that leaned into the kiss, as smooth as silk. Her fingers spread across Kennedy's hips, pulled her closer, Tara's thumbs hooking into her belt. She sighed into the kiss, letting the weight in her guts drop through the floor and out the other side of the world. Tara wasn't gentle or bashful, either. Her tongue set of fireworks in Kennedy's head, made her knees wobble and her body quiver. She returned in kind, sliding her hands beneath Tara's shirt and leaving scratch marks across her back. 'Just so you know I was here,' she thought.

A tray of paper cups dropped to the ground, steaming lakes birthed onto the carpet's topography. Kennedy and Tara separated, the space between them stretching and solidifying. Without the heat and pressure, the magma turned to rock.

"Oh my shit," Dawn said, her normally wide eyes impossibly large, her fists clenched at her sides: a pose cribbed from her older sister. "Oh my shit, oh my – "

"Are you," Kennedy watched Dawn over her shoulder, "absolutely sure that's a good idea?"

"Well, I think she has a right to know that her girlfriends were making out!" Dawn shouted.

Xander turned the corner. "Oooh, who's playing tonsil hockey? Is it half time yet?" He rubbed his hands together like a praying mantis, rearing back as his cyclopean gaze brought him up to speed.

"Okay," he said. "I'm confused, I'm jumping to some very disturbing conclusions, and I'm just a little aroused by it. What the hell is going on?"

"I caught these two about thirty seconds from doing the horizontal mambo!" Dawn pointed triumphantly and crossed her arms.

"Well, that's pretty likely, seein' how you're both still fully clothed and there isn't any oil involved."

"Xander!" Dawn whirled and shouted. "This isn't funny! Tara's cheating on her girlfriend with…her…girlfriend's girlfriend!"

"Well, since it's so cut and dried," Xander wagged a finger at Tara, "bad, bad girl." He pulled an about-face, looking Dawn in the eye. "Listen, Dawnie, it's pretty obvious that there's a lot going on between Will and her girls, and we're only getting half the picture, and so help me if you make a 'one-eye' joke I will drop you out a window."

Dawn folded her arms, grinding her teeth. "So what: are you two going to run off together. Abandon Willow – again?"

"Okay," Kennedy poured herself into the space between Tara and Dawn, "I think it's time for you to shut your pie hole, little Dawnie."

"You heard me. I bet it's easy to sit back there and criticize everyone's choices when you've never had to make a single decision on your greatly abbreviated life."

"No, Xander," Tara said. "Let them talk." Xander shook his head and turned away, hands in the air.

"Second," Kennedy leaned into Dawn, sucking up her safety bubble and snarling each word out, "Willow is a big girl. We're all adults, and we all made our choices. And you know, maybe they weren't the best choices, sure, but God damn it, they were our choices."

"Right," Dawn sneered, "more like you couldn't take being second best so you just decided to steal Tara from me."

Dawn's snarl thawed into stupefied surprise, which matched exactly what Kennedy was feeling at the moment. The color drained from Dawns face, and she staggered back into the perilously comfy chair, dropping into it. Xander hovered about, slack jawed and incredulous. Dawn buried her head in her hands.

"Um, Dawn," Tara worked her neck around the issue, "Is there something…uhh. Wow."

"Dawn," Kennedy stepped up. If someone didn't get this out of the way, the Scoobies could make this last for at least three months. "Dawn, are you queer?"

"Then how exactly did you mean it?" Xander asked. "Because, honestly: I'm just a little bit shocked."

"Well, saying that Kennedy's stealing Tara away from you isn't a good start," said Xander.

"I told you I didn't mean it like that." Dawn stood up, her shoulders bound up in ropes of tension. "I just meant, you know, if Tara stays, and yeah, I know it's your choice what you do and whoever you do it with, but if you stay then it's…"

"It's stupid, but – " Dawn wrung her hands together, like she was stripping the paint off them. "It'd be like having mom back."

"Oh, Dawnie," Tara cooed, wrapping her arms around the young woman. Kennedy faded into the background, taking a silent step back. Was this what it would be like? If she did what she planned, then maybe she'd have another option, something, anything other than this 'other', this observer in a social maelstrom. Now Dawn and Tara rocked back and forth, whispering consolations to each other, assurances. A shudder of jealousy ran through Kennedy. Did Tara understand what she was giving up?

Later that day she broke the news to Willow. Kennedy didn't see it, she just heard the results. She couldn't help but hear it, both because of her proximity to the room and her Slayer hearing. Buffy sat in the alcove across Tara and Willow's room with Kennedy, both women fidgeting and watching the door, a silent agreement not to interrupt each other's eavesdropping. Willow reacted as would be expected.

"No, baby, it's got nothing to do with me loving you," Tara explained. Willow wasn't buying it, her childish girly voice see-sawing like a pneumatic hammer.

"Well, it has something to do with it! I know, I know you're not leaving because you just can't get enough of me. So you're gonna, what go back to school? Good, I want you to, and I can, I can make sure you can get back in. Giles'll even help pay for it. Just, baby, please think about this."

"I have thought about it," Tara protested, "That's all I've been doing the past week. I know you don't like it, and I know it hurts, believe me, I know, but it's the right thing to do."

"You're right I don't like it. I don't like it, and you're making a mistake. You're making a mistake, and have you bothered to think about what you're going to do? Where you're gonna go?"

"No, Willow," Tara snapped, "I haven't. I was just going to walk off down the street until I found a nice whorehouse. Goddess, Will. I'm not an idiot."

Tara cleared her throat. "I was thinking about going back to, uh. Going back to the ranch. My…father's ranch."

Kennedy jumped a little, Buffy's jaw set, each glancing at the other as Willow paced around the room so quickly her footfalls seemed to multiply into an army.

"You can't go back to those, those evil fucks. After what they did to you? After what that…scum of a brother did to you night after night? If you're gonna leave, fine, leave but please don't go back to those monsters."

"Willow, I know what they did," Tara shouted, or as close as she ever got to shouting. More of a stern, motherly voice. "And you know what? They don't scare me. I can handle those assholes. I've dealt with a thousand times worse than a bitter old man and a degenerate little weakling. And that's why I'm leaving, Willow, because as long as I stay here I'm always gonna have someone looking over my shoulder. Someone's going to be walking on eggshells around me. And-and I just can't live like that."

"I said I know. But they need to know I'm alive. And they have work I can do. Real, normal work. I've got my life to start over. I know it's a little melodramatic, but I figured the best place to start is at the beginning. And I'll get it right this time."

Willow sat on the bed, comforter and blankets rippling out like waves of earth. The lava flow came to a halt at the foot of the Red Witch, avatar of the forces of change; just a lonely young woman underneath it all.

They kissed, smooth as burnished leather and strong as steel. Buffy and Kennedy looked at the floor. Kennedy felt the elder Slayer's eyes on her, hard and cruel. She didn't feel like explaining herself.

Tara shook her head. "No. I think – I think I'm going to go find someplace quiet and cry for a little bit, okay?"

Kennedy nodded, then watched her walk down the hallway, swaying like a summer breeze. She opened the hotel room door, and walked in.

Willow sat at the edge of the bed, her face drawn and the blankets clenched in her hands. The pale red sun dropped under the jagged line of houses, lighting the gasses a pale pink, melting into the dark blue of the sky above it all.

"It'll be fall soon." Kennedy sat next to her, wrapping a hand around her waist. "I like the fall. Everything turns red."

"Then you know what she's doing," Willow tried to muster some anger, but the energy spilled onto the bed.

"It's her choice, Will," Kennedy stroked her love's cheek. "She's strong. She's one of the strongest people I've ever met."

"Oh?" Willow perked a little, not quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but getting there.

"About my…problem," Kennedy scratched her nose, the little itch more than annoying. Willow pulled her hand away, smiling at her, the corners of her mouth wide and accepting. Kennedy's heart melted. How could it not?

"What did Giles say? About your little deal with the devil." She poked Kennedy at each word.

"That he'd need a copy of the agreement. I suggested calling up Gunn at Wolfram and Hart, but he just huffed it off."

"I don't know," Kennedy tucked a strand of hair behind Willow's ear, then cupped her face in her hands. "It doesn't matter. I made my bed, I'll sleep in it."

"It belongs to you. Has since that first kiss. And any blue-skinned son of a bitch who says otherwise is gonna have to face me. Although, honestly, a legally binding document would be appreciated."

Willow looked into her eyes, the wealth of sadness and regret filling them. "I'm sorry, Kennedy. I've been such an idiot."

"Don't," Kennedy made little circles along Willow's jaw line with her thumbs, "Don't apologize, or make excuses, or any of the other shit that's mucked us up. Just be here, okay? Not somewhere else. Not in your head, or in the past, but right here."

"Here?" Willow brushed her lips along Kennedy's, her head filling with rain and thunderstorms. She explored the thin lines of her scar, the sensitive flesh on her upper lip memorizing the valley that marked her sacrifice. "Not here…"

Her kisses drifted like falling leaves to Kennedy's collarbone. She slid her hands under the thin material of her shirt, sliding it up and over her head. Once upon a time, her hair would entangle anything that passed it by. That wasn't a problem now.

Kennedy ran her fingers through Willow's hair, grasping handfuls of the russet flow like blood from and open wound as Willow kissed her breast. She ran her tongue in languorous laps around Kennedy's nipple, then took it between her teeth and nipped, just hard enough to elicit a gasp of approval and a low groan at the absence. Willow's lips roused the beast, the raw animal need; and the beast was hungry.

Willow's waist fascinated Kennedy. The muscles that danced around her ribcage, the smooth line that curved up from her inner thigh and to the point of her hip, the featherings of fire red hair that made her whimper with anticipation. She pulled Willow beneath her, pulling her shirt off as she spun her, a guttural growl on her lips and kissed the arc of her belly. She ran the tip of her tongue up, underneath her breast, her nostrils filled with Willow's arousal. Kennedy's strong thigh pressed into the center of her love, ground out a primal rhythm. She was not the ether, she was not the future. She was the now, the immediate, the flesh and blood.

Her own mark was found, the witch's hand kneading her through her jeans. Kennedy gave a long lick along Willow's peaked breast to show her appreciation. Willow grabbed the back of her neck, pressing her hard against Willow. Her teeth brushed vulnerable skin, and like a predator, she tasted her prey.

"Oh, ffffuck," Willow breathed through grit teeth. Dampness penetrated the cloth around Kennedy's thigh, and she pressed harder. Her hands moved up the white ribcage, slid along the underside of the arms, and pinned her wrists to the bed, the strength and weight of her embedding Willow into the mattress. Willow watched her through heavy-lidded eyes, lips parted and a thin sheen of sweat coating her features. She opened her legs to Kennedy, accepting the powerful woman's body pressed against her.

Kennedy smelled her come, smelled the organic sea air and the crashing tides that rolled Willow's eyes into the back of her head. Her jaw worked like a drowning woman, trying to form words even as Kennedy, infinitely cruel, ground more rapidly into her. Pressure and friction: these things make earthquakes.

But Willow was no victim, no blushing bride to be ravished. She had fangs of her own, and as her climax passed she pulled her lover down into a kiss that swallowed the stars. Then she was atop Kennedy, pinning her to the bed and twisting her lips into the wickedest smile Kennedy had ever seen. The pleasure the smile promised was delivered, her lips working their way down to Kennedy's tender breasts. She lavished her attentions on one and then the other, pinching and pulling in the syncopated rhythm that had Kennedy blind and begging for more.

How her pants got off, she didn't bother to question. Willow chuckled, low in her throat, then brushed her fingers through around and into Kennedy. She arched her back and howled, her synapses firing in supernovas. Kennedy's world became a point, a singularity, driven by the fullness between her legs, the vibrations of flesh on flesh.

"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here," she moaned in time with the thrusts. Then Willow's mouth replaced her fingers, then worked in unison. Kennedy shuddered again, and again, one climax following loyally on the heels of the other. She reached down, ground Willow's face into her, snarling like a caged animal. Nothing else mattered.

Sex, for them, was never more or less than being connected. It was about knowing and living in another's skin, the taste of her lover and the wetness that proved to each other that they lived and breathed the same air. The pleasure they gave each other was the flesh expressed, the pinches and bites just another way of expressing that life.

This was different. When Kennedy came, she let herself go, fell back into the pillows and howled into the night sky. She was wanton and brazen and she did not care who heard her. She wanted them all to know, wanted the world to know that her love could do this to her. She pulled Willow on top of her, slid her hand between the intervening space, and linked them.

Willow fumbled with her pants, frantically unbuttoning them, practically ripping them from her body. Her alabaster legs admitted Kennedy, her arms braced on either side of the dark haired woman's head. Kennedy rode her out, fingers playing a teasing tune, stirring more tremors until she seized around Kennedy's fingers, gasping and sweating.

No time was wasted. Kennedy slid down the bed, positioned herself under her love's center, and kissed her. She pressed her face into Willow, groaning and the woman's hips bucked uncontrollably. Another tremor came, this time nurtured by the feverish strokes of Kennedy's tongue, and it worked into a full fledged eruption. Willow screamed Kennedy's name, squeezed the bed sheets and clamped her thighs around the sable locks of her lover. Kennedy left ten matching half-moons on either of Willow's cheeks; her mark made.

Willow drifted to the bed, her strength spent. Kennedy crawled up to the side, kissed every last trace of their passion off her face, and rested her head on Willow's breast. The redhead sighed, still settling from her earthquakes.

"Just nice?" Kennedy tried to sound indignant, but the exhaustion made it come out as amused.

"And you! You've never been like that. You've never just let go like that. I think everyone in the hotel heard you."

"Oh my god," Willow repeated, "oh my god." She bolted upright, knocking Kennedy from the bed. The Slayer sprawled on the ground, limbs stiff and braced.

"No! I am through calming down! What is this, 'Abandon Willow' day? Don't I get a say in any of this?"

Kennedy stood up, brushed herself off , and sat at the end of the bed. "Willow, do you know how I feel about you?"

As usual, Kennedy refused to play ball when Willow started hyperventilating. The redhead made her way to Kennedy's side, running her fingertips down her back. "I – you love me, right?"

"Yeah," Kennedy smiled, "I love you. I'm crazy about you. You're all I think about. You're everything I ever wanted in another woman. I love you, Willow Rosenberg. More than I can ever say."

"I used to think we were gonna work out forever. Things were hard, but I was learning, you know? Things would… things would have…" She wiped a tear from her face with the back of her hand.

"And then Tara came back. And I know you never meant it, but I had a hard enough time competing with her when she was dead. I always felt like your second choice then, but that was okay…because I was still your choice. I can't stand up to that, not every day for the rest of my life with you. And I don't want to. And not to lay this on you, but I'm a little in love with Tara, and I don't want you to come between us. I'm not being cruel, I'm just being honest. I can't be second best. We can't last like that."

"Tara's leaving," Willow said as way of explanation, "She doesn't want to be around me."

"Don't be an idiot," Kennedy shook her head in silent amazement, "That girl loves you as much as I do. And she knows you love her back. She just needs to get her head together, and I guarantee she'll be back in your arms within a year."

"But your, your curse," Willow stumbled through reasons, "you can't do that on your own."

"Because every time I look at you all I can see are the things I'll never have."

The room sat silent and still for a long time. The flutter of bat wings chased each other in the night sky, the distant shouts of revelers on the streets of New Orleans intermingled with the wailings of saxophones and trumpets. Willow sobbed quietly, stifling the noise with her hand as she pressed herself against the headboards. Kennedy watched the space between her feet. The ground seemed very far away.

The eruption came and went. Now she watched the dust settle, cloaking the world in a gray film, blotting out the sun and the stars. It isolated her from the world, made everything monochromatic.

"Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess. Her loyal knight fought for her heart every day, and won it. But then the pieces that she replaced came back to her, and they were so beautiful that the knight couldn't hate them even though she thought they were taking her place. But they weren't, they were just filling up a hole. The princess had room for everyone in her heart. But the knight was proud. She couldn't be second best, not for the princess. She decided to leave and slay a foul dragon or two. Everyone was very sad, and it hurt very much, but the knight knew a secret she'd been keeping."

"That being alone doesn't always mean being lonely. That when everything starts over, it has to suffer a little before things get better. But that things do get better. Nothing ever dies, Willow. It's just forgotten and waiting to be remembered."

"Because," Kennedy turned to Willow, the scar on her cheek warping as she smiled. "We live in a fairy tale. And fairy tales always have happy endings."

The coffee tasted like ratpiss, but that was to be expected when you get coffee at a fast food restaurant. He wasn't a huge fan of the idea of fast food: anything that took less time to prepare than to eat seemed all kinds of unwholesome. A good steak, slow broiled over an open flame, or tira misu made his mouth water. A croissandwich was an evil that made him jealous.

He shook his head, gestured to the plastic bench next to him. He gave her an appreciative glance as she turned around: slim, maybe twenty-five or thirty, dusky black skin like the bottom of a dark pit. She moved with fluid grace into the bench, sighing as she sat down and cast her large, dark eyes around. He shrugged, his skin a little tight around the shoulders, and went back to reading the morning newspaper.

She quirked her head to the side, rapped her fingers against the Formica tabletop, and laughed high in her slender throat.

"Well, the story goes that this young doctor sells his soul to the Devil. Old Lucifer, the Morning Star himself." She dipped a slender finger into the man's cup of coffee. He jerked the cup away, spilling scalding liquid across the back of his hand. The woman tilted her head back with a smile, licking her finger clean. The man's beard bristled, a stirring in his loins mixing unpleasantly with the frustration.

"I just have to wonder," she went on, "how often the devil wanders around the world, looking for more souls to go into his book. And really, the world the way it is today, there has to be a lot of folk ready to sell their souls to old Scratch. He must be terrible busy."

The man pursed his lips, turning from the woman and snapping open the newspaper. The insane often left if you just ignored them long enough.

"But on the other hand, maybe he went and got himself some helpers. A few foul demons to scrounge about, casting out their nets and gobblin' up whatever poor fools that are desperate enough to sing their names on the dotted line. The Lord can't help them, the silly souls."

"Listen," the man sneered, "I'm sure this is all very interesting, but I have some place to be in a few minutes, and I really want to have my coffee in peace and quiet. So if you'll please just be quiet for a few minutes?"

The woman pouted and crossed her arms. "You really don't know who I am, do you?"

"Lord a'mercy, you are a dense one." She gave that same, wheezing chuckle. "How long have you been doing this?"

D'Hoffryn sighed, dropped his shoulders and turned the newspaper over. "Ever since Babe Ruth won the World Series."

She laughed again, her slender fingers resting atop the false skin of his hand. "Oh, I swear I learn something new every day." She settled herself into the bench. "But I'm not here to discuss the funny pages."

D'Hoffryn folded the paper into quarters, then set his half empty Styrofoam cup of coffee atop it. "Don't tell me you want to join the fold, dear. You must be resourceful to find me here, and as that you did not try to kill me unawares, you must know that ho haven't a chance of surviving if I don't wish you to. So what is your game, child?"

The demon prince cocked an eyebrow. The serrated tips of his teeth scraped the tip of his black tongue. "Imogene," he cooed, "my oh my. I thought you were dead."

"That's not my name anymore," she said. "I left that name with the scattered dust of my old body. Got myself a brand spankin' new one." She stood up and gave a twirl. "What do you think?"

"You silver tongued old snake." She retook her seat. "But no – we're square now, aren't we?"

"Well," he pondered, tapping his fingers against his whiskered chin, "You lost your home, your minions, and your old body. And all of your plans for undoing Rosenberg's little spell are all for naught. I, on the other hand, got to see the witch set herself up to suffer for the next decade."

"Let's not forget you finanglin' the soul outta that Slayer girl. She was a terror."

"They still have my boy locked up," she smiled, "things should get real interesting when he gets out. But we're all kinds of digressed here. I hope you got what I owed you and more."

"You take me for a fool? I ain't asking for forgiveness. This is just business. A debt got settled."

D'Hoffryn thought about this for a second. "Yes. Yes, I suppose you have honored the letter of our agreement."

"Then in all fairness, I have to let you know that my plans went more or less as they were supposed to."

"Well, not quite the way it went down," she picked at the edge of the table. "But I knew my boys wouldn't be walkin' out of there alive. I didn't rightly expect Tara Maclay or Gertrude Kennedy to be walkin' out of there alive. In fact, I was sorta countin' in them not."

"So, and I ask this strictly out of curiosity, so what exactly was supposed to happen?"

"Right. And you know Willow. The poor thing would go out of her mind again, call upon her power and lay waste to all of Louisiana."

"Ah," D'Hoffryn objected, "I think you underestimate her willpower. She may have retaliated in true Rosenberg fashion, but I don't think she would have fallen to black magic."

"Good," she huffed, "I hope not. That's my world, and I'd just as soon have her stay out of it. No, she'd of reached on out and found her proper place waitin'."

"Well," the demon prince shook his head. " I must say I am impressed. So all the Slayer nonsense was just that? And you just wanted her to what, step up to the plate?"

"Why?" he asked. "I would think that a weak insecure Willow would be much easier to manage than an all powerful Willow. Oh, wait," D'Hoffryn almost dropped his human guise.

"Of course. It must be a thousand times easier to keep an eye on a fettered, responsible force of nature than it is to try to predict how the witch will react from minute to minute. My hat is off to you, ma'am. Well, if I wore a hat. The horns get in the way, you understand."

The woman stood up from her spot, the swaying white dress gathering around her like a throng of admirers. She flattened the wrinkes against her statuesque legs. "Well, I'm off. I have a flight to catch."

"I was thinking about heading back home. West Africa is looking mighty fine this time of year. I've been in the States these past four hundred years. And I have to lose this damnfool accent. Gets on my nerves."

"You take care, old Scratch. You do know Miss Kennedy ain't gonna let you keep her soul, right?"

"Oh, I know," he lifted the lukewarm cup of coffee to his lips. "I guess I'll just have to kill her before she finds the loopholes. I really should have had Wolfram and Hart go over my paperwork."

D'Hoffryn spat the putrid beverage back into its cup, stood up from his chair, and teleported back to his home. The soul of a Slayer willingly given would be worth a pretty penny. Not that he planned to sell it, no; it was more powerful than any slaves or powers granted would ever be worth. Still, he'd have to work fast.

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