Chapter 6
“She’s alive.” Willow says, wistfully, after a while of us walking cautiously through the broken streets. I want to push faster, to make sure Dawn is okay, demons don’t need invitations like vampires do, after all, but Willow is so drained, walking is hard for her, “I really—we really did it.”
“You did most of the work.” I tell her, “No one else vomited up an anaconda.”
The carnage aftermath continues as we’re getting closer to the house I can feel my heart racing and sound rushing through my ears like a wave. There’s no one actively attacking but the destruction, hurt people, various sirens, and here and there people being loaded into ambulances. I hear one of the first responders saying, “Well, these gangs like to wear creepy masks to freak people out nowadays, you know?”
More debris on our street and lights on at the house. I can’t help but leave Willow at the start of the driveway given the door is broken off the hinges and I run inside calling Dawn’s name. No answer.
NO ANSWER.
Willow appears at the doorway as I’m frantically, looking for the map of Sunnydale and any supplies I can lay my hands on for a locator spell.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, based on her expression as she looks around, the broken door, tipped over bookcases and couch. She realizes, “Dawnie?”
“She’s not here.” I confirm.
“Could we, maybe, check with Janice’s family before we start whatever you’re doing?”
“This is Dawn.” I tell her, “In a crisis situation, with demons, she’s not going to think Janice.” I weigh down the corners of the map with crystals and candles, “She’s going to think Buf—that wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t know where we were. She’s going to think Spike.”
“Spike.” Willow echoes.
I’m not haring off to the crypts though, when anything could have happened in the meantime. I lay out a couple more crystals and scatter some red brick dust across the map. After lighting a couple of the candles, I begin my incantation which is accompanied by a lot of internal please, please, please. Please be okay.
The dust begins to swirl into a larger cohesive group in the center of the board, but then a small ball splits off, and another, and another.
Willow sits down on a couch cushion and leans back against the turned over sofa, massaging her temples and the center of her forehead, alternately.
I watch the map as the dots spread out and all over. Then I realize there’s two here in this house and the others further afield. Two in close proximity moving rather haphazardly must be Xander and Anya, then there’s one alone but moving methodically across the map—Buffy and the two together but slightly apart is that Dawn and Spike?
“Which one is Dawn?” I ask. The further back of the last group swirls in a spiral like a spring stretching out. Okay, one of the ones I figured she might be, “Where are she and Spike going?” I wonder out loud, but then the dot I figured was Buffy swirls up as well as the one already established as Dawn.
Shit.
“What?” Willow asks.
“I didn’t realize that became an outside thought.” I tell her, realizing what’s potentially happened. Spike is closing in on where Dawn is at, but she’s chasing—towards the side of town where the Glory showdown happened, “Which one is Buffy?” I ask, and that dot in front of Dawn flares up. It seems like it’s drawing to a standstill, but it’s quivering, and Dawn’s dot is overlapping it now.
The Tower.
THE TOWER!
Were the cards being literal—is that thing literally going to come down. Willow calls out to me as I’m starting back towards the not-door. I explain what’s happening as quickly as I can.
“How are you planning on getting over there before something like the thing coming down happens?” Willow asks. I appreciate she doesn’t ask me what the heck I expect to be able to do once I get there.
“I can’t just—” I sigh, “Maybe there’s a protection spell we can do from here?”
“There’s my girl. Help me up.” I do and find some salt on the way back, an idea forming.
Willow leans heavily against me, and we clasp hands her left in my right. I open the top of the salt, and we begin. Envisioning the salt as a protective layer of energy and calling it to them, to all of them just to be on the safe side, and to call them Home.
On the map the salt is dancing around the little red balls of dust, and they’re all linked together by the trail of salt on the map which is tied back to the saltshaker here.
I can’t help but snicker for a second which has Willow asking me, “What?”
“I’m glad we keep the magic salt separate from the table salt is all.”
Willow nuzzles my cheek and then nose with her own nose and boops me a kiss really quickly. She is looking at the map again soon enough.
“They’re coming back.” She says, pointing with her right hand and swaying slightly.
“Maybe you should sit down before you fall down?” I tell her. If she can find a spot—well, there’s where she was—we need to put something over the windows and do something about the door most urgently. Though if we’re going to risk another claim against the homeowner’s insurance we need to take photos of everything first. It’s easier to just have Xander fix it and help him where we can.
But Buffy—she’s maybe back now.
Depending how she’s doing.
We did leave her room alone. None of us could bear to touch it. We changed some things around, of course the first floor is half trashed right now and I haven’t even looked upstairs, though it does look as though they got interrupted, or bored part way up the stairs and left.
I look back down on the map and speak to it, confirming that Buffy and Dawn are the closest to us. I guide Willow back to the couch cushion, and then I’m not sure how to proceed and not look awkward standing there waiting for them to come through the not-door, but then Dawn is leading Buffy through the broken doorway, gently coaxing.
Buffy looks around, “Home?” her voice is barely audible.
Dawn looks to have been crying, understandably, and looks to me desperately.
Willow looks like she’s going to spring up and I wave her back down. We don’t need to be crowding Buffy right now; especially not as hyper-eager Willow is. I take one step closer to where the two Summers sisters are with my hands up in a, hopefully, non-threatening gesture.
“Buffy. It’s Tara.” I explain, lamely, “Is it okay to come with you upstairs. We can get you cleaned up.”
“It’s different.” Buffy says, looking around the room.
“We only moved out a couple of the round tables and—” Dawn stops, “—well, it is half-trashed right now too. It wasn’t like this when I left, I swear.” She looks from me to Willow, “I ran out because of the demons breaking in all over the street.”
Willow stands up, anyway, and rushes towards us, “Buffy I’m so glad you’re back I—” she looks stung as Buffy flinches away.
“How about you wait for Xander and Anya, and possibly Spike.” I suggest to Willow, “I’ll help Dawn with supplies for getting Buffy cleaned and patched up.”
Buffy is woodenly moving towards the stairs.
“She—she asked me if this was Hell…” Dawn says, quietly as she starts to follow Buffy up. Then she stops, “You guys aren’t surprised to see her.”
I do my best to project a calm and soothing aura.
“Dawnie—” Willow starts in a pleading, guilty tone.
Dawn’s eyes narrow, “What did you do?”
“A spell.” Willow says, softly.
I reach for Dawn’s hands she starts to pull them back but then lets me take them, “We’re sorry we didn’t tell you.” I say, as Willow nods, fervently, “but we didn’t want to get your hopes up in case it didn’t work. We—we didn’t want you to have to lose her twice.”
“Definitely not.” Willow agrees.
Dawn accepts this, for now potentially, but we’ve left a not quite centered Buffy alone upstairs for long enough. Though she seems to have stopped on the landing hallway and is just staring ahead. I let Dawn reach her first, and work on centering myself to project the calm and safe aura even though I’m petrified inside that I was trained in to in childhood.
I’m suddenly really glad Dawn didn’t want to cremate Buffy, for various reasons, not least of which would have been her healing up into a demon infested area naked.
Upstairs has definitely been spared. I’m glad we’re not walking into a destroyed bathroom. Buffy sits on the edge of the bathtub at Dawn’s direction and just stares again for a moment. I rinse a washcloth with warm water and wring it out, handing it to Dawn, telling her, probably unnecessarily, “Start gently, hands and face. I’ll go and find the first aid kit. I think it’s in our room.” Joyce’s room. I realize to Buffy it’s still Joyce’s room—her mom’s room, and we’ve taken it over. It felt less weird to move in there than Buffy’s room though, and Dawn was the main one we were thinking about then and she was okay with it, as we were the reason she was getting to stay in her own home. Dawn follows me to the door not that it’s very far.
“She needs a shower—or maybe a bath—” She turns back to where Buffy is staring at the towel rack.
“Start with her hands.” I say again, “be gentle. Show her it’s safe. She’s in utter shock right now. We need to start slowly.”
“Okay.” Dawn nods and then, “It is really her? It’s not like when Faith was in Buffy’s body. I know Giles said you could tell back then.”
“It’s her.” I nod, “Shell-shocked from being pulled from Hell; but it’s her.”
“She was in Hell.” Dawn’s voice cracks, and I hold her against me.
“She’s not anymore.” I tell Dawn, “That was the other reason we didn’t want to tell you.” I sigh, “We didn’t want you think about her being there.”
Buffy is still staring off at the towel. I quickly re-warm and replace the washcloth in Dawn’s hands.
“Start with the hands.” She says, softly.