Happiness is something I’ve never quite understood. By all reasoning I am happy with Willow and she’s everything that I could ever need. She’s strong and supportive and she cares for me better than anyone. She knows me inside out and upside down and she can predict everything I’m going to say or do before even I can. She loves me and I love her. So I should be happy with her, right? Should be. But I’m not. I wouldn’t give her up for the world because I love and she makes me happy but there’s something missing from our relationship. Something stupid.
That something is Anya. I don’t know if I would say I was in love with Anya or if she was in love with me. I don’t know if she’d ever allow me to say something like that. From the first moment we knew we wanted each other she told me she loved Xander and I told her that I loved Willow. We are both in happy strong relationships that we wouldn’t leave for the world yet… Yet every Saturday I go to the magic shop in the pretence of helping her do the accounting and she looks at me and I look at her and we know that it’s going to happen all over again. I give her all the tenderness that Xander doesn’t understand she needs and se gives me the excitement that Willow could never give me. It’s stupid but I couldn’t give it up. She’s my weakness, my addiction.
Looking at me you would never think I had a secret like this. Ever so nice Tara would never do anything bad. Never break the rules. But as I see it I’m not breaking them I’m just creating my own rules. I would never cheat on Willow. I couldn’t find it in me to do that to her because it would break her heart if she found out but with Anya it’s different. When we’re together it’s like we’re one person and I can’t cheat on Willow with myself now can I? It’s not like I’m being unfaithful.
Maybe it’s the whole ex-demon thing that gets me. The power that she had is kind of sexy. I remember the time when I thought I was a demon and in a way I craved it. To be different from everyone else: to control them. But then the Tara part of me would start working again and I’d realise what I just thought and feel so sick that I could barely breath. With Anya I don’t have to be Tara any more I can be me. I can be the demon I never was but always felt inside me because when you’re told day after day year upon year that you’re a demon you start to become one. Deep down inside of you something changes forever and you can never be the way you were. Never be completely pure or light or good again. Willow never saw it and neither did any of the others. Not even Buffy with her slayer sense could ever tell that I was anything more than the sweet little girl I pretended to be.
Only Anya saw it: only she could sense the darkness that was locked inside me. The first time I lost my temper in front of her she pulled me to one side and asked me why I’d never said I was part demon. Of course she didn’t know my family history and so when I explained that I wasn’t and what I felt she did something strange and unexpected. Instead of telling me I was silly and stupid and that it was all in my head like I had expected anyone I told to do she dragged to where no one could see and kissed me. No love or tenderness just raw emotion. Like she was sucking something out of me. Then when we pulled apart I felt empty inside and when I looked into her eyes I could see myself smiling back. She did that for me because she knew that I wasn’t the type of person who could cope with that burden, that power. And when I crave it I just crave her.
I crave the darkness and she needs the light. When we’re together though we’re one. And though I can’t tell you whether I love her I can tell you that I need her. My demon, my secret.
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