Title: Clean Slate

Rating: PG-13

*~*~*

I can see it now. Candlelight, the Indigo Girls playing, picture of your dead girlfriend on your bloody lap... And try as she would, Willow couldn’t help but see it, too. She’d sit down on the bed they shared, Tara’s picture propped up in front of her, a frozen face and frozen eyes watching without complaint as she took the razor to her wrists. Sad music playing, the Indigo Girls even, maybe? The sharp, burning pain that would deter her for only a moment. She knew she wouldn’t enjoy it. But she could just envision the fading sensations, the way the edges of her vision would dim, and Tara’s picture would be the last thing she saw as the salty warm blood soaked the covers and drove her to the cold.

The cold night air was no talisman against her self-doubt. What if she couldn’t recover? What if this was it? As good as it got? The pain from Tara’s death had never gone away, not at all. She’d just stopped fighting it, was all.

She’d let the pain drag her down to the bottom, and now she was stuck. Could it ever get better? She didn’t know. It had been half a year, and nothing had changed. She felt almost as insane and grief-torn as she had the day Tara died.

She’d been taught control by the coven in England. Control, and understanding. And the knowledge that she’d paid dearly for both. It had cost her her imagined salvation. Or damnation. It didn’t matter. Either way, it was real to her. And it was gone now. The destruction in magick that she craved had been forbidden to her by walls they’d labored long to build in her mind.

So what could she do but grin and bear it? Be a trooper, a team player, anything they wanted her to be, because she owed them that, and a lot more besides.

She came home to a wreck. Dawnie was crying in the middle of the floor, blood streaming with the tears from a wound in her forehead. “Dawn, oh goddess, are you alright?”

Dawn nodded, and Willow went to her. Cradled her like her own flesh and blood and rocked her as she wept. No more tears could Willow cry, though. “It’s alright, Dawnie, it’s alright.”

***

Sitting on the bed. Candles lit, flowers in a vase on the table next to her. The music was playing just the way she’d planned. Eerie chills ran through her. “I’m so sorry baby. I can’t...I can’t do this anymore. Oh, Tara, it hurts! I don’t want to...I just can’t live without you anymore. I don’t want to, I swear I don’t, but I can’t help it. I just...can’t.”

The razorblade was close at hand, but Willow didn’t reach for it. A single flower lay on the bed in front of her. Tears streamed down her face, and she turned Tara’s picture face down. “I’m sorry...” It was too late. The answer was crystal clear. She just couldn’t live with the memory of Tara’s death weighing on her head and weighting down her every move. I can fix it. I know a spell...

So she wouldn’t. Amputate a limb to save the person. It had to be this way.

She picked up the flower and brought it to her nose. And she began to speak. “Tabula rasa, tabula rasa, tabula rasa...”

Back to Soft of Eye and Light of Touch: Totally Tara

Back to Soft of Eye and Light of Touch: Totally Tara - RavenWolf's fanfic