Title: "Yours, Always"

Author: Buffonia

E-mail: Buffonia@hotmail.com

Pairing: Willow/Tara

Rating: R

Summary: Tara dreams of life beyond the trailer park…

Feedback: please!

Disclaimer: Not mine, Joss and co. own all rights.

* * *

I dream in black and white and many shades of gray. Since we buried her, my mind has taken on the bland flavor of my life. It refuses the vibrancy of color. Sometimes my hearing fades out and it's like an old silent film. And there are flashes of images, like a lowering coffin being swallowed by a gaping hole in the earth or a man screaming soundless words at me.

I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Cousin Beth's whimpering. She cries in her sleep; her pain transpiring to the life we share here in the trailer. Sometimes the intensity of my nightmares sends me flying into a sitting position, slick with sweat and lost for air. Worst of all, when I come out of my unconscious state, things happen. I don't mean to but there are times when I gasp awake and a plate will fall or the glass of water that I have on the kitchen table at our bedside will shatter.

But not last night.

It began the same as usual. The cold grass is licking the soles of my bare feet and my fingers are brushing the dilapidated headstones. But instead of the RV that is usually parked above her grave, there is a girl. And a flicker of cerise. I can smell sandalwood and patchouli drifting from where she sits, her weight rested on her heels.

I can see her but not completely. Even when I'm looking at her, studying her below me I cannot describe what she looks like. But I know she is beautiful, because her beauty seeps into me and surrounds me.

She stands and looks at me with a soft smile. There is a red halo crowning her seraphic face. It's hard for me to form words, but I finally ask her if she is an angel.

She smiles and shakes her head with a laugh. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

"M-me?" I can barely stammer a sentence out and my cheeks are aflame. "I'm j-just a girl."

"Are you mine?" She asks innocently. "My girl?"

"I've never been anybody's." I am thinking it but she hears me anyways.

"I know." Her face had been bright but I think my sadness has been transfused through our eyes because there is a sorrowful tremble in her lip. Her palm is chilling to my heated face as she grazes soft fingertips over my features. I close my eyes and rest gently into her hand as she cups my cheek. When I finally lift my eyelids I gasp.

Suddenly it's like the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy steps out of the old farmhouse. Everything is strikingly bright, moreso than any reality could be. The sudden illumination of my dreamworld is startlingly perfect. All heavy grief has been absorbed and altered by our fusion. I am light.

Her lips are soft and taste like strawberries. I wonder what I taste like to her. She moves her grasp from my cheek and down to my hips. Music is swelling within me and my chorus of fingers are singing the praises of her creamy skin.

Things I always pushed away from my mind, feelings and ideas that seemed wrong, flood my body. I am lighter. The rightness that is our melded bodies becomes a graceful dance of woman on woman.

She is teaching me how to feel things I denied myself with shamed fingers for years, and yet she is discovering them for herself as well. Sensations flow over me like warm water. My body is not to be hidden anymore, she unveils me and whispers an apology with her tongue. I ask her why she is sorry. And then I know. She is apologizing on behalf of fate.
For the years I suffered, and worse, the years I suffered alone. For death's misgivings and life's misfortune.

I can feel wetness streaming down my face. I am used to weeping in my dreams but never from pure ecstasy. Never from feeling so light inside. My body trembles and I am released. Her mouth is on mine once more and she shows me what I taste like to her, tears and honey.

We roll over and she is beneath me. Her thighs, her breasts, her all of her is pale and delicious and mine. She is the missing piece, and we fit and are one. There is motion again and I am creating it. She is replying to my lip and teeth proclamations of love with gasps and groans. My mouth articulates soundlessly what my voice never could.

I feel her lithe frame quake and cry out to me. And we are kissing again but it's goodbye. She is telling me with furious lips that we have to separate ourselves. And I say that I never want to leave her arms. That it's like coming home, to a home that isn't mine, but it's where my heart is. She assures me that I will find it. She lends me her bravery and says that I will have the chance to return it to her.

We are on our feet again and something is moving us apart. Her smiling image fades as sunlight bleeds through my eyelids. When I open them I feel myself fall a few inches and sink into the mattress. Beth is looking at me wide-eyed and threatening to tell. But I can barely hear her, hardly see her.

I must have been smiling because Beth's features become confused and agitated. I mentally prepare myself for the day to come. I wonder where I put my suitcase and calculate the distance to the bus station. I know that to bring up the acceptance letter again to my father will not be pleasant, but the girl's bold fingers have left an impression on my entire being.

I am going home. To her home. But I belong there, I know I do. Because I am hers too.