FF: Me and a Gun.

["honouredfool" <zenvoices@xxxxxxxx>]

So I wrote this fic right, and I couldn't decide where to put it so I
thought I'd send it to Sapphic cause I don't think I've ever posted there
before and I sent it to BWW, well, cause, old habits die hard.
Title: Me and a Gun.

Disclaimer: BtVS Characters are property of Whedon and Co.

A/N: This is a Challenge in a Can fic (www.dymphna.net/challenge). Dawn.
hopeful. gun. Sometimes it's just too easy. Thanks to Kate Bolin for
posting the first T/D fic I ever read and putting the idea in my head.
Props to Mad-Hamlet, Kirayoshi and Shyfox for the editorial assistance,
don't know where i'd be without you guys.

Archive: Challenge in a Can. Anyone else who wants it.



"Before we finish I'm going to tell you a little story about a girl that
I loved. This story starts a really long time ago, with some sort of energy
and a bunch of monks. The part relevant to you begins about eight months
after you left me to become a Magic Crackwhore. Every Thursday night after
I moved out I took her out for dinner and we watched a movie, usually a
rental. Dawn always had to pee in the middle. This particular Thursday was
during finals so we had just ordered in Chinese food and rented a movie. I
can't even remember what it was called now. Something about babies, or
children. It was Dawnie's choice, I thought it was kind of lame. Anyway,
we were lying on my little couch, loveseat thing watching this stupid movie.
Dawn liked to lay right on top of me and just sort of rest her head on my
shoulder. A lot of the time that meant I couldn't see the movie but I
figured it was more important for her to feel the touch of someone she than
I it was for me to see a stupid movie. Buffy was never real huggy with her
I guess. Especially, you know, after. So we're lying there right? Suddenly
I became very aware of Dawn's thigh pressed between my legs. I didn't do
anything that time, just felt its presence and its goodness. I remember she
was wearing denim pants, I can still feel the seam rubbing against me every
time she moved around which was a lot. She was just a little girl. And I
was a pervert for even noticing. Anyway that was the first time.

"You'll remember that after that I went away for a little while right?
I mean, you did notice when I stopped showing up to take Dawn once a week
didn't you? Maybe not, you were pretty fucked up then weren't you? Yeah,
you heard me right, fucked up. I can curse now. I'm angry enough. Well
anyway, I went away, I needed to get out of Sunnydale for a while. Needed
to get away from you, get away from all the magic and evil. Maybe get away
from Dawnie for a bit. I felt awful. That's when I bought this. I was
feeling pretty down on myself, hurt by you messing around in my head and
turning into the crackwhore of Sunnydale witchery, school was a disaster, I
hated my new housemates, I was confused about Dawn, disconnected from the
gang. I thought a lot about just sticking it in my mouth and biting down.
Maybe I'd get to see my mom right? Obviously I didn't. I traveled around
for a little bit, squandered some of the money that my mom left me riding
around on greyhounds back and forth across the country.

"So that went on for a while, like four or five years, then one day I
realized I was only about 4 hours from Sunnydale again so I jumped in a
rental car and came back. You were gone by then, your war with Buffy and
Xander had driven you out of the city I guess. I know if I had crippled
Anya I would have wanted to get out of Xander's way too. It took some
serious time to get Dawn to see me again. She was 20 then, I had been gone
for five years I guess. Funny, it never seemed that long while I was doing
it. Where was I? Oh yeah. Gone, no explanations, no postcards, just gone.
Then suddenly I was back. She was pretty upset with me. I think she might
have even hated me just a tiny little bit. The way a kid hates a shitty
parent. Xander was glad to see me, which I thought was a little strange, I
always thought he sort of blamed me for the whole Evil Magic Crackwhore
Willow that you had become. I guess not. He helped me to get Dawn to at
least see me, and talk to me a little.

"I told her about why I left, about you turning evil, and the
disconnect, and the depression. I didn't tell her about her though, I
thought that would creep her out. Ever so slowly we got back to a place
that was like where we left. Not the same, never the same, she was so much
older, a great deal thanks to you I'm told, and I had abandoned her so she
never really trusted me again. The night we were walking home from the
movies and she just reached down and grabbed my hand in hers was one of the
happiest in my life. Do you remember what it's like to feel happy? Not
pleased or self-satisfied like you always look, so fucking impressed with
your own power aren't you? Happy. Like, heart throbbing in your chest,
every muscle twitching with anticipation of something you can't even
recognize, you know, so happy it's hard to breathe cause your whole body
just wants to split into a million-billion pieces so that it can feel what
it feels a million-billion times more than it does as a single unit. So
happy you just want to vomit? I was that happy. I was almost that happy
with you, actually, I was that happy with you for awhile, but then you
started with the magic and I was just happy, then less happy. Then you
broke my heart. Dawnie made me that happy every time I saw her. We went
home to her dorm and she curled up on me again. Well, she tried, by then
she was pretty tall wasn't she? And so beautiful, that long brown hair
shining when the light caught it, soft as silk but the colour of polished
oak. Her little freckles, still refusing to fade away, much to her
frustration every morning. "Tara, there's nothing sexy about freckles!"
she'd tell me again and again. All I wanted was to hold her face in my
hands and kiss each and everyone of those little dots until she thought
there was nothing sexier in all the world then those little brown dots
across the bridge of her nose.

"We went slow because she was still a little young, the same age as us
when we split up, and I was still frightened of what I felt for her. It
took a lot of time for me to come to terms with loving a girl I had
essentially mothered for an incredibly traumatic half-year of life. She
kissed me one night over dinner, during a lull in the conversation she just
did it, reached across the table, pulled my face to hers and kissed me on
the lips. Strawberries, cinnamon and magic in case you ever wondered. But
you probably didn't did you? If I had died right then I would have died the
happiest little lesbian witch in the history of the whole entire universe.
Her lips felt like, like, they were soft, and really smooth, I swear she
must have paid hundreds for the best lip balm you can by. Ambrosia balm or
something. It was kissing heaven. I'm going to feel it again too, soon as
we get this business here wrapped up.

"Then you came back didn't you? And a little black hole opened in my
universe and just sucked the fucking sun in and left me with three things,
hate, this 45 and a tiny shred of hope. Why'd you do it Willow? Was it to
get at me, revenge for abandoning you all those years ago? Was it to get at
Buffy? You'd already crippled Anya and killed Giles, but that hadn't made
her any weaker had it? You never took history very much did you Willow?
Attempting to weaken your enemy through terror never works. You messed that
up huge. Made her stronger, made her furious. Got me involved. You ever
watch Return of the Jedi? Me neither, not until Dawnie. It was one of her
favourites for some reason. I think it reminded her of you a little, like,
maybe even after so long in the dark, doing terrible things you might still
be able to redeem yourself? Or maybe you're the Emperor and I'm Darth Vader
and by ignoring you I was just as bad as he was, and she, she was the only
thing that could wake me up. So you killed her. Killed the only person
that I had in the world. Just snuffed her exquisite little life out with
what? a little shake of your finger? crinkling of your nose? like that
girl on Bewitched gone menopausal? She was fair as a rose in May, the Venus
de Milo of this southern California hell, and you fucking killed her!

"Phew. Got a little worked up there. Just going to calm down a little
here. Have you ever read the Highwayman Willow? It's a poem. It's about
two lovers. They die. Both of them kill themselves for the sake of the
other. She dies to warn him of an ambush and he dies in a brave but futile
rush to avenge her. I could never understand that idea. I never really got
Romeo and Juliet either. Dying to be with someone. I didn't want to die to
be with my mom did I? And she was the only person who ever loved me that
much until Dawn came along. You didn't. Don?t say you did either. You
wouldn't have done what you did to me if you had. You understand I'm going
to kill you right? I'm going to take this pistol, put it between your eyes
and just pull the trigger. Have you ever seen what happens to a head when
you shoot it with a gun this big from that far away? Imagine an apple, a
rotten apple, which is exactly what your head is now, dropped from a balcony
on the 95th floor of a building. Now imagine, by some bizarre coincidence a
cinder block is being catapulted on a trajectory that it crashes into said
apple just as booth reach their maximum speed. Can you picture it? Can
you? Good. Now toss in a pint of blood, a human brain and some skull
fragments. Have a nice life.

?Remember when your hair was red? What happened to you? It was only what
ten, maybe twelve years that you started using black magic? You must have
used a lot. But I still won. Without it. So now it's time to end this. I
have two bullets in here. One for you, one for me. Do you know why I want
to die now? Do you understand how much I loved her? More than anything
ever. More than my own mother. I don't know what will happen. I can hope
though. I can hope that she's waiting for me, hope that she's there with
open arms, good and pure and innocent. Everything that you're not,
everything that both of us used to be. So go to hell Willow. Maybe I'll
see you there, but I'm hoping I don't."

*click*

There's a bit of backstory to this that I wrote, but it's not as good as
this. If anyone ever wants to read it let me know.

hf.