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Silence, Sounds of
by WhichWitch
Notes:
- Willow, Aftermath of s6. Spoilers for 7X1, but it's nothing like that ep.
- Written originally for Teana's gatefiction Writing Sound Project but I didn't make the deadline.
- My thanks to deepad and the wonderful Jeanne for the beta.
Silence, Sounds of
Tara has this thing she does, when you make her laugh so hard her laughter turns into snorts. Tara hates the snorts, and I've told her so many times that I think they're cute. I love the very fact that she can laugh so hard, that I can make her laugh so hard, that she loses control.
And she has another sound she makes, a short intake of breath, just a pause she takes sometimes before she goes on talking, that I know is her way of stopping the stutter before it can come to be.
She has an excited high-pitch sound that is for the cat and the cat alone. It's because sometimes Miss Kitty does something so extremely cute, Tara has to have a sound devoted just to that. Sometimes, when Miss Kitty does something she really shouldn't, like leaving us her special brand of affection-gifts, and Tara is yelling at her, because Tara's Bad Cop and I'm Good Cop, I can still hear a shadow of that Oh My God How Cute Are You, Miss Kitty Fantastico? voice in there. Which is totally wrong for Bad Cop, and if I can hear it, then betcha by golly that the cat can.
She has other sounds, more private sounds, a different kind of losing control that I love love love for being able to make her produce. Those harsh breaths, those lengthy moans, the swoosh-swoosh-swoosh sounds of her skin against the sheets.
And she can say my name, she can make it leave her lips like a golden, perfect spell, she can make it into something flowy and crimson, that goes through me like liquid magic and makes my heart feel all...
I know she has those sounds, I've been recording them. I want to remember them now. Please, please, why can't I remember them now? Anything, any sound from her, anything will do, I'll settle for her angry voice, accusing, disappointed, god, even that, just not, just stop, just please, anything except those final words, the glass, the THUD, the rush of the blood leaving her body-
*
"There. Isn't this so much better?" says Mrs. Blethyn, sitting down across the kitchen table, and handing me a hot mug of something. Tea, yes, of course, only with extra-special something in it, brewed specially for disturbed, creepy girls like me.
We sit in silence for a few minutes and she watches me stir the spoon inside the mug. Around and around and around... I know she's waiting for me to drink it, drink it all, and something wicked inside me won't do it just because.
"Would you like to tell me what you were doing out there?" she asks in a low, intimate voice. As if it's only her and me in this entire house, and no one will ever hear of this, my latest act of crazy. Just our little secret. Between me and Mrs. Blethyn, Mr. Giles, and thirty-two members of coven.
"I... " I feel like apologizing. I always feel like apologizing to them. "I wanted to- I was..." But what's the point, really? There isn't an answer that will make this seem less crazy, least of all the true one. I try to think of a good lie, something that is just what she wants to hear, but god, I'm too tired and cold.
Mrs. Blethyn reaches out suddenly to pull on a corner of the blanket that she'd wrapped around me five minutes ago when we came back into the house, to pull it tighter around my shoulder, like she's assuring herself that she is, in fact, taking care of me. She had not deserted her post this night, had not allowed their scary charge to go out into the meadows in the middle of the night to lie on the ground, dressed only in a flimsy, old-fashioned English nightgown.
"You were...?" she won't leave it alone.
I take a big breath and say the first thing that comes to mind, which also happens to be the truth. "Listening."
"Oh," she stares at me for a few short seconds, then leans back in her seat and sips her own tea, which is just plain Earl Grey with nothing funky in it. "Oh, I see," Her tone of voice is now conversational, not conspiratorial anymore, as though we're girlfriends, sitting in a caf, chatting about this and that. "Well, I most certainly can see why you would... I suppose it can be quite fascinating. The silence of the country at night, after you've lived in a town for so long. I used to be a City Girl myself, you know. Yes, for many years. And when I first moved into the country I simply couldn't sleep at nights for the silence!" she allows herself a small How Silly Of Me laugh. She isn't a bad person, really, and I hate myself for thinking such bad thoughts about her, but god! Do we have to play this game? She isn't anything like me and she never was, and she doesn't understand me and she never will.
On and on and on she talks and she's just another detail in the mass of noise in my head. What would she do, what would they all do, if they knew I can hear it all, hear everything? Hear them in their beds, tossing and turning, hear the creak of ancient floorboards when someone goes sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night, hear the faint clanking of the whiskey bottle touching the lip of the whiskey glass, hear the secret middle-of-the-night What Will We Do About Willow meetings, the hushed, rushed voices, the decisive tones, the fear, always fear, fear that makes them kinda hate me, laced through it all.
I can't sleep, I can't think of happier things, saner times, when they're all in this house with me, walking and talking and breathing and thinking about me, Their Mission.
So instead of giving in to the thing inside me that tells me to open my mouth and scream until this house and everything in it comes crumbling down, I get up and walk out. How's that for progress?
I don't give in to the urge to silence this whole damn world; I get myself together, start moving. Like a ghost I am, stepping out in the middle of the night in my white gown and no shoes on, walking out of this house and not stopping until I am lying on my back in the middle of the world, in the heart of the meadow.
Almost immediately, my nightgown is soaking-wet and I am chilled down to the bone. I can feel the prickle of the grass all over, and my hair is mixing with the dirt, but it's ok, it's quieter. I lie, not moving at all, except for breathing. I have this image of me lying there, like in a music video or something, when everything goes fast-motion, and while the grass is growing around me, and tiny earth-things slither by, I am sinking, decomposing into the earth.
And when the sounds of the house leave my system, all that's left is everything else. The grass grows in sharp, brazen spurts, while a yellow-flowery plant I can't name grows with a fluent, arabesque hum. Beetles scurry by with click-click clicks, and the ground moves under their tiny legs with a smoosh-swoosh trickle. A centipede buries himself and all his legs in a hole in the dirt, leaving behind a whirlpool of tiny grains of earth, a vortex that crumbles onto itself with a sickening sssaaaahhh sound. Tiny grains of sand and underneath that, more earth, roots that grow slow and barky, animals that live in darkness, and lower still there's water, trickling with a lively, happy chatter.
It's all connected, you see, and I know the sound of everything in this earth, and if I listen very carefully and down and down and down I go, I can hear Dawn singing in the kitchen, the words echoing in the empty house. Take another route and I can hear the rattle of Spike on a motorcycle, making his way back home, and there's something very wrong with him, because he's passing the Welcome to Sunnydale sign without giving it a second look. Don't even go there, and still there are the mountains around me, the wind in the trees, a billion heartbeats, and the creepy-crawly shuffle of things walking around with no heartbeats at all.
Going bump in the night.
I start laughing at that, laughing so hard my bones are rattling, and tears stream down the corners of my eyes, dropping and disappearing into the earth.
That's how Mrs. Blethyn finds me, lying on the ground, shivering from the cold and crying so hard that if I'm not stopped I might bring this whole meadow and everything in it crumbling down.
*
Mrs. Blethyn reaches across the table again, and her eyes are really kind and caring when she touches my hand. "It'll get better, sweetheart. I promise," she says, and I gladly believe her. It has to get better; it has to, because no one can be expected to live like this. Not even Willow Rosenberg.
So I drink my funky tea in one go, and shiver to let Mrs. Blethyn know that I'm cold and ready for my hot shower now. She's more than happy to allow me to withdraw to my bedroom, where I lay my body on the bed, wet nightgown, blanket and all, and stare at the ceiling until the sun comes up, trying to remember all those good Tara sounds.
Instead, there's the sound of her dying, and the sound of everything else. These are the sounds of the night, soon to be replaced by the sound of the day. These are the sounds of the world, and this is me, cursed to listen to all of it, all of them, all the time, everywhere. Can't filter, and the sounds I want to hear are not part of this world anymore. 'Cause Tara no longer makes her special sounds, only the regular ones they all make when in the earth.
Oh, Mrs. Blethyn, I wish there was silence. I really do.
END
Dedicated to my dad, who very ironically died right after I wrote this.
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