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“Wishing you a beautiful holiday and a New Year of peace and happiness!”
“Wishing you a Hanukkah overflowing with peace and happiness!”
“May all the joys of Hanukkah fill your heart throughout the New Year!”
A year ago, those might have been the perfect words. A year ago, Hanukkah had always been her favorite holiday. A year ago, she had rejoiced in the opportunity to share that holiday with her love.
A year ago, everything had been perfect.
Now, everything was wrong.
Could anything ever be right again?
***
Willow released an exasperated sigh as she set yet another card back into its place. Low-browed, and cresting the boundary between helpless frustration and excruciating numbness, she picked out another card and stared blankly at its cover, refusing to open it. Refusing to actually see it. So torpid was she at this moment that she didn’t bother to look up even as she sensed Xander’s approach toward her in the middle of the Greeting Card aisle.
“How’s the hunt?” he asked, amicable as ever, as he set down a handbasket stuffed with cheap last-minute tchotchkes.
“Nothing good, huh?” he offered gently, upon reading the expression of her downturned lips and bleary eyes.
As she registered his words, her eyes hardened a little and her frown sank deeper.
“Everything’s all butterflies and rainbows over here. All, ‘ohh, yay! Everything’s just so great! Whoopidy doo dah, ain’t life grand?’ Yep, just dandy. ‘Hope you’re happy now and your life is better off without me.’”
Her shoulders slumped even further, as if that were possible.
“I’m sure you’ll find something, Wil,” he said, softly.
She continued to face the stand of cards, now half-heartedly scrutinizing them.
“Why don’t they have something that says, like, ‘hey! Sorry I completely fucked everything up. I’m miserable about it, but, Happy Hanukkah! Hope you miss me as much as I miss you!’ Or...or like ‘I know you hate me right now, but I still love you. Happy Hannukah! Did I mention I love you?’ You know? Like, life’s not ALWAYS about rolling in puppies, or skinny-dipping in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...” She faded at the last, catching herself in the ridiculousness of it all. Dropping all pretense of sardonic mirth, she somberly continued, “Sometimes everything sucks. And all you want in the world is to make it better.”
She turned her head and looked at him with doleful eyes, then unsteadily murmured, “don’t they have a card for that?”
“I think, for that, you’ll have to look under the ‘Armistice’ heading in the ‘Greetings From NATO’ section.”
He was almost straight-faced as he said it, save for the awkward twinkle in his eyes and the slight curve of his lips that pleaded, ‘I really want to help, but I don’t know how! Here, have a funny joke! Feel better yet?’
She forced a weak smile, accepting that Xander was doing his best, and looked back at the card in her hands, truly seeing it for the first time. She saw it just long enough to register its meaning before the words became blurred behind a lens of tears she didn’t think she had left in her. She turned to him and meekly held the card up so he could see it.
It read: “Family and friends are a wonderful part of Hanukkah.”
“Oh, Wil..” she heard him say, as she felt the first tear break through her resolve to trickle down her cheek. Then she felt his arms close around her and she turned her face into the scratchy fabric of his jacket, willing herself not to melt into a sobbing mess. She let him hold her like that for several moments, during which she forced herself to take several steadying breaths. Just as she began to find her inner balance again, a crippling realization swept over her.
“Xander,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “She’s all alone...”
She felt his arms tighten around her.
“No she’s not,” he mumbled. He allowed her several merciful moments to regain a semblance of composure before stepping back an arm’s length, keeping his hands tight on her shoulders. She could feel his gaze on her downturned head, waiting for her to meet his eyes. After several more moments—more deep breaths and a few hard-fought tears—she did. She looked into his eyes and found a sort of strength in their intensity.
“She’s not alone, Willow,” he said, firmly.
“But, her family...” Willow faltered.
“WE are her family. She still has us. Dawn, Buffy, me...” He exhaled a short, decisive breath. “Even you, Wil.”
Willow narrowed her eyes at that, and a bitter scowl flashed across her face.
“She doesn’t want me.”
The jagged edges of that statement shocked even Willow herself as it escaped her lips. She found herself torn between maintaining a defiant sort of eye-contact with Xander—perhaps to prove her conviction in that statement—and looking away — perhaps hoping to hide the torrent of shame behind it.
In that very moment of seemingly-tangible desperation—of fears too terrifying to banish, of guilt too heavy to shoulder, of realities too real to face—Willow felt herself being dragged away, felt her thoughts become sluggish before ceasing altogether, felt her body seizing up—save only for the ability to reach out for that one desperate, hellish escape. In this glimpse of a moment, she would easily shirk the familiar comfort of Xander’s stalwart support, harshly deny the company of friends once-cherished, shuck off the suffocating shell of sentience, and float off into oblivion. In this glimpse of a moment, not a single infinitesimal thing could ever matter at all if it wouldn’t bring her face-to-face with her absolution. If it wouldn’t offer her a chance to earn the light back to her world.
If she couldn’t have the light, then she’d rather chase the darkness.
Just as she began to careen over that edge, a strong sensation pulled her back to reality. Xander’s grip had tightened on her shoulders, his fingertips digging in. He shook her, just firmly enough to confirm that she was still there with him. And then he dropped his hands from her, leaving a cold clarity in the absence of their warmth. The contrast encouraged her to focus sharply on him.
“She loves you,” he said.
It was stern, but not harsh. And though his hands twitched as if he wished to shove them into his pockets, he somehow managed to keep them at his sides. His face remained stoic, his body rigid, and he never broke eye-contact with her.
Before she could voice her self-deprecating protest, he continued..
“And you know it.”
She wanted to wither at that, though she wasn’t sure why. She knew he was right. Somewhere, buried in the depths of her soul, beneath bottomless troughs of regret, behind terror and anguish, beyond agonies stale and fresh, she knew he was right. But something she couldn’t quite identify was putting all its effort into not letting her believe it.
She pondered upon this for so long that by the time she had reached her decision her eyes had dried completely, and the only remaining trace of her tears was a slightly sticky sensation on her cheeks. She straightened her back and turned again to the card-display. Her eyes wandered over the contents, slow but resolute, until she found what she was looking for. She pulled the card and eyed its visage, scrutinizing the abstract lines and swirls whose striking blues and pale yellows lazily coalesced to invoke a distinct understanding of the holiday they represented. She noticed that the pattern had left vast expanses of blank canvas in its wake, and appreciated that negative space for what it was...For what she might hope it could represent. She opened the card and saw that it was blank inside. A small smile ghosted across her lips and she picked up the envelope which had rested behind the card.
“Ok. Let’s go,” she said to Xander as she turned to lead them toward the cashier, too single-minded in her own purposes to notice just how much tension he’d released as he followed.
***
A dozen crumpled balls of paper lay scattered around the base of the waste-basket that sat beside the desk in Willow’s room. No surprise they had missed their mark, for the vessel itself was already overflowing with much the same. Willow was no fool; she knew she only had one chance to get this right. She’d better practice first.
And practice she did. Over and over. For many evenings. After all, she had eight days, didn’t she? Eight days to convey her thoughts, her feelings, her regrets, her love. For this one perfect excuse to do so, she had eight whole days! ...or...was it...eight days only?
If one were to grow insatiably curious...so much so as to pick up those discarded wads, to smooth them out and read their contents, one would find that Willow had a lot to say. In fact, one would find that most of those crumpled wads were not made up of only one page, but several. Upon reading them, one might conclude that so many thoughts might never find peace at rest in the forgotten corners of deliberate isolation; that such confinement might only spawn new demons into existence.
But such as things go, all propelled through existence by forces none may comprehend, it is there—in that murky, unbidden solitude—that those records of a particular perception of reality were left to fester. And Willow continued to scribble away, clearly single-minded in her determination, and driven only by the one thing that kept her tethered to reality, the one thing that kept the shards of a broken world glued together...the one unbreakable constant in her life: her love for Tara.
And so she persevered, rigorously working to whittle down the tumultuous storm of her emotions, reluctantly chipping away details which she came to consider extraneous, though she had once felt they were so very pertinent. She shaved off whole pieces of her experience. Bit by excruciating bit. Until, finally, she uncovered the core essence which provided the foundation of everything in those discarded letters.
***
Willow exhausted a heavy sigh of relief and allowed her head to drop gently to the surface of her desk. A wave of relaxation washed over her, unlike any she had felt since...Well, it had been a long ass time.
That sense was fleeting though, and never truly penetrated through body to spirit and mind, as it once had. But it was a welcome respite, nonetheless, and she refused to allow her anxious brain to override it with overcautious analyses. She lifted her head and took a deep breath, then reached down to open one of the desk drawers. At the top of all its contents rested a light-blue envelope, and behind its fold, a card: its face artfully decorated in its sparseness, and blank on the inside.
Gingerly, Willow picked them both up, separating them and setting the envelope to her left, leaving the card itself centered in front of her. She ran her fingers lightly over the design, then opened it, pen at the ready in her other hand. She faltered for a moment. Both sides of the inside of the card were blank. ‘Wasn’t that the point?’ she thought, remembering the moment she had chosen it. At the time, that negative space had filled her mind with meaning. Now, it just stared at her, almost beckoning, almost indignant. Now, it was an empty canvas demanding to be filled in.
‘No!’ she thought, shouting it in her head as if to shun the myriad thoughts threatening to creep in. She glanced at her final draft, the few words written so large they took up the entire sheet of paper. She turned back to the card, and carefully wrote the words on the inside.
“Even when the world is breaking.
Even when hope is hiding.
You will always be loved.
-W”
She considered punctuating the “W” with a small heart next to it, but decided—in the same manner that she had declined to use formal greetings and salutations—to place the heart farther down, in the furthermost corner, so as not to be presumptuous. So as to possibly convey her unspoken regrets. So as to convey all that was left to define her:
A heavy heart, sinking in remorse.
She reverently placed the card into its envelope, and sealed it before second-thoughts could torment her into defiling it with unnecessary edits and additions.
As she readied herself to address the envelope she felt the weight of the world collapse upon her as she realized...she didn’t know where Tara lived now. She knew Tara was back at the dorms, but which building? Which room? How much trust had she destroyed that Tara had kept even this information from her? How self-absorbed had Willow been that she had never bothered to find out?
Feeling her body begin to tremble, and sensing a fresh torrent of tears behind her eyes, Willow decided it would be best to step out for some air. She glanced out the window—not surprised to find it was dark—then glanced at the clock—only slightly surprised to realize that it would be light soon. She took a deep breath, willing the tears not to fall, and then got up from her seat and crept through the house, then out the back door. She wouldn’t leave the yard at this hour—she still had some sense about her after all—but she allowed herself to walk in slow circles through the grass, breathing deeply and fighting to stave off the overbearing temptation of falling into old habits.
She’d finally managed to find her composure just as the first echoes of sunrise began to whisper at the horizon. Though the sun’s warmth was still far off, Willow found a wisp of comfort in the confirmation of its impending rise. Her muscles relaxed a bit and she was able to shake off the shackles of dread before realizing she had wound her way into the front yard. Cautiously, she glanced around, noting her environment, relieved to find an absence of any threat. Then, the exhaustion hit, and she made her way to the front door, deciding that fumbling in her pockets for her keys involved less effort than going all the way around to the back.
As she blearily stepped on to the porch, something caught her eye. Sitting at the base of the door, carefully propped up against it, was an envelope. It was purple, and sprawled across it, in exquisite calligraphy, was her name. She picked it up and examined it closer. There was no mailing address, no return address. Just her name. Just her name written in a flowing elegance that she would recognize anywhere.
Suddenly, Willow found that her legs were waging a mutiny against her. A new sort of anxiety burst from her chest and she stumbled her way back to the steps of the porch and finally found purchase by sitting on their ledge. She stared at the thing in her hands for a long time, studying the flowing sweeps of the letters which spelled out her name.
Finally, just as the cold shadows of night began to wither and recede beneath the eminence of the sun, she flipped the envelope over. Fingers trembling, exhaustion long forgotten, she carefully unsealed it. From within its confines, she pulled a card. The face of the card was back-dropped in soft blues and yellows, with abstract strokes of white converging to distinguish the sense of the holiday they represented. The sweeps and swirls, devoid of color, left large swaths of gentle tones in their wake. The irony was not lost on Willow. Carefully, and with more trepidation than was required, she opened the card to reveal its contents. There were no printed words inside, only that same sweeping flow of Tara’s skillful handwriting.
It read, simply:
“Dearest Willow,
Even when the world seems empty.
Even when you feel abandoned.
You will never be alone.
I promise.
Please keep fighting. I believe in you.
Always,
Tara”
Her name was punctuated with a heart beside it, large and filled-in by the ink of the pen with which she had drawn it.
Willow couldn’t stop herself from reading it over and over. She couldn’t stop herself from analyzing it—the small wavers in the lines where Tara’s hand had shaken as she began to write, the bold, sure strokes of the last line before her name, the almost-invisible blemish at the very bottom edge where just a drop of moisture had made contact..
The sun continued its ascent into the heavens, and Willow held the open card to her chest—closing her eyes even against the tears which refused to be dammed—as she felt the warm embrace of a new day rising. It was the warm embrace of hope. Her trembling ceased, and a calmness fell upon her being, for she knew, without a shred of doubt, that so long as the world continued to turn, so long as her love maintained, so long as the sun continued to rise...there would always be hope for a new and better day.
One way or another..
There would always be Tara.