Rating: NC-17
Summary: Willow dreams she and Giles are back in the Magic Box. Giles dreams about Tara.
Story Notes: Post-"Chosen." The third story in the "This Will Be Our Year" Willow/Giles series.
Disclaimer: It's Joss's world - I'm just in love with it.

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What They Dreamed
Gwynnega
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And after their dinner with their friends, with Xander and Buffy and Dawn and Andrew, they came home and lay together in bed, and they slept and dreamed.

Hers started out as the usual nightmare, the one she'd had intermittently since Tara died, albeit less and less frequently. She was black-haired again, and her clothes were black too. Sometimes she dreamed she flayed Warren, sometimes she fought Buffy. (Once she flayed Buffy and woke up screaming, but that was a long time ago.) Sometimes she destroyed the Magic Box, sometimes she destroyed the world. This time she was in the shambles of the Magic Box with Giles. "Oh, not this again," she said.

"What do you remember?" he asked.

"Tara must've died. That's when this happens." She felt unsteady on her feet, as if the ground were shifting beneath her. "Does this mean we get to fight?"

"Do you want to fight me?" Giles asked, smiling slightly. He looked so tall and sexy standing in the doorway, dressed in black.

"Don't you know that fighting is a metaphor?" she asked, in that harsh sarcastic tone she always used when she had the black hair. God, she hoped the veins weren't too noticeable. She wondered if makeup would cover them. She didn't want Giles to see her this way.

"Now I finally have you all to myself," she sneered, and let him have it with a blast of energy. It knocked him into a pile of rubble, but he got right back up and returned with a volley of his own that threw her against a wall.

"You've learned your lines, I see," he said, and she was confused until she remembered he was directing her in Death of a Salesman. But surely that had already happened, because Riley was in that play, and he was long gone.

She felt so tired of doing this over and over again. "I wish I had something else sarcastic to say," she said. "It's important to quip at such times, don't you think?" She flung out her arms and sent him hurtling toward the ceiling. But somehow he'd grabbed her, and up she went with him. It felt nice, like flying. He pinned her to the ceiling. "This is new," she said. "How'd you do that?"

"I love you," he breathed, tore off her black pants and plunged into her. His face was close to hers, all sweaty and hot looking, and as he fucked her, he murmured, "My beautiful white-haired girl." She looked at her hair. It wasn't white, but it wasn't black anymore, either. It was her regular red hair.

She started to laugh. "That's a relief," she said, and looked around her. They were no longer in the Magic Box. They were on the ceiling in their bedroom. She woke up - and they were sleeping on the ceiling of their bedroom.

Then she really woke up. It was dark. Giles slept on his back beside her. Her heart was beating fast, but she felt elated and at peace. She put her arm around him and drifted back to sleep.

***

His was a new dream, although he had dreamed of Tara from time to time, especially since her death. This time she smiled at him, and he started to cry. "I'm sorry," he wept.

"Why, Rupert?" she asked.

"You died, and I get to be with her."

"Don't you love her, Mr. Giles?" With her serene gaze, Tara looked like an angel - but she had always looked that way.

"I do," he said. "I love her."

"That's good," she said. "I love her too. Anyway, I always knew. It was that time at the Espresso Pump."

"Good lord," Giles said, "did everyone know she was swooning over my singing but me?"

She gave a little smiling shrug.

"Tara, do you believe in an afterlife?"

She didn't answer.

"If there is one," he continued, "I wonder which of us will get to spend it with her?"

"I'm no expert, Mr. Giles," she said. "I don't know about such things. But don't you think you're already in heaven?" And he woke. It was just after first light. He could still hear her voice, clear like water, saying the word: heaven. Willow lay sleeping on her side, her sweet face against the pillow, her arm flung across him. Giles couldn't think of a better word for it.

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The End
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