In a Cardboard Box

Summary: Writer's cut: now with previously unreleased, bonus flashback scenes! Buffy, Tara and Dawn battle a fiendish kitten.

A/N:Not quite linear and definitely A/U-ish because you can't have a Happy Ending with a dead Tara. ::shakes fist at Whedemort::

Rated: PG-13-y

~ o ~

Buffy trotted out to the parking lot with a pair of glasses in hand. She scanned the lot but didn't see anyone. Phooey. Well, whoever lost them would likely come back. They were eyeglasses after all. Eventually the owner would need to read something, right? She went back inside the Doublemeat Palace and over to the manager's office.

Lost-and-found boxes had always kind of depressed her, a collection of misplaced and forgotten bits of people's lives. Sure, some of the unclaimed items were probably insignificant or replaceable, like the pink Madonna Inn pen she'd found in the ladies' room. Buffy set the glasses beside a Pez dispenser--cute!--that had been in the box for weeks. Had the owners even noticed the loss? Or maybe they were searching for it somewhere else, always keeping a wary eye out for that familiar slice of color or shape?

Well, the box would be here if they came looking.

~ o ~

Waiting outside the streetlamp's circle of light, Buffy stretches her stiff back and notes that Slayers aren't supposed to be this old. She'd have died years ago (and for good, too) if it weren't for all the other girls, taking turns at cheating and meeting death. Adrenaline courses through her veins, and her knees ache with the effort to remain still. Buffy has been hunting and losing to this demon for weeks. Visions of retirement villas with swimming pools and nearby shopping malls only serve to remind her that she isn't the girl she used to be. But she waits.

Then a slow, soft sound freezes the air so she can't breathe. Thhhch. She cocks her head to listen but keeps her eyes on the darkness that claims the corners of the dead-end alley. Somewhere in there, just beyond sight, is the beastie that killed two young Slayers, the thing that devoured bodies, swallowed screams and turned them into laughter.

Thhhhch.

She catches a flash of straw-colored silk. It looked like.... Oh, god.

~ o ~

Buffy followed the explanation as long as she could. "Wait. Hunh?! A kitten?"

"Kittens are very loveable." Tara proposed, as if that cleared everything up.

"The demon is a kittycat? Snowball or Fluffy or something is gamboling around the city and killing Slayers?"

"Well, no. When the local slayers began hunting it, the demon split itself in two: part for the kitten and part for the killing. You can't harm the killing part unless you take care of the kitten part at the same time."

"Okayyyy." Buffy looked down at her shoes, a very dark brown so they don't show blood stains with a stylish low heel. They made sense. She looked back to Tara. "Nope, I'm still at 'Hunh.' Why a kitten? Why not a ferocious, strong, snarling bear or something less... squishable? I mean, what if I just kill the cat?"

"Ooooh! You can't kill a kitten!" Dawn squeaked.

"That's what the demon is counting on, Dawnie. He could be curled up in the lap of some little old lady, safe and sound and well-loved. Who would love and protect a blood-thirsty monster?" Her words left her mouth like a poorly folded paper airplane. Both women looked awkwardly away from each other. "Um. I-if you kill only the kitten, the spirit will just be reabsorbed into the demon-body, and you're right where you started. Only with a dead kitten." Dawn made a small, strangled sound.

"So we get the kitten and the demon-body in the same place and begin the slayage. I'll check with Clem," Buffy rose to leave. "About the kitten. Maybe he's won it."

"Good idea! Just in case that doesn't work, I'll try a locater spell, too. And s-something to rebind the demon with its regular body," Tara turned abruptly and headed off. Dust motes swirled in the air where the women used to be.

"What about the kitten?" Dawn asked the empty room.

~ o ~

The first time she'd met Buffy, Buffy wasn't even there. Just the cheerleader-blonde body she used to have, in someone else's possession. The girl seemed awfully comfortable in someone else's skin, a feeling as foreign to Tara as Istanbul. For a moment, Tara second-guessed herself.

It wouldn't be the first time she'd been wrong. Of course in retrospect, the whole body-switching thing was kinda fortunate. Tara felt too much pressure that night to make a good impression: she wanted Willow to like her, she wanted Buffy to like her, and she wanted Buffy to like her so Willow would keep liking her.

In the end, instead of being a bumbling, stuttering spaz--yet again--Tara got to help return Buffy back to... Buffy.

~ o ~

Dawn said sent them off at the door. "You've got the kitten? And the spell?"

"Kitten, check. Spell is memorized, check." Tara embarrassed her with an awkward, but well-meaning salute.

"You've got the merkaba crystal?" she looked to Buffy while cooing over the gray and white tufts of fluff poking from the pet carrier.

Without blinking Buffy answered, "Doodad crystal, check."

Dawn crossed her arms, "The whole thing won't work without the merkaba crystal, Buffy, you better have it and you better not drop it or break it because I'm not losing both of you and the cutest cat just because you're a big klutz."

"Okay! Ali Baba crystal, check. See?" She held out the small crystal for Dawn's inspection.

"And bring back that cat, " Dawn ordered as they left. Buffy shrugged noncommittally as she guided Tara to the street. "Pretty please?"

~ o ~

What was left of Tara's heart broke a little more as she packed to leave. This had become her home and her family though she isn't sure exactly when it happened. When does a newly planted sapling become part of the landscape? And can you take it from the ground without breaking its roots?

She already had all the important stuff. Now she wandered through the rooms collecting odd and ends as if the household were a bourgeois tourist digging guiltily into his pockets to drop loose change into her corrugated coffer. She paused at a book, 'The Lost Language of Cranes.' Sorry for your loss. Here, take this as a token of our affection. She lingered over a framed photo. Remember the good times, the smiling faces seemed to say. She tucked the photo next to the book and covered it all with clothes.

Tara carried her box out of the house. A furious and hurt Dawn stormed away from her stuttered apologies and assurances. Tara ducked her head, shifted the box to her hip, and stepped off the porch. From her bedroom window, Dawn watched Tara's form recede until she was lost to the darkness.

~ o ~

They waited in the darkened alley for some sign from Buffy. The kitten mewled through the cage door and sat morosely in a saucer of milk Dawn had put there for it. Tara tried to jostle it to a dry space and quiet it, but it just twitched its tail.

"Shhh, you big, bad, demony fluffball. We need Buffy to find the rest of you before the rest of you finds us." The kitten swatted its cotton paw at her. Hard to believe there was something evil in there. Tara stood and went to the entrance of the alley. She counted three buildings from the corner to where she stood, then she scanned the rest of the street. She was where she was supposed to be, but where was Buffy? Or the demon-body? She dutifully returned to the carrier and checked on Fluffy, who had managed to hide under the blanket Dawn had also given it.

Keeping an ear tuned for Buffy's footsteps, Tara squinted and tilted the cage at an angle to try to get enough light to see, but the alley seemed to get darker and darker. Then Tara heard a sound. A strange sound that wasn't at all Buffy-like.

~ o ~

Buffy had a habit of sneaking up on people. Not that she tried sneaking up on regular people people. But all the patrolling and hunting sort of naturally resulted in a distinct sneaking tendency. Tara was folding laundry, completely unaware. Buffy noted the ripped seam in Tara's white cotton t-shirt, exposing the goosepimpled skin over her ticklish ribs, and the spaghetti stain that bowed with the curve of Tara's very female form. Yeah, they really needed to do laundry. The familiarity of her motions--tucking the towel or blouse under her chin, folding the sides inward, then lifting her head and letting the item fall into a perfect rectangle--stirred a nostalgia in Buffy.

She was glad Dawn had talked her into joining them in Europe. She realized that now, though at the time the idea of seeing Tara again... after... well, she thought it might be awkward. For Tara, that is. Not for her. She was fine with what happened, totally moved beyond it. Just a thing that happens, sometimes, between people, when they're vulnerable. Not like now. Not at all.

"Are you going to stand there or give me a hand?"

~ o ~

A patch of black shifts to green and Buffy lunges at it, using all of the energy she'd reserved. The demon is smaller than she thought, but stronger and faster too. Her head hits the brick wall as sharp claws drag across her side, sending her skimming to the damp asphalt. She feels a searing pain, and then a warmth that quickly cools against her skin.

It's on her now, hissing and... ew, slathering her with... ewww! The demon-body is all sharp bone and muscle, and they're wrestling for leverage. Then the ew begins to mix with her sweat and it stings. What she thought were claws are actually talons and are useless at close range. It tries to pry itself free, but Buffy brings it closer. Her skin burns. She has an elbow at what she hopes is its throat and leans into it as she tries to roll the demon over. An acrid smell pulls at the air and she realizes it's her own flesh.

Panic sets in. Her arm slips, and the beast is at her throat. Sharp needles sink into her burnt flesh, and she thrashes against it. And weakens. She feels the full force of its weight and strength grinding her into the pavement like a used cigarette.

~ o ~

His cold, hard body crushed hers, bruising muscles and breaking skin. Every scrape and grasp hurt as they struggled for dominance. How had she ended up there in that crypt? Bones near breaking and she couldn't get enough of it.

Breaking but not broken, she reminded herself. Tara said so.

This time, the stony blonde didn't look or act like Buffy, but she was. Tara was sure of it, even without researching the spell. She sat on the sofa, told Buffy the truth, and watched the slayer crumble and confess: She'd been sleeping with Spike. She might love Spike. She didn't want to be sleeping with or loving Spike. Buffy didn't want to be that girl.

And in the very moment Buffy begged not to be forgiven for these sins, Tara sinned against her friend. Buffy's head lay in her lap, fingers digging lightly into her thighs. Her narrow back curved like a daisy stem under the weight of rain. Buffy's hot, sloppy breath caught in her throat and tugged at Tara's heart... among other places. In that moment, Tara sinned against her friend. She forgave her.

Buffy, raw and oversensitive, didn't want to know anymore. She wanted an escape from this brutal place, she wanted the comfort of heaven, and what she got were Tara's arms and hands and gentle voice, telling her she was okay. Then for a moment, she was.

~ o ~

She manages a quick jab at its kidneys. Or the place where his kidneys would be. It releases its jaws and retreats as she rolls onto her stomach.

Silence again, then thhhch.

Where is it? Her eyes search and find nothing, no demon, no Tara, no kitten. Her ears are ringing and useless. She rocks onto her feet, slowly, and every hair on her arm stands to attention. Left and back, three feet maybe. She pats the item in her pocket with one hand, tightens her grip on the blade with the other, and counts.

Before she gets to three, the demon careens into her. A cry rings out, loud and horrified. Her own. She rolls behind a dumpster and feels her skin separate from her ribcage. The night air is cold against white-hot needlepoint punctures in her neck. But she'd got another blow in herself. She could hear its surprised breath and smell its shock. She knows she can beat it if she can just not pass out.

The darkness that floods the alley reaches her consciousness in inches and seconds. Or the streetlamp went out.

~ o ~

It's all surfacey, physical stuff, like a sunburn, Tara tried to assure her. Buffy thought about that, about her surface, as Tara's fingertips glided across her shoulders and down her arms. The difference between the old Buffy and the new Buffy was millimeters thick, slick with sweat and pink from the heat of a good sunburn.

The needles sink deeper into her throat, and her dreams fade into purgatory. Tara's hands curl into her hair and pull her up from her knees.

~ o ~

From somewhere in the darkness, Buffy hears a low murmuring. Rhythmic, soft, but definite. Chanting. Somewhere in the darkness, Tara is chanting. Buffy lets go the demon's neck and shoves her hand into her pocket to get the Mark E Mark crystal.

Slick yellow fangs glisten in the air above her and lungedfor her throat, but not before Buffy aims her full fist for its gaping maw. The demon reels back as the glowing crystal makes its way past its gullet. Tara's chanting grows louder and the kitten hisses and spits. Buffy poises herself to lunge, blade first, at the dekittened demon.

"Now!" Tara shouts.

The blade sinks into the demon with ease. Buffy yanks it upward through some seriously non-fluffy guts, and they both fall to the ground, the demon's breath leaving its body in a gurgling purr.

Buffy rolls away and begins feeling her way toward Tara. A warm hand closes over hers, "I'm here. I'm right here."

~ o ~

"Worked like a charm!" Buffy chirrups into the cell phone as she limps along the sidewalk. Tara wrinkles her nose in the universal sign of Bad Pun Acknowledgement before concern overtakes her features.

"We need to take care of that laceration."

Over the phone, Dawn relaxes and asks about the kitten.

"I think it's stopped bleeding," Buffy assures her. She ignores the squeal from Dawn and cocks an eyebrow, "We can play Doctor when we get home."

"Doctor, definitely. I'll need to give you thorough examination." A lopsided smile curls the worry from Tara's lips.

"Hey, I might even need a sponge bath," Buffy offers.

"Because you're dirty?"

"Wait, are we playing Doctor or Naughty Nurse?"

"Is there a rule against playing both?" Tara wraps her arm around Buffy's shoulders, and Buffy thinks that whatever goodness she felt she'd lost, she's found again.

On the other end of the phone, Dawn growls exasperatedly. "You guys! What. about. the kitten?!"

The End