InsaneJournal

Fic: This End is No Beginning (BtVS)
whee!
this is for netgirl_y2k in the Cady's Femslash Ficathon.

the requests were Tara/Jenny Calender, angst, AU


Title: This End is No Beginning
Pairing: Tara/Jenny Calender
Rating: if the MPAA didn't suck it would be rated with a letter between Q and S. as it is now i'll just say it contains non-explicit FF sex.
Timeline: This is set in an alternate S4, it contains spoilers up to New Moon Rising.
Summary: Jenny watches Tara and wants.

AN: this story kind of kicked my ass. millions of thanks to B for spending a night at Quiznos dissecting all the possible ways these two could get together and helping me find my way into this story. also millions of thanks to crazydiamondsue for her beta help and her much needed encouragement.

Necessary background information: This takes place in an alternate s4. Angelus never killed Jenny Calender, he raped her and beat her severely, but after a few days in the hospital she was alright physically. She no longer wanted to help re-ensoul him, however, instead she wanted him dead. She withdrew from the Scoobies, and from Giles, because she hated the reminders of her ordeal. Willow was snooping around Jenny’s desk one afternoon, trying to find more information on gypsies when she discovered the disk with the spell to re-ensoul Angel. She performed the spell, pretty much exactly the way she did in canon. That summer, with Buffy gone, Willow went to Jenny to ask for help with her witchcraft. After Jenny found out that Willow had performed the re-ensoul spell and that it may have succeeded she agreed. Jenny still didn’t interact much with the Scoobies, but she met with Willow at least once a week to discuss magic and practice spells. In S4 Willow started bringing Tara to the meetings.



Jenny’s magic was rooted the mind. She approached spells like puzzles, complex interactions between thought and action – alchemy – turning nothing to something after working out the precise way to do it. She loved the combination of language and science, of knowledge and ingredient. She loved taking the universe, with its perfect order and structure and changing it with her will.

Tara’s magic was rooted in the body. She was instinct and intuition, the spirit captured and channeled. She practiced in the space between world and witch, bending the universe with subtle pressure. She worked with her breath and her heart and her soul and she infused everything she touched with a gentle energy.

Watching Tara work left Jenny breathless. Working with Tara left Jenny aching with arousal. Tara was lovely and gentle and soft and kind and Jenny was entranced, enthralled. She wanted to touch Tara and soak up some of her spirit. She want to kiss Tara and drink her magic down. She wanted Tara, and it made every moment spent with her deliciously painful.



Jenny wasn’t blind, and she wasn’t as old and sexless as Willow seemed to assume. She saw something blossom between the two girls. She watched shy glances turn bold, watched blushes turn to grins. She noticed the increasing frequency of their touches, the way they’d sit on the couch pressed together, and the way their hands hovered close together as if preparing to grab hold.

She saw the way that Tara sometimes looked at Willow with naked longing, and the way that Willow seemed to glow under Tara’s gaze. She saw the way that Tara’s stutter dropped away when she was engaged in conversation with Willow and the way she seemed to grow taller and stronger when Willow was by her side.

Jenny loved the strength that Willow brought out in Tara, and she wanted to be the one who inspired it.

The girls started showing up each week with kiss swollen lips, smelling of sex and scented candles. Jenny was happy for them, she really was. It was only at night when her mind wandered to a different set of circumstances, a different hand holding Tara’s, different lips swollen with her kisses. She let herself ache with jealousy and loneliness then, but only in the moments before sleep. Otherwise she tried as much as possible to put it out of her mind. Tara was too young, and too in love with someone else.



One night the girls arrived on her doorstep out of breath and flushed with panic. Willow started to babble but quickly deferred to Tara who stuttered out something about Buffy’s body not containing Buffy, and how she needed help anchoring Willow so she could cross to the nether realm.

The spell was one of the most intense Jenny had ever participated in. She sat next to Tara, palms clasped together, knees touching, each extending one hand to touch Willow. Jenny was struck, as she always was, by the way Tara and Willow’s energies sought each other when doing magic, the way they twined together and thrummed with power.

Jenny knew that the girls didn’t really need her for the spell. She was a crutch, a security blanket. She’d lived longer, she knew more, but each of these girls held more power than she did, and the two of them combined were a force to be reckoned with.

As the spell progressed, the room got warmer and Jenny was uncomfortably aware of the girls’ arousal. She knew that if she could feel it from them, they could feel it from her and so she tried to clamp down on her climax as it approached, but as Willow, then Tara climaxed, Jenny was unable to keep her body from the pulse-throb of her own orgasm.


After they conjured the katra and the girls had gone home, Jenny retreated rapidly to her bedroom. She thrust her hand between her legs and tried hard not to think of the motion of Tara’s breasts when she was out of breath, or the subtle hitch and moan in her voice when she watched her girlfriend come. But it wasn’t until she gave in and imagined being the cause of that hitch and moan that she was able to come and then sleep.



When a distraught Tara showed up alone on the night after the full moon, Jenny’s immediate thought was for Willow’s safety. When she’d been reassured that Willow was safe, she gently took Tara’s elbow and led her inside.

She made tea and watched the way Tara folded herself over the mug and tried to become small. Tara was silent, hiding behind the curtain of her hair until Jenny could bear it no longer.

“Tara, what happened? What’s wrong?”

Jenny’s heart sank as she listened to the girl tearfully stutter out her story. Oz had returned and Willow had chosen him.

“I kn-knew, I always knew that if he c-came back she m-might go with him, but…”

Jenny gathered the weeping girl in her arms and stroked her back while she cried.

Jenny knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t help but be distracted by the curve of Tara’s spine under her hand, the press of Tara’s breasts against her own, the feel of Tara’s breath against her neck and the soft slide of sweet smelling hair against her cheek.

Tara looked up just as Jenny was turning her head and their lips touched briefly, accidentally. Tara made a small noise of surprise and Jenny’s stomach knotted with guilt, but to her surprise the shy girl leaned back in and pressed her lips to Jenny’s once more.

Fleeting thoughts that she was taking advantage passed through Jenny’s brain as Tara’s mouth opened under hers, but then she was lost in the sweetsmoothsoft of the girl she’d been dying to touch for months and silly things like morality didn’t seem to matter.

They kissed on the couch for a long time. Hands tentatively gliding over sweaters, mouths exploring. Tara tasted like strawberry lipgloss and sweet chai and another taste Jenny couldn’t quite identify.

All at once she realized it was mint gum, and that Tara never chewed gum. Willow. Damn. Jenny pulled away.

“I can’t, it would be…”

Tara shook her head quickly.

“Don’t, please, just…make me forget? Please?”

Jenny nodded and kissed Tara again, then she took her hand and led the girl into the bedroom.

There was an awkward moment, it felt too planned, too passionless, too calculated, but when Tara’s lips touched hers again Jenny forgot all that.

There were clothes, and then there weren’t, and they were falling onto the bed. There were hands and mouths sliding across skin, teasing fingers and tongues. Jenny tried to catalogue every sensation, memorize it, because this would never happen again.

They fell asleep curled together, a naked, sweaty, sated, tangle of limbs.

Jenny woke the next morning before Tara and took a minute to savor the sound of the other girl’s breathing, and the calm that covered her features. Then she felt the girl in her arms stir and Jenny tensed.

Their eyes met and Jenny’s stomach clenched to see the despair and self-hatred in Tara’s face.

“I’m so sorry. I should have…” made you stop? sent you home? been so good you wouldn’t want to leave? Tara just nodded as Jenny trailed off.

They stumbled out of bed and searched for clothes in silence. Tara put on her outfit haphazardly, not bothering to smooth the wrinkles out, or fasten all the buttons. Jenny tugged on an old bathrobe, suddenly feeling very old and very alone.

“Do you want some breakfast?”

Tara shook her head and moved towards the door.

Jenny followed. “I really am sorry.”

Tara nodded again and reached for the door, but before she opened it, Jenny grabbed her and kissed her hard on the lips.

Tara kissed back, and there was a brilliant tongue tangling moment when Jenny thought maybe Tara hadn’t just been looking for comfort and that maybe there was something, some spark. But then Tara pulled away, looking even sadder than before.

Jenny blushed, “Sorry…again.”

And she opened the door and let Tara go.