When Dawn started dreaming about Tara, she shivered at how real it was.
The cafe Tara took her too, when she was sixteen, was lit up with candles at night, the moon shining over the tables on the patio. They laughed over lobster linguini, their feet tangling beneath the table as they talked about the subtext of the movie they just saw.
They snuggled in blankets on the couch, the television off and a book in their hands, reading the passages to each other while it rained outside.
Their fingers were linked loosely as they shopped at the grocery store, dropping cereal and cake mix into their cart, walking down the aisle.
Dawn was twenty-one, living in Paris because it was midway between Italy and England, which meant they could operate from another location in Europe. She was busy, as a Watcher, coordinating the comings and goings of a hundred slayers at any given time. Dawn hadn't been back to America in years, hadn't seen Willow for six months, hadn't thought about her life before now for some time. So it startled her when she woke from her dreams reaching out for a body that wasn't there, a body that hadn't been there for a long time.
She'd had a schoolgirl crush, maybe, but it had gotten buried with the rest of Sunnydale when they left, and she was happy to leave it behind. Old hurts had no place in her new life, especially when there was nothing she could do about them.
Their relationships, hers and the other Scoobies, had grown better with time apart. It was strange, at first, to be countries away from Willow and Xander, from Giles, after seven years of seeing them everyday. She got better at it, though, taking the subway by herself at night and making new friends and dating people her sister only mildly disapproved of. It was better. She was better.
Five years after Tara's death, though, and she couldn't even send flowers because there was no longer any grave to put them on. Dawn hadn't thought of her in years, except in passing, seeing a scarf Tara might have liked, or a book they had wanted to read. Two weeks of dreams like these, seeing a relationship that might have been and aching with the loss, and Dawn was ready to put herself in therapy to figure out why this was happening.
This night, when she put her head down to sleep, she felt Tara's lips on her forehead, Tara's fingers on her arm. She rolled over with a smile and opened her eyes, and there was Tara in the shirt she wore when she died, no ugly hole marring the thin fabric.
Dawn wanted to shut her eyes again, but she couldn't because Tara was *here* and suddenly she missed her so fiercely Dawn thought she might cry.
"I miss you," she said with a choked smile.
Tara nodded sadly.
"I love you," Dawn whispered, wiping the tears from her eyes.
Tara brushed her palm over Dawn's forehead, somehow warm and not-real.
"I wish we could have had that," she said, and Tara leaned over to whisper in her ear, "In one world, we did."
It wasn't enough, but Dawn knew that when she went to sleep tomorrow night, she could pretend it was for a little longer.
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.