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Disclaimers: Buffy, Willow, Tara, et al belong to Joss Whedon, not me. Please, don’t send the lawyer shaped nasties after me, cuz I mean no harm. Just playing in the sandbox. The inspiration for this fic, the song and video "You’re Crazy For That Girl", is not mine either, but belongs to DocCovington and others. If you haven’t run across her stuff, go check it out at http://soulblood.com right now!

Canon Coupleness. Deal with it. High sappiness content. If that’s a bother, what’s wrong with you? Sap is good!

Notes: This is a result of watching a music video a few too many times and downloading the song to listen to on repeat while writing. And I spent 28 minutes downloading the video... yeesh...

Archiving is okee dokee for all those with prior permission, and if you haven’t that, just ask. Feedback to ressick@yahoo.com if you’re so inclined.

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Crazy For Her

by Ressick

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I wanted to be normal. Normal as in like every other girl, with a house and a dog and a husband and two-point-four kids. I wanted to be cool, like my best friend, instead of the geek who had seen the softer side of Sears. I wanted to just be Willow Rosenberg.

But I found out that Willow Rosenberg isn’t like every other girl. She’s strong, and special, and very un-normal. Tara taught me that. Taught me that I’m capable of a love so deep that sometimes I fear losing myself in it, or I would fear that if it wasn’t for her. She awoke so much in me - passion, power, true love. In giving myself up to her, I found myself for the very first time in my life. She forced me to discover who I am. From that first gentle touch of our hands, to a slow dance, to starwatching, to snuggling, to a thousand other moments and emotions, Tara Maclay taught me who I am, by making me look inside myself and find out what’s there.

When we first met, I was so lonely and miserable. Not just because my boyfriend had left and my friends didn’t seem to care, but because with Oz’s departure I found myself without my ruler. I always measured myself against him; he was my identity. I was Willow, Oz’s girlfriend. With him gone, I had no idea who I was supposed to be. I didn’t want to go back to being Willow Rosenberg, class geek - the girl with the long hair, dorky clothes, and brains. I couldn’t go back to that. I refused to.

So I wandered around campus, or town sometimes, lost. Oh, I knew where I was - at the Bronze, the Expresso Pump, my dorm room, class. But I didn’t know who I was - who was hanging with Buffy and Xander, or getting a caffeine high and completely spazzing, or sleeping, or who was taking notes. The body seemed the same, but the mind was completely mixed up. Who was I if I wasn’t Oz’s girlfriend? Who was Willow Rosenberg?

Tara seemed to know, instinctually, from the first second we touched hands in the laundry room. She didn’t seem to care that I babble, that I spaz, that I was completely lost. She saw something in me that she liked. Like Buffy so long before, she’d looked beyond geeky Willow and seen something more. She didn’t know my history. She didn’t know that I’d once been madly in love with a werewolf. She didn’t know that my best friend is the Slayer, or that my other best friend was dating an ex-demon. Nor did she seem to care about that kind of thing. She saw something deeper than adjectives and nouns. She saw me. She saw me, and liked me. Fell in love with me. Loved me for being me, not some adjective and noun combination. Saw into my soul and loved me despite all my flaws and faults and shortcomings. Maybe because of them.

As we fell deeper in love, as I lost myself in her eyes and skin and touch, I had to know who I was. I had to know who it was that Tara Maclay loved so much. I had to understand why she loved me, me of all people. I know who I am now. I can’t put it into words. I don’t think it’s one of those things that can be verbalized, that it’s one of those things that can only be sensed. And I still don’t understand why Tara loves me. Now, though, I feel like I’m worthy enough to be Tara’s. Because I am someone. Someone worthy of love, and tenderness. Not just that geeky, dorky, painfully shy computer whiz who’d seen the softer side of Sears.

You might think I’ve traded being Oz’s for being Tara’s. Traded one person to measure myself against for another. But I haven’t. With Oz, I couldn’t stand on my own. Being his was my whole identity, and I never even really gave myself to him. My body and my heart were his, but he never truly touched my soul. Tara has my body, and my heart, gladly, and she has even laid her gentle claim to my soul. Tara insists that I stand on my own, even as she offers me her heart, her body, her soul in return for mine. She won’t let me use her for a ruler, a gauge. I have to be myself, totally, with her. Any less, and it would almost betray the love and trust and intimacy between us. I can’t just present myself as her girlfriend and leave it at that, as I did with Oz for so long.

For a long time, I would curl up into my pillows, and cry. Cry for whoever I was. Cry for whoever I would end up being. I didn’t think that I was worth loving, or caring about. My parents certainly never seemed to care, in fact my own mother tried to burn me at the stake. They treated me like a psychological experiment instead of a child. As if by dissecting me, they’d be able to treat their patients better. Well I wasn’t a patient, I was their daughter. And they didn’t seem to care about that. Xander was better. He loved me, in his own boyish best friend way. But we were the misfits together - he was abused and I was neglected. We were the outcasts. I loved him so much and he chased all the other members of the fairer sex around but me. I thought it was me, that I was unlovable. It was a lesson I’d learned from my parents. Buffy was the first one to break the trend, to love me for me, as a best friend. She made me feel like I was worth something, that I was useful, as her hacker and her wiccagirl and her rock. She’s never realized how much of a rock she was to me, as well. But she still put me in boxes, tried to define what I was to her. If I wasn’t research girl I was a hacker or a wicca. If I wasn’t that, I was her rock, her shoulder to cry on, her best friend. There was always some label, some function I was to fulfill.

Oz was the next in line to put me in a box. Even if it was the ones of girlfriend and first love. I thought he was my world, and for a couple of years, he was. The sun rose and set on Daniel Osbourne in my life. I did love him, a part of me always will, because he is, after all, Oz.

But Tara doesn’t box me in. I’m whomever I want to be. She loves my soul, not my function or role. She loves me completely. When she touches me, holds me, kisses me, makes love to me, I know she’s making love to me, without labels, without barriers. She doesn’t need any words to tell me how she loves me. She just needs to look at me, with those soulful deep blue eyes. Every emotion we’ve ever felt is in there, along with every thought and expression and touch and gesture and impression and beat of the heart. Love is a poor word to describe what I feel for her. Girlfriend, lover, even soulmate - those words don’t begin to define what we are to each other.

I suppose it’s easy to see that I’m crazy for her. She’s Tara Maclay. To me that’s everything good, pure and loving in all the universes ever created throughout all time. With all her faults and foibles, beauties and strengths, she holds my soul, freely given. Just as I hold hers with the tenderest of caresses.

~ finis ~