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 Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:36 pm
Busman's Holiday[Tara + Chaonis] There's no such thing as a vacation for a senshi. Tara's in a pinch, but Chaonis jumps in- with plenty of questions for the gal he's saving.
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:38 pm
[Reserved- Snowglobe Solo]
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:40 pm
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:45 pm
Christmas Eve[Tara + Kaguya + Everyone] Once again, aliens come to earth! And once again, they are homicidal maniacs. Tara cries foul amid the commotion.
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:47 pm
It all happened so fast. One minute, Tara was racking her brain for ideas, throwing whatever she could lay her hands on at the ice queen in front of her. The next, her arms were pinned behind her back, and she was dragged away. She screamed, a sound that went unnnoticed in the chaos around her, and tried to break free. None of it did any good. A few seconds later she was stuffed into the backseat of a car, the door slamming as soon as she was safely inside.
In the car, it was quiet. Escape didn't even occur to her. She just waited for the driver to get in, and assaulted his eardrums then. "Kent, what the hell do you think you're doing? You just about gave me a heart attack!"
"That's my line." Kent's voice was cold, with none of its usual playfulness. He didn't say anything else, instead starting the car and trying to maneuver through the crowds. Most people were now running away from the frozen fright in the plaza, and some of them weren't careful about staying on the sidewalks or looking before they crossed.
Tara gave him a few moments, then started again. "Are we just running away? What the hell? Those people back there need our help, Kent! We have to do something!"
"I understand that you're upset and concerned, so I won't be angry with you." He sounded angry, though. If Tara was less angry herself, she might have stopped and wondered why. Kent wasn't the type of person to turn his back on his fellow man. Granted, the situation back there seemed rather hopeless, but wasn't that all the more reason to fight?
... "So much for my vacation," Tara mused softly. "No rest for the weary." Even when she was on break from school, it seemed that the world was determined to toss her into battles. It was strange, though; this time the Negaverse seemed as surprised as she was. Did they have another, unknown enemy? It was a frightening thought.
As she was thinking, Kent slammed his palms against the steering wheel, making her jump. "Dammit, Tara, that is exactly the kind of thing that's ticking me off."
"It is?" As usual, Tara was totally clueless about the effects her behavior had on other people. "What, thinking? Breathing?"
"Taking the world's problems on your shoulders, you idiot." Startled, Tara paused, wondering what was going on. Kent rarely swore, and never mocked her or called her names. Not since they were kids, anyway. But he wasn't finished yet. "'So much for my vacation?' The second something happens, you have to intervene, is that it? Nobody asked you to go fight that thing, Tara. The fact that you did- when even those damn terrorists couldn't scratch it- well, I'm not sure I agree with the therapists, because that sounds pretty suicidal to me."
There was so much in that statement, so much pent up resentment and hurt, that Tara didn't even know where to begin sorting through it. It was far easier not to. "So what you're saying is it's better to not do anything?" How could he think such things? How could she never have noticed?
"I did do something. I got you out of there, which is what any sane person would have done." Kent couldn't turn to look at her, since he was driving, but his expression was visible in the rearview mirror. "I'm not trained to fight giant ice monsters. I'm not a medic. I can't handle that sort of situation, so all I could do was make sure that you were safe."
He meant well, Tara could see that. But he just didn't understand what he was doing. Of course, he couldn't possibly know why she acted the way she did- not when she didn't, really- nor could she explain her actions. "You just don't get it," she sighed moodily.
Kent twitched visibly. "You're the one who doesn't get it, Tara Shannon Kavanaugh." With that, he jerked the steering wheel, pulling over on the side of the road.
As if there hadn't been enough clues that Kent was angry, this one was enough to make even Tara, clueless wonder, take notice. Kent never called her by her full name. Not even their dad did that. The only person who did was their mother, and even then, only when she was extremely upset. Tara had gotten it a lot during and after her various hospital stays, but not in several months, and never, ever from her brother.
"I know that a lot of things happened to you that I'll never understand." He hadn't turned around, but was looking at her through the reflection in the rearview mirror. "I know that's just about the understatement of the century. But haven't you ever considered that that works both ways? You died, Tara. For a year, I had to deal with the reality that I couldn't protect you. I didn't stand up to our parents, and you died. They were full of self-blame too- big surprise there- and I had to deal with that. I'm not sure which was worse, really, their pity party, or my own."
Tara was quiet. They had never really discussed what happened while she was gone. In brief moments, on a need-to-know basis, but never the nitty-gritty. Maybe she didn't want to know. Maybe, in a way, he was still trying to protect her. "I never blamed you for any of it," she said quietly.
"Do you think that's the point I'm trying to get across here?" Kent snorted. "That's sweet, but no. Your time... away, it taught you the value of life, and of the lives of those around you. That's great, but if you don't have the skills to back up your beliefs, there's only so much you can do. Usually, other people can and will do it better. It's a judgement call, and your judgement has been skewed lately.
"In that same time, I learned that if you're in trouble, and I have the power to get you out of it, I will. And I don't care if it makes you unhappy or angry for a while, that's life. Which is the entire point, really." Shivering a little, he finally turned around to face her. "I can't deal with losing you again. So I'm sorry you're mad at me right now, but frankly, deal with it. And next time you throw a tantrum over me saving your hide, consider how I feel."
Before that night, Tara would have said that she and Kent were open with each other. Barring one little secret about secretly being an alien costumed superhero (on leave of absence), she tended to tell him everything that was going on in her life. For a long time, she thought that he did the same. But this was a new kind of honesty, raw and painful, that she just wasn't used to.
In the end, all she could squeak out was "I'll try."
"You'll try?" he repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Come on, Tara. You know what Yoda said about trying."
If he could quote Star Wars at her, then things were going to be okay. "Fine, then. But you won't know whether I do or do not until it happens." And she stuck her tongue out at him.
Kent laughed, dispelling the tension in the car, and pulled away from the curb. "I wouldn't have it any other way. Keeping things interesting is a gift of yours, you know. I guess I should thank you for sharing it with me for Christmas."
It was Christmas, wasn't it? Or nearly so. What with all the chaos and their subsequent argument, Tara had completely forgotten. "Is this some kind of candid camera holiday special?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. "'Cause any more heartwarming and I'd need a Peptid."
Kent laughed again, but his expression shifted slightly, and while he kept his eyes on the road and one hand on the wheel, he reached into the passenger seat with the other. "That reminds me, you almost left without this." It took a couple of tries to grab the item in question without looking at it, but soon enough he clumsily handed over one of the snowglobes Tara had dropped.
Tara wasn't sure what to say. It was clear now that the snowglobe was a device planted by the evil ice alien, but his gesture was so touching that she couldn't tell him. Which left her rather speechless, as she turned the innocuous-seeming globe over in her hands.
"I hope you treat my other gifts to you better," he told her teasingly. "Especially ones that are relics of alien cultures. I mean really, Tara, I expected better from you."
When the man was right, he was right. Even if the aliens were evil, it didn't mean that she couldn't learn from their technology. Moreover, the snowglobe- not to mention the evening's experience as a whole- was a much-needed reminder of how much she depended on Kent. When he did stuff like that, there was no way she could stay angry at him. Not when he was only looking out for her, in a much less suffocating way than their parents. Not when he was still hurting just as much as she was. And most importantly, not when he made it clear just how well he understood all of her that she was willing to show him.
"Hey, Kent?"
"Mmmm?"
"Merry Christmas."
Their eyes met in the rearview window, and they both smiled. "Merry Christmas, Tara."
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:51 pm
The surroundings were serene, the atmosphere pleasant. The grass crunched softly under her feet, and the wind tugged at her hair and the hood she wore over it. It was neither too hot nor too cold, and the quiet was welcome, considering her mind never was. All that was missing was a picnic basket.
For anyone else, such a setting might have brought peace. For Aquarius, it brought panic.
She steeled herself, then glanced down at what she was wearing. Sure enough, her pajamas were gone, replaced by the usual garb of the Eleventh of Twelve. The last thing she remembered was going to bed. She hadn't transformed before doing so. She hadn't transformed for the past few months, but that wasn't really the point. The point was that the last time she woke up, as Aquarius, in an isolated place she didn't remember going, she spent the next few months in a coma.
Aquarius swore. If this was another coming of whatever caused the so-called sleeping sickness, she would be having words with whoever was behind it. None of them kind or complimentary. Assuming she woke up this time, anyway.
And wasn't that a chilling thought, she realized suddenly. While she'd gotten lucky, with both her brother and herself making full recoveries, she knew that a lot of people simply hadn't woken up. Her luck may have been strong before, but she wasn't willing to push it. Already, at the age of eighteen, she had cheated death more times than she was willing to count.
Another gust of wind blew her hood off, her hair falling in her face. Aquarius pushed it back and studied her surroundings. Last time, there had at least been a path. She hadn't gotten very far on it, but it was a landmark. This was just rolling meadows as far as the eye could see. She looked up, to see a sky filled with unfamiliar stars. It wasn't red, at least, but that didn't mean much. When the sky changed color, it was always a bad sign. But lack of grand scale scientific phenomena hardly meant that everything was going well. And wasn't an entirely different astronomical map about as grand a phenomena as they got?
"Relax," she told herself sternly. Focusing on all the bad things that could happen was not going to help her get out of there. "I get it already. Bad stuff happens whether I transform or not. My luck's only good for avoiding death in bad situations, not for avoiding the situations. This is some kind of lesson, right?" Then again, had Tartaros taught her anything other than not to ride the bus? "Come on, pulling the same trick on me twice is no fun. Now I know it's just a coma, so I can wake up. Right?"
Right, her brain agreed. Usually, when Aquarius talked to herself, it was because she was bored, but sometimes there were actual seeds of ideas in there. If she knew she was asleep, she could wake up. Not that comas were that voluntary, considering Laney had spent a year in hers. It was a stretch at best, but there was enough possibility for Aquarius to cling to it. She wouldn't know if it worked or not until she tried it.
"Okay, self. On the count of three, you're going to wake up." And if not, she'd probably scream loud enough to wake even the dead. "One." She clenched her fists and shut her eyes. "Two. Three."
She opened her eyes again. To Tara's profound astonishment, she was in her room. In her pajamas. Staring at the Star Wars: Clone Wars poster on her wall, and the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to her ceiling. Her mouth dropped open. "It worked?" Nothing was ever that simple. Suddenly doubting the ease of her escape, she pinched herself. "Ow!" Nothing in a dream could hurt like that. "It did work!"
But, her logical mind said, who was to say that it would keep working? It might have been an outlier. Or maybe it could only work once, and the next time she dreamed, she would be stuck there. Tara was not fond of the idea of spending any more time in that barren land, especially transformed. Being Aquarius for the first time in months had felt strange to her. Wrong, in a way. Though if it was the transformation that was wrong, or the long time between it and her last one, she couldn't quite say.
"Either way," she said to herself as she reached for the alarm clock, "I'm not going back there anytime soon."
Later on, when the Zodiacs gathered, Tara would learn the truth behind the mysterious scenery. While relieved that it wasn't another Tartaros, that didn't stop her from sleeping with her alarm clock switched on, set to go off every hour throughout the night. When that stopped working, she started sleeping when she got home from school- and sometimes in school- rather than risk being drawn in again. She was always tired and lethargic, and she could tell her brother was worried about her again, but the bags under her eyes she could hide with concealer, and it was better than the alternative.
"I'm not going back until I'm ready," Tara told herself firmly, setting the alarm before bed again.
But without dreams, what exactly was she living for now?
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:53 pm
Ride the Wind[Tara + Ridley] Still knee-deep in denial, Tara tries to bike away her troubles. Instead, she ends up making more trouble.
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Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 2:20 pm
Time for a Break[Tara + Marcella] Tara is not the only one craving an extra-special treat. Nor is she the only one with a lot on her mind.
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:06 pm
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:10 pm
Rah rah ree![Tara + Aitana] When Tara gets fed up with bad cheerleading, Aitana steps in to show her how it's supposed to be done.
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:11 pm
[reserved- end of school year]
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:13 pm
[reserved- choking down pride and pizza]
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:17 pm
Tara woke up screaming. Somehow, this had become normal behavior for her. That scared her, or it would have if she didn’t have so many other things to be afraid of. When she was a kid, she had thought herself fearless. Now, as she looked back on her childhood, she was torn. Half of her mocked her own youthful abandon, calling herself clueless and deluded. The other half longed for a time when she wasn’t paralyzed by fear.
That was the right term for it, Tara decided. She opened her eyes wide, breathing slowly as the glow in the dark stars on her walls came into view, and the smoke and flame cleared from her vision. Even though she was able to move her body- there was nothing physically wrong with her- she was still frozen, in both body and spirit. Her mind, with nothing else to occupy it in the present, kept replaying the past. And with a past like hers, was it any wonder she was scared?
The past year had been relatively peaceful. Not perfectly so, of course; you couldn’t live in Destiny City without running into some trouble. Even so, Tara had enjoyed her first few months of “vacation,” doing things she felt she couldn’t while she was a senshi. But every incident reminded her of what she was running from; every attack on her life, even when they were foiled, brought her closer to death. She couldn’t escape every time. Sooner or later her luck would run out, and there was no prince to sacrifice himself this time. Aries was gone for good, and Sagittarius, and who knew who would be next? The Zodiacs were broken, and it was only a matter of time before they all joined their comrades.
Little by little, Tara dropped the parts of her life that she had given up fighting to protect. Gone were the occasional fancy cake outings, the long bike rides, the frequent jaunts to the library or the mall. With every bit of fun she cut out of her life, she felt a little safer, until she only left the house to go to school. She spent her time in the evenings, and late into the night, rewatching star Wars for the millionth time, or practicing handstands, or even doing her homework. Anything to help her forget the fears that plagued her, and the joy that she gave up, in order to preserve her life.
But out of her desire to escape death, Tara had stopped living.
That realization was what Tara ran from now. She wasn’t dead, but she was lifeless all the same. In some days, it was worse than death, because she was inflicting it on herself. Maybe she had become afraid of living. Maybe she was punishing herself. Whatever it was, Tara didn’t want to think about it, and searched for a distraction. Grunting a bit from the effort, she rolled out of bed, lifted up the mattress, and pulled out a can of frosting.
It was too light. Fearing the worst, Tara pried off the lid. Empty. Considering how often she needed distraction, it was hardly surprising. A few months earlier, she wouldn’t have hesitated to run out for more. There was a 24-hour deli just a few blocks from her home. She could go and come back in less than twenty minutes.
Assuming a Negaverser wasn’t out hunting for starseeds, or a youma wasn’t prowling in the back alley behind the store. Tara shivered at the mental images flashing through her head. But the thought of staying home, alone, without even frosting to keep her busy, wasn’t any prettier. Her eyes darted over to the jewelry box on her dresser briefly, before she shook her head. She was not going to henshin just to get frosting. It would draw every bad guy nearby right to her. And anyway, Kent had the key, and she wasn’t ready to explain to him why she needed it. She wasn’t ready to need it.
A trip to the store, on the other hand, was a different matter entirely. Tara was sick of shutting herself away. She didn’t feel happy. She didn’t even feel safe anymore. If she couldn’t go to the store and back without fearing for her life, then she didn’t have anything left to live for. The odds of her getting attacked were small. She was, after all, just a normal human doing a normal errand. She would be fine.
And if she wasn’t? part of Tara’s brain asked, a part she had come to hate during her months in isolation.
She would be, she told that part firmly, throwing a sweatshirt with a stylized atom on over her pajamas.
And if not? it asked again, persisting cruelly through her assurances.
Tara crammed her keys and her wallet into the pocket of her pajama pants and hesitated. Then she nodded firmly and left.
A moment later, she came back in, took the jewelry box off the desk, and left again.
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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:26 am
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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:28 am
It was the first time that Tara had been awake during her hospitalization, or at least during part of it. She decided she didn’t care for it. In some ways, she supposed it beat waking up in a sterile room with no real idea of how she had gotten there. Not being comatose or kidnapped was a definite plus. On the other hand, it involved hours of waiting in the emergency room, while other, more critically injured patients were tended to first. She was hardly the only one to come in that night, or any night, she figured. Not with the Negaverse out prowling for starseeds, or whatever they were up to. As she sat there waiting for her turn, she watched doctors rushing around, nurses pushing beds with all sorts of people laying in them. There were businessmen and waitresses, kids and senior citizens. She fell asleep while watching them go by, wondering how many of their injuries she could have prevented. If she had patrolled like she was supposed to, or at least not ran away from everything, how many of them would be okay? Would she be okay? At this point, did that even matter?
“What, you again?”
Tara opened one eye. One of the nurses she knew from her regular visits to Laney was standing over her, looking aghast. “Not that it isn’t nice to see you again, Tara, but under the circumstances, I can hardly say it’s a pleasure for either of us.”
“I was planning on bringing you guys some cake, but this wasn’t how I planned my visit.” She closed her eye again. “Can I call Kent? I don’t think he knows where I am, and-”
The nurse shook her head. “Your brother, right? Don’t worry about it, they’re calling him. You just need to rest. It’s a rough night here, but a doctor will be here to patch you up as soon as possible. Okay? Tara?”
Tara was asleep before the nurse finished speaking. Images of what had happened that night mixed with her usual nightmares, making her toss and turn and wake up in the hospital. Every time she opened her eyes, she was reminded all over again that this nightmare, like all the others, was real. She was really hurt, she was really in the hospital, and it was really all her fault. Running hadn’t saved her from her visions; it had made them come out of her mind and into her life. She had been foolish to think she could escape so easily, but as her family was fond of telling her, she was always foolish. Now she was just foolish and injured. On occasion a nurse or doctor would poke in to ask a question or check on her, and her answers mixed with her sleep to form one long stretch of terror in her memory. While she would later try to remember the details of her night in the ER, she would never be able to recall more than the first visit from the nurse, and a lingering feeling of anxiety.
When she awoke for real, she was in a proper bed in a room. The lights were on and the curtains drawn, making it hard for her to tell what time it was. She tried to sit up, but felt a dull burning pain down her side that froze her in an awkward half-sitting position. “Aglhh.” At least her vocal chords still worked, though maybe her brain had been rewired while she was out. “One. Two. Three.” The basics still worked, so she was probably going to be okay. Or as okay as she could be, knowing that she could never escape what she had been trying so hard to run from.
“Don’t overdo it.” Gentle hands supported Tara’s back, easing her back into a reclining pose. They pulled the thin white hospital sheets up to her shoulders, tucking them gently around her, and patted her forehead gently before pulling away at last. “So.”
Tara closed her eyes again. She didn’t need to see Kent standing there, his look of worry and disappointment evident. But she couldn’t just go back to sleep this time, and she would have to answer to him sooner or later. “So.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?” Kent sat on the edge of the bed and put one of his hands on top of Tara’s. He could see her trying to shut her out, but he wasn’t about to let her do that again. She had gotten away with it too much, and this was where it got her. It was his mistakes that put her here as much as hers, and he was ready to take responsibility for them, even if she wasn’t. It would, naturally, be better for all of them if she joined him in this, but he wasn’t sure how to indicate that other than in his willingness to listen.
“What’s there to tell?” Tara asked, her hand twitching in response to his touch. She didn’t want anyone touching her right then, but there was no way to pull away without making him feel bad, which she knew she was already doing. “I was attacked by a monster. Like the ones on television. End of story.”
Kent lifted his hand, to make sure he wasn’t hurting her, and crossed his arms instead. Maybe the physical aspect was too much, right then, considering he had to be harsh with his words. “You can start with why you felt the need to leave the house in the middle of the night. Especially when you’ve hardly set foot outside your room in months. Feel free to mention why you didn’t bother to bring your phone, which I hardly need to add was a stupid thing to do. And you can end with exactly what happened and how you got here.”
The temptation to roll her eyes was strong, but she would have to open them to do that. “I ran out of frosting, so I went to get some. I was hungry.” Not that frosting was real food, but Kent would understand that part, at least. “I was only going a couple of blocks, so I thought I’d be okay without my phone, but I know that was a bad idea. Before I got there, some monster thing attacked me.” Now she had another bad memory to add to her collection, of the youma slamming her into the fence. “Some guy found me and brought me here. That’s all I can tell you.”
“All you can tell me, or all you will tell me?” Exasperation filled Kent’s words. This was what he had expecting. He had hoped for a breakthrough, but knew better to assume that one would just happen. Now he had to take the bull by the horns. “Tara, I’ve been patient with you. I know that I can’t make you talk about the things that have happened. But when it leads to stuff like this, I really feel like I’m not doing something right. Maybe I should make you say more. Maybe I should send you back to Mom and Dad, or-”
“You’re kidding, right?” Now her eyes were wide open, and she looked at her brother with abject panic. “You’re not going to make me leave, are you? It would be so much worse if I was stuck there, all by myself. My friends are here! My life is here! And Mom and Dad don’t understand, not the way that you do.”
Kent shook his head sadly. “That’s just it, Tara. I want to understand you. I’m trying really hard to see what you see, or at least know why you see it. But you’re not giving me the information I need, so all I can do is watch you. And you’ve avoided every bit of the life you claim to have here, and all of those friends of yours. You give me nonspecific answers to get me off your back, or to try and convince me that everything’s okay. Well, everything’s not okay. I know that, and now you know I know, so stop pretending for my sake.”
There wasn’t a lot that Tara could say to that. He was right on most counts, though hearing things laid out for her so baldly was pretty jarring. She had been avoiding life to try and keep from dying. That much she had known for a while. She didn’t want him to worry, but she was a pretty terrible actress, so it was no surprise he saw past her feeble efforts. Still, there was one thing he was wrong about. “I’m pretending for my sake too.”
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He was waiting for her to go on, praying that she would finally tell him what was going through her head. So she did. Not everything- she wasn’t so desperate for relief that she would put him in danger- but she couldn’t hold everything in anymore. The dam didn’t burst, but it leaked, a little. “I don’t want to talk about it because that means I have to remember. But I remember anyway. I relive what happened every night in my dreams. When I’m awake, the wrong word or picture can make me see it all over again. Even after dealing with it for so long, it still hurts. I’m still scared, like I was back then. It got so bad that I tried to hide from it, but it didn’t work. I tried to go back to normal, but that clearly didn’t work either.” Her voice cracked. “I’m not sure what else to do. Do I have to just keep hurting like this forever?”
“I don’t know.”
It was not a very reassuring answer. Tara didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that her brother didn’t have all the answers. Kent looked about as wrung out as she did, and his eyes were haunted in a way that was very familiar to her as he spoke. “I wish I could stop these things from hurting you. I wish I could have stopped all of this from happening. But I can’t, and you know what? Pretending otherwise isn’t going to help me, and it isn’t going to help you. All of these painful and scary things did happen. That fact is never going to go away, and so I guess that in some way, the pain and fear will always stick around. But it doesn’t have to chase everything else out of our lives. The past will always be part of who we are, but it doesn’t have to define us.” He caught a flicker of amusement in her face and frowned. “Yes, us. I may not have been captured by an organ ring or assaulted by a monster, but I have to live with the fact that you were, and I couldn’t stop it from happening. I still can’t really help you.” Unless he tried to play bodyguard for her night and day, which he knew he would resent and she would resent even more. Not that he hadn’t considered it more than once. “I can’t protect you the way I want to. That’s my burden.”
Tara stopped being amused by his self-inclusion. “Kent, I didn’t mean-”
“It doesn’t matter whether you meant that or not. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t blame me. I do, and to an extent I always will.” Now she knew why the haunted look was so familiar. Kent wasn’t just scared, he was feeling guilty. Like he could be doing more. Only she really could, and she’d spent so much time with her head in the sand. And for what? For nothing. All she had done was ruin her life and possibly other people’s as well.
Kent leaned forward and put the sheets back over Tara’s shoulders. “All I can do now is try to move on with my life. Try not to make the same mistakes. Not let myself get bogged down with might-have-beens. It’s not easy, and I mess up a lot, but if you help, I think I can do it.” He sat back in his chair, an unspoken question on his face.
She thought it over for a moment. It wasn’t going to be easy, but nothing worthwhile was. Tara Kavanaugh wasn’t afraid of hard work when it was for something important, and few things were more important than reclaiming her life. And her mission. And herself, the person she thought that she had lost in the Barren Pines Science Lab two years ago. If Kent said it was possible, she believed it was, and she owed it to him- and to herself- to try to make that happen.
“Me too. If you help me,” she added quickly. “I don’t think I can do this by myself.”
“You won’t have to,” Kent assured her. Tara smiled and let her eyes close slowly.
For the first time in months, she slept peacefully, without dreams.
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