SERIES TITLE  : Twelve Days of Christmas ;
CHAPTER/TITLE : Five gold rings
AUTHOR        : Black Widow
EMAIL         : bw@l...
SUMMARY       : Just how strong is a daughter's love for her mother?
SPOILERS      : None. 
RATING        : G.
PAIRING       : Gen Fic
DISCLAIMER    : The characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant
                Enemy, Kuzui, Sandollar, and Greenwolf Productions, 20th
                Century Fox, the WB Network, and whoever else may have a
                hold on them. The situation is wholly mine, and I do
                not mean to infringe upon any copyrights.
ARCHIVE/DIST  : List archives. Anyone else, please ask.

*

Joyce blinked as she awoke from her nap. The room was a white haze
with just a hint of black in front of her. She closed her hand around
the silver chain hanging around her neck, counting, trying to
remember.

Angel's cross and four rings.

"Tell me again, dear," she prompted.

Dawn closed her eyes against the pain. She couldn't bare to look at
her mother when she was like this. "Okay, Mom.

"It was the year after Buffy graduated. A bright, spring day and
everyone was there. You were so proud as Mr. Giles led Buffy down the
aisle. Riley looked so handsome..."

"No, dear. Not that, the other one. Willow and... and..."

"Tara. Her name was Tara."

"Yes, Tara. Such a lovely girl, Tara."

"Yes, Mom, she was. They both were."

"Were?"

"Don't you remember? The rings?" Sometimes her mother forgot and she
wondered if it made her any happier. She'd loved Buffy with all her
heart, and Riley too. And she'd accepted Willow and Tara being married
when their folks hadn't, and she'd taken them to her heart as if they
were her own. Everyone needed a family, she always used to say, angry
at the way they'd both been rejected.

"Tell me, dear. The wedding."

Dawn tried to keep the emotion out of her voice. "Willow and Tara got
married in San Francisco the following year."

"You were a bridesmaid, dear. I remember."

"Yes. Mom." They'd made her dress up in a silly outfit, and she'd felt
completely stupid. Honored and proud, but stupid. "It was after," she
hesitated.

"Go on. I cried. I remember crying, but not why."

Dawn watched her carefully. If she upset her mother the monitors would
pick it up and the nurses would come running; and she couldn't allow
that to happen. Glancing at the machine, hearing the irregular beep as
her heart beat so weakly, she gambled...

"It was Buffy's birthday. After..." she knew she had to continue now
because she knew why her mother had asked: with what little she had
left she was holding her memories in her hand.

"After Buffy and Riley were killed, Willow and Tara wanted to remember
them by getting married on Buffy's birthday. 

"You cried because you were so happy for them and yet so sad." That
was the first time she'd worn the necklace. The necklace that Angel
had given Buffy. And she'd worn it with the two wedding bands that
Buffy and Riley had given each other looped on either side of the
small cross.

"Do you remember you all walked down the aisle together? Xander and
Willow, and you and Tara?" It was one crazy, mixed up ceremony. Two
brides, the best man was a woman and Willow was given away by an
ex-boyfriend she'd broken up with when they were five.

"And now they're gone."

Her mother's hand clenched and unclenched on the rings as she counted
them. "Yes, Mom, they're gone." Willow, of all things, had been
persuaded to work for the government. Not that she hadn't tried to get
out of it, but there were some computers that even she couldn't hack
her way out of. Not until she was on the inside. And Tara... to
overcome their combined guilt she'd gone to work for UNICEF. Only she
was working in some remote African country when a sniper's bullet had
killed her. When they'd got the body home, Willow had buried her and
then taken her own life.

That, Dawn reflected, had been the turning point in her own life. Of
all the people she'd known, Willow was the strongest, the bravest. If
Willow could give up, she remembered thinking...

"I still have you," her mother smiled up at her. She looked so
peaceful, so... Her thoughts were interrupted by the flat tone coming
from the infernal machine.

Dawn knew she didn't have much time as she took the envelope from her
pocket.

Carefully she removed the chain from around her mother's neck and undid
the clasp. Gently she took her mother's hand in hers, praying quietly
to herself as she removed the wedding band from her lifeless finger.
Fighting back the tears she added her mother's ring to those already
on the chain. 

Placing the envelope in her mother's hand, she kissed her one last
time. The letter would tell Giles what had happened and what to do. He
would understand.

Biting her lip she put the necklace around her own neck, letting
the cross rest above her heart. She was determined not to fight it,
not to cry out as the pain filled her, as the cross burned through her
skin to her own still heart, as she condemned the demon within her to
hell and her body to oblivion.