There is no comfort for the living. Tara does not look like Tara any longer. Her long hair goes unwashed, is dank and greasy rather than vivid and golden. Her gentle smile is merely a memory that lingers in the back of the mind like a forgotten melody. Her eyes are sunken holes.

Willow looks no better. Guilt and loneliness have made a shaking, chattering fool out of her. Losing her lover, her friends, she talks to herself, has befriended the paperboy and the cashier at the grocery store. Sometimes she tries to call Buffy, or Xander, or even Giles. They don't answer, or hear her voice and abruptly hang up.

Buffy said, "I can't believe you, that you would do this again. You pulled me out of heaven, that wasn't enough? The pain and suffering you caused me wasn't satisfying? You needed to put your girlfriend, who you claim to love, through it, too?"

Xander said, "You have to admit it was a pretty shitty, risky thing to do, Will. You didn't honestly believe that Tara was stuck in a hell dimension. You just wanted her back. You were selfish."

Giles said, "I am ashamed to be associated with you."

Tara said, "I can't look at you. I can't love you. I can't stay in Sunnydale if you're here. One of us has to leave, Willow. It may as well be me."

Willow is the one who leaves. She packs her suitcases, little girl florescent plaid, and boards a plane. She leaves notes on their doors, doesn't say where she's going, doesn't say why. (They all know why.) All she writes is, "I'm sorry."

Buffy visits Tara. "How are you feeling?" she asks, although she knows the answer. She felt the same herself.

"This is not where I'm supposed to be!" Tara raises her voice to scream. Buffy nods, urging her to continue. It's best to let the rage out, to fill the emptiness with some kind of feeling. "I've been here too long."

"I know," Buffy says. What else can she do? There is no comfort for the living, not once they know what they're missing.

Tara woke to pain so intense, noise so loud, that if she was screaming, she couldn't distinguish the sound amidst the clamor. She just wanted to curl up, go to sleep, make the hideous world recede, much as a newborn must long to return to the familiar warmth of its mother's womb.

Willow was crying, but they were tears of joy. She tried to kiss Tara. Tara wanted to slap her, but she didn't have the energy, so she just let her lips remain still and slack.

"You felt the same, didn't you? When she brought you back?" Tara's voice is desperate. "How do you make it go away? Drugs? I'd kill myself if I thought suicides went to the same place."

Buffy is not a doctor. And if she were? There is no cure for the pain of life, there is no comfort for the living. She can't prescribe, say, "A dose of sex with Spike, filthy and rough, and call me in the morning."

Tara looks so broken, and Buffy knows it's not healthy, but Tara is her friend, and the poor girl deserves to feel something. Buffy's never kissed a girl before.

Tara doesn't seem shocked. She just leans into Buffy's mouth as if in thanks, or gratitude. She takes what's offered, and coaxes more. Buffy's lips ease apart at the urging of Tara's tongue until they are entwined. Buffy's jaw aches and all she can taste is Tara, lost in wet and warmth. She thought it would be gentler than kissing a man, and it is, but Tara thrusts with her tongue and Buffy pushes back in response and it so good she almost wishes her mouth were free to scream. There is no comfort for the living, for those that should be dead, but there is something close to comfort in this, the press of flesh, bodies twisted together.

Tara's hands are at Buffy's waist, warm and cold at once as they press against bare flesh, wiggle under tight t-shirt to find a lacy bra and aching breasts. Buffy rubs her face against Tara's neck, sniffing her hair, the scent of dirt and decay that should not remain, but lingers beneath herbal soaps and all-natural perfumes. Tara smells like the grave, and her hands are moving to unclasp Buffy's bra-- and Buffy remembers how strange it is, for a dead girl to move, when those fingers should be reduced to stiff bone, buried beneath mounds of black loam, red clay, gray stone. Buffy's shirt is off, now, and her bra falls down, limp as she should be, as Tara should be, to lay still on the floor.

Then there is mouth and lips and lathing tongue on nipples turned hard as the rocks that dot the soil in the cemetery. Buffy arches her back and moans in glorious agony. Tara's trembling as she licks her way down Buffy's smooth stomach, over the tiny cavernous belly button, down, down, down.

Tara whispers, "Thank you for this, I knew you'd understand," as she unbuttons Buffy's jeans. And Buffy doesn't know how to respond, words are for the living, when they are just dead girls in recycled bodies. What she can say that won't mar this moment with the mundane, the everyday world they will now always be outside, looking in on?

"You're welcome," Buffy says as Tara's tongue finds soft blonde curls, dives deeper still to a place damp with secret desires. Buffy doesn't remember where she learned it, certainly not in school, but the French called this "le petit mort," a little death. As Tara's fingers find her clitoris and Tara's tongue snakes up her opening, Buffy's mind descends to a place where, once again, there is no pain, no doubt, nothing but the sensation of Tara's body, and her own.

There is no comfort for the living, but this. This is all they can attempt, they who are expelled from heaven to live once again amongst the mortals. Afterwards, Buffy holds Tara and they both cry. And then Buffy uses her tongue and her fingers, her body and her heart, in an attempt to make Tara whole again. It's the least that she can do. They are sisters, now, the same, trapped here for far too long.