Author: JustSkipIt
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Yes, please. Please leave feedback on the Love Comes to Long Lick - Revisited thread on the Kitten Board.
Disclaimer - Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own Willow, Tara, and the Buffyverse and Angelverse and all characters and locations from those universes. No copyright infringement is meant by this fic and I will not make any money from it.

"You look like shit, Mac. I didn't think it was that good a party." Tip slid into the chair across from her friend and waved the waiter over to ask for a bottle of water. Once she'd ordered her drink and breakfast she returned her attention to the blonde. "Seriously, sweetheart. You look like you got rode hard and put up wet." She laughed, then added. "I don't suppose you took video did you?"

Mac glared at her friend. "You know damn well how video can ruin my reputation."

Tip laughed. "You have a reputation?"

The waiter brought Tip's water and fruit and she began eating. "Seriously, I noticed you drove my car to the event."

Mac laughed. "It's not your car for five and a half more days and I don't plan on it ever being your car."

"On the other hand, I notice you haven't demanded my phone so you can call your father and make me quit before smashing it on the cobblestones here so I'm guessing your hard riding wet put up night wasn't courtesy of Marian."

Mac took a sip of her coffee. "No, my hard riding night was not courtesy of Rose Jennings, formerly known in these parts as Marian the Librarian."

Tip slapped her leg. "In these parts? Well, howdy pardner. What parts have you acquainted yourself with so far?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Tip's smiled fell from her face. "You're going to tell me, right? What's the point of this bet if I don't get to live vicariously through your progress reports?"

The blonde waited for the waiter to refill her coffee. "Of course, sweetie. I've met her and ingratiated myself into her life's passion. How hard could it be from here on out?"

"Ok, details and don't leave any groping or shoving her up against book shelves out now, Maclay Willingham."

Mac laughed. "She's a researcher and she's cataloging a pile of documents from nearly 150 years ago around the time Sunnydale and Sunnyland were founded. She's got maps, tax rolls, articles of incorporation and quarterly statements, journals, letters, newspaper clippings, all about my family."

Tip was silent for a few seconds thinking. "Why does she care so much?"

Mac smiled and nodded. "A good question. What you would say if I told you that my great-great-grandmother-wife to one Ethan Rayne who founded Sunnyland farms - was a big ole dyke?"

"Uh, Mac? Big ole dykes don't generally marry men who found jelly companies."

"Well, this one did. I don't know why but she came out here to be the school teacher in 1871. It seems that she had developed a lack of interest in men back in Philadelphia."

"Much like someone else at this table," Tip interrupted.

"Except for the Philadelphia part, yes." Mac laughed again. "So she comes out here and promptly seduces the town telegraph operator who happens to be Ethan Rayne's niece."

"Hot for teacher..." Tip sang out.

"Then she what, leaves the telegraph operator for your great-great and what, squeezes out some babies and lives happily ever after?"

Mac stopped smiling. "Not exactly happily ever after." She passed two scanned document across the table toward her friend. "Rose lent me some of her research on a data key. By the way, that's why I'm so tired this morning. After I'd finished with the party and all that..."

"...all that..." Tip airquoted.

"I stayed up late reading."

The first clipping was an obituary from the Sunnydale Express dated May 11, 1887.

Tip read the clipping before passing it back. "Tragic. What does that have to do you failing to seduce Marian-Rose the researching librarian?"

"Well, Marian-Rose the researching librarian just happens to be the great-great-howevermany-great-grand-daughter of the aforementioned telegraph operator."

Tip laughed loudly. "Oh, like great-great-grandmother like great-great-daughter." She pointed at Mac as she guffawed.

Mac waited for her friend to stop laughing which took a few minutes. "I really do mean it's tragic. I mean she, this Tara Maclay, seemed to really be in love with the telegraph operator. And the telegraph operator was crazy about her. Willow, that's the telegraph operator, kept a journal and it tells about how they met and fell in love."

"How sweet." Tip was being her usual droll self but Mac resisted laughing along with her friend.

"And I've read another few months and they are just rolling along, being thrilled with being together and holding hands and reading to each other and watching sunsets. Shit like that."

Tip snorted. "So they don't even screw? How in love could they be?"

Mac laughed back at her friend as she pulled her fruit plate toward her and began eating. "Oh, they 'screw' as you put it. They also make love."

"How touching."

She set down her fork. "No really. It is touching. I've never read anything like it. I mean, they just eat dinner staring at each other and then go outside to sit on the porch and talk and hold hands. And then they'll just be looking at each other and it's like they just can't stand to be two separate people anymore. Like they have to be closer than that." Seeing that Tip was actually listening, Mac continued. "They like wash each other's hair down at the creek and bring each other coffee and a hot rock back to bed. For a surprise, Willow will carve Tara a little animal and sometimes Tara surprises Willow by making her cookies or tending the grass on Willow's parents's graves."

Tip squinted at her friend. "You're softening up on me, Mac. I mean do you want someone to, whatever, wash your hair by the creek and sit on a porch swing with you?"

Mac looked away quickly. "It's not that... I'm not saying I want to live their lives. It's just..."

"Just what, Mac?" When Mac didn't answer Tip pushed farther. "This is me, your best friend. It's just what?"

Mac took a deep breath. "I've never... I've never felt anything like that. I mean never. Not for a second. I've never thought I felt anything like that."

"That doesn't mean you won't. It just means you haven't met the right girl yet."

Mac sipped at her drink. "I hear you. And I want to believe you but maybe she's not out there. I mean, maybe that right girl... How is she going to find her way through the money?" Tip stared at her looking like she was trying to keep her jaw from banging against the table. "I mean... I'm never going to know if she wants me, loves me, or if she loves the idea of the money or the money itself. And even if she does... even if she truly loves me... how would I meet her?" She shook her head. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I want to settle down. But what if I can't even find her? I mean wouldn't it be ironic. Maclay Willingham, going through life screwing every woman who's not tied down..."

"And quite a few who were," Tip interrupted only to catch a glare from her best friend.

"only to find that I can't find love when I decide I'm ready for love."

Tip reached out and patted her friend's hand. "Sweetheart, when you're ready, you'll find her and she'll be perfect and she won't care about the money or that you've screwed half of the debutantes on the continent and a few other continents." Mac smiled. "And she won't care that you once lost a bet and had to give your best friend your Escalade."

The blonde laughed. "I'm thinking about love, Ms. Deluded-Sense-of-Optimism. I'm not joining a convent and losing my bet."

"Plus, I'm still not convinced that love is all that."

Mac picked her fork back up. "Well, you may have a point there."

"Seems like quite a turnaround from a few minutes ago so how so, Captain?"

"Well, this Willow and Tara were madly and sweetly in love but they didn't stay that way, right? I mean Tara married my great-great-grandfather and churned out some babies and Willow had that kid somehow right? If they couldn't handle it, what makes me think I could do better?"

Tip shrugged. "I don't know. Why did they break up?"

Mac swallowed the bite of pineapple she had just speared. "I don't know. I've read most of the first journal and they're just wonderful. They're in love and very domestic. Willow's growing fruits and vegetables and Tara's some sort of canning fiend. Interspersed into the journal are all these calculations about the number of trees and bushes and the yield per and the grafting she's doing on certain breeds and how much they yield and the cost of the canning supplies and how many jars of everything Tara's put up. I think they're going to have to build another building just to hold the preserves soon."

"So it's just them out on the farm?

"So far. They have some friends- one who just got married, the town sheriff, the bartender at the local saloon who hang out with them. The bartender seems to totally get them as a couple, in fact she flirts with both of them shamelessly."

"Maybe ... oh hell. I can't figure out how people think."

Mac laughed as Tip set down her fork and reached across to pick up the second sheet of paper. "Ok, now what's this." She started reading outloud but stopped after a few lines of reading an article on the front page of the Sunnydale Express dated April 13, 1887:

Tip set down the clipping. "So, what she's a spurned lover? She gets drunk and either wanders into the wrong house or breaks in to argue with her ex. The husband comes home and shoots her. She's like a stalker from history."

Mac took back the sheet of paper and tucked both into her bag. "I don't know. I mean that's one way to see it but I can also tell you that she doesn't seem like the get drunk and wander into the wrong house type."

"Well, if she built the thing, maybe she just forgot."

Mac shook her head. "I don't think that's it. Christ. I don't know. I want to believe that there's something right here. I want to believe that these two women loved each other until their deaths."