Work Text:
“Umm, I don’t think we know a Warren,”
Tara lied.
Tara didn’t go to Sunnydale High. She only moved to Sunnydale for college.
Warren only went for a semester.
As the fates would have it, they came from the same place.
It was a small school, only about 100 students per year. Still, they didn’t know each other that well. They shared a couple classes and sat only a couple tables away at lunch, but the two never talked for most of the time they co-existed.
On Valentine’s Day of their junior year, they both showed up to the Valentine’s Dance alone. They quite literally ran into each other at the punch bowl, spilling the red punch on each other simultaneously.
Tara felt an odd sense of dread as she looked up at him.
“Your shirt,”
At first, Warren looked enraged. His fancy looking tux was ruined, and it was all her fault. She apologized over and over, and Warren seemed to calm. In fact, he ended up laughing and asking her to dance.
Tara was surprised. She didn’t know Warren well, but she knew of him. She knew he was a recluse, and he had a horrible temper, so she was surprised at is reaction. Hell, she was even surprised he was at the dance in the first place. Of course, she could say the same for herself.
Still, she accepted.
People stared at them as they started twirling on the dance floor, wearing punch. They didn’t care, though. They just laughed and stumbled their way through the song.
At the end of the night, they went their separate ways, promising to see each other each other. Still, Tara felt that odd dread.
She went home and got her supplies out from under her bed. There was something she needed to check.
Tara saw her future. Not the entirety of it, but enough.
She knew she’d die young.
She knew her last words.
She knew Warren would kill her.
She understood everything.
The next week at school, Warren tried to talk to her.
She couldn’t do it.
She knew when he was going to kill her, it was going to be an accident. She wouldn’t be his target. But she would be his victim, and that was enough.