Fleeting

Part XII – We Build Our Own Cages
A/N: I got some really fucking brilliant reviews for another piece, and it inspired me to write some more. i did, so here's a new part for you guys. hope you enjoy it.

~ ~ ~

“you… are insane.” Buffy looked over at willow again, as she sat on the edge of the massage table. The guy, who’s name she’d forgotten already, was currently rubbing some cream into the wound, before placing a gauze pad over it.

“you keep saying that.” When the guy came around the front of the table and removed his gloves, buffy pulled her tops back on, mindful of the now extreemly tender area of her lower back.

“and I mean it every single time. I mean, god buffy, what’s with all this? You never liked tattoo’s and piercings before.” The blonde shrugged, pulling out her wallent and having over the appropriate amount of money, before walking out of the door, the wicca trailing behind her.

She was still talking, but buffy wasn’t listening. She was slowly, mythodically, focusing her attention on each of her new pain areas. First the tongue, then the ear, her belly button and finally, the most painful of all: the tattoo. She’d spent hours every single day, drawineas eas for it in her note books, ignoring whoever was talking to her and instead, concentrating on her pen. Watching as it crossed over the paper, scratching into it and leaving behind a trail of ink.

Over the last few weeks, the design had been formed. Black and grey, softness, and yet when looking at the entire picture, hard at the same time. Just like faith. She hadn’t even realised what she was drawing, until she’d finished, but when she had, she knew it was the perfect way to remember the one person who gave everything for her.

Reasonably, she knew that faith gave her life for everyone, but at the same time, it was almost as if she was just doing it for her. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, or the way she smiled that last, painful smile at her. Maybe she was just imagining it and it hadn’t happened at all.

The design was a pair of raven’s wings. Large feathers fluttering out over the wings and the word raven, in a delicate script, underneath. And also, the one thing of faith that she will never forget. Even if she forgot her own name.

~ ~ ~

“it’s just so fucking *hard* faith!” she was sat on faith’s dorm room bed, cross legged and face streaked with tears. The room was hot, and moist. Heavy with the humidity of the early spring heat wave.

Her statement had been a general one, nothing singular or specific, just that everything in her life was getting so damn hard. Her mother’s death, looking after dawn, dealing with her friends, dealing with giles, loving faith and never having the guts to own up to it. terrified of what she might say, terrified of what might come of them.

And the underworld. It never stopped. Every week it was something else, some new demon, a gang of vampires, evil experiments got seriously wrong. She never got just five minutes. Five minutes to just lay, be still and quiet, to breathe. Have no worries. No little sister yelling at her to do something, no friends rushing in to tell her the world was going to end again. Just peace.

Was that too much to ask? Was that too hard to find?

She couldn’t remember the last time she had five minutes to herself, because her life was relentless, never giving just an inch for some breathing room. And she wanted it all to end. Wanted to be a normal, every day college kid. Living off of her parents, going to classes, and having the most worrying thing in her life be whether or not she was going to get an assignment in on time.

“Hey hey now. I know it’s harelieelieve me, I know. Maybe we can find you some space huh?” she looked up through her tears at her best friend, and not for the first time, wondered what she’d done to deserve her. “I dunno. I me and xand can do the patroling one night and red and t-bear can look after dawn. You could maybe hang out here or something.”

The brunette shrugged, trying hard to think about what her best friend was asking for, and not really having a clue how to give her anything really. Buffy was so hard to deal with sometimes. She just needed to blow off some steam.

“it just feels like I’m trapped faith.”

“B, listen to me. Just remember: we build our own cages. And if we build ‘em, then we can knock ‘em down too.”

We build our own cages.

~ ~ ~

and we do. Everything we do in our lives, leads us to the point we’re at right now. We make our own choices, and sometimes they’re the good ones, and sometimes they’re the bad ones. But it’s really all our own doing. We just don’t know which of our choices is gonna be a good one, or a bad one.

So with the wingsm the animal that in her mind, would always represent faith to her, she’d also had those words inscribed into her skin.

In the perfect memorial to her beautiful raven haired friend.


Continued Next in: Trespass