The Taken Series

Vociferous
A/N: "I didn't have any dignity. So she took mine"

~ ~ ~

I remember these sheets, this bed, this room. My mind holds on to and pulls in the gentle smell of shampoo as it lingers over the pillow I find my head resting on. But I find no comfort in my surroundings, no peace at the memories that have risen within. Only mind numbing pain that is far too much for my conscious body to deal with.

My eyes stare blankly ahead, seeing the dresser from a side angle and detachedly wondering how weird it looked. The smiling faces of the people in those photographs seemingly mocking me from their distorted resting places, even myself as I smirked at the unseen camera. The faded pastel wallpaper reminded me of lazy nights watching movies or playing video games on the tv I knew was stood in the opposite corner of the room, all bringing those lost tears to my eyes once more. Like they have so many times in the last month.

The muscles in my neck strained against the almost physical need to close my eyes against those little droplets of salty water, to hold them inside, to lock them back away where no one could ever witness them. But if I closed my eyes, the person I could feel laying a distance away from me, would stab me to death in my sleep.

At least emotionally. Or maybe I'd already been to sleep, and had awoken to find some more trust in them, as I gave them the only side I was never comfortable in showing someone: my back. The one side someone could hurt me from the most.

But no, I know for a fact I haven't been to sleep yet.

It's funny now that my mind remembers all the drunken details, but on the night it matters the most: it abandons me to hurt.

The stale a wholly disgusting floor of the trash dive I found myself in: spilled alcohol making the floor sticky and a sickly brown color. The souls of my boots making a velcro sort of sound as I pulled them up to walk another step forwards.

In my sober state at the time, I refused to even touch the mahogany bar as I called out my drink order to the girl behind the barrier. Almost afraid to find out what kind of putrid liquid would be covering my arm in a thick layer of what you could mistake for cooking oil. Bowls of peanuts and pretzels lining the bar like soldiers. Protecting the innocent, and I use that word lightly, bar staff from drunken, groping hands of men far too gone to realise they have wives and kids waiting for them at home.

I remember the look of surprise as a girl with dirty blonde hair came to serve me, probably at the fact that I was sober enough to have a look of utter disgust and distain fixed over my features, to even notice the scum lining the walls and spilling over onto the floors.

But I didn't care. It was the nearest bar I could find. One offering those without morals enough cheap alcohol to drown whatever sorrows they might have, in hopes of numbing the pain of living and blurring the harshness of the reality around them.

I'd need a river to drown myself in.

One bottle, two bottles. Three. Enough alcohol to render those around me into oblivion and possibly land half of them in hospital while they were at it. But just enough to lower my guard of wanting to stay as clean as I could possibly get. At least physically. And get me to sit on one of the bar stood, my elbow leaning against the wood of the bar as I slammed back shot after shot of foul smelling whiskey.

I remember that I only ever had to fend off one greasy, over weight guy, who thought he was romeo incarnate, and that was towards the end of the night. When my attitude of pure danger had washed away slightly, leaving only a broken girl in it's wake. The beginning of the night had found me not being asked for i.d and no one coming anywhere near me, as my very pores seemed to be leaking the feel of my power. And even if you don't know what a slayer is, you can still feel pure, undulating power when you step near it.

I even remember the feel of the bar as my forehead lay upon it. Tacky, sticky, with a smell so deeply disgusting, if I hadn't worked so damn hard to get all that alcohol inside of me, I would have thrown it all up again by now. But I swallowed deeply, breathing through my mouth as my eyes looked at the floor. Broken pieces of pretzels and flecks of beer bottle labels scattering the wooden surface.

My eyes focused on a single peanut, as it lay broken in a river of yellow liquid that ran along side the bar. I gasped as I felt another lump rise in my throat, this one not from the smell of the surface beneath me. I pulled air heavily into my lungs as I lifted my head; feeling the skin stick to the bar as I pulled away slightly, putting my left arm where my head was and laying it back down again.

I closed my eyes, blocking out the sight of the place I'd come to find myself in, trying to send the alcohol raging in my system to my brain to wipe the images of her betrayal and my personal revenge, however petty the word, from my mind. But finding myself being able to think of nothing else. Images twisting in front of my eyes, creasing where they ran over the edge of the river of beer, puckering as they lay over disguarded food bits.

The feel and taste of her skin becoming fresh in my mouth, the musky sent of her arousal blocking out the must of the bar surrounding me. The heat I felt as I watched her mouth drop open in a small o of ecstasy flooding my body and causing the fist, that belong to the arm I was resting my head on, tense in painful reminders of the wall I had beaten half to death on my way here.

I gasped again, releasing the breath I didn't even know I was holding, only to find my tears so much more closer to the surface, wavering before silently falling out of my eyes and splashing into the river below. Harpooning upwards in little crowns of intermingled beer and salty water. They almost looked as if they were praying; as I suddenly become fascinated by the personal rainstorm I was creating myself. Reaching up towards a higher power to make the pain wash away.

Like they were praying to me.

But I tried. I tried so damn hard to make it all go away. I tried to kill the pain by handing her back her betrayal on a silver plate. But only succeeded in bringing myself more. More pain than I have ever felt before. Because even though I knew what she'd done, even if my body remembered, my mind couldn't. It was supposed to make it easier to walk away. But my mind and emotions contradicted themselves, making me want to have what I couldn't remember.

You can't miss, what you can't remember. But you will forever crave what you find yourself having had.

How could I possibly try to walk away now, that I know what she feels like beneath me? How she reacts to my hands as they trace every single curve of her body. How her lips feel as they dance in a long forgotten dance with mine. Her tongue brushing against mine in a certain way that would have made my knees bend and buckle beneath me, had I not already been led down.

I watched as the tears continued to fall, I felt as the pain washed away the blur of most of the alcohol, leaving me with just a soft buzz where I had once been so drunk I doubt I would have been able to walk. I listened as I sat there, hearing the vociferous swearing of a guy who'd just lost all his remaining money in a pool game.

I could consciously tell the time by how many tears had fallen, by how much less drunk I was feeling in mind. No amount of slayer powers would have gotten rid of the bodily effects of the drink I had consumed. But the main purpose was for me to drink myself so blind, I wouldn't have to watch those images and memories play back in front of me as I cried and distorted the pictures for a few seconds.

I hadn't cried in years. I have lived through my mother beating me for no good reason at all. I lived through my father leaving because she got too much for him to handle. I lived through watching her make my brother leave the house. And in all that time, I had never cried. But this, now, right here, reliving the memories of utter betrayal and heart break, to my own twisted version of payback, to my own denial of the goodness I could have had in my life, made all those tears burst free.

I cried for an hour, I cried for an eternity. I don't remember.

What I do remember is the exact moment that I felt her. I could see her, in my minds eye, as she walked almost hesitantly through the doorway, her eyes flickering over the crowd as she searched, obviously for me. Or maybe some demon to pummel. Was she really there for me? Who knows. But she saw me.

Hunched over the bar, my head resting on my arm as I tried to ignore her very presence. As I forced myself not to sit up and watch her as she walked over to me. I could feel her standing there, wrestling with the idea of reaching out and touching me. Waves of fright reaches across the air to me in tides as she watched me, waiting for some sign that she knew I was there.

Should she reach out and touch me? Should she just call my name? Would I even answer her if I did? I could almost hear what she was thinking, without ever having to hear her speak them out loud. If only she hadn't have stood in the place she had. Her image was reflecting in the river of beer into which I had found myself crying. She hair tied back in a hazardous knot as she chewed her bottom lip and watched the back of my head.

She reached out to me, my body being far to full of whiskey to flinch away from her like I would have done, had I been sober. Instead I toppled
to the opposite side, causing her to grab me around the waist and haul me upwards. Off my stool and backwards into her body. I tried to hold on to the tears again, tried to hold that sob back.

But my body betrayed me. My knees fell out from under me as the pressure of almost unbearable pain crushed my chest and my body heaved with the force of that sob. I was prepared to fall to my knees and wail, but her arms around me prevented me from doing so.

She slowly walked me out of the bar, throwing a glare back at the bar girl as if it was her fault I had gotten into the state I was in. but I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember was opening my eyes to the scene before me. Of knowing I was in B's bedroom, of feeling her laid behind me on the other side of the bed, her hand crooked under her head as she watched me.

And I knew that she could feel the moment I woke up. But she didn't say anything, and I never moved, or offered her a single word. I just led there. Perhaps hoping she would fall asleep, giving me the chance to walked out of her room without having to see her watching me with those silently pleading eyes for me to stay.

But I knew she wouldn't.

"She used to hit me." The words rang out across the eerily silent room, and for a moment I was shocked at them, wondering who would break the silence, and only realising it was me as I felt B tense up on the bed behind me. "When dad left, she blamed me. And my brother. And she hit us. Used to call us twisted. That little line scar on my cheek is from when she hit me with her ring on."

I could feel the waves of anger rolling from B's body, feel the bedclothes pucker as her fist grabbed them as she held her arm away from touching me. I didn't know where the words were coming from; I didn't even know why I was telling her. I've never told anyone. But she was always different from everyone else I've ever met.

"She didn't have any dignity. So she took mine. She *stole* mine." Maybe that was the point: I thought B was different. And maybe now she needed to know why she cut me more deeply than anything when she took from me what she did. Maybe she needed to know why she was now like everyone else.

I let my words sink in, before I carefully pulled my legs off the edge of the bed and sat up. Grabbing my disguarded jacket from beside the bed and slowly pulling it on. And not finding it ironic that I was now completely sober and found my hand to be aching in that deep seated way that only a brick wall could ever make you feel.

I stood without a word, walked to the word without looking at her, and opened it. My hand resting on the doorknob as I looked at the floor in front of me. The world was once again in full, startling technicolor and I could feel my surroundings as if I was born knowing every molecule of everything around me. The cool feel of the brass door handle beneath my hand, the soft rushing sound of the water running through the pipes. The very low humming noise of the radio alarm on Buffy's bedside table.

"Well done Buffy. You did the only thing she never managed to do. I hope you're very proud of yourself."

I heard a sob escape her lips as I pulled her door shut quietly behind me.


Conitinued Next in: Nothing's Changed