Inner Walls

ACT III: Pain


***


"Buffy..."


Jessy did not sleep. She could not stop thinking of Faith's body who was fidgeting in her sleep above her. For five minutes she had been hearing her turning over in her bed and moaning, muttering continuously a single name. Buffy.

She rose and watched her. Faith was sweating and her face was expressing intense distress. Her fists were clenched, her jaws tense and her body trembled now and again.

Jessy resolved to put an end to her nightmare.


"Faith!", she called shaking her arm.


"Buffy..."


"No, it's Jessy, wake up! You're having a nightmare, wake up!"


Faith opened her eyes. She no longer knew where she was and her gaze seemed to be lost, scared. With a tanttant hand, Jessy pushed aside the locks of hair sticking to her face by sweat.


I'm dead...


Jessy continued to caress her face trying to soothe this tormented gaze that was fixing her. No, that was passing through her, Jessy corrected herself. A gaze still near madness. A gaze leant over the void. Her hand was getting lost in the long dark curls, slowly, gently. It moved lower, on her arm, hardly touching the skin, then up, brushing the lips with her fingers, drawing forms on this face that began to relax.

Jessy was containing her lust, her desire to accentuate her caresses and this forced smoothness was almost painful. She wanted to touch these breasts under the tank top, this muscular belly, these long legs which had stopped shaking, she wanted to take her into her arms, reassure her, make her forget for a while the pain she felt everywhere inside her.

When Jessy met Faith's look again, she realized it was no longer blank and that she was staring at her intently. She removed her hand at once.


"I'm sorry..."


"Why?"


"I..."


Jessy could not end her sentence. Faith had sat up and had gripped her tee-shirt pulling her to her. She took her by her nape and lifted her literally with her other hand, making her climb on the bed. Jessy did not have the time to be surprised at this incredible strength. Faith had lain down on her back and had dragged her in her movement, kissing her violently and hugging her tightly. Their added desires, their common frustrations met at last in this feverish embrace of their eager bodies.

Jessy rolled off the tank top discovering what she had wanted to touch so much but also revealing a terrible scar on the tanned skin of Faith's belly. She hesitated for an instant then continued to slide down her hands on the breasts, on the scarred belly, then even lower until she finally plunged her face between the long legs which started to tremble again.

Faith threw her head back and closed her eyes.


Buffy...


Buffy's image had imposed itself again in her mind but this time it had taken Jessy's place like a fantasy repressed for too long. The frustration had been so strong that Faith felt the pleasure coming too fast, too abruptly, a great wave overwhelming her suddenly, making her arch, and she muffled her cry in the sheets.


Buffy...


Jessy went up to her level and kissed her. Faith had kept her eyes shut relng Bng Buffy's fake image, imagining that the tongue insinuating in her was the other Slayer's, like she had dreamt of it, hoped it so many times, and also like she desperately knew that it was not her, that it could never be her.

She opened her eyes. Jessy was observing her.


I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...


The disappointment, the renewed frustration aroused in her a new wave of violent and morbid impulses.

Faith stood up, turned Jessy on her back and hiding her own face in her neck to conceal her change of mood, began to make love to her. But her gestures had become mechanical, cold, impersonal. As Jessy's moans were invading her mind, Faith tried to pull herself together and to persuade herself that she was hearing Buffy's voice, that her hand was touching the blonde Slayer's body, that she was giving pleasure to her. But there was nothing to do. She did not feel the unbearable burn, the fire in her belly and her sex when Buffy touched her, the electric atmosphere, the intense desire enveloping their meetings, the thrill, the embarrassment, the hesitation and the lust when they looked at each other. She felt nothing. Nothing but frustration and disgust. Disgust of herself, of what she was doing, of this vain sexual mechanics that she could no longer be satisfied with.


I'm gonna tear your throat with my teeth and wallow in your pain...


The disgust of this delightful violence which could take possession of herself at any time and which she did not succeed in getting rid of.

The disgust of the despicable being she had become in the eyes of the only person she had ever loved, those eyes that had condemned her with


satisfaction...


The disgust of this void that overwhelmed her and made her lose consciousness, her eyes wide open onto nothingness.


"Faith..."


The sound of Jessy's voice whispering her name in ecstasy brought her back abruptly to reality, to this sordid reality, to the inevitable outcome of her wasted and pathetic existence, locked up behind the walls of a prison, behind the bars of her sick mind, prisoner of her murderous madness, of her schizophrenia, and forever condemned by a satisfied gaze.

As Jessy let out a last sigh of pleasure, she felt something wet in her neck. Faith was weeping silently, destroyed by this moment of cruel lucidity, devastated by this unbearable sudden awareness, her tears running down freely, slowly, like the ultimate relief of her alienating frustration.


***


The two women stayed silent, immobile, Jessy holding Faith tight in her arms, waiting for the tears to dry up, not daring to speak, not knowing what to say anyway. Faith remained an enigma for her. She had perceived her absent-mindedness, her gestures without passion, without tenderness, her disinterest. She had felt hurt, humiliated. Then she had understood that Faith would stay elusive, that her mind had been closed again, that it would remain tortured and incomprehensible. She had understood that Faith felt nothing for her, that she was not the object of the brunette's desire, not because of herself but simply because Faith could not feel anything, because she had forbidden herself to feel any other emotions than this inner violence passing through her gaze. Jessy wondered against which somber demon of her past she protected herself, what terrible event she could have lived to retreat into indifference, into the refusal of feelings. What had left such a scar in her skin.


"Who's Buffy?"


Jessy's voice had finally pierced the silence.


The Chosen one... The one who has been chosen to make me suffer, to make me pay. The one who has proved to the world the rotten slut I am, the one who has saved the world from a psycho Slayer...


"How did you hear of her?"


The one who has condemned me...


"You've been saying her name for several nights..."


The one who has killed me...


"She is... someone I've known..."


The one I've loved...


"Someone close?"


The one who has hated me...


"Less than I wished."


"You loved her?"


I love her...


"Yes."


"And what happened? She knew it?"


You did it B. You killed me...


"I don't know... Maybe..."


"You've never said it to her?"


Never had the courage to confront you on that ground, B...


"No."


Jessy digested Faith's last words letting a heavy silence fall down again for some time. It seemed impossible to convince Faith to open up more. Her answers were laconic, her reticence palpable.


"How did you get this scar?"


You did it B...


"A fight... that turned out badly..."


"A knife?"


My knife...


"Yes."


"Who did it?"


Faith got free of Jessy's hug and turned her back on her.


"Her.", she finally said closing her eyes.


Jessy knew there was no use insisting henceforth. Whatever may have happened between, these two women, she would not know more of it. Faith would keep her truth inside her like a much more painful scar than that which marked her belly.

Jessy turned round on the other side and fell asleep.


***


Faith was awakened by the sound of the gate being opened. The guard cast a glance inside the cell and gave a slight smile when she saw the two women in the same bed.

When she went away, Faith climbed down her bed and took her toilet bag. Silently she headed for the showers.

Several prisoners had come in before her and the water vapor had created an opaque fog in the room. She took her shower making the last traces of last night disappear, the last shreds of guilt she had felt when she had slept with Jessy.

As she was getting dressed, she heard women laughing and speaking loud amid the noise of the showers. She did not take notice of it. When she lowered to get her things out, she suddenly felt herself being flung violently against the wall, then two prisoners she did not recognize seized her arms and immobilized her.


"So you cunt, you don't show off any more, do you?" exclaimed Trisha while kicking her in the face.


Faith had been surprised and had not had the time to free herself. Her nose was bleeding and her lip was cut but it not not the worst. She felt that her jaw was broken and the pain was agonizing.


"I told you we'd get even with you."


Trisha kicked her in the face a second time - Faith heard her bones cracking upopactpact - and carried on with a punch in the liver that winded the dark Slayer. She felt she was falling forward but Trisha's colleagues held her back.


"I told you I'd kill you."


Another kick. The blood spurted out on the walls. Faith could not see anymore, she did not feel anything more but pain. It was too late for her to react, she was going to lose consciousness.


"I told you I'd kill you..." repeated Trisha clenching her teeth, her gaze mad with rage.


I'm already dead... So what?


Faith heard a click. Blinded by the blood trickling in her eyes, she did not see the flick-knife held by Trisha. But she did feel the cold blade sinking into her, she felt the familiar sensation of such a particular pain, she felt the blade coming out and thrusting again into the precise place of her scar, like a bad imitation, a fake replica of Buffy's gesture.


What an irony...


The women released her and she slowly slid onto the floor. While holding her belly, the blood running out between her fingers, Faith could not help smiling. All this was only a grotesque parody. Nothing could ever compare to the pain of being crucified by the one you loved. Nothing could ever match the mix of contradictory feelings in Buffy's gaze when she had stabbed her.


You did it B. You killed me...

I'm already dead...


As she had done it before on the roof during this cursed night, Faith looked at her bloody hands then sank into unconsciousness at last.


***


Faith woke up three days later in the prison infirmary. Jessy, worried about the length of her absence, had finally gone to the showers and had found her lying in her blood, unrecognizable, disfigured. The prison doctors were used to receiving prisoners who had been beaten up, and even sometimes to bring back cadavers, but they would never have thought that Faith could have survived after such a loss of blood. Nevertheless Faith had been lucky: the knife blade had reached no vital organs. The doctors diagnosed multiple fractures of the jaw and the nose, two broken ribs, and had to stitch her two orbital archs. To relieve pain, they had injected her with morphine and she had been delirious since waking. They had to tie her up to the bed because, despite her injuries, she had tried to leave and had opened again the wound of her belly they had just stitched. They did not understand where she could find such a strength.

In the prison, an enquiry had been ordered to find the perpetrators of this murder attempt. Obviously everybody knew them but nobody had seen and heard anything. Even Jessy knew that she had to keep silent. The administration was not fooled either: they knew perfectly how the internal law between prisoners worked and had a precise idea of the murderer's identity. But without a witness they remained powerless.

Trisha showed off in the middle of her court, having reaffirmed strongly her domination over the other prisoners, a domination which no longer admitted any dispute. They feared Faith for her violent unpredictability as much as they respected the logic and predictability of the sheer strength embodied by Trisha. With her they knew the possible limits and consequences. With Faith they could never know and it was much more frightening than to go on being under the yoke of Trisha. Order had been restored and the hierarchy respected.

Faith went back to her cell after one week. The doctors did not understand either how the various fractures could have knitted in so little time. The physiology of this woman was beyond them.

Faith did not speak anymore and her eyes were continuously lost in the void, blank. When she had come back, Jessy had tried to ask her had had happened exactly, how she felt, but Faith had immersed herself in muteness not even casting a glance at her. So Jessy had taken her in her arms and had simply hugged her gently. To her surprise, Faith had not pushed her away, merely grimacing with pain when the embrace woke up her wounded ribs, but still giving the impression of not feeling concerned.



*******

To be continued in Act IV