The Taken Series

Nothing's Changed
A/N: "Why do you keep coming back?"

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I felt myself being lowered to my bed. Crumpled sheets from the afternoon when I had woken up, bunching beneath my weight, pressing into my face. The harsh material of not at all expensive bed clothes scratching against my skin, giving me something physical to focus on, instead of the humiliation I already felt. Coupled with the fact that I'd just been carried to a bed, staggeringly drunk. Again.

I had returned to the bar I had first been found in. this time not so much focusing on the stale bitterness of my surrounds, but more on the number of whiskey bottles I had lined and emptied along the bar. In my drunken haze I can recall giggling as I counted to six and then lost count.

I hardly stopped for breath as I slammed glass after glass full of the cold burning liquid down my throat. Slayer healing be damned. I was getting drunk. So drunk, in fact, that I wouldn't have been able to find my way home again, even if a map came up and hit me.

As I starred down into my tumbler, swilling the alcohol within the glass, I suddenly found myself sobering up. No, the irony of what I had intended to do to myself wasn't lost on me. Drowning myself into oblivion, choking off my mind with cheap whiskey that was far too expensive in a dump like this.

They always say you turn out to be your mother.

And despite the fact that Buffy had finished the job my mother so kindly didn't get chance to finish, I didn't want to become her. I knew that road; I've seen where it leads. I placed my glass back onto the bar, resting my elbows in a large puddle of indescribable ale and held my head in my hands. I doubt I've wanted to be so sober in my life.

And a part of me just couldn't help but desperately want her to come rescue me again. I'd fight her; I'd push her away. I'd scream for her to leave me alone. But I wouldn't mean it. I'd let her drag me out of here, probably literally. Follow drunkenly as I stumbled behind her in my effort to stand up straight as she led me home.

But the longer I sat there, forcing myself to sober up, compelling those little mystical parts of me to do their work and start to make me as close to me as they could get me, the more I realised that she wouldn't be coming again. The last time I left her, I had the distinctive and painful notion that it would be the last time she let me close a door to her.

I wondered when metaphors became so real, so physical.

And then came the anger. She used me, she stole from me. And now she had left me? Given up and walked away. Wasn't I good enough her her to care just a little bit longer? Did she care if she never saw me again? Did I?

I threw a bundle of notes on the bar top, idly wondering if the bar girl would mind fishing the wet and now dripping dollars out of a pond of beer. Or would she just grab them in her haste to get paid and get the hell out of the place? I knew what I would do if I was her.

I dragged my body from its stool, barely aware that my legs and arms still refused to sober up as fast as my mind did, and started to slowly walk away. I promised myself I wouldn't come back here, and try to kill myself in alcohol. But a part of me knew I was lying. Anything was better than the pain I seemed to go through without it.

I hated going to sleep. Because for those few precious moments, when the mind wasn't fully awake, I forgot. I could live in the world were nothing had ever happened, where her betrayal didn't haunt me. I would smile, and reach across my bed in a stretch. But then I would open my eyes, and another wave of grief would crash over me, so much more painful than the first.

Pummelling me with flashes of that forgotten night, of tastes and touches and sounds of the night I can actually remember. I could physically feel my heart ripping into smaller, more un-fixable pieces every single time I woke up. And with the stale taste of whiskey and smoke in my mouth, I would weep. Curl up into a foetal position and sob. My body shuddering with their force as they poured their way out of my body.

I would cry until my lungs burned and my chest heaved, eyes stinging from the salt that accompanied the water as my tears fell. My pillow would be wet, my cheeks red and blotchy, and an itch of agony buried so deep within my chest, I would try to scratch it out of me, numbly recognising the blood as it dripped out of the wounds my nails left behind.

I stumbled, catching myself on a near by street lamp and looking upwards, trying to figure out where the hell I was, until I recognised the house I stood before. Odd that my body will always remember the one place I was drinking to forget. And all the memories that came with that house. That room. That bed. Her face.

I staggered around the side of the house, unnervingly remembering exactly how to climb that tree, with an ease born from many nights sneaking back into her house after a patrol. Or simply for the hell of it, to scare to to keep her company. To keep her awake with endless hours of movies and video games. To grin as she remembered she had to wake early the next day.

Her window was open slightly, and I froze as I saw her. Back turned away from me as she slumbered peacefully in her comforter. Cocooned in a kind of place I had once hoped I would always find. Pity the person I hoped to find it with turned out to be just as bad as the person who broke me in the first place.

I shunted the window open, dropping one booted foot inside and completely misjudging the distance to the floor. I stumbled forwards, cracking my forehead on the window frame and falling face first on the floor. My elbow smashed against the side of her bed and I swore, harshly. Loudly. Not caring if she woke up and heard me.

"Faith?" her voice was leaden with sleep, shocked, tired and confused at her pull from sudden peace.

I grunted at her, trying to put my hands beneath me to push myself off the floor again. I couldn't seem to make them move, a stab of pain shooting down my left arm when I attempted to do so. So I stayed there. My cheek pressed into her carpet, my eyes open and starring at the sweater she had dumped on the floor near the door.

”What.. what are you doing here?" I could here her shoving the comforter away from her and shuffling over towards the edge of the bed. Did I want her to see me like this? No. Was she going to? Yes. She slowly pushed her hands underneath my armpits, gently tugging me to sitting, before shifting me in her arms and pulling me to sit on the edge of the bed. My head fell forward, my chin touching my chest as I sat there, feeling her so close to me, and yet knowing exactly how far away she was.

I slumped forward, my elbows on my knees and I pushed my fingers into my hair, pulling it away from my face as I focused on the floor and held my now throbbing head in my heads. Yes, I was a mess. I could even smell the alcohol and smoke on myself. And something much less appealing to my self-destructive nature, that was perhaps the smell of the bar itself: dark, musty, musky and mouldy.

"Are you ok?" her voice broke into my thoughts, her hand landing gently on my back and she leaned forward, attempting to see my face. I shot upwards, launching myself to my feet and clenching my fists at my sides.

"This is your fault." I whispered in a harsh, forced voice. Tears straining at the back of my throat as I starred at myself in the mirror. That person, that broken, bloody and disgusting person reflected back at me, wasn't in fact a stranger. Like I had been hoping all my life. But me. For the first time, I could see what anyone else saw. I saw the rage, the wild side, the bitch and the slut. I saw the pain I could cause, and the agony I could infuse in people.

For the first time, I could see the mask. The one I hid behind so very well. The one that had made B think she could play me, could use me. Is this what everyone else saw? I knew it was.

And I hated her just a little bit more.

"Wha..?"

"This is *your* fault!" I screamed, turning around and finally looking at her. My anger ebbing slightly as I saw her confused look, her bed tangled hair and pink pyjamas. "All of this! If you had just left me alone, none of this would be happening to me!"

I was being irrational, I was being hurtful. I was screaming and waking up her sister. I knew. I didn't care. If she was feeling even just a little bit of what I was, then it'd all be worth it. All those nights spending hard earned cash on shitty whiskey that tasted like cats piss anyway, all those tears wasted and burned away to nothing. All those walls which now have a good few holes in them. All of that, would be worth it. If only she'd feel what I was feeling right now.

"You came here to tell me that?" she stood, crossing her arms over her chest as she looked at me. The slightly hostile look in her eyes pissing me off more, surging my body with adrenaline.

"If you haven't noticed B, I seem to be drowning here." I turned my head away, feeling that lump rise a little higher in my throat, feeling those tears burning my eyelids as I swallowed. Why was I whispering? Why was I being quiet? I came here to hurt her. I came here to make her feel what I was feeling. "I'm drowning…" a tear spilled over as I looked back at her "…and you just don't seem to care."

I raised my hands to my face, covering my features as a sob ranked my body. I could feel her eyes on me, her arms dropping from in front of her chest as she watched on, helpless as I dropped to my knees and sat back on my feet. My sobs coming thick and fast now as I felt the burning humiliation of simply just being there. Of staying there. Of *wanting* to stay there.

I felt her walk over to me, kneeling in front of me and not being able to tare her eyes away. I could feel her want to hold me. To reach out and pull me into her arms and hold me there. But I could also feel the fear. The fear of me pushing her away again, of telling her something else that cut her right to the core and left her naked from within.

But she did anyway. Held me close and whispered softly into my ear as I wept away a lifetimes worth of pain, triggered by her betrayal of me. Pulling me up to my feet and slowly walking me down her stairs, when I'd cried too much and not enough. Becoming silent as the tears continued to fall but my body refused to work the way I wanted it to. She led me home, fishing my keys out of my pocket, opening my door. Closing it behind us.

Taking off my jacket and laying me down softly on the bed. Taking care to remove my boots and put them near the dresser next to the wall. Taking the blanket off the back of the sofa and draping it over me, tucking a stray piece of behind my ear and giving me a lasting look as she started back across my apartment.

"Why do you keep coming back?" I whispered, halting her from walking out of the now open front door. I could see her out of the corner of my eye as she turned and looked at me, saying nothing for such an extended length of time, I thought she would calmly point out to me that this time, she didn't come to me at all.

"I want to help put you back together again."

Her soft words hung in the air long after she'd closed the door behind her.


Conitinued Next in: Revoke