So Damn Domestic

The Same Night. FPOV


They’re keeping something from me, I know they are. I may be a lot of things but stupid isn’t one of them. I know when someone isn’t telling me something that I should know. Ok, so maybe I have been tricked in the past what with the whole Angel pretending to lose his soul and tricking me into believing he was working for me, but I’m different now, and Red is just really easy to read. Both her and Giles. They’ve been researching for the last couple of hours. After my slayer healing did enough to keep me conscious I told Willow what the demon looked like, how strong it was, and that it was male. I even drew her a little picture, nothing too detailed because my arms feel like they’re gonna fall off but it was good enough for them to find the thing. But now they’re not telling me something and I really wish they’d knock it the fuck off.


“Mama?” I jump a little at the whispered voice. I wasn’t expecting it, and I really wish she’d just go back to bed. She shouldn’t see me like this, she shouldn’t have to be around all of this tension. This is exactly why me and B can’t move to Ohio and help run the slayer school because our kids would suffer too much because of it. I try to roll over onto my side but the pain in my leg forces me to stay on my back. I do look at her though, and she looks so small. She looks scared too, like she wants to run away, run back to bed and hide under the covers and pretend like she never saw me like this. At least that’s what I want to do right now. Hide under the covers and pretend like all of this isn’t happening. Like my wife isn’t in the hands of some scary ass demon. Like I almost didn’t die in the line of duty.


“Hey baby,” I whisper and she inches a little closer. “What are you doin up? It’s way passed your bedtime.” She looks down at her little bare feet but then she looks up at me with a little pout on her face. I don’t think she’s ever looked more like Buffy then she does right now. And the sight is completely breaking my heart. I get tears in my eyes, and I blink them back. Crying isn’t going to do me any good. Finding out what the fuck is going on will do me some good. I need a solution to this fucked up problem. I need to know how to make it better. She inches a little closer to me and she still looks scared as hell. It’s making feel even more helpless then I was a couple minutes ago. My wife was taken by a demon and there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m the reason my baby girl is scared. Yeah, I feel really peachy right now.


“Mama, what hurt you?” her voice is so soft, like she thinks if she talks too loud it’ll hurt me more. My eyes tear up a little more but I hold them back. The last thing she needs right now is seeing me break down. That’ll probably scar her for life or something. Then again, she’s only three so I’m sure she won’t be able to remember any of this when she’s older. Here’s hopin. I sigh a little bit and she keeps inching towards me. I don’t want to tell her the truth. I don’t want to tell her that a demon did this because I’m afraid that she’ll panic every time me and B go patrolling after this. That until she forgets all this ever happened, she’ll remember the time she saw her mama lying in a bed beat to hell and she’ll freak out thinking it’ll happen again. But I can’t lie to her. I can downplay the fuck out of it but I can’t lie.


“A demon, baby. I big, bad demon did. I’m gonna be ok. See?” I sit up a little bit and force myself not to wince because of the pain. She steps a little closer and now she’s about a foot away from the bed. I reach my hand out and she just looks at it. She has this strange expression on her face, like she’s never seen a hand before. It makes me smile a very small and short lived smile. When she slowly reaches for my hand I expect her to hold onto it, so I can wrap my fingers around her tiny hand and pull her a little closer to me. But she doesn’t do that.


She gently grips onto my thumb and slowly turns my hand over so she can see the back of it. It’s swollen and bruised and there’s some dried blood where the cut was. She slowly traces all of the bumps and the bruises with the tips of her fingers, very softly, not causing pain but not lessening the pain already there. If she wasn’t only three feet tall, had brown curly hair, and light brown eyes then I’d swear she was Buffy. The expression on her face, the gentleness of her touch...it all just screams Buffy and I don’t know if I can handle that right now. But right now isn’t about me, it’s about her and making sure she isn’t scared, or panicked or worrying. Because she’s just a kid, her biggest concern should be figuring out how to con me into giving her some chocolate.


I feel something that I’ve never felt before, at least not regarding my children. I feel guilty. Guilty for having them. Guilty for brining them into this world, guilty for being one of their mothers. I feel guilty because I know this isn’t going to be the last time one of us gets hurt. We’re slayers, it’s our job to hunt down the demons and vampires and make sure that the world stays safe. It’s our job to not live in ignorance to all of the evil in this world. And we brought children into that. Innocent children, and instead of worrying how to con me into giving her some chocolate or letting her stay up with me, or letting her watch TV at this late hour, she’s worrying about a demon who beat me to a bloody pulp. And she knows that Buffy isn’t here, because she knows that if Buffy were here she’d be at my side taking care of me. She’s slowly figuring it out. I can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she connects all the dots. I want to keep her from talking, I want to stop her from asking the question that I know she’s going to ask. But I can’t because I can’t lie to her.


“Did the demon hurt Mommy?” Ok, wasn’t expecting that. I want to lie to her. I want to tell her that no the demon didn’t hurt Mommy, that Mommy had to go see aunt Dawn but she’ll be back later. I want to tell her that everything is ok, that my slayer healing will make me all better and we don’t have anything to worry about. I want her to stay in the dark. I don’t want her to be in the know. I don’t want her to know that the demon took Buffy, and that she might not come back. I don’t want her to know that her once happy family might be broken forever. Because in the dark there might be fear, and she’s feeling it right now. I can see it in her eyes that she’s afraid. But in the dark there’s also hope. I don’t want to be the one to rip that from her. I don’t want to be the one that takes away that shred of hope. I come up with something to say. Not a lie but not the whole truth. I look into her eyes and she starts to tear up because I’ve been quiet for a lot longer then I should have been. I take in a little breath and open my mouth.


“Faith I need to- Addison, what are you doing up?” Thank God! Saved by the redhead. I may not be able to lie to my little girl, but Red can. Dishing out little lies to instill hope is just what the Scoobies do. How many times in the past have they said something to Dawn to try and make her believe that everything would be ok even though the situation seemed completely hopeless? Don’t worry, I’ll wait. I watch Red take control of the situation. She tells Addy that she needs to talk to me about some grown up stuff and Addy fights her at first but I give her a little stern look and she lets Willow usher her back to bed. She doesn’t worry about me getting offended that she’s telling my baby what to do. She saw the desperate look in my eyes when she walked into the room when I was about to tell Addy that the demon didn’t hurt Mommy, but Mommy is still trying to fight it. What? That isn’t a total lie. Buffy won’t give up fighting until she’s tied up, knocked unconscious, or killed.


Now that Addy is gone and I don’t have anything else to focus my mind on, it’s right back to where it was before, and again I know that I’m being kept in the dark. As a human I want to be kept in the dark because that’s where the hope is. But as a slayer I need to be in the know. I have to know everything about a situation no matter how bad it is so I can help find a solution. But the human side of me is screaming to be left in the dark on this one. My slayer side is stronger. It’s always stronger. I have to know what’s going on. I have to do know they’re keeping from me. Even if all my hope for getting Buffy back alive is shattered. I have to know because I can’t stand not knowing. It hurts more then the shattered leg, and the internal bleeding, and the broken hands, and the broken ankle, and the sore neck and all of the other physical injuries the demon inflicted on me.


I hear Willow talking to Giles. I can’t hear what they’re saying because they’re whispering and my slayer hearing isn’t that good. I have a feeling it’s about me though. Or what they’re going to say to me when they come in here. I hate that I can’t just walk in there and demand that they tell me. I hate that I have to lay here like some fuckin loser and wait for them to come to me. I abso-fucking-lutely hate this. There’s nothing I can do about it and I hate that there’s nothing I can do about it. So I sit here in the dark, literally. The only light in the room is the light shining in from the other room. I don’t want the lights on in here because my head still hurts from getting slammed up against a tree really fucking hard. I hear Giles raise his voice a little bit and it surprises me, but at the same time it doesn’t. Over the years he’s been like a dad to me, and I guess he’s just trying to protect me from whatever knowledge they have. But I guess Red won the argument because here she is standing at the door looking worried.


“We need to talk,” she says and I nod my head. She sits down at the foot of the bed, a book in her hand and she rests it on her lap. It’s opened to a certain page, the one on the right side has been dog eared and it makes me wonder if that’s the thing that Giles got pissed about. He really cares about those books. The tension that builds in the room is almost tangible. I open my mouth to speak but she interrupts. “The demon that you fought is called a Ferreus demon. It’s Latin, it means ‘made of iron’. It’s skin is like an exoskeleton, it takes a lot to injure it with force. You’re lucky to be alive.” Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just tell me about Buffy. I just I thought that loud enough because she sighs, like she read my mind or something. The look on her face is not a happy one.


“And here’s where the luck runs out.” She pauses and it’s pissing me off because I know this is the part that they were fighting about. This is the part about Buffy. “This explanation is going to sound pointless but it’s important.” I try not to sigh too heavy. This sounds like it could be long and I just want to know where the fuck my wife is. “A Ferreus demon is not only tough on the outside but it’s genetics are also very strong.” And I need to know this because...? “It doesn’t matter what else they...breed with, the offspring always comes out one hundred percent Ferreus demon. And for some reason, because of that all of the offspring are born male. When these demons go in search of a...mate they find something that is strong enough to carry one of their offspring, something that can take the physical stress of it.” I’m getting a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, almost like my insides are rotting.


“They also need something with a flexible womb because the babies grow very large very fast.” I am not liking this at all. She sighs and shifts around on the bed a little bit. She won’t meet my intense gaze. She refuses to look up from the bedspread. “Because Buffy is a slayer her body can take the stress of carrying one of these things. And because she’s carried two babies, one of them pretty recently, her womb is flexible enough to hold one of these things.” I see the tear force its way out of her eye, and then snake its way down her cheek, and finally it reaches her chin. It rests on the end of it for a few seconds and falls. It lands on the bedspread and darkens the fabric with it’s wetness. I’m focusing so much on that tear so I don’t have to focus on what she just told me. But now that the tear has been absorbed by the comforter there’s nothing else to focus on but this ugly truth.


“So that thing carried her off, took her back to some secret layer and is raping her right now?” I have to ask. It would have been wrong not to ask. My voice is nothing but venom. Nothing but anger and hatred and I so need to hit something right now. I need to get this out before it kills me, gives me a heart attack or something. Willow looks up at me so fast that if I didn’t have slayer eyesight I wouldn’t have seen her head move. Her eyes are wide and she’s shaking her head back and forth. She also looks a little guilty for not explaining something. I guess there is some silver lining to this horrible, black cloud.


“No, no it’s not raping her. See, there’s steps that need to be taken, rituals that need to be performed to make her body ready. The first thing it’s going to do is force her to swallow a tonic, the book didn’t list the ingredients.” Like I care. “But it does say that the tonic is a very powerful aphrodisiac. It has to make her body want sexual intercourse or the other rituals won’t work.” So not only has this thing taken my wife away from me, but it’s going to make her want to fuck it? I almost want to laugh that sounds so ridiculous. Buffy would never fuck some evil demon. At least not again. And this thing isn’t even a vampire with bleach blonde hair, and a stupid accent. So we should be safe. I ask Red how long the other rituals will take. From what she’s said this thing won’t touch her until all those are done.


“It doesn’t specify exactly how long each of them take, but my best guess is five hours. It just depends on when it made her drink the tonic, because it has to wait three hours for that to set in before it can start the others. So, that’s eight hours. But we don’t know if it’s given her the tonic yet. We don’t even know if they’ve reached the demon’s layer or not. It could be starting on the first ritual right now.” Her face drops a little bit, so I ask the question that she doesn’t want to answer. But she does because she knows I hate being left in the dark. Even though at this point I really wish I was still there. “It has to brand her with the mark.” She holds up the book so I can see. It’s almost like a three d triangle or something. “It uses a needle and some homemade ink, and it’ll tie her down so it can tattoo it on her lower back.” Damn, she’s gonna be pissed about that. I can almost see the angry look on her face. It makes me want to smile, but I don’t.


“Find her,” I say, and I don’t recognize my own voice that’s how much anger is in it. I don’t think I’ve ever been this fucking angry. Ever. “Call as many slayers as you can to make a search party, do a spell, get back into the dark shit if you have to. Just find her!” I scream and I think my voice box just snapped. My throat hurts so bad from all the screaming I’ve done tonight. Red jumps off the bed and leaves the room. I guess she’s taking my words to heart because I just heard her give Sky the job of hunting down as many slayers as she can. I guess Red is going to keep herself busy working on a spell. I heard her talking to Giles earlier about a locator spell. She tried, it failed. Something about a magical cloak that she can’t get passed.


But I don’t give a fuck about any of that. They are going to find her before that thing lays a hand on her. I don’t care how many people I have to kill to get her back, how many demons I have to torture to find the location of that thing’s home. We will get her back. And even after all that Red just told me, all of the hope that she ripped away from me, I still have a feeling like they’re keeping something from me. Like the rituals and the raping is just the half of it. But I’m letting my human side win for a change. I want to be left in the dark on this for just a little longer. Because I don’t think I could handle any more bad news right now.