The Taken Series

Revoke
A/N: "Forever's too far away..."

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Silence surrounded us like a dark, black cloud. Ready and waiting, almost willing, to burst forth it's wrath upon us, if even so much as one word was spoken. Tension carried over the airwaves, rippling over my back as I sat on the window ledge and watched the rain as it battered the panes of glass I sat next to.

A distant thought swirled around my head, a question that burned and ached. Willing itself into my concious mind, to spill forth and shatter the silence we sat in, like a baseball bat would shatter glass. It was like a splinter in my mind, slowly driving me mad.

Causing hot, bitter anger to rise to the surface at the apparent uselessness of my memory. It had failed me so many times recently, I wondered if someone had come and stolen it from my body while I slept in a fitfull state of longing and pain.

Before the rain began to fall, I had found myself stood on the street, hands delved deep into my pants pockets as I hunched against the on coming cold. I flickered my gaze towards the sky, feeling a slight wave of sadness wash over me at the absense of the stars above me. Once shinning so brilliantly, so brightly. Now dull and faded as they hid behind the clouds.

Bringing my eyes back towards the building across the street from me, I watched in idle fasination as a burly man with greasy dark hair staggered out of the open doorway, bracing himself against the wall with his hand and steadying himself. I could here him drawing air in deep, rattling breathes, finally cut short as he keeled over in pain and retched so loudly, so painfully, that I winched for him.

But I didn't feel enough sympathy for him, to go and help him stagger home.

Two days ago, I had been that man. Crowding a bar stool with my frame and swallowing cheap whiskey as if it were water. My blurry eyes not registering the grimy, filthy world around me as I attempted to fill my body with enough alcohol to forget. And then maybe remember. Only to finally swallow one mouthful too much, to throw my body out of the stool, slamming through that doorway and emptying the contents of my stomach over the wall just outside the door.

A waft of vomit hit my senses, causing me to reel backwards a step and slam my back into the wall behind me. I swallowed deeply, pushing out the fetid air from my lungs and opening my mouth to breathe. For an instant I was tempted to cover my nose with my hand, to block that smell from ever entering my body again, from causing the bitter taste of acidic bile to rise in the back of my throat.

From a distant place, I could still feel the alcohol I had been trying to kill myself with over the last number of weeks, still lingering inside my body. Swirling through my system with the blood that makes me so very different from anyone but her. I would still wake up in the morning with the foul taste of stale drink on my breath, my head pounding and my stomach turning as it attempted to rid the distructive liquid from my being.

Slayer healing or no, alcohol is like a bad memory. Fading but never quite leaving, lingering around the edges of your mind and senses until one single word can bring it all crashing back to you in full, living technicolor.

A part of me was screaming at me to fight my way past the man who had passed out in a pool of his own vomit, to claim that bar stool once again and to try to drink the lost memories out of me. I knew my logic was seriously flawed, because no matter how much alcohol I was drinking, I could never bring those images and feelings back to me. I now have a different night to remember. One that I caused, one that I stained. One that I broke.

How many times in a life do you think you wish to be able to turn back time, to halt something from happening. To make something different? Countless, endless times have I laid on my bed as a child and wished that someone would grant me the power to do just that. New bruises forming on my arms and chest, cuts drying bloody over my pale legs. A smelly and holey blanket clutched to my chest as I listened to my mother screaming at my brother downstairs.

Silent tears would pour out of my eyes, my body rocking gently back and forth as the words 'I wish' fell in a constant stream from my mouth, lips hardly moving as I prayed for someone to come and save us.

I would jump to hear a loud bang from downstairs, realising that it was the kitchen door slamming shut behind my brothers back as he ran up the stairs. His footfalls slowing and becoming almost silent as he crept towards my bedroom door. To check if I was asleep. He was never dissapointed that I wasn't.

He would come into my room and kneel by my bed. His big hand gently running over my forehead as he told me stories, that it would all be ok sometime soon. I never believed him, but I always listened, wishing once again that it were true. Knowing, that even as a small child, he was protecting me, and taking as much as he could possibly handle, to keep me from being hurt more than I was already.

And when he thought sleep had claimed me, he would carefully pick me up, cradling my small body against his 19 year old frame as he took me into his room. His job letting him have a proper bed with thick, thick comforters and locks on his door. Shelves full of food and drinks lining the wall above his desk, food which he was more than willing to share with me when I became too dizzy with hunger to even stand. He would tuck me up in the far corner of his huge bed, and then climb in after locking up his door and bolting down his window.

I can still remember in avid detail how safe I felt as he gently pulled me into the circle of his arms, whispering to me that he'd protect me, and that someday he would take me away from all this. When he had enough money, when he could run far enough away from her. From the woman whom we were supposed to call 'mother'.

I shattered the day I watched him walk out of that house. His eyes were almost dead, looking at me with a deep sadness tainting the brilliant blackness of his eyes. I could see, in the moments just before she slammed the door in his face, the hopelessness he felt at having to leave me there. His heart breaking into tiny little shreds as it dawned on my face that he had broken his promise.

He would no longer be there to protect me. He wasn't taking me away. He wasn't coming back.

For years afterwards I would still use his room as a safe haven, long after the food on the shelves had rotted and began to smell, years after the comforters that covered that once huge bed began to wear away. If I concentrated enough, I could push the smell of rotten food from my senses, and I could still smell him sometimes. A waft of his hair on the pillow. The sutble sent of his aftersave lingering by the window.

I shook myself out of my thoughts, finding that having my mind wandering over the most painful period of my life, did nothing to ease the pain that I was currently going through. It, in fact, had almost the same effect as my sleeping would have. I would drag myself back to reality, only to find the agony still waiting for me, ready to wrap it's icy fingers around my body again, and squeeze until I thought I would shatter.

"It's a bit late to be hanging around the streets isn't it?" a voice penitrated my conciousness, but I didn't move, simply blinked. I had no idea who it was, but I knew for a fact that I wouldn't be moving, even if someone attempted to drag me away.

"Fuck off."

"Now now pretty girl. That isn't the way to talk to a man." He was stood two foot to my left, leaning against the wall and attempting to act as if he were gods greatest gift to man kind.

"I ain't your type." My voice sounded slightly strained and I cursed myself in mad fad for it. it made me sound like he scared me, like I was afraid of what he might do to my poor, fragile, female body.

"I kinda doubt that." I flickered my gaze towards him for a moment, my eyes taking in the stained and grubby wife beater he wore, dispite the drop in temperature. His black jeans had smudges of paint and dust over then, as if he'd been working on a building site. Dirty blond hair hung in strings over his forehead, and I wondered if the color was due to nature, or that fact that he smelt like he hadn't bathed in weeks.

"You shouldn't. So leave." I looked back towards the doorway of the bar, almost grinning to see the burly guy straining to stand up, his hand clutched to the side of his head as if he'd been bull whipped with a two by four.

"Listen you little…" his words were cut off as he watched a small, delicate looking hand, deeply tanned in the californian sun, slink its way across the front of my chest, just underneath my neck, to hold on to the opposide shoulder. The sent of her hit me like a hammer, causing me to close my eyes and swallow deeply at her near proximity.

Had I been waiting for her to come and find me again? Perhaps. Did I care that she had? I'd like to say no, but a part of me was highly doubting that she would come back again, dispite her confession of late. 'I want to help put you back together'. Her words still rung clearly in my head, and even I couldn't deny the quality of senserity within them.

"Hey baby." Her voice had dropped to a husky, deep level, the words she spoke vibrating through my skull and dropping down my spine at an alarming speed, causing the hair over my arms to stand to attention under the cloth of my jacket. She slowly pressed her body into the left side of mine,
modling her form to fit mine as her other arm came up and around the back of my neck.

I could feel dirty blo's e's eyes on us, as she manuvered her body more in front of me, so he could get a damn good look at exactly why he wasn't my type. Almost without thought, my hands pulled themselves from my pockets and wrapped themselves around her waist, pulling her closer to me. My body flaired in waves of heat as her pulse beat against my chest, her eyes drawing me into them. Causing me to feel that free sense of falling, like I always did when she captured me with those hazel pools.

"Hey." I whispered back to her, wishing dirty blonde would get the message so I could push her away from me and start to breathe again. I could see blossums of white exploding behind my eyes as my oxygen starved body screamed out for her to let go of me, to step away. To grant me breathe again.

"Sorry." And then the guy practically ran across the road and into the bar.

As I heard it slamming behind him, I took hold of her shoulders and gently pushed her backwards, my upper body leaning downwards as I gulped in masses amount of sweet oxygen. Her hands held on to my forearms as she waiting for me, watching me with her eyes.

The wind rose, whipped my hair around my head as I stared at her boots, causing tears to rise in my eyes and spill over as the cool sweeps of air stung my eyelids. Dammit. I didn't want her to think that these tears were for her. I've already spilt a lifetime of tears over her, I've wasted enough energy trying to force the pain from my mind.

I let go of her, leaning back against the all, my eyes looking once agains towards the sky as my breathing calmed down again, slowing to normal intakes as my heart followed suit and gentled out to it's normal rhythm.

"I'll walk you." she said, turning back towards my left, back toward the way she came from, and waiting for me to follow.

The walk to my apartment was almost as silent as of when we arrived. The rain starting suddenly as we took those first few steps, my hair and clothes soaked in minutes, as it always happens with californian rain. Huge almost tropical drops spilling forth from the sky, covering everything it can reach within ater ter of moments. My hair hung down in wet tendrils, hiding most of my face from her view as we walked.

I flickered my eyes towards her reflextion in the glass, looking slightly surreal as the rain poured down the window. Almost making her look like she was crying. She was slumped in one of the chairs, her elbow resting on one of the arms, her fingers covering her lips as she stared off at some unseeable point. I had been spending the last god knows how long, just watching her reflection.

The bleeting of my phone startled her from her thoughts, causing her elbow to slip from the arm of the chair and her eyes fly open wide as she shot a look towards me. If I had any humour left, I would have laughed in amusement. But as it was, the most I could manage was a faint smile that hardly reached my lips, let alone my eyes.

I glanced towards caller id, my mind wrapping itself around the number as I couldn't quite read the name from so far away. I recognised it, but chose to ignore it, letting the machien pick it up.

"It's me. You didn't pick up before. I've rung you three times. I know this is a painful day Faith, but we have to talk about it. we always do. It's only one day a year our mother died on. And I miss you. call me back." The machine clicked and I watched in rapt fasination as the words rolled themselves around buffy's mind. Her brain focusing on certain words to try and figure out who the hell the guy on the phone had been.

Her eyes gently lifted towards mine, meeting my gaze in the glass as it finally sunk in. a wave of sorrow crossed her face, but no words were forth coming. If they were pity, I'd rather she didn't say them at all.

"He saved me." I moved my eyes away from hers, still feeling their gaze upon me as I looked at the street below. "I waited forever for him. And he finally came."

I spun myself around on the sill, dropping both feet to the floor and taking hold of the wooden ledge as I lowered my eyes to the floor somewhere in front of me. She shifted in her chair, but I didn't look at her.

"I refuse to wait that long again," I lifted my eyes to her face, forcing all the pain to the surface as I locked my gaze with hers. Pushing all that fear, all that agony and all that bitter pain across the room to her with just my eyes. "for you to save me."

Something crossed her gaze then, as we stared at each other, a game of wills to see would would turn away first.

I didn't give her the chance to lose. I stood, pushing my still damp hair behind my ear as I folded my arms over my chest and walked across the room to my phone, picking it up on my way.

I stopped in my bedroom door, my back towards her as I fiddled with the pant clip on the back of the telephone.

"Forever's too far away." I whispered softly to her as I closed the door soundlessly behind me.


Continued Next in: How Soon Is Now