Origin and Season One (Ch. 19)
Character: Buffy Summers
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1727
Setting: pre-Pilot
- Caged -
She was gliding along the ice, feeling self-made wind as it flowed through her hair and rippled her clothes. The only sound was her skates as they scratched long, thin trails behind her. It was silent, and she was free and flying, and the rink seemed to go on forever. She was alone.
She picked up speed, racing parallel to the faraway wall. For once in so many months, she felt nothing but freedom, and it was exhilarating. She could just keep going, just keep flying, and she would never have to stop. The world would turn without her, and she could be free forever.
The wind was roaring in her ears now, but she kept moving faster, never slowing. Her skates left long trails of red behind her. She thought she could hear voices over the roar, but she ignored them. They were beyond the boundaries, and she couldn't get there, and she didn't want to. She just wanted to fly.
Something cracked beneath her and all at once the ice was shattering and splintering in front of her. She skid around it, her skates raking hard into the ice, and it almost seemed to bleed as the growing maw in front of her ate up her path. She couldn't stop; she would fall right in. There was nowhere to go but forward, even as forward rapidly disappeared.
Something reached for her out of the dark. She smelled blood.
She wasn't going to scream.
She would fly in.
There was another crash, louder this time, closer, and her eyes snapped open.
Someone was yelling, and she was on her feet in an instant, muscles already taut for a fight, but a hand pushed her back. She looked up at the nurse, in an instant remembering where she was.
Her attention flicked to the corner of the room, where Harold and a knot of white clothes were the center of commotion. Harold was screaming something intangible, a downed table at his side, two nurses on the other. There were origami birds scattered around him, and he was crushing one bright blue piece of paper in his hand as he cracked his head against the wall.
Buffy stared, fear and revulsion warring inside her.
One of the nurses grabbed Harold, ducked a wild punch, and pinned him hard against the wall. Another nurse was moving the table to clear a path back to the rooms, and then they were hauling Harold away as he screamed and cried and cursed. Some of the people in the room were staring, but just as many hadn't looked up from their puzzles pieces and paint canvasses to see the commotion.
Buffy was still watching, the nurse's hand heavy on her shoulder. She didn't know what to do. This was the second time she'd watched Harold dragged off, too paralyzed to help. Even now she was rooted to the spot, heart in her throat, pulse loud in her ears. She was the Slayer. She'd faced demons and death and the fire, but Harold terrified her. Some of the people in here just had eating disorders and drug problems, but the few with three letter acronyms, that had that not-quite-right look in their eyes, she was afraid of them. There was something...wrong about them, and it scared her that they were her peer group. When this month had started she'd never even met a crazy person before, and now-now she was one of them.
Harold was out of sight now, but she could still hear his shouts ringing down the hall. “You can sit now,” the nurse who was holding her said.
Buffy looked up at him. He was just a scrawny guy in white scrubs, probably in his thirties but with facial hair that looked more like teenage peach fuzz than anything. He had all the command and authority of grapefruit, and she could snap him like a twig, and yet she sat at his command, like a housebroken puppy.
She watched as he walked away, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged. Who was she kidding? She was no Slayer. Here, she was just a frightened, sick, meek little girl.
She tightened her fingers on her knees, digging her nails into the fabric of her sweats. The polish had worn off them, and they were already starting to look ugly from inattention.
She stared at them, swallowing hard.
She just wanted to fix them, to paint them colors and file them down. She wanted to comb her hair for an hour, use her own shampoo and conditioner and her cream rinse that smelled like mint that made her hair feel soft and clean. She just wanted to be home with her own shower and her own bed, to be free and unfettered. Here she was caged, trapped within the confines of the fenced in yard and ugly peach-colored walls.
She was suffocating, and her muscles ached from lack of exertion. She just wanted to fight, but there was no one here to save. She was surrounded by a mass of broken people.
She rubbed her face with both hands.
This place would drive her insane, slowly but surely. She hadn't spoken much at all since she'd come here, refusing to talk in the power circles and saying as little as possible in her private sessions. They'd been prescribing her antidepressants and mood stabilizers, but she suspected having a Slayer's metabolism stopped them from effecting her system, because if anything she felt edgier now than she had before. Every day the walls seemed a little closer together, and every day the psychiatrist's words seemed a little more artificial. She didn't know how much longer it would be until either she snapped or they started pushing harder for her to retract from the shell she'd supposedly constructed for herself in response to Tisha's death. So far they'd mostly been leaving her alone, but Stone had been more aggressive than usual in the office today when he'd been trying to get her to share, and she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be allowed to keep silent.
Hell, she didn't know how much longer she'd be forced to stay here.
Buffy dropped her hands, glancing around at her fellow ward-members. The girl with the black ringlets who never spoke was reading a book; the girl with the long, brown hair was working on a puzzle with her friend Steve, who always talked in third person. The girl whose name she thought might be Marci was picking up Harold's origami birds and placing them carefully back on the table. Chuck was playing cards with Charlie.
Where was the Watcher's Council? Didn't they know that the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of a girl trapped in a mental institution? Why hadn't they come for her? Why had her parents left her here? Why the hell had she thought for half a second that her mother would understand?
She jiggled her leg against the chair arm.
She was no one's hero and no one's martyr. For all she knew, the forces of darkness had already taken over LA and were spreading outward, secure in the knowledge that she was either dead or incapacitated. How could she fight when she had no weapons? How had the Council expected her to deal with Merrick's loss? Or did they still not know?
She hated them, whoever they were. She could see them in her head, a bunch of fat British guys in tweed with tea and crumpets, talking offhandedly about her performance next to the Slayers of the past. Did they even think of her as human, or was she a tool to them, as she had been to Merrick? Did they care that she'd been caged like an animal? If they eventually helped to release her, would it be for her or for them?
God, she hated them. Her blood was already hot in her veins, and it seemed to boil as her blood pressure rose and tears filmed her eyes. She hated them intensely. Had Merrick cared for her? Had he even liked her? Did she care that he'd died for him...or did she care for her?
She remembered that conversation they'd had so long ago in the warehouse. What was a Slayer to her Watcher? Was life and death just a business to them? Were they supposed to chalk it all up to fate and prophecies and leave it at that?
She couldn't believe this had all been predestined, that all the pain and the fear and the loss of the last few months only amounted to a footnote in the greater arc of Slayer lore. She couldn't believe that she was supposed to shoulder it all, to treat everything like a responsibility that came with some all important destiny. She just wanted to be a girl. To go back to school, to make out with boys in the back seat of their cars, to study and watch TV and complain about her dating life. She hadn't asked for this, and she'd never signed on to be dumped in the cuckoo's nest, to have her family believe she'd not only been abused but that she'd lost her mind in the process.
Maybe the rest of the Slayers had been self-sacrificing warriors, but Merrick had been right the first time. She was self-absorbed, and at this moment she desperately wanted her life back.
Angrily, she slipped off her seat, then stood there on the ugly grey carpeting. She didn't know if she could do this anymore. If she ever got out of here, she didn't know that she could go through all of this again. She wasn't cut out to shoulder the burdens of the world, and so far she'd failed in her duty to protect those who depended on her. If the fates had decided that she was a savior, they'd been wrong. They could find someone else to be the light in the darkness, because she was done with this.
Setting her jaw, she made her way back to her room. No one seemed to notice her as she left, and it suited her fine.
She would have to get out of here soon, one way or another, if only just so she could tell the Counsel where they could shove their duty.
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