FIC: Another Place (Dana/Tara, PG)
TITLE: Another Place
RATING: PG
FANDOMS: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
PAIRING: Dana/Tara
SUMMARY: Set before either girl’s appearance on their respective shows. Dana and Tara find each other.
WARNINGS: Contains mentions of past abuse.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for femslash_minis Slayers round for snogged who wanted a mental hospital, angst, and comfort without non-con.
THANKS: ONE MILLION thanks to my intrepid beta reader, formanymiles. You are the wind beneath my wings.
|| DANA ||
They make me take the pills, blue and white and yellow, and they make sure I don’t hide them underneath my tongue. I’ve learned better ways to hide them.
If you get caught hiding them, they stick a needle into your arm-yellow makes you weak, brown makes you sleepy-and then everything tilts, and I fight, breaking the point of the needle off in the soft flesh of my arm, and then the restraints, tethered to the bed screaming even though nobody can hear, nobody can distinguish it from the other screams that echo against the walls.
My doctor says I don’t know which screams are real and which are imagined.
They’re all real, I tell her.
|| TARA ||
I miss shoelaces. I miss shoelaces, and being able to see sunlight without seeing it through bars.
I’m not depressed, I want to shout, but can’t. I’m not depressed, it’s just that my mom died, and she was a demon, we’re all demons.
I have power. I can feel it flickering under my skin, growing like a fire-not devouring, but heating, bolstering me the way fire feeds a hot air balloon and lifts it to the sky.
The demon power. And my greatest secret is, I’m not afraid.
|| DANA ||
They find a diazepam tucked behind my back molar. I break an orderly’s nose when they try to stick the needle in me, and an hour later, I am strapped to a bed in isolation, the cuffs on my wrist and the cuffs on my ankles and the burn of the poison in my veins-it’s not poison, Dana, it’s helping, we’re all here to help you, don’t you feel better when you take your medicine? I watch the world crawl by, the shadows on the ceiling move like animals crawling through the undergrowth. I can hear them growl, and then think that’s probably A Bad Thought and probably Not Real.
I tell my doctor, All my thoughts are bad thoughts.
|| TARA ||
I can’t stand to watch another episode of Murder, She Wrote, so I wander the blinding hallways, my laceless shoes flopping around my feet. Scuff, scuff, little shoes. After a while, I find something odd: a room with a door. A door that doesn’t go to the outside.
I push inside.
|| DANA ||
Light interrupts the dark, and at first I snarl, bucking against my restraints, the light from outside blinding, and only a horrible silhouette of Him Coming for Me …
But then my eyes adjust to the light, and the shadow is too small to be Him, is curved pleasantly, not Him not Him not Him, he’s gone, Dana, he’s gone forever, you’re safe now, you’re safe.
Oh! the little figure gasps. Oh, I-I’m s-sorry-
|| TARA ||
My eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness, but when they do, I can see I’m not alone in the forbidden room. There’s a girl tied to the bed, dark hair, dark eyes with a dark shine to them. I jump, my arms pulling against myself, like a little turtle pulling up into its shell.
The girl’s eyes focus on me, and I feel like I can’t move, like she’s Medusa and I’m turned to stone in her gaze. I wonder what happened to her that she needed to be tied up here in the dark-what kind of place is this?
I don’t belong here, I think, I don’t belong here, and then a little voice in the back of my head rasps, DEMON, and I think, maybe it’s best I’m here, maybe it’s safe.
I look at the girl on the bed, and wonder if she has had that same thought: I don’t belong here.
I think we’ve all had that thought.
|| DANA ||
The girl steps forward, and I can see her more clearly. She is soft and pale and her hands move nervously, by themselves.
Do you want me to untie you? she asks. She looks at my restraints. I nod.
|| TARA ||
It takes me a minute to figure out how to undo the restraints, but as soon as I do, they’re easy to release. There are impressions of the ties on the girl’s ankles and wrists; I flinch. She sits up, then stands, and stretches, like she hasn’t used her muscles in a long time. I wonder how long she’s been lying here, waiting for someone to free her.
|| DANA ||
In storybooks, when princesses are rescued, they give kisses. The girl straightens up, her hands balling and pulling back to hide inside her sweater, and I put my arms around her neck and kiss her. She looks surprised, but then relaxes, and for a moment we both close our eyes and exist in another place.