Fanfiction: Aibhilin
EMAIL: iiveraione@aol.com FEEDBACK: I crave it like I crave Sesame Chicken.
It’s ten years into the future - and the numbers are for what age Faith’s daughter is at the time
12
Crying was such an integral part of my survival as I grew into a woman in her own home with her own mini-family of mother and daughter. We’re two girls against the world, was how little Enya had put it as she tried on a pair of pants that I bought her the day before. I’m not sure why I cried. I should be happy, in my little home with my little daughter and little living room with a little TV. I’d lie in bed at night, staring up at the ceiling, pulling out every good memory I could find in my jigsaw puzzle of a mind and crying it all out of me. Crying for the sake of crying; crying because I was thankful, sad, happy, I don’t know. But I cried until totality - nothing left out, nothing held back.
Bittersweet memories locked away in a place of obscurity that had me crying all of the liquid out of my body was something some would find unusual, especially for me. But the kind, fake smiles that belonged to those that thought they had every layer of skin figured out was what set me off, so I gave them no room to judge. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Most of them were gone.
I let my mind wander and explore the depths of my memories, sorting through everything both good and bad. Stuff I wanted to forget, stuff I wanted to remember forever, stuff that made me want to die and cry and hate with every fiber of my being. The way his face had twisted into a look similar to the broody, puppy-dog look, except this time it wasn’t over Buffy or Spike or some blonde dog girl. But the memory of that face was so etched into mind that I didn’t figure this out until his body exploded into ash and Angel was gone from me forever.
Faith, it hurts, Oh God, it hurts.
I could remember her voice then, and the voice before that, and the voice during… the way she yelled, pushed me out of the way and took a beating that would have had me crying like a wounded kitten.
Take care of Angel, please?
But I hadn’t, had I? He disappeared like she did, but in a consumed-really-gone-way. But shoulder-length blonde hair and a smile that could make a million hearts melt was six feet underground, rotting away because she saved my life.
Faith… Oh God. I can’t breathe. Faith, it hurts too much.
I shut my eyes and try to push the memory out. Her pleads to live and the tears that fell from her eyes. But I can’t push them out. I want them there and safe and remembered… but not because I want to remember her hand gripping mine so hard that bones cracked and broke as she slipped away into a peaceful oblivion. No, I wanted it so I could do my nightly ritual. Curl up in my bed and remember everything ten times over and cry until the veins in my eyes decide to go ahead and bust. Not because it made me feel better, not because I wanted the memories, but because I… I was addicted to the misery.
And crying made me feel just a little less guilty.
~13
I’ve got a nice smile and nice clothes, a nice home with an even better daughter. She loves me, and I love her. I walk her to the school bus sometimes and she’s proud that she has me as a mom. She tells me this, too. Tells me how the little boys whistle and that’s why she kicks so many in the groin on so many occasions. I help her with her homework and don’t feel stupid about it, because I do know some stuff, and when she gets into advanced territory, we’ll teach each other. And I can learn from the experience. I’m a good mom and I love my daughter as much as she loves me.
But it’s not enough. I guess nothing is ever enough. Maybe I’m still expecting something more from the world. But you can’t expect anything from anyone, because then you become disappointed when you don’t get what you so desperately want. But, maybe, occasionally, sometimes you do.
And there’s nothing scarier than that. Because then, even if you’re happy and thankful, you’ve got something to lose. And you know, you just know one day you’re gonna lose it. That kind of disappointment is the most painful kind.
But bury the worries away by running bath water for your daughter and life is easy again. Sometimes, my life can make me so utterly happy that I forget everything else for a fraction of a second and I find myself greedily pulling everything back in. I hate that I do this and I loathe myself for it, but I feel as if my life can’t be complete without it.
So I just suck it up and deal.
~14
“What time does the bus run, Mom?”
“Six.”
“No, it’s seven.”
“Oh. I knew that.”
“Are you okay? You’ve been acting strange.”
Didn’t I always act strange?
“You know I’m great, En.”
~15
Sometimes I would stay up until four AM, standing in the shower, letting the steaming water snake down my form. I cleaned the scars that were on the outside, scrubbing away until they started bleeding again, hoping it would make the scars on the inside bleed just as well. But those were un existent to the naked eye and even I couldn’t touch them. They simmered with pain and self-loathing and self-doubt that built up as the years of my life progressed.
She’s dead, Dawn.
I wrapped my arms around me as I stepped out of the shower. Desperate for someone to hold me and love me and approve of me… in a different way than my daughter did. I wanted someone to make me feel like a person. Enya made me feel like a fraud. The self-hug was something I did often now, when I was at my weakest, and it was a cold kind of reassurance.
Buffy’s dead, I’m sorry.
My entire form shivered as I walked into my bedroom and over to the bed, slipping beneath the warmth and comfort of my covers. They were recently washed and smelled like summer, and it was a familiar smell.
So I cried some more.
~16
“I love you!” I called, watching Enya climb into the car with her friend Katie for her sixteenth birthday. They were supposed to go to the movies and hopefully it wasn’t a lie. Because if it was, I wouldn’t be able to punish her.
I watched the car pull off with my kid in it and a smile formed on my face. So many years and we had made it this far and Enya was really her own woman already. The fact that I raised my daughter better than anyone that’d raised me in one life time could was bittersweet in its own way and something I would cherish for the rest of my life.
As soon as the car was out of sight, I knew my happy moment was over.
Without Enya around, all I did was wallow in misery. But maybe that’s because I refused to let her see the side of me that even I hated sometimes. The side of me that hid away and only came out when not even a fly was around. Because of it being a secret, it seemed so much worse than it really was. But I couldn’t control it. Therapy couldn’t control it. Not even fifty kinds of different meds could control this…
Nothing could really control something that I was born into, or born with, or born as. If I couldn’t, then a couple of pills weren’t gonna do much, either.
Tell me where Angel is, you bloody-
~17
I hadn’t seen it coming. Maybe my age made the slayer senses a little slow, but still, I should have noticed. I should have seen the car flying at me at God knows what speed and slamming into my car with a sickening twist of metal. I should have seen it.
I’m lying on the pavement only a few miles away from my house. Enya would be getting off the bus by now. I needed to go… needed to go ask her how her day was, how…
“This woman’s going to die.” I hear the paramedic say in a deadpan voice, because this wasn’t anything new to him. A paramedic dealt with death everyday, why treat me any differently?
But I wasn’t going to die. My own blood surrounding me, soaking into my clothes, flowing out of every part of my body - none of that mattered. I was a slayer and a mom and slayers didn’t die from car accidents. They get up and start again.
Pain cuts through my body, like a fuckin’ thousand knives poking and slashing and stabbing at every inch of me.
I couldn’t die. I had a daughter and I needed to be there for her. She couldn’t grow up on her own. I needed to see her graduate and I needed to see her go to college and I needed to see her become a veterinarian like she always wanted to. I wanted to see her have a family and give me lots of grandchildren, so I could be Grandma Faith, the psycho slayer that never really was and only lived in the past.
My breathing was becoming shorter, and I could feel my whole body sting and tingle and paralyze. Fear overtook me and I tried not to cry. I was so scared. I couldn’t die. There was so much… Enya needed me…
I can’t die. I can’t die. icantdieicantdieicantdieicantdieicantd—