Fanfiction: Survivor
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My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, every baring and ever concealing. Beneath lies no complaisance, beneath lies fear and confusion, and aloneness. But I hide behind a nonchalant, sophisticated, facade to help me pretend. To shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation. From the barriers I so painstakingly create. It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself…that I am worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I’m afraid to. I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and it will not be followed by love, and I’m afraid you’ll think less of me…that you will laugh. And your laugh would kill me.
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3434 West Lane
The apartment of Faith Williams
Friday, May 4, 2004 11:30 PM
Sunnydale, Ca
He knows.
He knows and I never even told him.
Xander didn’t buy my story that I was just impatient and ran straight into a brutal fight that saw my clothes torn and face battered. He didn’t believe me when he first saw me, and I know he doesn’t believe me now.
Xander drove through a storm to where I was after I’d only said three words and gave him my location. He exited the car, saw my face, and pulled me into his arms, asking what happened to me and was I okay. Five by five was my reply, as well as ‘wait till you see the other guy’.
I led him into the mine shaft, explaining no more than I found the killer, Slayed him, but got my clock cleaned good in the process. I hoped he didn’t notice the way I couldn’t look him in the face, or that my legs trembled as we reached Rainman’s cave. Xander unfortunately did. He watched me closely and damn him for having done so as much as he had in the last seven months. He knew I wasn’t okay. But as long as I kept up the charade that I was just in a really bad fight and no more, I was okay. No way was I letting him know I allowed myself to be raped.
No fucking way!
We reached the cave. I walked behind Xander as he approached Rainman’s body. Upon a second look, I see that I went motherfucking OJ Simpson on his ass. Xander asks for the full story and I give him 50% of it. He’ll live with that better than I will. Together, we drag the body out of the cave and the mine shaft.
Just down the road we dumped the body in a huge trash dumpster and set it on fire. I stood in the rain, watching it burn, hoping the sight would bring me some satisfaction.
I still felt broken.
Xander wanted to take me to the nearest hospital. He was clearly worried and knew I hated that. I brushed him off as usual. My shame was my own. I was damaged goods as it was, but now I….
I need to get drunk.
Really and truly fucked-up drunk.
Maybe even high.
I told Xander I was going to go home and clean up. He refused to allow me to go alone. Told me if I didn’t let him come he was going to call all the Scoobies right away. He was making a deal with me and I didn’t know why.
Now I do. He’s smarter than I give him credit for. Smarter than a lot of folks give him credit for. Look past the natural silliness that is part of his personality, and you’ll find a very perceptive man with his eyes wide open.
I head straight for my bathroom as soon as I hit my front door, yelling over my shoulder he could have some left over pizza in the fridge while I took a shower. Yeah, I kept acting like everything was everything. No big deal. Even while on the inside I had never felt as vile, or as dirty as I did tonight.
Xander’s hand gripped my arm before I could shut the bathroom door stalling me.
“What happened to you tonight, Faith?”
His eyes are full of caring, but I was gripped by fear, and fear won out. “Look, I took a mean ass whipping tonight, okay. I’m not my normal cover of a biker magazine self right now. Shit happens. The life of a Slayer ain’t flowers and candy, you know.”
“Why is there blood on your inner thighs, Faith?”
He was calm and detached, but serious. I shrugged, paying him no mind. “Xander, we fought like cats and dogs. He got in some good hits. More than anyone’s gotten in a very long time. You need to let this go!” I snarl at him, hoping he gets the picture.
My rising anger only spurs him on. I should have known it would. “I found your panties on the other side of the cave, Faith.” Now he looks almost like he’s about to cry, but that won’t break me. He approaches me slowly, as if I’m a rattle snake ready to strike. Why won’t he just let this go? “You can tell me anything, Faith. You know that.”
Not this, Xander. I can’t tell you this. I can’t have you see me any more damaged than I already am. I can’t look that weak in your eyes. Anyone’s eyes. “Look, if you’re going to keep giving me shit, why don’t you just leave.”
“I’ve seen those torches before, Faith.” The air suddenly vacates my lungs. I’m forced to look away. “Willow was once considering using them around Buffy’s house when the First had just appeared. We decided against it, but I know what they can do. When Willow lit one Buffy all of a sudden couldn’t lift one of her heavier axes over her head. She had to use both hands and couldn’t even swing the thing.” He stands right in front of me and I’m about to crumble before his very eyes. “I know what sex smells like. I know that all of your clothes are ripped to shreds. And I know you weren’t wearing your panties at some point. I think I know what happened. And I want to be there for…”
I shut the door in his face.
I can’t deal.
I’m pacing my bathroom with my hand covering my mouth, shaking my head. I want to be alone so I can get drunk and forget this. Forget the dried up blood and semen still on my legs. Forget the way be made fun of me, humbled me, made me feel like I was only worth the strength in my hands. And without it, nothing at all. Zero. Less than that. I want to forget the stink of that monster all over me. Forget how that he came inside me, all the while calling rape an act of making love.
“Faith, please open the door.”
“No….” Jesus, was that me? Was that my voice sounding so fragile, like a scared little girl?
“Faith…”
“JUST FUCKING GO AWAY!!” I’m yelling at the top of my lungs, sweating, my hands shaking at my sides.
Xander is quiet, but doesn’t do as I asked. “I’m not going to leave you, Faith. What I’m going to do is go into your bedroom, and pack some of your stuff up for a few days. Then I’m going to wait for you in the living room.”
I can’t hold back the tears, sobbing quietly as it hits me without a shadow of a doubt he knows I was raped. He’s put the pieces together just that fast. Well I don’t know what he expects from me. I’m a mess right now. A filthy mess. I just want to….
I never answer him, deciding to decide in the shower what I’m going to do.
Even with my accelerated healing I am still sore. Fuck that, I’m in pain. I can barely walk because of what that bastard did to me. Stopping in front of a mirror, I finally get a good look at my face.
Is it possible to look as ugly on the outside as you feel on the inside? I may be living proof of that tonight. My tongue rolls around my two loose teeth. They seem to be holding for now.
Somehow, I manage to get into the shower and let the hot water wash over me. I’m lathering soap over my exhausted battered body, letting the suds sting the bite, the scratches, and the pain. I can barely bring himself to touch my bruised and swollen sex. The throbbing pain there reminds me of Rainman’s cruelty. The water just keeps getting hotter and I just don’t care. I’ve watched movies in the past when a girl gets raped and how she stays in the shower forever.
Now I’m a fucking made for TV movie with a horror twist. Great.
I’m catching stray images in my head now. I can feel myself clawing at his arms, pushing my legs together, shifting, spitting in his face, doing everything in my power to get him off of me. And failing…..
I find myself watching the pink suds swirl away down the drain. In the back of my mind, I realize I’m still bleeding, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. There isn’t enough hot water or soap in the whole world to ever make me feel clean again.
I’m leaning against the slippery tile, allowing myself to slide down to the bottom of the stall. After awhile the water starts to turn cold, but I’m just crouched there, dizzy, spinning with the memories that are swallowing me alive.
It takes way too much energy to turn off the water, too much energy just to breathe. My arms are wrapped around my chest as the uncontrollable shaking began. To finish it all would be so easy.
And there it is.
The first suicidal thought I’ve had so far. There will be more, but that’s the first one. And the first is always the special one.
I’m out the shower and drying off without even remembering getting out of the shower or turning the water off. My body still hurts, but not as bad. Even the swelling on my face is beginning to go down already. Inside of two days my body won’t show even the smallest mark from the rape. I used to read a lot of girls could barely even bring themselves to accept that it happened. Even acknowledge it with words. Well my first rape took place when I was twelve and a virgin, of course. Since then, several other times, all by men my mother trusted to look after me while she was gone.
I had been raped eight times by the time I was seventeen.
But none since I was old enough and able enough to fight back. That’s what makes this one the worst. Fuck, I’ve got issues. And the worst timing ever. Xander and I are just starting to get over this wall we’ve been dancing around for the past three months and now this happens.
How dirty I must look to him….
Fuck it! Whatever! Me and him will just be friends. I know I can swear him to secrecy. But I can’t ever get him to look at me the same way again. And that hurts so bad.
I wrap myself in a towel, not caring in the least about my appearance tonight.
At least I killed the Rainman.
I did it no matter the cost. Judge, jury, and executioner. I took justice into my own hands and at that moment, became the instrument of a wrathful God and righteously sentenced the Rainman to death.
I am still blank, expressionless. I feel frozen, moving in a time that has no beginning and no end. I was raped. I was raped. I was raped and I couldn’t defend myself.
I want to cry, so I do. I can’t stop it anymore than I can stop the sun from rising in the morning.
I let myself out of the bathroom. One more room that will have to be exorcised.
Xander follows me into my bedroom. It is an absolute mess, but par for the course in my crib. I grab some clothes and throw them on, just jeans and a shirt.
“I packed you about four outfits. Unmentionables to,” he tells me, and the tone of his voice says, ‘come home with me. I will look after you.’
I need to let him. I just don’t want to. But for tonight only, I just might. I am just that broken. “You pick out the sexy underwear?” I manage a smile.
“All of your underwear is sexy, Faith”
“So you’re saying you went through all of it?” I catch him off guard for a moment, but his eyes quickly lose their playfulness.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“You weren’t there.”
“Did you say no and tell him to stop?”
“…yes.”
“Then it wasn’t your fault. He attacked you. He hurt you. You did nothing wrong.”
“I don’t want to tal…”
“Okay…” he stops me immediately, giving me my space. Or at least as much space as he will allow me to have. He’s not going to leave me alone even if I ask him to.
Suddenly I am weak and I sit down on the bed before I fall down. “Thank you,” I manage to keep my voice fairly level. For that small measure of strength, I am grateful.
Xander’s keen gaze bores into me, measuring me swiftly, but there is no condemnation in him. “I would do anything for you,” he offers quietly.
“Could you see me again as the woman I was?” I ask him without any conscious thought, “And not the woman I am now?”
Xander gazes at me, seeing the price my internal struggle is exacting in tears. There is nothing but solace and the promise of warm comfort in his gaze as he wipes away my tears with the gentlest of fingers on my face. It occurs to me in the darkest manner possible how unfamiliar a gentle touch is to me. “Faith, I know you,” he declares solemnly, and I close my eyes, unable to bear the utter conviction in his voice, blinded by the power of his belief in me. “You are precious and innocent to me. You have lost none of that.”
Like a father confessor, he has released me to my penance and I am lost. In my desperation, I can only reach forward to cling to him, as if he is my lifeboat in a stormy sea. Xander gathers me to him as though I weigh no more than a feather and sits next to me, pulling me onto his lap so that I can lose myself in his arms, if only for a moment. He whispers calming, nonsensical things in my ear, as if I am a small child, and I sob quietly against his neck. I cannot believe I am allowing myself to lose it like this. But I need him so badly right now.
No woman is an island unto herself.
Xander allows me just enough time to get out the first wave of my delayed reaction. “Come on, Faith,” he says, raising my chin to gaze into my tear-filled eyes. I hiccup softly and manage to pull myself together. I want my tough girl armor back, Dammit! I want my confidence and my ego and….and…Godamnit! I hate what happened to me!
Xander raises his eyebrows, reassuring me without words that he will look after me. “We should get out of here. Okay?” He doesn’t want me in my own home tonight. He wants my home to not have the memories of a rape. He’ll place those on his. He wants my home to remain pure. I know him so well.
“Okay.” I wince at my own weakness but it doesn’t bother him. Xander is always stalwart and brave, my own knight errant, and the emotion that wells in me nearly undoes me again, but I push it away with the last shred of my control. Not here, not now.
Xander bends forward to press a mute kiss of love and consolation on my forehead. “Let’s go.”
With a strength born of the desire simply to get away, to leave behind what happened, I climb to my feet. Xander grabs my overnight bag. I can bear the physical pain. It is the mental pain of my carelessness and stupidity that makes me want to fall asleep and hide for at least three months.
We’re out the door the next second. Three neighbors watched us walk in my place and no doubt saw the condition I was in. They are so fucking nosy they’re still in the hallway when we leave. I notice that two of them are exchanging raised eyebrows even if they won’t say anything to our faces; we get that a lot, Xander and me. We’re being as discreet as we know how and still something between us betrays us to the world. But I am past caring how we appear to other people anymore.
Xander buckles me into the front seat of his car like I am the most precious object in the world. Normally his natural tendency to want to coddle me pisses me off, but today I welcome his chivalry. I haven’t been able to stop shivering since we ventured outside; he turns the car heater on full blast and tunes in some soothing classical music that I hate but doesn’t make me think much.
Good choice.
One of the best things about Xander is that sometimes he seems to know instinctively what I need, before I can even voice it. And now he knows that I need silence and respects this as he drives the distance to his apartment. I close my eyes and lean back against the headrest, huddled into my coat. I try to empty my mind of all thought, except I am drawn back into the nightmare of not long ago.
Rainman’s hands all over me… Taking my clothes off. Pushing inside me when I was so dry… So much pain… Tearing me, hurting me, and not caring… Stealing my pride, my self-worth, my everything…
My hand clutching my knife. The madness that raged within me as I repeatedly stabbed a man already dead. How I cut him up like a butcher without a second thought. Blood…. So much blood….
“Faith? Are you all right?” Xander’s voice is low and urgent against my ear.
“I…what?” I am stunned into opening my eyes, blinking in the darkness and seeing familiar landmarks. We are almost at his apartment. “I’m….I’m just really tired.”
“You’re sure?” I cannot bear the concern and caring in his eyes and close mine against it.
“Xander, I was raped tonight.” I say it to him with as much flair as I would ask him for a piece of gum. “I’m not okay. I’m not going to be okay for a while. I just need rest. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”
He knows I’ll talk about it when I’m ready. But only to him. “Okay.”
“I’m doing good. No sweat.”
Xander accepts this, but I can see that he doesn’t believe me. At least he is not willing to press the point. I force myself to remain upright and awake until we reach his apartment building. Then I am glad to allow myself to fall into a stupor that makes me move robotically forward with Xander’s arm supporting my weight as we lurch inside.
His apartment is blissfully warm and safe, and I can at last allow myself to relax. At least I have another place to find shelter. And I know that Xander would never begrudge me a temporary stay here. Beyond that, we have no words to describe our future, what it means for us to be together. We only have the now, and at least for the moment, we feel free enough to inhabit it.
Xander takes my overnight bag into the bedroom and I follow him, stumbling behind like a drunk. I’m still shivering and I don’t think I’ll ever be warm. He turns to me and takes my coat from my shoulders, throwing it to the floor and folding me into his embrace. “Are you hungry, Faith? Thirsty? I can get you something if you want it,” he tells me, brushing my hair away from my eyes, caressing my face with light flutters of his fingertips.
The thought of food makes my stomach roil in horror. “No,” I murmur against his chest, the steady thumping of his heartbeat so soothing to me, like a lullaby. “Jus’ wanna sleep.”
Xander smiles at that. “Okay,” he whispers. “I’ll just be in the other room…”
I wrap my arms tighter around him. “Don’t go,” I plead, unable to prevent him from seeing my need, hating how vulnerable it makes me, yet completely unwilling to let him go. If this is what loving him and allowing myself to express it means, then fine, I will be honest, I will admit my weakness.
Xander moves to the bed and throws back the covers, then comes back to me. His gaze is direct, open; in his warm brown eyes lies the promise of solace and a love so deep that I am drowning and it is wonderful. I don’t know who I am tonight. I only know that I need him. The rest will just have to come to me. The sheer fact that he even wants to touch me at all nearly has me in tears. I have cried more tonight than I have since I was twelve.
Ironic, isn’t it.
Wordlessly, I try to meld my entire body into his and he presses me into the bed. He is mine, and he will watch over me. He makes me safe. In Xander’s arms there are no monsters; in his kiss the world melts away, and there is only me and him, and love.
I am ready for us to be here, like this, but thought we were still a little ways away. Accepting what he is to me now is something I’m still getting used to. This romance is as backwards as the two poeple involved in it.
But I am so tired. I shake my head against his questioning kiss. He acknowledges my decision with a nod, draws me close to his shoulder. I curl up inside his arm like a cat, burrowing my head into the place between shoulder and the curve of his neck. I inhale deeply of his warm, familiar scent and feel drowsily satisfied. He is the haven that I have only recently allowed myself to find, the shelter that I have sought for so long. It is in him, and he is in me.
The road ahead is long and painful. A nights relief won’t get me back on my feet. I’ll worry about that in the morning.
I am released into the relaxation that precedes sleep and snuggle deeper into Xander. He whispers, “I love you, Faith,” against the top of my head.
I had expected, having long since known his feelings for me, that the first time I would hear those words come out of his mouth would be over a food fight, or during a heated argument, or while we were fucking each others brains out. How sad my life is that the first time I hear those words from the man I love it is on the night I am raped.