Warnings: F/F, no beta, vulgar language, possible character death, angst, child abuse etc.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, UPN and WB Television Networks
Chapter 2: Better Off On My Own
BPOV
This morning wasn't that great. I woke up 10 minutes before 8, came downstairs wanting some breakfast, and what do I find? Not breakfast, that's for sure. The kitchen is empty, Willow and Xander are in the living room watching some cartoons, and Faith is nowhere to be found.
So I go up to her room, and bang on her door. I hear a thump; she must have fallen out of the bed. I smile, "Faith get up, and make breakfast. It's your turn, and you have about 5 minutes to serve it." She throws the door open, and runs downstairs.
We sort of have this rule that whoever doesn't make the meal in time has to clean the dishes for the rest of the week. For the last three weeks she's been doing that 'cause she can't ever get up in the morning, and this week she's trying to avoid it. Willow and Xander probably haven't woken her up because they don't want to do the dishes, but I think it's hilarious when she's late like this.
The schedule is pretty basic and fair:
_Breakfast (8 am)_Lunch_(2 pm)_Dinner (7.30 pm)
Monday_ _Willow_ Buffy_ Xander
Tuesday_ _Faith_ _Willow_ Buffy
Wednesday_ Xander _Faith _Willow
Thursday _Buffy _Xander_ Faith
Friday_ Willow_ Buffy _Xander
Saturday_ Buffy _Willow _Faith
Sunday_ Xander_ _Faith_ Willow
Faith was also supposed to be doing breakfast on Saturday and not just on Tuesday but I took pity on her, and let her do dinner. Doesn't really matter if its breakfast, lunch or dinner because she's always late anyway.
She's a pretty good cook too. I'm horrible at it so I mostly make simple stuff, and try to avoid burning down the kitchen. That's also one of the reasons I took the breakfast deal. You don't really have to cook for breakfast; you can just make some sandwiches or something.
Out of all of us Faith is the best cook, and we all love it. If she would agree we'd be happy to let her just cook every day, but there's no way that would happen. She hates doing it 'cause she can't sleep in and it wouldn't be fair to just force her. I remember the first time she cooked for us.
*****FLASBACK*****
Faith wanted to get out of the basement to stretch her legs a bit, and she was getting a little crazy down there. I would be too if I was forced to lie on the bed for days. We changed her chains, and now she's able to sit instead of just lying there, and when she asked to be released so she could at least take a walk around the house, Willow was strongly against it.
"The only reason she can get out of there is if she's doing something for this house, like cleaning or, or cooking."
Faith's face lit up, "Done, I'll cook for ya. Just let me go in the kitchen."
She must have seen our shocked expressions because she started to explain, "I was on my own a lot, and I had to take care of myself. Cooking is just a part of it. No biggie and I promise I won't poison you. I haven't done that since…" she trails off, pretending to be thinking really hard.
"Ha ha, real funny." I glared at her. "Willow what do you think, should we let her?"
"I guess. She's a free loader now, and she should start pitching in. We can give it a test run, but someone should watch her in case she really does try to poison our food."
I nod my head in agreement. I slowly unchain her, prepared for anything in case she tries to run but she doesn't. She just rubs her wrist a bit, and asks where the kitchen is. I walk her upstairs, and lean against the counter. There's no way I'm letting her out of my sight.
About an hour later I'm practically drooling. Whatever she made smells delicious, and I can't wait to try it. I haven't had a decent meal for a while now. Don't get me wrong, Willow, and Xander do make pretty good simple stuff, but it doesn't even come close to how my mom used to cook, and well, I'm pretty useless when it comes to cooking.
She sets the table, and everyone sits down. Willow uses a spell to check if anything's wrong with it. Faith just rolls her eyes, and complains about it getting cold. After about a minute everyone digs in, and to everyone's surprise it tastes even better than it smells.
We more or less just inhale our food, and are thoroughly disappointed when lunch is over. "Wow, that was…" Xander starts.
"Amazing, delicious, perfect, outstanding… and lots and lots of more adjectives that have a positive meaning."
Faith just smiles at that, and rubs the back of her head while she mumbles a thank you.
I frown, "Is your head still hurting?" She looks confused for a second but then remembers the hand, and quickly pulls it down, "No, it's fine. Just a force of habit."
"Liar," but she just ignores me, and picks up the dishes. "What are you doing?" asks Willow.
"Cleaning up. I made the mess; might as well clean it."
"You just don't want to go back in the basement," Xander smiles mischievously probably already planning on how to use this to his advantage.
"Do you wanna clean up?" She has a point. I stand up, and help her grab some of the dishes, and bring them to the kitchen sink. I lean back against the counter, and watch her as she rinses the plates with water.
"That really was great. If you want we can add you to the schedule we have set up, so you can get out of the basement more often."
She smiles for a second, "Yeah, that'd be great. I hate just sitting in the basement, and I haven't cooked in a really long time. I missed it." I give her a little nod, and tell her we'll talk about it later with the others.
*****END OF FLASBACK*****
I slowly walk to the kitchen because I know how she gets when she's hurrying, and sure enough, she's running around the kitchen like a headless chicken. I take in her appearance, short white t-shirt, blue jeans, and again no shoes. I have to admit she does sort of look cute like this, completely lost, and in a desperate need of a comb. Her hair is flying everywhere, and they're all tangled up.
I giggle, and look at the clock. 7.59 aaand it's 8. I look at the table where Willow and Xander are sitting and snickering. She didn't manage to get it done in time because the table's still pretty empty. She managed to throw some bread on it but that's about it. "Fuck!" she curses aloud.
We start laughing, and she just glares. I know she's about to say more so I stop her before this turns into a fight, "just calm down Faith. Take your time, and make breakfast."
She takes a deep breath and walks back into the kitchen. It's amazing how good she got at controlling her temper. The old Faith would've already punched someone by now, but she hasn't. She didn't even yell. Maybe there's hope for her yet. Oh, who am I kidding, as long as she has someone to guide her she'll be fine.
20 minutes later the breakfast is ready, and amazing as always. She made the most delicious waffles, and after we're done eating I help her clean it up.
She's rubbing her head again, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, fine." She can be so stubborn at times. She hates to show any kind of weakness. For the first week I couldn't even get her to admit she's not sleeping well. Actually now that I think about it, she still hasn't admitted to that. We've all seen the dark circles under her eyes, and every time we try to talk to her about it she just shrugs it off like it's no big deal.
It's kinda weird. She sleeps through most of the day, and when she wakes up she still looks like she hasn't slept in a month. But forcing her to talk about something she doesn't want to is pointless. We'll do something about it if it doesn't stop or if it gets worse.
FPOV
My stomach just won't let up. Today after I've made breakfast I got really nauseous, but everyone else seemed to be fine so I know there was nothing wrong with the food. I can't believe I managed to sleep in again. I got really pissed and bitchy about it too. After lunch Buffy finally got tired of my snarkiness and took me to the backyard to spar.
"Just take it easy 'cause we still have patrol tonight." She warns me. I really do feel like a kid sometimes, except I've never been really good at following rules so sometimes I have this insane urge to just rebel.
"Hey, if you can't handle it, I can go by myself." I suggest, hoping she'll finally give me some breathing space.
No such luck however, "Yeah, right. So you could just find a bar, get drunk, and get some? I don't think so." Damn, she knows me too well. Oh well, at least I can have some fun teasing her about it.
"Why you so against it? You wanna be in it or something? You know how I get after slaying. What's wrong with taking care of the H&H?"
"Just stop. You're not going anywhere without us, and we all know how you get when you drink, and your brain turn off."
I should probably take offense to that but I don't. I know exactly what she means. This one time after I got really wasted I managed to get myself going with three guys at once. It was wicked awesome. I feel myself getting wet just thinking about it. The only downside to that was that I was sore all over the next day, and they sorta robbed me. Took my wallet and everything.
Buffy groaned, and punched me really hard in the head, enough to make me fall to the ground.
"HEY! What was that for?! I thought we were taking a break." I pick myself up.
"Please stop thinking about your sex life when we're sparing."
"What, how did yo-"
"You were grinning, and I can smell you. Sometimes I really wish I didn't have heightened senses."
"Oh c'mon. At least let me daydream. It's bad enough I can't do anything." This is becoming a serious pain in the ass. I love teasing her about it but I didn't have any in so long, and I don't count prison 'cause that wasn't exactly consensual. I'm so horny right now I could probably jump her if given the chance.
"Mhm…" she's not even listening anymore. I can tell she's distracted. Probably going off into her own little happy place.
"Listen, I think it's time we wrap it up for today. Besides I'm beat, I'm just gonna go crash for a while so I won't fall asleep on ya in the cemetery."
"Yes, we wouldn't want that." She smiles, but there's a bit of concern in her eyes too. I know she wants to know what's going on, I mean I have been sleeping a lot since I got here, but here's the thing. Every time I fall asleep all I get is nightmares, and I usually wake up feeling even shittier than I did before I fell asleep.
What I'm dreaming about you ask? A bunch of stuff really. They're not slayer dreams or anything like that. Just shit from the big house, that crap that happened before in Sunnydale, my sucky childhood etc. The latest memory that invaded my sleep was about that time when my mother told me that dad's gone.
*****FLASBACK*****
"Get up, you stupid whore!" I wanted to hit her back so much, but you want to know what the fucked up part is? I sort of like it. At least when she's beating me she's noticing me, giving me attention. On most days she'll just ignore me, and pretend I don't exist. Usually my dad would be the one to discipline me, but he hasn't shown for a while now. My mom still hasn't told me where he went or when he's coming back. Not that I miss him or anything, I'm glad he's gone.
Usually when he comes home, and sees my mom drunk he just beats her up, and she gets mad, and then she beats me up, tellin' me over and over that all this is my fault.
I have no idea how I did this. Honestly I have no idea what I did either. I don't know if she's talking about her getting slapped around, us living in this crappy apartment or her life in general. Or maybe she's refereeing to my dad being gone. There's a bunch of other stuff that I could be responsible for too.
I don't even know why they had me. They hate me, they make that very clear, and from all the yelling at me I got the faint idea that they wish I was never born. I have to agree with that one with them. I wish I was never born too. I can't wait to get the fuck out of here.
"Just stop crying you big baby before you wake someone up." Did I mention it was the middle of the night? She just got home from a bar, and as soon as she saw me on the couch she slapped me as hard as she could. She's been hitting me for the last 20 minutes now, and somewhere in between I started crying. I tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn't. She's too strong for me, and I'm only four.
After a while she finally got bored, "Get up, get yourself cleaned up, and go to bed." I quickly picked myself up from the ground 'cause I know if I disobeyed she'd just start hitting me again, and ran to the bathroom. I washed the blood from my hands and face as best as I could, and changed myself into my shirt I used as a PJ.
The next morning I found my mom passed out on the couch. I could still smell all the alcohol on her, and it made me want to gag. She reeked really bad. I went to the kitchen, and made us some breakfast. Just a couple of sandwiches 'cause my mom freaks out if I turn on the stove. She's afraid I'm gonna burn down the house. What she doesn't know is that whenever they're both gone I always make myself some lunch and I've never set the kitchen on fire. At least not yet.
I slowly shake my mom awake. This could either go really good or really bad. Sometimes when I wake her up she gets really pissed, and starts hitting me again, and sometimes she's really nice. I'm prepared for both situations.
"Mom, wake up. I made breakfast." I touch her shoulder.
"Go away. Who turned on the fucking lights!" Great, she already sounds pissed, and she's not even fully awake yet. That light isn't the lights though. It's the sun rays from the window 'cause we don't have any curtains. She shouldn't have fallen asleep here.
"That's the sun mom." Oh crap, why did I say that?!
She rubs her eyes, and looks at me, "Are you trying to be a smart ass, you little piece of shit?!"
"No, no! I swear I'm not!"
"Oh just shut up, and give me that damn sandwich." I hand it over to her and for a while neither of us says anything. It feels nice, just sitting here, enjoying breakfast with my now sober mom, so of course she has to do something to ruin it.
"Your dad… he's not coming back."
"What, why?" I'm getting really freaked right now, and I can see my mom is getting annoyed with my asking questions. She gets angry really fast.
"Because you drove him away. He doesn't want to be with me anymore because you're such a horrible little kid." I start crying, and she gets even madder. By the end of the morning I was lying in the corner of the room, bruised, and silently wiping.
*****END OF FLASBACK*****
Sometimes I can still feel the back of her hand when it connects with my face. That day will probably be forever engraved into my mind. My mom just got worse after that. Before she'd just hit me if dad hit her or if I pissed her off but after that the beatings never stopped. I still don't know what happened to my dad. I guess I don't really want to know either. It sucked either way.
I used to blame him for my mom hitting me, but when he disappeared I remember I wished for him to come back every Christmas. I always wrote a letter to Santa, but he never made the wish come true. When I was seven I finally realized there was no point of writing to Santa anymore, so I stopped.
Doesn't really matter now anyway. I'm not that little helpless kid anymore. Now I can defend myself, and no one is going to hurt me like that anymore. Even in prison I still had at least a little control of what happens to me. Yes, I got beat up a lot, but I still didn't stop fighting. I didn't break, and just give in. Never again will I just let other people walk all over me.
TBC
A/N: Sorry about the bad "food schedule" chart. If you want you can see a slightly better version of it on my LiveJournal (link is in my profile).
Guest: If I told you if Faith is okay, I'd spoil the whole story :P
Thanks for reading :)
