Prompt: "Somebody needs to be injured – how severely is up to you. Low, gravelly voice. Dog tags. 'This isn't fucking Narnia, X!'"
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Losers
Pairing: Faith/Clay
Point of View: Buffy Summers
Timelines: After all seven seasons of BtVS, before Rogue's betrayal for the Losers.
Words: 693
When Time Slows Down
She was woken to the fact she had been clenching her hands together by the touch of her sister's hand on them. She glanced at her, momentarily taking her eyes off the door of the operating door she had been staring now closer to an hour. She put some effort into relaxing the muscles of her hands and managed to make the whiteness that had taken over her knuckles slowly recede.
She focused her senses to survey her surroundings. There weren't any noticeable changes since the last time she had taken a break from the thoughts coursing through her head. The hallway they were sitting was still empty, if you didn't count the two of them and a couple of nurses who walked by now and then. The walls were painted in a sickly shade of green, one typical of hospitals. She supposed they were meant to be calming or something to that extend. Didn't really help, if you asked her.
The radio was playing somewhere down the hall, and she could faintly hear the low, gravelly voice of Leonard Cohen sing about a cold and broken Hallelujah.
She absently wondered when Faith had last gone to church, and if she should pay a visit to the hospital chapel. Not that praying had ever helped her, but it never hurt to try. It wasn't for herself, so maybe the powers or the big guy upstairs would take a pity and be merciful on the woman in the surgery.
She didn't know how long had passed when she was again brought out of her more or less morbid thoughts and back to the narrow hallway by the sound of someone talking. Dawn had gone to get them some coffee and something to eat about fifteen minutes ago. She had barely been aware of that, never noticing that a group of five men had arrived; she had been so lost in her own thoughts.
She caught something about a lion and hope of one of the men's speech – scratch that, it was definitely a babble, before another one of them snarled out, "This isn't fucking Narnia, Jensen! Now sit down and shut the fuck up!"
The look on the face of the one called Jensen was one of a kicked puppy as he did like he was told, sitting on one of the benches.
The quiet of the space would probably have been awkward if everyone's minds weren't occupied by what was going on behind the closed door.
Dawn was yet to return when one of the older men of the group approached and stopped in front of her. He was dressed in well-worn jeans with a red flannel shirt pulled over a black t-shirt. His posture screamed military and the fact she could tell he carried dog tags by the glimpse of the chain that caught the fluorescent light and the faint shape under his shirt pretty much confirmed it.
"Hi, you must be Buffy? I'm Clay… I'm Faith's–" he paused.
"I know who you are," she interrupted him, saving him the effort of finding the right word to describe himself. There was no change in the stoical expression she had sported ever since she got the call.
"Aah," he breathed, acknowledging her statement. "Have you heard anything?"
"No, they're still operating. It looks like she's going to pull through. The doctor promised to send someone to tell if anything changed," she told. In an act of compassion prompted by his expression she added, "I'll tell you if I hear anything."
"Thank you," he nodded and stared her for a moment, not certain if he should say something more. She turned her gaze back to the door having nothing else to say to him, and recognizing the dismissal for what it was he returned to his friends down the hall.
