CHAPTER EIGHT: GREY
Stephen stood shakily, adrenaline pumping through his body. He dusted the dirt from his clothes and cautiously stepped towards the fallen creature who had saved him. He swallowed hard, and gently prodded the small body with his bare foot, but she did not stir.
He thought frantically for a moment before coming to a decision that could have been potentially dangerous. Arranging the water bucket so that it dangled from the crook in his elbow, he lifted the Slayer and held her awkwardly before finding an easier way to carry her. With a quick glance around him to make sure he wasn't open to any attacks, he rushed home.
His father was, as always, waiting for him on the makeshift porch, sitting on a rickety old chair that Holtz had hand-crafted when Stephen had been only a year old.
Holtz opened his eyes wearily and jumped to his feet as he saw the silhouette of his son against the darkening sky. He raced to meet Stephen, looking down at the bundle that was being carried.
He looked at his son with confusion, but his son obviously didn't have any answers for him either. Holtz's eyes glanced over her body and he took in the bloody shirt and bleeding wound in the girls stomach.
"Bring her inside," he said quietly.
Stephen nodded and took her into the hut, laying her down on the beds that Holtz had crafted out of what little materials he had been able to find. He watched the girl carefully, afraid that she would awaken and attack at any moment, his weapon at the ready.
Holtz poured some of the new water into a smaller jug and grabbed a piece of old cloth to begin cleaning the wound on the injured girl. He lifted the black shirt carefully off the bleeding area and Stephen could only sit back and watch, trying to understand what it was that he was seeing.
"W-what is it?" he asked hesitantly.
Holtz looked up at him, sometimes forgetting that his son was so innocent, so ignorant about the world. Holtz had told him about girls and women, but Stephen had never seen one for himself.
"A girl. A human girl," Holtz replied gently.
Stephen tilted his head to the side thoughtfully, regarding the creature that lay prone on his bed.
"A girl," he whispered to himself. He swallowed and sat down on his father's bed, only a few feet away from his own.
Holtz hesitated before his next question, not entirely sure as to whether he would offend his son by asking.
"Did you…did you do this to her?" Holtz asked, pointing to the wound. The bleeding had stopped and Holtz had begun to wash away the excess blood.
Stephen shook his head emphatically.
"It uh…her…it saved me."
"Saved you?"
"Yes. A Ragnart demon was about to attack, but…this…girl killed it," Stephen explained. "The demon hurt her."
"She was able to fight?" Holtz asked, incredulously.
From the size of the girl, he was surprised that she had been able to lift a hand against a Ragnart demon and defeat it.
"It was…magnificent. I've never seen anything move like her."
Holtz regarded the unconscious girl with unbridled curiousity. He and Stephen had been in Quortoth for eighteen years and had never once come across another human being. Every creature had been a demon, evil, many of them extremely difficult to defeat.
The girls eyes opened suddenly, blinking as though to adjust to her surroundings. She sat up quickly in bed and jumped to a defensive position. Holtz stood and quickly put his hands up in a sign of peace. Stephen stood beside his father, ready to attack the girl if she decided to pounce on his father.
Buffy quickly cast her memory back to the last thing she remembered, and finally recalled saving the boy from certain death. She dropped her hands to her sides and sat down again, the gash in her stomach making her slightly queasy.
She looked up at the two men staring at her and felt herself go red under their scrutiny. It had been over four centuries since she had seen another human, and it was making her uneasy. The young man's penetrating gaze did nothing for her complexion either.
"Where am I?" she asked quietly.
Holtz touched his cheek thoughtfully and wondered how and why this girl was in Quortoth. She looked to be no older than twenty, a small slip of a girl who, by all rights shouldn't have been that good at defending herself.
"A dimension called Quortoth," Holtz replied.
She rolled her eyes a little and shook her head. "Yeah, I know that, but…where in Quortoth. I've been here for…well, a helluva long time and I've never seen any other humans here before."
Stephen looked a little startled at the girls language. His father's language was always formal, generally always loving unless Stephen had taken unnecessary risks during a fight. But Buffy's language was tinged with sarcasm and a cynicism that had been ingrained into her in the last four centuries. She had given up hope of going home about four lifetimes ago. She knew reality.
"You're in a hut in the East of Quortoth," Holtz explained.
Buffy nodded and looked between the two men.
"And…who are you guys? What did you guys do to deserve to come to hell?" she asked.
"We were forced here by a demon," Stephen replied, very defensive of his beloved father. He hated this dimension as much as the girl obviously did, and the fact that it was his biological father's fault that he and Holtz were there was an issue that lay heavily with him.
Buffy stopped and sighed quietly. It wouldn't do her any good to pick a fight with the only human interaction she'd had for four hundred years.
"But who are you? You have names?"
Holtz held out his hand for her to shake and she regarded it with confusion at first. Then, as though she had worked out the pieces to a difficult puzzle, she returned the hand shake.
"My name is Daniel Holtz. This is my son Stephen."
She shook Stephen's hand as well, though he was unfamiliar with the custom and accidentally squeezed a little too hard. He went to let go but she held onto his hand.
"Don't squeeze so hard. Lighten up the pressure by about half and you'll have a pretty decent handshake," she said.
He did as he was told and they shook hands once more. He took his hand back, surprised by the slight tingling feeling he had on his skin and in his stomach. He smiled shyly and quickly retreated back to his seat on his father's bed.
"Why are you in Quortoth?" Stephen asked, trying to regulate his breathing.
Buffy gave him a sad smile and just shook her head. "It's a long and…complicated story."
"You don't look like someone who deserves to be here," Holtz commented.
"Let's just say that I had a lapse in judgement. I jumped headfirst, literally, into something I didn't understand, and ended up making an slight mistake. I ended up here, and I've been here ever since," she explained.
"You don't look to be more than twenty," Holtz said. "You can't have been here very long."
Buffy rolled her eyes and made herself more comfortable on the makeshift bed, curling her legs up beneath her.
"Part of some higher plan from the Powers That Be. I don't age here in this dimension. Kinda lucky seeing as I don't have to eat anything, but I'm kinda partial to the water here. There's something to be said about water that you have to fight for. Makes it taste that much better," Buffy said.
Stephen suddenly narrowed his eyes at her, and as if out of nowhere, he pulled out a wooden cross and shoved it in her face. She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Problems?"
He stepped back, startled by her very casual demeanour.
"You're not a vampire?"
Buffy shook her head, and without a word, she pulled back the collar of her shirt and lifted the cross so that Stephen could see it.
"I'm not a vampire."
"But you move like a demon. I've never seen anything as fast as you are. And…you don't ever age."
"Four centuries in a hell dimension is kinda bound to leave me with some pretty good fighting skills. And not to honk my own horn here, but I was pretty darn good before I got stranded here."
Holtz looked horrified by her statement. "Four centuries?"
Buffy blew out a short breath and nodded. "Four very long and painful centuries of fighting and making up for my error in judgement."
There was silence for a moment before Stephen looked up curiously.
"What was it?"
Buffy looked up confused. "Huh?"
"The error?"
Buffy cocked her head to the side and gave a sardonic smile.
"I saved my sister. And I wouldn't take it back for the world."
