Buffy's POV
Feel like I've been run over in traffic, scratching in the dust as someone's leaving, punches in the gut, ohh look I'm bleeding, not for you, for me this time. All we have are our love and our guts baby; they're all over the road.
"B, I...."
She takes my hand with both of hers looking down at my fingers and she speaks but I don't think she has realised what she is doing. It's as if the contact will make sure that I find it impossible to ignore what she has to say.
I don't know what to do so I just stand there waiting to see what will happen, what she has to say.
"I'm ... I came here.. I needed to fight, to help. But I can't do this, I mean I need to know where we stand, I can't be here if I'm unwelcome again. No matter what it feels or looks like, this can't be the same as before." She's unconsciously playing with my fingers, like she's nervous and she's picked up my hand in the absence of something else to fiddle with while she talks, entwining my fingers with her own then untangling them and starting all over again. It's unnerving and I want to pull my hand away. It takes a moment for her to realise what she is doing and she carefully lets go of my hand.
She's not tough girl Faith; she's clumsy like a child. But it's kinda making me mad, i don't want her back here acting like a child. No one seems to get that all this responsibility always lands in my lap, they can run away or go off the edge but good little Buffy has to always keep her cool and do the right thing, even though it could mean losing everything. Having friends I think to myself, it keeps me alive and it kills me. Am I supposed to have friends or aren't I? This is all too hard of late.
So I decide it doesn't matter what the right thing to do is, I'm going to be totally honest and if she runs again well so be it, I really need to be looking out for me and I need to be thinking about my job as the slayer, what I don't need to worrying about is what everyone expects from me and fitting the criteria for the person they think I should be. I just tell her straight out.
"Stop." And she does, she quickly shuts her mouth and waits for me to continue.
"You don't get to say that, you don't get to say sorry, you don't get to say you care about me, you gave up all your privileges where I am concerned a long time ago. You don't get to come back into my life and turn everything on it's head and you don't get to look at me like I am supposed to be ok with this all. The hurt I feel is beyond the telling and your forever going to be a part of that. No matter what I want to feel toward you, no matter what glimmers of compassion I feel for you, everything comes back to what you did and I feel sick all over again. I want to see you as the person you were before or the person you are now, but every time I think of you my mind play everything over and over like a record stuck in a groove and the vision I am stuck with is not a nice one.
Everything's screwed up, I didn't ask for it to be this way, *I* didn't ask to be this way. I didn't ask to be the judge, the jury and the executioner, and I don't know what else to say to you, what I am *supposed* to say to you. I don't know how to help you."
There, I said it. It wasn't the long confrontation I had imagined having but it was something, it was a start. I don't know what I expected her to say, nothing really. I just stood there while she took it all in. Next thing I know she is walking towards me, closing the distance between us in a few paces, sadness written all over her face. But she doesn't say a thing; she just encompasses me in her arms, not letting go even as I stiffen in shock. It's an odd gesture and it's an odd response to my seemingly harsh words spoken seconds before.
This isn't supposed to be happening, I resent her and I just tried to push her away, because I don't know how to help her, I can't help her, I have nothing more to give.
She's not supposed to be hugging me, comforting me. I don't need it. I can't help her; I don't know how to help anymore. I'm ok with that; I'm not the one falling apart here.
I keep telling myself this as over and over as I find that I am clinging to her, tightening the hug. I take in a shuddering breath as the shocking realisation hits me, if I'm perfectly ok, If I don't need rescuing then why am I standing here balling my eyes out in the arms of the one person I thought I hated the most in all the world.