Title: Unending Path of Mine Chapter 3 Beyond Redemption

Rating: PG:13 for now. The smut will come. I promise.

Pairing: Buffy/morphine so far…

Disclaimers: I don't own Buffy. Though if I would I would've soundly beaten Joss for what he has done to AtS. The Lyrics are His Majesty Ville Valo's. I wouldn't mind him soundly beating me.

Song-fics Rock. Fuck off if you don't have an open mind when it comes to writing. There is always a possibility for creativity for even song-fics, slash, fluff and PWP. I'm still looking for it… but yah. Read some of Annie Sewell-Jennings's work if you need to renew your faith in the Fan fiction Community. She. Fucking. Rocks. While I am the stinking pit of mediocrity. Enough self-loathing.

Oh I see your scars

I know where they're from

Fear oppressed her, the panic in her chest spread from the center of her body outward. The muscles in her fingers tensed, fingers digging into her palms. The confusion and dizziness blocked her thought. She was warm. That was the extent of her comprehension of the situation. She hadn't been warm in a long time. She relaxed her hands and felt them aching. Movement beyond that was near impossible; she was bound down in softness and swallowed in comfort. It was all so strangely alien. The refusal to open her eyes kept the illusion alive. The exhaustion that had been on the verge of consuming her for years finally caved in past her anger and will. Sleep took a hold and dragged her into his arms.

So sensually carved and bleeding

Until you're dead and gone

The drugs drip, drip, dripped through a winding tube into the silver needle and into her bloodstream, tricking her mind into yielding. Her thoughts blurred again with the fading pain. Three times she had awoken already, if it was the passing of days or hours she couldn't tell. Faces came to her in dreams, people with looks of relief and disbelief, pain and shock, longing happiness. All her bittersweet memories, which always came to her in dreams, rendered less vivid with the drugs.

I've seen it all before

Beauty & Splendor torn

It's where heaven turns to black

And hell to white

Right so wrong and wrong so right

Now

Her body was healing. Healing the wounds that had seemed permanent. All the little changes she could feel in her body, tensing, the pulsing of her heart, the stiffness and growth of her skin and muscles. The soreness that came with the healing was almost pleasant, like the morning after being pounded into the walls of a crypt by a glittering moonlit avatar. She stretched every muscle of her body and almost smiled. Almost.

She didn't know her situation. Right then she didn't give a damn. She could guess that whoever this was wanted to kill her. Nothing new. She waited for the usual heaviness bought on by the drugs. The impatience of a new addiction filled her anger seeped in. She didn't want to open her eyes yet!! Please god. Let me go back to sleep, make them pump me full of that shit again so I can rest… Out of frustration her eyes cracked open. Light, that's all this place is made of. I'm dead. I must be dead. Have the pretty little Angels come down to take me back to Heaven? It's been so long since she'd been here. She wondered how long her stay this time would be.

Feel it turning your heart into stone

Feel is piercing your courageous soul

This Heaven wasn't what she remembered it to be. The feeling was back in almost all of her body. Occasionally she picked up soft feminine voices, whispering now. Every time she opened her eyes just pure white light leaking in. A white light that made her want to step into it and shut the door behind her. The voices were back again, slightly clearer. The words still didn't make any sense, but that could be because she hadn't heard a human voice in so long.

            'Good-bye Buffy..'

'You'll get to come soon! I'm sure of It.'

            'See you in Heaven, friend.'

Ringing in her ears, voices screaming, crying, chanting, consoling, hushed moans. Every voice she had heard in her life rang in her ears. A scream welled up in her throat and joined the other noise that wouldn't stop. Through it all, the welcome press of the needle and the heaviness, sleep and silent dreams it bought. Thank you pretty little needle…

You're beyond redemption

And no ones going to catch you when you fall

The next time she woke up it was better. Much too real for her liking, but better. More solid…. Things had lines forms and depth. She was aware of being lifted, carried by gentle strong arms. The sound of water running… She was set down into lukewarm water. Though it scalded and burned and made her want to try and peel back her skin to make it stop hurting.

The same strong gentle arms that carried her soon used their hands to start scrubbing at the stains on her skin. Some times they scrubbed so hard it hurt, on her injuries it was delicate, on her breasts and abdomen just the barest whisper. The hands and arms were nervous, shaken like they knew naught to do with this filthy little creature in their grasps. The cleaning process went on forever as the water was changed many times and she was finally dried by a soft towel with millions of little fibers absorbing the water off her skin. She tried to find whom the strong gentle arms and hands belonged to, but it was just another big white blur in her vision.

Oh I see you crawl you can barely walk

Back to rest, back to bed, back to the needles and the pretty quiet dreams. Before the happy sleep was induced, she heard weeping. So quiet she could barely hear it over the usual noise in her head. Whispered consoling murmurs of something that sounded like her name. Someone knew her name. This time she struggled to maintain consciousness. She wanted to know whom it was who knew her name… This.. Wait.. No.. The curiosity wore out and she rested, unaware of the haunting eyes that wept for her or the slight brush of a hand on her skin.

And arms wide open

You keep begging for more

She dreamt of hands. Hands that were strong and prevailing. Wielding the anger and conviction of the gods. They were her hands, as they were a long time ago. Before the

Scars malnourishment, and the endless struggle. Back in a time when she had pretty smelling lotion to soften her calluses. Band-Aids and Neosporin to heal the wounds before they turned to scars. Fingernails that were a vanity, and painted endless colors and glued to plastic bits and pieces, only to be ruined the same night by the endless struggle for her life. Her hands weren't soft anymore, the holes in them made her fingers shake when she tried to use them. The nails were used more for digging than any sort of display, unless you counted the demon blood under the tips. Which she did. Her hands held her power; they were her greatest tools, at times her only one.

            Her dream was soon full of other peoples' hands. Bony, pale, soft, strong, some as callused as hers from combat, others from just labor. She guessed there were no more soft hands anymore. There was not enough tenderness in the world anymore for that.

I've been there knocking at the same door

It's where hate turns to love and love to hate

Faith the doubt and doubt to faith

There was a room now, with the precisely placed corners and flat soft walls. She wore a flimsy white gown and soft cloth binding over half of her injured body. The nurse said a Lady was coming in to see her, to talk to her. The brunette woman named Annette was a vampire. She never smiled. The look in her eyes said she would rather eat Buffy than tend to her. But even the small illusion of humanity the vampire had was a light in the darkness. She left in a hurry, locking the door behind her. Annette wouldn't tell Buffy anything. Not a word wasted on her to give information. She was in a hospital.  That was it. Her drug-addled fantasies of heaven were brought down to the mundane.  She couldn't sleep without the needle anymore. Sometimes they forgot to bring it to her and she pounded the walls with fist and foot until preternatural hearing picked up her desperation. The nurse would walk into the room and harshly grad her arm, tying plastic around the upper half of her arm, carelessly shoving the needle into the bruised delicate skin. She would sigh and fall to the floor, the white walls and Annette speeding to a haze.

That's how she slept. During the say her hands shook and her palms sweated. It was the pain she insisted to herself. And that was convincing for a long time.

            Finally the Lady came, on a day when the shaking wasn't as bad and she could concentrate enough to exercise. Her door opened to let in a luminous skinned seraph. She walked to Buffy with an easy grace and tapped her on the shoulder. Instinct propelled her to whirl to a crouch and flatten herself to the wall.

'Do not be frightened'

'You're here to talk to me right?'

            'I am here with the answers to many of your questions.'

Feel it turning your heart into stone

Feel it piercing your courageous soul

The words coming out of the Lady's.. creature's … whatever's mouth refused to sink in. hospital. Rescue. Angel. Los Angeles. Safe. William?. Angel. Death. Morphine. Safe. Heal. Battle. Angel. ANGEL! Angel.. Still alive and well. The last sanctuary for those demons and other assorted creatures, who didn't particularly like what was happening in the world. Weren't exactly all out for the Apocalypse. Really. Wasn't in their best interests. This was the Last Stand. Angel, he was in charge. No, there weren't any other humans, well one but that was arguable.

            She couldn't grasp this. That he had rescued her, that there was still some good (?) in the world. The woman let to let her deal with the shock. Would he come to see her? She wanted desperately to talk to him. But… that he had seen her There like That.. Oh God.. She could've handled it if he hadn't, but he did. She couldn't live with this. It was for survival. It had to be acceptable. He had to understand! Sleep… the needles came again.

You're beyond redemption

And no ones going to catch you when you fall