Repairs

A Buffyverse fanfic by Raven

Part 2 of 3

When the lights went out in her room, Dana did not react, did not move. She lay there on the cot, in her long t-shirt and boxer shorts and bare legs and feet, her eyes open and staring up into the darkness at a ceiling that wasn't visible.

The lights, like so many other things in her life, were not under her control. In her more lucid moments--which were few and far between, but she'd begun to have more of them lately, after months of therapy--she had to acknowledge that she was hardly under her own control either. So someone else turned her lights on and off, told her when to get dressed, when to eat, when she could go out of the room and when she had to go back inside it.

So the lights went out as they always did in her plain white room, the latest in a series of plain white room where she had eked out her days for about as long as she could remember. The lights went out and it was dark but Dana lay there and her mind kept working. She was waiting. Waiting for the dreams. The dreams that came when everything was quiet and dark and still. No, not dreams, memories. Except they weren't hers. But they were. She had them, so they must be hers.

In one she was a princess in a castle. In another she was a warrior in a village in Africa. In another still she was a Chinese girl and she danced with a sword. She was traveling with an Arabian trade caravan. She was a medicine woman in training in a Navajo tribe. She was the daughter of a seamstress in the Warsaw ghetto.

Slayers.

They were her. She was them. They were the same. Girls. Girls like her. But not like her. So many. So many girls...

She liked the memory of the black woman in the big city the best. She was the strongest and she lived longer than any other Slayer and fought and beat the most monsters. But that wasn't what Dana liked best. What she liked best was the little boy. Because he was hers and nothing had been hers for so long since she couldn't remember when. Except he wasn't. Hers. But Dana pretended he was. And she fought to keep him safe from the monsters and the vampires and he was beautiful and was the color of chocolate and Dana loved chocolate and she loved him and she protected him. She would never let a bad man take him and hurt him. Not like...never. Protect. PROTECT.

Except a bad man took her. Took her away from the little boy. A bad man with white hair and metal in his face and a sneer and a smile and a laugh when he killed her. And her last thought as his hands closed around her throat was about the little boy. She knew the little boy was safe and that was all that mattered.

Dana memorized the face of the man with white hair. She'd seen him before. He'd killed her before. In China. And he'd been the one who'd taken her and chained her and gave her the poison and touched her in places he shouldn't have places that were bad and dirty. She made herself remember but it didn't bother her because now she was a Slayer and she was strong and she fought him and she beat him and she made sure he'd never hurt her or touch her in the bad places again. She beat him. Him. The man. The man with the dark hair and the bald head. No. The man with the white hair. No. Which one? Was there another one? What other one? Who?

No. Monster. Champion. Vampire. Slayer. Evil. Good. Strong fight slay heart head fire sun dust dust-dust-dust-dust-dustdustdustdust

Stop.

It was hard, but she'd been learning, learning to make the confusing swirl of thoughts, the jumble of words and sounds and images in her head, learning to make it stop. Just for a moment. So she could be with them. The Slayers. So many of them, so many now, not one, many. She worked hard to make the noises and pictures stop so she could see them and hear them talk even if it didn't always make sense. They talked and they talked and their sentences were longer than the ones she said and shorter than the ones she thought but they were strong and they fought monsters and they were good. They were good. They wouldn't hurt her. They said so. And they didn't.

Well, they did at first. Because she had fought them. And they had fought her. But they would stop and they would say things and she started to listen and she learned. She learned if she didn't fight them, they wouldn't fight her. She can't remember when she learned it or how or how long it took but she did and she didn't fight them anymore and they didn't give her poison or hurt her or bind her in tight coats that itched and scraped against her skin.

And they smiled.

Not the lie-smile the doctors wore. Real smiles. Like she remembered. From the time before the man. Smiles. And she thought if she was with them long enough maybe she'd be able to smile like that too. She wanted to, but it was hard, she had forgotten, forgotten how.

She liked the other Slayers, even if she couldn't say so or even smile to let them know. Even though they kept her here, kept her in the little room and locked her away like all the others before, she still liked them. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt that way about anyone. Yes she could. Before the man took her. That was when. But not since. Not until now.

So she let them talk and she let them help her get dressed and let them take her out for exercise and she'd even been outside, out in the sun, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen it. They had to take her back inside right away because it had scared her and because she'd started screaming. But she had gone outside and she had seen the sun and she held the memory in her mind like a precious, tiny jewel that she took out and caressed when it was dark and she was shut in her room. In her bed. Like now.

Quiet. Dark. Tired. Tired...

Why had they let him come back?

The thought came to her just as her eyes were about to close for the night. They opened wide instead. He'd came back. They'd let him find her. Today. Here! She'd started to think it was safe, but it wasn't. No place was safe. And he'd beaten her. He always won. She always lost. Maybe not at first, but eventually, she always did, it ended the same, with death. And the Slayers let him find her and face him alone and she didn't know why. Why? Why why why why why why...

Click.

Of course she heard it. She heard everything. She heard it and every sense was suddenly alert, her muscles tense, though to anyone watching she would not have appeared to have moved a muscle. Not at first. A heartbeat later she'd leapt off the cot and was on her feet. She crouched and her dark eyes scanned the room, looking for danger. Looking for him. Looking for the man.

It was the door. It was open, just a little. Light was coming through.

Dana stayed crouched on the floor, her eyes on the door. Waiting for someone or something to come through it. She felt no fear. She was a Slayer. She was strong. She would fight. But time went by and her heart beat in her chest and blood pounded in her ears and nothing came through the door and she heard no other sound. It didn't make sense. No sense at all. It was a break from the rules, from the routine of over a decade of locked rooms. Lights on, door opens. Door closes, lights off. But now the lights were off and the door was open and it didn't make sense. But nothing made sense. Nothing had made sense to Dana for such a very long time.

She slowly straightened. Then took a step. Then another. Her eyes looked about in her darkened room but saw nothing. She walked towards the open door. One step. Then another. She reached it. Put out her hand. Peered through the crack. Pushed the door open. It creaked softly and she flinched, but she took a breath and pushed it open. She looked out into the hall.

No one. Nothing. Empty. Not right. Her fists clenched. But the door was open. It had always been closed, she had been locked behind it for as long as she could remember, ever since the man took her and locked her up and after that everyone had done the same thing.

But now the door was open. The door had never been open. Like moth and flame, sailor and siren, she was drawn to it.

She took a step through the door, out into the dim hallway which was lit only by a single pale light several feet away. Dana's eyes, wide now with amazement and exhilaration, but with a growing trepidation as well, stared into the dimly-lit hall. She stepped cautiously into it. She heard nothing but the faint electric buzz from the single light that was on. No one said anything, or called her name, or yelled at her, or came running towards her.

She began to walk down the hallway, slowly at first, her head whipping left to right then back again excitedly, her long dark hair flying about her slender shoulders as her eyes searched the dim hallway for threats but saw none. She walked faster. Then faster still. Her heart pounded in her chest. She forgot all about the girls and their talk and their smiles. Somewhere down this hallway was another door, then maybe another one, but somewhere after that would be the last one and then she would be outside and then she would be free. And she would go far, far away and be away from the man and his poison and his hands forever.

He watched in complete and utter silence as Dana left her room and walked down the hall. He followed her with the silent stealth of a hunter who had pursued prey like her for over a century. He did not breathe, his heart did not beat, he did not sweat; he made no sound and left no scent. He was the perfect predator.

But she had a scent. He could smell it and it was like perfume in his nostrils and like liquor in his cold and stagnant veins, intoxicating, exhilarating. He could smell her adrenaline--her excitement, her fear as well.

And, of course, her blood. Oh, yes, her blood.

Warm, thick, sweet, gushing through her arteries, her heart pumping it faster and faster as she began to run down the hall, her pursuer following unnoticed behind her. The thick rubber soles of his boots made soft scuffing noises on the tiled floor, and his long leather duster made a gentle flapping noise against his legs, but she was lost to the thrill of her imminent escape now and would not hear him. Not until it was far, far too late, not until he was so close he could practically lick the sweat from the back of her slender neck.

Oh yes. He would make his presence known to her very soon.