Needle in the Hay
Dsic:. Noingth
Wonderful.
Twice a day.
Five times a week.
Three weeks under the Ludovico Technique and its cure for the modern convict and their redemption.
Have I really been cured? She would think to herself many times over as the acid coloured taxicab rolled her sluggishly back towards the hidden, fictional streets of Sunnydale, California. Had I really changed because I was forced to watch some videos?
Everything was surreal. The scene outside her fingerprint tinted window, the hands that connected to what were supposed to be her arms, all of it was constricting and unreal. She was returning to Sunnydale, cured, but quite literally "sick" of violence. The thought simply of even staking a vampire, which occurred automatically, thoughtless over the course of the ride back to her previous hometown, caused her insides to rumble and twist, forming the brief bubbling at her lips and a quiet groan to escape her dry, chapped lips.
And then there was of course, Buffy. Buffy Elizabeth Anne Summers. Or Elizabeth Buffy Anne Summers. She wasn't sure, it didn't matter though. Buffy had to have heard of the experiments put on her. She had to have because the newspapers and News television shows wouldn't shut up about it. She probably knew every detail, every part of her stay at the State Hospital, right down to the brand and colour of the jello that was served with her meals every day.
And with the fact that Buffy knew, came the thought that quite possibly she understood, and realized that this whole endeavour, this whole act had been for her. It was for her, and she had to understand. She had to know that redemption, goodness, whatever it was that been bestowed so forcefully upon her whether she originally wanted it or not, was for her.
All these thoughts, all these 'for hers' had taken up an hour, plus one half maybe, and teleported her it seemed to 1630 Revello Drive. Faith couldn't even remember arriving in Sunnydale, much less telling the driver to bring her here. Never the less, she silently paid the man, took her things from beneath her feet, and stumbled up to the door.
Her fingers had just barely recovered from knocking when the door was thrown open, and then promptly closed behind Elizabeth Anne Buffy Whatever Summers. She stood here before her, though many inches shorter, just as chilling. "Heard about it already. What you think you're some kind of hero? Some sort of saint now because they flushed the bad out of you?" And on came the blows. Faith stepped back with Buffy's words, keeping two chocolate doe eyes against the ground and letting each petty insult bounce off of her. She had learned to drown Buffy out over the years.
"I just -- … "
"You just… what? Didn't think? Didn't care? I'm through Faith. You're out of my life. You're dead to me."
The door suddenly closed and Buffy was gone, disappeared inside to promptly be asked by her squad of friends who had disturbed them at so late an hour, to which she most likely replied, "Someone was lost."
Faith stepped away from the porch, down the few steps, and took herself down the warm Sunnydale streets, hugging her package of things tight to her chest, wondering if she might possibly find a home for the night. It didn't matter though if she did or not. She was a creep, a loser, an old story on an outdated newspaper.