A Small Creature Who Can Barely Walk
by zingrrrl
A Small Creature Who Can Barely Walk
[reviews]
Title: A Small Creature Who Can Barely Walk
Author: Zinerva Donella
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Fox Television, and Dark Horse Comics own all things Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Songs are from Bikini Kill and belong to Kathleen Hanna. Titles are taken from Le Tigre songs and belong to Kathleen Hanna. The Jackal belongs to Alphaville Films and Universal Pictures. I'm just borrowing for my own amusement.
Pairing: Buffy/Faith Willow/Buffy.
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and sexuality.
Author's Note: Transcripts used are from the Buffy vs Angel website. While this story starts off Fuffy and makes several references to Bangel, it is a Wiffy story. The girls will get together, sooner rather than later. The Tuatha Dé Danann and Fom...iri in this story are not mythologically nor spiritually accurate.
Warnings: There are massive amounts of character death. I am being a brutal bitch in this piece. If you're looking for a soft Wiffy ship, this isn't for you. Read it anyway, and tell me about it, anything. Spoilers for season 3, mostly up till the end of Helpless, but there will be a little bit of stuff from later season 3 eps that creep in. Also some general spoilers for seasons 7 and 8.
Author's Note 2: Thanks to my beta Michelle. Special heart felt thanks to Valyssia, who actually did a lot more work with me on the first part of the piece than my beta. Without her, it would suck a whole lot more than it does. She helped me fix lots.
A Small Creature Who Can Barely Walk
Prologue
i wanna spread my dementia
They want to buy the look of my abuse. They want to use my blood. To color their perfume. Get out of me. I know. Go, go, go. Just like a starfish. My legs will soon grow back. I'll just be ten times stronger. Each time that you attack me. - Starfish - Bikini Kill
Blackness claimed me as I felt the cool, bitter, coppery fluid slide down my throat with my last conscious breath. Then nothing but pain. Everywhere. Every nerve, tendon, and spasm wracked muscle screamed in an agony like nothing I'd ever felt. Not even my first death had felt so bad. I might not of drank if I'd known it would feel so bad, 'cause the bite sure as hell didn't feel this bad, even if it was more than a bit gross. But then I probably shouldn't have drank from that well at all. It was a mistake, I knew that, one that was completely within my power to resist. But I hadn't. Couldn't. If I'd refused, well, that would've meant that they'd get away with what they'd done to me. And there was just no way I'd ever let them get away with it, murdering me. If I had to die, then they were sure as hell going to go with me. Was no doubt about that as far as I was concerned, not one. Happy fucking eighteenth birthday, Buffy Summers! Hope you liked your God damned present, because murder just isn't an easy gift to give. My body twitched one last time, then stillness.
Nothing.
Iron gray swirling tendrils of thick smoky mist wrapped around my prone body, caressing, oily. A violation. I opened my eyes and shuddered as suddenly I was standing free, ankle deep in reddish windblown sand. The sun sat high above the western horizon, burnt my exposed skin past red into a sizzling bubbly mass of pain I knew would turn deadly soon enough. I spotted a cave carved into the side of a narrow cliff that suddenly appeared to my right. Ran. Screaming.
Diving through the mouth of the cave as my flesh started smoking, I rolled until the sunlight was but a cruel memory, embraced the wonderfulness that was subterranean shade. Curled up into a fetal position and cried. I was loosing something vital, I was certain, but what it was I didn't know. I just knew I felt incomplete. But clueless as to why. Laying there on my side, rocking gently, searching my shrinking soul for the sadness and grief I should've felt at what I was loosing. And found nothing but a lack of empathy, even for myself.
Standing, relieved that what ever part of me that had drained away was not important enough to be bothered with, I walked back further into the cave, my eyes so well adjusted to the dark that I had no problem making even the smallest details of the cave walls. The primitive paintings lining the passageway, of wild animals and fierce hunters. Of demonic visages and young teenage girls.
I found myself entering an immense cavern lit by a large roaring bonfire. Moving closer to the fire, I spotted three men in leopard skins and tall felt hats - one hat red, one brown, one black — spastically dancing around a large round rock and beating large oaken staffs into the ground. Chanting in a language so old, it'd been forgotten for millennia when Ki walked the earth. A young girl lay, back bent, upon the boulder, chained tightly, face up, body covered in smeared, greasy black and white body paints, her hair a rat's nest of shoulder length dreads.
The girl screamed as one of the men opened a box and tendrils of black smoke shot forth, reaching for her. The smoke obscenely caressed her body, engulfing her, forcing it's way up into her mouth, her nostrils, even her wide open eyes. Her body twitched as the man with the box snapped the lid shut and turned to stare furiously at me while the girl screamed.
"This is no longer yours!" he shouted, his lips pulled into a tight snarl. "You do not belong!"
Again, nothing.
In a distant corner of my consciousness I found my self awareness fade into a sea of white. A static on reality. And then something rushed at me, a mirror of the white. Without my reflection. I screamed.
And found myself laying upon a hard, cold surface, face up, unable to move. Stared up at a domed ceiling of white marble inlaid with streaks of a brilliant red gold. After an eternity or perhaps a second, a woman's face came into my view. Why couldn't I move? Where was I?
The woman smiled at me with thin lips and gleaming eyes with bright pink irises. Her face was narrow, fey, her hair a swirling mass of fiery copper. She ran her smooth, soft fingertips along my forehead. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I needed to destroy her, but I couldn't move. Why couldn't I move? Fucking magic.
"Relax, my child," the woman said in a softly lyrical and compassionate voice. "No harm will come to you." I didn't want her compassion. What I wanted was to bite her throat out, drain her of life. Damn her! I believed her implicitly. Not believing her was impossible, I knew, because any word the woman uttered would be transformed into the truth the moment it left her thin pink lips. And I hated her for it.
"We merely await Manannán mac Lir to return with the spark and then you will be free to go," the woman said. "Did you understand what you saw?"
I found myself able to speak. "The making of the first Slayer. They violated her, it was an act of rape."
The woman nodded. "Yes. They chose her to be the vessel of the demonic essence because she meant nothing to them. She was just a receptacle. Just a girl. Who would miss her if she died? No one, because the essence would just be passed on to the next unimportant girl. Typical Fom...iri cruelty."
"Why show me?" I asked. "I'm of a different order now."
"Yet the essence still resides within your body, thanks to my interference, and fighting with your newly demonic nature. We will return the spark to you and combined with your essence, it will allow you to keep your nature in check. To a degree."
"A degree?"
"I wage war on the Shadow Men and will destroy them. You are my instrument. My will is the end of the Fom...iri and their representatives."
"And if I refuse?"
"The choice isn't yours ..."
I laughed long and hard, to the point my ribs hurt. "I see nothing wrong with that, considering." If I could have moved, I would have shrugged.
"I choose to heal with cleansing fire," the woman said. "It is dangerous, precise work. I need an instrument, not a monster." She ran her fingers gently through my blonde hair. "You will keen for every death you cause, except that of the Shadow Men. They lost the right to lamentation with the act of cruciamentum and for them, you will shed no tears. Yet this act of theirs is not enough, for we are loathe to interfere. Your purpose is to serve our purpose. You will grow to understand these things as you awaken with knowledge of your struggle. Be assured that your world hangs in the balance."
I heard a man's equally lyrical but far deeper voice say, "It's a dangerous game you play, Brighid, but here is this creature's soul."
They were using me, of that much I was certain. But it sounded like I was going to get to kill Watchers, and that was why I'd drank Kralik's blood in the first place. So I was fine with being used in that way.
Fear gripped my un-beating heart as I saw a purple glowing sphere grow in what I now knew to be a Goddess' hand. My soul. A conscience. What I'd chosen to cast aside restored. I found myself once again unable to utter a sound, so I screamed silently as the woman gently placed the sphere on my forehead. It sank inside my skull, burning, worming it's way throughout my mind. Sharing its space with two others, three becoming one. Triune.