Fanfiction: In Her Arms

So my shrink says that writing out my thoughts will help me. She thinks a journal is what I need to help focus my thoughts and to help me figure out what’s wrong with my life. Hell, I’ve known what’s wrong since I was six. It’s not hard to figure out. I’m sure the whole town knows.

But to appease the therapist who holds the key to my survival, I’m writing. Okay? Do you see this, Dr. Leigh? I’m writing. Key to my survival. Okay, I’ll explain. A while back I sort of snuck into my mother’s stash of drugs. I don’t really know what I was thinking. I think I may have been trying to get rid of them so that she couldn’t do them anymore.

But one pill led to another and one hit led to about fifty. Next thing I know, I’m addicted to the shit. The only really good thing is that my mom was always too toasted to realize that I’d been swiping her drugs. Anyway, someone narced on me. I’m pretty sure that it was my friends; how could it not have been. So I had to go to detox and what a fun experience that was. I was the only one in there under the age of eighteen. Although, that surprised me, this being California and all. But I guess it’s not close enough to Hollywood.

So I got clean, which I’m happy about, but I had to agree to therapy once a week with Dr. Leigh. She reports back to the appropriate agency and if she sees me slipping in anyway, I get carted off to some institution of another. Two months ago I had one of my “I wanna kill myself” episodes and that just landed me into Clear Brook. If you don’t know what it is, trust me, you don’t want to. It’s horrible and the “treatments” they give you there…well, they just fucking hurt.

I think all my friends are distancing themselves from me. I can’t blame them. I would too. If I could just get away from myself everything would be good.

Okay, so I just came from a session. Dr. Leigh is sooooooo damn happy that I’m writing in this stupid book. It’s like she’s proud of me. But I must say, that was unique. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone be proud of me before. She also said that the journal was just for me, so I can put anything I want in it.

Fuck Dr. Leigh, Fuck Dr. Leigh, Fuck Dr. Leigh.

So okay, I feel really bad about writing that but I had to test it out, you know. Can’t always go on faith.

Speaking of which. New Slayer. Faith is her name. Nice looking and totally hot. Not that she’d go for me, but I can dream can’t I? Anyway, Cordy never really broke up with me, so maybe she and I are still dating. See? Witness me dream.

So, I’m sighing. How do I express that in a journal? Write a big SIGH when I do? Why do I sigh, Dr. Leigh would ask in that annoying way of hers. I guess because I’m sad. I’m lonely. The only thing I’ve ever wanted was someone to understand or hell, just to pretend to understand me.

I want to cry sometimes, but I find that I can’t. I just sit on my bed, staring at nothing with this huge emptiness inside of me that needs to be expressed.

So…The heart of the problem. Six years old. That’s how old I was when I realized that my life was so completely different than anyone else’s. That’s when my father hit my mother for the first time in front of me. Sent her flying across the room. He hit her because she was getting high while she was supposed to be watching me. And I had gotten into my dad’s collection of weapons. He didn’t hit her because I could have gotten hurt or dead. He hit her because I could have fucked up his prized collection.

After that day, the open hitting never stopped. My dad hit me too. Although, he didn’t always have to use his fists. One time, he put me in that small closet at the end of the hall. I think I was in there for a couple of days because when I went back to school everyone was asking me where I’d been and if I had a good time on my vacation. Yeah, my dad was inventive with his punishments. Although, they were never just punishments, they were just games for his pleasure.

Once or twice, he filled the bathtub up with cold water then went down to the gas station down the street and bought a bag of ice. He dumped it in the tub then made me get in. I don’t know why. There was never any reason to it. I had to stay in that tub for hours. It took me three days to get warm after that.

Where was my mother? How getting high and sleeping with the town’s drunken men in order to get more smack. Yeah, she was a whore. My dad liked to tell me about it. Your mommy’s out getting fucked for money, he told me when I was seven. You know what fucked is, Alex?

Of course I didn’t know. So he showed me. And what fun that was. I couldn’t go to school for about two weeks. I couldn’t sit down for two weeks and after that he never did it again…while I was that small. But I’m pretty sure that I was the only boy on the block who could suck his father off in under five minutes.

See, this is where the anger comes in. It shouldn’t have happened. I was supposed to have nice parents. Ones that cared. Ones that didn’t hurt me every chance they got.

But fuck it. I got what I got, so what can I do?

The most unbelievable thing happened last night. I was in the park after dark, just thinking, although a lot of me just wanted to get attacked by a vampire. I wanted to just hurry up and die; get this life over with.

Instead of a vamp that found me, a Slayer did. Faith, in fact. She found me sitting on the swings, so she sat with me. A couple tears slipped out before I could stop them and she saw. I didn’t want her to, but she saw. She asked me what was wrong and I didn’t answer. I already have a woman to pour my heart out to, not that I ever do, and her name is Dr. Leigh.

Faith just nodded and started swinging. ‘It’s okay’, she said. ‘I understand. You want me to guess at what’s wrong’? she asked. ‘One word, two syllables. Par-ents’, she said. ‘You’ve got that look’, she said.

I just looked up at her, surprised that she knew. I nodded silently. She took me back to her little apartment. She lives down in the industrial district, so the air smells like burnt rubber. I didn’t pay much attention to it, though. We talked all night. We talked about rotten parents and I found out that hers rivaled my own.

Her mother was a drug addict, like mine. Her dad was in jail for some thing or another and two of her three step fathers had raped her. All by the age of fifteen. She had an older brother who left her alone with her mother when she was thirteen and she hadn’t seen him since. His name is Tommy. She talks about him like he’s a god, but underneath, there’s that anger, just like the anger that’s inside of me.

Her mother overdosed when Faith was sixteen. She found her mother all bloated and puffed up. It wasn’t long after that, that Faith was called to be a Slayer. She took to her job and used it as an outlet. Her watcher, a woman, became like a mother to her.

I wish that I had something like that. Something that I could use as an outlet, someone who could be like a parent to me.

Anyway, I told her about my life and damn, it felt good. I mean, I’ve told Dr. Leigh, but this was different. I let Faith know about me because I wanted her to know, not because I was forced into telling her.

By dawn we fell asleep together. I woke up at noon with my arms wrapped around her waist. Her back was pressed up against me and my face was nestled in her hair. I want to take care of her. Because even though she’s a Slayer and she’s tough and can physically take care of herself, there’s a soft center to her that needs protecting and I want to be the one to protect her.

I want to take care of her and I want her to take care of me. We’re so alike. I could give myself to her. I could let her see more of me.

I met Faith again at the park last night. It was so nice. She makes me feel…

Hell, I don’t know how she makes me feel. What I like the most about her is that she doesn’t make me feel like the only to me is my past. She looks at me in the present and has hopes for me in the future.

We had just talked and talked for hours while we sat on the swings. After a while we jumped on the teeter-totter. It was fun. Of course, I weigh a lot more, but she’s got strength. It was like we were living the childhood we both should have had, together.

Faith is so smart. I mean, she’s not Willow smart, but she’s Buffy smart and Faith smart. What I mean is, is that yes, she dropped out of school, but wouldn’t you if you were her? And she’s got the Slayer intelligence, but there’s something else there that glimmers behind her eyes. It’s something that I want. She’s streetwise and knows what pain is and knows how to avoid it. I want to learn that.

We went back to her place again and we talked some more. It was…well, it was sad. I mean, I don’t cry in front of people if I can help it, but I can’t help it with her. I mean, she just strikes that cord in me that makes me want to share. I told her about the time that my mom did a fastball, but accidentally mixed too much heroin into it and almost died. I can’t imagine telling anyone else about this stuff. She’s been through it. She knows and she understands.

She’s good at asking those questions that only Dr. Leigh asks. Like how it make me feel to be nine years old and see my mother convulsing on the floor. Or what happened when my dad came home from work and found me trying to help her. She asks the hard to answer questions. The questions that make me cry because I’m not sure of the answers.

She held me last night too. She made me feel good. She’s so strong and I could live the rest of my life within her arms.

When I get the nerve, maybe I’ll tell her that. I’ll tell her that I want to be in her arms forever.

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