Faith
Faith sat in the corner of the shower, her knees tucked up under her chin, the water cascading down like scalding hot needles, prickling at her skin. She scrubbed visciously at her arms and legs again, trying to erase the dirty feel from them. No matter what, she couldn't get clean again. She was dirty, so very dirty.
"Just pretend I'm Zac..." Angelus's cruel smirk, his teasing tone of voice, the evil glint in his eyes, the way he smiled and relished her screams of pain. "Faithy..." The way his lips curled in disgust when he said her name, the way he gently licked her blood from her cheeks, the way he'd delighted in cutting his name into her stomach, branding her as his forever.
She looked down at her body. The marks were gone now, all gone, but the dirt was still there. Dirty, so very dirty.
Every single time Faith fell asleep, she'd panic the moment she'd wake up, in fear that it had all been a dream. Maybe she hadn't been rescued, maybe she was still there, waiting for Angelus to come back and finish her off. Decide he still wanted to play with his toy, and damage her some more. And she couldn't fight back. All the years of training, the years of fighting experience... nothing. Nothing could be done. She just let him hurt her, and she let him know how much he could hurt her.
And then there were the dreams. Dreams that she was still there, still living through the torture, unable to stop him, and almost unwilling. Giving up, because giving into the pain was easier than fighting it. Easier. Because that was all that mattered... making things easier. She didn't want them complicated, because complicated meant more pain. Fighting Angelus meant pain, more pain than she could stand.
Then she would wake up in a cold sweat, hoping none of it had happened, but realising it had. Wanting so badly just to forget, but unable to. Wanting to feel anything but her pain. She could still feel it, the way he cut into her body, the way he broke her, and laughed, actually laughed as he heard the snapping of her bones. The way he didn't care... he didn't care that he was breaking her for life, because it was part of his game.
The way she had wanted to beg for him to kill her. How she wanted it to end so badly, she had actually considered begging him to kill her. Realising that she would perhaps die without him knowing, and with him hating her. The way her world crumbled again when he told her he'd killed Zac. The way she had believed Zac had died without knowing the truth.
But maybe she deserved it. Maybe after all she'd said and done in her lifetime, after the killing, the torturing, the maiming... it was all coming back to her now. After all she'd done, maybe she did deserve her punishment. All the pain she'd ever caused, it was coming back to her, and she couldn't stop it. And almost didn't want to stop it.
The water stung as it hit her skin. Faith weakly stood up and tried once more to clean herself off. She was still dirty, so very dirty. No matter how much she scrubbed, she was still going to be dirty. She reached out slowly and turned the water off, shivering in the sudden cold.
As she reached for her towel, her eyes stared blankly at her reflection. Her beautiful eyes, so bright and lively before, now only a one sided mirror of pain that not even she could begin to fathom. Nothing feels right, sounds right, looks right or tastes right. She knew she'd lost a lot of weight already. She was withering before everyone's eyes, but she was powerless to stop it. Or maybe she didn't even really care.
Bruises fade but the pain remains the same, and I still remember how you kept me so afraid...
Faith dried herself off carefully, and put her pyjamas on. It seemed like she was living in them, these days. She'd burnt her other clothes, the clothes that he had ruined. She was completely detached. From her friends and even from her own body. It was like her mind was somewhere else, but her body was making the basic functions by itself. Sooner or later, she knew, she'd have to face everything.
They were already trying to make her talk. She'd given a basic rundown to Piper about what he did to her. But somehow, when she'd told her, it was like Faith hadn't even been there. She told the story without emotion, without expression, nothing. Because it was easier that way, it was easier to pretend it didn't happen to her. Easier to tell it as though it was something she'd watched in a movie, or something she'd read in a book... but not something she'd lived.
Angelus had succeeded in his game.
She was completely broken.