The Things That Shape Us

Written By: starcrossed

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing, really I don't. The shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, et al. Anything you read here is simply a product of my overactive imagination!
RATING: NC-17 for graphic descriptions of abuse, including rape. Fair warning, this story is not for the faint of heart.
SPOILERS: Season 4 of "BtVS" and season 1 of "Angel"
SUMMARY: Faith's reflections on the events that have shaped her.
DISTRIBUTION: If you would like to archive this story at your own site, please, ask me first.
DEDICATIONS: To the character, Faith, for telling me her story and allowing me to share it. And to Sovereign, for helping me to discover Faith's voice - simply put,you rock, Sov, baby!



Jail. The one thing about being in jail is that you have lots of time to think. That ain’t always a good thing, though, cause some thoughts are better off left alone. When you’ve lived a life like mine, seen the things I’ve seen, been through some of the shit I’ve been through, yet, lived to tell the tale, you ain’t too keen to go trippin’ down memory lane. In jail, though, sometimes you ain’t got nothin’ but your thoughts to keep you company.

During the months I’ve been here, I’ve found myself revisiting places in my mind that I ain’t been to in years. I been recallin’ things that I thought were locked up good and tight. The brain is a mystery, though, the way it chooses to unlock doors and take you places whenever it damn well pleases, whether you want to go on the journey or not. You can escape from a lot of things in this life, but there ain’t nowhere that you can run and hide from your memories.

It ain’t been all bad, though. I’ve found that in spending time with myself, I’ve learned a lot – about me, about the way I am and why, and I’ve come to the startling conclusion that there’s a lot of things that have happened in my life that ain’t my fuckin’ fault. There’s things in life, events, that shape us, that make us who and what we are. I’ve been learnin’ to deal with the things that have made me what I am.

My life was never sunshine and roses, but I suppose most people prolly figure that out just from lookin’ at me. Now, I ain’t aimin’ to sit here and feel sorry for myself just cause my mother never loved me and my asshole of a father split before I was ever born. No, I’m just wantin’ to get the story of my life all straight in my head so that maybe one day when I trust someone enough, I can tell it to them, and hope that they understand.

The beginning, a fittin’ place to start. My mamma got herself knocked up by a no-good, no-account, lazy, worthless bum who hightailed it out the door before she even knew she was pregnant. Mamma liked alcohol – beer, wine, whiskey – whatever was on sale at the local liquor store that week or whatever she could con some creep into buying her at any of the number of dives that she frequented. Being pregnant didn’t slow her down none on her drinkin’, either, so it’s a fuckin’ miracle that I didn’t come into this world full of birth defects. The only reason I can think of that she didn’t just have an abortion was that she prolly never came out of her alcoholic stupor long enough to get her ass down to a clinic. So, for better or for worse, I was brought into this world.

Booze did one of two things to Jolene – that’s my mamma’s name - depending on her mood. She either got horny or she got mean. As soon as I was old enough to realize this, I used to cower in my bed late at night, hopin’ and prayin’ that it was the former and that she was able to charm some bum into comin’ home with her to scratch her itch. Never took me long to find out what kind of mood the drinkin’ had put her in, though. I’d either wake up to the sounds of her and some guy screwin’ or I’d be rudely awakened by her yankin’ me up out of bed to punish me for some grievance she’d claim I had done.

Most nights, she’d be too drunk to do me any serious harm, but then, there were the other times. The times when she’d had just enough liquor to make her mean, but she could still think clearly enough to mete out a punishment. This was usually on a night when she’d run out of money to pay for her drinks and whatever bar she’d been drinkin’ in had a dearth of dumbass blokes willin’ to buy her a drink. Those nights were the nights I dreaded. She’d come home feelin’ meaner than a rattlesnake. Didn’t matter what I had done or not done. She would make something up if she had to. Any excuse to take out her frustration on me.

I’ve managed to block out a lot of the stuff she did to me as a kid, but there are a few incidents that stand out in my mind, no matter how hard I try to forget ‘em. One of ‘em that remains vividly etched in my brain was when I was ten years old. That night she yanked me up out of bed by the roots of my hair, half draggin’ me out into the living room. She snatched up an empty cigarette package off of the filthy, scarred coffee table and threw it at me, accusing me of smokin’ her cigs and leavin’ none for her. Of course, it wasn’t true. I never touched cigarettes cause I thought smokin’ was a nasty, filthy habit. Didn’t matter, though, cause once Jolene got her mind set on something, there was no way you could convince her otherwise.

I still carry the scars of that night’s punishment. In her drunken rage, she got it in her mind that a fittin’ punishment would be to burn me with a half-smoked cigarette that she managed to dig out of the ashtray and re-light. Like I said, I was about ten years old at the time and I remember that it took everything I had not to scream bloody, fuckin’ murder when she was holdin’ that lit cigarette to my bare skin. I already knew at that age, though, that it was far better to take the punishment in silence, than to scream or cry or even whimper, for that usually just enraged her more.

To this day I have two circular burn scars – one on the inside of my right thigh and the other on my left buttock – permanent reminders of a fuckin’ tragic childhood. That wasn’t even the worst punishment I can remember, though. No, that title would be bestowed upon the time that she stripped me naked, hog-tied me, and beat me all over with a wide, leather belt until I finally passed out from the pain. And for what? Because she had misplaced her favorite tube of lipstick and accused me of takin’ it. That one didn’t leave the same kind of scars that the cigarettes did, though. No, my scars from that one are all on the inside.

One might ask the question, how come no one in my life ever noticed the abuse that was happenin’ to me? Well, the answer to that is easy – I never let anyone get close. In school, I did my assignments, stayed out of trouble, and kept to myself. I was never one for drawing attention to myself, which is just as well considering the way that Jolene used to beat the holy hell out of me. I also never really had any friends. The girls always looked down on me cause of my shabby clothing and the boys never paid me any attention until high school. By that point, they were only after one thing and I wasn’t interested in givin’ it to ‘em. I learned early on not to trust anyone, not to open myself up.

The other reason that no one ever noticed is because although she was drunk when she’d beat me, Jolene was usually clever enough to hit me in places where it wouldn’t show. The times when she did hit me in the face or some other place that couldn’t be covered up by clothing, I’d play hooky, skipping school for however many days it took for the bruises to fade.

The happier times, if you can actually call them that, were when she managed to hold on to a guy long enough for him to be considered her ‘boyfriend.’ During those times, she’d usually be so involved with her man, that she would forget about me, which was just the way I liked it. As long as she had some guy to go out drinkin’ with every night, someone in her bed that would screw her brains out, she tended to leave me alone.

A whole, long line of losers paraded in and out of our ramshackle apartment over the years, so many of them that I lost count after awhile. What they saw in her, I have no fuckin’ clue. Couldn’t have been anything too special, though, since none of ‘em ever stayed around for very long. She’d always find another one, though, for she couldn’t stand for her bed to be empty for too long. If my mamma had a light bulb for every guy who’d ever gotten into her pants, she could fuckin’ light up all of New York City on her own.

Out of all the ‘boyfriends’ she had over the years, only one stands out in my mind – Ernie. Ernie was your typical unemployed, alcoholic, good-for-nothing bum with a bald spot and a beer belly. Jolene brought him home from some bar one night, just like she did all her men. For some reason, though, he didn’t up and leave after a few days or a week like the others. No, Ernie took up residence with us and ended up living in our apartment for months.

There was something about him that made me uneasy from the very first time I laid eyes on him. Something about the way he’d look at me that made me feel like I was naked in front of him. To make a long story short, he made my skin crawl. I was fourteen at the time and already well developed for my age, which did not escape Ernie’s lascivious eyes.

I made it a point to start stayin’ away from the apartment as much as possible when he was around, which was almost all of the fuckin’ time. I was in my first year of high school by then, but I looked like I was sixteen. I lied about my age in order to get a job at some crappy fast food place. Not my choice of employment by any means, but it kept me out of the apartment when I wasn’t in school and it provided a means of building a nest egg. I was already plottin’ that I would run away when I thought I had enough money.

One night, though, the inevitable happened. Jolene and Ernie came home in the middle of the night, rip-roarin’ drunk. They headed straight for the bedroom where they proceeded to fuck each other’s brains out, as evidenced by the sounds coming through the thin walls. I curled up in a tight ball in my twin bed, pulling the covers up to my chin and sticking my head under the pillow in an effort to block out the embarrassing sounds coming from my mamma’s bedroom.

After awhile, the noises stopped, as they usually did, and I figured they had collapsed in a drunken, tangled heap in the bed and gone to sleep. As I lay there, trying to go back to sleep, I heard footsteps in the hall that stopped outside my bedroom door. I cringed, thinking it was my mamma comin’ to haul my ass out of bed and punish me for some sin she thought I’d committed. The door opened slowly, almost hesitantly, which wasn’t Jolene’s style at all.

I kept my eyes closed, thinking that if she thought I was asleep, maybe, just maybe, she’d go away and leave me alone for once. I felt her sit down on the edge of my bed and I braced myself for what was to come. Then, a hand reached out, not to slap me, but to stroke my face and hair gently, something that my mamma had never done in my entire life. I opened my eyes, then, and got the shock of my life when I found Ernie sittin’ on the edge of my bed, touchin’ my face and hair.

I tried to sit up, thinkin’ I could get the hell away from him. He anticipated my move, though, and placed his hands on my shoulders, pushing me rather roughly back onto the mattress as he moved into the bed with me, coverin’ my slender body with his large, foul-smellin’ one.

Knowin’ what was to come and deciding that I’d be damned if I was going to let him do it to me, I fought him. I wiggled and squirmed beneath him, tryin’ like hell to break loose. Every time he’d move to touch me, I’d vainly grab for his wrist trying to fend him off, to keep him from explorin’ my body. At one point, I even spit in his face, but all that earned me was a resounding slap that made my head spin. Finally, I resorted to a tried and true female trick – tears. I began crying, begging him not to do it. He silenced me by moving his mouth over mine and kissing me. When he inserted his tongue into my mouth, I had to fight the sudden urge to gag.

He must have got tired of me attempting to push his hands away cause at one point, he grabbed hold of both of my wrists with one of his hands, pinning both of my hands on the pillow beneath my head. With his other hand, he ripped the tank top I was wearin’, exposing my breasts to his lustful gaze. Ducking his head, he took a nipple into his mouth, licking it at first, then biting it so hard that I almost screamed. He repeated the action on my other breast, before his interests moved further down my body.

My shorts were ripped away almost before I knew what was happening, leaving me completely naked. He parted my thighs with a rough hand and inserted a thick chubby finger into my dry passage, rubbing his thumb over my clit for a moment. He added another finger inside of me, causing my hips to arch up off of the bed from the pain as silent tears streamed down my face. I think he mistook my movement as an indication that I was actually enjoying his repulsive actions.

“Like that, huh?” He asked me, leering down at nude body. “Yeah, you’re a wanton lil’ slut, just like your mamma.”

He removed his fingers from me, taking his hand and using it to pull his cock out of the opening of his boxers. I looked away, then, not able to bring myself to look at him and what he was doing. Next thing I knew, he was roughly grasping my chin in his hand and jerking my head back to look at him. He moved over my body, in between my parted thighs and began to insert himself inside of me.

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from screaming. It hurt. It hurt so fuckin’ bad. Worse than anything I’d ever experienced. Worse than any punishment my mamma had ever inflicted upon me. My flesh resisted him, but he didn’t seem to give a good goddamn. He continued to push forward, tearing me, until he was all the way in.

After that, it was over pretty quickly. Once he was all the way in me, he didn’t hold out for too long. He moved on top of me for a couple of minutes, then threw his head back and brayed like a mule as he came, filling my aching, torn passage with his seed, before collapsing on top of me.

He lay like that for impossibly long minutes, during which I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Finally, he rolled off of my body, sitting up to turn on the lamp next to my bed. I wondered what the fuck he was up to, turning on the light, but I didn’t have to wait long to find out. He roughly parted my legs, again, looking at the sheet beneath my body.

“Whoo-hee! I just *knew* you was a virgin! Nothin’ I like better than poppin’ me a cherry!” He turned around and left me after that, shutting the bedroom door behind him on his way out.

I rolled over onto my side, facing the wall and curling my body up into a fetal position. For the rest of the night, I lay there, silently sobbing for my lost innocence. I remember my mamma stumbling into my room a few hours later, bellowing at me that I’d better get my lazy ass out of bed and get dressed for school. I just lay there, though, staring at the wall, not moving a muscle.

My lack of movement was soon rewarded by Jolene grabbing my hair and hauling me up into a sitting position. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Faith? Didn’t you hear me? I told ya it was time for school! Ain’t no kid of mine gonna grow up to be an illiterate idiot!”

“M-Mamma…” my voice trailed off as I lost my nerve to tell her what had happened the night before.

She stood there, hands on her hips, wearing some cheap imitation Oriental style robe, with a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. “What?”

I swallowed hard in an attempt to garner some courage. I knew it was now or never because Jolene had zero patience. “Ernie…h-he came into my room last night…h-he r-raped me, Mamma!”

She was upon me, then, slapping me so hard that it made my teeth rattle. “You lyin’ little, bitch!”

I stood up, pulling the top sheet off of the bed and wrapping it around my nude body. At fourteen, I already had a couple of inches on her in height and I used that to my advantage, glowering down at her. “I’m not lying, JOLENE!” Pointing to the rather large bloodstain on the bed, I screamed, “What the fuck do you think that is? It sure as hell ain’t my period! It’s my BLOOD! My VIRGIN BLOOD! Your good-for-nothing boyfriend RAPED me!”

She stood there for a moment, looking like someone had slapped her, and I almost thought that she believed me, that maybe she was going to take me into her arms and comfort me. After a minute, though, her face slipped back into its usual cold, hard mask as she took a puff on her cigarette.

“Well, maybe Ernie did come into your room last night, but I’m sure he didn’t give you nothin’ that you didn’t deserve!”

“Deserve? Deserve?” I screamed at her incredulously. “You think I DESERVED to be raped? You’re actually gonna stand there and try to tell me that I somehow ASKED for this?”

She apparently didn’t have an answer for my question, for she just stood there, smoking, one hand still on her hip. I brushed past her, then, and made my way over to my dilapidated dresser where I began pulling drawers open and yanking clean clothing out. Turning to look at her over my shoulder, I told her through gritted teeth, “You are no longer my mother, not that you ever were much of one to begin with.”

I ran away after that, taking my small nest egg and whatever clothes fit conveniently into a knapsack, and I never looked back. I lived on the streets for a couple of years, working odd jobs and sleeping in shelters. When I was sixteen, a woman approached me and told me I was a Slayer. I thought she was on drugs, on first, but eventually, she got through to me and I believed her.

She took off of the streets and into her home, fattened me up, taught me and trained me in the ways of being the “chosen one.” My life began to take on purpose after that. I found something almost comforting in the act of hunting down the evil undead and killin’ ‘em with a wooden stake cause in my mind, every one of them wore the face of that bastard, Ernie.

Men became toys to me, something to use and throw away. Get some and get gone became my philosophy. The first coupla times I was with a man after my rape experience, I ended up cryin’ through the whole thing. Eventually, I learned to tune out the memories of that awful thing that had happened to me, and I even learned to enjoy sex, in my own twisted way. I always had to be on top, though, for I couldn’t stand to have a man on top of me, pinning me down. Most of ‘em didn’t seem to mind, though, as long as they got what they wanted.

The only man who has ever come close to getting through to me was Riley Finn. That night that I spent in Buffy’s body, in his bed, was the one and only time in my life that I felt cherished, special. I even let him be on top. Too bad that it wasn’t me that he was cherishing. It wasn’t me that he spoke those three little words to. No, he thought I was Buffy. It was Buffy he was makin’ love to and Buffy that he told that he loved her. For one brief, shining moment, though, I let myself live the fantasy. I allowed myself to pretend. Then, reality came crashin’ over me and the next thing I knew, I was shovin’ him off of me and hoppin’ out of his bed like it was full of snakes.

Angel. Now there’s a fuckin’ contradiction for you – a vampire with a soul. He tried to save me, not once, but twice. The first time was back in Sunnydale after I killed the deputy mayor. Angel cold cocked me with a baseball bat while I was tryin’ to strangle Xander. I came to chained up in his mansion with him tryin’ to talk some sense into my hard head. Truth be known, he was actually startin’ to get through to me, too, but then, that pansy ass, Wesley, had to break in with the goons from the Watcher’s Council and kidnap me. After that, I hardened my heart, again, not trusting anyone.

The second time Angel tried to save me was in LA when I went gunnin’ for Wesley. Angel was the only one who believed in me, who was willing to give me a second chance although god knows I didn’t deserve it. He did get through to me that time, though, and that’s how I ended up here, in jail.

As good as Angel has been to me, though I could never love him. That’s partly cause I don’t think I could ever love anyone – my mamma and Ernie fucked me up real good in that department. The other thing is, I see Angel as my savior, my guardian ‘angel,’ so to speak, and you just don’t go around havin’ gushy, romantic feelings for someone that you view like that.

No, Angel is my friend. The first real friend I’ve had in a very long time. He comes to see me every week on visiting day, rain or shine, and he never fails to bring me some little something. We sit and talk – me about the goings on here in jail and him about what’s going on in his life. He’s even offered that I can come and work for him, helping to fight evil, once I get paroled.

Little by little, this ensouled vampire is winning me over, gaining my trust in tiny increments. Maybe, just maybe, one of these days, I’ll trust him enough to open up to him completely, to tell him the whole sad saga of my life. I think maybe I could cause I know that he is one person who would understand. He’d sit and listen to me without interrupting me and without casting judgement on me. Angel looks at me sometimes in a way that tells me that he knows I have some deep dark secrets, but he never pushes.

There’s things that shape us in life, that set us on a course, make us who we are, for better or for worse. I am the way I am because of the fucked up things that were done to me in my childhood. My mamma made me to where I can’t trust anyone, much less love ‘em. Ernie made it to where I will never be able to be in a lovin’, healthy relationship with a man.

Still, we have choices in life. No matter what happens to you, you always have choices. All this thinkin’ I been doin’ here in jail has made me make a choice. I’ve chosen to put my past where it belongs – in the past. Sure, the things mamma did to me and the horrid thing that Ernie did to me will always be with me, but I ain’t gotta let those things control my life anymore.

I have had plenty ‘nough time to think in here, now is the time for action. I wanna make myself a better person. I’m gonna do it, too, day by day, one step at a time. I’m gonna start reshaping my life.

The End

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