Slayer Memories
Well, in my poll, a continuation of "Debriefing Dana" was overwhelmingly chosen as the next thing I should work on.
So here it is, a start, anyway.
This is from Dana's perspective. I'll call this Chapter One, since I like "Debriefing Dana" standing on its own. I'll be alternating Buffy perspective in past-tense and Dana perspective in present-tense, moving toward a combined third person past-tense as Dana gets more lucid.
I know next to nothing about psychology or schizophrenia, so take my Dana with a grain of salt.
Calling this one "Slayer Memories"
Hey: Check it out! We wons an award!
AND A judge's choice:
Slayer Memories by Hello_Spikey - Dana made such a brief appearance in the show, but the idea of a damaged slayer, who could not differentiate between reality and the shared memories and visions of her calling, was really compelling. Hello_Spikey brought this character center stage in Slayer Memories, getting into Dana's head in a moving, believable way. The fact that her broken memories drive the entire plot is very original, and the sections from her point of view realistically track from endearing to frightening and everywhere in between. Buffy's relationship with Dana is very interesting to read, not only when they connect, but also when they cannot seem to understand each other, no matter how hard they try. In the final chapters, the interactions between all of the characters were pitch perfect, culminating in an open ending that left me wanting more.
Slayer Memories Part One
Dana dreams about The Vampire. She dreams about many vampires, she dreams about horrible monsters and she dies and dies and dies. But sometimes she kills and kills and kills, and she is getting better at focusing on those dreams, and the others become less frequent.
But more and more, lately, she dreams about him. Handless and sad and blonde. Irreverent with boot-polish black hair. “Not helpful,” the sarcastic voice in her mind says. (Sometimes Dana is Someone Else. Doctor Giles assures her it's not Multiple Personality Disorder. It's Something Else. But she’s learning to control that, too.) Casual and brunette and sloppy and vicious. And occasionally he would slip into her mind naked, beautiful and worshiping her. He does vague things with his hands and his mouth. She likes those dreams.
She wakes up once and someone has poured water all over the bed. She wonders if it is to try and make her sick or just to make her uncomfortable and she rips the sheets apart. Lady Doctor comes and tells her she is Awakening as a Woman and something about the pills having prevented that before. She hits Lady Doctor and is restrained. But the bed sheets are clean at least when she is tied down.
The next day she is given a book with colorful pictures of naked people and the doctors ask embarrassing questions. They are always asking embarrassing questions. “Do you like being able to hurt monsters?” They would never ask each other that.
They don't ask about sex, which is what the dreams are about. Dana isn't stupid.
It is confusing, but Dana is dealing. The world seems more solid these days. There are fewer pills anymore, and restraints, though they still lock the doors. The doctors here don’t flinch when they look at her drawings. They look like they expected her to draw blood and violence. “That’s very good, Dana,” Lady Doctor says, “A Raknath demon. You got the tail just right.”
The doctors in the Gray Place would peer at her drawings like there was a secret code hidden behind the crayon lines and ask her if the demon represented her father.
“You were treated heavily with anti-psychotics,” Doctor Giles says. Doctor Giles comes a lot, and looks at her like it’s his fault her mind doesn’t work anymore. “Because those treating you before thought the visions were, well, that they were the real problem. But the visions are real, Dana. It is one of the slayer’s powers. We won’t be trying to get rid of them because we can’t. But…” He leans forward as though this is Very Important, “They can’t harm you, Dana. They are only memories.”
But they can harm her. She dies and dies and dies. She wonders if They are only keeping her here to hurt her. They say they want to Help. Only Help. For Her Own Good. But there are pills and she isn’t allowed alone near the door.
“Dana?”
He tells her, “We believe you have a milder case of schizophrenia. It is a disease of the mind that trauma can sometimes trigger or exacerbate - make worse. We hope, given time, you will get better now that we know what happened, why you have the troubles you have. Do you want me to tell you more about schizophrenia?”
No matter what she says or doesn’t say, she knows the doctor will keep talking. These were the kind of things doctors always wanted to tell you, like names were magic and you could hold on to their tails and thus control them.
She likes Giles, though. He doesn’t make her Express Herself or take pills or do tests. He only comes to sit and talk or to watch her do what she was doing anyway. He has a face like a softball mitt. She had a softball mitt once. She wasn’t old enough to play, but her daddy had hopes, and she’d lie in her big girl bed and hold the mitt on her face to feel the soft leather and smell the summertime.
This is a thing from Before. Doctor Giles says that it’s important to remember Before. The Lady Doctor says it too and tries to get her to draw Before. Draw Mommy Before. Draw Daddy Before. She tries, but they always come out headless.
She holds Doctor Giles’ hand to her face and giggles at the feel of it, dry and wrinkly. He doesn’t pull away. He just asks, “Do you like my hand?” She nods against his palm. Yes, she likes hands. Hands hold the power.
Besides Doctor Giles there is Teacher, who comes every day after breakfast with his brown paper and big, colorful books. She likes Teacher better than Lady Doctor. He doesn’t ask her to Express Herself, but gives her easy instructions to follow. She fills pages with capital Gs and feels happy. She writes her name. She knew how to do that Before. She isn’t stupid. And now she can write “Vampire” because she asked to learn it special. Lady Doctor wants her to Write About How She Feels. She doesn’t. She writes “Vampire” and she writes “Dana”. She practices when Teacher isn’t there and thinks of his hair, which is tiny white springs against his chocolate-brown scalp. She can’t draw Teacher because her drawing paper is all white.
Lady Doctor brings the drawing paper. She also brings toys, dolls and puppets, and clearly thinks that Dana is Four Years Old. But if she doesn’t draw, Lady Doctor just keeps talking in her sing-song voice. It’s better to draw than listen to that. Sometimes Dana just pretends she IS four years old.
They wanted her to draw something happy, so she drew The Vampire. She drew him how she likes him best - Lemon Ice crayon for the hair and French Blue for eyes. Lots of black crayon for his shirt, which runs off the end of the page.
She likes French Blue a lot.
She ends his arms in nice red circles.
The Slayer comes to visit her after she draws The Vampire. She should think, ‘A Slayer’, not ‘The’, because Buffy says there are many of them, and She Is Like Her. Dana is just like Buffy. A Slayer. Except Buffy can go through the brown-painted metal door at the end of the hall whenever she wants.
There are other slayers. They don’t say much. They stand around the edges of the room and look at Dana like they fear they might catch something from her. And if she tries to go out the Brown Metal Door or break the Black Mesh Window, A Slayer steps in front of her. If she breaks A Slayer’s arm, she gets a shot and the soft cotton restraints and Doctor Giles stands over her a long time talking slowly about disappointment. His eyes are the color of blue jeans and this is worse than just being restrained or even beaten. He talks relentlessly, dripping pity and sympathy on her with his eyes.
She stops breaking people’s arms. She writes “I Won’t Hurt Anymore” very neatly, in red crayon. She asks Teacher for the word “anymore”. He is very proud of her Sentence. She is rewarded with a Trip to the Garden, though there are more slayers than ever and they watch her like rats.
It’s the day after the Trip to the Garden. This is now. Dana is getting better about time. Buffy has come to see her. It’s the third time Buffy has visited, since she met her in the interrogation room.
Buffy has seen The Vampire drawing and wants to talk about it. She has the picture with her, hidden under her jacket. Dana hides sharp things like that, but the nurses always take them away and she doesn’t get to wear a jacket anymore.
Buffy holds up the picture so that it faces Dana. Dana can’t do that. When she holds up pictures to show, she holds them toward herself, because the blank back feels wrong.
“Is this supposed to be Spike?”
“Yes,” Dana says. She is getting good at Answering Questions. It helps that there is no punishment anymore if she doesn’t.
Buffy’s chin lowers. Her eyes get droopy on the sides. “Do you understand? Do you know who Spike is?”
“He killed me twice. But it wasn’t me. It was a Slayer Memory. He wasn’t here.”
Buffy smiles, but her eyes are wet. “That’s right,” she says. She turns the picture back toward herself and looks at it. “You probably hate him,” she says, very quietly.
“No,” Dana says. “He’s funny and nice sometimes.”
Buffy laughs, just a little, like she’s coughing up something. She puts her arms around Dana. Dana feels very uncomfortable with this and wants her to Get Away Now. She says so.
Buffy drops her arms and goes back to sitting where she was. She is really crying now. “I’m sorry,” she says. She touches the back of Dana’s hand briefly. Dana snatches her hand away.
Buffy smoothes the crumpled drawing on her lap. “I loved him,” she says.
Dana is still reacting to having been Touched and wondering if she shouldn’t be happy to be hugged and maybe she should hug Buffy because Buffy is crying.
“I want him,” Dana says, meaning The Vampire, but Buffy hands her the picture. Dana looks at her drawing and thinks she did a pretty good job, this time. She’s getting better at drawing.
Buffy leans over her drawing. Her blonde hair is loose and touches Dana’s arm. Dana doesn’t mind this time. Buffy sniffles a little, but isn’t crying any more. She points to the red circles. “What is he holding?”
“Those are his arms where I cut them off so he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
In a different sort of voice, Buffy says, “Oh.”
“He didn’t hurt me. Those were Slayer Memories.”
“Right.” Buffy nods at the picture. She doesn’t look at Dana. “I wonder when Spike had his hands cut off? He must have hated that. You never met him, I mean, really. In the flesh and living Technicolor. Er. Unliving.” Buffy’s hand traces the pink line that is supposed to be Spike’s cheek. “But no one could fidget like Spike. I think it physically pained him to sit still.”
“Sit still,” Dana says, remembering. “Its always important to sit still. Don’t move. Be quiet.”
Buffy shifts in her seat. “Poor you,” she says. She tucks a loose lock of hair behind Dana’s ear. Dana twitches away from the contact. “Would you like me to visit more often?”
“Yes,” Dana says.
Buffy touches the back of her hand. Dana doesn’t pull away. Buffy’s fingers are smooth and soft. It feels like Mommy, Before. That makes her feel guilty and sad, but she also likes it. Likes being touched and not being afraid of it. She wraps her hand around Buffy's.
They smile at each other.
Part Two -->
So here it is, a start, anyway.
This is from Dana's perspective. I'll call this Chapter One, since I like "Debriefing Dana" standing on its own. I'll be alternating Buffy perspective in past-tense and Dana perspective in present-tense, moving toward a combined third person past-tense as Dana gets more lucid.
I know next to nothing about psychology or schizophrenia, so take my Dana with a grain of salt.
Calling this one "Slayer Memories"
Hey: Check it out! We wons an award!
AND A judge's choice:
Slayer Memories by Hello_Spikey - Dana made such a brief appearance in the show, but the idea of a damaged slayer, who could not differentiate between reality and the shared memories and visions of her calling, was really compelling. Hello_Spikey brought this character center stage in Slayer Memories, getting into Dana's head in a moving, believable way. The fact that her broken memories drive the entire plot is very original, and the sections from her point of view realistically track from endearing to frightening and everywhere in between. Buffy's relationship with Dana is very interesting to read, not only when they connect, but also when they cannot seem to understand each other, no matter how hard they try. In the final chapters, the interactions between all of the characters were pitch perfect, culminating in an open ending that left me wanting more.
Slayer Memories Part One
Dana dreams about The Vampire. She dreams about many vampires, she dreams about horrible monsters and she dies and dies and dies. But sometimes she kills and kills and kills, and she is getting better at focusing on those dreams, and the others become less frequent.
But more and more, lately, she dreams about him. Handless and sad and blonde. Irreverent with boot-polish black hair. “Not helpful,” the sarcastic voice in her mind says. (Sometimes Dana is Someone Else. Doctor Giles assures her it's not Multiple Personality Disorder. It's Something Else. But she’s learning to control that, too.) Casual and brunette and sloppy and vicious. And occasionally he would slip into her mind naked, beautiful and worshiping her. He does vague things with his hands and his mouth. She likes those dreams.
She wakes up once and someone has poured water all over the bed. She wonders if it is to try and make her sick or just to make her uncomfortable and she rips the sheets apart. Lady Doctor comes and tells her she is Awakening as a Woman and something about the pills having prevented that before. She hits Lady Doctor and is restrained. But the bed sheets are clean at least when she is tied down.
The next day she is given a book with colorful pictures of naked people and the doctors ask embarrassing questions. They are always asking embarrassing questions. “Do you like being able to hurt monsters?” They would never ask each other that.
They don't ask about sex, which is what the dreams are about. Dana isn't stupid.
It is confusing, but Dana is dealing. The world seems more solid these days. There are fewer pills anymore, and restraints, though they still lock the doors. The doctors here don’t flinch when they look at her drawings. They look like they expected her to draw blood and violence. “That’s very good, Dana,” Lady Doctor says, “A Raknath demon. You got the tail just right.”
The doctors in the Gray Place would peer at her drawings like there was a secret code hidden behind the crayon lines and ask her if the demon represented her father.
“You were treated heavily with anti-psychotics,” Doctor Giles says. Doctor Giles comes a lot, and looks at her like it’s his fault her mind doesn’t work anymore. “Because those treating you before thought the visions were, well, that they were the real problem. But the visions are real, Dana. It is one of the slayer’s powers. We won’t be trying to get rid of them because we can’t. But…” He leans forward as though this is Very Important, “They can’t harm you, Dana. They are only memories.”
But they can harm her. She dies and dies and dies. She wonders if They are only keeping her here to hurt her. They say they want to Help. Only Help. For Her Own Good. But there are pills and she isn’t allowed alone near the door.
“Dana?”
He tells her, “We believe you have a milder case of schizophrenia. It is a disease of the mind that trauma can sometimes trigger or exacerbate - make worse. We hope, given time, you will get better now that we know what happened, why you have the troubles you have. Do you want me to tell you more about schizophrenia?”
No matter what she says or doesn’t say, she knows the doctor will keep talking. These were the kind of things doctors always wanted to tell you, like names were magic and you could hold on to their tails and thus control them.
She likes Giles, though. He doesn’t make her Express Herself or take pills or do tests. He only comes to sit and talk or to watch her do what she was doing anyway. He has a face like a softball mitt. She had a softball mitt once. She wasn’t old enough to play, but her daddy had hopes, and she’d lie in her big girl bed and hold the mitt on her face to feel the soft leather and smell the summertime.
This is a thing from Before. Doctor Giles says that it’s important to remember Before. The Lady Doctor says it too and tries to get her to draw Before. Draw Mommy Before. Draw Daddy Before. She tries, but they always come out headless.
She holds Doctor Giles’ hand to her face and giggles at the feel of it, dry and wrinkly. He doesn’t pull away. He just asks, “Do you like my hand?” She nods against his palm. Yes, she likes hands. Hands hold the power.
Besides Doctor Giles there is Teacher, who comes every day after breakfast with his brown paper and big, colorful books. She likes Teacher better than Lady Doctor. He doesn’t ask her to Express Herself, but gives her easy instructions to follow. She fills pages with capital Gs and feels happy. She writes her name. She knew how to do that Before. She isn’t stupid. And now she can write “Vampire” because she asked to learn it special. Lady Doctor wants her to Write About How She Feels. She doesn’t. She writes “Vampire” and she writes “Dana”. She practices when Teacher isn’t there and thinks of his hair, which is tiny white springs against his chocolate-brown scalp. She can’t draw Teacher because her drawing paper is all white.
Lady Doctor brings the drawing paper. She also brings toys, dolls and puppets, and clearly thinks that Dana is Four Years Old. But if she doesn’t draw, Lady Doctor just keeps talking in her sing-song voice. It’s better to draw than listen to that. Sometimes Dana just pretends she IS four years old.
They wanted her to draw something happy, so she drew The Vampire. She drew him how she likes him best - Lemon Ice crayon for the hair and French Blue for eyes. Lots of black crayon for his shirt, which runs off the end of the page.
She likes French Blue a lot.
She ends his arms in nice red circles.
The Slayer comes to visit her after she draws The Vampire. She should think, ‘A Slayer’, not ‘The’, because Buffy says there are many of them, and She Is Like Her. Dana is just like Buffy. A Slayer. Except Buffy can go through the brown-painted metal door at the end of the hall whenever she wants.
There are other slayers. They don’t say much. They stand around the edges of the room and look at Dana like they fear they might catch something from her. And if she tries to go out the Brown Metal Door or break the Black Mesh Window, A Slayer steps in front of her. If she breaks A Slayer’s arm, she gets a shot and the soft cotton restraints and Doctor Giles stands over her a long time talking slowly about disappointment. His eyes are the color of blue jeans and this is worse than just being restrained or even beaten. He talks relentlessly, dripping pity and sympathy on her with his eyes.
She stops breaking people’s arms. She writes “I Won’t Hurt Anymore” very neatly, in red crayon. She asks Teacher for the word “anymore”. He is very proud of her Sentence. She is rewarded with a Trip to the Garden, though there are more slayers than ever and they watch her like rats.
It’s the day after the Trip to the Garden. This is now. Dana is getting better about time. Buffy has come to see her. It’s the third time Buffy has visited, since she met her in the interrogation room.
Buffy has seen The Vampire drawing and wants to talk about it. She has the picture with her, hidden under her jacket. Dana hides sharp things like that, but the nurses always take them away and she doesn’t get to wear a jacket anymore.
Buffy holds up the picture so that it faces Dana. Dana can’t do that. When she holds up pictures to show, she holds them toward herself, because the blank back feels wrong.
“Is this supposed to be Spike?”
“Yes,” Dana says. She is getting good at Answering Questions. It helps that there is no punishment anymore if she doesn’t.
Buffy’s chin lowers. Her eyes get droopy on the sides. “Do you understand? Do you know who Spike is?”
“He killed me twice. But it wasn’t me. It was a Slayer Memory. He wasn’t here.”
Buffy smiles, but her eyes are wet. “That’s right,” she says. She turns the picture back toward herself and looks at it. “You probably hate him,” she says, very quietly.
“No,” Dana says. “He’s funny and nice sometimes.”
Buffy laughs, just a little, like she’s coughing up something. She puts her arms around Dana. Dana feels very uncomfortable with this and wants her to Get Away Now. She says so.
Buffy drops her arms and goes back to sitting where she was. She is really crying now. “I’m sorry,” she says. She touches the back of Dana’s hand briefly. Dana snatches her hand away.
Buffy smoothes the crumpled drawing on her lap. “I loved him,” she says.
Dana is still reacting to having been Touched and wondering if she shouldn’t be happy to be hugged and maybe she should hug Buffy because Buffy is crying.
“I want him,” Dana says, meaning The Vampire, but Buffy hands her the picture. Dana looks at her drawing and thinks she did a pretty good job, this time. She’s getting better at drawing.
Buffy leans over her drawing. Her blonde hair is loose and touches Dana’s arm. Dana doesn’t mind this time. Buffy sniffles a little, but isn’t crying any more. She points to the red circles. “What is he holding?”
“Those are his arms where I cut them off so he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
In a different sort of voice, Buffy says, “Oh.”
“He didn’t hurt me. Those were Slayer Memories.”
“Right.” Buffy nods at the picture. She doesn’t look at Dana. “I wonder when Spike had his hands cut off? He must have hated that. You never met him, I mean, really. In the flesh and living Technicolor. Er. Unliving.” Buffy’s hand traces the pink line that is supposed to be Spike’s cheek. “But no one could fidget like Spike. I think it physically pained him to sit still.”
“Sit still,” Dana says, remembering. “Its always important to sit still. Don’t move. Be quiet.”
Buffy shifts in her seat. “Poor you,” she says. She tucks a loose lock of hair behind Dana’s ear. Dana twitches away from the contact. “Would you like me to visit more often?”
“Yes,” Dana says.
Buffy touches the back of her hand. Dana doesn’t pull away. Buffy’s fingers are smooth and soft. It feels like Mommy, Before. That makes her feel guilty and sad, but she also likes it. Likes being touched and not being afraid of it. She wraps her hand around Buffy's.
They smile at each other.
Part Two -->