Author’s notes: This part takes place shortly after ‘Afterlife’.
The NightCrawler
by Belladonna
Chapter 2
~The masks we wear~
You wear many faces.
The joyful, happy one you show your friends and which is the one they always expect you to show them, want from you to put on for them. How utterly disappointed would they be if you simply wouldn’t do it anymore; if you wouldn’t show them what they wish to see? Would they still be your friends after seeing what you really are, or are they just befriended with the façade you’ve always shown them, the way they wanted you to be?
The open face you wear for your co-workers, classmates or simply the people surrounding you. Every time smiling and being polite towards them, almost frantically in being helpful to or for them, even though you feel, see that they will never be grateful for anything you do for them. They’ll never show gratitude for you, your help or the countless sacrifices you’ve already made and are prepared to make for them again. They’ll never see the true value in it or can appreciate it fully. Would they be disappointed too, if you would simply reject all those sacrifices, all the pain that your readiness to help means for you, causes you to endure? Would they be so completely stunned by your actions if you’d just ignored them at all and lived a normal life instead, that normal life you’ve always longed for, the peace of mind you’ve dreamed of?
Or the face you are wearing to show in front of your own family, the face that always is there for them and reacts compassionately to solve all their problems, or at least tries, gives its best only for them. The one that shows them your readiness to comfort them, gives them hope and that shoves aside all your own worries, sorrows and problems, putting them back into the farthest corner of your soul, where it hopefully will not come out and be forgotten soon, that way solved? Because for them, nobody shows any interest at all, your problems not a matter of importance but only their own for you to try and solve for them. Would their feelings be hurt that badly or they being offended that much if they knew the truth; that you rather wanted someone of them to listen to you instead them wearing you out emotionally; someone you can talk to and seek out for comfort?
Yes, you do indeed wear many faces; some of them not so daily used but still not completely vanished from your repertoire. But it is not you that you are showing them; just another mask you are holding in front of your own face for them to see.
Because it no longer is you, hasn’t been for a long time.
Even the face that looks back to you in the mirror is not the one that truly shows you, like you really are.
All these are simply mere masks you are showing the world, allow and give to the world to see, for it is the faces they want to see in you, expect from you to show to them, no matter at what cost. But you yourself, underneath all those layers of disguises you put on for them are long lost, maybe even died with you and not retuned again after you did return back to them, for it was never anything they wanted to see in you.
You have been brought back, returned to them. But have you really?
They never wanted to see how you truly are and if you would show them, how and especially who you truly are, they wouldn’t understand it. They just don’t see, cannot or want not is really not of any importance in that case.
Who you really are, they have never seen, and now?
Now, you have come to realize that all you have been, ever been has paled underneath all those masks, just faded away and actually no longer exists. You have vanished, are just gone, for you cannot find what you’ve once been, what you’ve been before anymore. Did they just leave it behind? Leave it out so that they don’t have to see it ever, deal with it should you find it again one day and decide to show them?
To all those questions you don’t know the answers, you yourself cannot give them, not even to your own questioning self and that frightens you, terrifies you more than you want to admit and you are trying frantically to grab onto the one single thing that is left for you – yourself and the faces you are showing the world; the ones they want to see, still expect from you to put on. And so you do so again, for them.
But you realize that this is not what you are, that is not yourself you see and how could it ever be? For you don’t know the true you underneath all those layers of deceit anymore.
And what is even worse, is that you no longer wear those different masks of yourself because they want to see it or expect but more because you cannot be sure anymore what of all that is real and a part of you, a part of who you really are.
And you also fear now that you really have gone lost underneath those masks, those deceptions you’ve put up, at first for them and now for yourself. You are afraid of no longer existing, just like it already has been reality for a while in your nightmares. You are grabbing onto that one straw that if you would just look deep down enough, put aside all those masks of your faces, you could find yourself there again.
But then, deep inside you already are feeling the silent nagging feeling, that slight knocking of insecurity and fear that is gripping you of what you might find there.
Would you find anything at all?
It is no longer like it had been before; nobody would understand it anyway, even if they would listen. But stop, you cannot tell them, for they must never find out. And if they did, would it touch them, after all what they’ve done to you?
All that is left for you is the fading comfort in continuing to show them all they ever wanted to see anyway; they’ve never expected you otherwise to do.
And now an even deeper and darker knowledge slowly creeps into your soul, lays itself like an icy hand around your heart and starts to close that cold grip onto your inner soul, slowly but undemanding.
Because the even colder truth is that what you desperately seek out deep inside you and thought to have lost since you’ve returned, never existed at all. And it always had been your own hand that chose the masks to show the world, your friends and your family; that had held them in front of your own face, in front of yourself.
For even you have to admit and realize that this is not only easier for them but also for yourself to live with. It had been from the beginning and may continue to remain that way and they will never know; cannot be allowed to find out, to know…
Well, my gentle listeners, it is question time again on NightWatch, so put down your own masks my fellow children of the night and let me see who is hiding underneath them…
~/~
Buffy Summers felt her hands shaking when she turned off the radio that stood on the nightstand beside her bed. She still didn’t quite know why she even listened to this show, every night again after she returned from her nightly patrol; during those few still awake moments before sleep would conquer her. During those minutes of waking that stretched themselves even longer by now; and that not just since she’d begun to follow that radio show. And not only her fingers were shaking at this night, but also she really started to feel that cold icy hand grabbing for her soul and the shivers running down her spine at the words of the mysterious speaker on the radio. His voice alone was enough to cause her to lay awake longer than she wanted to, for it seemed to penetrate her deepest thoughts and emotions, striking deep down inside her very own soul; almost hypnotizing so that she couldn’t fight the urge to turn it on every night again; even if she swore to herself not to do so again.
So she was lying awake for a long time on her back in her bed staring blankly at the ceiling of her bedroom; her mind and thoughts in turmoil as were her feelings about what he had said on this nights show; and about how close it had hit the truth and reality, especially her own. It seemed as if he had talked directly to her, made his topic of the night especially for her but that could not be, for many others listened to his program, otherwise he wouldn’t have that many callers every night again. Buffy felt a feeling of familiarity by listening to his voice, it was almost as if she knew him but she was pretty sure that she had never met him, didn’t know his voice. But she wasn’t able to shake off that sense of familiarity. It was like listening to her own thoughts and deepest feelings that some absolute stranger had composed into words; seemingly for her ears only to hear.
Buffy continued to lie awake even longer and she wasn’t even sure that she had slept at all when she slowly walked the stairs down the next morning towards the dining room, to breakfast where all the others already were waiting for her. It seemed like any other normal morning, all seemingly peaceful and unchanged, undisturbed by the night’s events or life’s general ones. And yet still underneath that top layer of carefully constructed normality the doubts began to rise, to fight their way to break through and appear.
She was glancing into the faces of every single one of them. Willow, her best friend since High School, who almost was like family to her and her single remaining family, her sister Dawn. Next to Willow sat Tara, her girlfriend who also to Buffy had become someone she could confide in and a close friend to her too. They were the ones living with her in the house, smiling at her in a friendly greeting the moment they saw her appearing. They were her friends and family, Buffy silently said to herself in her mind and ignored the nagging doubts and thoughts inside her and put on a cheerful smile for them instead. She fetched herself some hot coffee and plopped down onto a chair opposite to the others. Laughingly and happy she joined the conversations at the table and carefree, as if nothing, nothing at all had changed, for it still were her closest friends and family sitting in front of her, wasn’t it? Towards them she could be and had always been completely honest and just been herself.
And as if to mock her, to tell her to look closer at her fantasy of a reality she had made up for herself, the voice of the man from the radio sounded inside her thoughts again, clinging onto her as if he would want to remind her, to make her remember just how close his words had truly come to her life, closer than she might have wanted them to.
“You wear many faces…”
Interlude I - To his old glory