- OK. Karen realizes some things.
One: Ryan is really really nice and she really appreciates him as a person but she is super not emotionally prepared for this and is going to have to process a whole lot of feelings about having to do this under these circumstances as soon as she has any pieces of her brain left to think about anything else.
Two: Oh God if she ever makes it out of this then no nice Catholic boy is ever ever ever going to want to date her. Probably the baby murder would do that anyway, actually, but the Evangelicals didn't give youth group presentations on how guys won't like you if you do human sacrifices, did they, they just talked about licked candy bars and roses with the petals torn off, and it sure is a good thing that Ryan is a nice human being because he is probably the only person who is ever potentially going to be interested in her ever.
These things are sort of dwarfed by realization number three: Sex is excruciatingly painful. She feels like someone could have mentioned this at some point. Like, she's read enough historical things to know that it's supposed to be painful your first time, virgins are supposed to bleed, something something hymens, whatever, but the pain levels here are - the relevant comparison is, like, that time she was shot in the head with a bullet, except that was a momentary shooting pain and then she was fine or she was dead, and this is sustained, this is everything hurting worse and worse the longer it goes on, this is feeling like there was a wall inside you and for a second you were sure nothing could go through it except it did but everything is complaining VERY LOUDLY now and she kind of wants to break down sobbing.
However. She is the slayer. She is the one girl in all the world - literally - who alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She made it through being shot in the head, she made it through being strangled almost to death by Lurconis, she made it through carrying Billy all the way down the mountain, barefoot in the snow, and back to the hospital. She can make it through this. She can. She can.
She clamps her jaw shut and turns her waterfalls up so they roar and focuses on not reacting weirdly and keeping all of the scream-sobs inside her brain.