12 Days of Ficlets, Day 4
Jan. 4th, 2004 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleDay 4 of the 12 days of Ficlets. Today it's 'Loss of Innocence'. Since I'm trying to make each of these about a different character, this one's Buffy, post-Innocence.
Not quite sure where this came from, actually.
Title: In This Life
Author: Doyle
Pairing: B/A
Rating: PG
On the ride to school, her mom talks about a new display at the gallery. She's so enthused about it that she doesn't even notice Buffy's total silence. That's good, Buffy thinks, in the same numb kind of way she has been thinking everything for the past fifty-some hours. It's good that her mom's happy.
She spends too long at her locker, because Willow and Xander and Giles will be waiting for her in the library. There aren't any pictures tacked to the inside door, photo-booth snapshots of her in Angel's lap, both of them making goofy faces at the camera. She doesn't own any pictures of Angel. The cross he gave her is in a drawer at home. She still feels the shape of it against her collarbone, cool and accusatory. She put the ring back on when she felt too raw without it. The curve of the heart is turned inwards.
First period is Computers. She doesn't look Ms. Calendar in the eyes.
They're covering the Civil War in history class. Willow is casting worried glances at her and she smiles her false, bland reassurance. It feels strange, like her face is being stretched.
Gym passes in a blur. She doesn't feel even a twinge of pain from hoisting the rocket-launcher onto her shoulder. The fight that came after hurts, but that goes deeper than sprains and aching muscles.
She eats lunch beneath the clocktower. Brown-bagging it today. The tuna-fish sandwiches taste like paper.
Giles will be expecting her in the library. She can imagine him pacing.
She and Willow and Xander ate out here last Friday, the very same spot, and this is both experiment and masochism, because she needs to see what's changed. The place and the people are the same, and the sun's still beating down, and she's still hopelessly in love with Angel. And if she was a real superhero she could fly around the world and make the clocks turn backwards, but it turns out everyone was wrong about her, and she's just a girl after all.
In Math, she works out her age in days. She ignores leap years. Seventeen multiplied by three six five plus two is six thousand, two hundred and five. Doesn't seem all that high. She spends the rest of the class figuring how old she was when she died, in days, in hours, in seconds.
She lets Will and Xander catch up to her in the hallway. They don't say any of the things that are obvious in their expressions and their eyes, and in return she laughs at Xander's jokes and smiles as if it's just another day.
Inside, she can feel herself closing off or closing up, as if something in her has already decided she's never going to love anything in this life as much again.
English is the final class of the day and she tries to pay attention, even though she can't stop looking at how the sunlight catches the ring on her finger. Everyone around her is writing, and she drags her focus back to the teacher.
"Soft," Ms. Wiseman reads from her sheet, and Buffy writes 'gentle'.
"Angry." She listlessly notes down 'furious'.
The last word is 'innocent', and she's already written down 'guilty' before she remembers that that's not a synonym, not at all.
END
Not quite sure where this came from, actually.
Title: In This Life
Author: Doyle
Pairing: B/A
Rating: PG
On the ride to school, her mom talks about a new display at the gallery. She's so enthused about it that she doesn't even notice Buffy's total silence. That's good, Buffy thinks, in the same numb kind of way she has been thinking everything for the past fifty-some hours. It's good that her mom's happy.
She spends too long at her locker, because Willow and Xander and Giles will be waiting for her in the library. There aren't any pictures tacked to the inside door, photo-booth snapshots of her in Angel's lap, both of them making goofy faces at the camera. She doesn't own any pictures of Angel. The cross he gave her is in a drawer at home. She still feels the shape of it against her collarbone, cool and accusatory. She put the ring back on when she felt too raw without it. The curve of the heart is turned inwards.
First period is Computers. She doesn't look Ms. Calendar in the eyes.
They're covering the Civil War in history class. Willow is casting worried glances at her and she smiles her false, bland reassurance. It feels strange, like her face is being stretched.
Gym passes in a blur. She doesn't feel even a twinge of pain from hoisting the rocket-launcher onto her shoulder. The fight that came after hurts, but that goes deeper than sprains and aching muscles.
She eats lunch beneath the clocktower. Brown-bagging it today. The tuna-fish sandwiches taste like paper.
Giles will be expecting her in the library. She can imagine him pacing.
She and Willow and Xander ate out here last Friday, the very same spot, and this is both experiment and masochism, because she needs to see what's changed. The place and the people are the same, and the sun's still beating down, and she's still hopelessly in love with Angel. And if she was a real superhero she could fly around the world and make the clocks turn backwards, but it turns out everyone was wrong about her, and she's just a girl after all.
In Math, she works out her age in days. She ignores leap years. Seventeen multiplied by three six five plus two is six thousand, two hundred and five. Doesn't seem all that high. She spends the rest of the class figuring how old she was when she died, in days, in hours, in seconds.
She lets Will and Xander catch up to her in the hallway. They don't say any of the things that are obvious in their expressions and their eyes, and in return she laughs at Xander's jokes and smiles as if it's just another day.
Inside, she can feel herself closing off or closing up, as if something in her has already decided she's never going to love anything in this life as much again.
English is the final class of the day and she tries to pay attention, even though she can't stop looking at how the sunlight catches the ring on her finger. Everyone around her is writing, and she drags her focus back to the teacher.
"Soft," Ms. Wiseman reads from her sheet, and Buffy writes 'gentle'.
"Angry." She listlessly notes down 'furious'.
The last word is 'innocent', and she's already written down 'guilty' before she remembers that that's not a synonym, not at all.
END
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no subject
on 2004-04-04 05:31 am (UTC)