A/N:
I signed up for the first round of the new Buffy genfic community on LJ, which is new and scary for me. I've never participated in a fic exchange before, and was worried that I would get a prompt and my brain would go on strike and refuse to fill it. However, the community's tireless mod held my hand and answered all my (sometimes stupid) questions, and here we are. Success! (I hope).
The focus for round one was "Buffy's Things".
Title: Come Out Come Out Wherever You Are
Characters: Buffy
Rating: PG
Word count: 1850
Recipient/prompt: For kwritten. Inanimate object: Scrunchie/hair tie. Three elements you'd like included: S6 short hair era, flickering streetlights, long walks. Two things you don't want: Boys, dialogue-heavy
Warnings: S6, so angsty depression
Setting: S6, following "Gone" (the episode where Buffy is turned invisible).
Betas: RedSatinDoll and TheFoxinator. Both of whom are invaluable and insightful, as always.
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Come Out Come Out Wherever You Are
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Stake?
Check.
Other stake? Other other stake?
She reached under her bed and pulled them out. Check and check.
Buffy might've been almost Jell-O Pudding Popped by Warren and his loser gang yesterday, but that didn't mean she could take a well-deserved sick day. Nope, today was just another day in the parade of suck that was her life. Vampires wouldn't be taking the day - night - off, she could guarantee you that, and any she didn't stake tonight would've multiplied by tomorrow night. Like cockroaches. Skittering and scurrying through the night, dealing in filth and despair and seductive lies. They needed to be dealt with. Immediately. Firmly.
Permanently.
The thought of the tasks ahead of her - not just the stakeage that awaited, but the bills, and Dawn, and other things - dimmed Buffy's whole don't-want-to-die-after-all certainty from the night before. Closing her eyes, she tried to recapture that certainty, but all she could come up with was a vague sense of irritation. She'd paid good money for her haircut, money she didn't even have. If she died before she got to flaunt it -
But, hey. Her hair was adorable. So light and bouncy, and carefree. Buffy tossed her head from side to side, feeling the short strands swing and swish, whispering kisses against her cheeks. She'd wanted different. A whole new person. Time to go out and prove it.
Where was she… Stakes?
Check.
Silver knife?
Check.
Ponytail elastics?
Buffy reached for one before she remembered. Swing and swish. Wouldn't be needing those for a while. Maybe just a headband.
She chose a cloth headband from the items cluttering her vanity top and tucked it into her back pocket, then opened her drawer and swept the remaining assorted hair paraphernalia scattered across the surface of her vanity into it. The twists and clips and ties tumbled inside, a hodgepodge of outdated and unneeded items. Buffy nodded with satisfaction at the vanity's clean, uncluttered surface. A fresh start. She was all about the fresh start, these days.
As she shut the drawer, a bright splash of material caught her eye, and she paused mid-push.
The sight of the garish, frayed scrunchie made Buffy's breath catch. Afraid of what else she might find, she cautiously tugged the drawer back open to discover a jumble of her old scrunchies tucked into the corner. "What…?" She reached in and pulled out a hot pink one covered with cavorting teddy bears. "Where did these come from?"
Willow poked her head in the door. "Were you talking to - oh." She indicated the scrunchie in Buffy's hand. "Tara found those the other - when she was packing up her - um." Her eyes welled. Her chin wobbled. Her mouth creased. Buffy waited her out, to be rewarded with, "They were in your mom's things, when we were packing up her room after you -"
Buffy flinched, unwilling to be reminded of her mother's death. Or her own.
"Dawn wanted us to keep them, and then when Tara found them again, I thought you might want them, and…" She shrugged. "Guess you won't be able to use scrunchies for a while, huh?"
"No, but it's -" Buffy thrust it into her pocket, out of sight, and then shoved her vanity drawer shut. Standing quickly, she said, "I'm off to patrol."
Outside, she walked briskly through the deepening gloom, aiming for the nearest cemetery. She added a flounce to her step, and her hair followed suit. Swing and swish. The streetlamps flickered on, sodium lamps flaring with a buzz and pop to create muted pools of light that reminded Buffy of spotlights, picking her out and highlighting her as she passed through them. Finally, she slipped over the cemetery wall and into darkness.
Fresh Start Positive Attitude Buffy reporting for duty, vampires. Come out come out wherever you are.
No more whining about events past and unchangeable. Also, no more trying to be the girl you'd once been and were no more. Also, no more of - the other thing.
Her mom had been a huge advocate of the Fresh Start™. Had thought Sunnydale would be just the fresh start they needed. That had worked out well. Fresh Start Buffy, daisy fresh from the grave.
Come out come out wherever you are.
The undead refused to cooperate. Maybe they were embarrassed to show their not-so-daisy-fresh faces.
Buffy went on to sweep the next cemetery and the next, each stop taking her farther from home as she circled determinedly away from Restfield. Sometimes the vamps obliged her silent call to action, rushing out to meet their dusty demise at the end of her stake. Swing and swish. Other cemeteries were as empty as the first, leaving Buffy only her thoughts to accompany her lifeless patrol.
At last she reached the final cemetery - final but for Restfield. One-two-three vamps, waiting beside a fresh grave. And then only the yet-to-rise. Buffy waited, heels thunking against the tombstone. Dorotea Carthilton. Beloved. Thunk, thunk. Dorotea didn't seem to be in any rush. Bored, Buffy wandered off to investigate a loud snapping noise several rows over.
The Fyarl she'd had to outrun the other night lumbered around the side of a crypt. After a brief pause to confirm it sported a less-than-soulful gaze, out came the silver knife. Swing and swish. Buffy side-stepped the spray of snot, and the Fyarl did what all good Fyarls were meant to do when stabbed with silver, and expired noisily.
By the time she'd hauled the corpse out of sight, the freshly turned earth over Dorotea had begun to shiver and shake and quiver and quake. Buffy resumed her seat on the tombstone. Thunk, thunk. Come out come out wherever you are.
Dorotea sprang from her grave, freshly reborn and armed with those martial arts skills that seemed to be part and parcel of the Vampire Benefits Package. Maybe, Buffy thought as she ducked and swung, she should have a word with her own HR department. Slayers didn't get quite as good a deal.
Or maybe vampires got the sell-your-soul deal. Maybe she'd pass.
Despite her less-than-stellar quippage skills, Dorotea wasn't lacking in the speed department, and the should've-been-quick fight ranged from graveside to streetside, weaving in and out of pockets of shadow and illumination. An unexpected kick sent Buffy tumbling, scrunchie falling from her front pocket to lay forlornly in the flickering glow of a guttering streetlamp. One of Dorotea's black pumps, chosen, Buffy presumed, by loved ones who had imagined the tasteful footwear bearing their dearly departed into eternity, snagged the fraying edge of the hot pink fabric and tore it.
Dorotea kicked.
The scrunchie sailed into the night.
Buffy stared after it, then turned, lips pressed thin and white. "My mother made that." Without further effort, her stake found home. Swing and swish.
She scrambled in the direction of lost childhood past, and tenderly cradled it to her breast. "My mother made that," she repeated to the silent night air. Joyce Summers had hand-sewn it during Buffy's Dorothy Hamill phase, along with the other scrunchies now tucked into her vanity drawer, each created to match one of young Buffy's ice skating competition outfits. Eventually Buffy had moved on, to boys and cheerleading and high school, and the skates and scrunchies had been forgotten.
By her. But not by her mother. Dismayed, touched, Buffy shook her head.
Swing and swish.
In the weeks following her aborted skate-date with Angel, she'd found herself gliding along the streets at night, twirling her way in and out of the illumination cast by streetlamps-turned-competition-spotlights in a young girl's imagination. Buffy had re-lived her youthful dreams of becoming the next Dorothy Hamill, still somehow hopeful that someday it could come to pass. With her Slayer grace and strength, it had seemed so easy. So possible.
The urge to pretend struck anew. Pulling her oh-so-adorable hair tight enough to give herself a facelift - good as new nothing sagging here - she was able to grasp just enough hair that she thought she could make a ponytail. With old, familiar motions - twist, twist, snap - she'd corralled her wayward wisps with prancing teddy bears and frayed pink cotton.
After glancing up and down the street to reassure herself she was alone, Buffy began to glide to the silent music in her head.
Push and glide, twist and dip. Spotlight.
Old, comfortable movements became familiar once more. Buffy still had strength and grace to surpass any of the figure skaters out there, male and female alike. If she wanted it, she'd be a shoo-in for her own show. Oooh, now there was a way to pay the bills. She could call it Slayer on Ice. Or maybe The Slayercapades. Huh. Except Slayercapades, plural, implied more than one Slayer, and the only other Slayer was -
Well, hell. Faith was trying for a Fresh Start™ of her very own. Her ice show could feature the pair of them, why not? Buffy couldn't quite recall how to hate the other woman these days, anyhow. It took too much energy.
Spotlight. Glide. Swing leg out. Swish keen-edged blade through the air in graceful arc.
Buffy pushed away the memory of decapitating one of the Order of Taraka with just such a move. No room for evil here. Just a girl and her fans.
Spotlight. Arms up. Spin spin spin.
The spin loosed her precarious ponytail, and sent her scrunchie flying. Her hair fell free. Swing and swish. Staring into the gutter where her scrunchie lay, Buffy reached up to finger the short, blunt edges of her hair. Tears formed, hot and dismayed.
Some might see her new hairdo and say she'd cut off her nose to spite her face, and it made no difference anyhow. Didn't make her a new person. Some would be wrong. She wasn't - that person. Not ever.
The maniacal teddy bears grinned up at her from their grubby resting place. Give it up give it up give it all up. Wasn't this what she'd told herself earlier? That it was time for a fresh start? No more whining over who she used to be and was no more? The past was past. Her mother was dead. Her childhood was dead. She was dead. Time to accept it. Get over it. Move on.
Make me different, she'd said. Who was she kidding?
She was already different. In all the wrong ways.
Fresh Start™ Buffy turned and trudged away, head bent, shoulders bowed, shorn locks dangling like a shroud about her face.
Swing and swish.
Her stake dangled from numb fingertips as she began the long trudge home.
Each step grew slower. Her shoulders bowed further.
Come out come out wherever you are.
With a cry, Buffy turned and raced back to the gutter. She knelt and scooped up the fraying bit of material a mother had once lovingly sewn for a young daughter full of life and future promise, and, holding it to her chest, carefully brushed away the bugs and dirt.
Her hair would grow back. Someday.
.
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Fin