Title:
Freedom
Rating: PG
Subject: Buffy
Summers
Pairing/Characters: Vauge references to Buffy/Angel
and/or Buffy/Spike
Prompt: 97. Free
Author's Note:
This is set right around 'The Girl In Question.' It's written in 2nd
person which I like to play with from time to time.
You never really stop to look at your life now. You're so afraid that if you do you'll find yourself wanting; lacking something so fundamental to your existence that you aren't even a whole person without it. You're afraid that you know what you're lacking and you aren't ready to accept that you need it. You've always seen yourself as an independent person yet when you think back on everything you've accomplished you don't find anything you did yourself. You know you've only survived this long because you had help from the people closest to your heart.
You've managed to convince yourself that this is what you want out of life, this freedom you used to crave before you realized that it wasn't freedom at all. You go out every night and dance like no one's watching. Isn't that what the song says?
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean, when one door closes I hope one more opens
Is this what being free is? You spend all your energy convincing the world you don't need anything else (or anyone else), that you love this existence you've made for yourself and what is it that keeps you here? Is it your pride? Fear? You used to spend all you're time pretending that you felt anything at all and now you spend your time trying not to feel.
You know that if you do end up looking at your life you will see what's missing. You're not chained to duty anymore and you always thought that was what was holding you back. You finally started to realize that it was never really a job like you made it out to be, it was part of you. You can't stop being a slayer any more than Spike or Angel could stop being vampires of course you don't know about sanshu or the fight over who it's really for and no more than Willow could stop being a witch.
You know you're denying your nature and you try to tell yourself you can live without it but you know in the end it will kill you. A few years ago you would have welcomed the blessing of death but now you actually see life as something worth living and going back to heaven is a gift you don't want to take for granted, even if love doesn't find it's way back to you.
You know this isn't freedom and yet you still yearn to be free; so when you feel your spine tingle low, that warning that he's near, you have to ignore it and dance even harder.
like no one's watching
It would be so easy to turn around and catch those dark orbs with your eyes or even those bright blue ones, to laugh your way around the two of them and pretend like they wouldn't see through your façade' of freedom. But they will, so you dance.
Because you might know these things about being free, you might know you're not no matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise but you aren't ready to accept it and pride keeps you from embracing what you know is the thing you lack.
You finally looked real deep and found that you are left wanting.
