justprompts: Arrival at Crowded Hour

[vampirelayer]

Prompt:
Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.
-Kurt Cobain

Timeline:
Post S7 finale, en route to the castle at crowdedhour
 

As childish as it might have been, there was a part of her that really didn't want to go alone. 

There was an even smaller part, hardly audible deep within the recesses of her heart, that didn't want to go at all.

Everybody else was together right now, in some way, some form.  Even Faith, who'd run off to Cleveland to deal with big bad Hellmouth mach 2, had Robin with her, and some of the Slayerettes.  Ones she considered friends, as well, seeing as how she'd actually made the time for it.  Not just the time either... the effort.  It was easy for Faith though.  People liked her.   She had something magnetic.  It certainly wasn't tact, or kindheartedness, or good manners, but it was fascinating nonetheless, and the girls had responded to that.

As much as Buffy had always felt apart from the crowd, being The Slayer, she'd never categorized herself as 'fascinating'.  Here she was, some sort of living legend, making young vampires quake in their snakeskin boots, but when it came down to it, she wasn't sure how much of anything she was besides the Slayer.

As she looked out the window of the helicopter, watching the clouds haze across the landscape below, her thoughts drifted to Willow and Xander, Giles and Dawn.  She knew how much their world-savey teamness meant to all of them.  How it defined their lives too.  But she could imagine, however briefly, how each of them might go on if they woke up the next day and vamps had vanished off the face of the earth.  Demons disappeared back into the pits of Hell.  She could sort out little alternate futures for each one of them.  They had personalities that would allow that.  Pieces of themselves that still belonged to ye olde mundane world.

She couldn't imagine any such destiny for herself, though.  Which was part of the frightening bit of no longer being the only (excepting Faith) slayer.  Now, if she chose to, she could claim her life for herself.  Take it back.  Wrest it out of the hands of those men long ago who'd chosen to embue a girl, chosen without her consent, to be their defender.

But there was that tricky word.  Consent.  Maybe it had never been consensual at first -- when she'd been ripped out of her gum chewing, clique leading ways and forced to grow into a fighting machine.  But now, even as she sat, lonely on this chopper, she knew in her heart of hearts that she couldn't be doing anything else.  It would have been nice to go hang out on a beach with her friends.  It would have been nice to forget, for one tiny second, about saving the world.  

It would have been even nicer to not have had to go off alone on a mission only days after she'd lost Spike the way she did.  It would have been nice to be surrounded by people she loved, so she didn't have to pay any mind to that hole in her gut that was a result of that loss.

But Buffy's world, for better or worse, just wasn't that.  It wasn't nice.  

But it was hers.  A flicker of unbidden pride rose in her throat, and her chin tilted up slightly as the helicopter began to descend. 

And nobody can take that from me, she thought to herself.  Least of all, me.