BtVS Triple Drabble: After Death

[bk_forever]

Title: After Death
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 350, a triple drabble and a half.
Spoilers: End of Season 5, beginning of Season 6.
Summary: Buffy sacrificed herself willingly, but her friends wouldn’t let her rest in peace.
Content Notes: Canon character death and resurrection.
Written For: Challenge 279: Amnesty at fan_flashworks, using Challenge 38: The Other Side.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters; they belong to the great Joss Whedon.




Buffy made her sacrifice willingly, giving her life so that the young girl she’d grown to love as her sister could have the life she deserved. It was the right thing to do. Her own death wouldn’t be the end of the fight against vampires and demons. One Slayer died, another was called, and Buffy’s replacement, her successor, was already in the world from her previous death. First there’d been Kendra, then there’d been Faith, and when Faith fell there would be another… The forces of darkness could never hope to win.


She wasn’t afraid of dying; in some ways she’d been preparing for her death since the first time she’d faced a vampire. Slayers lived short, intense lives and died young; she’d already cheated death so many times, but it was always bound to catch up to her. That was okay; she was ready.


What she wasn’t prepared for was what came after she crossed to the other side. If she’d expected anything, it was that she’d cease to exist; her duty done her life would simply end and that would be it, no more Buffy Summers, but instead…


She’d found peace, and warmth, and contentment, a sense that her work was over and she could rest, surrounded by those who loved her. That was her reward and she’d been happy, drifting in what must surely have been heaven, no pain, no fear, and no regrets.


It should have been her eternity, but it hadn’t lasted. Her well-meaning friends, believing they were saving her from Hell, had dragged her back to this harsh, too-bright world full of sharp edges, disorienting physical sensations, and raw emotions.


It’s too much for her to bear, and yet there’s no escape; she’s trapped in life as she never was in death, constrained by her body, tortured by her senses. She feels brittle, as if she might shatter at the lightest touch.


She doesn’t belong in this place; it’s not her home, not anymore. She already served her time, but there’s no way for her to regain what she’s lost.


Being alive is torture.



The End

Comments

"Buffy's Death Notes."

[vantiri.livejournal.com]

Love the story overall, but her actions pretty much drastically reduce her odds of making it to Heaven, what with her immodesty as a personality trait.
I especially think you nailed it when you hint that her friends meant well, but remember, regardless of that, she was kidnapped by them- now if they'd been right: then she'd be a monster! If they were wrong, she'd be livid with them for kidnapping her like they did; either way what they did was both extremely deadly and extremely stupid, but that's *actions*.
Now, there is a distinct way the First could win such a conflict *against that kind of modern dame, that is*, that being not by engaging itself until the final hour, and only by offering itself and its services to her, of course the price of this favor would wind up being her soul- much like a deal with the mafia, once you sign the contract you're enslaved to them forever! Well, with that mafia don, any slavery to it is *literally forever*, if I'm right about who/what that entity is, and I'm sure I am, because of the hints in the show of its identity and its methods to a T, as well as its psyche as shown in the television show too. Overall, I really do believe it's supposed to be the fallen seraph we commonly call the devil... and thus an extremely scary intellect at that. All the more potent with the corruptions in society today, the extremely indecent culture we seem to have sadly developed, the mass-murder of human beings before birth and all other times in the life of the person too, the divorce people engage in from biology and also a divorce culture which always harms the children in it- she herself was subjected to that sort of thing too in fact-, and, in summary, the monsters she goes hunting to defend her neighbors from are really small-potatoes, suicide "terror troops" that may well have, and especially in earlier vampire stories, sold their souls, and thus became monsters; as the premise is that he/it gets their soul and body when they die in exchange for some favor; he'd do the same with her: offer her aid, but for a price, that price being her soul for all eternity as his/its slave.
Sincerely one of your hopefully entirely too many fans;
Vantiri.