BtVS Ficlet: Double Life

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Title: Double Life

Fandom: BtVS

Author: badly_knitted

Characters: Buffy

Rating: G

Spoilers: General for the first season, before Joyce learns that Buffy’s the Slayer.

Summary: Buffy feels torn in two by the double life she has to lead.

Word Count: 345

Written For: My own prompt ‘BtVS, Buffy Summers. By day she's a schoolgirl, by night she's the Slayer. Sometimes she wonders which is the real Buffy,’ at fic_promptly.

Disclaimer: I don’t own BTVS, or the characters. They belong to Joss Whedon.

By day she’s a schoolgirl and by night she’s the Slayer. Sometimes she wonders which is the real Buffy and which is the mask she wears to conceal her secret identity.

Her mom thinks she’s just an ordinary teenager with some behavioural issues and a tendency to get into trouble, while half the time Giles treats her like a warrior instead of a person. If it wasn’t for Willow and Xander, she thinks she might go nuts, if she hasn’t already.

Hiding her Slayer activities from her mom has always been difficult, but since moving to Sunnydale, it’s gotten even harder. In a place so full of demons and monsters, she’s almost never off duty. She hates seeing the look of disappointment in her mom’s eyes every time the school calls about her skipping classes, or starting fights, and she hates knowing how much her mom worries about her, but if she knew the truth she’d worry even more. So she lies to protect her mom from the truth, and she knows it’s for the best, but that doesn’t make her feel any better about doing it.

The burden of guilt over everything she’s putting her mum through weighs her down, so for her mother’ sake, she puts on the carefree teenager mask and acts like everything is completely normal. Then at night she puts on dark clothes, slips into her Slayer persona, picks up her stake, and sneaks out of her bedroom window to patrol.

She feels split in two, wanting to be a normal girl yet bound by her duty as the Slayer. She’s scared she’s losing some important part of who she is somewhere between the two faces she shows the world, some essence of Buffy that’s leaking away every time she switches from one to the other. One day, it might all be gone and then she’s not sure what, if anything, will be left. How much of yourself can you lose before all that remains is a dried up husk? That’s something she hopes she never has to find out.

The End

Comments

[bk_forever]

I loved Nathan in Firefly, so sad it got cancelled after only a few episodes. The movie Serenity is one of my favourites ever. He's a great actor.

Other shows have tried to capture Buffy's style,. but I can't think of a single one that has managed it. It worked incredibly well, and I think that's largely down to the cleverness of the scripts and the way the ensemble cast worked so well together. The show is a deserved classic.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

Another Joss Whedon show that got cancelled was Dollhouse. I saw the first season before I found out it was canned.

Firefly was popular enough to get a movie. They did that with Veronica Mars.

I've never gotten into any other shows with vampires. Charmed was ahead of its time too. The only sci-fi style show that Aaron Spelling did.

[bk_forever]

Yeah, I liked Charmed, but it still wasn't a patch on Buffy.

I never got to see Dollhouse, it wasn't on any of the channels that I get here in the UK.

I tried to watch True Blood because I'd liked the books, but I gave up after half an episode. I'm no prude, but it just seemed to be wall-to-wall swearing and it got on my nerves.

I wish there'd been more Firefly movies because Serenity was just awesome, everything I could've wished for. The only downer was losing a couple of the characters. I loved them all so that hurt. Doesn't stop me loving the movie to bits though.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

I got into watching Buffy straight away. My mum was watching Charmed first so I end up watching with her. I have to admit the writing was better on Buffy. I think the in fighting wasn't the only reason Shannon left Charmed.

Dollhouse had promise. I found out off the internet right before season two was shown in Australia. Now I usually do research on a show that looks interesting to see if it has longevity before I watch it because I don't want to get emotionally invested if it gets cancelled. Thank goodness for the internet.:)

I saw a snippet of true blood and it looked too gory for my liking. I know Twilight and Vampire Diaries are popular since I've had people ask me about them, particularly the first one. Then I have to say that I don't watch that show.

The downside to watching your favorite show is when a character is killed off. It changes the dynamic.

[bk_forever]

Tell me about it! I was a massive Torchwood fan for the first two seasons, then at the end of season 2, two characters were killed off, in the very short season 3 my favourite character was killed, leaving just two of the ensemble - the hero and the one character I hated. I didn't bother watching season 4, there was nothing left of the show I'd loved.

I haven't seen The Vampire Diaries or the Twilight films, haven't read the books either, they just don't appeal. Buffy was so completely different it hooked me from the first episode. I really am due a re-watch, problem is finding the time when there's so much else I want to do. A lot of shows I can listen to while doing something else, but with Buffy I always like to watch properly, there's so much going on that you miss if you're not paying attention.

You're right, the writing on Charmed wasn't as good, I watched it more as light entertainment than as a serious drama. Buffy had more depth somehow, the situations resonated more because there's the whole horror of being something of an outcast in high school, not fitting in with the popular crowd and just trying to find your place in life. The Charmed sisters are all older so it's a different dynamic.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

I was hoping that Torchwood wouldn't lose its momentum.

Why was series 3 so short anyway?. Was it because they had a smaller main cast?.

They always call it specials, when the series is short. It was okay when RTD did specials for the Tenth Doctor.

I know John Barrowman said in an interview that when a person dies, its not an instant thing to automatically have someone take there place.
That was why the doctor that double crossed them was just a red herring. But an outsider has to interact with the main cast to get the story going as well. I wish the RTD knew how to make a proper heroine out of Gwen. She didn't even have survivors guilt as far as I could tell.

On well. I didn't really care for the story-arc anyway so the upside was that it didn't drag longer. I would have preferred a proper series or no series at all. The Children of Earth should just have been made into a TV movie so it could have been shorter if RTD wasn't able to do it better.

I shouldn't have bother watching "Miracle Day". I guess that since Torchwood was more popular in American, that RTD decided to shift it over there. Gwen made have been less annoying. But did the new guy Rex have to be really irritating to make it so. I did like that moment when she states that she is Welsh not British. I really hate when people are ignorant of a persons nationality, especially when they are trying to put the other person down. In some shape or form. Particularly if they are being racist.

However I didn't like having a pedophile as part of the story. I can never see Bill Pullman the same way again. Even if it was only alluded to. RTD may be able to hit the mark. But most of the time he missed it. The explicit sex and violence outweighed the story line which was pointless. I can only assume RTD was trying to be controversial.

I take watching Angel, which was the inspiration for Torchwood despite being a spin off of Doctor Who, over ever seeing Torchwood again.

Sometimes when books are made into TV shows or movies, they lose some of the essence that makes it good. Doesn't stop Hollywood from making films about comic book characters though.

I did a rewatch a few years ago on Buffy and still found it interesting to watch. Charmed was written by a producer who usually did soap drama so the writing style was different and the witches didn't use spells written in Latin.

Phoebes relationship with Cole reminded me a bit of the ups and downs of Buffy's relationship with Angel. Piper sometimes annoyed me when she panicked.

I think Charmed got its ideas from Greek mythology and religious elements.

[bk_forever]

From what I've heard and read, both CoE and Miracle Day were written as original scripts, but because nobody wanted to make them as TV shows or movies, RTD recycled them as Torchwood scripts. He must have made minimal changes because everyone was acting out of character during Children of Earth and the strongest scenes had nothing to do with Torchwood. I hated it. Everything I liked about Torchwood - the Cardiff setting, the Hub, the SUV, most of the cast, the Rift, the Weevils - was ditched, the action moved to London and the plot was idiotic, particularly when set in the Whonivers. More than seven years on, I still feel betrayed because of the outright lies we were told about how much we'd love the developments in the Jack/Ianto relationship. >=[

I still enjoy both Buffy and Angel. I'll never watch CoE again, but despite Gwen being annoying, I still like the first two seasons of Torchwood. I completely refuse to watch Miracle Day at all, though I read synopses of the episodes. The whole thing sounded awful. Buffy and Angel stand the test of time. CoE and Miracle Day never will.

I've seen some episodes of Charmed recently, but it hasn't aged well. Then again, I've been watching re-runs of MacGyver too and so much of that is laughable, particularly the female characters and attitudes towards women, and the oh so outdated technology. The computers may have been state-of-the-art back then (my boyfriend had something similar) but nowadays, looking at them... ROFLMAO!

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate that RTD couldn't have done the series the way he wanted in the first place. But then
again maybe he should have seen the rejection of the script as a sign to not do it at all.

I thought the bit where Gwen was the "expert" on how to survive on the run was very OC. Jack and Ianto
weren't amateurs. Did we really need to see Jack "killed" and resurrected again?. The pain he goes
through is unbearable.

I did like the bit where Rhys thought he would have time to read a book while on the run.

You could overlook Gwen's attitude in the first two series because of the stories. We still had more
characters to focus on.

Buffy and Angel had the best humor. So that never gets old. I watched MacGyver when I was a kid but I
forgot most of it except for his nemesis Murdoc and the fact that MacGyver could invent things despite
the logic.

[bk_forever]

Yeah, that's pretty much MacGyver in a nutshell, but Richard Dean Anderson is just always fun to watch. It's pure escapism, nostalgia.

Gwen being an expert was just unbelievable, she's the least likely person to know that stuff, she's had a sheltered life before Torchwood, but she was RTDs darling, the character who would always have everything her way, who nothing bad would ever happen to. Jack and Ianto were apparently supposed to be the comic relief in CoE, because repeatedly killing someone is great for laughs? Just disgusting.

I don't think the CoE script should have been made. It definitely shouldn't have been used as a Torchwood script, it forced the characters into roles they didn't fit and made them look stupid.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

We should just let it go. Torchwood would have been better off if it had been cancelled after series 2. I think I'm still annoyed because I think of how good it could have been.

[bk_forever]

With Season 2, the show was just hitting its stride, and then RTD basically destroyed it. Still, it means that Torchwood fanfic writers have a lot of scope for writing stories. It's the fandom I started out with, and still the one I write the most for (with FAKE coming a close second), and that's largely because anything goes. The Rift means that anything can fall through from any place and any time, plus alien technology can do anything a writer wants it to. Add to that all the different genres possible from heartbreaking angst to complete crack, and all the potential crossovers... It's the perfect fanfic fandom. Most of the time I ignore CoE - except for writing fixits - and even ignore Owen and Tosh dying. Having the whole team, amd extras, to play with is more fun.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

I was hoping that Torchwood wouldn't lose its momentum. Why was series 3 so short anyway?. Was it because they had a smaller main cast?.

They always call it specials, when the series is short. It was okay when RTD did specials for the Tenth Doctor.

I know John Barrowman said in an interview that when a person dies, its not an instant thing to automatically have someone take there place.
That was why the doctor that double crossed them was just a red herring. But an outsider has to interact with the main cast to get the story going as well. I wish the RTD knew how to make a proper heroine out of Gwen. She didn't even have survivors guilt as far as I could tell.

On well. I didn't really care for the story-arc anyway so the upside was that it didn't drag longer. I would have preferred a proper series or no series at all. The Children of Earth should just have been made into a TV movie so it could have been shorter if RTD wasn't able to do it better.

I shouldn't have bother watching "Miracle Day". I guess that since Torchwood was more popular in American, that RTD decided to shift it over there. Gwen made have been less annoying. But did the new guy Rex have to be really irritating to make it so. I did like that moment when she states that she is Welsh not British. I really hate when people are ignorant of a persons nationality, especially when they are trying to put the other person down. In some shape or form. Particularly if they are being racist.

However I didn't like having a pedophile as part of the story. I can never see Bill Pullman the same way again. Even if it was only alluded to. RTD may be able to hit the mark. But most of the time he missed it. The explicit sex and violence outweighed the story line which was pointless. I can only assume RTD was trying to be controversial.

I take watching Angel, which was the inspiration for Torchwood despite being a spin off of Doctor Who, over ever seeing Torchwood again.

Sometimes when books are made into TV shows or movies, they lose some of the essence that makes it good. Doesn't stop Hollywood from making films about comic book characters though.

I did a rewatch a few years ago on Buffy and still found it interesting to watch. Charmed was written by a producer who usually did soap drama so the writing style was different and the witches didn't use spells written in Latin.

Phoebes relationship with Cole reminded me a bit of the ups and downs of Buffy's relationship with Angel. Piper sometimes annoyed me when she panicked.

I think Charmed got its ideas from Greek mythology and religious elements.