Title: Loneliness And Regrets
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Spoilers: Anne.
Summary: Leaving Sunnydale seemed the only option, but now Buffy is alone and struggling wit her new life.
Written For: Challenge 309: Amnesty, using Challenge 30: Solitary.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters; they belong to the great Joss Whedon.



Buffy has never felt more alone. She knows this was for the best; after recent events she’d needed to get away from Sunnydale for her own sanity, it held too many painful memories. But being out on her own is harder than she’d thought it would be.

She misses her friends, Giles, her mom, although she guesses she’s burned her bridges there. Even if she were to go home she probably wouldn’t be welcome after the way she left. She can still hear her mother’s words ringing in her ears: “You walk out of this house, don't even THINK about coming back!” Why would her mom want her delinquent daughter back after that?

Weird though it seems now, Buffy even misses school; the life of a high school student was way easier compared to the life she’s living now as a waitress. She makes just enough to rent a crummy little room and buy food, but that’s it. If she thought she was lacking a social life before… After a long day of serving food to people who are always willing to find fault with the food, the service, her attitude, she doesn’t have the energy to go anywhere or do anything even if she could afford to.

‘I should’ve appreciated what I had before.’ Lying on the hard bed each night in the flickering light from a neon sign outside the grimy window, she thinks of her room back home, her comfy bed, her mother’s cooking, and all of the other things she’d taken for granted over the years. The memories make her feel hollow inside; they belong to another life, Buffy’s life, but she’s not Buffy anymore.

The people she works with call her Anne, and most of them seem nice enough, but they’re not her friends and never will be. She can’t confide in them, can’t tell them how lonely she is, how homesick, how lost and adrift she feels. As the Slayer she’d had a purpose in life, but now her only purpose is getting through each day. They’re all the same now anyway, one blending into the next; nothing really changes.

Is this how it will be for the rest of her life, a solitary existence of waiting tables and dreaming of the past? Is this all she has to look forward to? It’s a bleak prospect, but maybe it’s all she deserves. She made so many mistakes; she should have done more, acted faster, killed Angelus sooner… Regrets are easy; atoning for the things she didn’t do when she should have, and all the things she did wrong, could take her a lifetime. At least being alone gives her time to reflect on her failings and mourn what might have been. Maybe she’ll become a better person because of it.

So each morning she drags herself out of bed after too little sleep filled with disturbing, heartbreaking dreams, puts on her uniform, pastes on a smile, and goes to work.

It passes the time.


The End