Title: Bad Reputation
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Principal Flutie, Cordelia, Willow, Xander, Giles, Joyce, Others.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 802
Spoilers: Set just after Welcome to the Hellmouth / The Harvest.
Summary: Buffy has barely started at Sunnydale High and already she’s getting a bad reputation, all because of a few unfounded rumours.
Written For: Challenge 312: Rumour.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters; they belong to the great Joss Whedon.



It hadn’t taken long for the rumours about her to start spreading amongst the students of Sunnydale High. If Buffy had thought she could start over here with a clean slate she’d been sadly mistaken; after all, Principal Flutie had her transcripts from Hemery, and despite what he said about the past being the past, there was no way he wouldn’t have passed on what he’d read to her teachers, just to warn them what kind of girl they’d be dealing with.

So now students and teachers had all heard about how she’d burned down the gym at her old school, which was fair because she really had; it had be the fastest and most effective way of dealing with all the vampires inside. But now they also thought she was a troublemaker and had been in a gang, when all she’d really been doing was trying to save lives, which was a good thing! She couldn’t explain that to everyone who’d gotten the wrong end of the stick though, which sucked. She had to just let everyone believe whatever they chose to believe about her, and that wasn’t going to help her make friends and influence people.

She sighed, feeling the burden of trying and failing to make a good impression weighing her down. Looked like the new, improved Buffy Summers wasn’t doing too well on her maiden voyage; she could already feel any hope of a stellar academic career sinking without trace, and as for her social life…

Okay, that actually wasn’t looking too unhealthy. Yes, she’d managed to fall out of favour with the Queen of the in-crowd within a day of meeting her, but not being welcome among Cordelia’s group of hangers-on was hardly the end of the world. Buffy should know; she’d seen end-of-the-world stuff more than a few times in her short career as the Slayer. Getting on Cordelia’s bad side wasn’t it.

Anyway, she didn’t need to be one of the popular kids; she’d done that back in L.A. and a lot of it had been kinda shallow. She had proper friends now, Willow and Xander; they knew her secret and still liked her, still wanted to hang out with her, even helped her be a better Slayer with research, and extra stakes, and moral support. The benefits of good, solid moral support couldn’t be underestimated.

And she had Giles too. He was stuffy and tweedy and way too British, not to mention strict, but despite all that she already liked him better than her last Watcher. It was sort of fun making him go all stuttery and reach for his books; they were like his comfort blanket when he didn’t know what to say or do.

Now she had her buds, what did it matter if most people got the wrong idea about her, all because of a bunch of rumours? Anyone who believed that stuff didn’t really know her, and she didn’t want to know them either, so there! It might cramp her style when it came to dating, most of the cute boys probably thought she was some kind of freak, but between school and Slaying when was she going to have time for dating anyway? Sure, if some boy asked her out on one of the rare occasions when she wasn’t busy she might be able to squeeze him in, but she’d cross that bridge when and if. In the meantime, the people who mattered most to her knew the truth, except for her mom, but Buffy had already accepted that was how it had to be. Her mom was better off not knowing; if she ever found out about her daughter’s extracurricular activities she’d only worry about Buffy even more than she already did.

What were rumours anyway? Just stories built out of a few misunderstood facts, a lot of speculation, and a sprinkling of outright lies and embellishments; nobody with any sense paid attention to them. People shouldn’t judge other people on stories they’d heard about them from yet more people who didn’t actually know the person they were talking about, like that whole thing about not judging a book by its cover. Get to know what’s inside first; you still might not like the book but at least you’d be judging it fairly.

Which reminded her; she still needed to get actual textbooks for her classes from the library; she couldn’t keep sharing Willow’s or Xander’s, and she might need them for homework assignments at some point, if she ever had five minutes to spare for homework in between slaying vampires and saving the world. She’d better visit Giles’ domain, and this time she wasn’t letting him distract her with prophecies, and training, and stuff. Flunking school would destroy her reputation far more thoroughly than a few rumours.


The End