Title: Future Plans
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 200
Spoilers: What’s My Line.
Summary: Slayers seldom live long, but does that mean Buffy shouldn’t plan for her future?
Written For: Challenge 363: Amnesty, using Challenge 59: Photo.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.



Sometimes, Buffy looks at photos of herself when she was younger and wonders who this person is. There’s a sense of dislocation between the carefree kid she used to be, with her ice-skates and Dorothy Hamill haircut, and the person she sees when she looks in the mirror, and it seems impossible to reconcile the two.

She’d been so full of hopes and dreams back then, until her destiny as the Slayer had been dropped on her. Now all those childhood dreams are meaningless, because it’s unlikely she’ll live long enough to experience them. Even the senior prom might be beyond her reach, and as for college and a career… What’s the point of planning ahead, getting her hopes up, looking to a future she might not have?

On the other hand, if she doesn’t hold on to her hopes for the future, isn’t that the same as giving up? What would Giles call it? A self-fulfilling prophecy?

If she keeps her hopes and dreams alive, maybe they’ll give her the strength to keep fighting, and to keep living.

Smiling, she sets the photo aside. When she was little, she’d dreamed of being a superhero. Some dreams do come true.


The End