Title: Distance
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Others.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 350
Setting: Season one and the beginning of Season Two.
Summary: Buffy can’t reconnect with her old friends the way she’d hoped. Too much has changed.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 405: Amnesty 67, using Challenge 19: Old Friends.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.



Leaving L.A. and everything familiar behind her had devastated Buffy. It had felt like too much on top of her parents’ divorce. Bad enough that she’d only see her dad occasionally, when he wasn’t too busy with work, but then her mom had told her they’d have to leave the home she’d grown up in, leave L.A., her school, and all of her friends! It had seemed like her whole existence was being ripped away!

Okay, so the school thing hadn’t really been an issue; she’d been expelled for burning down the gym, so she’d known there was no chance of going back there anyway. But the thought of having to start over somewhere else, had been beyond daunting.

Then they’d arrived in Sunnydale, settled into their new home, Buffy had started at her new school, and it had been… okay. She’d met her new Watcher, made a few new friends, and she’d found her feet, both as a teenage girl and the Slayer. She’d even had a few dates.

Then summer vacation had rolled around, she’d gone to stay with her dad at his new place for a few weeks, looking forward to hanging out with her old friends from Hemery, and it had been kinda awkward.

It wasn’t her friends’ fault, and it really was good to see them, catch up on news, but there was so much she couldn’t tell them. She couldn’t regale them with tales of the vamps and demons she’d fought, or her date with Owen Thurman where they’d wound up at the crematorium and Owen had almost gotten killed. She couldn’t tell them about Scott Hope trading her to vampires for a shot at immortality, or that she’d had to slay him when he rose from his grave. She couldn’t tell them about the prophecy, that she’d died and been revived to finish what she’d started, destroying the Master.

She definitely couldn’t tell them about Angel, her much older creature of the night sort of boyfriend. They’d never understand.

Her friends were the same as they’d always been; it was Buffy who’d changed.


The End