InsaneJournal

WHO: Buffy Summers, OPEN
WHAT: Getting out.
WHERE: The edges of civilization.
WHEN: Friday night



If she closed her eyes, Buffy could still trace the exact pattern of the light that filtered in through the drapes and spread across the ceiling. She'd seen it enough; except for occasional trips out for food, or to go shopping with Dawn, or even to pilgrimage to the spot where she arrived -- waste of time, she hadn't recognized a thing -- Buffy had spent most of her time in her apartment. Staring at the ceiling.

It was an exceptionally ugly ceiling.

Every now and then she dragged out the laptop and pretended to be normal. She thought she was pretty good at it, in that 'on the internet, no one knows you're a dead girl' sort of way. She liked to pretend that someday this would all be over, and she would emerge from her apartment and quit pretending. Someday soon?

She had no idea.

All she knew was that whenever she went out, she longed for the peace and quiet of her apartment. And lately, whenever she was here, she felt restless. The walls closed in on her, flat and uncaring. She had to get out.

* * *

It was late afternoon. She wandered aimlessly. This wasn't patrolling; she'd listened to what everyone had to say about things being different here, how she could get someone killed, and she wasn't looking for trouble. She didn't know what she was looking for.

She listened to a busker for an hour or two or maybe three, time passed as she sat in complete stillness with fiddle music swirling around her. She only realized when the busker started to pack up that she hadn't brought any money. The woman gave her a friendly grin, though, and might have approached and said something but Buffy froze up for a second, and the woman was sensitive to that kind of tiny signal and just gave Buffy a wave from a distance. Buffy wondered if she thought Buffy was a runaway. It wasn't everyone who had time to sit around listening to street music for hours.

As dusk spread gray across the bright colors of the buildings, Buffy wandered through the emptiest areas; down by some warehouses she found some real runaways, maybe. They younger than her, wearing ten layers of clothes and huddled in a group like they were planning something. They glared at her and she glared at them.

She picked up a stray dog a few streets over. Thin and whining, eager and shying away. She wished she had something to give it, but when she sat down it curled up next to her. She tucked her jacket over it and watched until it fell into a restless sleep. Then she snuck away. Behind her, the dog woke and whined, but didn't follow.

By then it was dark, and she skirted the busier areas. This was where she'd expect to find trouble in Sunnydale; not the empty areas, not the busy areas, the places in between. Her body fell into her habitual way of walking. This small woman in white, walking in the dangerous places, was not a victim. No one approached her.

She found a bench on a deserted street -- all the shops were the sort that closed around six, so at night the street was well lit but the people hurried through it, all going somewhere else. She lay down on the bench and squinted upward. She saw the glow of streetlights, and beyond them, just maybe there were stars.

She was starting to miss her jacket a little.

Finally she shivered and sat up, looking around with a careless air, trying to decide whether to wander further or try to return home. She was lost, but it didn't really seem to matter.