BtVS Ficlet: It's A Drag
Mar. 17th, 2025 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: It's A Drag
Fandom: BtVS
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Buffy, Xander, Willow.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 888
Spoilers: Early Season Two.
Summary: Slaying can be a bit of a drag, sometimes literally.
Written For: Challenge 393: Amnesty 65 at
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fan_flashworks, using Challenge 9: Drag.Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
“Do I HAVE to?” Buffy remembered whining when her mom and dad wanted her to go with them to visit a family friend. “It’s such a drag!”
Boy, if she’d known then what she knows now, maybe she wouldn’t have complained so much. Giving up a couple of hours out of her abundant free time once in a while to visit someone who mattered to her parents really hadn’t been a big deal, even if it was always boring. She wishes she could revisit her younger self and put her straight on a few things; she knows exactly what she’d say.
“You think that’s a drag? You should try juggling school with having to patrol every night, trying to get homework done and keep your grades up to please mom while stopping the next Big Bad to come along. I have to watch my peers go on dates or to parties while I’m stopping the world from getting sucked into literal Hell. Again! Now that’s a drag!”
Her younger self hadn’t known about Slayers though. Vampires and demons had been nothing more than monsters from horror movies and TV shows, not living - or living dead - creatures intent on destroying humanity.
This demon isn’t living though, not anymore. It’s not even among the living dead, for which Buffy is grateful. She’s dealt with zombies before, and it’s not fun; they’re gross and stinky, and bits tend to fall off them. No, thankfully this demon is very dead, mostly because it tried to pick a fight with the Slayer and lost. Unfortunately, Buffy can’t just leave it lying here in the park for anyone to stumble across, so that’s a drag too. Literally.
“Can I maybe get some help here?” she calls to her friends. She doesn’t mind doing the killing part herself, not too much anyway; it’s sort of her job. But why should she have to do all the clean-up too? Hasn’t she done her part?
“Uh, what d’you want us to do?” Xander hovers uncertainly.
“Grab a leg, or an appendage, whatever those are, and help me drag it in among the trees. I’ll have to bury it somehow.”
“But we don’t have any shovels!” Willow protests. “You don’t, do you?” she looks hopefully at Buffy, as though expecting her to produce a shovel out of thin air.
“Nope, sorry, I left my shovel in my other pants.” The joke, perhaps predictably, falls flat. “It’s not like I routinely carry a shovel everywhere I go, Will. I wasn’t expecting demon slayage tonight.” Maybe that was short-sighted of her; demons are an occupational hazard, but she can't go through life carrying all the equipment she might possibly need to deal with whatever might cross her path. She’d be too loaded down to fight. She can tuck a stake in her purse or up her sleeve, but anything bigger would be impossible to conceal. “Looks like we’ll have to improvise.”
“I could call Giles, have him bring a shovel,” Willow suggests.
“No phones around here, Will. By the time you find one and get him out here, we could already have our friend here tucked neatly away.”
Buffy isn’t looking forward to digging a grave with her bare hands, it will ruin her nails, just when she’s gotten them looking halfway decent, but she’ll do it if she has to. Maybe they can use rocks or branches to dig with, but first things first.
Grabbing a couple of the dead demon’s appendages, Buffy starts to drag it across the grass, and Xander jumps to help her, pulling his shirtsleeves down over his hands so he doesn’t have to touch the greenish-grey flesh. Buffy can’t really blame him, it’s still disturbingly warm, but at the same time, clammy.
Willow joins in, at Buffy’s other side, and between the three of them they haul the body in amongst the trees, leaving drag marks which will have to be dealt with later. The first priority is to dispose of the demon.
Burying it takes the best part of an hour; they scrape a shallow grave, roll the corpse into it, then pile the earth on top and cover the whole thing in dead leaves and a few artfully arranged rocks, trying to make it look as natural as possible. It’s not perfect but it’ll have to do.
“So much for our evening of carefree teenage fun,” Buffy sighs, brushing her hair back and leaving a streak of dirt on her face. She looks at her grimy hands and less than pristine outfit. “I’m not showing up at the Bronze looking like this. We might as well call it a night and head home. I need a shower.”
They use a couple of leafy branches torn off nearby bushes to erase, or at least disguise, the worst of the drag marks. With luck no one will look too closely and find the grave.
Buffy smiles wryly to herself; life had been so much simpler when she was a kid, but she’d never appreciated that until now. Still, another win for the Slayer! Her destiny might drag her down at times, but it also gives her purpose, which is more than most kids her age can say. Because of her, Sunnydale is a little bit safer, and that’s something she can be proud of.
The End
Boy, if she’d known then what she knows now, maybe she wouldn’t have complained so much. Giving up a couple of hours out of her abundant free time once in a while to visit someone who mattered to her parents really hadn’t been a big deal, even if it was always boring. She wishes she could revisit her younger self and put her straight on a few things; she knows exactly what she’d say.
“You think that’s a drag? You should try juggling school with having to patrol every night, trying to get homework done and keep your grades up to please mom while stopping the next Big Bad to come along. I have to watch my peers go on dates or to parties while I’m stopping the world from getting sucked into literal Hell. Again! Now that’s a drag!”
Her younger self hadn’t known about Slayers though. Vampires and demons had been nothing more than monsters from horror movies and TV shows, not living - or living dead - creatures intent on destroying humanity.
This demon isn’t living though, not anymore. It’s not even among the living dead, for which Buffy is grateful. She’s dealt with zombies before, and it’s not fun; they’re gross and stinky, and bits tend to fall off them. No, thankfully this demon is very dead, mostly because it tried to pick a fight with the Slayer and lost. Unfortunately, Buffy can’t just leave it lying here in the park for anyone to stumble across, so that’s a drag too. Literally.
“Can I maybe get some help here?” she calls to her friends. She doesn’t mind doing the killing part herself, not too much anyway; it’s sort of her job. But why should she have to do all the clean-up too? Hasn’t she done her part?
“Uh, what d’you want us to do?” Xander hovers uncertainly.
“Grab a leg, or an appendage, whatever those are, and help me drag it in among the trees. I’ll have to bury it somehow.”
“But we don’t have any shovels!” Willow protests. “You don’t, do you?” she looks hopefully at Buffy, as though expecting her to produce a shovel out of thin air.
“Nope, sorry, I left my shovel in my other pants.” The joke, perhaps predictably, falls flat. “It’s not like I routinely carry a shovel everywhere I go, Will. I wasn’t expecting demon slayage tonight.” Maybe that was short-sighted of her; demons are an occupational hazard, but she can't go through life carrying all the equipment she might possibly need to deal with whatever might cross her path. She’d be too loaded down to fight. She can tuck a stake in her purse or up her sleeve, but anything bigger would be impossible to conceal. “Looks like we’ll have to improvise.”
“I could call Giles, have him bring a shovel,” Willow suggests.
“No phones around here, Will. By the time you find one and get him out here, we could already have our friend here tucked neatly away.”
Buffy isn’t looking forward to digging a grave with her bare hands, it will ruin her nails, just when she’s gotten them looking halfway decent, but she’ll do it if she has to. Maybe they can use rocks or branches to dig with, but first things first.
Grabbing a couple of the dead demon’s appendages, Buffy starts to drag it across the grass, and Xander jumps to help her, pulling his shirtsleeves down over his hands so he doesn’t have to touch the greenish-grey flesh. Buffy can’t really blame him, it’s still disturbingly warm, but at the same time, clammy.
Willow joins in, at Buffy’s other side, and between the three of them they haul the body in amongst the trees, leaving drag marks which will have to be dealt with later. The first priority is to dispose of the demon.
Burying it takes the best part of an hour; they scrape a shallow grave, roll the corpse into it, then pile the earth on top and cover the whole thing in dead leaves and a few artfully arranged rocks, trying to make it look as natural as possible. It’s not perfect but it’ll have to do.
“So much for our evening of carefree teenage fun,” Buffy sighs, brushing her hair back and leaving a streak of dirt on her face. She looks at her grimy hands and less than pristine outfit. “I’m not showing up at the Bronze looking like this. We might as well call it a night and head home. I need a shower.”
They use a couple of leafy branches torn off nearby bushes to erase, or at least disguise, the worst of the drag marks. With luck no one will look too closely and find the grave.
Buffy smiles wryly to herself; life had been so much simpler when she was a kid, but she’d never appreciated that until now. Still, another win for the Slayer! Her destiny might drag her down at times, but it also gives her purpose, which is more than most kids her age can say. Because of her, Sunnydale is a little bit safer, and that’s something she can be proud of.
The End
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Date: 2025-03-18 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-03-19 10:41 am (UTC)Thank you!