BtVS Ficlet: Haunted By You
May. 5th, 2025 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Haunted By You
Fandom: BtVS
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Buffy, Angel, Others.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Setting: Between Becoming Part 2 and Anne.
Summary: Since she killed him, Angel has haunted Buffy’s dreams.
Word Count: 629
Written For:
last_haven’s prompt ‘Any, any, I don't know what I'm supposed to do/Haunted by the ghost of you,’ at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own BTVS, or the characters.
The worst of it was that Buffy knew she deserved this, because it was all her fault. She’d thought it all through, everything that had happened, and it was obvious. If she hadn’t slept with Angel, then he wouldn’t have lost his soul, and if he hadn’t lost his soul, he wouldn’t have turned evil and started killing people again. He wouldn’t have killed Ms Calendar, just because she was trying to find a way to re-soul him, and he wouldn’t have tried to wake the demon Acathla, to literally suck the world into hell.
Then, if she hadn’t been trying to prevent the whole hell sucking thing without having to kill her ex-boyfriend, she wouldn’t have had Willow try the spell to restore his soul, and if she hadn’t been so slow getting to the mansion, she might have been able to prevent him from completing the ritual, so she wouldn’t have had to kill him right after his soul was restored.
Her list of screwups was like a row of dominoes, each one toppling the next in line, and it had all started with one night in Angel’s arms… In one night, she’d become a woman, and he’d become a monster. If she’d known then what she knew now, it would never have happened, but it HAD happened, and she had no one to blame but herself.
So yes, she deserved this, deserved to have her dreams haunted by the ghost of the man she’d loved and destroyed, twice over, and if she never had a decent night’s sleep for the rest of her life, short though it would probably be, then she deserved that too.
She’d been a bad girlfriend, too caught up in what she wanted to think of possible consequences.
She’d been a bad friend, not there for her best buds, and her Watcher, when they needed her strength to protect them from the enemy. She’d gotten Xander injured, Willow concussed and hospitalised in a coma, Kendra killed, and Gilles kidnapped and tortured… How could she ever face any of them again?
And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, she’d been a bad daughter. She should have told her mom about the whole Slayer thing sooner, instead of dumping it on her in the middle of an end-of-the-world crisis and expecting her to just accept it. She couldn’t blame her mom for telling her not to bother coming home. Her whole world had been turned upside down when she’d already been reeling, thinking her daughter a murderer. That was more than anyone should be expected to deal with.
Having Angel stalking her dreams, reminding Buffy how badly she’d messed up, was a good thing, because she should never be allowed to forget, not for a moment. Even though she’d never have the chance to make exactly the same mistakes again, that didn’t mean she couldn’t make others. She’d been thoughtless, careless, overconfident, even arrogant, and she needed to guard against such failings in future.
Being the Slayer didn’t make her all-knowing and all-powerful; she was still just a naïve, immature, less than perfect teenager. Maybe it would be better if she quit being the Slayer altogether, let the Watcher’s Council figure out some other way of keeping vampires and demons under control. She’d done more than enough damage already, why risk making things worse?
It hurt to see Angel, even in her dreams, and it probably always would, but in a weird way it made her feel that she hadn’t completely lost him. He’d always be with her, whenever she closed her eyes, and although she knew she didn’t deserve to, she took some small comfort from that. Remembering him, and how much he’d loved her, gave her the strength to keep going.
The End
Then, if she hadn’t been trying to prevent the whole hell sucking thing without having to kill her ex-boyfriend, she wouldn’t have had Willow try the spell to restore his soul, and if she hadn’t been so slow getting to the mansion, she might have been able to prevent him from completing the ritual, so she wouldn’t have had to kill him right after his soul was restored.
Her list of screwups was like a row of dominoes, each one toppling the next in line, and it had all started with one night in Angel’s arms… In one night, she’d become a woman, and he’d become a monster. If she’d known then what she knew now, it would never have happened, but it HAD happened, and she had no one to blame but herself.
So yes, she deserved this, deserved to have her dreams haunted by the ghost of the man she’d loved and destroyed, twice over, and if she never had a decent night’s sleep for the rest of her life, short though it would probably be, then she deserved that too.
She’d been a bad girlfriend, too caught up in what she wanted to think of possible consequences.
She’d been a bad friend, not there for her best buds, and her Watcher, when they needed her strength to protect them from the enemy. She’d gotten Xander injured, Willow concussed and hospitalised in a coma, Kendra killed, and Gilles kidnapped and tortured… How could she ever face any of them again?
And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, she’d been a bad daughter. She should have told her mom about the whole Slayer thing sooner, instead of dumping it on her in the middle of an end-of-the-world crisis and expecting her to just accept it. She couldn’t blame her mom for telling her not to bother coming home. Her whole world had been turned upside down when she’d already been reeling, thinking her daughter a murderer. That was more than anyone should be expected to deal with.
Having Angel stalking her dreams, reminding Buffy how badly she’d messed up, was a good thing, because she should never be allowed to forget, not for a moment. Even though she’d never have the chance to make exactly the same mistakes again, that didn’t mean she couldn’t make others. She’d been thoughtless, careless, overconfident, even arrogant, and she needed to guard against such failings in future.
Being the Slayer didn’t make her all-knowing and all-powerful; she was still just a naïve, immature, less than perfect teenager. Maybe it would be better if she quit being the Slayer altogether, let the Watcher’s Council figure out some other way of keeping vampires and demons under control. She’d done more than enough damage already, why risk making things worse?
It hurt to see Angel, even in her dreams, and it probably always would, but in a weird way it made her feel that she hadn’t completely lost him. He’d always be with her, whenever she closed her eyes, and although she knew she didn’t deserve to, she took some small comfort from that. Remembering him, and how much he’d loved her, gave her the strength to keep going.
The End
(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-05 09:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-05-05 09:17 pm (UTC)Thank you!