BtVS Ficlet: The Last Dance

[badly_knitted]

 


Title: The Last Dance
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Angel.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: The Prom.
Summary: Buffy hadn’t expected to enjoy her Prom, but it was far better than she could have hoped.
Word Count: 577
Written For: ruthchinn’s prompt ‘any, any, dance’, at threesentenceficathon.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BTVS, or the characters.
 


 

The Senior Prom, the social highlight of the school year, a night Buffy had been looking forward to for months, and why shouldn’t she? Didn’t every high school girl want a Prom night to remember? And then everything had fallen apart, she’d found herself facing the dance without a date, which would have been bad enough without first having to deal with Hellhounds.

 
But she’d gone anyway, because Prom was a once in a lifetime thing, she already had the dress, and she didn’t want to wind up sitting home alone, full of regrets. And it had been rough at first, feeling like she was on the outside looking in at everyone else having fun, even while she was right there in the hall with them. But then she’d been given an award as Class Protector, and that had been such a surprise, realising that people had noticed, that they knew at least a little of what she’d done to keep them as safe as she could. It had been the highlight of the whole evening, until…
 

Buffy hadn’t been expecting it, not after Angel broke up with her. It had hurt, a lot, but even she had to admit, after a lot of soul searching, that it was the right thing to do. So when she looked up to see him walking towards her, looking so smart and handsome in his suit, her heart hadn’t just skipped a beat; it had tumbled over itself in a kind of painful delight, because perhaps she should have known he’d do this for her, show up at her Prom out of the blue, just to make her happy. To give her this one special, bittersweet night, a taste of what might have been if their lives had been different somehow.
 

And she was happy, even though her heart was aching at the same time. It was a beautiful, perfect moment, one she would remember for the rest of her life, however long or short that might be. Held in Angel’s arms one last time, drifting around the dance floor like her feet weren’t even touching the ground, swaying to the music… the rest of the world might just as well have melted away to nothing, because all she could see, all she could feel, was Angel. And if this was the last time they ever got to be together, she wanted to make the most of every second, to drink it all in, engrave the memory not just on her mind but on her heart, to make it an indelible part of herself.
 

It might have been just one dance, or five, ten, a dozen… she had no idea after it was over. It seemed to last forever as she gazed into his eyes, studying his face more intently than she ever had before, and how she wished she could have a photograph of this moment, like the other couples would get to remember their Prom Night by. But Angel, being a vampire didn’t exactly photograph well, so that was out. It wasn’t important though; what mattered was that he was here, smiling at her, dancing with her, letting her be, even if just for a little while, not the Slayer, but a young woman in love.
 

Someday in her unknown future, when she looked back on her life, she’d be able to point to this moment and tell herself that for one perfect night, she’d had it all.
 
 

The End
 
 

Comments

[dswdiane]

Very nicely done, indeed.