Ficlet/Drabble: Abstract
Title: Abstract
Fandom: BtVS
Characters: Buffy
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Angsty. Takes place sometime after "The Body" in season five.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. There.
A/N: So uh, my mother wanted me to write something for the funeral, saying that it "should be something that comes easy to you." Pff. That didn't work out so well. It figures that the only time I was able to write anything was when it came out as fanfiction.
Her poetry professor said that death was an abstract idea.
People, he said, had trouble understanding death, so the poets used literary tools in their writing to describe it.
Similes. Personification. Allegories. Extended metaphors.
All used to help understand something people thought was shifting and abstract, something not understandable, something untouchable.
But Buffy knew they were wrong.
You could touch death. She’d done it, many times. She’d felt it under her hands, cold and still and stiff, she’d smelled it, that sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh as it decomposed, turning her stomach even as she pushed forward, her body’s desperate need for oxygen not allowing her to hold her breath as she fought. She’d heard the last breaths of the victims she was too late to save, felt their dying pulse beneath her fingertips.
She had even caused death. She’d slumped under the weight of a demon’s body after she’d snapped its neck, felt the bones twist and pop under her hands as its life was extinguished instantaneously. She has felt blood cool and dry on her hands, flaky and gritty as the warmth of life left it, and it was never as easy to wash off as she hoped.
Oh yes, death is concrete. She has touched it, felt it. Choked on its dust.
It’s loss that people have trouble understanding, the lack of something, someone they knew was supposed to be there.
It’s the silence in the afternoon when a soap opera should be playing in the living room, the looming figure of the SUV you don’t know how to drive parked in front of the house, the chocolate squares and marshmallows in the cupboard and the recipe you never thought to ask for. It is the lost look in your sister’s eyes that you don’t know how to make go away, the errant thought to share and the smile ready for someone who isn’t there when you look over your shoulder.
It’s that unbearable tightening in your chest when you just can’t help think, never again.
Buffy knew death. She understood it, she made it happen. It was loss she had trouble with.
And she didn’t think any amount of literary tools or finely crafted images would help her understand it.
Fandom: BtVS
Characters: Buffy
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Angsty. Takes place sometime after "The Body" in season five.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. There.
A/N: So uh, my mother wanted me to write something for the funeral, saying that it "should be something that comes easy to you." Pff. That didn't work out so well. It figures that the only time I was able to write anything was when it came out as fanfiction.
Her poetry professor said that death was an abstract idea.
People, he said, had trouble understanding death, so the poets used literary tools in their writing to describe it.
Similes. Personification. Allegories. Extended metaphors.
All used to help understand something people thought was shifting and abstract, something not understandable, something untouchable.
But Buffy knew they were wrong.
You could touch death. She’d done it, many times. She’d felt it under her hands, cold and still and stiff, she’d smelled it, that sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh as it decomposed, turning her stomach even as she pushed forward, her body’s desperate need for oxygen not allowing her to hold her breath as she fought. She’d heard the last breaths of the victims she was too late to save, felt their dying pulse beneath her fingertips.
She had even caused death. She’d slumped under the weight of a demon’s body after she’d snapped its neck, felt the bones twist and pop under her hands as its life was extinguished instantaneously. She has felt blood cool and dry on her hands, flaky and gritty as the warmth of life left it, and it was never as easy to wash off as she hoped.
Oh yes, death is concrete. She has touched it, felt it. Choked on its dust.
It’s loss that people have trouble understanding, the lack of something, someone they knew was supposed to be there.
It’s the silence in the afternoon when a soap opera should be playing in the living room, the looming figure of the SUV you don’t know how to drive parked in front of the house, the chocolate squares and marshmallows in the cupboard and the recipe you never thought to ask for. It is the lost look in your sister’s eyes that you don’t know how to make go away, the errant thought to share and the smile ready for someone who isn’t there when you look over your shoulder.
It’s that unbearable tightening in your chest when you just can’t help think, never again.
Buffy knew death. She understood it, she made it happen. It was loss she had trouble with.
And she didn’t think any amount of literary tools or finely crafted images would help her understand it.