BtVS: Privilege
Title: Privilege
Author: Vashti (tvashti)
Fandom: BtVS
Character(s): Rona, Slayer Inc
Rating: PG
Summary: She's all alone in an army of white girls, and nobody else seems to understand why this is a problem.
Length: ~680
comment-fic Prompt: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Rona, She's all alone in an army of white girls, and nobody else seems to understand why this is a problem.
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that’s probably up for philosophical debate.
Dedication: for tiny_white_hats who comes up with some of the best prompts
Notes: I have read maybe 3 comics ever? Thank God for the Buffy Wiki and things like that there (how did fandom work before the internet got into full swing?). My point being that the comic-verse is made of very broad brush strokes. But that's not what's important here...
§§§
Sometimes it's all Rona can do not to shake somebody to make them understand. Make them open their eyes and see what’s missing. Who's missing. And maybe if she'd grown up someplace less urban, maybe if she'd been assigned to someplace less urban, this would have all seemed normal to her, too. Hey, half the colleges she'd been looking at before this Slayer thing happened had featured loooots and lots of girls and guys with blue eyes, blond hair and loose curls. Hadn't she joked about leaving LA so they could "have a token Black girl in one of those pictures next year"?
College hadn't happened, but the token Black girl thing... Yeah, somehow she'd managed to make that work.
The problem was that this was Chicago, and before Chicago it had been Sunnydale just a few hour outside freaking LA. Statistically speaking, she shouldn't be able to look around a room and find only one face that didn't go pale in the winter, or one broad nose, or one pair of two-tone lips, or one head full of curls so tight you could only see the other half of their length by tugging on them.
Even if she expanded her racial borders from "brown people" to anyone non-white (something her mother always seemed loath to do when they played their favorite game at the theatre, Count the Black People, so maybe it's a generational thing (not that they ever got above ten)), that only brought her numbers up to 2, counting herself and Chao Ahn.
But now she's the leader of the crew in Chicago. Chicago. Thirty-two percent Black, 28% Hispanic freaking Chicago! How is it that she's the only person-of-color in the house unless someone orders take-out?
Every now and then she thinks about going up to Willow and asking her if she, Rona, is somehow a fluke. Was she really the only brown-skinned slayer called? Are there no other slayers of color, Chao Ahn not included of course. Sometimes she wants to be funny and say, "This is because of The First, right? Because she had locs and she was Black, so now you’re all afraid of having a Black slayer, right? Does Africa have no slayers, only demons?" And in her head it’s funny-for about two seconds, before she’s running her hands through her hair, tugging on her own locs and sniffing back tears.
She remembers hearing how, in New York, they've started to stop Black men on the streets for being Black, so, yeah, maybe this is actually a thing. Then she flees that thought and moves on to something innocuous, like battle-axes.
One morning she is standing on the last stair, elbow resting on the post as she drinks her morning coffee, and watching her girls gathering, chattering, at the front door. They’re getting ready for a shopping adventure-or misadventure, more likely. For the most part they’re good girls. Crazy, catty, hormonal, quixotic, but good girls. Their lives have been turned upside by a duty they could have never expected, but they’ve mostly embraced it. And every last one of them is pale, pale, pale as moonlight. (She'd mentioned that once only to have on them roll her eyes and say "It’s mid-February in the Midwest. You’re lucky we’re not translucent.")
Soon they’re rushing outside, nearly tripping over themselves to get down the front stairs. Rona follows slowly behind, momentarily relishing the flash of cold on her bare feet and under the hems of her clothes as the coffee warms her from within. The girls head down the street in a cloud of noise and puffs of steamy breath. Behind them, a Black woman who looks to be in her late forties or early fifties, but is probably at least ten years older than that, has slowed her pace to watch the girls rush off. She turns her face up to look at Rona.
"That sure is a lot of white girls."
Rona feels her shoulders slowly lower as she nods to her neighbor, her lips pulling back in what might be a smile. "Yes, ma’am, Miss Ada. It sure is."
[in]Fin[ite]
Author: Vashti (tvashti)
Fandom: BtVS
Character(s): Rona, Slayer Inc
Rating: PG
Summary: She's all alone in an army of white girls, and nobody else seems to understand why this is a problem.
Length: ~680
comment-fic Prompt: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Rona, She's all alone in an army of white girls, and nobody else seems to understand why this is a problem.
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that’s probably up for philosophical debate.
Dedication: for tiny_white_hats who comes up with some of the best prompts
Notes: I have read maybe 3 comics ever? Thank God for the Buffy Wiki and things like that there (how did fandom work before the internet got into full swing?). My point being that the comic-verse is made of very broad brush strokes. But that's not what's important here...
§§§
Sometimes it's all Rona can do not to shake somebody to make them understand. Make them open their eyes and see what’s missing. Who's missing. And maybe if she'd grown up someplace less urban, maybe if she'd been assigned to someplace less urban, this would have all seemed normal to her, too. Hey, half the colleges she'd been looking at before this Slayer thing happened had featured loooots and lots of girls and guys with blue eyes, blond hair and loose curls. Hadn't she joked about leaving LA so they could "have a token Black girl in one of those pictures next year"?
College hadn't happened, but the token Black girl thing... Yeah, somehow she'd managed to make that work.
The problem was that this was Chicago, and before Chicago it had been Sunnydale just a few hour outside freaking LA. Statistically speaking, she shouldn't be able to look around a room and find only one face that didn't go pale in the winter, or one broad nose, or one pair of two-tone lips, or one head full of curls so tight you could only see the other half of their length by tugging on them.
Even if she expanded her racial borders from "brown people" to anyone non-white (something her mother always seemed loath to do when they played their favorite game at the theatre, Count the Black People, so maybe it's a generational thing (not that they ever got above ten)), that only brought her numbers up to 2, counting herself and Chao Ahn.
But now she's the leader of the crew in Chicago. Chicago. Thirty-two percent Black, 28% Hispanic freaking Chicago! How is it that she's the only person-of-color in the house unless someone orders take-out?
Every now and then she thinks about going up to Willow and asking her if she, Rona, is somehow a fluke. Was she really the only brown-skinned slayer called? Are there no other slayers of color, Chao Ahn not included of course. Sometimes she wants to be funny and say, "This is because of The First, right? Because she had locs and she was Black, so now you’re all afraid of having a Black slayer, right? Does Africa have no slayers, only demons?" And in her head it’s funny-for about two seconds, before she’s running her hands through her hair, tugging on her own locs and sniffing back tears.
She remembers hearing how, in New York, they've started to stop Black men on the streets for being Black, so, yeah, maybe this is actually a thing. Then she flees that thought and moves on to something innocuous, like battle-axes.
One morning she is standing on the last stair, elbow resting on the post as she drinks her morning coffee, and watching her girls gathering, chattering, at the front door. They’re getting ready for a shopping adventure-or misadventure, more likely. For the most part they’re good girls. Crazy, catty, hormonal, quixotic, but good girls. Their lives have been turned upside by a duty they could have never expected, but they’ve mostly embraced it. And every last one of them is pale, pale, pale as moonlight. (She'd mentioned that once only to have on them roll her eyes and say "It’s mid-February in the Midwest. You’re lucky we’re not translucent.")
Soon they’re rushing outside, nearly tripping over themselves to get down the front stairs. Rona follows slowly behind, momentarily relishing the flash of cold on her bare feet and under the hems of her clothes as the coffee warms her from within. The girls head down the street in a cloud of noise and puffs of steamy breath. Behind them, a Black woman who looks to be in her late forties or early fifties, but is probably at least ten years older than that, has slowed her pace to watch the girls rush off. She turns her face up to look at Rona.
"That sure is a lot of white girls."
Rona feels her shoulders slowly lower as she nods to her neighbor, her lips pulling back in what might be a smile. "Yes, ma’am, Miss Ada. It sure is."
[in]Fin[ite]