recalling my days in north africa // i've never crossed the atlantic
Prompt: Marriage from justprompts
Timeline: Set sometime during early S7 before Conversations With Dead People
It seemed like a simple enough thing to do. Just circle not attending, stuff it back in the envelope, slap a stamp on it, and send it out, away, no more thinky about it.
So why was her pen still hovering?
Buffy released a frustrated noise and dropped the pen, sliding her face into her hands.
It wasn't that she cared one way or another about the event. It was a second cousin's wedding, a relative she couldn't remember seeing since they were throwing sand at each other with Swimmies on their arms. No one would expect her to attend, or miss her if she didn't. All she was doing was opting out of several boring hours of obligatory waving, and chitchatting, and little-white-lying about how she was doing and why she'd dropped out of college.
No, it wasn't anything about this particular wedding itself that was bugging her. It was just staring at that lacy invitation with the loopy calligraphy and the little picture of white doves intertwined with rings. It was seeing the name of her cousin paired with another one she'd never even heard, in such a concrete way.
It was that feeling that had instinctively sprung up when she'd opened the envelope, a feeling something like annoyance, though she never liked to admit that, at just another thing that she'd never be a part of. Another of those pesky life stages she was bound to miss out on.
She tried not to let her mind slip down that road, but she couldn't help but have images of herself in a fluffy white dress (but not too fluffy, ew ruffle-age) with a big bouqet in her grip, walking down an aisle. But there was nothing to picture at the end of that aisle. Hell, two of her relationships had been vampires, who weren't big on being the marrying type (not that she'd ever have married... oh God, there was a terrifying domestic picture). But what was the worst part, was that even if things hadn't gone as they did with Riley, she couldn't ever imagine herself being Mrs. anybody.
Being part of a team.
Maybe that was it -- in a partnership it was all about equality, facing the world together, in every way.
And while she could have others behind her, others to rely on, others who helped her out, in the end she couldn't be part of a twosome, because she was always going to be the damned Chosen One, and that was always going to influence things. She couldn't bow to someone else's decision in the name of compromise and love, if it meant compromising what she had to do. Her mind flashed back momentarily, begrudgingly, back to her fight with Xander when she'd told him she had to kill Anya. It drove her point home.
So. There it was. There would be no white doves for her, no lacey edges, no bickering over color schemes, no ugly ceramic wedding gifts, and endless streams of relatives she didn't particularly know.
On second thought, not sounding so fairy tale after all, Buffy mused. She picked up the pen again, and decisively circled 'Not Attending'. She stared at it for a moment, until she had herself convinced that it was an invitation to a wedding she didn't even want to attend. Not an invitation to life in general.
Geez, Summers, enough with the over-drama-rama, she chastised herself, and then shoved the invitation in the envelope.
Timeline: Set sometime during early S7 before Conversations With Dead People
It seemed like a simple enough thing to do. Just circle not attending, stuff it back in the envelope, slap a stamp on it, and send it out, away, no more thinky about it.
So why was her pen still hovering?
Buffy released a frustrated noise and dropped the pen, sliding her face into her hands.
It wasn't that she cared one way or another about the event. It was a second cousin's wedding, a relative she couldn't remember seeing since they were throwing sand at each other with Swimmies on their arms. No one would expect her to attend, or miss her if she didn't. All she was doing was opting out of several boring hours of obligatory waving, and chitchatting, and little-white-lying about how she was doing and why she'd dropped out of college.
No, it wasn't anything about this particular wedding itself that was bugging her. It was just staring at that lacy invitation with the loopy calligraphy and the little picture of white doves intertwined with rings. It was seeing the name of her cousin paired with another one she'd never even heard, in such a concrete way.
It was that feeling that had instinctively sprung up when she'd opened the envelope, a feeling something like annoyance, though she never liked to admit that, at just another thing that she'd never be a part of. Another of those pesky life stages she was bound to miss out on.
She tried not to let her mind slip down that road, but she couldn't help but have images of herself in a fluffy white dress (but not too fluffy, ew ruffle-age) with a big bouqet in her grip, walking down an aisle. But there was nothing to picture at the end of that aisle. Hell, two of her relationships had been vampires, who weren't big on being the marrying type (not that she'd ever have married... oh God, there was a terrifying domestic picture). But what was the worst part, was that even if things hadn't gone as they did with Riley, she couldn't ever imagine herself being Mrs. anybody.
Being part of a team.
Maybe that was it -- in a partnership it was all about equality, facing the world together, in every way.
And while she could have others behind her, others to rely on, others who helped her out, in the end she couldn't be part of a twosome, because she was always going to be the damned Chosen One, and that was always going to influence things. She couldn't bow to someone else's decision in the name of compromise and love, if it meant compromising what she had to do. Her mind flashed back momentarily, begrudgingly, back to her fight with Xander when she'd told him she had to kill Anya. It drove her point home.
So. There it was. There would be no white doves for her, no lacey edges, no bickering over color schemes, no ugly ceramic wedding gifts, and endless streams of relatives she didn't particularly know.
On second thought, not sounding so fairy tale after all, Buffy mused. She picked up the pen again, and decisively circled 'Not Attending'. She stared at it for a moment, until she had herself convinced that it was an invitation to a wedding she didn't even want to attend. Not an invitation to life in general.
Geez, Summers, enough with the over-drama-rama, she chastised herself, and then shoved the invitation in the envelope.