justprompts: sanctuary
Prompt: Sacrosanct from justprompts
Timeline: Season 1-ish
It's hard to be horrified by things when you start dealing nightly with killers. Monsters. It's hard to find something new that's honestly sort of shocking, or so you'd think. But this sort of got to me. If nothing, it surprised me.
"But how?" Buffy asked Giles, who was sitting there rubbing his glasses as if this were all just obvious. Or as if he were also unsettled by it, and just trying to distract her from noticing. Typical, she thought. "I mean... churches are like... cross city, aren't they? And I thought that this constituted hallowed ground?"
Giles replaced his lenses and looked across the street at the decidedly forbidding looking church (whoever decided to design churches to look forbidding... she really don't get that whole design move).
"I'm afraid all that about 'hallowed' and 'sanctified' ground is just another part of vampire myth that's, well... myth," he said. "It's certainly a dangerous place for a vampire to venture given the prevalence of holy objects, but it isn't impossible for them to enter. And given that it's public, they don't have to request entrance either."
"But I thought it was supposed to be like... God's... house. Somehow I don't see God inviting vampires in for supper," Buffy said with a frown, immediately regretting her choice of words, as she flashed upon images of the priests they'd found dead already. Supper was right.
Giles was avoiding looking at her, and Buffy found herself wondering exactly what Giles take on religion was. Or Watchers in general. Heck, it wasn't something she actively thought about very much, but the Watchers did hand her holy objects and teach her how to use them to thwart demons. Total atheism wasn't even an option for either of them. But as much time as they both spent thinking about creatures from hell, she for one didn't really think very much about the opposite corner. She supposed she'd always taken it as a given, but there was something chilling in the realization that the damned could just waltz into church after church, slaughtering priests and preachers. Why would God allow that?
Except that he wasn't allowing it, she thought with a sigh. That was where she came in, she supposed. Woo.
"As I said, it counts as public property," was all Giles said. "Now this particular vampire seems to have fixated on church figures, but I suspect, from what evidence we've gathered, that he's not particularly old, or we would have heard about something like this before: a string of clergy related deaths in the nearby area, or something of that nature."
"So what, he's like a vampire serial killer?" Buffy asked. "... That seems redundant."
Giles ignored her comment, which was okay by her. She was really just trying to cover up the fact that as she stared across the street at that church, she had the sinking feeling that one more place of sanctuary had just been stripped bare by the dark reality that she was forced to face.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
"I'm going in," she said, gripping the stake tightly. "Don't wait up."
She knew that he would anyway.
Timeline: Season 1-ish
It's hard to be horrified by things when you start dealing nightly with killers. Monsters. It's hard to find something new that's honestly sort of shocking, or so you'd think. But this sort of got to me. If nothing, it surprised me.
"But how?" Buffy asked Giles, who was sitting there rubbing his glasses as if this were all just obvious. Or as if he were also unsettled by it, and just trying to distract her from noticing. Typical, she thought. "I mean... churches are like... cross city, aren't they? And I thought that this constituted hallowed ground?"
Giles replaced his lenses and looked across the street at the decidedly forbidding looking church (whoever decided to design churches to look forbidding... she really don't get that whole design move).
"I'm afraid all that about 'hallowed' and 'sanctified' ground is just another part of vampire myth that's, well... myth," he said. "It's certainly a dangerous place for a vampire to venture given the prevalence of holy objects, but it isn't impossible for them to enter. And given that it's public, they don't have to request entrance either."
"But I thought it was supposed to be like... God's... house. Somehow I don't see God inviting vampires in for supper," Buffy said with a frown, immediately regretting her choice of words, as she flashed upon images of the priests they'd found dead already. Supper was right.
Giles was avoiding looking at her, and Buffy found herself wondering exactly what Giles take on religion was. Or Watchers in general. Heck, it wasn't something she actively thought about very much, but the Watchers did hand her holy objects and teach her how to use them to thwart demons. Total atheism wasn't even an option for either of them. But as much time as they both spent thinking about creatures from hell, she for one didn't really think very much about the opposite corner. She supposed she'd always taken it as a given, but there was something chilling in the realization that the damned could just waltz into church after church, slaughtering priests and preachers. Why would God allow that?
Except that he wasn't allowing it, she thought with a sigh. That was where she came in, she supposed. Woo.
"As I said, it counts as public property," was all Giles said. "Now this particular vampire seems to have fixated on church figures, but I suspect, from what evidence we've gathered, that he's not particularly old, or we would have heard about something like this before: a string of clergy related deaths in the nearby area, or something of that nature."
"So what, he's like a vampire serial killer?" Buffy asked. "... That seems redundant."
Giles ignored her comment, which was okay by her. She was really just trying to cover up the fact that as she stared across the street at that church, she had the sinking feeling that one more place of sanctuary had just been stripped bare by the dark reality that she was forced to face.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
"I'm going in," she said, gripping the stake tightly. "Don't wait up."
She knew that he would anyway.