Prompt 012
Title: Save All My Ashes for My Return
Author: Always_jbj
Rating: G
Word Count: 336
Prompt: 012 - It's Over, It's Under
Characters/Pairing: Buffy
Note: Post Chosen. Buffy's having a hard time letting go.
She sat cross-legged on the floor of her room; the heavy canvas resting in her lap.
Letting go was hard. Harder than it should have been-at least that’s what they tell her.
It had been seven months.
Seven months, two weeks and four days, to be precise. Time enough, they say, for her to have finished grieving-for her to have let him go. But she couldn’t let him go.
Her hand moved absently over the duffle; the coarse fabric worn smooth from countless such caresses. Inside were the few hastily gathered things he’d stuffed in there that morning; a couple of changes of clothes, a few beat-up cassette tapes filled with loud music and incomprehensible screaming that supposedly passed for singing, a couple of well worn books, and a photograph. A pitiful collection of remnants for so long lived a life. So long, and yet too short. Far too short.
Miraculously, his scent still lingered. She delved into the bag’s depths, burrowing her hand into the soft folds of his tee. She pulled the photograph out from between the pages of a book, smiling through her sadness at his happy, laughing face. It was one of those photo booth shots; him and Dawn from back before she’d driven a wedge between them. Dawn was pulling silly faces and they were both laughing. Dawn would want the photograph, of that she was sure-if she knew it existed. She slid it carefully back inside the book, burying it between layers of dark denim before carefully re-closing the bag and sliding it back into the shadows beneath her bed.
Climbing into bed, she rested her hand above its hiding place, turning her face into the mattress and inhaling, as if she could breathe him in through the layers of foam.
She closed her eyes, damp lashes fluttering closed as she whispered good night.
‘How could she let him go,’ she wondered, ‘when to do so would be to lose all she had left of herself?’
Author: Always_jbj
Rating: G
Word Count: 336
Prompt: 012 - It's Over, It's Under
Characters/Pairing: Buffy
Note: Post Chosen. Buffy's having a hard time letting go.
She sat cross-legged on the floor of her room; the heavy canvas resting in her lap.
Letting go was hard. Harder than it should have been-at least that’s what they tell her.
It had been seven months.
Seven months, two weeks and four days, to be precise. Time enough, they say, for her to have finished grieving-for her to have let him go. But she couldn’t let him go.
Her hand moved absently over the duffle; the coarse fabric worn smooth from countless such caresses. Inside were the few hastily gathered things he’d stuffed in there that morning; a couple of changes of clothes, a few beat-up cassette tapes filled with loud music and incomprehensible screaming that supposedly passed for singing, a couple of well worn books, and a photograph. A pitiful collection of remnants for so long lived a life. So long, and yet too short. Far too short.
Miraculously, his scent still lingered. She delved into the bag’s depths, burrowing her hand into the soft folds of his tee. She pulled the photograph out from between the pages of a book, smiling through her sadness at his happy, laughing face. It was one of those photo booth shots; him and Dawn from back before she’d driven a wedge between them. Dawn was pulling silly faces and they were both laughing. Dawn would want the photograph, of that she was sure-if she knew it existed. She slid it carefully back inside the book, burying it between layers of dark denim before carefully re-closing the bag and sliding it back into the shadows beneath her bed.
Climbing into bed, she rested her hand above its hiding place, turning her face into the mattress and inhaling, as if she could breathe him in through the layers of foam.
She closed her eyes, damp lashes fluttering closed as she whispered good night.
‘How could she let him go,’ she wondered, ‘when to do so would be to lose all she had left of herself?’