INNOCENCE

Disclaimer: Property of Fox, the WB, UPN and Mutant Enemy. No infringement should be implied.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Various details of Seasons 1 through 6, especially 5.
Summary: Buffy reflects
Feedback: Please
Distribution: If you would like it then please let me know
Dedication: WP for moving me & Beloved Inspiration for always being you

Innocence seems a long time ago. Before Watchers and demons and vampires and apocalypses and Masters and Hell Gods. Before friends and family dying. Before sacrifices had to be made. Before I lost myself.

Innocence was having the right hair, the right clothes, the right crush. Innocence was when a life or death situation was a broken nail or someone wearing the same dress as you to the prom.

Innocence. The dictionary says it is the state, quality, or virtue of being innocent. Freedom from sin, moral wrong, or guilt through lack of knowledge of evil. Guiltlessness of a specific legal crime or offense. Freedom from guile, cunning, or deceit; simplicity or artlessness. Lack of worldliness or sophistication; naiveté. Lack of knowledge or understanding; ignorance. Freedom from harmfulness; inoffensiveness. Nowhere does it say that innocence is the price you pay when you find out you're the Slayer, when your mother dies because an artery in her head explodes, when your sister turns out to be a mystical key needed to open a hell dimension or when the man you love more than anything in the entire world leaves you for your own good.

You'd think that was the end right? But no, the debt was still outstanding, and what little innocence that remained was soon stripped away by Parker and Riley and Spike and Giles and Willow. Even a little thing like dying twice didn't cancel out the 'Buffy owes' column.

So now my days are filled with 'adult' things like balancing my checking account, meetings with Dawn's teachers, shopping, being Mom, and my nights are filled with slaying and trying to stay alive so I can repeat the cycle again and again and again.

I wish I could know innocence once more.

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