Who is Buffy Summers? Buffy couldn’t count how many times she’d asked herself the question. She kept asking, kept wondering because each time she asked she couldn’t come up with an answer. She knew she was good, or everyone saw her that way at least. Most people told her she was, and that would have to suffice. Everything she was was built upon something someone had told her about herself, things she couldn’t see. None of it was real, not to her. It never was. She couldn’t remember feeling like a real person, not once. Everyone around her was real. She saw them and felt them, but when she looked at herself there was nothing. She had done so much, made such an impact on this planet and she’d been told time and time again that she’d changed. Giles said he’d watched her grow, but when she looked in the mirror she wasn’t there. She didn’t recognize the person looking back at her. She was a empty.

She’d come back from the dead yet again and hadn’t learned a thing. That was a lie, there was one thing she’d learned after Willow had brought her back the first time. She knew how to feel. Pain, rage, grief, elation, and love. There were other emotions but as far as she was concerned they were all just mixtures of those basic five. It was a science almost, the science of feeling- of controlling those feelings and of reacting to them the way she ought to. Her emotions were the one thing that she could use to convince herself she still existed. Buffy was in there somewhere, she had to be there because she felt everything. But the Buffy she had to see in the mirror every day? She wasn’t allowed to honestly feel anything, no she had to pick and choose which emotions were mature. She wasn’t violent anymore, not the way she had been before. She was charming, the face of the Slayers. Everyone knew her name, who she was. Or who they thought she was.

But what rested beneath the person she’d built herself up to be? She had no idea. She only knew what she felt. She felt her heart ripped from her chest the day Dawn died, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. That was real, the agony of knowing she’d never hear that laugh or see the light behind her baby sister’s eyes. She felt so much pride when she looked at Spike and the man he’d become, he’d fought his way to goodness and deserved every ounce of praise he got for it. That was also real. She couldn’t deny the comfort that being able to trust and respect a person completely brought her. She trusted Spike and she did love him. And with loving him came feelings of guilt. She wanted so desperately to love him the way she loved Angel, she wanted it because it would be easy, no tragedy in a pair who loved one another equally and were actually allowed to give themselves completely to one another. He’d loved her so completely despite the fact that he knew her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he got to know her when she didn’t even get to know herself. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t reciprocate the feelings of love he was so certain of.

Angel. He was his own emotion, a part of her. She loved Angel with the entirety of her being, it was the only thing she was certain of. It made her real. When he was in the room he was the sun, she couldn’t look away. Every moment away from him that she didn’t fill with distractions was spent forcing herself not to give in to the raw magnetism that pulled her toward him constantly. So much of what she was came from the way that his heart had shaped hers. He made her want to fight, to be that force of good. His soul was tethered within him by a curse, and a lot of the time Buffy felt like she was cursed too. She was cursed with feeling everything inside of her squirm when she even thought about him being with someone else. She was cursed with the urge to offer her own life up in place of his without hesitation. And even knowing this couldn’t stop her from loving him, he was the center of her world. Buffy didn’t know who she was, but she knew who he was. He was the most beautiful star in the night sky, the one she orbited around. He was so much stronger than she could ever hope to be, so much better. When she saw him smile, her heart couldn’t help but give off the most triumphant glow. When he touched her, her skin burned and melted into his. He had lived so long and was somehow the youngest most alive person she’d ever encountered. He was selfless when he could be selfish instead and oh so incredibly wise. She felt him wherever she went.

Her feelings were what made her real. Buffy tried to force them away, put them on the shelf because she was a big girl now. She needed to handle things like a politician, to be what the world needed of her. She needed to face each problem as it came to her, not to ponder it or get emotional about anything. Emotions lead to attachments and attachments made her weak. But it was all a fabrication, all just a ruse that she clung to desperately. It was the only way she knew how to cope with what was thrown her way. Buffy Summers was propped up by a house of cards. What would happen if she just let go and let them fall? Simple- she’d find herself.