Assorted Personal Canon Ficlets

by Spurlunk

Summary:

These were all posted at one point on my Tumblr.

Chapter 1: Xander Harris

1. He knows that sometimes he acts like a complete asshole, and he hates himself for it. Every single time it’s because he doubts himself, because he second guesses his place in the Scooby Gang. It’s not really an excuse, but it’s hard to be the only one without something special.

2. Angel called when Cordelia died, but no one went to the funeral. Well, except Xander. He was the only one who remembered her as being someone he actually liked. For Buffy, Cordelia was a high school rival, and for Willow she was someone who made her high school life a living hell, but to Xander she meant a lot more. Once he got there he realized how out of place he was, and he didn’t stay to chat with Angel or his friends, leaving right after he had paid his respects.

3. Xander pretends he’s too cool for Andrew, but for the few weeks when they’re on the road after defeating the First, all sharing that school bus, driving around and trying to figure out what to do next, they’re friends. Well, sort of. Andrew just keeps pestering him and finally Xander gives in. The two of them talk for hours about comic books, cult TV shows, old science fiction and fantasy movies that no one else has heard of. Buffy simply raises her eyebrows and Faith smirks. Xander pretends like he’s just indulging Andrew, but really he’s having the time of his life. The girls just don't understand the appeal of things like Doctor Who or superhero comics.

Chapter 2: Damon Salvatore

1. Damon Salvatore has kind of a crush on Jeremy Gilbert. He thinks he’s very attractive, but he can’t exactly act on it because he tried to kill the guy, and he doesn’t think Jeremy swings that way anyhow. Also he thinks maybe he only likes him because he looks kind of like his sister and since he can’t have her he’s projecting on Jeremy. Either way, he’s not going to do anything or tell anyone, so it doesn’t really matter.

2. At night sometimes Damon dreams, ones that have him wake up and ache from the images that he’s just seen - memories of being human, of dreaming of a future that now he can never have.

3. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to, but he absolutely hates the taste of blood. He needs it and craves it, and therefore he drinks it, but the little bit of him that remembers being human is completely repulsed by it and he hates how he needs blood to survive. It’s very inconvenient, but when the hunger takes over sometimes he forgets, though it never actually tastes good.

Chapter 3: Darla

1. Darla didn’t mind being a prostitute - it earned her a lot of money and she enjoyed the work. How else could a single woman live like she did? Her mother had always told her that all she had going for her was her looks, and that she’d find a husband easily, but Darla never wanted that. She wanted more from life, and when her mother and brother died of smallpox she jumped at the chance to get away and make her own life in America.

2. Darla and Drusilla were sisters, best friends, lovers, but sometimes Darla grew impatient with her. It was rare, but sometimes she just longed to have an ordinary conversation with someone, but Angelus was busy bickering with Spike. So Darla would leave Drusilla to her musings and she would go outside, wandering the dark alleys alone until she found something to eat. She always felt better with a full stomach.

3. When Angelus is cursed with a soul, Darla leaves him, but she never loses track of where he is. She never meets with him again, of course, not until Sunnydale, but she knows where he is all the time. One doesn’t live for hundreds of years without making connections, and Darla knows vampires and demons all across the globe. Sometimes they tell her what they know about Angel, and she is glad to hear that he is as miserable with a soul as she is without him by her side.

Chapter 4: Astrid Farnsworth

1. At night after work, or on weekends sometimes Astrid plays the violin at a nightclub that is owned by a friend of hers from college. He has had an unrequited crush on her since they first met, sitting next to each other in Introduction to Modern Linguistics back in freshman year. At first she felt like she was using him, but he wasn’t paying her and she’d told him she wasn’t interested in him in that way, so she just was happy to play her music in front of a crowd. They seemed to like her, and she enjoyed herself. It was a nice break.

2. Astrid feels incredibly underutilised. She knows she’s smart, she knows she could be doing so much more than working as Walter’s assistant, handing him things and filling out forms and feeding Gene (though she actually kind of likes taking care of him, she’s never spent much time with animals before, she didn’t even have a goldfish growing up and it’s kind of nice), but she doesn’t quit, she doesn’t complain or protest, and that’s because she loves being around Walter Bishop and the kinds of things that the four of them investigate are way more interesting than any other job Astrid can think of.

3. At first she didn’t like it when Walter kept forgetting her name, but now she’s actually interested to see what crazy thing he will come up with next - as of now, her favorite is Astringent.

Chapter 5: Anya Jenkins

1. The cool thing about Andrew is that Anya can be a little kid with him, immature and silly, and he’ll play along, even enjoy it. She used to do that with Dawn instead, but then Dawn grew up and got all serious and Watcher Junior, studying dead languages and old boring books. Anya had lived that, she didn’t need books. She hung out with Andrew instead, and even though he annoyed her and she complained, he was the only one who would have a wheelchair fight with her so she was cool with it. He was the best she was going to get, and he grew on her.

2. Before the wedding, sometimes Anya and Xander talked about the life they would have together. He brought up the possibility of children, and at first Anya just said no right off the bat, but then that evening in bed, as she lay awake in the dark, accompanied by Xander’s gentle snores next to her, she thought about it a little bit. A child might not be such a bad thing. Sometimes they were cute to look at, though she wasn’t sure if she’d have the patience to actually deal with one. She looked at Xander and decided that he might be better equipped to be a father than she was to be a mother, but the both of them together might come out to equal one good parent. Then the day of the wedding everything changed and she didn’t think about children again until the moment of her death, when she thought that she hadn’t left anything behind, no mark to show that she had once been there.

3. Anya’s been alive for hundreds of years. She can’t just be dead and gone, not like that. She hangs out with Lorne for a while, as a ghost. She doesn’t mention her affiliations with the Slayer and he doesn’t mention his affiliations with the vampire with a soul, they just sit together and talk about music, monsters, and money.

Chapter 6: Halfrek

1. Halfrek did not meet Anyanka through D’Hoffryn, she met her at a party, actually. It was held by a vampire couple, sisters. Two wealthy European women who threw such amazing parties that Halfrek had actually heard rumors of people trying to buy invitations. Of course since this was a party by vampires, there was some drinking going on, discreetly and behind closed doors. Some people did not return home the next morning, and there was always someone who wanted vengeance, if Halfrek knew exactly which questions to ask. When Halfrek first figured out what Anyanka was, her instinct was to destroy her, but then she realized that they could be so much more if they worked together.

2. Halfrek can’t remember her real name or anything about her life as a human before she was a vengeance demon. She’d been kicked in the head by a horse, and she was in between life and death when D’Hoffryn found her. Her choices were either to die or live for hundreds of years as a vengeance demon. Sometimes Halfrek got jealous of Anyanka, who remembered her past life as a human, though she never spoke of it.

Chapter 7: Zack Addy

1. Zack’s only real friends when he was a boy were his siblings. They accepted him in a way that other kids just never did, and they had learned to understand his social awkwardness. He got a scholarship into one of the best private high schools in the area, and thought he might finally make friends there, since they would presumably be interested in the same academic pursuits and science fiction series, but they weren’t. They were rich kids who mocked him mercilessly until he became nearly a hermit, one of those kids who scuttles from class to class and eats lunch in the library.

2. If Zack hadn’t decided to go into forensic anthropology, he would have been an aeronautic engineer. He was thinking of working at NASA, but something messed up his schedule in his freshman year of college and he ended up in a biology classroom. Somehow he just got sucked into it, but he didn’t want to abandon his first love, so he just got two doctorates instead of one. He’s planning on getting more, too. Maybe something with math.

3. Zack doesn’t mind the institution he’s in, the only part he doesn’t like is not getting to see Hodgins as much as he used to. Hodgins was the first real friend that Zack ever had, and he misses him. He’ll never say so, but Hodgins’ visits to him are the highlight of his week. When Hodgins tells him that he and Angela are expecting a baby, Zack says he’s sorry he won’t be there to meet it, and he actually means it.

Chapter 8: Dawn Summers (Part I)

1. The year Dawn is fifteen, she doesn’t spend her free time going to parties or hanging out with her friends. She never really had that many friends, and when it comes down to it most of the best times of her life have centered around her sister’s friends instead. But this year, she doesn’t even have them. Willow’s gone all Dark Magic crazy, Xander and Anya are having issues, Buffy’s all depressed and probably having sex with Spike, and Giles isn’t even there. She misses her mom and Tara. Dawn knows that she could very easily slip into a pattern of self-pity, so to get her mind off things she studies. Dawn teaches herself Turkish, and Latin. School is fun, but not enough to keep her occupied, so she spends her time looking through some of Giles’ old books on demons and vampires. She really wishes that she could talk to someone about all of the things she’s learned, but no one wants to listen.

2. Dawn really misses Spike. And Riley. She doesn’t really think much about Angel, because she didn’t see him much and she was pretty young when he was around, but she liked Riley, even though she would never admit it. Spike was like her big brother, her partner in crime. Then for a while she thought he was just being nice to her to get with her sister, and that pissed her off. Once he got what he wanted, she barely saw him anymore. And then he got his soul back, sacrificed himself to save the world, and came back to life in LA. She wishes he’d come visit her at college sometime.

3. The reason Dawn likes Andrew is because when he’s around, everyone else can see how immature she’s not, compared to him. Okay, that’s not the only reason. It’s just that everything gets so serious sometimes, what with the constant fighting of evil and numerous apocalypses (apocalypsi? no, that’s not right), it’s kind of cool to have a complete dork around. Even if the world is coming to an end, Andrew will make some nerdy reference that she doesn’t get, and then when the dust settles, she’ll make him show her the TV show/comic book/movie that he was talking about and they’ll enjoy it together. Sometimes Xander joins them.

Chapter 9: Dawn Summers (Part II)

1. the year that buffy was depressed and having sex with spike, willow went all dark magic crazy, giles was gone, and xander and anya were having issues, dawn didn’t spend her time hanging out with her friends (she didn’t have many), she studied. she studied her schoolwork and then when she was done with that she went through willow and giles’ old books and taught herself a couple of dead languages as well as reading up on different demons and slayer lore.

2. dawn was too little to really care about angel, but she liked riley. he was kind of like a big brother and though she put on a show of thinking he and her sister were really gross for making out in front of her all the time she really misses him. she also misses spike. well, not spike exactly, but the times they had together. he was a lot of fun. she hasn’t spoken to him since she heard he came back and is living in la. she still hasn’t forgiven him for what he did to buffy, and she’s not sure she ever will.

3. dawn likes having andrew around because when she and him are in the same room everyone can see how immature she’s not. also, he’s great to keep nearby if she ever wanted to get her mind off the impending apocalypse.

4. dawn feels terribly guilty that she felt worse when tara died than when her mother died. she also feels really awkward around willow even though technically she’s reformed and not evil anymore.

5. dawn went to college and majored in ancient studies with a minor in linguistics. she took kickboxing classes in the evenings. she’s not trying to be as badass as buffy because that’s just not possible, but it’s nice to have the actual skills to back up her constant “you don’t need to protect me, i’m not a little kid anymore”.

6. dawn does a semester abroad in tibet and visits oz there. he’s really cool and he teaches her meditation. she babysits his son and studies buddhism.

7. dawn and xander date for a little while. they don’t stay together, though they are always good friends. whenever dawn’s home from school, she, andrew, and xander have ‘geek nights’ where they hang out and watch doctor who together. watching one episode can often take up to two hours because andrew won’t shut up and they keep having to pause and rewind.

8. dawn seriously considers being a watcher but then decides she’d rather not, and instead travels around the world researching different kinds of supernatural phenomenon and cataloguing them. she writes several books and gets into awesome adventures sometimes too.

Chapter 10: Kaylee Frye

1. kaylee would never admit it to anyone, but she wouldn’t have given bester a second glance if she hadn’t overheard him telling her dad that he was quitting his job to go be a mechanic on a spaceship. she knew there was absolutely no way she was going to give up a chance like this - she’d never even been near a machine that big before, and she was dying to get a closer look. so she turned on her sweet girl charm to a hundred and ten percent, and bester agreed to take her onboard the old firefly. she was having sex with him in the engine room when the course of her life changed forever.

2. when kaylee first joined the crew of serenity she had a little bit of a crush on captain malcolm reynolds. seriously though, who wouldn’t have a crush on him? he was really really good-looking, and even though he pretended like he was tough, he wasn’t, at least not with her. soon enough she realized that nothing between them would ever happen, and she started to regard him like the big brother she never had (well, she did have an older brother back home, but they were bullies and she never liked them much). in fact, she often not so subtly tried to get mal and inara together, but inara always gently rebuffed her attempts and mal just plain ignored them.

3. wash’s death hit kaylee hard. whenever they would land on a planet, the others would always be out, doing their job like they always did, and inara would be off doing her business. wash was the one who always kept kaylee company. they talked, or worked out new inventions to help keep serenity in the air, or played cards. now he was gone, and the ship felt so empty. simon helped fill the gap sometimes, since he wasn’t needed on the others’ dangerous jobs. he often stayed back with kaylee, and having him around didn’t necessarily make the loss of wash any better, but it was nicer than just being alone. wash used to be able to make kaylee laugh, but simon could make her smile.

Chapter 11: Lydia Martin

1. when lydia was little, she was known as the smart kid in class, and everyone wanted to be her partner for group projects because inevitably she’d get fed up with them and do the whole thing herself, ensuring that they all got a good grade. it wasn’t until she entered middle school and realized that being known for her intelligence wasn’t going to get her very far that she decided that her outward persona was going to have to change if she wanted to be the school’s ‘queen bee’.

2. she knows that the adult world is just as much of a popularity contest as high school is, but she maintains her good grades and a spot on the honor roll anyway, more because she genuinely enjoys math and science than anything else.

3. one might think that lydia doesn’t notice anyone unless they are useful to her, but she is actually very observant, filing everything she knows on the student body away for later. it just wouldn’t do for her to actually care about them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Chapter 12: Ann Perkins

1. quite often ann looks at her track record with guys and realizes that spending time with leslie is much more functional and healthy than dating andy, mark, chris, or tom ever was or probably will be.

2. ann loves being useful. sometimes this means that she is leslie’s sidekick, and though leslie is bossy and almost always gets her way, the love that she has for ann is too clear and heartwarming for her to ever get too frustrated with her. learning how to fix things with ron is really fun for ann, and sometimes she’ll break things on purpose so that she can call ron and he can teach her how to put them back together. one time she calls him and he tells her that she should probably know how to fix that herself. he stays on the phone with her while she figures it out and the feeling of triumph that she gets once she’s done keeps her on a natural high for the rest of the week.

3. ann loves chick lit. she can’t get enough of the trashy romance novels with shirtless guys on the cover. after leslie’s forced her to read various fantasy series, ann finally gets her friend to try a romance novel. leslie hates it, ann can tell, but she reads it anyway and tries to pretend that she likes it as they discuss it over brunch. then leslie can’t keep up her charade anymore and tells ann it was terrible, but ann doesn’t mind. she loves leslie for trying.

Chapter 13: Ana Lucia Cortez

1. she’s really good at soccer. she used to play with her male cousins when she was a kid, and though at first they treated her like a mascot (she’s the youngest), soon they learned that they’d better take her seriously or else she’d run circles around all of them.

2. the girl scouts were boring and stupid so she pretended she was a boy and tried to join the boy scouts instead. she was found out within the first hour, but they let her stay on anyway, and she learned survival skills that would actually come in handy years later in ways she could never have predicted.

3. she thinks she’d be a great mom.

Chapter 14: Spike

Notes:

This one is in more of a short drabble form. I've always wanted to expand this story. Someday I will.

after the fight in the alley with angel, illyria and gunn, spike leaves. he needs to be alone for a while, and away from l.a. he can’t go to buffy. he knows that she knows he’s alive, but he’s not ready to face her yet. so he does the next best thing and goes to stanford instead.

he feels particularly vampire-like, lurking in the shadowy bushes outside the window of the library, but he sees her in there, sitting at a table with two girls and a boy. he studies her expressions and marvels at the similarities all of the summers women share. the bright smile she flashes at the boy, who looks appropriately pleased at her approval of him, the furrowed brow as she concentrates on the textbook spread open before her.

he looks away from the window, lighting a cigarette, and thinks about how happy buffy must be that her sister’s getting to enjoy a relatively normal life, at least for a while, when taken by surprise and knocked to the ground with a loud oof!

“what are you doing here, spike?”

“bloody hell, niblet, can’t you just say hello?” he said. she let him stand up, but held a pencil at the ready as if it were a stake. he glanced at the window and saw that she’d left all of her friends inside.

“what, did you tell them you had to go to the loo?” he asked.

“huh?”

“they don’t know about your sister.”

“of course not! no cute guy’s going to want to date me if i start talking about demons and vampires.”

“that guy? you could do better.” spike said, jerking his head towards the library. dawn rolled her eyes but lowered the pencil, and spike let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“right. this is coming from the guy who dated harmony.”

spike grimaced at the memory. he wondered what was up with that girl, he hadn’t heard from her in ages but she’d probably gotten out of la okay. no matter what happened at least she’d stay the same.

“i have to go back inside. are you … sticking around?” dawn asked, turning around at the last minute to ask the question. he shrugged.

“maybe. why?”

“i thought we could go get drinks sometime. catch up. if you’re still here, anyway.”

“got no place else to be, niblet.”

she smiled and spike ground out the butt of his cigarette, retreating once again into the shadows.

Chapter 15: Inara Serra

1. inara did not enjoy companion training at first. there were classes that everyone had to take, and then electives where some girls specialized in music, or poetry, or art, or dance, or any number of different things. there were self-defense classes, where inara learned some rudimentary fencing. (she learned how to use a bow later, when she worked with a client who was a fairly skilled archer.) the class that inara hated the most was elocution. the way she spoke was part of her, it was who she was. she didn’t want to lose that. instead, she pushed it inside of her and learned how to wear a mask instead. (sometimes her true voice slipped out anyway, in times of distress.)

2. though the companion house did not really have a policy on religion (there was time set aside every day for meditation or prayer, but most students used the time to relax, sleep or study), inara kept up the practices she had been raised with. even long after the memories of her parents and siblings had faded, the scent of burning incense filled her with a warm feeling of home.

3. inara never really became friends with zoe in the same way that she did with everyone else on board. she respects her of course, and they both share a similar strength, though it manifests in different ways, but for some reason they never really formed the easy camaraderie that inara shared with mal, wash, kaylee, or even jayne.

Chapter 16: Leslie Knope

1. when leslie was a little girl, she was the president of every club she could find, and her enthusiasm was infectious. this worked well in elementary school, but in middle school and high school when being sarcastic and apathetic was the trendy behavior, she had a rough time of it. still, leslie always related better to adults than teenagers anyway, so she reasoned that in a few years she’d be working to make the world a better place and that required a bit of sacrifice.

2. leslie loves everyone she works with. obviously ann is her best friend, and ron is like her big brother, but andy’s probably the most fun to be around. she loves how he just runs with any idea she throws at him, even if he doesn’t quite understand it. he’s the first person she’s met who has more exuberance and enthusiasm than she does.

3. leslie owns three waffle makers. one of them is portable and stays in her car with a package of batter mix just in case she goes someplace where there are no waffles available. the other one makes waffles in the shape of mickey mouse, and the last one is so big and fancy that it has a permanent place on her kitchen counter and is the focal point of the room.

Chapter 17: Andrew Wells

1. andrew wells has been overlooked his entire life, and he doesn’t even mind. he’s content with being an observer, just being allowed to tag along on whatever adventures those around him are embarking on is enough for him.

2. on the bus out of sunnydale after the first is defeated, they all deal with things in their own way. faith and robin spend most of the time flirting, giles, xander, willow and buffy are in their own little bubble, and those potentials that are left mostly hang out with each other. andrew is left with dawn, at the back of the bus, and though she pretends to be annoyed as time goes on he can tell that she’s genuinely interested in what he has to say. her knowledge of geekdom surprises him, because she doesn’t seem like the type, but then she explains that she used to have a crush on xander so she got into things like comics to have something in common with him. andrew says he understands, and she thinks he means the getting into comics part but really he means the crush on xander part, or probably a combination of both.

3. andrew misses jonathan so much. he never had friends before, not unless they were forced by their parents to hang out with him. he’s pretty sure that warren brought the three of them together because they could be of use to him, and though a part of him knows it’s probably just wishful thinking he really does miss the friendship that they had together before it all went terribly wrong. he tries not to think about it much, because then the memories of what happened after will flood his brain. he can’t separate the good from bad, but dawn assures him that almost every single person on the bus has done something that they can never forgive themselves for. he’s not alone.

Chapter 18: Jayne Cobb

1. jayne comes from a barren, dismal planet that used to be fertile but then it was overfarmed and now the soil has no more nutrients. the population is mostly old women and young children, because all those who are able travel off planet for work and send money home. jayne wanted to be an athlete, but he sustained a knee injury that destroyed those chances. he always liked to hit people, so he got a job as a mercenary.

2. jayne’s father died young, so the money he doesn’t spend on weapons and cheap t-shirts he sends home. he supports his mother, his aunt, and a half-dozen young cousins. his favorite cousin is maddy, who is eight years old and loves wrestling. she gets into fights all the time, but unfortunately she’s also rather small and sickly.

3. jayne hates that the person he dislikes most on the ship (simon) also has (technically) the most power over him. he hates not being in control (he can deal with it if it’s mal because he respects him, but it’s very aggravating with simon).