KnifeEdge

Time and Tide (A "Once Upon A Time" fanfic)

2013-03-21T23:07:49Z

Posted this earlier to FF.net and AO3 and Tumblr (sort of). Suppose I ought to post it here.

And BEFORE you complain that this isn't more DUST: Yes, I'm aware. Still working on DUST. There's two chapters of it up over at the Elysian Fields archive site that aren't posted anywhere else. Go read those. :) I'll post the rest when I'm done.

OR :) If you're in the Once Upon A Time fandom, here's a little Captain Hook missing scene/oneshot that I knocked out yesterday.

Title: Time and Tide
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Genre: General? This is a missing scene. There's not a lot of action. It's mostly getting Hook from point A to point B.
Shippy?: Yeah, there's some hints at Hook/Swan going on here. Some Milah angst, too.
Rating: Teen, I guess, for some vaguely naughty words and references to violence.

Summary: After the events of “Manhattan,” Killian Jones wakes up with a throbbing headache, once more tied up, and uncertain about his future.

No Hook/Emma interaction, unfortunately. Just a peek inside his skull as he makes his way back to Storybrooke. But if you’re wearing your Official Captain Swan Shipping Goggles™, there’s plenty here to enjoy, though.

[Insert standard disclaimer here: not my property, just writing for fun and amusement.]

_______________

Time and Tide

Killian comes to consciousness like a man swimming up from the depths of some black lagoon.

If he's going to be honest—which tends to be far more often than most realize—he doesn't really want to be conscious. He's faintly certain that the Indian tribe that is pounding war drums in his skull has nothing to do with rum. Rum is a friend. Centuries of imbibing the stuff has given him a nearly inhuman tolerance for drinking alcohol of any sort and it's been decades since he last drank himself into a complete stupor.

It isn't until he attempts to feel for new lumps on his skull and finds his arm—once again—shackled to something, that memory comes roaring back.

The Crocodile.

He'd slammed through the door of the building, shoved whoever was in his path out of the way, and paused for just a moment to savor the look of pure, unadulterated fear on Rumpelstiltskin's oh-so-vulnerably human face. He'd been inches away from skinning the bastard and making himself a new pair of boots. There had been blood on his hook.

And then?

Then there was a great big gaping chasm full of pain, although the brief glimpse he'd caught of golden hair and the fact that he is tied to something, leads him to only one conclusion: Emma Bloody Swan has derailed his plans once more.

Hook is suddenly blindingly furious. He staggers to his feet and tugs at whatever is trapping his wrist. For once it's not an actual metal shackle; she's tied him off to some metal contraption with a length of thin, white rope. It would be easy enough to shred with his hook—except that she's taken that, too. This realization sends him completely over the edge, and a few seconds later he's free—if a bit more battered and bleeding than before—and suddenly reminded that his ribs haven't fully healed yet.

He has no idea where he is; there's little light—only a single bare bulb with fire caught inside such as he's seen everywhere since arriving in this land. The metal contraption he'd been tied to is broken now and gives him no clues as to what its purpose might have been. His erstwhile prison smells of damp and rust, which is as familiar as home.

His gaze lands on something on the floor: a white sheet of paper with his name written on it in a hasty scrawl. He snatches it up and realizes that it's an envelope, actually. It looks as though it's been appropriated from someone else; there's another name and what seems to be an address printed on it, but it's been crossed out, and the top is torn open already. It strikes him as unintentionally considerate, since he'd have had trouble opening it using only his teeth. Inside there is a wad of green paper that smells like money—filthy and fondled by many hands even if it doesn't have the distinctive perfume of gold. There's also a note.

Sorry about your head. And your ship. Not so sorry about your hook. - Swan

Once more he loses his temper, swearing and lashing out at anything that looks likely to break. Robbed. He's been robbed in more ways than one. Robbed of the killing blow, robbed of his vengeance and now robbed of his hook and his ship? It's nearly too much to bear. To have fought for so long, to have come so far, only to be brought up short at the end? That the poison his hook was coated in would be enough to kill the Crocodile was little consolation. He'd wanted to watch him suffer, wanted to watch the fear on his face as death came for the slimy imp at last. Wanted to know that he'd killed the Dark One without becoming him, and that Milah would finally, finally be avenged.

But now, now he knows nothing except that Emma Swan is the savior of their land and if anyone could possibly find a way to cure the incurable it would be her. They'd taken his ship back, he knows that much, too. It's the fastest way back to Storybrooke and with the poison eating its way toward the Crocodile's heart it would be their best bet. He has no idea how much time has passed. Has the Crocodile succumbed? Been saved?

There's no way to know, stuck here in this foreign world, alone, without even the familiarity of his ship to get him where he needs to go.

He kicks aside the debris his fury left behind and locates the envelope again and the thick wad of money. She'd left him with something, at least. With this he could, perhaps, make it back.

But not in time. For once, Captain Hook is completely out of time.

There are stairs in the corner and a door at the top that opens into the entry hall of the building. She hadn't moved him far, it seems. He pauses at the iron grate and notes that there are droplets of blood there, leading past him and up the stairs. Curious, Hook follows them up three flights, only to lose them at the landing where they fell onto a shabby carpet. Still, Hook hasn't been hunting a Crocodile for this long without picking up a few tricks: there are only a few doors along the hallway, and of those doors, only one has a smudge of blood near the handle. It's locked, of course, but Killian is prepared for this. He fishes a metal pick out of one of his many pockets, and jimmies the lock one-handed in three seconds flat. The deadbolt only takes a couple of seconds more, and then he's in.

The scent of blood lingers in the little room, layered on top of smoke and sweat and the stench of the Crocodile's slimy cologne. Hook takes in everything, his eyes noting the details of the room and discarding much of it as unimportant—right up until his gaze lands on a framed portrait sitting atop a dresser. The image is small, but the details are realistically perfect. He ignores the woman and studies instead the features of the man: there's something familiar here and Hook knows that he's seen this man before, somewhere else. The look in his eyes: this is a Lost Boy, perhaps the most lost of them all, all grown up now.

Hook turns back to the room and studies it again, this time with a sharper gaze. The Crocodile had been looking for his son. His son was a lost boy. Fate has a fickle sense of humor—he'd had Croc bait under his nose for ages and hadn't even known it.

Still, the room tells him little that he wants to know. Right now all he wants to know is if Rumpelstiltskin is dead, and the only way to know that is to get back to Storybrooke.

Killian catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He's bruised and bloody, and his leathers are beginning to look a little worse for wear. He knows he stands out a bit, in the crowd—his trek from the docks to this place had taught him that much, but before he'd been so intent on the end of his quest that he hadn't bothered to care. Now, however, he is stuck here and will be forced to deal with people to find his way back. It would be better, perhaps, to blend in.

He finds the bedroom and a wardrobe, ransacks the drawers. The garments within are awful, but he manages to locate a pair of denim trousers that fit well enough, and a soft shirt and black sweater that he can navigate into one-handed. He leaves his boots on, but lets the trouser legs hang over them like he'd seen others do. Further searching turns up a coat that he doesn't loathe on sight and it takes him a few minutes to transfer the myriad small items that he always carries on his person to his pilfered clothes. In the closet he discovers a satchel of sorts, and he dumps out the contents on the bed and lovingly folds his own garments inside it as best he can without the aid of his hook.

The money he tucks away securely, hidden from pickpockets and cut-purses. He's not sure of the amount she's given him, though he'd seen the numbers printed in the corners of each bill. It seems a decent amount, except that he has no idea of what anything actually costs.

Not that that would be a problem. If there's anything Killian Jones is truly good at, aside from hunting Crocodiles, it's the acquisition of money. One lesson he'd learned early in life: it was easy enough to get more, if you weren't too picky about how you got it.

Though tempted, he takes nothing else. He's wasted too much bloody time unconscious already.

***

He leaves the way he came in, sauntering back out onto the street with his left arm tucked into his coat pocket. Then he walks back toward the docks, even though he knows that his ship is long gone. It had been quite a job finding this place to begin with, like locating a single fish in the midst of a vast ocean. The docks are miles away, his head is still throbbing and his ribs hurt. It will be a long, long walk.

Killian has not survived as long as he has by being a stupid man, however. There are things he knows about traveling in unfamiliar lands, no matter what world you might find yourself in: keep your eyes and ears open, pay attention to the way people move, how they convey themselves from place to place.

In Storybrooke, whilst Cora had been popping off in puffs of smoke to make mischief, Killian had occupied himself by studying the town from the relative safety of the rooftops. He'd watched and he'd listened, studying more than just the quaint looking little shop where the Crocodile had made himself a nest. Unlike Cora, who had been as like to chalk up the wonders of machinery to magic, Killian understood about cars and the basic mechanics of how they worked—though he had yet to attempt driving one.

(He also understood that it hurt a great deal when one hit you. That, he admitted privately to himself, had not been one of his smarter moments.)

However, this city is ten times larger than Storybrooke, possibly even a hundred times larger, and it's crawling with the blasted things. As he strolls down the sidewalk he notes that there are an overabundance of yellow cars, packed arse to nose up and down the street. Every so often one pulls up and disgorges its passengers, who then pass paper money or a card of some sort to the driver. Sometimes someone gets in the moment someone else gets out—hired conveyances then.

Killian considers the money he has tucked away. He listens to the people talking around him, the multitude of languages and dialects. Some of them talk to each other, others talk into little boxes they hold close to their ears. He absorbs bits and pieces of it all, and finally, after some inner debate, when a yellow car labeled "Taxi" pulls up and a man gets out, Killian grabs the door before he can shut it and slides in.

"Where to?" the driver asks.

Killian leans forward and smiles his least threatening smile, "How much to get to Maine?"

The driver snorts and eyes him in the mirror mounted to the front window. The car smells of stale sweat, alcohol, fried food, smoke and a peculiar stench that he associates with his crew after six months at sea. There are signs up everywhere, covered in warnings and rules. "More than I bet you've got, buddy. You want the bus station or the airport?"

"How about the docks?"

"Can do," says the driver, and then they lurch into traffic and Killian tries his best to look unconcerned at the way they seem to careen into spaces that are surely too small for the car to fit, fighting for dominance on the road as if they are sharks tearing into prey. Instead he studies the car: particularly all the signs, the cage between himself and the driver, the little black box with a display that says "fare" and a number ticking steadily up. Surreptitiously Killian fishes the money out from where he's hidden it: tucked between his skin and the cupped mount for his hook. After eyeing the black box again he counts out some of it, then stashes the rest in its hiding place.

The car turns down a road that he recalls leads to the crowded harbor where he'd left his ship. "Anywhere here is fine," Killian says. The driver pulls over immediately.

Killian hands over the money, hoping he's guessed right. But the driver only counts it, grunts, then asks, "You need change?"

"Keep it, mate," Killian says, and makes mental notes for the future.

After the car leaves, tearing back off in the direction from whence they came, he turns his attention to the docks. He has to check, has to be certain that his ship is gone. He has no doubt that Emma is resourceful enough to have found it—he's uncertain why Cora's invisibility spell continued to work even after he'd left Storybrooke, but he'd been grateful enough not to question it at the time. And if the Crocodile's son is who he thinks he is, then they could have easily sailed it. It's enough to make him want to grind his teeth.

Sure enough, the berth where he'd left her is empty—actually empty, not invisible ship empty— and Killian stands there and swears at the water and the single seagull perched on a nearby pile, eyeing him as if it thinks he might be insane.

He is insane. He's just saner about it than most.

He is also a pirate: it takes him less than an hour to commandeer a new vessel.

Really, he reasons, if people didn't want their ships stolen, then they ought to leave someone aboard to watch them. Then he smirks at the irony.

Besides, one look around the sleek cutter is enough to tell him that this is some rich bloke's toy, taken out only for holidays and when he needs to impress a woman. It's fully stocked with enough provisions to get Killian where he wants to go, and it's in good enough condition that he's not worried about it springing a leak once he gets it out onto the open sea.

With a certain amount of grim determination, Killian gets to work. Time has waited for him long enough, the tide never has.

***

As a boy, the sea had always fascinated Killian.

As a man, he calls it home. He walks better with the deck rolling beneath his legs, breathes better with salt in his lungs, sees clearer with nothing between him and the horizon but countless waves. Since he lost Milah, it has been an empty home, but he thinks sometimes that she is the ocean now—wife, mother, lover. She can be temperamental and terrifying, but she welcomes him back every time with open arms.

He will never hold Milah again.

It is not the first time he has had this thought, nor will it be the last. His phantom left hand still remembers the shape of her, and without his hook he can feel the loss more keenly. It is all the more painful because he can no longer recall, exactly, the shade of her eyes or the sound of her voice. For decades she haunted him, her ghost lingering aboard his ship, invisible to all eyes but his own. Then, slowly, Neverland stripped even that away, leaving him with nothing but a gaping wound in his heart and the thirst for vengeance to fill it. It is a wound that few people have ever seen.

Just one woman, with hair the color of purest gold, the instincts of a pirate, and a matching wound in her own heart. One infuriatingly resourceful woman who has bested him not once now, but four times.

Killian scowls and turns his thoughts to a safer topic. He lets the wind ruffle his hair and the smell of the sea remind him of his true purpose. Milah. The Crocodile.

He has waited and plotted and schemed lifetimes for this moment, and it is killing him to not know if it has all been worth it—if he has succeeded. The hole in his heart is empty, empty, empty.

Others think they understand his desire for vengeance, and they think more often than not that it can be used to control him. They are wrong. He has been around much longer than they. He has been setting up game pieces, moving things into place since before most of them were born. Even now, there is a part of his mind that is turning things over and over, searching for the way to ensure Rumpelstiltskin's death. It is all for this. It has always been for this. He can barely remember a time before there was this. Every move he makes, every bargain, every word he speaks is to help him achieve his ends.

Except, recently, for a brief shining moment, when he had felt less like Hook and more like a Killian he barely remembers. He had smiled and meant it, laughed and felt free. He had saved a woman's heart because it was the right thing to do. That moment had been a distraction, a diversion. His backup plan was already in play and he knew he had the time to enjoy the challenge of a beautiful woman with more bravery and brains than ten men. But playtime is over, and now he wishes he hadn't let her look at him with those eyes that saw him far too clearly. He isn't sure he likes what he saw reflected in their depths.

Once more he shakes himself free of such thoughts. Instead he studies the maps he found aboard, charts a course that will take him to Storybrooke as fast as this little ship can manage with the winds at her back. There are machines in the wheelhouse, gauges that he thinks he understands by comparing them to his own innate sense of the sea. The Roger made this journey in less than two hours. It will take eight, at least, before he's close enough to abandon the boat along the coast. He guesses it will take twice that long for the owner to discover that the boat is missing and he'll be back in Storybrooke before the hue and cry is raised.

One of the sails flaps and Killian swings himself out on deck, wraps his left arm into the rope and yanks, using his right hand to tie off the slack. He wants his hook back.

He wonders if she's carrying it in her pocket. He hopes she wiped the poison off before touching it with her skin.

She's a resourceful lass, of course she did.

He ought to be worrying about other things. Cora and her scheming bitch of a daughter have likely discovered his betrayal by now. Queen Snow and her charmingly hard-headed husband are also likely out for his blood—though really he'd barely tapped the bloke; it had practically been a kiss.

He realizes he's sailing back into a swamp full of reptiles, and if by some miracle, the Crocodile has survived, he will be the most vicious of them all.

Perhaps the Crocodile will kill him, finally. It would be a fitting end.

***

The tide is with him, and he beaches the cutter five miles down the coast from Storybrooke. He considers scuttling it, then decides that's a waste of time. It'll either wash back out to sea or someone will find it and tow it home. He no longer cares. His own ship awaits him ahead. The town itself sits in a little niche of the coast, the lights hidden by jutting headland covered in towering pines. He doubts anyone will come there looking for a pirate. He doubts most people know of the town's existence at all.

He shoulders his satchel, which he's now stuffed with some of the food he found in the cutter's tiny galley, and sets out on foot. The coast here is not sandy—the harbor he'd left the cutter in was barely more than a dimple, the shoreline rocky and shallow. He has to climb, his left arm pressed against his sore ribs while he uses his right hand to grab hold of branches and tree roots to help haul him along.

He really wants his hook back.

The light is dimming, night draping slowly over the forest like a lover. He can sense the ocean off to his right; all he has to do is follow the shoreline. He doesn't really fancy tripping over tree roots in the dark, but he also doesn't want to delay much longer. Who knows what has happened in Storybrooke since they returned?

He considers the possibilities as he hikes.

The poison he used he'd devised himself. He alone knows the antidote. Still, once the Crocodile was back in Storybrooke, he would've been able to use his magic once more. It was possible he had managed to heal himself.

If that is the case, then Hook has to consider that the dagger may be in play. He knows that his ruse wouldn't have been able to hold Cora and Regina off forever, however he hadn't had the time or inclination to go back into the Library to move the dagger to a new location before he'd left. He really rather hates the Library, come to think of it. Still, he has to concede that the imp's hiding place was clever. Tick tock indeed.

If Cora controls the dagger, then she controls the Dark One. He will have two choices: grovel and beg to be let back into her good graces. Or, he will have to find a way to get the dagger away from Cora. Regina, compared to her mother, is far easier to manipulate. All she wants is her boy—Emma's boy. The most expedient method would be to kidnap the child and bring him to Regina as a gesture of goodwill. Get her on his side and he can use her to get to the dagger.

Still, kidnapping the boy strikes him as bad form. It would ensure Emma's enmity, if he hasn't earned it already, and that thought doesn't sit well with him.

He stows that plan and searches for another.

He could seduce Regina. She is love starved, and Hook can be seductive and charming enough to convince, if necessary. That thought, however, is utterly repulsive—Regina is beautiful, but dangerous as a snake. She can be manipulated, but he's really rather tired of working for women who would as soon rip his heart out as look at him.

You know which way the wind is blowing, Snow had said to him.

Perhaps it is time for a change of course. The heroic royals do seem to have a disturbing tendency to win, and they would be as invested as he in getting the dagger away from Cora.

He plots and he schemes as he stumbles through the moonlit forest. His schemes turn back in on themselves. He switches sides seventeen times, examines ways of ingratiating himself to both sides. It would be easier to do with Cora and Regina, but far more dangerous. He has no way to prove his intentions to Emma and her family. If they accept him into their fold it will be warily, and he doesn't have time for warily. Warily, with Emma Swan, involves leaving him shackled to something.

Then he remembers a promise he'd made at the base of the beanstalk. I will swear allegiance to whoever gets me there first, he had said. The truth was, it had been the bean that got him to Storybrooke. A bean he wouldn't have acquired at all if Emma had not chained him in the giant's lair. Her betrayal had been his way into Storybrooke; he almost laughs at the irony.

It is a stretch, but it might just be convincing enough to get him back into their good graces. With luck, and a great deal of charm on his part, she might even give him his hook back so that he won't have to go about bashing princes on the head to find it.

Plans begin to settle into place; backup plans begin to settle around them, further contingencies curling around the edges like loose threads that he can pull at a moment's notice to tighten the weave. He considers what he must do, whom he must convince. He doesn't even realize that he's grinning with anticipation of the challenge ahead.

It is not until he can see the lights from town glimmering through the trees that he considers the possibility that he may have already succeeded.

That thought is enough to bring him to a halt. For a long time he stands in the dark forest, staring at the lights ahead.

What if the poison worked too fast for it to be cured? What if it proved beyond the Dark One's ability to heal? What if his Crocodile has already expired whilst he lay tied up in a dank basement?

What if Hook has won?

Then there is nothing ahead of him. His vengeance will have happened without his knowledge and little participation. There will be no gloating as the Crocodile lays dying. He will never get to whisper Milah's name in the imp's ear so he knows what action brought about his death. He will never get to gut him with his hook.

And what will he do, then? What will be left for him, with the Crocodile gone and his entire reason for existing as long as he has wiped out with less than a whimper for him to enjoy? What will become of what is left of Killian Jones?

He tries to let the feel of his possible victory settle in his damaged heart, but no relief rushes to fill the empty hole. There is no sense of completion. He ascribes this to his lack of knowledge, to the probability that he has failed—but the excuse rings hollow.

For the first time in lifetimes, Killian Jones is at sea, adrift. He is a lost boy, and he fears that he can never, ever be found. He does not know who he is without his vengeance. His body is still young, but his soul is old, old, old, and he fears it is rotten to the core. Nothing can save him. Not anymore.

Ahead of him, between the trees, he sees a light blink on in the upper story of an apartment building. He knows that light, knows that window. He watched it often enough over the last week or so through his spyglass.

It is Emma Swan's window.

The bloody savior.

Hook smiles without quite realizing it. Something small flickers in the darkness of his heart. It isn't much: just a tiny candle gleaming weakly in a vast gaping chasm. It has no business being there, but there it is, all the same. If he could see it, he might label it hope.

The Crocodile is dead, or he isn't. There is only one way to know for sure, only one way to know what paths lay before him. He knows, however, that all of his paths lead to her.

Killian Jones takes a deep breath and steps out of the woods.

Second star to the right. Straight on till morning.

FIN

_________
Just a couple of things:

1.) I have my own opinions on whether or not Hook or Neal is Peter Pan. I left it ambiguous here since I would prefer not to be canon-balled on this one.

2.) No matter what may happen, I think that this is one internal conflict that Killian can't avoid in the future: without his vengeance, who is he? This seemed an appropriate place for him to at last confront that thought head on, if only for a moment.

3.) With all the Snow White and Hook parallels, it amuses me to think that their hearts may be mirror opposites: hers with a spot of darkness and his with that tiny gleaming bit of light. It remains to be seen, however, which is stronger: the darkness or the light?

4.) While I have no intentions of continuing this at the moment, my head canon says that later Hook and Neal run into each other and Neal is like "Those are my clothes!" and Hook, of course is, "Yes, well they look better on me."

Annoyed

2013-03-14T15:47:04Z

So, this comment just arrived on my last post, which was a quick, off-the-cuff one shot for the Lizzie Bennett Diaries.

"Please finish Dust. Re-read and it's still as great, if not even better. Takes me back to all the first-class Spuffy characterizations of the series years - but your story has the advantage of very little contribution from the Scoobies. In the series most definitely and in fanfiction they have sometimes over-indulged their sense of import in the Slayer's life. Not in Dust......because, they are, thankfully, fast a-bloody sleep. It's all him and her and it's excellent him and her. Please, pretty please, finish your great story. Thank you."

Now, first of all, Anonymous, can I point out that its really nice that you like DUST so much--but it was kind of crappy to leave this as a comment on a Fic for another fandom entirely? (Which is why I'm not unscreening your comment on it, BTW).

It's like maybe you think I'm wasting my time writing in other fandoms and you think you're steering me back on track?

I'm pretty sure my Labyrinth readers have thought the same thing about my Buffy fics for years.

Fact is, however, writing is writing. If I can spit out 12 pages of LBD fanfic in less than a day, it means I'm getting past writers block preventing me from writing DUST.

But whatever.

Let me just address a couple things here.

First, (and once more, with feeling) I AM STILL WRITING DUST. I have been, off and on, for months. Whenever I find the time and inspiration, I go back to it. If I'm not posting what I'm writing, it's because I'd like to finish it first. That way you don't have to wait a year between updates. Be patient. I do not need reminders that people want me to finish it. Trust me, I know. That's why I've restated it sixty bajillion times.

Second, I really don't care for character bashing. I get that some people aren't a fan of the Scoobies. I get that DUST might be appealing because the Scoobies are asleep and therefore seemingly uninvolved in the story. (Small spoiler:) That might not be as true as you think, nor will it always be the case. I fear you are in for some disappointment. If that's the main reason you like my story... Might want to take this extended hiatus as an opportunity to stop reading it.

I love canon. I love these characters and their relationships. DUST was, in part about exploring in detail the reality of Buffy and Spike as a team. That does not negate the fact that Buffy needs her friends, flawed and imperfect and realistic as their relationships may be. And they need her, and love her, and that's also important and true. Buffy is not a loner. She needs people, in some ways, more than they need her.

Please don't come to me for Scooby bashing. I won't do it.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Preludes (a Lizzie Bennet Diaries fanfic)

2013-03-11T05:31:27Z

So... yeah. I'm watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and like everyone else I am on pins and needles every week waiting for the next episode. (I'm also watching Once Upon A Time and the waiting for THAT is even MORE painful. Why must you hiatus? WHY?)

This morning I woke up, and even though I was a teensy bit hungover, and had to be at the theatre for a show at 12:30, and then DO a show at 2 and then STRIKE the show at 4--SOMEHOW this story kind of started writing itself in my head. So I have tossed it down on paper, and here it is, unbetaed, and full of fluff (and a tiny bit of angst).

Title: Preludes
Fandom: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Rating: PG-13? (one swear word and references to naughty thoughts)
Pairing: Lizzie/Darcy (what else?)
Notes: (takes place during Episode 84, just as Darcy asks Lizzie to go to the theatre. Not really AU, and fits canon. I'd call it a missing moment, but it's really more of a missed moment. Spoilers for episode 84, I guess.
Summary: Three seconds, spun out into forever. What happens in the silence between a question and the beep of a cell phone.

Preludes

“I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.”

- from Preludes, by T.S. Eliot

“…Gigi has an engagement so… It would be just you and … me.”

Worlds revolve in the silence like the spin of a roulette wheel. In that moment, the universe holds its breath as the spin slows, spiraling toward a stop. The future begins to unfurl like a ship’s sail, like a newly birthed butterfly’s wings. Two hearts pound fiercely, with slightly varying levels of trepidation and hope, beneath ribs that suddenly feel too small and as fragile as glass.

(But this—this is what doesn’t happen.)

Lizzie blinks once, then twice. Her mouth opens soundlessly for a moment before she locates her voice, buried somewhere behind the tidal wave of emotion that has suddenly clogged her throat. She is terrified, as if she stands on the edge of a precipice, but for once—just this once—she thinks she’s ready to take that fall. She has only just been able to admit to herself recently that she likes Darcy—or at least this new, not-so-robot-like version that she has encountered here at Pemberly. She likes him enough to want to explore this—whatever this is that has been gradually building up between them and has, in recent days, felt thick enough to cut with a knife.

“Okay,” she says, finally, and thinks it possibly the stupidest word in the English language. “I mean—that—well, that sounds … good. Fun. The theatre. With … you.”

She may have found her voice but sentence structure, basic grammar and the elements of conversation have eluded her entirely.

Darcy makes a sound that’s not quite a laugh. It might be a grunt, or a cough, except that it’s made of happiness. He clears his throat to get rid of the sound and wonders if there’s ever been a more beautiful sentence ever uttered by a woman in the entire history of speech.

“Wonderful,” he says, then clears his throat once more just because he’s afraid he might make that noise again. “I will—“ he rethinks the wisdom of his phrasing and tries again. He is, after all, making an effort to be a better man. “May I pick you up at six-thirty?”

Lizzie gives something that approximates a nod, but which feels as graceful as a head butt. “Yes. That would be … lovely.” She wonders when she started talking like a Regency romance novel, but somehow doesn’t mind in the slightest.

She wants to ask if he’s still in love with her. If, after everything she has said about him, every hurtful thing that has been between them, if this is him, offering them another chance. In the end, however, she decides not to question it.

A date, she thinks. I’m going on a date with William Darcy.

Nervousness is thrumming through her veins, making her giddy and she fights back the urge to giggle. She’s afraid it might scare him and he’ll spook like a startled deer.

He gives her a smile instead, and she wonders once again how she managed to live in the same house with this man for a month and never see him smile. If she’d ever seen him smile the way he is right now she could have never imagined that he was a robot.

She has no idea that this smile he’s wearing now, made of joy and hope in equal measure, is something brand new, never before seen, made just for her.

Things are a little blurry then, as he fumbles his way through leaving and she realizes, dimly, that she left the camera running. She turns it off after he’s gone and stares at it for a long time without actually seeing it, wondering if she’s dreaming. Then, suddenly, she realizes what she’s looking at, and then the camera is as precious as the black box of an airplane after a crash.

In a mad rush she plugs it into her computer, copies over the video footage, and then spends the next hour watching and re-watching it, trying to decipher the flutter of Darcy’s eyelashes or the quirk of his lips. The only thing that goes through her mind, however, is: This is real. This happened. I’m going on a date with William Darcy.

(It is not real, however. It didn’t happen. But Lizzie doesn’t know this.)

It takes another hour for the panic to set in as she realizes she has, in fact, agreed to go on a date with William Darcy. She mentally inventories every dress she has brought with her and realizes that, though they are pretty, none of them measure up to what she imagines a woman wears to go to the theatre and sit in a box seat. Who even has box seats to the theatre in this century? She wants to call Jane. The urge is so strong that her hand actually reaches for her phone, wondering if the activation is through and she can use it to make calls right now.

Then she thinks better of it, because calling Jane would entail telling Jane about Darcy and about Bing and about a million other things that Lizzie isn’t quite ready to talk about yet with her sister, but which she has shown thousands of strangers on the internet.

So instead she quietly panics and checks her bank account to see if enough money has magically appeared in it that she can afford to go buy a new dress. There hasn’t.

(This may be a dream, but even Lizzie’s imagination has its limits.)

Darcy, meanwhile, has gone beyond mental wardrobe inventory and, instead, has simply cancelled the rest of his appointments for the afternoon and gone home so that he can stand blindly in front of his immense walk-in closet. He probably has enough shirts to wear a different one every day of the year, but he has absolutely no idea what to wear. A decision like this feels insurmountably monumental, far more important than whether to buy or sell stock, or companies, or invest in a brand new technology: what exactly does one wear for an evening with Elizabeth Bennet?

There is a grin on his face that he knows is stupid, but he can’t quite make the effort to care.

Gigi finds him there, eventually, deduces—because she really is quite brilliant—that her brother has bitten the bullet and discovered that it was made of chocolate, and takes matters firmly in hand. She sits him down on his bed as if he’s a giant Ken doll, then delves into his closet for him and returns with a blue-green shirt the exact shade of Lizzie’s eyes, a tailored pair of slacks and a suit jacket that doesn’t scream Darcy-bot.

She refuses, absolutely REFUSES to let him wear a tie of any sort. Instead, once he’s showered and dressed, she unbuttons his top two collar buttons and threatens to cut them off if he even thinks about doing them back up again.

Five-thirty finds Lizzie in a robe and a towel turban standing amidst the carnage of her limited wardrobe, ready to burst into tears. She stares at her one good black dress that she thinks is the closest thing to suitable she has, but which Darcy has seen her in before, and wonders what Jane would do in this situation. She thinks that men never seem to remember what women wear, why should Darcy be any different? But he is, somehow, and she knows it. He probably has a photographic memory, and has stored away in the computer of his brain an image file of every outfit she’s ever worn, complete with notations and criticisms.

(She is only partially right: Darcy does have a photographic memory, and a mental image file of everything that she has ever worn. However, Darcy has long since come to believe that Lizzie Bennet is the most beautiful woman in the world, and would be so even if she wore a burlap sack. Nothing short of a nuclear bomb dropped on his head would convince him otherwise.)

In the end she goes with her second best dress, which isn’t quite as nice as the black one, but which is still a designer label (bought at a severe discount at her favorite consignment shop). It is the right shade to make her hair look redder, her skin creamier, and it reflects the color of her eyes. It also has the added benefit of Darcy having never seen it before. She dresses it up with her best shoes and jewelry, and spends an inordinate amount of time trying to decide what to do with her hair. Ultimately she leaves it down, because without Jane around Lizzie has a difficult time doing anything interesting at all with her hair.

The doorbell buzzes at six-thirty on the dot. Lizzie spends exactly thirty seconds standing in the hallway, staring at it, twisting her hands into nervous knots, which is just long enough for Darcy to edge close to full-on panic. On the opposite side of the door he wonders if she’s forgotten, or perhaps he dreamed it. He has a lot of these sorts of dreams lately, and it’s entirely possible that his imagination, rusty from disuse for many years, has gone into overdrive.

(It has, but we won’t tell him that.)

Then she opens the door, and she’s perfect, and he’s perfect, and he’s utterly astounded that there isn’t music playing or a light change to indicate the moment.

They stare at each other while somewhere in the universe stars die, entire solar systems collapse into black holes, and new planets are born. Finally, Lizzie makes a vague gesture that Darcy cannot interpret and after a moment she says. “Purse. I should … Let me just get my … purse.”

“Of course,” Darcy says, and waits on the other side of the door while she disappears back into the apartment. The sound of swearing drifts back down the hall, there is a thump, a slight crash, more swearing, and then—before Darcy has had time to decide that in the few seconds she’s been gone the apartment has been broken into by purse bandits and he probably ought to go in and rescue her—she reappears, smiling apologetically and brandishing a handbag.

“Found it,” she says. “It was stuck.”

Darcy smiles at her because she’s smiling at him and she’s beautiful and clever and really, he can’t think of anything better to do.

Lizzie shuts the door, locks it, then turns to look at him expectantly. “I meant to ask, um, what are we seeing?”

For a moment, Darcy’s mind is utterly and completely blank, as if someone has turned off the server and he can’t get a connection. He had looked it up, hadn’t he? Or had he just assumed that, since it was a Friday night, there would be a show? What if there wasn’t a show?

Then he remembers, and remembering causes a faint flush to crawl up his neck and take up residence on his face.

“The Importance of Being Earnest,” he says, and tries to cover his embarrassment with an even more embarrassing attempt at a cough. He had thought it appropriate, since he knew of her love for period pieces and all things English, but perhaps he had been wrong.

Lizzie smiles, however, and it’s her wide, true, happy, Lizzie smile—the one that she usually reserves for Charlotte or Jane. He knows this because he has a mental catalogue of her smiles as well. “Oh, that’s perfect!” she says. “I’ve always wanted to see that on stage.”

“Well, then,” he says, and offers her his arm, because he’s William Darcy and that’s what he does. She stares at it for a moment as if it is an alien appendage, then laughs and loops hers through his, her hand resting on his sleeve. In that moment he remembers the brief touch of her hand on his shoulder the other day, and the briefer touch she gave his arm during that awkward first meeting at Pemberly. He remembers dancing with her at the wedding, and again at Bing’s birthday. None of those touches, brief as a butterfly landing or forced as the march of a man toward the gallows, compare to this: Lizzie Bennett, her arm linked casually and voluntarily through his, as warm and perfect as if she belongs there.

Lizzie had, to be honest, been half-expecting a limo. Wasn’t that what rich men did in movies, to try to impress a woman? But Darcy had driven himself, which gave her an opportunity to babble inanely on the drive to the theatre about hybrid cars and to ask him a million questions about his. When faced with an opportunity to talk about something he was interested in, William Darcy opened up and spoke freely, and Lizzie found herself wishing that the drive was longer (even though they’d gotten stuck in rush hour San Francisco traffic for twenty minutes and the theatre was halfway across town).

The box seat lives up to her expectations. It is plush and expensive looking and affords an excellent view of the stage. There are two rows of incredibly comfortable seats, and they sit in the front so that Lizzie can peer over the balcony at the people below. Darcy hands her a pair of honest-to-god opera glasses and Lizzie amuses herself by peering at the people in the other occupied boxes while Darcy amuses himself by watching Lizzie.

She is aware of him as if he is a live wire. It feels like all the hairs on her body are standing on end, and when he moves, they move with him. Lizzie cannot remember ever being as aware of another person as she is of William Darcy, and although she laughs and talks and tries to chatter like a normal person, inside she feels squirmy and strange. Oddly, this isn’t a bad feeling.

When he touches her arm to direct her view toward the stage, it feels like fireworks have just burst under her skin.

The show begins, and even though Lizzie watches it, and enjoys it, she is far more attuned to the man sitting beside her. Later, she will recall the details of the show —because Lizzie remembers everything, no matter how distracted—but she will also recall that during the first act, Darcy’s thigh was touching hers, and at one point his fingers accidentally brushed her dress. She will remember the way that he smells at this moment for the rest of her life, to the point of tracking down the exact cologne by scent in Macy’s so that she can buy him a new bottle of it two Christmases from now, even though she doesn’t know the name.

(She will wince at the price tag, but buy it anyway.)

During intermission they skip going to the lobby in favor of talking about the plot of the play and the actors, and when the lights dim for the second act they quiet themselves with a slight sense of disappointment.

Darcy finds his eyes wandering from the stage to where Lizzie’s hand lays on her thigh, only inches from his. In the dim lighting her pale skin is incredibly tempting, and he wishes with every fiber of his being that he could simply bridge that gap and run his fingers over the back of her hand, to see if it is as warm and soft as he imagines. For some reason he finds the back of her hand almost unbearably erotic, and even though he scolds himself for it severely, he finds himself hardening a little at the thought of touching her there.

But he doesn’t, because for her he’s going to be a gentleman and he would never dare presume. He knows from harsh experience that when it comes to Lizzie Bennett, it is much safer to never presume that he knows what she’s thinking or feeling.

It is something of a surprise when Lizzie glances at him during a humorous moment to see his reaction to the play and finds him staring longingly at her hand. For a moment their eyes meet and hold, before he glances away, perturbed at being caught at something so ridiculous. He feels her shift, then her hand slips into his, their fingers tangling slowly together like vines. She gives him a smile, and turns her attention back to the play, her hand entrusted into his care for the moment. The rest of the play passes in a blur for him, wrapped and caught entirely by the warmth and smoothness of her small hand.

Afterwards they walk slowly back to the car, and Lizzie finds herself wishing that the night wouldn’t end. Her stomach, however, has clearly been taking notes on matchmaking from Gigi, and chooses a lull in the conversation to growl embarrassingly loud. She laughs and puts a hand over it, as if to shut it up. “I forgot to have dinner,” she confesses. “I was a little nervous about … this.”

Darcy’s brain rattles through nearly a dozen possible responses before landing on something unassuming. “Do you like Indian cuisine?”

Lizzie smiles. “Yes. I love it.”

“There’s a place, not far from here, that makes excellent vindaloo. They’re open late.”

“That sounds brilliant,” she says, and decides that she’s really glad she tossed Altoids in her purse.

The restaurant is small, dimly lit, and smells richly of curry. She’s thrilled that the menus are printed on paper and she can actually see the price of what she’s ordering. Aside from the wine list, everything is in her price range. She wonders if he’s planning on paying, or if he’ll let her pay for her share. She frowns at the menu, not sure how to bring it up. “Darcy, I…”

He reaches over and touches his fingers to the back of her hand. She looks up. He gives her a brief smile that is nothing but genuine. “Whatever you want,” he says.

For a moment she thinks he means that she should order whatever she wants, but then he dips his head, slightly as if rethinking his words.

“What I mean is, I am more than happy to treat you to dinner, but … if it would make you more comfortable to split the bill … I don’t want to presume. Whatever you prefer, Lizzie.”

Something in her chest flutters, like a bird. “I … I would like to chip in, this time, if you don’t mind. After all, you treated me to the theatre, so…”

He cocks his head to the side and gives her an unreadable look. “This time?” he asks, his voice softer than she’s ever heard it, as if he’s speaking to a small animal he’s afraid of startling. “Does that mean … would you like for there to be a … next time?”

She blushes, knowing that she’s probably nearly as red as her hair. Then she laughs, and nods slightly. “Yes, I … think I would like for there to be a next time.”

The smile that dawns across his face reminds her of the one that he gave her earlier, when she said yes. It makes something within her light up, and all of a sudden she feels like she could power half of San Francisco with the joy that’s building inside her.

Dinner arrives, and they talk easily through it, though Lizzie finds her gaze drifting to the open collar of Darcy’s shirt more and more. The dip and bob of his throat as he chews and swallows is unreasonably fascinating, and by the end of dinner she cannot tell if the flush on her face is from the spice in the food or thoughts running through her head about what else might be hiding under that shirt.

They split the bill, though Darcy insists on covering the tip. Lizzie lets him, too distracted by her own thoughts to put up more than a token protest. Afterwards they decide to walk for a bit, warm with food and each other’s company.

“I would like to show you something,” Darcy says. “If you’re not too tired?”

“I’m not tired at all,” Lizzie says.

So they walk another block, and Darcy takes her hand and leads her into the Marriot Marquis hotel. For a moment, Lizzie feels a brief, startled moment of worry. Then he guides her into one of the express elevators to the rooftop lounge and she forgets to be worried about anything. The elevator goes faster than she expected, and she stumbles slightly into him. Darcy puts a steadying hand against the small of her back and leans in to murmur in her ear. “Close your eyes.”

She does so without hesitation.

The elevator dings to a stop and she hears the doors open. Darcy’s hand on her back guides her off the elevator and a few steps forward.

“Open your eyes,” he says against her ear. Goosebumps skip up her arms. Her lashes open.

“Oh,” she says, her eyes widening. “Oh, wow.”

The rooftop bar is very dimly lit, the lights low and close to the small tables and comfortable chairs that dot the floor. The windows stretch from the floor all the way to the high ceiling, giving an unimpeded view of the city stretching out beyond, lights spangling the darkness like glittering gems on a black velvet gown. In the distance she can see the Bay, and the lights on the hills beyond. This high up there are even some stars visible beyond the light smog. It is, in a word, breathtaking.

Darcy leads her to a table pressed up against the windows and pulls out a chair. A tiny tealight candle dances merrily between them, unaware that it can’t compare to the glittering brightness beyond the glass, but in no way shamed by it. A waitress takes their order--cappuccinos for them both—and disappears. The music is just loud enough to be heard, the voices around them a soft murmur, as if they were sitting in a museum or a church and not a bar. Darcy knows it’s not always this way, but he’s thrilled that, for her, fate seems to be cooperating.

He watches her drink in the view and marvels anew that they are here, that they have come to this moment at all, after everything. He doesn’t know what they talk about: Pemberly, San Francisco, innocent things. They don’t discuss their families, and shy away from talking too much about the past. It feels, however, like they are forging something in this moment. Darcy lets himself hope, and he feels as though it isn’t just the city spread out before them, full of glittering promise, but the future.

Eventually they find their way back to the ground and then back to the car. Lizzie takes his arm again and he enjoys the feel of her pressed against his side. They don’t talk much on the drive home. Darcy watches the road and Lizzie takes the chance of watching Darcy, liking the way his large hands look on the steering wheel and remembering how they felt against her back and in her hand. There is, by some fantastic stroke of luck, a parking space along the street. He walks her to her door.

“Thank you,” she says, on the doorstep. “Tonight was … wonderful. Really, really wonderful.”

He smiles down at her, and even though the light above them casts his eyes into shadow, she feels lost a little in how blue they are. “You are very welcome, Lizzie. It was truly my pleasure.”

He means it, that giving her the gift of this night was a pleasure for him. She cannot remember ever hearing someone saying those words before and meaning them as much as he clearly does. She leans toward him, wondering, and finds her gaze dipping to his mouth.

Hesitantly, as if she is something precious, he touches his fingers to her cheek, brushing back an imaginary strand of hair. Lizzie smiles and leans into the touch. Feeling a little bolder, he dares to touch her hair and nearly shudders at the sensation, his entire body taut and almost quivering with the need to take what he wants more greedily. Luckily, perhaps, Darcy has the self-control of a saint, and ignores his more lascivious urges in favor of simply stroking the soft shell of her ear and the silky fall of her hair.

Lizzie makes a small sound.

“What?” he asks.

She smiles. “Nothing. It’s just … your hands are cold.”

He freezes, then starts to withdraw. “My apologies—”

But Lizzie steps into him, and somehow his fingers are tangling in her warm hair. “I don’t mind,” she says.

His gaze falls to her lips, and the smile curled there like a promise. “I … have your permission then?”

She nods, tangling his fingers in her hair further. “Yes. Whatever you want.”

“You are … very generous,” he says, and his head dips toward hers like they are magnets. He pauses. “Lizzie?”

“Will,” she says, and her hand reaches up cup his jaw, then the back of his head. She moves slightly closer, and now, now, with his name on her lips, he knows he can bridge the gap.

She feels his lips brush hers once, more gentle than she could have imagined. Then he kisses her again, braver this time, but still not taking any more than she’s willing to give. Lizzie feels her entire body yearning towards him. Her heels have grown uncomfortable from all the walking, but she is glad of the height they give her now. It is enough to let her tug him slightly closer so she can angle her lips against his. Her tongue touches the edge of his upper lip, and he immediately deepens the kiss. His free hand wraps around her waist, his fist bunching a little in the fabric of her dress.

There is nothing then except him and her, pressed together like the pages of a book, mouths moving over one another’s, as if they are having all the conversations they could have had, before, if they hadn’t been so blind.

It lasts a long time.

Finally, with shaking hands and shakier control, Darcy pulls away. He swallows, his forehead pressed against hers, his breath warm and slightly spicy still from dinner (despite the Listerine strip he popped discreetly afterwards).

Lizzie breathes as if she has just run a marathon, and her entire body is thrumming with desire. A little nervous, her fingers clutching the incredibly fine fabric of his suit coat, her gaze fixed on the hollow of his bare throat, she asks, “Would you … would you like to come in?”

He laughs, softly. “Yes, I would, very much. But—that is why I won’t. Not this time.”

She looks up at him, at this new Darcy with his collar unbuttoned and his smile and earnest eyes. “Then, do you think there might be a next time?”

“Yes,” he says. “I would very, very much like there to be a next time.”

She offers him a smile, and another kiss, and in it there is the promise of a hundred thousand next times, and a million times after that.

It’s as beautiful as a dream, everything he could have wished for and everything she didn’t know that she wanted.

(It’s a shame that it is only a dream.

Because this—all of this—doesn’t happen.

The roulette wheel of fate was set in motion long before this, and so this future clicks past faster than it takes for Lizzie to blink. But in that moment, in that span of three tiny seconds, without ever knowing it, this is the future that they both imagined.)

(What really happens is this: )

“…so it would be just you and … me.”

There is a silence then, in which universes are born and die.

Then Lizzie’s phone chirps at her. Startled, she turns to look at it. “Sorry! New phone.” She picks it up and looks at it. “Apparently Charlotte has called me … seven times in the last … hour?”

Even as she says it, even as some nameless, indescribable dread crawls up her spine, the phone rings.

She answers.

The nightmare begins.

In moments Lizzie’s world is shattered into pieces, and she doesn’t even notice that Darcy’s hopes are also littering the floor. Fear for her sister fogs her eyes, so she cannot see that her pain is causing him pain. Despair numbs her, so she cannot feel the comfort he offers in the hand that brushes her shoulder and settles against her back. Guilt clogs her ears, so she cannot hear the worry in his voice, or the determination that steels it a few moments later.

“We’ll get you on the next flight out,” he says.

“No. No—”

“I insist,” he says, and stands.

It is only then that she manages to pause, to look at him, to see him. For a moment, she can almost feel that other future—and a thousand more besides—pass her by. For a moment, she grieves for what will never, ever be.

“Darcy—”

He turns, and his expression is unreadable, his face hard as stone.

(She doesn’t know that in his head he is already calculating the paths laid out ahead of him, trying to determine the most expedient way to reach George Wickham and fix this mess that he has decided to own. He may have lost Lizzie, but he hasn’t ever really had her. The least, the absolute least he can do for her is this. He cannot bear to see her in this much pain.)

“Thank you,” she says.

“There will be a car downstairs for you in five minutes,” he says.

Then he leaves, to ensure that there will be a car, and a plane, and to make the first of a hundred calls that will, he is determined, lead him to George fucking Wickham.

Lizzie makes it to the car, and the plane, and home to her sister. In the late nights and useless hours afterwards, as she despairs of their ever finding a way to shut down that horrible website, sometimes she allows herself to think about Darcy.

To remember that, one time, William Darcy had asked her out, had once offered her a second chance to get to know him, to see if the feelings she had been developing for him could have been more.

There will not, she is sure, ever be a next time.

(She is wrong about that. There will be a next time.)

(And next time, for all the darkness and damage that happened in between, next time will be even better, because it will be real. It will happen.)

Yeah, sure, why not? :)

2013-01-24T09:56:49Z

Stolen from smells_corrupt

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer*.

*Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting

I'm going to be bouncing around like a loony tomorrow, but I will try to answer everyone within the next few days, if you do ask me something.

Good causes

2013-01-21T02:00:44Z

One of the things I have loved most about joining the Buffy fandom has been the people that I have met. Everyone has always been so welcoming, arms wide open, willing to accept old fans and new alike. It has been heartwarming and humbling, and it's one of the reasons why I want to continue writing fic for these amazing people.

To that end, I'm tossing my hat into the ring for the Elysian Fields hosted Auction for Kain--an effort to help raise money for a long time member of the Buffy community who recently lost her son and who is struggling to pay bills. I've added my name to the list of participating authors, and you can donate money (or purchase items that are up for auction), and suggest prompts for fic and the author who you would like to tackle your prompt. If you're one of the top five donators, one of the participating authors will pick your prompt and write a fic for you. Prompts from the rest of the donators will be tossed out to the rest of the participating authors to tackle, so you have a fairly good chance of seeing a fic based on one of your prompts, possibly from one of your favorite authors Here's a link to how this works

Even if you're not in the mood for fic prompts, please consider donating? I think it's wonderful that so many people are willing to band together to help a fellow community member in a time of personal need.

Procrastinating and thinky thoughts and "West of the Moon"...

2013-01-14T20:40:17Z

I'm writing this because I ought to be working, but I don't feel like it at the moment.

I woke up this morning to find that "West of the Moon" has garnered a couple of nominations over at the Absence of Light Awards. I'm thrilled, if a little surprised, since I don't really think of the story as being that dark or angsty overall, and it's been a few years since I finished it, but it's still awesome to be nominated.

I'm on Tumblr now, under my real name -- though I think somewhere I had made a fandom Tumblr and then promptly never used it. Whoops. I keep waffling over whether to reveal it or not, partially because I've worked very hard over the last decade or so to keep my fandom life and my real life from crossing over too much. However, in the last few months I've discovered that you can't prevent that from happening, no matter how hard you try (although, admittedly, I've been trying less hard as of late). My Tumblr has become the place where I don't worry about looking professional, and I don't post a ton of work stuff anyway -- especially not now that my job has changed, somewhat. I reblog a lot of fandom stuff there, and I read a lot of fandom blogs so it seems silly NOT to let it cross over.

Part of what has led me to consider it is that, last month, while randomly scrolling through my feed, I came across someone I follow who was talking about "West of the Moon." She was just reading it for the first time, and her thoughts on it were ... interesting. Honest. Really honest, because she obviously had no way of knowing that I follow her blog or that I'd be reading her thoughts

I've gotten a LOT of reviews on that story. It's very nearly embarrassing sometimes to think about how many. Nine years ago I was posting my first (mocking) Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic over at FF.net never dreaming that someday I'd have the second highest reviewed Buffy fic on the site (fourth highest favorited Buffy fic on the site, as well) out of an incredible (at the time I'm writing this) 45,352 stories. It's overwhelming and incredibly humbling.

And the vast majority of those reviews have been positive. Glowing. Wonderful. Oh, there were a handful here and there that nitpicked on little things, and one that I remember with incredible clarity that slammed me for my portrayal of Nikki Wood (although I really think they misread or misunderstood my intentions there). There were a handful of people who took their hatred of Buffy's character out in the reviews, which always annoys me to the point of wanting to yell at people -- but overall the reviews tended to be really positive.

So it was kind of ... refreshing? to read a review where the reader didn't like what I was doing at all. She didn't like the pace or the POV, didn't like the amount of canon I kept. She admitted to skimming most of Part 1 and not reading it.

On the one hand, it was frustrating. As the writer, I can tell you that I put a LOT of time and effort and thought into Part 1 of "West of the Moon." I debated heavily about just what canon to include and what to skim over, what was necessary to the story and what wasn't. Could I have edited it more heavily? ... Honestly, I think I probably could have. BUT I used what I did include in order to conceal clues and hints and all KINDS of foreshadowing for what was actually going on in the rest of the story. So much of the canon included was necessary to Buffy's story arc, and when it wasn't, it was almost always foreshadowing something else that was going to happen or was currently happening where Buffy couldn't see it.

When people tell me that they skim Part 1 I kind of want to shake them. I want to point them at different lines and paragraphs, descriptions and moments and say "DO YOU SEE THIS? IT'S IMPORTANT!" and then move to the next paragraph and repeat the process. For (a really obvious) example, in Chapter 21, "Thesis", there's this moment:

"Look, I know you know more about this Ice Demon thing than you're letting on. I want to know what you know." We glare at each other. His jaw works and he keeps glancing around the walls of the crypt as if the answers are written there.

And if you've read the whole story, you'll know why that last sentence is there.

So, yes. Frustrating.

On the other hand -- this person wasn't saying anything I hadn't said to myself when I was writing it. I agonized over all that canon for EXACTLY this reason. Because I knew there'd be people who wouldn't want to read a rehash of half of Season 5. I knew there were people who would not want to read canon in any shape or form. I KNEW there would be people who dismissed it after the first paragraph because it was written first person and in Buffy's POV, no less. In fact, I was pretty darn sure that would be why no one would bother reading this epically long thing in the first place. I figured most readers would give up around chapter 5 or 6 or 7 and even if they did, then they'd get to part 2 and think "Oh, god, AGAIN? REALLY?" and stop reading there.

I thought, in short, that these things would be the reason why the story would tank.

It has been, to my everlasting surprise, incredible to me that it did not tank. That people did read it. That they liked it. That it has gotten so much attention and praise.

It does make me wonder, however, how many people DID give up on it? How many people never got to all the AU stuff in Part 3. How many never even made it to Part 2? How many were turned off so severely by my use of canon that they couldn't bother reading past the first few chapters? How many were turned off by the first person POV that they didn't read past the PROLOGUE?

I respect the fact that this reader DID keep going. That she did read through to (almost) the end, even if she didn't like Part 1 and wasn't all that impressed with Part 2. I appreciate it, and I appreciate her unwitting honesty.

But what I come back to is this: I didn't really write it for her. Or for my other readers and reviewers. Or for you. I wrote it for me. Because I was laying in bed and the story came to me and it practically vomited itself out onto my computer keyboard. It was, in all honesty, nearly painfull imperative that I write that story. I wrote it to be the Buffy fic that I always wanted to read. I wrote it to be everything that I loved about the Buffy'verse. Everything I loved about fanfic. Everything I loved about the characters, and finishing it gave me this incredible feeling of catharsis, like nothing else I've ever done or experienced.

It was wonderful and terrifying.

It's icing on the cake to get reviews. It's validation that the incredible amount of thought and time and effort I put into that story was worth it to other people and not just me.

For the record, though, I will say that my favorite reviews aren't just the "I loved this" ones. The ones I really cherish are the ones from people who were going through rough times in their life. Who were depressed, or who had lost loved ones recently, who were sick or injured and in need of escape. It's nice to know that I provided that escape for them, and that in a sense, my catharsis was theirs as well.

So, I guess what I'm saying is: I'm still around, even if I've been quiet lately. I'm still active in the fandom, even if you can't necessarily see it. I'm still following along. Still reading. If you leave me a review, it makes my day a little brighter.

The last few months for me have been rough, and I always turn to fandom and writing when things get that way. I know I still have quite a bit of "DUST" left to finish, and it's coming--slowly. It has been harder to write than "West" was, but in some ways, I'm even prouder of it for that struggle.

Thanks, to those of you who read my stuff. To those who review. To those who don't review and enjoy it anyway. To those who are honest enough to admit that it has faults, and those of you who love it enough to nominate it for awards.

Just, thank you. Really. For everything.

You guys? Fandom? You're my dark place

Update from yesterday...

2012-12-02T03:25:07Z

So, thanks to borg_princess, I have copies of Dangers Untold and Shove's Tale again.

There may be some dancing for joy happening over here. :)

While I'm still hesitant to repost them to FF.net, I may go ahead and rearchive these fics over on AO3.

Just in case.

On a different topic ... supposing I was writing a story that's based on Alice in Wonderland, but not on any of the established remakes of it (like Tim Burtons, or the SyFy version, etc. -- both of which I love, by the way, but this is something else.) It's kind of my original (well, as original as such a thing can be, I suppose) take on the story. Would any of you be interested in reading such a thing, if I were to post a few chapters here?

Help

2012-11-30T22:10:05Z

So, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, I had the perfect storm of bad computer luck. The long and short of it is this: my hard drives on my main computer were completely fried. Toasted to a crisp.

All my work, everything, for the last seven years was on those drives. It got hosed in less than a second.

We sent the drives off to a data recovery center, in the hope that they might be able to recover my files. At last estimate, they said it could be January before they know if they can get anything off of them, and I'm looking at over $2000 to get back what I can, and even then the files may be totally corrupted. I don't *have* $2000 to spend on this.

There are moments that are just soul crushing.

I'm having that moment right now.

On the bright side, if there is one at all: I do most of my writing using Google Docs. That means that DUST (including all of the chapters I haven't posted yet) is safe. So are my backups of "West of the Moon", my unfinished epic Labyrinth Fic "Unlikely Ways", several short fics that weren't finished yet, and one long unfinished original novel.

However: remember how a few months ago I had yanked some of my unfinished Labyrinth fics down off FF.net because I was peeved at an overly entitled fan? Yeah. The only backup copies I had of "Dangers Untold" and "Shove's Tale" were on that fried hard drive.

In the grand scheme of things, they aren't that important. I lost WAY more important stuff than those two fics. But I'm hoping that maybe, just ... maybe, one of you lovely readers out there downloaded those fics to read later and have copies of them somewhere. I don't know if I'm ever going to get around to finishing them, but right now, even if I wanted to, I don't even have the ghost of them to work from.

So, if you're one of my Labyrinth readers, and you have copies of either "Dangers Untold" or "Shove's Tale", or if you know of someone who might... let me know? Please?

How to utterly make my day...

2012-10-13T18:08:12Z

Someone made a Spuffy fan vid based on a moment in my story "West of the Moon, East of the Sun." This absolutely made my morning.

Here's the scene from "West of the Moon" that inspired them (it's in Chapter 7: Ask Me No Questions):

He stands and heads for the pool tables, leaving me no choice but to follow. It's a slow night, there's no band playing tonight, so the tables are mostly empty. Just a few college kids and some high-schoolers fooling around. Spike picks up a triangle thingy and racks the balls on the table with the efficiency of a born pool-shark. Xander would be jealous.
When he tosses me a cue, I catch it easily. "Want to break, Slayer?" he asks. "Ladies first."
There's a challenge in his eyes. I've never backed down from him yet, and I'm not about to now. "Fine, but then you start singing again, Spikey."
He curls his tongue. "Could," he says, doing that growly thing again. "But then you'd have to protect me when all the women start throwing themselves at me. Want to be my bodyguard, Betty?"
What? Are we stuck back in Jonathan's delusional glory days? Then the pop-culture reference clicks. Spike thinks he can out-pop-culture me?
"You're a pig, Al." I put a little too much Slayer strength into the break, and the balls fly across the table with a loud crack. Takes a minute for them to stop ricocheting... and somehow I never manage to sink even one. So not fair.

When I wrote that, I mentioned that the song "Call Me Al" had struck me as being weirdly appropriate for Spike (and Buffy, sort of). It thrills me to little tiny pieces that someone else agreed with me enough to vid it.

Still Alive

2012-10-07T00:12:19Z

I've been wretchedly busy, but I can see the clouds starting to clear ahead and there is writing on the horizon. I sincerely apologize for being absent for so long. I think I worried a few of you--thanks to those of you who messaged me privately to be sure I was still amongst the living.

Yes, I am and I have writing to coming up.

- I signed up for the Labyrinth Fic Exchange, and I have some fun plot bunnies skipping around in my head that are going to need written at some point soon.

- I'm going to be devoting Nanowrimo to trying to finish DUST. It's a goal. I'm going to do this. It's bothering me that it's stuck where it is, so I'm gonna finish it. And when you next see me posting DUST, it's going to be because it's DONE.

- Also, in totally different fandom news, I'm a big BBC Sherlock fan. Not in a "I'm going to write fan fic about this" kind of way. At least... not yet, anyway. Even if I did, it wouldn't be slashy so you can put down the drool buckets right now fangirls. Actually I find it really fascinating in a totally analytic, how-to-write way. So, I started a blog to analyze the show (and possibly to answer some major questions left from the end of season 2. Warning: Contains spoilers for everything up through the end of Series 2. DO NOT READ if you haven't watched all six episodes. But if you're like me and kind of gnawing on the furniture while you wait for Season 3 to start filming, I'm trying to post stuff over there every few days.

So, November: anyone else working on something for Nanowrimo? (In my case I'm calling it Nanofimo--National Novel FINISHING month.)

EXCUSE ME???? WTF did I just read?

2012-06-07T13:02:11Z

So you know how yesterday I was all "Oh, the FF.net thing is irritating, but I'll just back up my fics and say to hell with it"?

Yeah, that was yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday evening I got this ... review. I'm posting the first part of it here because I forgot to save it in its entirety. Which is fine, because really just the first paragraphs are enough to piss you right the hell off.

We have been observing and waiting...Those who are kept waiting to long could
get creative and issue public notices like the one served to the author
Purplerhino (below*) . Consider this a compliment; your work is worth notice
and followup. Not that you need the ego boost. It has not escaped our notice
that your normally finish what you start. You could think about taking it down
or handpicking another author finish it. Otherwise it's just another in a long
line of the unfinished and no one thinks this story deserves to be on that
stagnate list.

*We the public on fanfiction have been waiting for "Purplerhino" to finish
"Perchance To..." for years. The aforementioned author has had adequate time
to finish this story. This is a clear case of story abandonment. *see fine
print below* Further more in the case of said abandoned story: "Perchance
To...", we the public on fanfiction claim ownership of Perchance To... and are
donating its creative entirety to any accomplished author willing to finish
this story.

*thepublicswish does not encourage or condone plagiarism of claimed,completed
material by active or inactive writers on . The exception being with the
express permission of owner or author(s)of abandoned incomplete material.

this public court finds this arrangement benefits all and could end the
plagiarism epidemic currently causin...

EXCUSE ME????

I'm supposed to be COMPLIMENTED by this? Thank FUCK they pointed that out, because otherwise I'd have just been insulted by the whole freaking thing.

Suggesting that they have the right to put my unfinished fic up for adoption by someone else... I have no words. Just streams of steam coming out of my ears.

If one wanted to be technical about this sort of thing, one might argue that what they want to do is write fanfiction about my fanfiction. And it seems kinda silly to be pissed about it in that light. Somehow I'm still pissed.

I found this tumblr entry which is talking about this same "reviewer" and they express my feelings on it much more eloquently than I'm capable of at the moment: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/thepublicswish

So I read that last night, just before I was about to go to bed. I'd already finished backing up all my FF.net stories and most of my reviews, including the reviews on that particular story. Since "thepublicswish" (and who the FUCK made them the mouth person for public opinion? Oh, that's right, their own egotistical assery) is an anonymous account, I couldn't reply to them directly. So I replied on my FF.net profile with the following statement and apology to the rest of my readers.

My apologies to the thousands of incredibly polite wonderful people who have supported and loved my stories all these years. This is not for you.
Dear thepublicswish,
First of all, thank you for informing me that I should be "complimented" because my story was worth noticing. I barely noticed the compliment beneath the rest of the insulting pile of bullsh*t you just tossed my way. No, I "don't need an ego boost"--I'm absolutely arrogant enough as it is.

Arrogant enough, in fact, to say emphatically that what I write--no one else will finish except for me. No I will not adopt my fic out for someone else to finish. No one else lives in my head, no one else knows what twists and turns that story is supposed to take. I'm not one of those authors who just makes it up as she goes along. I plot my stories out from beginning to end. I have notes and backstory and reams written that YOU WILL NEVER SEE.
And I have all the end chapters. I usually write them about the same time as I'm writing the beginning chapters.
I know how "Dangers Untold" ends. Only two other people in the world have read it. One of them passed away.
I know how "DUST" ends... and I'm still writing it. I have ten chapters that I haven't finished editing.
Yes I do normally finish what I start. And I will finish all of my stories. Someday.
But I have a life. And a job. And a family. I have other hobbies and passions. I have a fickle muse that turns her nose up at me sometimes and refuses to come out and play. And until she does the story will wait.
But it sounds as if you do not have a life, if you have the time to send me such insulting emails. It sounds as if you've never had writer's block--which tells me you're one of those vain authors who are only in it for the reviews. It sounds to me like it's really bothering you an awful lot that I have an uncompleted fic languishing here for you to go back and re-read and enjoy.
So I'm taking it down until it's finished.
I'm taking all of my unfinished fics down, in fact.
Had you worded your email politely, maybe asked me if/when I was planning to finish it, or asked if you could adopt it... you probably wouldn't have pissed me off. Instead you chose to write me the most insulting (and poorly spelled) letter imaginable, implying that not only was I an ego driven author too lazy to get off my butt and write, but that it was an actual CRIME for me to not just hand it over to someone else to finish--and if I wasn't going to do it myself, you were going to do it for me.
Well, I hope you're happy. If anyone asks, you're the reason we can't have nice things.
Sincerely,
KnifeEdge
To everyone else,
I'm sorry. It's been bothering me for years that these stories are unfinished. I do intend to finish them someday, but between the entitlement queen who pissed me off this evening and the rumors of the site going on a censorship spree from this morning... I think it's safer if I take these stories down and post them elsewhere.
If you wondered what happened to "Dangers Untold", "Shove's Tale" and "DUST" ... the first two have been taken down completely and will be reposted when they are finished. I have archived all your reviews, because they have made me smile a great deal over the years and I've appreciated every single one.
"DUST" is up on several prominent Spuffy websites, as well as on my livejournal. You can find me there under the name knifeedgefic.
I have backed up all of my stories and reviews, just in case the censors decide they want to play hardball. I will always be available on Livejournal if you really do miss me.

Did I overreact?

Probably.

Am I somewhat relieved that my two longest "on hiatus" stories are no longer online to garner "PLEASE FINISH THIS!!!" reviews? Yeah, pretty much.

I probably will finish them someday, and then I'll clean them up and repost them here. Or somewhere else. And I feel bad because there are a lot of people who had favorited those stories and who liked to re-read them occasionally, finished or not. But that number wasn't substantial enough to make me leave it up when ass-hats like "thepublicswish" are prepared to offer my fic up to all and sundry to finish.

And if anyone even THINKS about suggesting I adopt out "DUST"... there will be blood.

Moving Moving Moving...

2012-06-06T23:27:33Z

So, we bought a new house, and we officially moved in about a week ago. I am still living amongst boxes while I juggled necessity: should I paint that bookcase now? Or hope I have the initiative to do it later? What about my dress? Vanity? I need more bookshelves! Why do I have so many freaking books!??? OMG I'M DROWNING IN BOXES!

The husband and teenager are ... er ... helping. Mostly by staying out of the way, which I suppose is somewhat helpful.

The cats are helping by climbing all over the boxes and furniture like they are mountains and must be conquered just because they are THERE. This meant that this morning my youngest cat woke me up from my morning shamble around the kitchen by knocking a box of Christmas ornaments off of a high spot where they shouldn't have been in the first place. I'm kind of scared to open the box since it's the box of things that I've had since I was a baby and many of those ornaments are one of a kind and irreplaceable.

Maybe I'll just wait until the kitty has gone and hid somewhere for a while.

Finally, in fandom related news: I'm lucky, I suppose, that all of my long Buffy fic is already archived in multiple locations and I have some fairly solid backup copies on my hard drive. Not so lucky when it comes to my Pirates and Labyrinth fics. So I'm archiving everything I have over at FF.net, including reviews. Just in case.

I pretty much refuse to edit what I've posted there for mature content. It's silly and pointless and when I put smut in a story it's usually for a purpose. If they want to yank my fics, fine. If they want to ban me, fine. I'll just post them somewhere else.

Maybe I'll even clean them up and post them somewhere else. Some of those old fics have some typos, and could use a little overhauling.

Crap, now I'm back in the moving boxes situation: Do I edit and repost them to my LJ? Do I just repost them and hope someday I feel like editing...?

HELP!

Posting about a totally new different fandom!

2012-05-21T17:55:57Z

Okay, so I have this curse. Every single time I get into a show that's currently in production, the minute I get really attached it seems like bad things happen. That's why there are a lot of shows where I watched the first season or two, and then stopped. And waited. And once the show was done and wrapped, THEN I felt like I could go back and watch it.

That's why I didn't finish watching Buffy until 2009. That's why I STILL haven't watched past season 2 of Supernatural. That's why I'm only JUST NOW watching Season 2 of LOST.

But a friend of mine got me hooked on "Community" and I love it soooo much. And now Season 3 is over and we're only getting a short run for Season 4, and Dan Harmon is leaving(!) amid lots of bitterness, and I still think Chevy Chase is a prick and I could watch the show without him... and...

I love this show so much. It's not exactly like anything on TV--although it's extremely meta awareness of TV Tropes makes it like EVERYTHING on TV but in a way that is beyond everything else ever. And that's why I love it. I love that it's unique and weird, and that it totally appeals to geeks like me. And now they're replacing Dan Harmon as showrunner because they want to take it in a more "mainstream" direction? Make it more appealing to the masses???

No. No. No! Bad executives!

I mean, yeah, I get that they need to make money on this, and that if it doesn't make money then it isn't worth them producing. And yes, the ratings have dropped (maybe because they insist on putting it in really bad timeslots? I don't know. I don't have cable or TV at all, and I have to get all my "Community" through HULU and Netflix.). But I want to get down on my knees and BEG them not to change the things that make me love "Community" so much.

Please do not stop doing TV-Trope-ic shows! My favorite episodes are the ones that are the most self-aware. The multiple time-line episode is one of the best things I've ever seen on TV. The Conspiracy Theories ep with the multiple plot twists. The bottle-episode that took place entirely in the study room (and gave us all the boys in their underwear, thankyouthereisagod). ALL the paintball episodes. The pillows vs. blankets episode with the historical documentary narration. The zombie episode! Gah!!!!!! I could go on and on and on and on.

Please do not change the characters! As annoying as it is, I love Jeff's speechifying and Annie's adorable nerdiness (though it'd be nice if they let her grow up a LITTLE). I love Britta's hypocritcal preachiness, and Shirley's turn-on-a-dime nice girl to badass mama. I love how sweet Troy is and Abed's quirkiness, and Chang and the Dean's overtop insanity. (I could live without Pierce, though I admit that the jokes about his stupidity and racism make me laugh--at him. Which is all I ever wanted out of Chevy Chase in the first place, cause I don't think he's very funny. My enjoyment of him is the same as I'd get at a dunk tank. I want to throw things at him and watch him flounder like a stupid-fish.)

Please don't make it more PC! Yes, I know that a lot of the show's humor is based on stereotypes (and sometimes ripping them apart). Yes, I know that they rely pretty heavily on Pierce's completely unconscious racism for humor, or poking fun at various religions. And I know that that doesn't always sit well with people, and sometimes, yes, the humor falls flat. But I really like that the show is so self aware of what it's doing, that it uses this bravery to TRY jokes like that, in order to deconstruct them.

Please do not make this another bland sit com.

Please do not cancel it after the short run Season 4.

Also, while I'm asking for things I know I probably won't get, can we please have like, five or more episodes where Jeff dresses in the magicians outfit from the episode "The First Chang Dynasty"? I really, really think that will improve ratings. Those skin-tight black leather pants, rippling abs, and the black fingernail polish... I'm totally with the Dean on that one.

GUH.

Can someone PLEASE make me a GothPunk!JeffWinger gif?

dusty things

2012-05-09T21:32:36Z

I'm beginning to wonder if i didn't title my fic what I did because my house is literally full of dust. I have just spent the better part of four hours cleaning TWO small bookcases in my kitchen. Two. Pulling everything off of them, scrubbing off the thick layer of grease/dust/pet hair that always seems to build up in kitchens, and which you don't notice because how often do you really pull out all those cookbooks anyway?

And there's so much JUNK, too. Where does it come from? Why did I save some broken bit of plastic that doesn't apparently go to anything in my house, but which has been lovingly tossed into the Bowl Of All Small Things that sits besides the Change Bowl That Holds Everything But Change. Why do I have a plastic pirate ring that squirts water? Four pairs of irreparably broken sunglasses? A small collection of horribly ugly (and not even charmingly so) coffee mugs? Why have we saved ads for magazines for the last four years? Why?

But moving means cleaning (and people coming to look at the house definitely means cleaning) so I might as well go through all this stuff now before I have to figure out how to stuff it in boxes.

Some of it got tossed. Some will get repurposed, but so many things are just getting junked right now before I can convince myself that I really NEED that loose screw that doesn't appear to go to anything (I did not check to see if it belongs in my head, however... hmmmm).

In other news, I think I wrote close to 1000 words today, or last night or some combination of the two. So, yay. Go me.

Just me...

2012-05-04T23:16:33Z

I compartmentalize my life so much.

There's "Day Job" and "Theater Stuff" and "Fandom." There's "Family" and "Friends" and "People Who I'd Like To Punch In The Throat." There's "Art" and "Writing" and "Acting" and "Designing."

Some things cross all boundaries, but most get their little sliver of my life, and when I put them away and take out something new it usually gets my mostly undivided attention while I'm playing with it. Until it's time to put it away and switch to something else.

On the one hand that means that when I'm in a particular zone, I'm THERE. And it keeps things fresh.

On the other... I can see where certain things in my life really need to integrate better, and where, if I did integrate it, it might make it easier for people to understand when I do vanish for a bit... maybe?

Anyway, here's a list of what's going on in my life, at the moment:

My "day job" is getting semi-shelved. I've been working freelance full time for a long time, but over the last few months the amount of time I've had to spend working has significantly dropped, not to mention I just don't have the drive to keep at it the way I used to. On the bright side, I'll be starting a new part-time job soon that will make up for what I'm losing by not doing as much freelance work.
I'm getting ready to start the process of packing and cleaning my house because...
We're in the middle of purchasing a home. Which is one of the scariest things I've ever done. I have so much doubt -- not because the house isn't great (it's really great), but because I always worry when it comes to big financial stuff. Not to mention I worry that we won't be able to keep the place up as well as it should be. My family isn't that great at the house keeping, TBH.
I'm writing again, mostly because it distracts me from the stress that always surrounds huge life changes.
I am always and forever a Labyrinth and Buffy and PotC fan, but lately I am super in love with Community. I want to be Troy and Abed's best friend and hang out with them in their blanket forts and go on adventures in the dreamatorium with them SO bad.
I just started watching Lost for the first time ever a couple of months ago. I'm only about halfway through Season 2 at the moment and I'm eating it up. It has so many things I love: flashbacks and long complicated stories and intertwining narratives, and weird plot twists and... so much love right now. And I'm breaking my own rule and saying PLEASE DON'T SPOIL ME! (Normally I'm all about spoilers, but I'm loving watching this with no idea of whats about to happen or when). And yes, I've heard all kinds of vague things about how the series ends, and how it drags in places, and stuff, but I want to figure all that stuff out on my own.
The last few months I've been struggling with depression again. I'm thankful that it's not as bad as it's been before, and that I recognize it for what it is. I'm also of the opinion that we place a lot of emphasis on being happy, and that when we're not happy we feel like there is something wrong with us. Well, sometimes life kinda sucks, and it's okay to be unhappy about that. For almost a year now there's been some minor but pervasive suckage, and I'm working to make things better. Moving will help immensely, even though it comes with so much of its own stress. But it's good stress, because it's Going Forward stress.

Anyway, that's me. Just so you know that my entire life doesn't completely revolve around what I write.

My Spuffy/DUST playlist ... here there be music. Also, vids.

2012-05-03T23:22:46Z

I can't write to music. If there are words it messes me up. I CAN and sometimes DO write to music that has no lyrics, but usually my favorite sound when I write is silence. I like the words to just roll around in my head so that I can hear them before I commit them to paper. (And for when my house isn't silent, there's simplynoise.com. I love the "brown noise" option. I put my headphones on and let the static drown out loud video games, barking dogs, noisy cats, teenagers who like to talk to me when I'm in the zone...)

But! I do listen to music for inspiration. When I'm cleaning around the house, or driving somewhere, or working on stuff for my day job, I have playlists set aside for whatever story I'm currently working on. I like to let the songs make pictures in my head and then later, translate them to story.

So, while I'm working on DUST, I thought I'd share a few of those songs, and why they're part of my playlist, including one that'll be mentioned in the next chapter when it goes up. Consider it a very tiny spoiler, if you will. Some of the songs on this playlist may be a little spoilery as well, if you haven't read the story yet, but they won't give away any major plot points (not obviously anyway.)

Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Why: This is one of my favorite songs and was one of the main driving inspirations behind this story. It FEELS like the first few parts of DUST to me. It has this laid back, slow, long dusty road feel to it (which the video gets perfectly). And the lyrics fit the story I'm writing so well, of these two people who are so layered with scars both inside and outside, and who keep picking at each other and exposing even more, who are both lonely and reaching for something.
Fav lyrics: "Scar tissue that I wish you saw, sarcastic Mr. Know-it-all.
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you cause with the birds I'll share.
With the birds I'll share this lonely view yeah."

Nada by the Refreshments
Why: This one came to me as a rec from Nos. Like "Scar Tissue" it has that long, dusty road feeling that I like so much, not to mention some really appropriate lyrics for Spike.
Fav Lyrics:
"There ain't no moral to this story at all
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie
...
I been away from the living, I don't need to be forgiven
I'm just waiting for that cold, black, sun-cracked,
Numb-inside, soul of mine
To come alive"

In My Veins by Andrew Belle
Why: This is one of my ultimate Spike/Buffy songs, and I'm linking to the fanvid that uses it by nvrbnkisst. I adore this song, the solemn, melancholy feel of it, the resignation, the desperation, the way it feels like their relationship: complicated and painful, with this underlying melody that is simply, exquisitely beautiful.
Fav Lyrics:
"Everything will change / Nothing stays the same / Nobody is perfect / Oh, but everyone is to blame"

"Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out / Oh, you’re all I taste, at night inside of my mouth /
Oh, you run away, cause I am not what you found / Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out / No, I cannot get you out..."

Blinding by Florence and the Machine
Why: Oh, god the THEMES! It has so many THEMES in this song that match my story and the characters and oh god I have SO many emotions about this song and why it is perfect for this story.
Fav Lyrics:
"And I could hear the thunder and see the lightning crack
All around the world was waking, I never could go back
Cos all the walls of dreaming, they were torn right open
And finally it seemed that the spell was broken"

"No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone
No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden
No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love ...
No more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world"

White Blank Page by Mumford and Sons
Why? Another awesome fanvid below using this song by nvrbnkisst. This is SUCH a Spike song. We've barely touched on Spike's human past in DUST, yet (it'll happen, I promise), but this song is so absolutely spot on to how I see him.
Fav Lyrics:
"A white blank page
and a swelling rage, rage
You did not think when you sent me to the brink, to the brink
You desired my attention, but denied my affections, my affections
So tell me now where was my fault,
in loving you with my whole heart?"

"Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life"

Born to Die by Lana Del Ray
Why: Okay, ignoring the fact that Lana looks kinda like Buffy from some angles and the hottie bad boy she's doing on top of the muscle car in the vid... I love the feel of this song, and oh the THEMES. I love themes. This has a very Season 6-7 feel to it, too.
Fav Lyrics:
"Walking through the city streets
Is it by mistake or design
I feel so alone on the Friday nights
Can you make it feel like home, if I tell you you’re mine"

"Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry
Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough
I don’t know why
Keep making me laugh
Let’s go get high
The road is long, we carry on
Try to have fun in the meantime"

Brick By Boring Brick by Parmore
Why: I'm reclaiming Paramore from the hoards of Twilight fans, because I really like them. This song was a carry over from when I was writing "West of the Moon" because it sort of encapsulates some of the major themes in DUST. The idea that life is not a fairy tale, that endings are only happy if you make them that way, that it's pointless to wait for your prince because he might not be what you want, or what you need.
Fav Lyrics: "If it's not real
You can't hold it in your hand
You can't feel it with your heart
And I won't believe it
But if it's true

You can see it with your eyes
Oh even in the dark
And that's where I want to be, yeah

Go get your shovel
We'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle"

Conversations by Finger Eleven
Why: Man I wish I could explain this without giving away plot... but trust me on this, this one is really appropriate.
Fav Lyrics: pretty much the whole thing

There are some songs that actually get a mention in the story, or that tie into the narrative ...

Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Mentioned in: Chapter 2, as Buffy and Spike are heading out into the desert, Spike starts to sing this song. Why?
"It was a creepy song, but somehow appropriate. His voice suited it perfectly: deep and growly and tired. He sang it mockingly and it ought to have made her mad, but Buffy knew why he was singing. Out here there was the temptation to fill the silence just so that it wasn't so empty and lonely, and even a creepy song sung by a vampire was better than walking quietly into the hollow dark."

We Are Not Alone by the Karla DeVito
Mentioned in: Chapter 15, Buffy and Spike take a study break to watch "The Breakfast Club" (Buffy's choice). The scene that follows takes place with the end credits song playing underneath.
Anthony Michael Hall finished up his speech, and Judd Nelson strode off across the football field in his long coat and big ugly boots. Buffy sighed. Then she glanced over at the other end of the couch where Spike was lounging, his gaze still fixed on the TV."
Have some "Breakfast Club" fun:

Shadow by the Lurkers
Mentioned in: Chapter 16, when Buffy and Spike visit Oz's dorm room. Spike takes the opportunity to play with Oz's punk collection.
"The angry screech of guitars and bass filled the air, accompanied by the violent beat of the drums. Voices Spike had once heard live chanted: "Shadow! Shadow! Shadow! Shadow! My heart's in the shadows! My heart's in the shadows!" If he closed his eyes he was right back in Manchester, in a tiny little club full of juicy human bodies slamming against each other to a beat that reverberated in his dead chest."
You can be right there with Spike in this vid:

Rebel Waltz by The Clash
Mentioned in: Chapter 33 (ha! I'm sneaking in a hint for the next chapter...) I'm going to leave context out and just give you a teaser...
"The floor was covered in blood--a shallow crimson pool that was nearly black underfoot. It spilled down the walls from the tarnished gold ceiling, and the candelabras reflected off the slick surface, lending the massive ballroom the appearance of hell. The dancers twirled through it, the blood staining the women’s skirts, weighing them down until the trains dragged below the surface. The men’s boots and trousers were stained nearly to their knees.
Spike stood amongst the whirl, ignoring the overwhelming scent of blood, the well-dressed dancers, the grisly decor, and the string quartet that seemed to be playing a classical version of The Clash’s “Rebel Waltz”, searching for something..."

There's a bunch of other stuff on my playlist, but I figured I'd just pick my favorites. Tell me, what are your favorite Spuffy tunes?

Oh man, here we go...

2012-04-19T06:22:48Z

I spent a tiny chunk of today actually writing! (Yay!) Working right now on Chapter 36 of "DUST" (yes, I'm several chapters ahead of you guys. Just so you know that they ARE written. I promise). I should be a lot farther, but first there was writer's block, and then there was Real Life, and then MORE Real Life...

le sigh.

But I WILL finish this story. I've actually written the ending already. I have an outline and everything.

Only, that's kind of the problem. I was looking at the outline and I realized that this story that I started thinking it'd be a quickie that I could knock out in between writing "West of the Moon"... well, it's already longer than I thought. But I realized tonight that it's actually got five distinct parts. And I'm only JUST at the tail end of Part 3 right now. So, a little over halfway finished. Now, each part doesn't exactly have a set number of chapters. Part 1 was really long, Part 2 was slightly shorter. Part 3 shorter than Part 2. I don't know yet how long Parts 4 and 5 are, though I suspect that they'll be shorter than Part 2 at least.

How do you know which parts are which? Well, they each have their own banner, to start with. But it can pretty much be broken down like this:

Part I: Spike wakes up Buffy and they explore their situation.
Part II: The two of them begin working together and exploring Sunnydale for clues
Part III: ~~Smut ...~~ Er... Angst and Emotional Overload
Part IV: will commence with Chapter 33, and there will be a significant shift in what's going on...
Part V: ... you'll know when we get there.

But that still means that I've got at least fifteen or so chapters left to go (give or take). So for those of you who are worried that someday DUST will end? It will, eventually. But not for a while yet.

For those who are worried that I'm going to abandon this fic? I'm not. I promise. In fact I'm thinking what I'll probably do is try to finish writing Part 4, then post all of those chapters on a weekly basis. Same when I finish Part 5. So if I go a long time between posting, know that when you finally DO see the next chapter of DUST, you'll get the one after it really soon.

Fic: DUST (32/?)

2012-04-17T06:25:43Z

Previous Chapters are HERE

Title: DUST
Author: knifeedgefic
Era/Season: Season 4 (post “Harsh Light of Day” and “Fear, Itself” but before “Beer Bad”)
Rating: Mature/NC-17 (strong language, sexual situations, adult content)
Genre: other?
Betaed by: goblin_dae , yakimama , and subtilior

Summary: She'd kicked his butt, taken the Gem and sent it off to Angel. Buffy thought she'd seen the last of Spike. Clearly, she’d been too optimistic. That he was in her house, in her room, waking her out of a sound sleep and asking for (okay, demanding) her help meant that something had to be majorly wrong. They weren't due for another apocalypse, but ... why else would a vampire make a truce with the Slayer?

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all recognizable characters, locations,and dialogue belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the various writers. This is written purely for fun.

Author's Note: I know, Spike is British and therefore he should be thinking "torch" instead of "flashlight" in his internal narration, but it was too confusing once I added in actual torches. So, let's just pretend he's picked up the American term instead.

32.

He loved her.

He was in love with her.

He hadn’t even thought before he’d said it, hadn’t had a chance to roll the idea around in his brain and see how it tasted before he’d blurted it out—which made it deeply, unfortunately, horribly true. Spike was in love with Buffy.

With the Slayer.

For a moment, he really wished he was dead—as in the actual sense, rather than his current sorry undead state. He had no idea how long he stood there, frozen in horror. All he could think about was how utterly, totally, thoroughly fucked he was.

In love with the Slayer.

He was in love with the Slayer.

For more than a hundred years his heart had belonged to one woman only: Drusilla. Their relationship had been stormy and turbulent, and he’d known that she was too damaged to ever love him as completely as he had her. Instead, he’d loved enough for the both of them and turned a blind eye to her unfaithfulness as much as he could. They had fought and shagged and gone their separate ways, but Spike had always found Dru again, had always been able to patch things up. It had been a mad, masochistic kind of love, but he’d believed in it with everything that was in him.

Until she’d broken him. Until she had cast him aside.

And now, like a complete twonk, he’d found the one woman in the world who was guaranteed to bring him more pain than Dru ever could … and he’d fallen in love with her.

Spike rarely questioned his heart. It wanted what it wanted, and it wanted it with more ferocity than he’d ever craved anything else in his existence, including blood. It had been that way when he was human, and it had only gotten worse once he’d become a vampire. There was no reasoning with it, no logic to it—his battered heart was hopelessly consistent on this point. He had fallen in love, and there would be no climbing out for him. He still loved Dru, after all ... but now there was Buffy, glowing deep inside him and pushing the shadow of Drusilla into the corners.

He cursed the Slayer, cursed Sunnydale, and the spell, and Drusilla for driving him here, and Angel for taking Dru, and the Slayer for shagging Angel, and the entire world for making Buffy what she was and him what he was.

If he could have reached into his chest and ripped out his heart and stomped it into the ground, he would have.

Spike laughed bitterly. Turned out that the Slayer had been right about him after all. He was more like Angel than he thought. Only far, far more pathetic, because while Spike might be able to shag her with impunity, she’d stolen his heart … and there wasn’t a curse in the world that could give it back to him. She’d sent him to hell as surely as if she’d thrust a sword into his chest.

Still, the knowledge settled something in him. Everything he’d been so confused about for the last month, his sudden disinterest in killing her and his need to please her, the way he wanted to be kind to her when they fucked rather than simply shagging her senseless, the things Dru had said—and there were implications there he wasn’t yet ready to examine—it all made sense when he added this last, missing bit of the puzzle.

He loved her.

And nothing would ever be the same again.

He became aware, after some time, of a rattling noise, and Buffy’s panicked breathing. She was swearing softly, coughing after every few words, and judging by the sound of it, trying to resurrect the dead flashlight by threatening it.

“C’mon, work, damn you,” she muttered.

“Buffy—” he croaked, his voice as raw as hers.

“Shut up, Spike.” Her tone was cold. “Just … shut up.”

Her heart was rabbiting away, and the scent of fear rolled off of her. It was a delicious combination, and he couldn’t keep from licking his fangs. Just because he loved her, after all, didn’t mean he wasn’t still a vampire. Probably a good thing it’s darker in here than the inside of Angelus’ arsehole. She’d stake him, if she could. He knew it.

Still, he had to say something. “Look … about what I said—”

“Which part of shut up did you not understand?”

“The part where I have to obey your bloody orders,” he snapped. “Buffy, we need to talk.”

“No. No, we do not. What we need is for this stupid flashlight to work, and then to get the hell out of here.”

“What I said—”

“We will never speak of again. You were angry, you blurted out the first … you were just … We’re not talking about it. Why won’t this thing turn on?”

“Slayer—”

“SHUTUP!” The whistle of air was all the warning he had. He ducked just as something whizzed past his head to crack off of a rock somewhere behind him. She must have flung the flashlight at him. It rolled, and then he heard it clatter over the edge and down into the chasm below. Somewhere, a demon was about to get brained by falling flashlight.

“Hey! That was my property you just chucked down the gullet of hell, I’ll have you know.”

“You p-probably st-stole it,” she said through chattering teeth. The fight seemed to have gone out of her. Cloth rustled, and he moved toward the sound, wincing when he stepped on some uneven rock and jarred his injured leg. God, I’ve got rotten luck.

He sighed. “Yeah, probably did.” His hand came up and caught at a damp bit of her jacket. It was icy cold, and this close he could sense her trembling. There was nothing on earth he wanted so much, just then, as to wrap her in his arms and warm her.

Unfortunately, even if she’d let him, he had no warmth to give.

Pillock. What’s next, Spike? Gonna wish you could grow old with her and give her kiddies, too?

He wanted to fight it out, wanted to discuss what he’d said and why he’d said it and whether or not she felt anything for him … but now clearly wasn’t the time. If he’d had a heartbeat, it would have stopped earlier, when he’d seen her go down into that puddle. Something had freaked her out to the point where she’d nearly lost it, and he’d had to use some of the restraining tactics he’d learned over the years when Dru had had her more violent fits.

She was stronger than Dru, though, and far, far more vulnerable. The slender arm he held in one hand trembled. With his other hand he fished out his lighter. The tiny flame seemed incredibly bright in the darkness. Buffy’s face was pale, and she had her arms wrapped around her as if she could contain her shivers simply by holding herself still.

Their little chat was gonna have to wait until they were someplace warmer.

“Guess it’s a good thing I smoke, yeah?”

His attempt at levity fell further than the doomed flashlight. She glanced past him at the cold stone floor and clenched her jaw.

Spike wondered if she could see how pitted and dangerous it was, beyond the tiny circle of light from his zippo. Little pools of water lay in wait for another tumble. Rocks littered the ground, ready to trip or twist an ankle. And while the chasm in the corner was the deepest, several thin fissures spiderwebbed away from it. What had been merely some villain’s dream lair, in the light, had become a deadly obstacle course in the dark.

If they were going to get out of there in one piece, they needed more light. “Stay put,” Spike said.

“You’re leaving?” Buffy’s voice held an edge of panic.

“I’m gonna go find a bloody torch, what did you think?”

“Oh. I thought—”

Spike’s temper began to boil again. “What, that I’d just ditch you here and scarper off on my own?”

“Yes! Well ... Does ‘scarper’ mean to leave?”

Spike took a deep breath and tried to put a lid on his anger. She was afraid, of course. He didn’t need his nose to tell him that. Stuck down here in a place that obviously brought up some bad memories, half-drowned, freezing, relying on him to get her out, add in her abandonment issues—yeah, she was afraid.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” he promised. “What I said earlier—I meant it. Didn’t know I meant it until I said it, but I do. And I don’t leave the women that I—”

“Don’t say it,” she warned. Her eyes had gone steely again.

“Love.” He stepped back quickly, in case her fists got any ideas. Instead, she turned away, her proud little chin held high. “I don’t leave, Buffy. I won’t leave you, I swear it—”

Her laugh was a harsh, strangled thing. “Fine. Fine. You don’t leave. You’re Mr. Stand-By-Me. Whatever. Can we have this argument somewhere that is else? Cause I really don’t want to be here anymore.”

That was half her bloody problem, Spike thought. For once, however, he bit his tongue. Instead he handed her the lighter. “Hold this, don’t let it go out.”

She frowned, but took it. “Why?”

“Because I need it to see where I’m goin’ … and I reckon you’d rather have it than stand about in the dark on your lonesome.”

Relief flooded her eyes, then she looked at him suspiciously. “I thought you c-could see in the dark.”

Why was it everything he did had to have some kind of evil ulterior motive?

“You do know how vision works, yeah? It’s pitch black in here. Got to have some light. I’m not a bat, after all. That ought to be enough for these old eyes, though. You hold that up, and I’ll go see about a torch or something.”

“Oh.” Her fingers were shaky on the lighter. “I could come with you.”

“You can’t see well enough to know where to put your feet.”

“So you’ll tell me where to put them,” she said, determined.

“You don’t trust me, remember?”

She took a deep breath, and this time, when her gaze met his, he could see the scared girl and the Slayer both mixed within. “I’d rather trust you than wait here alone.”

Floored, Spike could only gape at her. “Right,” he said, and ran his hand through his hair nervously. “Right then,” he took a step toward her, only for his right leg to buckle under him. “Fuck.” He wobbled, then straightened his wounded thigh. “Stupid thi—”

He froze, surprised when Buffy slipped under his right arm and put her left around his waist. “What—?”

Her gaze was fixed on the ground straight ahead. “You’re gonna have to tell me where to go,” she said. “Don’t make a thing about this, okay?”

Spike swallowed hard, cleared his throat, and nodded. “Bit to the right, then, and straight on till morning.”

***

Their progress was haltingly slow. He’d managed to ignore his injuries earlier when he’d been fishing her out of the puddle, but the vampiric version of adrenaline was starting to wear off. Aches and pains were making themselves known: his eye was starting to swell shut, his nose was probably broken again, and he was pretty certain she’d cracked a couple of his ribs during their tussle. Then there was his leg, which was having a screaming fit where the crossbow bolt had torn through his upper thigh muscle and hit the bone.

In addition, the Slayer’s puddle plunge was taking its toll. She was shivering constantly and pressing against him hard in order to conserve what little body heat he could give her. It wasn’t much, but room temperature at this point was probably warmer than her damp clothing.

And bickering, apparently, was better than admitting that they were both miserable, hurting, and needed each other. By the time they reached the cavern’s parlor of the damned, Spike had nearly managed to forget his earlier revelation, and Buffy had gone entirely over to the Bitchy Side.

“You’re freezing,” he said. Because stating the obvious is so bloody helpful, Spike.

“You gonna p-pretend you c-c-care?”

Spike clenched his jaw. “Maybe I don’t. Maybe it’d be better for us both if you turned into a meat popsicle. You’d get your bleedin’ death wish, and I’d get a measure of peace. Can’t say I’d miss how bitchy you are.”

She jerked to a halt. “I d-don’t have a death w-w-wish. Why d-do you k-keep saying that?”

“Sure you do,” he said. “Every Slayer has a death wish. Comes part and parcel with the gig, pet. You fight and you fight and you fight some more. And eventually you get tired of it. Eventually, you just want it to end. Maybe you don’t bite a bullet or leap into the mouth of hell—but you start looking for an out.”

“What d-do you know?”

“More than you. You forget I killed two Slayers? I know a bloody death wish when I see it, Slayer. And I see it every single time I look in your eyes.” Only now he knew why it killed him a little, every time.

“I never forget that you k-k-killed two s-s-s-Slayers, S-Spike,” she said. “The only d-d-death wish I have is f-f-for you.”

“Careful there, princess. Be a bloody shame if those chattering teeth of yours bit off your tongue.”

“I hate you.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” he said. “Someday, you might believe it.” It had worked so well for him, after all.

She stumbled going up a set of roughly hewn stone steps, and Spike’s bad leg twisted under him. “Oops.”

“Bitch,” he growled.

He made himself let go of her and hobble ahead, toward an altar-like section that held what looked like half the inventory of Yankee Candle Company. Most of them had no wick left, and tallow had melted down the stone to pool in great lumpy wax stalactites beneath. “Here,” he said, and took the lighter out of her shivering hand, then touched the flame to the few candles that remained intact. The light grew, and Buffy sank down on a bit of stone nearby with palpable relief.

The place looked like it had been decorated for an issue of Better Crypts and Caverns. On this side of the cave, archways that wouldn’t have been out of place in a cathedral lay shattered over broken rock. Chunks of furniture rotted in the shadows, surrounded by bits of mildewy manuscripts. One of the papers caught Spike’s eye as he started to search for the makings of a torch. Carefully he eased it out into the light. The edges crumbled to dust when he touched them, but the center remained mostly intact long enough for him to make out the crest and a bit of the Latin.

“Aurelius.” Spike frowned. “Slayer ...?”

She sighed and huddled in on herself, fisting her hands under her jacket and refusing to look at him.

“Angel said you killed the Master,” Spike said. “This the place, then?”

She made a sound he couldn’t quite interpret. It hadn’t been a laugh.

Spike limped over and knelt in front of her so he could see her face better. She just turned it away. In the flickering candlelight she looked heart-breakingly beautiful, even with her wet hair and her pale face framed in shadows. How had he not seen, for so long?

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“Why?” she asked. “What does it matter? It happened. It’s over. It’s ancient history, Spike.”

“It’s your history,” he said. “It matters to me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“Well, it bloody well does!” He snarled and grabbed her chin, forcing her to face him. She smacked his hand away and glared at him instead. “Ever since we set foot in this place you’ve been running scared. You think I don’t smell it on you? Think I can’t tell when you’re frightened out of your wits? You lost it, back there, when we were fighting. You almost died. Almost drowned yourself in a fucking puddle—”

“Well it’s not like it would have been the first time!”

Spike froze.

“You asked me who I killed here,” she said, fury lighting her face and getting rid of her chatter completely. “Me, Spike. I’m the one who died here. Three years ago. I came here to fight the Master, and I lost. He bit me and dumped me in one of those little pools, and I drowned.”

***

For a long moment, Spike just stared at her.

In the flickering light she thought she could see a hundred thoughts flashing behind his eyes. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was human.

Then, because Spike was eloquent, he said, “What?”

“I got better,” she said, humorlessly.

“I can see that,” Spike said.

“So, I don’t have a death wish,” she said, because clearly he was missing the point. “Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.”

He stared at her, his eyes serious and dark.

“That’s precisely why you do.”

“Huh?”

When he looked at her again, the candlelight caught the edge of his face and she realized that it was bruises, not shadows, that had darkened the hollow beneath his eye.

“You got a taste of it,” he said. “Death. It caught you once, and you know it can catch you again. You survived but you know you’re not immortal. You cheated death and eventually you know he’s gonna come to collect. But you’re not scared of it anymore. You know that when your time comes, you’ll get to rest, and you want it. You want it to end—the fighting, the responsibility. Admit it, Slayer. You like to dance with death. You’re a little bit in love with it.”

Why was it always Spike who saw through her? Why was he the only one who could? It pissed her off, infuriated her.

“I am not in love with death,” she said.

He looked at her, and his eyes were filled with pity. “Yeah,” he said. “You are. I know why you let me shag you. I’m not stupid, you know. Well, not completely, anyway. You’re looking for your grand exit—hoping that I’ll slip up, break my promise, take a bite out of you. Sorry, Slayer, not gonna happen.”

Don’tsayitdon’tsayitdon’tsayit.

“I’m in love with you,” he said, doing this thing with his eyebrows that made him look super-serious.

“You’re not in love with me. God, do you even hear yourself? You’re delusional, Spike. This spell … it’s made us both crazy. It’s like that Stuck-Home Syndrome thing—”

“Stockholm—”

“Whatever. The point is, we’re both … lonely. That’s it. We’re like the last two people on earth; and you’ve got boy parts and I have girl parts and so we, you know, got part-y.”

She winced. Got part-y? Sometimes Buffy wished her mouth came with an owner’s manual so she would know how to shut it off. Or at least program the language setting correctly.

Spike stared at her with something like exasperated amusement, a smile twisted the corner of his lips.

“Maybe it started that way,” he said. “But things change. We’ve changed. God, bein’ around you, day after day, seeing you, touching you, knowing you—how could I not love you, Buffy?”

“You don’t have a soul—”

“Back to that old song, is it?” Spike rolled his eyes. “Don’t need a soul to love, pet.”

“Angel—”

“Fucked you over good and proper, and now I’m gonna pay for it. Yeah, I know. I’m not Angel.”

That much was painfully obvious. She glanced back at the place where she’d nearly died for the second time. Spike had pulled her out.

“...I don’t fucking know CPR, and if I have to wing it I’m gonna cock it up, so would you cough that water up already?...”

“Spike? If I had... I know you said you... if I had d-drowned... You said you didn’t know CPR...”

He shrugged. “Would have tried anyway. Not letting you escape me that easy, Slayer. Figure I’ve seen it on TV enough to have blundered my way through. Not like I could have made it worse. Why?”

His head did that tilty thing that reminded her of a dog trying to understand human. It wasn’t a bad comparison, really. Of course, Spike was a hell of a lot smarter than a dog, and he always did understand her—sometimes better than most of the humans she knew.

“Who pulled you out last time? Who brought you back?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer, even if he’d never heard the story.

“Angel,” she said, to answer his first question. “And Xander.”

Spike frowned. “I’m surprised Bat-face didn’t take them out first.”

“They ... weren’t here. I—I faced him alone.”

“Alone?”

Giles had wanted her to talk about it. So had Willow, and Xander, and Angel. They’d poked and prodded and asked a bajillion questions, because they’d cared, because they’d wanted to know how it had all gone down. But how could she tell them, when they’d been so involved? How could she tell them when, at the time, she’d been so full of feelings—anger and fear, fury and resentment—at them. For not telling her she was going to die, for letting her find out the way she had, for manipulating her. Xander had told them how he’d had to go to Angel and practically bully him into helping find her. He thought that she hadn’t noticed the way he’d gloated, just a little, at Angel’s inability to save her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful Xander had saved her, but he didn’t have to be so smug about it.

And Angel—talking with him about it was even worse because it was almost like Angel hadn’t even cared that she was going to die. He hadn’t tried to stop her, hadn’t gone after the Master on his own like Giles, he’d just … waited, and when the chance for him to be her hero had happened the best he could do was claim he had no breath.

Buffy had taken CPR. Giles had sort of insisted on it, as part of her Slayer training. She’d also taken biology. If Angel could talk, he could still inflate his lungs, and that’s pretty much all he’d needed to be able to do to give her—

Spike’s hands shot out and gripped her hips, then he yanked her down into his lap and slammed his mouth over hers. It was only when she couldn’t talk anymore that she realized she had been—talking, that was. Everything she’d wanted to say to everyone else, all the words that had been bottled up inside of her, the anger, the resentment—it had all come pouring out. Because Spike hadn’t been there. Because Spike was there, now. Because, while he hadn’t saved her, he’d tried.

And now he was kissing her as if his unlife depended on it. Her mouth opened automatically underneath his onslaught, and she moaned when his tongue dipped inside to taste hers. He wasn’t warm, but he was warmer than her wet clothes, and she suddenly wanted to strip out of them and burrow into his arms.

She pulled back for air, and Spike’s hand caught in the hair at the nape of her neck. His eyes were very dark and intense. “Do you trust me, Buffy?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Not even a little? Won’t hurt you, I swear. Just want to try something.” He seemed serious, which with Spike meant that he really, really was. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. A smile briefly touched his lips. Then he was kissing her again, and whatever it was he wanted to show her apparently involved his tongue—which she didn’t really mind at all.

She tugged at his shirt, her hands skimming under the fabric to touch his skin. He moaned into her at the contact, and his hand tightened on her hip. Still, he made no move to undress her. It was getting kind of annoying, actually, that he wasn’t doing anything.

Then he did do something, but it wasn’t anything she would have expected.

Just as she was about to break their kiss so she could breathe, he clamped his hand around the back of her neck to hold her in place. His head tilted to the side; his mouth opened wider over hers. She felt him inhale, felt his chest rise under her palms, and then he breathed into her mouth.

Buffy’s eyes flew open, but it was too dark for her to see much more than the candlelight haloing Spike’s white hair.

For a second, she fought the sensation. Only, she really kinda did need air. In the end, however, it was curiosity that made her relax, made her stop fighting against him. He inhaled again, and breathed again, and filled her lungs. For a second or two, she simply sat there in his lap and let him breathe for her.

She felt, for a moment, like she had when they’d done that trance. They were one being that moved together and breathed together. They weren’t a slayer and a vampire, or the living and the dead. They were just Buffy and Spike, and she knew that whatever else might happen, whatever it was he thought he felt for her, Spike would do everything he could to keep her alive.

Even the impossible.

When he finally pulled away, he looked as shocked as she did. It took a couple of breaths for her to actually remember how to work her lungs on her own. Spike cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said. “Now we know the answer to that question, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” she said, shakily. “Guess we do.”

“What do you say we find a torch, get out of here, and go home?”

“I think I’d be good with that.”

***

They stumbled in the doorway just before dawn, Spike leaning heavily on Buffy’s shoulder to keep the weight off his injured leg. She’d have minded, except that he blocked the wind, which had dried her clothes but left her freezing. Her fingers and toes were numb by the time they hobbled up the walk, and the blast of warm air on her face as she opened the door was nearly painful.

There was only a momentary pause in the foyer. Then they looked at each other, at the stairs, at Spike’s bad leg and Buffy’s muddy hair and clothes, and without a word they headed up the stairs for the bathroom, leaning on one another.

She wasn’t going to think about it. Wasn’t going to examine the choice too closely, though she knew she’d made one. What she wanted, right now, was to make it up the stairs and into a hot shower. At this point she was well past exhausted. There was a good chance she could make it up on her own, but a better chance if she just didn’t let go of Spike.

What she was going to do when they got up there, she still had no clue.

If she didn’t think about it, if she just moved, things would sort themselves out without her having to make a conscious decision. Right now, she was all about the unconscious.

The last few steps were the worst. Her legs trembled under her, and she could feel Spike wobbling a bit beside her. They used their free arms to kind of push off the wall in a forward direction, and to keep themselves mostly upright. “Bit further,” Spike muttered, and then they were tumbling through the bathroom door to fetch up against the counter like something that had washed in on the tide.

He left her there after being sure she wasn’t going to fall and hop-limped across the tile to the tub. She heard the water come on and automatically began stripping her clothes off. Her jacket was stiff and crusty and didn’t want to budge. After several moments of fighting with it, she gave up and managed to toe off her shoes. Numbly she set to work on her jeans, and then Spike was there, pushing her fingers away and undoing the button and zipper.

Really, she should stop him, she knew. This was way past the boundaries that they’d set before. But she was tired, and fumble fingered, and somewhere along the way she’d made the choice to trust him—it seemed pointless to put up a fight over this. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her naked.

She let him finish stripping her, then helped him out of his blood caked jeans. With their arms around each other’s waists they climbed into the tub. The water was hotter than she could really stand, but she didn’t complain. Instead, she simply stood there and let it wash over her, thawing her cold skin.

Spike’s hands slid over her shoulders and turned her toward him so her back was to the spray. It was only because she was so tired that she let herself be pulled into his embrace, only exhaustion that made her lay her head against the solid wall of his chest, close her eyes, and drift.

Distantly she felt his hands smoothing over her skin, slippery and warmed from the water. He didn’t move her, just washed the bits of her that his hands could reach without having to dislodge her from his chest. Somehow he even managed to shampoo her hair. Sleepily, she was aware of his fingers trailing through the wet strands, working conditioner through the ends. It felt like heaven to let him do this for her.

Finally, just as she was starting to fall asleep for real, he took her by the shoulders and set her back from him. “Sorry, pet,” he murmured. “Gotta deal with my leg for a mo’.”

Buffy leaned back against the tile wall and cracked her eyes open. In the bright bathroom light she could see the mess that was Spike’s right thigh now. The bolt had gone through the muscle, and when he’d yanked it out, he’d made a huge mess of it. Blood oozed from the ragged wound, and he hissed when the water hit it.

“Ouchy,” she said. Then her gaze drifted up to take in the rest of him. Mottled bruising marred his rib cage, and the discoloration around his eye was even more pronounced in the light. Several other bruises had blossomed across his chest, including one right over his heart.

Buffy frowned. She knew she’d hit him, but... she didn’t remember the details. It had all been a bit blurry.

He struggled to rinse the wound out, then reached for the soap. Buffy watched with sleepy fascination as he lathered his hands, then ran the suds over his skin. Pretty. Had she ever watched a man shower before? She couldn’t remember, but she doubted it. Angel had been kinda private about that, the one time they’d...

“Buffy?” Spike stilled his movements and studied her with his head tilted to the side. “You alright?”

“Yes,” she said, and realized that she was crying.

“Buffy … Pet. Don’t … Look, it’s been a long night, yeah, and we’re... you’re … we’re …”

Whatever else he said was lost to her sobs. Slowly, as if he thought she’d break if he did, Spike eased his arms around her. Far too tired to flinch, she let him stroke her back and murmur nonsense against her hair.

She was just so tired. Tired of the spell, tired of the loneliness and the pain and the confusion. It was a good thing she had super human strength considering the baggage she had to carry. And now there was Spike, who confused her even more with his evilness and his sexiness and his insistence on feeling as though he were human. As though he really did care. Really could love her.

And if it was true, that something as soulless as Spike could love, then what the hell was wrong with her? She wasn’t good enough for Angel, but she was bad enough for Spike?

The water shut off about the time she ran out of tears, and then Spike helped her out of the shower. There was toweling and hair drying, but she felt as though she were sleepwalking through it. He sat her on the closed toilet, bundled up in a towel, while he fished out the first aid kit and did something to his leg. She watched through heavy lidded eyes.

“Gonna need some help here,” he said, reaching for her again. She let him pull her up, let herself be guided beneath his arm and then, supporting each other, they limped out into the hall. Here, Spike hesitated, then glanced at her warily. She ignored him and muzzily contemplated the hall carpet, which was in desperate need of a vacuuming. Then he turned them, and they dragged themselves into her bedroom.

The bed rose up to meet her like a long lost friend, and Buffy, heedless of how she’d gotten there, embraced it with open arms.

_________
To be continued...

Still alive...

If you haven't had a chance to read the Q&A I did about this story a few days ago, maybe that'll hold you over until I get a chance to update again. With any luck it won't be as long as it was this time.

DUST Q&A

2012-04-08T06:22:02Z

So, trying to get my brain back into writing DUST, and something I just posted on another site made me think that this might possibly be helpful...

I love getting reviews. Please don't think I don't, but what I really love is discussing ideas and thoughts behind things and "why did you do this instead of that" or whatever. It really gets my brain juices pumping and makes me start thinking.

SO... to that end, I'm opening the floor for questions pertaining to my fic "DUST" (or even to "West of the Moon" if people would like to talk about that, too. It's all applicable). Or even questions about fandom, my thoughts on Buffy/Spike, favorite episodes, moments, whatever. If you ask, I promise to answer.

**Please note that I won't give away spoilers or plot for the rest of DUST. Sorry.

Fic: Silence Speaks (3/?)

2012-03-31T18:54:50Z

I am trying, desperately, to get back to writing. I'm not quite ready to post more DUST yet (sorry!), but I've been poking at some other unfinished pieces and dribs and drabs to see if I can jolly my muse back into cooperating. This has been sitting around for a bit so I figure I'll post a little more of it.

Each "part" can, technically, be read as seperate drabbles, however, they are meant to be read in the order posted, even though it's extremely non-linear and jumps around in time quite a bit.

Title: Silence Speaks
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters/Pairings: Drusilla (mainly Dru/Spike, with implied Buffy/Spike and some Buffy/Angel)
Season: Jumps around, but mainly Season 2, with flashbacks.
Warnings: Violence, Sexual Situations (including mentions of rape and non-con), Kinks, Insanity, Non-linear storytelling, POV fic
Rating: Mature

Parts I & II
Parts III, IV, & V

Bye, baby Bunting,
Father's gone a-hunting,
Mother's gone a-milking,
Sister's gone a-silking,
Brother's gone to buy a skin
To wrap the baby Bunting in...

VI.
(Hunger)
Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean, 1997

The ship is full of rats. My Spike catches them quick and brings them to me. Mister Mittens used to bring us birds every morning and lay them on the doorstep.

“You have to eat, darling.”

I line them up along the wall. Their eyes are shiny drops of ink. They are small and soft and smell sweetly of carrion. Their whiskers tremble like kisses.

“We shall have a tea party. My guests are hungry.” I can hear their tummies growling. I cut my finger, so they may drink.

“No, Dru.” My Spike is hungry, too. He is always hungry. He licks at my finger, but it will never be enough. An ocean of blood would not be enough to fill him. He is bleached and hollow as a seashell washed up on the shore. “Pet, you’ve got to eat.”

I press my ear to his chest and listen to the roar.

VII.
(Secrets)
Mexico, 1998

“No.”

“Dru, don’t be difficult. Please. Look, there’s a family in that station wagon.” He smiles. I paint his teeth with my fingers. “You’d like that, wouldn’ t you? Couple of little kiddies, nice and ripe?”

“What have you done?”

“Dru...”

“I shan’t go. It’s too bright.”

“Fluorescent bulbs, is all. We’ll keep to the shadows.”

Miss Edith’s hair is mussed. Naughty thing. After all, Mummy spent hours in the arrangement. Did she hear, when Angel fell? Did she press her ear against the door? I tug away her gag and listen to her whisperwhisperwhisper.

“Miss Edith cannot hear Acathla anymore.”

My Spike is silent. Too silent. Secrets dance behind his eyes. He will not look at me, but they spill anyway. Little slips of sunlight full of dust. She laughs again, hovering at his shoulder. Why can’t he see her? I cannot push her away from him. She burns too bright to touch.

But my Spike can touch the sunlight where I cannot. He puts on his mask, ready for the ball.

“That so? Didn’t think she’d have it in her to send old Angel to hell. Still, world’s still here. Best to make the most of it.”

She laughs brighter, and he is hollow, so hollow, and longing.

VIII.
(Care)
Chicago, 1997

“Look what I’ve brought for you, my love.”

Pretty. “Such lovely curls. Hush, darling. Mummy has you.”

It speaks in whimpers, so soft. Hush, hush. Cheeks like warm china, the lashes are feathers wet with dew. What do I do, when baby cries, mummy? She will not stop!

Mother smelt of violets and mint. Hush ababy, rockababy, sing her to sleep, sweetheart. Then give her a kiss.

Mother knew best. My kisses quiet it and it stills.

Perhaps it is hungry? Mother fed sweet Mary at her breast, I must try the same. Only now it is cold, all the lovely warm fading. I shall wrap it in my blanket and sing to it.

The door opens, and my Spike returns.

“Are you finished, pet? Shall I get rid of it?”

“Shhh, she is sleeping. I shall nurse her again soon.”

“Dru, what did you do?... What did you...FUCK! Drusilla, how often do I have to tell you not to turn babies? We can’t cart along a car full of blood-thirsty brats!”

He is lovely in his violence, like a spark in tinder. So easy to extinguish before it flares out of control.

“I’m so lonely, my William. You were gone so long.”

“Oh, luv. Hush, darling, don’t cry. You know I’ve been looking for a cure for you, sweetheart. I came back as soon as I could. Hush. Here. Give me the baby. I’ll take care of it for you. Spike will take care of everything.”
______________
TBC...

Fic: Turn (Labyrinth)

2011-12-29T05:00:41Z

And because I'm in a Christmasy mood, here's one for my Labyrinth fandom friends that I wrote a while back and hadn't had time to post here.

Title: Turn
Author: KnifeEdge
Fandom: Labyrinth
Rating: PG

Plot Summary: While on a semester abroad in England, Sarah stumbles on a reference to a name she hasn’t heard in years. Was her adventure nothing more than a dream? Or are things more than what they seem?

Author’s Notes: This was written for the labyrinth_ex Fic Exchange. I was called in as a pinch hitter, and I wrote this over a couple of days, well past deadline ... which may explain why it's a bit disjointed. I did my best to follow the prompt, but as you will see, some stories seem to have a mind of their own, and some questions are better left unanswered.

Recipient: tsukisei
Prompt: Sarah is studying abroad (where is up to the author) and she keeps seeing references to Jareth in old books. What are they? Does she ask him about them?

Turn

Worlds are hinged so strangely that it takes only a moment to turn them upside down.

The rain starts on her walk home. Sarah’s used to the damp after a few weeks in London, but she’d left her umbrella (“brolly” Mrs. Glaslindys, her landlady, calls it) at home. There’s a teahouse on the corner, and a pub across the street she could duck into. Instead she braves the downpour a little further and pushes open the door of a tiny bookshop she’d noticed but never had the time to explore. Overhead, water sheets off of the sign, partially obscuring the faded painting of a quill pen.

A bell tinkles charmingly as she enters.

Inside everything is cozy and warm. Yellow lamplight gilds the long narrow room and a veritable maze of shelves. In the front corner, near the slightly warped glass window and its tiny display of books, are a couple of well used reading chairs that would fetch several thousand in an antique auction house. Her stepmother would have a conniption to see them here, with the upholstery a bit worn and the wood scarred by so much use.

Sarah smiles and breathes in the scent of books: dust, paper, glue, leather, age, and wonder.

No one comes to greet her, and the shelves are unlabeled and unorganized. Pulpy paperbacks and ancient looking leather tomes share shelf space, with no regard for any kind of system. She has to move carefully through the aisles to avoid tripping over stacks left on the floor. In a word, it’s perfect.

For the first time since she came to London she feels right at home.

Outside the rain pounds the pavement, but inside, Sarah explores every nook and cranny. Her fingers trail over the spines, occasionally pausing to pluck an interesting title out for further inspection. Eventually she finds herself sitting cross-legged in a corner, paging through a frayed and fragile collection of children’s fairy tales.

It’s only the rumble of thunder overhead that makes her pause, momentarily, to look up. When she looks down again, she finds him: Jareth, right beside her thumb on page 113.

Sarah blinks, then looks again.

It’s a name she’s not thought of in years, but it’s so etched into her memory that she couldn’t forget it even if she tried. And she had tried. It was a dream that wouldn’t fade with time; it stayed crystal clear, sharper than a mere memory. She barely could recall her thirteenth birthday party, but the events of that night, be they memory or imagination, had never blurred in her mind.

It was a dream. It had to have been a dream.

How many times had she sat at her mirror, whispering the names of her friends, and waiting for a response that never came? Finally she had had to give up, chalk it up to the late night and the storm and loneliness or boredom.

But she’s never forgotten, and now she wonders anew, her fingers tracing the tiny black print that forms a name she hasn’t heard in almost ten years.

The story is unfamiliar, the name mentioned only in passing: a threat to an unruly child who eventually goes on to have a different adventure entirely. Still, there is the name and the vague reference to goblins and a world Underground. It’s enough to get her thinking.

She buys the book from a wizened old man who she has to nudge awake from his nap at the counter. The rain has stopped by the time she leaves the store, the book wrapped protectively in a plastic bag. Lights shimmer on the wet pavement and old buildings while fog creeps around the corners, but for the first time since coming to London, Sarah doesn’t notice these things.

Instead she thinks of a decades-old dream, and wonders.

***

When Sarah calls home the next day, she asks Karen to find the little red book and ship it to her. The British postal service being what it is, Sarah asks her to Fed Ex it. It costs almost as much as a plane flight.

***

She unwraps the package like it’s Christmas. The cover of the book fits familiarly in her hand, the leather worn to fit her fingers. When she opens it, the pages smell like her childhood. Memories overwhelm: evenings curled up on her bed surrounded by an army of toys, afternoons in the park wearing her favorite costume gown, mornings at the breakfast table, her mother reading aloud to her while she was sick in bed.

Sarah reads it from cover to cover, the words achingly familiar. Then, puzzled, she reads it again, slower, searching. The sun is coming up when she finally puts the book down.

She knows the lines by heart, knows the story inside and out.

Nowhere in the novel is the name “Jareth.”

***
Perhaps she imagined it.

Perhaps it was just a dream, and in her dream she invented a name for her imaginary Goblin King.

A name she’d never heard before or since.

She does some research, but even Google can’t give her much. The name is uncommon, the meaning uncertain. Maybe it’s Welsh. There’s some mention of La Mort d’Arthur and Sir Gareth or Gawain. It’s not like spelling was consistent back then. There’s not much to go on.

Eventually she gives up. Decides it must have been a dream. The mention in the fairytale book a mere coincidence. She puts both books on a shelf and tries to forget.

***

Some things refuse to be forgotten.

She finds him again in a small town in Scotland.

She and her flatmate and another girl in the theatre program take the train up for their week off to explore the Highlands. They stop several places, mostly on whim. A rainy night drives them down a dirt-rutted road to the nearest pub and bed and breakfast. When dawn arrives, the place is charming enough that they decide to spend the day.

The town is a bit off the beaten path, but used to tourists mainly due to the ruins of a castle nearby. Their tour guide is a weathered old man with a lovely voice for storytelling and a penchant for ghost stories. Sarah wishes she could capture his particular accent for use on the stage and asks if she can record him. Delighted to find an appreciative audience, he agrees.

On the walk up from the village he entertains the small group with stories of the area, local legends and folktales. Sarah questions him endlessly, enchanted by his voice and his effortless retellings. They spend the afternoon exploring the castle ruins, clambering up stone stairways to explore chambers roofed only by the sky, taking photos of crumbling walls scaled and conquered by an army of moss. It seems strange, to Sarah, to imagine the place once full of people--that once this had been a place where people had lived and worked and loved and fought and now all that is left is a hollow shell.

As the afternoon wanes, their guide takes them down into the remains of the dungeons and regales them with stories of prisoners of note, a famous escape, and the local version of the Grey Lady who haunts the ruins. Her friends are properly scared by it all, but Sarah herself is drawn to a doorway and a word etched there.

Her fingers trace the ancient pattern.

“Bòcain,” the guide explains. “Goblin. It’s a warning.”

“Warning?”

“I saw your smile, lass, when I told my tale. The ghostly woman pining for her lost love. It’s a good story for the tourists. They eat that shite up. But it’s not the only one.”

Then he spins her a different version, of a young mother, widowed by war, and her only child. “Alone, she was, and frightened. Far too young to be a widow and with no other family left. The boy cried at night, missing his da, and finally she had had enough.”

“She called on the goblins,” Sarah whispers. The guide nods. A shiver traces down her spine.

“Aye. That she did. And they took the babby underground, to their king. The woman begged for the boy to be returned, but the Goblin King offered her something else, instead: the return of her lost husband.”

The shiver becomes goosebumps, and Sarah remembers a crystal full of offered dreams. “Did she take the bargain?”

“Aye. But it was a faerie trick. Come the dawn, her husband was revealed as a changeling, a faerie in disguise. The villagers burned him, and the woman died of a broken heart--her love and her bairn gone forever.”

The story haunts her more than any ghost. Sarah remains silent as they make their way back to the village and the warmth and comfort of the pub. The other tourists ply their guide with drinks, in thanks for the trip and the tales. Sarah studies the foam in her mug and wonders, late into the night. When her friends are ready to hie themselves to bed, Sarah stops to speak to the guide one last time.

“The Goblin King,” she asks, “does he have a name?”

The old man regards her, an odd light in his eyes. Maybe it’s just a reflection of the lamp overhead, but for a moment, she thinks she sees a gleam of red behind his pupils. “Many,” he says. “But I’m thinking the one you want is ‘Jareth’.”

He sees her start, sees her surprise. His grin reveals a mouthful of crooked teeth spaced with dark holes.

“What does he want?” she asks.

But the old man only shakes his head and hides secrets behind his smile. As she turns to leave, however, he speaks.

“Brìgh gach cluiche gu dheireadh.”

“What does that mean?”

“The essence of a game is at its end.”

***

She returns to London full of questions without answers.

But life goes on, and rehearsals and classes take up so much time. When she can she sneaks away to the library, overwhelmed at first by the sheer size of it. It’s very different from the little brick building back home. Undaunted, Sarah explores.

Mazes, after all, have never posed much of a challenge to her, and she’s good at finding what she’s looking for--even if she’s not entirely sure what that might be.

Still, it’s close to the end of the term when she finds him again. Once again, it’s raining; the kind of rain that chases everyone indoors. Through the high arched windows Sarah watches it gray the already gray streets and buildings beyond. Thunder grumbles overhead like an impatient narrator. Inside the library the shelves gleam under the warm light. There’s a little lamp at her table, casting a golden glow over the rich, dark wood and her small pile of books.

She’s somewhat day dreaming, her mind turning over her lines for the upcoming showcase while her eyes merely skim the words in front of her. She’s halfway through (“... set your heart at rest, the fairy land buys not the child of me...”) when something catches her attention. It’s an etching of a castle, atop a hill, the way it looked several centuries before. The details are wrong, but there’s something to the shape of it that seems familiar. Frowning, Sarah scans the accompanying text.

“...The Castle Yester, built in the 13th century by Sir Hugo de Giffard. Legend has it that Sir Hugo summoned an army of goblins to build the castle, including the infamous Goblin Ha’ (hall) beneath, where he practised his dark magic …”

There are no pictures of Sir Hugo, but there is something about the etching of the castle that calls to her. It embeds itself deeply in her mind, and for weeks after, she dreams of it sitting atop its hill while a storm brews in the skies above.

***

Time passes as time does.

Her semester draws closer to its end. Sarah finds that she loves it in England. Not London, specifically, though it has its appeal. The theaters and stages and opportunities for her there feel endless. But there’s something about the land that calls to her, something in the air, in the ground, in the stone. If someone had asked her to give it a name, she’d have said it was magic. What else could it be?

Her mother left her with money, which means choices.

There is home, and her family, and Toby who she loves.

But there is something in Sarah that has never been content. There are questions that she’s always wanted answered.

Mrs. Glaslindys says she’s fey-touched. “You’ve got fairy eyes, child,” she says over biscuits and tea one rainy evening. Her wrinkled, crab-apple face creases with worry. “You see more than you should. If you’d been born here the faeries would have snatched you right up.”

The other girls laugh at Mrs. Glaslindys’s talk of fairies. Sarah never has. “Why? What would they want with me?”

“You’re special, somehow,” Mrs. Glaslindys says. “Can’t you feel it, girl? Something has marked you from the day you were born, I’d wager.”

“Something? Or someone?” Sarah muses, more to herself. To Mrs. Glaslindys, however, she simply asks, “What do you know about goblins?”

“Wicked little imps. Leave a bit of milk out for them, and wear your clothes inside out. Carry a bit of cold iron and you’ll be alright. You’re too old for the likes of them, though. At most they’ll do you a mischief. It’s the little ones they want.”

“Why?”

For a moment Mrs. Glaslindys looks blank, stumped, as though it never occurred to her to wonder such a thing. “Who knows? Have you tried the shortbread, dear?”

***

Sometimes the way forward is the way back.

It’s the last week of the term. There are final performances to get through, and a couple of exams. Sarah’s on her way home that Monday afternoon when it once again starts to storm. It seems like the rain comes out of nowhere, clouds boiling up in the sky and abruptly releasing their downpour. Thunder growls ominously and Sarah ducks into the first doorway she finds.

The bell tinkles charmingly overhead.

Once again the bookshop feels deserted, but the lights beckon and the books entice. She shakes the rain from her hair and wanders, letting her feet guide her down the aisles and between the stacks. In a dark corner, her finger catches on the spine of a book, and she pulls it out.

The cover is dark blue leather, clearly old but unfaded. The top is dusty, as if it has sat there for a long, long time. When she opens it, the spine crackles with disuse. It does not smell like most books. There is the lingering scent of dry, hot deserts and deep, green forests; underlying that is a slightly foul smell, like a swamp or a city littered with refuse and populated with poultry.

It is a collection of old tales and folklore. The pages fall open.

Sarah begins to read.

There is a clock somewhere in the shop, and when it chimes seven she finally looks up and shuts the book. Inside she feels as though she’s been spun upside down, but outwardly she is calm as she collects her things and the book and goes in search of the counter.

It takes a couple of prods to wake up the old man sleeping in the swivel chair behind it. He blinks rheumy eyes at her and his mustache twitches as he rings up the sale. There is a cage in the corner behind him, and a bright-eyed bird cocks its head to the side to study her. “Gracias, senorita,” it says.

Sarah stares. “Keep the change,” she tells the proprietor, who has already settled back into his chair for his nap.

She thinks she hears the bird sigh as she exits the shop.

***

There are always forks in the road, choices that need made. Sometimes what you thought was the way forward is a dead end. Sometimes the path changes when you aren’t looking.

We grow up, but we rarely grow wise.

Curiosity compels, and feet follow.

On the other side of the ocean is the life she left behind, the world she knows. It too, is full of questions that need answers. But they aren’t Sarah’s questions, and she isn’t that interested in their answers.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to postpone my flight another week or two?” her flatmate asks. It’s the last day of the term. Bags are packed, flights are booked. All but one. “I could come with you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Sarah says. “I’m … going to look up some old friends.”

Rebecca studies her for a long moment, then pulls her hair over her shoulder and fiddles with the end of it. “You’re not coming back, are you?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah says, but she smiles as she says it.

***

The train takes her as far as Edinburgh.

She finds a tour bus heading out to the village of Gifford and pays for a seat. It’s not a long drive, and Sarah spends most of it watching the hills roll by and the trees grow older and darker. As they near the village the trees give way to fields and low stone walls and hedges. Something about it feels familiar.

It feels, she decides, like going home.

She likes the white buildings all pressed together like books and the brick and stone ones with their Spanish tile roofs. The bus drops her off in the square, near the Goblin Ha’ hotel. She shoulders her backpack, stops at the newsagent and buys a map of the area. Down the street she has lunch at a tiny coffee shop named “Love’s Coffee … and Food.” She wonders why food is only an afterthought. Then she tastes the coffee.

There’s a boy working the till. He’s youngish, with a head full of ginger hair and a rosy birthmark over one eye. He’s cute, though, and he knows it. She doesn’t mind when he flirts with her when she pays up.

“Do you know how to get to the Goblin Ha’?” she asks after awhile.

He grins. “Of course. Everyone here knows where it is. Very few go, however. Bit spooky out there.”

“Does it scare you?” she asks.

“Course no’,” he scoffs and puffs out his skinny chest. “You looking to explore, lass?”

“Can you take me?”

“Fear not, fair maiden. I shall be thy guide,” he tells her with a wink. “Meet me here after lock up. Bring a torch and wear hiking boots.”

Sarah’s been in England long enough to know that when he says “torch” he means “flashlight.” She buys one at a shop down the road. Hiking boots she already has.

***

Her guide’s name is Todd, and he’s as nimble as his namesake. He takes her through fields and into the woods, skirting anything that looks fencelike and official. Sarah wonders if they’re trespassing and decides they probably are. Todd’s dog, Emrys, trots at their heels. Sarah isn’t even surprised that it’s a sheepdog.

The light dims to a rich gold that filters through the trees. Part of their trek leads them uphill, over ancient tree roots and rocks. It feels so familiar; Sarah bets she could walk it blindfolded. She’s not quite foolish enough to take that bet, however.

There is a path, ancient and dotted with the occasional cairn to mark the way. Tingles start at the base of her spine and dance their way up. Finally, Emrys sits down and whines and refuses to go any further, despite Todd’s coaxing and threats.

“He’s fine,” Sarah says, her eyes on the path ahead. “How much further is it?”

“Just round the bend.”

“Thanks for taking me this far,” she says.

“You don’t want me to come with you?” he asks, but he doesn’t seem surprised. “Like I said, bit spooky in there.”

“No,” Sarah tells him. “This is something I need to do alone.”

“Well, if that’s how it is done, that’s how you must do it,” Todd tells her. Then he grins. “If you need me...”

“I’ll call,” Sarah says. He won’t wait for her, though. She knows this, too. It’s getting dark, and time is running out.

Overhead the leaves rustle, and the breeze picks up. There’s a storm brewing. She can smell it on the wind.

***

The entrance to the hall is a dark archway beneath a ruined wall. The place is abandoned, but not empty. It’s alive in the way that some old buildings are: with memories and magic. The hair on the back of her neck and all along her arms stands on end.

She takes a deep breath, and steps through the archway.

The walls are cold stone, and her footsteps echo off the vaulted ceilings. Leaves litter the floor and cobwebs curtain the corners. In her head she hears alarms ringing (...beware, beware...), and she knows she’s on the right track. The light from her flashlight sends shadows waltzing away from her, dancing into the corners. There are ghosts here, pressed all around her.

Sarah explores, because that’s what she does. She finds the main hall easily enough, pokes her head down the tunnels and passageways, but ultimately ends up back in the hall. The architecture is gothic, and so symmetrical she can believe that it had to be made with magic. Finally, she sits down on the floor, in the center of the room and waits.

Outside she hears the storm building. Wind whispers down the tunnels to ruffle her hair. The scent of rain, the sound of thunder, every so often a flash of light. In the hall, however, it is dry. Her flashlight flickers and goes out.

Sarah waits.

The light on her LED watch counts down the minutes to midnight.

There is a gust of wind, stronger than the rest. It rushes through the hall, chased by the flash of lightning. The air sparkles. And he is there, a dark silhouette against the tunnel entrance, his cape a tattered shadow, and the lightning caught in his silver-gold hair.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” Sarah says.

He only smiles a little, his eyes inscrutable in his ever-so-slightly inhuman face.

“Jareth,” she says, his name practically a prayer. His eyebrows arch and he crosses his arms.

“Why have you come here, Sarah?” His voice prowls through the darkness toward her, though he himself remains still.

“Because you dared me to,” she says.

He smirks. “Did you enjoy our game, Sarah?”

“Piece of cake,” she replies.

Then he is in front of her, his cape swirling around them in the wind, long strands of his hair brushing her face. She realizes then, that aside from a dance in a dream within a dream, she has never touched him, nor he her. “There is no baby to save,” he tells her.

“I know.”

“Then what would you have for your prize?”

“The truth.”

Jareth stills, his mismatched eyes sparkle in the dim light. “You know that it wasn’t a dream, silly girl. What more could you possibly want to know?”

“I want to know what you want--”

His bark of laughter echoes through the hall, scattering shadows. She realizes then that they aren’t alone. In the darkness a thousand inhuman eyes watch as though worlds hinge on this moment.

“Careful, Sarah. Haven’t you learnt yet to be careful what you wish for? You might just get it.” He steps toward her, so she can feel the electricity of his body only inches from her own. She can smell the wild scent of him--like forests and deserts and magic and male.

“What do you want of me, Jareth?”

For a moment she thinks he will not answer.

“I am ancient, by your measure,” he says, his voice as soft as a caress. “I was ancient when this hall was built, old even when these hills were young. I cannot remember my beginning, or how I came to be what I am. All I know is the game, the challenge, the chase. I am a villain by necessity, because this world needs villains...”

“What do you need, Jareth?”

“You,” he says, his jaw clenched as though the admission pains him. “I have always needed you.”

***

Stories are like labyrinths. You may not know where the path will take you, what choices you will make. There are many ways it can end, if the wrong fork is taken, the wrong door opened, the riddle never solved.

But stories are like labyrinths, and there is always more than one right path. Some are shorter, some are longer, and they change what you find when you reach the center.

If you do reach the center, though, you may never find your way back out again.

You may not want to.

There are places where the veil is thin, where the crossing between worlds is as easy as taking a breath, or a step.

Perhaps it is the wrong step, but Sarah is very good at landing on her feet.

Fin.

_________

Additional Notes: My apologies to Great Britain (I’ve never been). My thanks to my beta, Goblin_Dae (who lives there). The Goblin Ha’ is a real actual place, located beneath the ruins of Yester Castle southeast of the village of Giffon, in Scotland. According to history, it was built by Sir Hugo de Gifford (allegedly a wizard and necromancer), who summoned an army of goblins to construct his castle. Interestingly, to me at least, there’s something about the shape of the original castle that resembles the castle beyond the goblin city.

That could, however, just be my imagination.

Fic: DUST (31/?)

2011-12-29T04:34:27Z

31.

When William had been alive, he’d often felt as if he would burst from the emotions inside him. Whether it was embarrassment and shame, or love, or joy, or anger, or fear—they’d all been so near the surface that he’d had a difficult time suppressing them behind society’s polite mask. A gentleman did not wear his heart on his sleeve. He did not express his emotions. He was polite and distant. One simply must keep one’s crust stiff and upper and all that rot.

Every day was a struggle to put a leash on his feelings, to keep from lashing out at those who hurt him, to refrain from blurting out his deepest secrets to all and sundry. Poetry, finally, gave him an outlet—a way to vent all the things boiling inside of him.

Unfortunately, poetry and his own excess of emotions had led to the Decline and Fall of William Pratt.

Spike knew the party line the Watchers touted about vampires. That the human left behind his or her memories for the demon that set up shop in the body—like moving out of a flat but leaving all the furniture. He’d never bought into it. Not once. Because memories were one thing, but emotions? Feelings? Those were something else entirely. They belonged to the human heart … and after he’d died, they had only gotten stronger.

And harder to control.

If he lost his temper—and William had, underneath his polite mask, possessed a temper held firmly in check by the lovelorn poet’s soul—he was now free to destroy the things that infuriated him. If he hurt—and he did hurt—he could cause pain back a hundredfold. He had no shame, no need for manners, and no one to tell him no.

If in William those feelings had swelled to bursting, then in Spike they boiled over. Dru had told him once that he had a face like a moving picture show—every thought dancing across his features and through the windows of his eyes for anyone who cared to to view. His moods were mercurial and violent, a carnival of lust and glee, and he’d let them run rampant over anyone who might stand in his path.

Until now.

Until this spell.

Until Buffy.

He ought to hate her. Ought to be burning with hatred as hotly as he burned with desire. And he did. Hate her, that was. It simmered just beneath the surface, making him clench his jaw and ball his hands into fists. It made his face itch, he wanted so badly to vamp out and tear into her throat.

And yet … he knew what she was doing. It wasn’t the first time and likely wouldn’t be the last. He’d crossed some unspoken boundary, broken some human rule he didn’t understand, and her gates had slammed closed, denying him entry. He wanted her badly, and he knew she wanted him—though she’d deny it with every breath left in her until they were both screaming toward an orgasm. If she’d just stop torturing them both with her bullshit excuses, they might be able to find a measure of happiness.

If she’d just give him a chance, he knew he could make her happy.

But no. Mustn’t want the evil vampire. Mustn’t admit that he got her juices flowing, or that her little quim got a bit twitchy now whenever he was near. Mustn’t let him into her bed—though she seemed perfectly happy storming into the basement on a near nightly basis and using him to scratch whatever filthy itch she’d managed to work up that day.

Most of all … she mustn’t treat him like a man.

No matter how much he felt like one in her presence.

At least until she reminded him that he was a monster, again.

Spike watched as Buffy marched over to the bed, and carefully unrolled the maps, spreading them out to study. The better to ignore him, he supposed.

“Where do we begin?” she asked, tracing her finger over the map. Her voice was cold, controlled, and when she looked up at him her eyes were, too. Something had closed behind her eyes, some door that he thought he’d been slowly battering open over the last few weeks.

With a nearly human effort, he managed to put a lid on his temper. No point in losing it now. It’d just brass her off more.

“Uh, here, I guess,” he said. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the crevice in the rear wall of the lair “That leads down into the tunnel system, bit further on.” She didn’t say anything when he approached the bed, but he felt her stiffen beside him when he reached out to trace a route on the map with one finger. “Joins up about here.”

“It’s a start.” Buffy rolled up the map. “We’ll need a torch or flashlights or something. I’m not going to wander around in the dark.”

He thought of the walk there, holding her hand, how natural and easy it had felt to have her little palm tucked in his. Less than an hour ago, he’d had that, and now he suspected she’d rather chop off her arm than touch him.

Wanker. Pillock. Poofter. Wanting to hold her sodding hand.

“Right.” Spike crunched through the destruction to the tunnel entrance and rummaged around in the pile of junk there until he unearthed a couple of torches—the mechanical kind. Less chance of getting accidentally flambeed. The batteries on one were dead. He clicked on the other and handed it to her. “You’re sure you want to do this tonight? We could go back, get some supplies and stuff.”

“No. We’re here, we might as well get started,” she said, then gestured with the light at the entrance. “Vampires first.”

***

The tunnels here were different than the sewers she was used to navigating. The rock walls were harshly hewn and studded with chunks of rock and—here and there—bits of bone that didn’t look entirely human. It wouldn’t surprise her to find that all of Sunnydale was one big burial ground for everything the Hellmouth devoured—human or demon.

Dust clung to every surface and kicked up around their feet. Water dripped somewhere far off. Otherwise there was nothing but silence and the sense that the ground was pushing down on you, burying you beneath its weight.

It became more and more oppressive the further they went.

Spike stalked ahead of her, the line of his shoulders clearly broadcasting his sulk. She found herself watching him, mostly because he was far more interesting to look at than the passing scenery. The light caught in his hair, on the pale length of his arms, and sparked off the silver safety pins that studded his shirt.

He was completely not her type. Sure, she sometimes went for bad boys—but she liked them taller, darker, and handsome in that brooding hero sort of way. Not … ripped and chiseled and short enough to kiss without straining her neck and … with bad fashion sense.

That shirt really did fantastic things to his arms, though.

She shook her head. Dirty, nasty, evil vampire. Grrr. Arrgh. Her sworn duty to kill. Why was that so hard for her to remember sometimes? Twenty minutes ago she’d known it. Hell, twenty minutes ago she could have written an entire book on why lusting after vampires was the worst idea since the return of bell-bottoms.

He wanted to have sex in his ex-girlfriend’s bed. Ex-bed-sex! See? EVIL!

Also, ew.

“What do you want to do, Slayer?”

“Wha—?”

She jerked her attention back to their surroundings. He’d led her into a small cavern, the walls pitted with openings to several branching passageways.

“You’ve got the bloody map,” he said. “Which way do we go?”

Gritting her teeth to keep from snapping at him, Buffy spread the map out on the uneven floor and studied it under the beam of her flashlight. She found Harmony’s lair, then traced the route they’d followed until she came to the branching tunnels. West would take them under the cemeteries, east would head toward the middle of town and the sewage system, northeast would lead them into town, but close to the old high school.

Spike pointed at the westernmost passage. “There are some demon lairs this way,” he said, tapping a series of caverns. “But it dead ends about five hundred yards from here. Can’t think it’s likely we’ll find your army boys down that way.”

“We’ll come back with weapons and clean them out later. For now, northeast looks good.”

“Back toward town.” Spike arched an eyebrow.

“Closer to home when we’re ready to get out of here,” she pointed out.

“Right.” He studied the map with his head tilted, then glanced up at her. The low light cast his features into eerie relief. He looked nearly as demonic as he did when in game face.

Bad. Wrong. Demon.

Then he shifted, or the light did, and she realized that he looked, more than anything, like a someone lost.

“Northeast, then,” she decided, and rolled the map back up.

The tunnels grew a little smoother further along, as if they’d seen more traffic. The sense of the ground closing in around her grew worse, however. She didn’t like it down here, not at all. After several minutes of strained silence, she couldn’t take it any longer. “So, how come you know so much about these tunnels?”

“Used them to get around, time or two,” Spike said, without looking back at her. “Sewers are more convenient, though.”

“Oh. … So, uh, what do you think those army guys want to study?”

He turned his head back over his shoulder to glare at her, his eyes dark hollows in the low light. “So it’s to be small talk, now, is it?”

“I’m bored,” Buffy said. And kinda creeped out down here, she didn’t say.

He rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw, but came back to walk by her side. Oddly, it made her feel better. “What are we gonna do if we find these blokes? They’re human, right?”

Okay, not so much with the better.

“I—I don’t know,” she said. “I just … feel like we’ve gotta find them. It’s important. Or something. I guess we’ll figure out what to do with them when we do.”

“You think they’ve got somethin’ to do with the spell?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? We’ve looked at everything else, haven’t we?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Gettin’ kinda tired of books.”

“Me too,” she said. Their eyes met briefly, and Spike smiled. It wasn’t his evil grin, or his sarcastic smirk, or his sexy smile. It was the kind of smile you give someone that you have something in common with, a friends-y sort of smile. Somehow, it sent an electric tingle down her spine even so. It was hard to remember, when he smiled at her like that, that he was evil.

Of course, then he opened his mouth again and words came out.

“Do you … Are we gettin’ along now?”

“No,” she said. Because they weren’t. They couldn’t afford to. No matter how lonely that left her.

He scowled and kicked at a rock, then hopped on one foot for a moment. “Do you know what your problem is, Slayer?”

“The entire town is in a coma and I’m stuck with Spikey, the wonder vamp?”

“Your problem is that you can’t just let yourself be happy. You’ve got to put rules on it, and conditions. You never just let yourself enjoy bein’ you,” he said.

“Hey, I enjoy me!” she said. “I enjoy me all the time!”

“In the bedroom, under the blankets, with the bloody lights off, sure.”

“What?” Horrified, she came to a halt and stared at him. And there was that stupid smirk of his.

“I’m dead, not deaf, Slayer. I know what you do when you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t need me to scratch your itch,” he said, tongue curled obscenely behind his teeth. “You and Mr. Pointy’s pink latex cousin—I’m bigger, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

She punched him, right in the nose. He just laughed and dabbed at one bloody nostril.

“You … you … How do you know that it’s …? Oh, god, you were in my stuff! I told you to stay out of my room!”

“I did. Lucky guess. Tell me, does it have sparkles or is it one of those semi-realistic ones? I want a good mental image to wank to when you’re otherwise occupied.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said. He laid one hand over where his heart had once beat. “But thanks for sayin’ it.”

***

The tunnels began to intersect with the sewer system more frequently the closer they got to town. Buffy’s feet were cold and damp from splashing through shallow water. The air was cold and musty in the tunnels, and cold and wet in the sewers. Every so often her flashlight picked up the gleam of bones on the floor, some human, some not.

Tired, hungry, and more than slightly creeped out, she’d have quit after the first half hour, except she didn’t want to give Spike the satisfaction of being right.

“If I hear one more complaint outta you, I am turning around and heading straight back for the surface, Slayer,” Spike groused after she’d complained for the fourth or fifth time. “Need I remind you that you’re the one who wanted to go spelunking unprepared, and I was all for goin’ for supplies?”

“Just because you’re lazy and don’t want to work—”

“Oi, I am not—”

“Oh yeah? So all that trying to distract me with … sexy stuff was what? Part of your solid work ethic?”

“Just because I don’t want to go off half cocked—”

“No, you’d rather go off all co—” Buffy stopped, frowning, and pointed her flashlight beam down a nearby tunnel. A shiver rippled down her spine just before Spike nearly ran into her back.

“What?” he asked, all traces of snark gone. “What’s wrong?”

“This looks familiar.” She couldn’t quite place it, but something about the section of tunnel was pounding at the doors of her memory, hard.

“You kill a demon down here, before?”

“I …” She took a step down the tunnel, feeling the creep factor writhe up the back of her neck. Goosebumps rose on her arms. “Maybe? I mean, you guys do seem to like dark and dank for your interior décor. Let’s go this way.”

“Why?”

“My spidey sense is tingling.”

That was usually all the reason she ever needed. It wasn’t a full-blown demon-alert tingle. It was something else: a low-grade itch between her shoulder blades and a warning crawl of flesh that hinted at old power. It was as good as labeling the tunnel with a big, scary sign: “Here Be Monsters.”

Or, more accurately, she realized as she stepped out of the sewer into the vast cavernous space beyond: “Here Were Monsters.” As in: past tense. Because the thing that had dwelt in this literal hell-hole? She’d killed it.

And then bashed its bones to dust.

Behind her, Spike gave a low, involuntary growl that sounded nearly like a purr. “Well, well. What’s this?”

“What does it feel like?” Her flashlight beam played over the uneven floor, the pools of stagnant water, and sharp bits of rock that stabbed down from above. Embedded in the walls, and crumbling in the corners were the rotting remains of what had once been someplace holy—now fallen.

“Power.” Spike stepped past her and looked up toward the cavern’s high, shadow shrouded ceiling. “Old, old power. This joint reeks of it. Bloody hell, Slayer, what is this place?”

They stood on a roughly cut staircase above the main part of the chamber. But Buffy’s gaze was fixed several feet below, where her flashlight illuminated a shallow pool of water. The thin beam barely cut through the gloom. The last time she’d been here, the walls had reflected the flickering light from dozens of candles. From the look of things, they had long since melted to lumpy piles of wax.

Spike started down the staircase, his footsteps vampire-silent in the shadows. Reluctantly, Buffy followed. Most people got creepy tinglies and went in the other direction. Not Buffy. Nope. Shouldn’t have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

Together they ventured into the middle of the cavern. Its far end looked as if it had suffered some damage in an earthquake: a rock fall had taken out one corner, just beside a gaping chasm. When she played her light over the ceiling, she thought she glimpsed a similar crack several hundred feet above that endless pit.

The library.

If she’d jumped, before, she’d have passed through this place.

“This is the Hellmouth, isn’t it? We’re just under the school, here.” Spike’s head swiveled towards her. His eyes narrowed. “Not thinking about taking a tumble, were we?”

“What?”

“Feelin’ suicidal again, Slayer? If so I’ve no objections to fucking that thought right out of your head. But maybe we can skip the scary preliminaries and get straight to the shaggin’ this time?”

“Ugh. No. No shagging. Or … that other thing. Besides, what would be the point? I’m already in Hell, stuck here with you.”

She turned away, only to trip over something that clattered across the stone floor. A twang, a whoosh, and then an earsplitting howl from Spike told her what it was before she could find it with her flashlight. She froze.

“Bloody buggering FUCK! You’ve already got me by the balls, you don’t need to try to shoot them off—oi, hold up, where’d you get a crossbow?”

He limped up next to her, a bolt protruding from his upper thigh. With a growl, he yanked the bit of wood out, leaving a ragged and bloody hole in his jeans. He kicked the crossbow across the cavern floor, and it plunked into a pool of stagnant water. “You are hell on a fellow’s wardrobe, you know that, Slayer?”

“It was an accident. I—I’d forgotten …”

“To look where you’re going?”

“No … I’d just … forgotten I’d … left it. Here.”

She could feel him staring at her again, but her eyes were focused on the pool of water.

“What happened here, Slayer? … Buffy? What did you kill here?”

Her throat tightened, clogged with the old fear.

Suddenly she felt sixteen again—she could see the candlelight on the walls, hear his voice, calling her to her death. It didn’t matter that she’d come back, that she’d beaten prophecy and lived. It didn’t matter that she’d pounded the monster’s bones to splinters. For a moment, she was as powerless as if he were standing there once more, compelling her with his eyes and voice.

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and spun her.

“Slayer!”

Panicked, she dropped the flashlight and lashed out at the voice. Her fist connected with bone and flesh. The light rolled, the light flickering wildly off in the wrong direction, leaving her adversary as just a shadow among many. A fist smashed into her cheek, sending her stumbling over the rocky floor. She lashed out with a foot, connecting with something fleshy. Squinting in that direction, all she could see was a tall, thin shape in black, with a white face and glittering eyes.

Not again. Never again.

She threw herself back into the fight with a vengeance. After a while, however, she realized he wasn’t trying to hurt her so much as stop her. His hands grappled for her wrists in an attempt to immobilize. Disoriented, she kicked out, and he swept her feet out from under her.

“Knock it off, Slayer!”

Her head struck something, a bit of rock, most likely. Pain stabbed through her skull, and her vision went black. Well, black-er. Buffy scrambled backward, desperate to get away, but her right hand met only air instead of stone — and then she was tumbling into cold water.

It was shallow, but slippery and slimy; her hands found no purchase. Coughing, choking, she scrabbled for the edge to pull herself up, but the pain in her head made her dizzy.

Is this how I die the second time? she thought, as she inhaled and got mostly water.

What was it with the world trying to drown her?

Then there were hands grabbing her jacket and hauling her up onto the cold stone floor. Hands pounded on her back. A strained voice near her ear swore and commanded: “Cough it up, Slayer. Fuck. Don’t you do this to me. Don’t you even bloody think about it. Breathe, Buffy. C’mon, sweetheart. Breathe for me. I don’t fucking know CPR, and if I have to wing it I’m gonna cock it up, so would you cough that goddamn water up already?”

It took a moment, and then she did cough, gagging on a lungful of disgusting water.

Spike’s hand—and she knew, now, that it was Spike—continued to thwack her between the shoulder blades. His other hand smoothed the dripping hair away from her face, held it back at the nape of her neck as she heaved and puked up what felt like the entire pool.

“There now,” he murmured. His hands gentled. “There you are. Get it all out. Fuck. Don’t you ever scare me like that. If you ever do that again, I swear I’ll kill you myself. Gettin’ bloody well tired of you trying to off yourself on the Hellmouth, sweetheart. Come on, luv—”

Feeling strength return to her limbs, Buffy shoved at him.

“Stop it,” she croaked through a throat that felt like she’d swallowed glass. She made it to her feet, pushing her hair out of her face again and ignoring his extended hand. Her teeth chattered, clacking together violently. If she’d been cold before it was nothing compared to how cold she was now. Her soaked clothes felt like clinging sheets of ice. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself—”

“Not what it looked like to me.” Spike stopped a few feet way, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared. “You should get out of those wet things, Slayer, or you’ll finish the job.”

With a snort that turned into a brief coughing fit, Buffy turned her back on him and started hunting for the flashlight. “Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you? I’m getting a little tired of you trying to get yourself off on the Hellmouth. It’s sick, Spike.”

“You’re gonna be sick standing around in wet clothes. I’m trying to help, here, Slayer.”

“You don’t help!” She found the flashlight and turned it on his furious face. He squinted against the light, his sensitive pupils contracting to pinpricks in a sea of ice-cold blue. “You just … you don’t help, Spike. The only reason you’re still around is because I let you stay.”

“And because you need me—”

“I don’t need you,” she lied. “I never need you.”

He advanced a step, but she stood her ground. In the light she noticed that he had a black eye and his nose was bleeding. Water dripped down his hollow cheeks like tears. His right pant leg was shiny with blood. He didn’t even seem to register his injuries, and the fury on his face was as cold as she felt.

“Needed me just then, didn’t you, Slayer? If it weren’t for me, your ungrateful arse would still be drowning in a bloody puddle—”

“If you hadn’t knocked me down it wouldn’t have been in it in the first place!”

“You hit me first, you daft bint!”

“You—” But whatever she’d meant to say got lost in a brief coughing fit. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Spike’s temper had finally snapped. He roared—the enraged roar of a completely pissed off vampire—loud enough to shake dust from the cavern walls.

“I just saved you—”

“I didn’t need to be saved! I would have been fine in a minute—”

“You’d have been dead—”

“Why do you even care? You’ve only ever wanted to kill me! Why didn’t you just leave me there to drown in peace?”

“Because I’m in love you with you, you stupid bitch!”

Everything froze but the echoes, which seemed to take an inordinate amount of glee in repeating those words into infinity.

Buffy caught one glimpse of Spike’s horrified face—eyes wide as windows, mouth hanging open as if he had no control over it at all—before the flashlight flickered once in warning.

Then it died, plunging them both into the hollow dark.

For a long moment, the only sound in the cavern was their harsh breathing.

Then, “Oh, god, no. Please, no.”

_________
Chapter 32

Author's Note: Merry late Christmas (and Happy Birthday to me--Dec. 29). I finally, finally, finally had some time to finish editing this chapter, and I thought I'd post it as a belated Christmas gift to you all. Thank you for being so patient with me while I wrestle real life back into submission.

For the record: NO I have not abandoned this story. Updates are just going to be a little sporadic and far between for a bit. I'd apologize for this cliff hanger but ...

Excuses, excuses

2011-11-14T15:16:14Z

I'm not dead. Yet.

Sometimes real life comes along and says, "hey, little girl. You're kinda cute. Wanna hang out?" and you're all like "Sure, been awhile, and you're not too bad yourself."

Then he throws a bag over your head and pushes you into his van and ties you up and makes you eat a lot of pancakes.

...

That analogy made a lot more sense in my head.

So I did this play, late last spring. In it I played a bubble headed Londoner throwing a disastrous house party. It took a lot of time and the voices of the other actors had a tendency to get stuck in my head. So writing slowed to a trickle.

As soon as that play was over, I was cast in a new one. In it I played a stuck up New Yorker who was attending a disastrous house party. I was also set designing it. It took even MORE time, and the voices of some of my fellow actors got stuck in my head, and all I could hear mentally, for months, was a New York accent. Writing stopped.

When that play was done I started into a new show (Deep South, disastrous house party...), but I ended up switching to work on a different show (Virginia, unexpected but disastrous house party) at a theater 25 miles away from my house. This time I wasn't acting, I was assistant directing and stage managing. We're heading into the final week and this is the first time I've had three days in a row where I can be home before 2 am.

Unfortunately, I'm also set designing the next two shows. However, there aren't any house parties in either of them, so maybe the train is starting to derail and I can get back to other things. Like writing. And actual work. The kind where I get paid.

So, if you've been wondering where I disappeared to for the last few months, blame theater.

If you're wondering when I'm going to start writing again. My plan is soon. I always write more in the winter anyway, so I'm hoping that kicks in very shortly. Because my fingers itch, and I want to write.

I'd just prefer not to write Spike with a New York accent. ;)

Icons: (20) BtVS - Restless, Part I

2011-09-25T08:39:30Z

For the Fandom Free For All
Prompt: From snickfic - Icons from BtVS: "Restless"

Sneak Peek:

This is Part 1 of 2 (maybe 3?) ... Trying not to kill people will load time for a lot of images.

01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

RULES:

No hotlinking
Please don't redistribute or use these as bases
Credit is lovely, thank you.

Coming soon ... icons from Giles' and Buffy's dreams, plus the cheese man. ;)

Fandom Free-For-All

2011-09-24T02:57:55Z

I've never done this before, but it looked like fun. Thanks to snickfic for linking to it.

And it's for all fandoms! Yay!

Here's a link to my requests: Cause it's all about ME, really ;)

Also: DUST updates... still working on writing and editing. :( BUT! I'm writing again, so yay me!