Erika, I don't know the show, but you've got Faith's voice down. That's awesome.

Thanks. I think it's the noir in me. (If you did know that show, you'd know I set off a hand grenade in their house. A hand grenade in leather pants.)

Well, the body was dead, and while it lay Buffyishly cooling Fitz's spirit has been cohabiting a wolf's body and is pretty much totally in wolf mode now that it's moved back in. So the effect is exactly what I intended. Cool.

Erika, this is splendid.

Thanks, glad you like it. Feeling the girl-on-girl this early in a story is new for me, although I thought there was a vibe between Joyce and Kay in that make-up thing, but for the most part that was metaphor.

Claire/Faith seems like such an obvious femmeslash pairing I'm surprised it never occured to me.

Good show.

I knew Claire would be attracted to Faith as she is Danger-Seeker Girl...I'm just surprised that "attracted" means porn. Or will. Maybe I'm channelling some slasher right now, AIFG.(Or maybe I just thought it would please the lovely Pandarus.) Thanks, Nova, good to hear as I mostly write het or gen...and I've only seen one season's worth of SFUs. So I'm a little insecure about my ability here.

The show gets worse after the first season. In my opinion. I gave up about 2/3 of the way through season 2.

OK, worse as in "more self-indulgent?" Because despite liking the characters, I have noticed kind of a congratulatory streak in the writing sometimes. The actors are all very good, though. (Hec should visit the Mrs. Convince her to go short.)

Both more self-indulgent and also just less interesting somehow. It may be just me, but I sort of stopped caring about many of the characters somewhere in the second season, too.

Edited because second and first relate to completely different numbers.

waves

Could I impose upon y'all for Beta-ishness? Have committed more Sandman fic, for the yuletidetreasure New Year's Resolution thing. Thoughts appreciated:

Untitled

She is cleaning out the fish bowl when he calls.

“Sister?”

She should perhaps have expected it, but the truth is that she has not been able to think about Dream without pain, and so she has tried not to think about Dream at all. Unsuccessfully, of course.

“Sister? I am standing in my gallery, and I hold your sigil in your hand. Will you see me?”

The fish she had been moving is still suspended midway from bowl to mug, its little orange body spasming frantically as it drowns in air. Death shakes herself and lowers the net quickly. The fish plops into the water and she feels its panic fade within seconds as it grows accustomed to its new location and its tissue-thin fins brush softly against those of its companion. The mug has Snoopy on the front. She likes Snoopy.

He had never understood that about her, of course. Snoopy, goldfish, floppy hats, hopscotch, rollercoasters: all the frivolous and ephemeral trappings of humanity in which she takes delight. She dragged him along to salsa clubs and amateur dramatics, to football games and children’s parties, and he slouched along in her wake with an expression of polite – or sometimes irritable – incomprehension on his ivory coloured face. He knows – knew – that she takes genuine pleasure in these things, but he has never really understood it.

Although, perhaps, towards the end – but she will not think of this.

“Sister?”

It’s his voice. It will be his face under the startling tumble of white. Him. But – not him, as Delirium is not Delight, and Change is not Destruction. As Despair is no longer who she was in the beginning. She loves him, of course, because she is who she is. But it still pains her that Morpheus has gone – even knowing with perfect certainty that it was always inevitable, that it was in the end what he had wanted and needed so badly. Even knowing that this new facet of her brother is a necessary change no stranger than Spring succeeding Winter. Even knowing all that, it still stings her with a fierceness and immediacy she know only from her centennial forays into mortality. This is infinitely worse. She sorrowed at Despair’s passing, as she sorrows at all endings great and small, but it did not cut her to the heart. Of all her siblings it has always been Dream to whom she has felt the closest, prickly and pig-headed as he is. Was.

She isn’t sure when she started to cry, but she knows it won’t be doing her eye liner any good. And she knows too that the tears are for herself, not for the stiff-necked brother who orchestrated his own ending, since bending was beyond him. She will miss him until the last star finally gutters in the sky.

“Sister?”

He sounds lost now. Hurt, almost – and that won’t do, that really can’t be borne. She blows her nose noisily on a gaudy square of paisley-patterned cotton and turns to reply. Her makeup is perfect once more.

“Hey, Dream. What’s up?” It is very nearly her usual breezy tone.

“Nothing is ‘up’,” he replies, the phrase sounding endearingly awkward on his tongue, and she is surprised into a smile. “But I would visit you, if I may.”

“Sure thing,” she replies.

He appears slowly, a heat-haze of pallor gradually solidifying into the familiar form of a gawky, unfinished-looking man. The set of his shoulders, the sharpness of his cheek bones, the thoroughly inhuman eyes – everything remains the same. All quintessentially Morpheus. Only this unruly mass of Einstein-white hair sticking out at all angles, giving him the appearance of a day-old chick, is new. Only the uncertainty and softness of his mouth. She smiles at him, her new-old sibling, and makes a conscious effort to see him as himself, rather than as a catalogue of changes and constants.

She manages it for a moment, and his expression shifts from uncertainty into a hesitant smile that somehow hurts to look at. She turns away, and sees (continued...)