All right, no one's killing folk today, on account of our very tight schedule.

Mal ,'Trash'


Buffista Fic: It Could Be Plot Bunnies  

Where the Buffistas let their fanfic creative juices flow. May contain erotica.


Beverly - Mar 02, 2003 8:58:54 pm PST #1962 of 10001
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.

connie. More. Please.

I can't critique. It just is. As it should be, inevitable as breath. Except when it stops.


Connie Neil - Mar 02, 2003 9:01:12 pm PST #1963 of 10001
brillig

I can't critique. It just is. As it should be, inevitable as breath. Except when it stops.

Bev, if you don't quit it, they're gonna know I'm slipping you sawbucks under the table.

grin.


deborah grabien - Mar 02, 2003 9:06:05 pm PST #1964 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

Deena, she's looking back from a damaged place. You're about to get her first bit of sobbing breakdown and betrayal. It comes after this next bit, but there's a hint of it in the final paragraph:

Outside, as winter made itself felt across Oxfordshire, we emptied our cups and ordered soup, and Rupert talked about his mother. Moira's sister Eileen had been a potential Slayer, one of those who might be called in the line of succession, had the Chosen One died. That was how Moira had met Richard Giles. Why she had married him had been known only to herself.

We got back to Turl Street late, and found the flat dark; Richard, in the last stages of the flu, was staying in bed. I was exhausted, I told myself it was from the long walk back in chancy weather, or perhaps a touch of the flu was fastening itself to me. But somewhere beneath the physical weariness, there was a touch of something foreign to me: depression, hopelessness, what the Christians of an earlier time had called accidie. It had been many years since I'd last felt this, and in the past, it had always been an omen, my spider-sense triggering to the delicate footsteps of something bad to come. Something loomed, something waited. I felt the drag of it against me, and indeed, there was nothing in the real world to cause it. I had killed a demon and Rupert had sworn that he would take my side, now and always. Surely, I should be energised, pleased...?

"Amanda?"

We stood in the kitchen. The flat was completely dark; it was very like Richard to send me out on a killing errand and not bother to leave a light on for me. Behind Rupert's head, through the tied-back curtains, black clouds scudded fiercely across the moon's face, driven by a winter gale. Unaccountably, I thought of the only time I had ever seen the faces of the Council of Watchers, nearly seven years ago. Rupert stood, shadowed by the season and the weight of my foreboding, and he suddenly seemed a thousand miles away. I shuddered.

"Amanda - I meant what I said."

He didn't feel it; whatever this was, it was a witch's business, not a Watcher's. I lifted my head and he came to me quickly, murmuring quietly. I hadn't known, until he touched my cheek with one fingertip and then put the finger between his lips, that I was crying.

"Don't cry, beloved." His voice was almost normal, and I made a tiny hushing noise. "I don't know what's wrong, but there's something -"

He stopped in mid-word. In the split second that was the eternity before the kitchen lights came on, I felt him go rigid against me.

"So." There are no words to describe the venom in Richard Giles' voice. The glasses were off, and the eyes fixed on me were the colour of filthy ice.

It was the stuff of purest melodrama, tacky and tawdry and cheap. Drury Lane might have produced the scene as a morality play and sold seats for a ha'penny. a century ago. The stern father, the son of the house, the hated ward caught in the son's arms...

Ah well. At least the shock seemed to have put paid to his flu.

I began to laugh.

"Get out." Richard took a step towards me. I hadn't thought Rupert could get any tenser. I was mistaken. His arm was around my waist and he was rocklike beside me.

"No." Rupert spoke quietly. "No, Father, I think not."

"I don't recall asking you what you thought." If I had cared for Richard Giles' opinion of me, the concentrated malice would have been enough to damage me; that, after all, is one drawback to being a witch. I cared for Rupert, though.

"She's the Slayer." Rupert sounded as cold as his father. "She's the Slayer, and that means you don't get to choose. You know it, I know it. You can't order her out into the snow with her baby in her arms, or whatever you think you're doing. Not without asking the Council."

"It's all right, Rupert." Something had flashed between us; I'd felt him catch at my thought. He hadn't simply also seen the absurd penny-dreadful parallels, he'd actually heard a bit of my thought. I had never come so close to anyone, other than the father I had never seen. It warmed me. "He's got a right to be shocked."

"Shocked?" Richard was almost lipless with hate. "I'm not remotely shocked. I always knew you were a witch and a whore and why you were Chosen is beyond me. This stupid weak boy here, he's quite right. I can't put you out. But I can -"

"Stop." It had hit me, the looming, the foreboding, the vast dark thing just above my shoulder. A picture in my mind's eye, books, one book left open on a lectern in a corner in the shop below our feet, a whispery voice, familiar, I knew it, an incantation, a curl of - "Smoke. I smell smoke."


Elena - Mar 02, 2003 9:06:25 pm PST #1965 of 10001
Thanks for all the fish.

Yes. connie cannot stop. She has to be with the moving forward. Like a shark. Except in cyberspace. And with teeth of jagged glass that she plunges into your chest and uses to chop your heart into tiny little pieces. Bitch.


Beverly - Mar 02, 2003 9:08:07 pm PST #1966 of 10001
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.

Hee! Well, don't stop. Writing, I mean.


Elena - Mar 02, 2003 9:10:20 pm PST #1967 of 10001
Thanks for all the fish.

deb, I can't wait to get more of this story. I'm loving it muchly.

But, when does this story take place?

and in the past, it had always been an omen, my spider-sense

Because this is such an American reference, and from the late 60s, I think.


Connie Neil - Mar 02, 2003 9:10:30 pm PST #1968 of 10001
brillig

adding Elena to my will


Elena - Mar 02, 2003 9:13:12 pm PST #1969 of 10001
Thanks for all the fish.

adding Elena to my will

Dibs on the writing talent, plot bunnies, and porn.


Steph L. - Mar 02, 2003 9:13:12 pm PST #1970 of 10001
I look more rad than Lutheranism

Deb, I have one question -- would Amanda say "spider-sense"? Would she be familiar with that phrase, and even if she were, would she use it? She seems so removed from anything of the world, particularly pop culture.


Elena - Mar 02, 2003 9:13:50 pm PST #1971 of 10001
Thanks for all the fish.

Steph and I are twins! And it's my birthyear! And we both asked about the Spidey reference!