I do hope i can get this finished before they do something dreadful on Buffy.

I'll settle for 'soon'.

But I'm well behind with Buffy, and I fear I know what you mean. Watching ASH keep his hands in his pockets for another episode may drive me crazy.

(driveby, with messages)

Plei: Roz says she went and read "Closing Time" and that it's "absolutely lovely."

Fay: Roz was/is hoping to go to Harvest, but she's a bit huffy with the organisers; she offered to do a crit panel for them, and they haven't got back to her yet. But if she does go, can I hook you up?

(driveby)

But if she does go, can I hook you up?

Hell yes! Although if she's going to be there in a formal capacity I shall feel decidedly shy/stalkerlike.

Although I suppose my interest in Roz is vaguely stalkerlike anyway, in a she-seems-like-a-nice-lass-and-I-like-her-writing*-but-she-doesn't-know-me-from-Adam kind of way. Darn. See, pretty much nobody in my corporeal life has the fannish love. I mean, there's my formerly-non-fic-reading-friend, who's now been sucked into reading LotR RPS...but the ironic thing about that is that, although I'm wholly to blame for sending her to Calico's stories, I kind of balk at reading RPS still, and so although I share the fannish glee (and the LotR love), I don't really read in her fandom of choice.

Um.

So, yeah - I'm awash with the Anorakish love of BtVS and AtS, and brimming with enthusiasm for fanfiction as a genre/aesthetic/whatever, but my opportunities to wax lyrical and pretentious about it all in person are few and far between. I figured that Roz could happily wax fannish over Cabernet Sauvignon, for she seems both smart and funny, as well as big with the Jossverse love. Which is cool.

* incidentally, did you read Webs ? It's been in the back of my mind a lot lately.

(Fay, do you know that she has a LiveJournal?)

Oh, splendid! I knew that she had had an LJ, but I didn't know she was using it again. (Although possibly the one I found before was an old one. Hmm.) Cool.

Fay, I quoted your original post and she laughed and said "I have absolutely no objection that." So if she does go, I'll intro you in email, or howsoever; I like hooking cool people up.

Yes, we spent two hours on the phone; we're getting into a sort of weekly check-in, which is lurvely. She's teasing me with tales of a show on the telly, not got over here, called "The Bill." Claims they have the best screen villain ever. Which led me to believe she'd never seen Luther Mahoney on H:LOTS, and I was right, so I need to find at least one of the juicier bits of Mahoneyhood and pop it on tape for her (she's got a bilingual VCR).

Off to watch Angel....

(Roz also has her website at dymphna.net - it's called glamourous rags. But I haven't been able to get into dymphna since the host played around and did the April Fools page yesterday, and broke the link. Now it won't acknowledge the host, and I can't get there. And I have two stories of hers I want to read....)

For Twi's drabble challenge.

---

Zoe counts on both hands the number of times it has happened. An untraceable message on the cortex, leading her to a shabby motel room on an outlying planet with a name not worth remembering. She leaves them all behind when she does it, especially Mal, because she's afraid one day he'll get this bu dui idea too and she have to use all her fingers.

She dumps the body in the incinerator and tosses the sheets and whatever else that's irreparably stained in afterwards. The gun is pocketed, to be resold on some backwater where they don't care about little things like serial numbers and licenses.

The note is pocketed, to be carefully read and then placed away with the others resting watchfully in a small brown tin.

The bodies she has seen and taken care of once had names; the signatures scribbled in despair at the bottom of the notes once had signifigance. They no longer do, and Zoe needs almost all of her fingers to mark the passing of each of her comrades--one every couple of months. Her heart grows harder and heavier with each senseless death, and the secret she is forced to bear, alone.

From the same thing...

Enough

It's high noon, but the thick curtains of Whil-A-Way Motor Inn room #104 keep the place pitch black, just how Wes likes it.

Faith looks over to where he's sleeping off his third bender in four days. It's like being with Mom, only with Mom, all she ever had to worry about was dodging cigarette butts and her Mom's lecher boyfriends, not making sure the shotgun's empty and all the knives are hidden.

Sometimes she thinks about leaving him a note--taking the car keys and the contents of his wallet and getting the hell out of whatever this is--but she still owes him for getting her out of Sunnydale alive. So she'll deal with the drinking. Besides, least when he's drunk, she gets laid. He won't touch her when he's sober.

She watches as he thrashes against the pillows. Even odds he's dreaming about that last fight, about having to chose between rescuing her ass and saving Angel's, about choosing her, thinking Angel could take care of himself. She gets up, stretches legs still stiff from another night spent trying to make it all up to him with her body, and just holds him 'til the thrashing stops.

Late and wrong fandom for the Sunday100. I couldn't get the image out of my head.

- - -

There he is: a darker heap in the dimness of an alleyway, black hair splayed across the dirty cobbles. Lost in a foreign land, beaten by soldiers who think themselves men, for committing no crime against them. Tokyo is open to all, but the army that uses it is not so forgiving.

I kneel by his side, assessing the wounds with an experienced eye. He’ll live, and with a few well-placed stitches there won’t even be scars—outside—but explaining what happened to the people who care about him isn’t going to be easy. Especially when even I don’t understand.

This is for that drabble challenge. I have some questions I'll post in the next post I make here. There are no spoilers in this. If you didn't see last week's Angel, Players and if you live under a rock, there's a casting spoiler for the next new BtVS, so I'll white font.

Guidelines: Two hundred words, motel, gun, note, M/F (rated PG)

Another dead potential. The note reads, "I am devoured."

Their clean up equation, now second nature: One performs a locator spell; three distract the clerk; two hide evidence.

Art.

Gift.

Bane.

Ashes to ashes…

One sheet-wrapped corpse, one dusty truck/hearse.

Warriors wield bleedin' stain remover? No. Blood stain remover. On rugs, it works.

He draws the motel curtains. Waiting, she dims the lights, but stains never disappear.

Like scar tissue, it fades.

She turns on the TV. War. Blood. She's mesmerized -- not by it, by memories, by death. His hand finds a pistol, not cold to his touch. It's compact, hard, lean. Like him.

Like her.

He fondles it.

It's colder than she'd be.

He raises it, cocks it. She doesn't notice, or she's waiting. He aims -- at himself.

Why?

It won't make him colder, there'll just be more stains to hide. He aims at her.

The pain sears soul now, not head - much more effective, really. Besides, this one might not go to Paradise. Can't do that. She's already tasted Hell.

He won't make the world any colder. Spike drops the gun. Faith shuts off the TV. Devoured by darkness long ago, for heat they forsake light.