umm Fay. That was yummy.

Oh, yummy, Fay.

Fay, I really think that there is more to this. And that you'll post it soon.

As always, Elena makes an important point.

Fay, that's just-- !!!!!!!!!, and that's a direct quote from my nervous system.

Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh.

No. Really.

(heheheheheheheheh)

Plei writes sicko porn like a deranged, er, dryad. But I knew that.

(still at Nic's office. Feh.)

Oh, dear Fay. There is not enough hubba in the world, you lovely lovely woman.

The Resurrection Gambit

Part Nine: Memory

China, 2023: “Funny what comes to mind,” thought Spike as he observed his comrades. Despite their obvious antipathy toward their current location and course of action, Wesley and Xander had been carrying the conversation. He chimed in here and there, if only to keep things flowing, but to tell the truth, there were bits he’d forgotten, and he was listening intently, trying to find the small details lost in the wash of decades.

Everyone always assumed he had that photographic memory gift that Angel had. No such luck. That particular talent was something Liam possessed even before Darla made a monster of him. It amused him that people were so quick to reach for the supernatural, rather than acknowledge just how incredible people’s human gifts could be.

Spike figured he’d at this point forgotten as much as he knows. Maybe more. He knows he was in Hell for awhile, but that’s a bit of a wash. Before that, he knew he stumbled and crawled his way from Africa to Sunnydale, the weight of his returned soul driving him mad. He remembered scraps of humanity, as though his previous life were a painting he’d been fond of as a child. He remembered Buffy.

Looking across the table at Dawn, watching her discreetly size up each entry to the bar as a potential threat, he couldn’t help but think how much she’d changed from the girl she once was, the girl he failed to save from Doc, the night that Buffy…

He remembered the last time he’d come to Shanghai. How he and Drusilla had wrestled over the Aurelius Gem, how Dru had knocked him to the street below before turning toward Dawn.

“How many times can I fail to save this girl?” he thought, then realized that she was no longer someone who needed to be saved. Still, he’d die for either of them—her or Buffy. Even now, despite the distance between them. He did once, although it didn’t take. And he tried to again, ten years ago this very day, this very city. That, too, didn’t work.

Dawn had ripped the stone of the necklace Dru was wearing it on, and tossed it over the side of the building after him. The plan was, if they couldn’t use it, then at least they could keep them from using it. Again, no luck. The Juris appeared and snatched it as it fell, tossing it through the swirl of extradimensional energy Willow had summoned. Awestruck by the Juris’s appearance, Dawn let her guard down, and Drusilla lunged for her, nearly killing her, if not for Wesley.

The Juris gazed at Angel, and energy began to radiate from him. As the Angelus personality began to emerge, Angel begged Buffy to stake him, but she couldn’t do it. Perhaps when he was fully Angelus again, Spike figured, but not yet.

Angelus flashed forward in Angel’s mind, and he clocked Buffy with a sucker punch. The Slayer slid across the roof. Giles had already been knocked unconscious in the assault of Drusilla’s army. It took every bit of effort for Willow to hold the doorway open. The plan was going to Hell, and soon Angelus would join the fray, if not for Xander.

Angel begged for Xander to kill him, and Xander looked as though he were inside a nightmare. Wesley turned as Drusilla burst into ashes to watch as Xander, tears streaming down his face, plunged the stake deep into Angel’s heart.

Buffy had been uncomfortable with this plan, this using the gem to eradicate vampires from the face of the Earth. That both himself and Angel concurred with the plan wasn’t enough to sell her on it. “We should have listened," he thought, “should have known that kind of foresight, that insight into whether a plan would work or not, was indeed a gift of her humanity.

“Now,” he thought. “Now we do it right.”

Spike bought the next round.

Woo!

Spike figured he’d at this point forgotten as much as he knows. Maybe more. He knows he was in Hell for awhile, but that’s a bit of a wash. Before that, he knows he stumbled and crawled his way from Africa to Sunnydale, the weight of his returned soul driving him mad. He remembers scraps of humanity, as though his previous life were a painting he’d been fond of as a child. He remembers Buffy.

The tense shifts in this paragraph.

No such luck That

Missing full stop between luck and that.

(MORE MORE MORE!)