Oh.

Ow.

Wonderful, connie!

Victor, I loved the latest installment of your story, and loved the way you re-introduced Oz and Connor. I'm going to have to go back and re-read this thing from the beginning.

Sunday100 drabble...

Played Out (G, AU from BtVS S3 "Bad Girls")

"Buffy, you're not concentrating."

She stopped punching the heavy bag. Her hands fell to her side, and she turned, panting and glaring at him. "Well, thanks for that astute assesment, Wes. I'll see if I can concentrate better with you nagging. And hovering. You were hovering."

He discreetly rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I don't think you take the job of a Watcher seriously."

Her eyes hardened. "I take it plenty seriously."

Wesley surreptitiously watched her, minutely adjusting his glasses and making a note in his journal. Some days he didn't know how Giles put up with her for three years.

For the Sunday100 drabble....

This is really just a distillation of my earlier fic "Redux," but since the challenge was AU, I decided to see if it could be edited down to a drabble. The result:

[Spoilery for Angel S4 through "Salvage" and Buffy S7 through "Lies My Parents Told Me"; AU after that.]

The Convert

She came to Sunnydale, fresh from fighting Angelus. She told them she defeated him, some monk re-souled him, and everything was cool.

"That green guy who works with Angel can see the future, or something. He said I should come here, that you?re facing big evil. So...whatever you need, I'm your girl."

Buffy replied hesitantly, "That could be what we need. Nothing else has worked...." She looked at Faith. "Yes."

Faith extended her hand. "Okay?"

Buffy took it. "Okay."

Faith pulled Buffy to her with preternatural speed. Ridges distorted her face as she tore into Buffy's jugular vein.

Sweet, victor!

My drabble: Our Gift

She knows that look. That serene, resolute, dead inside look.

"Dawnie … I have to …"

Dawn pulls back as Buffy leans in, refuses to listen.

"NO!"

She scans her older sister's face, looking for the right things to say.

They don't exist.

"I was made from you, Buffy. I'm Summers blood."

She kicks off, backwards, flinging herself out of reach, trying not to memorise the pain on her sister's face. She squeezes her eyes shut, remembering … focusing on the real memories, the ones since her creation, of her mother, and love and friends.

"Death is our gift …"

Boy, ita, I wish it woulda happened that way.

Man, some superb writing to wake up to.

For Plei, as motivation:

Title: Some Kind of Devil

Impatient fingers scrabbled up her body. She held deathly still, as if this would all simply stop if she didn't respond to his skillful, cutting touches. It didn't, of course, but thinking loudly to herself kept her a hair's breadth from insane.

She couldn't count the weeks she'd been there. Time had been stripped away, and she remained chained to a wall. She faintly remembered the times she'd attempted to struggle, knowing she could break the iron bonds, and failing. Angelus watched on with a leering smirk, and once he'd tired of watching her humiliate herself over and over again, he'd informed her of the magic that strengthened the metal.

She'd started crying at some point, and now tear tracks overran her face. She barely noticed anymore, working to recede into the distance that would enable her to get through this. She had to believe that she'd survive.

The days he beat her dragged on like molasses, thick and sweet with the smell of blood. He seemed fascinated by what her body could take, determined to push her to the very brink. There were moments when she could feel death cresting over her, a welcoming black. But then there would be a spike of pain, clear and unrelenting, and she would be pulled from the precipice.

Slowly he started to introduce pleasure with pain, and she gasped with shock when he took her brutally, timing each thrust with a deafening blow. He trained her, made her so that she whimpered with joy as he slid razor-sharp knives down her skin, pleaded wordlessly for more when his thumbs withheld air from her fragile lungs.

Each night he would return her to her corner, and she would huddle there, pulling her arms close to her body and burying her head in her hands. It was more routine than sorrow. She remembered reading somewhere that humans could adapt to anything, given enough time. Any situation could gain some semblance of normalcy. A remote part of her mind, remnant of the Buffy-that-was, wondered how she could possibly define this as normal.

That small voice in the back of her mind chanted the names of her friends, a mantra that meant she'd get out of this. Sometimes she would whisper their names across creamy white skin, causing Angelus to move harder and thrust as if to burn those words from her brain. Her gasps would falter, and more than once he had slaped her back to consciousness.

Angelus was ever searching for the part of Buffy that would break her completely. She bent to his will, and she was young enough that he could manipulate her well to his intentions. Still, something eluded him, and he was ever intent on discovering what exactly it was.

For endless moments she had lucidity, and Angelus would frown and beat the clarity out of her. She would smile, the soft curve of mouth she'd saved for her lover, and Angelus would be that much more determined to bring her down.

You know, I really thought it was going to be Dru.

Ouch.

Ooooo. Owwwww.