Erika, again with the dead-on voices. I just stand around on the street corner waiting for the next installment to hit the stands.

Nicole, I reread your piece. Your story's intriguing, your characters very close to canon, especially Cordy, you've got her perfectly. I agree with the critique you've been given here, it needs a bit of sanding and smoothing, otherwise, it's a fun read, and hot in the spots you meant it to be hot.

"Where does everything *go*?

I think it likely depends on the proportions of said gender sandwich....

Is there an accepted age/DOB for Dawn?

She was sixteen last year. I don't think we have a birthday though.

Whoa. Good question. I do know she gave her age during OMWF - "I'm just 15, it's kinda lame", IIRC - so could one extrapolate backward?

This week's Sunday 100 is music. Mine (I may do more) with apologies to Evanescence, Darla/Dru:

Bring Me To Life

She lay under cover of a night without a moon, her back against a bed of earth.

Above her, something feathered wheeled and dipped, a fabulous patch of dark against a darker background. Her eyes were open. She could see, she could hear. I am an embryo, she thought, a journey waiting to happen, waiting...

"Darla."

Drusilla, a Pygmalion in a cinch-waist and absurd shoes, whispering her name. Singing it. Crooning it.

"You were nothing, grandmother, daughter. I'm saving you from the dark."

A final step, begging, singing words to a song as yet unwritten:

Bring me to life.

erika, now I'm wishing that I watched Homicide.

Nicole, I reread your piece. Your story's intriguing, your characters very close to canon, especially Cordy, you've got her perfectly. I agree with the critique you've been given here, it needs a bit of sanding and smoothing, otherwise, it's a fun read, and hot in the spots you meant it to be hot.

Thank you. I'm still working on the smoothing of what I have since I'm stuck on how to begin the next portion. I trust that my muse shall return as soon as sanding is complete. Ok...trying to trust. sigh

deborah, I can not express enough how much the grace of your words mesmerize me.

Second musical drabble.

Someone to Watch Over Me

(Because the Gershwin boys are good for grieving): post "The Gift"

She'd sat there all day, alone until sunset.

Her sister's face was pale, a bit bruised from the fall, her body kept from putrefaction by the stasis of Willow's spell. She'd sat there all day, tearless, silent. If she opened her mouth, Dawn thought, there was a pretty good chance she'd start screaming and not be able to stop.

The crypt door creaked. "Shove over, niblet, will you?"

He sat beside her. After awhile, he began to sing under his breath, looking at Buffy. "Someone to watch over me....."

And Dawn, humming a song she'd never heard, began to sob.

Third and last. All about Edith Piaf.

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

In the postwar madness of Paris, where the stink of the Nazis' tenure still hung over the City of Light like the devil's smoke, two vampires fed on a girl.

They'd got in the only way they could: by invitation. Luckily for them, since they were hungry, she'd been starving. Food in the days following the Liberation wasn't exactly plentiful. They'd knocked on her door, holding some quenelles and a tin of potted meat. She ceased being une jeune fille and became meat herself.

Afterward, they played her tinny records, dancing slowly to Edith Piaf: "non, je ne regrette rien"....

deb, those three drabbles--just marvelous. I came here to post more of my self-indulgent AU, and now am having a severe case of fan-girl I'm-not-worthy-itis. Better drabble cues this week, I'm guessing?

...

When Buffy Comes Marching Home - part 3

Tara

When Willow can't sleep, I can't sleep. She tosses; she turns; she makes barely audible little crying noises. Willow is probably one of the least selfish people I've ever known, except in bed--that is. W-Wait. I-I mean...except when it comes to s-sleeping. Well, sleeping, and she likes to get her way about some things, but that's only because she's usually r-right. Right?

That night, Willow wasn't sleeping.

I suppose it was all the excitement. Buffy had come back. Alive. If I hadn't already been lying down, you could have knocked me over with a feather when Spike, Xander, and Dawn burst in here with the news. I thought I was dreaming. I'd been dreaming about Buffy coming back to life for the past month or so. I'd figured the dreams came from Willow's p-plans. Willow had these plans--these plans to resurrect Buffy. We all did--have the plans, that is. Willow just had the idea. It was f-funny how it came about. Anya was going on about something, I'm not sure what. I think she's a sweet soul, but a young one. I suppose that is an odd thing to say about someone born over a thousand years ago, but still, she's a young soul. She's surprised by death, offended by it, even. She and Xander were arguing in that way--that kind of...an-annoying way--that some couples have. You know every detail of the argument, except the one that started it. At any rate, Anya had said, "It's not like we can bring Buffy back to life, Xander!"

That's when Willow got her idea. Willow is so sexy when she's obsessed with learning something new, or engrossed in researching some monster, or lately--some spell. I had objections--strong ones, but Willow... Willow owns me. I don't mean that in some horrid way. She's not like my family--my father--trying to control my mind. She is j-just it for me. And usually, she is right, and doing the right thing...for the right reasons.

I couldn't figure out why she couldn't sleep that night. I was so relieved that the choice had been taken out of Willow's...our hands. We could abandon our quest for the Urn of Osiris. We could stop w-w-worrying about the ethics of all this. Willow never thought the ethics of resurrecting Buffy were in question. She said since Buffy died a supernatural death, it was d-d-different. When Xander asked her why she hadn't resurrected half the town of Sunnydale then, Willow was so angry--hurt, I mean--um...angry that he-he would hurt her like that. Besides, she said deaths that were the results of vampire bites were natural. She's right about that. It doesn't matter how or why someone bleeds to death. Bleeding to death is a natural event. By the time Anya pointed out that we don't know what actually killed Buffy--the fall or the mystical energy--Willow wasn't having any more of it. She was too far gone in research mode.

Buffy was back. Yet Willow couldn't sleep, so neither could I. I wanted so much to talk to her, but sometimes when she's like this, I-I-I'm afraid. I was just screwing up the courage to say her name, when she turned over--hard--to face me, and spoke. "Tara?"

"I'm awake, Willow. Are you all right?"

"I don't know."

"You're not sleeping."

"I guess you're not either?"

"I-I'm just thinking about Buffy being back. It's amazing isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Willow, I expected you to be over-joyed. You're not. Are you still worried she's not really Buffy?"

Willow turned on the lamp and sat up. I wanted to hug her, but she was hugging her knees to her chest, and just looked...I don't know...not huggable. "No. She's Buffy all right. This is a horrible thing to say..."

"What, Willow?"

"I think I am feeling a little let down."

"That she's back? We've been trying to figure out how to do just that, for months!"

"Yeah, I know."

"You wanted to do it?"

"I think so. Does that make me horrible?"

My poor girl. She just looked so forlorn. I reached past her, shut off the light, then pulled her down and held her tight. I wanted to erase the worry lines beneath her pretty widow's peak. I wanted to make everything all right. "No baby, it doesn't make you horrible. It-it it makes you...it makes you r-right, don't you think?"

"Right? How so? I like right. Right is good."

I laughed at that. Willow does this cute little thing with her voice sometimes, and...I'm just whipped, aren't I? "I was worried about resurrecting Buffy. I wasn't--I wasn't sure we were doing the right thing. But if she's back, it must be the right thing, right?"

"Hey. Yeah. I hadn't thought of it that way. Tara?"

"What Willow?"

"Do you love me?"

"Oh, you know I do. I love you, Willow."

"Good," said Willow. And with that, she was asleep, but I wasn't.

Deb, great drabbles. I love your choices of music.

Cindy, I'm really enjoying this, and I think you have a very good grasp of the characters, and the Willow/Tara dynamic.

One mild comment: I think you could go easier on Tara's stutter. It can be used very well in dialogue, but in a narrative told from her POV it gets distracting. Plus, the story feels like something they're writing down, rather than something they're telling, and she definitely wouldn't stutter in writing. Just my opinion, though.