I love you, Anne.

Your style is *so* suited to the Jossverse. This is very, very ME.

Now I want to know why Halfrek wasn't around when Xander was a kid. It's complicated isn't good enough.

Anne, lovely twist. I want to know what's next, too.

Wow, two great stories in here! I like the line about Paris being "pretty and old and nice if you ignore the French people" -- not because I'm a fan of franco-bashing, but because it's SO Anya.

And I'm interested in Mama Numero's #6 as well. I agree that the story feels very ME, Anne.

Just catching up here, and loving Anne's luchadores' mama's story, connie's Xander and Anyanka in Paris, and erika's deft H:LotS-BtVS crossover. Fantastic, all of them.

Oh, and Victor? Still waiting for more of yours. I loved Gunn, English and Angel returning to S-2 footing, sorta.

Thanks. And yes, both reading and writing have been a thrill this week. Anyone have any thoughts about what Ripper would say about stake fighting to somebody who...let's be kind, prefers battles of a more verbal nature? He's kind of eased back into his Giles persona some. And he and the Munchkin? Not exactly bonded. But the stake is the weapon of choice, besides beheading, which, unless he could do it with a withering retort, our detective friend is not going to master. And besides, that's disgusting. What is he, some kind of animal? Attila the Freaking Hun? How many years of British society and there's two choices: poke it in the heart with a big wooden stick or lop its head off with something sharp... he can see why the Industrial Revolution was such a shock, now. (Sorry, couldn't resist...) I don't know anything about fight scenes, though. Seriously.

Two drabbles, about which I have mixed emotions. The theme was autumn:

Gunpowder Treason
Wesley took Connor on a cool day in early spring. But in his hospital bed, he looks out the window and thinks about another season altogether. His heart and head feel like autumn, chill winds and rain, crunchy leaves and bonfires. Guy Fawkes Day.

As a schoolboy, he made and burned effigies and watched the fireworks, hot cider warming his hands. Then, it was delightful; now, it makes him sad.

Wesley stares at the L.A. spring. Wonders if he can be forgiven. I see no reason/For my sort of treason/to ever be forgot, he thinks, turning to face the wall.

Missing You
Buffy missed Angel most that fall, when the air and leaves crisp. Sheer force of will took her through the summer, propping her up through training sessions and shopping trips and a vacation with her dad. “You’re coping so well,” her mother said, and she smiled, cool inside.

But his gone-ness became much more real in November, as she hugged her sweater a little closer at night (and he wasn’t there to give her his jacket) and did her homework (and he didn’t recite the poems or scrunch up his forehead at the algebra).

And that’s when she cried again.

I like them. My brother, had he been my sister, would have been Autumn, probably.

LJ, they're both lovely things.

I'd look at one thing: in the first one, it read at first that he was watching the Guy Fawkes bonfires with both hands shoved in a keg of hot cider. I suspect it wasn't the liquid warming his hands, but rather the warmth coming through the mug.

I suspect it wasn't the liquid warming his hands, but rather the warmth coming through the mug.

Fair point, and thank you. I'll try and fix that in the copy on my hard drive.

And thanks for the praise.

I made some new Buffy fic. :) At long last. This is for the Time Zone Challenge, which should go live sometime this week. The idea was to write a story of an original slayer being called. I got GMT -8, or Los Angeles. Lemme know what you think.

Equal Danger

"Fine. Mom, look--fine! Okay, I get it. You can't help me right now. That's fine, I'll figure it out. Okay. Okay. Goodbye." You hit the end button on your cell phone and can feel your teeth grind together. Sonofabitch.

It's midnight and you shouldn't have called that late, but you were desperate. You don't make enough money to cover your tuition, even working thirty hours a week when you're in class for twenty more.

Minimum wage covers jack shit, and while loans work in the short term, you hate to take them out because you know you'll have to deal with them later.

You let out a deep breath and curl up in your favorite chair, watching the play of rain against the window. Your thumb runs against the side of your cell, and you think of a hundred variations on curse words that run through your head like the water against the glass. You hate this. You hate being twenty and still dependent, unable to truly live on your own in a city that will eat you alive if you can't.

You hate living on peanut butter and tuna fish, and having to accept the pitied looks your boss gives you when you take hours-old takeout home for breakfast and lunch the next day. You're sick of bland Americanized food, and of having to sacrifice your time with your barre for extra shifts.

You hate bartending for drunken C-list celebrities on the weekend, and you hate writing papers every night when you could be going over your entrance piece to the ABC. You hate it all, but it's where you're at right now and who you are.

You clench your fist tighter and watch in shock as pieces of your phone crumble to the floor.

---

Interlude One

"I've got another one," Willow announces at the table Monday morning. They've taken over the Holiday Inn, able to afford it due to a complex series of accounts and funds that technically reverted the entirety of the holdings of the Watcher's Council to the last known Watcher: Giles. They were biding their time, collecting all the Slayers they could find before they'd set up a school in England.

Buffy nods from her chair, her feet propped up on the table. "Location?" she asks.

"Pretty close," Willow replies, sliding a folder with all the details she could get from the Slayer-finding spell she's been using. "Los Angeles. Kinda cute, long brown hair. Really serious. She was doing some dance-y thing when I saw her. Really tense. She looked kind of pissed off. I was thinking we could call Angel, but..."

Buffy shakes her head. "I'll do it. Too close not to. She's freaked. Most of them are." She rubs the heel of her palm against her forehead. "Twelve in a week. This is fucking crazy, Will. I don't know how we're gonna handle them all."

Willow leans back in her chair. "We'll manage, somehow. Lyndepast is looking like a better location, according to Giles. We'll be able to house them all. The hardest part is just making them accept who they are."

Buffy sighs. "Yeah. Like it was so easy for me."

Willow leans over to grasp Buffy's hand. "You were alone. These girls, they're completely not. They're part of something, Buff. Something special. And you get to tell them that, of all the girls in the world, they are truly someone. I'd be pretty excited."

Buffy looks are her, locking her eyes with Willow's. "You say that, Will. Until you know, though, it's a completely different thing."

Willow nods, looks away. She thinks Buffy's wrong, because she's felt the essence of Slayer. It's a burden, but so much lighter when there's hundreds of them, banded together. She smiles softly to herself, and Buffy's fingers tighten around hers.

"I'll leave tonight."

---

You can't seem to stop shaking.

It's like you can't control your body any more; the flesh that has bent to your will, contorted itself at the command of strict instructors and moved with the grace of years of training has abandoned you and become this other--thing.

You have barely moved from your spot in the center of the floor for three days. You ignored the phone and the knocks at your door, catching your eyes in the wall mirror and refusing to look away for hours. Sometimes your attention drops to the crushed cell phone a few feet away, or you find yourself intently studying your toes.

They were covered in ballerina shoes, once, but now you fear that simply stepping on them will make them dissolve away.

The phrase, "She doesn't know her own strength," keeps pounding a steady rhythm in your head. You don't know why--you can't recall ever hearing it before.

But it keeps a beat to the thump of your heart, the ache in your head, the tension in your limbs. You feel pained and small, curled up in yourself.

After a lifetime of spending all your concentration on your body, you hate it in its betrayal of you. You crushed the cell phone with your bare hands, with the smallest thought driving you towards its destruction.

Your mind speaks in poetry because your father did when you were little; you retreat to it like a frightened puppy to its corner.

Play me, you hear yourself whisper soundlessly, play with me. Turn and stretch, bend and pull your body, make it submit to your will like it did before. You won't hurt anything, you can't hurt anything, you won't you won't you won't.

You unfold yourself from the floor, move your feet into first position, en pointe. You breathe out a shaky sigh of relief when you do not crumple to the floor, your shoes giving way.