I am greatly enjoying this, Victor. I love how everything that happens makes perfect sense in light of what's happened before but is still surprising.

wrod. Now that I've rented some "Manchild" I appreciate that fic even more, btw.

This is so good Victor. It just keeps getting better.

I think I'm going to want to go back to the beginning and reread it once it's all done.

This is so good Victor. It just keeps getting better.

Thanks. Closing in on the end, but still a little more mileage to go...

This week's Open on Sunday drabble topic is "Time".

But Not For Love

She touches him.

She's older than she was before she died, either time she died. There are things she understands, things she can look at, see, acknowledge.

And here he is, world without end, except that oh, as usual, dear, the world's about to end, again. And she takes down Caleb, and Angel's still here. Damn, he says, I've missed this.

She touches his cheek for a moment. If he misses her dance of power, she misses something else: age, and death, the indignities of the grave, every imprint of mortality that can't touch him, but will someday take her.

Another one:

Regret (Darla)

She can't keep him.

It doesn't matter that she loves him. It doesn't matter that she believes he still loves her.

The sins that led them to this pass, two hundred years of murder, death, sadism, torture, Angelus' teeth deep in the flesh of so many, so very many, uncounted and unregretted, don't matter.

Until he got his soul back.

The soul matters.

And now she can walk in sunlight, and he accepts his soul, but she can't accept hers, it burns and nothing in all the years and nothing in all of time everlasting can bring them together again

Victor, I'm loving this fic of yours. It zings.

One grammar nitpick:

You alone, out of everyone here, is in complete control of yourself

I think that should be "You alone, out of everyone here, are in complete control of yourself." (I could be wrong, of course, so someone please feel free to contradict me if I am.)

Huh. No, you're right about that. I'll go fix it.

And thank you!

One more Time drabble.

Thief

He listens to Pink Floyd some days, taking him back to a time best left forgotten, nights spent with a charmed circle of pissed-off Oxford brats, tattooed and bitching and eating vindaloo from the local takeaway. He's Ripper again.

He listens to Syd Barrett and back he goes, down the twisty ladder to the days of Ethan and Deirdre, raising hell, raising demons.

Sometimes, he hears the neighbour's music playing, instead of his own, the bloke's a blues man and there it is, too much, too true, B.B. King, singing the story of Rupert's own life:

Time is a thief...

Ooh! I like that, Deb. The soundtrack is just perfect.