Disconnected Ramblings from an Interesting and Creative Mind

Only One (the "Remember Who You Are" Remix)

sroni — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 05:08:33 GMT

Round 9 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at cof_remix.

Title: Only One (The “Remember Who You Are” Remix)
Author: Sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Highlander
Rating: I guess PG-13? No worse than was on the show. I’m really bad at guessing ratings for writing.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN. Characters from Highlander are the property of Davis/Panzer Productions or a successor corporation.
Original story: “Twisting the Drabbles (Chapter 2)” by kerravonsen

Only One
(The “Remember Who You Are” Remix)

“Sneaking through the alleys, what a great idea, this is oh so totally what I’d planned on doing with my life. People will ask why I became a garbageman and I’ll say it’s because I spent my teenage years skulking in gross alleys with mondo amounts of trash to trip over,” Xander kicked the offending crate, and then hopped around a few times because yowsers that hurt, note to self, save up for steel toed boots, “and raise a ruckus so every vampire in a hundred yards heard me, and that, kids, is why I became a garbageman.”

“Don’t forget talking to yourself so you couldn’t hear anyone sneaking up on you,” Danielle from Xander’s chemistry class seemed to just appear out of the shadows.

The only problem is that Danielle had disappeared over a month ago.

Also what was up with that sudden appearance? Did vampires practice how to do that or was it just something they woke up knowing how to do?

“No, I wouldn’t want to forget that,” Xander said, pulling a stake out of his back pocket. Maybe he should have listened to Buffy when she said she didn’t need backup, but… come on, he didn’t pore over the Watcher diaries the way Willow did, but he knew that Slayers weren’t exactly known for their longevity. If he could help keep Buffy alive even an extra day, that would be worth it.

Assuming, of course, that he could help her stay alive that extra day, and not just get killed before her.

Danielle glided forward smoothly, laughing at Xander. “You don’t get it. I’m the cat, and you’re the mouse. Maybe the mouse can mount a defense, but in the end, the cat is going to win. That’s just the way it is. I’m higher up the food chain than you are.”

“Tell that to Tom and Jerry,” Xander countered, stepping back away from Danielle automatically.

Danielle closed the distance between them faster than an eyeblink. “This is real life, Xander, not a cartoon. You’re just food.”

“You mean Looney Tunes lied to me?” Xander shook his head in mock horror. “Say it isn’t so.” While Danielle was distracted by his goofball act, Xander drove the stake through her chest.

Buffy always made it look so easy, but he got the job done. Even if it was easier to go through the back.

Okay. Vampire dusted. Now to be backup.

Xander really should have been expecting it when Tommy yanked Xander into the shadows and bit into Xander’s neck, but it happened almost faster than he could register.

* * *

Xander woke up in the same alley. “Amateurs,” he snorted. He could have been found there! Actually, that raised a good question about what would happen to a body of a future vampire left in the sun. Would it burn or would three days need to pass first?

And then the meaning of it all hit, and Xander shook his head in disbelief. But he didn’t feel like a soulless monster! But would a soulless monster feel like one before killing their friends’ fish? They’d probably just be going lah-de-da sure do wish I could have some blood now. But he wasn’t even thirsty and wasn’t he supposed to be thirsty?

It didn’t matter, though, because Xander couldn’t let things get worse than they already were. He didn’t remember drinking any blood, but, well, he was awake and alive. “Alive”. So he must have. He always thought that he’d refuse to be a vampire, but apparently he was wrong.

But he couldn’t change it. It had already happened, all he could do was move on.

He couldn’t make his friends kill him. He couldn’t put Willow through that. So he’d have to do it himself. They’d need an explanation, and it wasn’t like he could leave a note that wouldn’t make him sound crazypants bananas, so he rummaged through his pockets for some loose quarters and found a payphone, leaving a coded message on Cordelia’s machine. With any luck, she’d share it with Willow, and Willow would pass it on to the others.

He couldn’t stake himself. He tried. He kept chickening out, and all he had to show for it was a shirt with some holes in it and some blood. Okay, a lot of blood. He thought he was supposed to be a lot faster, but maybe he was just defective.

So staking was out, and he didn’t think he could handle setting himself on fire, let alone beheading himself. So that left… Sunlight. It left sunlight.

Okay. He could do this. The beach was probably the best bet; if he picked the right spot, there was no way he’d be able to get to shelter before he was burnt to a crisp. And maybe it would be nice to see one last sunrise. If he survived long enough to even notice it.

He picked his spot and waited, thinking of all the people he was letting down, but he didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t an Angel. They didn’t have another Orb of Thesulah on hand, and besides the last time had cost them a lot to pull off. He wasn’t putting Willow through that again, it had been freaksome when she’d channelled… he didn’t know who and he didn’t need to know who. No, they weren’t doing that again.

Xander watched while the sky turned pink, then orange, and waited for the immolation to start. And Willow wasn’t even around to notice that he’d used immolation correctly!

The sun rose higher and Xander remained a Xander-shaped Xander and not ashes. Was it too cloudy? That didn’t make sense, there weren’t really a lot of clouds.

Was it possible that he wasn’t a vampire? But he’d died. He’d felt it. ...But he was breathing.

Okay, quick check.

Xander held his breath as long as he could, staying still. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, if they weren’t doing something that needed air, like talking. Maybe if they were running they needed it, he didn’t know, they’d never tested it, so he was holding still just in case.

And he needed to breathe. He definitely needed to breathe.

He so needed to talk to Giles.

* * *

“Giles, we have a problem,” Xander announced as he came into the library.

Giles responded by throwing water on Xander.

Xander blinked the water out of his eyes. “Did you just throw holy water on me?”

“Yes, well, it didn’t have an effect, which means that Willow’s been crying in my office for the past hour needlessly.”

“That’s part of the problem.” Xander shifted his weight back and forth a few times. “I died. I know I died. But then I woke up? And things have been weird. I thought I was a vampire, since, you know, last thing I remember was a guy going chomp on my neck. But I didn’t burn in sunlight and I breathe, and also I can’t do anything vampires can do. So I don’t know what’s going on and I really hope you have answers because I’m kind of freaking out here, G-man.”

Giles blinked slowly at Xander. “I think I need to make a phone call.”

Shortly after Giles disappeared into his office, Willow came barrelling out and flung herself at Xander, clinging to him. “You’re alive! Giles says you’re really not a vampire, so why would you go leaving messages saying you’re a vampire and you’re going to off yourself, mister? I just saw you yesterday! But this is the Hellmouth and if a vampire can become a vampire in less time, it’s going to happen here especially if there’s any big supernatural happenings going on to make things even faster.”

“Breathe, Willow,” Xander reminded her with an affectionate smile. “I might have jumped to conclusions.”

Willow smacked his arm. “Well, don’t go jumping to conclusions like that!”

“I’ll try, but that kinda happens a lot,” Xander admitted sheepishly.

Giles emerged from his office. “My friend - no, that’s too strong. An acquaintance of mine, Joe Dawson, is on his way to explain things. We don’t run in precisely the same circles, but occasionally there is overlap.”

“What kind of overlap?” Willow tilted her head quizzically at Giles.

“He can explain better than I, since this is his field,” Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them while he spoke. “Normally you would not be allowed to know the full situation, and he would only tell Xander, but he is aware of your roles with Buffy, despite it not being typical, and I believe that he is rather atypical in his own group, so an exception is being made.”

Xander wasn’t exactly known for his patience, though he did try, but after what seemed like forever but was probably only a few minutes, he gave up trying to be patient. “Can you give me the cliff notes version while we wait?”

Giles sighed, though Xander would bet good money that he’d anticipated Xander’s inability to wait. “Very well. We are both Watchers, but our responsibilities are very different. I guide the Slayer. He watches and records Immortals. They’re not supposed to interfere but-”

“But he’s like you and isn’t so good at watching without doing?” Xander interrupted.

“Quite,” Giles nodded. “I must admit that I don’t know much about Immortals. They keep to themselves, for the most part; we are only taught enough about them to recognize the signs. They age like humans, until they have their first death, at which point, they are, well, immortal. They may die again, but they’ll resurrect within minutes, unless they are beheaded.”

“Sooooo I need to not lose my head and everything will be hunky dory?” Xander focused on the important information Giles had shared. He didn’t need to know most of the rest, but “if someone chops off your head you’ll die for real” was a thing he definitely needed to know. The rest of it was the kind of thing Willow would want to know, and she’d tell him what else he needed.

“I wish it were that simple,” a new voice said. “I’m Joe Dawson. Sit down and I’ll lay it out for you. Usually you’d have an Immortal to be your first teacher, but most of them won’t go near the Hellmouth, for damn good reason, but that also means you’ll be safe while you learn. As safe as you can be on a mouth of hell.” Joe Dawson settled in at the table, and steepled his fingers. “Let’s see, where to start…”

* * *

Xander’d thought he’d be lucky to survive high school. Then he met Buffy and realized that he’d really be lucky to survive high school. But now there was a lot more than that. He’d have to survive The Game, too, or die trying.

Well, this was his life now, and the sooner he adjusted, the better.

The Game was afoot.

No, wait. No, he thought of a better one.

Let the Games begin.

Oh, whatever. Bring it on, Immortals.

THE END

These Wounds Won't Seem to Heal (The “I've Been Alone All Along” Remix)

sroni — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 11:52:16 GMT

Round 8 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at cof_remix.

Title: These Wounds Won’t Seem to Heal
Author: Sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Walking Dead
Rating: I guess PG-13? No worse than was on the show. I’m really bad at guessing ratings for writing.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN. Characters from The Walking Dead are property of Image Comics, AMC, Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, Frank Darabont, and anyone else that I might have forgotten.
Original story: “His Brains, Her Steel, Their Strength” by jedibuttercup

These Wounds Won’t Seem to Heal
(The “I’ve Been Alone All Along” Remix)

There were whispers, rumours, of the tiny golden girl that would rescue people from herds of zombies, maybe stay for a meal or a night, once or twice staying as long as a week, before taking off again and disappearing ‘in search of the dawn’. She was the opposite of the boogeyman, the opposite of ghost stories whispered around campfires. She was a story of hope, a story of survival, told in hushed whispers to remind people that not all was lost yet, when it seemed hopeless they might still be rescued.

Dawn knew, statistically, that it probably wasn’t the same girl in each story. That some of them were going to be made up, and of the ones that were true, it was probably a handful of surviving Slayers, probably some normal girls as well that had stepped up after the apocalypse and learned how to be strong on their own.

But Dawn knew, emotionally, that the stories were about Buffy. Even if Buffy herself didn’t appear in them all, they were still about her, about her spirit. About her legend.

Now Dawn just needed to find her.

Dawn had been in Chicago when the outbreak had first hit. She’d had the damn bad luck — or maybe the damn good luck, she didn’t actually know anymore — to have come down with the flu, so she’d been holed up in her apartment for two weeks, sleeping and eating soup and feeling miserable and sorry for herself. By the time Dawn had realized that it was an actual apocalypse and not just Buffy freaking out on her voice mail again (look, Buffy freaked out the same amount whenever she didn’t hear from Dawn for more than a week, regardless of what was going on, it was well under way and Dawn’s options were pretty well limited to ‘get the hell out of Dodge’ and hope that she and Buffy would eventually land at the same safe house that the Slayer’s Council had set up, because there were a lot of them scattered across the world.

Getting out of Chicago was a lot easier said than done. She wound up having to steal her neighbor’s truck because her cute little Honda couldn’t get out of its parking space due to being blocked in by other cars, and she wasn’t about to try to push the cars out of the way, not when there were claw marks on the interior and blood smeared on the inside of the windows. Besides, it wasn’t like Dave was around to use it anymore; Dawn had gone door to door in her building to see if there was anyone still there that wanted to get out with her, and she’d had to kill a few of her neighbors in the process. Rekill. Kill again?

Things got muddy, okay.

Dawn said a quick thanks to Spike, wherever he might be now, for teaching her how to hotwire a car one of the times he’d been stuck babysitting her. It had taken a lot of wheedling to convince him, but it had come in handy the few times she’d needed the skill; even if it hadn’t come up very often over the years, the few times she’d needed it, she had really needed it. Dawn clicked her seatbelt into place, because if some zombies managed to get on the truck she’d be stopping suddenly and would like to not send herself through the windshield in the process.

Dawn finally got out of the city, white-knuckling her way through. She had to run a few zombies over, and there were more than a few harrowing moments, but, well, she survived and that was the main goal. Secondary goal was to try to reach someone from the council, anyone, even Andrew, but the cell phones were down and magic seemed to have gone, for lack of a better word, wonky, so she couldn’t use some of the other methods she normally would.

She should try to check Cleveland, it made the most sense, but that meant dealing with another city, one with a Hellmouth underneath it, and Dawn wasn’t a Slayer. Dawn didn’t have a Slayer with her. She didn’t have an unlimited supply of weapons. She just had herself, and the truck until it ran out of gas, unless she managed to siphon gas from other cars, but that … just seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Dawn had gone to college in Chicago because it was close enough to Cleveland to get there in an emergency, but far enough away that she could live her own life and not be in the shadow of her sister or who she’d been as a teenager. That decision was biting her in the ass, and now she wished she’d been with her family when the apocalypse hit.

No, south was the way to go. Keep moving, keep going south, check in at some of the safe houses, stay there if it was, you know, safe, keep moving if it wasn’t. There was a plan for this (mostly because there was a plan for everything), and Dawn needed to stick to the plan.

It would be a lot easier to stick to the plan if there were someone with her.

Dawn kept moving. When the gas on the truck ran out, she started walking. She had her sword and her crossbow, and she learned how to whittle replacement bolts with the knife Xander had given her for her birthday. Wooded areas were the easiest, because zombies weren’t fast, weren’t smart, and couldn’t climb. They were slow and relentless, they were inescapable death, but humans used to hunt by chasing their prey until their prey dropped of exhaustion. Dawn did her best to not attract zombies, and dispatched the ones she did as swiftly as she could. She slept in trees at night, she walked carefully during the day to be as quiet as she could.

And she avoided people because she’d learned already that travelling with people would just get you killed. Either you’d risk yourself to save them or you’d let your guard down and feel safe, or they’d do something stupid. It was easier to be on her own.

It was safer to be on her own.

Oh, sure, sometimes she’d fall in with a group and eat with them before heading her own way. It’s how she started hearing the stories. But she always went her own way, sometimes circling around for hours to make sure that they weren’t following her.

Buffy, she was sure, was loaded for bear and still looked freaking amazing because Buffy always looked great. Buffy had probably gathered a group together and set herself up as the protector. Buffy had adapted to this new life the same way she’d adapted to being the Slayer.

Buffy always adapted, and Dawn always felt like the ugly duckling next to her sister, not quite fitting in, not quite able to keep up. Dawn had found her niche in languages and school, but that hadn’t seemed like important things. Dawn was bristly and sometimes a brat, and Buffy was … Buffy was likable, Buffy made friends easily. Buffy was good at all the things Dawn had wanted to be, cute and athletic, winning skating contests when she was younger while Dawn had spent her childhood with scraped knees and hands because she was constantly tripping on herself and other people.

So Dawn had no doubt that Buffy was succeeding in this new world the way she’d succeeded in the old one. Better, even, since the things Buffy was good at was necessary for this new life, and the things Dawn was good at … didn’t really translate well.

But Dawn kept moving. She might not be naturally good at this, but she could learn. She got better at making crossbow bolts. She got better at shooting with the crossbow to begin with. She got better at not drawing zombies’ attention, and killing them when she did. She got better and she learned and she kept going, she kept moving, because she was going to find her sister.

Of course, when she did find Buffy, Buffy was making goo-goo eyes at a scruffy guy with a crossbow that put Dawn’s own to shame.

Dawn couldn’t really judge on the scruffy; most people were scruffy now, after all. Dawn was acutely aware of how long it had been since she’d taken a real shower, because of course Buffy was clean even if wearing very non-Buffy-like clothes. Buffy wasn’t really one for floral shirts, but this one suited her. Dawn was wearing a tank top and jeans that had seen better days, a flannel shirt thrown over to protect her arms, and solid boots that she’d pilfered from an army surplus store that had been raided before she got there for the guns and ammo but not the women’s boots.

Dawn heard Buffy before she saw her, freezing at the sound of her voice and spending several long moments trying to decide if she was really hearing Buffy or if her mind was playing tricks on her. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought she’d heard Buffy, after all. She’d decided to brave a deserted town to see if there were supplies that she could replenish, and had been surprised to hear actual people talking, and even more surprised when she’d gotten close enough to really hear.

But, no, it was actually Buffy, and Dawn … Dawn didn’t know how to handle it.

She didn’t actually know how long it had been since the zombie apocalypse had started, because she’d lost track of time. But however long it had been, she’d spent it looking for Buffy, avoiding people when possible, and avoiding zombies as much as she could and killing the ones she couldn’t. She’d watched people die that she couldn’t save, she’d walked away from people that she knew would probably die without help, and if Dawn had stayed to help she’d have died, too, but maybe she could have made a difference and she’d chosen herself.

She’d chosen herself every time.

Listening to Buffy speak, Buffy had been killing zombies, and Dawn didn’t think she’d been doing much else.

Dawn’s people skills were rusty. She felt like a feral cat, wanting to come inside in the snowy winter, but not really sure how to go about it or if it was even the best thing to do.

This should be easy. It was Buffy. All Dawn had to do was say Buffy’s name, get her attention, and Buffy would be glad to see her and give her a big hug. There would be tears and ‘look at you’s and ‘I was so worried about you’s and more hugs. All she had to do was say something. Anything.

Instead, Dawn froze.

Dawn froze and couldn’t make herself do anything while Buffy and Scruffy Boy walked away, presumably back to the camp that Buffy had found.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Dawn would be able to talk to Buffy tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow Dawn wouldn’t feel like she’d let Buffy down.

THE END

As Water Unto Wine (the "All Thy Passions" Remix) Part Three

sroni — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 19:05:55 GMT

Title: As Water Unto Wine (the “All Thy Passions” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13, I think. No worse than the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “As Moonlight Unto Sunlight” by aadler

Notes: Apologies for how short this section has been and how long it has taken for me to post. I've been knocked literally flat on my back due to back pain, and that is really not a position that is conducive to writing. Today has been my first day sitting up in a while.

Part One: Can be found here.
Part Two: Can be found here.

As Water Unto Wine
(the ‘All Thy Passions’ Remix)
Part Three

Angel was able to sit motionless for long periods of time, if she so desired, and wasn’t much of one for nervous energy. She’d much rather fade into the background, and be automatically looked over in the shadows because of lack of movement, than expel energy in restless motion. It wasn’t as though she ever suffered from a lack of energy, but it was the principle of the matter.

The Slayer and the Watcher were telling the teenagers about vampires and Slayers, and Angel really wanted to be anywhere but where she was, but she couldn’t just disappear without raising more questions.

The Watcher wrapped up with, “I think that’s all the vampire information you need.”

Shaggy Boy disagreed, apparently, because he said, “Except for one thing. How do I kill them?”

“You don’t. I do,” the Slayer told him.

While they argued, the shy one turned to Angel with a quizzical look on her face. “If Buffy’s the Slayer, what are you?”

Angel met the other girl’s stare evenly. “One of a kind. You won’t find anything like me in those books.” It was the truth, as far as she knew: she had no doubt that her vampiric activities had shown up in Watcher’s journals for the century she was active, but no one other than Liam and the gypsies knew what had happened to her; the gypsies were notoriously private about such things, and she knew that Liam wouldn’t have told anyone, and probably would have just said that Angel had been killed. Which, as far as he was concerned, she had been. She wasn’t the same Angel she’d been before, and that Angel was dead, having been replaced with the Angel she was now.

The other girl turned back to the others, the disagreement having wrapped up to a point. “This is probably the dumb question, but shouldn't we call the police?”

Angel could understand the question; to these teenagers, the police were who you called when people were in danger. The police were the people who protected you. But this was Sunnydale, and the police were oblivious at best, and calling the police was not an option. They tended to not believe in things like vampires, and the only result would be dead policemen, which was what the Slayer was telling the other girl.

Before they could start arguing again, Angel cleared her throat. “I wish I could be of more help, really, but I can’t stay. I have things that I need to get to, and I won’t be of help beyond this. All I can tell you is that when you get inside the tunnels, head back towards the school.”

“Don’t suppose you have a key?” the Slayer snarked at her.

Angel shrugged. “They really don’t like me dropping in on them, and I try to avoid them.” She moved towards the door, and turned back with a sigh. “Be careful. You’re needed to stop the Harvest, and if you go down there by yourself, you’ll be putting yourself in danger.”

“Why don’t you go down with me?” the Slayer challenged her. “Or try to stop the Harvest thing yourself, if it’s that big of a deal?

Angel replied frankly, “Because I’m scared.” She took advantage of the Slayer’s surprise and used it to leave, trying to not feel guilty.

She was there to help the Slayer, but some fights weren’t hers. Some things, the Slayer had to do herself.

Rescuing a friend shouldn’t have been one of them … but Angel couldn’t go, not when she knew that it would mean fighting Liam.

Once, she could have taken him on in a battle to the death, with the odds evenly balanced; he was stronger, but she was quicker, and while he took active delight in sadism, he had never been able to match her in sheer viciousness. But that was before she found herself fettered by a soul; now, handicapped by self-hate and her memories of the brother she had once loved — however loathsome might be the thing now wearing his face — she wasn’t completely sure she wouldn’t hesitate for the tiniest fatal fraction of a second in striking a killing blow. She simply couldn’t risk that when the Slayer’s life would be on the line.

No; in this fight, paradoxically, the Slayer truly was better facing her enemies alone. If she survived …

… if she did, then it truly would be time to see what kind of difference an irredeemably stained angel might make in the worlds of destiny already unfolding on this singular Mouth of Hell.

END

Part One

Part Two

Quick Update

sroni — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 05:05:11 GMT

I promise I am still hard at work on "As Water Unto Wine". I just had a very active past four days, with no time to write after Thursday (and I can't take away from sleep time because I've been getting three or four hours).

I have no plans now until Thursday, though, so writing will resume today (Monday the 11th) and there's no reason to not expect a post coming in, as well.

I just wanted to reassure that I hadn't dropped it, I have just had no time, and what little writing I have managed to do was on my phone, so it's riddled badly with typos because I have a small phone and small hands that aren't small enough to type coherently on the tiny keypad.

As Water Unto Wine (the "All Thy Passions" Remix) Part Two

sroni — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 21:57:44 GMT

Round 7 of Circle of Friends is still here! You can find the stories at cof_remix.

Title: As Water Unto Wine (the “All Thy Passions” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13, I think. No worse than the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “As Moonlight Unto Sunlight” by aadler

Explanation: I am posting this story in parts because this month has been a crazy, crazy month and I’ve dislocated my shoulder twice in nine days, with the second one being yesterday. I will do this story quickly, but it just wasn’t ready in time to post completely today. I talked to aadler, and didn’t make the decision on my own. I could have posted what I’ve written so far and had a complete story that I’d be (mostly) satisfied with, but it’s not the story I wanted to tell yet. But it will be. Oh how it will be.
Part One: Can be found here.

As Water Unto Wine
(the ‘All Thy Passions’ Remix)
Part Two

After all that time waiting for the Slayer to get there, Angel had forgotten to consider one very important detail: how to introduce herself and be taken seriously by the Slayer. The fact that she had a soul wasn’t exactly well known, so Angel emphatically did not want to start the conversation with the fact that she was a vampire; not when the Slayer’s job was to kill her ilk. But Angel was well aware of how young she looked. She’d been fifteen, but looked younger, when Liam had turned her, and she could pass for a young-looking seventeen if she worked at it. To the trained eye, though — and Angel had already learned that the Slayer had a trained eye when it came to fashion and make-up — it would be obvious that she was trying to look older, no matter how subtly she did it.

So, no, Angel had no idea how to go about passing on the things that she’d learned while waiting for the Slayer to get there without raising more questions than Angel wanted to answer… but neither could she stay quiet just because it might get uncomfortable for her to have the Slayer scrutinizing her too closely.

So Angel decided on a quick warning, answer no questions, disappear as fast as possible. The Slayer might not trust the warning, but at least she’d know, and she could do with that what she wanted.

Angel followed the Slayer (Buffy, she knew the Slayer’s name was Buffy, but it was easier think of her by what she was, the Vampire Slayer, as in “if she finds out what Angel is, she will stake first and not bother to ask questions later”) into the alley, trying to pick her moment, and only realized when the other girl — actually not much bigger than Angel — dropped down to the ground in front of her and landed in a fighting stance.

Angel had long since trained herself to not react to things unless she chose to (even if you are considered one of the leaders, one does not run in circles with the other three vampires that make up the Scourge of Europe and give things away with your face unless you have a death wish), so she only arched her eyebrow at the blonde. “Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem,” Buffy replied, more than a little belligerently. “Why’re you following me?”

Angel allowed herself the ghost of a smile. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry. I don’t bite.” It was easyfor her to lapse into the pretense of not taking it seriously, when Angel really took it all too seriously. But she couldn’t be too earnest or she’d come across as a little girl trying to prove that she could keep up with the big dogs, when the truth was, little Slayers might not be able to keep up with her.

Buffy backed up a little bit, giving Angel space, but kept her hands up and ready, just in case.

“The truth is,” Angel mused as though she were admitting a secret, “I expected you to be taller. Or bigger, or something. You’re pretty spry, though.” She had a momentary thought of letting her eyes drift over the other girl; Angel had spent over a century not caring who her bed partners were, and though she hadn’t done that in almost a hundred years (if it was only a few years short of a hundred, did she get to claim it as a century, just to make it easier to say? Best not, alas, because words matter, words have power, and Angel didn’t want to piss off anyone that might take umbrage at it) she could still act. But while she had no doubt it would throw the Slayer off, she didn’t know how else the other girl might take it, and best to not toss too many unknowns into the wind at the same time and see what came back. So she just focused on looking carefree and slightly amused, and waited —

The Slayer was apparently having none of it, because she stayed in her fighting stance and raised her hands a little. “What do you want,” she demanded.

“The same thing you do,” Angel lost all pretense of humour and met the Slayer’s eyes steadily.

The Slayer dropped her hands, spreading her arms wide in challenge. “Okay. The what do I want?”

“To kill them.” Angel stepped in a little closer despite the potential danger. “To kill them all.”

Buff–… The Slayer replied mock cheerfully, in the way of a game show host, “Sorry, that’s incorrect. but you do get this lovely watch and a year’s worth of Turtle Wax!” She brushed past Angel to stalk out of the alley. “What I want is to be left alone.”

Angel answered her wearily. “You really think that’s an option anymore? You’re standing on the mouth of hell. And it’s about to open.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small jewelry box, tossing it to the Slayer and trusting her catch it … nor was she disappointed. “Don’t turn your back on this,” she cautioned the other girl. “You’ve got to be ready.”

The Slayer seemed to be trusting her to genuinely be delivering a warning. Good. “What for?”

“For the Harvest.” It wasn’t a lot of information, but it was enough; Angel knew that if the Slayer told the Watcher, he’d find it in one of his books and then she’d be prepared, and that was the whole point of this. Angel was done with the conversation, she’d done what she came to do, so she started to walk off.

The Slayer stopped her. “Who are you?”

Luckily, Angel already had a response prepared for this question. She smiled at the Slayer (with perhaps a bit too much in the way of teeth), and said, “Let’s just say I’m a friend,”

She began to walk away then, but behind her the Slayer challenged, “What if I don’t want a friend?”

Angel let out a quiet laugh. “I never said I was your friend,” she pointed out, tossing the words over her shoulder.

This was the Slayer’s fight, but Angel would join herself to it, because it was her fight as well. She just wanted to make sure that the Slayer was ready for it.

***

Angel had already learned that the main place where most of the teens and young adults hung out in Sunnydale was called The Bronze. There was too much town for Angel to cover on her own, so she tried to focus her efforts on The Bronze and stop the vampire attacks when she could.

So she really wasn’t all that surprised when The Slayer showed up, meeting up with friends. She was surprised, however, when the Slayer let her two friends talk and dance with Liam and some blonde vampire working the private school angle.

Any other vampire, and Angel would step in — she had stepped in more often than not in the previous months — but Liam knew her, and it was too much of a risk.

It had to be a trap. The Slayer must know what she’d just set her friends up against, and she had to be using it to set a trap for them.

Except … except that the vampires and their prey were leaving, and the Slayer wasn’t reacting fast enough and damn it.

Angel sprinted after the blonde and her prey, the better strategy for the moment: Liam would recognize her, and the Slayer had seemed more focused on the redhead than the boy, it was the smart decision and the safe decision, and, well, Angel was pretty much always in favour of anything that could be both of those things at the same time.

The crowd was too thick for Angel to get through easily, though, and they got away. Angel had a good idea where the blonde would be taking the boy, but she didn’t know, and she had already lost valuable time. She was right, though, Angel found them as the blonde entered the mausoleum, the boy trailing after her before Angel could intercept him.

Why were humans frequently so stupid? Why did they so often seek out their predators and follow after them as if dazzled by their own doom?

Angel waited outside the mausoleum, ready to enter if necessary to save the Slayer’s friends, but Liam and the blonde were currently just talking, and the redhead was terrified but trying to figure out a way to escape. Angel couldn’t go in and fight them alone, she’d have the element of surprise but that was the only advantage she’d have in the fight; it would be two against one, and Liam was vastly stronger than she was.

Plus, the Slayer was on the way. Angel would intervene if the humans were in immediate danger — she would — but she needed to be smart and not just rush in unthinking.

It was a moot point, though, because the Slayer was suddenly there, so Angel stayed where she was, ready to help if it was necessary, but content to stay out of it otherwise, because Liam recognizing her would raise more questions than she wanted to answer.

Angel heard the Slayer tell her friends to run, and then the three teens came stumbling out, one of them leaning heavily on the other two from blood loss that Angel could smell from her spot in the shadows.

Angel quickly fell into step alongside them. “Let me help, I can carry him easier than you can.” They already knew about things that went bump in the night, and right then her priority was their safety, not keeping her capabilities a secret. How she could do these things, yes, but not necessarily what she could do.

The two unwounded ones obeyed without an argument, and Angel shifted the bloody one to a fireman’s carry to make it easier to transport him … but then shaggy-haired boy asked, “Are you a Slayer, too?”

Angel almost missed a step at the question, which threw her even more than the Slayer landing in front of her in the alley had earlier that night. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone might think she was a Slayer, and she filed it away for the future, in case she could use that further down the line (probably after this Slayer had died, because Slayers didn’t last long in the grand scheme of things). “No,” Angel answered with the hint of a wry smile. “I am really not. But don’t worry. I’m here to help.” She matched her pace to theirs, because she could outrun them easily even with the extra weight on her shoulders.

“We should go to the police,” the redhead was saying. “They’re just a few blocks awa–…” She broke off, the three of them slowing to a stop when three vampires blocked their way.

Angel thrust the bloody boy at the shaggy one, moving into a defensive position in front of the humans she had to keep safe. She heard the girl let out a squeak of terror, and whirled to discover that Liam had come up on that side, and now her brother was staring at her with mirth and wonder. “So this is where you’ve gotten off to, Angel?”

Angel felt the familiar icy rage settle in her blood. “Let her go.”

“I don’t think I will.” Liam made a show of sniffing at the girl’s neck. “She smells too delicious —”

Angel didn’t waste time with banter, she simply launched herself at Liam. She had no surprise on her side now, and he was far stronger, but she fought dirtier than he would ever bother to do, and she went straight for his eyes, her nails catching his face and drawing blood in scarlet lines.

His automatic reaction was defensive, as she had known it would be, and as he blindly shoved her back, she used the opportunity to seize the redhead and swing her away from Liam’s grasp. Shame she didn’t actually get to claw his eyes out, he’d be much less dangerous if he couldn’t see, but he’d never be that slow —

She caught a hard fist to the ribs, the force of it stopping her where she stood even if she didn’t need the air it drove from her lungs, and the next blow crashed against her jaw with an impact that made her ears ring. Angel was already moving, though, getting inside Liam’s third swing, and she used his momentum from the missed punch to throw him into a gravestone.

Unfortunately, that put Liam closer to the bleeding boy, and before Angel could follow up, one of the other vampires was tackling her to the ground. Angel rolled with it and to her feet, thrusting her stake into his heart before he’d regained his own footing — fledglings weren’t known for their fighting skills because they hadn’t had to learn it yet — and spun around to go after Liam again. He was easily the most dangerous of all the attackers, he was where she needed to focus …

Angel saw that the shaggy boy had been grabbed by a big-shouldered vampire with white-boy dreadlocks, and she drove straight at this new foe, not wasting time on a pretty attack but going for pure speed and force, doing her level best to punch completely through his ribcage. It didn’t work, of course, he was just as tough as she was, but it took his attention from the shaggy boy and onto her, which was where Angel wanted it. He swiped at her with a slow, lumbering hand that would have hurt had it landed — and to be fair, it would have seemed fast to a human, but she wasn’t one — and Angel simply ducked under the blow and closer in against him, her own hand darting out to slam the stake home.

Fledglings. Honestly. If she were ever a master vampire again, she’d train the fledglings up right before letting them loose. What good were they if they didn’t know how to fight?

Angel dropped to her knees next to the shaggy boy, who had at some point been rendered unconscious. She smacked at his cheeks lightly, gauging her strength because what was light to her wasn’t necessarily so to fragile humans, and waited to see if that would wake him up.

And apparently during the process she lost all concept of spatial awareness, because she was met with a foot to the face that knocked her away from him, and an angry blonde Slayer stood between Angel and the boy.

“I thought you said you didn’t bite,” the Slayer challenged. “Or was that just to get me to let my guard down around you?”

“Buffy —” the redhead protested.

Angel wiped the back of her hand against her mouth, taking the small trail of blood with it. “Why would I warn you about the Harvest if I was going to attack your friends?”

Shaggy Boy lurched to his feet, leaning on the redhead for support, and his voice was wheezy and vague. “Two pretty girls fighting over me? turns out, not as much fun as it was in all those dreams.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Buffy, she helped us.”

Angel realized that the bleeding boy wasn’t with them anymore, and that Liam had disappeared. Damn it, damn it, DAMN it! “Not enough,” she said grimly. “Liam got your friend.”

End Part Two

Part One

Part Three

As Water Unto Wine (the "All Thy Passions" Remix) Part One

sroni — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:44:05 GMT

Round 7 of Circle of Friends is still here! You can find the stories at cof_remix.

Title: As Water Unto Wine (the “All Thy Passions” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13, I think. No worse than the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “As Moonlight Unto Sunlight” by aadler

Explanation: I am posting this story in parts because this month has been a crazy, crazy month and I’ve dislocated my shoulder twice in nine days, with the second one being yesterday. I will do this story quickly, but it just wasn’t ready in time to post completely today. I talked to aadler, and didn’t make the decision on my own. I could have posted what I’ve written so far and had a complete story that I’d be (mostly) satisfied with, but it’s not the story I wanted to tell yet. But it will be. Oh how it will be.

As Water Unto Wine
(the ‘All Thy Passions’ Remix)
Part One

It’s hard to remember every horrible thing you’ve done and simultaneously be disgusted by it and revel in it and want to do it again.

In her human life, Kathy had been the type of person to take care of the wounded animals because she couldn’t stand to see them suffering, to adopt all the barn cats and try to bring them inside in the winter, much to her parents’ dismay. Liam didn’t really care about people, other than the women he might be able to “have a bit o’ fun wit’”, but Kathy had cared altogether too much and tried to save everyone.

In the first part of her vampire life, Angel had taken pleasure in destroying people’s lives before finally claiming those lives. She’d gone for emotional torture as much as physical, and while Liam had loved the blood and screams, Angel had loved breaking people. The blood and the screams were a nice bonus, of course, but it wasn’t her end goal, just a side trip along the way.

In the second part of her vampire life, when Angel and Kathy melded, Kathy kept the name Angel as a reminder of all the things she’d done, all the things she needed to atone for, because she’d been Angel and she’d loved being Angel for over a century, and now carrying that name was a penance, a drop in the bucket of the ocean that was the penance she owed. In the second part of her vampire life, Angel was horrified by the things she’d done. But the addition of her soul didn’t take away from the demon inside of her. The soul kept her demon caged, but it was still there, still remembering the heinous deeds that Angel had committed, still wanting to get free and do it again.

Angel couldn’t risk that happening, but she had so much to make up for that she couldn’t simply stake herself and be done with it. Suicide was a sin, but what was one more sin on top of all the ones she’d already committed?

Angel went to Mass every Sunday without fail, though she switched churches periodically, and tried to keep her ear to the ground for people who needed help. She went to Confession, though she, of course, didn’t confess to murder. It helped, at least a little. Angel didn’t feel so alone when she talked to the priest, whichever priest it was, and maybe Confession was more for not feeling alone than for any absolution. She didn’t take the Eucharist, though, because she wasn’t that much of a masochist, and she didn’t go up for a blessing on the off chance that it would make her demon react the same way it did to any object blessed by a priest (she was curious about that, but not curious enough to try it herself).

She helped people, she knew she did. There was the Greene family that couldn’t afford their rent and their groceries for a couple months, and Angel deposited groceries in front of their door. The Williams family, hiding from Maria’s husband and the children’s father because last time he’d found Maria, he’d put her in the hospital. Angel found him first this time and “politely persuaded” him to not abuse women in the future and to leave Maria alone by putting the fear of God into him, and, all right, putting him in the hospital that time with the same injuries he’d given Maria. Angel had kept an eye on him for years, and he’d known someone was following him but couldn’t prove it, even to himself, because Angel was very very good at staying in the shadows and staying hidden. He’d drunk himself into an early grave, and Angel probably should feel more responsible for that than she did, but she couldn’t manage to dig up sorrow over it.

She was helping people, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough, and she didn’t know how to make it be enough. Angel needed to do more, but she didn’t know where to find the more to do.

Until Whistler came to her again.

Angel didn’t like Whistler — there was just something about Whistler she wasn’t sure she trusted. Balance demons were, by their nature, not on either side but in charge of making sure neither side got too strong. So Angel had to take what Whistler said with a grain of salt, to make sure that she didn’t wind up helping the wrong people and adding weight to the evil side of the scales.

But Whistler showed her a Slayer. Angel had met Slayers before, fought more than a few of them,and so what if Spike was the one that had killed them, Angel had fought more of them than he had and survived the fights. Slayers were a dime a dozen, though not at the same time, of course, and they were more replaceable than people were, because they weren’t allowed to really be people.

This Slayer … This Slayer was different. This Slayer had fire, this Slayer had heart, for all that she was new and spoiled and terrified. This Slayer had nothing in common with Angel, this Slayer had everything in common, the things that mattered, with Angel.

This Slayer was a kindred spirit, and Angel wanted to help Buffy.

Angel hadn’t been apathetic to the problem of vampires. She’d stepped in against them when she could, saved people when she could. But she was one vampire with a soul, and if she started targeting vampires and demons that couldn’t be allowed to live, she’d be putting a target on her back.

Well. So be it. It was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do, and that settled it for her.

Whistler told her that the Slayer was going to need her in Sunnydale, so Angel left for Sunnydale and waited.

And waited.

And seriously, she was willing to put a target on her back and fight for people, but she’d like to not be going on a suicide run in the process! How long was it going to take the Slayer to get there?

Angel spotted the Watcher easily enough; it wasn’t like there were many Brits running around a small town in SoCal, and he still wore tweed. Angel kept an eye on this one; she hadn’t been able to help save her other Watcher, but she could keep this one safe as much as possible before the Slayer got there, and the man seemed to not realize how much danger he was in, even if he knew that they were on a Hellmouth, and how could someone so smart be so stupid? He slept in his office! Angel had had to dispatch a wandering Lorophage demon that had been drawn to Angel while the Watcher slept and Angel kept an eye on him. All right, so the danger was brought there by Angel herself, but still. Did the man have no instinct for self-preservation?

Then Buffy arrived in Sunnydale, right before The Harvest.

What was this Slayer’s luck?

End Part One

Part Two

Part Three

sroni — Sun, 07 May 2017 22:55:41 GMT

I saw that aadler already posted a thing about it, so here’s a bit more detail on everything that’s happened regarding my husband.

Irish had a deadline at work on Wednesday, and he never eats right or gets enough sleep beforehand. Everyone in the office loses weight in the time leading up to a deadline.
He and his coworkers went out celebrating after the deadline. Normally he doesn’t get home until two thirty at the earliest on these nights, but he came home by eleven thirty and went directly to sleep.
He woke up an hour later and started vomiting. I assumed it was a hangover.
He was still sick the next day, didn’t eat anything, but did walk to and from the store.
Friday he got weird. I woke up to him having plugged the bathroom sink up, knocked everything in, and was flooding it with the water going full blast, muttering about “45 degrees 45 45 45 45”. I managed to get him back to bed. He talks in his sleep, so I assumed it was just an extension of that.
He started making less and less sense, but whenever I said I thought he needed to go to the doctor, he’d say that he was fine, he didn’t need a doctor. It was one of the few times he was actually coherent.
He did something that, on the surface, isn’t that worrying but that I have literally never seen him do without a reason for it, and that worried me more than the bathroom flooding. I tried to get him to eat something, thinking that he probably had low blood sugar since he hadn’t eaten since Wednesday night and it was at that point 3 on Friday afternoon. He wouldn’t eat, and I called his parents to help me get him to the doctor.
His parents texted me when they thought they were fifteen minutes away. He was able to help me get pyjama pants on him and his slippers on him, but not his shirt.
By the time his parents got there five minutes later (because traffic was actually good for them), he’d gone mostly non responsive. He’d look at us when we talked, and he’d grunt, but he wouldn’t say any actual words beyond “yeah” and “nuh”.
We called an ambulance and waited.
In the ten minutes or so that we waited for the ambulance, his breathing changed and we called back. The dispatcher was nice and kept us calm and told us that they were also sending the fire brigade so that someone would get there as fast as possible. He had Irish’s dad put his hand on Irish’s chest and just say “now” every time Irish breathed. He stayed on the phone with us until the firemen got there.
By the time they got there, he’d stopped responding completely, other than flicking the eyes at us sometimes when we talked to him. He’d been able to squeeze my hand when I asked him to before, and he wasn’t able to by then.
Irish’s blood sugar was 24 when normal levels are 6.
We got to ride in the ambulance with the sirens going. Not as much fun as it sounds, and I never thought it sounded particularly fun.
By the time we got to the hospital, his blood sugar had climbed to 35.
He responded to insulin treatments and the doctors thought it was Diabetes Type One, because he wasn’t showing any signs of abdominal pain, which pancreatitis would have. They flat out told us it was Diabetes Type One.
He was awake and talking a little bit when I got to visit with him; he said “I love you, too” and squeezed my hand. I sang our wedding songs to him quietly and he touched my face.
They moved him up to ICU before we left for the night.
He was responding slower to the insulin drip than he should be if it were diabetes, so they tested him for pancreatitis on Saturday morning. Turns out that’s what it is, even though he didn’t get the abdominal pain until Saturday afternoon.
He was awake and talking Saturday and they said he was doing much better, but still needing to level out his blood. He had the lowest number of something in his blood when he came in than they had ever seen in the ICU on someone still alive. (I thought they said the acid in his blood, but it might not have been; I’ve honestly been taking in a lot of information the last couple of days and so I’m getting some details wrong.)
He took a turn downhill Sunday morning. At 5:30, he started saying things that didn’t make sense again, and his breathing got shallower. They decided to intubate him and have him on the ventilator, and also do dialysis.
They told me that he was fine and that I didn’t need to come in before visiting hours.
We went in to visit him this afternoon. He’s really swollen from the fluids but he’s doing much better. They have him in a medically induced coma for now, just to give his body a chance to heal. His blood levels are actually equalizing better than they have been, so the dialysis is doing its job. They have him on a broad spectrum antibiotic for the pancreatitis.

And that’s where we’re at right now.

I’ve been staying with his parents, but I’ll be going home tomorrow evening.

LJ 18th anniversary

sroni — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 18:22:06 GMT

Sharp Knife of a Short Life (the ‘If I Die Young’ Remix)

sroni — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 18:33:58 GMT

Round 6 of Circle of Friends is still here! You can find the stories at cof_remix.

Title: Sharp Knife of a Short Life (the ‘If I Die Young’ Remix)
Author: Sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13? Mild cursing, at any rate.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, and the WB and UPN.
Original story: “Vigil” by eilandesq
Notes: aadler is still working on his remix, so this is by no means to replace that; I checked with him to find out if he'd like me to do a pinch hit for until he finishes is, and he agreed. And then my mom arrived in Ireland and I proceeded to get sick as a dog, so I haven't had a chance to work on it until today. So, Eiland, I hope you like your pinch hit, and I can't wait to read Aadler's real story for you!

Sharp Knife of a Short Life
(the ‘If I Die Young’ Remix)

***

If I die young, bury me in satin

***

A Watcher usually outlives their Slayer. This is common.

What is usually left off, though whispered in hushed voices, is by how long.

It’s far from unusual for a Watcher to outlive their Slayer long enough to do their final duty for the girl they took care of and loved — and they did take care of the girl they’d been assigned to and loved them despite themselves, no matter how much they tried to remind themselves that she was a tool, and a replaceable one, at that — and no longer.

If Buffy had been the typical type of Slayer, willing to listen and follow directions and not have friends or a life and not be Buffy, Rupert might have gone that same route. But the family she’d created for herself still needed him, and he couldn’t be selfish enough to follow her, even though he felt like he was even more broken than her body had been.

Water and blood was wiped away by gentle hands. Broken bones were straightened and re-aligned. Dawn had picked out the dress, but that was the only help Rupert had allowed to be given to him.

This was his duty to do. He’d failed at keeping her alive. He’d do his duty.

***

Lay me down in a bed of roses

***

Dawn insisted on filling Buffy’s coffin with roses, reasoning that they’d been Buffy’s favourite.

She also insisted that Mr. Gordo be put in it with her so that Buffy wouldn’t be lonely.

The funeral, such as it was, was quiet, with no one really knowing what to say. She hadn’t been buried in the cemetery, after all, and no one except them knew about Buffy’s death. Perhaps no one could say anything because it hadn’t yet sunk in that Buffy was gone.

At any rate, it was much quieter than Joyce’s had been, though this one was at night so that both Spike and Angel could be there. Rupert had talked to them both long enough to let them know that if they fought there, he would stake them both himself, because he wouldn’t stand for them upsetting Dawn like that. Dawn looked so much like Buffy when Buffy had first walked into the library years ago; her limbs were longer, and her eyes the wrong colour, but her hair wasn’t much darker than Buffy’s had been then. Rupert had failed Buffy, but he would keep Dawn safe.

And if that meant killing the vampires that he didn’t have much love for, well. That’s what would be done.

***

Send me away with the words of a love song

***

Every word that was said could have been replaced with “I love you” and “I’ll miss you”, and it would have meant the same thing. If that doesn’t say everything, nothing will.

***

The sharp knife of a short life

***

The smallest coffins are the heaviest.

Buffy wasn’t the smallest coffin Rupert had ever had to carry, but she was his heaviest.

He’d spent his first year as her Watcher prepared for her to not come back every time he’d sent her out. Then he’d found the Codex, and the prophecy that she would die that night. He’d tried to shield from it because he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear that weight.

But she’d survived. More than that, she’d thrived.

Kendra had shown up and he’d been relieved that the burden wouldn’t all fall to his Slayer any longer. Kendra had been killed and God help him, he’d been relieved that it was Kendra and not Buffy. He’d sent a letter to Sam Zabuto, expressing his sorrow and condolences, and every word he’d written had tasted of celebration and “not my Slayer”.

Rupert had been unsurprised to find out that Sam had died within a few weeks.

No one talked about it afterwards.

He’d spent so long prepared for Buffy’s death every time she’d gone out, but she’d kept coming back, and he’d slowly, slowly, slowly let his guard down.

She was Atlas, with the weight of the world on her shoulders, and when she’d slipped, she’d sacrificed herself to make sure she didn’t drop the world.

Rupert would have sacrificed something else to make sure it wasn’t the world that was dropped, but Buffy had made it clear that he wasn’t allowed to.

Rupert was pretty sure he could handle Buffy’s anger much better than he was handling her death.

He’d let his guard down and now he felt like a part of himself had died with the girl he’d loved like a daughter.

***

What I never did is done

***

Rupert approached the grave to fill his last duty as a Watcher. Because after this, he wasn’t going to be one ever again.

He wasn’t as surprised as he probably should have been to see Spike and Xander sitting there with weapons of their own.

He nodded at the other two, not having the energy to talk to them. He was somewhat surprised that Xander was tolerating the blond vampire, but so long as they didn’t bicker, Rupert wouldn’t protest them staying.

He’d put up wards on the grave, of course, but there were some things that the wards wouldn’t be able to protect her from during her first night under the earth, and it was his duty as a Watcher to make sure nothing took her body from its resting place.

And much like Dawn, he couldn’t stand the idea of her being alone, not for the first night, no matter how much he knew that she was gone and wouldn’t know.

So he sat his vigil, feeling much older than his years.

***

Gather up your tears, save ’em in your pocket, save ’em for a time you’re really gonna need ’em

***

Giles dropped onto his couch, a bottle of scotch in his hand as he listened to his records.

He’d done his duty. Now he could get hungover.

A shame he couldn’t let that be his new state of being.

His duty as a Watcher was done.

But he would never stop being Buffy’s Watcher, and he still had a duty to her to take care of the people she’d loved.

Bittersweet Symphony (The "Nobody Singing to Me Now" Remix)

sroni — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 12:43:43 GMT

Round 6 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at cof_remix.

Title: Bittersweet Symphony (the "Nobody Singing to Me Now" Remix)
Author: Sroni
Fandom: Angel
Rating: I guess PG-13? No worse than was on the show.
Disclaimer: Characters from Angel are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, and the WB.
Original story: “A Shadow of Myself” by sevendeadlyfun

Bittersweet Symphony
(The "Nobody Singing to Me Now" Remix)
Dying was supposed to be easy. Be here, close your eyes, stop breathing, maybe let out a last shuddering breath, and that was it.

Months before, he'd watched the woman he loved die, and it hadn't looked easy at all. She'd fought it as best as she could, and the others went out to try to stop it while he stayed with her, tried to ease her through the suffering as much as he could, but in the end, it had been painful and he hadn't been able to protect her from it.

He would have moved heaven and earth and hell and everything in between to prevent it, if he could have, but he'd failed her.

Compared to that, dying himself was the easiest thing in the world.

"Lie to me." A last request for a dying man, a last chance to see a face he'd never see again and had long since lost hope of seeing it when he'd all but banned the godking in her body from wearing her face around him. A lie, a game of make believe that he'd grown out of playing a long time ago, one last chance but one he didn't deserve, knew he didn't deserve, and the pain of the lie hurt much more than the knife that had killed him, more than the pain in his chest that stabbed with every breath.

A last breath, a last touch, then no more pain.

Yes. Dying was much easier than living, and easier by far than living in a world without her.

Two years before his death, he had betrayed everyone he held dear, everyone he trusted and everyone who trusted him. He'd thought he was doing the right thing, the necessary thing, he'd thought he was preventing a worse heartbreak and pain later, but he put his trust in the wrong person - and wasn't that just the story of his life right there? - and he'd hurt good people who'd deserved better than his actions and failure.

He'd betrayed everyone that mattered to him, but he'd believed he was doing the right thing.

He had no such belief now.

He wasn't doing the right thing. He wasn't doing a good thing. He had agreed to the deaths of people who mattered to him, and for all that they (most of them) would likely not survive the night even without his intervention, their blood would be on his hands, and he wouldn't be able to wash that off. Maybe they would have gotten through the fight ahead of them. Now they wouldn't have the chance, because of a choice he'd made, and he still couldn't bring himself to regret making it.

Gunn went down first, blood loss and previous injuries proving to be too much for him to last long in the battle, but he made his short time count. He died in a bloody alley. but not before a vampire forced her blood down his throat.

Spike was next, his blond hair making it easy to spot where he was, throwing elbows and fighting dirty and just enjoying the fight itself, and one second he was fighting and the next second his blond hair and ever present leather coat were dust riding on the wind. He couldn't muster up a lot of care about Spike's death, to be quite honest. Mostly he thought "This one will likely stick this time," owing to the nature of the deal he'd made with the metaphorical devil.

(Across the city, leaving LA true to his word, a drunk co-ed ran a red light and struck Lorne's car. He died alone.)

Lorne's was the death he felt the most guilt over. The others likely would have died, deal or no deal, but Lorne could have gotten away, could have set up a new life for himsef. Lorne...

Well. What's done is done.

Angel took the dragon down. But he did it from the air.

Not even a vampire could survive that fall.

Illyria cut a bloody swath around her, and lasted long enough to not be felled by an enemy.

She lasted long enough for the deal to take effect.

He could tell by the way she faltered mid-strike, and appeared next to her, an insubstantial shade that was nevertheless her downfall. "I feel like I should say that I'm sorry," his voice was more matter of fact than anything else. "But that would be a lie. For what it's worth, though, it wasn't personal."

"Do you believe that she will thank you? That she will be happy you made such a choice?" Cold blue eyes stared into his while blue leeched from her hair, leaving brown in its wake. The godking knew the taste of betrayal and knew the flavour of this particular brand of it. Illyria might not know the details, but the godking obviously knew the basics of what he'd done.

"No." His response was quick, but with an air of acceptance and resignation. No, he knew that if she ever became aware of the circumstances around the deal he'd made that she would not thank him, not be happy, never forgive him, and quite possibly hate him forever for doing it in the first place. He was sacrificing people that mattered to him, people who had befriended him and respected him when he hadn't believed himself worthy of either. People that trusted him. And yet, he hadn't hesitated, didn't regret it, and couldn't regret it.

Not when the result was her alive.

He could have handled her death, if that had been all it was. He could have handled knowing that she was somewhere else, and that she was happy and safe wherever that somewhere was. But for her to no longer exist, for her to have simply been obliterated by the godking's return... that had been unacceptable and unbearable.

He knew the truth for himself, as well. He would have damned the entire world to hell if it had meant she would exist somewhere again.

No, she wouldn't forgive him. Nor should she. But he could handle her hating him, because if she hated him, it meant that she existed, that she was again, and he would sacrifice anything and everything for that one goal.

Illyria faded while he watched, not dispassionately, bit with neither pity nor regret.

If circumstances had been different, he could have come to care for the godking. He could have loved Illyria, tried to fix the broken pieces of her, taught her more about the world as it was now. He'd felt out of place so often in his life, and he had a soft spot for people who needed mending. But they hadn't been different, and he would never be able to forget, and never be able to not hate the creature that had destroyed the woman he loved.

Illyria faded in the rain, and left Fred in her wake. "Wesley? What's going on? I was in my apartment and now..." She looked around, trying to piece things together.

"I don't have time to explain. But I need to tell you that I love you. I should have told you that when I first realized, and I should have told you every day in between, and there is not a thing that I wouldn't do for you," Wesley's words came out in a rush, because he didn't know how much time he had left. "You died, more than died, and that was unacceptable. I found a way to undo the wrong that was done to you."

Her eyes had changed while he spoke, at first soft around the edges, but as he'd continued they'd gone harder and he could tell that Illyria had left some memories with her.

It was too much to hope that Illyria had kept the nature of the deal away from Fred, and he could tell by the way she was looking at him now that she knew, and his original hypothesis that she would hate him was, in fact, a proven theory now.

He disappeared from the street, reappearing elsewhere, and knew that his time was up.

But that was all right. He'd told her what he needed to. He'd done what he'd needed to.

He'd damned his soul in the process, but he'd lived the worst hell he could think of for months already, lived in a world where she no longer existed. Anything else would be a pale imitation.

And he could live with that.

I Did a Thing

sroni — Thu, 26 May 2016 16:25:05 GMT

It's been forever, I know. Like, forever. I'm mostly okay. We're in a new flat, which is definitely nice, trying to do some writing, mostly failing at that but gonna keep trying.

Dealing with some health issues. I'll be doing really well and then I tank hard, and can barely function, and then I'll get back to doing well. The last couple weeks have been hardest; all of a sudden, I'll be walking and lose feeling in my legs. The first time it happened, I just kept walking despite not being able to feel, and managed to stay upright and keep up with Spouse-Type-Creature and his dad. The second time, not so much, and I hit the ground.

I don't really know how to describe the feeling. It's like when you were a kid and you'd kink the water hose, and the water would stop flowing, and then you'd unbend it and the water would start going again, usually in a huge gush because it had built up behind the kink. If we imagine that my spine is the water hose, I get this "pinchy" feeling in the lower part of my back, near my hips, and feeling in my legs slows to a trickle of water. And then my spine unkinks and a gush of water happens and I'm good again, until it kinks back up and we start over again.

That's not a perfect description of the feeling, but I think it communicates it well enough.

That happened last Monday (the 16th). The falling, I mean. Today, I had to walk to the same place I went on Monday, which is about two miles away. It took me 45 minutes to get there and another 45 minutes to get back, because I stopped whenever I started to get that "pinchy" feeling, because I wasn't on a time crunch and I figured it would be better to stop and stretch rather than push and possibly fall again.

I also sang the entire way and never got out of breath, which means that me being slow is due entirely to my hips and back and not do cardio issues. A month ago, I wsa going at Google Maps speed for walking, and now I was 12 minutes over that for two miles. Which is sad, but hopefully I'll get there again.

Anyway, at one point, I was thinking about my dad's remix from a couple years ago, with Vi and Pike. Man in Motion (The Free Falling Remix). And thinking about it made me realize that those two songs would actually mesh together really well.

So I did it.

It can be found here.

I am proud of it.

Current Status: Sick as a Dog

sroni — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 16:31:07 GMT

On Sunday, I pulled an all-nighter to finish a story for Circle of Friends. I still fully intend on writing the stories I'd originally intended (there was also a misunderstanding between Aadler and myself; I was assigned Deird1, and when he told me she'd dropped out and asked me to remix Eiland, I took that as an "instead of", while he was meaning "as well". Which is fine, but both of us thought that we'd communicated/understood, and if there'd been any doubt, either one of us would have sought clarification. Looking back over the messages, it was absolutely me that misunderstood, but he's been nice and told me to just post it up when I can.)

Got about two hours of sleep before we had to go to a Nano thing; my region has a "Thank Goodness It's Over" party and had reserved tables at a Japanese place and we'd already RSVPed, so I really couldn't have just dropped out unless it were an honest emergency or "we're really sick". We had a good time, but when we were coming back, I got slammed by a sudden onset migraine. (Realized later that the reason my symptoms were so weird was because I was having a panic attack at the same time that it hit.)

And then I proceeded to have that stupid migraine until Thursday.

I finally kicked it on Thursday night, and decided that I would write on Friday to finish up these stories, since at that point, it was around 9 o'clock. Not late enough that I'd be going to sleep, but not early enough that I wanted to get involved in writing, because that way lies insomnia.

It was a good plan until I woke up on Friday Sick As A Dog. It's a head cold, but it's like the head cold from Hell, and the sinus issues are triggering migraines, yay. And to make it worse, this lovely head cold is trying desperately to move down into my chest.

I'm currently medicated up the whazoo and I'm chugging chicken soup and orange juice like crazy. I'm feeling a lot better than I was on Friday, but still feel extremely lousy. Everything hurts, I can't get warm, and breathing through my nose? Not going to happen. Which is all kinds of fun when I'm sleeping, because I'm such a nose breather that I will wake up unable to breathe because Stupid Body decided to breathe through my nose instead of keep breathing through my mouth like I have been.

Give Me Three Steps (The "Better Part of Valour" Remix)

sroni — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 03:32:35 GMT

Round 5 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at cof_remix.

Title: Give Me Three Steps (The “Better Part of Valour” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13? Nothing stronger than would have been on the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “Empathy” by eilandesq
Notes: This is actually a pinch-hit, simply to meet the deadline. The real remix should be along sometime later on the 6th, possibly as late as the 7th, though hopefully not. So, yay, Eiland gets two stories!

Give Me Three Steps (the “Better Part of Valour” Remix)

Spike was exceedingly glad to be out of the Summers house, ecstatic to a degree that even the budding poet that William had considered himself to be — way back when he breathed air without having to think about it — would have been hard pressed to put into words. Considering that Spike lived in a crypt, it was really hard to make him feel claustrophobic. It just wasn’t a thing he really felt very often.

Please. Spike, afraid of enclosed spaces? No. He wasn’t afraid of being locked in with anyone or anything. They should all be afraid of being locked in with him. Especially when they were fragile little Happy Meals on legs. If it weren’t for the chip, he could have (and would have, don’t think he wouldn’t) killed them all and laughed at the blood. Angelus was all about the artistry, the poncy poof, but Spike? Spike was all about the blood and the guts and the pain, and don’t you forget it, either.

Unfortunately, Glinda didn’t seem to get the memo very well, because she’d insisted that, since they were heading in mostly the same direction, he should walk her back to her dorm room. Spike didn’t really have a good reason why not, other than “I don’t want to”, but that would have made Buffy — Slayer, couldn’t forget what she was, because it wasn’t likely that she’d ever let herself be Buffy with him — give him the disappointed look that always seemed to make everyone around her jump to do whatever she wanted.

She didn’t even have to actually give the look for Spike to do it. He was already doing it simply because he didn’t want her to have a reason to have that look on her face.

If that wasn’t proof that he’d gone ass over teakettle for her, he didn’t know what was.

He wasn’t a cat. He couldn’t very well bring her headless demons to show his affection for her. Even if he could, that wasn’t likely to impress her much at all.

Glinda broke him out of his … he was not going to say brooding, because that belonged entirely to The Poof. Musings. He could go with musings. Whatever it was he decided to call them, though, she broke him out of them, with a rather odd question, but, then, she’d always been a bit of an odd duck. “Why don’t you have any nicknames for me?”

Rather than answer the question, he responded with one of his own. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” she’d long since lost her stammering around him, and normally Spike neither noticed nor cared, but right then, he did both. Why wasn’t she afraid of him anymore? He wasn’t a bloody house pet, docile and fed table scraps. He was William the Bloody. They didn’t just give names like that out will-he-nil-he. Blissfully unaware of his imaginings of ripping out her entrails and spreading them around the tree branches like crepe paper at a party, she kept going. “You call Buffy ‘Slayer’, which isn’t hard to figure out. Giles is ‘Watcher’, Willow —” he just barely heard the catch in her voice before she continued on without a pause, “— is ‘Red’, and I think you get a kick out of calling Xander ‘Droopy Boy’. Dawn gets all the snacks for names, and even Anya gets ‘Demon Girl’. Why don’t I have a nickname?”

“You do,” Spike lit his cigarette, taking a long inhale of the tobacco smoke. “It’s ‘Lunch’.”

The blonde shook her head. “No, it’s not. You keep talking a big game, but somewhere along the line, you actually started caring about us.”

Spike snarled at her, his game face coming in without him even thinking about it.

She remained unimpressed. “You’re still evil. Not about to forget that. You only remind us as often as you can. But you haven’t worked against us or tried to have us killed since Adam. You could have sided against us a lot. Or you could go off on your own, go to Europe or somewhere. Just because you can’t hurt people doesn’t mean you can’t still be a scary vampire. But you don’t. You keep staying here and you keep helping us out, and you even broke my nose to prove that I wasn’t a demon.”

“That doesn’t mean that I like any of you lot.” Spike inspected his black nails for chips in the polish.

“No, it doesn’t,” the witch agreed carefully. “But you like Buffy. After all, she helped you with that … muscle cramp.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye.

And that was enough for it to click with Spike that she knew. He didn’t even have to ask. “What exactly do you think you know?”

“Well,” she answered carefully, “she asked me to run some tests to figure out why you can hurt her, and her reaction made me figure out what was going on.”

“Damn it!” He burst out in anger. “You stupid, careless chit! You’re the gentle one! You’re supposed to be the sensitive one! Couldn’t you have figured out some way to break the news to her without making her fall to pieces?” Spike advanced on her slowly, not even caring how much the chip would hurt him.

Tara thrust her hand out, and a wall of air stopped him in his tracks. “Shut. Up.” Her magic wouldn’t hold him, and they both knew it. Out of the witches, she wasn’t the powerhouse. The fact that she’d managed that much, though, surprised him, and her words made him stop where he was even more than her magic had. “She’s not a demon, Spike. That’s what the tests showed. One hundred percent bona fide human. She didn’t fall apart because she’s a demon. She broke because she isn’t one.”

The anger left in a rush, leaving him feeling oddly boneless and bereft, and he could swear that he felt himself collapsing in on himself. “But … if she’s not a demon …”

“I don’t know why the chip stopped working for her, Spike,” Tara’s voice was soft and gentle. “It’s science, and science and magic don’t always mix. Who knows why the chip doesn’t recognize her as human? It’s wrong, though, because she is.”

“But if she’s not a demon —” he started again, before she interrupted again.

“She was upset because she’s not a demon and she’s still doing things that she hates herself for,” Tara explained sympathetically, her hand on his arm just barely touching his jacket. “Being a demon would have been easier for her, because she’d have that to blame.”

“You know, it’s funny.” Spike spoke almost wistfully. “I don’t even know when exactly it started, but it started and kept going, and I don’t mean to hurt her. It’s not all about getting our jollies on. We work together, and work well, and there are times that she looks at me and the world melts away and I think that maybe I can make her happy.” He let out a sigh, the words seeming to pour out of him now that he had someone he could talk to about it all. “But the world always comes back, and I realize that I can’t. I tear her down and I hurt her and I hate myself for doing it but I just can’t seem to stop myself from doing it. I love her,” he added on quietly. “Whether she believes it or not, I do.” But not enough to walk away from her and let her be happy on her own.

“I know, Spike. But Love isn’t always enough. We’ve gotten along pretty well, since I got my mind back.” She was quiet for a long moment, and then something in her changed. She straightened up, her stance more assured, but that wasn’t the only change. She got that look in her eye, the same kind of look that Harris got when the only way to protect one of his girls would be to kill everything he could get his hands on and plenty he couldn’t, and he’d do it, regardless of cost to him or anything around him.

Neither she nor Droopy Boy were people that he would single out as being scary, or people that you should even watch out for. When he was still a hunter, he would have picked them as the easy pickings that you could save for last because they wouldn’t matter while you took out the real threats.

But when they got that look in their eyes, everything shifted, the world tilted on its axis and if you were smart, you would realize that they were quite possibly the most dangerous people on the planet, if you gave them reason to be.

Spike was smart. He realized.

So when she got that look in her eyes and leaned towards him, Spike did the only thing he could: he shut up and listened, and hoped that she wouldn’t decide he was a threat.

“I know you love her.” She stated it simply, but iron rang underneath her words as a ball of fire formed above her open palm, as though it were meant to be there, as much a part of her as her own hand. “But that’s not enough, so I’m letting you know right now: I’m looking out for her now. I helped tear her away from heaven, and I’m going to have to live with that. The least I can do is watch out for her and help keep her safe, and that includes her emotional well being. She is under my protection now, William, and if that means that I have to do something I don’t want to do in order to keep you from hurting her anymore, I will. If you hurt her again, I will deal with you.” She threw the fireball like a baseball at a large rock that wasn’t quite big enough to be called a boulder. It exploded against the rock in a flash of bright light that hurt Spike’s eyes to look at, and when his vision cleared, the exterior of the rock had melted.

Spike was much more flammable than a rock, and he knew that he wouldn’t get off with just being a little melted.

“Are we clear?” Her voice was soft, but her expression had no give in it, and Spike was in no doubt that she would follow through with her threat if he gave her reason.

“Don’t hurt the Slayer, got it.” He forced some brevity into his voice. “You know, when I met Joyce, she hit me on the head with a fire-axe. Just the flat side, mind you. I don’t think she was trying to kill me then, but I don’t think she would have cried too much if she had, and delivered a threat very similar to yours, though much simpler said: ‘Get the hell away from my daughter.’ There are worse people to emulate than her.”

“She didn’t have a nickname, either,” Tara noted with some amusement. “I meant what I said, Spike. I like you. I consider you a friend. But you’re still evil, and the others … they let themselves forget it sometimes, and think of you as harmless. But you’re not. You weren’t even before you discovered that you could hit Buffy. You’ve gotten used to not having consequences or repercussions. I don’t want to be your repercussions, but I will if I have to be. I’d much rather be your conscience.”

“Oh, goody, my own Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder.” He lit up another cigarette. “We’ve come to an understanding. Don’t push it further than that.”

At the very least, he now knew that he’d need to take the witch out if he hurt any of her friends, and preferably do it before she found out about it.

He wasn’t a house cat. He couldn’t leave headless demons on her doorstep to instill fear in her. But the idea held more allure than it had for doing it for Buffy.

END

I Can Handle An Emergency (Even When it's Not Yet an Emergency)

sroni — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 22:33:23 GMT

So, this afternoon we went to a Chinese restaurant and it was lovely. But I wound up kind of choking on some food. I say “kind of choking” because I could still breathe. I could feel myself wanting to freak out, but I forced my throat to remain relaxed and I kept breathing. I tried to kind of work the food back up, because it really hadn’t gone very far, but it wouldn’t move. I tried swallowing it the rest of the way, and that just made it worse. At this point, it was beginning to get difficult to breathe, so I tried to cough it up and wound up gagging it up instead. I’d already thought through what I was going to do if this failed (signal to Spouse, who was sitting right next to me, and if that failed, use the chair to give myself the Heimlich; I know how but I really don’t want to do that if I don’t have to because it hurts). Luckily, the cough/gag worked.

It was odd, because people expect me to not handle things well in an emergency, but so far, every emergency I’ve had, I’ve remained fairly calm and collected each time.

Blargh

sroni — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:15:35 GMT

I've miscarried at around the three month mark for the second time in less than a year.

The doctor doesn't think it's anything that I'm doing that I shouldn't be, or should be doing that I'm not; neither does she think that this is likely to be a recurring problem for me. It's a thing that happens sometimes, and I've just had the bad luck to have a late miscarriage twice. That being said, she does have me on various vitamins and such, including folic acid, and our goal is to get me healthy before we try again (not that we were trying either time, it just happened, and we weren't not trying).

I'll be okay,things are justa little tough right now.

Home From Italy

sroni — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 13:47:57 GMT

It occurs to me that maybe I should have written more things from our trip/while we were there/our trip back, but, I didn’t. Oh well.

For the trip down, I was put in charge of navigating, because I apparently inherited my mom’s sense of directional skills; there are two stories that I tell semi-frequently to demonstrate the two types of directional skills that my brother and I possess. Kevin (as my dad calls him here) once had to call my mom because he’d gotten lost and didn’t know how to get back home and it turned out that he was about eight blocks away from the place we’d lived for the past twelve years or so. Story Two is about myself: aadler, Kevin and I had driven down to Houston (I was a brand new driver, so I did most of my driving in Oklahoma rather than in anything resembling a city; hit a dog once but didn’t freak out because I had a car right beside me and a car right behind me and if I’d done anything to evade the dog, I would potentially have caused a massive wreck with all three of our cars, plus anyone who was behind them. I don’t feel bad about it, either, though I do feel bad for the dog itself.) because Kevin needed to go to the Chinese Embassy there for visa stuff before flying out of Houston to China. Being the newest driver meant that they really didn’t want me driving in the city, and I didn’t want to be driving in the city, so I was instead put in charge of navigation (plus there were exactly two of us in the car that could read a damn map and aadler was already driving). Kevin had an app on his phone that would give us directions, but we couldn’t select routes, and it wanted us to constantly take highways while aadler wanted to be taking other roads with stoplights and stuff. One of the first things we did when we got there was find a hotel, and the hotel had those little touristy maps, so I grabbed one of them. While we were getting food, I saw that there were a different set of the touristy maps there that was quite a bit more in-depth than the one I’d grabbed at the hotel, so I grabbed one of those, too. Flash forward to Monday, when we need to get Kevin to the airport, and I was navigating by the map in the atlas, the two touristy maps, and Kevin’s phone, figuring out new routes if we missed a turn, and I am damn proud of that.

And before you say “But, Roni, those are two completely different sets of skills, yours was navigating by aid of a map while Kevin didn’t have that”, there’s a third story of us on our way to California, when every time Kevin would start driving, he’d ask what he needed to do and we’d say “Hop on the I-40” and he’d ask “But which way?”, so I’m pretty sure that even if he’d had a map at his disposal when he got lost close to home he would have stayed lost. And Story 4 is with Kevin and Irish, Kevin had been driving someone home with the two of us in the back seat, dropped the friend off, gotten lost, and then he decided that maaaaaaybe he shouldn’t have been driving and asked me to drive instead. Before we got lost, I had recognized the area as one I’d done some babysitting about ten years previous (and he’d gone to the friend’s house at least once a month for yeeeeears so he really should have recognized it, too), so I knew where the main street we eventually needed to hook up to was, and I knew where the street that would take us to it would be if we hadn’t managed to go straight to the main street, so I just headed “straight and right” through a bunch of twisty turns and lo and behold, the street I knew would take us there. Kevin was convinced I was getting us more lost, and I just kept telling him to be quiet.

So, yes, two types of directional awareness in my family, and I got my mom’s. (I can also retrace the way I came any time I need to, so long as I was paying at least a little bit of attention the first time, and that skill very much comes in handy. Of course, in terms of my navigating skills, there are the times that I get us in another state, but in my defense, we’re usually within ten minutes of the border when that happens and I realize my mistake right before we see the “Welcome to ______” sign.)

So I was the navigator for this trip because Irish was driving, and I’m literally not allowed to drive over here because I have an American license. I’ll need to take a driving test over here, and before I can do that, I have to 1) pass the written and 2) take driving classes and when the driving instructor thinks I’m ready he signs off and then I can take the practical exam. On the upshot, my father-in-law is a driving instructor, so when it comes time for it, he’ll be the one teaching me. I’ll have a leg up in the fact that I already know how to drive, and I even already know how to drive a manual, I’ll just need a refresher on it and I never actually drove one on the road, and I’ll need to get used to driving on the right hand side of the street and all the other differences. Anyway. Irish had to be the driver, and that meant I was navigator. The roads to take were super simple. We get off the ferry in Holyhead, Wales and drive to Dover, England, which meant that we took one road to the second road, the second road to the third road, the third road to the fourth, and then that one to Dover. Unfortunately, the second road I’d selected wasn’t a toll road (I had been trying to avoid toll roads and he had neglected to tell me that the toll roads were the best and fastest and therefore he wanted me to use them) so we wound up going through the middle of nowhere (where I saw a gorgeous tree and I’m still mad at him that he wouldn’t let me take a picture of this tree because it was the prettiest damn tree I have ever seen in my life and there’s a reason that I sometimes worry that I might be on the Autistic Spectrum, okay? And the fact that when people asked me what my favorite part of the trip was and I go on and on and on about this tree is an example of why I worry. But for real, though, that tree was gorgeous, the bark was all gray brown and the leaves were this almost velvety green and I want a picture and I don’t have one and I am still mad over that) and Irish was snippy at me because I hadn’t read his mind to know that we should have taken a toll road, but I fixed it the first chance we got. But since we had to stay on that road for a couple hours, I took a little nap because the ferry had made me very sick (I get very very boatsick) and I really just needed to nap for some recovery time, unless he wanted me to puke all over him. The other option was to stop driving while my body evened out, but we needed to get to Dover in time to get the ferry we’d booked to go to Calais, France, so stopping for an hour or so was a bad idea.

So turns out that Irish really doesn’t like it when people fall asleep when they’re supposed to be navigating, even if there is nothing for them to do ever. We were on that road for three hours. I told him to wake me up when he saw signs for any one of five different things, and that would have me awake long enough to become alert before we needed to turn onto the next road (which we would stay on for another couple hours). He was still titchy and stuff about it, but meh. We got over it.

England was pretty but I honestly don’t really remember anything other than the tree.

The ferry from Dover to Calais was a lot easier on my stomach than the one from Dublin to Holyhead. I was miserable, but I was able to sleep through it instead of praying for death.

We got off the ferry and drove for a short period for some god unknown reason since it was three in the morning, and missed the main road we needed because Irish was trying to find a gas station instead of the road. He finally pulled over at a rest area instead, in the middle of nowhere, and we slept there for the night. It was cold, I was miserable, I woke up at six, desperately having to use the bathroom, and the place we’d stupidly stopped for the night had no toilet seat or toilet paper. I lasted as long as I could, but I had to wake Irish up to take us to an actual gas station because I was desperate. He was very much not a happy camper (but to be fair, he’d gotten three hours of sleep and here I am, waking him up because it’s a bathroom emergency), and we got stupid lost trying to find one because we had to go into little bitty towns (pretty sure we passed a prison), but we finally found one and all was good in the world again.

I don’t really remember that much about France, I’ll be honest, other than managing to take us about an hour out of the way because I misread the signs (the sign gave an arrow for the road we needed, but it turned out we needed to keep going straight). Turns out that if we’d kept going, we would have hooked up with where we wanted to go, and it cost us more in time and money to turn around and go back than it would have to keep going, but at that point, it was eleven at night and we’d gotten pretty much no sleep (we’d catnapped in the afternoon at one point, and that was about it). We spent the night in France again, and once again, I was freezing. But I popped some sleep meds and conked out (though it did make waking up difficult in the morning and at one point before I fell asleep I was tracing patterns in the air and I’m pretty sure I was solving math equations, which makes no sense because I am not a math equationy type person, but that’s what I was doing anyway) and we got into Italy the next day.

And now we get to Rome. See, I’d opted against taking this one road to the ring road around Rome, because it would be taking us a bit out of the way. Irish decided to look up specific directions for where we needed to go, but didn’t bother asking me where we were. I’d mentioned that we’d already passed that road, but we were tired and hungry and cranky and I guess he just didn’t really process that. The directions he gave me had us taking that road, but I guess I forgot that we’d passed that road, too, so it’s not like I can blame him all that much. It wasn’t until we stopped seeing signs for Rome and started seeing signs for Naples that I figured we should turn around. Turning around was all kinds of “fun” and we wound up going drastically out of our way but finally succeeded. After that, it was smooth sailing until we got into the town. We were supposed to take a particular road, and couldn’t find it. Wound up a couple towns over, turned around and went back the other way, didn’t see the road, hit a couple towns over, turned around again, went back. We did this for at least an hour. We finally just pulled over, got lunch, Irish texted his boss for directions and told him where we were, and we stayed at the pizza place for the next hour until he got a response. (We went back to this pizza place a lot because Marco, the owner, was so nice to us and gave us free bottles of water and a bottle of Coke, and wouldn’t let us buy the square pizza and insisted on cooking us fresh pizza that was damn good pizza. Whenever Irish went in by himself, they were very concerned about me and asked about me a lot.)

Even with the step by step directions, we still got lost, and when we finally found the road, I don’t feel bad about not seeing it, because the name of the road was behind about four different signs and some bushes. The reason we didn’t realize that was because there was a name carved into the wall on the corner, and we assumed that was the name of the street. (It wasn’t.)

All in all, it was actually a really fun trip. I would have liked to eat more and sleep in the car less, but it wasn’t bad at all.

World at Her Fingertips

sroni — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 03:57:46 GMT

Title: World at Her Fingertips
Fandom: BTVS
Characters: Willow, Jenny Calendar
Rating: G/FRC
Word count: 1,365
Recipient/Prompt: aaronlisa, Magic vs. Technology: Technology
Three elements you’d like included: Season One or Two Setting, chat rooms, Willow figuring out what’s going on before the others
Two things you don’t want: Dawn, major character death
Range of ratings you’d like to read: any
Setting: Season 2, before “Surprise”.
Summary: Things can be a slippery slope, especially if you convince yourself you’re doing it for the greater good.

World at Her Fingertips

Maybe this was bad. Willow wasn’t used to being bad, really, she wasn’t. The worst she did was lie to Mrs. Summers about Buffy spending the night with her, and, really, she felt worse about lying to Mrs. Summers than she did about lying to her own parents, because Mrs. Summers was just so sweet and nice and motherly and tried to take care of their little group like Jesse’s mom used to, and Willow felt really bad that she hadn’t seen Jesse’s mom since … Well, since. She’d tried, once, but both of them had cried all the way through it and Willow just couldn’t go back there, not again, and besides, what was she supposed to say? Mrs. McNally hadn’t believed that Jesse had just run away, after all, Willow and Xander were still there, and he had the best home life out of the three of them; it was an accepted fact without any of them ever stopping to think about it that if any of the three of them would run away, it would be Xander. (Of course, they also knew that if Xander did run away, it would be to Willow’s house.)

And yes, Willow was babbling inside her mind, mostly to take said mind off of what she was doing, because she just couldn’t get past “this is bad” and Willow was a good girl, she always had been, that was as much a defining characteristic of her as her brain!

But what she was doing now was very much not good. It was, in fact, the opposite of good, no matter how much she tried to convince herself it was necessary. She was hacking a teacher. A teacher she liked! Sure, she wasn’t doing anything bad with it, but the fact she was doing it at all …

But there were too many inconsistencies about Ms. Calendar, and Willow wanted to get to the bottom of them. Mostly because she was curious, but also because … She liked Ms. Calendar, really she did, Ms. Calendar let her do all kinds of stuff for extra credit and Willow loved extra credit, and Ms. Calendar knew about the things that went bump in the night and helped them out a lot and that was exactly Willow’s worry. She’d already learned that just because you liked someone didn’t mean you could trust them. Just look at Buffy and Billy. Or. Well. Buffy and most people. And as much as Willow liked Ms. Calendar, and she did, her loyalty was to Buffy first. She had to make sure that Ms. Calendar wasn’t going to double cross them! She just had to!

She’d first twigged onto the discrepancies when she’d gone looking for the chatrooms that she’d heard Ms. Calendar mention. They’d been a lot harder to find than she’d thought. Like, a lot harder. And Willow had been looking for information and hacking into it since she’d first heard about the internet, thanks to her dad deciding that with her aptitude with computers and as much as she liked learning, she should be able to have internet pretty much whenever she wanted it. It had meant getting a second phone line installed, so that Willow wasn’t constantly using the house line, but he said it was worth it.

That was actually one of Willow’s favorite memories of her dad, the way he’d smiled at her happiness and exuberance over the internet and all that information at her fingertips.

So, yeah, Willow was pretty used to being able to find things quickly and easily. It didn’t make sense that if these chatrooms were so hard to find, Ms. Calendar had been able to find them. Not that Ms. Calendar was bad with computers! Not at all! It was just … Willow had grown up during the dawn of the internet. The internet and computers were her playgrounds. Ms. Calendar was good with computers, and was really good at teaching them, but Willow had discovered fairly early on that she was leaps and bounds beyond what Ms. Calendar could do.

So Willow had had to do some digging, and finally she’d found the chatroom and had picked a handle that wouldn’t be linked back to her; that was always the problem with hackers, they picked names that corresponded to them in some way. She picked a random name out of the phonebook and made up a screen name for that person, usually consisting of the first initial and last name. The phonebook was from Denver, just to make it that less traceable to Sunnydale.

And then she paid attention to the things that Ms. Calendar was saying (it had been really easy to determine that “JDiary” was Ms. Calendar, because the British called a calendar a diary, but that did introduce the question of why Ms. Calendar was using a British term, unless it was a way to confuse her own identity a little more and also a nod to her relationship with Giles. That made sense, but it just didn’t feel right, and Willow trusted her instincts when it came to things feeling right. Usually. Most of the time.), and some things were just … odd. It wasn’t any particular things that Willow could put her finger on, but things didn’t seem to be stacking up right.

So to make sure that everything was on the up and up and most definitely not simply to assuage her own curiosity, Willow started digging into Ms. Calendar’s files.

And that was when the poo hit the fan.

Willow had gotten a little complacent in checking on things around Sunnydale. She’d left trap doors in things she used a lot, and yes, that did include the school files. She’d never had something notice her before, not in Sunnydale. She’d looked around Giles’s file a few times to make sure that everything checked out the way it was supposed to, and it had been fine. But when she opened Ms. Calendar’s file, there was a firewall there that hadn’t been there for the others. Willow could get through it no problem, but it didn’t make sense for there to be one there where it wasn’t for any of the other teachers!

The best that Willow could figure was that it was something Ms. Calendar had set up. And the way it was dodging her —

Wait a minute. This wasn’t a purely technological firewall. This was magic! Ms. Calendar had blended hacking and magic! Willow had to learn how to do that!

But first, she had to figure out what the magic firewall was hiding.

It took hours, which was hours longer than she’d expected it to take, but eventually, Willow had all the information in front of her, copied to her own computer, and it was just a matter of reading it.

When she was done, she really wished she hadn’t.

She’d been right, but Willow didn’t think she’d ever been so miserable to be right. Ms. Calendar was hiding something, and it was a big ol’ something. A huge something! Willow should tell Buffy, she really should. Except …

If she told Buffy, she wouldn’t be able to get Ms. Calendar to teach her how to combine magic and computers. And besides, what Ms. Calendar was hiding wasn’t hurting anyone. It wasn’t really Buffy’s business, was it?

No, Willow had to do this. If Ms. Calendar could use magic and computers, other people would be able to, too, and Willow had to be able to get information she wanted, when she wanted it, to help Buffy. What if Buffy needed something and Willow wasn’t able to get to it because she’d gotten blocked by some computer witch?

No, that wasn’t acceptable.

Half an hour later, Willow knocked on Ms. Calendar’s door, wearing her Resolve Face. Inside, her knees were shaking and she really wanted to go throw up. But this was too important, so she made herself stand firm and straight. When Ms. Calendar opened the door, surprised to see her, Willow stated firmly, her voice not shaking a bit, “You’re Janna of the Kalderash. I won’t tell Buffy. But you’re going to teach me how to use magic like you do.”

End

Love is Not a Victory March (The "Broken Hallelujah" Remix)

sroni — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 16:52:41 GMT

I am really bad at actually posting any of the stories I put on Archive of Our Own over here, and I am very sorry about that.

So, months too late:
Original Story: Winning Isn’t Everything by n_e_star
Fandom: “the Cutting Edge”
Disclaimer: Not mine, I don’t own, please don't sue.

Act One

They hadn’t won. She’d risked everything, only to fail once again. She’d skated the best performance of her life, but they still hadn’t been able to snag the elusive gold medal she felt like she’d been chasing half her life.

She’d had talent. She’d had discipline. She’d had more discipline than she’d known what to do with and had channeled it all into skating and practice, spending long hours at the rink until her feet were bruised and bloody and still she’d skated because she didn’t know what else to do. She was an Olympian before she’d ever tried for the team. It was her destiny and she was going to have a gold medal.

She’d had talent and she’d had discipline, but she had never managed to have passion.

Until now.

And it still hadn’t been enough.

Their illegal move had resulted in docked points from their technical score while simultaneously earning them a perfect artistic score. They’d lost the gold but had still landed on the podium.

Despite the loss, Kate didn’t regret including it in the program. She’d trusted Doug, trusted herself, she’d let go and she had flown, so, no, she couldn’t regret the decision.

“They look like umbrellas.” Doug probably thought that he was being quiet, but his version of quiet was still loud enough to be heard a couple of feet away and there were people there that had glanced over at his words.

“Shut up,” Kate hissed at him automatically, but there was laughter in her voice and her fingers tightened around his.

“Or maybe bugs,” Doug continued on undaunted. “Look at those hats.”

Kate didn’t reply that time, choosing to simply land the sharp point of her elbow against his ribs as she applauded politely for the medal presenter.

Smilkov and Brushkin took their victory lap as Kate watched them with no small amount of envy, before climbing onto the podium.

She could handle envy. She’d been bitter about Calgary because they’d messed up, they could have won but didn’t because of a fall. This time, she didn’t have that pain. She and Doug had had a fantastic skate. Smilkov and Brushkin had had a better one. That’s just all there was to it.

Silver medal was announced, followed by Moseley and Dorsey, and she and Doug took to the ice. Kate wished she could fly again, but knew that this wasn’t the time. Maybe once she was back home.

She couldn’t help but smile when she realized that the crowd had cheered louder for her and Doug than for Smilkov and Brushkin. Majumdar, the IOC official that was putting their medals around their necks, smiled at her, his teeth white against wrinkled brown skin. “You were the crowd favourite. They were disappointed you didn’t win.” His smile stretched a little wider. “You were my favourite, as well,” he confided before stepping away.

The bronze medalists were announced, another Russian pair, and Kate made sure she looked like the ice princess she had always been reported to be, calm and decorous, not clapping, because she was on the podium, but smiling as she was supposed to. She’d forgotten to coach Doug on proper podium behavior, because he was grinning like a loon. Thank God he’d had sense enough not to clap; if he’d started, she would have had no choice but to tell him to keep clapping until the cheering was over, but either he’d realized the podium wasn’t the place, or they were their competitors, and his hands had stayed where they were, one by his side and one around her arm.

The Olympic hymn started playing, and Doug gave the barest of winces. “That’s got to be hard.” He was quieter than he’d been before, but Doug really didn’t do quiet very well.

Rather than admonish him again, Kate simply asked, “What is?” She was curious, after all.

He nodded at Smilkov and Brushkin, who were standing and looking straight ahead, giving no indication of whether or not they knew that Doug was talking about them. “That. It’s one thing to not hear your anthem because you came in second, but to win and still not hear it …”

Kate couldn’t stop her own wince. “Yeah,” she breathed the word out. “But at least they have a flag.”

Doug nodded up at the flags. “So do we. And next time, we’ll get to hear our anthem.”

Her fingers tightened on his again, and she smiled up at him. “Promise?”

“I promise. Want me to seal the promise with a kiss?” He gave her a lazy smile.

“Not here. Neanderthal. But later, I’ll take that kiss.”

***

Act Two

But neither Kate nor Doug were at the 1994 Olympics. Kate was on bed rest because of a difficult pregnancy, her fingers too swollen for her to wear the simple gold wedding band so she kept it on her bedside table. She’d told Doug that he could find another skating partner and try to go to the Olympics with that girl, and Doug had just given her his you are out of your damn mind but I love you anyway look (she got that look from him a lot, but she rather liked it) and told her, “You are the only person I ever want to skate with.”

Truth be told, she was glad he hadn’t taken her up on the offer, because she’d feel like he was cheating in her. Their relationship had started on the ice. They’d skated with other people before, him with his teams, and her with Brian, but they’d only skated with each other since they’d started skating together. She couldn’t imagine skating with anyone else, molding her body to fit next to someone else’s, trusting someone else to hold her and not drop her. She didn’t want to do those things with someone else. If he’d accepted her offer, obviously, Kate couldn’t have been mad at him for it, but she loved him for turning her down.

They watched the Olympics on TV from their bed together. Kate was enchanted by little Oksana Baiul along with the rest of the world and cried when she won. Doug had learned to not be alarmed when she cried anymore (he’d stopped being alarmed the day he found her sobbing over a broken light bulb once he’d made sure she hadn’t cut herself) and simply cuddled her close against him.

“We’ll be there in 1998,” he promised her, kissing her forehead. “We’re going to get that gold medal, and our daughter will be right there with us, cheering us on. She’ll have your hair and your eyes, but hopefully my sense of humor. But she’ll have your determination. The best of both of us, which means she’ll be getting more from you than from me.”

Kate gave a sniffly little laugh, curling her body against his, his hand going to the swell of her stomach and her hand resting on top of his.

A week later, she went into labor two months early. She couldn’t watch the Olympics when she was worried about little Jackie. Doug stayed with her constantly, and Kate was simultaneously glad for it and frustrated that she didn’t get alone time. She was more glad than frustrated, though, and she spent a lot of time sitting next to him, the line of her leg pressed against his.

It was enough. It was everything.

***

Act Three

Kate was teaching Jackie how to skate. Jackie was almost four, and only a little younger than Kate had been when she started learning. Sometimes Doug helped teach, sometimes he didn’t. Kate was careful to try to share something she loved with her daughter without pushing her, even unconsciously, to follow in her footsteps.

This was one of the days that Doug joined her. “Do you want to go to the Olympics again, or do you want to retire?”

Kate looked at him. “Do you think we can really win, or would we just be has-beens?”

“We can win. We’re still skating strong. We can get our programs together and make them the best we’ve ever had. We can do this, Kate.” He held her hand and looked her straight in the eyes, trying to give her some of his own belief in them.

Kate found herself nodding. “Let’s do it, then.” She didn’t have quite the same faith in them that Doug did, but she knew he was right: they were still as strong as they’d ever been.

So they started training again, to be ready for the US Nationals and then Japan. They’d thought about petitioning onto the team, but Doug pointed out that they did better in the clutch, especially if they were performing for a crowd. Kate agreed with him, and that was the end of the discussion.

She’d forgotten, however, how infuriatingly relaxed Doug could be about training. While she was winding tighter and tighter, he was enjoying himself.

Before things hit a head and she exploded on him, Doug grabbed her hands and spun around with her. “Skate with me.”

“I am,” she responded through gritted teeth.

“No, you’re not. You’re going through the motions. Skating against me. Don’t do that.” Doug started pulling her along. “Come on. Just skate with me.”

Kate followed him, trying to think how to get them back on track. But Doug had other ideas, and would spin her around or lift her up before she could. “We’re going to go to the Olympics and this time, we’re coming home with gold. I know it. You just need to know it, too. So stop obsessing and look at this as recess. Skating is supposed to be fun, and you’re treating it like you used to. Like it’s something for you to just get through.” Doug pulled her into a lazy spin and kissed her softly. “So let’s have fun with it.”

It didn’t fix everything. Kate was an uptight planner, and she knew it, while Doug was more a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants person. But Kate was able to relax more after that.

All the creative control that Doug had wanted the first time around and hadn’t gotten, Kate was more than willing to give to him this time. A lot had changed in the skating world in six years, and the traditionalism that she’d been raised on wasn’t as important as it used to be. It was Doug that came up with the concept of their routine, presenting it as “leather and lace”.

“Think about it,” he enthused. “You can be the traditional ice skater and I can be the rebel that’s trying to get you to do new things. We can play ourselves as everyone thinks we are! It’ll be a lot of fun, and people will love the story.”

Kate couldn’t argue, and truthfully, she quite liked the concept, though she’d insisted that Doug’s character should also learn the value of tradition, and that way it could be a good blend of their personalities.

They worked on their routine, making it fluid and streamlined. Kate turned into a drill sergeant, making the two of them drill through their routine over and over and over and over again. Doug would roll his eyes but acquiesce without complaint, until he’d had enough for the day and would “kidnap her for fun skate time”.

Kate didn’t actually get to see Doug’s costume before Nationals. He wouldn’t let her. All she knew was that it had some leather. Doug had insisted that her costume be lace and satin in pastel pink, and Kate was pretty sure it was to contrast his costume; obviously, he wouldn’t be in red because then she wouldn’t be in pink, so it was probably black leather.

Finally, it was go time, and Kate was so nervous she felt like she was going to throw up. Doug didn’t look much better, but at least he wasn’t actually throwing up this time. Kate would take that as progress. Their short program was solid, but not really flashy. The short program was usually seen as something to get through, while the long program was to really let the skaters shine. The scores that Kate and Doug received reflected that; they weren’t leading the pack, but they were still in good standing for the next day. The goal of the day wasn’t to prove that they were the best short programmers, but that they were solid and dependable. Or, at least, that’s what Doug told her when Kate was obsessing over the scores.

“Come on, Kate, you know as well as I do that anything can happen during a long program. Like getting tangled up in lederhosen.” Doug managed to not smile, but Kate could see it peeking at the corners of his mouth and Kate couldn’t help but relax next to him.

Kate insisted that they go to sleep early, so they could be well-rested for the long program. She especially didn’t want either of them drunk or hung over. That would be a few too many shades of repetition than she wanted.

Their long program was different from most. In a lot of ways, it was almost like two solos happening simultaneously, with portions done side by side. Doug had wanted to show up on a motorcycle, but Kate had put her foot down for that. No. Very much no. Not least of which because she was pretty sure it wasn’t allowed.

She’d been wrong about his costume, though. It was a dark blue that was almost black, and it was a combination of leather and denim. It worked, though, especially against Kate’s innocent pink. They got the scores she felt like they deserved, and that fast, they became the favorites for Olympic gold. Sure, the Russians were considered a lock (what else was new?), but the pair that seemingly everyone wanted to win was Moseley and Dorsey. Kate had kept her maiden name for skating, because she’d been skating as Kate Moseley her entire life and she’d always pictured herself getting Olympic Gold as Kate Moseley. Doug had seemed to understand without her even having to explain.

If Kate had been obsessive before Nationals, it was nothing compared to the lead-up to the Olympics. Doug wouldn’t let her change the long program, but he did agree to a new short. Kate obsessed over every movement, worrying that they wouldn’t be good enough. She didn’t get into screaming matches with their coach, but that was only because she was Kate Moseley, even if she was now Kate Dorsey, and neither Kate Moseley nor Kate Dorsey screamed. She argued and then treated their coach to icy silence while her body performed the moves to perfection. Doug had to shake her out of it, reminding her that that wasn’t how she skated anymore.

Before Doug, Kate had skated cleanly and near-perfectly, but she’d never learned how to connect, not with Brian and not with the audience and not with the judges. Doug, on the other hand, connected with people so easily it used to make Kate want to scream. He could make people root for him without even knowing him. Kate was icy perfection, untouchable and unattainable. Doug was relatable and everyone’s buddy. Doug had taught Kate that it was okay to mess up, as long as it was because you were pushing yourself to your limits. Kate didn’t know what she’d taught Doug. It certainly wasn’t anything that changed him; Doug had remained utterly the same since they’d started dating, and Kate wouldn’t want him any other way. Still, he was better, and she had to believe some of that had come from her.

Though it would be nice if he could leave the toilet seat down.

The Olympics dawned, and Kate was tied in knots. Doug seemed to be taking it in stride, and was nowhere near as green as he usually was before competition. When Kate asked him about it, Doug just shrugged. “We’re on familiar ice now. We’re already Olympic medalists. All that’s left is to get you the gold now. It’s a lot less pressure.”

Kate wished she could see it his way. She wanted to chew her nails down to the quick, but, of course, she didn’t, because that would show weakness. She’d gotten a lot better at letting Doug into the workings of her mind and how she was feeling, but she still wasn’t good at showing imperfections to anyone else.

Their new short program was well received, though Kate still felt like there was something missing. They were in fifth place, which wasn’t a bad set-up before the long program, but Kate still wished they were sitting pretty in the top three. Doug rubbed her back and whispered reassurances in her ear, and Kate managed to give him a small smile.

Finally, the day of the long program dawned. Kate fussed with her hair, braiding it into a bun over and over again until it was perfect. Doug just left her to it, knowing that if she wasn’t obsessing over her hair, she’d be focusing on something else to nitpick.

The point of their long program was to take how people perceived them and make those personalities larger. For Kate, it meant wearing the Ice Princess persona: haughty, cool, and utterly above everyone. For Doug, it meant rebelling with a smile, making everyone fall in love with them.

Before they struck their opening poses, Doug squeezed her hand. “Let’s have fun with this, Princess. It’s time for you to fly again.”

They skated their hearts out and Kate felt like everything in the last seven years had been leading up to this. If they didn’t get gold, it wouldn’t be because of anything Doug and Kate hadn’t done or should have done.

And then it was just a matter of waiting for scores.

While they waited for the other four couples to skate and get their scores, Kate had a death grip on Doug’s arm. She kept loosening her hold, only to realize a few moments later that her fingernails were digging into Doug’s arm, but he never complained.

One couple fell. Kate managed to not show her pleasure at that. She felt bad for them, of course, having been there herself, but it was a gain for her, so she couldn’t feel too bad. Another blew their side by side triple lutzes, the male turning his into a double.

And so it went, until it was the Russians’ turn, this cycle’s version of Smilkov and Brushkin. They did extremely well, but there were some small mistakes. The only question was whether or not the lost points would be enough for Kate and Doug to win or not.

When the last judge’s score flashed and Kate knew what the results were, she actually screamed, throwing her arms around Doug and hugging him tight.

“I told you we’d do it, Princess,” he laughed in her ear, kissing the top of her head. “We got you that medal.”

Kate kissed him hard. It wasn’t their first Olympics and they were married now, and Kate was going to kiss her husband after they’d just won an Olympic gold medal. To hell with propriety. “We did it,” she exulted. “We actually did it!”

When it was time to take their victory lap, Kate felt like she was flying again.

Humbled and Proud

sroni — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:37:11 GMT

I've had two stories nominated at the No Rest for the Wicked Awards, and I'm humbled, grateful, and proud of the stories, all at the same time. One of the stories nominated is "I Kissed a Girl (The Scientific Method Remix)", which I have to admit is one of my favourite remixes, especially since I wrote it in a matter of hours as a pinch hit for Aadler when his story was taking longer to write than expected. I had a lot of fun writing it and it seems to be fairly well received, which is always gratifying. I believe it was nominated (and I think came in second?) for Running With Scissors around a year ago.

The second story that was nominated was actually from the same remix, "Made to be Broken (The 'Scars of Your Love' Remix)". It was well received, as well, and I got good feedback from it, but I was never as satisfied with it as I was with "I Kissed a Girl". I can't even put my finger on why. I just felt like I should have done more and should have done better. So for it to be nominated, as well... Well. It makes me a happy Roni.

Whoever nominated my stories, thank you very much. I appreciate it tremendously. I write for the joy of writing, it's true, but I also love feedback (even if sometimes I'm crap at responding to it and I promise I'm trying to get better at it), and it seems to be much easier to produce stories when I feel like people are interested and care.

So thank you. Truly.

Tea for Two

sroni — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 13:27:45 GMT

Title: Tea for Two
Characters: Buffy, Giles
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,067
Summary: Buffy, Giles, and tea through the years.
Prompt: For velvetwhip, who wanted a teapot or teacup, confusion about tea, missing Los Angeles, something about Joyce’s art gallery.
Warnings: Various character death (mostly canonical).
Setting: Season 1, Season 5, Season 6, nine years post-“Chosen”.

Tea for Two
by sroni

Buffy’s fifteen and coming to terms with the fact that she’s no longer a girl of sunshine and light, but something that has to hunt in the darkness.

She wants to go back to being that girl. But when her parents divorce (it’s your fault, Buffy, if you’d just been normal they’d still be together) and her mom moves the three of them out to Sunnydale, Buffy has to adjust to no longer being an LA girl, either.

She thinks she could like Sunnydale, maybe. She was a big fish in a big pond at Hemery, and she’s sure that she could rule Sunnydale with an iron fist, though thank God she’d stopped being the megabitch she’d been back at Hemery before everything happened.

Buffy settles in before school starts, and she turns out to be right. She likes Sunnydale. She likes how quiet it is. She likes not having to carry stakes with her at all times. She likes not having to sneak out of the house and listen to lectures about how she’s supposed to be a good role model for Dawnie.

She likes being normal.

She thinks that she misses LA, but then she realizes that she misses what LA used to represent. Normalcy, when the worst thing Buffy had to worry about was landing a complicated cheer trick.

She feels guilty for not missing LA more than she does.

She should. She had friends there from kindergarten, but her closest friend is dead and her Watcher is dead and Buffy feels the loss like a hole in her side that’s never going to heal up. It’s raw and it’s aching and Buffy doesn’t even want to care about Merrick, she hadn’t even liked him most of the time and he hadn’t trusted her to do what had needed to be done, but he’d died trying to protect her and that meant something to her. The worst part was that Buffy couldn’t even explain why she cared, because no one knew about Merrick.

Buffy doesn’t miss LA, she misses her old life. She misses who she used to be — though she’s glad she’s grown — and she misses people (she always was a Daddy’s Girl, but she knows that her mom was surprised that Buffy chose to go with her instead of fighting to stay in LA with her life and her dad), but she doesn’t miss either of those things as much as she thought she would.

And then, of course, everything goes to hell because this nice little normal town? not so nice and normal. The creepy librarian lists off all the things that Sunnydale’s dealt with and Buffy wants to scream because this isn’t her job anymore, she retired because she can’t fail again, she can’t deal with her mom being mad at her for sneaking out or coming home bloody, she can’t deal with Dawn’s nosiness and trying to figure out what’s going on, she’s not that girl anymore and she won’t be, she won’t.

Buffy’s fifteen years old and she knows that being a Slayer means that she has a shortened lifespan, and she’s just not ready to die yet.

But it turns out that you can say you won’t be a Slayer anymore but actually following through on that? much less likely to happen, especially when you actually care about people. Buffy rescued Willow, but Jesse …

Buffy tried apologizing for Jesse, for not getting there in time, and Willow and Xander wouldn’t let her. Buffy decided to not push it, but the failure weighed heavily on her, and that’s how she found herself with a tea cup in her hand, as she frowns down at the murky liquid. “I don’t get it.”

Giles prepares his own tea with swift, sure movements and honestly? Buffy doesn’t get it herself, but she can understand Willow’s crush on the guy. “What don’t you get?”

“Tea. I don’t get it. What’s the point of it? If you want something hot or with a kick of caffeine, why not go for coffee?” Buffy shakes her hand a little, sending the tea dancing along the sides of the cup.

“Tea is about comfort more than anything else,” Giles explains, sipping on his own tea. “There’s a ritual to it, and that can make it … soothing. You do the same actions and you get the anticipated results.”

Buffy tries hers and makes a face at it. “Is it supposed to be a comfort for me or for you?” She drinks some more, making another face at the taste.

Giles gives her an almost sad look. “I had meant it to be for you.”

“Then it is,” Buffy assures him, though she’d still prefer a coffee, and takes a long drink of her icky tea. They have a rocky relationship, but he’s trying, and Buffy doesn’t dislike him, she just … really hates the responsibility that comes with being a Slayer. She doesn’t want it but she can’t run from it, and Giles represents that sometimes. But he’s trying, and she’s trying in return.

She doesn’t really know what else to say, so she drinks her tea in silence, trying really hard to not hate it. But she’s pretty sure that tea is never going to grow on her.

Buffy is fifteen and has her whole life ahead of her — for however long it lasts.

* * *

Buffy is twenty and tired of death. She has to … she has to be strong. Dawnie needs her, after all. But Buffy is so tired of being strong, is tired of holding up the people around her, and she just can’t do it anymore. The weight on her shoulders is just too much, and no one seems to notice.

She should be spending time with Dawnie, make sure she’s handling their mom’s death, but Willow and Tara are looking after Dawn and Buffy knows that Tara will do a better job of it than Buffy would. Buffy would say the wrong thing and start a fight and both of them would be too raw and they would just hurt each other. It’s better to leave Dawn to the gentle blonde, and Buffy pushes back the guilt at doing so.

She should go on patrol if she’s not at home, but instead she finds herself at Joyce’s gallery. She uses the key to slip inside and keys hers and Dawnie’s birthdays into the security alarm. She’ll need to pack everything up, sell what she can and put in storage what she can’t, but she just can’t bring herself to do that yet. Buffy wants to pretend that Joyce is going to walk in the door any minute, that she’ll want to use Buffy’s muscles to open up a difficult crate, but Buffy knows that she can’t do that because it’ll just make it hurt too much later.

She shouldn’t have come, not when it’s still a raw, aching hole in her chest that’s worse than any other she’s had to deal with. Buffy’s had a life of losses, it seems like, but even Celia doesn’t compare to this.

Buffy sits on a desk and looks around, and hears the door behind her opening. She’s whirled around before the door even finishes the swing, and relaxes when she sees that it’s Giles.

“I saw you come in,” he explains, and Buffy wants to ask him how he even saw that but lets it slide; their relationship is no longer rocky and he’s the most dependable person in her life now. She needs him like she needs the earth underneath her feet, and she’s not going to get mad at him if he’s keeping a closer eye on her than usual. “Would you like some tea? I know where Joyce keeps —” He cuts himself off, swallowing hard, and corrects himself quickly, “— kept it.”

Buffy still prefers coffee to tea, but she knows what tea represents to him, that it’s a way for him to take care of her, so she nods, giving him the barest of smiles. “Tea would be good.”

He prepares it with practiced movements, and Buffy watches his hands as he goes through the motions. After it’s steeped, they drink it in silence, not needing to say anything.

Buffy’s twenty, and feels as though death is all around her … but at least she has Giles.

She’s pretty sure she can get through anything so long as he’s in her corner.

* * *

Buffy is not yet twenty-one now, but she’s dead. She’s dead, her friends buried her, but they didn’t know how to let her stay dead, so they brought her back. But what they don’t understand is that Buffy is worse than any vampire, because at least the vampire somewhat resembles the person they were before, warped though it may be, but Buffy’s just an animated corpse that’s going through the motions of pretending to be alive.

Buffy’s dead and she wants to go back to being dead but she doesn’t know how. Buffy is a role that she plays, and she’s never been a gifted actress. She wears a Buffy mask and says Buffy words, but she’s less Buffy than even the Buffybot.

Every breath she draws is poison, every move she makes is a mockery of how she used to be, but she’s pretending for the sake of her friends.

Giles notices, though. Giles notices and tries to help her and makes her tea and that would make her cry if a corpse were capable of tears. He tries to talk to her while they drink, and she tries to give him Buffy-type answers, but she knows, she knows that he sees through it, because Giles has always been the one to see through her bullshit.

She’s a walking corpse, but she thinks that maybe he can help her come back to life where her friends’ spell couldn’t succeed.

And then he tells her that he’s moving back to England and she grips the teacup so hard it shatters in her hand.

Buffy is nearly twenty-one, and she’s dead, and she’s fairly sure she’s just going to stay dead, even if she is walking around and breathing.

* * *

Buffy is thirty and she thinks she’s okay.

But she knows that Giles isn’t. They’ve all had deaths that hit them hard, Jenny, her mom, Tara. They grieved and they rebuilt their lives from the shambles, and the pain got a little less each day. But, as much as he’d loved Jenny, as unexplainable as the relationship he and Joyce had, he’s never lost a wife before, and he’s like a ghost of himself with new lines of grief around his eyes (when did Giles start looking so old?) that get deeper each day.

Buffy doesn’t know how to help. She always felt better when she was fighting, but Giles has never been as physically geared as she was.

So instead, she breaks into his flat — she’s picked up Britishisms over the years — and starts making some tea. She’s still not allowed to cook ever, but she knows how to boil water, and that’s most of what making tea is, after all. She’s watched him enough over the past fifteen years to know how he likes it, and when he comes out to investigate the banging around in his cupboard, she has the tea poured with the right amount of milk added to it for him.

He doesn’t even have to ask. All he does is tilt his head at her and Buffy understands what he’s asking without words, so she shrugs in response. “Someone told me once that tea isn’t about the taste but about comfort more than anything else.”

Giles gives her a wan smile and parrots her words back to her from that first time he made her tea. “Is it supposed to be a comfort for me or for you?”

Buffy smiles softly back at him, passing him the cookies. “For you. Always for you.”

Tea’s grown on her, mostly from living in England the last few years, so she no longer makes a face when she drinks it. They sip their tea quietly, reminiscing when they want, and sitting in comfortable silence when they don’t want to talk. They’ve been friends for fifteen years now and there’s a comfort in that.

Buffy’s thirty and she thinks she’s okay. She’s determined to get Giles to that point, too.

End

Hiiiiives

sroni — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 21:17:48 GMT

Most if the hives have gone away. It turns out that the main thing I'm allergic to right now is stress, and while I'm stressing, I'm allergic to EVERYTHING. Unfortunately, while I know what's causing the stress, there's nothing I can do about it. So I have hives all over one foot, and all over my lower left arm. The foot is doing a lot better, but the arm... The arm has been steadily gwtting worse. It looks like a severe burn, and I'm starting to worry that it's going to scar.

But, oh well, if it does. It is what it is.

(This was not my feelings last spring when my face sunburned and I scratched it in my sleep. I have a scar on my face now and I was freaking out because I'd been so careful with so many different things before the wedding and I was a sobbing mess because I was going to look like Frankenstein's creation.)

But. It is what it is.

I have so many ideas for stories. I definitely don't lack for ideas.

Slytherin

sroni — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 10:27:58 GMT

Imagine that you’re at Hogwarts for the first time, and the Hat goes on your head. “I’m so sorry,” it whispers to you, before saying loudly, “Slytherin!”

It’ s your first year. You’ve won the House Cup and you’re getting ready to celebrate.

And then Professor Dumbledore awards just enough points to take the win away from you, with no warning to the House that had won and now lost.

Can you imagine how that would feel? The older ones and Snape trying to convince you that Dumbledore doesn’t hate you? Them trying to convince you that the entire school doesn’t hate you simply because of the colours you wear, while the words taste like dust and lies in their mouths and sound like the lies they are to your ears?

You spend the next six years trying to rise above what everyone thinks you to be, you want to scream and shake the blood purists and the bullies and yell at them, “Stop being what they hate! Stop giving them a reason to hate us more!”, but experience has taught you they won’t listen.

You’re small for your age, you always have been, and in your third year, a pair of bullies beat you bloody for what happened to Hermione Granger and her teeth. It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t, but you were there and you wear silver and green. Professor Snape finds you and takes you to the hospital wing where you have to stay overnight and he is so angry he’s white because the bullies got twenty points taken away each and that’s all. “What do you expect, Severus? They have witnesses saying that he attacked them first. Obviously they went too far, but they have the right to defend themselves.” You roll away from the words, unable to stomach them.

It’s not the first time you have to spend the night in the hospital wing.

Every Sorting, you whisper for every child, “Don’t be a Slytherin, don’t be a Slytherin.” You wouldn’t wish on anyone this hatred from people who don’t even know you and simply hate what you are.

You’re in your seventh year, almost free of this place that’s so magical to most but has become a hell for you and things get so. much. worse. You are expected to cast torture curses at your fellow classmates. You, who cried the first time you had to feed one of Hagrid’s creatures a live animal, have to torture people you’ve gone to school with. But the Carrows are scary and you don’t want to be on the receiving end, so you do it.

Every time you do it, it gets a little easier and you think that maybe, everyone was right about you. You are evil, you have to be, or you’d be able to stand up instead of hurt. Everyone that hated you, they were right, they were right, they were right, and you start breaking apart.

Imagine that you’re at Hogwarts for the first time, and the Hat goes on your head. “I’m so sorry,” it whispers to you, before saying loudly, “Slytherin!”

New thing to add to my long list of allergies

sroni — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:14:30 GMT

Heat. I am allergic to heat. Keep in mind that before the hives started, I loved being hot because it meant I was finally not cold and cold is painful for me.

We're in Italy. The temperature is around the 90's right now. I'm probably going to live in the bathroom.

I freaking love Rome

sroni — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 21:09:45 GMT

We currently have no internet of our own, but Irish's bosses are awesome and told him to bring me to the office in the off hours so i can hop online. They're really nice and keep inviting me out to office parties; I feel almost like an unofficial staff member here. We're here until November, at which poing we'll head back to Ireland. I'm loving the weather here; Irish thinks it's hot, while it feels like home to me (but we're used to about 30 degrees of difference for what's "home"; I'm used to weather being around 50 in winter, with the dropping cold happening periodically, and 100+ in summer, with 90 or below being oddly cool, while his winters are in the negatives, and his summers are around 60-70 degrees), so it's no wonder he's dying of heat. I'd put the temp here at around 80, 85, with about 60% humidity, which means for me, it's nowhere near as bad as what i'm used to, and for him, it's a lot worse than he's used to.

I've been walking into town multiple times a week, which means about a mile up a STEEP hill. It's bad enough that even Irish is feeling the strain when he walks up it, and he's 1) in much better shape than I am, and 2) used to walking up hills. I started off having to stop at lesst thrre times on the trip up, just because of my thighs and ribs, but on the last few trips I've managed to not need to stop. I don't know how much weight I've lost because I will not allow myself to own a scale (I get too focused on numbers and then I get obsessive and it's just healthier for me to pay attention to how I'm feeling than my weight), but my jeans are hella baggy now, and I know that my waist is about ten inches smaller than it was when I left the States in January. For my birthday, I bought an excersise ball and a twist board, and they've seen a lot of use.

The place we're currently living is fantastic, and we've been adopted by the landlords (the lady comes down every Friday for two hours, to help us clean and visit with us). Unfortunately, we'll be moving elsewhere at the end of the month, something about the way the house is zoned. The landlords are really sad we'll be leaving, and I'm going to miss them.

I have about 25,000 words written on a series. This makes me ridiculously happy, but I'm apparently insane because I have at least twelve stories planned out. (One of the books needs something, though, because the plot is just not along the same lines as the other plots; I'm going to have to figure out how to add the type of thing that's in all the others to the existing plot. But that's seven or so books down the line.)

I've been reading the Game of Thrones books, and eh. I like the characters a lot but the more i read the books the more I realize I don't like them. I'm reading because I want to know what happens to the characters I like.

I've been watching a lot of Nickelodeon and Disney shows; this isn't unusal for me because i love Nick and Disney, even if I am a grown ass woman. Mostly, i've been watching them because I still don't understand Italian and I can mostly understand what's going on with these shows. I'm almost starting to understand diaologue, even when I don't recognize individual words. (I don't know how to explain it; I have no idea what the words that were said are, but about 50% of the time, I can tell you what the English sentence was. I seriously have no idea what the Italian was, so I can't look it up, but I know what's being said in English.)

I want to see movies. I miss movies.

I think I might be the first person to write an End of Watch fanfic...

sroni — Thu, 14 May 2015 23:37:41 GMT

It seems like other people should have, but when I do a search, all that comes up is a Castle fanfic and a Southland fic, both titled “End of Watch”. Which is weird, because I have had these characters in my head since I came out of the theatre the weekend the movie came out. I got tired of looking for this story and decided to write it. Notes will be at the end.

Used to Be …

You used to have a partner. Sometimes, you can almost remember him, but then the wisps of memory just kind of … go away and you can’t remember him anymore, but his voice stays with you. Most people call you Carrie Anne because that’s your name, but in your head the voice of your partner’s ghost calls you “Boot”.

Your name is Carrie Anne Sook. You used to be a police officer. You used to have a partner. You used to be pretty. You used to be able to sleep through the night.

There are a lot of things you used to be that you aren’t anymore. Now you’re just an empty space where a person used to be. You’re a blank canvas and people have to tell you about yourself because you don’t remember you or anyone else. Two guys that you used to work with, back when you were a cop, would visit you in the beginning. You begged the nurses not to tell them that you didn’t remember them, because you just needed someone who would treat you mostly like normal. The guys gave you invaluable information about your partner without even knowing they were doing so and you’ll never be able to explain to them how much you appreciate it. The one with the kind eyes tried to assure you that it wasn’t your fault, but his kind eyes couldn’t lie and you saw the truth that he tried to hide.

You might not know what happened, but you do know that it was your fault.

Months later and you’re shocked by the newspaper. The one with the smile has been killed, leaving the one with the kind eyes without a partner. You insist on going to the funeral; you don’t remember him, no, but he visited you when he didn’t have to and he and his partner tried to make you feel better. You hesitate for a moment over your dress blues — once a cop, always a cop, make us proud, rookie — but only for a moment because you used to wear the uniform but the you that you are now never did. Instead, you wear a simple black dress that doesn’t fit quite right because you’ve lost weight since getting out of the hospital.

Your father used to be a cop. You’re pretty sure that’s why you wanted to be one, too, but, of course, you don’t really know. You just wish you’d been able to make him proud instead of being a disappointment. People recognize him at the funeral and ask him how he’s doing. No one recognizes you, and that’s how you want it. You used to be a cop but you aren’t that girl anymore, and you don’t know how to talk to these people that might remember you better than you do.

The one with the kind eyes fell apart while he was speaking, so you seek him out, cookies and coffee in hand. You fell apart, too, when you lost your partner and your life and yourself, but you had the luxury of doing it in private. You know that a few treats from the buffet table won’t fix it, nothing will, it’ll be an aching gap that he won’t even be able to put a name to, or maybe he will and it’s just you who doesn’t have a name for that hurt, but you hope that the offer of comfort will help, at least a little. You find him and pass the cookies and coffee to him, trying to find the words to say before giving up and just saying, “I am so sorry,” before fleeing.

This is so stupid. They didn’t even know you before you stopped being you, and they didn’t know you afterwards, either, but they were nice to you and now one of them is gone and the tears are hot and heavy, clogging your throat and streaking your cheeks.

No one recognizes you, not after the reconstructive surgeries, and you prefer it that way. The anonymity means that you’re able to escape to the courtyard garden without any prying eyes, and you do, collapsing onto a bench so you can cry and get these tears out.

You don’t cry loudly, but you make enough noise that it’s some time before you realize you’re not alone. Your hand automatically drifts to your taser — you were deemed too emotionally unstable for a handgun license — and the guy that followed you puts his hands up. “Whoa. I was just checking to make sure you were all right.” You relax a little, but only a little because you’re not stupid. You see an almost-smile and hear the voice of your partner calling you a good girl with a laugh. “Are you okay?” One eye doesn’t quite track right and you mentally note it down in case you need to take advantage of his blind side and your partner’s voice calls you a good girl again.

You give a hard shrug, before finding words. “Is anyone?”

He sits down on a bench across from you, folding long legs in front of him. “Did you know him?”

You chew your lip, trying to think of how to answer. Absently, you recognize you’re tasting blood. “I used to. I don’t know how well, because how well does anyone know anyone? But he … he was nice to me at a time I really needed it, and I’m sad he’s gone. The world could use more nice people.”

The almost smile came back. “He was an asshole, him and his partner both.” His voice is respectful, in spite of the words he is using. “They were a pain in the ass and one step away from a lawsuit. But they were good people and good cops.”

“You used to work with them?” You can’t quite keep the surprise out of your voice. You knew that most of the cops in the city, former and current, would be coming out for the funeral, but you hadn’t been getting the cop vibe from him.

He nodded. “Used to. My partner and I, we took a call. Had no idea what we were getting into. I got nailed in the eye. She got it worse. Two careers over, just like that. Poor kid. The worst of it was, everyone assumed it was her that screwed the pooch.”

You’re pretty sure that the world is full of people who walked out of bad situations. Some came out stronger, some came out all right, but a lot didn’t, like you, and your heart goes out to his partner, whoever she is. “It … it wasn’t her fault?”

“Absolutely not!” The vehemence in his voice surprises you, and you jump back a little and he softens a little. “Sorry about that. Most of my unit was convinced that it was because of her I got a fucking Ginsu lodged in my eyeball.” He winced. “Sorry again. I try to not curse in front of ladies. No, she wasn’t to blame. I got jumped as soon as I got out of the car because I was paying attention to the wrong person. I fucked up, sorry again, but they still treated her like she was the screw-up. I’ve tried telling her I’m sorry, but I haven’t gotten any responses.”

— someone sitting on your chest, pain, the taste of blood, make it stop make it stop, oh God you don’t even know if your partner’s okay, of course he’s not okay he had a knife sticking out of his eye, please let it stop —

“Your partner.” You lick your lips even though your tongue is just as dry and you can’t make yourself meet his eyes. “You used to call her Boot.” Boot is slang for Rookie, you know that, it can’t have been unique to your unit’s —

But his eyes widen in recognition and he breathes out, “Sook?”

You’re crying all over again, ducking your head to hide your face and tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it was all my fault, I —”

“You stop that now.” He’s directly in front of you now, his voice gentle but commanding when he cuts you off. “You don’t need to apologize to me. Unless it’s about not responding to the emails I sent you. You didn’t mess that call up. I did. And I’ll be damned if I let you take the heat for something that isn’t yours.” He makes you look at him. “I will let you apologize for the emails, though.”

You can’t hold back the sniffly laugh. “I couldn’t remember my password. … Or my username,” you admit quietly.

“Sook.” He’s being gentle again and you’re not used to this gentleness to his voice. “What the hell happened?”

You shrug, giving a bitter almost smile. “Hell if I know. I don’t remember anything before waking up in the hospital. I’m having to get to know people all over again and figure out who I am.”

He covers one of your hands with his. “What do you know?”

You let out a long breath. “Pitiful little. My name is Carrie Anne Sook. I used to be a cop. I like the color yellow. I like dogs, and want to get a German Shepherd. I can’t sleep through the night. I like gardening but I think I might be growing weeds instead of flowers. I like coffee but only when it’s super-strong. I like mysteries but not murders, and I hate horror films and I cry at Finding Nemo. I like cooking and Italian food and I used to have a partner.”

He looks away before he speaks again. “You could have a partner again. If you want one.” You give him a look of surprise and he explains, “I’m still getting used to civilian life. We used to talk a lot in the squad car, and I remember most of what you told me. You talked about your dad a lot. I’d like to help, if I can.”

Something in your chest eases, that unnamed gaping pain hurting a little less, but you still have to ask. “Why?”

He lets out a heavy sigh. “I’m not adjusting well to civilian life at all. You’re not the only one who can’t sleep through the night. I had PTSD from before we were partners and it hasn’t gone away just because I’m no longer on the job. You … You weren’t really cut out to be a cop, and that’s the truth, but you didn’t deserve this and that’s the truth, too.” He stands up, his knee letting out a crack as he straightens. “I used to help people and I miss it. But I let you down and I owe you to try to help.”

You stand as well, shaking your head. “No debt. No owing. Even tallies. Just two … friends? helping each other as best as they can.”

“Been a while since I had a friend,” he admits in a low voice.

You assure him with a bright smile and upbeat voice, “Oh, don’t worry! I’m a much better friend than I was a police officer.” You shrug, the smile and cheer fading. “I’m pretty sure, at least.”

It does the job because he’s laughing and you join in.

Your name is Carrie Anne Sook. There are a lot of things you used to be that you aren’t anymore. You used to be a cop. You used to be pretty.

You used to be alone.

Hey, not every “used to be” has to be a loss. You have your partner back. You can live with the rest.

End

Okay, so a few things that should be known: Sook is the actual name of the rookie cop that was called Boot. Yes, Van Hauser is being more open than he would have been in the movie but I figured he’s been in therapy since getting stabbed in the eye and, in this version, at least, he feels like he’s responsible for her getting as badly hurt as she was, hence being more willing to talk to her and not simply shut off. Keep in mind, in the movie, we only saw him interacting with Brian and Zavala, so who knows how he’d be with his partner.

Also, I found out that the actress who played Sook was Chao-Ahn from Season Seven of Buffy, which really surprised me, because my mental picture of Sook was a brown-haired Caucasian girl.