Fic: 'I love you' is a thing you say to people who are dying (1/16) +notes; hard R
Hello everyone! I have the S7 fic I've been promising...!! Not all of it today, as it comes in at around 90k words, but the first five chapters. These all work together as Part One of the fic, so are more of a connected whole than a set of individual chapters. There are five parts to the fic in total (this is the longest), and in an early plan
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Things were not on schedule for Spike to make her care this much about him, not now.
Beautiful phrasing.
“What?” Spike asked, before he’d even had much chance to take the question in. Eventually he parsed the words, eased them out one by one - and then he found himself annoyed.
And this.
Immediately they ignored her, their faces brighter than anyone’s who looked at Buffy’s.
Everything is so hard for and on Buffy, And this moment illustrates it perfectly. Lydia abd Althenea both have people who are so happy to see them, but not Buffy the Bringer of Bad News :(
“Everything I do is for you,” Spike told her, the words dark and unashamed. It was private, this bitterness - the intimacy of it. Looking at her again, Spike’s expression burned with every moment that they’d spent together and if Buffy had been weaker, less tired, she would have been embarrassed to have everybody see it. Possibly that was Spike’s intention. It still didn’t work. ( ... )
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Poor Buffy is not in a particularly happy place here. But it is only the beginning!
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trying to explain how she would always betray him.
She wants him to see her as she sees herself -- harsh and callous and strong. Poor Buffy.
As annoying and useless as the Potentials were, I kind of feel badly for them. They still see themselves as kids, where Buffy is asking them to see themselves as Slayers.
Hmm, here's a thought -- maybe the First took out the Potentials with the most potential -- like the pink-haired girl in Germany -- first. (I've long had a bitter theory that the Potentials excessive whiteness as a group (even when they added some anonymous extras at the end) was because it was easier to kill black and brown and Asian girls around the world without attracting as notice than to kill off white American girls.)
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And maybe Kennedy made it through the Potentials with potential slaughter because her family was wealthy and it was harder to get to her at her private school or her mansion or whatnot, than it was to get at chai wallah's daughters in Delhi or secondary students in Lima.
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feeling so desperate and flayed of kindness.
What an amazing description - yes! I love Buffy in S7, and pretty much all of S7 (up to Touched), so this is a study in that as much as anything... :D
I feel sorry for the Potentials as well. They can be frustrating to watch on the show, because there are just so many of them by the end, but as characters they never really do anything wrong. They're basically just victimised chattel, getting picked up and moved around to take up space.
It certainly seemed like the Potentials in Buffy's dreams were slightly more mature than the Potentials we end up meeting. I don't know if we're supposed to assume that the girls who don't end up in Buffy's house are all dead, though; I'd probably be more inclined to think that the racial and English-speaking bias comes from the Watchers networks and who Giles is likely to be able to track down. But then you might be right about within the English-speaking countries... :(
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Victimized chattel, indeed. Well put. And that's not fun to watch, nor is (even justified) complaining at Our Heroine, which is pretty much all they did until the final.
Although, perhaps Buffy is wrong, that only Kennedy has the stuff; as she once told Angel, she was a shallow kid before she got called, as well.
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