Still more fic
Apr. 11th, 2007 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmatonakThis is a Buffy/Angel crossover fic, set after Not Fade Away. I intend it to be part of a huge series. It cannot be reconciled with the Season Eight comics. The series is intended to be structured like a season of one of the shows, in that the formal plot skeleton is action-adventure. It is tagged "alpha" because I'm not sure where I'm going with it and reserve the right to revise in the future. It is a sequel to my previous fics "Come the Revolution" and "Perfect Day."
Prologue: Milan
Buffy ran along the ridiculous narrow streets and considered giving Giles a good talking-to.
She had told him he was in charge when she was gone, and he meant it. She told him personal life had to be more of a priority now that she was just the most senior of the Chosen Eleventy-Thousand-and-Twelve, instead of the Chosen One, and she meant that too. So she couldn't really blame him for making decisions. It was just that, from what she was hearing, a lot of those decisions were about things she considered part of her personal life, which, when you thought about it, sort of defeated the purpose of making that a priority. Plus, it was not cool that she was hearing these kinds of things secondhand from Dawn and Andrew.
Andrew (!) knew more about what Spike and Angel (!!) had been up to for the past year (!!!) than she did. That was not right.
"It's not right," she said. The vamp she was chasing made a sharp left into an alley... and slowed down. She snorted. Yeah, how could I ever see through your brilliant evasive maneuver? She put on an extra burst of speed and ran in front of him. A lot of them got pretty confused when she did that to them. That was supposed to go the other way.
Much like the pain and suffering.
The vamp recovered quickly when she punched him in the gut, and she mentally revised his estimated age upward. He favored the hands, so she mostly stuck to wrist blocks.
"I mean, this is one of my six weeks of legally mandated vacation. Tonight should be all massages and mojitos, or some Italian thing that sounds even more Spanish. And yet, here we are."
He opened his mouth to reply and she punched him in the face.
"I gotta admit, it is kinda fun to do this outside an instructional setting, for once. I don't have to demonstrate proper technique to a bunch of peppy newbies. Which is good for you, because it doesn't seem like you make proper technique a priority." During all this, she mostly just kept him off her. As a rule, a vamp old enough to be this strong was nowhere near this clumsy.
"Oh, look at me, babbling on while you have places to be. Don't let me keep you." Stake, heart, noise, dust. Not all of him crumbled away. Sitting amid the dust was a piece of dark... something, maybe volcanic glass, a little smaller than her thumb. She'd seen it in his chest as the rest of him fell away. Quizzically, she brought it up to her eye.
Okay. Definitely time to talk to Giles.
Chapter One: Dallas General Hospital
Spike caught up with Illyria just outside the building. To judge by her face, things had not gone well at all.
"You need to kill something," he said.
"God damn right," she said, and they were off.
Ir didn't take them long at all to find the first set of vampires. Big cities all work the same way in some respects. And in between literally pulling their heads off, in short bursts, she talked.
He mostly let her talk. She had to fill him in on how things had gone, and after that, it was mostly her being upset. He made sympathetic noises, and listened. He really did. But it was hard to concentrate on his friend because he felt great. In the old days, he would have said he must have eaten someone who agreed with him. He was bouncy and peppy and full of energy as he'd been in decades.
Hearing about Wesley and Illyria made him think of himself and Buffy. Because tonight was tonight, there was no apprehension there, just a calm joy. Of course it would work out, seeing her. How could it not? But he shouldn't think about that now.
"Have you ever considered just being Fred, at least for a little while? Keeping the blue under wraps, as it were?"
"I thought about it. It doesn't feel right. It feels like when Jenny Gonzales told me not to read where boys could see."
"Hm."
"I thought about not using Illyria's name, but honestly? I think it's prettier than 'Winifred.'"
He couldn't help laughing. "May have a point there, love. But Winifred has its charm."
"Nothin' wrong with it... hey!"
They spotted the latest pair of vampires at pretty much the same time. She beat him to them, although not by as wide a margin as usual, and punched her hand through the boy's sternum as the girl looked on, aghast.
"I wish we could find some real demons. These guys just aren't that durable."
The girl morphed into game face, grabbed Illyria, and hurled her bodily into the side of a nearby Dumpster, with such force that the entire thing, the side she hit and the side parallel to it, wrapped itself around her.
As Spike jumped back and raised his fists, Illyria flexed out and to her feet and said, "Okay, except for her maybe."
Chapter Two: San Francisco
Whistler whistled, because that's what he did, and he carried the things entrusted to him today along their ordained path, because that's who he was. He wasn't happy about it, but then no one required him to be. He'd expected to have to go to one of San Francisco's precious little architectural oddities like the Transamerica Pyramid or some damn thing, but she was waiting for him on a perfectly ordinary plastic chair in the Haight, just a couple blocks down from Ashbury.
Despite it all, she impressed him. The looks reminded him of Louise Brooks, even down to the short brunette haircut and the glint in her eye. The bearing was pure Empress; she even favored purple. He set the satchel down and retreated to a respectful distance.
"The bones of Saint Vigeous, my lady Tal. I believe this completes the collection."
She smiled a smile of geniune pleasure. "Thank you, Whistler. I have no further tasks for you tonight. Would you care to accompany me for a drink?"
"No, thank you, ma'am. I'd like to rest."
"Of course. May I ask you a brief question?"
"Ma'am?"
"I know you don't approve of my project- no, you needn't protest, you've served me as well as I could have asked for, regardless of your personal feelings, and I respect that. But... when it became clear to you what I was doing, why did you not pass the burden to another of your kind?"
Because it was nice to help the White Hats pull ahead for a while, and so I had to help them fall behind. Balance in all things, and never mind if the scales tip disastrously before everything settles down. They'll just put me back with the White Hats then anyway- if there are any left, Whistler thought.
"I couldn't possibly comment on internal matters, ma'am."
"Oh, of course. Thank you for discussing this with me. You may go." And he did.
Lady Tal picked up the nondescript leather bag and felt the power emanating from within it. She had no idea what a Grinch was. It was one of the many things any American child would have to explain to her, and she would, of course, have listened politely to an explanation before brutally murdering her interlocutor. Regardless, her heart- her real heart, not the incidental organ that pumped blood through her frame- grew three sizes that night, all of a sudden.
She took a moment to make sure everything was in place, diminishing a lung to make everything fit right in her chest, and went off to get that drink.
to be continued
Comments? I'm not too proud to beg...
Prologue: Milan
Buffy ran along the ridiculous narrow streets and considered giving Giles a good talking-to.
She had told him he was in charge when she was gone, and he meant it. She told him personal life had to be more of a priority now that she was just the most senior of the Chosen Eleventy-Thousand-and-Twelve, instead of the Chosen One, and she meant that too. So she couldn't really blame him for making decisions. It was just that, from what she was hearing, a lot of those decisions were about things she considered part of her personal life, which, when you thought about it, sort of defeated the purpose of making that a priority. Plus, it was not cool that she was hearing these kinds of things secondhand from Dawn and Andrew.
Andrew (!) knew more about what Spike and Angel (!!) had been up to for the past year (!!!) than she did. That was not right.
"It's not right," she said. The vamp she was chasing made a sharp left into an alley... and slowed down. She snorted. Yeah, how could I ever see through your brilliant evasive maneuver? She put on an extra burst of speed and ran in front of him. A lot of them got pretty confused when she did that to them. That was supposed to go the other way.
Much like the pain and suffering.
The vamp recovered quickly when she punched him in the gut, and she mentally revised his estimated age upward. He favored the hands, so she mostly stuck to wrist blocks.
"I mean, this is one of my six weeks of legally mandated vacation. Tonight should be all massages and mojitos, or some Italian thing that sounds even more Spanish. And yet, here we are."
He opened his mouth to reply and she punched him in the face.
"I gotta admit, it is kinda fun to do this outside an instructional setting, for once. I don't have to demonstrate proper technique to a bunch of peppy newbies. Which is good for you, because it doesn't seem like you make proper technique a priority." During all this, she mostly just kept him off her. As a rule, a vamp old enough to be this strong was nowhere near this clumsy.
"Oh, look at me, babbling on while you have places to be. Don't let me keep you." Stake, heart, noise, dust. Not all of him crumbled away. Sitting amid the dust was a piece of dark... something, maybe volcanic glass, a little smaller than her thumb. She'd seen it in his chest as the rest of him fell away. Quizzically, she brought it up to her eye.
Okay. Definitely time to talk to Giles.
Chapter One: Dallas General Hospital
Spike caught up with Illyria just outside the building. To judge by her face, things had not gone well at all.
"You need to kill something," he said.
"God damn right," she said, and they were off.
Ir didn't take them long at all to find the first set of vampires. Big cities all work the same way in some respects. And in between literally pulling their heads off, in short bursts, she talked.
He mostly let her talk. She had to fill him in on how things had gone, and after that, it was mostly her being upset. He made sympathetic noises, and listened. He really did. But it was hard to concentrate on his friend because he felt great. In the old days, he would have said he must have eaten someone who agreed with him. He was bouncy and peppy and full of energy as he'd been in decades.
Hearing about Wesley and Illyria made him think of himself and Buffy. Because tonight was tonight, there was no apprehension there, just a calm joy. Of course it would work out, seeing her. How could it not? But he shouldn't think about that now.
"Have you ever considered just being Fred, at least for a little while? Keeping the blue under wraps, as it were?"
"I thought about it. It doesn't feel right. It feels like when Jenny Gonzales told me not to read where boys could see."
"Hm."
"I thought about not using Illyria's name, but honestly? I think it's prettier than 'Winifred.'"
He couldn't help laughing. "May have a point there, love. But Winifred has its charm."
"Nothin' wrong with it... hey!"
They spotted the latest pair of vampires at pretty much the same time. She beat him to them, although not by as wide a margin as usual, and punched her hand through the boy's sternum as the girl looked on, aghast.
"I wish we could find some real demons. These guys just aren't that durable."
The girl morphed into game face, grabbed Illyria, and hurled her bodily into the side of a nearby Dumpster, with such force that the entire thing, the side she hit and the side parallel to it, wrapped itself around her.
As Spike jumped back and raised his fists, Illyria flexed out and to her feet and said, "Okay, except for her maybe."
Chapter Two: San Francisco
Whistler whistled, because that's what he did, and he carried the things entrusted to him today along their ordained path, because that's who he was. He wasn't happy about it, but then no one required him to be. He'd expected to have to go to one of San Francisco's precious little architectural oddities like the Transamerica Pyramid or some damn thing, but she was waiting for him on a perfectly ordinary plastic chair in the Haight, just a couple blocks down from Ashbury.
Despite it all, she impressed him. The looks reminded him of Louise Brooks, even down to the short brunette haircut and the glint in her eye. The bearing was pure Empress; she even favored purple. He set the satchel down and retreated to a respectful distance.
"The bones of Saint Vigeous, my lady Tal. I believe this completes the collection."
She smiled a smile of geniune pleasure. "Thank you, Whistler. I have no further tasks for you tonight. Would you care to accompany me for a drink?"
"No, thank you, ma'am. I'd like to rest."
"Of course. May I ask you a brief question?"
"Ma'am?"
"I know you don't approve of my project- no, you needn't protest, you've served me as well as I could have asked for, regardless of your personal feelings, and I respect that. But... when it became clear to you what I was doing, why did you not pass the burden to another of your kind?"
Because it was nice to help the White Hats pull ahead for a while, and so I had to help them fall behind. Balance in all things, and never mind if the scales tip disastrously before everything settles down. They'll just put me back with the White Hats then anyway- if there are any left, Whistler thought.
"I couldn't possibly comment on internal matters, ma'am."
"Oh, of course. Thank you for discussing this with me. You may go." And he did.
Lady Tal picked up the nondescript leather bag and felt the power emanating from within it. She had no idea what a Grinch was. It was one of the many things any American child would have to explain to her, and she would, of course, have listened politely to an explanation before brutally murdering her interlocutor. Regardless, her heart- her real heart, not the incidental organ that pumped blood through her frame- grew three sizes that night, all of a sudden.
She took a moment to make sure everything was in place, diminishing a lung to make everything fit right in her chest, and went off to get that drink.
to be continued
Comments? I'm not too proud to beg...
