Happy new year! I struggle through LJ to post negligible ficlets, and if I get no comments it's clearly just because of the DDoS *g*
Title Neverending Narrative
Words 285
Setting very early season 6
Rating PG but angsty
Prompt Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
He can laugh about it now. Now that she's back. The extremity his imagination sometimes took him to.
So many nights where he saved her, and it doesn't matter how ridiculous it got, he saved her, and that's what mattered. Before.
There was the version where Spike was hanging around hiding on the tower beforehand, because of course they could have spotted the tower, it wasn't discreet, that monstrous steel structure. And he… he killed someone, who may be Doc or even Glory, it varied. Sometimes he was disguised, something more frightening than a vampire, or less suspicious, sometimes he just smacked them with a tire iron and it worked because this time he was faster and cleverer and sometimes it has to come out right.
There was the one where he killed Dawn and chucked her through the portal instead. Because sometimes, he couldn't stand that she lived when Buffy didn't. Even though it wouldn't have been any better. Just differently agonising.
There was the one where he wrote to the local authorities about unauthorised tower building, and nobody could get up to the crucial site in time to drip anyone's blood. Though he admits to the absurdity of an evil fiend having this fantasy, it could have worked. Though probably not without the deaths of a number of Sunnydale city officials. Spike could have dealt with the guilt. Heh.
Yeah. Daft. He can laugh about it. Could laugh about it sometimes. Would laugh about it still, except that she came back from the dead and she isn't all right at all. And he was still just a little too slow, a little too late, and if he had saved her…
It never ends.
Title Neverending Narrative
Words 285
Setting very early season 6
Rating PG but angsty
Prompt Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
He can laugh about it now. Now that she's back. The extremity his imagination sometimes took him to.
So many nights where he saved her, and it doesn't matter how ridiculous it got, he saved her, and that's what mattered. Before.
There was the version where Spike was hanging around hiding on the tower beforehand, because of course they could have spotted the tower, it wasn't discreet, that monstrous steel structure. And he… he killed someone, who may be Doc or even Glory, it varied. Sometimes he was disguised, something more frightening than a vampire, or less suspicious, sometimes he just smacked them with a tire iron and it worked because this time he was faster and cleverer and sometimes it has to come out right.
There was the one where he killed Dawn and chucked her through the portal instead. Because sometimes, he couldn't stand that she lived when Buffy didn't. Even though it wouldn't have been any better. Just differently agonising.
There was the one where he wrote to the local authorities about unauthorised tower building, and nobody could get up to the crucial site in time to drip anyone's blood. Though he admits to the absurdity of an evil fiend having this fantasy, it could have worked. Though probably not without the deaths of a number of Sunnydale city officials. Spike could have dealt with the guilt. Heh.
Yeah. Daft. He can laugh about it. Could laugh about it sometimes. Would laugh about it still, except that she came back from the dead and she isn't all right at all. And he was still just a little too slow, a little too late, and if he had saved her…
It never ends.
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Comments
(I speak as a hardcore bureaucrat, btw.)
Glad you liked it!
(One might think they'd all have realised that, tbh.)
Oh, and I didn't mention the "why of course!" ness of siccing the local bureaucracy on Glory and her tower. Why didn't anyone think of that?
Edited at 2013-01-02 10:13 pm (UTC)
Meh. I reckon Sunnydale bureaucrats are veery good at ignoring unauthorised demoning, don't you?
And whaaaa -- oh, it's one of those gut-punch stories where everything's going along amusingly, and then you realize there's something different going on here. Because it seems like all those ways Spike saved Buffy in his mind are unimportant now, but what if she's still not saved? Not the way anybody wanted?
Random thought: y'know what these "every night I save you" fics remind me of? Stargate SG-1's episode, The Gamekeeper. Brrrr.
In conclusion: ANGST.
I haven't been having any troubles with LJ besides it being a touch slow. Guess I'm special. :) Except,crap, now I've probably jinxed it.
Anyway, this was lovely. What a great way to start the year on the comm.
Glad you liked it!
nicely done.
It sounds like a perpetuum mobile.
Edited at 2013-01-04 06:45 pm (UTC)
There was the one where he killed Dawn and chucked her through the portal instead. Because sometimes, he couldn't stand that she lived when Buffy didn't. Even though it wouldn't have been any better. Just differently agonising.
Good characterization; though it breaks my favorite friendship a bit!
And I promise he's not serious. Just, when you can't bear one pain, you maybe consider swapping it for another.