Fanfic: Birds In Cages.

[cadhla]

Title: Birds in Cages.
Fandom: elements of both ‘Angel’ and ‘Buffy: the Vampire Slayer’, Spike/Angel. Lynnevitational ficathon entry for stakebait.
Rating: R, for swearing, violence, and sexual content.
Description: It was always about power. It was never about love. (It was always about lying to yourself.)

Comments

[seraphcelene]

Wow. That is awesome and really kind of fucked up. But in a really awesome way. I love the way you align the characters, make them into sort of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Love it. Love the way the beginning and the end are reflections of each other. This, I think, is very true for who Spike was. His journey has alot to do with connections and belonging. It's definitly about love, but the punk rock vampire that he is, the one who kills Slayers, wouldn't allow for that to be a truth and so it has to be about power. Knowing where he comes from, that that kind of sentiment would be a weakness for Darla and Angel, and that Dru wouldn't really comprehend it, would make him try to change the definitions of his engagement with the world.

I also love the language here, the tangled, doubling ... so damn biblical and perverted.

So many lines ring true. I especially liked:

Darla kisses like the plague personified; cheap lipstick, spoiled port, and the distant, dying burn of thwarted end-stage syphilis, the disease cut off at the finish line and eternally preserved in her pretty, frozen flesh.

Blood lubricates everything. Sex, society, slaughter.

There's really too many lines to choose from or I'll quote the whole thing back to you. But especially this. I loved this:

Drusilla was Famine, things running out, hot blood turning cold, stagnant and unnurturing, and Darla was Pestilence, the pretty thing that rots you out and leaves you dead and empty...but Angel is Death himself, has always been, whatever face he comes or came to wear. Let him put a soul inside his empty spaces. It won’t change a damn thing, because his emptiness will always win, will drink away the good as it drinks the evil, and he’ll come back to what he is: an ending.

Awesome fic!