Ficlet: Rosetta (PG)

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Title Rosetta
Rating PG
Words 162
Setting At the end of I Was Made to Love You
Prompts Erm, Rosetta Stone, obv. In a fairly non-literal way, I hope.

Comments

[hello_spikey]

This is short and brutal. Love it! Comprehension fails. Killing follows. Chilling!

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Thanks! I think he's wrong, actually, but he fears it. And if Joyce hadn't died, perhaps the gap between them would have grown until that became the outcome.

[dorians_kitten]

Very nice. "his human cipher ring"-perfect.

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Thank you! I liked that like too. *g*

[rebcake]

I don't doubt that Spike sees it this way, in his desperation, but neither he nor his decoder ring know what he's truly capable of understanding and doing.

Excellent.

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Oh, I agree totally - but I wouldn't like to bet that if the shock of Joyce's death hadn't changed the situation, Spike might not have ended up in this place eventually if he'd never broken back into the circle.

[rebcake]

Oh, interesting. I actually tend to think that Joyce could have been a further "in" for him had she not died. Not that she would have been in favor of a romance. I can see his interest in her daughter making her take a closer look and start insisting on a better standard of treatment for him...just in a "I'm disappointed to see you mistreating helpless wild animals, Buffy" way.

I don't see the change coming until Intervention, but I always like to think of ways that Joyce matters to the narrative.

[thisficklemob]

Oooh. Interesting. It kinda makes Spike's obsession with Buffy more layered than they showed it (yet) -- it's not just her, it's what she represents. (And really, could he have fallen in love with her if some part of him wasn't drawn to what she represented?)

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Thank you! For me, from the moment Spike starts helping in Triangle, angrily and expecting just not eating accident victims to be the charm, he's starting to see himself through Buffy's eyes. And yeah, I think he does start to like what she represents, and the alternate story you can tell of him if he's not doing evil. But if Buffy's not reading that story, can he still see the point?

[rahirah]

That's always been a huge, huge point for me. And it very often gets completely overlooked...

[brutti_ma_buoni]

*cough*

In fact, the idea behind this is pretty much (c) rahirah, if I'm honest - how soulless Spike comes to recognise humanity through understanding Buffy and aspiring to her.

[quinara]

Ooh, I really like this!! (And this sort of interpretation of the prompt is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to see!)

Oh, you make me starry eyed to have Spike think of Buffy as a parallel text... *iz a weirdo*

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Gooood! Any particular edition, or shouldn't I ask...?

[quinara]

Oh, I don't know - the Rosetta Stone itself is probably the coolest example out there. ;)