Fic: And Fear Finds Nothing Left to Mend, Part III (Conclusion)
And Fear Finds Nothing Left to Mend
By Barb C.
Rating: T
Setting: Post-Gift AU (Barbverse)
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Synopsis: Knowing that the Slayer has hard decisions to make is one thing. Being the subject of one is quite another.
Author’s notes: This story takes place in the same universe as "Raising In the Sun," "Necessary Evils," and "A ( Read more... )
By Barb C.
Rating: T
Setting: Post-Gift AU (Barbverse)
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Synopsis: Knowing that the Slayer has hard decisions to make is one thing. Being the subject of one is quite another.
Author’s notes: This story takes place in the same universe as "Raising In the Sun," "Necessary Evils," and "A ( Read more... )
hee!
"I'd spent the last nigh-on-twenty years gladly forging the chains that bound me to these people and this town, and sloughing them all in a night? Impossible. I stopped off at home, first."
o_o
"I stood there on the front porch, staring at the door, for a good long time. No one'd revoked my invitation, but somehow the place didn't feel as if I'd a right to it any longer."
owie
"when Bill found me."
oh no O_O
"If I thought I could make things better."
*gulp* It's okay, it's okay, he'll be back
Bill is making good points, good job Bill
"I'd need to arrange for someone to take charge of Bloody Vengeance Inc., till I could decide whether to sign it over to Buffy, or sell it off and give her the dosh - bugger me if I was going to pull a Hank Summers on her. Fuck. Would Buffy consider her truce with Bloody Vengeance's employees null and void? Would she want a formal divorce? Would she let me visit the sprogs? Would the sprogs even want me to visit?"
D:
"The slashes from the bottle I'd crushed were already starting to heal, and for a mad second I wished they wouldn't, wished I could wear the pain on the outside for as long as it'd last on the inside."
Yeah. Makes sense.
I don't know how you're going to attempt this, Willow, but I'm rooting for you.
"What kind of fuckwitted question is that?"
*giggles* Fair! But I bet she wanted to be sure he could not possibly miss her point.
"I'm a demon, and I can't change - Ow!"
Haha, good timing, Willow
""No, you’re not good. You're approaching goodness on an asymptotic curve, and you'll never quite get there."
Much like everyone else who tries hard, then.
"What does matter is, do you love her enough to stand by her when she doesn't choose you?"
Ooooh. I like the way Willow's framing this.
"if you'd rather stay here in L.A. and sob into your beer while she's going through the worst time of her entire life, instead of getting your skinny vampire ass back to Sunnydale THIS MINUTE and being the person she needs to get through this"
Yeah! You tell him, Will!
"So I went home. What the fuck else could I do, after that?"
...Okay? That sounds... good? (but I see there's more story left)
"like it was the sodding Green Mile"
heh :)
"Recalling he hated my guts now, no doubt."
Waah, all my fictional friends are unhappy and upsetting one another
"MOM! HE'S HERE!"
Okay, so far so good...
"I - you were right."
*blinks* That sounds good, I think? Except that Willow was right about how guilty Buffy feels.
Every sentence is riveting! :)
Who's Sparrow? And dear lord, Buffy really keeps a tally in her head - of course she does, but still, yikes. *googles* oh, Sparrow's a Wolfram & Hart doctor, okay. OH! Must have been the guy in the fic with all the alterna-Buffys.
Finch, though? I guess she's blaming herself because Faith accidentally killed a guy and it *could* have been her. Being Buffy is a hard time.
"I did the selfish thing back then, and I did the right thing this time, but it's now I'm being punished for it. It's not fair."
I KNOW, Buffy
""I can't ask you to take me back," I whispered. This was a thorn that would be years in the drawing, as I'd so foolishly driven it deeper. "But whatever you need of me, whatever you want of me, I'm here to do.""
*sighs* he's so romantic <3
"I need you to be here."
That's all right, then
"Then here I'll stay."
Yay! *throws confetti*
"For a second I thought she'd taken shagging off the table altogether."
Yeah, same :D
"Not yet, anyway."
<333
Okay, I totally got what I signed up for, and it was excellently written, too. Thank you! <3 Sorry about the wall of text, can't be arsed to shorten.
Reply
Heh, yeah. Back when I wrote "Lesser of Two Evils," one disgruntled reader complained that Willow and Buffy weren't being properly punished for letting Spike doing a Very Bad Thing. I told them that as a writer, I didn't believe in punishing characters. What I did believe in was actions having consequences. It just sometimes takes quite awhile for them to play out, and they're not necessarily going to be a one-to-one, eye-for-an-eye mapping, because life's just not like that.
""No, you’re not good. You're approaching goodness on an asymptotic curve, and you'll never quite get there."
Much like everyone else who tries hard, then.
Yes, exactly! :D
(And never, ever worry about leaving too-long comments on fic. There is no such thing!!!)
Reply
Leave a comment