[identity profile] ice-tealc.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] remixredux09
Title: Abandon Hope (the Mary Quite Contrary remix)
Author: [livejournal.com profile] snickfic
Summary: She'd always wanted to grow a garden, full of delicate wickedness and the fragrance of blood.
Rating: PG | 10 drabbles (1000 words)
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Spoilers and/or Warnings: Spoilers to the end of S2, with allusions through the end of the series
Original Story: All Ye Who Enter, by [livejournal.com profile] aadler

~~~~~

Hellmouth. A silly name. She’d been near it hours now and it never spoke. It wasn’t a mouth, but a field made fertile with blood and flesh.

What should she grow in it?

She knelt. A single daisy pushed upwards from soil crawling out between the cracks of pavement.

Yes, she decided. Daisies. She would plant daisies and when they bloomed she’d squeeze their heads off one by one, as she’d pop the heads of children when Spike made her well again. It wouldn’t matter that her seeds so often died, not in earth so rich and red as this.

***


She’d forgotten how like wine her Angel was, how many grapes had been crushed to make him. He wouldn’t let her taste, now.

But he was new wine in an old wineskin, and that mustn’t be done. The bad book said.

Why not? She knew, but the caterpillar wouldn’t tell and she’d forgotten now.

He told her to leave. Silly Daddy. He should have known this was just the beginning.

And all the while watched the poor little Slayer. Angel was wine and the Slayer a scythe, and what did they suppose happened when a blade and a wineskin danced?

***


Some things the pixies wouldn’t tell her of -- not proper for nice girls, they said.

The Slayer must have been very naughty, for they rarely spoke of her. They told of the little lost boy with the lovely white bulbs in his head -- such pretty black flowers they’d bloom! -- and how he’d snare the Slayer. But they didn’t tell her how the Slayer would vault to the catwalk, wrapping her in nasty arms and pressing dead wood to her heart. It was Spike that saved her, not the pixies.

She wondered sometimes if they were so wise as they thought.

***


She told Spike of the Slayer’s sister, little sky-eyed emerald girl. He didn’t understand at first; he thought to steal the girl away, bait to a trap. No taste for green blood, he said. But she told him how the zephyrs of dimensions flowed in those veins, and then he promised to bring the girl for her, a dainty draught for Princess. Make you strong again, he said.

He came back to her at dawn, weary, with dark purpling bruises and no green girl. “Slayer doesn’t have a sister,” he said.

No good telling him that sometimes the pixies lied.

***


“Time’s all the same to you,” Spike said, soft, like rose petals, like eyelids, as though words could comfort when the heavens fell silent.

“‘Now’ is just a glass you see through. The world mostly doesn’t change to someone seeing it all at once. You’re not even in the world, not really -- there’s not a thing in it that can change you.”

He laughed, low. “You’re the real immortal. The rest of us -- Angel, me, Darla when she was still about -- we’re only pretending at eternity.”

She let him feather kisses along her collarbone and hoped the stars sang soon.

***


Mostly she knew things from the pixies or the stars or the crawling things, but sometimes, like now, she dreamed. It was her party, she saw, the table all arranged and the presents heaped in stacks. Vines wound verdant round the chairs. The Slayer walked in, white, radiant, and when the blade was pressed to Angel’s throat how sweetly the Slayer screamed.

Awake, she cried, for there were blossoms draping the vines where there should be none. But dear Spike saw them taken away, and once they were gone the Slayer came, just as she’d dreamed: an extra special present.

***


When the wineskin tore, she tore, too, ripping open from crown to soles, although there was no blood. It was all on the inside. The pixies told her it was Angel being torn, and she remembered about the wine flowing free but not what it meant, only that it was wonderfully bad. She must wait to find out.

After the pixies had sewn her up again -- but not the wineskin, that took stronger thread than theirs -- she waited, teasing the stars, until Angel came. Then she remembered: new wine bursts old wineskins. Now, finally, she might taste the wine again.

***


Angel meant to play with the Slayer’s mother, pleasant games of bruises and then blood. Wasps buzzed to her: the empty-veined delivery boy’s strange camouflage, lamb’s wool for the wolf. An arm bent wrong and a forced invitation. Angel taunting, teasing. Sour fear turned to struggle, little trapped rabbit. Lamp broken, oil spilt, spark lit.

Angel and the woman, both ash.

A pretty fire, oh yes. How the Slayer would rage and weep.

But... Angel.

Ice skaters, she suggested, shiny and sweet. Can’t we eat them? Leave the woman for another night.

Laughing, he agreed, never knowing how he’d burned.

***


She told Angel how the Slayer had fallen ill. She knew just what room, how many flights of stairs. Yet he’d come back snarling of white knights, and he’d done nothing.

Delicious tendrils of power wound round his voice when he talked of hurting the Slayer, but she began to believe he wouldn’t. Perhaps -- still bewitched by the foul, bright Slayer? -- he couldn’t.

But he could end the world. A jaybird had said it: the Slayer was in the world. End it and end the Slayer, too.

The stars whispered of a block of stone, and she began to listen.

***


They’d all wilted, her daisies and her pale, glistening jasmine. Every blossom she’d planted drooped on its stem.

A whiff of char hung about Spike even after he bathed and bathed again, and she tried not to think of how he’d got it scorching himself on the Slayer’s fire, helping to send Angel away. Now Angel was gone, and even the stars couldn’t say where. The world still wasn’t ended, and somewhere the Slayer laughed.

She clung to Spike and pretended pleasure at the scarlet bouquets they gathered, and tried to forget how everything she put in the ground withered and died.


END

Date: 2009-07-19 11:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sevendeadlyfun.livejournal.com
What an interesting take on Drusilla! She's such a complex character, but so much fun to write. The end is especially intriguing, with its hints at how Spike and Dru came apart in the end. Well done!

Date: 2009-07-27 03:09 am (UTC)
snickfic: (Dru)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
I'm so glad you enjoyed! She is really interesting to write, especially playing with exactly much she sees and understands of the future - hence the foreshadowing at the end.

Thanks for commenting. :)

Date: 2009-07-20 01:33 am (UTC)
beatrice_otter: Giles would like to test that theory. (Test That Theory)
From: [personal profile] beatrice_otter
It can't be easy to write Drusilla, mad and yet perceptive. You did a wonderful job.

Date: 2009-07-27 03:11 am (UTC)
snickfic: (Dru)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
Thank you! She is definitely a challenge to write, finding that balance between madness and enough linearity to get a narrative thread out of. I'm glad you enjoyed. :)

Date: 2009-07-20 01:41 am (UTC)
ext_2351: (Default)
From: [identity profile] lunabee34.livejournal.com
*impressed*

Such a hard character to write. This is lovely.

Date: 2009-07-27 03:12 am (UTC)
snickfic: (Dru)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
Writing her turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected! It's tough finding that balance between madness and enough linearity to tell a story with. I'm glad you enjoyed the end product. :)

Date: 2009-07-21 06:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] erinya.livejournal.com
I really love this. Excellent Drusilla-voice--half-little girl and half monster.

Date: 2009-07-27 03:15 am (UTC)
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
Thank you! She is such a contrast of extremes, isn't she? Glad you enjoyed. :)

Date: 2009-07-23 04:15 am (UTC)
aadler: (Foamy)
From: [personal profile] aadler
This is interesting, insightful, imaginative. It does what I’ve done in other remixes: takes a snippet of inspiration and runs with it. Probably this is the best remix that’s ever been done from my work.

The segment dealing with Dawn? Entertaining and thought-provoking.

The one that covered the events of the original story (“All Ye Who Enter”)? Succinct, captured all the essence, and fitted it into the rest of what was done here.

Drusilla is always a challenge. When I do her myself, I tend to focus on the childishness of her, the mix of madness and impulse, almost too innocent to feel truly evil. You took a subtly different tack: the conflict between her psychic insight (seeing things nobody else can) and the insanity that makes her unable to properly use — or even fully understand — the things she sees.

Given the quality, and the approach of using linked drabbles, could I be looking at [livejournal.com profile] nwhepcat’s work here?

In any event, this was impressive. Thank you.

Date: 2009-07-27 03:42 am (UTC)
snickfic: (Dru)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I was concerned that I'd strayed a little too far from your fic, but I really liked the idea in the epilogue of Dru averting disaster and no one even knowing. From there, a whole series of drabbles dealing with that aspect of her seemed a natural choice.

Writing Dru was definitely as challenge. As you say, what I was most interested in in the fic was contrasting her visions with what she's able to do with them - a sort of deconstruction of Dru as plot device, which is maybe her biggest purpose in S2. Whenever Spike and/or Angel needs to know something, just give Dru a vision! And yet, clearly she either couldn't see everything or couldn't follow through on all she saw, or the season would have ended better for her.

Clearly, I'm not [livejournal.com profile] nwhepcat, but I'm tickled pink to be mistaken for her. She's one of my favorite gennish, plotty writers.

I really am very glad you liked the fic. :)

Date: 2009-07-27 04:17 am (UTC)
aadler: (Wood)
From: [personal profile] aadler
Well, how about that.

As it happens, I have some small familiarity with your work — I’ve been following Seraph, though without any particular urgency, since I know I’ll go back and re-read the whole thing from the beginning once it’s finished — but not enough to have gotten a solid sense of your style. What you said, though, echoes what I commented in my own ‘coming-out’ post yesterday: there are worse things than to be mistaken for [livejournal.com profile] nwhepcat.

So, addressed directly to someone I now know by ‘name’: thank you for this.

Date: 2009-07-27 06:51 am (UTC)
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
I'm tickled to hear you're reading Seraph. And I already knew who you were, too - I'd run across your fic in a couple of places, and even recced something of yours a while back. "All Ye Who Enter" was a new read for me, though.

You're very welcome. By the by, I just posted commentary on "Abandon Hope," in case you're interested.

Date: 2009-07-23 11:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wordsofastory.livejournal.com
Oh, this is lovely. What a wonderful Drusilla voice. Fantastic story.

Date: 2009-07-27 03:19 am (UTC)
snickfic: (Dru)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
Thank you! I was trying really hard to get her voice right - dreamy, but not too dreamy, and with plenty of concrete images to ground the visions. I'm glad you enjoyed. :)

Date: 2009-07-26 05:14 pm (UTC)
next_to_normal: (Spike/Dru)
From: [personal profile] next_to_normal
I knew it! Well, not really, but score one for deductive reasoning! lol

You sneaky snick, you, trying to fool me.

Drusilla is very, very difficult to write, I think. I especially like the idea that she knows about Dawn even before Dawn exists. And the wineskin metaphor takes me back to my bible study days. :)
Edited Date: 2009-07-26 05:14 pm (UTC)

Date: 2009-07-27 03:29 am (UTC)
snickfic: (Dru)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
You sneaky snick, you, trying to fool me.

Hey, if I'd really been sneaky, I'd have thought to post a comment along with all the other commenting I did at the beginning of the week. Next year... *vows*

It turns out, Dru is incredibly difficult to write. For me, at least. And yes, the wineskin metaphor seemed terribly appropriate to Dru, even though I've never been able to decide if the wineskin=soul, wine=evil correlation actually works.
Edited Date: 2009-07-27 03:32 am (UTC)

Date: 2009-07-27 03:40 pm (UTC)
next_to_normal: (pic#)
From: [personal profile] next_to_normal
Well, it was your speculation post that really tipped me off. The commenting was just confirmation. :)

Date: 2009-07-27 03:46 pm (UTC)
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
To be fair, if I hadn't written it myself, it still would have been one of my guesses for Deird - drabbles series and chararacter-study-via-objects are both things I associate with her. I didn't quite just randomly throw it in. *g*

Date: 2009-07-27 03:52 pm (UTC)
next_to_normal: (Default)
From: [personal profile] next_to_normal
Hee! No, I thought you chose well in which author to falsly attribute it to. :) What gave it away was that you complimented all the other fics - and I kinda pegged you as too modest to compliment yourself, even if it's just to throw people off - so I honed in on the two where you just gave a neutral description. Then it occurred to me to check the comments, and you'd left one on the Oz fic and not here, so... lol.

I doubt most people will comment on every single remix fic, so I don't think that alone would give you away. (Besides, who's going to go around and check every single fic to see who didn't comment on what?)

Date: 2009-07-27 03:58 pm (UTC)
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
What gave it away was that you complimented all the other fics - and I kinda pegged you as too modest to compliment yourself, even if it's just to throw people off

Bwah! You know, I didn't even notice. Just in case the authors of the other fics wandered through, it was important to say something nice for them, whereas I wasn't worried about the author of that one. :)

Actually, I watched for who commented on a couple of remixes, just because I had an idea who wrote them and I wanted confirmation/contradiction. But possibly I have too much time on my hands (soon to change!).

Date: 2009-07-28 12:45 am (UTC)
ext_30166: Sierra looking holy shit amazing (Default)
From: [identity profile] lavastar.livejournal.com
Ohhhh, how very wonderful. Your Dru-voice is crazy excellent - the imagery is all sing-y and pretty. Very interesting take on the early seasons.

Date: 2009-07-28 01:07 am (UTC)
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)
From: [personal profile] snickfic
Oh, thank you so much! Writing Dru-voice was definitely a challenge. It needed to sound like Dru, and yet actually convey a story - 'cuz linearity, not really her strong point.

I'm glad you enjoyed. :)

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