![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Under Darkening Skies
Summary: The Winchesters take a job involving a demon-influenced woman and a powerful witch. Explicit heterosexual content (not, amazingly enough, involving Faith). 35,000 words.
Notes: Written for Sweet Charity for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
giandujakiss. This goes AU early in SPN Season 3 and right after the first “episode” of Buffy Season 8. Thanks to geekturnedvamp for beta and giandujakiss for accepting a shift in her scenario!
Read the whole story here.
Summary: The Winchesters take a job involving a demon-influenced woman and a powerful witch. Explicit heterosexual content (not, amazingly enough, involving Faith). 35,000 words.
Notes: Written for Sweet Charity for
giandujakiss. This goes AU early in SPN Season 3 and right after the first “episode” of Buffy Season 8. Thanks to geekturnedvamp for beta and giandujakiss for accepting a shift in her scenario!Read the whole story here.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Do not forget - in addition to the SPN and Buffy communities or wherever else, you must post it to the Sweet Charity "goodies" section :-).
Thank you so much! Hee!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I don't know what the main Buffy LJ community is, but I definitely think it should be posted there.
And, of course, Sweet Charity site has a place to upload "goodies" so others can admire them. You click on "flaunt it."
From:
no subject
*Flaily hands* Seriously, I don't even have words for how much I loved that story.
...
At a certain point I started a cut and paste file for lines that were utterly and completely perfect, but it is more than three pages long, so I guess I will spare you quoting back EVERYTHING I loved, but damn! Your Willow is just so wonderfully adorkable, and I loved Buffy being tempted by the evil shoes from hell and yet her fashion sense is what got them out of there, and the only thing funnier than Dean's total joy in having a bunch of girl slayers throw him around while they sparred was that HE TOOK OFF HIS SHIRT and threatened to rip Sam's off, too, when they wanted to see that (*insert more flailing hands*).
And LILAH! That made me jump up and down, because I've been thinking for a while someone out to involve Lilah in researching Dean's contract, given she's a lawyer in hell and all. And cameo by Ethan! And fairy tales! And the multilayered way that fairytale and the hunstman and the heart/hart worked in this!
But I do absolutely have to quote back my three favorite parts. After watching Dean's moral struggle with their mission, and how trapped he felt, this part nearly broke me:
I know that what I did is what got us here. I know we've spent the past few years going from death to death, and the price tag just gets higher, and I got us used to paying." He looked up into Sam's eyes—he would have put his hands on Sam's shoulders, if not for the fear that Sam would get skittish and knock him unconscious to finish the job.
"But I'm asking you—I'm begging you—be better than me. Be stronger."
Dean looked at Sam—really looked, allowing himself to notice all the strain and grief written on his face and in the hunch of his shoulders. A bad year for Winchesters, he thought. Maybe a bad generation. Sam was staring right back, searching for something in Dean's face, but since Dean didn't know what, he didn't try to give it. He just remembered that Sam was his brother, and was all that mattered in the world, and maybe the only way for the world to be worth saving was to be willing to let it end.
"... Okay," Sam breathed.
And this part made me cheer:
All this bullshit about the boy king," he said—boy king? he wondered—"but nobody ever asked who fostered him. Who'd raise someone like that with enough strength to get the job done."
Her eyes were wide and scared now, feigning humanity. "What—are—you?" she wheezed.
"I'm a Winchester, bitch," he said, and clenched his hand into a fist.
And this conversation is why this is hands down the best crossover ever:
"And it's like you've been carrying this weight for years and years. It's always hurt, but you couldn't put it down. Then you did, you got a chance to rest, but it turns out that you're not done after all. And everyone around you expects you to pick that weight right back up, and you expect you to pick it up, but you don't want to. Maybe you never wanted to, but that didn't matter before. Now—you can't make yourself pick it up again. But you can't stop thinking you should."
In conclusion, I completely loved this story.
From:
no subject
I never would have thought of this crossover, but
From:
no subject
Your grasp of Sam and Dean's voice and of Buffy and Willow's was perfect.
I loved that I didn't know if Dean and Sam would go through with their 'assignment' or not. With some stories you can say, "oh, of course they're not" but with this one I was guessing to the end. And then them choosing to go out together, one hand clenched around the other's.
There is so much to love about this fic that I can't name every single thing.
This is not just writing a story but weaving one so it flows seamlessly into an amazing piece of art.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Or I will rec it, if you'd prefer! :D
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The crossover relationships were incredible. I loved the way the boys each saw the other in the girl they bonded with, though I was never sure whether they saw it themselves, or if it was just an irresistable unconscious draw. I admire the way that that works whatever the precise nature of that undersea beast, their feeling for each other, might be; you invoke everything about it that really matters. I need to reread this a few dozen times. Need to read it aloud to DearSpouseFanGuy, too. There are a whole flock of incredible scenes, extravagant gifts to the reader.
I also agreed about the scenes singled out by
From:
no subject
I didn't expect the parallels to work as well as I thought they ultimately did, and I'm glad you found them plausible. I do think that in another world Spike could have been the right guy -- Jennifer Crusie has an essay (http://www.jennycrusie.com/essays/datingdeath.php) I like a lot on the subject -- but it's much better for Dean to have Buffy to help him than Sam, who's just too close.
I do see Sam as the leader, but he can't do it right without Dean.
From:
no subject
Thank you for the link to that essay! I'm an appreciative reader of Crusie's books and her blog, and knew she was a fan, but somehow missed the anthology it's from. It's delicious (and makes me recalculate how much she knows about the dark.) I loved the conditional love thing, especially after months of "Delilah" on the radio. "Now let's talk about you. It's what you do to me."
And yeah, the excruciating thing for me about Buffy and Spike in S6 was how close they came to a real relationship. It's not a universal truth that lovers can't be friends; it's the particulars of their histories and their natures that defeat them. In S7 they don't just reconcile; he gets the chance again to give her just what she needs, and this time he manages it.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Bobby. HA! That is so how he would react to news that the government is coming for his ass. HIGHlarious.
The end gave me chills. Lilah is so excellently evil. Poor Dean never gets a break.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Totally unrelated: I just saw The Cutting Edge for the first time last week. I LOVED it! I think it has to be one of Rosenbaum's favorite movies.
From:
no subject
The voices are clear, the characters both well and clearly defined and oh, hell yes for half-naked Winchester sparring practice! I think Buffy's words to Dean at the end are what he knows in his heart but not what he wants to hear, much like Buffy herself. Kudos for great cameos; from Henricksen to Lilah and assorted Slayerettes.
The Huntsman and his heart - nice blending of legend and old tales.
All and all a terrific effort and I thank you for it!
From:
no subject
From:
very nice
I have never watched either show. I did like the story even if I wasn't familiar with the characters and probably missed some of the nuances that the show watchers would catch.
The words flowed and it was an easy read for that reason.
Powerful ending.
spike
From:
Re: very nice
From:
Good Story
From:
Re: Good Story
From:
no subject
I'm not entirely sure I believe the Dean/Willow 'ship, but you made it work well anyhow.
Thank you for sharing.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I love that you did justice to BtVS and SPN and the characters of all involved. Buffy killed more pizza things than Sam and kicked a whole lot of ass generally because duh, that's what she does. Willow wasted those attacking demons with only a swoon afterwards and did geek stuff and was that latter day BtVS combination of awesome power and awesome Willowness that she perfected (and you even remembered, unlike Willow, that she is most likely bi, having once had a perfectly fulfilling relationship with a man). Dean enjoyed getting beaten up by girls and took command of the group fighting situation and was willing to do anything, including nothing about his deal, to save Sam. Sam was thoughtful and intense and lock picking and law enforcement impersonating and surprisingly more ruthless than Dean in that way he sometimes is. And Sam and Dean would have taken down Buffy and Willow, despite the girls both being more powerful in and of themselves (okay, boy king, but that's so untapped), because they had planning and competence and won-trust (realistically won because they actually are good guys!) on their side, but then they had to be rescued when they were all set to tragically and grandly sacrifice themselves, so it all evened out in terms of who was cooler (and I feel a little petty in so explicitly admitting that I weighed this stuff up, but I did, and I have to learn to accept these failings in myself...).
And oh. I just loved the whole setup. Because there is very little Winchesters won't sacrifice for each other, and this chill just seized me the moment the government gave their little proposal, because I knew that Sam and Dean would go very far to save each other and I didn't know if they would go all the way. I cannot express how much I loved the resolution in words. I love that it was Sam who came closest to killing his victim, who would have made it a soul selling (because it totally is) Winchester hat trick. Because whoever said Dean was the dysfunctional one has never seen Mystery Spot. I love that it was Dean in the end who saw that this was a trade too many and that they had to stop damning themselves for each other one day.
This was his life: get something good, lose something else. Kill the demon, let a hundred others out. Break the deal, make another one.
And still he couldn't stop thinking. For his own self, Sam would rather be dead than have him make this trade. A couple of years back, that might not have mattered to him, when Sam was more of an ideal who'd left, who'd wanted a life outside of the Winchester family business. Now—well, even if they survived getting out of the Slayers' grasp, and even if the military had been telling the truth and let them go, and even if the next set of bad things didn't kill them—at some point, you had to say that it wasn't worth it anymore.
From:
no subject
(sorry about replying to myself, lj can't cope with the length of my enthusiasm)
"I know that what I did is what got us here. I know we've spent the past few years going from death to death, and the price tag just gets higher, and I got us used to paying."
He looked up into Sam's eyes—he would have put his hands on Sam's shoulders, if not for the fear that Sam would get skittish and knock him unconscious to finish the job.
"But I'm asking you—I'm begging you—be better than me. Be stronger."
Dean looked at Sam—really looked, allowing himself to notice all the strain and grief written on his face and in the hunch of his shoulders. A bad year for Winchesters, he thought. Maybe a bad generation. Sam was staring right back, searching for something in Dean's face, but since Dean didn't know what, he didn't try to give it. He just remembered that Sam was his brother, and was all that mattered in the world, and maybe the only way for the world to be worth saving was to be willing to let it end.
"... Okay," Sam breathed.
Those paragraphs, I just. Don't know what to say. In some ways it's what I want Sam and Dean to understand, what everyone wants them to realise. That it has to stop. That Dean shouldn't have sold his soul for Sam, because a brother in Hell is worse than a brother just dead, that Sam mustn't damn himself via a different path in his quest to break the deal and become a leader in Hell, because I don't even know if that's worse than being a prisoner. But oh it's so tragic. There is no way for it to end well that I can see! Every time they put off one thing they sink deeper in to do it. Get something good, lose something else, sometimes something more. And this time they actually had a chance to break even. To die free and clear. The situation is so dire that death without a guaranteed ticket to the Pit is actually a best case scenario!
Oh god. It's like death is their gift. Okay shut up now.I was actually willing to accept (okay, lets just say respond with floods of tears, but not death threats, rather than accept) Sam and Dean dying in the end, letting themselves die, because together and not being evil is the only way that Sam and Dean can go out, the only way they deserve to go out. But then you pulled this incredibly anti-climactic (in a good good way!), really really Buffy little happy ending out. And Sam and Dean are alive and bound to nothing and they have a whole load of new friends and I am smiling so my face aches.Ack. I skipped straight to the emotionally epic end without mentioning the equally epic deal breaking! So cool dude. So. Cool. There were evil lawyers (Lilah!) and contract loopholes and someone finally thinking to re use the S4 deus ex machina and cartoon Sam and Dean. Let me say that again because it can take it. Cartoon Sam and Dean. And Sam actually had to crawl inside Dean. And Sam and Dean were one person. And the doors in their mind unlocked. And they totally took the demon ("I'm a Winchester, bitch"). And I know I’m just repeating back what you wrote in incoherent prose bullet points rather than actually commenting but the incredible awesomeness and coolness of the whole thing is just there explicit and obvious in the text. How can I point it out without seeming redundant?
As much as anything though I just enjoyed seeing some of my favourite characters who'll never get to meet interacting with each other with recognisable distinct voices. I always hope for sequels of stories I love, but I especially feverently hope that you write something else that combines SPN and BtVS. You do both so well.
From:
no subject
A world of yes to that! Of course Dean isn't precisely functional, but let's just say it's not a one-man race.
So basically I just want to say yes! You got everything I was going for, which is immensely gratifying. I have a deep storytelling kink for self-sacrifice, and I wanted it to be a step up -- a moral evolution -- for the boys to decide that the sacrifice should be their lives for their souls.
I feel less of a need to write BtVS fic than SPN, because I'm the kind of person who writes to fix things and I don't have much impulse for that with BtVS, but it was wonderful to revisit them and see how they interacted with Sam & Dean.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
"I'm a Winchester, bitch."
PLEASE ACCEPT THIS 'BEST LINE EVER' AWARD
And the bit near the end was amazing, the parallels you drawn between Dean's situation and Buffy's. In conclusion: YOU. THIS FIC. AWESOME.
From:
no subject
I'm glad you enjoyed it! The parallels worked better than I initially feared!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
/geek
From:
no subject
From:
no subject