seraphcelene | LATE!!! Quoting my Fic and Loving it! WHEE!!

So, I totally missed National Quote Your Own Fic Day. But who cares!! I'm jumping in anyways!! (dried frog pills) OMG! This was so awesome!! I haven't really re-read some of these things in like forever. Especially the older ones which I pretty much tend to cringe at. And everything sounds SO much better in sound bites! LOVE!!

Burn the Flag
Mal never looks at you, staring at the floor, at the mess, at the BODY and suddenly it has a face and you shudder in Inara's gentle grasp. Flinch at Kaylee's muffled sobs escaping through the Sheppard's shoulder. But he is about as real as Wash, you realize.

Ghost Ship
River laughed and said, “Mei shen me, I'll never leave you” to the tears in Simon's eyes.

Mal cursed beneath his breath, sorrier than he could say, she knew, but a vengeful fury had risen into his heart at the sight of Zoe dead in a pool of blood at River's feet. When he murdered her, he slit her throat from ear to ear.

The shell of her fell without regret and River walked out into Serenity.

Scratched
Her death was his burden, and the cold and the ice and the memory of the calluses on her thumbs.

When in Dreams I See Her
Between dreams of Thanksgiving and Cordelia, the blood of his son on his lips and the snap of precious bones beneath his hands, Angel dreams of curious girls with sea-kelp tangled in their hair and large, seal-black eyes, shiny and round.

Monster
He can feel it behind his eyes. The creeping, crawling, burrowing essence of what he was and always will be. It squats in the back of his brain, in the spot where his skull curves into his spine.

Impressions
They fuck in darkened corners, on tables, against the baptismal font in the Sacred Heart. They fuck like falling in love, like snow, like reggae music and speed metal.

Have You Seen the Wind?
Destroying one wall with nothing more than the laziest gesture of indifference, Willow welcomed the blowing air and swirling snow. Then she built an altar, there, in the space where the sky fell into the room. She covered it in runes, some made with the blood of her enemies.

A Wave of Moonlight Gloss
There is something prowling through the trees. Something with flaming eyes and a honeysuckle scent. “You weren’t there,” Xander calls, ignoring the fire lit eyes burning in the woods and stares at Faith instead. Faith as he’s never seen her. A girl with soft hair and ivory skin dressed in white satin and lace. Her feet are bare as she stands in the rain. Only it isn’t raining anymore and the forest is a ceiling that she lies back on. Xander is in bed, breathing heavily and covered in sweat and glass shards.

“Glass. Not good.” Gingerly Xander moves, shaking fragments of glittering light from the folds of his boxer shorts.

“Careful of the goods, Xander,” Faith lies on the ceiling above him, inching the satin up over her bent knees and naked thighs. Her half-lidded eyes sweep the length of his body.

A Pivot for the Sun
Riley stretches away from the pain, balanced on head and heels before falling. He drowns for a moment in a metallic wave of pleasure, flashes of color behind his eyes. It narrows, shrinking concentric circles, into Buffy's small, warm hand moving smoothly over the head of his cock. Short tugs and long strokes that make his hips rise and twitch.

Feels so much better than slender, cool mom fingers stroking his brow. But desperate. Not stoic and strong at all.

To the Waters and the Wild
Dawn, heavy and languid, did not resist - limbs unwilling, mind unsure. The image above her, wide, dark eyes in a face paler than new cream - vermilion lips and coal black hair. Fingers longer and more delicate than they should be, stroking across her collarbone, plucking away her clothes. And Dawn, finally dressed in nothing more than the naked woman bowed above her - hazy colors, ethereal skin, and the press of something heavy on her chest. Something weighted in the elfin face above hers.

Let Me Start to Fade Away
The water is cold against her ankles, the tide rushes and tugs and pulls. Her throat fills up with the flavor of salt and the sharpness of the sea.

On the shore she has left a warning, two words written in the sand: Buffy, and beside it, Angel.

Fingertips
And she loves them. In the beat of her heart and the kiss of her mouth. Bruises beneath the taste of her blood. On her teeth. On her tongue. Sweet, sticky, woman-taste; and more. Dark. Foul. The corrupted flavor of something like spice in the back of her throat.

Faith hears it. The leathery wings beating in her pulse, match the cinnamon impulse in her veins. Maybe, they didn't consider that this would happen when they made her, them.

All of them. The one in all of them. A girl in every generation. One girl in the world.

Concerning Flight
The memory of Buffy throwing herself off a tower because of you is a wound that never quite heals. It is an image forever impressed on your brain. You dream her jumping, brilliant sunrise ripping reality at the seams, her arms thrown wide to embrace the coming dawn. In the small hours of the night you are sure it was a mistake.

She loved you. You are sure. Sometimes, you are very sure that she must have fallen.

A Butterfly Dream of Sand and Sky
"There's a storm coming and if we're going to survive we'll have to work together. I mean, it's not like I'm immortal anymore." She holds the jar, small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, the other hand rests on the lid. Her fingernails are the same sweet baby-girl shade as her dress. "I live here. On Earth. I like Earth. Despite all of the dying and the vampires and the Hellmouth, I like Sunnydale. I have no intention of moving."

"Anya, she isn't going to destroy the world." Xander carefully pushes wet sand into a crumbling pile. The handle of a plastic yellow shovel lies beside his knee.

"He's building sandcastles," Anya's face twists into a grimace.

"It's a moat," he interrupts. "It protects the people in the castle."

"But the tide is coming in," Tara watches the ocean and the approaching night.

Anya shakes her head. "This is the third one. He won't listen. He never listens. Not really."

eyes like the summer, all beauty and truth
River pictures Eden March’s Adam’s apple and thinks that maybe Simon would like to put it in a jar and sit it on the edge of his desk. Tell his students when they come to visit his office how his sister sent it to him after exacting revenge on the murderer of their dear friend, Inara Serra. How she (his sister River, once a fugitive like himself) danced with Reavers like Kali with four arms and three eyes; she saved everyone but the pilot.

Love Song
She stands in Serenity’s wide-open belly, empty of cargo, the bay doors yawning wide and hungry behind her. She cups one hand in the empty air, imagines the round, smooth, apple-flush of Kaylee’s cheek against her palm and pretends to tell her all of the things that Simon never will. Not the pretty, insincere things all boys tell the girls they like, but the true and important things that only come with true love.

but then shall you know
He woke among medics with their sad eyes that never quite met his and their smiles that never travelled any further than the curve of their lips. In his dreams and the theatre of his mind they still pat his hands and say, “I am sorry for your loss.”

Vex Not the Roses
Olivia leans up and kisses him. Dips her tongue into Rupert’s mouth and tastes the bitter sweetness of the wine he’s been drinking. Presses her mouth hard against his as if she can eat his disappointment away. For a moment Rupert is tense, no longer the pliable, passionate lover who greeted her at the front door. Olivia pulls back gently, coaxing him with her mouth to follow. A breath. Rupert gives her that. A moment of hovering rejection before he leans in and closes the space between them.

The Downfall of Angels
Willow can only catch her as she falls. She staggers forward, arms outstretched. Forever she will recall the heavy slide of her lover falling. She will remember pulling the limp body into the cradle of her lap, the weight a familiar and lovely thing settled against her knees. A sensation, once so precious, now stained bitter.

Istanbul
You said it would be Istanbul. But you had forgotten. Or maybe hadn’t forgotten so much as you had filed away the memory, because here you are and you remember.

That Which Survives
When she sleeps so soundly and he knows that she is healthy and whole he doesn’t mind that she is not petite and blonde.

When her sharp, angry eyes aren’t burning into the muscles of his back he can forget that he doesn’t love her as much as he should.

In the dark hours as he stares fixedly at the ceiling Xander can admit that it’s okay. Because in the end all that matters is that the dark-haired, long-legged girl beside him is made up of petite and blonde. He remembers that. He will always remember that. In his dreams a voice on the wind reminds him.

They made her out of me.

Carvings On Stone
Over time, her heart has hardened. Over time, she has dropped things, once-essential things. Things that made her soft and pretty and human. What remains is hard, striking and efficient.

She is not a demon.

Buffy remembers things that she swore never to forget. She imagines the memories are written on her heart like carvings on stone, clean and precise. They are important and if she could get past the flavor of liquid salt and copper she would whisper them to Willow like secrets long kept.

But she always gets these things wrong.

Instead her memories are dreamy, hazy fragments that taste of salt and water and sugar, like joy, on her tongue.

Insomnium
Only that isn’t strictly true. There are things dressed in gray that nibble at the back of her memory. Fish picking at the fingers that feed them. They’re monochrome now, buried half in shadow. Willow can see bits, flickering like the light from a projector. She knows that Tara can see them too, memories flitting in the dark, sparking against each other in passing.

They won’t stay that way, you know. That way. Not for long. You can’t just bury things.

Hemorrhage
Dawn is aware, finally, that she is an odd sight. A slightly trashy, trendy ‘grrrl’ in black hip huggers and a scrap of cloth that barely covers her breasts. Except there’s blood. And glitter.

She imagines they can smell the sex on her and that he was blonde, tall and lanky. All lips and hands and somehow it was over before it even really began. Stickiness between her thighs and the flavor of rum mixed with man leaves a film on her tongue that isn’t unpleasant. She licks her lips and still the flavor is there, a reminder of her ability to be alluring.

Dawn has dangerous sex in alleys.

Pink Linen and White Paper
Tara frowns, focusing painfully on the bloody swell of Willow's lip. "You taste," she pauses and the thought hangs brilliantly, as though it will lead her home. "You taste like tragedy,” she says finally. The glimmer of thought, the promise of a path, spins away.

"Is Xander coming," Tara asks, smiling brightly. "I'm making pancakes."

and if you should have a future
This is what he has left her: a willingly objectified body and the notoriety of sex on film. Her face achingly lost on DVD boxes, scrolling across computer screens ($49.99) -- Google’s number one downloaded image -- and her name in neon lights.

This Long Eve
The color of blood, like the purest of rubies, is deep and fathomless. Bloodstone. Dark, vibrant and alive with the essential patterns of glint and gleam. In the calculated angle of directed light rubies wink, blood does not. Wesley is very aware of that particular truth. He is also intimately familiar with the horror of life spilt into dew-shine on grass. He’s felt it slipping between his fingers and beyond the instinctive, protective cup of his hands. Impending death is a hot, pulsing thing that paints his eyeballs with forgotten memories and sings ‘never again’ into his ears, a requiem in the angelic voice of a boy-child.

The flash of a blade in the corner of his eyes is Fortune’s way of reminding Wesley that there are other things in the universe that wink. But the flash came too suddenly and in his instinctive flinch from the arc of light on silver he failed to protect her. Now here she lies, sprawled across his lap and cuddled close into his chest. His most precious of failures.

A Tale of Heaven
First names are forbidden, but she doesn’t seem to care. She defies the law, caps her corner of Paradise with a marmalade sky, and calls her mother Joyce. She eats grapes all day and ice cream, weaves daisies into chains and wears them like crowns. If you should visit her, they tell the indistinct idea of a woman who comes seeking, she will feed you marshmallow pie and chocolate, fold parchment into hats and cut champions from the clouds.

and the sky full of stars
He slides his hands beneath the blankets and with a single finger, touches her. His will is to infect her dreams. The art of invasion, he has learned, is in its subtly.

If You Would Be True, Love
She is going to die, and her death will be unfortunate and sad and pathetically clichéd, but it won't be something that she does alone. Max is there. He is always there. And now he is there watching her die. He watches from the window or from the rickety chair beside the bed. He holds her hand and strokes the veins beneath her parchment skin, tracing gentle patterns as if he can find the answer or rub away what is wrong between them.