Templum Bellonae

Set while Spike is living with Xander in Season 7. It’s the first fic written kinda-sorta for me, which is pretty exciting. Especially since it’s really, really good–Xander and Spike sound just like they do in my head.

Watching Spike wake up is a moment of truth; this is when Xander finds out if his day is going through Door Number 1 - batshit, furniture-chewing crazy, Door Number 2 - “My undead roommate cries and cuts himself”, or Door Number 3 - “the monster I always hated is in there somewhere.”

Stakes by One Person

Duo returns to his current school after a misson.

Loaded by One Person

Good Duo backstory is hard to come by. This is the best I’ve read so far, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s not at all how I pictured it, but the story makes so much sense and has such emotional resonance that by the time finished it, I was completely convinced. And completely hooked.

This is the story of Duo, Solo, and the L2 plague, which is used so often to create Duo-angst but rarely explored in any depth. I love Duo’s narrative voice in this fic, especially the way he juxtaposes the story of his first weeks on the colony with the account of the early progress of the plague. Lovely, lovely writing.

That night is my last pure night; the first soft whisper of a greater shadow that hangs over the landscape of my life. The last time the rain really belonged to me.

I never met Mary Lenox. The history-books say she was twenty-three, that she was admitted to Wellspring Hospital on May 15, AC 186 and died two days later of respiratory complications. As I figure it, that was seven days after Solo warned me out of the rain.

Her death passed without comment; she was only the first faceless pebble in the landslide to come.

I hesitated for a long time before adding this story to my Top Ten list, not because the fic itself isn’t good enough to justify it, but because I had a sort of unofficial rule that only novel-length fiction would be added to the list. In fact, I still do, but Twilight deserves to be the exception.

Twilight by One Person

Crawford makes first contact with Schuldig.

“I’m forgetful. Most people call me Shuldich. I think you say… ‘Guilty’?”

“Are you?”

“Forgetful?”

“Guilty.”

“More often than not.” He picks at the mesh, now, and scratches at one exposed hipbone. Crawford wonders if it’s morphine-itch, or if the child will need to be de-loused.

Shuldich laughs.

He says, “I’m clean.” But whether this regards his drug use or his hygiene Crawford isn’t sure.

I really like young Schuldig in the bookstore. And the rest.

Complex by One Person