Run

[dragonyphoenix]

Title: Run
Fandom: BtVS
Characters: Xander, Willow, Angelus
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon: genius; me: just playing with his characters
Warning: I hadn't realized it but apparently I'm being squickly cruel to Xander.

 

Xander scanned the garden as he tried his bonds. No luck. Angelus had tied them too tightly. Even if he could free himself, the garden was at the center of a house, well, mansion was more like it, which was crawling with minions.
 

Not a bad place to die. Not that he wanted to die but also not like his opinion counted for much at this point.
 

He wondered if he'd see Willow before Angelus killed him. Not that he wanted to. If Angelus hadn't killed her, well no, after two years Angelus most definitely had killed her, but if he'd turned her afterwards, Xander didn't want to know. He'd rather go to his death thinking she was well and truly dead.
 

As if his thoughts had evoked her, Willow stepped into the garden, nervously looking over her shoulder but approaching him quickly and confidently.
 

“Xander, thank God you're still alive,” she said, settling before him in the moonlight, which made her skin seem paler and her hair darker than he recalled. No, her skin would be paler now. No sunlight. When he didn't answer, she asked, as if with concern, “Are you OK?”
 

Why do vampires always want to banter, he wondered. “Come on. You're just glad I'm alive so you can torture and kill me yourself. You know it. I know it. Don't play with me.” Stupid move, stupid move, stupid move, he thought knowing that, to a vampire, that kind of comment was just like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
 

Willow bit at her lip as if uncertain. “Xander,” she said, touching his cheek. Her hand was warm.
 

“Willow?”
 

She started untying the ropes. “We have to get out of here quickly. I don't know how long they can keep the vampires distracted.”
 

“Who? What?” Xander asked in confusion.
 

“Demon hunters. They rescued me. I... I'm sorry I didn't get world to you but I couldn't break my cover. Come on, they'll be waiting for us just outside.” Standing, she put a finger over her lips and gestured for him to follow her.
 

They made it out a side door without being noticed. Searching the area, Xander asked, “So where are these guys?”
 

“Church is a couple of blocks that way,” Willow said, following her own train of thought before adding, “What guys?”
 

“The demon hunters. You said they'd be waiting outside,” Xander replied.
 

“Oops.” Willow turned her ridged face towards Xander. “Run,” she said.
 

Xander startled back a few steps. A tear slid down his cheek. “Willow?” he stammered.
 

Angelus stepped out of the shadows. “Was his despair everything you'd hoped for?”
 

“It was but why won't he run? I can't have a hunt if the puppy won't run,” Willow replied.
 

Angelus stepped towards Xander.
 

He ran.

Note: I've been trying to figure out why so many people thought this was dark whenI don't.  In the original version, which was Spander, Spike and a bunch of Slayers are there to save Xander but Willow and Angel get away.  It was a bittersweet, found out WIllow's been vamped, but not too dark, nobody got hurt kind of a story.  This shorter version worked better and I never noticed how dark it was without the original ending.

Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Ok, "kink" definitely means something different in fanfic than my more generic/vanilla definition! (I just tried to read clockwork_hart1's Kendra/Drusilla fic written for femmeslash_kink or some site like that and - ah. ok. I'm starting to get it.

I am either very (willfully) sheltered or very dense.

My personal definition of 'dark' would be heavy angst/hopelessness/seriously dodgy ethical decisions.

That was/is pretty much mine as well: Willow in Bargaining and All the Way also come to mind. (then again I thought Flutie being eaten alive was pretty damn dark, but maybe that just falls under the heading of "horror". Or "shit just got real" at the very least.)

'dark' has increasingly come to mean noncon/dubcon/D/s/slavefic/tortureporn/etc.

So the terms "kink" and "dark" are sort of overlapping now, or is there any real difference?

Valyssia seems to write some VERY dark stuff - some of her stories have a list of warnings longer than my arm. (She's also the author of a story where Willow has buffy under her control and Buffy is her sexual slave that just shocked the hell out of me until I finally hit the back button.) And she's very highly regarded as an author. Different strokes.

[rahirah]

Well, kink CAN mean just a narrative device you like - time travel, or redemption arcs, or whatever. Which makes it confusing since people don't always specify which type they're talking about. And in the last ten years admitting to kinks in the sexual sense has gotten a lot safer and more common in fandom spaces, so there's a changing context over time as well.

I think kink and dark can overlap, but aren't by any means congruent - I mean, you can have stories about fluffy, happy kinks just as easily as dark painful ones. I have a huge kink for too-skinny characters being fed delicious food - I can read or write about that happening in a sexual context or in a non-sexual context, but regardless of the context it always makes me happy in my girl parts. If someone gets off on the thought of their characters lounging in a huge marble tub, soaping each other up and massaging oil into each other and whatnot, and writes up a story devoted to a steamy, elaborate description of same, I consider that just as kinky as a story about whips and chains.

There's a tendency to dismiss or ignore the lighter kinky stuff, which I think is just a special case of people's general tendency to think that grim and unhappy stories are inherently of greater literary worth.