Okay, now I have to read it. Fabulous start.

Hey, just started reading this story and am completely in awe! Excellently written, you do have some real beautiful sentences there, and the language has its own rhythm. And there are 18 more chapters waiting for me! Thanks for making my evening!

I just re-read the entire story, and loved it again. You've reminded me why you were one of my favorite authors when you had time to write before Iraq. I read the last three chaps for the first time today, and am very intrigued with where you are taking the story. Since your last update was in August, has the story stalled, or are you still writing it? I hope so, it's wonderful.

Joy

Good- could be better about the relationship/interactions with Dawn. [Dawn has far more personality then that!] But this is definatly a story I will follow. As I hate Angel- I'm glad that you are keeping Angel ambiguous at best.

Excellent mutual goading between Spike and Angel. It is telling that Angel hasn't been in Buffy and Dawn's apartment. The department story plotline is getting creepier and creepier.

The conversation with Xander was surreal and heart wrenching. I loved Buffy's idea of using his parents' barstools as headstones, it was funny and sad, right in tone with the rest of the dialogue.

I began reading this at All About Spike years ago and was delighted to see an update here. Your characterization of a newly humanized Spike is believable and vivid. He and Buffy relearning their roles in life and with each other is emotionally involving. The new events at the crater are genuinely creepy and I'm looking forward to how they relate to Spike's resurrection.

argh! cliffhanger! :-) that's ok, picturing Spike wearing white makes up for it. :-) keep it up!

I just read this yesterday and I really enjoyed it. I think we met in Cleveland on Sunday night. In any case, I really like this story very much, particularly the way that you portray the confusion between Buffy and Spike, now that he's human. This story has so much potential and I can't imagine where you're planning on taking it, only please do continue.

what? ok, i can deal, just please update soon, i love this story. thanks! :-)

Oh, I loved this. I could just picture Buffy cursing Mortal Spike for having a smaller rear end than her own (all the while admiring said behind, of course). And the conversations with Giles (the rakish and debonair, and how I love that self-description) and Dawn were just absolutely priceless. Intelligent, funny, loving conversations. Giles and Dawn are tricky characters to write correctly, and are so often written tragically wrong. You wrote them flawlessly, without a single misstep.

I particularly loved these passages:

She counted the seconds to gauge exactly what his silence meant. Two seconds he was just waiting to say something sarcastic. Three meant he was torn between sarcasm and seriousness. Four meant he was going to say something both serious and sarcastic. Five meant he’d taken what she’d said and run with it, and enthusiastic hypotheses awaited her—doubtful in this case. If he got as far as ten seconds, she knew he’d either thought of a reason the whole idea was screwed up but salvageable or else was completely untenable and didn’t know how to break it to her. Fifteen seconds meant dire news.

*

"If you choose to perform your obligations wearing a spangled pink tutu, there’s no one who can gainsay you because you’re the first. Of course, generations of Slayers-turned-Watchers will curse you for instituting a reign of pink-tutu-wearing-"

*

Buffy grimaced at her. "Did you not get spanked enough when you were a little glowy pre-adolescent Key?"

*

"Hey, Apocalypse, remember?"

"That was your excuse for **everything** in high school!" Dawn exclaimed. "So not fair."

*

I cannot WAIT to read the rest of this.

You have a wonderful way with words. I enjoyed reading this so much. It was so full of real emotion.

very good story!

please write more soon!

ooh...what's gonna happen? i can't wait to see what sunnydale officers actually do.

I am very glad you returned to write another chapter of a great story. I love the characters. I also love the way you use words; they move me.