Remix Fic: “Walking After Midnight” BtVS, Angel, Xander

 
So the day of the Big Reveal has come. I’ve changed my remix author name in remix_redux, and below are the links to my contribution.

Title: Walking After Midnight: the Music of Pain Remix
Summary: Sometimes the enemy you can count on is exactly the friend you need.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Angel, Xander Harris
Rating: PG (language)
Disclaimer: All characters are the property of others more creative than myself. I don’t own them, I don’t profit from them. Angel and Xander belong to Joss Whedon, with rights also going to those companies and individuals who licensed them from him, of whom I am not one.
Original story: “Getting It” by bastardsnow
Notes: As with the original story, this takes place in Season 2, shortly after the events of “Amends”.

“Walking After Midnight” — Part 1

“Walking After Midnight” — Part 2

“Walking After Midnight” — Part 3

Remixing bastardsnow was more of a challenge that I had expected. The story he’d done that I best liked, “Thirteen Days”, was longer than I wanted to attempt, and nothing else seemed to grab my imagination. (This is not the same as saying they weren’t good stories, or weren’t effectively told; I just couldn’t find myself wanting to jump into one and write it myself.) “Getting It” came closest, and once I’d finished scanning all the candidates, I went back and gave it another look. The more I considered the dynamic between Angel and Xander — and beyond that, the contrast between two very different men who, in very different ways, loved Buffy more than their own lives, and changed the direction of those lives for her sake — the more it began to speak to me. I spent a couple of days thinking about it, a couple of days writing out notes, and by the end of that time I knew I had an idea I could work with.

It was a pleasure, and I’m glad I had the chance.

Meanwhile, faith1922 has been revealed as the author of “The Dance of Death Remix”, a different perspective on my January 2000 fic, “Voices in the Dark”. She is to be congratulated on finding an original twist in (I can say this, because I wrote it) a not especially promising story.