Fandom: The Sandman (comic) Title: Small Fish Author: Fay (pandarus on LJ) Pairing: None (gen); characters are Death and Dream (the new one). Warnings/Rating: None, it's totally family-friendly. Link:Story hosted on Yuletidetreasure.org Additional info : You can leave feedback as a comment on the web page, or check the contact details on the author profile.
Why should people click? Because it's sad, and hopeful, and fragile, and funny. Because it's about change, and finding the constants underneath that keep you going. Because every person who ever had siblings will know how Death feels; that mix of annoyance and love for her brother. Because Fay managed to get a Labyrinth reference in there, which makes me want to hug this story and give it a chocolate muffin.
Also, the descriptions of Death's home and Morpheus' old, stiff self are adorable.
"He has lifted a teddy bear from an over-stuffed armchair and is surveying it quizzically. Morpheus won it for her at a fun fair, she recalls, and suddenly she can almost smell the hotdogs and the cotton candy, can almost see again the expression of rigid dignity upon his face as he accepted the prize from the fat man at the coconut shy, after Death nagged him into having a go. He thought she wanted the teddy bear, and so he stood stiff-backed and pitched coloured balls at coconuts with brutal accuracy, quietly disregarding the glue which Marvin Hammerstein had so carefully applied to fix them into place. [...] Dream picks his way very carefully through a clutter of bunny slippers, splayed hardbacks (Lucien would have an apoplexy if he saw them, she realises with a pang of guilt), sheesha pipes, tarot cards, duelling foils, pages of sheet music, glossy magazines, spilled popcorn and all the other oddments scattered across her carpet, and looks from the Snoopy mug to the fishbowl with its greenish water."
Told you so.
Where to find more by this author: Conveniently, Fay put up a fic list on her journal (lots of BtVS, and many multifandom one-shots). It's from 2004, so I can't guarantee every single link to work. Another index can be found at the Skyehawke Archive.