DISCLAIMER: *arches eyebrow*.
TIMELINE: About a month after 'Reunion'.
SPOILERS: 'Reunion'.
SYNOPSIS: I'm at a loss. Just read.
CONTENT: Angst, major character death.
DISTRIBUTION: Well, if you think you want it...
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I think my fluff muse has wandered off somewhere - this isn't my usual type of thing. Vaguely inspired by the lunar eclipse we just had, even though it was a total anti-climax and completely unbloody where I am.
FEEDBACK: I vant to hear your thoughts *cackle*. Ahem. Sorry. RATING: PG-14.

The moon isn't red. The sky hasn't fallen. Nature isn't screaming protest at this final violation, and the gods haven't come to save their best warrior.

There's only me, and Buffy and the blood running down my throat and her neck. And the silent audience of a hundred or so dead.

I know what brought me here; too many disappointments, not enough hope left to get through them. Darla turning Cordelia while I watched, held by Drusilla the way I'd been held when she herself turned Darla.

I learned a lot about mental cruelty from my sire.

Staking Cordy, telling myself I was giving her release. I didn't even try and find her body before she rose. I told Wesley's answering machine not to invite her in, but he'd stopped trusting me, and I stopped just long enough to bury the body, made almost unrecognisable by the delighted torture, the gore and bruises covering his face and torso.

You know what's worse than that image? Remembering that it made me hungry.

Am I hungry now? Buffy is whimpering against me, holding my head to her neck with the last of her strength. I don't know what brought her here. But it was of her own free will.

I came back to Sunnydale on the trail of Darla and Dru; bored with trying to get me while I steadfastly refused to come, no matter how far I slipped towards them, Dru decided she wanted her other boy, the one that did whatever she asked, whenever she asked it.

Once upon a time.

She came upon Spike and Buffy, together, in some crypt. I simply followed the furious mental calls, abruptly cut off when he shoved a stake through her heart, looking into her eyes with no remorse. And I thought he was closer to humanity; he still gave the final end to a woman he professed to love when the next one came along.

I took care of Darla, with Buffy, working in wordless, perfect tandem - as attuned as we'd ever been for a few precious moments, and miles apart the minute the fight ended. She stared at me, wearing next to nothing, her hair tumbled, her lips swollen and red, every inch the fallen madonna. Her hand came up to touch my arm, but it fell and she turned away and I left.

And drew all night, sat in the dusty mansion, unconscious of the cold and that I drew in the dark without even the accustomed flickering firelight. I fell back into the habit of brooding easily, forgetting in a moment that I'd had friends who I'd worked and laughed with. Who I'd drawn. But my best sketches are from memory, and many of my memories are Buffy. Fighting, talking, loving... the Slayer and the girl.

I forgot those memories of slight, fleeting contentment as fast as I'd forgotton I had a purpose, a reason to live ordained by the Higher Powers, standing at the top of a flight of stairs... not a month ago. Time doesn't only fly when you're having fun.

I endlessly replayed those memories, another old habit. I never did forget anything about Buffy... the scent of her hair, the curve of her hip, the slight gasp she'd make when I kissed her. And I unwillingly mixed them with the memories of Buffy writhing under Spike.

I bought a dozen blood-red roses unthinkingly and went to her house. I walked right through the door, and there was no-one to stop me... I don't know what's happened to her mother, I don't know whether any of the gang are usually there. I didn't know the identity of the young heart beating to an inhuman rhythm in one of the other bedrooms. I don't know anything except that I left the roses, and a picture of her, asleep as I recalled her on our lost day, on her pillow, and I went unchallenged. Even by my own conscience.

The roses, the portrait... I knew what, when, they would unfailingly take her mind back to. That was the intention.

Whether the intention was ever to have anything come of it, I'm not sure. I needed proof that it was the end, reason to take off into eternity, coat flapping in the wind and eyes dark with a sadness no- one would know or care about. I have a tendency to flagellate myself that way; it's no more than I deserve, and probably much less. I don't even have the pitiful defence of the demon to hide behind anymore... the soul was in charge and aware when I left a group of lawyers to a death I was familiar with, having given it so many times. The lives Dru and Darla took after that are dirty marks smeared on my soul. The lives I ignored as Cordy groaned in vision- induced pain half a city away drag at me, drawing me inexorably into the darkness... or enticing me, because the lack of fight I'm putting up only shows how close it's always been. It's the same darkness I tried to pull Faith away from, only for me it's thicker, and deeper, and made up of a million ugly blood-clots. I don't know who'll save her now.

I can't save everyone, never could. But it probably shouldn't be because I didn't even try.

Not even myself, because Buffy came to me, found me in the graveyard where we used to make out, when things between us were as easy as they've ever been. She looked like a ghost, dressed in pure white I know she's not entitled to... the darkness nips and strikes at her, it's clear in everything about her. At least to one as similarly plagued as I am.

She moved to me, clutching the roses. I hadn't removed the thorns - beauty fraught with bloody danger, an old cliche, but apt for us - and she held them tight enough to tear her delicate skin, leaving crimson trails trickling down her wrists. She didn't seem to notice. Maybe her unholy alliances with vampires have desensitised her to running blood, her own and anyone else's. I hatw to thin of her brutalised. Tainted. Especially by someone other than me.

She threw the roses at my feet; it must have looked like a gesture of detestation to the casual viewer, of which there were none. I thought it was; I pulled myself off the tombstone I sat on slwoly and looked down at her, preparing to leave her life as silently as I'd briefly come back into it.

She looked up at me, and I was shocked to see her hazel eyes glimmering with tears. Our eyes met, understanding and acceptance passed between us, and she bared her neck to me, as she did so long ago when we'd just met, when she'd just found out about me and the climax of our fight was her calm offering of her blood.

She must have known I wouldn't take it then; as surely as she knows I will now. The hunger is up, and only her body can sate it.

There were no initiating kisses, on her lips or the tears that flow quickly down her cheek, or on the old scar on her neck. That pleased me; Spike must have bitten her. Only I marked her.

There was no reassuring speech. I didn't try and make her feel better about the fact that she might have been about to put the world in the most danger it's ever been in. There were no pretty words about death, and certainly none about life.

There wasn't any declaration of love, from either side, but she trusted me to bite her, and she knows I refuse to do this without knowing she's somewhere in the world, even if not my world. Maybe she hates me, and I'm nothing but a willing participant in her games of vengeance; maybe she thinks the guilt of turning the only woman I ever loved will kill me. Maybe it will.

I took her by the shoulders. Not roughly, but neither as a lover - as a hunter, and the demon screamed in pleasure to have the Slayer so vulnerable in my arms. It's arms. I felt the fine trembling running through her small body, and instead of a wash of protectiveness, I felt a high exultation from the heady scent of her fear, and of her desire.

Something else Spike has taught her, no doubt... or maybe it started earlier, the first time I fed from her and she reached climax under me. Or even earlier, the first time we kissed and she trembled in my embrace then, before the demon's face overtook the human.

I didn't kiss her, but I licked her neck once, precisely, right above her thundering pulse. Her arms came around my neck convulsively and she arched closer, pressing her slim body tightly to mine.

My control, the ever-thinning leash I hold the demon on now, snapped and I growled once, furiously... then I struck, feeling every inch of my fangs as they pierced her skin deliciously. She screamed, mixed pain and pleasure, but I ignored her for the blood flowing over my lips and tongue, down my throat. I could almost feel it racing through my body, filling me with strength and the demon with determination. I could feel her reactions to me, taste the waves of dizzy ecstasy and agony as they washed through her being, the rapture that I slowly matched gradually edging out the torment.

And so I am here, clutching the Slayer's weakening body to me as I unceasingly work to make it weaker. I'd nearly forgotten what it is to drain a body, and the fact that my first in years is hers... she slides against me, and as I slip into a leisurely pace of sucking as her throbbing pulse delivers the delectable liquid to me, the demon laughs and the doubts rush in.

I'm don't know if this is the thing to do. Oh, I know it's not the right thing, and certainly not a good thing. I don't know if it's a smart thing. The idea - the overpowering desire - is to have her by my side eternally. But she might not even stay with me; once she is of my kind, she might revile me as the rest of them do.

But I know that now I'll never be of her kind, so what else is there? I need her. And I will take her any way I can.

I know she won't go to Spike; not only because he's even more of a joke among vampires than I am (irony, that the only vampire who might even come near to understanding that part of my existence is the one who hates me too much to let himself). Anyway, I took care of him before I met her here. I think she knows; I think she knew before she ever got involved with him that his unlife would be my price. I don't know if she cares.

Maybe not even as much as I do. I know better than most how sex can be only physical, because that's all it was to me, until I met her. Then it was a dream... and then it was forbidden. But I didn't stake Spike without regret - the Master's line was never prolific. I might even be the last surviving member of this my Blood, at least until tomorrow night, the one after, the one after that, when Buffy rises.

I'll have her at least until her first feed... then will she leave me? Will our demons connect as I once believed our souls did? Or will my soul taint any bond we might have had. It may not. And we may be together. And she may still go - not this year, or the next, or even in the next century, but eventually maybe she will tire of me. I'm sure I could never tire of her, but then Buffy will be an exceptional vampire. The darkness in her might even rival that in me, whether souled or not. I think I've proved it's always there.

Or it might be completely different. I know her friends will try to gift her with her soul, not realising the burden they give her, even free of the blood of a thousand victims. The burden of fighting yourself, an insidious evil buried deep, splitting you in two with every thought... it's the weight I've dropped, unable to hold the demon at bay any longer. He - it - colours my every action now, though, strangely, the sin I am currently committing is all me. If Buffy is made to endure this trial, not just once but every waking moment, will that make her leave, in disgust of what I made her, what she let me make her? Will it force her out into the sunlight, and me pulled irresistibly behind her? And even if she doesn't leave, and she doesn't suicide, and she claims me as I've already claimed her - will I ever know if she's staying with me out of whatever love her soul still feels for mine, or simply fear at being alone in a strange new world?

Buffy is so very afraid of being alone. Maybe that's what this is about, why she's in a dark graveyard letting her lover feed on her, to the death (and hereafter) this time. It is for me.

I don't know if the clause will be an issue. I'm not sure I'm even capable of happiness anymore, not truly. If anyone can show it to me, it should be Buffy, but knowing that I was the cause of the coldness of her skin when I touch her, that I'm the reason I'll never go to sleep listening to the hypnotic rhythm of her heartbeat, may prevent it anew. I'm not sure, because Fate has not been kind to us -though perhaps no more or less kind than we have been to ourselves - and wouldn't that be the final cruel irony? The vampire with a soul forced to stake her freshly demonic boyfriend.

Whatever the path, I'm going to know soon; her heartbeat slows further and I gently detach from her ambrosial blood, licking the sluggish flow from the ugly wound soothingly. She sways into my chest, near unconsciousness, and I steady her, grip her firmly, and lift her up until our lips meet. My tongue sweeps into her mouth without delay, and with very little encouragement she bites down. Hard. I groan as my blood flows directly into her mouth and she drinks it down greedily, welcoming the coppery flow and waiting for more.

Don't the highest angels always fall the furthest?

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