Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

He's Blood

Season 2, Lie To Me.

*~*

~Hey, I'm not mad at you, guardian-
I'm mad at myself for spending so much time with you
and your Jekyll-and-Hydeness
I'm glad I figuratively slapped you on the wrist
You laughed a wicked laugh and said "Come here let me
clip your wings!"
(I know he's blood but you can still turn him away
You don't owe him anything)~
______________________Alanis Morrissette, "Front Row"

*~*

"It's the goth club downtown," he says, pressing one hand to his forehead as if something pains him.  "Be there tomorrow at sunset."

"Fine," I retort.  "Now shove off."

When the insufferable human boy is finally gone, I turn to face the assembled minions.

I'm not stupid enough to think they have some innate sense of devotion towards me.  Hell, most of them aren't even my get.  They're my great-great-grandsire's progeny, Childer of the last Master, and most of them are still staunchly faithful to his memory.  When it comes down to it, there is no stronger bond in this world or under it than that between Sire and Childe.  I can't compete with that.

But I don't want them to love me.  I just want them to *mind* once in awhile.

"Right now the boy is very discreet," I point out. "He's human, and therefore still guided by some spurious notion of fair play.  I assure you," I inform them, "that once he is turned he will have no such scruples."

They eye me nervously.

"And when I find out which one of you led him here," I say evenly, "I'll rip your lungs out."

I don't care if it's a good deal; you don't go handing out our location to humans, especially ones seen trucking about with Slayers.  Besides, I'll kill her eventually, with or without his help.  Jesus Christ, why didn't we just draw the bitch a map and have done with it?  Yes, I realize that he probably got the information at the point of a stake.  But did it never occur to whichever one of them it was to give a phony address?  No.  Because they're all bleeding idiots.  So the threat to security will have to be removed.  Natural selection.

"That's all," I say.  "You can go."  They file out slowly, staring at the floor like disobedient puppies. God, I've got to find some intelligent employees.

Then I cross back over to the birdcage, where she stands, tapping the bars with one fingernail.  I just *told* her that the sodding bird was dead.

I stand before her, fold my arms over my chest, and stare at her stonily.  "Well?" I demand.

Her gaze remains fixed on the dead bird.  I'm not quite sure yet if she's really forgotten the conversation we were having ten minutes ago or if she's only pretending to.

"Dru!"

She starts and looks up with me with wide eyes.

"**What happened**?"

She sighs.  She's seen this coming, I suppose; I know I have.  I didn't tell her that Angelus was here in Sunnydale.  I told myself that it didn't matter, or that she couldn't take the surprise in her fragile state, or a dozen other stupid half-assed reasons. Truth is I didn't want her to know.  Truth is I didn't want to see the joy in her eyes.

She found out all the same.  I don't know how; I doubt that anyone told her.  Most of the Master's remaining get- the ones who survived that half-assed Harvest- are too young to have heard of Darla's Favored Childe, the Scourge of Europe.  Stupid wankers.  They certainly don't realize that we're cousins of sorts. Dru and I have never been ones to advertise our parentage. I wanted to build a reputation on my own, not be known as Angelus' misbegotten brat.

I'm not sure how she found out or even when; Dru just has a way of knowing things that no one else does.  A vision, perhaps, or her cards, those thin gray paper slabs of destiny.  Kings and princesses.  Ghosts and shadows.  Delicate, white-feathered angels with one wing dipped in blood.

She knew how I'd react.  That's for sure.  Her silence now speaks as much.

She went looking for him.  She'll deny it until existence itself crumbles into dust but I know her better than she knows herself and I know that she left the house the other night with the express purpose of finding him.  Damn it all to hell.

I'm usually not the jealous type.  Until now, I never had to be.  There have been other indiscretions on her part in the past- meaningless, silly one-night affairs characteristic of anyone with as short an attention span as hers.  Her lovers died quickly, and then I forgave her.  I was angry, hurt, violent, fiercely possessive.  But never jealous.

But it's different now.  It's different with those two.  He's her Sire.  He's blood.

She trails her fingers slowly up and down the bars of the cage and furrows her brow.  "There was a boy. Lovely.  Big brown eyes..."

I stand and wait patiently, hoping to God that this has something to do with the topic at hand.

"He would have tasted so yummy."

"What happened, pet?" I say gently.  "Did he run away?"

She shakes her head, a familiar expression of confusion overtaking her features.  "No.  He stopped me.  He... he let the boy go."

"Who did?" I prod.  "Angel?"  I've never called him that before today.

She nods silently, reaches through the bars, and brushes her fingers lightly over the feathers of the stiff bird with a little sigh of regret.

I'd figured as much.

I'd known right away at the high school that something was amiss.  Well, not *right* away.  He's nothing if not an excellent actor and I certainly had other things on my mind at the time.  But there was something strange in the way he clasped that boy in his hands, a certain careful manner in which he exposed the neck.  The brutality, the feral pleasure of the kill, was gone.  He was going through the motions, playacting for my benefit.  And then the boy spoke.

"*I knew you were lying.  Undead liar guy.*"

The Angelus I knew would have very well pretended to be a well-meaning human in order to work his way into a group of hapless mortals, but he would never have pulled this Anne Rice fluffy reformed-vampire crap, not for the sake of an amusement, an obsession, or a meal.  The Angelus I knew didn't see things in shades of gray.  He can play two roles: sinner and saint. There is no in-between for him.

After that I made it my business to find out what had happened.  He's changed, apparently.  He is, of all fucking ridiculous things, ensouled.  Some bollocks about a curse; the details don't matter.  Point is the wanker's got himself a bleeding soul.  And instead of remaining true to his badass vampire nature, he's turned against himself, against us.  That blighter whose neck he offered up to me?   One of *her* mates. Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, has become a sodding groupie for that damned Slayer.  The same Slayer that killed his great-grandsire.

Not that I mind... the Master's death created a job opening for me.

"What else?" I press.

She moves away from the birdcage and leans her head against my shoulder.  "He loves her."

I try to ignore the bitterness and jealousy in those three words.  I try to ignore the implications of how his affection for the Slayer makes Dru feel.  And when that doesn't work, I try to remind myself that it doesn't matter anyway.  Her Angel, my rival, our Sire, is gone.

"He's changed, love," I say, folding my arms around her.  "He's... he's not the same anymore, Dru.  He's not... your Angel.  I'm sorry."

I'm not even a little bit sorry.

She reacts violently, as I knew she would.  Truth is, he's still Angelus, at least, part of him is.  The soul might make the decisions but it doesn't control the desires.  That sort of thing is left up to the demon.  The part of him that he's currently pretending doesn't exist.  That sort of thing pisses me off.  And as happy as I was to discover that he's no longer a threat to the relationship between Dru and I, it still pisses me off.

She shoves me away, angrily.

"No!  No, he *is*- he's my Angel, he's-"

"Dru," I say tiredly, "he's not like us anymore, ducks.  He's got a soul."

"So?" she says, pouting.  She's being unreasonable now, a child.  This is getting me nowhere.

"So- things have changed."  I lead her over to a nearby chair, push her down gently, and kneel before her. "Dru," I explain, taking her hands in mine, "he's not- a vampire anymore, ducks.  I mean, he *is,* but-"

She gives me that look.  That utterly aggravating one. As if I'm the crazy person here.

"He doesn't kill, he doesn't feed off humans.  He helps them- the Slayer and her friends, he helps them kill us."

Stubborn expression, unbelieving eyes.  Denial mode. Great.  She hasn't looked at me this incredulously since 1969, when I tried to explain to her that man had landed on the moon for the first time. "*Silly Spike.  People can't walk all over the moon.  She wouldn't stand for it.*"

I glance briefly from my attire to hers.  My leather and Doc Martens, her quaint, lacy frock.  Dru has never adapted well to change.  Especially where her Sire is concerned.

"And the Slayer- she and Angel are- together, pet. The way you and I are together."

She shakes her head violently, her eyes filling with tears.

"Dru, there's something else.  Something else I heard."  I take an unneeded breath.  "He killed Darla."

Her eyes widen.  Disbelief for a moment, then shock. I could have told her that Angelus had become the sodding pope and she would have denied he was anything other than her Angel until the End of Days.  But this is a trespass she cannot ignore.

You don't kill your own Sire.  It's unheard of, insane.  It's not even that you shouldn't, I've never had a bit of patience for regulations and rules.  You just don't.  She blinks, presses one frail hand to her temple.  She realizes the enormity of my statement.

And I know she believes me.  Dru and I haven't always gotten along over the past century but I've never failed to take care of her, and I only lie to her for her own good.  Oftentimes we don't like one another, oftentimes there are tears and insults and furniture being thrown about, but two things are constant: my love, her trust.  She knows I would never lie about something like this.

"Killed-"

"Staked her.  To save the Slayer."

Part of me is relieved at the hurt in her eyes.  Her realization that her Angel is truly gone renders him less of a threat.  At the same time, I hate that this upsets her.  Yes, because it pains me to see her cry, but that's hardly the only reason. I love her too much to be unselfish in this.  I hate it because I suspect that she'd never cry this way for me.

I know how she feels.  She feels hurt and betrayed, just as she did a century ago when he disappeared and we realized that he wasn't coming back.  I wish I could act shocked and indignant at this turn of events, but I can't.  He betrayed my trust long before he betrayed Dru's.  Perhaps I betrayed him as well.  I was hardly the ideal Childe.

I've made hundreds of minions- maybe thousands- cannon fodder, loyal workers, even helpful companions such as Dalton. I've accepted obscene amounts of money from humans so terrified of their own mortality that they would gladly pay to accept the Dark Gift at my hands.  I've used it as a bargaining point in numerous deals, such as the one I just make with that boy, whose skin already has the sallow complexion of impending death.  And I once turned a pretty young Swedish girl, on a whim, simply because Dru was determined that such utterly magnificent beauty should not wither and die.  But I've never truly sired a Childe.

I have no desire to.  I don't want the trouble, the responsibility, the requirements involved.  And, frankly, I've never met a human that I honestly thought I could put up with for eternity.

But I know what it's like to have such a Sire.

I know what it's like to be the Favored Childe.

That admiration.

That duty.

That trust.

And I know what it's like to have that trust betrayed.

He betrayed her when he got his soul back, but he betrayed me much earlier.  That blood-bond between us, stronger than death, was not strong enough withstand the challenges that life offered.  Instead it bent and broke, under the weight of time and grief, of jealousy and affection.

((What the hell do you think you're doing, boy?))

((She- she was crying, and I-))

((Go back to bed, Will.))

((But I-))

((Now.))

((Yes, Sire.))

There was nothing that could come between us.

((She's dreaming again.))

((Let her dream.))

Nothing.

((Should I see if she's all right?))

((Leave it, Will.))

Nothing but her.

((No concern of yours, boy.))

Other vampires will turn humans for amusement, gain, revenge; Angelus sired only for the sake of love or obsession.  I don't know how many Childer he made before he was resouled; five, maybe ten?  He rarely discussed those unseen get, my brothers-and-sisters-in-darkness.  In his heart there were only three: the Puritan, the novice, and the criminal.

I never met Penn; he and my Sire parted ways amicably a century before my birth.  I don't think I would have liked him; Darla, apparently, adored the pillock, and she certainly didn't think much of me.  From what I hear, he was religious as a mortal, staunch, morally upright, and greatly sheltered from the challenges of life.  Like Dru- an innocent, a child.  Like Dru, deliciously delightful to corrupt.

I was different.

("My little scofflaw,"* he'd murmur, pushing a curl of hair out of my eyes with careful fingers.  "My daring, ruthless ruffian.  Not an innocent, Will.  Not even born an innocent.")

Hands running along my cheekbones, my lips.  There had been a time when I couldn't tell where I left off and Angelus began.

("Never an innocent.  Not in Whitechapel.")

His dark kiss saved me from the hangman's noose; Angelus did not so much end my life as prolong it. And as for a vampire's innate talent for murder? Bollocks.  I was an eleven-year-old mortal boy when he turned Drusilla, already skilled in the arts of Death, sticking my knife in the ribs of other boys for the sake of a stolen piece of bread.  I was killing long before she was; Angelus had precious little left to teach me by the time I was turned.

*"You're an insufferable nuisance, Will."

"Yeah, well, no one forced you to spend eternity with me, you know."

A sardonic chuckle.  "What would you have had me do? Would you rather I had left you to the trials of life?"*

Life?

Not entirely sure what the word means.

I'm not saying that Penn or Dru had bleedin' sitcom existences before they were turned.  Penn, with his rebellious streak and thirst for adventure, could hardly have been the ideal Puritan.  Dru, with her curious, questioning nature and the infernal Sight that constantly challenged her carefully ordered view of the world, was never a good Catholic. But at least they felt some sort of God looking down on them, guiding their steps, instead of empty, dirty gray skies.  Both of them, apparently, had parental issues: Penn a controlling father, Dru a disapproving mother. But they did, at least, have families.  They both had happy memories, lives to leave behind, things to regret when they crossed over.  I'm not throwing pity parties here and I don't want anyone's sympathy.  If my parents couldn't be bothered with me, fuck 'em.  If life didn't give me what I wanted, I took it all the same.  I'm just saying that it was different for me. That Angelus meant something to me that they could never understand.  He was everything to me, all I had. He's blood.

(*Don't pretend to regret your choice, Will*)

As much was true.  Unlike the others, Angelus gave me the choice before I was turned.  Unlike the others, he would have let me go, unscathed, if I'd refused him. And unlike the others would have done, I accepted what he offered me without hesitation.  I'm not going to pretend that I didn't have any other choice, because I did.  I could have continued to eke out an existence as a pickpocket, a petty thief, a highwayman with precious little patience for those who didn't surrender quickly to my will.  I'd survived twenty-six years that way and I probably could have managed to make it a little longer.  But there was nothing waiting for me in my future, not really, nothing but starvation and darkness and death.  What else was I supposed to do?  I had a talent for violence of which the mortal world disapproved.  Where could I turn, except for Angelus' dark embrace?  Where else could I possibly belong?

I was different from the others.  I was not a pet or a protégé.  Not a fucktoy, an amusement, or a whipping boy.

Well, maybe a whipping boy.  But not at first.

I was his companion.  A hunting partner.  In me he saw a potential for violence and mayhem that surpassed any of his other Childer.  I didn't need to lose my soul to gain a taste for blood; only now that taste was literal.  The Dark Gift only honed my natural skills for murder and chaos.

(*You never cease to astound me, my dear boy.  It's as if you were born to this destiny.  It's as if you were bred to destruction.*)

A son...

(*My beautiful boy.*)

A lover?  Perhaps.  In everything but act.  A thousand touches I never returned.  A thousand unspoken wishes hovering about my ears.  I pretended it wasn't happening; I feared the power in his embrace, feared the steel grip that I knew lurked beneath that silken caress, the silent threat of violence that threatened to rip me to shreds.  I shivered like a virgin beneath the pressure of his hands and perhaps I wanted it just as badly as he did, but there was a part of me that Angelus was not allowed to have.

He claimed me in every other way except that one. Why?  Perhaps because he didn't want to corrupt the simplicity of what we shared; he already had Drusilla for fucking.  Perhaps in time he would have only felt for me the hate and contempt he felt for his other whores, and he didn't want that any more than I did. Perhaps it was because he respected me, at least at first, and was willing to give me one area of my life over which I had complete control.  I couldn't choose who I would fuck, but at least I could choose who fucked me.

Or perhaps it was because of her, because of what he knew I felt.  He could take me against my will, but he couldn't make me like it.  And Angelus would never allow himself to be second best.

(*"She's nothing to you," he'd whisper insidiously, coming up behind me and running cool fingers down the side of my neck.  "You think it means something, those stupid things you feel for her, love, hate, sex, death?  Human emotions... ridiculous fancies.  They're nothing, Will.  There is only the eternal link, the bond of blood.  There is only me."*)

There was only him.  That household was his universe; everything that took place revolved around him. Sometimes I did what he told me for fear of what he might do to me, or to her, but sometimes I simply obeyed because it never occurred to me to do otherwise.  Angelus was the beginning and the end. Angelus was my days and nights.  Angelus was the Blood and the Life.  He raised me, fed me, and taught me that my innate talent for death could prove to be an exemplary gift.

You should have seen the way he loved to watch me kill.

You should have seen how proud he was.

What was I supposed to do?  What could I possibly have done?  It's the worst choice that anyone could ever have to make.  He was my Sire.  The lessons of immortality, the beauty of death, the secrets of the evening- his blood held all that for me.  The call of his blood to mine sang in my veins, sings in them still, though the song is quiet and bitter now.  There was a time when there was nothing I would have done for him; he was my entire universe.  But she- she is my heart.  She is the soul I no longer have.  She's everything that is real and alive and true in my world and I can't give that up.  Not even for him.

It hurts, of course.  Not as much as it once did.  She doesn't realize.  She was his lover, yes, she was his pet project, she was his darling wicked girl, but I, goddamnit, I was the Favored Childe.  And I lost him.  I mean, he was a pillock and a ponce and an egotistical abusive bastard, but he was my Sire.

*Is* my Sire.

Sort of.

He's blood.

She's crying harder now.  She's upset.  And I'm going to have to swallow my bitterness and anger and comfort her even though it's her fault, it's her fault I lost him, and I hate her for that, I hate her for his sake as much as I hate him for hers.  He's my father, she's my sister, she's my lover, he's my friend.  He despised her and he adored me and he hated me for loving her and I hated myself for the way they both made me feel.  It was a sick, sad, fucked-up three-ring psychological circus and just thinking about it makes my head spin.  And she doesn't know. She doesn't realize, arrogant, unseeing child that she is.  She'll never realize what I gave up for her.

(("You've been watching her again."

"No, I-"

"What are you trying to be, Will?  Some sort of bleedin' undead Romeo?  We've been through this before, boy.  Leave her alone."

"I was just-"

"It's unseemly.  Don't make me ashamed of you, boy.  I taught you better than that."))

And now he's back.  I don't want him back.  I loved him and I hated him and I missed him for a decade, but I eventually got over it.  I have a new life, a life with Dru, a life that he could shatter now with the merest glance or word.

((Will, she's mine.  She has always been mine and she always shall be.  You can't win, boy.))

He's back and now it starts all over again.  Good or evil, ensouled or not, we can't get away from him. He's a part of us, like our thoughts and our feelings, her long slim fingers and the color of my eyes.  He's everything we ever were or could have been.  He's blood.

((The white lace sheets that adorned her bed.  Candles flickering against moonlight, a window empty of our reflections.  A congregation of dolls that watched my every move as I slid white shift off pale skin, revealing neck and shoulder.  Nervous lips caressing every exposed surface.  Wandering hands that responded hesitantly, then eagerly, to my touch.  Uncertain voices and good intentions.  **"He'll never forgive you if you stay here tonight**."

"**Then I'll have to learn to live without his forgiveness.**"))

I made a choice and I have never once regretted it.  I wept for it and I bled for it but I never once wished I'd done any differently.  He disappeared, of course, and he forgot us all.  Threw away our years together, denied the fear and the rapture and the pain, the joy of the kill, the delectable agony we shared, in a half-assed attempt to atone- leaving his Childer to
suffer for the sins of the Fathers.  We moved on, of course.  I have relished every moment of the last century, the murder, the mayhem, ravishing the land with Dru at my side.  I have thanked unseen gods for his disappearance, for the chance it gave me to claim her as my own.  I got over Angelus.  But I have never once forgotten him.  Never.

And now she's collapsed in my arms, her tears soaking into my shoulder, and she's hurt.  She's hurt and betrayed because her Daddy has left her.  She's a poor, lost child devoid of parentage and purpose, and I have no words of comfort for her.  Because that bond is supposed to mean something, is supposed to last, and it doesn't.  In the end it means nothing.  But as much as we choose to hate him, we can never let him go.

He's blood.