*****

Spike has an unpleasant Epiphany, Buffy has a Breakdown, and they receive a disturbing phone call about their mutual lover.

"Checkmate. Again," I tell her.

Buffy's not even looking at me. She stares down at the chess board the way she has all evening, her green eyes empty of anything I can read, as if some answers for whatever questions are plaguing her might be found in the smooth ebony and ivory pieces. She doesn't care about the game, or that I've trounced her thoroughly nine in a row, or even that she's sitting in her mother's living room playing chess with a creature who not so long ago was her arch enemy.

Really, she's had this look for a couple of weeks, now. Sort of vacant, distracted, never quite present in attention where her body is.

I hate to admit it, but seeing her so lost tears me up inside. I've always been drawn to her light (much like that old moth to flame thing), that bright joie de vivre and particular flair with which she does everything, including kick my ass. I'm always helpless in the wry amusement that sparkles in those eyes, the searing commentary of that sarcastic smirk and those biting remarks. But lately, it's like her spirit -- that whatever it is that makes her Buffy-- has moved out, and I'm looking at nothing but barely animated Slayer Shell. The Buffy Zombie.

It's bloody creepy, is what it is.

I wave my hand in front of her distant gaze, which is still fixed on a game now long over. Ass kicking number nine in Spike's column. I should be happy, right? After all, any small victory against my most formidable foe is something to covet.

But mostly, I just want to bring her back from wherever she's gone.

"Hello... Earth to Slayer. You lost. Again."

Her eyes come up slowly from their unseen focus, and she looks into my face, but somehow, her gaze never really manages to meet mine.

"Oh," she mumbles absently, "Play again?"

I have to struggle against the urge to growl in frustration. She sounds like a damn computer or something. I want to shout at her. Ask her why she's so damn lifeless. I have very hard time believing that Captain Cornflake's departure could possibly have this deep an effect on her.

I won't lie and say I had her best interests in mind when I exposed the dunderhead's nighttime hobbies. I won't try to tell you I had even the faintest of good intentions. Fact is, I hated that stupid Neanderthal. I hated his big, caveman head and his floppy hair and that goofy, 'aw-shucks' grin. The way he looked at her with that hang-dog infatuation, scrambling like a starving puppy for scraps of affection from her that he would never get -- and never had any right to expect, if you ask me. I hated the idea of him having those big, clumsy paws all over the Slayer, and I hated the fact that she let him hang around.

So I got rid of him. Or at least, I did my part to help the process along.

Hell, truth be told, I'd rather have her with my fruity Pseudo-Sire. Much as I hate the wanker, there's something comforting about knowing that someone of my blood is looking after her, even if it isn't me.

I stare at her, and for a moment she looks just like him, which throws me. The scrunched brow, the pinched lips, the shadow of sorrow and self-pity dragging her face down into a sorry brooding mask that Angel has spent a hundred years honing into an art form.

"Why bother?" I reply at last, "I'll just hand you your pretty ass again anyway. Gets boring after a bit."

Buffy says nothing. Her attention has already drifted away again, and the only way I know she's heard me at all is by the barely perceptible shrug of her fine shoulders.

Ever since I've declared my self "Pathetic Watch Demon of the Slayer", it seems I've acquired a few handy, and neverendingly annoying skills. One of which is empathy, which comes along with a healthy dose of sympathy.

I've thought about that a bit. About what this effin' chip has done to me. I figure it's something like this -- I have to think a lot more carefully nowadays about what or whom I kill, and that forces me to think about creatures as individuals a bit more, which is a sort of enforced empathy, I guess.

Those Soldier Boys sure know a bit about torture, I tell you. Imagine my great chagrin to find I've got an electronic soul, of all things. When I first figured that one out, I promptly went out and got myself good and snookered. A soul. William the Goddamn Bloody with a USDA electronic soul. Wouldn't Angel be proud?

Point is, I've managed to minimize the empathic damage by focusing only on the Slayer, and it's some measure of relief to realize that I don't really care about her in some mushy, fuzzy-bunny sort of way, but in a "Damn, I miss the smart-ass, fiery bitch who beats the Hell out of me on a regular basis" sort of way. It's nominally better.

"So, what's your problem, then?" I ask her, playing it cool, getting up to grab a pint I've brought from where I've stowed it in the Slayer's fridge, warm it up quick, and bring it back. Sort of a fun irony, I think.

She watches me return, and I see a glimmer of something flash in her dead eyes.

I don't think Buffy's fully comfortable with the new, improved me, either.

"Why would you think anything's wrong?" Her voice is as flat and totally unconvincing as her demeanor. "For that matter, why would you care?"

I lean back against the door frame and give her a nonchalant shrug. "Bored, is all. Telly's out."

She snorts, but doesn't answer my question.

I sit back down in the chair across from her, and lean forward like bloody Freud with my mug of blood in my hand. Buffy stares at me like I just sat down like bloody Freud with a mug of blood in my hand.

"You're really freaking me out with this nice routine, Spike."

I roll my eyes at her. "Stop avoiding the question. You're the one who's been dragging ass around this place for two weeks like somebody ate your damn puppy. It's annoying. When's the last time you even picked up a stake?"

Her empty look turns into a glare. That's something, at least. Shows maybe I can goad her into some semblance of life.

"That's none of your business," she snipes, jumping to her feet in outrage. I'd swear she was getting ready to bolt in a snit, but then, of course, she comes to the realization that this is her house, and that would just be stupid. So she sits down again, her indignant fury making her shake as her eyes drop back to that damned chessboard.

I sit up straighter and gulp down my dinner. After wiping my chin, I add, "Listen, pet, you're not the first person to lose a lover, you know... and it's not like you haven't been abandoned before."

Her head snaps up in shock, and her mouth falls open like she's going to argue. Of course, she can't, because I'm right, so she shuts it again.

Having woken her up a little, I plunge on.

"I have to tell you, I have a really hard time believing you're this broken up over that wussy farmboy."

I can smell her rage snap up a notch. Her body goes a tiny bit more tense, and her scowl scrunches a little further. Yeah... that's what I'm looking for. Stoking the fire. I set my mug down and get ready to run, because I have every intention of pushing her to the snapping point.

"I mean, you barely knew the wanker, for all the scroggin' you did. And he couldn't have been too bright, if he was out playing snack bar to a bunch of demon whores to get your attention! Really, Slayer! I just don't get it!"

"SHUT UP!" she barks.

Oh, yeah! That's my girl. It's not gonna take much, now. And I know just the thing to put her over the edge.

"Quite a come down from the Eternal Ass-Twitching Angst that is my Sire, eh?"

That's it. She's on her feet again, her cute little face all red, and she's advancing on me with murder shining in those...

Oh, shit. Now's where I bolt, if I want my ass to stay a solid and not turn to a fine powder.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD! WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?" She screams.

Okay, so maybe I pushed the wrong button. I grab my coat and flee out the front door before the "it" even finishes echoing off the living room walls. But Buffy's out of her mind pissed, now, and she's right on my heels. 120-something years as the Big Bad Predator, or no, she's going to catch me. Really, I don't mind so much. I could do with a good spot of violence. So long as I don't get staked.

I haven't run so damned fast in I don't remember how long. And I know for a fact that I've never run like this from her. It feels good, the chase, even if I'm technically the prey. Wind whipping my face, leaping hedges and white picket fences like bloody Jessie Owens, and I have to laugh. I can still hear her cursing from behind me, including something about forgetting a damn stake and how she doesn't need one anyway, because she's going to rip my damned head off with her bare hands.

Buffy catches me just inside the walls of Sunny Rest, and I can smell the rage on her. She tackles me fit for a good rugby match, and I'm still laughing as I crash face first into the wet grass. This is the most fun I've had in forever.

She grabs me by the hair and flips me over, and now I'm laughing so hard, it's all I can do to raise my arms in self-defense. She's panting and growling like a rabid animal as she rains Slayer strength punches down on my face, and in a moment, I'm not laughing anymore, because her hot body is straddling me, and I'm so hard I could probably fuck her right through our clothes.

I've got a little thing for being dominated, you know.

I grab hold of her wrists and finally still her. Her wrath is palpable in the air between us, and her hot breath smells sweet, like candy.

"There. Now don't you feel better?" I manage to choke.

The Slayer freezes and stares down at me, dead silent. Her eyes are wild, her mouth turned down in the most delicious, murderous scowl.

She stinks like madness... and sex. Funny combination, really. Like my old Sire, in fact, but without the blood and the promise of torture implements.

"You did that on purpose," she growls.

I give her my best leer and a shrug in response.

She hauls off and cracks me a good, stiff right in the jaw.

"You ASSHOLE! I FUCKING HATE YOU!" she screeches, and swings again. But this time I'm ready for her, and manage to stop the blow with ease.

She's so close... so close I can fell the heat of her on my skin.

"You really need a new line, Slayer," I say, but my voice isn't quite right... sort of too high and scratchy, with lust or hunger, I'm not sure. And in a split second, I don't really give a witch's tit, because her hot lips are smashed against mine, her sweet tongue violently plundering my mouth. Hands made to tear my kind in two are tearing nothing but my shirt, and then that mouth is on my bare chest, licking, biting hard enough to draw blood. I yelp in spite of myself at the pleasure of it -- it's too much, her mouth, her scent, my blood, her crotch grinding against my hard-on.

My only thought is, "What the Hell is this?"

Then she wipes that thought away by ripping at the button fly of my jeans and yanking them down to my knees, her little hand grasping my rod too hard (not hard enough) and too hot, and I gasp out loud.

"I FUCKING HATE YOU!" She rages on, "You TASTE like Him! I can SMELL Him all over you! I can't STAND IT! I CAN'T STAND THAT YOU KNOW HIM AND YOU HAVE HIS BLOOD IN YOU AND I FUCKING HATE IT!"

She's crying now as she dives down and vacuums my cock right down her tight throat. My brain has checked out, and all that's left is mouth (Slayer mouth. Mouth's been on His mouth, His cock) and her hot tears splashing on my crotch as she sucks with a fury fit to draw a golfball through a garden hose.

"GAH!" I shout. Never was one much for poetry in the sack.

She's hauling me right along to the gates of a Heaven I don't believe in, and it's my every wild dream come true -- the Slayer blowing me right in the middle of the cemetery where just any fledgling (or He Himself...) might come along and see. I tangle my hands in that thick mane of honey hair, and ignore her sobbing, focusing only on the slurping mouth, the grasping hand on my balls. I try not to hate the fact that it's Him she's blowing, and that I'm wishing it was Him that was blowing me. Pretty soon I'm not seeing blonde hair, but sable, not hazel eyes, but melting chocolate, and I can't fucking STAND the idea that I'm in love with the bint because she belongs to Him. Why do I always have to fall in love with His possessions? Can't I, just once, have something of my own?

I grab her by a fistful of that hair, and yank her off my dick, using the momentum to flip her onto her back, eliciting a pained yelp from her chest as all the air leaves her lungs. (He can't fuck her. I can.) I don't have anything to say, because half of me's focused on ripping her clothes off, and the other half is fighting the overpowering compunction to just shred that fine throat and drink Him right out of her veins. God, I want to taste her! So much worse than I want to fuck her. (Her heart will taste like Him.) But I can't, because that would hurt her, and subsequently, hurt me (hurt Him) like Hell. So I'll settle for this.

I finally have her naked and writhing beneath me, tiny hands forcing my mouth back to hers, crushing grip of legs around my waist, heels digging into my ass, commanding me home into that dark, wet, tight, pulsing passage that cost my Sire His soul...

My Sire. My fucking bastard son of a whoring goddamn Sire. My beloved. My Master.

Now I'm fucking his mate, driving my cock so deep and hard (He was here. He felt this.) and damn it, now I'm weeping right along with her. I ram her hard -- it's painful for me, so it must nearly be killing her. But the chip doesn't go off. Buffy wants it. She loves it. She wants me to rip her in two. She meets my every thrust with unbridled viciousness like she knows it hurts me, too.

This is not exactly the coupling I had in mind with the Slayer. We're both sobbing and grunting and fucking each other bloody. I arch myself away from her and watch her throw her head back and howl like some rutting Hellbeast. The sight of it is too much. Her heat, too much. Her blood roaring loud enough to split my skull as she comes. I ram myself in once, twice, again, her throbbing cunt milking me beyond agony, beyond ecstasy, beyond even the tears, and for that single moment, when the world explodes, my balls tighten and release and my cold seed jets into her heat, there is no Angel. There's only us, our shrieking, our orgasm, the stars and the gravestones.

When it's done, I fall onto my back in the grass beside her. She doesn't look at me, she just lays there, panting, staring up at the sky with tears streaming down her face.

I reach for my coat, snatch out my cigs, and light one up. I look over at the Slayer, and now I find she's staring at me. I offer her a smoke. She shakes her head. I shrug. She sits up and wraps her knees in her arms like she's not buck naked in the middle of Sunnydale's biggest graveyard.

"He left me. He promised he never would, but he did."

Her voice has some life, at last -- not quite sorrow, not quite anger... just not understanding. I know she's not talking about pasty fish face commando boy, either.

I stay right where I am. I don't want to touch her again, and have all that pain come back. A goddamn century of repressed pain.

"Yeah, well, you're not the first one he left."

My voice is bitter, a surprise even to me -- but apparently a bigger shock to her. Buffy stares at me like I just told her I'm the Tooth Fairy or something.

(*Gypsies, lad. My lovely mate has brought us some Gypsies...*)

"You were lovers," she observes, like it's something she's suspected for a long time, but only now believes.

A fury washes through me. How can she, the most dread killer of my kind, not know this? Something so simple about my species? Something so fundamental to what we are?

(*Lower, my boy... ahhh, yessss... that's it. Ye grow more skilled everyday...*)

"He was my SIRE, ya bloody TWIT! That's a DAMN SIGHT MORE INTIMATE THAN THIS!!!" I shout at her, waving my cigarette at her naked form, "YOU DON'T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT MISSING HIM! You've been apart for, what, two YEARS? HE'S MY BLOOD, AND I'VE BEEN WITHOUT HIM FOR A *HUNDRED*!"

I can't believe how mad I am. Mad with jealousy, loneliness, that old, long-forgotten longing, and now resentment. I clutch the cigarette between my teeth and yank my pants back on, leaping to my feet in the same motion. I want to kill her. I want to rip her apart, limb from limb. As much as I wanted to be inside her a few minutes ago, now I can't get far enough away fast enough.

And she's still sitting there, staring at me with that funny stupid look on her face in all her unveiled Slayer (Sire's Mate) Glory.

"WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT???" I scream at her. There's nothing left of my shirt, so I just pull on my coat and start to stomp off.

"Spike! Will... wait."

Her use of my given name -- the name He always used -- freezes me in my tracks, just like it's Him that said it. An order I can't ignore. But I refuse to turn around.

I hear her get to her feet and put on what's left of her outfit, and then she's beside me, her little hand on my arm.

I finally look down at her. She's so small, so young, and I can suddenly understand my Sire's mind-numbing desire to protect her. But I still hate the bitch. I'm so jealous of her, I could spit. I love her, too. Much like my psychotically confused feelings for Him. Like they're one and the same goddamned being.

"You love him too," she says.

I snort. Demons don't love. And they sure as Hell don't love cruel, sadistic (tender) progenitors who'd just as soon peel the skin off your carcass as look at you. Even less their whiney, simpy, soul-eyed do-gooder alter egos.

"Yeah," I reply, so soft, I'm not sure if she could have heard.

She nods. "It's funny. I don't miss Riley. I mean, I do... I miss having... someone..." She shakes her head a little, probably realizing how fucking pathetic that sounds. Then her eyes meet mine again, and there's the life I was looking for. It's sorrow, it's pain, but it's life.

Oh, the cost. I feel like my dead heart's been ripped wide open. Is it for her? For Him? Does it matter?

"Riley left me," she goes on, "But all I can think about is Angel leaving me. Why?"

I don't know if she's asking why her head's all fucked up and her priorities twisted, or why my bloody idiot Sire abandoned her. I shrug and take a wild guess.

"Probably figured it was the best thing for everyone."

(*He's gone, Spike, so just stop ASKING ME! Believe me, it's for the best, what he is now... you don't want to see him.*)

Buffy gives another wise little nod. "Yeah, I guess."

We walk back to her house in thoughtful silence. I thought I was over this decades ago. Haven't given the plonker more than a passing thought in what, 2, 3 years? Some demons just can't be exorcised, I guess.

But why now? That's what I want to know. Obviously everything that's happened in the last year has led up to this very night, me and the Slayer walking down the street with our guts hanging out, both missing the same damn ghost. Why this tickling in my blood? Why did a simple scrog with the hottest woman on the planet end up opening some floodgates into my Sire issues?

The phone is ringing as we walk through the door. Her mum and the chit are off on some weekend getaway or something, so she rushes in to answer it. I follow, locking the door behind me, and help myself to a good, tall glass of her mother's finest double malt. Then another. And another, in quick succession. Less than the time it takes for her to say "Hello?"

I down another quickly. Buffy's quiet, listening. Don't like that one bit. Her face drops. I pour myself another, try to pretend it's the booze or the sex that's making my skin too tight, and my blood even itchier. Another shot.

"What?!" she gasps, "When?"

I stop with my seventh glass halfway to my lips. I turn slowly, and by the stricken look on her face, there's only one thing that whoever's on the other end of the line could be talking about.

"What do you mean, you don't know where he is? How could you just let him go?!"

She's shouting, frantic. I'm frozen to the spot. But not too frozen to drink that whiskey. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.

"No, I know. I'm sorry, just... Okay... Cordy, calm down, please. We're coming. We'll leave right now. Don't go anywhere."

Buffy slams the phone down at the same moment that I set my glass on the counter.

She moves like lightning, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me back toward the door. I grab the Scotch on the way.

"What the Hell is this then?" I managed as she drags me out, scratching a quick note and tossing it on the foyer table as we pass.

I'm asking, but I already know (no, not Him...), and I know it's bad -- world off its axis bad--because that's what the itching and humming and all the rest have been about.

The Slayer stops. Looks at me. "Where's your car?"

My... I haven't thought about the DeSoto in months. Dunno if the damn thing even runs anymore. "At the mansion."

"Let's go."

I finally pull back. "Hey, wait, there, pet. Don't you think you better tell me what the Hell's going on?"

She looks at me again. Fire in her eyes. Fire, always, for Him. "Angel's in trouble. He's disappeared. We have to find him."

I don't argue anymore. That's all she had to say.

*****
Part 2:

Angel sinks slowly into madness, drinks some cheap Irish whiskey, gets laid, and has his coat stolen. Dude's in rough shape!

It's been a long time since I've done anything that could be considered prowling. Slipping from shadow to shadow with sword and stake concealed in the folds of my coat. When I was a hunter, my only weapons were hands and teeth.

No more. I am another creature, now. Not man, not demon. Not animal, not hunter. Aimless violence. Undirected fury.

I don't know what I'm looking for. I don't know anything anymore but that I have to move. I have to kill something or drink something or fuck something. Maybe all three. Soon. Now. Or I'll explode.

I move because I can't sit anymore. I can't think. Can't brood on all the things that have failed in me. In my mission. I can't sit in that place that's meant for a man. There's nothing left of me but beast. Monster. Thing.

Things don't live in warm, tidy rooms with clean, cool sheets on soft beds and balconies that overlook the silent, sparkling vista of a living city (mine). Beasts don't own hotels or have dear friends or sacred destinies or eternal soulmates. Monsters only exist. Hunt. Destroy. Walk and rot.

I prowl, I walk, and I refuse to think. I ignore the whispers of betrayal and death and failure... the incitement to chaos. I feel nothing but the biting winter wind on my dead skin, and a lust whose origin I can't determine anymore -- is it for sex or blood or violence or power? Does it matter? I hear nothing. I see nothing. I taste nothing.

I can't remember what caring felt like... though I know it wasn't so long ago that I did. I've lost track of the days. I cut the ties, let myself dangle freely in the wind, in the incessant movement of time, no one but the sky and ancient instinct to tell me "day" or "night", nothing but my stomach cramping, telling me to feed (rage). And the burning goes on. The need. Find. Kill (Why are they gone?) Annihilate. Ease the craving.

I'm a fool. That much I recall. All the rest is blood and pain (a glimmer of faces) and just... nothing. But I remember I am just a slave bitch to the Powers That Be.

If they were corporeal, I'd take this sword to them. Or maybe string them up from the ceiling, bleed them slowly with tiny pinhole fang pricks (make a fool of me. Fuck with the demon, get the teeth.) while I break each of their bones, from smallest to largest, all the while promising them fairness... mercy... reward... as they scream.

Fuck you and your destiny. Dangling Shanshu carrot. Bullshit. This ass won't haul for you, anymore.

I'm so gone in the anger, a car's horn brings me back. I'm standing in the middle of the street, inches from being splattered on the pavement. It wouldn't kill me (too bad), but the idea of Final Death is fascinating in a way I had forgotten (*I'll never forget!*) existed. How many decades did I pass contemplating stepping out into the warmth of the sunlight, burning away the pain, the soul, with the shell? (*I wish I wished you dead! I don't! I can't...*) But I was too weak, even, for that... too full of fear of damnation (*You damned me...*) to do the deed. (the snow. a miracle. a sign. needed. wanted. purpose.)

I walk on.

I wandered for two years after the Curse. And when I left Darla (*You disgust me!*), I walked for another fifteen before I came to these shores. Here in the West, some years... (*Take them all...*) Then East. I hid. Wandered. Waited to die. (*Look at you! This is the stink of death you're giving off, here!*)

Then a tacky little demon in a cheap fedora offered me a whole new doom, and called it a purpose. (*She's gonna have a tough time of it, that Slayer. She's just a kid.*) If I knew how to find him, I'd kill that bastard, too. Become someone. Ha.

The next time I bother to pay attention, I'm on a barstool, a bottle of cheap whiskey and an unused glass on the bar before me. I remember this. It wasn't so long ago that I was a connoisseur of low-rent pubs. (*A drunken, whoring layabout, and a terrible disappointment to your parents!*) Not so long ago that I was human. (*I felt your heart beat...*) A man who loved nothing more than his women and his liquor. Life was so easy, then. (*A son is what I wished for! A man! And instead God gave me you!*)

I drink faster. 250 years... an eon... 225 pounds of dead flesh. It takes a lot of whiskey to forget.

A cloud of Chanel No. 5 (demon) sidles up... slinks up, beside me. She stinks like centuries of loneliness under all that perfume. Her hair is long and thick, blue-black like a raven's wing, her eyes purple like fine wine grapes. (lovely. delicious.) Fine, regal features, full mouth pulled back in a bitter mockery of a smile. She says something about hating these places. Don't I? She means it as a joke. I shrug. (*You smell so good... so warm... I miss that.*)

"I know who you are," she says. "Vampire with a soul, the face of an angel. How sad."

I motion to the bartender. He brings another bottle. Takes away the glass. Refills her Smirnoff and lemon.

She tells me her name is Alais. I don't care. She already knows mine (help the hopeless), so I don't bother speaking. I polish off another bottle before her ice cubes melt (*William, listen to me, boy. Ya need ta control yer drinkin... alcohol makes ya slow... stupid.*). She stares at me with those eyes and a wry, knowing smile. I ask her if she wants to go somewhere and fuck. (*Make love to me, Angel... I need you...*) She laughs, a voice so close to human, I wonder how much of her blood really isn't. She takes my hand (warm) and leads me out into the street. Did I pay the bill? Rain is falling. Alais doesn't blink at the flash of broadsword from inside my coat. Tough broad. Old. Seen it all.

The need to kill is dulled by the whiskey, the violence becomes... something other... but the lust is sharpened. She lives nearby. She leads me upstairs, where it's dark and neat. She turns on a dim lamp, casts shadows over the simple furniture. She politely recounts my life story to me (*Once upon a time, der was a vampire... and he was the meanest vampire in all de land...*) , and asks about the Curse as she pours us a drink.

I don't give a fuck about the Curse, and I tell her so. When I say it, her eyes widen slightly... any but a predator would never notice the change... the faint odor of fear.

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," she says. Alais thinks maybe I've lost my soul already... not such a eunuch, eh? I'm the Scourge of Goddamn Europe, and she's brought me home to screw her brains out, only to maybe find herself skinned alive, her pelt hung over the shower curtain to dry while I eat her eyeballs and suck that brain out through the empty sockets...

I don't bother to tell her about Perfect Happiness.

Maybe she's right. Maybe she is in danger. Fuck, eviscerate, it's all the same. I laugh. She seems strangely reassured by the sound, which rings hollow in my ears, like I'm inside a tunnel (*That light was so bright...*). She gives up the glass. I gulp it before she even sits. She immediately pours another. Makes a joke about my constitution. Polite hostess. The warm haze of flesh and intoxication. Blind Lust. (*It's not enough time!*)

"You can kill me if you want, Angel," she murmurs. "I'm old. I'm ready to go. But first, I want..."

She wants. Wants to die? Wants me to kill her? For a moment, there's a flash in me... shock? Horror? (*I won't let you die! Drink!*) Pity? Recognition of a kindred soul? (*Go ahead! It should be nothing for ya... put the blade to the wall.*) I don't know, and it's gone before I can care.

"I've seen you around over the years," she purrs, "I've always thought you were so... beautiful..." (*Sire... you're so... exquisite... beautiful...*) She reaches up, a warm, gentle, wanting hand on my cheek, and there's that feeling again, a wrenching, this time, a pain. Touch. (*Oh. I didn't even notice...*) I growl. Alais doesn't flinch. She's not afraid anymore. There's only desire in her, the vague haze of drunkenness. Another vodka. The lamp goes out. Shadows.

Predator quick, I'm on her, pushing her back on the couch, stripping her bare (*Can unlace a corset in five seconds flat with me right hand tied behind me back, I can!*), tearing my own clothes off in the process.

My God. She's so warm. So soft. For a moment, I forget to forget, and I see hazel eyes, wide, innocent, so trusting, staring up at me with love and tears and rain. Golden hair tousled, breath quick. (*Show me... Angel... please...*)

I. Don't. Care.

I don't care if I lose my soul. I'm not sure I can, because I think maybe it's already dead, frozen, broken beyond repair. The two of us-- this ancient, desolate demon and I--naked, skin to skin, is too sweet... a perfect abyss to hide in, to fall into. Her breasts round and firm and full and so human... the nipples pebble up under my lips, and I whimper like a motherless child (*My parents were great -- tasted a lot like chicken!*) as I nurse at them. She wraps her long legs around my waist, slips a fine hand down to wrap around my cock, and sighs as she guides me into that wet... hot... tight... Ohhhhh... it's been so long... so long... (*Buffy... God, you feel so... good...*)

She wants me to fill her, this demon woman. She wants me to fill her emptiness. She clutches and claws and demands, thrusting up at me, driving me deep (*Yes, Sire! Harder! Please!*), begging me.

I have nothing but flesh to give. But I give it. I pound into her. I fill her. I do have it... I have so much... I fill her with my cock that's ached since a cold November morning, and the rage that there is no hope, no purpose, no reward. I drill her with my hate and all the death and the loss and the never-ending hunger, and all the things denied. I feel it now (*Everything you're going through... everything you've gone through...*). Everything rushes through me... out of me... into her. Darla's resurrection (*Now I find I need you... just like I've always needed you.*) Her redemption (*You'll never be alone again....*). Her murder at the fangs of my Childe (*He's not Daddy!*) My fault. I feel all the regret and the sorrow and the worry of my friends and fury at the Powers and missing Buffy with a tearing, wrenching agony, and remorse for the way I abused Spike and Dru and Penn and God, how many others....

Alais cries out-- in pain or empathy or pleasure, I don't know, and I don't care. She begs for me to give it to her, and I do. Fucking this demon, this stranger -- it's Heaven and Hell and Purgatory all in one, and I know it won't fill me or fix me, but for now it'll drain me... Take the edge off. Take the last of me. Take it all, bitch! (*No, really. I thought you were a pro.*)

And last, the demon rises... senses razor sharp, bloodlust renewed and climax exploding... I tear into her throat (I AM THE DEMON! THE DEMON IS ME!). Her blood is thick and sweet, hotter than human, her hands tangled in my hair, her inner muscles clenching me tight. I want to hurt her. I hammer into her. I want to love her. I drink from her. I want to feel her heart stop. I want to eat it raw, in front of her dying eyes. I want... She screams in ecstasy, and I roar in rage and pump the last of me inside of her, cold and dead. Alone. No purpose. No friends. No weapons. No hope. What's left?

She holds me in the darkness while I weep. She strokes my hair tenderly, like a lover, like a friend, (like Buffy) and tells me that everything is all right. There's always hope, she says. Always...

A stranger. She doesn't know. No one knows anymore. No one remembers but me, and soon I'll forget (just like her). Better off forgotten.

I creep out just ahead of the dawn, crawl into the sewers. I chase out a nest of fledglings and huddle into their filth to sleep.

I don't care. Nobody cares. There's no point to any of it at all, and nothing can convince me otherwise.

I curl up in the waste, feel it ooze into my hair, my skin, my clothes, the hole where my heart and soul used to be.

Death will find me, someday. She has to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My eyes snap open at sunset. The biological imperative irresistible. Unavoidable. The blood never forgets.

I'm soaked to the bone, twice as dead as 12 hours before when I lay crying in the arms of a comforting stranger (sin, betrayal, infidelity). Twice as empty, so I can't even feel the rage anymore. Just the hunger.

Again, it's rats. So much of my unlife defined by their wiggling, wire-tailed, diseased bodies. The bitter, thin (hopeless) taste of their blood. The strangled death squeal, the quick draining, the corpse tossed away like chicken bones (*What are you eating, like, a rat a month?*). I don't even want the blood. It tastes like corruption (death) and failure, and it satiates nothing.

I've always been weak. I've never been anything else. One rat, to take the pain away. No more. Someone stole my coat while I slept (*Why is Wesley wearing my coat?*) and I don't care. I don't remember why I ever wore it. It never kept away the cold (the pain).

I walk. Climb out of the sewer and into the bustling (living) thrumming of the LA night. I wanted this city to swallow me, when I arrived. I want it to devour me, now. I watch the humans scurrying (like rats) and wonder why they bother. There's no Heaven. No God. No eternal reward, no meaning at all. Just this. Right now. (*Of course I know what it means! It means pain, and suffering and disease, and death!*) Short, painful lives, souls shriveling, hearts crying out for something (*The same love still infects our hearts...simple death won't change that.*), anything to fill the endless void. Don't they know?

The night things are worse... the demons, the vampires, the other monsters, the always-ravenous. Their nothingness is wild, mindless. I see them skulking in shadows, waiting... for blood, for violence (death... get it, take it.), always waiting. Like I've been waiting, and it never comes.

What happened to the things I wanted? The people and other creatures I cherished? Even the pain is gone, the guilt, my constant companion of centuries. The rage, gone. I walk all night, searching. Something is coming (they're coming.) I should look for them... my childer? My mother? (My lovers, coming...) I don't know... kill them, before...

Kill who? Before what? What's coming? I don't remember. I don't care. All the faces of sweet dream and screaming nightmare are dulled, blurred. Another dawn threatens. I crawl back to the muck to sleep. Another dusk calls, and I rise. Another dawn. Another dusk. How many? I forget. Undead automaton. Monster of habit.

Soon, I don't rise anymore. I sink into the squalor and stop. No rats, no walking, not even waiting. Don't feel the thing take my wallet, my shoes, my watch. Beat me with something heavy. Sharp. Don't care.

Trappings. Man things. Don't care.

Four nights? Six? Ten? I drink with the wino who gets lost down here, and spare him by drinking him dry when his bottle is gone, and it doesn't fill me, but only makes me itch. Later... a day, a week, a century? A fledgling. Little blonde boy (old enough to shave, old enough to kill) with big, blue eyes and fine, chiseled features. Confused, lost, Sire dead (*You were my SIRE, man, my YODA!*). He shares his heroin. I haven't fed since the wino... the booze, the smack, the ugly, useless blood... Two pinpricks? Three? Just a pinprick, there'll be no more... Was that a song? Am I numb? He sucks me tenderly... calls me Master... I fuck him and drink him and pretend he's mine, and he feeds from me and cries...

Did I used to cry? Did I want to hurt him? (Spike... Will... my boy... my son... blue eyes... cool skin, like powder. Why is he crying?) He's tight and cold and dead, and there's not even the emptying, this time.... He calls out, but I am silent. Nothing.

The youngster goes with sunset, leaving the empty needle, crusted with his blood, and my blood and I don't know what else. I lean back against the wall and wonder if it's cold above, watch myself from outside myself... Dead Soul peering at the husk of a corpse. The needle breaks in my skin. Jagged glass draws blood... I pull it along my arm... is it my arm? The flesh separates, there should be pain, but it's over there somewhere, with the Dead Irish Brachen demon, the loyal black street kid, the former May Queen, the earnest Englishman. Back there with my soul and the beautiful, golden Slayer and the sky-eyed platinum blonde Childe of my blood. Gone with the soul of my lover, my Sire, and the Gypsy computer teacher and the hundreds and thousands whose names I never knew and whose faces once haunted me, but now all that's left is this.

Crimson rivulets of things I don't remember. One arm, then the other. Then legs -- thighs, calves. Stomach and chest... drip... drip... drip. It doesn't smell like anything. Dust in my veins.

I don't care about the blood anymore. Not even that single constant, and all I feel is empty when the wounds heal... slow, because there's something I should be doing, and that's gone, too... Why can't I die?

No hunter. No hero. The demon too, has left me. There's an empty space--more vacuum--where the hunt, and the howl, and the lust used to be. I don't wait for Death anymore. She'll never come. (they'll come.) I draw the sharp pictures in my impervious flesh and try to care and watch them heal, and all that's left are the opening and closing of wounds that don't hurt, tearing a corpse's skin. I can't find the pain. (they'll come.)

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Soon I can't remember to care about that, either. The broken needle falls to the floor and I fall beside it.

Someday...

*****
Part 3:

Buffy thinks about poetry, fairy tales, and just what all of this Sire/Childe business means.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go.

I remember, when I was little, my mom and dad used to read me fairy tales before bed. I'm not sure why -- some kind of weird brainwashing thing? I don't know. But the stories always promised every little girl that she was a Princess. That she would have One True Love. That the handsome, pure Prince of her heart would always come and rescue her from the Scary Things, carry her off on his magnificent steed, and they would live Happily Ever After in the castle.

I love my parents. I'm glad they're alive, and that I have them. I'm glad I didn't kill them -- directly or otherwise -- unlike some vampires I know. But I still have to wonder, what is it in them that decides it's okay to never tell us everything?

For instance, Mom never bothered to tell me that sometimes the handsome Prince has a delicately tethered demon living inside of him, or that the Scary Things win just as often as they lose, or that Happily Ever After is a lie.

Is riding off into the sunset a lot to ask, considering? With everything we've suffered, shouldn't we get that Happily Ever After? Shouldn't his eternity, and my short life, include each other? Don't we deserve at least that much, after everything we've done for the world?

And under what circumstances is it fair and right for the Prince to decide that he's just not good enough for the Princess, and instead of carrying her home to his castle to be blissfully happy forever, he turns and walks away, disappearing into the smoke of an apocalyptic battle with her blood in his veins, and her heart crushed beneath his feet?

Mother Goose must have forgotten that part. Just like she forgot the story where the Princess ends up driving a 50-year old tank of a car with no power steering that she can barely see through the windows of, because they're blocked out with black paint to protect the car's vampire owner. Barreling into the night with the Prince's immortal demon Childe and lover passed out beside you on the seat because he drank a stolen quart of your mother's whiskey in under 20 minutes. They never tell you that you might fuck said demon because so much of you is so desperately empty for the Prince, that you'll do anything to be close to him.

They never mention that the Prince might go insane and disappear, and that the Princess will be forced to relive every sweet and painful moment they spent together, and realize, maybe too late, just how hard she should have fought to keep him by her side.

Then there's the part about the Prince spending 500 years in Hell because the Princess loved him and had to run him through with a sword. And how the Princess followed the Prince's imperative to find someone who could "take her into the light" and "make love to her", and that was about all she ended up with. The stories never mention the other prince and how his kind, loving soul got crushed in the process for the crime of not being Him.

Riley was right -- I never loved him. I never should have let him fall in love with me in the first place. But something inside of me--maybe that poor, disillusioned Princess who's still waiting for the fairy tale to come true?--remembers what it was like to watch the Prince walk away, and maybe I just didn't want another man to disappear from my life. I didn't want to always be the one left alone.

So I ran after him. It was too late, though, and now I think maybe that was for the best. What would I have said to him, tonight? "Angel's flipped out and disappeared, and I swear this doesn't have anything to do with us, but I have to go and rescue him." Probably wouldn't have made Riley feel too good about himself.

He just wasn't my Prince, no matter how hard I pretended he was. No matter what I told Angel.

God, I'm so sorry for what I said that night in the police station. I'm sorry I didn't apologize when he did, and he didn't even have anything to apologize for. But no... everything between us has always been about me. Angel always put me first, and so did I, from the moment I first saw his face in the shadows behind the Bronze, to the night we made love (God, was that the only time I ever really made love?) to his leaving the only home he'd known for a hundred years. Always about me. I would take it all back , if I could, if I knew then what I know now. I would have done everything so differently.

No. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't change a moment of it. I'm still that selfish.

And now? What's the result of me only thinking of me? The Sire Angel killed to save my life was brought back from Hell, and... I don't even know what happened. It's been so long since he and I really talked. I remember how he used to sit there, his eyes shining with something I didn't understand, and listen to me go on and on about... what? I can't remember all those problems and complaints that used to be so earth-shattering, anymore. That's how really important they were. But Angel always listened patiently, and soothed and held me, imparting his sweet wisdom... He knew everything about me. Everything. He always knew exactly what to say, even when I didn't listen.

And now I realize I never knew anything about him at all but what he did or didn't feel about me. Typical.

Spike snorts in his sleep, as if to remind me that he's still there. A walking dead reminder of every goddamned thing that's ever gone wrong in my life. I want to blame it all on him, I really do, but I can't. Because I'm the Princess. I'm the blind, selfish moron. It's my fault, and nobody else's.

It's my fault that Angel's disappeared, and that he's lonely and hopeless, and that Cordelia was crying so hard on the phone I couldn't understand half of what she was saying.

My fault. Mine. All me.

So, I drive. It's time for me to be the Slayer, to really take responsibility for my place in the world. To show my Prince that I love him and only him, and all the rest was a lie. To show him that I was listening, and maybe now I'm starting to understand.

"We there yet?"

Impatient, slightly drunk, really scared, sleepy voice from beside me in the dark. Spike's a child, not just a Childe. A little boy who had everything stolen from him, too. He never apologizes for who and what he is. He never regrets. He loves me, in his own way. But it wasn't until tonight that I really understood why.

There are things that my friends... maybe even my Watcher... don't really know about vampires. I don't think they know about the Blood. All they know is that when you can see it on the outside, it's Bad. They don't know what it feels like to have your lover draw it out of your veins in a pulsing rush. They don't know that it tastes like new pennies suspended in corn syrup. And they certainly don't know that it binds people so tightly together that nothing -- not a hundred years, and certainly not 200 miles -- can separate them.

"No. We've still got about a half an hour, I think. We have to stop and get gas again," I tell him. The Prince's bastard offspring. The Childe of his Blood.

"Shoulda stolen a Hyundai," he grumbles. It's the second time we've had to stop this heap already.

As I watch the numbers on the pump crawl by, I think... every second we're standing here is one more second that Angel is in pain... every minute, we're closer to losing him forever.

Spike looks up from the gas nozzle. His face is perfectly impassive, telling me nothing about how he feels about all this. Two hours ago, it was screwed up in agony and ecstasy, and there were tears pouring out of his eyes, and he was sobbing Angel's name as he fucked me.

It was good... not poetry and flowers good, but... "I hurt inside and only you can heal me with this pain" good. It's really hard to explain. But the one thing I got out of it is the realization that no matter how much he complains about Angel, he still loves him.

"We'll find him, Pet. We'll bring him back," he promises. His cold hand rests on my shoulder, and I can feel 62.3 degrees of worry right through my coat. "Don't worry."

Don't worry. Don't worry about that pesky oxygen, Buffy. You'll only die if you can't breathe.

"I know," I reply. I can't even let myself imagine that he is wrong. Angel can't disappear forever. He can't die. The idea is too painful to let into my head. A world without him walking somewhere on its face just isn't a world worth being the Slayer for.

We'll find him. I don't know how... or where... or what condition he'll be in. Right now I don't care.

* "Buffy, it's Cordy. I... There's, um...can you come... *SOB* Buffy, he's... he's GONE! He fired us all and he's gone totally crazy and nobody's been able to find him for days! He fired us! *choke* and D-darla... They brought her b-back... *Sob* and she was in his dreams, and he wasn't sleeping, *snuffle* and he just... He bit Kate and then Drusilla turned her, and he let them kill all the lawyers, and now he's GONE!"*

Like one piece of really confusing bad news right after the other.

The funny thing is, I already knew. I knew that something had gone wrong with him. I felt it in my bones. In my blood.

See what I mean about the Blood?

Which means that Spike knew, too. I wonder if he was ignoring it as hard and as purposefully as I was? For weeks, I put that weird tickling, itching in my skin off to exhaustion, to stress, to my sister, my mom, my Duty, my period. Not enough protein. Not enough green vegetables. Not enough aerobic exercise. A nightmare. A sad movie. It couldn't be Angel, because, after all, I was living a normal life, right? He was of the past.

The idea is as funny and sad now as it was two years ago. God... has it been two years? Shouldn't it have stopped hurting by now?

I look at Spike, the way his face looks paler than usual in the fluorescent lights of the gas station, how sad his eyes are, even as he smirks at me like he knows my every dirty little secret (which he does), and I remember:

A century later, it still hurts him. A whole human lifetime, plus thirty years, and his heart is still broken. I couldn't exist that long feeling like this.

We have to find him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I once asked Oz why he was so quiet all the time. He gave me that "too wise for a guy my age" look, and said, "I'm listening to my inner monologue."

I wondered what he talked to himself about, because everything that came out of his mouth was either wet-your-pants funny, or so important to what was going on, you couldn't ignore it. There's no one left in our group now with that kind of blunt wisdom. There's no one left who says those things that should or have to be said, but never are.

Except Spike. Where he used to spend all his time practicing to be the very best Big Bad he could be, now he's becoming a Master Button Pusher.

Like tonight. They way he just picked and poked at me when I didn't want to think about or feel that nagging sensation that something was... off. The little voice inside me that kept insisting Something way beyond the fact that my lover left me... something below my sister being some kind of an otherworldly force, or that I didn't finish half my classes last semester, or that my mother could have died of brain cancer, or that my father didn't even bother to call and see how she was... and, oh yeah, the fact that there's a powerful "She-Who-Cannot-Be-Named" Demigod Demon Chick out for my blood. This was something else that I didn't even want to acknowledge, and there Spike was, forcing it all out of me...

Moping is my favorite way to not cope. It's an escape. Playing chess with one part of my brain, and not thinking with the other was a really good way to forget that what was wrong with my world was something that came from deep in my cells. I don't need another crisis to deal with, I kept telling myself. I don't want to think about my abandonment issues, or how much I miss Angel, or the fact that by losing Riley, I had failed him, somehow... or that something was really, really wrong.

But Spike couldn't just leave me to my denial. He had to make me process, make me listen, make me feel, and all of that just exploded out of me and ended up making me rip his clothes off, right there in front of God and all the dead people in the cemetery. He always does those things... those fucking annoying things that make me want to take his head off with a butter knife, at the same time that he makes me feel better. He drives me up the wall.

And somehow, I still care about him. He's my... friend... sort of. Part of me, and part of Angel, too, and now... now he's technically my lover, even though I really don't think that what we did had as much to do with him and I as it did Angel.

Exit 24, "Silver Lake." I pull off the highway, and whack Spike on the arm.

"HEY!" he yelps, sitting bolt upright. "What?"

"Which way?"

"Which way what?"

I sometimes wish my glares were solid. And made of pointed wood. "The directions," I snap, "In your hand. Which fucking way do I turn???"

I'm all out of patience. We just don't have time for him to be groggy. He might be immortal, but all the forever in the world won't save our hearts if Angel is gone.

"Take a right, here. Next light, left. Go eight blocks to the..." he reads.

"Hold it. One turn at a time. Just... please. Stay awake."

He grunts and sits up in the seat, blue eyes straight ahead on the road. He's suddenly not smiling anymore. Can he feel them? His family? His sister-lover, his Sire-lover, his GrandSire-- were they lovers too? Is lover even the right word for what they are?

Oh... my... God. I had sex with Spike.

Spike and Angel were lovers.

Spike loves Angel.

Three realizations -- or maybe, first really realized realizations-- like three rapid, full-strength punches to my gut, and I almost drive right off the road with the stunning jolt of it.

"Bloody Hell, woman!" Spike bitches, yanking the wheel back, "Arabs got it right -- birds shouldn't be allowed to drive! Pull the Hell over!"

I do, but not because he said so. I do it because I'm suddenly shaking so hard, I can't keep my hands on the steering wheel, and if we have a wreck and die, then there'll be no one left to find Angel.

Spike doesn't waste any time arguing or comforting me. He drags me up over his lap and dumps me in the passenger seat beside him, and takes my place driving. Fast.

That saying from sex ed --- you know, the one that sounds like that old shampoo commercial? "You're not just sleeping with one person, you're sleeping with everybody they've slept with, and everybody they slept with, and so on and so on and so on..." It just took on a whole new, really unpleasant meaning... And the Blood Ties thing makes my head spin.

I fucked Spike. Right there in the graveyard where Angel and I used to hunt and neck like horny teenagers... only with stakes and vampire dust and stuff.

Angel. It all comes back to Angel. Earlier tonight, last week, last year, four years ago, a hundred years ago, right now... it's all about this one vampire that we love. We're all caught in this web together, and I have no idea how we could get out, or if we could, or if the platinum blonde vampire son of the Great Love of My Life and I even want to.

We have to save him, because I don't know what will happen to us if we don't.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Angel used to love to give me poetry. Sometimes he would read it to me in front of the fireplace at the mansion. Sometimes I would find little notes in his old-fashioned handwriting on heavy parchment paper, tucked into my locker at school when I got there in the morning. Once he gave me a book. I lost it, like I lost him. I bought another copy, just to know what he was thinking, but it wasn't the same. He told me once that I was poetry, to him.

I never understood. How could I? I was a little kid who'd never been outside California, except for two weeks in Michigan every summer. I was 100% American teenager... I liked "Beverly Hills: 90210." I flunked French. The only unusual blip in my life was the fact that I killed vampires and their assorted Hellbeast buddies for a living. Poetry, to me, was Backstreet Boys' songs. What did I know about love? About finding that one other person in the universe who completes you? The only one who can always make you laugh or cry or sigh... How could I have known how precious his loyalty, friendship, and love really were?

He was 243. Two. Hundred. And. Forty. Three. He had seen every square inch of the world. He met the poets, the authors, the composers. He saw the plays and the operas during their first runs. He told me that he once laughed in Bram Stoker's face. He'd tasted the wines of a hundred countries. Drank the blood of a dozen cultures. He had been utterly and completely alone but for his guilt and his ghosts and his self-loathing for a hundred years. Ten times my life span, almost.

Alone, until me.

Of course I couldn't understand. Maybe I still really don't. Like the difference between knowing why he left me, and believing it. I never forgave him that. I forgave him Angelus, and all those months of torture... how could I not? But I never forgave him for shattering my fairy tale. For not staying and trying. For smashing my heart into little pieces.

I wish I could tell him. I wish I had told him. I hope I'll get another chance. I promise I won't waste the next one by being angry and talking without thinking first. I need this... maybe he does, too. However it happened, he is in my blood, just as he is in Spike's, and I need this chance to make things right between us.

There's this one poem he read to me... right now, my heart remembers it, as I think of this man that I love, and all the things that tie us together. All the things that keep us apart. I look at Spike, driving with his brow furrowed, an unlit Marlboro clenched between his teeth, and I think about how the same barriers to Angel are reversed, for him. For both of us, the soul is the thing that is always in the way. The thing that has robbed us of what we love. But the Blood still ties us together, and we all understand and know each other, somehow.

I remember as we drive to search for him. To save him. I wonder if Spike has things he left unsaid. I wonder if he was remembering and regretting when he was inside me, and he called out Angel's name.

This poem... this one little song... its all about him, and us. I think about it, and I watch the last miles to Cordelia's house pass, and I pray as I recite it to myself. Please hold on, Angel. We're coming. We love you. Don't leave us again.

*somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience,
your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near.

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose.

or if your wish be to close me, I and my life
will shut very beautifully,
suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow
carefully, everywhere descending.

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me
with the colour of its countries; rendering death and forever
with each breathing.

(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.*

*****