Rated – PG-13
        Disclaimer – Not mine. Don’t sue.
        Dedication – To Angie, Michelle and Nicole who are wonderful betas and better friends.
        Author’s Notes: Set mid-second season.
 

    I am haunted.
    It’s a simple as that. Call it a tortured soul or a need for redemption, it doesn’t matter what you dress it up as. I’m still haunted.
    I can’t remember all the faces of the people I’ve killed. I can’t remember the unique flavor of each warm droplet of blood I drank greedily or the screams my victims made or didn’t.
    There have been too many for me to remember them all and the man I was at the time didn’t care to notice too many details about his victims. The man I am now cares about who they were, what they could have been. But, I’m still grateful that I don’t remember all of my sins clearly. It would be overwhelming.
    I heard Cordelia and Wesley talking once, back when I tried so earnestly to somehow do enough good to redeem myself. She said, in a hushed voice never meant to reach my ears, that she thought that more than anything it was the screams that haunted me, that the need to silence them kept me on my nightly mission to save the world. Back then I would have said she was right. She wasn’t.
    I realize now that the screams are a blessing. When I hear them, I know that somewhere a victim is still alive, waiting for me to save them. It’s the silence that haunts me.
    There were those I killed that screamed so loudly my ears rang. There were others who didn’t even let lose a whimper. But, by the time I was done with them, they were all silent. All of them. The British aristocrats over two hundred years ago. The French prostitutes that soon followed. The Romanian gypsy girl whose silence cost me my soul. The lawyers of Wolfram and Hart just a few weeks ago, who I silenced with a door rather than fangs. It’s all the same thing. With a closed door or a bite, I silenced them all.
    Silence is all I’m left with, now. With Wesley and Cordelia and Gunn out of my life, there’s no one left to break the silence.    It surrounds me, envelopes me like a physical force. Silence has become my only companion, but I think that’s how it has to be.
    Undisturbed quiet can chill the air or darken a room or send a mind reeling into the past. It is the only memory I have of all of my victims and it’s consuming me.
    If I am ever to begin to atone for my wrongs, I first have to acknowledge them all.
    I can sit, alone in a dark room, with my eyes closed and relive every life I took, every death I relished. I can feel the weight of a faceless body go limp in my arms. I can taste the sweet, coppery flavor of blood on my lips. I can hear the nothingness that always follows a kill.
    Part of me loves it, clings to it with craving and pleasure. The other part of me is disgusted and grieves for my victims and for myself. But for both parts, the silence is all that is left.