The Absence of Breath By – Isis_uf [email protected]           Disclaimer – Not mine. Don’t sue.           Rating – PG-13           Author’s Notes – This is based on the season 5                       premiere. Also, I should credit the music that                       spurned this strange little fic: “Devil’s Dance” by                       Metallica.

            You’d think she would be used to it by now, a vampire’s eerily breathless words. But as he spoke, his mouth so near her ear, she’d held her breath unconsciously awaiting a rush of hot breath to accompany his words and dance across the side of her face. It never came, of course, it couldn’t, but she felt a chill run down her spine anyhow.

             She knew, from the beginning, that he was toying with her. Using her like a fascinated child would a new present at Christmastime before destroying it or moving on to a newer, more interesting toy. Just the same, she’d found herself powerless to stop him. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.

             There was something thrilling about the danger of it all, her game of Russian roulette with the dark, mysterious vampire. She’s always been in control of everything. Her survival has depended on it. But, he won’t allow her any measure of control in their game of cat and mouse. His very presence demands complete dominance and leaves her near helplessness, a victim subject to his every whim. The truth is she likes it and that petrifies her.

             His icy blue eyes, almost entirely masked by his dark pupils, meet her stare and look straight through her to the very depths of her soul. In that instant, she knows he understands her better than she understands herself, maybe better than she ever will.

             When he speaks again, his words echo a twisted version of a lover’s declarations and she will wonder later, in the morning, if that is exactly what they were. But, at the moment, she’s too far under his spell to think of anything other than his breathless, lilted voice caressing her ear.

             He’s searched for her.

             He’s yearned for her.

             Somehow, she knows without question that this much is true. Maybe it’s because she feels drawn to him as well, like there’s a magnetic pull she can’t deny and doesn’t want to. There’s no other explanation as to why she’s playing this dangerous game. Sooner or later everyone loses at Russian roulette.

            He tells her he’s searched forever for a being whose darkness rivals his own.

            Tomorrow she’ll be greatly disturbed by this comment and its implications, but in the moment it means nothing to her. She’s too mesmerized by his probing, dark eyes and his melodic, breathless voice to realize that the darkness he speaks of is the same one she’s fought for years.

            He notes that she’s been tasted and she fights to exhume a name that once meant so much to her. She can almost see his face, dark and brooding with a softness when he looks at her, but she can’t remember his name at the moment and though she realizes that that should bother her, it doesn’t.

            His whispers break through her vain attempt to retrieve any memory through the haze that he’s created in her mind. He tells her in a hushed but urgent voice that the one who first bit her wasn’t worthy; he let her go.

            She stares at him blindly, knowing in another time and place she would have had the words to counter his claims, something witty or sarcastic. But this moment isn’t about a battle of words. It’s a moment of truth.

            Every last word he’s said, she knows deep down to be true. It’s frightening and it’s alluring, all in one, but most of all it’s honest.

            A thought crosses her mind briefly, a wonder as to whether he’s incapable of lying or if he just finds no use for it. But before she can ponder the mysteries of the vampire before her, she feels his sharp fangs bury themselves in her neck.

            It’s terrifying and intoxicating all at once, but for reasons she can’t yet understand, she doesn’t fight it.

            She gasps in surprise or fear or pleasure, she’ll never acknowledge which, at the surreal sensation of his mouth breathlessly stealing away her blood, her control and her desire for either.

            Just before she passes out, she wonders if this was how Druscilla felt before she turned and if it bothered her at all to never feel her sire’s breath.