Not Entirely Perfect
Disclaimer:(Unfortunately) none of the characters are mine, as they all belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enenmy and friends. I've borrowed them to play with and promise to give them back.
Humanity.
Something I dreamt about, hoped for, prayed for, for two hundred long years. Even after her death, the tantalising thought kept me going, gave me a reason for continuing. I longed for life. I knew it would be perfect.
I was wrong.
I tried not to dream. I tried not to remember that long-ago amazing day that never happened. But the problem was, part of me was human all along, and that part of me kept on hoping despite everything. Even when I watched my friends die, and their children, I hoped that when I was alive, I would not be alone any longer, that my memories would fade into a blur.
The truth is, I'm more alone, more depressed than ever. I hated being a vampire. The few positives never made up for the negatives, not when I had them. Now, though - now I am weak, slow, clumsy; my hearing is feeble and my sight pathetic, and I want so much to have back the powers I detested. I can go out whenever I want, but what is there to do in this grey concrete world? The lakes and rivers are polluted, the grass built on and the trees felled, the air I longed so desperately to breathe is stale and filthy. Increasingly books, once my favourite pastime for whiling away the endless days, are impossible to find and languages are disappearing.
So I return to my oldest solace. When I was young it was an escape from my domineering father, my clinging mother, my rowdy younger siblings. These days it's an escape from myself. Alcohol helps me forget the long years spent fighting, a fight now denied me. If I went out now armed only with a stake I would die.
The irony is part of me longs for death as violently as it once longed for life. I have spent hours enumerating the possibilities, but in this fragile human shell none of them are sure. If I jumped from a building I risk paralysis. If I overdose on pills I might not take enough. Everyone knows slitting your wrists never works; shooting myself would as likely give me brain damage as kill me. The most certain way is, in fact, to try and fight my former kind, and die honourably.
I have also thought long and hard about pleading with a vampire to turn me again, to return me to what I was. Unleash Angelus on the world once more. At least I was happy then, without the bonds of guilt to torment me, when I was afraid of nothing. As I sit alone in the bars of this great metropolis, a glass of something strong clutched between my hands, I am afraid of everything; of living, of dying, of other people, of demons, of my past. Afraid of trying to find a job, afraid of passing what days are left to me in solitude and poverty.
This is not what I dreamed of, not the perfect life in a white house by the sea, every day spent in bliss with my Buffy and several beautiful children, a life where the sun always shone and I was always happy. This was supposed to be my reward. Instead it feels more like a punishment.
Humanity is a curse greater than that given by the gypsies. No moment of perfect happiness can release me now, and so I return to my drink. It's not entirely perfect, but it's all I have left.
END.