"Y'know, everyone I love can't stand who I am.
Bollocks, first of all, to the idea that a vampire can't love. I know we can, because I do it every damn day of my existence. It may not be mushy-gushy, and it's often interspersed with periods of violence and heavy bloodshed, but it's still love. I would know, of course, having loved three people more insanely than you'll ever understand.
Y'see, you hate me because you made me. You're my Sire, and you take responsibility for every bloody thing I do, which gives you the opportunity to brood twice as much as you normally do. Because of that bloody soul you want to forget how much I loved you, because that would mean accepting all the things you did to me and with me.
I sure as hell wouldn't change a damn thing. And you can blather on and on about how it would all be different if I had a soul, but I don't and I like it that way. It's all bloody well and good for you, remembering all the bad bits of the past two hundred fifty years, but what about the good one? The parts were you would let me stay in your bed, where you claimed me as your own and protected me? For chrissakes, Sire, I am you Childe, and you can beat up on yourself as much as you want with the whole soul business, but that doesn't change the fact that I love you still and if you had one damn bit of sense you would love me too.
Dru loved me, as best she could. She was the only person who accepted me for who I was, mainly because she was too batty to do otherwise. I remember that feeling of exhileration when I first realized that I had control of how I felt and what I should do. Because I was a vampire. Dru loved that about me, the abandon. She cried for weeks when you left us, when Darla left us. And I fell ever more in love with her because we both felt the same what. What are childer to do when their Sire has left them? Oh, yes, we did make our way for a hundred years having a jolly good time, but it wasn't the same without you.
And of course, she hates me now. Hates what I am. The first time she left me it was because I turned against you. Ironic when you think of it. Angelus, you, were the one I loved more than anyone else, but when I finally got you back you wanted nothing to do with me. You left us, and when you came back you punished me for being able to get along without you. So I began to hate you, and I did something about it Dru left me.
The second time she left me, she smelled something on me. I reeked of Sunnydale, and the Angel and the Slayer. That's what she said. With that in mind, I did the idiot thing and went back to the place that destroyed me. I went for the Gem of Amarra, as you well know, because more than anything I wanted to destroy the things that destroyed me.
After I left you in L.A. I brought myself back to Sunnydale. I can't get away from here now. I'm stuck here. Danm hellmouth. Got myself chipped, fell for the Slayer and threw myself into untold dimensions of hell. Figuratively.
Falling for the Slayer was worse that hating you. I hated you because you didn't love me anymore, ensouled or not. I loved the Slayer, and she hated me for what I am. She hates that I'm a vampire she can stand to be around, and she wishes I were easier to understand, to fit into her her little ideas of what's right and wrong. But she knows that if I weren't a vampire, she'd still hate me because I wouldn't be able to keep up with her. Paradoxical, isn't it, that she needs a vampire to keep up with her but she hates being around them? Rather like you. You both hate that I'm a vampire, but if I wasn't, than how could you love me? You made me into the big bad. She made me into a neutered puppy.
Christ, Sire. I can't seem to do anything right. I can't make the people I love most love me back, or accept me for who I am. I can't change. I'm a goddamned vampire, who's in love with the two people that can't stand him the most. I don't know what I am anymore, because I'm not the big bad and I'm hardly a white hat. I'm stuck in the bloody middle, walking both sides of the line knowing that sooner or later I'm probably going to get evicerated for being so entirely pathetic.
What's a lovesick vampire to do when the people he loves hate him?"
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.