Talking to Him
by Mad Poetess 

I keep trying. A hundred and twenty-six years and I keep trying to 
find somebody not quite as twisted-up as me, and do I ever succeed? 
Angel, in the morning, sometime tomorrow, he'll corner me and he'll 
ask me all the questions he was too *nice* to ask last night, and 
he'll ask me sooner or later where the six years came from, as if I 
can't count from eighteen eighty to two thousand. As if I didn't have 
just as good an education as he did. One year I add onto my death for 
every month I spent in that fucking wheelchair, so sorry, please 
forgive the language, that's where they came from. One year for every 
month I thought he was back and he wasn't, it was some bastard with 
his face who didn't... Sorry.

I keep trying. My little girl. His little girl. Crazy sweet child 
woman who could read my mind when she had her hands on me, who read 
my mind in an alley and said one word that made me stop and give her 
my soul. What'd she do with the poor thing, I wonder. Gave it to that 
creepy Miss Edith? Except it was Princess Charlotte, back then, with 
the porcelain head that the Bitch, and I won't apologize for that, 
smashed against a wall when she was angry with Dru, and my little one 
crying like her poor heart was broken. For about five minutes, until 
I handed her a pretty red-headed girl wrapped up in a Christmas bow 
and she had a new dolly. For a day or so. She tended to break things, 
our Dru, just like she was...broken.

I keep trying, and here's this one in my arms. He scared nine hells 
out of me just a few days ago, lost someplace I couldn't find him, 
asked me, told me, ordered me to hit him and hit him just to bring 
him back, and the chip never even buzzed at me. Never gave a whisper. 
And he won't tell me. All I have in this world, now, and he won't 
tell me where I almost lost him to, and God, he's broken. He's 
broken. Tonight when I thought it was safe as houses and I had him 
back, tonight in this flat in the dark, with Angel's little Girl 
Friday sleeping a room away, he slept on the sofa so nobody would 
know I love him, most of all him, and he had a bad dream. 

And he woke me up from some scrap about Darla, about Dru, the sort of 
mindless idiocy I've dreamt for years and never cared about. Faces 
change, song remains the same. Woke me up from the first nightmare, 
if you want to call it that, since the first morning after, when I 
sat up and he was gone and the bed was cold. And like he's done all 
his short little life, he'd gone for donuts. Donuts. I could eat him 
up sometimes. 

Not had one dream like that again, not me, not a one, not since then, 
and he crawls up tonight hot and shaking on me, and his back cold 
with sweat and he's got chocolate on his hand that I put there, and I 
lick it clean and somewhere in there he starts to cry. Cry and cry 
and it's all I can do not to join him, but I don't. Haven't. In 
ninety-eight years, I haven't cried but once, and that when I was so 
drunk I don't have to admit to anything I said or did, except damn me 
if I didn't apologize for hitting this one on the head. My boy. Lost 
boy. Christ, and shouldn't the word burn my tongue, but it never has.

He doesn't love me. He can't possibly love me, I'm everything he's 
learned to hate in almost twenty years of living on the Hellmouth. 
I'm a monster and I'm proud of it, I live for it, I died from loving 
it, and he doesn't love me. But he trusts me, and he lets me pretend, 
even if he doesn't know that's what I'm doing. He trusts me enough to 
climb into my lap and cry until he can't shake anymore, and all I 
could do was rock him back and forth and try not to let him know the 
rocking was for me. Just for me. And he wouldn't tell me why. He 
doesn't know. If he doesn't know, and I don't know, and you, well you 
haven't answered me for longer than I care to remember...

And then... and then he asks me to drink from him. Asks and I can't 
believe he thinks I need it though I do and then he says it's not for 
me and he's broken. He's this tiny little thing for all he's a 
smidgen taller and a little wider and he smells like sick right now 
but usually he smells like warm and sweet and I don't cry. Not ever. 
Not for anybody. Not since the only one I trusted enough to crawl 
into his lap and cry... I don't cry, but my boy's asleep in my arms 
and I could've killed him when he fell away into that bloodsweetness 
that came when I had my teeth in him. He could've died, because I'm 
just as lost as he is, and the fool chip didn't think I was hurting 
him, because he *wanted* it. First time I've *ever* hated that thing 
for *not* doing its job, and... 

I don't cry, alright? He's sleeping and it would wake him up anyway 
and it took more than I had left to smile at him and play as if 
everything was fine, when nothing's fine at all. He's sleeping, and 
you won't make me wake him up. So if you're watching, if you think 
because I'm William now, in the dark and inside my head and Spike and 
the rest of the parts that shout at me for reminding them I'm here 
have finally gone to sleep, if you think I'll cry for you, when you 
never answered me in a hundred, hundred, how many? Never you never 
answered me, you bastard, and here's this one in my arms and who 
broke him in the end, if not you? I won't cry for you. I will not. 
Not for you, not for me, and as for him...

Just don't look at me. Sweet Jesus, just don't look at me.