Title: Everlasting Love

Author: Alan Hitchen

Email: darkmere2000@yahoo.co.uk

Disclaimer: BtVS belongs to Joss Whedon and others

Pairing: Buffy/f

Rating: PG-13 (mild language)

Based on: Into the Woods

Summary: Buffy writes a note for posterity

I know how will it end, but how did it start? I often think about that, and how things would be different if I had killed her as I'd planned. I'd dusted the rest of them, but I recognised her, the vampire whore who had been servicing Riley, and let her go. Then I changed my mind and was going to spear her in the back, when pity stayed my hand again.

I ordered her to stop and turn around. She was nothing, just a scrawny kid with all the allure of an open grave. Why would he want her and not me? What did she have that I didn't? I had to know. I had to ask. So I let her live.

She was so scared of me she literally pissed herself. There she stood in a puddle of her own urine. She looked so pathetic what anger I had for her evaporated on the spot. I'd had my revenge, now I wanted answers. I took her home.

I got the feeling she hadn't seen hot water and soap in a month of sundays. I left her to it and got myself something to eat. Later, she came down to the kitchen wearing an old dress of mine. Without the game-face, the grime, and her hair tied back, she looked almost pretty.

She knew by now I wasn't going to hurt her, but she was still nervous as she sat down and I asked her some questions.

She had been Alison Taylor, an 18 year old student, but that was two years ago. Now she was a lowly vampire, as timid in unlife as she had been in real life. She claimed to have never killed anyone and I believed her. I had killed her sire so she never learned what she was supposed to do, but she had to live, and that was why she had joined those vampires selling themselves to people like Riley, thrillseekers with more money than sense. It wasn't much of an existance, but it was all she had and I'd just taken it away from her, I felt like shit.

We talked for hours about this and that. I had wanted to talk about Riley, but it no longer seemed important. This girl was. This girl who could have been me, who had been robbed of her future just like me, she was important to me.

We went to bed together. Just to sleep. And for the first time in a long time I slept easily with none of the usual nightmares. Fast asleep with a vampire without a soul or inhibitor chip. I must have been crazy, yes? Well, maybe I was, but I trusted her and she trusted me. Next day, I awoke and found myself cuddled up to her, my nose buried in her clean scented hair and my arms encirling her protectively, it felt so good, so right.

She woke shortly afterwards and turned to face me. I smiled at her and she smiled back, and she looked so beautiful at that moment it took my breath away.

"Hungry?" I asked her, meaning breakfast cereal. "Yes," she replied, meaning blood, and I came back to earth with a bump. No matter what I felt about her now, Alison was still a vampire. There was pigs blood in the fridge, I could have given her that, but instead I gave her for free what Riley paid for, I offered her my neck.

With Angel it had been an act of desperation; with Dracula an act of seduction and control; with Alison it felt like an act of love. I then understood what Riley wanted and why I could never give it to him.

When she finished drinking from me I impulsively kissed her and tasted myself on her bloody lips. The coppery tang of liquid life seared into my tongue and made me jump. I could see in her eyes she wanted more. More of my lips, my tongue, my blood, and I wanted to give it to her, but I panicked and sent her to live with Harmony instead. I figured Alison couldn't get into too much trouble with the world's most incompetent vampire.

Then things got a little hectic for me and I forgot all about her. Well, there was Glory, and death, of my mother, then myself, and heaven, and coming back, and Faith out of jail, and falling in love with her, and marrying, and divorcing, and a million other things, before before Willow and Tara finally managed to close the hellmouth for good and I retired from Slaying duty. And in all that time I never saw Alison once.

Not until the day I died.

An old enemy had returned to even the score. I killed him, but not before he killed me. She found me, badly injured, dying. She offered me love and eternity with her. I accepted.

That was over 400 years ago, and I love her now as much as I did when I first kissed her. But I'm a Slayer, not a vampire, even if I am a benign one. Eternity is just too long, I can't live like this any more. I want it to end but I can't leave her behind, I can't leave her alone and friendless.

I killed her today, I took her by surprise and staked her from behind. I think she knew. I think she let me do it. I think she loved me that much. I think I'm a monster! When I finish writing this I'm going to follow her. She promised me everlasting love. I can only hope she was right.

The End.