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Cowardice
Author: Jo
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas.
Wordcount: 500
Setting: The Harvest
Notes: Written for ba_rosebuds.
Prompt ‘Cowardice’.
**
Cowardice
He loved the Slayer as soon as he saw her, with the sun on her hair and her
baby-pink nail polish. He knows, but won’t admit it. That way brings only
madness, torment and death. And for decades he’s been... careful. It’s
strange what having a soul will do to a vampire. It’s made him careful of
his life, because when he was human, religion meant something, and he’s
been taught how terrible life after death will be for a sinner. He has to
face the fact there are no worse sinners than him. That’s not going to say
much for his eternity, if he gets dusted.
If she is going to fall tonight, he doesn’t want to go down with her. He
fears the long march of ages burning in Hellfire if he dies. And he fears
being taken alive if he fights the other vampires as the Slayer’s ally.
He’s seen what the Master does to captive enemies, and that would be
everlasting suffering as dreadful as Hell.
Buffy asked why he didn’t stop the Harvest. He said he was afraid, and
that’s the truth. He hadn’t expected so many strong vampires, when he came
here. He doesn’t believe she can do it so he has let her go alone. Yet, as
he stands in this mausoleum, watching her disappear down the tunnel to stop
the Harvest, he wants to go with her. To watch her back. To protect her.
She’s such a tiny thing, half-girl half-woman, but with the heart of a
lioness. Could she really beat that bat-nosed old vamp? Could she really
stand in the way of prophecy, and the Master?
The Sunnydale vampires don’t like him. They think he’s a perversion of
vampirehood, about as welcome as a tramp at a wedding, but so far they’ve
done no more to him than the equivalent of warding off the evil eye. Darla
knows that she brought this upon him. Perhaps she’s hoping to fix him, to
reverse his neutering.
He hunches a shoulder, unhappy with himself. Buffy knows the odds are
against her, and she’s gone in there anyway. Gone to do her duty, while he
waits here, a hesitant messenger preparing to take the tidings of doom to
the Watcher.
Is he a coward, to be thinking like this? He never used to think that of
himself. He kicks a fragment of bone into a corner of the mausoleum. Has a
century of brooding over his sins made him a coward? It’s not cowardice,
right? It’s just being careful. He can’t possibly have loved her on sight,
because he’s a thing without a heart, without true devotion. Maybe he
really is as stupid as the demon makes him feel.
He reaches a pact with himself. If Buffy comes out alive, he’ll take a
chance, step up to the plate. Perhaps he’ll find that the tinman can have a
heart, the strawman a brain. And just maybe, the cowardly lion will find
his roar.
The End
August 2010
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