Summary: This little thing was inspired by Lucien's last words to Kraven before he died. I wondered what it is that lichens think of or feel before they die. This is my version of what went on between his last words and his last breath. It's dedicated to the loving memory of Margaret, a wonderful woman I never met, but loved dearly.

"Not Man, Nor Monster"

"You may have killed me," he hissed painfully, still defiant. "But my will is done regardless." Gunshots rang out and the impacts felt far away, though he knew that they were happening to him close by. Pain shot up his arms and down his legs. His lungs burned and his eyes watered as they lost their sharp focus and clouded with death.

They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. All that Lucien could see was a blur of light. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It drew closer and he realized with a start that it was sunlight. There before him stood the only light his life had ever held.

"Sonja?" he whispered. Her golden hair tumbled around her shoulders as she turned and smiled at him, blue eyes sparkling mischievously. She held out one hand to him and he felt his arm lift to take her hand. In the distance, there was another loud crack, maybe another gunshot, maybe not. Sonja, his love, his bride, did not react to it, so he did not either.

"Welcome home," her voice whispered across his mind, and her smile grew as she slipped her hand into his palm. She pulled him close and he could smell the delicate floral scent of her hair and the spicy-sweet scent on her skin. His own scent, as she had always smelled when she was alive.

"I am dead," he said, half awed, half overjoyed. She nodded tenderly and kissed her cheek.

"We are together again, my love," she replied, squeezing him tightly.

"But this is so…how is this…?"

"Your will is done, my Lucien," she answered the question he couldn't ask. "Our son is reborn in this descendent of Corvinus you have sought so long and hard. You have ended the war that was started that day, so long ago." She sighed and pressed tighter into his arms.

"I…" He sighed and held her tighter. "I only wanted you. You were all I ever wanted." He felt the tears burning in his eyes and buried his face in her shoulder. She whispered soft nothings to him as she gently smoothed down his hair. "I never wanted to go to war."

"It doesn't matter anymore," she replied. "The daughter of my kind, this Selene, and her Michael, the hybrid you have created, they will end the war, end what was started the day my father had me killed." She pulled back to look him in the face. "We are together again. That is all that matters."

He nodded. "I am at peace."

Her smile was dazzling. "And I am with you. There is nothing else that matters." She cupped his face in her hands and smiled, kissing his lips once. "I would have waited forever for you. Now we can go."

"This is not heaven?"

Her laugh was gentle and intoxicating, as it had been when he'd fallen in love with her. "Our kinds do not get a heaven, my love. But we do have paradise. And that is where we belong, together. We will never be parted again."

"Never."

Selene had never known Lucien, and she had spent most of her life believing him to be a monster and worthy of destruction. Her every thought for more than six hundred years had been focused on the complete and total decimation of his entire kind. And now…

Now, she couldn't help but feel the twinge of regret and even sadness at his passing. He was a noble enough creature, having wanted nothing but the freedom to love the woman of his choice. Viktor had taken that away from him, and brought the war upon himself. Death was never something to be cheerful about, but…

She felt Michael's hand on her arm and she looked up. This man, whom she had felt so drawn to, now bore a part of herself within him. The vampiric virus swam in his veins as it did in hers, but he was more, stronger, faster, and, in a way, everything a vampire could or would never be. He had been hunted and sought by Lucien for years, and now, he was the fulfillment of everything Lucien had sought to create since taking Sonja for his bride so many centuries ago.

"He wasn't a good man, or a kind man," Michael murmured, looking down on the corpse of the man, the lichen, who had started this chain of events that had turned him into what he was. "But he wasn't a monster, either."

"No," Selene whispered, clutching the golden pendant with its broken chain in her hand. "I'm almost glad to say he was not a monster."

Only a slave who fell in love with his mistress. Only a husband bent on revenge for his wife's killers. Only a general searching for a way to end a war. Lucien was only a father, wishing for the son he'd never known.