Title: The Watcher
Author: Cprav
Written: 26 September 2009
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Characters: Mick
Pairings: MickCora
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: n/a
Disclaimer: I claim no rights to any characters or situations from Warner Brothers' Moonlight, and seek no monetary redress from this derivative work of fiction.
Summary: Mick hasn't quite been able to let his human life go.
Comment: Through various fic and RP muses I've come up with two sisters for Mick.
I've watched them for years even though I should have walked away the night she turned me. Coraline could never understand why I couldn't just let them go, but was that so surprising? She couldn't understand why I hated what she'd done for me – what she'd done for me… I could never hate HER - sometimes even I couldn't understand why I hated it. Despite everything she'd done and said to make me stop, to leave LA altogether, I just couldn't and so we stayed. Even though I could have exposed us all, she turned a blind eye because she would do anything for me… she'd proven that when she killed me. Coraline tore me from my life, from my family, but she couldn't tear that family from me.
I watched them as them as they looked for me, long after the police had stopped. I watched when my mother and sisters finally packed up my apartment. I was in the back of the theatre on opening night of every one of my younger sister's plays. I'd anonymously purchased many of my older sister's painting; some still decorated the office and apartment. I was at the cemetery when they buried my father. A year later, I stood outside the church where my beautiful sister was getting married, wishing I could walk her down the aisle in my father's place.
Births, deaths, marriages… I've been there for them all.
The pain I felt, still feel, as I watched them live their lives without me is part of my punishment for the things I've done as a vampire. But it was also welcome – my way of keeping at least a part of my humanity. Watching them go on with their lives, knowing they were safe and happy, has been the only ray of joy in my own long, miserable existence; even if it killed me, tore my heart out, every time I saw them.
I've never had to interfere, though; never had to reveal myself to them. And that was good. Though I wanted to watch them, wanted so much to still be a part of their lives, how could I explain it? How could I tell them that I would live forever even after our parents died, even as they got old, friends had died… It was better for them to think something had happened to me – because it had, of course. It was better for them to pass down the stories of Uncle Mick, if that made them more cautious of the monsters that roam the LA streets. Because monsters DID roam the streets.
I am one of them.
With that thought, I hang my head and put my sunglasses back on; leave the shade of the tree and turn away from the park where my sister's children and grandchildren enjoyed a beautiful, sunny summer day. Leaving the light and heading back into the dark, lonely shadows where I belong. It's how it should be, how it will always be.
