Thanks go, as always, to Amaretto for the beta; and to the two A's (Amaretto and Aayla) for feedback on the characters.
Author's Note: Saddest Poem (in italics) is not mine, it belongs to the brilliant Pablo Neruda.
Feedback would be better than kitten poker.
Saddest PoemI can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."
But I was William the Bloody, so no matter what I wrote about sadness or beautiful stars it would be bloody awful and Cecily would laugh.
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
Drucilla though, Dru understood. Things were always singing to her and I was effulgent.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
She loved me whenever Angelus wasn't there breaking her and telling her that she liked it.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
A sky that would draw beautiful pictures for her; a bowl of lemons, a snail on a blade of grass. What ever the hell she wanted.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
Eyes, so beautiful, even though they'd focus in the middle distance on things only she could see. I loved her always. Except when he called and she went to him like a dog to scraps.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
Lost her when Daddy came home. When we were a family again. When we could all be happy again.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
I didn't hear the night, but she did. And now the secrets it tells her, well she only tells him.
What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
My love wasn't good enough, wasn't the love of the man who made her hear the stars in the first place. Not that he loved her.
That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
My soul is lost because of her; and she sings. She sang to me after she took my soul, a lullaby.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
I see her, where she always is now. With him. My heart's with her. Always. She just don't remember sometimes.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I remember her wearing white dresses and moonlight that made her glow as she wavered on her little slippered feet. Now, she's standing up strong in red and heels.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
I loved her better then. I whispered it in her ear night after night. Now his sibilant voice hisses in her head.
Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
Someone else's. His. His hand on her ribcage from behind.
"She never belonged to you Spikey. Just a loan."
Her head nodding in obedience.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
I don't love her now, I loved what she was when she was mine. A black goddess I called her. And she was.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Nights like this we'd dance while the stars that sang to her. Twirling, dancing. My soul is lost because of her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
Sunlight
Want?Ask.Take.Have.