Krad blinked.

This wasn't his fault.

Was it?

He had tried to raise him well, had been kinder and more attentive than any vampire had any right to be. He had saved his life several times.

But that wasn't what he wanted.

That's what I've wanted from the start.

But he didn't know that! He didn't know that he would have chosen death. He had made the best decision he could at the time. And now he was doing the best he could with what he was given. He only killed when he had to. After all, it wasn't his fault he'd become like this.

Satoshi's voice rang in his mind. Don't give me the 'I'm a good vampire' act. This isn't a dime store novel and a murderer is a murderer. You can lie to yourself all you want, but at the end of the day you're a cold-blooded killer. Maybe you've forgotten that, but I haven't.

But he wasn't—a man had to live, and he…he had just accepted what he was…That was healthy…He knew it was wrong, but he had accepted that a long time ago.

You were never human. What had he been like as a fledgling? It had been a long time ago, but he had some memories—he had been there once, hadn't he?

What had he been like as a human?

The question was like cold water down his neck. He swallowed at the chill shock of it.

He couldn't remember.

He remembered remembering it, remembered longing for it, remember accepting the loss. He had put those times behind him, accepted that they couldn't be again, no point crying over spilled milk, and he…He…Somewhere in the centuries he had lost it. He had forgotten. Forgotten what it was to be human.

He had, on a whim, saved a boy from a burnt down cabin and taken him in as a pet. That was the cold truth. He would never say that to the boy now, but that was the truth. And what he said to him now didn't matter. He hadn't known then that biting the dying child would make him protect him with the fierce, undying protectiveness of a parent for a child. He hadn't known that the bond would force him to care about him, to value him. He couldn't have guessed that that instinctual protectiveness would grow into a real love, the kind that mothers had for their children, the kind that even allowed them to let their children go when the time came. He had survived by being flippant.

Satoshi was wrong, he hadn't thought of them as dirt.

He hadn't thought about them at all.