Happiness Clause

Disclaimer: Characters and Premise are borrowed from the show "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

I love Buffy with all my heart and soul. She is the only sunshine in my life and protecting her gives my existence purpose. Still she can be frustratingly oblivious at times.

It's not her fault, she's only eighteen, was only sixteen when this whole mess started. That's only one of the hundreds of reasons I never should have gotten involved with her in the first place.

I knew what I was doing was wrong. I said it often enough that first year, but she never listened. I never should have expected her to, like I said, she was little more than a child. I tried to stay away, but I loved her too. I was lost from the moment I first saw her, a lovely, spirited young woman, with the weight of the world dropped unexpectedly on her shoulders.

Every encounter with her only caused me to fall deeper in love with her. Her wit, her devotion to her friends, the way she took life on her own terms while still fulfilling her destiny, her vulnerabilities, everything about her drew me to her.

Even so I should have been stronger, should have made her see that I wasn't worthy of her affection. I should have used my love for her to strengthen my resolve to do what was best for her, but I was so lonely.

Buffy offered warmth, companionship, acceptance and of course love. Things I had believed I'd lost forever when I became a vampire. Since the curse I had been denied even a vampire's twisted version of relationships. Hell, before Whistler found me I'd spent almost a hundred years without speaking more than two sentences to another entity. I had been existing on the fringes of society, near enough to torture my self with what I'd lost, but never a part of it.

Buffy brought me back to the world. She made me believe I might actually become a worthwhile individual. And it wasn't even the curse or the things that the demon had done in my name that had cost me my belief in myself. I hated myself long before Darla changed me. Buffy's love for me was a balm on injuries I'd never believed would heal.

Which is why I have to leave. Buffy wants to believe everything can continue like it is, that as long as we don't have sex that it's safe for us to be together.

God, it makes me want to shake her and scream "It wasn't the thrice damned sex!" It really wasn't, it was what it meant. Buffy trusted me and accepted me and loved me when no sane person would have. She wanted me when no one else in the world had for centuries. That was what broke the curse, not the physical act of sex. Although I throughly enjoyed that as well.

If I hadn't been so worried about the Taraka assassins I surely would have lost my soul that night at the ice skating rink when she looked into the face of my demon with love not revulsion and then she kissed me!

That was the first time I realized that she truly loved *me*, not just the human seeming I generally wear. No matter how much I pretend and want to be human, I'm not. Until that night I never would have believed that it was possible for her to understand that and still love me. Since my return I've come to believe that I was right in the beginning. That night Buffy accepted me completely, but she didn't truly understand what the demon ... What I was capable of. Now she does.

The demon is part of who I am, even now, even with my soul, Buffy would like to believe otherwise. I almost corrected her when she told Willow that the Vampire Willow had nothing in common with the human she had once been. My sense of self-preservation stopped me from doing so. If Xander or Giles ever realize how much of the personality remains when one becomes a vampire I'd be dust in very short order. Neither of them could take me in a fight, but they are certainly capable of putting a crossbow bolt though my back. Not that I'd blame them, it would be the expedient thing to do, and I deserve it.

See what happens when you become a vampire is your soul, that part of you that strives toward the light departs. In it's place you get a demon, blood lust, inhuman strength and all eternity to let your darkest impulse run wild. Of course having a soul doesn't necessarily prevent a person wrecking havoc on the world, Hitler always comes to mind as a prime example of how evil a soul baring human being could be. On the other hand ninety percent of vampires out there don't want anything more than to live... well not exactly live... exist comfortably. Oh they're still evil, they still kill people, but they have no desire to destroy the world. Heck most of them even supplement their diets with cold blood, or feed off animals. It isn't because they feel any guilt over killing, its just that too many drained corpses lead to inconvenient questions. On the Hellmouth the police and everyone else have learned to look the other way when the nightmares come calling, elsewhere creatures of darkness have to practice a little restraint to avoid angry mobs.

Even Spike, despite his destructive tendencies and his two dead Slayers, wouldn't do anything truly catastrophic. I on the other hand happen to belong to the other ten percent of vampires. My soul changes that, it's what makes me truly unique, I am a demon possessed by a soul. One of the world's most viscous vampires, wanting to do good, to find redemption, but still a demon.

Which is precisely why Xander or Giles should, and if they knew the truth, would kill me. Because it wasn't the demon's fault that I was such a monster, it was my own. The demon simply released my anger and darkness on the world, the demon didn't create my desire to see the world destroyed, it simply acted on it, and my poor battered soul is all that prevents me from doing it again. I shutter, because now I know about the happiness clause in the curse. I know what to do to end my pain. All I have to do it turn the darkness outward, release it on the world. Then I would be free, but at a horrible cost.

Damn the gypsies and their stupid curse anyway! They had known it would be broken someday. Counted on it, and counted on the curse being renewed. That was probably why they watched me, so they'd know when I learned how to break it. So they'd know when to recast the damn thing. Because now that I know, the last century is going to look like paradise in comparison. This was the hell the Rom had planned bor me so long ago.

And to make matters just that much more annoying Buffy, her friends, even Faith can't see past the blasted sex thing. If anyone should have realized sex and happiness aren't inextricably connected it's Faith. Sleeping around doesn't make her happy, why should she assume that it would be any different for me? It would have been so easy if sex had been the key to breaking the curse, sex is a choice. Happiness on the other hand is what sneaks up on you when you aren't watching.

And then there's Buffy and her ridiculous idea that everything's fine as long as we don't make love again. Doesn't she realize how much it means to me every time she come to see me? How my heart soars every time I see my ring on her hand, worn with the heart facing in like I showed her?

Why can't she see? I love her!! There is so much about her that brings joy into my life, because of that I have to always be on guard against happiness. Happiness is stealthy, it creeps up on me when I'm the one she turns to for comfort. Happiness is clever, it ambushes me when I marvel at her incredible grace and beauty. Happiness is patient, it waits for the inevitable, for my guard to slip. No one can be vigilant all the time, so I have to go. I have to hurt her, to make her hate me. I have to get away from the temptation she represents, before I give in and destroy us all.

Therein lies the true genius behind the Rom curse: It makes me a willing participant in my own torture. I create my own cage with bars forged of misery, depression, and despair. Then I eagerly step in and lock the door behind myself, and pray to a god who must despise me for the strength to throw away the key.

The End

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