Title: Nest
Author: alliterator
Summary: The Master tells his origins to the Anointed One.
Spoilers: Up to "Prophecy Girl"
Disclaimer: The characters within this story belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox, except for the ones that I made up, which you will know they are mine because they are not in the show. So there.

The cave was dank and dark, filled with the sounds of water (or was it blood?) slowly dripping in some corner. Puddles of some unknown substance littered the ground and an array of religious artifacts, including a large cross, stood out among the darkness

"Home," the voice was horrifying and sentimental at the same time. "I've lived here so long that I barely know what the moon looks like."

"Lycanthropy inducing," said Colin.

"Funny," the voice rang out, "but I prefer vampires to werewolves. Werewolves are just animals, while vampires are something... more."

"Bloodlust," Colin walked around the cave, inspecting the different religious instruments, careful to avoid the crosses.

"Not just that," the voice replied. "It seems to me that vampires are an existential anomaly. Demons inhabiting human bodies. Although I doubt you would call this body exactly human."

"De-evolution," Colin sat down on a ledge, picking up a few pebbles.

"Correct," the source of the voice moved forward. "Once the demon inhabits the body for a long period of time, it starts to... corrupt the body. Convert it to animalistic forms."

"Bat," Colin tossed a pebble into a puddle.

"Not just bats," the voice leaned closer and from a certain angle you could make out the shape of a face, something grotesque. "I once met a vampire with cloven feet. Didn't care much for his personality, but his de-evolution interested me. You could say he was half an ass."

Colin smiled, showing all his gleaming white teeth. He sat down on a nearby rock and started tapping on the stone. "How did you become the Master?" he finally said.

The voice contemplated this. "How did I become a vampire?" he asked.

"No," Colin replied, "how did you become the Master?"

"How did I become what I am today?" Colin nodded his hands busy tapping. "That's a very interesting question, but it involves a long and quite boring story spanning six hundred years."

"Only tell the good parts," Colin smiled, knuckles tapping away.

The Master also smiled, only his smile was different than Colin's. His teeth, while still stark white, were long and razor sharp. He rarely smiled, but when he did it was an event, a point where the Master was going to do something either great or horrific. Now, he was going to tell his life, which was both. "It all started in the time of Columbus."

"Did you know Columbus?" Colin asked.

"No," the Master replied, "but Nest did."

---

Bahamas

October 15, 1492

The air was hot and sticky and the coarse material clung to Heinrich Joseph Nest's skin. He had not traveled with the proper clothing for this type of weather and he was getting awfully uncomfortable. The Nina, along with her sister ships the Pinta and Santa Maria, had landed here a day ago and Nest already wanted to leave. He wanted to get off this god damnable place and go find a place with spices and jewels where he could get rich, but this place had no jewels or spices and it just god awful hot.

One of the Indians – the Captain's nickname of them – started babbling at him in some tongue. Unfortunately, Nest had not taken the time to learn the Indians native language and ignored the Indian and turned around searching for tonight's dinner.

"Hello," Nest turned around and looked at the Indian. Did he just speak – "Yes, I know how to speak your language."

"Than why did you start talking to me in your primitive language?" Nest was annoyed. Why was this stupid Indian bothering him?

"I wanted to warn you. I thought you knew our tongue," the Indian said. "It's getting to be night soon."

"Your point?" Nest said, "I have to find dinner for our crew and I don't care if it's night."

"Night is when certain animals come out," the Indian said. God, thought Nest, why is this stupid Indian still bothering me?

"I don't care," Nest told him. He grabbed his rifle and said "No animal will mess with me because I have this."

The Indian looked at him with his squinted eyes and dark skin and realized that it was impossible to argue with Nest. "Happy hunting," the Indian told him and then walked away mumbled something.

"I will," Nest said. He looked around for some prey, a bird or animal to shoot, but saw nothing. He noticed then that beyond the small Indian village there was a small woods. He tromped over to them, intent on capturing even a small animal. A rabbit or squirrel would do. Inside, he saw a small pig wrestling to get free of some underbrush and he smiled. He lifted his gun and aimed. Bang! A crowd of birds that Nest had not seen suddenly took flight and obscured his views. When they were out of the way, he took a look to see if he hit the pig. Not even close. "Damn," he muttered as he walked through the woods searching for where it had gone.

After about an hour, he realized that the woods weren't so small afterward. He was about to set back, when suddenly the allusive pig appear and he took aim again. Only, this time he didn't have a chance to shoot. A slender, tanned hand reached down and grabbed and the pig by the neck. Nest looked up to the owner of the hand.

Standing next to a blackberry bush was a very tall lady. She looked a mixture of Indian and Asian and she stood taller than Nest did. Her skin was a rich, light brown, almost coffee, and her hair was a raven black. Her breasts hung high with her back arched and she wore a flowing white gown, with intricate patterns along the edges.

"Is this yours?" she asked her voice soft and flowing.

"Uhh," Nest looked up at this tall beauty, "yes. He's supposed to be dinner for me and our crew."

"And who are you?" the woman said.

"H-heinrich Joseph Nest," Nest said nervously, "the first mate of the Santa Maria." He trumped up his status; he didn't want this beauty to know his lowly position.

"Oh," the woman replied, "I heard a ship had landed here."

"Three," Nest corrected, eager to boast.

"Three," the woman looked like she was lost in thought. "Hmmmm... forgive me for my manners, my name is Aria."

"Aria," the named rolled off Nest's tongue. He loved it; it was so... so... exotic. "That's an... unusual name."

"In my native tongue," Aria said smiling and showing pearly white teeth, "it means 'appearing at twilight'."

"Interesting," Nest was hypnotized by Aria's smile and he went into a trace. Suddenly, the pig in Aria's arms started to squeal and squirm. "Umm..." Nest felt like he had just woken up, "I really must get back to my shipmates."

"Of course," Aria said clasping the pig in her arms ready to give it to him, "but first, allow me." With one twist, she snapped the pig's neck and it went limp in her hand, dead.

"Uh, thank you," Nest replied, taking the pig. He turned around and quickly left, eager to get out of the woods and back to camp, where they would have a roaring fire.

"My pleasure," Aria said when Nest was out of earshot.

Nest had finished his part of the meal and was sitting near the campfire unsatisfied. The pig had been small and split up between his shipmates, his portion had been tiny, so he was still very hungry. He rubbed his hands together for warmth and cursed the weather. "Why is it so hot in the day and so cold at night?" he asked rhetorically.

Suddenly, through the haze of the smoke, Nest thought he saw a shape in the woods. It was tall and Nest thought it might be a bear. A bear might taste better than a pig, he thought. It would certainly be bigger. He decided that he would try and kill the bear, so he got up and grabbed his gun.

"Where are you going?" one of his shipmates called. Should he tell them? Would they want to hunt it, too? No, he would kill it alone and have the biggest share of the meat.

"I'm going to water the bushes," Nest lied.

"With your rifle?" asked another shipmate.

"I wouldn't want to be unprepared if an animal attacks," he replied and then them walked forward towards the woods.

If the woods had been dark when the sun was going down, they were infinitely darker now. Nest stumbled over some underbrush and secretly cursed the darkness and hoped the bear had not been scared away. Suddenly, he saw the outline and ducked down so whatever it was wouldn't see him. When he took a closer look, he realized it wasn't a bear – or animal for that matter – at all.

Standing in a clearing was Aria, looking beautiful in the moonlight. Next to her was an Indian that Nest did not recognize. Aria stroked the Indian's face and Nest felt a twinge of jealousy. Aria brought the Indian closer to her and smiled. It was then that her face... changed. Instead of her beautiful visage, there was the face of a creature, which looked quite animalistic, its knife-like teeth glinting in the moonlight. Then the creature pulled the Indian's neck back and bit. Blood gushed out of the wound and the creature sucked it up. It drained the Indian dry and then, when there was no more blood, it dropped the Indian to the ground.

Nest backed away, simultaneously horrified and curious. What was that creature? As he was backing away, he tripped over a branch and fell backwards into a bush, making a lot of noise in the process.

When Nest got back up, Aria was in front of him. Her face had changed back into the beautiful and haunting features that he had first seen, but he knew that it was just a mask.

"Hello," she said, inching toward him.

"What," he searched for the words to express what he was feeling, "what did I see."

"You tell me?" she said coming closer.

"You... killed that man," he tried desperately to back away and failed.

"I fed upon him," Aria said, "it's how I live, how my kind survive."

"Your kind?" he asked. "You're not..."

"Human? No," she replied. "I'm something different. A blend of things as you will. Something older than mankind."

"An angel?" he asked unsteadily.

"A demon," she answered and he shuddered. "Oh, it's quite wonderful actually."

"If you are what you say you are," Nest began, "can you answer a question?"

"Yes," she looked him with her dark green eyes.

"Is there a God?" he stood up entirely, barely reaching the height of Aria's mouth.

Her lips parted, displaying her teeth in a wide smile. "No," she answered, "but there is a Devil."

By now Aria and Nest were very close to each other and Nest was backed up against a tree, unable to move any farther backward. Aria leaned in close to him. In the cold night, he could see his own jagged breath, but there was none coming from Aria. "Can you prove it?" he asked, his breath becoming quicker and faster.

"Yes," as she said the word, her face slowly changed as it did before, but now he knew what the face was. It was the face of a demon. The face of an angel. The face of his savior. She pulled his neck forward and he didn't resist. She bit and there came a blinding pain, but then it was gone. There was no pain, only pleasure. Aria brought back her head and her features morphed back into a human's. Then she raised her wrist and cut it with her long, sharp fingernails and held it, bloody, to Nest. "Drink," she told him and he obeyed. He drank long and hard.

---

"She sired you?" Colin asked.

"Yes," the Master answered, "I was lucky it was her. She was old, much older than I am now and she taught me well. We had some good times. I think my favorite will always be Roanoke. What a horrible things we did to that town."

"Where is she now?" Colin had stopped his tapping and was sitting intent and cross-legged.

"Dust," the Master said sadly. "A Slayer caught her one night unprepared."

The Anointed One looked thoughtful at that point. "The Slayer kills many of our kind. We should destroy her."

"Ah," the Master turned his grotesque face towards Colin, "but when you kill one, another one is called. So what do you do when faced with this dilemma?"

"Destroy the source of the Slayers."

"Or better yet, destroy the world. With no humans left, they'll be no Slayers left."

The Anointed One grinned. "We should do it now."

"My time with Aria taught me many things," the Master said, "one of them being patience. The Slayer's end will come and the world's end will come, but only if we wait." It was then that the ground started to shake and the walls rumbled. It seemed the entire Earth shifted in that one earthquake. While it was happening, the Master looked up as said "I guess waiting time's over." Then he raised his hands to feel the earthquake.