VICIOUS

Summary: Vicious finds what he's been looking for. One Shot.

He never made a true effort to find her, but he could not say that he never kept an eye out for her, never glanced in the direction of her name when it was mentioned, never thought of her. Then, unexpectedly, she was there, sitting at the table with her legs crossed, eyes blank. Lips red. Still beautiful, but sadly so. He wondered what he'd done to drive her away--

(to Spike)

--but unconsciously, he knew. He knew he'd changed over the course of their relationship. He knew where the ugly, purple bruises he saw on her white skin when they made love in the light came from. He didn't know why or when, but he'd changed into something, he'd molded into something he promised he wouldn't. She become not Julia, but release. It became not love, but lust. He lost her because of that.

And the betrayal. He swirled his wine glass, eyes still on her, and reminisced.

It had been the nudge he'd needed to fall, to spiral into a sea of his own madness, and he became not crazy, but vicious. He took a sip, but his eyes were really drinking. Sipping every piece of her. Her lips, her eyes. The emotion that radiated from her--he could feel it. Reach toward her and gather that pain because he'd shared that pain with her, too, every drudging day. His memory of her had faded into a black and white picture of rain, roses and respite, but she was here in front of him in vibrant color and suddenly he knew her again, as well as he knew her when he loved her. Her taste, her voice. Whispering to him in the middle of the night, her warm breath spilling over his skin as he toyed with her hair idly, asking questions he'd never answer.

To his comrades, he was consumed by madness. He was not human. But truly, it was all he was--he was that and just, he was a man consumed by an incomprehensible sadness that ultimately molded and hardened into a shell of anger that protected that sadness. Everything looked and screamed treachery, whispered betrayal, everything reminded him of her, of him, of the empty hollow feeling he felt when he looked her in the eyes and saw no love but fear for the first time. He was a victim, in a sense, in his mind, and it drove him forward passionately, angrily, to the conclusion that he would, in a sense, in his mind, make victims out of them, the all deserving devils.

And he was crazy, he was mad. He was ruthless, he was his name. But worst of all, he believed it was not him, but them. Everyone around him, but her and him most of all--

(Spike and Julia, Spike and Julia, the Jack and Queen who betrayed the King.)

--he felt the most refined, the most collected, sane and normal (and that's what made him crazy, they would later say). He felt he was helpless, and them, their mere memory, were the destroyers of his being.

(their fault, their fault. All. their. fault.)

Another drink, and suddenly, there was no release but to curl his fingers around her throat, her pretty, unblemished throat, to touch her lips with his fingertips and kiss her when he squeezed the breath out of her bruised, gaping mouth.

He wanted it to be like it was before, most desperately. But he could never trust. Not after that. His best friend. His love. Gone. Along with his humanity, his sanity.

Kill her?

He didn't know. But he found her, and that provoked an unearthly, erotic desire for closure.

And then he watched in stilled silence as she left, an arm's length away, close enough to touch, but he never did. He took a breath of her scent through his nose when she passed, and he longed.

She smelled the same, jasmines and scents and the soft tinge of perfume in the air that mingled with the cigarettes she smoked in her spare time when she felt nostalgic. She smelled like passion; she smelled like promises that were never real but pleasing to think about nonetheless; she smelled like candy wrapped kisses and most of all, Julia smelled like forever. The kind of forever you dreamt about when you were young, when you were foolish, when you still believed and when pain and loss were fresh new tastes you'd only pressed your tongue too.

And that was all it took for his conviction to settle.

Silently, wordlessly, he lifted himself from his chair. He followed. The angel had a devil on her heels, and for the first time in months, he smiled, invading her hope with his hell.