Winner and Still Champeen

The hand that writes this has blood on it -- again. Demon blood, yes. Innocent blood? I don't know. Demon or human, guilty or innocent, it's blood just the same and just as red. So much for all my noble ideas of about not killing. Angel, winner and still champeen. I was so close to losing it completely. The demon makes everything very simple. Feed, kill, live. A lesson I learned at my sire's knee. I should be honest here of all places. There was blood on my hands, and I wanted it. I hungered for it. And even now I don't know what frightens me more -- the fact that I killed, or that I enjoyed it so much. The truth is ugly. Seems the demon gets closer to the surface the more I try to hold it down. It'd be so easy just to let go, and maybe I would if I didn't have people who depended on me and trusted me.

Cordelia and Wesley witnessed this latest fall from grace, but they didn't abandon me to my fate. They rescued me -- freeing all the rest of the demons in the process; we can live with that, though. I find myself depending on them, trusting them. I don't want to. It's a big mistake every time but I can't stop. That's human nature, right? Maybe the gypsy curse has a provision in it for that too. No love, no trust, no friendship.

Or maybe...in these pages I should admit what I can't say aloud. I don't want that responsibility. It's dangerous for them. Kate is right to keep me at arm's length. It wasn't working out when Doyle found me. I thought that's what I needed when I left Sunnydale. Wrong again.

I don't know anymore. After being a part of something larger than myself or my problems, I find I can't be apart, no matter the consequences. Thanks to Whistler and Doyle, I've become. I'm real. There's no going back.

...because once you are real, you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand...once you are real, you can't become unreal again; it lasts for always.

Strange that a 245 year-old vampire should learn a lesson from a child's story, but if it's true and I've become someone, I'd like to think it's a good someone.

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