InsaneJournal

Blessed

            Madeleine was blessed by her swift execution.

            She was a vampire for just days.  Not long enough to truly understand the bitter cruelty of an unending life built on the deaths of others.  Not long enough to realize that her beloved Claudia was not what she imagined. 

            For Claudia was not the beautiful living doll Madeleine imagined her to be, was not her own lost child.  No, Claudia was a woman many times Madeleine’s age.  A woman twisted by bitterness and hate even as her face remained a sweet angel’s.  A doll-sized devil inflamed with perverse hunger. 

            Madeleine was blessed in that she never found this out. 

 
            Her body was turned to ashes while there was still love in her heart. 

Swoon

            Lucy was all in white, paler than the fog.  With her fierce red hair and her dark addict eyes, she was a woman from a Rossetti painting, a street waif posing as an ancient Goddess. 

The lips Lucy pressed to Mina’s were red as blood, cold as death.  She was dying.  The vampire had sucked her dry and put his poison in her veins.  With each heartbeat she became more monstrous.  She was dying and yet she was truly herself, the mad and passionate creature she secretly known herself to be, kissing Mina till she swooned into a dark dream. 

Not a Nightmare but a Wish

Though she dreamed it night after night for many years Willow never mentioned the dream to anyone, not Buffy, not Giles, and especially not Kennedy or the women who followed her.

There was nothing unusual about the dream, it was if anything, all too familiar.  Standing beside a grave, stake in hand, watching the ground break open, and watching the vampire emerge.  Except in the dream it was Tara’s grave that burst open, Tara who emerged vampiric. 

Willow never mentioned the dream to anyone and no one ever asked about it. Because Willow never woke up screaming from this dream, or stayed up hoping to avoid it. 

It was Willow’s secret that she felt, not terror but joy when Tara rose from her grave.  The stake fell from her hand and she stepped forward, gasping at her lover’s bite but knowing that in a moment that all there would be no more pain, ever. 

It was Willow’s secret that she called this dream not a nightmare, but a wish.