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Wrong.

That's what they had called it.

Like... accepting the devil's kiss in an Irish alleyway two hundred and forty-seven years ago was wrong. Playing God and spreading death for half of that time was wrong. Driving a raven-haired beauty into the grip of insanity was wrong. Killing her was wrong. Turning her was wrong. Killing that accursed gypsy child was wrong.

What about being cursed with a soul? From my point of view at the time, that had been the worst. Horrible. Insufferable. But not really... wrong... ? Was it because it had been something not of my doing? Is that trying to tell me something? About myself?

Of course, it brought me to a blonde little girl that was the part of me that had always been missing. Loving her had felt like the most natural thing in the world. And, oh... it let me feel like I was actually becoming something good once more. I wasn't a killer anymore... I could've been right.

Two years ago, I left her behind. Walked away from her and Sunnydale without so much as a goodbye kiss.

Now the wrongs have started to pile up again.

Ironically, being in love in Sunnydale felt the same way that a century and a half of massacre all over the world had; it had been alright. There had been no reason for me to be burdened with guilt for my deeds... nobody ever thinks they're wrong at the time, if ever.

But, sitting here in front of a bolted set of wooden doors that I had walked away from hours before, in the pitch black, I honestly wonder... If my soul was ever the truest part of me, why do they want to snatch it away? Why do the slaughtered 'innocents' locked inside that cellar of death want me to be wrong again?

Isn't that wrong of them?

Doesn't that make them deserving of what they got? For everything they've caused, all the wrongs they've committed, they were worthy of nothing other than what they gave out every day, every hour, every minute: death. I only let them at their reward.

Why, then, did they say that what I did was wrong?

Even after everything I've seen... everything I've done... I do not understand.

I didn't decide their fate. I didn't even bring it about them. It was all pre-planned by a God that is seen by no one except for the truly enlightened, the truly beautiful.

I think... I think I was beautiful once.

I think everyone is at some point in their lives. When a soul is really a soul and a heart is as pure as this God wants it to be; when we all see the world through the eyes of a child.

Children, of course, will always grow up. They will always change. But they are beautiful for a while, with their love and trust and the eyes of His angels.

I used to be a tiny lad called Liam with unruly brown hair and wide, curious eyes. A pretty face. There was no world that had existed outside of my land of happiness and fairy tales and purity. Evil had had no place there; I couldn't have even conceived of it back then. My life had been far from a fairy tale, with a demanding father, a cowardly mother... I still remember her crying silently in her big rocking chair by the fire as she pressed cold, wet cloths to purple and black bruises the shape of father's hand, too scared to do anything but avoid his piercing dark eyes and offer useless, whispered comforts to me as I cried from the pain but understood little else. But, I had still had my own personal little place to escape to, no matter what. I still could have been happy.

I grew up. I changed.

But, I think Liam's still in there, somewhere. He's still living in a world void of unhappiness or unfairness or any kind of wrong.

I wish I could find him inside of the mess that I've become.

Maybe, if I could, I would understand a little better, and I wouldn't feel so ugly anymore.

Was Lindsey MacDonald ever like that? Growing up in a small, dirty little home with no food and no money, yet too many mouths to feed? Did he have that perfect child's world that I had, despite everything going on around him? When his brothers and sisters were dying from influenza, could he still find that little bit of happiness?

Was he still beautiful?

Were any of these others beautiful? These motionless, dead bodies behind locked, wooden doors?

I stand slowly, wearily, my mind buzzing with so many questions and not enough answers. I reach out, blindly, in the dark, and feel for the heavy bolt on the doors, numbly observing that Drusilla and Darla had gone through the trouble to lock the doors behind them, just as I had left them.

They had locked it all inside a room, so that I could come here and look upon it with my soul's guilt, my human mind's questions, my demon's glee, and my Liam's innocent, startled confusion. Maybe he is still there, buried too deeply for me to reach...

I find the bolt eventually, and unlock it slowly, hearing the slight grind of well-oiled brass and the echoing click of the lock slid out of place. For a moment, as I push the wooden doors open, it's like I'm looking through my own eyes and watching myself move at the same time.

I am a dark, well-dressed figure looking in upon a play of utter chaos and destruction and death. A play that I set the scene for, and walked away from, with the sound of Angelus' crowing laughter ringing in my ears, overpowering the faint sound of a child's crying.

Is it possible for a soul to weep?

They are all dead. Their blood stains the floor, mixed in with the rich wines on the still-damp carpeting. I see that Holland Manners' throat has been torn out viciously, and his eyes are gone, no doubt by Drusilla's hands. Lilah Morgan smiles sadly in death, her eyes closed peacefully. I know that she did not give in without a fight, and the fact that she has been arranged in such a way would surely be insulting to her if she could see it.

I had not known any of the others, and that is just as well. I already know that my soul, at least, will carry their faces for the rest of eternity. I do not have to hear their names and their voices along with it.

A faint, slowed heartbeat sounds in the middle of it all.

He has been laid on the couch, his brown suit jacket pillowed beneath a head of thick, luxurious brown hair; his eyes are closed, his hands crossed over his chest as if he should really be in a casket lined with silks as soft as his skin. But, he is alive, and the sound of that willful little organ pumping away is deafening.

He is as pale as I am, if not more so. The smile that I had seen the last time I was here is gone, and his expression is a frightening thing on that handsome face. His pink lips are pressed together in a thin line, and his brow is furrowed deeply from pain and the concentration it takes to keep that pain from becoming all encompassing. A deep gash across his eyebrow has stopped bleeding, but is still sticky and just barely warm. A trail of the crimson sweetness runs down the side of his face, close to his eye, and it looks like a tear. Strangely suiting, in a depressing, morbid sort of way. The two deep wounds in his neck have bled quite a lot, and they mar his flawless skin, leaving red lines that disappear beneath the collar of his black shirt.

I cannot tell whether or not he is conscious. He might be, but I could always be wrong.

I laugh out loud at that prospect, and the noise is cold and hard and it doesn't even sound like me.

It sounds like him. Like Angelus.

Lindsey tenses up on the couch when he hears it. Any normal human wouldn't have noticed the slight movement, but in the stillness of this room, it catches my eye very quickly. So he is awake, after all. About to die, but completely aware.

I wish I could say I can only imagine what that is like, but I know the feeling all to well, even when it has been almost two and a half centuries since my first experience with death... with dying. My soul feels a pity for him that is almost blinding, but Angelus' wickedness is just as powerful.

He can't see the wrongness in all this, and neither can I. It was coming for these ones, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

I step over the bodies littering the floor silently, going towards Lindsey tentatively. I kneel beside the couch, looking down upon his face expressionlessly.

Couldn't I just kill him right now? Finish it? Rip up the last of a mortal evil so that I can go on and live the rest of my life in tortured silence? He said he was cool with me dying. Would it be so wrong for me to feel the same way?

The question is... do I?

Angelus just smiles cruelly, and urges my hand around the younger man's neck. I could just finish what has already begun in the same way that I have always brought an end to things.

My teeth are longer now, sharper, and it is then that this boy's eyes fly open, and his lips part to suck in a pained gasp.

He looks like he wants to talk, to beg, but at this point, I know that he cannot. He knows, by the black glint in my eye, that I am about to end it. He is almost dead, after all. A hand that is not my own -- death's hand -- is holding his head under the water, and soon he will begin to fight for air, and thrash... and struggle... and plead...

My hand tightens around his throat.

He does not want to die.

Everyone will realize that they do not want to die, sooner or later... But, by the time death has taken them by the hand, it is too late. Always much, much, too late.

It was too late for me. Too late for Liam.

Too late for Darla and Drusilla and Spike and Doyle and Penn and Holland and Lilah... so late.

Too late, Lindsey. You will die in the hands of this dark angel, and you can fight and struggle and plead all you like... your wrongs end here...

I do not even realize that I am saying this to him out loud until I hear the words out of my mouth, spoken with a voice that is frighteningly low and calm.

His eyes widen and he tries to pull in air. Maybe I am the one holding him beneath the water... but I don't want to be... I'm sorry, Lindsey. You're should've never grown up, never should've lost your beauty; you wouldn't be here now... you wouldn't be so fatally flawed. And you were so beautiful, weren't you? Much more beautiful than I ever was, with your charming laugh and accented voice and smiling eyes...

He's got blue eyes. They're big, and it's a blue so pure and so clear that it makes me think of the very heart of a flame or the sparkling waters of an undisturbed ocean someplace in that world Liam used to have. His eyes are innocent, like a little boy's. They are beautiful. He is beautiful. Still beautiful.

But that just can't be so... he's not a boy anymore... He changed. He grew up long ago. He's not beautiful like that... he can't be. I won't let it be. This would not be right if he was... beautiful. It would be wrong... wrong... not right... wrong. He isn't supposed to look so beautiful in death... only birth... and he can't have that kind of beauty... This would be too wrong, and they can't be right in what they told me and I don't want to be wrong anymore...

They're such a beautiful blue. He's got... he's got the eyes... of a child... of an angel...?

Someplace inside, Liam screams. It hurts everywhere, and I know then that my soul is crying along with the sound of Angelus' evil laugh. They are both pulling me, but in different directions. Is this what they wanted? This fight between right and wrong inside of me? I'm only Liam at heart, aren't I? I can barely do one, let alone both; I can't be both right and wrong. But they are both so strong... pulling, so hard... Angelus wants to tighten this fist and choke the air from a boy's body until he is gone, while Angel will fight to save this dying child here.

Lindsey is scared, but his eyes are no less bright. They are still blue. Not wrong, not changed... just lost. Still lost... still innocent... still hopeless...

We help the hopeless.

... They're still that kind of beautiful...

Oh, God... They were right, all of them! This is so wrong...

What am I becoming? Why am I strangling the boy I've looked for all my life? Liam, Lindsey... they're the same, so why am I killing them both?

With a roar of agony, I release his throat and hear him sputter and gasp for air... Angelus howls deep within, screaming in rage. I almost killed the beauty inside of Lindsey -- inside of myself -- didn't I?

Sobbing uncontrollably, I gather him into my shaking arms and hold him against my chest tightly, burying my face in the side of his neck as Angel's tears stream down my face.

These dead had wanted to take away the only thing inside me that's ever been right... they thought they would be able to. But they didn't think hard enough... just because they were wrong, doesn't mean I have to be...

Lindsey's breathing is beginning to slow, to even out. I feel a tremor run through his body, and soon he is shaking and his own tears are warm against my cold skin, and the sobs in the back of his throat are barely loud enough for me to hear. It's the most beautiful sound in the world.

"I didn't want to die," he chokes out, shuddering. "I didn't..."

"You won't," I whisper softly, rocking him gently. Taking a deep breath that my body really doesn't need, I raise my head and place the softest kiss upon his trembling lips, and then lay his head against my chest, stroking his soft hair. "You won't, you won't, you won't..."

I am still mumbling the quiet mantra when his eyes slide closed and he goes completely still.

Finis