I keep trying. My little girl. His little girl. Crazy sweet child woman who could read my mind when she had her hands on me, who read my mind in an alley and said one word that made me stop and give her my soul. What'd she do with the poor thing, I wonder. Gave it to that creepy Miss Edith? Except it was Princess Charlotte, back then, with the porcelain head that the Bitch, and I won't apologize for that, smashed against a wall when she was angry with Dru, and my little one crying like her poor heart was broken. For about five minutes, until I handed her a pretty red-headed girl wrapped up in a Christmas bow and she had a new dolly. For a day or so. She tended to break things, our Dru, just like she was...broken.

I keep trying, and here's this one in my arms. He scared nine hells out of me just a few days ago, lost someplace I couldn't find him, asked me, told me, ordered me to hit him and hit him just to bring him back, and the chip never even buzzed at me. Never gave a whisper. And he won't tell me. All I have in this world, now, and he won't tell me where I almost lost him to, and God, he's broken. He's broken. Tonight when I thought it was safe as houses and I had him back, tonight in this flat in the dark, with Angel's little Girl Friday sleeping a room away, he slept on the sofa so nobody would know I love him, most of all him, and he had a bad dream.

And he woke me up from some scrap about Darla, about Dru, the sort of mindless idiocy I've dreamt for years and never cared about. Faces change, song remains the same. Woke me up from the first nightmare, if you want to call it that, since the first morning after, when I sat up and he was gone and the bed was cold. And like he's done all his short little life, he'd gone for donuts. Donuts. I could eat him up sometimes.

Not had one dream like that again, not me, not a one, not since then, and he crawls up tonight hot and shaking on me, and his back cold with sweat and he's got chocolate on his hand that I put there, and I lick it clean and somewhere in there he starts to cry. Cry and cry and it's all I can do not to join him, but I don't. Haven't. In ninety-eight years, I haven't cried but once, and that when I was so drunk I don't have to admit to anything I said or did, except damn me if I didn't apologize for hitting this one on the head. My boy. Lost boy. Christ, and shouldn't the word burn my tongue, but it never has.

He doesn't love me. He can't possibly love me, I'm everything he's learned to hate in almost twenty years of living on the Hellmouth. I'm a monster and I'm proud of it, I live for it, I died from loving it, and he doesn't love me. But he trusts me, and he lets me pretend, even if he doesn't know that's what I'm doing. He trusts me enough to climb into my lap and cry until he can't shake anymore, and all I could do was rock him back and forth and try not to let him know the rocking was for me. Just for me. And he wouldn't tell me why. He doesn't know. If he doesn't know, and I don't know, and you, well you haven't answered me for longer than I care to remember...

And then... and then he asks me to drink from him. Asks and I can't believe he thinks I need it though I do and then he says it's not for me and he's broken. He's this tiny little thing for all he's a smidgen taller and a little wider and he smells like sick right now but usually he smells like warm and sweet and I don't cry. Not ever. Not for anybody. Not since the only one I trusted enough to crawl into his lap and cry... I don't cry, but my boy's asleep in my arms and I could've killed him when he fell away into that bloodsweetness that came when I had my teeth in him. He could've died, because I'm just as lost as he is, and the fool chip didn't think I was hurting him, because he wanted it. First time I've ever hated that thing for not doing its job, and...

I don't cry, alright? He's sleeping and it would wake him up anyway and it took more than I had left to smile at him and play as if everything was fine, when nothing's fine at all. He's sleeping, and you won't make me wake him up. So if you're watching, if you think because I'm William now, in the dark and inside my head and Spike and the rest of the parts that shout at me for reminding them I'm here have finally gone to sleep, if you think I'll cry for you, when you never answered me in a hundred, hundred, how many? Never, you've never answered me, you bastard, and here's this one in my arms and who broke him in the end, if not you? I won't cry for you. I will not. Not for you, not for me, and as for him...

Just don't look at me. Sweet Jesus, just don't look at me.