The Inhabitants

Death was cold and lonely. Kendra would pat herself on the back for getting that one right.

The cold of the metal box on her back and of the thin sheet on her front bit at her naked flesh, and the autopsy room's temperature was set several degrees below anything Kendra had experienced; but it had nothing on the chill within, the ice burrowed deep in her veins and in her bones.

And she felt sick, sicker than she ever had in a lifetime without so much as a fever. Nauseated, as if something was trying to painstakingly claw its way up from the pit of her stomach while she put her best efforts in keeping it down. It felt wrong beyond the sickness; if Kendra knew something it was vampires, fresh-out-of-the-tomb vampires, and they never gave her any indication that they were all but itching for a fight, let alone about to spill out their guts on her shoes.

The darkness around her was all-encompassing and claustrophobic, making matters much worse. Without a hint of the foresight and preparation she always prided herself on, she pushed her way out and the door of her metal cage fell to the floor with a loud clang.

It was much, much later when Kendra thought of how lucky she was that no one had been in the building, as she stumbled gracelessly through the room until she found some clothes —her own, fortunately, still encased in a plastic bag. She trembled and the floor wasn't as easy to navigate straight as it should have been, but she felt a ghost of comfort when she wrapped herself up in her leather jacket. She could remember the last moments of her life with a clarity and vivacity of color that didn't belong to such a moment, entranced as she had been. Her brain should have trouble recalling those fogged, clouded memories from the depths of her mind; instead, it replayed Drusilla's crazed smile, the way she'd pushed two bloodied fingers on Kendra's tongue, the pump of her own blood raising upward and into Drusilla's fangs. Each little detail came to her over and over, in every tone of red —her blood, Drusilla's blood, Drusilla's clothes.

It was even later when Kendra wondered why no one had been there, where the hell her Watcher was. Why no one thought ahead and did what needed to be done and just cut off her corpse's head before it was too late.

Now it was too late.

Kendra kept stumbling across deserted streets with the newly innate knowledge that the sun would come out to get her soon. She would want it to take her, if she had all her faculties intact —a roundabout way of saying a filthy demon had made a house of her body and fought her at every step for control they'd inevitably win; that she'd lost her soul and everything that made her truly her, the essence of her being. Part of her still did wish to die, still at the very least thought of letting it happen. But a survival instinct she had never possessed before pushed through until she found an empty crypt to hide in.

She raised her hand to her face to touch the bumps on her forehead, the tips of her fangs. How happy she was, that even if she found a mirror it would not show her the horror she had become.

On the floor she hugged her knees against her chest and breathed in, out; counting, meditating through the nausea until she fell asleep. And then she appeared in her dream, for the first time of many.

Kendra wore the softest, prettiest dress she never had: white cloth covered in multicolored flowers, childish and bright and joyful. She sat on the floor playing with a little grey dog, petting it and dotting on it; she felt Drusilla's knees digging against her lower back while she gently brushed her hair, echoing a memory long buried within her. She could faintly hear murmured platitudes, but couldn't parse their content until her sire said, in a sing-song tone, "Slayer no more."

Kendra's hand snapped the little dog's neck. "You stop being a Slayer when you die. I'm not all the way dead; just most of it." Would she feel such clarity awake?

"There is only one Slayer, my baby." Drusilla stopped brushing her hair. Her sire's arms surrounded her body and pressed Kendra's back against her breasts, as her long, long fingers interlaced over Kendra's lower abdomen. Cold lips pressed against the side of her forehead before she startled awake when she heard, "What are you going to do about that?"

Buffy was the Slayer. She could finish this. She could do what had to be done.

It was with that idea in mind, one she wasn't all that sure she could follow until the end, that she stalked her way through town the following night until she could spy hidden in the bushes next to Buffy's house, peeking like a predator by the window. It unsettled her, how natural this came to her; probably more than it did to the majority of the vampires she once hunted.

Buffy was nowhere in sight; an older woman sat alone on the dining table, her eyes lost ahead of her for one eternal second before she seemed to collapse, her edges folding on themselves, and pressed the palm of her hand against her mouth to rein in silent sobs.

Had Angelus killed her? Had Kendra as a Slayer been of so little help? The only indication it hadn't gone that far —other than the world as it was still standing around her, as far as she could see— was that the mother of someone like Buffy wouldn't just be quietly crying in her dining room; she'd be beyond devastation, beyond grief, and beyond tears.

It would be so easy to lure her out. She could make do with the promise of Buffy and sink her teeth in when she was just one step out the door and then let her body fall on the ground like a broken doll for her daughter to find on her return. Or if she could control the violent hunger roaring in her guts she could worm her way in just as easily, to drag it out, play pretend; let her curiosity roam free and have a taste of what it could have been living in a house like this, with a mother like this, with a life like this.

Kendra's stomach turned once more before she vomited a gross-smelling deep yellow paste on the grass. She ran back to the crypt, which for all she knew could be a different one altogether, and decided that if she was too cowardly to let the sun do it quickly, and Buffy wasn't around to do it for her, passively lying in wait of a slow starvation would have to be the way.

But her will wasn't just hers anymore, and it failed her. She'd like to say it was the recurrent dreams with Drusilla, all of which took a scene of out the most clichéd, televised view of childhood and gave it a sick twist or two along the way; she couldn't even be sure they were dreams. Was Drusilla really reaching out to her? Was that something sires could do? Or was it the form her demon took to try and push her over the edge? In the dreams, Drusilla would tell her to let go, don't you want to stop being so tightly wounded, don't you want to feel the blood sing to you when it touches your lips? Don't you want to please me, my baby?

But as she said, it wasn't the dreams. Kendra, simply, lost to the hunger.

She had told herself she wasn't on a hunt. She just needed the fresh air, because it'd been days and she wasn't feeling any better. In truth, Kendra thought all a mere human had to do to fence her off was slightly push her off them and she'd stumble to the floor.

Stumbling turned out to be just as good as strength in the end. Kendra had all but collapsed near an alley when she heard heels rushing to her side to help and a sweet, high-pitched voice rambled at her non-stop ("oh my god are you okay?? Somebody help! I'm gonna call an ambulance, okay? It'll be here soon, I'll wait with you, it'll all be okay okayokayokayokay"). Kendra looked up at the girl: intensely light blond curls, thick eyelashes, a white dress and a jean jacket, long legs bent when she knelt down next to her. There was a warmth about her, like a glimmer of sunlight had chosen to grace Kendra that night, and she couldn't resist it anymore. A murmured apology and straight for the neck she went.

Kendra had underestimated her own strength, because the few fumbling attempts to get her off the girl while Kendra pressed her body flush against hers and drankdrankdrank didn't move her an inch. The girl hadn't even screamed; she'd given a high-pitched whine that turned into a low-pitched one and then nothing, just breathy, barely twitching in bliss underneath Kendra's body while she took for herself that warmth she'd sensed on her. And dammit, but Drusilla had told the truth, and the blood sang to her.

Noises of a door opening and closing and laughs nearby dragged her back to the present, and the horror and nausea hit her on the chest. The girl was still breathing, just barely, and her long eyelashes fluttered over her pale skin.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." It was all that Kendra could say. She stood up and screamed for help before running away. Whoever they were, they would find the girl, and they would help her, and that would be a line she still hadn't crossed.

Kendra didn't want to live like a demon, but she couldn't let herself die either. The third option hadn't worked that well before, but it was what she had and she chose to cling to it with desperation.

The next night she stood outside the pub she'd heard Buffy mention until she located her friends, and she followed the redhead all the way to her house. Willow, she had finally managed to remember, just when she was separated from the rest of the pack.

She had chosen to wait until Willow crossed the safety of her own threshold before approaching her, to make her see she could be trusted and to keep herself in check.

Willow's eyes widened in horror and in pity. "Oh. You're a... Oh."

"Don't invite me in. Never invite me in," Kendra rushed to say, because she realized she'd spent at least five seconds staring at the girl's long neck; "I need you to curse me, like Angelus. Please."

The shock was written all over her face, accompanied by yet more pity. "But that... that didn't work, Kendra."

"I attacked a girl, I almost killed her. This is the only chance I got. Please," she repeated.

"Okay. Wait... wait here. I'll call Giles and... just wait here?"

And wait she did. They all came, not just Giles, brandishing crosses and stakes —weapons like the ones she'd once treasured that now made her skin itch all over. She knelt down on the ground and put her hands behind her back, as non-threatening as possible so that Giles could put her arms in chains, and then her ankles. He did it with just a hint of the wariness the others carried in their eyes, and had for her a few words of comfort that meant the world to Kendra.

They took her to the Watcher's base, where she gathered the nerve to ask after Buffy.

"We don't know." Giles sounded utterly defeated when he answered. "She must have defeated Angelus, and there were other... issues... She left. I'm afraid we don't know much more."

Kendra swallowed. "And the girl I...?"

Everyone but Giles, who spoke with a voice of infinite compassion, studiously avoided her gaze. "She was taken to the hospital, but they couldn't help her. I'm truly sorry."

She was sick all over again, and she felt tears pour from her eyes and a sob get stuck on her throat. She could tell she was making a spectacle of herself and it disturbed the others, but she didn't much care for their comfort. She didn't much care for the girl, either; Kendra didn't have it in her, at least not yet. These tears were wholly selfish, about her and only her, and the line she'd stepped over. Maybe she should've drained her until the last drop to sate her hunger, like she herself had been, if this was how it was going to end.

"What happens if the spell fails, again?" asked the brunette girl, brusquely.

"Then you do what has to be done," she forced out. Kendra could tell that answer didn't make them less uncomfortable either.

They told her they had the supplies they needed, between what Willow brought with her and what Giles had in store, but they made her wait in a different room. She laid in that bed trying to quieten their voices, though some of it made it past the door. The other girl, the brunette, thought they were making a mistake; that Kendra had already killed once and any of them could be next. Kendra gained a newfound respect for her, and vowed to learn her name if she survived the night. She could hear one of the boys express concern for Willow, and she gathered that Willow and Giles were determined to go through with it. Kendra didn't fool herself into thinking it was all about her; a desire to prove herself on Willow's part, and the complications of Buffy's absence on Giles's were what she should be grateful for.

Drusilla's fingers and Drusilla's voice danced at the edge of her conscience berating Kendra for her choice. Domesticated, she said. Defanged, declawed. They'll keep you as a pet, my baby. Petpetpet.

While Drusilla taunted her the scale had apparently tipped in her favor. The spell turned out to be far simpler than she'd expected, but the power in the room was palpable, a magnetic force stemming from Willow's form and pouring from her fingers, her voice, her eyes.

Said force became a wave and it was poured into Kendra, overflowing her from within. She thought she fell unconscious for a few seconds, but she couldn't be sure of anything beyond a contained confusion when she opened her eyes. The change was immediate: the nausea was gone, as if the return of her soul had calmed down the beast inside her and it now just laid in wait.

"Did... did it work?" Willow asked.

"It worked," she whispered. The tears on her eyes were part joy, for herself, and part sorrow, for the girl she killed. Humans, she'd been taught, were the civilians she was tasked to protect in her war against all evil, and she had torn through the one compassionate enough to come to her aid. It wasn't a debt that could be repaid, but she was overcome with a desire to try. At once, she didn't want to learn more about her that would make her feel worse, but she felt a duty to do so; to find out who Kendra had robbed the world of in her thirst; to pour salt into her own wound and to try her hardest to find a way to lessen the burdens she'd had a hand in creating.

Ignorant of her inner tumult, Willow leaped in joy and enveloped Kendra in a tight hug. "It worked!"

Kendra awkwardly patted her on the back. "Soul or not, I'm still a newborn vampire. It's not a good idea to put a tasty neck so close to my teeth."

"Sorry. Didn't mean to tease." Willow let her go with an apologetic smile, before jumping excitedly again. "But it worked! We should celebrate."

"I think it's a little early for me," Kendra said, pointing to the window. The first sunlight of the day could be seen from it.

"Tonight, at the Bronze?"

"It might be better if I avoid crowds for a while."

"Okay. Then tonight we all come here and play board games. That's non-negotiable!"

"By all means," Giles said, cleaning his glasses, "invite yourselves into my home."

"Thank you, Giles, that's very generous of you," the short boy said.

She squeezed Kendra's arm, like she just couldn't stop herself from touching her. "Okay, we're leaving, but I will be back before school with animal blood for you, so don't worry."

The others said their goodbyes —a few even more awkward pats from the boys, a sarcastic "all is well that ends well, I supposed" from Cordelia, whose name Willow finally mentioned when she admonished her for it—, and she was left with Giles to wistfully stare after them, at the glimmer of sunlight they let enter the door on their way out.

Soul or not, the transformation had happened, and Kendra knew she would never be the same. The world shifted dramatically —sounds, colors, tact, all of it. Death was a different plane of existence and she would never get the previous one back.

Kendra thought she would miss the sun most of all. She wasn’t an indulgent person by nature —or possibly she would have been, had that chance presented itself—; sunbathing had never been a priority. If anything, she’d learned to be about as nocturnal as her prey; now she would at most be able to hang out by a long shadow when the sun was low, and thinking that she allowed the bitter resentment she had forced down for years to grow. Bitterness about how she never simply lied down on the ground, maybe on the grass near a swimming pool, and sucked in every ray of light until her skin burned to the touch.

She had thought she knew death intimately; it was a possibility waiting for her nearby behind every sunset, and she thought she had made her peace with that. But nobody had prepared her for this, for how she’d feel after… after. For the hunger, for the internal battle constantly warring inside her, for her newfound power; for Drusilla’s visits in her dreams, where she cradled Kendra in her arms like a toddler and fed her from her chest, and told her that everything would be fine because she was there to guide her through it. It was unsettling, how the comfort of those words persisted for those few seconds of stupor after she woke up.

She decided to press pause on the melancholy and self-pity and looked back at Giles, her remaining companion. He sad on the couch and he'd been staring in the distance, with the same look Buffy's mother wore, but he braved a smile for her. However, the thought of Buffy put her on edge.

"Do you think it worked too, with Angel? That Buffy had to..." It was too horrifying a sentence to complete. Buffy would have. Just like Kendra, she understood when duty came first. It wouldn't make it any less painful, any less unnatural for Buffy to see herself pushed into such an act against someone she'd loved so deeply.

Giles wouldn't have looked more pained if Kendra had pushed her hand into his ribcage and twisted. It had been ungenerous of her to give voice to that fear, one he'd surely imagined before.

"I don't know."

No, things could never return to their previous state. Not her, not Buffy, not that sweet blonde girl, not anybody affected by the events Angelus had set in motion that day. All she could do was to put her hand on Giles' shoulder, in an attempt to be the comforter as well as the one comforted.

"I will help you." I will help you with patrols. I will help you find Buffy. I will help you, plain and simple.

Giles reached back and clasped her hand in an almost painful grip.