Disclaimer:  The world hasn't ended therefore I own nothing.
Author:  Shay
Title: What's It Like?
Summary:  Tracy's POV about being a vampire.
AN:  This is  a little similar to stream of consciousness. I have 
never written a FK fanfic.  Hope it goes well and please review for 
me.  Thanx. This hasn't been beta'd so all mistakes happen to
be my own :D
                           What's It Like?
 
I think that I'm in a brooding mode for tonight.  It only comes
upon 
me when I have nothing better to do.  Lacroix may complain but the 
world still has secrets for me to find.  Things seem so strange now.  
Maybe it's the air.  Let's go with that for a moment.  The
air feels 
different.  Alive in a way that I could never understand before now.  
Maybe it's the scents that come my way.  Smells that seem more 
vibrant, willful as if they have a life of their own.  Smelly life.  
Haha...I slay myself. It's hard to remember the beginning without 
bias, hard to discard it.  But I'm here now.  Sitting on top of a 
billboard and just watching.  It's not the watchfulness of a
hunter.  
It's merely the philosophical gaze of someone who has seen only a 
small part of the puzzle and can never dream of grasping the fullness 
of it.  It's a contemplative gaze.  How did I get here?  I trace
it 
to when I was created.  Not born, created.  It's all so clear
now.  
What was it like being brought across?  How can I explain such a 
sensation?  I can't, but since I never back down from a challenge 
I'll try.  I remember dying, feeling the life bleed from me.  My 
Maker was Nick Knight.  I saw it in the blood exchange.  I saw 
Natalie trying to dissuade him from bringing me across, I saw his 
capitulation.  And then I saw him return.  I saw him give me this 
gift and I saw him regret it.  A part of him died when Natalie died.  
If not for Lacroix, his death would have been physically manifested 
instead of emotionally.  But that's just the mechanics.  You want
to 
know how it was, how it felt.  It's looking at another vampire
and 
simply smiling a small contented smile and knowing that they 
completely understood.  It's a feeling that I really hadn't
felt 
before, except of course on girl night.  I have no complaints against 
Nick.  The last fifty years have been fun.  We became lovers,
it's 
what generally happens between the maker and the created.  We had no 
falsehoods between us.  I could never take the place of Natalie and 
he could never replace Vachon.  The bonds we share are far removed 
from love and lust.  But maybe I should use an analogy to describe 
being brought across.  Have you never just gone outside and played in 
the snow and return to the comfort of your warm house where a nice 
warm cup of cocoa made by loving hands awaits?  It's knowing 
intimately the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  It's
being 
in a dark place and then bursting forth into a brilliant light that 
scares and intimidates, and then being embraced in the warm cocoon of 
loving arms.  It's feeling a crushing loneliness and then a
presence 
that never lets you go.  Enough of that though, because I could 
probably wax poetic on the subject all night long.  I bore myself so 
often that it can`t possibly be healthy.  What is that I see?  
Ah...some wayward mortal on their merry little way.  I have often 
thought it ironic that in our great race to defeat death that in the 
end we welcome its embrace and find immortality.  What is it like 
being a vampire?  I attribute this question to morbid curiosity on 
the parts of some and a complete terror of death on many others.  
I've found an answer of sorts.  Have you ever gone back to your
old 
elementary school?  You look around and everything seems so small. I 
look around that school and think.  Were the toilets always that 
small?  Was I ever unable to reach the water fountain?  Was there 
ever a time when the teachers were like giants?  Did I ever really 
worship them and do all I could to please them?  Did the halls ever 
seem able to swallow me whole?  And maybe you say out loud:  "I
don't 
remember everything being so tiny."  And maybe a perceptive loved
one 
or good friend answers you back, or maybe some small voice amusingly 
replies:  "Silly girl it isn't that the school is so small,
it's that 
you're so big."  That was my moment.  The moment that I
realized that 
change makes philosophers of us all.  I look back on my mortal life 
and ask myself many questions.  Was I ever that eager?  Could I have 
possibly been that naive?  Was I ever that small?  I look back on my 
mortal life and it seems so insignificant.  Lacroix's words
finally 
make sense to me, but I'll never say that to him.  His endless
rants 
on the inadequacy of mortals take on a new light.  Another 
realization comes to me.  That school in all it's incredible 
smallness is the foundation on which I was formed.  Without that 
basis what am I?  I'm nothing.  Without my mortal existence,
I'm 
nothing.  It was the crucible in which I was forged.  Let Lacroix top 
that.  Of course these musings are followed by the first time the 
bloodlust took control and I took a life.  At my core I am a police 
officer.  Sworn to uphold the law.  It's not what I do.  It's
what I 
am.  Lacroix will always be a Roman general.  Time won't change 
that.  Nick will forever be the Crusader with high hopes and a faith 
that failed him.  The Eternal Brooder, that has a nice ring.  The 
bloodlust was like no other sensation.  When all was done, it finally 
clicked for me.  All my life I wanted to understand why a human being 
would kill another.  It's all about control.  I knew this 
intellectually, but it was only an academic understanding.  I just 
didn't get *it*.  The control over another human.  The power.  I 
could now understand Nick and his pain.  Nick taught me how to 
control myself.  How not to let the blood lust take over, in this he 
was the best of teachers and I his rapt pupil.  I wasn't afraid
of 
the beast in me.  On the hunt it's you and your prey.  At the end
of 
the hunt it's you and a corpse, generally.  But during the
feeding 
itself, it is you and the blood and the memories.  Parts of me was 
repulsed, but the majority of me felt the raw exhilaration.  That 
part of me rolled in the waves of ecstasy of the blood lust.  All 
things paled in comparison.  It was orgasmic.  Nick wasn't simply 
grieving times when the beast within seized power over him;  he 
grieved the aspect of him that enjoyed it.  My illusion of control 
over myself was shattered.  And this life made sense.  Control is 
something we try to find everyday we exist.  It can drive a person to 
madness in it's power.  It was a revelation.  We all react in 
radically different ways.  Some people kill others so that their 
illusion of control remains intact.  Lacroix dominates.  He dominates 
my life, Nick's life, the lives of other vampires.  Vachon always
ran 
away.  Screed buried himself in his sewers and refused to look 
reality in the face.  Natalie found causes to believe in.  Nick 
turned his back on forgiveness.  So how did I react?  I accepted that 
my existence was small.  In the end, I accepted myself.