Disclaimer: If you want it, ask me for the beta'd version.

Notes: I can't remember where I read the quote: 'Humanity is learned not inherited' or who it's credited to, but that was the inspiration of this story. It's my perspective on the whole demon/human thing, I guess. Kind of rough around the edges.

I have to admit, the first thing I noticed about the chit was the blond hair.

Been awhile since we had a blond bint for a Slayer. Though it's kind of hard to remember, they blend into each other quite a bit. They don't stick around for long anymore. In fact, since the descimation of the Watcher's Council, they've been dropping like flies.

Peaches, Princess, the Witch and me - we try and keep up. But it ain't easy. We don't have the upperhand anymore. Apparently, the good guys don't always win.

Yeah, that's right, I'm playing for the home team now. I've turned into a great big bloody pouf like my Sire. Only with better dress sense and much better hair.

Which is why I'm crouched in a graveyard watching a Slayer do her stuff and thinking about giving her a helping hand instead of ripping her throat out.

And I don't even have that bleedin' chip to blame for it, anymore.

'Cos, you see, even if she doesn't know it yet - me, Peaches, Princess and the Witchy are all this chit has got in the world.

It's been that way for years. The four of us and some nameless Slayer. We're all that stands between the world and it's total destruction. It's a bloody tough gig and we're all in it for our own reasons.

Princess didn't really get a choice in the matter. Peaches is still paying for past sin. I think the bint with the mojo sticks around because she knows it's right.

And me? I owe it to the Powers That Be.

But mostly, I owe it to him.

I've always been a sucker for a brunette.

Peaches, my Ripe Wicked Plum and then him.

I didn't plan it this way. But to be honest, I don't think I had any bleedin' say in the damn matter. I should have been bloody suspicious from the start. The way the whelp and me kept getting shoved together was a little too pat for my liking. Those Powers That Be are tricky buggers.

Though, not that I'm complaining.

I can be flippant about a lot of things in my life, but Xander Harris is not one of them.

I loved him. I still love him.

We had four years together. Four measely friggin' years. I'm over a century and a half old for christssake and everything that has ever mattered to me in this bleedin' life comes down to four measley friggin' years.

He was only twenty-three when he died. Still a bloody kid.

But what really chaffs at me, what really gets my goat, is that I lost him to a bunch of human creeps who should've been drowned as birth.

I couldn't protect him because of that fucking chip. I tried so fucking hard to ignore the pain, but it crippled me. And by the time I recovered it was too damn late. The bastards had buggered off, leaving Xander in a pool of his own blood.

He was in my arms when he died. He didn't say anything, just looked at me with those big brown eyes as his life slowly ebbed away. I wanted to scream, I wanted to howl, I wanted to cry, but all I could do was meet his gaze and memorise every line for the long drought.

Red stopped me from walking into a sunrise that morning. I'll tell you what, she was a fiesty bint when she wanted to be.

She had be chained up for weeks to make sure I wouldn't do anything stupid. It took me hours to finally convince her to let me go and that I wouldn't do anything stupid. She cast three truth spells on me before she even considered it. I'm still not sure whether to be grateful to her.

When she finally did unchain me, I did something I didn't think I would ever do.

I went running to my great ninny of a Sire.

I threw all dignity to the wind that day. I begged and I pleaded with him like a big ponce. I needed that bleedin' chip out. I couldn't let anything like this happen again.

To give him his due, Peaches was pretty good about it. He worked night and day until he found a way to deactivate it. In the end we ran some bloody huge wattage of electicity through me scalp and the thing short circuited. I still have the burn marks.

Peaches and I had a lot of long talks those following weeks.

He had this theory.

He believed that it was part of a human's nature to want to do good. Which made those fuckers who killed Xander all the more sickening. It's one thing for a demon to kill, it's in their nature. But for a human, whose very nature urges them to be good...for a human to take a life brutally...it is the greater evil.

No one was really suprised when I didn't switch sides after the chip was deactivitated. Not even me. I knew I had gone soft ages ago and so did everyone else. I used to claim it was the chip that did me in, turned me into a pet vampire, house trained and all. But I know and they know it was Xander.

Peaches had some theories about that too. He reckoned it was one thing for him to fight on the side of good, since thanks to the gypsy curse, he was handed his humanity on a silver platter.

But for me, for a demon to renounce his very nature and fight the good fight was something else entirely.

Humanity, Peaches reckoned, wasn't exclusive to those who had souls. It was a brutal lesson perhaps, but Humanity could be learned. He told me it just took an extraordinary student.

I disagreed. I told him it took an extraordinary teacher.

That was 2005.

In 2009, the Watcher had stroke and began to detriorate qucikly. He eventually died a few months later with Buffy by his side.

Things went badly after that.

Watching the old man die and not being able to a bloody thing about it broke the chit. She lost her edge. She still kept up the fight, but she was weak. She was losing.

In the end that's what sent it all to hell.

Some wise-ass 600 year old vamp caught onto the fact that the Slayer was weakend without the Watcher, and decided that the way to eliminate the threat of the Slayer, was to eliminate the Watcher's Council.

Somehow the jammy git managed to mobilise demons and vampires alike. By the time we realised what the hell was going down, it was too late to do anything but assemble defense tactics.

We drained all the bleedin' sources that we could russle up and built an army. We pulled that psychotic chit out of prision, we had Farmboy rattle up some commando jocks. We had the Watchers mobilised and Red and Tara gathered as many mojo workers as they could find.

But in the end, it was slaughter.

The Watchers, Farmboy and the Commandos were knocked out in the first wave, along with that Homey G kid and the stray Watcher, Peaches picked up in LA.

We should've ran then, and maybe we would've saved more, but we were stupid, we wanted revenge. All we got we got was more blood.

Red was the next to fall. She was the focus of some spell the witches were working and she lost control of the power or something when the demons attacked.

That other Slayer, Faith, was killed in the final battle, protecting Buffy. I didn't actually know the chit well, and I hear she's got something of a colorful history but I swear she had it where it counted.

Nothing the chit had done in the past could've outweighed what she did for Buffy on that battlefield. There's no way in which to describe it. She threw everything she had into protecting Buffy. Every thread of her being had one focus and it was the weakend blond Slayer.

The bint may not have had a long life to repent her sins, to dwell over them and to suffer, and to brood over everything like the pouf, but she earnt her redemption. And after that last battle, she bloody well deserved it.

The Princess also took a tumble. Technically she died, but since she's crouched behind a gravestone about ten feet away from me at the moment, technically doesn't really count for much.

Apparently the Powers That Be hadn't finished with her yet.

Peaches doesn't agree, but I think it's bloody amusing that the Queen C should be granted eternal youth, with one hell of a catch - heartwrenching and neverending duty to humankind.

I s'pose the Princess doesn't really deserve it, but like everyone fighting on the right side, she'll get her reward someday.

That's the way the Powers That Be work. If you serve them, if you fight the good fight, you'll be rewarded. Faith had an instant before she died when she heard Buffy tell her that she loved her. Giles' decade with Buffy was more than enough for the old man. Red had Tara. And likewise, the Witch had Red.

I'm not sure what Peaches got. Maybe his humanity, his soul, was reward enough.

And me? I got my reward in advance. Four years with Xander, and every memory of him emblazoned on my mind as it traced out in golden ink.

And now, I'm doing every bloody thing I can to deserve it.