To Live For

He'd long since discarded the idea of ever being normal; he was fairly certain that threshold had been reached well before his first death, and the time travel hadn't helped it any. He wasn't even sure if he could act normal; too many things had passed from habit into reflex for him to change his behavior anything other than slowly.

Somehow, he'd held out this hope that once humans were around everything would be all right, that he'd be able to fit in and live a normal life or ten. But that wasn't how it happened. He'd spent so much time pinning his hopes on the first humans he saw that the reality fell far short of his expectations. They were better than the demons, but the world was a rougher place than it had been in his first lifetime, even if the conflicts were smaller in scale.

Even after all this time, he wasn't sure if he even wanted to live to the time of his first life. What did he have there? Friends who were scattered across the globe and still managed to wish him gone, who he'd worked through all his emotions toward until they were as minimal as his emotions toward strangers. What did he have in this time? Not enough to live for, and that was unlikely to change any time soon.

Sometimes, the only thing keeping him sane was his students. Teaching them to the best of his ability was something to live for, and they were young enough to still be enthusiastic about the world, in whatever way they were enthusiastic.

He had a lot of students over the years; he travelled around enough to run into a lot of pre-Immortals and new Immortals, and he taught all of them who were the slightest bit receptive. Some of them were cheerful. Some of them were angry. Some of them were determined. But they were all enthusiastic about something, and that was something he could live for, seeing and fanning the fire in their eyes.