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Buffy picked up the phone with a shaking hand after the third ring, but for Spike that hadn’t been quick enough.


“About soddin time slayer! I’ve had e-bloody-nough of you ignoring me. Now you’re gonna tell me why you’ve made me attach m’self to the phone and keep callin you like some nancy boy teenager with a crush.” Spike must’ve heard the hitch in Buffy’s breathing. His voice softened, lowered, thrumming with concern. “What’s goin on pet?”


Buffy’s stomach twisted even as her skin trembled at the sound. A million possible responses flitted through her head, what came out of her mouth was not one of them.
“You don’t have a soul.”


She gasped as she heard her own words, they came out like a slap and when she heard Spike hiss she knew the slap had made powerful contact.


Buffy had never meant to have this talk over the phone. While she couldn’t deny it was easier to talk to Spike when she wasn’t surrounded by his presence she knew it wasn’t fair to him.


It was too late now though, the damage was done.
Buffy didn’t believe in God, but she prayed to whatever higher powers there were that Spike would tell her he had a soul. Buffy prayed he would tell her she was wrong. She prayed he would laugh, and make a joke of it. She could put it down to Angel stirring things and they could forget all about it. And everything would be ok. She prayed so hard that it would be ok.



It was hideous long moments before Spike replied. When he did it was the last thing she expected to hear.
“So?”


Buffy wasn’t sure she heard him correctly. “So? Did you say so?”


“Yeah. I did.”


Buffy felt her whole body constrict until it was hard to breath, it was hard to think. Hard to do anything but hurt.
Her voice came out as an anguished whisper. “You really don’t have a soul do you?”



Spike growled, and it was a truly scary sound. “No I bloody don’t. I don’t have that shiny bit of untouchable nothin inside me you humans call a soul, and I’ll say again, so? What does it matter?”



Every word Spike spoke chilled her blood a little more. “How can you even ask me that? After what happened with Angel how can you say not having a soul doesn’t matter?”



“I’m not soddin Angel slayer! You’ve known me for months, and how many times have I tried to kill you? How many times have I tried to kill your friends or your mum? That would be a big fat none. Last time I looked I hadn't tried to take over the world either. The most evil thing I've done since I got here is eat all the watchers jaffa cakes and blame it on the bloody whelp!”


Despite the fact that Spike was practically shouting Buffy was clutching the phone so tightly to her ear her knuckles were threatening to burst through the skin.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was a whisper, but the accusation rang out like a scream.


“Because you never bloody asked. It’s not something I broadcast slayer. If the soddin council knew d’you reckon I’d still be their Saviour? Their champion? D’you think they’d let me anywhere near their precious slayers? Near you? I know having a soul doesn’t matter. Those idiots don’t.”



“Without a soul you don’t have a conscience Spike.”


Spike laughed, but it was a dark and humourless sound. “You askin me whether I have a conscious slayer? Or are you tellin me I don’t have one?”


Buffy was hurting, unbelievably so, but she was also getting angry. “Spike, without a soul you don’t have a conscious. It’s a fact.”


“According to who? The Council of Bloody Wankers? Yeah, cos they’ve never been wrong about anything have they? They hate demons slayer, all demons, and they need to make sure their greatest weapon doesn’t give a fig about them either. If you give them a conscious they’re too human aren’t they? It makes the whole slayer gig a bit too much like murder if what you’re killin has a conscious, has feelings. You don’t think their view might be a little biased?”


Buffy heard what she was saying, but it was spinning her round, turning her upside down and confusing her. She clung rigidly to the only thing she had which could stop her drowning, she clung to what she had been told, what she knew. “I kill demons because they're evil. Without a soul they don’t know the difference between right and wrong. They do what they want when they want and damn everyone else.”



“I’ll give you that Slayer. Some demons are evil. Maybe even most. But that’s not because they don’t have a conscious, it’s because they chose not to listen to it. I know the difference between right and wrong, that’s why I don’t rip Xanders neck open and bathe in his blood, no matter how much I want to sometimes.
Lets turn the tables shall we? How about human murders, slayer? Rapists? Where do you stand on them? Their conscious doesn’t seem to be functionin quite right does it? And yet they have a soul. Does that mean they’re not evil then?”


Buffy didn’t know what to say in reply. Her heart was throbbing so painfully it was hard to think.
She remembered Giles patiently answering her questions that morning – god had it only been a few hours ago? – Giles wouldn’t lie to her, he wouldn’t have told her anything he didn’t think was true.Giles wasn't stupid, he wouldn't just go along with what the Council said if he didn't think it was right. And the Council had to be right because they were the Council... Buffy hated the Council, thought they were interfering idiots, scared old men who needed a little girl to fight for them. But they were the Council, they had to be right. If they weren't then...

“You can’t love”



Buffy had barely spoken the words, she hadn't meant to do anything but think them, but Spike had heard her.
Buffy could feel him stiffening, could see the way his blue, blue eyes had darkened. She could see him as clearly as though he was in the room with her, and oh how it hurt.


His voice went lower still, laced with bitter anger, pain, regret. “Oh, I can’t love? Someone ought to have told my soddin heart that then, it doesn’t seem to have had the memo.

Let me tell you something Slayer, seein as you’re all about the brutal honesty today. I love, just like you.
You’ve got your family and friends, you had captain forehead. You’ve got plenty of people to love, and who love you back. In all my life I’ve loved five people, had five people who I would consider family. And when I say loved them I don’t mean desired, or obsessed over, or wanted to possess. I mean really loved, as in cared more for them than for any other soddin thing on this earth, cared more for their existence then my own.
Three of them were beautiful women, including my mum. And I had to see each of them die, because I couldn’t save them. D’you have any idea how that feels? How it feels to love someone so much you’re drowning in them? To love with your whole bloody being, with everything you are, everything you have. To love like it’s the only thing you can do, because you’ll die if you don’t, and then have it taken away?
Almost every time I’ve loved someone I’ve lost them Slayer. And over the years it’s broken me, bit by bit. I don’t want to love now, because I really know what it means, I know where it can lead. But just because I don’t want to love doesn’t mean I can’t. Doesn’t mean I don’t.”



The raw pain and the honesty rang in every syllable Spike had spoken. The depth of his emotion, emotion a soulless demon shouldn’t have been able to feel, shook Buffy to her core. He wasn’t lying to her. She was sure of that. But she wasn’t sure of what it meant.


Spike sighed, and he sounded so lost Buffy wanted to hold him, to make everything alright. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even say anything to make it better, she couldn’t help him feel found, not when she was just as lost herself.

“Slayer I’ve got to go. Werewolves to hunt. Before I do, I want you to remember somethin for me, remember somethin and try to believe it. I might not have a soul, but I have a heart. I live by it and I’ll die by it. I’m not much known for being a thinker, sometimes I make some wrong calls, some wrong bloody decisions, but I follow my heart, my feelings, and usually it doesn’t lead me wrong.
This might not mean much comin from a soulless demon, but I think that since the first time I had a vision about you... with you’re stupid shampoo commercial hair bouncin all over the place... since then, my heart’s been leading me to you.
I won’t apologise for what I am. Or for what I’m not. I haven’t always been honest with you, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me. But one thing you have to know, you have to understand, I never meant to hurt you pet. It was the last thing I wanted to do. Knowin I did is breakin me, but I can’t make it better. Only you can. If you want to get passed this, if you want us to have a chance at somethin you’re gonna have to step out of your black and white world and join me in the gray one.
I’ll understand if you can’t slayer, but I hope you try. I need you pet. Need you so bloody much.”



The dial tone buzzed loudly, sounding strangely bleak.



Buffy replaced the phone, and lay back. Her eyes were wide and brimming. Her voice was quietly intense as she whispered into the night, “Be careful Spike. I need you too.”






The next day Giles rang Buffy to tell her that he’d heard from Spike again, but Spike had made it clear that it would be the last time he'd call until he returned.
“He seemed very out of sorts, not like himself at all. And it was almost as though he was angry with me about something, though I can’t for the life of me think what I could have done. Unless he feels I’m not doing enough to discover the identity of the werewolf perhaps? But he knows I’m doing all that I can. Have you spoken to him Buffy? Do you know why he, er, seems so out of humor with me?”


Buffy knew alright. Spike blamed the Council, and so inadvertently blamed Giles, for how she had reacted to learning that he didn’t have a soul. She couldn’t say that of course, but Giles sounded so much like a child who'd been told off she tried to sound a little reassuring.
“No Giles, he hasn’t said anything to me. Maybe he was just stressed about the mission? It is going to be dangerous.” Her heart was screaming TOO DANGEROUS, but she tried to block out the deafening sound of her feelings. “Did he – did he ask about me?” she was horribly aware of how small and fragile her voice sounded.



Giles was too, but he was still trying to stick to his new policy of letting her come to him with her problems, rather than forcing his own solutions on them for her. His voice was gentle. “He asked me to be a ‘good little watcher’, and watch out for you. I thought you’d spoken to him?”



Buffy felt another helpless tear force its way down cheeks that had yet to fully dry. She swallowed the burning lump which had formed in her throat. “I spoke to him last night, but I haven’t today.”


“Oh, well he only just phoned me, maybe he’s been trying to phone you and I’ve been here jamming up the line. I’ll let you go Buffy, I’m sure he’ll want to speak to you before he sets off.”


Buffy wasn’t sure of that at all, but murmured agreements and said goodbye.



She hung up the phone and stared at it against her will. It rang again a couple of times that day, but it was never Spike on the other end.







The days passed with agonising slowness for Buffy, each minute a torture which had to be endured to progress to the next. She hadn’t forgotten her promise to Xander, so even though Willow claimed Oz was sicker and bailed, Buffy and Xander had a movie night. Buffy couldn’t eat the pizza, and she couldn’t watch the film. But she could talk to Xander. Asking about him, about all the non scooby related things he’d been up to and all the things Buffy had missed out on in recent weeks, reminded Xander that she still cared about him, and distracted her a fraction from the searing agony that was her heart.

Last nights conversation with Spike played on a loop, echoing in her head no matter how hard she tried to block it out. Every time she ran through it she ended up being more confused than before. Some of what Spike had said made sense, it scared her and warmed her at the same time and let her hope that she hadn’t lost him. But then she remembered her slayer training, she remembered everything Giles had ever said about souls. Most of all she remembered Angelus. Then she could see nothing but heartbreak on her future.



Joyce had gone off on a buying trip which would last at least until Spike came back. Willow spent most of the week MIA, or at Giles’, talking even less than usual and keeping her head stuck in some book or another. Cordelia was making more demands on Xander’s time, so he wasn’t around much and Giles was still plugging away at the research, hoping that he might find another way of dealing with the werewolf and perhaps find a way back into Spikes good graces.



All this meant that Buffy spent most of the week on her own. She was pleased in a way, trying to pretend to be happy regular Buffy was too damn hard at the moment, and the urge to cry was often too strong to ignore. On the other hand she had nothing to distract her, nothing to pick her spirits up from where they lay so crumpled on the floor. She knew she should have told Giles, this was not the sort of thing she should keep from him. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It would all become to real then, Giles would make it a real issue, with real consequences, and Buffy just couldn’t cope with that right now, not when her mind was in such a constant state of flux.


Thoughts of Spike were with her constantly. Was he ok? What was he doing? Did he miss her?

She missed him so much it was like a physical ache. It was lucky that patrols had been so quiet lately, because Buffy was so distracted she was often unprepared for the fights when they came.

The question that kept returning to her, like an unshakable fever, was whether she and Spike could ever have what they had been so close to having with each other.

When she asked herself what Spike had been to her the answer turned out to be surprisingly simple. Everything.

He had somehow or another become everything to her.
He made life about more than just living, he made it about being alive.
Spike was so vibrant so full of energy, so full or power and excitement.


He could thrill her with a look, drive her to the brink of madness with a touch, and draw her anger forward with a word. He was annoying. He was irritating. He was beautiful. He was incredible. He was hers.


Darkness and light met within his eyes and it took her breath away.


He was everything.


But was he still?


Most the time she thought no, no she couldn’t possibly see him the same way, couldn’t possibly continue having the boundless depths of trust for him she had had before. He was not the person she thought she knew.


At other times, mainly times in the protective cover of night, when she was nearing exhaustion, the barriers she constructed during the day began to lower.
At those times she was honest with herself. It hurt. He had hurt her. But he was still in her heart, he had become part of the fabric of it. Impossible to cut out.
He was still everything.


If she continued having a relationship with him she would be going against her calling, her watcher, going against the Council and everything they believed and taught.


If she stopped her relationship with Spike she would be going against her heart, and every fibre of her being.



Buffy had two ways to jump. But she couldn’t decide. She was caught on the precipice, sick with vertigo, and not sure how to make her way down.



As it turned out, she just needed something to give her a little push...





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