I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain.

“Life is just a chance to grow a soul.”
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Getting his soul back was supposed to change everything. In truth, it changed very little save for the guilt and self-loathing. The conscience, the pain, that was all the bloody thing really was good for in the end. All it did was drive him mad and send him straight into that blasted pit where all he could do was feel...

Having a soul was fair worthless until he was back at Buffy’s side again. And even then, it wasn’t worth much.

Even when he recorporealized, failed at getting back to her and ended up with Baileigh instead, Spike wasn’t sure he’d made the right call and invested enough in his choice that he couldn’t very well have the bugger removed. Getting to know Bee, becoming part of her life all the way through to Searchlight...that had changed a lot.

( That had given his soul value... )

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

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Fever had him in its grips, blinding him with white-hot flame. Somewhere in the place where he could still think clearly, he knew he was dying and mourned the loss. Pain he could handle, delirium and hallucinations were no big deal. Hell, he could even stand in judgment and tough out having his victims paraded before him by the Almighty himself…he’d already put himself through that wringer once upon a time.

I don’t know if you can hear me…but you’ve got to trust me.

He could trust the pain, he could trust the dark. Blinding whiteness he couldn’t handle, he couldn’t go into it willingly. He wasn’t made for it, not anymore. He played at the edges, but all it was ever going to be was an act. Even his soul was a lie, torment for a demon’s life that the man had to atone for. Sins he’d committed, sins he’d never even conceived…

( ..... )

Muse: Spike
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Words: 1,065

You'll never see me coming
You'll never know my name
Try to remember, try to forget
But you'll never be the same

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Nobody asked him to stay, he just did. It made the most sense, being that he didn’t actually need sleep or food or any of that nonsense. Once Baileigh stormed into the waiting room cursing in both English and Spanish, and once he’d calmed her down enough to explain that Nahuel was behind the shooting, Spike hadn’t left the hospital. It was easy enough to avoid the sun, hospitals weren’t very welcoming to daylight so long as he stayed out of the lobby.

There was always someone in Hank’s room as well. She was always with Joe or Claire or Bee or the Bartletts, and Spike was always with them…except when he was in the ER like he was now, gazing longingly at an accident victim bleeding in the corridor. Guiltily, he imagined the bloke was already dead, and what was a taste of cold meat among friends, right? After all, Cain worked in the damn hospital…

( ..... )

Muse: Spike
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Words: 772

To the soul, there is hardly anything more healing than friendship.

She wasn’t like any of the other girls.

Drusilla offered him love, eternal life, beauty and glorious darkness to hide in when the world was an ugly and cold place. She was his greatest love, his dark mother, his sweet and simple princess…the reason he was even here to think on another woman.

Buffy offered him nothing by choice, and yet gave him a reason to step into the light once again. She was forced by fate, life, and all the powers above to draw back the curtain for him…to reveal the world was still waiting, beautiful and worthy of a little effort to make it something great again. She showed him his place in that world, the ray of sunlight that was out there waiting for him. Her pity and her compassion were the only thing she ever gave him purely, willingly, but it was those things that brought him to Searchlight…and his thoughts to another person.

Baileigh was his sister, his best friend and the greatest ally he’d ever know. Of all the women in his life, she was the one that treated him as more than a man or even an equal: she treated him as family. With her, he belonged…no matter how evil or flawed, in her home and in her life he forever had a place where he simply fit. She was the one to truly welcome him back to the world, with arms wide open and warmly ready to accept him for all that he was…she was the one that made it all right to stop and stare.

Baileigh made it okay for him to think of her. The girl with the broad smile and soft, strong voice that offered him absolutely nothing. A beer, a pint of blood, a quick word and a mind wide open to the world. He could smell the wind in her hair and almost hear her laugh depart as soon as it came, carried off on some errant breeze that might blow her away any second.

She offered him nothing…not a blessed thing that wasn’t his rightful due as a man, as a human (in theory)…as a person.

Amelia Steed wasn’t like any of the other girls, because she wasn’t trying to make anything of him. She was just another girl, and he just another boy…and there was something about the idea of being the boy to her girl that rather appealed to him.

Muse: Spike
Fandom: BtVS
Words: 406