AN: Just a little thought I had.

Warnings: SPOILERS Season 6's "Bathroom Scene". If you don't know what I'm talking about, you shouldn't read.

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That honor belongs to Joss Whedon.

Evil. Soulless. Monster. Murderer. William the Bloody. Slayer of Slayers. Half a dozen appellations and none of them had ever bothered Spike. Not until he made the stupidest decision of his life, and unlife, and added rapist to the list.

"Ask me again why I could never love you." She had looked so broken when she had said that. So hurt. Because he had hurt her. And looking at her looking at him like that…that was the first time Spike had ever hated himself. He had just wanted so badly to believe that it wasn't over. That she loved him.

She didn't though. It was painfully obvious to him now. He still loved her. He would love her until the day this body turned to ash. But she didn't love him. Couldn't love him. He was a fool. What the hell had he been thinking?

"I know you'll never love me. I know I'm a monster." God, he had said the words, why couldn't he remember them when they mattered! She told him over and over again that she didn't love him. He knew it was just sex. She didn't even like him most of the time. They had said that too.

"Do you even like me?"

"Sometimes."

She couldn't stomach the thought of him when he wasn't inside her. So how, in the name of all things holy and unholy, had he managed to convince himself that he could be something she loved. He is nothing to her. A monster.

"Buffy, I've changed"

"You mean the chip? That's not change. You're like a serial killer in prison."

"Women marry them all the time."

But did they love them? Did they look at them with shining adoration the way he looks at her? Did they have more than lustful infatuation and obsession in them? Is that all she had for him? No. No obsession. No infatuation. Not even lust really. Wanted to feel. Feel hate and disgust and…

How had he confused that for love? She didn't love him. Because he was a monster. He was evil. He had no soul.

"You don't have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you! I could never be…your girl."

And perhaps that was the root of it all. She thought he couldn't love because the place that love is supposed to come from isn't in him. But he's always loved. He loved Sicily even as she scorned him. He loved Dru even as she betrayed him. He loves Buffy even as she left him.

He loved her until he'd convinced himself she loved him too, despite the extensive evidence to the contrary. And he hurt her trying to prove his delusion true.

Spike had been called a lot of names: Murderer, monster, soulless, evil. William the Bloody. Slayer of Slayers….Rapist.

"What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet." Isn't that what Shakespeare said? Sitting alone in a crypt, Spike has come to the realization that everything is in a name. It wasn't what he had done that stopped her from loving him. It wasn't what he hadn't done. It was the semantics. Because he didn't have a soul, because he was soulless, he was a being incapable of love regardless of all the things he did to prove that he was. Because he didn't was a murderer, what made him different was a jail cell in his head not a choice to be more than he was. Because he had been made into a monster, he couldn't be sincere in his affections. Because he was a being defined as evil, he couldn't be something worthy of love.

What's in a name? The reactions of everyone who hears it. The judgments they will make the moment it is revealed. Names are what define the world. And the world couldn't give a damn if the titles shelled out didn't always apply perfectly. In the realm of names and name labels, there are no shades of gray. You will be what you are, even if you aren't.

Well, that settles it." Spike says, rousing from his liquor induced stupor. He rises on steady legs and snatches his duster from the back of a chair. He strides through his front door with purpose. If Buffy can't love him as he is, with the labels he bears, then he'll just have to get some new ones.