A/N: As promised I'm trying to keep my updates coming! And since it's almost Spring break I have nothing really to do, all my instructors are as eager as I am to get on with vacation . . . RNR please!

Spike leaned back, puffing smoke rings at the ceiling.

"I told you 'no smoking'." Buffy snatched the cigarette out of Spike mouth and stubbed it out.

"Oi! Daddy, Buffy took my fag!" Spike shouted across the room, getting up angrily.

"Spike, no smoking!" Angel called from the kitchen.

Buffy smirked and went to join the others in the kitchen, Spike pouted and sat down, glaring at the others that were gathered in the room, it was the end of the world apparently and Buffy had asked for Angel to help and of course where Angel went he always dragged Spike along with him. The teenage version of Hostile #17 was really starting to hate this arrangement as the teenage girls that were literally everywhere in the stupid house were constantly following him around and making eyes at him. He got up and went upstairs, looking for Dawn or Willow, at least they were still sane, he found the younger Summers girl in her bedroom, he moved in and slumped onto the bed,

"Hey." He said as she looked around at him.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Bored, not allowed ta do jack-diddly-shit 'round 'ere, thought mebbe you an' me could take off fer an hour or two, cause some havoc, loight stuff on fire, that sort of thing." Spike smiled winningly at her, but the cock of her eyebrow told him that she would not rise to the bait, "Oh alroight then let's go out or some such! Can' take this sittin' 'round and I at least know that the current nasties don' have it out fer you."

Dawn smiled, closing her textbook, "What the heck, not like I have a future or anything."

"Tha's the spirit!" Spike sprang to his feet and they rushed downstairs.


Spike leaned back in the cemetery, smoking away with Dawn sitting next to him, he glanced at her and offered the cigarette but she smiled and shook her head.

"So, what's it like to be eighteen again?" She asked.

Spike snorted, "Hell. 'm too young ta get alcohol an' 'sides, Daddy said no, I'm too old ta be cute an' now we got the end o' the world ta tango with. I loiked it better livin' in the penthouse and stuff. Dunno where Cyprus is or that git Zephyr and I've barely aged so I'm gettin' worried . . . "

Dawn nodded, "Yeah, how old were you when you got turned."

Spike blinked and furrowed his brow, "Hmm, 'bout twenty-four, twenty-six? I don' remember really, ta be honest."

"Well . . . maybe we'll all live long enough to see you grow up." Dawn smiled.

"Not loikely but thanks for the confidence, Nibblet." He smiled, throwing an arm around her and watching the stars.


Spike and Angel got into another shouting match, it was happening more an more lately,

"Ya think yer so much better'n me since ya got a soul an' all that? Well fine, who needs you?" Spike grabbed his jacket.

"Where the hell are you going?" Angel shouted back, moving to grab Spike's arm, but the younger whipped around and punched him in the jaw.

"Sod off!" Spike snapped and ran out the door.

"Spike!" Angel called, then he heard the blonde's motorcycle (Why did he let him have that thing to begin with?) rev up, "William!"

He ran outside but only in time to see the taillights, he ran back inside and got his car keys, Buffy came into the kitchen, "Wait, now where are you going?"

"After him, no telling what trouble he'll get into!" Angel snapped, turning to run back outside, but Buffy caught him, "What? I'm going to lose him if I don't hurry!"

"Angel, let him be, okay? Just let him vent off some steam and he'll be back in no time."


Spike wandered into the cavern almost a month later, glancing about at the paintings on the walls, "Noice décor . . . "

He turned and looked at the demon that was watching him with glowing blue eyes. He grimaced, this was it, he was going to prove that he was just as good as Angel.


Angel paced the room again, he couldn't be bothered with the melodrama that seemed to rule the Summers home lately, Xander and Anya weren't Xander and Anya anymore, Buffy was busy prepping for the end times, there was that weird little red-head Andrew running about and Tara was gone . . . so much had happened in his absence, so much had gone awry . . . and now Spike was nowhere to be found and Angel was worried about him.

Buffy came into the room, she looked at Angel, "I've been everywhere I could think of at least a dozen times and no one has seen or heard from Spike since he took off."

"Dammit!" Angel snapped, glaring at the sunshine outside.

Just then Buffy's phone rang, she picked up, "Hello? Dawn? Why aren't you in class- basement? What? Okay, hang on, I'm coming." She hung up, looking at Angel, "Dawn and two kids are stuck in the basement with some spooks, wanna burn off some steam?"

"Sure, why not, I'll meet you there." Angel said, heading for the door with a heavy blanket under his arm.


Buffy wandered through the basement of the Sunnydale high school, her and Angel hadn't met up yet so she was trying to find him, "Angel? Dawn? C'mon guys!" She'd already run into a spook or two so her guard was up, she looked around and just then a door opened up and a rather disheveled looking Spike stood there.


Angel groaned as he hit yet another dead-end, this was hopeless, he didn't know his way around here before and now he was insanely lost,

"Dammit . . . " He turned around and- "Agh! Oh, gods, Buffy, you scared me!"

Buffy grimaced, "Yeah and I think I know where Dawn is, c'mon."

"This place is weird . . . " Angel muttered, following behind her.

"You're telling me? It's like hallucination city down here."

It didn't take long to extricate the three teenagers from the clutches of deranged ghosts and back to relative safety above ground.

Angel climbed into his Viper and Buffy slid in next to him, "I have a bad feeling about the school being up and running again."

"Really?" Angel's eyebrows furrowed as he continued to try and come up with where Spike might have hidden himself away.

"Yeah, all those weird apparitions moving about . . . one of them looked like a crazed Spike but-"

Buffy almost smashed her head on the dashboard when Angel slammed on the breaks (nearly getting rear-ended by an SUV in the process), she pulled her hands off the dash and glared at him as he made an illegal U-turn,

"Angel, I said one looked like Spike but it was most certainly not Spike."

"How do you know? What better place to hide then in the basement of the school where we would never look for him?" Angel sped back to the school, eager to prove that he was right, that Spike was here, and was safe.

"Because whoever it was looked younger than the Spike that took off and they were insane! Going on about living down there and a spark and a whole lot of other nonsense!" Buffy insisted.

Angel shook his head, "I'll just go take a look, alright? I won't be long." He pulled his coat up over his head and ran back into the school, making sure no one noticed him then he sprinted down to the huge hole in the girl's bathroom floor. He leaped down and began to sniff about, trying to find a trail, a small trace of Spike's scent, anywhere.

He rounded a bookshelf when a hand landed on his shoulder, he yelped and whirred around, "Buffy! Stop doing that!"

"Sorry, thought you heard me walking." She grimaced, "I thought I'd come down and help."

"Thanks." Angel nodded and moved cautiously down the hall, "Spike? You down here?"

He strained to hear anything at all, but it was pretty quiet except for water rushing through pipes, rodents gnawing at trash, and this constant banging sound, it kind of sounded like something being hit on concrete. He ran to the noise, hauling open the heavy metal door and then feeling his heart convulse painfully.

It was Spike, it had to be, sure maybe he'd regressed a year or . . . five, but it had to be Spike, sure the hair was no longer gelled and the curls were getting dark roots, sure he was scratched up really badly and sure the boy was bashing his bleeding fists and forehead into the cement but . . . but it was Spike.

Angel slowly made his way closer, "Spike? William?"

The boy turned and blinked large blue eyes at Angel, blood trickled down a bruised cut in the middle of his forehead, "I didn' really mean for it ta all fall apart but then that's the way'a things, isn' it? Hmm?"

Angel blinked in confusion, "Spike, I'm going to take you home, okay?"

Spike shook his head violently like a dog, blood splattering everywhere from the cut, "Nuh-uh! Nope, sorry, not today or tomorrow or the next even, 'm stayin' 'ere, yeh? Nice an' dark an' full o' nasty, horrid things, just like me! Found where I b'long, Daddy!" He smiled maniacally then burst into tears, turning and bashing his head on the wall again, "SHUT UP! SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP! All o' ya shut the bleedin' hell up!" He screamed, tearing at his hair, "I said I was sorry, stop it!"

Angel and Buffy exchanged glances, Angel licked his lips, "Look, I'll stay here and figure out what's going on, okay? You take my car back to the house but come back and get me when the sun goes down, I don't want to risk taking him out of here until he's calm or night falls, which ever happens first."

Buffy nodded and hurried out of the basement. Angel turned and walked up to Spike, grabbing the boy's wrists and pulling him away from the wall,

"Alright, Will, calm down, tell me what's wrong so Daddy can fix it." He tugged Spike into his arms, wiping the blood off Spike's face with his sleeve; he would lick it clean if only Spike would stop thrashing like that.

"Make it stop! They won' shut up no matter how many times I say 'm sorry! Take it back, I don' want it no more!" Spike shrieked, pushing away from Angel, "They tell me I need ta be punished an' 'm tryin' but nuthin' I do makes 'em happy!"

Angel blinks and looks at Spike's noticeably thin body, his shirt was ragged and torn wide open and there were deep gashes on his chest over his heart that looked liked fingernail marks and bruises all over him, some a deep black-ish blue. Angel's jaw dropped and his eyes widened in shock,

"William, did you do this to yourself?"

Spike looked down at the marks and started sobbing uncontrollably, "They said ta do it but I couldn' keep up, hurt too much, Daddy an' I begged them not ta make me keep doin' it but they said I'd been bad, that I was so bad an' needed ta be punished . . . "

"When was the last time you've eaten?" Angel asked, thinking that Spike was talking about the ghosts that haunted the basement.

"Don' 'member, can' hunt, makes the voices scream louder an' my head hurts so much from them yellin' . . . " Spike sobbed, covering his face, his bloodied knuckles were raw down to the bone.

" . . . Wait . . . " Angel gently tilted Spike's head up and there it was, "You . . . you got a . . . soul?"

"The demon in the cave gave it ta me but I don' want it no more, take it back out! It burns, Daddy, it hurts! All the things I did . . . make it go away, please, make it stop!" Spike begged, grabbing the front of Angel's shirt and twisting it in his bloody fists.

Angel blinked helplessly, he remembered how long it took when he'd gotten his soul, nearly a hundred years . . . he didn't have that kind of time, and Spike looked at him so desperately, so afraid . . . Angel pulled Spike into his arms tighter, tucking the small vampire under his chin and rocking him,

"Shh, just close your eyes, Will, I promise that if you just sit quietly and don't give in to them they'll hush themselves." He murmured, tilting Spike's head a little to gently lap at the cut on his forehead, Spike whimpered and closed his eyes, his whole body trembled, "That's it . . . just sit quiet, it'll get easier . . . not better, ever, but it will be easier, I promise."

Spike huffed out a breath and soon fell asleep. Angel held the small, bruised body in his arms, Spike had a soul, he'd gone out and gotten himself a soul . . . Angel couldn't believe it but then part of him could, Spike was always trying to outdo Angel in some way, shape or form, so why not a soul? He'd been so angry with Angel, especially that night he took off but this was not what Angel had been expecting, not for Spike to do this. Run away? Yes. Hide right under their noses? Yes. Steal, drink, or vandalize something? Definitely. But run off and get a soul, on purpose? Not in a million years. And for once in his entire existence, Angel was at a loss. It hadn't been like this when he'd gotten his soul, certainly he'd killed a lot of people and done many an atrocious thing but . . . Spike had been unsouled and on the loose for so long and now he was trying to cope with what he'd asked for.

Angel bit his lip when Spike convulsed and woke up, crying out and panting and thrashing as if he'd forgotten that Angel was the one holding him,

"Easy, Will, easy, I've got you." Angel murmured but it seemed to do no good because Spike managed to wiggle out of his grasp and started scratching at his scalp, ears, and temples, trying to get the voices out.


Buffy didn't return until much, much later, by that time Angel was tired and desperate for help, Spike had successfully worked himself into a frenzy then collapsed from exhaustion and lack of food. Angel bundled the small vampire in his arms and carried him out to the car,

"What I would like to know is how he got to Africa and back again on his own." Angel murmured, cradling Spike on his lap as Buffy drove.

"Dunno, but then Spike was always pretty resourceful, always seemed to have connections everywhere." Buffy glanced at the dozing Spike.

"Always so clever." Angel praised softly to the unhearing Spike.


Spike woke to the voices again, he whimpered and sat up, looking around in confusion, then he recognized Buffy's basement, he swallowed and hugged his knees, rocking back and forth as they whispered to him,

"Go away . . . " He moaned, "Please, please go away . . . "

There was the sound of the door opening and Spike looked up at the stairs, seeing Angel's shoes then legs then Angel himself descending the stairs,

"Hey," He moved to sit on the cot next to Spike, "How ya feelin'?"

" . . . why won' they go 'way?" Spike asked, looking up at Angel, "Why? I said I was sorry."

Angel leaned forward to put his forehead on Spike's, smiling a little, "I hear 'em too, kiddo."

"Ya do?" Spike asked softly, moving to lean on Angel, putting a hand on the brunette's shoulder.

"Yeah, I've heard them for over a hundred years but after a little while, they get quieter and you don't have to yell at them so much." Angel murmured, stroking over Spike's slight curls, looking at the roots that were darkening with the honey-blonde that was Spike's natural color, "Don't know why you insist on dying your hair . . . it's such a lovely color."

Spike snorted and closed his eyes," . . . 's a sissy color."

"Is not." Angel said gently, "You hungry?"

" . . . should I be?" Spike looked up at Angel, "Don' feel much no more . . . feel hollow, dead . . . "

"I bet you are hungry." Angel said, slipping his shirt off, "C'mere."

Spike straddled Angel's lap, facing the brunette and looking small, vulnerable, and broken. Angel tapped the side of his neck and tilted his head back invitingly, Spike nodded and let his fangs slip down, leaning forward to make the bite, but then-

Images. Thousands of them. Screaming people begging him to stop. Writhing. Pain. Blood, everywhere, on his hands, his face, his clothes. Men, women, children, pleading for mercy, for release, for help. Laughter, his, Dru's, Angelus's, laughing over their cries. Fear, the stench of it as the body convulses for the final time, the struggles are over and all that's left is an empty husk, reeking of sweat, bile and all other things human. Death, the scent reeking in his nostrils, the taste in his mouth, the feeling of warm flesh turning cold in his hands, the sounds of gurgling death rattles. Death. Theirs. So many. SO MANY!

Spike didn't realize he was on the ground or screaming until Angel picked him up and desperately tried to shush him, hold him, anything. Then Spike stopped, gasping for breath that he didn't need and trembling as he looked at Angel and saw grim concern in those big brown eyes,

"William, can you hear me, lad?"

Spike nodded slowly, his whole body shaking, he felt rigid and cold, but didn't know what to ask for.

"I'm going to go upstairs for a little bit, then I'll be back. Alright?" Angel said slowly, annunciating his words carefully.

Spike nodded again and Angel lifts him up and puts him gently on the bed again then leaves him alone in the basement. Spike can hear talking but doesn't try to listen in even though he knows he could hear every word if he wanted to.


Angel pushes the needle into his arm and starts to draw his blood.

"Is that really necessary?" Giles asks, replacing his glasses on his nose after rubbing them.

"It's what he needs." Angel says simply, "And if he won't bite then I'll find another way to feed him."

Buffy and Willow sat watching with grim fascination as Angel siphoned his own blood into a baggie, pumping his fist to make it flow faster.

"Will he be okay?" Willow finally asked softly, still watching the blood with a wary expression.

"After some time, yeah, I think he'll be just fine. I was." Angel murmured, waiting until a pint was taken then went about taking the needle out and getting the baggie ready.

"Yeah, but that was a hundred years in the making." Buffy insisted, "we don't have that kind of time to babysit him."

Angel stopped with his hand on the basement door, not turning to look at her, "You think I don't know that? That our time may be up and he's this vulnerable? That there's no way he can defend himself when he's in such a state?" He finally looked at her and the worry and fear was evident even though he tried to hide it, "It'll be fine."

He turned the knob and disappeared into the basement once more.

Spike looked up when Angel reappeared with a blood baggie, "Here ya go, kiddo, right from the tap."

Spike blinked at the baggie with the straw in it, "'s your blood?"

"Mhm, nice and safe." Angel sat next to him, holding the baggie out.

"'s still blood." Spike shook his head and turned away.

"Spike, vampires drink blood or they die. You are a vampire. This is blood. Drink it." Angel held the bag out, trying to stay patient and mindful of Spike's . . . condition.

"No, Daddy, please don' make me drink that." Spike shook his head, not looking at Angel.

"Would you feel better if I fed it to you?" Angel asked, reaching with his free hand to stroke Spike's cheek lightly, "Hmm?"

Spike swallowed and nodded, moving back into Angel's lap, this time he was hunched over and hugging himself like he was afraid to get too close but desperately wanted to. Angel slowly scooted back until his back was to the wall and tugged Spike after him, pulling him gently to his chest and slipping the straw into Spike's mouth. Spike sucked slowly on the straw, drawing in the familiar, warm taste of his grandsire's blood and feeling warmth return to his battered body. Angel curled an arm around Spike protectively and used his free hand to stroke the younger's back and hair, murmuring softly as he felt Spike grow heavy and limp in his arms.

There was a soft pop and Spike released the straw, all the blood was gone and his eyelids were heavy. Angel put the empty bag on the floor and rolled to lie down on his back on the cot, pulling Spike next to him then yanked the blankets over them,

"It'll be okay. I promise." Angel whispered into Spike's soft hair, relishing its feel on his lips and chin before it would be gelled again into whatever that was that Spike deemed a 'hairstyle'.

Spike didn't reply, but he wrapped an arm around Angel's chest and tucked himself up as close to Angel as possible before nodding off again.

A/N: And now Spike has a Soul . . . poor lil guy, I just wanna pick him up and snuggle him. Luckily I got Angel in there to snuggle Spike . . . RnR please!