Still Here

And how can the world want me to change,
They're the ones that stay the same.


Flashback to the Victorian era of London – when men still wore clean-cut suits and tipped their hats at the women, who stood correct and smiled politely. When cities weren't dominated by traffic and fast cars, but were quaint and often quiet. A school for young gentlemen was along the corner of Wedgeworth and Kindsley, enter and see the instructor before the children – lecturing on the proper etiquette in terms with descriptive speaking and writing. And follow him down the fourth row of students, who sit seemingly quiet and listening intently. Two-thirds towards the front of the class, a boy with sandy colored curly hair – of eight or ten years – stares blurry-eyed out the window, the instructor's words slowly being processed in the back of his mind.

Setting is always important.

Now, centuries later, he, having not aged since the eighteen eightys, sits silently and examines the patterns along the house wall. And he wonders why the fuck Willow has a black and white photo of somber naked women. Oh, right. Modern art and all that shit. Fucking whatever. They can tell him whatever they want – Willow has a dirty mind, and he's sticking to that.

He listens to them talking – downstairs – and he thinks that for a group that has been dusting vampires for seven years, they don't know shit. And the demon they're down there with, works for the fucking almighty Powers That Be, a bloody wanker. Hello? He's a vampire – vampiric hearing? Have they forgotten that? Or have they forgotten that he is a vampire? They don't want him listening in, they need to acknowledge in their pee-brain minds that he is a vampire, a demon. So, he has a soul – that changes him?

"You got a soul."

"Yeah. What do you want from me?"

"Listen, buddy, you went and threw the big guys upstairs for a loop. They never saw you coming – "

"What do you want from me?"

"Point is, you've changed – "

"Remains to be seen, doesn't it?"

"But you're still missing something – "

"What?"

"Your path."

Whistler. A bloody right wanker of a demon. But they think that the guy in the fucking stupid hat is right. Here to show ol' Spikey his path. Whatever the fuck that is. And they won't listen – he was never the vampire to follow some destiny laid out for him like the ponce in L.A. He's a vampire. Like he told Buffy that one night, he never was alive until the night he became a demon.

The demon didn't take over his body – his so-called life, he became the demon. He is the man. He is the demon. What is the difference?

"Don't you get it? Spike…William, you have a chance. You're different now. You have a good soul. I can see it in your eyes. You're going through a change."

What was that, anyway (Was that sodding soul theory in Dawn's Chicken Soup For Your Vampire Friends' Souls?)? An intervention? One by one, they come forward and spout out good graces. With the, 'Oh, you got a soul,'s and the 'Oh, you're so good!'s. Talking about changing and redemptions and destinies.

Yeah, right. He's changed – because Spikel and Spikelus are so different from each other. Spikel has a soul and therefore is allowed to love; Spikelus does not have one and therefore cannot love – at all. The humans get to make the decision whether Spikelus has feelings or not. Isn't that the way it works? Isn't that the way they still think?

He punched the Fucking Powers That Be lackey. Twisted his neck and stuck an axe in his gut. That ol' Whistler even screamed. He got bandaged up and now they're downstairs in the dining room (Scooby gang and all) talking. Maybe the soul isn't working, 'cause Spike didn't feel much remorse when he pulled that sharp axe out of Whistler's stomach. It doesn't matter, the Slayer already summed it up as post-soulgetting craziness – with the century of killing and all.

But the question comes up to why. Why did he grab the immortal's neck and crack it so?

"Oh, that's it, right? I've changed, I've changed, and I'm so fucking different. Is that right? Am I right? Am I being a good doggy now? Mind if I still steal a bone?"

That's when it started, he did what he did to the alcoholic immortal and the witch put a binding spell on him, holding him in place until they locked him up in the Slayer's old room – the witch's new room. Maybe they forgot that he also had vampire strength as well. But it didn't matter, 'cause he ended up sitting on the bed anyways.

And he can still hear the talk downstairs ("He's going through a lot" "Does this mean he is like Angel now? Champion and all?" "He has a soul" "He's good now" "Yeah, I'm sure he'll go to L.A. and start his own detective agency." "I think he doesn't believe that he can achieve redemption." "Yeah, he's got that century of bloody torture going on. Not to mention the two slayers he killed." "He'll get better in time. He'll change"), the one he believes he loves still hasn't said anything since he attacked Whistler – she was never one for words anyways.

But the truth is. He doesn't feel all that different (Something has got to be wrong with the soul batteries then, huh?). Everyone says that he'll change. That he's different. They all want him to be different. Too bad, 'cause he is not Angel. He doesn't have the miracle multiple personality disorder where he's blood thirsty without a soul and crying with one. And they just can't seem to grasp that.

Maybe that's why he just doesn't belong here - with them, in their world.

Setting is always important. Willow's walls are colored a pale yellow. Her vanity table is clean, pictures of her family and Tara are scattered on the sides of the mirror. An open planner is laid out on the desk across the small room and the chair is pushed in neatly, the closet door is ajar, and the bedspread is a plain cream. She doesn't have any bed slippers, but pink cotton pajamas are folded carefully and are laid out on the pillow. The curtains are pulled open to the side – the window isn't locked. And the night sky is always beautiful.

He doesn't belong here.

One foot out the window when the Slayer seems to have finally found something to say and her words drift from the room below to his ears. Soft, unsure and she speaks as if everything has finally sunk in, filled with awe and maybe still some shock.

"Spike, Spike fought and won those trials for me. He got his soul…for me."

And he falls in love over again.

He doesn't belong in their world.

But he knows he wants to belong with her, and that's the point of everything, innit?