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What I Wanted
By Tigerwolf

Disclaimer: I don't own Spike, or anyone else that's in this fic. Duh.
Summary: I wrote this the day after "Two To Go" and "Grave" aired. But it was inspired by the last two minutes of "Grave".
Author's Notes: Well, who guessed that would happen? I had three possibilitys, but that was one of the ones that I hadn't really considered. Spike has a soul now, huh? Well, I can work with that. Personally, I thought he was gonna be turned human, but I guess this is better. Now all he needs is for Buffy to forgive him, and to learn to forgive himself.... for everything.
Rating: PG13/R There's a couple of graphic violence references.

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"We will restore your soul."

Searing pain, all over. A light, coming from nowhere, and everywhere at once. Then it was gone, and so was the demon.

"Bloody hell," I muttered. "What was that?"

I stood up, slowly, the pain from my burns and other various injuries making me stagger a little. "Where'd he go?"

I used the wall of the cave to hold myself upright. Suddenly, I realized something. "Wait a minute. What did he say he did?"

No, it couldn't be. I'm Spike. I'm evil... Well, simi-evil, anyway. No way do I have a bleedin' soul. Do I? I don't feel any different. Certainly no "agonizing guilt" floating around. I decided to test it. "Ok, the orphanage in Prague. Dru and I broke down the door. There was a bunch of scrawny kids milling around, and they all dove for cover when we went game face. Then Dru caught a kid, ten/twelve years old. And she grabbed him by the neck, twisted off his head, and drank from the fountain of blood..."

I started to feel a little sick, but passed it off as wound induced nausea.

"Then I grabbed that five year old girl and I.... Oh god.." I felt tears in my eyes as the memorys surfaced. But, worse than that, I felt a certain undeniable rising in my stomach. I stumbled over to a corner and vomited up my last meal of blood. Unfortunatly, that didn't help much. "How... No, no. I won't let this soddin' thing beat me! I once drove a railroad spike through the skull of a living.... Not again.." I puked again.

"Ok, different tactic," I muttered, after recovering from that last bout of calling Ralph. "I've killed two Slayers." I paused, waiting for the nausea, none came. "Good. I have single handedly slaughtered whole families." Pause. Nothing. "Now we're getting somewhere. And, I'm gonna go back to Sunnydale and kill me another Slayer." Little bit of nausea there, but nothing I couldn't handle. "Ok. I can do this. Just don't get to specific. After all, she deserves it, she's been nothing but a bitch to me ever since that stupid sing-along. So, whatever I do to her, she deserves. And she deserved what I... almost.." I shook my head. "No. It wasn't her fault her so called "friends" pulled her out of heaven. She couldn't take it out on them, so she took it out on me. I never should have gone to her house that night. It's all my fault, everything's my fault.." I sat down in the corner and cried as I realized the real reason why Buffy had used me. She hadn't had any other outlet for her pain, so I was an obvious target. Well, I would have to set things right. I had to go back to Sunnydale.

The next night, I caught a cargo plane, and managed to stash myself in the hold, hiding behind crates of something supremely smelly. It was a long flight, so I had alot of time to think. Had the demon really thought that I wanted a soul? I replayed our conversations in my mind. Never once had he said that he was going to take the chip out, but I had thought that was what he meant, hadn't I?

"Restoration" he'd said. I though that meant that he was going to restore me to the way I was before the chip. Before I became the Slayer's lapdog. Maybe something was lost in the translation. Or, maybe it wasn't. Maybe I was just being dense in my haste to have something, anything done about this stupid chip. I mean, I still had the bloody thing... didn't I?

There was a rat over in the corner. A living thing. If I still had the chip, the I shouldn't even be able to throw a piece of wood at it, right? I decided to experiment. I ripped a sharp, stake-like, piece of wood off of the crate that I was sitting near, then I hurled it at the rat. The pointed tip of the wood scewered the now dead rodent to the crate behind it. I'd killed it, but where was the pain from the chip? There was no pain. No pain, no chip. But I had a soul now, wasn't that sort of the same thing? No, I realized. It's not the same. Now, I have a choice, the same as a human. There are human murderers, and they have souls, so, technicly, I did get what I wanted, didn't I? I could kill again, if I wanted to. I could even kill the Sla-.. Buffy. IF I wanted to. And I was begining to realize that not only didn't I want to kill her, I never really did. Not when I left, not when I was wandering around in the desert looking for that Shaman's place. All I had really ever wanted was to find a way that she would love me. And I'd done that, hadn't I? She was left with no excuses. I had a soul, and she'd been with a vampire with a soul before (not that I really want to bring Peaches into this). And, I wasn't cursed, the soul had been a gift. So, that meant that I couldn't lose it, right? Ha! Maybe this really was what I wanted, after all. I'm still the Big Bad, just in a different capacity. Besides, what would the Scoobies do without me? To my suprise, I actually had missed them. All of them, not just Buffy and the Lil' Bit. I'd missed the Red, and the Witch. I'd missed Demon Girl, and the Whelp. It would actually be good to see them again. Especially Buffy and Niblet.

I've been back in Sunnyhell for a week now, and I'm just begining to believe everything that happened while I was gone. Tara's dead, and so's that wanker Warren. Giles is back, although we don't know for how long, and Anya and Harris are actually speaking to each other again. Anya's still a demon, although she's not practicing. Dawn's now training and going on patrols with Buffy, and the Whelp actually saved the world! Which brings me to the part of what I missed that I am having the most trouble believeing, Willow, sweet Red, was nearly responsible for an apocolypse. I understand the grief she was going through, I know how it feels to lose someone you love, but I'll never understand how she could do that sort of thing. She's still a little out of it, spends most of her time up in her room, crying. But Buffy and Dawn actually convinced her to go to the movies with them last night, so she's on the slow road to recovery.

What happened to me, you ask? Well, I don't want to force anything, but things seem to be going pretty well for old William the Bloody. Buffy isn't mad at me, in fact, she asked ME to forgive HER for the way she acted last year. I did, of course. I'm getting to spend alot of time with Dawn, seeing as how I'm her main trainer in vampire combat, and that's fun. As for my relationship with Buffy, well, it's on the road to recovery too. And, just like Red, I know that, someday, everything will work out. So, I guess I got what I wanted, after all. Even if it wasn't exactly what I thought I wanted. The road isn't what's important, after all, it's the destination. And I know I'm on my way home.