BTVS Ficlet -- For Vampires Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf
Title: For Vampires Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf
Fandom: BTVS/Angel
Wordcount: 368
Rating: PG
Summary: Spike ruminates on having a soul.
The thing about souls, as Spike sees it, is that every person thinks they're something different. It's easy enough to say that vampires (except for Angel and no, bloody fucking hell, him) don't have them, but when he really thinks about it, souled-Spike and souless-Spike aren't really all that different.
He'd been in love with Dru after all, and nothing that the poof or the slayer or the watchers said would make that love any less real. Spike had hurt and cried and burned for Dru in more ways than one and it would take more than a bunch of pompous and righteous academics to tell him that wasn't real.
Spike is no philosopher, but he figures that what everyone else calls a soul is little more than a heavy dose of compassion mixed with a bit of guilt and he's not about to let those things get in the way of who he is even though the soul, or whatever it is, hurts like bloody hell. It hurts because now those people aren't food (aren't cattle) they're people and William always was a little bit on the soft side when it came to putting himself in other people's shoes. When it comes down to it, Spike thinks, getting souled is a little like waking up one day and realizing that the burger you had for dinner was actually your sister.
Nevertheless, it took more than a lack of empathy to make Spike into himself and those things are not removed with a quick ritual and a fresh coat of paint. So he fights the same and talks the same and doesn't let his guilt eat him from the inside out the way it's done to Angel. And things are good.
And on his way back to Angel's shiny new office over at Wolfram & Hart he picks up a copy of For Colored Girls and he reads it while crouching in a broom closet on the tenth floor and he feels a cool moistness on his cheeks and a pressure on his unbeating heart.
And Spike knows that everything he's ever heard about souls is a pile of shit because that bloody poem has always made him cry.
Fandom: BTVS/Angel
Wordcount: 368
Rating: PG
Summary: Spike ruminates on having a soul.
The thing about souls, as Spike sees it, is that every person thinks they're something different. It's easy enough to say that vampires (except for Angel and no, bloody fucking hell, him) don't have them, but when he really thinks about it, souled-Spike and souless-Spike aren't really all that different.
He'd been in love with Dru after all, and nothing that the poof or the slayer or the watchers said would make that love any less real. Spike had hurt and cried and burned for Dru in more ways than one and it would take more than a bunch of pompous and righteous academics to tell him that wasn't real.
Spike is no philosopher, but he figures that what everyone else calls a soul is little more than a heavy dose of compassion mixed with a bit of guilt and he's not about to let those things get in the way of who he is even though the soul, or whatever it is, hurts like bloody hell. It hurts because now those people aren't food (aren't cattle) they're people and William always was a little bit on the soft side when it came to putting himself in other people's shoes. When it comes down to it, Spike thinks, getting souled is a little like waking up one day and realizing that the burger you had for dinner was actually your sister.
Nevertheless, it took more than a lack of empathy to make Spike into himself and those things are not removed with a quick ritual and a fresh coat of paint. So he fights the same and talks the same and doesn't let his guilt eat him from the inside out the way it's done to Angel. And things are good.
And on his way back to Angel's shiny new office over at Wolfram & Hart he picks up a copy of For Colored Girls and he reads it while crouching in a broom closet on the tenth floor and he feels a cool moistness on his cheeks and a pressure on his unbeating heart.
And Spike knows that everything he's ever heard about souls is a pile of shit because that bloody poem has always made him cry.