*****

"A soul? You gave me a soul?"

"Yes, Xander. I promised I would, didn't I?"

"Well...yeah, but..."

With a snarl, Spike turned away from the bed where his one and only childe huddled in misery between the Slayer and the witch.

"This is just bloody great! Now he's gonna be a soulful broody guilt-having git. Always afraid to have a good time for fear he'll go all Angelus on us and start rampaging up and down the bleeding coast. Bloody Hell, that *is* a good time if you ask me. But do you two bints care? No! You've gone and turned *my childe* into Peaches the Sequel!"

"Spike!"

Both women shouted at him in unison and identical glares of annoyance flashed in their eyes. Xander's reaction was completely different though. Soul or no soul, he *was* Spike's childe. And rejection *hurt*.

"Sire! *Please* I...I..."

Spike turned at the sorrowfilled longing in that voice only to see his childe frantically struggling to get off of the bed, even as Buffy and Willow hurried to unlock his restraints. The hurt of rejection and the fear that he would leave were clear to see in Xander's deep dark eyes. Dark eyes which were turning gold in the fledgling's panic.

As if it had happened just yesterday, Spike remembered the pain of Angelus leaving them...followed a decade later by Darla. Then, the overwhelming loss when Dru left a few years ago. He looked into the true face of his childe and knew, then and there, that he couldn't do that to him.

With a soft sigh, Spike's expression melted out of the lines of indignant anger and he walked back over to the bed. Shooing the Slayer out of the way, Spike helped to undo the last of Xander's chains. As soon as he was free, Spike pulled his childe into his arms and began to rock slightly from side to side in the same way he had when he needed to calm down a hysterical Dru.

"Com'ere Brood-Boy. Not going anywhere without you. 'm your *Sire* for Hell's sake."

Spike felt Xander relax in his arms at those words. Then the witch cleared her throat. Spike turned towards her and growled. He forgave his childe the soul, after all, it wasn't *Xander's* fault he had one. It was *her* fault the fledge was souled...just as it would be her fault when the soul eventually drove his childe to leave him the way Angelus' soul had driven him away a century ago.

Willow shifted back nervously and Spike could smell her sudden fear, but he didn't care. He let his true face come to the fore.

"Um...actually, I did the curse for Xander different than the curse for Angel. No Happiness Clause."

Spike felt a bolt of confused shock slam into him. Xander's head snapped up from where he had buried it against Spike's neck and turned to stare at her in disbelief.

"It's permanent? My soul...it's not going to go bye-bye if I have a happy thought?"

Willow shook her head no and flashed a wobbly grin. She took a deep breath and made a vague gesture. Spike knew she had just made the internal shift into babble-mode. But that was okay...he wanted to know just what in the name of the Hellmouth she had done to his boy.

"See...I've been kinda-sorta working on it off and on for years. So that I could make Angel's permanent. That way we wouldn't have to worry about the Happiness Clause and he wouldn't have to be such a grumpy-pants. Changing it a bit here, modifying it a bit there. You know, as I learned more and more about Wicca and magic and stuff? And I got it to the point where I could do it from scratch...which didn't help *him* but it helped *you*...so that's of the good. Right? I mean the soul's not *permanent* permanent...but getting happy or, or, or... you know, won't make it go away..."

Spike blinked in amazement that the witch didn't pass out from lack of air when she was talking so fast, but he needed her to get on track. And she had said something that caught his attention and he wanted more details.

"Waitasec Red. You say there's no Happiness Clause on Xander...which is good, I guess. No worries about the only action him seeing is a quick wank in the shower, but what do you mean it's not *permanent* permanent? What *will* make the soul go away and leave my childe full of joyful mayhem and remorseless bloodlust?"

Willow fluttered her hands in the air a bit, seemed to notice them and then brought them to her lap. They then began to twist together in nervousness.

"Um...he just has to *want* it to go. Nothing *outside* of him can get rid of it. No happiness or sex...or even a spell. He would just have to...um, *will* it away. Reject it."

"Oh."

Spike just sort of stared at her with an odd sort of numb horror. He vaguely wondered why she had never experimented with the Soul Restoration Spell on *him*...but he was really glad that she didn't. He wasn't too thrilled with the concept of guilt as it was...and he wasn't too sure he could handle the amount of remorse that would hit him over all of the things he had done in the past century. Suddenly...the chip didn't sound so bad.

Before he could delve too deeply on the subject, his childe's uncertainty and need pulled him back out of his thoughts and into the present.

"Um...now what? I can't go home now. I can't go into work. I have no idea how to even *be* a vampire and...I'm hungry. *Real* hungry. But I...I don't want to kill anyone."

Spike's unbeating heart broke. Here was his childe, starving and he didn't want to kill. Xander should have been, by the laws of nature, happily munching on the two chits while Spike looked on in pride. Instead, he was worrying about where to live and what to do about his bloody *job*! And what did he mean he didn't know how to be a vampire? Vampires just *were*...there was no *be* about it.

With a sigh, Spike stood up and pulled Xander up along with him.

"Come on. You can stay with me in the crypt. I've got some blood there. As for work, call 'em tomorrow and tell 'em to go to bloody hell. You're a vamp and we *don't* hold down jobs. As for being a vampire, that's easy mate. Fighting and killing and shagging."

"But..."

"Right. You don't want to kill humans, I know. That's very Angel of you mate, but that's not what I meant. S'okay. I can't kill humans either...not that *I* wouldn't mind, but that's beside the point, innit? I was talking about other demons. You fought 'em before...don't see how being undead would change that."

With that, Spike put his hand on the small of Xander's back and guided him out the door and into the dark of night.

END