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As You Were (Ep 6.15)"Killing Me Softly" In Douglas Petrie's "As You Were," Buffy is forced to confront her past in the form of her ex, former Initiative soldier Riley. If people are defined in part by their relationships, then by looking at Riley, Buffy gets to see what could have been, and to compare herself to the girl she was. In contrast, she is also getting a clearer picture of who is she now. And, for the first time, she seems willing to take a good look at and deal with what she sees. . . . After a hard day's work wherein she is lectured by a night-school attending coworker about her future prospects, Buffy strides through the cemetery, swinging a paper bag. She's attacked by a random vamp, who for some reason, seems pretty able to kick her ass. (I guess I can't get too on her case about the lameness of her fighting here - as I remember, closing shift took at lot out of you. Cleaning the grease trap... blech.) Fortunately, before she becomes a late-night snack, he stops his assault, sniffing. "Geez, Slayer, is that you?" he asks with a disgusted air. "I was working!" she whines. He tries to retreat with a "catch you later," but catches a stake in the back instead. Buffy sniffs her coat as she walks off, pouting. After her Slaying detour, Buffy arrives home, but pauses before climbing the stairs. "Oh, for Pete's sake. Spike?" she huffs, exasperated. He immediately emerges from where he was lurking behind his traditional tree. "Ah, it's a fair cop, you caught me, Slayer," he says, smiling, walking toward her. "However, in all honesty, I think we have to say this one doesn't count. After all, I wasn't exactly hiding." He leans in to kiss her. "Not here," she insists. "Why not?" he pouts. She explains that Dawn is waiting for her, counting on her, and "I'm not letting her down by letting you in." He absorbs the only part of this speech that makes sense: "So, it's fear of getting caught, then?" he questions. "Reason number one on a very long list," she affirms. Undeterred, he takes her hand and leads her around the side of the house to the lurking tree. "Well, if I can't come inside," he purrs, "Maybe it's time for you to come outside." After a miniscule pause, she gives in, leaning into his embrace and letting the paper bag fall from her fingers. Since succumbing to public groping on her front lawn is clearly less stealthy than the option of inviting her secret lover into the house for a possible popcorn and video night, we're once again driving home the metaphor from "Older and Far Away," of Buffy being in the closet. (And frankly, using Dawn as an excuse is a little hard to buy in light of all Spike's summer babysitting.) Unable to face "getting caught," she is taking refuge in the secret status of their affair, hiding every trace of their interaction from her friends even more than is strictly necessary. In contrast, Spike is unthreatened by discovery - "I wasn't really hiding." It's obvious that, given a choice, he'd prefer to be openly a part of her life. But that's the one thing she absolutely won't permit. Inside, Buffy presents Dawn with the sorry-looking hamburger from the much-abused paper sack for dinner ("made it myself"), which Dawn graciously declines, mostly because she's just plain sick of this diet. Guess we have fast-forwarded in time quite a bit here - Buffy has been working at the DoubleMeat long enough for Dawn to have gotten tired of hamburger dinners, and also for Dawn to gotten over being angry with Willow for the whole car-wreck incident; the pair are now headed to the Bronze for fun. (I wonder if this means Dawn is sweet 16 now, as that seems to be the permitted age for Bronzing.) "Some vamp get rough with you?" Willow asks, pointing out a grass stain on Buffy's coat. "He's not getting any gentler," Buffy grumbles. "He?" Willow queries. "I mean 'they,'" Buffy says quickly, to cover. She declines the invitation, saying she's "seen enough action for one night" and tells them to have a good time because "somebody should." This too, is oddly revealing dialogue - does she want "gentler"? As for the assertion that she's both "seen enough action" and that she can't describe it as a good time... Buffy is getting restless with the affair. The novelty is wearing off. It isn't relieving her tension or taking her out of herself the way it used to. At the end of the day, all of her problems are still there. And boy, are they ever - a pile of dirty dishes lingers in the sink and a mountain of laundry has collected in the basement. Buffy spends the rest of the night trying to scrub the grass stain out of her coat and listening to sad country music, finally falling asleep on the couch, waking just in time to miss the garbage truck. "Don't you want your garbage?" she whines as the truck pulls away. So here's a question - where do Willow and Dawn fit into all this housekeeping? Apparently nowhere. "Blow it off!" Willow used as her reasoning to get Buffy to abandon the idea of scrubbing stains and go to the Bronze instead. As a full-time student who seems to be living in the Summers house rent-free, is it too much to ask that Willow wash a few dishes? "Oh, don't forget, today's trash day," Dawn carelessly throws out the morning after her guilt-free dash to the town's one nightclub. Does Dawn still have a broken arm? Against every scrap of common sense in the universe, with saintly, momlike Tara out of the picture, Buffy is now being pushed into the traditional housewife role. Never mind that she is already shouldering the burden of supporting them financially, struggling with exhausting employment at two jobs (counting the Slaying). Forget the stealing and getted stoned - at this point, I think both Buffy's mooching best friend and ungrateful whiner of a sis are due for a hearty slap, just for simple laziness. Anyway, back to partying on at the Bronze. Xander and Anya are deeply entrenched in the final stages of wedding planning. "I'm starting to have dreams of gardenia bouquets," Xander admits, then winces and comments that "I am so glad my manly coworkers didn't just hear me say that." He is nervously digging into a bag of potato chips as they once again pore over the seating chart. Anya tries to grab them away. "One more bag and you'll pop right out of your cummerbund," she complains. Across the room, Dawn and Willow watch the soon-to-be-wed couple with a mixture of amusement and sympathy. "When I was little, I used to spend hours imagining what my wedding to Xander would be like," Willow ponders, making it clear that looking at them stressing out now makes her glad that it's not her sitting there. Dawn asks about Tara. Willow says that although she's not ready to try calling her yet, "If I did call, she wouldn't hang up on me." I guess that's progress. Back at her job, Buffy's hectoring coworker continues to plague her. "Zeitgeist! You're not taking the pulse of the public, the next thing you know you're LBJ handing the house keys over to Nixon," he rambles - a little PolySci along with the MBA, huh? - then notes, "we're out of special sauce." Swell. He takes over on the grill, sending her to do a counter shift. Buffy shuffles listlessly up to the register, and begins her how-may-I-help-you speech... and looks up straight into the eyes of her ex, former Initiative solider Riley Finn. Buffy's reactions to Riley are those of stunned shock. First, she can barely string sentences together ("My hat has a cow" and "Were you always this tall?" she blurts nonsensically). Riley looks every inch the assured, confident soldier, dressed in styling black body armor and combat gear, with the addition of a thin scar over his eye and cheekbone. Clearly, he's gotten a few firefights under his belt since he left town. He leans in toward her and speaks urgently. "Look, this isn't the way I wanted it. But something's come up, something big. We don't have much time. You understand?" Buffy nods. "Not a word you've said so far," she says numbly. He goes onto explain that he's been tracking something bad to Sunnydale for two days straight. "I need the best. I need you, Buffy. Can you help me?" She stares at him, at the line of customers behind him, and decides, grabbing her coat and marching out. Coat over her brightly striped uniform, Buffy strides alongside Riley as they move toward downtown, doing her best on her short legs to keep up. His belt makes a beeping sounds and he pulls out a tracking device. Buffy bursts into hysterical giggles over his "James Bond stuff." "It's so cute! I forgot," she gasps. Riley eyes her with curiosity, then returns to all-business mode. He explains what they're after - Suvolte demons that have been nesting in the South American jungles. "As soon as we put one Suvolte down, a dozen take its place," he says. (I wonder if he knows he's echoing the tagline to Them! the '50s movie about giant ants in the California desert - "Kill one, and another takes its place!") He goes on to explain that they're "breeders" - "One turns into ten, ten becomes a hundred." Buffy processes this. "So they're like really mean Tribbles?" At his double-take she tries, "I've been dealing with these geeks... it's a whole thing." The demon then makes its appearance - it's a large, Alien-like creature. "National Forestry Service, we got a wild bear!" Riley yells, flashing a badge while people run. I suppose those years he clocked in Sunnydale have helped him manage the crowd control issues. Buffy and Riley fight it, but it's too strong and too fast - it gets away. The pursuit continues via auto. "Nice wheels," Buffy compliments re: his speedy black urban assault vehicle. "Came with the car," Riley replies tersely. They communicate in brief, efficient, to-the-point sentences. "How you doin'?" he asks. "Complicated question," she answers. He adds that if they get half a second, he has "some big stories to tell." She cuts him off with "did you die?" and at his puzzled no, bluntly asserts "I'm gonna win. "After a moment of silence, he hands her a pile of black Kevlar battle gear to change into. As she changes ("I'm a gentlemen" he claims as she asks if he won't look) he adds "Buffy? Love the hair." She smiles wistfully. On another part of the highway, Xander and Anya sit stalled in traffic. "I think we died in this car on the way to the airport, and now we're stuck in hell," Anya says. Both are constantly munching from potato chip bags. "Why did we ever agree to have your friends, who are demons, and my family, who are monsters, stay at our place?" Xander rails, claiming that they "should have eloped," but he explains it for himself: "That's why I'm marrying you, to start a new family. Have children, make them hate us, then one day they'll get married, we'll sleep on their couch. It's the circle of life." Anya shows nothing but gritty determination: "I've been through too much planning this wedding, and it is going to happen. It is going to be our perfect, perfect day if I have to kill every one of our guests and half this town to do it." Meanwhile, Buffy and Riley have tracked the demon to Sunnydale's imposing hydroelectric dam - who knew the town had one of those? (Sunnydale seems to have one of everything, just like The Simpsons' Springfield. Next, it'll have a gorge and a gambling casino.) Riley readies a cable to rappel down the wall, and Buffy is obliged to hold onto him for the ride, perhaps a little closer than is strictly necessary. At the base of the dam, there's the demon, snarling for a fight. As they attack it, Riley catches a good hit in the stomach. Buffy manages to knock the thing down, then grabs at Riley in concern, and the pair freeze for a moment, staring into each other's eyes... ...until a tall, model-thin woman outfitted in kevlar just like Riley, rappels down the wall. "Hey there. What exactly are you doing with my husband?" she asks jokingly. Buffy looks as if she's just been slapped. She tries for humor, asking if "husband" might be a code name, "like 'Big Dog' or 'Falcon'" then trails off with "I didn't think so." Riley introduces the woman as "Sam." They exchange greetings, and as the demon pops up again, Sam turns to fight it with a confident "mine." She attacks, efficient and professional, while Buffy and Riley watch. "She's good," Buffy says numbly. "So, you guys do this often? You know, the whole husband-and-wife tag-team demon fighting thing?" "It's what brought us together," he says. To demonstrate, he steps into help his wife. Buffy stands alone, watching them fight as a couple, then shakes herself out of her stupor and stalks forward, roughly grabbing the demon by the head. "Call this your wedding gift," she says, snapping its neck. She smiles, expecting thanks, and gets looks of distress instead. Wide-eyed, Buffy begins to realize that she did the wrong thing. Riley forgot to tell her that they were meant to be tracking the creature, not killing it. Oh. Sam begins to read Riley the riot act about not briefing Buffy correctly. (Riley goes for those aggressive types, eh?) Realizing that they've got more explaining to do, they ask if Buffy has a "safe house" where they can regroup. Buffy says she does. "Sometimes you can't even leave," she jokes. At the Summers house, Buffy is quick to apologize for the state of the place because she hasn't "had a chance to give it a good cleaning." (Again, why is this solely her job? Grumble, grouch.) Dawn gives Riley the frosty treatment, Xander greets the returning soldier with a hearty handshake and a booming, "Hey, there's the man! Life taker, heartbreaker... you know, figuratively speaking." Willow congratulates the couple with a sincere look, then sidles up to Buffy and in a hushed voice informs her that "Just so you know? I'm willing to hate this woman any way you want." Buffy turns this offer down, saying she doesn't "wanna seem all petty." "That's the beauty!" Willow crows. "You can't, but I can. Please. Let me carry the hate for the both of us." Buffy considers, watching the happy couple laughing and touching. "Go nuts," she agrees. Willow favors Sam with a stern glower. The group gets the full story. The demons, who "kill the minute they're hatched," have come to the Hellmouth to spawn. The demon Buffy killed had already laid its eggs, so finding the nest is paramount. But instead of the usual havoc-on-the-Hellmouth, they think that the eggs are likely to be sold on the black market, by a local dealer called "The Doctor." Sam mentions that she's heard that Willow is "one Major-League Wicca" and wonders aloud if she can perform a tracking spell to find the nest. Willow freezes, coldly stating, "I got addicted. As addicts do," then gets up and stalks from the room. (Such an adaptable phrase. I stole stuff. As kleptos do. I drank the blood of the innocent. As vampires do. I cursed people. As vengeance demons - oops, "justice demons" - do.) Realizing she's put her foot in it, Sam follows Willow into the kitchen, contritely telling her the story of two shamans in their unit who'd gotten addicted to heavy magic. "Now they're just gone... nothing left," she says. "I've never met anyone with enough strength to quit before." Willow absorbs this quietly. With Sam's speech, it finally dawned on me that the magic addiction storyline is not going away. It is not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story. The writers aren't letting go of it. All of which I could forgive if it weren't for the fact that it destroys the cool story that was being built up, erasing all of the complex issues Willow's overuse of magic originally raised. Are we likely to see it pointed out that Willow's "forget" spell was not unlike Warren's mind-controlling of Katrina? Will we get another glimpse of the drunk-with-power witch who threatened Giles, who called on the powers of darkness to raise her friend from the dead, and wiped everyone's minds blank to cover her tracks? At this point, probably not. With next to no foreshadowing behind it, Willow's "addiction" feels far too much like an eleventh-hour substitution for my comfort - where are they going with this? Willow first began learning magic to help her friends save the world. She became incredibly powerful as the result of her own hard work and training. She then began to abuse that power, a la The X-Men's "Dark Phoenix" storyline. But now that "addiction" is in play, it leaves the viewer wondering what the point of magic in the series now could be. It's not what it used to be, surely - remember when magic was the only weapon worth anything in the battle against Glory? So what is its function now? The answer is, best as I can tell, is that Willow's "addiction" gives her an excuse. She's not accountable for anything she's done "under the influence." Or is she? Anya's "whose fault is that?" statement in "Older and Far Away" made sense to me. Is "admitting you have a problem" in the classic 12-step manner enough to be forgiven for such transgressions? Or is more required - do you have to make amends? My hope that the rest of the season can somehow redeem all this is dwindling fast, but let's keep our fingers crossed. Buffy and Sam have been paired up to search for the demon nest, Riley having headed off on his own to "check out some bars. Willy's. Some crypts that I know." The two girls walk through the graveyard. Sam is irritatingly bubbly. "I gotta tell you, Buffy, I'm a little bit intimidated. I mean, patrolling with the real live Slayer. You're like... Santa Claus, or Buddha, or something...legendary." She also says she's heard plenty about her from Riley, which surprises Buffy a bit. "He didn't say anything for a long time, but I could tell he was ripped up inside," Sam says. "The only thing that could help Riley work it out was time. Lots of time. Took him a year to get over you." "I'm glad he's over me," Buffy says softly, clearly not too happy about it. Sam follows up by asking if she's "seeing anyone now." At Buffy's hedging response, Sam replies, "I know what you mean. Better no guy than the wrong guy." Abruptly, Buffy decides that she's had enough. She tells Sam she's going to see an informant. "Cool," Sam agrees. "I'm guessing Finn needs me about now...You know how wild he gets. Don't worry about Ri and me, we're good." Buffy watches her go. "I noticed," she whispers.
Buffy enters Spike's crypt with an urgent stride, her face somber. Curled up on the sarcophogus in the center of the room with a book in hand, Spike was clearly not expecting this visit, but he rises to her bait with a pleased smile. Crisp and businesslike, Buffy tells him she's there for information. He plays along, coolly responding to her rapped-out questions as she feeds them to him, obeying the rules of this latest game. "Clock ticking?" he asks, voice seductive. Well, maybe not in such a hurry. There's time for something else first. She looks at him, eyes wide and full of pain. "Tell me you love me," she says desperately. He looks a little taken aback, surprised... and no wonder. A month ago, she would have knocked his block off for even trying to tell her just that. "I love you. You know I do," he says sincerely. "Tell me you want me," she continues. "I always want you," he says, drawing closer. "In point of fact..." he begins. She cuts him off with an abrupt "shut up," and pulls him down to the sarcophogus, her eyes on his face and her hands sliding under his shirt. As she tugs him closer for a kiss, she continues to watch him, as if looking for answers. It's later. Both are asleep on top of the sarcophogus, covered by a sheet. Buffy is shifting restlessly. Spike is lying on his side next to her, a little apart. The rasping sound of the door opening wakes them both. Riley is there, framed in the doorway. Buffy sits up with a gasp and gathers the sheet around her in shame. Spike smiles broadly. He just can't resist rubbing the situation in Riley's face. "Me and your former? Must kill," he gloats. "What can I say? Girl just needs a little monster in her man." Buffy stares at the floor, unable to look Riley in the face. Riley glares at him coldly. "That's not why I'm here... Doctor," he grates. Buffy turns to stare at Spike, then back at Riley. Mortified, she slides off the stone surface to find her clothes, dragging the sheet with her. Naked and unashamed as usual, Spike continues to bait Riley with "I thought we'd run you out of town," and reminding him that he was last seen being serviced by vampire whores. Riley stays on target. "Glad to be back in Sunnydale. The locals all speak English, and I know who to beat for information. It's all brought me here." he says. "Where are they... Doctor?" he presses. "Where are what, and why do you keep calling me that?" Spike replies, sliding his jeans on. Riley gestures with his gun. "We can do this the hard way, or we can do this the fatal way," he grinds out, then punches Spike in the face. Buffy, now dressed, intercedes. "The Doctor, it can't be Spike," she rambles. "No need to defend me, love," he tells her, and gets a punch in the face from Buffy in return. "It can't be, okay?" she persists, adding that Spike is "too incompetent." But just like her sister's shoplifting last episode, Buffy is proved wrong. She trails after Riley as he descends to search the crypt's lower level, Spike protesting thinly in the background. Sure enough, there is the stash of demon eggs, nesting cozily in a corner of the room. Rumbled, Spike tries to come up with a reasonable excuse. "I can explain... I'm holding these for a friend," he says lamely. Buffy slugs him, knocking him down. "No more games!" she yells. He picks himself up. "Well, that's bloody funny coming from you! No more games?" he chokes out in a trembling voice, sounding suspiciously close to tears. "That's all you've ever done is play me. You keep playing with rules you make up as you like. You know what I am. You've always known. You come to me all the same." He stumbles away, leaving them to confront the now hatching eggs. Dozens of crablike creatures emerge and rush toward them. Riley hands her a rifle. Buffy tries to shoot at the scuttling monsters and only succeeds in blowing holes in objects across the room - pillows, record albums. I guess it's a running gag now that Buffy can't handle a gun. Giving up, the two flee the basement. From their position at the top of the ladder, Buffy grabs a grenade from Riley's belt and chucks it into the lower level. The resulting explosion totally destroys the crypt basement, sending a blast of fire through the tunnels. Two key things are established by this scene. First, with the revelation that Spike is still a player in the underworld, we are reminded that although he has the ability to do good if properly motivated, he is not by default a "good" person. He's a liar, a cheat, and he habitually does (as Blade Runner's Roy Batty would say) questionable things. When caught, his first impulse is to lie - it's reflexive, automatic. He even admits as much when called on it. In "All the Way," when Buffy discovers him stealing herbs from the Magic Box, he first tries to tell her, "what, I was going to pay for it," and at her skeptical look he tiredly retracts with, "no, I was going to nick it because that's what I do... I go where I please and I take what I like." That Buffy now seems to have other expectations from him honestly seems to distress him. After all, hasn't she told him repeatedly that he can't change? Yet somehow she's surprised that he hasn't? Second, he's absolutely correct in his assessment that Buffy is constantly altering the rules on him. She's turned to him for comfort again and again, despite her own protests of disgust and obvious shame. She's hidden their affair from her friends and family, yet been willing to have sex in public places; she beats him savagely one moment for saying that he loves her, then begs him to tell her just that the next. She's clinging to him for emotional support on every level, from a shoulder to cry on to a punching bag on which to vent her anger, a hard fuck or a gentle lover to suit her mood, and requires him to somehow keep up. Without no moral compass to tell him the "right" thing to do, he's left with only a general desire to please Buffy as his guide, and with the mixed signals she's been giving off, he's simply at a loss to define what his role should be. (And although James Marsters hardly needs more praise as an actor, he's downright brilliant here in getting across Spike's confusion and frustration - his outburst is amazingly moving, like child on the edge of exhaustion, unable to figure out what's expected of him.) Unrealistic expectations are also the subject across town, as Xander and Anya sit in semi-darkness, perched on the edge of their bathtub, locked in a whispering argument about Riley and his too-perfect missus. Loud noises of arguing and the occasional crash are coming from the other room. "I have a hard time imagining Nick and Nora Fury hiding out from their own relatives in the bathroom," Xander hisses. "You think that their marriage is better than ours, is that it?" Anya says, upset that Xander seemed so impressed by the Finns, but as they discuss it, the problem becomes clear "our wedding... is not our marriage." The wedding is an event, it will be over. The marriage is what will last. They smile, at each other, content. Finally, the Riley odyssey draws to a close. Now that his mission is over, he and his wife will be leaving for their next destination - Nepal. "I'll send you a postcard," Riley says as he and Buffy walk downtown. He then explains that he's been authorized to take "The Doctor" out. "Do you want me to do that?" he asks quietly. Buffy looks at him, shocked. "How can you ask me...?" she says haltingly, near tears, then manages, "I'm sleeping with...him. I'm sleeping with Spike," she repeats as if admitting it to herself for the first time. She then turns to vent at Riley. "Did you wait until your life was absolutely perfect and then send that demon here so you could throw it in my face?" she asks. He throws back: "You think this was easy for me? I was terrified about seeing you again," he says. "I'm sure my incredible patheticness softened the blow for you," she sobs. Riley smiles, and in a nice turn of events, tells her that he doesn't know what she's talking about. No matter what kind of job she has, or who she sleeps with - none of it touches her. "You're still the first woman I ever loved and the strongest woman I've ever known," he says gently. Buffy looks at him, eyes shining. "I never got the chance to tell you how sorry I was. About what happened between us," she tells him. He smiles, and tells her she never has to. Aw. Riley and his missus gather themselves to go. The gang exchanges pleasantries and teary goodbyes. Sam and Willow exchange e-mail addresses and bid each other farewell. A hovering black helicopter lifts Riley and his wife into the searchlit sky, drawing them up into the heavens like the classic deux ex machina in a stage play. Willow sidles up to Buffy, watching them go. "What a bitch," she grumbles supportively. For a moment, I actually forgot the episodes of recovery girl. Go, Willow, go. Next morning. Spike is picking through the blackened ruins of his crypt. Not much is left. Buffy appears, and he looks at her tiredly, expecting a brush-off, only to hear her tell him that Riley's gone. "You come for a bit of cold comfort?" he says in a weary voice. She says that's not why she's here. "I'm not here to bust your chops for your stupid scheme either. That's just you. I should have remembered," she says. He looks at her. "So this is worse, then," he says. It is. She tells him it's over. She admits that she still wants him, earning herself a surprised glance, and a reminder that she's said all of this before, but this time Buffy is resolute. "I'm using you," she murmurs. "I can't love you. I'm just...being weak and selfish." He tries to break in with the protest that he doesn't have any complaints, but she stops him. "And it's killing me," she says. Her eyes are sad. We see Spike's face in tight closeup here, the emotions that flit across it are much like those we saw when Buffy shut the door in his face in "Crush" - confusion, hurt, and a dawning realization that she's serious. But most heartbreaking of all is a look of stunned surprise at the idea that his affection is "killing" her. He honestly seems to have thought he was helping her, trying to be there for her, giving her everything he could. "I have to be strong about this," she says. She looks at him sorrowfully. "I'm sorry...William," she whispers, then leaves him behind to walk out into the sun. That this is a heartwrenching scene to watch hardly needs to be said. It's also strangely reassuring. By choosing to end their affair (a first for Buffy - historically, she's always been the one left behind), Buffy is finally trying to get a handle on her life and her feelings, something that badly needed to happen. Buffy's depression, like Willow's "addiction," has allowed her to defer responsibility for her choices. But in this speech, she owns up to her actions. In breaking up with Spike (and by doing so, she confirms that "this thing" they had was indeed a relationship) she's brutally honest about her feelings, checking off the standing issues between them like a bullet list - "I do want you... I can't love you... I'm using you." She's not talking to "a thing," but her lover, a man, even to the point of calling him by his human name as she walks out. She has come to terms with Spike as a person, as who he is instead of what he is, maybe for the very first time. She doesn't simply dismiss him with her usual round of excuses for why they can't be together. (Blah, blah, blah, no-soul, you're a vampire, denialcakes.) She doesn't bring right or wrong into it, realizing that's not the issue. He's who he is. For the first time, she's admitting that he has a heart to break, and then sadly proceeds to break it. And it's no accident that Buffy's words here echo Giles' reasons for leaving her to go back to England. His explanation was that she mustn't give in to the urge to give up, that she could stand on her own without him. "You can be here, and I can still be strong," she'd pleaded with him, unsuccessfully, to stay. But Buffy herself has now come to the same conclusion re: Spike. The vampire has become her new emotional crutch. Abandoned by Giles, Buffy had simply traded one support system for another - Giles took on Buffy's responsibilities for her; Spike encouraged her to ignore them ("you belong in the shadows... with me"). That both men did this out of love for Buffy, to try to ease her suffering, is exactly the point - both were equally keeping her from facing adulthood. In pulling away from Spike, she is trying to stop being "weak and selfish," and finally taking the steps that Giles hoped she would - to face her life instead of running from it. I actually don't expect this to be the last word on this relationship, for one major reason. With the breakup, Buffy has conveniently avoided the need to expose her affair to the light of day. With Riley clocking in as the second person in the know, Buffy's "stay inny" status was becoming dangerously close to ending. The strain of maintaining secrecy showed throughout this episode - Buffy's verbal near slip to Dawn and Willow; her decision to have unsubtle, grass-staining sex on her own front lawn; her hardly stealthy crypt visit. Everything was beginning to point to the inevitability of discovery. Like Dawn with her shoplifting, Buffy almost seemed to want to get caught, to gain attention and intervention. And she got just that - from a person who was then immediately airlifted out of the country, ascending godlike into the heavens after helping her pass judgment on her own life. And finally, I can't help but wonder what's next for Spike. He's spent the last several years revolving around Buffy's star, trying to come to terms with the fact that he wants the unattainable ("I know you'll never love me," he told her in "The Gift"), sacrificing his own self-esteem and damn near everything else just to be close to her. The devastating blow of her rejection could either send him into an extreme downward spiral or help him reach for better things, depending largely on how Buffy decides to treat him from now on. If her parting apology to him meant anything, maybe finally we'll see her actually treat him as a man rather than a monster. For both their sakes, I can only hope that the closet door opens soon.
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