Spike (to Angelus) Yeah, you know what I prefer to being hunted? Getting caught.
Angelus: That's a brilliant strategy really... pure cunning.
S: Sod off! (laughs) Come on. When was the last time you unleashed it? All out fight in a mob, back against the wall, nothing but fists and fangs? Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're going to win?
A: No. A real kill. A good kill. It takes pure artistry. Without that, we're just animals.
S: Poofter!
(Angelus shoves Spike and the fight is on. Angelus snaps a metal rod in half, lifts Spike up and slams him down on his back, raising the makeshift stake. Spike stops it inches from his heart and smiles up at Angelus.) S: Now you're gettin' it!
(Yorkshire 1880, BtVS 5.07 Fool for Love, written by Doug Petrie)
 

Okay, let's take the above exchange. Spike has only just been made as a vampire; he owns nothing yet, not even himself, and certainly not against Angelus, the Scourge of Europe. Already, though, we can see that Angelus views him as a threat. He'd like to kill him. He can kill him. Why doesn't he? Angelus has the stake. But -- here's a lesson -- who's got the power?

Give it a cursory glance, you gotta say, Spike's too quixotic to survive another minute, vampire or no. There's sound logic behind Angelus' sarcasm: What kind of an idiot would recommend getting caught over being hunted, recommend fighting when you don't hold a winning hand. Still, there's something to that boy. Only what exactly? Let's find out.

Angelus creates for himself a carefully structured world. All the rules are his. All the weight -- metaphorically speaking -- is his. Gravitas, we could call it, almost, in an ironic mood. He studies every possible move so carefully before he acts. He means always to win. He probably will win. He is very skilled at whatever he does, moving through his world of artistry (Holtz's family, the long making of Dru, the laying out of Jenny) with style and grace.

I'm not talking about evil. Angelus and Spike, in 1880 at least, are both evil. But Angelus surrounds himself, always and forever, with negative space. He is anti-matter. Nothing that matters to the living world will ever matter to him. Nothing that belongs to love, or hope, or even glory will ever matter to him. Like the First Evil, nothing grows where he stands. Compare Spike: undisciplined, erratic, unpredictable, invading even Angelus' treasured, menacing borders as if he actually had the power to rub them out -- acknowledging goals other than winning (there's death, there's glory), reveling in the joys of the natural world (happy meals with legs, Slayers to kill, nothing but fist and fangs). Angelus could kill him. But he'll still have lost, and he knows it, even then. He's got the stake. He'll probably win. But who's got the power?

It 's always the one who could be caught, but wouldn't be hunted, you have to watch out for. The one who was willing to risk, to fight, to die, beyond reason, for what Angelus would certainly consider reason could never be love. It's always the one that was willing to reach beyond what he could see, to whatever he found there. Because that's the one who always accepts the risk of choosing, of reaching for something beyond himself and holding on tight, and not letting go, beyond death and reason, once he found something worth keeping. The one who insists on choosing, himself, no matter what the cost. Because that one can't be predicted. He might be caught, but you'll never really own him. He might be killed, but he'll never ever let go.

Okay, now think about Buffy, the woman and the Slayer both, what's down to one, down to the other? Think about what she risks, and what she chooses, and how she might claim the negative space that now surrounds her. What makes her cede power? What makes her claim it? What is she, in herself, the Slayer and the woman both? She and we both know that she has things worth dying for, but what does she have or want that is worth living for? She lives in a bleak world, and it's a long time since she's dared to hope, or to reach, for anything. It's Spike who is teaching her these latter-day lessons. And there are lessons he tried to teach her long ago, that she didn't quite understood at the time, like Spike's second lesson for her in Fool for Love:

S: Lesson the second: ask the right questions. You want to know how I beat 'em? The question isn't "How'd I win?". The question is "Why'd they lose?". B: What's the difference?
S: There's a big difference, love.

Mostly in life Buffy has concentrated on winning: After all, in her line of work, she wins or she dies. So strategically speaking, she has always gone for the sure thing, Angelus style: carefully crafted plans with quantifiable results. But what's worth living for? There is existence, after all, and then there is essence. They are not the same. And the difference matters. Especially when the world is at stake. Now it's time to decide. Okay, let's draw the episode, then, chart all the negative space around these objects, in space, that The First might own. Locator spells. Mind the rug.

Xander's trying to patch up the house again: "It's a loop. Like the mummy hand. I'm doomed to replace these windows for all eternity." He's the boy with his finger in the dike. He's determined, but it's really looking like an exercise in futility. Research isn't yielding anything at all. Dawn, scarily, is bonding with the ex-demon Anya, who's holder of (I'm sure) the new record for number of times to change hairdo in a single episode, and seems to be in a particularly black mood: "Nothing. And nothing. Cliff's notes to nothing. Nothing, abridged." Andrew's still out: "Maybe he's just faking, so he won't have to answer any questions. Or maybe it's a fugue state." (Dawn) And they can't find any trace of Spike: "And if we don't rescue Spike soon, god only knows what the First will get him to do." (Buffy)

Buffy's not getting any sleep, and when she does nod off, First Evil conjures up her mother to undermine her efforts:

Buffy: You're not real.
FEJoyce: Okay, is that slang like you're not for real, or....

Xander: You okay? What'd you see?
Buffy: Nothing. It was nothing.

We're back to the headspace of season 3, after The First revealed itself in BtVS 3.10 Amends:

Buffy: My mom... said some things to me about being the Slayer. That it's fruitless. No fruit for Buffy.
Angel: She's wrong.
Buffy: Is she? Is Sunnydale any better than when I first came here? Okay, so I battle evil. But I don't really win. The bad keeps coming back and getting stronger. Like that kid in the story, the boy that stuck his finger in the duck. Angel: Dike. It's another word for dam.
Buffy: Oh. Okay, that story makes a lot more sense now.
(BtVS 3.11 Gingerbread, written by Jane Espenson & Thania St John)

It's a loop. And Buffy started looping once before, spiraling in and down to catatonia when she couldn't find a way to beat Glory without sacrificing her sister:

Willow: Buffy, c'mon. It's your brain. Just tell me. What happened here? BookshelfBuffy: This was when I quit, Will.
Willow: You did?
Buffy: Just for a second.
BookshelfBuffy: I remember I was in the magic shop. I put a book back for Giles. Nothing special about it. And then, it hit me.
Willow: What hit you?
Buffy: I can't beat Glory.
BookshelfBuffy: Glory's going to win.
Willow: You can't know that.
Buffy: I didn't just know it.
BookshelfBuffy: I felt it. Glory will beat me.
Buffy: And in that second of knowing it, Will ...
BookshelfBuffy: I wanted it to happen.
Willow: Why?
BookshelfBuffy: I wanted it over. This is - all of this - too much for me. Buffy: I just wanted it over.
(BtVS 5.21 The Weight of the World, written by Doug Petrie)

This is where Buffy always goes when she feels herself to be helpless. It got her killed, twice. No fruit for Buffy. And this is exactly where First Evil counts on her to be. "Little girls tear so easily, like pink paper", FirstEvilDru says to the ubervamp, gloating, somewhere under the seal, torturing what's left of Spike.

Andrew wakes up and of course spills everything. They find the seal, and the mechanism to which Spike was tied when The First raised the ubervamp, but they don't know it's Spike's blood they find all over it. There is no entrance to the underground, and they cover up the seal. Still armed with shovels, they meet the principal, also armed with a shovel: They're looking suspicious, he's looking suspicious, they both have lame explanations.

It's all so a-morphous. There's nothing to get hold of. Sink one's teeth into. Nothing to kill. What they need, metaphorically speaking, is another one of those 'solid' spells Willow came up with in Afterlife. What they get is Willow trying an ordinary locator spell that goes spectacularly awry, manifests EvilWillow at the height of her powers and conjures up goddess knows what exactly, till Xander breaks the bowl (think: Urn of Osiris, in the abortive resurrection of Bargaining 1), and Willow is left terrified:

Willow: It's still in me. I can feel it.
Buffy: No. It's not. It's gone. You're okay.
Willow: I don't want to hurt anybody. Please, Buffy, don't let it make me. O god.
Buffy: (holding her) I won't. I promise. Okay. I promise. We won't use magic to fight this thing until we know what we're doing.
Willow: I can't. I can't. I'm sorry.

So Willow takes herself off the board, and Buffy lets her. Research has proved useless, Spike is gone, and Willow was the only ally left with any power. But Willow, like Spike when he was chained in Buffy's basement, would rather die than kill again. From Buffy's POV, the scenario suggests she might be about to relive Season 5 again, in which Buffy was asked to kill her sister to save the world. Another closed loop.

Buffy opens the front door, and there's Giles. She moves towards him, and three young Slayerinas trot into the house between them. "Sorry to barge in", he says. "I'm afraid we have a slight apocalypse." Throughout the episode, Giles is chilly. Lots of flattened affect. Lots of negative words. He is living in negative space; he and Buffy never touch. Of course, there's no denying that the situation is dire. But Giles is bearing gifts: the young protoSlayers, some research stuff he filched from the Council before it blew, the overview he brings as exposition:

Giles: Potential slayers. Waiting for one to be called. There were many more like them, all over the world, but, um, now there's just a handful, and they're all on their way to Sunnydale.
B (flashing back to her dreams): The others were murdered.
G: In cold blood. As well as their watchers. We always feared that this day would come, when there'd be an attack against not just the individual Slayer, but against the whole line.
B: The First. That's what it wants.
G: Yes. To erase all the slayers in training, and their watchers, along with their methods.
B: And then Faith, and then me. And with all the Potentials gone, and no way of making another, it's the end. No more Slayer, ever.
(BtVS 7.10 BOTN)

This is a situation Buffy has never faced. When she took the dive off the tower in The Gift, she knew she was saving the world, and not wiping out the Slayer line:

But it was my time, Giles. Someone would have taken my place. So why? (no answer) Right. (sigh)
(BtVS 6.22 Grave, written by David Fury)

The current situation holds no such comfort. She cannot abdicate, or resign. She must not die. This time, she is all there is to stand against the darkness.

So here's Giles once more, doing the exposition song:

It's strange, it's not like anything we've faced before. It seems familiar somehow. Of course! The spell we cast with Buffy must have released some primal evil that's come back seeking.... I'm not sure what. Willow, look through the chronicles for some references to a warrior beast. I've got to warn Buffy, there's every chance she might be next. Xander, help Willow. And try not to bleed on my couch, I've just had it steam-cleaned.
(BtVS 4.22 Restless, written by Joss Whedon)

G: The First is unlike anything we've faced before. There's evil, and then there's the thing that created evil, the source.
B: And that's what this thing claims to be?
G: That's what it is. It has eternities to act, and endless resources. How to defeat it, honestly I don't know. But we have to find a way. If the slayer line is eliminated, then the Hellmouth has no guardian, and the balance is destroyed. I'm afraid it falls to you, Buffy. Sorry. I mean, we'll do what we can, but you're the only one that has the strength to protect these girls, and the world, against what's coming.
(BtVS 7.10 BOTN)

Everything she's been and become has been in preparation for the battle here prefigured, when she faces down The First. But she's woefully unprepared, though it's none of her doing. Her two biggest assets have bailed on her, through no fault of their own. Giles, arriving without backup or plans, has pretty much just added four to the list of people she must protect. The house is demonstrably unsafe, 'unsafe as houses', but she has nowhere else to put them. The Potentials are very young, and untried, and they lack all the tools included in the Slayer package. Xander is only human. Andrew is useless, and so weak he is possibly a danger besides. Anya is, well, Anya.

Buffy's still marshalling forces, and Spike's abduction has left a pretty big hole:

B: We need more muscle. That's why we need to find Spike.
Anya: Yeah, he'll help. You know, if he's not crazy, or off killing people, or dead. Or, you know, all of the above.
(BtVS 7.10 BOTN)

Interesting that Anya is the last holdout in the SpikeSweepstakes: is she miffed about that bedroom scene in Sleeper, or is she comparing their recent body counts and thinking that Buffy came to kill her but left Spike stakeless? Nothing like a career in vengeance, apparently, for teaching you how to hold a grudge. Everyone else has shut up about him: whether because of the look in Buffy's eye when they raise the issue, because of some dim memory of all the times he's kept them alive, or because they can empathize even a little bit with his plight. And Spike isn't doing well. FirstEvilDru is keeping the ubervamp busy taking Spike apart a little at a time:

Hard to kill. You tried to enlighten little Buffy, didn't you? Spilled, spilled, spilled our secrets like seed. But you forgot. I say what you tell, and what you know. I say when this is over. And I'm not done with you yet. Not nearly.

Meanwhile, Buffy and Giles go to check out the entrance to the underground cavern where she found First Evil in Amends so long ago, under the Xmas tree lot. She hadn't even noticed it was almost Xmas, and suggests decorating amidst the rubble when they get home. She wants to know if he will ever just visit, instead of waiting for an apocalypse to drop in. He hardly responds, and never touches her. She falls into the cavern, and then the Ubervamp finds her. She is dealt some serious damage, while she can't seem to hurt him at all. Giles waits above, but isn't there when she first climbs out and is pulled back. The Ubervamp is impervious to staking, though he doesn't seem to like sunlight much and retreats.

Giles suggests sleep; Buffy refuses, and goes to work for the first time in awhile. At work she and Principal Wood keep lying to one another. He is watching her: does he know she's the Slayer? And who is he? They get into a conversation about evil movies, and he makes two curious remarks: "once you see true evil,... you can't unsee what you saw. Ever." and (when she asks him what kind of movies he likes, he answers "Mysteries. I love finding out what's underneath it all, at the very end." (Buffy can't see it, because his back is turned, but there's an evil grin at the end of that one.)

But the big question is: Why is Spike so important? Is he meant to be used against Buffy, whom we now know to be the main target? Or does he have some importance in himself?:

FEDru: Think of it as a game. A fun funny game. Without all the rules, or any of the bothersome winning part. But still, there are sides. You have to choose a side, Spike. Then we can fly, be free....
Choose a side. Choose our side. You know that it's delicious. What do you say? Spike: Dru, luv, get bent.

Meanwhile, Buffy has fallen asleep on the job: The First must be finding it easier to get to her while she's napping, and that may explain why Buffy refuses to go to sleep, though both Xander and Giles tell her she needs to:

FirstEvilJoyce: Are you worried about the sun going down? Because there's some things you can't control. The sun always goes down, the sun always comes up. B: Everyone's counting on me.
FEJ: They do that. And I'm sorry, Buffy, but these friends of yours, they put too much pressure on you, they always have.
B: Something evil is coming.
FEJ: Buffy, evil isn't coming. It's already here. Evil is always here. Don't you know? It's everywhere.
B: And I have to stop it.
FEJ: How're you going to do that?
B: I don't know yet. But (interrupted)
FEJ: Buffy, no matter what your friends expect of you, evil is a part of us. All of us. It's natural. And noone can stop that. Noone can stop nature. Not even you. [Buffy wakes (herself?) up.]

This speech is quite eerie because Kristine Sutherland does not play any FirstEvilly-edge to the character, and it sounds exactly like Joyce giving Buffy good advice at any time in the past. Except, of course, that it's really the BtVS homespun version of Holland's elevator speech in "Reprise" that so shattered all of Angel's good intentions:

Our firm has always been here in one form or another. The Inquisition, the Khmer Rouge -- we were here the first time a caveman clubbed his neighbor and watched in fascination as his brains oozed out in the dirt. We're in the hearts and minds of every living human being and that, friend, is what's making things so difficult for you. The senior partners are evil and powerful beyond imagination, and you can try to fight them, but the source of their power... that's beyond all of us. The world doesn't work in spite of evil, Angel. It works with us. It works because of us.
(Holland Manners of Wolfram & Hart to Angel, AtS 2.15 Reprise, written by Tim Minear)

And Joyce's pitch to Buffy is structured within the episode as parallel to FirstEvilDru's campaign to suborn Spike (and what that means, ladies and gents, ta-da, is that for the first time ever, structurally speaking, we have got (for this episode, at least) a setup in BtVS for two heroes).

And that's not even the only comparison to Spike's struggle that is being made. Andrew, still tied up, is contemplating changing sides, apparently on the grounds that Buffy is a good leader because her hair is shiny and he surmises that she is unlikely to ask him to stab things. "I admit I went over to the darkside, but just to pick up a few things, and now I'm back", he reports, with cutting rejoinders from Buffy and Xander in passing, and his very funny speech, gradually plugging himself into the hero mold just to see if it plays, ends with the following:

... but I'm like Vader in the last five minutes of Jedi with redemptive powers. Mine is a redemptive struggle of epic redemption which chronicles... (pause, wriggling a little, looking down:) these ropes itch. (speech ends)

Meanwhile, Buffy has decided that the Potentials should be armed, and admitted to strategy sessions. She doesn't have time to train them, and there may not be any time at all. There's Molly, who burbles non-stop, and Kennedy, who makes a pass at Willow first thing, and Annabel, who seems the most poised and professional, taking detailed notes and deferring to authority. But it's Annabel who bolts, illustrating the limitations of the Council's methods, and Buffy has to go alone to find her. She finds the body instead, and the ubervamp awaiting her. She takes a brutal beating, the worst I can recall in seven seasons, and finally he throws her through a wall and the wall comes down on top of her. Xander & Willow & Giles come to find her, and when Xander pulls off the debris, she is lying face up with her eyes closed, looking just as dead as she looked at the end of The Gift, and they stare down at her as if the world has already ended with her. Again.

Spike is also close to death. He lies on the floor of the cavern. He has been systematically held under water and viciously beaten by the Ubervamp. (I'm thinking to myself: next should come a jump from a tower, right?):

FEDru: Do you know why you're alive?
S: Never figured you for existential thought, luv. I mean, you hated Paris.

That Spike, what a kidder.

FED: You're alive for one reason, and one reason only. Because I wish it. Do you know why I wish it? Because I'm not done with you.
S: Give it up. Whatever you are, whatever you get away with, I'm out. You can't pull this puppet's strings anymore.
FED: And what makes you think you have a choice? What makes you think you'll ever be any good at all in this world?
S: She does. Because she believes in me.

And we see Buffy, in a room by herself, listening to a conversation on the other side of the wall (they have a long table set up in front of the front door, so the living room goes right across the front of the house behind boarded-up windows). She looks half-dead: like Spike after being tortured by Glory in 'Intervention,' plus Spike after the beating by the police station in 'Dead Things':

Giles: We could make plans, as we always do. But the truth is, Buffy was our plan. There is no backup.
Willow: Giles, she looks bad.
G: She does. I'm afraid there may be internal bleeding.
W: What does that mean? Will she...
G: Die? I don't think so. I don't know.
W: But what do we do if she can't fight? If she can't beat this thing? G: We're back at square one.
X: Which square would that be, exactly?
G: I'm not sure.... The First predates everything we've ever known. Or can know. It's everywhere. It's pure. I don't know if we can fight it. B (entering the room:) You're right. We don't know how to fight it. We don't know when it'll come. We can't run, can't hide, can't pretend it's not the end, because it is. Something's always been there to try to destroy the world. We've beaten them back. But we're not dealing with them any more. We're dealing with the reason they exist. Evil. The strongest. The First.
G: Buffy, I know you're very tired.

At this point, Giles is trying to head her off. He's still gotta deal with morale in her wake. And he sees her anti-St Crispins Day speech of "The Gift" coming again, the one after which she jumped from the tower and died for the second time, the one that goes:

B: Stay close but don't crowd her. We'll follow in a minute. Everybody knows their jobs. Remember, the ritual starts, we all die. And I'll kill anyone who comes near Dawn. (exits)
S: Well, not exactly the St Crispins Day speech, was it?
G: 'We few... we happy few....'
S: We band of buggered.
(BtVS 5.22 The Gift, written by Joss Whedon)

Instead she references her very first exchange with Angel, in the first episode, about the Master's first apocalypse, in which she died for the first time:

B: What I want is to be left alone.
A: Do you really think that's an option anymore? You're standing at the Mouth of Hell. And it's about to open. Don't turn your back on this. You've gotta be ready.
B: What for?
A: For the Harvest.
(BtVS 1.01 Welcome to the Hellmouth, written by Joss Whedon)

"I'm beyond tired," she says. "I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of Hell and it is gonna swallow me whole." But then, bloodied and broken, the Slayer rises, in all her power. Her voice is soft and grim. But it's Winston Churchill this time, not Henry V. This time, she's changing the ending. No more loop. Because she can. Because she's not alone with them there. Because she's come into her power. Because this is the work she is born to do. "And it'll choke on me", she says quietly, a whole manifesto in itself, and the world changes as she goes on:

We're not ready. They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse, well we'll give them one. Anyone else who wants to run, do it now. Because we just became an army. We just declared war. From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them, and cut out their hearts one by one. Until The First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil. And that's us. Any questions? (episode ends)
(BtVS 7.10 BOTN)

In the war room to hear her are only seven: Giles, Willow, Xander, Anya, Dawn, Molly, Kennedy. Spike is absent, but looked for. Andrew is around somewhere, tied down, for whatever little that's worth. Others may be arriving. It's the very picture of a motley crew. But this is not the kind of game in which one hotwires a Winnebago and hightails it out of town. Wrong spiral altogether. "Lesson one:" It may be non-corporeal, but "it's always real" (Dawn, from Buffy's training, Lessons). And Buffy herself has so much strength, she's still giving it away.

This is a world which has no rules, but many choices. It is held together by the values it considers worth fighting for, and by the kind of hard-won lessons that take a lifetime to acquire. It's an army of light, in a universe of dark matter.

It's all connected. The root systems, the molecules...the energy. Everything's connected.
(Willow to Giles, Lessons)

In Buffy's world, which came into being in the moment she declared war, people choose to care for one another, because they can. They choose to risk, because it matters. It is a world in which Willow can still be saved, and Anya can still be changed, and Spike can still remake himself, and none of them will be damned for it. In which knowing their own worth, and drawing on their own strength, will keep them safe. In which loving one another will set them free, and keep them whole. It's a very long way from the world of the Slayer Handbook. They know death, and evil, from the inside, but they struggle every day to cast it out, to opt for something better. It's a world in which they understand quite well how much they owe to one another, and how much is due to themselves. And when they go to war, they go willingly, not only because there are things worth dying for, but also because there are things worth living for. Because of who they are, and who they wish to become. And never simply because they can win.

So, Buffy. Slayer and Girl. Still relearning how to let go, and when to hold on. These are Spike's set of lessons: It 's always the one who could be caught, but wouldn't be hunted, you have to watch out for. The one who is willing to risk, to fight, to die, beyond reason, for what Angelus would certainly consider reason could never be love. It's always the one that is willing to reach beyond what she can see, to whatever she finds there. Because that's the one who always accepts the risk of choosing, of reaching for something beyond herself and holding on tight, and not letting go, beyond death and reason, once she finds something worth keeping. The one who insists on choosing, herself, no matter what the cost. Because that one can't be predicted. She might be caught, but you'll never really own her. She might be killed, but she'll never ever let go. She has always had the stake. But now she's also got the power.
 

W: I wanna be Willow.
G: You are. In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed.
(Willow & Giles, BtVS 7.01 Lessons, written by Joss Whedon)

Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her. To be hers.
(Spike to Buffy, church scene written by Joss Whedon, in BtVS 7.02 Beneath You)

Trust yourself. And the others might follow.
(Giles to Willow, BtVS 7.02 Beneath You, written by Doug Petrie)

You're the one who had to make breakthroughs and learn something about himself. (FirstEvil Spike to Spike, BtVS 7.09 Never Leave Me, written by Drew Goddard)

B: You're not alive because of hate, or pain. You're alive because I saw you change. Because I saw your penance.
S (lunges at her, but the chains hold:) Window dressing.
B: Be easier, wouldn't it? If it were an act? But it's not. You faced the monster inside of you, and you fought back. You risked everything to be a better man.
(Buffy & Spike, BtVS 7.09 NLM)

Look at you, glowing. What's a word means glowing? It's gotta rhyme. (Spike to Buffy, BtVS 7.03 Same Time, Same Place, written by Jane Espenson)
 

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