"Damage"
Dr. Rabinaw comes down the hallway of a hospital psychiatric wing. He opens a steel mesh safety gate and enters. A nurse behind the desk, Carol, looks up from her crossword puzzle to note they're running low on Diazepam.
He instructs her to call someone at another hospital, see if they can spare any. He asks her to give him one of the crossword puzzle questions which she does, "Okay, in a mellifluous manner, seven letters, ends in 'y'."
He thinks on that a moment, "Give me another one."
Their conversation is interrupted by a nurse calling for Dr. Rabinaw. She comes running down the hallway and approaches another locked gate. She tells the doctor there's a problem with one of the patients.
Rabinaw unlocks the gate and rushes to the patient's room where he finds the young man, unconscious on the floor. He asks the nurse what happened.
She doesn't know, he went into convulsions after she administered his medication.
He asks how much Lithium the patient was given.
The nurse looks at the clipboard she's holding, "No, he gets Thorazine."
Rabinaw informs her the patient is manic depressive, he doesn't need a sedative.
She looks through the paperwork, admitting it must have gotten mixed up.
Rabinaw gets to his feet and looks at the med list, wondering who didn't get their Thorazine. He reads something troubling, "Oh, God." He looks up as a loud pounding sound fills the halls.
Rabinaw rushes out into the hallway and calls for an orderly, Peterson. He opens a security gate blocking off another hallway and enters with the orderly as the pounding continues.
The doctor and Peterson walk very slowly and cautiously down the hallway toward the room the sound seems to be coming from. The noise suddenly stops. Rabinaw sighs in relief, the door held.
The door to the room is kicked off its hinges. A young female patient, Dana, stands in the open doorway a moment, then slowly walks out into the hall.
Rabinaw tells her who he is, tries to calm and reassure her as he and the orderly back slowly away from the advancing woman. They get on the other side of the gate and shut it, locking Dana on the opposite side. Rabinaw tells her they just want to make her better.
She notices he has a syringe in his hand. She grabs the gate and pulls it off its hinges, tossing it aside. She takes on several orderlies who try to restrain her, beating them down as Rabinaw cowers against the wall. She notices a box of surgical implements nearby, walks over to it and retrieves a bone saw.
An orderly comes up behind her and cracks her in the head with a baton, which doesn't affect her.
She turns and slashes him across the throat with the saw.
Rabinaw drops the syringe and runs.
As one of the orderlies lies on the floor, gasping, Dana kneels over him and starts sawing. She stands, wipes his blood on her face and looks around, wild-eyed.
In his office, Angel tells Wes and Lorne perhaps they made a mistake coming there.
Gunn and Fred walk in. Gunn asks what's going on.
Lorne tells him, "Parasite Eve, right on out the door."
Gunn asks if Angel is firing her.
Angel concedes that's "one option."
Wes reckons it's a generous one considering she tried to murder Angel. ("Soul Purpose")
Gunn is quick to defend her, "Okay, first, the parasite she allegedly sicced on you wasn't meant to be fatal."
Fred notes maybe not, but it would have put Angel into a "permanent hallucinogenic coma."
Angel wants to know what's with the use of "alleged", "You don't believe I know it was her?"
Gunn clarifies, it's not about what he thinks, it's about the evidence.
Wes points out they aren't in a courtroom, "Things work with a bit more immediacy in the real world."
Gunn notes Eve is the Partners' liaison, one couldn't get that position without some serious "juice". He reckons a move against her, without proof, could lead to a long and bloody battle.
Angel accepts that, "Okay, fine. I think I liked you better when you just wanted to hit people."
Gunn responds, "Rational thought, it's an acquired taste."
Lorne looks for a clarification of the decision, "Wait a minute. So we're not going to snap Twiggy into little sticks?"
Angel concedes Gunn is right, they can't risk it, "yet."
Gunn offers they can restrict Eve's access, keep an eye on her, play her the way she's been playing them.
Harm comes in and tells Angel, "We just got a tip some loony's hatched from the bin."
Angel looks at her quizzically, "A who did a what?"
Harm tries to explain, "A girl over in the nuthouse went all 'Cuckoo's Nest', hacked up a couple of guards and went over the wall."
Angel tells her that's not the kind of thing they deal with.
Wes suggests she notify the authorities.
Harm thinks they'll need a priest, sounds like the girl is possessed.
Angel asks, "Wait a minute, she's possessed?"
A frustrated Harm answers, "Duh! Didn't I say that?"
Wes gets up, saying he'll put a team together.
Angel tells him to wait, he doesn't want to go storming in with an ops team until he knows what they're dealing with. He notes he's seen possessions before, they have to be handled carefully, "real finesse job."
At the hospital, two elevator doors open, side by side. Angel steps off of one, Spike steps off the other. Spike chuckles, "Fancy this. Bitty slug I saved you from scramble your brains after all? Come to check yourself in?"
As Angel heads down the hall of the psyche ward, Spike follows. Angel asks what he's doing there.
Spike reckons Angel didn't get the memo, he's a "hero of the people" now.
Angel suggests he go annoy them then.
Spike says he'll do that when he's finished. He heard one of the "simples went out for a stroll."
Angel tells him he'll get her back, without Spike's help.
Spike points out he wasn't offering.
Angel asks if he shouldn't be out protecting the world, "from people like you?" He pauses a moment to look at the mangled gate.
Spike says he goes where he's needed.
Angel notes he isn't needed there.
They stop at the nurses' station. Dr. Rabinaw asks if he can help.
Spike starts to explain, Angel cuts him off, he's there to get their patient back. He introduces himself as he hands Rabinaw his business card.
The doctor looks at it, "A lawyer?" He's already told the police everything he knows.
Angel asks him to go over it again, just in case he forgot anything.
Spike takes a position behind Angel, to his side, "What he said, but with a bit more of a threat at the end."
Angel, Spike and Rabinaw stand in the ruins of Dana's room. The walls are covered with drawings of violence, blood, demons.
As Spike examines the drawings on the walls and Angel sorts through several drawings he's holding, Rabinaw tells them about Dana. Her family was murdered in their own home when Dana was 10. The murderer took her and tortured her for months. One day, she was found bleeding and naked, wandering the streets. She's been barely functional and nearly catatonic ever since.
Spike looks aroun
d
the trashed room, "Looks like she snapped out of it."
Rabinaw continues, her condition changed several months ago. She became increasingly more agitated and exhibited outbursts of inhuman strength.
Spike reckons it's a demonic possession.
Rabinaw thinks that's ridiculous.
Angel tells Spike he's not helping.
Spike reckons he's doing, Angel can stick around and chat with the doctor if he wants, Spike has a demon to repossess. He snatches one of the drawings off the wall and leaves.
Angel looks at Rabinaw, "Sorry, he's -- Is pathological idiot an actual condition?"
Rabinaw suggests Angel stop his "friend" because if he finds Dana, he'll end up dead like the others.
Angel mutters, "Yeah, but he'll just end up comin' back."
Rabinaw leaves, Angel remains behind, looking over the drawings on the wall. He senses someone, "What isn't he telling me?" He turns to the nurse, Carol, standing at the doorway.
She says the doctor videotaped all of his sessions with Dana.
Angel tells her to show him the tapes.
Dana, still dressed in her hospital gown, is in a store, eating off the shelves.
A stock boy approaches her, asking if she's going to pay for what she's eating.
She ignores him.
He walks up to her, telling her politely she can't just eat the food off the shelves like that, she needs to take it up to the cash register and pay for it.
She continues to ignore him.
He puts his hand on her shoulder, she snaps his arm. He sinks to the floor, crying out in pain.
Dana retrieves the bone saw she'd laid on the shelf and walks away. She ends up in the clothing department, where she retrieves and puts on a pair of jeans. She takes a dark colored T-shirt off the rack and stares at it. As she looks at it she flashes back to herself as a child, a terrified prisoner of the man who murdered her family.
A security guard holds a gun on her, telling her not to move, he doesn't want to have to hurt her. She stares at him.
Dana exits the store, wearing the jeans, dark shirt and a plaid flannel long sleeved shirt she's stolen. She's carrying the bloody bone saw in her hand.
At the hospital, Angel is viewing tapes of Dana, who is agitated and combative, secured in a straitjacket.
Carol notes she was like that even though she was on heavy doses of Thorazine. Rabinaw was planning on writing a book on Dana, which is why he had the tapes and why he didn't want anybody to know about them.
Angel asks if Carol was the one who called W&H.
She confirms she did, her cousin works there and had told her about the change in management and new positions opening up. She thought perhaps if she gave them a tip on this, she could get a foot in the door.
Angel continues watching the tape of Dana as she's growling and shouting something. He stops and rewinds the tape, playing back that segment again.
Carol says the tapes are pretty much all the same, Dana screaming gibberish.
Angel recognizes it, "It's Romanian."
Carol asks if he understands what Dana is saying.
He answers quietly, "Yeah, I do."
The police are gathered outside of the store where Dana was last seen. A body, covered in a bloody sheet, is wheeled out. Spike arrives and picks up a blood scent. He leaves, following it.
At W&H, Wes takes a call from Angel who's calling from his car. Angel tells him to contact their informants in the police department, get Dana's last known whereabouts. He wants an ops team on the ground in five minutes, equipped with non-lethal weapons.
Wes asks if that's wise, he's been brushing up on demonic possessions.
As Angel continues his conversation with Wes in voice over, Dana is shown walking through a warehouse.
Angel tells Wes that's not what this is about. He tells him about the hundreds of drawings in her hospital room, images of demons, some with a little girl in them. He thought they were of Dana, but he realized they're all different. It's not her.
Wes notes manifestation of multiple personalities often accompanies demonic possession.
Angel says it's not just the drawings, he saw a tape of her speaking several different languages, one of which was Romanian.
Spike has tracked Dana to the warehouse. He approaches her from behind as she looks out the window, "Liken' the view, are we?" He suggests they have a chat about "mistreating little girls, demon to demon." He morphs into game face.
Angel tells Wes that Dana was yelling about being "chosen", she's not a demon.
Dana looks at Spike and smiles wickedly as Angel (in voice over) tells Wes, "She's a vampire Slayer."
Spike wonders what Dana is grinning about. She slashes at him with the bone saw. He avoids the blows and taunts, thinking he's dealing with a demonic possession, "Look at the big, bad demon hiding inside the helpless little girl." He grabs her and throws her into a stack of crates as he continues goading the demon he thinks is inside of her to come out.
She grabs a large crate splinter and goes after him. Fight ensues. She gets him pinned to the wall, the improvised stake poised over his heart.
He struggles to hold her wrist, to keep her from dusting him, as she shouts at him in Chinese, the same words a Chinese Slayer once said to him just before he killed her.
He tells her he doesn't speak the language as he punches her, knocking her back. Fight continues. She throws him out the window. He falls the three or four stories to the pavement below, landing on his stomach.
Angel pulls the GTO to a stop and gets out as Spike gets to his feet. Angel asks what happened.
Spike answers, "Oh, I just thought I'd see what it was like to bounce off the pavement. Pretty much what I expected."
Angel tells him to stay out of the way, the ops team is coming.
Spike reckons she's not going to stand around and wait for their arrival.
Angel tells him he should have waited.
Spike figures at least he knows now what they're dealing with, "A Chinese demon. Maybe a Water Dragon or one of those elemental thingies."
Angel sighs in frustration and walks away.
Spike shouts after him, "What?"
Angel and Spike step off the elevator into W&H. Spike repeats, "A psychotic vampire Slayer."
Angel wonders how many times he's going to say that.
Spike is just trying to wrap his mind around that, a "psycho Slayer."
Angel notes he let her get away.
Spike counters, at least he was trying to stop her.
Angel snipes, "Oh, how did that work out?"
Spike reckons he's prepared now he knows what he's dealing with, he's killed two Slayers, he's confident he can handle "one that's gone daft in the melon."
Angel tells him he's not handling anything, Wes called Giles and he's sent his "top guy to retrieve her."
Angel and Spike enter Angel's conference room where they find Giles' "top guy", Andrew. Wes, Fred, Lorne and Gunn are also present.
Andrew turns and sees who's accompanied Angel into the room. He lays the pipe he's smoking in an ashtray, gets to his feet and happily chirps, "Spike?" as he eyes him like a long lost lover.
Spike isn't nearly as enthusiastic, "Oh, for the love of --"
Andrew grabs him by the shoulders, "It's you! It's really you!" He pats Spike's chest then embraces him tightly, "My therapist thought I was holding onto false hope but I knew you'd come back."
Angel looks on, not sure what to make of this.
Spike stands stiffly, his arms at his sides.
Andrew finally breaks the embrace as he sobs, "You're like Gandalf the White resurrected from the pit of the Balrog." He puts his hands on Spike's face, "More beautiful than ever." He hugs him again, "Oh, he's alive, Frodo. He's alive."
Angel asks dryly, "You two know each other?"
Andrew breaks the embrace, sniffles and answers, "Yeah, we saved the world together." He concedes Buffy helped, but it was mostly them. He asks Spike what happened, last he heard Spike was a "pillar of fire down in the Hellmouth."
Angel asks if they can't save the trip down memory lane until after they contain "the psychotic, super-powered killing machine."
Wes says they were just about to bring everyone up to speed on Slayer mythology.
Andrew tells "Pryce" best to let an "expert" take it from there.
Wes offers a caustic, "Please, enlighten us."
Andrew does the exposition, explaining the origins of the Slayer story. "Eons ago, on the dark continent, three wise elders decided to fight evil with a taste of its own sinistro. They took a young girl and they imbued her with the power of a demon. Thusly, the first Slayer of the vampires was born. But, alas, the existence of a Slayer is often brutal and short-lived and the "primitive" as she was called, was no exception. But the elders had foreseen this inevitability and devised a way for her power to live on."
Fred interrupts, "In every generation, one is chosen."
Andrew confirms that's right as he continues, "There are many potentials, as we experts call them." Wes adds, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands per generation. Andrew continues, "Each of them experiencing vivid dreams, some say nightmares, of the heroics of past Slayers. But only one can be chosen."
Angel tells him they know all of this already.
Andrew says they think they know as he lights a pipe and coughs.
Lorne asks if there's only one Slayer, "What is little Miss Whack-Your-Head-Off doing scampering around?"
Spike notes it's a "Sunnydale surprise."
Andrew explains, "Six months ago, Buffy, a vampire Slayer extraordinaire, had her lesbian witch make with the beaucoup de magie. One light show later --"
Angel realizes what he's saying, "All the potentials become Slayers."
Wes sees the army of Slayers as a smart strategy, but wonders, without the Council, who's providing the training they need?
Andrew answers, Giles and a "few key Sunnydale alum" have been finding them, training them, providing them what they need. He pulls out a paper bag with the Union Jack and his name printed on it, containing his lunch. As he opens a plastic baggie of snacks and munches from it, he continues, "But this Dana girl, she's an anomaly that no one could have foreseen. Tortured, traumatized, driven insane by Yoda knows who."
Angel notes the Slayer dreams have become real for Dana.
Wes adds the dreams are usually just dreams but Dana's mental problems may be making them seem more real.
Andrew agrees with that as he takes notes on a small notepad he pulls from his pocket, "I see Mr. Giles may have been wrong about you."
Wes shoots him an annoyed glance.
Spike reckons that explains why Dana was yelling at him in Chinese, she must have thought she was "the Slayer I took out back in the Boxer Rebellion."
Angel challenges that, "You mean the Slayer you murdered."
Spike defends himself, "Well, I didn't have a soul back then, did I?"
Angel snipes, "Right, because having one now is making such a difference."
Spike tells them to keep talking, if anybody needs him, he'll be out doing Angel's job. He leaves.
Angel calls after him, following him out into the hall, pointing out he and Spike are the last two people who should be confronting this girl, "She has every reason to hate us and she's unstable. In her mind, there probably aren't any good vampires. She exists for one reason, to destroy creatures like us."
Spike knows this, "Dance of death, eternal struggle, right. Got it."
Angel is sure he will when Dana drives a stake through is heart.
Spike wonders what Angel expects of him, "Go all boo-hoo because she got tortured and driven out of her gourd? It's not like we haven't done worse back in the day."
Angel answers that, "Yeah, and it's something I'm still paying for."
Spike thinks he should let that go, "It's startin' to make you look old." He leaves.
Andrew watches from the office doorway as he sips from a straw in a juice box..
Dana is walking the docks, having flashbacks of herself as a child with her captor. He pulls a vent grate off the wall near the floor and pulls out a small box, concealed in the space behind it. The child Dana screams.
A concerned dock worker approaches her, asking if she's okay.
She doesn't answer.
He asks if she needs some help.
She stares at him.
At W&H, Angel concedes perhaps Spike was right and they should just go out and find her.
Fred asks what then, kill her? She points out what's happening to her isn't her fault.
Gunn agrees Dana is mentally incompetent, not that it would matter when she was driving a stake through Angel's heart.
Angel notes a map mounted behind him, points out the places she's been sighted and the fact ops is doing a sweep, but it's a large area to cover.
Fred realizes it will take days, at least.
Angel knows they need to narrow the search. Witnesses had reported it was like she was looking for something, they need to figure out what.
Lorne suggests starting at the beginning, where this all started for Dana, her home.
Angel is skeptical, that was over 15 years ago.
Lorne says houses have long memories, one just has to know how to get them to talk.
Angel tells him to go ahead, set it up, but they should bring Andrew in, see if he knows anything.
Fred doesn't think Andrew is there.
Angel asks where he went.
Spike is walking on the docks, senses something, "Right, we can play cat and mouse all night --" He pulls Andrew out of his hiding place, "Or I could wedgie you unconscious and be done with it."
Andrew is impressed, "Bravo, I see your senses seem to be as well-honed as your Viggo Mortensen pectorals."
Spike walks away, Andrew follows. Spike asks what he's doing out there.
Andrew answers, "This is where the action is, bro. On the mean streets. Can you dig it?"
An annoyed Spike tells him to go back to W&H, he has no time for games.
Andrew says he's not playing games as he opens his coat, revealing an arsenal of weaponry inside. He goes on, saying Spike isn't the only one who's changed, Giles has been training him, "I'm faster, stronger and 82% more manly than the last time we --" He trips and falls over the bloody corpse of the dock worker, then screams like a girl.
A real estate agent shows Angel, Lorne and Lorne's psychic friend, Vernon, around Dana's childhood home. Vernon notes, "The walls scream with the blood of the innocent."
The agent cheerfully says she'll be in the car if they have any questions. She leaves.
Vernon continues reading the house.
Angel asks Lorne if he's reliable.
Lorne assures him Vernon is good.
As Vernon moves his extended hand through the living room, Angel asks what he's reading.
Vernon sighs heavily, "Fear." [Flash of a terrified woman, backing against the wall] "Anguish." [Flash of a man falling dead to the floor] "Pain, he needed them to suffer." [Flash of a crib, containing a bloody blanket]
They enter what had once been Dana's bedroom where Vernon continues his reading, "She doesn't know him." [Flash of Dana as a child, cowering under the bed as the bedroom door opens] "She tries to be still, invisible, but he senses her." [The man enters the bedroom, walks over to the bed and tosses the mattress off of it, revealing the child who screams] "She's gone."
Angel asks where the man took her.
Vernon pauses a moment, closes his eyes, "Dark. The floor is cold. The air is thick with dust ... and the smell, sickly sweet like .. molasses." He gasps, "A basement, that's where her pain lives and it's still calling to her."
Vernon's last line is in voice over as Dana is shown entering the basement where she was held as a child. She looks at a chain, still wrapped around some pipes that stand upright from the floor. She walks over to the grate in the wall, removes it and reaches inside.
She pulls out some tools [Flash of the tools laid out neatly in a row on a rag] and the small box. She opens the box and looks at the contents, syringes and a number of drug vials. [Flash of her as a frightened child, chained, approached by her captor, "Let's try the blue one this time." She looks at him and in her flashback, has replaced the face of her captor with Spike's as he bleeds the syringe, preparing to inject her with it.]
As they walk on the docks, Andrew fills Spike in. He mostly talks to Giles but everybody checks in. Xander is in Africa, Willow and Kennedy are in Brazil (Rio, to be exact).
Spike sniffs the air.
Andrew does likewise, then asks what blood smells like.
Spike answers, "Metallic, sort of. Ever taste a penny?"
Andrew hasn't.
Spike says it smells like that.
Andrew notices a penny laying on the ground near his feet. He picks it up.
Spike asks if Andrew has heard from Buffy.
He has, she's in Rome where Dawn is enrolled in school.
Spike is surprised, he didn't figure Buffy for an expatriate.
Andrew says she was rounding up Slayers in Europe and decided she liked it there.
Andrew puts the penny into his mouth, on his tongue, gags on it and spits it out. He thinks Buffy just needed a break from California. He asks if Buffy knows Spike is alive.
Spike doesn't know, he asks Andrew if she does.
Andrew doesn't think so, he's sure he would have heard about it, a "conference call" or something.. He wonders why Spike hasn't told her.
Spike extends his thumb and little finger, making a 'phone' out of his hand and puts it to his ear. He answers mockingly, "Hello, Buffy? It's Spike. I didn't burn up like you thought. How are things?"
Andrew asks if Spike wants him to tell her.
Spike says no, he'll handle it.
Andrew gets it, Spike wants to play it cool.
Spike would like him to just keep quiet.
Andrew agrees but continues chatting as they walk on.
Dana watches from a position above them.
Angel and Lorne return to W&H. Gunn asks how things went.
Angel wants to find out everything they can about the guy who murdered Dana's family; name, past, whereabouts.
Gunn notes the police never caught him.
Angel says they aren't the police. He wants the guy found, do what it takes to make that happen.
Gunn departs as Wes joins Angel and Lorne walking down the hallway.
Angel tells Lorne he wants to know where the guy took Dana, the psychic narrowed it down to a basement that smells like molasses, he thinks they can do better than that, "Start crackin' the whip."
Lorne departs to get on it, shouting, "Danny! We're gonna need a whip!"
Angel and Wes enter Angel's office.
Andrew is still babbling but Spike isn't listening. Something has gotten his attention.
Andrew asks what's wrong.
Spike answers, "Smells different, stronger."
Andrew asks, "Like nickels?"
Spike runs off in pursuit of the scent. Andrew follows.
Spike stops when he comes to a dead end. He looks around cautiously.
Andrew arrives, noting the dead end.
Spike sees blood on the wall of the building, "It's her blood."
Dana rushes out and punches Andrew, knocking him out. She and Spike fight. She knocks Spike back.
Andrew comes to and fires a tranquilizer dart at Dana. It hits her but doesn't slow her down. As he tries to reload, she kicks him in the head, knocking him out. She runs off.
Spike gets up and runs after her.
He follows her inside, to the basement of the old building where she was held captive as a child. He calls out to her, "All right, pet. No gettin' away. I've got your scent locked in now, could track you for miles."
She steps out of the shadows, "No escaping."
Spike agrees with that as he walks slowly toward her, telling her he doesn't want to have to hurt her.
Dana echoes words said to her by her captor, "Doesn't have to hurt if you hold still." She continues muttering, "Heart and head .. have to get home. Doesn't hurt if you hold still."
Spike can't make sense of any of it, "You're a real sack of hammers aren't you? Hey, don't worry. I used to date a girl who wasn't all there."
As they circle each other slowly, Dana continues muttering, "Heart and head ... Stab the heart, cut off the head. Only way to be sure."
Spike recognizes that, it's "Slayer talk."
Dana keeps mumbling, "Keep cutting till you see dust."
Spike tries to explain, "You got visions, right? Vampire Slayer memories kicking 'round in your head, which is tough, cause it sounds like your past midnight on the crazy clock anyway."
Dana channels another Slayer, "Please don't. I have to get home to my son, to my Robin."
Spike realizes she's talking about Nikki Wood, "The Slayer I offed back in --"
Dana looks up at him.
Spike decides perhaps best not to go there.
She glares at him and says accusingly, "William the Bloody."
Spike's getting a little nervous, "No, no, no. That's not gonna lead anywhere good." He tells her to focus on what's real.
She repeats, "Head and heart .. don't be scared" then attacks him. She knocks him to the floor and stabs him in the neck with a syringe.
Spike tosses her off of him and tries to fight, but can't. As he struggles to keep his feet, he asks what she did to him.
She answers, "Yellow makes you weak. Not weak anymore." She beats him down, "Don't cry, they can't hear you."
She removes his coat and drags him across the floor by the arm.
Dana flashes on a memory of her childhood trauma, Spike as her captor, carrying her to the pipes, chaining her as she screams. She chains Spike to the pipes, "Daddy's gone. He can't hear you."
Spike mumbles a threat as Dana retrieves the box. She opens it and takes out a syringe along with a drug vial.
As she fills the syringe, she rambles, "Piece by piece. Yellow makes you weak. Brown makes you sleepy." She injects him in the arm with the needle. As he struggles to stay awake, she says, "Can't hurt me anymore."
Spike tells her, "You crazy little -- I never --"
She says to count backwards as she begins counting back from 10.
Fade to black as Spike passes out.
Everyone is gathered in the conference room at W&H. Gunn notes on the map where ops found the latest body.
Angel realizes she's staying in the same area. He tells Wes to get ops on it, go block to block for a five mile radius.
Gunn wonders what they're supposed to be looking for, it's an industrial area, nearly all the buildings have a basement of one sort or another.
Angel asks Lorne if the psychics have made any progress.
Lorne says no, just that it's "cold, creepy and smells like molasses."
Wes starts to say something, thinks better of it, then admits, "I almost said the words 'molasses factory' out loud."
Fred realizes something, "Whiskey."
Lorne thinks that sounds good, he'll take one.
Fred clarifies, when one makes whiskey, the whole room smells like molasses.
Angel tells the others to look for a distillery, get some old maps --
Andrew comes in, he says they were attacked. He thinks Dana got Spike.
In the distillery basement, Spike comes to as Dana mutters, "Piece by piece."
His words are slurred as he asks what she did.
She again echoes words her captor said to her, "Stay quiet. I'll let you go."
Spike tells her she's homicidal, and weakly asks what she did to him.
She approaches him, holding the bone saw, "Losing all your pieces, not weak. Can't touch me anymore."
A horrified Spike raises his arms to see his hands have been cut off mid-forearm. Dana stalks toward him with the bloody saw as Spike processes what's going on, "Oh, God. I can't feel my --" He passes out.
She punches him, bringing him back around, "No! No more daddy. No more mommy. No more hands. Can't touch me ever again."
Spike says he never touched her.
She hits him again, turns her back and takes a few steps away from him. She turns back to face him.
He tells her to stop, she has it wrong, he never hurt her, it wasn't him. He admits he's done his share of bad things, but she's not one of them. His voice takes on a pleading tone, "It's someone else." [Flash of Spike carrying Dana as a child then changing into the man who was responsible] "You've got me confused with another man." [Flash on Spike chaining the child, changing into her captor] "Visions are mixing with your real memories, got 'em stuffed in your head. Other Slayers, other places, New York, China."
She speaks in Chinese as she stalks toward him, again repeating the last words of the Chinese Slayer Spike had killed.
Spike tells her she's remembering other Slayers as she kneels in front of him.
She looks at him, "You killed her."
Spike responds quietly, "Yes, but --"
Dana cuts him off, "You killed them both."
Spike admits it, "That and worse. But I was never here."
She punches him in the face repeatedly, telling him it doesn't matter, "Head and heart. Keep cutting till you see dust." She raises the bone saw.
As Spike steels himself for what's to come, Angel grabs Dana from behind and pulls her back. Fight ensues. Angel throws her across the basement. She gets up, but makes no move toward him.
He says he's trying to help her, the man who hurt her, Walter Kindel, is dead. The police killed him in a robbery attempt five years earlier.
Dana mutters, "Hold still."
Angel approaches her slowly, telling her he can't hurt her anymore.
She walks toward him, "Can't hurt me. Not weak anymore."
Angel tells her that's right.
She looks down at her hands, making fists of both, "Strong. Slayer." She attacks him. Fight continues. Angel manages to get hold of her as Wes and the ops team arrive.
Wes fires several tranquilizer darts into Dana, knocking her out.
Angel looks over at Spike and orders the med team to the basement.
As Spike is wheeled to a waiting ambulance, Fred is on the phone ordering things to be ready for their arrival. She informs them to tell the shaman no cadavers, they have his hands. Another employee carries over the cooler containing Spike's hands. Fred follows Spike into the ambulance, it departs.
As an unconscious Dana is wheeled out, Angel says she's to be chained into the back of the van and armed guards are to keep watch.
Andrew arrives, saying he'll handle things from there. He appreciates Angel's help, couldn't have found her without it, but he notes Angel has his own problems to worry about.
Angel dismissively tells him to get out of the way.
Andrew steps in front of him, "She's a Slayer. That means she's ours."
Angel tells him it doesn't work that way as he instructs his people to load her up, tranquilize her again if necessary.
Andrew steps in front of him again, "I don't think you heard me, Angel." He's joined by several young women backing him up, "Think we were just gonna let you take her back to your evil stronghold?"
Angel tells him Dana is psychotic, he's not turning her over to Andrew.
Andrew says he has no choice, noting he has twelve Slayers behind him to back him up, "And not one of them has ever dated you."
Angel clenches his jaw but says nothing.
Andrew continues, "She's coming with us, one way or another."
Angel tells him he's out of his league, he'll clear it with Buffy.
Andrew counters, "Where do you think my orders came from?"
Angel takes that hit, but says nothing as Andrew continues, "Newsflash! Nobody in our camp trusts you anymore. Nobody. You work for Wolfram & Hart. Don't fool yourself, we're not on the same side." He thanks everyone for their help, they can take it from there. They take Dana away as Angel glares at Andrew.
Wes asks if that's it, if Angel is going to let them take her.
He answers, "She's one of theirs. They can handle it. Besides, you heard the man. We got enough problems of our own to worry about."
Angel pays a visit to Spike in the W&H medical unit. His arms are bandaged, but reattached.
Spike greets him, "Come to tap dance on the patient, have we, doc? I'd give you the finger but apparently I won't have the motor skills till the drugs wear off."
Angel steps into the room from the doorway, asking, "A lot of pain?"
Spike answers, "More than I'd like but not as much as you would. Just what I deserve."
Angel notes he didn't say that.
A contemplative Spike says no, he did himself, "The lass thought I killed her family and I'm supposed to what, complain cause hers wasn't one of the hundreds of families I did kill?" He pauses a moment, "I'm not saying you're right, cause .. uh ... I'm physically incapable of saying that. But .. uh .. for a demon, I never did think that much about the nature of evil. No. Just threw myself in. Thought it was a party. I liked the rush, I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the victims."
A reflective Angel says, "I couldn't take my eyes off them. I was only in it for the evil. It was everything to me. It was art, the destruction of a human being. Guess I would have considered Dana a masterpiece."
Spike asks what happens to her now.
Angel doesn't know, Andrew and the Slayers took her, they didn't trust them to help her.
Spike reacts to that, "Andrew double-crossed us? That was a good move." He chuckles, "Hope for the little ponce yet." He looks down at his bandaged arms, "Though the tingling in my forearms tells me she's too far gone to help. She's one of us, now. She's a monster."
Angel disagrees, "She's an innocent victim."
Spike looks up at him, "So were we, once upon a time."
Angel repeats quietly, "Once upon a time."
Site design ©2000 TAO Designz
All Rights Reserved
Written by: Steven
S. DeKnight & Drew Goddard |
Original Air Date: January 28, 2004 |
Dr. Rabinaw comes down the hallway of a hospital psychiatric wing. He opens a steel mesh safety gate and enters. A nurse behind the desk, Carol, looks up from her crossword puzzle to note they're running low on Diazepam.
He instructs her to call someone at another hospital, see if they can spare any. He asks her to give him one of the crossword puzzle questions which she does, "Okay, in a mellifluous manner, seven letters, ends in 'y'."
He thinks on that a moment, "Give me another one."
Their conversation is interrupted by a nurse calling for Dr. Rabinaw. She comes running down the hallway and approaches another locked gate. She tells the doctor there's a problem with one of the patients.
Rabinaw unlocks the gate and rushes to the patient's room where he finds the young man, unconscious on the floor. He asks the nurse what happened.
She doesn't know, he went into convulsions after she administered his medication.
He asks how much Lithium the patient was given.
The nurse looks at the clipboard she's holding, "No, he gets Thorazine."
Rabinaw informs her the patient is manic depressive, he doesn't need a sedative.
She looks through the paperwork, admitting it must have gotten mixed up.
Rabinaw gets to his feet and looks at the med list, wondering who didn't get their Thorazine. He reads something troubling, "Oh, God." He looks up as a loud pounding sound fills the halls.
Rabinaw rushes out into the hallway and calls for an orderly, Peterson. He opens a security gate blocking off another hallway and enters with the orderly as the pounding continues.
The doctor and Peterson walk very slowly and cautiously down the hallway toward the room the sound seems to be coming from. The noise suddenly stops. Rabinaw sighs in relief, the door held.
The door to the room is kicked off its hinges. A young female patient, Dana, stands in the open doorway a moment, then slowly walks out into the hall.
Rabinaw tells her who he is, tries to calm and reassure her as he and the orderly back slowly away from the advancing woman. They get on the other side of the gate and shut it, locking Dana on the opposite side. Rabinaw tells her they just want to make her better.
She notices he has a syringe in his hand. She grabs the gate and pulls it off its hinges, tossing it aside. She takes on several orderlies who try to restrain her, beating them down as Rabinaw cowers against the wall. She notices a box of surgical implements nearby, walks over to it and retrieves a bone saw.
An orderly comes up behind her and cracks her in the head with a baton, which doesn't affect her.
She turns and slashes him across the throat with the saw.
Rabinaw drops the syringe and runs.
As one of the orderlies lies on the floor, gasping, Dana kneels over him and starts sawing. She stands, wipes his blood on her face and looks around, wild-eyed.
Gunn is walking down the hall at W&H, chatting in legal speak
on his cell phone.
Fred joins him as he hangs up, asking if he thinks it's wise "playing
chicken with the District Attorney of a major metropolitan city?"
He says it's just a bit of "professional rivalry", she
should see them go at each other on the golf course.
Fred wonders since when Gunn plays golf.
He answers, it was part of his W&H enhancement, half their cases
are settled on the golf course before they ever make it to trial.
Fred is incredulous, "Nine holes instead of a jury of your
peers, just what the founding fathers had in mind."
Gunn says casually, "Sometimes you gotta work the system before
it works you."
Fred, not really comfortable with that, wonders if that's their
new motto.
Unlike Fred, Gunn is completely comfortable with it, "Look,
I know our move to Wolfram & Hart hasn't been all flowers and
candy but we've been able to do some serious good while we're here.
Lives saved, disasters averted, with all our fingers and souls still
attached. At the end of the day? I'm thinking we made the right
choice."
In his office, Angel tells Wes and Lorne perhaps they made a mistake coming there.
Gunn and Fred walk in. Gunn asks what's going on.
Lorne tells him, "Parasite Eve, right on out the door."
Gunn asks if Angel is firing her.
Angel concedes that's "one option."
Wes reckons it's a generous one considering she tried to murder Angel. ("Soul Purpose")
Gunn is quick to defend her, "Okay, first, the parasite she allegedly sicced on you wasn't meant to be fatal."
Fred notes maybe not, but it would have put Angel into a "permanent hallucinogenic coma."
Angel wants to know what's with the use of "alleged", "You don't believe I know it was her?"
Gunn clarifies, it's not about what he thinks, it's about the evidence.
Wes points out they aren't in a courtroom, "Things work with a bit more immediacy in the real world."
Gunn notes Eve is the Partners' liaison, one couldn't get that position without some serious "juice". He reckons a move against her, without proof, could lead to a long and bloody battle.
Angel accepts that, "Okay, fine. I think I liked you better when you just wanted to hit people."
Gunn responds, "Rational thought, it's an acquired taste."
Lorne looks for a clarification of the decision, "Wait a minute. So we're not going to snap Twiggy into little sticks?"
Angel concedes Gunn is right, they can't risk it, "yet."
Gunn offers they can restrict Eve's access, keep an eye on her, play her the way she's been playing them.
Harm comes in and tells Angel, "We just got a tip some loony's hatched from the bin."
Angel looks at her quizzically, "A who did a what?"
Harm tries to explain, "A girl over in the nuthouse went all 'Cuckoo's Nest', hacked up a couple of guards and went over the wall."
Angel tells her that's not the kind of thing they deal with.
Wes suggests she notify the authorities.
Harm thinks they'll need a priest, sounds like the girl is possessed.
Angel asks, "Wait a minute, she's possessed?"
A frustrated Harm answers, "Duh! Didn't I say that?"
Wes gets up, saying he'll put a team together.
Angel tells him to wait, he doesn't want to go storming in with an ops team until he knows what they're dealing with. He notes he's seen possessions before, they have to be handled carefully, "real finesse job."
At the hospital, two elevator doors open, side by side. Angel steps off of one, Spike steps off the other. Spike chuckles, "Fancy this. Bitty slug I saved you from scramble your brains after all? Come to check yourself in?"
As Angel heads down the hall of the psyche ward, Spike follows. Angel asks what he's doing there.
Spike reckons Angel didn't get the memo, he's a "hero of the people" now.
Angel suggests he go annoy them then.
Spike says he'll do that when he's finished. He heard one of the "simples went out for a stroll."
Angel tells him he'll get her back, without Spike's help.
Spike points out he wasn't offering.
Angel asks if he shouldn't be out protecting the world, "from people like you?" He pauses a moment to look at the mangled gate.
Spike says he goes where he's needed.
Angel notes he isn't needed there.
They stop at the nurses' station. Dr. Rabinaw asks if he can help.
Spike starts to explain, Angel cuts him off, he's there to get their patient back. He introduces himself as he hands Rabinaw his business card.
The doctor looks at it, "A lawyer?" He's already told the police everything he knows.
Angel asks him to go over it again, just in case he forgot anything.
Spike takes a position behind Angel, to his side, "What he said, but with a bit more of a threat at the end."
Angel, Spike and Rabinaw stand in the ruins of Dana's room. The walls are covered with drawings of violence, blood, demons.
As Spike examines the drawings on the walls and Angel sorts through several drawings he's holding, Rabinaw tells them about Dana. Her family was murdered in their own home when Dana was 10. The murderer took her and tortured her for months. One day, she was found bleeding and naked, wandering the streets. She's been barely functional and nearly catatonic ever since.
Spike looks aroun
d
the trashed room, "Looks like she snapped out of it." Rabinaw continues, her condition changed several months ago. She became increasingly more agitated and exhibited outbursts of inhuman strength.
Spike reckons it's a demonic possession.
Rabinaw thinks that's ridiculous.
Angel tells Spike he's not helping.
Spike reckons he's doing, Angel can stick around and chat with the doctor if he wants, Spike has a demon to repossess. He snatches one of the drawings off the wall and leaves.
Angel looks at Rabinaw, "Sorry, he's -- Is pathological idiot an actual condition?"
Rabinaw suggests Angel stop his "friend" because if he finds Dana, he'll end up dead like the others.
Angel mutters, "Yeah, but he'll just end up comin' back."
Rabinaw leaves, Angel remains behind, looking over the drawings on the wall. He senses someone, "What isn't he telling me?" He turns to the nurse, Carol, standing at the doorway.
She says the doctor videotaped all of his sessions with Dana.
Angel tells her to show him the tapes.
Dana, still dressed in her hospital gown, is in a store, eating off the shelves.
A stock boy approaches her, asking if she's going to pay for what she's eating.
She ignores him.
He walks up to her, telling her politely she can't just eat the food off the shelves like that, she needs to take it up to the cash register and pay for it.
She continues to ignore him.
He puts his hand on her shoulder, she snaps his arm. He sinks to the floor, crying out in pain.
Dana retrieves the bone saw she'd laid on the shelf and walks away. She ends up in the clothing department, where she retrieves and puts on a pair of jeans. She takes a dark colored T-shirt off the rack and stares at it. As she looks at it she flashes back to herself as a child, a terrified prisoner of the man who murdered her family.
A security guard holds a gun on her, telling her not to move, he doesn't want to have to hurt her. She stares at him.
Dana exits the store, wearing the jeans, dark shirt and a plaid flannel long sleeved shirt she's stolen. She's carrying the bloody bone saw in her hand.
At the hospital, Angel is viewing tapes of Dana, who is agitated and combative, secured in a straitjacket.
Carol notes she was like that even though she was on heavy doses of Thorazine. Rabinaw was planning on writing a book on Dana, which is why he had the tapes and why he didn't want anybody to know about them.
Angel asks if Carol was the one who called W&H.
She confirms she did, her cousin works there and had told her about the change in management and new positions opening up. She thought perhaps if she gave them a tip on this, she could get a foot in the door.
Angel continues watching the tape of Dana as she's growling and shouting something. He stops and rewinds the tape, playing back that segment again.
Carol says the tapes are pretty much all the same, Dana screaming gibberish.
Angel recognizes it, "It's Romanian."
Carol asks if he understands what Dana is saying.
He answers quietly, "Yeah, I do."
The police are gathered outside of the store where Dana was last seen. A body, covered in a bloody sheet, is wheeled out. Spike arrives and picks up a blood scent. He leaves, following it.
At W&H, Wes takes a call from Angel who's calling from his car. Angel tells him to contact their informants in the police department, get Dana's last known whereabouts. He wants an ops team on the ground in five minutes, equipped with non-lethal weapons.
Wes asks if that's wise, he's been brushing up on demonic possessions.
As Angel continues his conversation with Wes in voice over, Dana is shown walking through a warehouse.
Angel tells Wes that's not what this is about. He tells him about the hundreds of drawings in her hospital room, images of demons, some with a little girl in them. He thought they were of Dana, but he realized they're all different. It's not her.
Wes notes manifestation of multiple personalities often accompanies demonic possession.
Angel says it's not just the drawings, he saw a tape of her speaking several different languages, one of which was Romanian.
Spike has tracked Dana to the warehouse. He approaches her from behind as she looks out the window, "Liken' the view, are we?" He suggests they have a chat about "mistreating little girls, demon to demon." He morphs into game face.
Angel tells Wes that Dana was yelling about being "chosen", she's not a demon.
Dana looks at Spike and smiles wickedly as Angel (in voice over) tells Wes, "She's a vampire Slayer."
Spike wonders what Dana is grinning about. She slashes at him with the bone saw. He avoids the blows and taunts, thinking he's dealing with a demonic possession, "Look at the big, bad demon hiding inside the helpless little girl." He grabs her and throws her into a stack of crates as he continues goading the demon he thinks is inside of her to come out.
She grabs a large crate splinter and goes after him. Fight ensues. She gets him pinned to the wall, the improvised stake poised over his heart.
He struggles to hold her wrist, to keep her from dusting him, as she shouts at him in Chinese, the same words a Chinese Slayer once said to him just before he killed her.
He tells her he doesn't speak the language as he punches her, knocking her back. Fight continues. She throws him out the window. He falls the three or four stories to the pavement below, landing on his stomach.
Angel pulls the GTO to a stop and gets out as Spike gets to his feet. Angel asks what happened.
Spike answers, "Oh, I just thought I'd see what it was like to bounce off the pavement. Pretty much what I expected."
Angel tells him to stay out of the way, the ops team is coming.
Spike reckons she's not going to stand around and wait for their arrival.
Angel tells him he should have waited.
Spike figures at least he knows now what they're dealing with, "A Chinese demon. Maybe a Water Dragon or one of those elemental thingies."
Angel sighs in frustration and walks away.
Spike shouts after him, "What?"
Angel and Spike step off the elevator into W&H. Spike repeats, "A psychotic vampire Slayer."
Angel wonders how many times he's going to say that.
Spike is just trying to wrap his mind around that, a "psycho Slayer."
Angel notes he let her get away.
Spike counters, at least he was trying to stop her.
Angel snipes, "Oh, how did that work out?"
Spike reckons he's prepared now he knows what he's dealing with, he's killed two Slayers, he's confident he can handle "one that's gone daft in the melon."
Angel tells him he's not handling anything, Wes called Giles and he's sent his "top guy to retrieve her."
Angel and Spike enter Angel's conference room where they find Giles' "top guy", Andrew. Wes, Fred, Lorne and Gunn are also present.
Andrew turns and sees who's accompanied Angel into the room. He lays the pipe he's smoking in an ashtray, gets to his feet and happily chirps, "Spike?" as he eyes him like a long lost lover.
Spike isn't nearly as enthusiastic, "Oh, for the love of --"
Andrew grabs him by the shoulders, "It's you! It's really you!" He pats Spike's chest then embraces him tightly, "My therapist thought I was holding onto false hope but I knew you'd come back."
Angel looks on, not sure what to make of this.
Spike stands stiffly, his arms at his sides.
Andrew finally breaks the embrace as he sobs, "You're like Gandalf the White resurrected from the pit of the Balrog." He puts his hands on Spike's face, "More beautiful than ever." He hugs him again, "Oh, he's alive, Frodo. He's alive."
Angel asks dryly, "You two know each other?"
Andrew breaks the embrace, sniffles and answers, "Yeah, we saved the world together." He concedes Buffy helped, but it was mostly them. He asks Spike what happened, last he heard Spike was a "pillar of fire down in the Hellmouth."
Angel asks if they can't save the trip down memory lane until after they contain "the psychotic, super-powered killing machine."
Wes says they were just about to bring everyone up to speed on Slayer mythology.
Andrew tells "Pryce" best to let an "expert" take it from there.
Wes offers a caustic, "Please, enlighten us."
Andrew does the exposition, explaining the origins of the Slayer story. "Eons ago, on the dark continent, three wise elders decided to fight evil with a taste of its own sinistro. They took a young girl and they imbued her with the power of a demon. Thusly, the first Slayer of the vampires was born. But, alas, the existence of a Slayer is often brutal and short-lived and the "primitive" as she was called, was no exception. But the elders had foreseen this inevitability and devised a way for her power to live on."
Fred interrupts, "In every generation, one is chosen."
Andrew confirms that's right as he continues, "There are many potentials, as we experts call them." Wes adds, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands per generation. Andrew continues, "Each of them experiencing vivid dreams, some say nightmares, of the heroics of past Slayers. But only one can be chosen."
Angel tells him they know all of this already.
Andrew says they think they know as he lights a pipe and coughs.
Lorne asks if there's only one Slayer, "What is little Miss Whack-Your-Head-Off doing scampering around?"
Spike notes it's a "Sunnydale surprise."
Andrew explains, "Six months ago, Buffy, a vampire Slayer extraordinaire, had her lesbian witch make with the beaucoup de magie. One light show later --"
Angel realizes what he's saying, "All the potentials become Slayers."
Wes sees the army of Slayers as a smart strategy, but wonders, without the Council, who's providing the training they need?
Andrew answers, Giles and a "few key Sunnydale alum" have been finding them, training them, providing them what they need. He pulls out a paper bag with the Union Jack and his name printed on it, containing his lunch. As he opens a plastic baggie of snacks and munches from it, he continues, "But this Dana girl, she's an anomaly that no one could have foreseen. Tortured, traumatized, driven insane by Yoda knows who."
Angel notes the Slayer dreams have become real for Dana.
Wes adds the dreams are usually just dreams but Dana's mental problems may be making them seem more real.
Andrew agrees with that as he takes notes on a small notepad he pulls from his pocket, "I see Mr. Giles may have been wrong about you."
Wes shoots him an annoyed glance.
Spike reckons that explains why Dana was yelling at him in Chinese, she must have thought she was "the Slayer I took out back in the Boxer Rebellion."
Angel challenges that, "You mean the Slayer you murdered."
Spike defends himself, "Well, I didn't have a soul back then, did I?"
Angel snipes, "Right, because having one now is making such a difference."
Spike tells them to keep talking, if anybody needs him, he'll be out doing Angel's job. He leaves.
Angel calls after him, following him out into the hall, pointing out he and Spike are the last two people who should be confronting this girl, "She has every reason to hate us and she's unstable. In her mind, there probably aren't any good vampires. She exists for one reason, to destroy creatures like us."
Spike knows this, "Dance of death, eternal struggle, right. Got it."
Angel is sure he will when Dana drives a stake through is heart.
Spike wonders what Angel expects of him, "Go all boo-hoo because she got tortured and driven out of her gourd? It's not like we haven't done worse back in the day."
Angel answers that, "Yeah, and it's something I'm still paying for."
Spike thinks he should let that go, "It's startin' to make you look old." He leaves.
Andrew watches from the office doorway as he sips from a straw in a juice box..
Dana is walking the docks, having flashbacks of herself as a child with her captor. He pulls a vent grate off the wall near the floor and pulls out a small box, concealed in the space behind it. The child Dana screams.
A concerned dock worker approaches her, asking if she's okay.
She doesn't answer.
He asks if she needs some help.
She stares at him.
At W&H, Angel concedes perhaps Spike was right and they should just go out and find her.
Fred asks what then, kill her? She points out what's happening to her isn't her fault.
Gunn agrees Dana is mentally incompetent, not that it would matter when she was driving a stake through Angel's heart.
Angel notes a map mounted behind him, points out the places she's been sighted and the fact ops is doing a sweep, but it's a large area to cover.
Fred realizes it will take days, at least.
Angel knows they need to narrow the search. Witnesses had reported it was like she was looking for something, they need to figure out what.
Lorne suggests starting at the beginning, where this all started for Dana, her home.
Angel is skeptical, that was over 15 years ago.
Lorne says houses have long memories, one just has to know how to get them to talk.
Angel tells him to go ahead, set it up, but they should bring Andrew in, see if he knows anything.
Fred doesn't think Andrew is there.
Angel asks where he went.
Spike is walking on the docks, senses something, "Right, we can play cat and mouse all night --" He pulls Andrew out of his hiding place, "Or I could wedgie you unconscious and be done with it."
Andrew is impressed, "Bravo, I see your senses seem to be as well-honed as your Viggo Mortensen pectorals."
Spike walks away, Andrew follows. Spike asks what he's doing out there.
Andrew answers, "This is where the action is, bro. On the mean streets. Can you dig it?"
An annoyed Spike tells him to go back to W&H, he has no time for games.
Andrew says he's not playing games as he opens his coat, revealing an arsenal of weaponry inside. He goes on, saying Spike isn't the only one who's changed, Giles has been training him, "I'm faster, stronger and 82% more manly than the last time we --" He trips and falls over the bloody corpse of the dock worker, then screams like a girl.
A real estate agent shows Angel, Lorne and Lorne's psychic friend, Vernon, around Dana's childhood home. Vernon notes, "The walls scream with the blood of the innocent."
The agent cheerfully says she'll be in the car if they have any questions. She leaves.
Vernon continues reading the house.
Angel asks Lorne if he's reliable.
Lorne assures him Vernon is good.
As Vernon moves his extended hand through the living room, Angel asks what he's reading.
Vernon sighs heavily, "Fear." [Flash of a terrified woman, backing against the wall] "Anguish." [Flash of a man falling dead to the floor] "Pain, he needed them to suffer." [Flash of a crib, containing a bloody blanket]
They enter what had once been Dana's bedroom where Vernon continues his reading, "She doesn't know him." [Flash of Dana as a child, cowering under the bed as the bedroom door opens] "She tries to be still, invisible, but he senses her." [The man enters the bedroom, walks over to the bed and tosses the mattress off of it, revealing the child who screams] "She's gone."
Angel asks where the man took her.
Vernon pauses a moment, closes his eyes, "Dark. The floor is cold. The air is thick with dust ... and the smell, sickly sweet like .. molasses." He gasps, "A basement, that's where her pain lives and it's still calling to her."
Vernon's last line is in voice over as Dana is shown entering the basement where she was held as a child. She looks at a chain, still wrapped around some pipes that stand upright from the floor. She walks over to the grate in the wall, removes it and reaches inside.
She pulls out some tools [Flash of the tools laid out neatly in a row on a rag] and the small box. She opens the box and looks at the contents, syringes and a number of drug vials. [Flash of her as a frightened child, chained, approached by her captor, "Let's try the blue one this time." She looks at him and in her flashback, has replaced the face of her captor with Spike's as he bleeds the syringe, preparing to inject her with it.]
As they walk on the docks, Andrew fills Spike in. He mostly talks to Giles but everybody checks in. Xander is in Africa, Willow and Kennedy are in Brazil (Rio, to be exact).
Spike sniffs the air.
Andrew does likewise, then asks what blood smells like.
Spike answers, "Metallic, sort of. Ever taste a penny?"
Andrew hasn't.
Spike says it smells like that.
Andrew notices a penny laying on the ground near his feet. He picks it up.
Spike asks if Andrew has heard from Buffy.
He has, she's in Rome where Dawn is enrolled in school.
Spike is surprised, he didn't figure Buffy for an expatriate.
Andrew says she was rounding up Slayers in Europe and decided she liked it there.
Andrew puts the penny into his mouth, on his tongue, gags on it and spits it out. He thinks Buffy just needed a break from California. He asks if Buffy knows Spike is alive.
Spike doesn't know, he asks Andrew if she does.
Andrew doesn't think so, he's sure he would have heard about it, a "conference call" or something.. He wonders why Spike hasn't told her.
Spike extends his thumb and little finger, making a 'phone' out of his hand and puts it to his ear. He answers mockingly, "Hello, Buffy? It's Spike. I didn't burn up like you thought. How are things?"
Andrew asks if Spike wants him to tell her.
Spike says no, he'll handle it.
Andrew gets it, Spike wants to play it cool.
Spike would like him to just keep quiet.
Andrew agrees but continues chatting as they walk on.
Dana watches from a position above them.
Angel and Lorne return to W&H. Gunn asks how things went.
Angel wants to find out everything they can about the guy who murdered Dana's family; name, past, whereabouts.
Gunn notes the police never caught him.
Angel says they aren't the police. He wants the guy found, do what it takes to make that happen.
Gunn departs as Wes joins Angel and Lorne walking down the hallway.
Angel tells Lorne he wants to know where the guy took Dana, the psychic narrowed it down to a basement that smells like molasses, he thinks they can do better than that, "Start crackin' the whip."
Lorne departs to get on it, shouting, "Danny! We're gonna need a whip!"
Angel and Wes enter Angel's office.
Andrew is still babbling but Spike isn't listening. Something has gotten his attention.
Andrew asks what's wrong.
Spike answers, "Smells different, stronger."
Andrew asks, "Like nickels?"
Spike runs off in pursuit of the scent. Andrew follows.
Spike stops when he comes to a dead end. He looks around cautiously.
Andrew arrives, noting the dead end.
Spike sees blood on the wall of the building, "It's her blood."
Dana rushes out and punches Andrew, knocking him out. She and Spike fight. She knocks Spike back.
Andrew comes to and fires a tranquilizer dart at Dana. It hits her but doesn't slow her down. As he tries to reload, she kicks him in the head, knocking him out. She runs off.
Spike gets up and runs after her.
He follows her inside, to the basement of the old building where she was held captive as a child. He calls out to her, "All right, pet. No gettin' away. I've got your scent locked in now, could track you for miles."
She steps out of the shadows, "No escaping."
Spike agrees with that as he walks slowly toward her, telling her he doesn't want to have to hurt her.
Dana echoes words said to her by her captor, "Doesn't have to hurt if you hold still." She continues muttering, "Heart and head .. have to get home. Doesn't hurt if you hold still."
Spike can't make sense of any of it, "You're a real sack of hammers aren't you? Hey, don't worry. I used to date a girl who wasn't all there."
As they circle each other slowly, Dana continues muttering, "Heart and head ... Stab the heart, cut off the head. Only way to be sure."
Spike recognizes that, it's "Slayer talk."
Dana keeps mumbling, "Keep cutting till you see dust."
Spike tries to explain, "You got visions, right? Vampire Slayer memories kicking 'round in your head, which is tough, cause it sounds like your past midnight on the crazy clock anyway."
Dana channels another Slayer, "Please don't. I have to get home to my son, to my Robin."
Spike realizes she's talking about Nikki Wood, "The Slayer I offed back in --"
Dana looks up at him.
Spike decides perhaps best not to go there.
She glares at him and says accusingly, "William the Bloody."
Spike's getting a little nervous, "No, no, no. That's not gonna lead anywhere good." He tells her to focus on what's real.
She repeats, "Head and heart .. don't be scared" then attacks him. She knocks him to the floor and stabs him in the neck with a syringe.
Spike tosses her off of him and tries to fight, but can't. As he struggles to keep his feet, he asks what she did to him.
She answers, "Yellow makes you weak. Not weak anymore." She beats him down, "Don't cry, they can't hear you."
She removes his coat and drags him across the floor by the arm.
Dana flashes on a memory of her childhood trauma, Spike as her captor, carrying her to the pipes, chaining her as she screams. She chains Spike to the pipes, "Daddy's gone. He can't hear you."
Spike mumbles a threat as Dana retrieves the box. She opens it and takes out a syringe along with a drug vial.
As she fills the syringe, she rambles, "Piece by piece. Yellow makes you weak. Brown makes you sleepy." She injects him in the arm with the needle. As he struggles to stay awake, she says, "Can't hurt me anymore."
Spike tells her, "You crazy little -- I never --"
She says to count backwards as she begins counting back from 10.
Fade to black as Spike passes out.
Everyone is gathered in the conference room at W&H. Gunn notes on the map where ops found the latest body.
Angel realizes she's staying in the same area. He tells Wes to get ops on it, go block to block for a five mile radius.
Gunn wonders what they're supposed to be looking for, it's an industrial area, nearly all the buildings have a basement of one sort or another.
Angel asks Lorne if the psychics have made any progress.
Lorne says no, just that it's "cold, creepy and smells like molasses."
Wes starts to say something, thinks better of it, then admits, "I almost said the words 'molasses factory' out loud."
Fred realizes something, "Whiskey."
Lorne thinks that sounds good, he'll take one.
Fred clarifies, when one makes whiskey, the whole room smells like molasses.
Angel tells the others to look for a distillery, get some old maps --
Andrew comes in, he says they were attacked. He thinks Dana got Spike.
In the distillery basement, Spike comes to as Dana mutters, "Piece by piece."
His words are slurred as he asks what she did.
She again echoes words her captor said to her, "Stay quiet. I'll let you go."
Spike tells her she's homicidal, and weakly asks what she did to him.
She approaches him, holding the bone saw, "Losing all your pieces, not weak. Can't touch me anymore."
A horrified Spike raises his arms to see his hands have been cut off mid-forearm. Dana stalks toward him with the bloody saw as Spike processes what's going on, "Oh, God. I can't feel my --" He passes out.
She punches him, bringing him back around, "No! No more daddy. No more mommy. No more hands. Can't touch me ever again."
Spike says he never touched her.
She hits him again, turns her back and takes a few steps away from him. She turns back to face him.
He tells her to stop, she has it wrong, he never hurt her, it wasn't him. He admits he's done his share of bad things, but she's not one of them. His voice takes on a pleading tone, "It's someone else." [Flash of Spike carrying Dana as a child then changing into the man who was responsible] "You've got me confused with another man." [Flash on Spike chaining the child, changing into her captor] "Visions are mixing with your real memories, got 'em stuffed in your head. Other Slayers, other places, New York, China."
She speaks in Chinese as she stalks toward him, again repeating the last words of the Chinese Slayer Spike had killed.
Spike tells her she's remembering other Slayers as she kneels in front of him.
She looks at him, "You killed her."
Spike responds quietly, "Yes, but --"
Dana cuts him off, "You killed them both."
Spike admits it, "That and worse. But I was never here."
She punches him in the face repeatedly, telling him it doesn't matter, "Head and heart. Keep cutting till you see dust." She raises the bone saw.
As Spike steels himself for what's to come, Angel grabs Dana from behind and pulls her back. Fight ensues. Angel throws her across the basement. She gets up, but makes no move toward him.
He says he's trying to help her, the man who hurt her, Walter Kindel, is dead. The police killed him in a robbery attempt five years earlier.
Dana mutters, "Hold still."
Angel approaches her slowly, telling her he can't hurt her anymore.
She walks toward him, "Can't hurt me. Not weak anymore."
Angel tells her that's right.
She looks down at her hands, making fists of both, "Strong. Slayer." She attacks him. Fight continues. Angel manages to get hold of her as Wes and the ops team arrive.
Wes fires several tranquilizer darts into Dana, knocking her out.
Angel looks over at Spike and orders the med team to the basement.
As Spike is wheeled to a waiting ambulance, Fred is on the phone ordering things to be ready for their arrival. She informs them to tell the shaman no cadavers, they have his hands. Another employee carries over the cooler containing Spike's hands. Fred follows Spike into the ambulance, it departs.
As an unconscious Dana is wheeled out, Angel says she's to be chained into the back of the van and armed guards are to keep watch.
Andrew arrives, saying he'll handle things from there. He appreciates Angel's help, couldn't have found her without it, but he notes Angel has his own problems to worry about.
Angel dismissively tells him to get out of the way.
Andrew steps in front of him, "She's a Slayer. That means she's ours."
Angel tells him it doesn't work that way as he instructs his people to load her up, tranquilize her again if necessary.
Andrew steps in front of him again, "I don't think you heard me, Angel." He's joined by several young women backing him up, "Think we were just gonna let you take her back to your evil stronghold?"
Angel tells him Dana is psychotic, he's not turning her over to Andrew.
Andrew says he has no choice, noting he has twelve Slayers behind him to back him up, "And not one of them has ever dated you."
Angel clenches his jaw but says nothing.
Andrew continues, "She's coming with us, one way or another."
Angel tells him he's out of his league, he'll clear it with Buffy.
Andrew counters, "Where do you think my orders came from?"
Angel takes that hit, but says nothing as Andrew continues, "Newsflash! Nobody in our camp trusts you anymore. Nobody. You work for Wolfram & Hart. Don't fool yourself, we're not on the same side." He thanks everyone for their help, they can take it from there. They take Dana away as Angel glares at Andrew.
Wes asks if that's it, if Angel is going to let them take her.
He answers, "She's one of theirs. They can handle it. Besides, you heard the man. We got enough problems of our own to worry about."
Angel pays a visit to Spike in the W&H medical unit. His arms are bandaged, but reattached.
Spike greets him, "Come to tap dance on the patient, have we, doc? I'd give you the finger but apparently I won't have the motor skills till the drugs wear off."
Angel steps into the room from the doorway, asking, "A lot of pain?"
Spike answers, "More than I'd like but not as much as you would. Just what I deserve."
Angel notes he didn't say that.
A contemplative Spike says no, he did himself, "The lass thought I killed her family and I'm supposed to what, complain cause hers wasn't one of the hundreds of families I did kill?" He pauses a moment, "I'm not saying you're right, cause .. uh ... I'm physically incapable of saying that. But .. uh .. for a demon, I never did think that much about the nature of evil. No. Just threw myself in. Thought it was a party. I liked the rush, I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the victims."
A reflective Angel says, "I couldn't take my eyes off them. I was only in it for the evil. It was everything to me. It was art, the destruction of a human being. Guess I would have considered Dana a masterpiece."
Spike asks what happens to her now.
Angel doesn't know, Andrew and the Slayers took her, they didn't trust them to help her.
Spike reacts to that, "Andrew double-crossed us? That was a good move." He chuckles, "Hope for the little ponce yet." He looks down at his bandaged arms, "Though the tingling in my forearms tells me she's too far gone to help. She's one of us, now. She's a monster."
Angel disagrees, "She's an innocent victim."
Spike looks up at him, "So were we, once upon a time."
Angel repeats quietly, "Once upon a time."
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