Writer: Doug Petrie
Director : Nick Marck

Cast : Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris, Emma Caulfield as Anya, Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers, James Marsters as Spike, Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg.

Main guest stars : Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles, DB Woodside as Principal Robin Wood, Karina Aufranc as Nancy.

Original broadcast date : October 1, 2002

My one-line description: Spike gets the sole from Buffy after coming to her as her sole champion, and then she finds out he has a soul ;)

In a night club in Frankfurt, Germany, a young goth-punk girl is running away from two hooded figures (again!). She manages to escape and lose them through hallways, but they suddenly reappear and pull her into a small room. They stab her with a dagger and leave. The dying girl turns her head towards the camera, and says in a lower-toned voice, “From beneath… it devours”.

Buffy wakes with a start (it seems she now has Joyce’s old room) to find her sister looking down at her with concern. She tells Dawn about her dream, and repeats what the German girl said. “From beneath you… it devours”. She’s convinced that there are others like that girl out there, and they’re going to die…

On the street, a rumbling sound begins, and the ground starts to shake. A large underground mound appears, tearing up the road as it moves.

In the school basement, a crazy and dishevelled Spike talks to himself… and to an uncaring rat. The ground starts shaking, driving Spike into wild panic. He crouches and clutches his head, begging for it to stop.

In Xander’s car, Dawn is expressing happiness that Buffy now has a job at her school. However, she reminds he sister she won’t be able to talk to Dawn, look at her or hang out with her friends. Xander smiles at this teenage-in-a-nutshell comment, and notes that the kids are lucky to have both a friend and a Slayer to count on. This leads the girls to ask Xander about his dating status – quite bleak since Anya left – and then about Anya herself. He tells them that he’s seen her a few times at the Bronze, probably looking for women who wish scorn.

At school, Principal Wood introduces Buffy to her new office; he tells her not to counsel, but to listen and talk to the students. After some small talk (Buffy asks and gets permission to give detentions), she wonders why she got this job, since she hasn’t finished college – is it her sparkling personality, or her experience at the DoubleMeat Palace? Revealing he’s a vegetarian, Wood tells her that he needs someone who understands the students. A few students clearly in trouble are led into the office, and Wood leaves Buffy to acquaint herself with the school.
Instead, she acquaints herself with the basement, where she looks for Spike…

At Giles’ mansion in Westbury, England, Willow sits alone at the door, staring at the rain outside. Giles comes up to her and tells her the taxi has arrived. Willow looks scared as hell at the idea of going back, and wonders whether she should stay with Giles and the coven longer, to learn to better control her powers. She wonders if she’ll be able to be a “bigger badass” than whatever is coming out of the Hellmouth. Reading between the lines, Giles reassures her – even if she stays here two more years, there’s no way to know whether her friends will take her back. He advises her to trust herself, and the others might follow.

Night in Sunnydale… A young woman is walking her smallish dog. It stops behind her, and she looks the other way, assuming it’s doing its “business”. But then she hears a crunching sound, a yelp, and the dog is gone... All that’s left is the empty leash and a hole in the pavement. Then something pulls on the leash, drawing the woman in; the “something” rises out of the pavement in front of her, and she runs away, screaming in terror. As she flees, she runs right into Xander.

At Buffy’s place, the woman – Nancy – tells Buffy, Dawn and Xander what happened. She describes the sound it made as that of the beginning of an earthquake. “From beneath, it devours…” Buffy mutters pensively. Dawn wonders if they should round up the gang, but Xander points out that this is the gang. Buffy starts giving orders, telling them that they need… “What you need is help”, Spike interrupts. He’s cleaned up, and his hair is re-bleached and cut.

Finding her voice, Buffy comments on how… different he looks. Xander tells Nancy that Spike is Buffy’s “ex”, and rudely offers to escort the vampire out. Spike promises he’ll make it quick - he needs to talk to Buffy alone for a moment. He adds that he was out of it in the basement, but he’s better now. Dawn asks Buffy why she didn’t tell them she’d seen Spike, and Buffy replies she’ll talk about it later. Dawn and Xander complain that she always talks about those things when it’s convenient for her. Spike defends Buffy, eliciting another angry reaction from Xander. Buffy defuses the situation by agreeing to talk to Spike alone.

In the hallway, Buffy warns Spike to not start his speech by saying he’s sorry. But he’s not here to atone; he knows that something bad is brewing, and he honestly wants to help. Buffy is unconvinced, but finally agrees to have him.

In the living room, Buffy asks Xander to take Nancy home, while she and Spike patrol. Xander takes Buffy aside and expresses worry at her going on patrol with Spike after what he tried to do. Buffy replies that if she stopped him once, she can do it again. As they leave, however, Dawn – who is staying behind to do homework – asks Spike whether vampires sleep. When he answers that they do, she coldly tells him that if he touches Buffy, he’ll wake up on fire.

As Spike clears debris from a hole in the pavement, Buffy asks him what happened. He lies that it was the zombies in the school basement getting inside his head. They chat a bit, and he asks her to hold his flashlight; as her hand brushes his, she has a flashback to the attempted rape. She abruptly draws her hand back, and hopes he doesn’t think this is a way for them to get back together. He knows it can’t be, and that he can’t apologize for what he did; however, he tells her, he’s changed. She replies that she believes him, but that she doesn’t know what he’s changed into. She thinks he’s hiding something, but he comments that since they’re not best friends anymore, he’s not telling…

Xander walks Nancy into her apartment building; there, after a moment of awkwardness, she asks if she can give him a call sometime. She reveals she’s hitting on him, and he happily says yes. Suddenly, the ground begins to shake… They flee down the hallway, as something BIG follows, moving under the shattering floor. They climb up some stairs, and the tremors stop… but suddenly a giant snake-worm-thingie with teeth jumps out of the floor and screams at them. It disappears quickly, though, and as they catch their breaths, Nancy comments that Ronny would love this. Turns out that Ronny is her ex, an abusive bastard who was always hovering; Nancy confesses she always wished it would stop. Wish… Hmm, that sounds familiar to Xander…

At the Bronze, Anya is listening to a girl’s troubles, trying to get him to wish her ex was a spineless pig. She swears as she sees Buffy, Xander, Spike and Nancy making their way towards her. She asks the woman to go get drinks, and then tells the group that she’s working. Nancy positively identifies Anya as the woman she spoke to about Ronny; Anya admits to turning him into a worm. She doesn’t see the big deal – the guy had it coming. Buffy reveals that her “worm” burst up through some pavement and ate a dog. Anya shows sympathy, causing Xander to be appalled at her showing more pity towards animals than humans. Having had enough, Anya rises to storm out, but Spike pushes her back into her seat. She indignantly throws his hands off her, telling him he doesn’t get to go there again. Spike coldly replies he’s forgotten all about their little time together, which confuses Nancy – she thought Anya was Xander’s ex and Spike was Buffy’s… “Isn’t there anyone here who hasn’t slept together???” she asks.

Buffy tells Anya her small worm turned out to be huge, and Spike supplies it’s a Sluggoth demon. Anya confirms it, commenting that she likes to “embellish” things. “Well, un-embellish it!” Xander orders. Anya angrily replies that she has rules to work with; she accuses them of not being able to understand, because they’re so human… “I’m not” Spike notes. “I’m a demon, just like you”. He starts to give her orders, but suddenly Anya isn’t paying attention – “Oh my God”, she says, an impressed expression on her face. “How did you do it?” He tries to get her to shut up, but she asks repeatedly how he did it. He loses it and floors her with a punch, and then pummels her. She sends him flying over a pool table, and gets up, wearing her demon face: “I am so going to kick your ass”, she promises.

Spike looks game for some ass-kicking, but Buffy steps in and stops him. He whirls around, now in vampire face; she punches him hard… and he punches back. He looks eager for a fight, commenting that this is first contact since… Xander stops them, warning Buffy that Nancy has left all alone, and that she’s worm bait… Buffy asks him to convince Anya to reverse the spell while she goes after Nancy. Spike is left with nothing to do.

Nancy is walking in an alley, chiding herself for always hooking up with freaks, when the ground begins to shake once again. She starts running, but again, a moving mound chases her, breaking up the pavement. She jumps onto a fire escape, and the rumbling stops… But suddenly the underground thingie starts battering the bases of the building, making the fire escape start to give…

Meanwhile, Xander tries to convince Anya to reverse the spell. She tells him that her bosses are on her case, and she doesn’t want to screw up. Xander snidely comments that they’re her new friends, but she replies that she used to have friends, co-worker, bridesmaids… And then something got screwed up – none of this would have happened if he hadn’t left her at the altar. He stands up for himself (yay!) saying that sooner or later that excuse stops working.

As Nancy tries to climb up the failing fire escape, Buffy arrives overhead, jumping from roof to roof, swings down on a rope and grabs Nancy. They land into a heap of garbage. Silence… then the Sluggoth jumps up at them, its maw roaring. Buffy assesses a small problem – she has no weapon. Suddenly, Spike shows up with a huge metal pole, asking her to leave the real battles to the demons. He aims the pole and runs at the Sluggoth – not noticing that it’s morphing back into Ronny. Spike can’t stop his momentum, and the pole impales Ronny in the shoulder. Both the human and the vampire cry in pain…

Seeing what he’s done, Spike starts to lose it again. As Buffy runs to Ronny’s side and calls 911, he starts muttering to himself. She angrily asks him to take it elsewhere, but he babbles on - laughing maniacally, he reveals to Buffy that this is just the beginning; when the real headliner arrives, “all of this will come tumbling in death and screaming, horror and bloodshed”. Pointing to the ground, he repeats the sentence from Buffy’s dream: “And from beneath… it devours”.

He runs off as Xander and Anya arrive. Nancy angrily asks Anya what she is, for doing this to Ronny. She also leaves, and so does Buffy. Anya and Xander are left to look after Ronny; Xander tries to convince his ex that she did the right thing, but she’s convinced that there will be consequences…

Buffy finds Spike in an old church in a cemetery. “It didn’t work… the costume”, he tells her. “No more mind games, Spike”, she coldly orders. “No more mind games”, he replies, “No more mind…” She asks him what happened, and reaches out for his bare, scarred chest. He leaps back nervously, ordering her not to touch him. He rambles that he was looking for the “spark” and then asks her whether he’s flesh to her. “Nothing else. Not a spark. Fine. Flesh, then”. He unzips his pants, aiming to “service the girl”. She grabs his hands and stops him, but he grabs her throat. She throws him off, and he crashes into some pews. Zipping up his pants, he notes that the girl doesn’t want to be serviced, because there’s no spark… She asks him if he’s completely lost his mind, and he starts telling her about looking for the “spark” that would make him “fit”. He adds that he dreamed of killing her, that he wanted her dead because he cared for her… "Angel should have warned me.... it's here, in me, all the time... the spark", he says, as realization painfully dawns on Buffy’s face. "I wanted to give you what you deserved, and I got it. They put the spark in me, and now all it does is burn."

“Your soul…” Buffy whispers. Spike asks if it’s what she wanted; now everyone is in his head, everything he did… and they’re all telling him to go to Hell. She asks why he would do this; “To be the kind of man who never...to be the kind of man”, he says softly. “And she shall look upon him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love”, he adds, approaching a large cross. “And he will be loved.”

As Buffy watches, tears in her eyes, Spike approaches a large cross and leans on it, his arms splayed almost Christ-like, looking so, very weary. “Can we rest now, Buffy?” he asks as his body begins to smoke. “Can we rest?”


Summary by OttsFiveByFive
Special thanks to www.leoffonline.com