Same Time, Same Place

Okay, this one's liable to be confusing. The way it airs, we see the Willow/Spike conversation first, to the line, "My money's on the witch." Then we back up and see the Buffy and Xander part of the conversation. After "money's on the witch," the scene goes on with Willow invisible. We don't see when she leaves.

For brevity's sake, I'm combining the two into one scene.

Willow is in the basement of the school, looking for Spike after she finds the skinned body at the construction site.

She hears him before she sees him.

"Out!" he says, and steps in front of her. She's startled. "This is =my= place. You need permission to be here. You need a special slip with a stamp." He's very intense about it.

She stares at him, taken aback. Anya said he was insane, but... "Spike," she whispers, "I... My God..."

Spike turns away from her, almost pissed off. "You go off," he says, "you try to wall up the bad parts, and put your heart back in where it fell out. You call yourself finished, but you're not; you're worse [off]* than ever, you are." He steps back, ducks his head.

Meanwhile, Buffy and Xander are looking for Spike in the basement. Xander remarks that it seems like the walls are shifting around. They hear Spike talking to Willow, and they follow his voice. They come in as Spike is talking about putting your heart back in where it fell out. They can't see Willow, and Willow can't see them; the end result is Spike having two conversations at once.

"Spike?" Buffy says, a little tentative. Then, stronger, "Spike!"

He looks at her from underneath his eyelashes, rocks back and forth, as though he wants to go to her but daren't. "You went away," He says, softly, almost afraid she'll go away again. He flicks glances at her, but can't look right at her. You've been gone since..."

"...the church," Buffy says gently. "You scared me a little. I didn't...didn't know what to think." She looks at him, and there's something like compassion in her eyes.

"We're here for a reason, Spike," Xander says, and he is gentler than one would expect, not threatening or snarking, just making a statement.

Willow has been talking while Buffy and Xander were speaking. "I...I needed to go, but I'm back now. And I saw... There's a dead body."

"Tragedy," Spike says, perhaps in reply to Xander, perhaps to Willow. He turns and asks Willow, "Is there blood?"

This startles Xander. "He knows," he says to Buffy, voice low. "He must have seen the body."

Willow answers Spike. "Uh, yeah. And I can't find Buffy or Xander or Dawn, and there's a thing killing people, and the victim was...skinned. What could do that?"

"You did it once," Spike says, giving her a slightly raised eyebrow. "I heard about it."

Got her on that one. Willow swallows. "Anything other...other than me?"

"Spike, we need to know who did this." Buffy doesn't know who--or what--Spike's talking to, and assumes it's just more crazy talk. The question draws his attention back to her, and he turns. His face lights up, and, smiling, he walks toward her.

"Look at you," he says. "[You're] glowing." He puts his hands behind his back and leans in. "What's a word means 'glowing'?" he says, almost conspiratorially. "It's gotta rhyme." Buffy doesn't know what to make of that.

"Spike, please," she says, very softly, looking at him with huge eyes .

Willow just sees Spike talking to the air. "Spike?"

Spike backs up, holding his hand up, as though to shield his face. "Oh. Uh...no, I, I should hide from you," he says. "Hide my face. You know what I did."

"What you did?" Willow is very confused. "You didn't do anything." Suspicion dawns. "Did you?"

Xander is starting to be a tiny bit impatient. "Boy, he's extra useful today," he says, but quietly. Don't want to alarm the crazy vampire.

Buffy shushes Xander, quietly but firmly. "This isn't the time."

And Spike finally gets what the communication problem is. "Everyone's talking to me," he says, pleased to have figured it out. "No one's talking to each other. "

Buffy can see that they're not getting anywhere. "We might as well go," she tells Xander.

"Someone isn't =here=," Spike says. Hah, broke the code! "Button, button, who's got the button? My money's on the witch."

Xander and Buffy, who have turned to go, stop and turn back.

"Red is a =bad= =girl=."

"He's talking about Willow," Buffy realizes.

"And that means so much because he's chock full of sanity," Xander says, clearly skeptical.

"Maybe he saw her," Buffy says.

"They think you did it," Spike says to Willow. "The Slayer and her boy. They think you took the skin." He may be insane, but he still notices things.

"Is something here?" Buffy comes toward him, perhaps remembering that he talked to invisible things at the church. "Something that killed?"

Xander is clearly stuck on one thing. "Her boy?! I'm 'her -boy-'?!?"

"I have to go," Spike says, suddenly all business again. "There are things here without permission. I have to check their slips. Make sure they have...authorization." He turns and walks away.

* Closed caption has the word in brackets, but Spike doesn't say it in the Willow scene. He does say it in the Buffy scene, though. Continuity glitch in the editing. He also claps after the button button line in the Buffy sequence, but not in the Willow one.

Out in the woods, Spike is walking purposefully to...somewhere, his head tilted toward the ground. He's talking to himself. "William is a good boy," he says. " Carries the water, carries the sin. It's supposed to get easier, isn't it? Supposed to help to help, but it doesn't. Still so heavy." He passes out of the frame, and after a second, we see that Buffy, Dawn and Xander are following him. He's following the trail of blood that the demon left, and they're following him. In their conversation, they don't notice that Spike has stopped at the base of a small cliff until Xander runs smack into him.

"That's it," he says, "end of the line. Everyone off." He turns and grabs Xander's shirt at the shoulder, leans in. "Keep your ticket," he whispers fiercely, "you'll need that." He's trying to warn Xander about something, but...what?

"That's a rock cliff." Buffy, pointing out the obvious.

"Give him a break, Buffy," Xander says, and there's the snark back, although much diluted. "Maybe it's a vicious, skin-eating rock cliff."

Spike turns, give Xander his you-stupid-git look. "There's a cave in it," he says, and pulls back some bushes to reveal a small hole in the cliff face. "See?" He looks at Buffy, and though he doesn't actually roll his eyes, you can tell he wants to. "I'm insane," he says, and here's Normal!Snarky!Spike back, just for a moment. "What's his excuse?" He turns away, leaving them to get into the cave on their own.

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Dori

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