The Pain That I Feel...

[thedeadlyhook]

This grew out of a response I began writing to azdak on the previous post, as a continuation of the discussion there, but it got long. We'd begun talking about that final Spike/Buffy moment in "Chosen," the "I love you" moment, and the validity of how it was presented, and I had a number of emotional things to say there.

This was the original quotation that got me writing:

(azdak says)
There are a lot of things about Chosen that I dislike, but the Spike/Buffy moment isn't one of them. I'm sure it helps that I didn't feel jerked about by the relationship prior to that point (and I didn't feel that it was inconsistent in S6 either), so I didn't get that 'So now I'm supposed to believe she loves him?' reaction. It seems to me that prior to S7 Buffy's feelings for Spike were always stronger than she was prepared to admit (even to herself), that the AR obviously throws a huge wrench in the works, and that in S7 she does, indeed, care about him more than anyone else, without this necessarily implying that he's the one she wants to be with for the rest of her life. She loves him, but not in the way he wants, or not enough. She's incredibly proud of him, and she trusts him (beyond the point where she's entirely rational about it - see the whole unchaining him while he's still triggered argument), she believes he can truly become a good man, and all of that is love, plus there's sexual attraction in there as well; but if it came down to a straightforward choice between spending her life with Spike or with Angel, I don't think she'd choose Spike. Doesn't mean he isn't in her heart; it's perfectly possible to love two men, even if you love one more than the other. I do agree, though, that that goodbye is far more about Spike than it is about Buffy.


There's a large part of me, the soft, Spuffy part, that agrees with this. To be absolutely honest, I'd thought she was in love with him in S6. And I saw her do a lot of things in S7 that consistently supported that. But...

Given that reading, Buffy-in-love, even figuring in their horrible history and "Seeing Red" et al, I couldn't explain why she never said as much to him in the lead-up to the end. In "Touched," in "End of Days," she listens to a couple of the most heartbreaking speeches ever from him and just lets them go with the barest of comments. Then we have that confusing scene with Angel, then she's back with Spike, acting like she cares.

So while I can do the work myself to wrench this into a shape I can live with (she loves him but doesn't necessarily want to settle down with him, etc., as per above), I resent that I have to, that it wasn't explicitly spelled out for me, what she feels. Buffy's reactions in those last three episodes seemed to be more about setting up the plot arc for Spike, to establish that he's willing to die for this woman whether she loves him or not.

...and from his perspective, it really does look like not. She passes up moment after moment when she could have come clean and told him her feelings, whatever they were, and lets it go, all during a point in time where any of them could die the next day, the next moment. Spike lives through those days without holding back - he says what he feels and he stays on the track he set himself on in getting the soul and coming back to Buffy to make his amends.

Buffy, on the other hand, holds back. On the edge of the end, she doesn't say anything, doesn't share this feeling with him, even though it was him telling her such things in "Touched" that gave her the strength to go on. She doesn't share that strength - she asks him to go forward with nothing, alone, to be strong in ways that she herself can't be. She wants to be "just a girl"; she asks him to be superhuman.

So that moment of goodbye that they share, in "Chosen"... it's heartbreaking to me because even if they seem together, as one, for that instant, with the flaring of fire and two souls meeting... they're really still so far apart. Buffy in that moment saying "I love you" and meaning it and thinking this is the perfect time and thing to say for their final goodbye... and him with that sad smile that says everything to me about what she doesn't understand.

Because in that moment we are seeing Spike, dying, for love... and for him love has been all about living, something that you do every day, with and for the one you love - it is life. But for Buffy, apparently, love is something you put off until some future time when you are ready for it, when you're fully baked and feel like accepting or giving it - it's a present. When she's "done" someone will "enjoy" her. So we have this man that's been in her life for years, who actually had it right in "Wrecked" when he told her he was already in her life - although somehow that was pitched to be a bad thing - and who she's kept at arm's length until the very moment of his death to say so, and we're told that she, Buffy, never had it backwards about what love is or isn't. It breaks my heart, and I can't be happy with Buffy in that moment, because when she finally says it, it's like she's giving him a present, a going-away gift. He's been telling her he loves her for years, and showing her with actions that have literally on occasion turned him inside out, and what she gives him in return is this - a statement that he has to struggle against all logic to believe. I would have much rather heard her say something in that moment that felt real to them both, that had no doubts attached to it, that would have felt right - "you were my best friend" or "I forgive you."

And I'm actually fucking tearing up writing this. God, I really am in a melancholy mood.

What got me, ulitmately, about the Buffy/Spike story, is that it ended up being one about despair. It wasn't about life-affirming nature of love - how could it be, when Buffy rejects love constantly with the idea that somehow this makes her a stronger fighter? It wasn't even about how how love can make you a better person - although that message is indeed in there, with Spike's remaking of himself, although he was required to turn into Jesus Christ before this was even faintly acknowledged. We see Buffy deny Spike's definition of real love as something "wild and passionate and dangerous," and yet the only times she sees fit to reward him for his love for her are in the aftermath of these sorts of moments, when he does something huge and painful and passionate for her, when he's broken and falling apart and dying. Then she can say it. Then we can see it in her eyes.

But for the guy who was willing to babysit her sister, fight alongside her every day, put up with her friends that he doesn't like, abide by her rules if she ever bothered to set them? She hasn't got a word for that man. That's the one she leaves waiting in her basement for when such time she deigns to visit, that she can forget about when she chooses to flirt around with others (whilst giving him the steely-eyed glare at the faintest suggestion him doing the same). She doesn't want to hear about how he could change for her, even while she insists that he does, that he go against his very nature constantly. She manages to be disappointed in him no matter what he does - act like a demon, act like a man, be good to her, be bad to her. She never figures out for herself what she does want from him, only punishes him for not being it, whatever it was.

I objected to that. I objected to the story of Buffy/Spike being one of hopeless surrender - that the only way he could prove his love for her was real was to give up every last thing about himself, do exactly as she told him, become a tame animal that jumped at her command. To Buffy, perhaps, this looked like love because it fit her life perfectly - he was there when she needed him, and didn't bother her when she didn't - but I think to every other human being in the world, it looked like what Buffy essentially wanted was a subservient wife, a First Lady, a "mission's boyfriend" that had no demands of his own. This is ultimately what broke up her relationship with Riley, her unwillingness to share the burdens and let him be part of her whole life (sue me, I'm one of those people who actually liked the Riley arc). In "As You Were," we saw Riley's "perfect" relationship as a team of equals. Buffy, we never saw reach for anything like that, although she surely could have. Because Spike was, or could have been, her equal - her adversary and opposite who'd changed from wanting to kill her to wanting to love her. There could have been a story there of how love transforms you and lifts you up, helps you see into places that used to be dark, but it ended up being being how-to manual on crushing spirits. Hers, because she couldn't quite figure out how to treat this one unusual vampire like a human being, his because that was his path, to be her sacrificial animal.

So even if she loved him the whole time, and there is a part of me that sort of believes that she did, I still can't take much comfort. She refused to share it, refused to give as well as receive. We saw him give to her, give everything, give the whole world for her, and whether she loved him or not had by that point become really irrelevant. We were given an ending in which Spike understood love and what it meant - giving to others - and Buffy sure as hell didn't.

God, I'm sad now. Pardon me while I go cry.

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