Buffy looked up at her Watcher with hopeful interest, wondering if he had indeed found a solution to the Spike-problem. She desperately hoped so; she was not sure she could take much more of the constant presence of the blonde vampire in her life without breaking her resolve not to stake him as long as he was helpless.
Or breaking another resolve.
*Stupid vampire,* she thought again resentfully. *He’s so infuriating. And sexy. *No*! Just infuriating!*
"You know, I really hope this solution involves Spike-dustiness," Xander remarked, as the entire room turned their attention to Giles, waiting to see what he had to say.
"It does not," Giles informed him patiently, "And I’m not quite certain yet," Giles cautioned them all, his attention focusing on Buffy. "But it could work. I've been doing a bit of research into the behavioral patterns of vampires -- social behaviors, that sort of thing..."
Anya began to speak slowly, "By *social* behaviors..."
"*Please* don't finish that sentence," Xander cut her off quickly, with a wide, overly affectionate smile to soften the words.
"As I was saying," Giles went on, giving them a dark, glowering look for a moment, "I've discovered some interesting things that might be of use to us in this -- intolerable situation." His tone told them all just how intolerable he found it.
"It seems that according to most recorded research, vampires in group settings are by nature, pack animals," Giles went on. "The first vampires who walked the earth existed, fed, traveled, in groups, much like some animals that we're familiar with today."
"Like wolves," Willow noted with a nod, her best teacher's-pet face in place.
"Or pirahnna," Anya agreed matter-of-factly.
Giles opened his mouth to go on, but suddenly stopped, looking at her aghast.
When Anya realized that everyone was staring at her, she said defensively, "*What*? It’s a very valid comparison! What with the sharp little fangs and bloodthirstiness…”
“Oooh!” Willow put in suddenly with a nod of agreement, “And they don’t breathe!”
“Could we please *try* to stay on the topic?” Giles interrupted them in a tone of intense exasperation, rolling his eyes and reaching for his glass.
“Yes, please,” Buffy agreed with him, reaching over to intercept the glass before it reached his lips and placing it on the other side of her, out of reach. When he frowned at her and tried anyway, she just gave him her best Slayer glare.
He backed down. “Yes,” he continued distractedly, focusing back on the matter at hand. “Well, as I was saying, these vampire packs would stick together…feed together, defend and protect each other, work together as a unit to survive.”
Buffy frowned; the thought was strange to her. But just as she was wondering why she had never seen that sort of behavior from vampires before, she thought of Drusilla, and how faithfully Spike had tended her, even when she had been utterly insane and running around behind his back like a little ho-bag.
Angel had told her very little about his life before his soul, and his vampire family – but from what he *had* told her, it seemed that they had been a very tight-knit group at one time. And in the high school on Parent/Teacher Night, she remembered Spike mentioning how Angel had been a mentor to him.
She had never thought that vampires were capable of that sort of bonding, but perhaps that was the sort of behavior that Giles was talking about, she thought.
Giles was *still* talking, she reminded herself, trying to focus. “These packs operate in very specific ways. There is a single ‘pack leader’ to whom the others all turn for – direction. Leadership. They submit to the decisions of the leader. What he says goes.”
“Or she,” Willow pointed out, glancing at Buffy with a smile.
An odd little smile came over Giles’ face at her words. She did not realize it, but Willow had accidentally hit on the very direction of what he was saying. “Indeed. As may very well be appropriate in this situation.” Before anyone could ask him about the cryptic statement, he went on.
“On occasion, one of the group, or even one outside the group, vying for mastery of the pack, might challenge the pack leader. According to this text, they would then,” he placed a hand on the thick old book as he glanced down at it before looking up at Buffy again, quoting exactly from the text, “ ‘meet in a battle of wills, climaxing in an act of dominance by the winning party’.”
“If the challenger won,” he went on, closing the book, “he would assume leadership of the pack, and the previous pack leader would submit to his leadership. If he lost, on the other hand, he would become one of the pack, and submit to the pack leader. From that point on, he would be under their control.”
Buffy felt an uneasy feeling, as she began to put together what Giles was getting at. “Okay,” she said slowly. “So…you’re saying that what Spike needs is…”
“A pack leader,” he finished the statement for her, meeting her eyes appraisingly.
“Gee,” she said, her tone flippant. “Wonder where we’re gonna find one of those?”
“Buffy,” Giles said in a voice of quiet rebuke. “I believe you understand what I’m getting at.”
“Good for Buffy,” Xander said. “Now what about the rest of us who are completely and totally in the dark still?”
“So you’re saying,” Willow began slowly, figuring it out as she went along. “that if Buffy can beat Spike in a fight – he’ll submit to her and he won’t be a problem? Like – he would just – not want to kill her anymore?”
“Oh, I quite believe he would still want to,” Giles corrected, a look of slight amusement in his eyes. “But he would not be able to. His very nature would prevent it, once he had been made to recognize her authority.”
“Okay, the only problem with that…” Buffy began, pausing with a frown before she amended, “One of *many* problems with that – is that I’ve already kicked Spike’s butt across Sunnydale and back on more than one occasion. And he’s still the same annoying, smart-mouth pain in my butt that he’s always been. And he would still try to kill me the first chance he gets.”
Giles shook his head. “No, Buffy. It’s not just a matter of winning the fight. Every time you’ve fought him before, your goal has been his death – not his submission to you. As I understand this text, you must dominate him in the fight, and make him actually verbally accept your authority.”
“Okay, big problem number two…let’s face it. That’s so not gonna happen,” Buffy stated matter-of-factly. “He would disappear in a cloud of dust still kicking and screaming and calling me nasty names in British before he would *ever* submit to me.”
“Okay, question here,” Xander interrupted, holding up a hand for Giles’ attention. “What about the chip? I mean – don’t get me wrong. I’m all for further humiliation of the bleached menace in there. But – isn’t he about as dominated as he can get? He *can’t* fight her, anyway. So…how’s she going to do the whole fighty thing with him?”
Giles frowned thoughtfully. “That, actually, is the biggest flaw in the theory.”
“No, that is *not* the biggest flaw in the theory,” Buffy corrected, shaking her head emphatically. “The biggest flaw in the theory is the idea that I should perform some ancient vampire ritual, just so I can have a neutered vampire follow me around for the rest of my life because he thinks I’m his boss or something.”
“But that is entirely the point, Buffy,” Giles explained. “He won’t have to follow you around. He won’t have to be supervised at all. You’ll merely have to give the order to leave us alone – not to attempt to harm us or anyone else – and he’ll be bound by his very nature to obey it.”
Xander’s eyes lit up. “Hey! Could you like – order him to walk out in the sunlight or something?” He was surprised by the shocked, indignant looks cast his way by everyone else in the room. “What?” he said defensively. “It was just a joke!”
“The entire point of this effort is to *avoid* having to destroy him, seeing as he *is* fairly harmless,” Giles reminded him. Then he frowned thoughtfully, “But to answer your question…I’m honestly not sure. According to the text, it does seem as if he would still have a choice in the matter, at least to some degree. It’s really – really not clear.”
“What a surprise,” Buffy muttered, her mind racing with what Giles was suggesting. It seemed simple enough. Best Spike in a fight, force him to say uncle and admit that she really *was* bigger and badder than he was, and then order him to reform -- and to get out of their lives for good measure, if she chose to. She could be rid of his confusing presence without the guilt that would come with staking him.
But something deep inside her, some niggling feeling warned her that there simply had to be more to it than that. Somehow, she just *knew*.
And did she really *want* him out of her life?
“And as to the problem of the chip,” Giles went on, and she forced herself to pay attention. “Well – that *is* a problem. The thing is, as long as he is virtually forced to submit anyway, by virtue of not being capable of fighting you – anything you would do to him would be – well, futile. In order for the act of dominance you perform to have any effect – he must actually have the ability to resist it.”
“Oh, well,” Buffy said lightly with a shrug. “There goes that theory. Anything else?”
“I think…” Willow began hesitantly. “I think I know a spell…” Buffy gave her a vicious glare, and the little redhead visibly wilted. “Well, I do,” she said defensively with an apologetic look. She looked back to Giles, who was watching her hopefully. “It would just kind of – scramble the signal on the chip. Just for a little while. So that it wouldn’t go off if he tried to hurt you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Xander broke in, a note of anger beginning in his voice. “I’m not liking the way this conversation is going. We’re talking about disabling Spike’s chip? Every time he’s been around Buffy before he got the chip, he’s tried to kill her!”
“In this case,” Giles said softly. “I dare say that’s rather the point.”
Xander shook his head emphatically, “No. That’s too dangerous, Buffy! You’re talking about *deliberately* disabling the only thing between Captain Peroxide and a major killing spree!”
“I think you’re forgetting the other thing between him and mass murder,” Buffy reminded him, a note of irritation in her voice. When he just gave her a blank look, she sighed and rolled her eyes as she clarified, “Me! Slayer, remember?”
“So,” Willow began to recap slowly. “The basic idea is, we do the spell to disable the chip, you fight Spike and do the whole dominance thing, and once he submits to you, he’s under your control. So we don’t have to worry about watching over him every single second to be sure he doesn’t hire a hit vamp to kill you or anything like that.”
“We think,” Buffy clarified flatly. “We’re still not totally sure that this whole thing is even gonna work like we think it is. I mean,” she looked at Giles, “you said he may not *have* to obey what I tell him, even then. So – it might be an awful lot of work and danger – for nothing.”
“At the very least,” Giles argued quietly. “resistance to your leadership and trying to do anything to hurt you or those in the ‘pack’ would be very difficult for him. It would be like – trying not to feed. He *could* do it – but it would only be to his detriment, and completely against his nature.”
Buffy’s eyes widened as she considered that. Okay…so maybe it was more of a sure thing than she had thought.
She glanced around the room, taking in the expressions on the faces of the others. Xander was obviously very unhappy with the idea, and was shaking his head slightly, just in case the others were not yet aware of his disapproval. Willow had a thoughtful look on her face, obviously already thinking about what she would need to perform the spell, and getting excited about the idea of using her newly developing powers.
Giles clearly wanted her to do it. The hopeful, expectant look on his face told her that much. He was certain that he had found a solution to the problem, and wanted her to accept it and carry it out.
Anya – Buffy frowned. As she looked at the pale, wide-eyed ex-vengeance demon, she realized suddenly that Anya had not said a word since Giles had brought up his idea. When Buffy looked at her, she gave her an exaggerated and very obvious shake of her head, pulling a finger across her throat in a gesture that said clearly what she thought of the idea.
She was certainly very emphatic about it. And she *was* a centuries-old ex-demon who probably knew quite a bit about ancient rituals and such.
“What do you think, Anya?” Buffy asked suddenly, surprising all of the others. Buffy frowned. Did they all really think so little of the girl that they should be so surprised? Really, Anya probably knew a lot about the sort of stuff they dealt with on a daily basis. She made a quick decision to show a bit more respect to the girl, as she waited for her response.
“Um – I think – I – think I need to talk to you privately for a moment, Buffy,” Anya finally said, a huge, fake smile on her face. “Okay?” she practically chirped, rising from the table and taking Buffy’s arm, pulling her toward the door.
“Wait a second,” Xander protested, not liking the idea of not being in the loop.
“Yes, Anya,” Giles agreed with the boy for once. “I believe we could all hear what it is you have to say.”
“I believe you don’t want to,” Anya shot back immediately before looking back at the Slayer. “Buffy?” she said expectantly, releasing her arm, but walking toward the door – expecting her to follow.
Buffy glanced back at her friends for a moment, a bit uncomfortably, before following Anya out of the kitchen and into the living room. Casting a glance at the bound vampire watching them, Anya nodded toward the front door, suggesting that they go outside to talk.
“Done talking about me, are you?” he smirked, and Buffy gave him a startled look, wondering if he had somehow overheard their conversation.
After looking at him for a moment, she decided that it had probably just been an assumption on his part, due to the fact that they had pointedly had the conversation outside the range of his hearing. She returned his smirk, putting a bit of sly menace into her smile just for the fun of it.
“Hardly,” she replied, following Anya out onto the porch.
“Hey!” she heard him yell indignantly behind her. “You mean you *were* bloody talking about me? Hey, now, get back here! *That’s* not right!”
Ignoring his protests, Buffy closed the front door firmly and turned her attention to the anxious girl in front of her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Buffy,” Anya shook her head slowly. “I’m familiar with this ritual – to a point.”
Buffy raised her eyebrows questioningly.
Anya shrugged. “In a thousand years, yeah, I’ve dated a couple of vampires. You pick things up.” She shook her head in dismissal and went on, “Anyway, Giles is way off about the ritual.”
“About what part?”
Anya took a deep breath, hesitant to respond, and looked away for a moment. “Buffy,” she said finally. “what he thinks you have to do – well – the ritual doesn’t just require – fighting. Let’s just say that the, um – the act of dominance you have to perform?”
Buffy nodded slowly, frowning, still not quite following her.
“It’s not – just -- *physical* dominance.”
Buffy was very confused by this point, shaking her head slightly. “Then – what kind of dominance is it?” she asked, a bit impatiently. She was completely unprepared for the answer, as Anya took a deep breath and blurted out her response.
“*Sexual* dominance.”
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