Angel

Ep 4: Hell Bound, by Stephen DeKnight

The episode opens following Fred as she moves through the corridors at W&H at the end of the workday. Late in the day, few people around, seems like she’s being stalked... and suddenly, there’s Spike. In her office. She pretends to be scared but doesn’t do a great job of it, because she knew he was following her. He complains about what a pathetic ghost he is — can’t move objects around; can’t scare people. She tells him he’s not a ghost. He wonders if maybe he can’t move things because he’s too busy just struggling not to slide into hell. She reassures him she won’t let that happen, and he’s touched by her concern — even if it turns out she can’t help. She tells him she’s working on something. She also tells Spike about the shanshu prophecy which is supposed to turn Angel human again after he saves enough people.

This whole time, she’s taking readings on Spike with some scanner type of device, and she suddenly gets very excited — she may have figured out a general theory of how to make him corporeal. Suddenly Spike disappears, falling right through the floor. He winds up in the Wolfram & Hart basement, where there’s a man intent on chopping something. Spike asks him directions back to the lab — and realizes the man is chopping off his own fingers!

Fred goes to Wesley, tells him she needs a list of books. It’s quite a list. Very unique rarities. Wesley notes that if he exploits all of his newfound contacts to find them, it’ll probably take, oh, about twenty minutes or so. But as a condition he demands that Fred have dinner. No, not with him. She hasn’t been eating or sleeping and he’s concerned. She assures him she’s all right, starts to leave and bumps into Eve — who hauls her into Angel’s office.

Angel is concerned at the effort Fred is expending in trying to help Spike. He and Eve both seem perfectly willing to get rid of Spike. Fred wonders why Eve is there, and why she gets a voice in Spike’s fate — is it because she and Angel are *friends* now? Angel denies this. Fred protests that they took the gig at W&H in order to do good things. Angel asks what that has to do with Spike, and Fred reminds him that Spike just saved the world. That he’s a champion, like Angel, and could really help them. Angel disagrees, saying Spike doesn’t care about anyone except himself. Fred notes he also cares about Buffy. Angel agrees — and points out that therefore the minute Spike is corporeal again, he’s going to go running off to her. Fred accuses him of being jealous. Angel says he’s just worried about Fred; that she’ll succumb to Spike’s charms. Eve agrees with Angel. Fred asks if they think she’s stupid. She knows Spike is playing her, but that’s beside the point. This is about doing the right thing. Angel tells her not to be disappointed if it doesn’t work because some folks can’t be saved.

Spike is still wandering around the creepy W&H basement. A woman begs him to hold her — but her arms are cut off at the elbow. She throws herself at Spike — and disappears. Spike’s a little freaked.

Spike follows Angel to his penthouse. Snarks a little, and Angel tells him to get lost. Spike comments about how he doesn’t belong in the exalted heights like that — he belongs in the basement with the dregs, right? Angel doesn’t disagree — just wonders why he’s not gone. Spike suggests that maybe they could hang out — and Angel realizes that Spike has been putting up a front. He guesses that Spike feels how close he is to hell. Spike tries to shrug it off. They have a moment when Angel mentions liking Spike’s (William’s) poetry — and Spike notes that Angel likes Barry Manilow. The mood is broken when Spike sees a hanged man with a blood- soaked bag over his head.

Wesley is helping Fred with the tests she wanted. He’s apparently also been regaling her with tales of how awful Spike was. Tells her that the reason everyone is warning her about how awful Spike is is because they’re concerned about her. The phone rings, and they rush to the W&H lobby, where Angel is with a very agitated Spike. Spike is freaking because ghosts are coming out from all over — not that anyone can see them but him. Eve and Gunn join the party, reporting that security has done a sweep — and found no ghosts at all, apart from Spike. Meanwhile, the ghosts are warning Spike that *he* is coming for him. Spike starts to ask Fred for help — and suddenly disappears. Except from Spike’s POV, he’s still right there; it’s just that nobody can see him anymore. They all wander off to look for him, and Spike starts figuring that he’s finally slipping into hell. This creeped-out voice assures him that he’s almost there.

Spike is wandering around the darkened halls of W&H. All very spooky. Meanwhile, Wes, Fred and Gunn are conferring. Fred thinks this time is different from the other times Spike has disappeared. Wes mentions that maybe Spike is crazy, seeing things that aren’t there, and Gunn agrees. Fred says they don’t realize what he’s dealing with — that when he disappears, he’s falling into hell. This gets a big yawn from the others. Not the reaction she expected.

Spike, meanwhile, has found his way to the basement again. He sees some of the severed fingers from Spook 1 —they’re spasming around. Sees a woman with glass embedded in her eye, warning him about the Reaper coming to get him. Spike wonders if he somehow slipped through the cracks, when the woman tells him that he hasn’t been forgotten. She rips the shard out of her eye and slashes him with it. It hurts!

Fred is working frantically in her lab, scribbling notes all over the place and talking to herself. Spike is watching her sadly, knowing she can’t see him. He tells her he thinks he’s figured things out. The welcoming committee from Hell has come to collect him; he just wanted to thank her for trying to help, and how much that meant to him. Suddenly Fred thinks she has it solved — and Spike momentarily thinks he’s reprieved — except that Fred then realizes that her *solution* is likely to destroy LA, so it’s back to the drawing board.

Angel tells Fred that Spike is gone. She tells him that Spike is still there, and they need to find a way to contact him. Eve brings in Claire, who is some kind of find-the-missing-spook expert. Claire senses a presence. A dark soul. Suffering. Spike, standing right there, agrees. She tells the others it’s coming. Spike realizes she’s not talking about him. She tells them the dark soul is here — but it kills her before she can name the Reaper.

Gunn asks why *William the Bloody* would do that. Wes says he wouldn’t — it wasn’t to his advantage, since she was trying to help him. That maybe the *dark soul* she mentioned was something else lurking at W&H.

Fred is taking a shower, washing off Claire’s blood. She senses something, turns around, but sees nothing there. Spike is standing outside the shower, wondering what happened. Why did the Reaper kill Claire? It hits him — maybe it was afraid she might spill something about him. Spike realizes he’s being played. He tries to tell Fred, who of course cannot hear him. Desperate, he struggles to write a message with his finger in the condensation on the door — and somehow manages it! Fred senses something and sees the word *Reaper* — just before the door shatters.

The ghosts start shadowing Spike again, and he angrily declares he’s not going to be played by flunkies anymore. That this is just some spirit fooling with him, and not the Reaper after all, come to take him to hell. Suddenly, Spike convulses in pain, barbed wire digging at his face, as a creepy voice replies that it will indeed take him to hell, screaming. But before he goes to hell, Pavayne gets to play with him first. Spike, twisting in pain, looks up to see Pavayne looming over him.

Gunn, Angel and Wes are researching the "dark soul" that Claire mentioned before she was killed. Unfortunately, there are way too many entries — including a few about Angel himself. Fred comes in and tells them to check against "Reaper" — and Angel finds a reference to Leocadio Pavayne, an 18th century doctor known as the Reaper for his rather unorthodox (and generally fatal) surgical practices. Wes, reading from W&H documents, notes that Pavayne apparently killed people in fairly vicious fashion for around 20 years and was never caught by the authorities. Instead, W&H seized him because they needed his blood to desecrate the site they had chosen for what was to become their LA headquarters (a Mission had had the poor taste to be located on the site that the W&H mystics had selected).

Still, none of this explained how Pavayne could still be around. Angel suggests that since Pavayne was supposed to be a master of the dark arts, maybe he found a way. He also ponders why there aren’t more ghosts hanging around W&H, and Gunn suggests that maybe Pavayne is doing something to eliminate them. Fred worries that they have to save Spike before Pavayne does something to eliminate him as well.

Pavayne, meanwhile, is still enjoying torturing Spike. He and Spike are in Fred’s office when she shows up. Pavayne makes a lascivious comment about Fred, and Spike tries to attack him. Of course he can’t make contact, and Pavayne taunts him. Pavayne makes the rules here. He creates reality as he pleases. Suddenly, he and Spike are back in the basement again, proving his point.

Spike realizes that Pavayne is responsible for the others not being able to see him any more. Pavayne admits it — he decides what is and what is not real. Spike’s wounds abruptly disappear. Just as suddenly, he finds himself naked. Pavayne continues to taunt him with his vulnerability. The other ghosts are there now as well, and Spike realizes somehow they had initially avoided hell — but Pavayne somehow sent them there. Pavayne admits it — but they’re still real enough to hurt Spike, and they suddenly attack him.

Meanwhile, Fred is working frantically to find a way to save Spike. Wes, Gunn and Angel are very concerned, as she’s taken to writing on the walls. She assures them she’s not crazy; just out of writing space. But she thinks she’s found a way to bring Spike back. One slight problem — they need a massive jolt of evil energy to make it work — and she does mean massive. Gunn has an idea — and brings them to the White Room. He thinks that a bit of the conduit that connects W&H to the other dimensions might do the trick. Problem is convincing the conduit (here, kitty, kitty) to cooperate. It doesn’t help when Angel announces he’s more of a dog person. Gunn takes over the negotiations.

Meanwhile, guess what? Spike is STILL in the basement. What a surprise. And he’s still suffering. Surprise. Oh, and he’s still naked too. Those clever plot twists just keep on a’coming, don’t they? (I think I was channeling bubonic during this part.) Pavayne opens what seems to be a portal to hell, telling Spike that his soul condemns him to suffer forever. And he starts to send Spike to hell...

And suddenly Spike rears back and clocks Pavayne, tossing him across the room. Spike has figured it out — Pavayne’s ghostly world is shaped by willpower. If he wants it enough, he can do it. And right now all he wants it to knock Pavayne into the middle of next week. (Well, that and put his clothes on.)

As the pair merrily fight their way through W&H, passing through the odd table or the odd wall, Fred is busy putting the finishing touches on her masterpiece that will make Spike corporeal once again. Gunn walks in with a vial filled with a thick liquid, warning her this is a one-time deal. Angel wonders how they will be able to contact Spike, and Fred says they won’t have to, as the device will make itself apparent to any ghostly beings out there.

Spike and Pavayne are still fighting when the device kicks in. Pavayne senses it first. Fred is taking readings when they suddenly go wild and she thinks Spike is there. The machine is already beginning to fritz out. It’s a now-or-never kind of thing.

Suddenly, Pavayne attacks Fred, and the others realize Pavayne got there first. He’s killing her, the way he killed Claire. The others spring to her defense, but Pavayne tosses them back. Spike appears on the scene. Pavayne warns him he has a choice — he can be recorporealized, or he can save Fred, but not both. Spike’s eyes go to the device, and Pavayne thinks he’s made the obvious choice — when Spike suddenly intervenes to save Fred, forcing Pavayne into the field of the machine, recorporealizing him.

Pavayne is mouthing off threats when Angel punches him out. Spike, finally visible to the gang again, warns Angel not to kill Pavayne for fairly obvious reasons.

It’s cleanup time at Fred’s lab. Wes and Gunn are helping with the mess that used to be her wonder machine. They ask if she’s okay, and she says she is; just a bit upset by all the destruction. Gunn tells her to rest; he and Wes will finish up. She heads off to her office, where Spike shows up. She didn’t happen to build a spare machine, did she? She pretty much says it’s impossible to duplicate the effort and apologizes to him. Spike tells her it’s okay — he’s happy with the choice he made. She says there are other, riskier things they could try, but Spike says it’s not worth it. He’s not going to be like Pavayne and try to avoid hell, no matter the cost or who gets hurt in the process. Fred says that just proves what she’s been saying to the others — that Spike is worth saving. Spike is touched by that and remarks that it isn’t so bad being a ghost, what with the new tricks he’s picked up and the companionship. There are worse things...

Which Pavayne is now discovering, as Angel has arranged for him to spend the rest of his days in permanent storage. Alive, paralysed, encased in a metal shell, with only a small slit to see out. Angel cheerfully welcomes him to hell as he leaves Pavayne to his eternal torment.