"Beneath You" — A Study in Shadows and Souls

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By Rin Nocturne

There are episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that live in the skin. They don’t just sit pretty in your memory like a good scene—they stitch themselves under your ribs and whisper there when you’re not looking. Beneath You is one of those. Specifically, the ending. That last scene between Buffy and Spike? Yeah. That one. It hurts right.

We talk a lot about redemption arcs in fiction—writers love them, readers crave them, and everyone wants to see the broken thing mended. But rarely do we see the raw nerve of what comes after the soul is restored. Not just the moment the light returns, but the unbearable weight of memory. Spike doesn't stride back into Sunnydale with swagger and fire. He returns with his soul intact and his sanity shredded.

It's love distilled into guilt and grief and torment. The way he kneels in the church, eyes hollow, shirt open like a wound. “I tried to find it… the spark.” 

"They put the Spark in me and now all it does...is burn,"...Emotional gut punch, but real. For me, it speaks of renewed innocence as the new kind of man Spike wants to become for Buffy and himself. And it is well earned.

But that doesn't mean it is without risks or a new kind of pain to endure...The voices telling him to go to Hell are especially effective.

A.K.A, you deserve punishment. What about rehabilitation for today's world?

Buffy doesn't touch him. She doesn’t need to. The silence between them is as loud as any confession.

What devastates me most is the nonverbal acting—how James Marsters twitches and stutters and crumbles under that cross. And that score? Strings that ache. Like something sacred is breaking. It’s not flashy. It’s not dramatic. It’s shattering.

Symbolically, this scene reads like an inverse crucifixion. Spike literally burns for his sins—but it's self-inflicted. No hero's glory, no applause. Just a man who chose to be better and paid for it with his sanity. There's something terrifying and beautiful in that.

Watch here: Spike has a soul

As a writer, scenes like this mess me up in the best way. They challenge me to write beyond the trope—to honor the trauma that comes with transformation. What happens when a soul returns to a body that’s committed unforgivable things? When memory becomes a punishment?

That tension—that paradox—is exactly the kind of emotional texture I want my stories to carry.

As a writer, scenes like this cut deeper because they echo something personal. In 2019, I dated a man who—like Spike in his worst moments—could wear charm like a mask and wield words like weapons. He was an artist, obsessed only with his job and his stage plays, and I was the quiet girl who worked at the same library—lonely, idealistic, and painfully naive. It took five months, and a long crawl out of emotional wreckage, to realize I was never loved—just used. Gaslit into silence, made to feel small for feeling too much. I carried that numbness for a long time. And I think I need to write about it. Not for closure, but for connection. There are others who’ve been there—invisible in their own stories, doubting their worth, aching to be seen. Maybe the story I write won’t have a fairytale ending. But it’ll be honest. And sometimes, that’s the most magical thing of all.

To Love You, I Must Break Myself is an example of this--a call to explore one facet of a male psyche--one that's been shattered. It's written under my other name, Seraphine Vela.

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Stay haunted.
Rin Nocturne