Buffy is on the job at one of the several cemeteries in Sunnydale. She is fighting a vampire with her usual repartee. When she pulls out her stake for the killing blow, the vamp turns the tables and the stake on her and impales her abdomen.
Stunned, Buffy pulls the stake out and drops it. The vamp picks it up and is about to strike her again when Riley shoves him out of the way. The two struggle, and the vamp flees. Riley wants to chase the vamp, but he sees Buffy falling and goes to her. She faints in his arms.
Riley patches Buffy up in her bedroom. She's concerned that he thinks she's a wimp, but he knows much better than that — until he finds out she was injured by single, normal vampire. Dawn barges into the room to warn them that mom is coming into the room. Buffy doesn't want mom to know that she's injured, so Dawn covers nicely as Riley is trying to hide the first aid equipment. Buffy shows Dawn the wound, which Dawn thinks is cool. Buffy asks Dawn to help with the household chores, and Riley offers to take patrol that night. Buffy asks him to take the Scooby Gang with him.
That night, Riley is stealthily leading Anya, Xander, and Willow, who are all eating chips, through the cemetery. When Xander bellows out, Riley suggests they split up. But the group still follows Riley, commenting on his coolness.
Buffy and Giles are going through the watchers' diaries looking for more information on the deaths of previous Slayers. Buffy is concerned about slipping up last night, and wants to know more about her predecessors last battles. Unfortunately, the watchers didn't write down much about these final fights because, according to Giles, the watcher finds the death of a Slayer rather painful. Buffy needs information, so she goes to the only person she knows who witnessed the death of a Slayer.
Buffy attacks Spike in his crypt and orders him to tell her how he killed two Slayers.
Over a beer at the Bronze, Buffy strikes a deal with Spike. She'll pay him cash to tell her how he did it. The fights weren't about the moves, he says, and he negotiates chicken wings as part of the deal. Spike soon realizes why she wants to know — she's injured. Spike reacts with his normal lack of tact, and Buffy asks, "Were you born this big a pain in the ass?" Spike claims he's always been bad.
Flashback to London 1880. William is a British gentleman composing poetry at a party. He sees Cecily, the object of his adoration and his poetry. Another partygoer asks William about recent attacks in the area, and William admits that he doesn't concern himself with such brutish matters; they are police business. He concerns himself with creating things of beauty, so someone grabs his poetry and reads it aloud. As the group laughs we hear the true origin of the nickname "William the Bloody," given because his poetry is so bloody awful. William finally retrieves his poetry and goes to the couch where Cecily is seated. At her questioning, he admits to her that his poetry is about her and that he loves her. She is disturbed and says that she can never love him: "You're beneath me." William is stunned.
William leaves the party in a huff, tears up the poetry, and accidentally brushes up against a dark stranger out in the street. Drusilla seeks out William, who is crying in an alley. She finds him dashing, and she offers to unleash his imagination. When he accepts, she makes him a vampire. He's quite pained by the bites and screams "Ow!" several times.
Back in the present, Riley et al find the vamp that hurt Buffy. They follow the vamp to a crypt full of a nest of vampires, and the Scoobies decide to take it at daybreak.
Spike continues his (version of the) tale to Buffy while playing pool at the Bronze. After being made a vampire, he decided to live by his own rules rather than society's. However, he needed a gang. In England of the past, Angelus is holding William by the throat. William declares his name is Spike. Angelus, Drusilla, and Darla are angry with Spike because his carelessness makes them run. Angelus and Spike fight, and although Angelus gets the upper hand, he lets Spike go. "If I can't teach you, maybe someday an angry crowd will. That, (he laughs) or the Slayer." Spike wonders what a Slayer is.
Present, Bronze: Spike tells Buffy of his obsession with the Slayer and how to kill her. A vampire has nothing to fear, except the Slayer.
China, 1900, Boxer Rebellion: Spike is fighting the current Slayer, while outside, the surrounding village is burning, and the villagers are fleeing. Spike gets the upper hand and after he strikes the killing blow, he drinks a long drought from her neck. As the Slayer dies, she says (in Chinese), "Tell my mother I'm sorry." Spike replies, "Sorry, Love. I don't speak Chinese."
Drusilla enters and sees that Spike has killed a slayer. He refers to the Slayer's blood as a powerful aphrodisiac and gives some to Drusilla. They make love near the dead Slayer's body as the village burns.
Outside, Darla is walking with Angel. Drusilla informs them of Spike's success, and Angel gloomily congratulates him. When Drusilla smells fear in the area, Angel wants to leave because of the reek. The four stalk away as the village burns.
Back in the Bronze, Spike comments that it was the best night of his life. Buffy is disgusted that he got off on it, but Spike is surprised to discover that she doesn't get off on killing his kind. Spike tries to point out the futility of her work because there is only one of her, and there are hundreds of thousands of his kind all looking for the same thing: one good day. The lesson isn't over, though.
A lone Riley walks dazedly back to the crypt full of vamps even though it is still night. He stakes the vamp that injured Buffy, but he knows he can't take on the entire nest. So he takes out a hand grenade, pulls the pin, and leaves the vamps inside to burn.
Outside the Bronze, Spike takes Buffy through a blow-by-blow re-enactment of his battle with a slayer that took place aboard a New York subway train in 1977. As the scene flips back and forth between New York of the past and Sunnydale of the present, Spike explains that it's not a question of how did he win, but how did the slayer lose. Buffy doesn't understand the difference, so Spike shows her. Spike, all punked-out like a junior Billy Idol, fights a young black woman wearing a long black coat just like the one Spike wears in modern times. He refers to fighting with both the past and present slayers as dancing. Spike claims all Slayers are haunted by the same bloody question, "Is this the day I'm going to die?" He continues to explain that part of the Slayer wants to die, to end the fighting. Buffy has lasted so long because of her ties to her family and her friends in the Scooby Gang, but the truth is that every Slayer has a death wish. As Spike says this, he kills the Slayer of the past and takes her jacket. When Buffy is ready to die, Spike will be there to have himself another good day. "Here endeth the lesson," he decrees. Buffy orders him out of her sight, but he taunts her instead. Then he tries to kiss her. Bewildered by his action, she pushes him down and says, "It would never be you, Spike. You're beneath me." She throws the money at him and walks away. He picks the money up and starts to cry. Then he gets angry.
Spike digs in a trunk in his crypt and takes out a rifle.
Although Harmony tries to talk him out of it, Spike is determined to kill the Slayer. When he storms out of the crypt, Spike hears Drusilla's voice instead. "Why can't you kill her?"
South America, 1998: Whenever Drusilla looks at Spike, all she sees is the Slayer around him. They argue, and Drusilla's date — a demon with antlers and a lot of slime — leaves the scene.
Back at home, Joyce is packing and confesses to Buffy that she has to spend the night at the hospital for observation and a CAT scan. Joyce reassures Buffy that she'll be fine because even if they find something, it's still early.
Buffy heads out to the back porch for a good cry. Spike comes up to her brandishing the rifle, but when he sees her tears, he softens. "What's wrong?" he asks. She doesn't want to talk about it, so he asks if there's something he can do. When she doesn't respond, he sits beside her and puts his hand on her shoulder in comfort.
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