Angel Season Five - episode 10 - Soul Purpose (part 3 of 3)
Part 3 (of 3)
This dream wakes Angel, rouses him from his deep delirium…or seems to. He makes his way downstairs and meets Fred who appears pleased to see him up and about again. She sympathises with his dishevelled state saying:
Fred: Always takes me a few days to get back in the swing of things, myself. Um...you should put on a clean shirt, though.
It’s a second reference to a dirty shirt as Spike also pointed this out in the previous dream and oh, Angel’s wearing no shoes, he’s shoeless. He’s sans shoes. (hmmm, that sounds like something…) Then Gunn arrives, excited:
Gunn: Hey, guys. Come on. You'll miss it.
Angel: Miss what?
Lorne: Hey...down in front!
Harmony: Yeah, Angel. You're blocking the apocalypse.
Outside Los Angeles is burning. The final destruction is at hand and at Wolfram and Hart you get front row seats. Angel’s reaction is immediate:
Angel: I have to do something. I have to get out there!
Words versus action; he says, but he doesn’t do. The others hose him down. No need to bother, someone else will do it for him. Yes, it’s another irrelevance dream - the main feature.
Wesley: Don't worry. Spike will take care of it.
Gunn: You should go back to bed.
Lorne: Or at least go put some clean clothes on. You got a little something on your shirt there, babe.
Ouch! And Angel dreams a stake in his chest (symbolic, in this case of his friends stabbing him in the back) and we see that all this talk of dirty shirts has not been just part of the madness of dreams. Angel has a creature, a parasite, a slimy blue alien feeding off him, gorging at his breast and it pinpoints the cause of his vivid dreams.
The apocalypse is averted! There’s cake and a party and songs and its all about Spike. In this dream he’s single-handedly ended Armageddon and turned the world into a beautiful, happily-ever-after, candy mountain place where all our dreams come true. It’s fairytale perfect and in this dream, Spike gets the reward not because he wanted it, but because he didn’t.
Spike: But I didn't do this for a reward.
Gunn: Well, that's why you're getting one.
And in floats the Blue Fairy and with a wave of her magical wand and a sprinkle of glitter she turns Spike into a ‘real boy’, beating heart and all. Fred listens at his chest and confirms the diagnosis. He’s human, he’s alive! In Spike she hears the steady beat of the human heart. In Angel all she heard was moving air, the illusion of the ocean, something great and dynamic in an insignificant shell. And Angel looks down at his chest, feels his non-beating heart and embraces his fate. He turns, takes up his mail cart and pushes it slowly down the hall before him; Number Five emulated completely.
Poor Angel, in his dream he really does position himself as ineffective, hard-done by, um, kind of pathetic; everything he hoped for is going to another and he knows the reason. It’s all got to do with that damn reward. Wanting it, counting on it to be his one day and in doing so he inadvertently tainted the purity of his mission so that he begins to wonder was he ever really selfless and altruistic in motive at all? And he sees Spike surrounded by his friends, getting adulation and praise for being the saviour, for being the hero and he sees Spike getting his reward. The appropriation complete, Angel all too readily resigns himself to a never-ending future of irrelevancy, as the superfluous vampire with a soul.
Now this all seems heartbreaking until we remind ourselves it’s a dream. In reality, Spike’s not surrounded by friends, he’s alone and at the mercy of a self-interested conman. He’s not happy; he’s sad, depressed and lonely. He did avert an apocalypse but he got no party, no thanks and no reward, but unlike dream Angel, he not taking up his mail cart, he’s looking for a way to keep on going. Angel, by contrast, in reality is surrounded by people who love him, are loyal to him but he can only see their worth when he imagines them admiring someone else. Perhaps there is an element of fear there too, what if they did find out what he’s done to them, with the memory wipe, maybe they wouldn’t love him anymore. Maybe that’s why there’s a distance between him and them now and why they might be willing to put their faith in a new champion. And that destiny, that reward? Spike doesn't even want it for craps sake!! Angel wonders how that can be. When he first discovered the Shanshu it was like water to a man dying of thirst, it renewed his vim and vigour, was music to the soul, it was a dream come true . . . but not to Spike. He heard about it, was intrigued, learnt what it was, what it meant, and, symbolically at least, even won it, but still he could walk away, give it back, say Angel was welcome to it. And those things he said in that fight they had, all those things about how he was different, how he was better, maybe there was some truth there too, What if he is better, more deserving because he doesn’t care about the reward? These are the thoughts that play around in the back of Angel’s mind, they feed the fear; make Angel dream fear fuelled dreams.
Spike receives some visitors to his new abode. The surprisingly intimidating duo of Wesley and Gunn want to know what he’s up to. While Spike thoughts are focused on the big picture, purpose, relevance and his place in the world, Wes and Charles are much more localised in their concern:
Wesley: From what we hear... you're fighting the good fight these days.
Gunn: We figure that's our territory.
Spike is surprised. Are they that protective of their domain? Are they afraid of a little competition?
Gunn: Not at all. We're wondering why you left in the first place.
Wesley: If you want to save the world, we've got the resources to help you do it.
They offer him a job. Ask him to join the team. And even though acceptance is something that Spike craves, has always craved, he’s not so keen to jump on board, join the evil empire and be compromised:
Spike: I told Angel, and I'll tell you. A place like that doesn't change... not from the inside. Not from the out. You sign on there, it changes you. Puts things in your head. Spins your compass needle around till you can't cross the street without tripping the proverbial old lady and stepping on her glasses. And it's not like I wasn't there, gents, like I wasn't watching you. Had to haunt the damn place. Remember?
Spike, the speaker of truth, noble but nowhere near saintly (thanks to Eliz at Tea at the Ford for this excellent assessment of Spike's emerging character) tells it like it is, gives them a few home truths. Gunn protests. It’s not so cut and dried! They’re changing the system from within, it’s a new playing field where they set the rules and dictate the game and they see him as a potential player, a team member, an asset. It’s a new experience for Spike, to be wanted. Sure he and Buffy shared a special loyalty but he was never on the team, never a real Scooby. But now, it’s quite enticing, the thought that Angel might want him to stick around…it’s almost too good to be true:
Spike: I can't believe Angel would sign off on that. Unless... he doesn't know you're here, does he?…Hedging our bets, are we, boys?
It is too good to be true. The captain doesn’t want him so he rejects the team with a final taunt:
Spike: And the compass needle keeps spinning. And the world gets murkier and murkier.
Lindsey and Eve are all cosy in the bedroom. Team Angel doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Eve is sure she’s keeping them all busy with the mysterious relic, too busy to check up on Angel and his inexplicable illness (although, interestingly enough, not busy enough to stop them checking up on Spike). Eve asks after their blonde crusader wondering if he’s buying the whole Doyle-visions thing:
Lindsey: So far. I mean, he hasn't sewn a big red "S" on his chest yet, but he's gettin' there. We keep building him up, and we tear Angel down. Pretty soon the senior partners are gonna start thinking they're backing the wrong horse.
And so their plan is revealed; it is audacious, risky and proving very effective. It’s all about Angel, about bringing him down, destroying who he is. It’s personal. It’s vengeance for a lost hand and an interrupted career. Lindsey - once the golden boy of Wolfram and Hart who was working his way up the hierarchy with admirable speed until Angel arrived and started messing with his life. Killed his clients, made him look bad, made him think, second guess his part in the process, cut off his hand, screwed Darla and ultimately destroyed his ‘innocence’ where Wolfram and Hart were concerned. Oh, and there was that ‘cops suck’ sign too. But more than anything, jealousy burns in Lindsey’s gut and he wants retribution for the fact that Angel now sits in the head honcho’s chair, where he would give anything to be. Without even trying Angel has gotten everything Lindsey ever dreamed of having. The flipside is, of course that Lindsey and Eve weren’t to know that Angel was coming unravelled at the seams quite nicely all by himself before they came along to tug at his strings. They have merely hastened the process.
Wesley and Gunn return to the office feeling surprisingly dejected (or, more accurately, rejected) by the fact that apparently they’re not good enough for Spike, that the newcomer thinks they’ve sold out:
Gunn: Thinks we sold out.
Fred: We didn't sell out. We're changing the system from the inside.
Gunn: You know, when you say it out loud, it sounds really naive.
The trio decides to keep this information from Angel but Fred decides to check up on him anyway. She’s forestalled by Eve and a not so subtle demand to get back on the case of the runes. Angel, meanwhile, is sleeping fitfully. Suddenly he sits up, looks around, Lorne is there playing ‘My Darling Clementine’ on the piano and goes by the name Honky-Tonk (perhaps sub-conscious suspicion of Lindsey, our urban cowboy’s involvement in the plot?). Honky-tonk asks why he’s so down:
Angel: I think... I think I'm lost.
On a lot of levels. Has been since they went to Wolfram and Hart. Honky-Tonk recommends a drink and a tune, he’ll be able to read Angel’s path, tell him what to do. But Angel is incapable of singing; he has no tune, only a cracked squeak that tells the empath demon nothing except that he has no path, no future, no destiny. And the audience doesn’t like it:
Fred: I told you he was empty.
Wesley: Yes, but this is ridiculous! We paid good money for this. We paid blood for this.
Lorne: Crowd's turning on ya, sport.
(Gunn turns, snarls viciously and reveals silver cat-eyes; he hisses at Angel.)
The crowd is turning, sick of empty promises, empty prophesies, leaders who are not what they seem. Nothing is what they bargained on. He paid blood for them to be there. Connor’s blood, Cordelia’s blood and now it’s hard to separate them from the company they run. Where do they stop and Wolfram and Hart begin? It’s like a parasite sucking the lifeblood out of them all; it’s exactly like a parasite. Oh, and he’s still got that thing on his shirt.
Somehow, Angel summons the strength to pull the creature off his chest and instantly he wakes. He squelches it so that its innards ooze between his fingers. He sits up gasping, his ordeal over. Eve appears in the doorway holding a large wooden box. He’s confused. She explains away her presence as part of his dream. She opens the box and allows a larger, uglier version of the parasite to crawl from within. Eve releases it to have its way with Angel.
Spike comes home from a trip to the bottle shop to find he has company. Lindsey/Doyle is not particularly welcome and he doesn’t even get the same level of hospitality as was offered to the earlier visitors. Just because this guy is giving him a road to purpose doesn’t mean Spike has to like him. Doesn’t mean he has to jump every time he gets one of those freaky visions.
Lindsey/Doyle: Oh, no. I think you're gonna want to jump on this one.
The large parasite latches on to Angel and instantly a new dream commences. Now he’s sitting outside in the sunshine. It’s warm and peaceful and comforting. Fred, Charles, Lorne and Wes arrive and tell him that he can stay forever if that’s what he wants, he’s earned the rest. They’ve got his work covered. All he has to do is stop caring. Suddenly the soothing words turn to animalistic screeches as each of his companions throws back their head in turn and begins to scream. Spike has arrived, grabbed the parasite from Angel’s chest, flinging it with force against the wall.
Spike: That'll be a bitch of a clean-up.
Angel: Spike?
Spike: No need to thank me; just helping the helpless.
Angel is too weak to do anything but watch Spike leave. The great Angel is completely helpless and having to endure the indignity of having his usurper come to his rescue, putting his fears of inadequacy and irrelevancy firmly in the real. His team come to his side, trying to help with explanations, supporting him steadfast and true. Angel is confused:
Angel: It seemed...real. All of it. (to Fred) You were dissecting me, taking things out of me, and there was this...bear. (to Lorne) You called yourself Honky-Tonk, tried to get me to sing, but... (to Gunn) You were big with the heckling.
And if Spike hadn’t swooped in to save the day then Angel would have been rendered helpless, stuck in a vegetative state. But there is one thing that Angel is sure of - that Eve is involved, that she bought the big one to finish the job the little one started. Eve pleads her innocence but Angel can’t be shaken, locking on to her new earrings as proof that she was there. Fred backs him up despite the slimness of the evidence against Eve. They’re a team, that’s what they do. Eve challenges Angel to tell her exactly what he thinks she’s up to:
Angel: Don't know, Eve. But I'm pretty sure the senior partners didn't give me the reins to their law firm just to turn me into a vegetable. Playing your own game here? What do you think the partners' will do to you after they find out about your little extracurricular activities?
He threatens her with the wrath of the Senior Partners from behind their apron strings. There are some advantages to being of significance to the big boys. But Eve counters with a little challenge of her own:
Eve: So things aren't going your way and you're looking for someone outside your little circle to blame. Here's a thought. Maybe you should try looking inward...unless you don't like what you see.
Her words cut deep. He’s spent the last few days forcibly looking inward and no, he doesn’t like what he sees. But the harsh reality for Angel is that he’s got no one to blame for his current miserable state and situation, but himself. Whatever Angel has lost, whatever Angel has become, it isn’t because of Spike or anyone else’s influence. He is in his present predicament purely because of the choices he himself has made along the way.
The End
This dream wakes Angel, rouses him from his deep delirium…or seems to. He makes his way downstairs and meets Fred who appears pleased to see him up and about again. She sympathises with his dishevelled state saying:
Fred: Always takes me a few days to get back in the swing of things, myself. Um...you should put on a clean shirt, though.
It’s a second reference to a dirty shirt as Spike also pointed this out in the previous dream and oh, Angel’s wearing no shoes, he’s shoeless. He’s sans shoes. (hmmm, that sounds like something…) Then Gunn arrives, excited:
Gunn: Hey, guys. Come on. You'll miss it.
Angel: Miss what?
Lorne: Hey...down in front!
Harmony: Yeah, Angel. You're blocking the apocalypse.
Outside Los Angeles is burning. The final destruction is at hand and at Wolfram and Hart you get front row seats. Angel’s reaction is immediate:
Angel: I have to do something. I have to get out there!
Words versus action; he says, but he doesn’t do. The others hose him down. No need to bother, someone else will do it for him. Yes, it’s another irrelevance dream - the main feature.
Wesley: Don't worry. Spike will take care of it.
Gunn: You should go back to bed.
Lorne: Or at least go put some clean clothes on. You got a little something on your shirt there, babe.
Ouch! And Angel dreams a stake in his chest (symbolic, in this case of his friends stabbing him in the back) and we see that all this talk of dirty shirts has not been just part of the madness of dreams. Angel has a creature, a parasite, a slimy blue alien feeding off him, gorging at his breast and it pinpoints the cause of his vivid dreams.
The apocalypse is averted! There’s cake and a party and songs and its all about Spike. In this dream he’s single-handedly ended Armageddon and turned the world into a beautiful, happily-ever-after, candy mountain place where all our dreams come true. It’s fairytale perfect and in this dream, Spike gets the reward not because he wanted it, but because he didn’t.
Spike: But I didn't do this for a reward.
Gunn: Well, that's why you're getting one.
And in floats the Blue Fairy and with a wave of her magical wand and a sprinkle of glitter she turns Spike into a ‘real boy’, beating heart and all. Fred listens at his chest and confirms the diagnosis. He’s human, he’s alive! In Spike she hears the steady beat of the human heart. In Angel all she heard was moving air, the illusion of the ocean, something great and dynamic in an insignificant shell. And Angel looks down at his chest, feels his non-beating heart and embraces his fate. He turns, takes up his mail cart and pushes it slowly down the hall before him; Number Five emulated completely.
Poor Angel, in his dream he really does position himself as ineffective, hard-done by, um, kind of pathetic; everything he hoped for is going to another and he knows the reason. It’s all got to do with that damn reward. Wanting it, counting on it to be his one day and in doing so he inadvertently tainted the purity of his mission so that he begins to wonder was he ever really selfless and altruistic in motive at all? And he sees Spike surrounded by his friends, getting adulation and praise for being the saviour, for being the hero and he sees Spike getting his reward. The appropriation complete, Angel all too readily resigns himself to a never-ending future of irrelevancy, as the superfluous vampire with a soul.
Now this all seems heartbreaking until we remind ourselves it’s a dream. In reality, Spike’s not surrounded by friends, he’s alone and at the mercy of a self-interested conman. He’s not happy; he’s sad, depressed and lonely. He did avert an apocalypse but he got no party, no thanks and no reward, but unlike dream Angel, he not taking up his mail cart, he’s looking for a way to keep on going. Angel, by contrast, in reality is surrounded by people who love him, are loyal to him but he can only see their worth when he imagines them admiring someone else. Perhaps there is an element of fear there too, what if they did find out what he’s done to them, with the memory wipe, maybe they wouldn’t love him anymore. Maybe that’s why there’s a distance between him and them now and why they might be willing to put their faith in a new champion. And that destiny, that reward? Spike doesn't even want it for craps sake!! Angel wonders how that can be. When he first discovered the Shanshu it was like water to a man dying of thirst, it renewed his vim and vigour, was music to the soul, it was a dream come true . . . but not to Spike. He heard about it, was intrigued, learnt what it was, what it meant, and, symbolically at least, even won it, but still he could walk away, give it back, say Angel was welcome to it. And those things he said in that fight they had, all those things about how he was different, how he was better, maybe there was some truth there too, What if he is better, more deserving because he doesn’t care about the reward? These are the thoughts that play around in the back of Angel’s mind, they feed the fear; make Angel dream fear fuelled dreams.
Spike receives some visitors to his new abode. The surprisingly intimidating duo of Wesley and Gunn want to know what he’s up to. While Spike thoughts are focused on the big picture, purpose, relevance and his place in the world, Wes and Charles are much more localised in their concern:
Wesley: From what we hear... you're fighting the good fight these days.
Gunn: We figure that's our territory.
Spike is surprised. Are they that protective of their domain? Are they afraid of a little competition?
Gunn: Not at all. We're wondering why you left in the first place.
Wesley: If you want to save the world, we've got the resources to help you do it.
They offer him a job. Ask him to join the team. And even though acceptance is something that Spike craves, has always craved, he’s not so keen to jump on board, join the evil empire and be compromised:
Spike: I told Angel, and I'll tell you. A place like that doesn't change... not from the inside. Not from the out. You sign on there, it changes you. Puts things in your head. Spins your compass needle around till you can't cross the street without tripping the proverbial old lady and stepping on her glasses. And it's not like I wasn't there, gents, like I wasn't watching you. Had to haunt the damn place. Remember?
Spike, the speaker of truth, noble but nowhere near saintly (thanks to Eliz at Tea at the Ford for this excellent assessment of Spike's emerging character) tells it like it is, gives them a few home truths. Gunn protests. It’s not so cut and dried! They’re changing the system from within, it’s a new playing field where they set the rules and dictate the game and they see him as a potential player, a team member, an asset. It’s a new experience for Spike, to be wanted. Sure he and Buffy shared a special loyalty but he was never on the team, never a real Scooby. But now, it’s quite enticing, the thought that Angel might want him to stick around…it’s almost too good to be true:
Spike: I can't believe Angel would sign off on that. Unless... he doesn't know you're here, does he?…Hedging our bets, are we, boys?
It is too good to be true. The captain doesn’t want him so he rejects the team with a final taunt:
Spike: And the compass needle keeps spinning. And the world gets murkier and murkier.
Lindsey and Eve are all cosy in the bedroom. Team Angel doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Eve is sure she’s keeping them all busy with the mysterious relic, too busy to check up on Angel and his inexplicable illness (although, interestingly enough, not busy enough to stop them checking up on Spike). Eve asks after their blonde crusader wondering if he’s buying the whole Doyle-visions thing:
Lindsey: So far. I mean, he hasn't sewn a big red "S" on his chest yet, but he's gettin' there. We keep building him up, and we tear Angel down. Pretty soon the senior partners are gonna start thinking they're backing the wrong horse.
And so their plan is revealed; it is audacious, risky and proving very effective. It’s all about Angel, about bringing him down, destroying who he is. It’s personal. It’s vengeance for a lost hand and an interrupted career. Lindsey - once the golden boy of Wolfram and Hart who was working his way up the hierarchy with admirable speed until Angel arrived and started messing with his life. Killed his clients, made him look bad, made him think, second guess his part in the process, cut off his hand, screwed Darla and ultimately destroyed his ‘innocence’ where Wolfram and Hart were concerned. Oh, and there was that ‘cops suck’ sign too. But more than anything, jealousy burns in Lindsey’s gut and he wants retribution for the fact that Angel now sits in the head honcho’s chair, where he would give anything to be. Without even trying Angel has gotten everything Lindsey ever dreamed of having. The flipside is, of course that Lindsey and Eve weren’t to know that Angel was coming unravelled at the seams quite nicely all by himself before they came along to tug at his strings. They have merely hastened the process.
Wesley and Gunn return to the office feeling surprisingly dejected (or, more accurately, rejected) by the fact that apparently they’re not good enough for Spike, that the newcomer thinks they’ve sold out:
Gunn: Thinks we sold out.
Fred: We didn't sell out. We're changing the system from the inside.
Gunn: You know, when you say it out loud, it sounds really naive.
The trio decides to keep this information from Angel but Fred decides to check up on him anyway. She’s forestalled by Eve and a not so subtle demand to get back on the case of the runes. Angel, meanwhile, is sleeping fitfully. Suddenly he sits up, looks around, Lorne is there playing ‘My Darling Clementine’ on the piano and goes by the name Honky-Tonk (perhaps sub-conscious suspicion of Lindsey, our urban cowboy’s involvement in the plot?). Honky-tonk asks why he’s so down:
Angel: I think... I think I'm lost.
On a lot of levels. Has been since they went to Wolfram and Hart. Honky-Tonk recommends a drink and a tune, he’ll be able to read Angel’s path, tell him what to do. But Angel is incapable of singing; he has no tune, only a cracked squeak that tells the empath demon nothing except that he has no path, no future, no destiny. And the audience doesn’t like it:
Fred: I told you he was empty.
Wesley: Yes, but this is ridiculous! We paid good money for this. We paid blood for this.
Lorne: Crowd's turning on ya, sport.
(Gunn turns, snarls viciously and reveals silver cat-eyes; he hisses at Angel.)
The crowd is turning, sick of empty promises, empty prophesies, leaders who are not what they seem. Nothing is what they bargained on. He paid blood for them to be there. Connor’s blood, Cordelia’s blood and now it’s hard to separate them from the company they run. Where do they stop and Wolfram and Hart begin? It’s like a parasite sucking the lifeblood out of them all; it’s exactly like a parasite. Oh, and he’s still got that thing on his shirt.
Somehow, Angel summons the strength to pull the creature off his chest and instantly he wakes. He squelches it so that its innards ooze between his fingers. He sits up gasping, his ordeal over. Eve appears in the doorway holding a large wooden box. He’s confused. She explains away her presence as part of his dream. She opens the box and allows a larger, uglier version of the parasite to crawl from within. Eve releases it to have its way with Angel.
Spike comes home from a trip to the bottle shop to find he has company. Lindsey/Doyle is not particularly welcome and he doesn’t even get the same level of hospitality as was offered to the earlier visitors. Just because this guy is giving him a road to purpose doesn’t mean Spike has to like him. Doesn’t mean he has to jump every time he gets one of those freaky visions.
Lindsey/Doyle: Oh, no. I think you're gonna want to jump on this one.
The large parasite latches on to Angel and instantly a new dream commences. Now he’s sitting outside in the sunshine. It’s warm and peaceful and comforting. Fred, Charles, Lorne and Wes arrive and tell him that he can stay forever if that’s what he wants, he’s earned the rest. They’ve got his work covered. All he has to do is stop caring. Suddenly the soothing words turn to animalistic screeches as each of his companions throws back their head in turn and begins to scream. Spike has arrived, grabbed the parasite from Angel’s chest, flinging it with force against the wall.
Spike: That'll be a bitch of a clean-up.
Angel: Spike?
Spike: No need to thank me; just helping the helpless.
Angel is too weak to do anything but watch Spike leave. The great Angel is completely helpless and having to endure the indignity of having his usurper come to his rescue, putting his fears of inadequacy and irrelevancy firmly in the real. His team come to his side, trying to help with explanations, supporting him steadfast and true. Angel is confused:
Angel: It seemed...real. All of it. (to Fred) You were dissecting me, taking things out of me, and there was this...bear. (to Lorne) You called yourself Honky-Tonk, tried to get me to sing, but... (to Gunn) You were big with the heckling.
And if Spike hadn’t swooped in to save the day then Angel would have been rendered helpless, stuck in a vegetative state. But there is one thing that Angel is sure of - that Eve is involved, that she bought the big one to finish the job the little one started. Eve pleads her innocence but Angel can’t be shaken, locking on to her new earrings as proof that she was there. Fred backs him up despite the slimness of the evidence against Eve. They’re a team, that’s what they do. Eve challenges Angel to tell her exactly what he thinks she’s up to:
Angel: Don't know, Eve. But I'm pretty sure the senior partners didn't give me the reins to their law firm just to turn me into a vegetable. Playing your own game here? What do you think the partners' will do to you after they find out about your little extracurricular activities?
He threatens her with the wrath of the Senior Partners from behind their apron strings. There are some advantages to being of significance to the big boys. But Eve counters with a little challenge of her own:
Eve: So things aren't going your way and you're looking for someone outside your little circle to blame. Here's a thought. Maybe you should try looking inward...unless you don't like what you see.
Her words cut deep. He’s spent the last few days forcibly looking inward and no, he doesn’t like what he sees. But the harsh reality for Angel is that he’s got no one to blame for his current miserable state and situation, but himself. Whatever Angel has lost, whatever Angel has become, it isn’t because of Spike or anyone else’s influence. He is in his present predicament purely because of the choices he himself has made along the way.
The End