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The Myth of Narcissus	By : QueenB Category: -Buffy the Vampire Slayer > Het - Male/Female > Buffy/Spike(William) > Buffy/Spike(William) Views: 1898 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-The Myth of Narcissus
- 1
The Myth of Narcissus

“‘Narcissus was loved by many,’ the poet Ovid introduces his tale. ‘Both youths and young girls wanted him; but he had much cold pride within his tender body: no youth, no girl could ever touch his heart.’
“Narcissus is a radiant, energetic young man who excites the passions of the nymphs, all of whom he rejects. One of his spurned admirers, in vengeance, prays that Narcissus might himself someday know the torment of unrequited love. The nymph’s wish is fulfilled when Narcissus, hot and thirsty from hunting, stumbles upon a clear pool in the woods. He leans forward to drink and instantly becomes enchanted with the beautiful face staring back at him. Narcissus brings his lips near to take a kiss and plunges his arms in for an embrace.
“But the image he longs for flies from his touch, only to return again each time he withdraws. When Narcissus cries in frustration, his falling tears disrupt the figure in the water, and he beseeches the spirit not to abandon him. “‘Stay, I entreat you!’ he cries. ‘Let me at least gaze upon you if I may not touch you.’ With this,” the tale concludes, “and much more of the same kind, he cherished the flame that consumed him.” Narcissus loses all thought of food or sleep. Transfixed, he pines, withers away, and dies.
“To understand this strange case history we must grasp the true nature of the young man’s malady. People often think of Narcissus as the symbol of excessive self-regard, but in fact, he exemplifies the opposite. As the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino observed in the 1500s, Narcissus did not suffer from an overabundance of self- love, but rather from its deficiency. The myth is a parable about paralysis. The youth, who first appears in restless motion, is suddenly rooted to one spot, unable to leave the elusive spirit. As Ficino remarked, if Narcissus had possessed real self-love, he would have been able to leave his fascination. The curse of Narcissus is immobilization, not out of love for himself, but out of dependency upon his image.” – I Don’t Want to Talk About It, Terrence Real
The trouble for Narcissus begins when he bends his eyes on an immovable, inanimate construct. The image appears to be his exact double, absolutely like himself. But it is incapable of loving him back. The more he attempts to draw close to it, the more it retreats.
What does this have to do with Spike? Read on.
In spite of Spike’s obsessions with various women--Cecily, Drusilla, and Buffy--there is no true connection with any of them. He imagines them to be like himself but attempts to draw near them always have them floating out of his reach. Cecily spurns him, Drusilla’s mind is addled and wandering (and her first affection always seems to be for Angelus anyway) and Buffy appears to be most distant even when he thinks he has her. Spike imagines in each case that he has met his match, his exact double. Love for him is about the pairing with an absolute equal. Like Narcissus with his reflection, Spike can only love where he sees the exact reflection of himself. For him, love is about images and faces not substance.
“This is Drusilla, girl! You have the slightest idea what she means to me? It’s the face of my salvation!” – “Crush”
Spike realizes his “love” for Buffy not from his series of encounters with her or through appreciation of her character. He has a dream about her, one that incorporates all his notions of vanity, death wishes and his rampant self-pity. Perhaps the dream like many dreams is an unconscious manifestation of his hidden desires. (It is worth noting that while dream-Spike declares he loves dream-Buffy, she merely says that she wants him.)
Nevertheless it remains a flat image in his head. It is not like the prophetic omens Buffy experiences or visions she used to share with her first love. The dream is all about Spike’s feelings--no one else’s.
Then, like Narcissus, Spike is doomed to follow his image, to watch Buffy endlessly. He tracks her from one place to another, his eyes relentlessly bent upon her form, yearning for her to gaze on him as he does on her. However, like the poor doomed boy, efforts to reach Buffy or establish contact with her result in constant rebuffs.
At one point, he is so desperate for Buffy, Spike even has Harmony pretending to be her. His shrine is also a clear sign of his inability to deal with the reality of a true loved one, only an image of it. Losing Harmony as his fantasy stand-in and tired of his inanimate doll, Spike has an android built in Buffy’s image.
However, the finished creation is deeply flawed. Stupid, sex-obsessed and blindly focused on Spike above all else, she is nowhere near a true creation of Buffy. She is merely a reflection of his desires. She even uses his language and words, phrases that Buffy would not. When she talks about love, Spike is merely talking to himself.
“Oh, Spike, you’re the big bad. You’re the BIG bad!” – “Intervention”
“Angel’s lame. His hair grows straight up and he’s bloody stupid.” – “Intervention”
Spike tries to alter his nature to suit Buffy’s, to be good. Just as he was convinced he and Cecily were special, as he made himself over to match Drusilla in terms of viciousness, so he tries to re-model himself for Buffy.
“Oh, they’re vulgarians. They’re not like you and I.” – “Fool for Love”
But his efforts are doomed to failure. Spike is a selfish, evil demon, a fact he extols to Xander and reveals himself to be no matter how many feeble swipes at being good he makes. His betrayal with Adam, his destruction of Buffy’s affair with Riley, his forced coercion of Buffy by chaining her to a wall--all show a self-involved cruel nature worthy of a demon. He is what he is and he cannot be good, no matter how pathetically he tries.
He also cannot make Buffy conform to his own image. For mirror images aren’t exact duplicates. They are our opposites. When you lift your right hand, the mirror lifts its left. The only thing the mirror does that matches your movements is to look into your eyes.
“I know I’m a bad poet but I’m a good man and all I ask is that...that you try to see me.” – “Fool for Love”
“No, look at me! I love you. You’re all I bloody think about. Dream about.” – “Crush”
That is the end that Spike seeks. He demands his images face him, that they see him for who he is--or rather how he wishes himself to be seen. Lacking empathy, he never sees himself as others do. He doesn’t know himself as a pathetic mama’s boy, Cecily’s inferior, Drusilla’s sometime playmate or Buffy’s whipping boy. Each woman must point out to him in often crushing terms (or scenes of deep humiliation) just how little she thinks of him. Each of his images leaves him.
“I’m drowning in you, Summers, I’m drowning in you.” – “Crush”
Spike speaks about drowning in Buffy much as Narcissus would have drowned if he’d tried too hard to embrace his watery twin. The wording is significant.
This is not the language of healthy love between two sane individuals. To speak of drowning suggests something darker and more sinister than affection, love or even hotheaded passion. Spike equates Buffy with a force of nature that will eventually engulf and kill him.
Perhaps this is what he wants. Narcissus pines away for his image until he dies. Spike is already dead. However, Buffy is a Slayer, capable of destroying him completely, a fact reflected in his dream of her. Yet he willfully pursues her.
Spike’s obsession with Slayers, girls born to destroy his kind, is well known. He claims to have defeated two such women because they possessed a death wish. But what of his? Let us look at precisely how his first death occurred.
Unlike the majority of vamp victims, William wasn’t attacked and turned against his will. In the moments before his death, he sees Drusilla’s true face (the face of his salvation). This is an awful death he’s facing yet he stands without flinching, without trying to escape or scream, while she bites out his throat. He has spoken about Slayers having death wishes. Here is a clear sign of his desire to die. No doubt he sees this as another aspect of similarity between himself and Buffy.
After Buffy’s resurrection, we see Spike embracing his mirror twin, finally at one with Buffy. Buffy even looks like him. Spike is a scrawny, bony, emaciated fake blond. Buffy is a skinny, anorexic fake blond. (Perhaps her depression is causing a lack of appetite.) Narcissus also wasted away, neither eating nor drinking, while he bent his eyes on his image. However, he noticed no alteration in it, continuing to see it as beautiful even while they both succumbed to the ravages of hunger.
So Buffy has become Spike’s mirror. But, as mirrors are cold, empty and lifeless, so too is Buffy. Just as we may warm a mirror temporarily with our breath or body heat when we press against it, so Buffy is temporarily brought to life when Spike presses against her. But whatever she gets from him doesn’t last.
A mirror shows a reflection of other things. But it doesn’t contain those objects. A mirror can show the fleeting faces of loved ones or a table, book, lampshade or desk. But it is none of these things. By making herself into Spike’s mirror and image, Buffy becomes or rather remains disconnected from life. She drops out of college, takes a dead-end job, neglects her sister and ignores her friends.
This suits Spike just fine. He makes no attempts to get her to return to the living. Buffy is now a creature of darkness, a dead thing like himself, and he couldn’t be happier.
“I told you...stop trying to see me.” – “Gone”
Buffy, however, feels no connection with anyone not even Spike. She resents his desire to draw her into his world. Even when she has sex with him, she is emotionally remote. She wishes to withdraw from him. When she sexually assaults him while invisible, he is aware this is her purpose. He wants all of her but he can’t have her. Even her image has disappeared and this deeply upsets him.
Then she leaves him. She tells him it’s over between them and she walks. Spike is unconcerned initially. He’s certain this is temporary, that she will return. She always has in the past; that, after all, is what Narcissus’s pond lover did. No matter how often it fled his touch, it always returned--out of reach yet forever faithful. It is an inherent aspect of mirrored images.
But Buffy does not return. The leave-taking is permanent this time and Spike is first dismayed, then enraged beyond reason. Your mirror image is not supposed to leave you; it is supposed to leap to your gaze from every shiny surface. It is as if Spike himself has disappeared and he cannot bear it. He assaults his image, certain this is the only way to win Buffy back. (The scene takes place in the bathroom, a place of running waters. An obvious metaphor perhaps but one that bears pointing out.) But he is repulsed again, as Narcissus was when he tried to grasp his liquid water spirit.
Having discovered that, in spite of all his efforts, Buffy remains unchanged, Spike flees. He is determined to change himself for Buffy again. He returns to Sunnydale with a soul. (For the sake of this hypothesis, let us assume that this was his original intention. It remains under debate but that is a separate discussion.) If Angel could win her with a soul, surely he can do so. Now he is another vampire’s twinned image, even though he haughtily denies it. This is true; he didn’t retrieve his soul to be like Angel. He did it to be like Buffy. He wishes to be her image not that of her first love.
“Maybe I wasn’t meant to last this long. One more thing you and I have in common, pet.” – “The Killer in Me”
But is he Buffy’s equal at last? Not really. He is still a vampire although he tries once more to wedge himself back into Buffy’s life. He interacts sporadically with her friends, goes out with the Potentials and wears more conservative clothing than he has in the past. But he is still a vampire, a dead thing. However, because Buffy is now forcing herself to rely on him (to the detriment of innocent people around her), Spike once more fools himself into thinking they are becoming alike. He refuses to stay with the Potentials and Buffy’s friends even when they will need his help more than Buffy does. Instead he runs after her when she is ejected from her home. Once more he cannot bear to be without his image.
Finding Buffy in the abandoned home, he goes on to say how he’s seen her--the best and worst of her. And the conclusion he draws from all his watching is this: She’s the One.
The one what? The one for him? The one to save the world? The one true god? There is a vagueness to his statement that leads you to suspect that Spike is once again seeing a clouded reflection of himself.
Did he not state that he retrieved his soul for her, to make himself over into the man she wanted? He is re-inventing himself to fit her image as he did with Cecily and Drusilla. This is reinforced by the fact that he again demands that she look at him before he declares his love, a scene eerily like the one when he chained her up in his crypt. It’s as if Spike cannot see her unless she is looking back into his eyes. Her gaze is the reflection that he lost when he became a vampire.
As the amulet destroys Spike, he cries out in shock that he can feel his soul. Was he not aware of it before? How can he have suffered such a change and be unaware of how it affects him inside?
Once again, we are confronted with a stark truth. Spike cannot truly see himself, even when he has affected such a fundamental change in his own nature. It takes an outside influence--the amulet--to make him cognizant of how he has been altered.
When he meets his end, the mirrored image reaches out to Spike. Buffy’s left hand clasps his right and both are engulfed in flames. Buffy at last tells Spike what he’s longed to hear for almost two years.
But Spike knows it isn’t true. Perhaps he’s heard Buffy speak of love before and knows the difference. Perhaps he realizes it’s just a sop to his feelings. Perhaps, finally, he knows what Narcissus had suspected all along. No matter how much you love your image, no matter how much you strain to conform to it or it to you, it cannot love you in return. It is incapable of it.
So he rejects Buffy’s offer of love. In the end, his image flies from him and he laughs, cherishing the flame that consumes him.

Finis
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The Myth of Narcissus