Chapter 5
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Previously:
… But it wasn’t redemption that got him interested in helping…it was Liam’s attraction to a fifteen year old child.”
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“What?” Buffy gasped out. She wasn’t shocked by the information. She already knew this. No, she was shocked by the inference. She had never considered it from anyone else’s point of view. The new view point made her feel dirty. As if she’d been touched by something really gross. When she thought about it, what type of two hundred and forty year old is going be attracted to- or fall in love with- a fifteen year old child? Ew…can you say pedophile? And that’s what he had told her- that he saw her at Hemery and fell in love with her heart. Her heart? Oh please…at that stage she’d been a valley girl Malibu Barbie who thought she was being stalked by a creepy old guy who lived in a delusional world filled with monsters…and maybe spent his free time speaking to Elvis! She’d been sitting on the school steps, sucking on a damned lolly-pop! Yet Angel fell in love with her heart? She’d been so self-centred at the time, that she made Cordy and Harmony look like selfless do-gooders…what the hell did that say about Angel?
“He was sent to help you, Buffy. To keep you safe. How often did he patrol with you? Did he inform you immediately of threats and tell you everything he knew? What was his reaction to the prophecy that foretold of your death? Did he do his job and keep you safe from that?” Penny asked the hard questions. “You don’t need to answer, I can tell you. He rarely patrolled with you, he preferred to stalk you. He hinted at problems, never told you all he knew, and what information he did give you, he gave cryptically. He accepted your fate as foretold by the prophecy, never considering for a minute that if the powers had sent him here to protect you, then perhaps that was their way of saying he had it in his power to avert the prophecy. He failed in his job. You died…and Xander revived you, not Angel. Not much of a protector, If you ask me, Xander did a better job.” Penny paused for a moment; allowing Buffy the time to process what had been said.
Deliberately shrugging her shoulders in dismissal, Penny continued; “Oh well, maybe he was a better boyfriend. Let’s see shall we?” Penny rhetorically asked. “You both went to see the same movie…I won’t say he took you, because…well...you paid. A foreign film I believe, that you had no interest in but went to anyway because Angel thought that as a teenager, you needed more culture in your life. How did that work out for you?” Penny asked, amused by Buffy’s grimace.
“There’s the time he took you ice skating, but no, that’s right. You had to break into the rink, so he didn’t actually take you there, he just encouraged a little breaking and entering. Let’s see…um…the Bronze? Well no, not really, because he went there, he met you inside, and didn’t even have a drink with you. Oh well, at least you can say you made out a lot…shame it was in graveyards.” Penny gave Buffy a hard look, forcing her to look at the relationship without the rose coloured glasses that she usually saw it through.
“He told you that you were his soulmate, then he lost the soul that he had been cursed with by having sex with a teenager. A moment of perfect happiness for a 241 year old is apparently the act of deflowering a seventeen year old virgin.” Penny’s disgust at this concept was displayed clearly in her tone.
“The part of him that wasn’t a cursed soul hated you to the point of obsession. Regardless of anything else, did it occur to you at all that if he loved you with that soul but didn’t without it, that it was reasonable to conclude that the only part of him that supposedly loved you was the soul? And that the reason he jumped on the council bandwagon and told you that demons can’t love was because he didn’t want to tell you the truth? You knew that he was wrong. You knew that demons could love, Buffy; otherwise you wouldn’t have believed that threatening to stake Drusilla when you were at the Sunset Club would effectively stop Spike. You based your whole threat on the strength of his love for her.”
“You’re right. I did know.” Buffy looked shocked by her own admission; her mind replaying images of the past over and over in her head. “I knew. And Spike wasn’t my only clue. When we lived our worse nightmares and I was a vampire, I felt the bloodlust, but I wasn’t overcome with the need to kill, I could control it...and I still had all my feelings and emotions.”
"Oh Goddess," Willow gasped, "Angel convinced himself, then he projected all of his own beliefs onto us! That is sooo psych 101. Then we took all the anger we had towards Angelus and directed at the only vampire we could. Poor Spike! We couldn’t get mad at Angel, cause Buffy wouldn’t let us, so we hurt Spike instead... that's transference. Oh, goddess...oh, Spike...I'm so sorry!” Willow begged the vampire for forgiveness, so distressed by her behaviour that she was close to tears.
Spike’s look of awe at her apology touched and shamed almost all of them. His gentle smile and nod at the redhead helped to ease her guilt.
Riley looked at Buffy. Unable to contain himself any longer, blurted out the question he’d been holding at bay, "You were a vampire? Is there anyone here who hasn't been a demon at some point?"
"I thought I was, but Spike proved I wasn't." Tara shyly smiled at the grinning vampire.
“Well, you don’t count, you’re a witch,” Riley dismissed the Wiccan.
"Hey! Leave her alone! And it's not the same thing....not that being either one is bad, it's just different." Willow defended her girlfriend, while attempting to remain politically correct.
“You really don’t like my friends do you, Riley?" Buffy stated coldly to the oblivious ex-soldier.
“It’s alright, Buffy, don’t worry about it, I understand that they’re your friends. We seem to be learning a lot about your lack of judgement, but I can help you with that,” Riley offered, completely unaware that his words might be construed as patronizing and insulting.
“Agent Finn,” Penny waited for him to look at her before continuing. “You appear to be very sure of your opinions. You also appear to be under the mistaken impression that you are experienced and knowledgeable in all matters relating to the supernatural; let’s address that erroneous misconception right now.” She smiled coldly at the man.
“You’ve only been actively involved, if that’s what you want to call your part in the Initiative, for approximately a year and a half. This makes you the person with the least amount of experience in the supernatural of this entire group.
“All your knowledge of the supernatural comes from a woman who ran a concentration camp similar to those that were run in Nazi Germany and believed, like the Nazis before her, that live experimentation on sentient beings was acceptable behaviour. Her own lack of understanding of the supernatural world and her egomanic belief that she could control supernatural forces led to her death at the hands of one of her own experiments. You learned, supported, and actively employed the methods of Professor Walsh’s teachings. The only exception you made was for Oz, and that was because he was Buffy’s friend and not because you believed his treatment was unjustified. Finally, regardless of the fact that Professor Walsh’s death must have indicated to you- unless stupidity is a character trait- her complete and utter lack of understanding of the subject; you still choose to follow her teachings today. I don’t think you have the right to be making comments relating to anyone else’s lack of judgement, when you’ve clearly been guilty of it yourself.
“Please tell me that at the very least, you’ve learned to carry a stake with you at all times?” Penny smiled when he pulled three stakes out of his pockets and laid them on the table, smirking at her.
Moving quickly, she picked one of them up and moved away from him.
“Pop quiz on true evil, people. An individual procures an instrument of torture and carries it with him. He doesn’t want to kill his victim yet, he wants to hurt him. Make his victim fear him, so that each time he is seen his victim will cringe, asking himself ‘will it be death or pain?’ Soon his victim will be begging for it to be death.” Penny looked around the room, recognition on many faces. “Who am I talking about?” She asked them quietly.
“Angelus,” Xander, Willow, Buffy and Giles responded sychronistically, their voices showing varying degrees of anger and disgust.
Penny held up the stake she had taken from Riley. “Plastic wood-grain. It doesn’t kill; it’s only purpose is to cause pain.” Placing her hand on Spike’s shoulder, she finished her point by looking at Riley as she asked, “Who’s the real monster?”