Mistrust and Wrongness

Disclaimer: Characters and Premise are borrowed from the show "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

Giles said I kept Angel's return a secret because I know what I was doing was wrong. Giles is the one who is wrong, but I can't tell him that.

Kissing Angel was wrong. I admit that, but it really was an accident, Xander's sarcastic comments aside. It was habit, it was seeing him looking so much like he used to after so long.

Before Angel was the one person I could turn to for protection. It's hard being the chosen one, the one girl in all the world with the strength and ability to fight the vampires. I'm still a kid, kids are supposed to think that their parents can keep them safe. I don't have that; instead I'm supposed to protect them, and the rest of the world from the monsters.

The one girl in all the world with the strength and skills, so who am I supposed to turn to to feel safe and protected?

Angel made me feel that way. He was strong enough for me to lean on. He made me feel not so alone. I loved that almost more than I loved him.

When Angel came back so sick and confused it scared me. It was sort of like facing Angelus again, he was Angel, but not my Angel. Only this time he wasn't evil, he was hurt, hurt so bad in mind and body that I wasn't sure he'd ever be whole again.

I asked Giles in a pretend rhetorical question what Angel would be like if he came back from Hell. Giles told me he would be insane, that since he had his soul when I trapped him there his mind would have been destroyed by the centuries of torture. I was scared that Giles was right. When Angel first came back he was little more than an animal. When I looked into his eyes I saw only a cornered animal's fear, not love, not hate, not recognition of any kind.

I was scared that that would never change, and it was my fault. My actions turned him into this. I knew I could never hurt him again, that I'd take care of him for the rest of my life even if he never got any better than he was when I found him.

When he said my name I was beyond bliss. It was then that I know there was hope. Still he needed time to recover.

I wasn't wrong to protect and care for Angel, he was hurt because of me and even more importantly he had cared for and protected me when I needed him, he held me when I cried, he tried to make me happy. He loved me, I loved him; how could I not help him?

Maybe I was wrong to keep his return a secret, but what Xander did tells me that I was right not to trust my friends.

That's what I can't say, why I didn't tell them. I wasn't ashamed of helping Angel. I was protecting him, from them, as much as anything else.

Angel was so disoriented when he came back and he'd have spells of weakness where he couldn't even stand let alone protect himself. I didn't trust my friends not to hurt him, so I didn't tell them he was back. I knew he couldn't stay a secret forever. I just wanted to keep him safe until he'd had a chance to heal, until he could face them without being in danger.

I didn't, I don't, trust my friends. It's a sad and scary thought. And look what Xander did the instant he found out about Angel. He sent Faith to kill him! Why did I keep Angel a secret? I wonder, maybe cause I didn't want him to die. You think?

I wanted him to have the chance to get strong again. He needed time to find his way back to what he had been. He had changed so much. Before when he spoke so little he was cryptic and mysterious. When he came back it was because he wasn't comfortable talking anymore, almost like he'd forgotten how. His sentences were broken, as if he lost the strength to speak in the middle of a thought.

Before he was so confident. The first time we spoke he was lying flat on his back in an alleyway, my foot pressing him into the ground, and he still had this presence that made him utterly unforgettable. When he came back he was a ghost, like he didn't know how to escape the shadows anymore. The confidence I'd originally been captivated by was gone. What was left was someone who was lost and in pain. A spirit haunting a life that he didn't know how to live anymore.

He was so wracked with guilt; he couldn't have faced their anger and recriminations. Not then, he wasn't strong enough emotionally. So I lied. I lied to my friends, my mentor, and my mother, but I only lied because it was necessary to protect the one I loved.

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