Part 2 (Giles POV)

She tried to hide her fear when I first approached her, but I saw it. I hesitated for a moment before coming near her, giving her ample time to get away from me, but she didn't. I can see she is not the same girl who jumped off that tower... she is broken and I don't know how to begin putting her back together again. I have a million questions I want to ask her but I know the time for that hasn't come yet. She is incredibly fragile right now and I will have to tread carefully. I've made more than my fair share of mistakes in my years as her watcher and she has always forgiven me, but I realize that right now I really can't afford one.

I know that if Willow is right --if she truly was in Hell-- then the damage will almost certainly run deeper than anything we could possibly begin to comprehend... and yet we will have to see her thru, knowing that there can be no help and that --at least until she can manage to tell us about it-- we will be going in blind, risking making things worse in stead of better at every turn. While I hold her I vow that I will do everything within my power to help her make it back... to help her crawl out of the Hell she is still trapped in.

***

I'm afraid to move, unwilling to run the risk of disturbing my slayer's sleep. She is so tired and for once she seems to be at peace.

I have been watching her for the past couple of days and in doing so I have grown even more concerned. She is clingy --there is no other word to describe it-- and that is so unlike her that it terrifies me, but somehow I know that there is something else, something darker, something I can't quite understand. I have seen how she freezes whenever I enter the room --almost as if she were afraid of me-- then she approaches me hesitantly, hugs me tight and refuses to let go. I know her sleep is plagued by nightmares unless I stay with her and while I am moved by the depth of her trust, I am also profoundly worried by the whole situation.

I am well aware that this is so only with me. Her reactions are different when she is faced with the others. With the girls and with Xander it is almost as if she were terrified of letting them out of her sight but she is not afraid of them, she doesn't seem to need their constant touch to reassure herself that everything is fine... and yet it is her reaction to Spike's presence that I find to be the strangest one of all: With Spike she is almost herself.

I hate my inability to help her. I know she is slipping away from us, losing her will to fight with every passing day and there's nothing I can do to prevent it. I realize that it's time for me to ask for help... and there is only one man --one creature-- that can possibly understand what she is going through: Angel.

***

I am caught totally off guard by her reaction to Angel's presence --by her undiluted fear-- and yet I can't help but notice that Angel himself is not surprised. It is almost as if he had been expecting her to react this way. That doesn't mean I cannot see the hurt in the vampire's face. It's as if his fears were being confirmed and I'm somewhat relieved by his acceptance of Buffy's reaction... at least he hasn't made any further move to approach her, giving me an opportunity to try to calm her down. I see him step away instead but I can't wonder about his reasons, not now. Now I'm too busy trying to soothe Buffy. She is breathing hard, with her face burrowed in my shirt and her eyes shut tight... and there is no way I could not feel her trembling in my arms.

I see the look Angel shoots Spike, asking him to follow him out of the room. For a moment I wish I could go with them... Angel has the answers I need and yet I know that my slayer needs me and there is no way I could possibly leave her alone right now.

***

Once I'm sure Buffy is asleep I ask Dawn to stay with her and I go looking for Spike. I don't like letting her out of my sight, not even for a moment --I guess Buffy is not the only one who is feeling more than a little clingy right now-- but I know that if I am to help her this conversation can't be postponed and I cannot run the risk of having her wake up in the middle of it.

I find Spike waiting for me in the basement as I knew I would. He looks serious --almost subdued-- and he's trademark cockiness is gone.

"Angel left a while ago." He tells me and I nod. The sun is about to rise and he obviously couldn't afford to take any chances with that... not to mention the obvious fact that his presence wasn't helping.

"Does he know what happened to her? Did he tell you anything?" I press.

"Yes. He has a theory as to what she's been through, but you won't like it."

"Yes, well, I realized that from the moment I saw her but this is not about me."

"It is about you," he tells me cryptically, "more than you know."

"Would you quit stalling?" I say, trying to keep my anger in check.

"Are you sure you won't be tempted to shoot the messenger? Well, shoot is fine as long as you don't decide to stake the messenger."

"What happened up there? Angel seemed to understand her fear."

"That he did, mate. He's been there, done that... spent an eternity trapped in that place."

"So?"

"You see, torture is just a tiny part of it, you can get used to it. That's not what makes Hell hell."

"Then what is it?" I ask, not entirely sure I can deal with the answer.

"That place plays with your memories, it twists them. The poof says that chances are that right now the slayer can't really tell here from there."

"What do you mean by 'it twists your memories'?"

"I mean that your friends become your enemies, they turn against you, they hurt you. As far as you can tell they are the ones doing the torturing and soon there are no safe places left in your mind any more. You have nowhere to hide and you lose yourself."

I try to process that information. I guess it makes sense but right now I'm too busy trying to keep my nausea at bay to approach this rationally. If that's what Buffy went through, if in Buffy's mind Angel was the one hurting her then her reaction to his presence would be perfectly understandable... but Angel wouldn't be the only one to trigger her fear. No, there has to be a different explanation.

"Angel is wrong." I blurt out, trying to hang on to my denial.

"How do you figure?"

"Because her reactions to the rest of us wouldn't make sense if that were the case."

"You are the one who's wrong, mate. They do make sense, you just don't want to see it." He insists.

"There has to be another explanation."

"Why? Because of the way she clings to you? That's what told Angel that he was right in the first place. I've seen her flinch when you approach her."

"Yes, but then she relaxes almost immediately. With Angel she was terrified, she couldn't even stand being in the same room with him. Tonight she was holding on to me so tight that I could hardly breathe!"

"And you are comforted by that?" He asks sarcastically and I begin to wonder what he sees that I don't, what did Angel tell him that he can't bring himself to tell me. "Think of how she reacts to each one of us!"

"That's the thing, her reactions are quite different from one of us to the next. With the girls she's doing as well as can be expected, I guess, though she does seem to get a bit anxious when she can't see them. The same goes for Xander. She is terrified of Angel --we both saw that-- and she seems to be clinging to me a little too much. As for you, for some reason with you she seems to be acting almost like she used to, maybe a little more subdued but that's all."

"And you don't see a pattern emerging?"

"Not really. Could you bloody well say what you mean once and for all and stop beating around the bush?"

"You want me to stop beating around the bush? Fine. You want to know what the difference is? I'll tell you, that's easy enough. The girls and Xander she sees as needing protection. If something were messing with her memories she would probably have seen herself as being helpless to stop them from being hurt, but I don't think it would have made much sense for whatever was pulling the strings in that place to have them hurting her. That's not how her mind works and that could also account for why she's reassured by the fact that she can see that they are fine. As for me, I think I may have been spared playing a role in her trip to Hell altogether, simply because she doesn't trust me enough to think of me as a safe place but she doesn't really see me as needing protection either. Happy now?"

For a moment I wonder if that could possibly be it. I have to admit that it does make sense in a twisted kind of way, except for her clinginess, however I do know that there's something Spike is not saying here so I force myself to ask the question. "And what about me?"

"Watcher, what's the difference between you and Angel?"

"He's a vampire." I reply immediately, not knowing what he's getting at.

"Exactly."

"I'm not following you."

"I think that just like Angel she sees you as a protector --that would be the most logical explanation-- but the fact that he's a vampire does make a difference. What does she do when you are around?"

"She stays close, extremely close. Usually she just holds on to me and refuses to let go."

"And you don't see a possible explanation? You don't see what's the difference between a man and a vampire that could account for that reaction?"

"My heartbeat," I finally realize, "she's grounding herself by listening to my heartbeat."

"Finally."

"So you are saying that if I was there --hurting her while she was in Hell-- that me wouldn't have had a heartbeat. In my case that's a tangible difference --something she can hold on to while I'm around-- but with Angel she would have no such reference, no real way of telling for sure what's real and that could serve to explain why she was so afraid of him when he was here."

"Took you long enough to figure that one out, mate. You are almost there, just one more push."

"What do you mean 'almost'?"

"Tell me something, in how many ways do you think you could have hurt her that would actually have allowed her to realize that you didn't have a heartbeat in the first place?"

It takes me a few seconds to realize what Spike is implying but when it finally registers I lose the battle I had been waging against the nausea that had been threatening to overwhelm me.