Meat

I'm trying to conceal my horror, I really am, but I don't think it's working and her puzzled look is only making it worse. It's like she can't even understand why her comment bothered me, as far as she can tell what she said was meant to be reassuring. She said it without bitterness, as if she were stating a fact, as if she were saying that the moon is shining... which it is.

Whenever I think I'm starting to understand what she's been through, something comes along and I realize that I've barely scratched the surface. It's happened so many times that I know I shouldn't really be surprised any more but I always am, and yet the worst part is her acceptance. She can't even see how wrong it is.

Her whole perception of herself --of what's normal-- has been turned upside down, and while the rational part of my mind has been aware of that for a while, the more concrete pieces of evidence are harder to come to terms with. I have spent weeks trying to conceal what she sometimes tries to do to me in her sleep. I was sure she wouldn't be able to cope with it and she just found out. The worst part is that she found out the one time I was so tired that I couldn't keep my own body from responding. As soon as I realized what had just happened I tried to apologize, making sure I was giving her more than enough room to get away from me and absolutely certain that I had lost all the progress we had made in the past ten weeks. I think I could have handled that better than her surprise at my own horror and her quiet statement that it was fine, that she's 'just meat'.

I know she doesn't really believe that --or at least I hope she doesn't-- but I do realize that any spiritual connection she might have had with her own body, with her own sexuality, has been shattered and I'm not even sure whether or not restoring it is a possibility. In order to survive she was forced to move her body from 'me' to 'it'. Oddly enough after what just happened I can understand her a little better. It is a lot easier for me to try to come to terms with the fact that my body, that it , responded than to deal with the fact that I responded.

I've thought about getting her help --professional help-- more than once but I still haven't figured out how to do it. There are several things I have going against me right now. First of all by the very nature of Buffy's situation I know the chances of finding a therapist willing to take her case seriously are slim to none. Then I have to deal with the fact that Buffy is still struggling to verbalize what she's been through when I'm holding her and totally unable to do it when I'm not... and to top it all off there's her hysterical fear of hospitals. I remember what happened when she got sick several years ago, I know what happened to her cousin, but I also know that that was just an excuse. The information I have on her personal background is far more complete than she knows and I know what Joyce did when Buffy first tried to tell her about the things that go bump in the night before I even met her. I am painfully aware of the weeks she spent in that mental institution and I know how unlikely she is to ever trust a therapist again.

In addition to all that I know the one thing I can't afford to do right now is jeopardize Buffy's trust, and that pretty much rules out the possibility of even mentioning what's going on to anyone who doesn't already know about it. That means I have no one to turn to, no one to share my concerns with except for a soulless demon living in the basement... and who knows, maybe under the circumstances a demon is the one best suited to understand what she's going through. By the way I keep underestimating the situation I can't help but fear that what she's been through is just too far removed from all that's human for me to grasp.

~*~

Author's note 1- About the POV mess the story goes as follows "Hell" was originally meant to be a one-shot until a friend asked me to write a sequel, so "Fear, Trust and Affection" was written. I assumed that that was it but she didn't agree and that lead to "Memories and Reminders". After that it became clear that the story was going to continue for quite a while and it was then that I decided to settle on Giles's POV. That will probably be the case throughout the rest of the story, however I am not ruling out the possibility of eventually writing a companion piece from Buffy's POV. In a sense these should be seen as a series of ficlets rather than a single story, it's being posted in chapter form due to technical reasons.

Author's note 2- I hope this explains why therapy is not an option, and also why Giles was freaking out in "Be Careful With What You Wish For".