"I didn't think about it."

"That seems to be a recurring theme, Buffy, you not thinking about it. Why would you trust him when you had no actual proof?"

"Well, he saved my life and he was right about the old vampire that tried to escape." Buffy tried to explain, but was confused herself. It had seemed so clear that night.

"Was he like the first person to save your life?"

"No, that was Pike back at Hemery and Xander saved my life twice when we tried to save Jesse and Giles saved my life just before then, so no, Angel wasn't the first person to save my life."

"God, Buffy, how often is your life in danger?"

"You don't really want me to answer that question, do you, Mom?"

"I may never sleep right again as it is." Joyce sighed. "So probably not. What happened next?"

"The old vampire sent some big vampires to try to kill me. Angel showed up and helped me, he was hurt, so I brought him home to put a bandage on his injury. He told me he was attracted to me, that he thought I was really beautiful. We kissed, but you came home and I told you he was my tutor."

"He told you he was attracted to you and you kissed." Joyce said flatly. "A grown man I thought was at least a Senior in College told a barely 16 year old Sophomore in High School that he thought she was beautiful and kissed you? Even if he'd been human, Buffy, that would have been wrong and he would have had to have known it."

"I don't understand." Buffy hadn't considered the possibility that Angel had done something wrong at this point, Giles had pointed out they she'd committed necrophilia by having sex with Angel, what had Angel done that was wrong?"

"Let's start with if he'd actually been your tutor, that's a position of responsibility, like a teacher. A teacher and student cannot be in a relationship, because the teacher has authority over the student and a relationship is an abuse of authority."

"Oh, like Miss Newman and James Stanley."

"Who?"

"Ms. Newman was a teacher at Sunnydale High School in 1955, she got involved with James Stanley, one of her students. I'm not sure how long it went on, but eventually she decided to do the right thing and let him go so he could have a normal life. He shot her accidentally because he was so upset and then killed himself."

"That's exactly why such a relationship is wrong, Buffy." Joyce informed her. "A teenager has extremes in emotion, they can't help it, the hormones make it difficult to think clearly and amplify emotional states. An adult is passed that. She took advantage of him and knew she was taking advantage of him. Angel had to know he was taking advantage of you too. How fast did this relationship progress?"

"It kind of stalled due to the fact that I died a month later."

"Yes, so you mentioned when Faith came to dinner or at least the fact that you had died, not how you actually died."

"Angel told us the old vampire was trying to escape again. Giles mentioned an old book with prophecies about the Slayer and Angel knew where it was. It had a prophecy Giles thought was about me. It said I would face that old vampire and die. Both Giles and Angel thought it was inevitable that I was going to die, so I tried to quit being the Slayer so I wouldn't die, which proved impossible when some of the old vampire's minions killed a bunch of our classmates. I realized they were going to keep killing until I dealt with him. I figured if I was going to die anyway, maybe I'd take him with him. I never even managed to lay a hand on him. He fed on me, like Darla did on you and dropped me in a pool of water and I drowned. That would have been the end of the Buffy story, except Xander refused to accept me dieing as inevitable and forced Angel to help him find me. Xander used CPR and brought me back, saved my life again and I treated him like crap for it because I couldn't deal with the fact that I'd died and used him to try to make Angel jealous. It worked too, Angel was jealous alright. He told me Xander was just a kid and then he said I was just a kid and I didn't know what I wanted. I told him I wanted him. He said he wasn't good for me and we shouldn't see each other. I told him I wanted to die when he kissed me, that I needed him that much. Then he and Xander and Giles saved me and Cordelia from demon worshiping frat boys and he asked me out for coffee, which Willow advised him to do and we were together. Maybe three, four months later on my seventeenth birthday we had sex and the Angel I knew was gone and in his place was Angelus, the demon. The Magic holding the soul in the body was gone and it turned out the demon had never left. Angelus joined up with his old gang and sent a very powerful demon to kill people. Xander came up with a way to stop the demon and I had a chance to stop Angelus. Instead I let him go because I love Angel. I let him go and he killed people, a lot of people. And I kept letting him go and he kept killing people and I knew he was killing people and I still didn't stop him. Not until about five months later when he literally tried to end the world."