Buffy sat on the exam couch waiting for the doctor to come back in, feeling awkward and lost. Her mother sat in a chair nearby, clearly wanting to talk but not sure what to say.
"Buffy, are you alright? God, of course you're not alright, but I want you to know, I'm here, I'll listen, you can tell me anything."
"I appreciate that, Mom, honest, but I don't know what to say. Angel...wasn't who I thought he was. But, if I think about it, there were hints, things I ignored. If I hadn't ignored them, we probably wouldn't be here now. Gods know, Willow wouldn't be."
"Why didn't you tell me you were seeing him, Buffy?" Joyce asked. "When he first told me the two of you had sex, I was so shocked. You didn't even tell you were dating this man, letting alone thinking of taking that step with him. Why do you insist on shutting me out of your life?" This was a point that hurt Joyce a lot and she wanted to understand.
Buffy laughed humorously. "Mom, you weren't part of my life when we lived in Los Angeles, we barely talked about the weather, let alone who I was dating. It took me starting to get into trouble for you to pay any attention to me."
Joyce took a deep breath and tried not to let her temper get the best of her. "And I'm sorry about that, I've apologized and I've made an effort to change since the divorce and us moving here, but you're still shutting me out. You've made no effort to try to meet me half way. I'm aware that I wasn't a good parent and I'm trying to figure out how to be a good parent. I get that you think boundaries and discipline are a bad thing, but they're not, they're a necessary thing. And if you can't give me an explanation for sneaking out and causing problems, then all I'm left with is punishing you. Did this Angel encourage you to sneak out and meet him? It probably seemed exciting, but Buffy he was way too old to be paying attention to a teenager. I guess if I'd realized sooner I wasn't being a good mother and we'd been closer you might have felt you could tell me about him."
"Maybe." Buffy didn't know what to do with her hands and kept twisting them in her lap. She wanted to run from this conversation, from her mother knowing things Buffy didn't feel comfortable discussing with her. "I don't know how to talk to you about things, personal things. And I can't tell you what happened this last week. But I'm sure I don't want to remember, whatever happened, I want to leave it locked in a dark vault and never think about it. Ever."
"The doctor said it's called hysterical amnesia, you can remember, you just don't want to. You're blocking it out because it was traumatic and I understand that, Buffy. But talking about it is like cutting into an infected area and cleaning the infection out, you can't heal while the infection is there and the infection can grow and become worse. Even if you can't talk about this past week, you can tell me about what came before and maybe that can help you heal."
"I thought Angel was special, he was unique and he understood me, like no one else could. He'd say things like, he hated the girls he grew up with and always wanted a girl like me. But he also said I was just a kid and didn't know what I wanted and I told him I wanted him, that I felt like I was dying when we kissed." Buffy confessed. "He asked me once if I loved him and I told him I did love him, but I didn't know if I could trust him."
"Your instincts were telling you that there was something wrong." Joyce said gently. "Without trust, love can't flourish, it'll wither and die."
"Mom, he asked me if I loved him just before he told me about a girl he...used to know." Thinking about Drusilla and what Angelus had done to her. "The guy who told you about us having sex," Angelus, keep them separate in your own head, Buffy, she told herself. "He told me how he'd...hurt her, on purpose, but he wasn't that guy, not anymore. Angel wasn't that guy anymore and he'd never hurt me. The first time Angel said he loved me was my birthday, a couple months later. Maybe he did love me." Buffy said hopefully.
"He warned you he couldn't be trusted, Buffy." Joyce suggested. "You tried to convince yourself you could trust him, even knowing he had that in his past. He always had the potential to hurt you, you just didn't want to see it. I'm sorry."
Buffy thought about her admittance that she'd told Angel she felt like she was dying when she kissed him. He was a vampire, dead body duh, given. But he'd also been willing to let her face the Master alone and die and she knew it.
If he loved her, why didn't he try to help her? And if 'a moment of happiness' broke the curse, as Giles thought, why hadn't her being revived from death made him happy enough to break it?