"Xander's not going to go back to letting you use him to make yourself feel better, Buffy and unless he decides to forgive you, I don't think he'll choose to cheer you up if he sees you're feeling bad." Joyce surmised. "As it is, I think he recognizes how one sided the friendship was and I doubt he has any desire to go back to the status quo."
"So, I've blown it, is what you're saying?" Buffy dropped her fork on her uneaten plate. "Xander hates vampires, he's never made any secret of that fact. He had a crush on me, which he was obvious about and between that and my impression of him it made it easy to dismiss everything he said about Angel as jealously."
"Maybe some of it was jealousy, but not all of it." Joyce answered. "Because he was right, Buffy, Angel's own actions proved he couldn't be trusted. He told you he wanted to help, you told me that, but he did almost nothing to help. Mr. Zabuto told me Angel just happened to know where a long lost, believed destroyed book about Slayers was -."
"The Pergamon Codex."
"That and it just happened to say you were going to die and instead of trying to help you, as he claimed he wanted to, he sat down and read a book with his shoes off and told Xander he was afraid. He proved he couldn't be trusted, he warned you himself he didn't treat women well. Remember, you told me when we were in the doctor's office that he told you about a girl he hurt on purpose."
"But it was Angelus that hurt her, not Angel. They're like two different people in the same body, sharing a brain -."
"So one personality was a monster and the other a coward?" Joyce clarified. "Who claimed he wanted to help, but barely did."
"He didn't know how!" Buffy protested. "He had all this guilt for everything Angelus did and it was all he could think about, he was so sad, in so much pain -."
"You felt sorry for him. Mr. Zabuto said he was cursed a century ago. One hundred years and all he did was be sad about what he knew about what this other personality did, but didn't do anything to help anyone. Or did he? Did he ever tell you that he ever tried to help anyone over the course of that century?"
"No, but I didn't ask him either! Maybe he just didn't want to tell me about it."
"But he was willing to tell you the terrible things this other personality did. Things that made you feel sorry for him. Made you want to make him feel better. You thought he could be a better man if he just had someone to believe in him."
"Yes and if the curse hadn't broken he could have had the chance to prove it!"
"That the love of a good woman could make him a better man only works if the man actually wants to be a better man. Why did it take him a century and you to make him supposedly decide to be a better man? It made you feel special, didn't it, Buffy, knowing you somehow had the power to make him want to be a better man?" Joyce hated the tears running down Buffy's cheeks and how harsh she was being but Buffy needed to see the truth. "You want to believe you inspired him. He told you none of the woman he knew when he was human were able to inspire him be a good man, no one he met after he was cursed with a soul inspired him to be a better man. But you did or so he said and yet, he put in the bare minimum of effort to change. His actions say he didn't want to be a better man, his actions say he wanted something from you, but it wasn't inspiration. I'm sorry, Buffy, but from what I can see, he took advantage of you."
"And once he had what he wanted he was gone?! Just like that." Buffy said bitterly. "He just wanted to screw me and go, that's what you're saying, isn't it?"
"You take out the vampire and the curse parts and that's all you're left with."
"But he was a vampire under a curse, that part is also real and he didn't know what would break the curse -."
"Are you sure about that? An entire century living under that curse and he never made a single effort to find out anything about it? Does that sound reasonable to you?"
"I-I, no, but Giles and I didn't find out anything about the curse either - and Ms. Calendar didn't tell us anything -."
"You knew about the curse before she came to town, you can't blame her for your own choices. Mr. Giles has made it clear he allowed you to see Angel because his involvement made you more accepting of what he considered your responsibility as the Slayer and he may have thought investigating the curse would be the same as opposing Angel's involvement, minimal as it was and that would affect your acceptance of your so called duty. You didn't want to investigate the curse yourself because you had to know, curses break. Any six year who's seen Disney can tell you that. You didn't want the curse to break, you didn't want to think about the curse at all, what you wanted to believe was that he really wanted to be a better man because you inspired him."
"If he'd had more time -."
"He had a century, plus his human lifetime, how much more time did he need, Buffy? He didn't want to be a better man, he just wanted his prize and when he thought he'd lost the prize, thought you were dead, he took his shoes off and read a book."