What we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts – even if they no longer beat. Simple death won’t change that.
Darla in The Prodigal
Angel and Angelus aren't two completely separate entities, there are parts of them that overlap, certain things that they share.
Do I think Angelus was in love with Buffy? No. Did he have the capacity for it? Who knows. I've read some fantastic fics that believe he could have but that isn't really relative to this discussion.
What I think Angelus felt for Buffy was lust, ownership, obssession and a twisted fascination. However, I also I think he felt echoes of the emotions Angel felt for her. There are several times we see him almost tender with her (IOHEFY and in Passion, watching her sleep, stroking her hair) this is reinforced by the fact that he really never physically hurt her.I think Angelus wanted her, in the mos base ways but I think he needed to understand her. He wanted to explore her, disect her...find our how this slip of girl, like so many others he had killed in his life, could bury her way so fully into Angel's heart, and how he could still feel parts of that when Angel had been expelled from his body.
Buffy was his 20th Century Drusilla. He thought he could break her just like Dru. He even knew exactly how to get at her but what he wasn't counting on was her sheer force of will. He couldn't break that.
To me Acathla doesn't really make sense. Like Spike, Angelus enjoyed the spoils the human world had to offer him. He could have taken his family and left and forgotten all about Buffy...all about Angel.
He could have just killed her. He never actively tried that either. Acathla seems almost like desperation. If he couldn't have her then he would have nothing.
I think Angelus' obssession with Buffy was as powerful, at the time, as Angel's love for her. But they were two very different emotions.
Angelus didn't love Buffy but he wanted her. He wanted her broken and he wanted her wanting him.
What he realised was that it was never gona happen.
PrincessBuffy16
Nice banner ;)
E
Eleftheria
My God!!!You also express my thoughts about the Buffy/Angelus thing!
S
Skytteflickan88
Interesting thoughts. I agree that the Acathla thing was a act of desperation, he was feeling filthy and wanted to be made pure, but I doubt he wanted her wanting him. He wasn't that much about seducing, more about breaking.