Question Lady with a Mission: Do Vengeance Demons Retain their Human Souls?

[Gum Gnome33]

Ok. So I've entered into this epic debate about Anya over in the anti-Spike thread. While in there, standing strong and defending everyone's favorite vampire with a soul, (wink) Anya's soul came into discussion.

For me, it was always clear that when the demon inside Anya and the powers that went along with it were stripped away, she became the (not so proud) new owner of a soul. I never even questioned this until Taaroko and Icarium brought up some really interesting points to the contrary. Prophecygrrl remembered that D'Hoffryn made the statement "the life and soul of a demon" in "Selfless" so I had to backpeddal a tiny bit and modify my view to accommodate that fact. I now believe that Anya, (and all vengeance demons), possesses what is not a human soul while they are demons, but something else entirely. I'll refer to it as a "demon soul," but what I mean to suggest is that it is simply an altered moral compass from what we humans have. I'll try to explain what I mean here. (I'm sorry if this becomes an essay--but I"m really looking forward to hearing peoples' thoughts on this!)

So she starts out as Aud. A callous, strangely literal human with a vengeful spirit. Her man does her wrong, and she turns him into a troll. She doesn't show much remorse and she doesn't seem to care all that much that the townspeople are running in fear of the monster she's created. In short, she isn't really the nicest of all people. But she's a human nevertheless. Then D'Hoffryn makes her a demon. Now her moral compass places a priority on killing for the sake of vengeance--the more gruesome the better. Her new morality says that gruesome vengeance is "right" and anything other than that is "wrong." When she is newly human, (as she describes herself), from season 3 on, she no longer commits acts of vengeance. So something changed. For 1100 years she killed for "justice" and suddenly she stops? Sure, she doesn't have powers any more but why would that stop her from murdering if her internal moral compass was exactly the same as it was when she was Anyanka? You don't need magic and powers to kill.

It was pointed out to me that she doesn't kill as a new human because without powers it is simply too risky. My response to this is that a creature who values death for justice as highly as (a now human) Anya, would probably be willing to face the consequences of killing because, again, according to their codes of morality, it is worse not to commit acts of vengeance than it is to be caught doing so. Not all creatures in Sunnydale have such a strong "cause" to kill for; vamps do it mostly for pleasure. Demons like Anyanka who believe they're justified in killing are much more likely to go for it. And they have this powerful demon who will stand behind them when they do, (D'Hoffryn). This very fact suggests a shift in morality to me.

It was also pointed out to me that Anya likes to boast about her former "glory" days as a demon, implying that her morality hasn't changed. I think this is a great point, but I argue that her anecdotes about the old days are her way of reminding everyone how powerful she used to be. In a warped sense, she's proud of what she did--not the murders themselves at this point (though she's awfully callous about them of course), but the power she had. Buffy and Willow have so much power and she doesn't after 1100 years of having it. Anya is a very jealous person who likes to be the center of attention. So she likes to remind people that she used to be able to eviscerate men with her thoughts alone. But because she doesn't actually harm a fly or try after Doppelgangland to get her powers back again in order to facilitate the killing, I think that what's inside of her has changed from a moral standpoint. In other words, she's all talk.

Now there's the issue of love. From her anecdotes it seems clear that Xander is the first person she truly loves in over a thousand years. It's no coincidence that she is human, (with a human soul) when this happens. If her soul had been exactly as it had when she was a demon, what then was the reason she could suddenly feel this way? In early season 4 she says to Xander "When I think that something bad could happen to you it feels bad inside, " (or something like that). This sounds to me like someone who is for the first time grasping the concept of truly caring for another person.

Time for the episode "Selfless." I think that when Anyanka pleads for her deed to be undone, she is drawing on her memories of empathy which are sparked by seeing Xander walk into the room and try to save her. I know it's a leap of faith, but truly it isn't until she sees him that she is remorseful enough to beg for it to be taken back at the cost of her own life. The argument here, (and this is where I draw a parallel to Spike), is that a creature either without a soul or with a different kind of soul from that of a human, (in Anya's case) can remember empathy or (in Spike's case) enter into a quasi empathetic state if triggered by love. This is fiction after all, and I believe that it is what's being portrayed. It's no coincidence that Anyanka doesn't beg for her deed to be undone until Xander enters the room. Nor is it a coincidence that Spike realizes that he'll never get rid of the monster inside until he hurts the woman he loves.


Perhaps my strongest argument concerning the newfound human soul in Anya comes from that well-loved monologue in The Body. She is for the first time beginning to understand what death means. How final it is. How it affects so profoundly the people close to the deceased. Over a thousand years of killing and she just begins to consider all of this now? I smell a change in morality.

Ok I'm stepping off the soapbox for now. What do you think??

 

[Doppelgang]

Thats a very well-considered post, I couldn't say much about the rationale behind Anya's character myself, I only really see it on the emotional level on which she clearly learns more and more about human emotions during the series, so I would see this as developing human characteristics.

The way I see it with Anya is she effectively starts from scratch as a human after Doppelgangland because it was so long since she was last human. She doesn't start with much if any empathy or other human moral emotions to boast of, just like we don't start off with them ourselves, we all start off self-seeking, but she comes to gradually learn the moral notions that come with being an adult mortal being. She also ends up wanting to embrace human institutions of having money, a job and getting married etc..

The Selfless episode I read as an internal conflict arising between the demon self and her human self pre Hells Bells, I think her human self effectively wanted to die for what she'd done to the frat boys as she knew that's what would happen by fighting Buffy, but then she was gradually bought round to the idea of wanting to live again because of Xander showing that he cared for her, and then she knew the only way for this to happen was to take back what she did to the frat boys, and so her human self won this internal battle over the demon self in the end.

 

[prophecygrrl]

Personally, I think she did have a soul when she was a demon. I would never call her a 'soulless demon', but whether or not she has a human or demon soul is a little ambiguous, I think. Anyway, as a demon, she can't experience things the way a human does because she fundamentally is not one. So it makes sense to me that no matter what kind of soul she has, she can commit all of those murders without feeling remorse the way a human would.

I was just thinking about this, but it's also important to remember the time period she's from. She's over 1000 years old, and in her time as Aud, it was probably pretty common to kill or maim people for vengeance. The code of law back then was probably very archaic.

 

[Willow My Love]

Personally, I think this is one of the most well thought out, well argued threads I've ever read on here. You've clearly put a lot of effort into this post. I'm impressed.

That said, I understand where you're coming from on the whole demon soul thing, and I must say, I've never thought of that before. You can definitely tell that she's different when she loses her powers, but it doesn't go into the soul/soulless thing about vengeance demons. I think she felt justified in what she was doing, just like Halfrek and her thing for deadbeat parents, and hurt children. Anyanka was helping hurt women. But she lost her powers, and as Buffy said with the whole evil Willow arc, the human world has it's own set of rules.

Or maybe it was somewhat of a relief. After 1000+ years of killing and bloodshed, she didn't have that responsibility anymore. She could live the life she left off so long ago.

 

[Taaroko]

Sorry I'm late to the party! End of semester madness. But having now successfully aced my French oral exam, I shall join the fun. (And then go away again to study for my finals.)

So she starts out as Aud. A callous, strangely literal human with a vengeful spirit. Her man does her wrong, and she turns him into a troll. She doesn't show much remorse and she doesn't seem to care all that much that the townspeople are running in fear of the monster she's created. In short, she isn't really the nicest of all people. But she's a human nevertheless. Then D'Hoffryn makes her a demon.

Here's where my theory veers off. She becomes a vengeance demon, and though she still has her soul, now she has to follow all of the rules of being a vengeance demon. When a human wants vengeance, she has to go to them (whether she wants to or not, though it's generally a safe bet that she wants to). She's already a vengeful person who doesn't particularly care about the suffering of others if she has her own problems to worry about. Her last act as a human was to *cause* the suffering of others (Olaf by turning him into a troll, and the rest of the village by letting Olaf run amok).

We didn't see Anyanka's entire vengeance career. I think it likely that she started out small. She may be indifferent to suffering to a certain degree, but she still probably can't inflict anything especially gruesome without getting pangs of conscience over it. But you've got to remember that she is no longer part of the human race. Her powers have elevated her above it and made her separate. Human beings are no longer her peers and equals. It will be harder to relate and feel pain for their suffering. Additionally, the only side of humanity she sees as a vengeance demon is the wrongs committed by one human to another. This is unlikely to raise her sympathies. The more time she spends as a vengeance demon, the more of these wrongs she sees, and the more her respect for humanity erodes. Her wish-granting becomes correspondingly more inventively brutal. This is all easily possible with a human soul that hasn't been tinkered with by anything more than her own choices and experiences.

Then, after eleven centuries of the slow but steady buildup of her antipathy towards mankind (emphasis on man, but she didn't particularly care about women either except when bad things were done to them by men), suddenly the thing that removed her from the humanity peer group is gone. She is now plunged back into human society without so much as a transition period to help her adjust. Her dislike of humans intensifies with the increased proximity, but she's powerless to separate herself from them now. She must endure the boring twelfth graders and the indignity of flunking her math class. She can no longer feel the souls of wronged women crying out for vengeance, so she's cut off from the one human emotion she still sympathizes with. Even if she wanted to keep trying to inflict vengeance, she'd have a hard time managing it without that extra sense.

Then her hormones lead her to Xander (or cosmic irony--one of the wishes Cordy made after Giles smashed the amulet was "I wish that Xander Harris never knows the touch of a woman"). I say hormones because that definitely started out as a regular teen crush, and I think human hormones might have been something she didn't have as a demon. Different body chemistry and all that. Anyway. She becomes interested in Xander and her sympathies, which previously included only herself, expand to include him. The Mayor could kill the rest of the school and even the whole town, but as long as Xander's okay, that doesn't bother her.

She spends the next three years with Xander, helping the Scoobies fight evil. The initial attraction to Xander develops into very powerful love (I think I'm turning into a Xander/Anya shipper as I write this), which is something she has never experienced before. Fighting evil means helping people who aren't herself (or Xander) and not for reasons of vengeance. Slowly but surely, all of this softens her towards the human race in general. Even though she still thinks they're basically all idiots, she learns that when it matters, they keep fighting. She learns that it hurts to lose people she knows, even if she wasn't all that close to them. She learns all the things she could never have learned in the 1100 years when all she saw was the worst in people, and it permanently changes her for the better.

As to why she never fell in love in all those years before Xander? Why would she? Again, I emphasize that for all that time, she saw only the crimes humans committed each other. She tells Halfrek, "Vengeance is what I do, Halfrek. I don't need anything else. Vengeance is what I am." She has no time for romance, and very likely no interest in it, considering that the only relationships she ever sees are the ones that end in vengeance. We do know that she had a few flings, but that's all they were. My guess is that either she always made it clear that they were only flings or else the guy always called it quits when he found out what a workaholic she was.

But back to the present. Xander leaves her at the alter and she feels like her world has shattered. She doesn't go to D'Hoffryn asking for her job back. He offers and she accepts. But her heart isn't in it, it's just broken. She wants Xander to suffer but is incapable of granting her own wishes, and all it takes is seeing him in pain because of her sleeping with Spike for her desire to make him suffer to disappear. She focuses on vengeance for others now, but her heart still isn't in it.

Unlike the first time she started out, she no longer has the vengeful spirit. She might still be blunt and insensitive in general, but she cares about humanity. It's upsetting to see humans suffer, and even more so when she's the one causing it--no matter what the human in question might have done. By the rules of vengeance demons, she still has to go to scorned women and grant their wishes, but she tries to minimize the damage now. No deaths, no eviscerations, and nothing inventive. This loses her the respect of the vengeance demon community. In "Beneath You" she tries to get a little of that back, but we know her heart still isn't in it because Xander is able to persuade her to turn that guy back into a human.

It all comes to a head in "Selfless". In a last desperate attempt to get her old reputation and D'Hoffryn's respect back (and probably to get herself properly back in the game again), she grants a girl's wish with a duodecuple homicide by spider demon. This is what makes her finally come to terms with the fact that she cannot continue doing this and living with herself. She puts up a (rather thin) front until D'Hoffryn asks her what she really wants, which is to take it back. Even if it means giving up her own life and soul, she just wants to take it back.

D'Hoffryn pulls a bait and switch. It's Halfrek who goes up in flames instead of her, and she is once again left a powerless human. From there on out, she never again expresses regret that she's not still in the vengeance business. She does express distaste for her physical human frailties, but I imagine that anyone who'd been free of those for as long as she has wouldn't be particularly happy to have them back.

She clearly feels immense regret for what she does in "Selfless". However, we don't know that she ever feels the same about all the vengeance she ever inflicted. In fact, if Wishverse!Giles was right about what smashing her amulet means, then all the vengeance she ever inflicted in the first 1100 years got undone (so how the heck the Buffyverse is still remotely the same place that it was before "The Wish", I have no idea), and maybe she doesn't think she needs to feel bad about things that never happened as far as this reality is concerned. She's made progress, but she isn't necessarily fully repentant yet. We do know that she's willing to die fighting to save humanity, though, and that's exactly what she does.

So, on the whole, I see the same human soul present throughout. Whatever changes her morality underwent came through a natural gradual process that was the result of how she internalized the things she saw and experienced.

 

[white avenger]

The issue of souls and how simply having one in no way guarantees that a person will be either good or bad before. Just the fact that Anyanka was cruel, ruthless, and pitiless in dealing with her victims in no way means that she didn't have a perfectly functioning soul. In fact, the only supernatural beings who we definitely know do not have souls are vampires, and they are soulless because the person being turned dies, at which point their soul goes on to whatever reward or punishment they have earned during their life. At that point, a totally different life force reanimates the remaining corpse and becomes what we refer to as vampires. We know that vengeance, or justice, demons are simply normal people empowered by D'Hoffryn to do his bidding, much the same way that the Sheriff in the old west had deputies. In reality, D'Hoffryn may actually be the only REAL vengeance demon, sharing his power with his minions pretty much in the same way that the First Evil shared its power with Caleb or the Senior Partners shared theirs with Hamilton. If that is truly the case, then Anyanka and all of her kind, not having died, still retained their souls.

As a side note, that would also explain why Anya never had that period of insanity and guilt that Angel and Spike had upon regaining their souls. Anya's soul was always there, but she had been justifying all of the things that she had done by saying that her victims got exactly what they deserved. The only time that we ever saw her express any regret for any of her actions was after her and Xander's aborted wedding, when she returned to D'Hoffryn's employ, and that was almost certainly due to her close association with Buffy and the Scoobies and their morals and values. Even then, she never seemed to have any regrets for the centuries of pain, destruction, and death that she had caused prior to becoming human once more.

So, what was the original question? Did Anyanka and all of the other vengeance demons retain their souls? My money would be on "Yes."

 

[Gum Gnome33]

The issue of souls and how simply having one in no way guarantees that a person will be either good or bad before.

So, I agree with this for sure, and it is actually the basis for my defense of Spike; that he can do good things without having a soul. I assert that human beings with souls can do terribly evil things so a soul is merely what me make of it. (See my 72 posts in the most recent Spike thread, LOL). But what I see is a sudden change in morality that suspiciously coincides with Anya losing her "inner demon"; in the Buffyverse, it seems that human "souls" are basically nothing more than a conscience informed by a very human sense of empathy. It seems from her anecdotes that when she is a demon, her conscience basically informs her that the right thing to do is avenge the deeds against women by killing mercilessly.

Now of course I realize that other characters in the Buffyverse, (as in real life), do terrible things with their human souls intact. So of course it is possible for Anyanka to have a human soul and be cruel and pitiless at the same time. It is because she is a demon, however, that I am suspicious that there might be something else going on, and I use the evidence stated in my OP as examples.

I know too well that people kill in real life who are not demons. But in a world full of demons and monsters, isn't the most logical assumption that the creature functions with a completely different moral code? We've seen in the 'verse that when a demon gets a soul, there is a marked change in behavior, relationships, and level of remorse. My argument is that these things can be seen in a newly human Anya, and I am still wondering whether a new kind of soul is the cause.

Ironically, the person whose argument I understand the best where all this is concerned is Taaroko; she and I have been battling over Spike but what she is saying here makes a lot of sense to me:

But you've got to remember that she is no longer part of the human race. Her powers have elevated her above it and made her separate. Human beings are no longer her peers and equals. It will be harder to relate and feel pain for their suffering...

So really, a creature's environment can be enough to inform how he/she will act--even to this extreme extent, (it's fiction after all). I agree with this completely and, again, it was one of my arguments when we were considering what having a soul means; that it is not automatically enough to make a person do good things in certain environments.
I would take this one step further to say that when it comes to Spike, the chip and the environment he was in made it possible to start identifying with human beings even without a soul. (Yes, I turned that around on you sorry!)

While I buy this argument wholeheartedly, I am a bit distressed because it makes me start to dislike Anya. As I saw her before, the demon conscience inside of her overpowered her sense of morality and she couldn't help but kill, much like a vampire. I saw the restraint and remorse she showed in season 7 while Ayanka as a parallel to a soulless Spike deciding to do good things in spite of lacking that inner guide. But to consider that she had a soul all along while she was "maiming and mangling," sending men to hell for eternity for one indiscretion--makes her no different from the countless human beings on this planet who do terrible things to each other every day when they do have the potential to be good.

 

[Icarium]

But in a world full of demons and monsters, isn't the most logical assumption that the creature functions with a completely different moral code?

Not when Anya shows just as much, if not more, compassion and remorse as a demon than as a human. Also, if turning people into vengeance demons could completely override their morality why did D'Hoffryn bother recruiting only people who were angry and hurt (as far as we know, at least)? He could have recruited anybody, turned them into demons which would have taken care of any unwillingness to smite people.

 

[BuffyElevated]

I think vengeance demons retain their soul. After all, in "Selfless", D'Hroffryn says that to undo what Anya had done, it required "the life and soul of a vengeance demon". I just think that Anya's soul was not a very good one. After spending so many years murdering and doing vengeance, when we first met Anya she was deeply evil and bitter. However, I do think her soul got a little "better" as she lived as a human and experienced happiness, sadness, loss, and friendship with the Scooby gang.

 

[Taaroko]

It is because she is a demon, however, that I am suspicious that there might be something else going on

I probably would be too, except that I don't see any sudden change in her morality after she loses her powers. Or after she gets them back. I only see the gradual process that spans her entire run on the show. Also, we do know of plenty of benign species of demon, so demonic-ness alone is not always an indicator of automatic badness.

So really, a creature's environment can be enough to inform how he/she will act--even to this extreme extent, (it's fiction after all). I agree with this completely and, again, it was one of my arguments when we were considering what having a soul means; that it is not automatically enough to make a person do good things in certain environments.
I would take this one step further to say that when it comes to Spike, the chip and the environment he was in made it possible to start identifying with human beings even without a soul. (Yes, I turned that around on you sorry!)

I don't feel this hurts my arguments about Spike, since I'm only saying that the environment can affect creatures with souls in this way. Anya(nka) had perhaps less choice in the matter than most creatures with souls, because as soon as she signed on to be a vengeance demon, she was bound to answer the call of vengeance and grant whatever wishes came of it. There was no choice involved there. But how she felt about granting those wishes was her choice, as was the way she interpreted them to mean something much more horrible than the wisher intended. She may not have always been free to choose her circumstances, but because of her soul, she was free to choose her attitude about them. It was also her own fault that she only ever saw the worst of humanity, because she never took the time off to see anything else.

While I buy this argument wholeheartedly, I am a bit distressed because it makes me start to dislike Anya.

Ironic. Anya never even made sense to me before I started thinking about this issue. Back then, I found her occasionally entertaining but mostly off-putting, and I only cared about her because Xander did, but even then I didn't care very much. Now I think her arc is subtle and brilliant (even if, as Icarium pointed out, this was unintentional as the writers may have actually had no idea what they were doing with her) and that she's a fantastic character.

But to consider that she had a soul all along while she was "maiming and mangling," sending men to hell for eternity for one indiscretion--makes her no different from the countless human beings on this planet who do terrible things to each other every day when they do have the potential to be good.

Except that she, unlike many of them, actually changed. And therein lies her awesomeness. I can't decide if it's more or less awesome because rather than it being something she stood up one day and declared she was doing, changing was something that kind of crept up on her and which she didn't realize had happened until she tried to go back to who she was before, only to find that that person didn't exist anymore. It's certainly more subtle, at any rate. Anya's entire mindset shifted. Humans not only became worthy of her notice in matters other than vengeance, but worthy of her love, friendship, and grief--and, ultimately, worth dying for.

 

[Gum Gnome33]

I probably would be too, except that I don't see any sudden change in her morality after she loses her powers.

She really takes an interest in Xander so quickly which I take as evidence as a sudden shift; I know in the beginning it's only hormonal as you pointed out, but didn't she have demon-y hormones as Anyanka? She didn't fall in love, then. By Graduation Day she's begging Xander to run away with him after only a few interactions which seems like more to me than hormones.

But how she felt about granting those wishes was her choice, as was the way she interpreted them to mean something much more horrible than the wisher intended. It was also her own fault that she only ever saw the worst of humanity, because she never took the time off to see anything else.

Aha. This is exactly why I love Spike so much. It wasn't his choice to become a soulless monster but he chose to do good things in seasons 5 and 6 as such. A completely opposite path.

Now I think her arc is subtle and brilliant

You know, I still do too when all is said and done. I liked her more before when I thought of her more as a victim of circumstance, (she didn't really know what she was getting into when she allowed D'Hoffryn to make her a demon).

Except that she, unlike many of them, actually changed. And therein lies her awesomeness. Humans not only became worthy of her notice in matters other than vengeance, but worthy of her love, friendship, and grief--and, ultimately, worth dying for.

Aaaaah! Wow. I mean, change the pronouns here and you've just written out for me why I love Spike. By "The Gift," this is how Spike feels about Buffy and Dawn. It isn't to the same extent, (the friendship, and sacrifice I mean) of course because he still is soulless. But it's there, and that's what I find so exciting. I know you disagree. I just had to point that out.

**Here's something I just realized. If we accept that Anya had a human soul while serving as a vengeance demon, the conclusion is that one's environment (ie exposure to demonic peers, having a mission to that effect, etc, as you mentioned before) is ultimately more powerful than the soul. By that reasoning, we can say that Spike's environment in seasons 5 and 6--living among humans and fighting by their sides every night, not being able to harm them, falling in love with one-- overpowered his lack of soul. That for some reason, for both Anya and Spike, whether they chose to do bad or good things had nothing to do with whether or not they had souls. It was their environments that mattered more when it came to their decision making. Anya realized that she was wrong once her environment changed, and Spike realized that doing good things without a soul wasn't enough to make him good. But ultimately it was their surroundings which led them to these conclusions. The difference was, (and this is why I like Spike more than Anya), Spike realized that his soullessness was a limitation and he did something about it. For Anya? In spite of having a soul there seemed to be no limit to how horribly and how often she could kill.

 

[Taaroko]

She really takes an interest in Xander so quickly which I take as evidence as a sudden shift; I know in the beginning it's only hormonal as you pointed out, but didn't she have demon-y hormones as Anyanka? She didn't fall in love, then. By Graduation Day she's begging Xander to run away with him after only a few interactions which seems like more to me than hormones.

I don't know about you, but I would be opposed to any boy I had a crush on getting eaten by a giant snake, even if the crush was entirely hormone-based. I think her ridiculous "Fine! You know what, I hope you die! ... Aren't we gonna kiss?" line supports the "it was still just hormones" angle. And I don't know what to make of her hormones when she was a demon. I'm sure she had them. Maybe they got muted in the transformation from human to demon, which would make all of her emotions much less pronounced and would explain why she says "...When I lost my powers, I got stuck in this persona, and now I have all these 'feelings'. I don't understand it, I don't like it; I all I know is that I really want to go to this dance..." in "The Prom". Hormones are these crazy-making things she's very unaccustomed to dealing with at human teenager levels.

You know, I still do too when all is said and done. I liked her more before when I thought of her more as a victim of circumstance, (she didn't really know what she was getting into when she allowed D'Hoffryn to make her a demon).

Yeah, Anya can't really be a victim of circumstance because those were all circumstances she chose. Except losing her powers.

**Here's something I just realized. If we accept that Anya had a human soul while serving as a vengeance demon, the conclusion is that one's environment (ie exposure to demonic peers, having a mission to that effect, etc, as you mentioned before) is ultimately more powerful than the soul.

That's definitely not my conclusion. Our environments are very powerful factors in what we become, yes, but the only things stopping them from being the *only* factors are our souls, which give us the free will to choose how to let our environments affect us.

 

[Gum Gnome33]

I think her ridiculous "Fine! You know what, I hope you die! ... Aren't we gonna kiss?" line supports the "it was still just hormones" angle.

I think it was primarily hormones but that she was feeling much more for him already than she had for anyone as a demon; I think this statement above was actually said out of embarrassment when she realized he didn't feel for her what she felt for him, combined with the strangeness of feeling so much for another person. When she sees him next she says that when she thinks that something could happen to him it feels bad inside. It sounds like more than just a little crush to me--I think her emotions are working at an accelerated level because they are so new.

That's definitely not my conclusion. Our environments are very powerful factors in what we become, yes, but the only things stopping them from being the *only* factors are our souls, which give us the free will to choose how to let our environments affect us.

Oh yes, totally in real life this is absolutely true. But I'm saying that these two characters for whatever reason, seem to be an exception. Their environments all but overpower their souls or lack thereof. It's a very interesting thing really.