By: Nomad
I think the basic trouble is that, even after all these years, Buffy still has issues with what she does. She's cool with - even happy with - the fighting, but on some level, the killing still disturbs her.
She finds it easy enough to stake the newbie vamps she meets out on patrol. They leap out at her with bumpy faces, snarling, and she dusts them. No problems here. You can point at those vamps and say, "look, that's a monster".
Which is not to say the older vamps, the ones who have more of a personality, are not monsters. Of course they are. But the thing is that they're a different class of monsters. Newbie vamps and a lot of demons are animalistic; just a bundle of instincts with sharp teeth. Older, more established vamps, are 'human' monsters - they have a certain level of thought and personality, and that makes them more like an evil human than a rabid animal.
It's easier to stake something that's coming at you and wants to drink your blood. It gets harder if you know what said 'monster' likes to watch on TV, or that they collect dolls, or that they have a bizarre liking for tasteless unicorn statues. It gives them personality, humanises them.
If Drusilla, or Harmony, or even - and I'm sticking my neck out here, I know - a de-chipped and evil again Spike was to make a definite, unambiguous attempt to kill or maim Buffy, or anybody else in Buffy's presence, they'd be dust. Poof. I think, in Spike's case, she might feel something about it afterwards; probably not guilt, but maybe a bit of regret that it came down to her having to do that. But she could do it.
But when they're not in the process of attacking her, it's not her Slayer instincts that are to the fore. She's being Buffy Summers, rather than 'The Slayer'. And whilst she knows, intellectually, that letting them live is stupid and wrong, she can't just walk up to someone not actively threatening her and slam a stake into their chest. She can't do it.
What restrains her? It's the same thing that makes human beings have a justice system, instead of taking all our criminals out and shooting them. Being familiar with the monsters, even against her will, means that the little box in the back of her head marked "This is a PERSON" gets ticked. This is a person, and you can't just casually kill it.
Buffy's not a psychopathic killer. She has the same instincts and emotions that stop us from physically attacking people we don't like. She knows that they *aren't* people, not in the truest sense, but it doesn't stop her seeing them that way.
When those two vamps fled from her in "Crush"; she didn't know them personally, but she knew they were afraid. She saw it as a human reaction, and that prevented her from attacking.
I think that to be the kind of Buffy Summers that could stake every vamp without hesitation, she would have to stop being the kind of Buffy that we love. That's the kind of merciless killer the Watcher's Council would like in their employ, but to make one they would have to wipe away every trace of the humanity the Slayer is sworn to protect.
That, I think, is part of the reason for this supposed "the lady doth protest too much" syndrome over Spike's feelings. She won't accept how he feels; not because doing so would make her fall in love with him, but because doing so would make him more human. The more human one vamp gets, the more human they all get.
The older she gets, the more the shades of grey are going to creep in. That happens to everybody, but in Buffy's case, it's very, very dangerous. And *that's* why Buffy's in denial over Spike - because accepting that he can feel is putting her on the road to a loss of faith in what she does.
First released on Thursday March 15, 2001 at The Buffy Cross and Stake Spoiler Board.