The Butterfly Girl Theory

She is innocence

She is sunshine

She is redemption

Touched, affected, strong and strengthened but untouched, not weighed down

People who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, Buffy, Angel, Mulder, Scully. It's in their eyes, and when they look at one another it is so tangible and unavoidable, they communicate on that level, where everything is heavy, gravitas. And when they are light it is a forced conscious effort that does not last, that depends on deception and no-one is fooled.

With Cordelia it is not a lie.

Like water off a duck's back she maintains her innocence, in exuberance, in an energy like light.

The lineoleum. She has to be free to be herself without fear of reprisal, to live where action's consequences are not always overly present in her mind. To act without gravity where she can, not cowed.

She has lost everything she ever had, but herself and her inner butterfy<!>

She is incredibly strong, but she can see past the weight of the world where Buffy and Angel can't. Arguably there is no past that responsibility, but living eternally under it drags them down, imprisons their souls. They put it on like a cloak that hoods their eyes everyday when they wake. They sleep in it's grasp. And because there is no past the weight, they are self absorbed in the extreme, the scale of import never shifts so they are unable to give priority to lesser things, like their friends lives.

She is a butterfly that cannot and will not be pinned.

It is Angel who understands this, and not Doyle, which is why it is Doyle who has problems with her age and sexual inexperience.