Title: Disclosure. Sequel to Resolve
Author: Califi
Posted:
Email
Rating: Hard R
Category: Angst
Content: Hmm…. Cordelia moment
Summary: An unexpected visitor adds to the angst…
Spoilers: in place of Disharmony… two nights later…
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: Just tell me where
Notes: Harmony never turned up. the clothes didn’t happen. C/A are still estranged.
Thanks/Dedication:to and For everyone who gave the love of that other 3 vignettes.
Feedback:Must admit, gears my Muse up to write more.
She just walked in.
But then, that was Darla all over. Brazen bitch from hell. Would have been nice to know she wasn’t dust, though.
Would have been even nicer to think that Angel had dusted her.
Until now, Cordelia had assumed he had.
Bastard.
The surprise had quickly turned to fear: the others were out dealing with a vision. Cordelia just had to stop to wash her face, and re-apply makeup that had been smudged by the intensity of the vision that had ripped through her half an hour earlier.
Luckily ‘having a chat’ was uppermost in Darla’s mind.
Taunts and sneers regarding Cordelia’s place in Angel’s life.
How it had been so easy to lure him away …. Wanting her. Every single moment had been filled with that want… need.
Wasn’t the fact that she was now standing here proof of that? Her darling boy couldn’t dust her.
Didn’t want to.
As she strolled nearer, her boasts dripping from scarlet lips, Cordelia backed away a step at a time. Most of her concentration towards making it to the weapons cabinet before Darla remembered she had fangs. Refusing to let her words tear into her very soul.
Catching on, Darla changed her tactics, circling Cordelia and slowly herding her away from the only chance she had of at least trying to defend herself.
“Do you want to know what your Champion was doing a few hours before he saved your pathetic little lives?” Darla purred, suddenly appearing in front of her and gripped fragile arms in a hold that would leave bruises.
Cordelia stared back, wondering how she knew, and a satisfied glint appeared in cold blue eyes. “Oh, I know everything that goes on here- it’s called pillow talk,” she whispered conspiratorially, smiling when Cordelia’s eyes widened in shock.
“Since he took me to his bed that night, he can’t get enough of a woman that knows how to please him.”
A choked gasp escaped Cordelia’s trembling mouth; then her back straightened, eyes narrowing into slits. “Pfft. A well-used skank, don’t you mean?” Darla’s mouth tightened, followed by her hands until the bones in Cordelia’s arms creaked warningly, and then she was shoved roughly away.
Catching her breath, Cordelia rolled onto her hands and knees, groggily shaking her head that had connected sickeningly to the hard marble floor. Scarlet-painted toenails on dainty feet clad in strappy heels appeared in her line of blurred vision a moment before talons threaded through her hair and yanked her head up. Her neck felt the strain, upper body half rising to ease it.
Moving in until their noses almost touched, Darla grinned like a cat that’d got the cream. “You think he came back for the mission? For you?” her free hand smoothed Cordelia’s hair away from her face, then slid down to encircle cold hard fingers around her exposed throat.
“He came back to you to protect me.” Hazel eyes met blue unflinchingly. “Keep thine enemies closer,” she quoted with a sibilant hiss, and her fingers tightened.
Then dust blinded Cordelia for a second; her body suddenly free and falling to the floor.
Large hands replaced small and eased her up. Blinking hard to remove the dust, her gaze finally locked with anxious eyes black as pitch. For a long moment the connection remained, then:
“Don’t ever put your hands on me again. Got it?” shrugging Angel’s hands off, she climbed shakily to her feet, stepping over the dusty remains on the floor and made for the exit.
Her life, for now ensured, she finally allowed Darla’s revelations to sink in.
But she refused to think too much about it right now. His betrayel. Of how inexplicably it hurt.
Not here.
Not with Angel’s guilty eyes burning a hole in her back.
~*~