Part 10
“It’s me, Giles,” said Buffy, twirling the cord around her fingers. She waited until the doctors strolling along the hallway had passed before she turned into the conversation, reaching up to push her hair behind her ear,
“Cordelia’s safe. Well, safe as in she’s with us now and Spike and Dru got the hell outta dodge…”
“Was she badly hurt?” He asked from the other end, though from the sounds of it he knew the answer already.
“She’s pretty banged up, yeah. Looks like Spike thought he’d have fun with a couple of cigarettes and stuff…” Buffy murmured, forgetting to be Ms. Tactful and stop Giles from feeling guilty about all of this.
“The hospital are going to keep her in for a little while. Observation. That, and her parents are kinda out of town.”
“Are you alright? You sound rather tired.”
“I’ll live,” said Buffy, echoing her earlier sentiment to Angel, “I’ll call you later, okay?” She hung up the phone with a sigh, hoping that the factory was blown up enough so the authorities wouldn’t start sniffing round. She made her way back to Cordelia’s room, finding Angel sat at her bedside, watching her.
“I’m gonna have to go, Angel. My Mom already thinks I’m home and–” How the hell she was gonna explain the whole charred clothing deal was beyond her, though her Mom hadn’t noticed the blood yet. Maybe she could… Overlook it? “Someone should stay with her. Just until morning.”
She’d known Angel would agree before she even said it. Spike and Drusilla weren’t likely to come back but on the offchance they would… “I can be here before sunrise if you want me to–“
“I’ll stay,” said Angel softly, “The hospital has sewer access. You should get some sleep.”
Buffy nodded, blinking up at Angel as he came towards her, pressing his lips to her forehead. The movement felt awkward, stilted, and though Buffy knew it had something to do with their conversation earlier she was too tired to press it.
“I’ll, uh… I’ll see you tomorrow,” she murmured, giving a little wave as she slipped out the door.
***
It was close to morning when Cordelia woke up. She was confused at first, her head feeling like she’d been hit by a doozy of a vision and when she laid eyes on Angel, Cordelia’s breath hitched.
“Look, I get it, okay,” she croaked out, “Big with the funny, this taunting business. Can’t you send Spike back in?” At least with him, she knew where she stood. Torture, lots of it.
Physical pain, stuff she could deal with, even though her body protested all the time and told her otherwise. It was mental torture that was killing her right now – opening up to Angel, telling him the things she’d known back in Sunnydale for weeks now and she hadn’t been able to say a word… And then finding out that it was Drusilla – aptly, she realised, at the time that she’d dragged information out of Cordelia that she’d really rather not share.
“You’re in the hospital, Cordelia,” said Angel gently, taking her hand in his. She flinched again and it took him a moment to realise he’d jarred her fingers, a pain that would have been worse without the aid of painkillers. “You’re safe.”
It took a moment for her to realise that he was telling the truth. She looked at the whitewashed walls, the uber-depressing lack of any kind of picture or painting or something that’d brighten up the place and met Angel’s gaze again.
“Spike grabbed me from behind,” she whispered, her frown deepening as she realised that the big freak had tortured her for the last day and a half, “Told me that it was time we had a chat. Guess he doesn’t talk well unless it’s with his fists.”
She remembered that look on her own Angel and went to squeeze his hand, reassure him that she was fine and cried out as her ribs pulled. “All this for a stupid arm in a box?”
It went deeper than that, they both knew it, but neither wanted to say. Cordelia didn’t want to admit that Dru had found out anything about Angel’s future and he didn’t want to admit that she could still be in danger.
“I thought we were too late.” He admitted quietly, his gaze dropping.
Cordelia definitely knew that look. “Okay, how was this one your fault?” She demanded, wondering fleetingly when she could get the hell out of the hospital. She didn’t like them as a general rule – something about visiting them every other week and being told your brain was being turned to mush kinda put you off.
“My fault? Cordy, I’m not–“
“Oh, you know you’re brooding,” she frowned, not ready to divulge exactly how many times he’d saved her in the past, well, ever. And had he just called her ‘Cordy’? God, everything still hurt, despite the multitude of painkillers judging by the fog.
“Angel, you saved me, okay? I’m still alive, mostly, and hey… No great sucking neck wounds. I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay, Cordelia,” he frowned, “What they did to you–“
“I was there, Angel,” she snapped, irritably, “There’s no need to get snippy with me just ’cause you have a serious case of flagging conscience over not getting me out sooner. I was there and it sucked and yeah, okay, I’m hurting right now but hello, not making it any better by going over it.”
They both fell into silence. Angel brooding – shock horror – and Cordelia wondering why this had to be so hard along with the fleeting feelings of guilt at being all snippy. “When can I go home?”
“The doctors need to keep you in for observation. You inhaled a lot of smoke from the fire and your injuries–” Angel pushed himself past that point, “The Maid said your parents were out of town?”
“Figures.” Cordelia murmured, though it wasn’t like she minded so much. She was used to it, she guessed, although the fact that her father had bailed on their conversation o’ doom was irking her more than she’d like.
Along with her fingers and, like, every part of her body. She could feel her eyelids drooping again.
“Do you need anything?”
Cordelia smiled, despite herself. “You guys always used to ask that back home…whenever I had a vision. Used to piss me off so much…”
Angel’s tentative smile faltered. “Oh.”
“No… I mean…” Cordelia sighed, her mouth twitching in exasperation, “I’m not saying stuff right.”
“You’re tired,” Angel offered, “They gave you a lot of painkillers.”
“Pretty strong ones too,” she murmured, letting her eyes drift closed as Angel’s fingers rubbed softly across the back of her hand. “I knew you’d come, y’know. To find me. You always do.”
This time it was Angel’s turn to sigh. “Cordy, what they did to you–“
Her eyes flew open, “I knew you were brooding.” She accused, frowning, “I knew what I was doing when I went to help you that night, Angel. What we do… What we did back home, there was always a danger that something like this would happen, I was just more careful, that was all.”
That and she had a kick-ass ghost as protection. No way Dennis would have let Spike grab her without a fight but then he’d grabbed her outside, pretty much blindsided her… This wasn’t Angel’s fault.
Angel stared at her for a moment, his jaw tightening. He couldn’t smell Spike on her beyond the torturing, but he’d been off about a few things lately. “Did he–“
“Did he what?” Cordelia asked, confused. He’d seen her wounds and bruises, spoke to the doctor probably. It wasn’t like–Oh. She blinked and shook her head, settling back into the pillows to make herself a little more comfortable.
“No, Angel. He didn’t…” She answered, which was one less thing for him to brood about, she guessed. “He was too busy brooding over the stuff he’d got me to admit to.”
“Spike was brooding?” Somehow, Angel couldn’t picture it, “What’d you tell him?”
Cordelia smiled a little, “I may have embellished a teeny, tiny bit,” she murmured, “Actually, I embellished a lot. I took something you told me in the future and kinda ran with it.” It wasn’t Spike’s fault he was all smitten and obsesso-guy over her.
Even Cordelia had to admit that there was something about how strong she was and how helpless she could look with those big baby-greens of hers that had the opposite sex falling all over her. Look at Angel.
“I think that’s why he was pissed,” she said, lifting her hand to look at her fingers, swathed in bandages and producing a dull ache that wouldn’t go away.
Angel swallowed and thought about the things Dru had said, not certain if he should press the issue until Cordelia was better. She noticed though, her head tilting as if waiting for the question he was bound to ask. “Dru…” He started, noticing the way she flinched, “She mentioned something about Darla.”
At first mention of his sire, Cordelia’s entire demeanour changed. She seemed to look smaller in her bed and when she looked at Angel, the spark in her eyes had dimmed a little.
“She said she’d pretended to be me,” he said gently. Angel knew how cruel Drusilla could be. He’d made her – turned her into everything she was today and Cordelia had taken the brunt of that full force.
“What else did she tell you?” Cordelia asked slowly.
Angel sighed, “Maybe we shouldn’t–“
“Maybe we should.” She interrupted him, pulling herself upwards in the bed a little. She ran her unhurt hand through her hair and glanced down at his fingers, still stroking across the back of her hand. “She pretended to be you.” She nodded, “But it wasn’t– I thought– It was so real, Angel, like hypnosis only stronger, I guess. I was back at home and everything that’d happened there… I thought I still had chance to stop it.”
Cordelia took a breath, steadily avoiding Angel’s gaze and continued, “In the future… Before everything that brought me back here, Darla… It involves some law firm, Angel. They brought her back. You went evil again for a while, sort of… Helped kill a bunch of lawyers and saw fit to bone Darla and then–“
Angel blinked, “Me and Darla?”
“She was human first. They brought her back with a soul but she was already dying – something to do with being a giant, skanky ho back in the day and– You tried to protect her but stuff happened and… And you got pushed over the edge, I guess. We don’t really talk about it.”
“I killed a bunch of lawyers?”
“Helped kill,” Cordelia frowned, “And don’t think I’m condoning that ’cause I’m really not but… There were circumstances.”
“Circumstances?”
“Didn’t Giles say you shouldn’t know too much about your future?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. Those circumstances had led to Darla showing up nine month later with a bulging stomach and things had fallen apart from there. Divulging that would not be of the good right now.
“I guess I shouldn’t ask too many questions,” he murmured, but he didn’t really think that way. Cordelia had explained most of what she was trying to prevent but there was something beneath that. Something she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – tell him.
Even lying in a hospital bed and hooked up to a dozen machines, Cordelia’s body language was perfectly sculpted to set him at ease, to deflect questions. Most people wouldn’t notice it but then Angel had spent a lot of time looking at Cordelia these past few weeks. “You’re going to stay with me once you get out of hospital.”
Cordelia glanced up, “Angel, I’m fine.” Standard response.
“I’m not arguing with you,” he told her firmly, “You can stay with me until your parents get home. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Cordelia knew that face. Cordelia had seen that face the day after her birthday when Angel had insisted she sleep over in his bed, with him and Connor, just so he could make sure she was okay. She’d agreed, reluctantly, once she’d paid a visit to Phantom Dennis to let him know she was okay.
“Fine,” she sighed, though she really didn’t have enough energy to protest anyway, “But just for a couple of days, okay?”
***
The thing about that sentence – something Cordelia was noting with more and more ire on the eighth day she’d stayed with Angel – was that to someone who could quite possibly live forever, a ‘couple of days’ could translate into something more. Like ‘eight days’ more. Like ‘eight days and not showing any signs of letting her leave’ more.
She’d spoke to her parents yesterday, insisted that they not cut their two-week cruise short with more vigour than she’d thought possible at the realisation she’d have to answer questions, and turned back to Angel, smiling when he asked what she’d like for dinner.
Just over a week she’d been there and he hadn’t let her lift a finger. She’d insisted, of course, and doing the washing up with one bandaged hand had been no easy task but she’d managed it. She was even getting better and yet still Angel insisted she stay.
Buffy hated it. Cordelia had been eavesdropping at Angel’s door one night when they’d come back from patrol to pick up the schoolwork she’d left behind when some random-ass demon was in town and Buffy had said, with no small amount of pout in her voice, that she never saw Angel any more outside of patrol. That he was always looking after Cordelia and wasn’t it time she went home already?
Cordelia had stopped listening after that. Her Grandmother had always said that nothing good could ever come out of eavesdropping and Cordelia firmly believed she’d been right, though Angel never said anything. And when Cordelia told him that maybe it was time she went home he deflected her attention with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and the television he’d acquired through a favor.
He didn’t have cable, but that was okay. It would have felt weird watching anything other than Jerry Springer anyway, since Dennis had been all obsesso-once upon a time. It was nice just talking to Angel, finding out more about his past that he hadn’t told her in the future, though there really wasn’t much. Telling him snippets of hers that he hadn’t known.
They were friends again, Cordelia realised on the eighth day she’d stayed with him. It was like second nature for her to heat up his blood in the microwave while she made her coffee, second nature for her to try and spice it up again though this Angel was more against the cinnamon than her own and on the ninth day – the day Cordelia realised she’d really have to go home – she was more upset than she thought she’d be.
Her decision to go back to school was met with many a frown from Angel. She was falling behind with her work, she told him, and no amount of catching up through homework dropped off by an icy Buffy would make up for that so she went. First period, she got through with ease – not a Scooby in sight and the painkillers were still kicking in nicely.
Second and third period had been a little rough. Many a concerned look from Xander, a frosty reception from Buffy (though it wasn’t like she cared) and enough questions and apologies from Giles to make even the worst of vision headaches come back. Her back hurt. It had been niggling her ever since Spike had taken her hostage, though she wasn’t sure what she’d done.
She slipped off to the bathroom halfway through fourth period, excusing herself from Study Hall, and sat looking at scars that were fading.
Her fingers would be out of the splints in a couple of days, she was pretty much healed… And yet she couldn’t get the memory of Drusilla out of her head. It wasn’t so much Drusilla as it was Angel. She hadn’t even told him about what she’d done, just that her taunting had been brutal enough to stay way past the few short minutes it had really lasted and that no, she didn’t want to talk about it, but it just kept niggling her.
The way he’d looked when he’d asked if she loved him. The laughter… That had been the cruellest thing to bear and yet it was the most absurd. Her Angel would never laugh at her. Let her down gently, maybe. Tell her he was in love with Buffy, that they were friends… But never laugh and yet that was what hurt the most.
She sighed, pulling down her shirt and moving to get up when the door to the girls toilets opened.
“Did Angel say anything?”
Cordelia froze, her hand halfway to the lock on the stall door.
“Not really. I don’t know, Will… I thought things would get better but ever since she came back… It’s weird. She’s always there. I know he only took her in ’cause her parents were out of town but seriously, how much looking after does she need?”
A flash of irritation ran through Cordelia but she pushed past it. She’d been back one morning and she’d had to put up with a thousand and one questions about what those scars on her arms were. Rumours that she was into some weird shit now she’d broke up with Xander and wasn’t hanging with the Cordette’s any more.
“Maybe you should try talking to him?” Offered Willow.
“Been there, tried that,” said Buffy, “He won’t talk to me. He almost killed Willy to get to Cordelia and then he practically threw the fact that he was a vampire back in my face.”
Cordelia frowned. That was exactly Buffy’s problem, Angel was a vampire. There was no getting away from it and Buffy hadn’t even witnessed Angelus yet. She ran her unhurt hand through her hair and shook her head. How Buffy had ever survived Angelus with an attitude like that, she’d never know.
“He’s different around her, Willow, even when he talks about her he’s… It’s like he’s this different person. They talk about things, this future that Cordelia’s lived and Angel wants to know more about without having grave consequences or whatever and–“
Buffy sighed and from the other side of the door, Cordelia could hear her breath hitch, “I’m losing him and I can’t do a thing to stop it.”
***
Back at Angel’s after school and things were– Weird. She knew she’d been quiet since she got there, kept replaying that little conversation between Buffy and Willow in her head over and over until she thought she was gonna go crazy from thinking about it and then she’d… Well, brooded for the want of a better word.
Her, brooding – a pastime most certainly best left to Angel.
“You’ve hardly touched your food…” He pointed out gently, having watched the play of emotions across her face, watching as she pushed the eggs back and forward on her plate.
Her hand stilled, “What? Oh, I uh… I had a big lunch,” she lied, finally pushing the plate away. Her favourite meal – eggs ala Angel (although where he’d learned to cook, she’d never asked) and now it was met with a slightly sour taste in her mouth since she’d overheard the conversation between Buffy and Willow.
He was different around her, she’d heard, almost killed Willy to make sure she was safe and now Buffy thought that the very thing Cordelia was here to stop was going to happen?
“Is everything okay?” He asked, drawing her out of her thoughts, “You’ve been pretty quiet since you came home from school.”
“Did Buffy come by?” Cordelia asked, finally lifting her gaze to meet his though it didn’t quite reach.
“Buffy?” Angel looked surprised, the mention of his girlfriend throwing him off guard a little, “No, she… Homework. We’re meeting later.”
“For patrol?”
Angel nodded. “Yeah, patrol.”
Patrol? Thought Cordelia. No wonder Buffy had been sourer than a bunch of grapes. If all she’d been doing with Angel was patrolling she’d be feeling all neglected and stuff too. This was fixable, she just had to remind Angel that once in a while he was allowed to have fun, that was all.
“Didn’t your date get interrupted?” She asked abruptly, not letting him change the subject or run for the Ben and Jerry’s.
“What?”
“Your date, remember?” She repeated, “Day before Buffy’s birthday? Ass-kicking of a lifetime? Maybe you guys should pick it up again.”
“Tonight?”
“No time like the present, right?” She asked brightly. A little too bright, but thankfully Angel didn’t seem to notice, “You’ve been with me all week, Angel. I feel a little, I dunno… Manpire-hoggy. You guys can’t have had much time together lately.”
“I’ve been taking care of you. She understands.”
Cordelia’s eyebrows rose, “Understands what? That her boyfriend’s been MIA for the past ever? Trust me, Angel, she doesn’t *airquote* understand.” If anything, Buffy was growing resentful and though Cordelia understood why, it irked her.
“But you…”
“I’m fine,” she told him, holding up a hand to ward off any argument, “You rented enough movies to let me open my own store. You deserve a night off, now go find Buffy and do something fun, okay?”
***
Go find Buffy and do something fun, okay?
The words kept echoing in her head and for almost the fifth time that minute, Cordelia glanced at the clock. She’d sent Angel out on his ‘date’ with Buffy a few hours earlier, instructing him to have fun and not come back until at least some of the bridges between them had been mended. Five hours later? No Angel.
It wasn’t that she was worried, not really. Angel could take care of himself, she knew. It was just– Well how weird was this, for a start? The whole date thing had been her idea yet here she was five hours later trying to keep her mind on something that wasn’t Angel, trying to focus on the fact that right now he and Buffy could be–
“Stop it!” She told herself firmly, yanking herself off the couch and heading into the kitchen for another drink.
This was insane! She was – quite literally – going out of her mind and not even Tom Cruise was enough to get her mind off of it. The truth was simple. Cordelia was screwed. Beyond screwed. So far screwed, in fact, that it was killing her even thinking about what it was they were up to right now and– And could she think of anything else?!
Fifteen minutes later when the door slammed behind her, Cordelia almost shot off the seat. She’d barely managed to calm herself down when Angel appeared at the door looking a little more than dishevelled.
“How’d it go?” She asked, looked him up and down once and then rose an eyebrow, “Do I really need to ask?”
“Polgara demon,” he said simply.
“That’s something ‘fun’?” God, that was crap even for him, “Angel, it was supposed to be a date.”
“It was!” He protested, moving to sit by her on the couch and wincing as his back jarred, “I just… By the time we’d tracked the Polgara everything ‘fun’ was closed… Did you wait up?”
“Huh? Of course not! Duh! I got caught up in the Cruise fest,” she lied, getting up off the couch. She faltered, remembering that as much as she’d lived here for over a week, this still wasn’t home. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
Angel shook his head, certain that he couldn’t take Cordelia patching him up, not tonight. “I’m okay.” Things with Buffy were too… Too bizarre. Cordelia’s soft hands sliding across injured and broken skin would only confuse him even more.
He opted for silence instead while Cordelia sat down and Tom did his ‘thing’ with a couple of bottles of tequila until Angel, no longer understanding what anyone saw in the guy, spoke up, “You like this guy?”
“He had his moments,” Cordelia smiled, taking a drink from her glass, “‘Course not so much now what with his Cult of Scientology and being a general freak thing.”
“He follows that?” Angel blinked.
“You know that?”
“I ate a high priest once,” he explained, shaking his head, “He bored me with it.”
Cordelia laughed, “I’d have probably bit him too. So you guys had an okay night, despite the demon?”
Angel’s gaze dropped. Despite his general surprise at Cordelia suggesting they take their ‘date’ now, Angel had thrown himself into it with as much gusto as possible.
She’d been right about Buffy not understanding – trouble was there’d been a lot of other things that Buffy hadn’t understood either, like his reaction with Willy earlier that week and the things he’d said.
Cordelia waited. And waited some more until curiosity really got the better of her. “Okay, hesitation? Not a great look on you. What?”
“Things were… Tense.”
“Tense?” She tried her damndest to temper down the brief spark of hope at his admission but it flared quickly and ran through her, “How come?” She asked, biting her lip.
“The last time we were together things were… Awkward. She had issues with me beating up Willy.”
Cordelia knew that. She’d heard when she’d been eavesdropping in the toilets, but it wasn’t like she could just come out and say it or anything.
“Okay,” she said finally, deciding to play it safe, “Can’t say I have a problem with that since it kind of saved my life. How come she was with the issues?”
“I went too far.”
Cordelia’s mouth twitched, “You didn’t kill him or anything though, right?”
“Nothing he won’t recover from.” He admitted, uneasily. Cordelia could almost picture him fiddling with his collar. It wasn’t like she had any issues with being saved – Buffy, however, was a different matter.
“So what’s her deal?”
Angel sighed, “I kind of… Made my being a vampire an issue.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well she– I wasn’t– I just sort of reminded her…”
Cordelia blinked, “You reminded her that you were a vampire. Which means that she’d what… Let it slip her mind?”
Angel sighed again. Was it really as simple as all that for her? He couldn’t forget what he was for a second, especially not since Cordelia had shown up, she’d just… Showed him that maybe it was okay living with it, that was all.
He palmed the back of his neck uncomfortably and glanced towards the screen again, not sure he liked following this train of thought in Cordelia’s presence. He’d almost been able to feel her pulling away from him earlier – taking a step back and praying she was doing the right thing only Angel didn’t want her to take a step back.
“I told her that… That being rough with someone kind of came with the territory, I guess… She didn’t take it too well.”
Cordelia shook her head, her heart sinking. Things weren’t getting better with Buffy, they were getting worse. And her presence here was only making that so. “Angel, she’s a slayer… If she had any problems over what it is a vampire does then we’d be living in the middle of an apocalypse, trust me.
It’s just… When it comes to you? Buffy’s kinda blind. And a lot stupid,” her voice lowered a little, “She’s in love and… And who can blame her?”
He glanced up this time, trying to catch Cordelia’s gaze. What the hell was she trying to say? “Cordelia–“
“Y’know, we should think about me going home at some point,” she began, her voice heavy, “My parents’ll be home soon and I’m better now.”
“Home?” That sounded as if it were the last thing on Cordelia’s mind right now. “But–“
“No buts, Angel. I’m getting better. How much looking after do I need?”
Angel’s nostrils flared slightly, anger zipping across his face. He’d heard that so many times this week, only the source was a little different. “Did Buffy say that to you?”
“What, and live to tell the tale?” Cordelia asked, eyebrows arched, “Pfft. And please. The time when I listen to Buffy will be the time when hell starts offering skiing lessons for the morally ambigious. I’ve just… I’ve been here for over a week now, Angel. Aren’t you getting a little tired of seeing me here every day?”
He shook his head. Part of him knew he should be giving a different answer – the other part of him didn’t want to. “I like you being here.”
“See? I knew you’d get too attached,” she tried to joke but it fell flat, “I’ve gotta go home sooner or later.”
“Your parents don’t get home ’til Friday.”
“It’s five days away. It’s not like I’m a total invalid.” She hadn’t been when she moved in, yet Angel had insisted – even gone as far as to get her clothes from home following an invite from the maid, glad to get Cordelia out of her hair for a while. “And you and Buffy can get some stuff sorted out.”
Angel was almost sullen when he answered, the muscle in his jaw tightening. “Sort out what? She doesn’t understand, Cordelia. Not like–“
Cordelia held up her hand, heart dropping like a dead weight. “Don’t. Don’t say that.” She couldn’t hear that. She couldn’t know that this Angel had finally opened his eyes when her own hadn’t even started.
She got off the couch again, almost unsteady on her feet. Why the hell had she done this? Why had she moved in here? What good had she hoped it would do? “I can’t do this any more, Angel.”
“What do you mean?”
Needing to put some distance between them, Cordelia walked over to the mirror he’d put above his dresser for her. He hated mirrors, she knew, had in her own world. They just served to remind him of everything he wasn’t and yet he’d put one up for her.
“While I was off being tortured, I figured some stuff out…” She said quietly, keeping her back to him. If she looked at him she’d never do this and if she wanted to get anywhere, if she wanted Angel to be okay and not live that life, she had to do this.
“From the minute I stood in Skip’s office, I thought I understood,” she said softly, “I was changing your past to give you a better future and I thought I was okay with that.”
The lump rose in her throat and Cordelia blinked, praying that she didn’t cry.
“I am okay with that,” she continued, “But every time I try and change your past, something gets thrown in the way. Boxes, vampires… Spike. I can’t change your past any more, Angel. I’ve done so much, changed so much… And now it’s time for me to start changing some things I can fix.”
“Like what?” He asked, his voice dulling with each passing second, “Cordy…”
“That,” she said softly, “You saying my name like that, like we’re friends. We barely even know each other.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded flat. She didn’t mean a single word of this, not after the last week, but having Angel in her life, even this way, it was turning out so wrong.
Pretty soon they’d be more than friends again and she couldn’t see a way out of that for him unless she did this.
“I thought it’d be okay. I mean, I was a little confused at first but I figured Skip knew what he was doing… Giving you this second chance. You deserve it, Angel, but it’s not just you.”
“What are you saying?”
Cordelia took a deep breath and repeated the same thing she’d been telling herself since the moment she dropped back into Sunnydale. She had to do this. Not for her, for Angel – there was no alternative here. “I wasn’t cut out for the visions, I think we all knew that,” she said softly, her gaze dropping, “I told you what it was like those first few weeks, how much I wanted rid of them.” She felt his presence behind her and blinked away tears.
“The Powers kept sending the visions and they hurt… They hurt so much.” Okay, so she was bending the truth a little. She hadn’t told them she’d been part demon, this was just working to her advantage, that was all, even though she felt like she was dying inside. “I just… I get it now. I get that maybe this isn’t just your second chance, Angel. Maybe it’s mine.”
“You don’t want that future?” He asked, his stomach sinking fast.
Cordelia steeled herself and turned, met his gaze, “No, Angel, and neither should you. Things are good here with you and Buffy. You love her. You’ve always loved her then too, but too much got in the way. I was selfish, wanting you to be my friend when I knew that… When I knew that I’d have to walk away one day and I’m sorry.”
Angel’s jaw tightened, “We can change it… We can–“
“We can’t,” she sighed, “Sooner or later I’d end up with the visions again and they’d kill me. That’s what Skip said, that one day I’d just have a vision and wouldn’t wake up and I can’t wait for that day to happen, I won’t. I’m sorry.”
Cordelia had always been the biggest advocate of speaking the truth no matter how much it hurt. Tact? Was simply not saying true stuff – she’d pass. And the harsh truth of everything she’d just uttered was that it was true.
This was her second chance. Did it matter that it was a second chance she didn’t want? Probably not because she could see Angel backing away from her with each second. He knew what she was saying.
If I stay with you, I’ll die.
And maybe it wasn’t the whole truth. Maybe she was embellishing and bending and even stretching it beyond all recognition but it was all Cordelia could do.
Even at the risk of great pain, he’d stay with her. She knew that now. She’d seen it when she suggested she go home. She understood Angel, she always had. They’d been friends first, heading towards something more and then things had happened. Darla, Connor, Skip… And then Sunnydale again. And she understood him here too.
Without meaning to, she’d painted him a picture of his future and with her – not Buffy – it was one he wanted. It was one she wanted but she’d seen the outcome and the only way he wouldn’t have that was if he thought he was killing her in the process.
Cordelia watched as he turned away. “Angel–“
“I’ll walk you home.” He said quietly, gathering his keys from the place he’d tossed them on the table.
She heard something shatter outside. Her gaze dropped and Cordelia nodded, taking her jacket from the back of the door, zipping it up though it wasn’t cold. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t want you to find out like that.”
When finally he glanced up at her, Cordelia was back at square one, his voice quiet, the ability to read him gone.
“It’s better than the alternative.”