Part 4
Just when it looks like you’ve hit rock bottom and there is no place to go but up, rock bottom always seems to sink a few more feet down and you crash helplessly as it drops. Maybe it’s Murphy’s Law, or rotten luck, or the odd dozen bad oysters you had for lunch, but life never fails to drag you down just when you think you can’t take anymore.
These pessimistic thoughts kept running through Angel’s head as he poured his third glass of whiskey and sank down into the plush softness of his leather couch, taking comfort in the semi-darkness of his new apartment. He leaned his head wearily on the back of the couch and pinched the bridge of his nose with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand. In the other, he swirled the liquor in the tumbler, a tiny amber whirlpool with ice that clinked delicately against the glass.
His mind wandered unbidden back to his recent encounter with Spike. Even now, the thought of that little upstart ruining his life was enough to make his blood boil and his stomach churn. At one point in his long life, Angel had actually come to tolerate Spike, maybe even like him a little bit, but that was a time very, very long ago. Long enough ago to be a time when he was still Angelus and Spike was still very firmly under his controlling thumb. Ever since Angel had gained his soul and Spike had taken off with Dru, their relationship had dwindled to petty insult hurling interspersed with sporadic bouts of violence. Their last major encounter had been over the Gem of Amara. Shortly thereafter, Spike had been captured by the Initiative and taken out of the running for the “Biggest Badass Vampire in Southern California” title.
Angel supposed that what bothered him most about Spike was the fact that he had a soul now. Angel didn’t like how jealous and petty he felt himself becoming every time Spike’s soul was mentioned, but truth be told, Angel felt threatened. He had kind of liked the fact that he was unique. A vampire with a soul is an enigma, and it seemed impossible that it could have happened to another vampire, much less Spike. But now that he had one, Angel had to face the fact that Spike might be the only other being in this dimension that could truly understand what Angel went through day in and day out: the struggle of the soul versus the demon. Ironically, the fact that Spike understood Angel’s struggle only made Angel want to push the younger vampire as far away from him as possible. Spike’s soul-having presence threatened what little stability Angel had left, and he was bound and determined to see that his grand childe didn’t ruin everything for him.
The grating ring of the telephone jerked Angel out of his morose contemplation. He snatched up the receiver in his hand and lifted it to his ear. The greeting on the other end was apologetic, but urgent.
“What?” Angel’s reply was rough, irritation at having been disturbed blatantly obvious.
Pause.
“She what?”
Longer pause.
“How the hell did that happen? I thought you told me she was a lost cause.”
Silence on the other end, then frantic explanation, followed by more startling declarations.
“She WHAT??”
More rapid talking, the excuses coming from the caller doing nothing to make the growing dark cloud of anger on Angel’s face diminish.
“I want to know who’s responsible for this, and I want to know NOW. I also want to know where she is, and I want to know that FIVE MINUTES AGO. Do you understand me?”
The voice on the other end of the phone spoke again rapidly in frightened apology.
“Don’t call me back until you have answers.”
He slammed the phone back down so hard that the black plastic housing cracked and the lamp on the table scooted over a few inches from the vibration. Angel downed the rest of his drink in one long gulp, not even grimacing as the fiery liquid burned his throat, the ice rattling violently as he tipped the glass upright and slammed it onto the end table next to the broken phone.
Rock bottom had just gotten a few feet deeper.
***
Much as she had stared at Wesley’s door several hours earlier, Cordelia regarded Angel’s front door apprehensively from a small distance down the hall. Whereas she had felt minor butterflies in her stomach and some nervousness at seeing Wesley again, this time, the feelings were intense enough to nauseate her. The thought of seeing Angel, especially after hearing most of the story of last year from Wesley, was enough to make her want to run screaming in the other direction. But there was this little, nagging emotion that kept popping up and dancing in front of her face every time Angel was mentioned: love.
Despite the fact that she had been in a coma for several weeks and absent from her body for several months, Cordelia Chase was still very much in love with Angel. It was that love that kept her feet glued to the floor and her eyes fixed on the unfamiliar, nondescript gray front door of his apartment. It was also that love that made her reject Wesley’s offer to accompany her here. She just couldn’t see Angel again with someone, even Wesley, watching their reunion. She didn’t know what to expect, and having Wesley there was a variable she didn’t want to have to deal with.
After a few deep, cleansing breaths, Cordelia moved closer to the door and raised her hand to knock. She held it there, suspended, for seconds that seemed like hours. Then, in a boost of confidence, she brought her knuckles in contact with the door and rapped three times, then stepped back and crossed her arms anxiously.
Minutes later, the door swung open to reveal Angel, and her heart nearly stopped. The apartment behind him would have been completely dark except for a lamp that was turned on. The soft light backlit him in an ethereal glow, giving him a halo-effect that complemented his name. He was so much the person she remembered, and yet, he was so different. Her eyes took in the familiar black-on-black ensemble, the spiky hair, the chiseled features, the chocolate brown eyes that seemed bottomless. But where all of this was familiar, there was a hardened edge to everything that showed her how much he’d changed in such a short time. His clothes were slightly wrinkled, his hair mussed, his strong jaw clenched, and his eyes were almost empty, as if the light he’d found before she ascended had left him once again.
They stood there, staring at each other, for a few minutes that dragged on like hours. Finally, she cleared her throat and the sound seemed to bring Angel back from wherever it was he’d gone.
“Hi, Angel,” she said softly, a small smile caressing her face.
“Cordelia,” he said simply, the word completely devoid of emotion.
Her smile left with the fleetingness of a ghost as she felt his apathy wash over her.
Angel’s examination of her was as thorough as hers had been earlier. He’d known it was her for a few minutes before she opened the door. He’d heard and recognized the rhythm of her heartbeat, faint though it was, from down the hall. The thought of seeing her again had sent his mind into a tailspin, his remembered love for her warring with his recent promise and past love to Buffy. Then when she moved closer, he’d schooled his thoughts, determined to make sure that she was all right and take it from there.
But after opening the door and seeing her familiar, beautiful face again, it was all Angel could do not to run back into the apartment and slam the door shut. Every memory he had from the time she was possessed came rushing to the forefront of his mind and tainted what should have been a joyous reunion of two best friends. He saw her pretty face and silky brown hair in front of him, then a flash of that beautiful face contorted in pleasure beneath his son’s body. He saw the sweet smile as she greeted him, then a flash of the evil smile she’d fooled Angelus with as she offered him her body in exchange for information. He saw the gentle curves of her figure, then a flash of her swollen stomach as she descended the stairs of the hotel and flaunted her pregnancy and her affair with his son in his face.
He knew he couldn’t blame her for what happened, whether she remembered it or not, but he couldn’t erase the painful memories and clawing sting of betrayal.
“Um, can I come in?” she asked tentatively, that soft, sweet voice breaking into his unpleasant memories.
It was obvious that this conversation was going to be difficult, even more so than Cordelia had thought, but she wasn’t going to have it in the hallway if she could help it.
He said nothing, only backed into the apartment and held the door open for her. She walked in behind him and took in the sparse but expensive furnishings with a wide sweep of her eyes, then sat down on the leather couch. She didn’t sink all the way back in, just perched on the edge and clasped her purse in her lap, as if she was preparing herself for a hasty departure.
She fiddled with the handle on her bag for a few minutes before bringing her eyes up to his. He was just standing there, his hands in his pockets, three feet away from her and staring at her in an expression that was nerve-wrackingly unreadable.
The silence was killing Cordelia. He hadn’t asked her to leave, so he obviously felt they would have something to say to each other, but she had no idea what he was thinking. There was a time when she could predict what he would say before he said it, but now, it was like she was staring into a familiar face that housed the soul of a complete stranger.
Wanting desperately to break the silence, Cordelia said the first thing that came to mind.
“You don’t seem very surprised to see me.” Her eyes darted up to lock with his.
“I got a phone call about ten minutes ago that you woke up and then disappeared,” Angel said, still struggling with his jumbled thoughts. Half of him wanted to run to her and scoop her up into his arms, the other wanted to grab her and throw her bodily out into the hallway and tell her never to come back.
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“Where did you go?” he asked, his tone still unreadable.
She looked back down at her purse. “I actually went to the hotel first, but when I didn’t find anyone there, I went to Wesley’s. I didn’t know where you were living and I hoped he was still in the same place. He . . . he filled me in on what happened while I was gone.”
“While you were gone?” he repeated, having a suspicion of her meaning but wanting confirmation.
She opened her mouth and took a breath, then closed it and pursed her lips in indecision. She wasn’t sure where to start or what to say. Everything she knew and loved had been broken apart like a building out of Lego’s, then thrown into a bin, tossed around, and scattered across the landscape in a hundred different pieces.
“Wesley told me what he remembered of last year. Basically, he said some evil, jacked up being possessed me because she needed my DNA to become corporeal and take over the world. He said her name was Jasmine, and that she controlled my body and led everyone to think that I was still me. Then I got pregnant with her and gave birth to her, slipped into a coma, and here I am.”
Angel nodded once. “That’s about it. You don’t remember anything?”
He was torn. Would her ignorance of that time be a blessing or a curse?
“No,” she said, her eyes coming up and searching his. “I remember nothing, nothing at all, since Skip stopped me on the highway and told me I was destined for the higher realms.” The look on her face turned to pure irritation as she remembered how she’d been duped.
She moved past that and paused for a moment, remembering her hunch about Connor’s involvement in her pregnancy. Something, though, was telling her that now was not the time to bring the topic of Angel’s son into the conversation. There were to many other unanswered questions.
She jumped in with the hardest one first, taking his silence to mean that she should continue. “Why did you take over Wolfram & Hart, Angel? They’ve been a pain in our asses since Day 1. Why would you trust them like this?”
Angel’s shoulder’s stiffened at the accusation and mistrust in her tone. With jaw clenched, he said, “I had my reasons, Cordelia.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “What reason could you possibly have to give in to pure evil? To run the place, for pete’s sake. You’ve had the opportunity to get your hands on other sources of information and power before, and you always turned them down. Why now?”
He shrugged as if he didn’t have to explain his reasons, but inside he was angry. She had no right to question his judgment, no right! He’d done this partly because of her, and he did regret it, every damn day. The only thing that had kept him from walking out into the afternoon sunlight and dusting himself was the knowledge that the firm could do whatever it pleased with her and Connor if he wasn’t around. He’d done this for her, and now she was questioning his motives?
But he said only, “At the time, it seemed like a good idea. They had something I needed, and I thought it would be best if I took them up on their offer.”
She snorted in disbelief. “Geez, cryptic, much? That’s a lame excuse and you know it, Angel. I would rather have my teeth extracted with a dirty, blunt knife than have anything to do with any of those evil lawyers and there was a time when you would’ve said the same.”
His nostrils flared as he held back what he really thought. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Cordelia, so drop the subject. What’s done is done.”
“The hell it is!” she muttered as she jumped out of her seat, her comment earning a flash of amber eyes from the vampire.
Inwardly, she cringed at his harsh words. Who the hell did he think he was, shutting her out like this? She’d told him after his beige period with Darla that he couldn’t expect to keep her in the dark and maintain their friendship. But then again, Buffy was coming to town. And Buffy changed everything.
At the thought of Angel’s soon-to-be-ex-ex-girlfriend, Cordelia’s jealousy reared its ugly head.
“Wesley tells me that Buffy is coming to live here,” she said, crossing her arms defensively over her chest and trying to keep the snark out of her voice. She failed miserably.
“Yes, she is,” Angel said, his expression daring her to challenge him.
She rolled her eyes at him and heaved a sigh of disappointment. “Really, Angel, I thought you’d gotten past that. You haven’t brooded about her in months.”
He shrugged again as if to dismiss her comments. “Buffy has always understood me in a way that no one else can, in a way that no one else ever will. She has the ability to make me happy like no one else ever has, and I wanted that back since Angelus isn’t a threat anymore.”
He knew the little speech was as much for his own benefit as hers, and it seemed to make his decision to get back together with Buffy sound so much more appealing than it had a few hours earlier.
His words were a knife in Cordelia’s heart, the pain of them bringing feelings to the surface that she’d been trying so hard to hide since she saw his unsmiling face and felt the coldness of their reunion. The love she felt for him gave way to righteous indignation as he took their friendship and undeclared love and shoved them under the rug as if they were no more important than yesterday’s newspaper.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing Angel, but you have some weird, twisted ideas. I don’t know how you think that Buffy is a good thing for you right now, but that’s beside the point. No, let me finish!” she hissed at his attempt to break into her diatribe, her hand up as if to physically ward off his unspoken words.
“When I last saw you, the real me, anyway, you were finally becoming the person I always knew you could be. You were fighting for your redemption like you have been since I met you, but you were finally getting to a place in your life where you could be happy. Now, you’ve let everything that happened last year turn you into Mr. Pity Party!”
She stared him down as she took a deep breath, the grim set of his lips and the anger in his eyes not enough to keep her from continuing.
“You’d better take a good, long look at yourself and fix what you’ve become before its too late. You’re turning into the dark, ultra-broody Angel that tried to commit soul suicide with Darla, not the man I loved and admired.”
Her eyes narrowed as she dealt the final blow.
“Whatever it is that’s bothering you, Angel, get over it. Deal with it. Move past it. There are battles to be fought here and we don’t have time to deal with your ‘poor me’ fest.”
His head reeled as her words sunk in. He was immediately transported back to the days after he’d seen her with Connor, after he’d watched from the nearby building as she writhed wantonly beneath his son and broke his heart into a million pieces. She’d had the nerve to come up to his room and tell him to “get over” whatever was bothering him then, too. At the time, he hadn’t known that she wasn’t really Cordelia, and her words had made him so angry, not to mention heartbroken.
They had no less of an effect now. Whatever love he had left for Cordelia Chase was squished and shoved into a box in the far recesses of his mind at those few words. She may be the woman that he fell in love with a year ago, but he was no longer the man he was then. She didn’t have what he needed anymore. She didn’t understand him, couldn’t understand what he was going through. Only Buffy could. Buffy, he could love. Cordelia, well, he didn’t know what he could do with her, but right now, love wasn’t anywhere in the horizon.
He stepped closer to her, his eyes now full of more fire and passion than they had been in months. It was angry fire and passion, but it was something.
“Get over it?” he said hoarsely, grabbing her by the upper arms and jerking her once. “Get over it?!?”
His voice got softer and more threatening with each sentence. “You, little girl, have no idea what hell I’ve been through in the last year. Your body may have been there, but you sure as hell weren’t. I fought battles worse than any we’ve ever faced, and you have no idea what I sacrificed so I could get the job done. You weren’t there, you didn’t experience the pain and heartache, so don’t tell me to get over it. You have no right to do that, Cordelia. You abandoned me when I needed you the most, so don’t tell me what to do!!”
By the end of his tirade, Angel’s voice was an angry, hateful growl. His face was scant inches from hers, his fingers digging cruelly into her upper arms.
Cordelia gasped at the pain of his strong grip, her heart breaking at his hateful words. She hadn’t abandoned him on purpose, and he knew it. He was hurting and miserable, but he wouldn’t let her get close. Not after what Jasmine had done with her body.
It was a lost battle, and she knew it. She’d gone too far, and now she had to pay the price. He was right, in a way. She didn’t have any idea what he’d been through. If he’d share it with her, maybe she would. But he wanted Buffy now, not her.
She pulled away from him stiffly and he let her go. She hid the tears that were welling up in her eyes. “I want to move back into the hotel.”
He took a deep breath to calm himself, crossing his arms over his chest and tamping down the anger, retreating behind his mask of indifference once more.
“I don’t care what you do, Cordelia. I don’t have anything to do with the hotel, so you can move in there if you want to.”
“Fine,” she said, still not in control enough to turn around and face him. He was making her so angry! He had it all backwards, just like he always did. That’s why he needed her. That’s why they’d been so good together. She understood him like no one else did, knew how to mirror him in a way that made him see what he really was, and what he could be.
That’s why being with Buffy was so, so wrong. Cordelia understood Angel so much better than Buffy ever could. She loved him and could make him happier than he’d ever been with Buffy. But would he see that? Would he ever see past the Slayer to what was really good for him? Pfft. No. Just like him, the dumbass. Always taking the easy way out. The familiar way out. First Darla, now Buffy. Never wants to face his true future, his true love.
She suddenly remembered the rest of their little family.
“What happened to Fred, Gunn, and Lorne?” Cordelia asked, her voice neutral.
“They still work for me.”
Rolling her eyes even though he couldn’t see her, she answered, “Oh, so now you’ve corrupted them, too?”
“That’s unfair, Cordelia, and you know it. They came willingly.”
“They came because you didn’t give them a choice. They feel obligated to you, Angel. They’d follow you anywhere.”
He shook his head. “They had both eyes open, Cordelia. And we’re doing some good there.”
“Good being evil, you mean.”
The angry glint was back in his eyes and he opened his mouth to shout back at her, but the doorbell beat him to it. Both of them jumped at the sound, then Angel glared at her for another minute and stormed over to the door. Wrenching it open, he fully intended to growl at the person on the other side and scare them away so he could take Cordelia down a peg or two. No one was more surprised than him when he opened the door to find Buffy waiting on the other side.
Cordelia looked around him and raised an eyebrow at his visitor. Nothing had the capacity to shock her after tonight’s mess. Not even the blonde powerhouse standing out in the hall.
“Hey, Angel!” Buffy said excitedly. She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him fiercely. “After I got off the phone with you, I just decided, what the hell. Why not come now? So here I am!”
His face softened as he took in her pretty face and smile. “I’m so glad you are! Come on in.”
Buffy stopped abruptly when she saw Cordelia standing a few feet away. “Cordy!” she said, then looked at Angel with a puzzled expression. “Angel told me you were, um. . .” she trailed off.
“In a coma?” Cordelia prompted. “Yeah, not that anyone cared,” she said with a pointed look at Angel.
She turned to the other woman. “Welcome to Hell-A, Buffy. I was just leaving.” She forced a smile, then strode toward the door. Angel followed her and grabbed her arm just before she reached it.
“Let go of me, dumbass,” she hissed, glaring at him.
“This conversation is not over, Cordelia. You and I are going to talk about this. Soon.”
She pinned him with a steely glare worthy of Queen C. “This conversation is most definitely over. I have nothing more to say to you, Angel. Come and talk to me when you get your balls back.”
With that, she stormed out the door, slamming it as she left.
Angel struggled against the temptation to vamp out in his rage. He felt a warm hand glide into his, and he nearly threw Buffy across the room in his anger, but he stopped himself just in time.
“Everything okay, Angel?” The slayer asked innocently.
“Yeah,” he said through clenched teeth. “Everything’s fine.”