Part III
“She’s stark raving bonkers,” Buffy said.
Wesley winced — she’d said that very loudly — and glanced back through the doorway. Cordelia, by herself at the library table, did not appear to hear, or at any rate to care. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think there’s more to this — more than she’s telling us. But I don’t think she’s insane.”
All of them were in the library office — Angel and Buffy on the cot, Jenny in the chair, Wesley on his feet, fighting the urge to pace. Pacing meant that you had nervous energy to burn, and Wesley did not want to reveal to the others — or admit to himself — how much Cordelia’s words had affected him.
Yet he was realizing that others were just as overwhelmed by what Cordelia had told them about her idea of what was real. Buffy was hugging herself tightly, a hunched, protective posture that belied her angry words. Jenny’s eyes were tear-filled, as they had been since the moment Cordelia first said that Giles still lived. And Angel still seemed dazed from the thought of Angelus’ escape, not that Wesley could blame him. If such a thing were true — though of course it could not be — the repercussions would have been ghastly.
Angel was apparently somewhat focused on the conversation at hand, though, as he asked, “That name she keeps saying — Naiura. What is that? A demon?”
“Not that I recognize,” Wesley said.
He cast a quick glance over at Jenny, who shook her head. “Me either. Of course, that doesn’t mean Naiura’s not a demon. Contrary to popular belief, Wes and I aren’t on a first-name basis with them all. Rupert — he would’ve known, I bet –“
“What’s with all this mission-in-LA crap, anyway?” Buffy grumbled. “You guys have a mission here. You’re my Watcher, and Angel’s my — well, he’s here to help me. You two wouldn’t ever leave me.”
Wesley said nothing; he knew what Buffy had said was entirely true. He had never questioned the fact that his calling, his purpose, was to help Buffy in her sacred duty as the slayer. Certainly it was hard to imagine that Angel could have anything more positive to contribute.
And yet — something in him he’d hardly realized was there had responded powerfully to what Cordelia had said. A mission. Not Buffy’s or the Council’s or anyone else’s. His own.
Wesley remembered Cordelia as Xander’s girlfriend, remembered his own rather guilty crush on the schoolgirl. He’d indulged that crush by watching “Cordy!” a few times; to him it seemed rather typical American sitcom fare, diverting but forgettable, of interest only because of his familiarity with the star. And now, suddenly, here she was again, a flickering image on a screen made real once more, arriving in his life bearing tidings of a world that had never existed. Of a man he had never been. And despite every bit of training and education he’d had in his life, Wesley was tempted by her words.
“Just going on gut instinct here,” Jenny said, “but I don’t think she’s lying. Whatever it is that’s trying to pull a fast one, it’s not Cordelia herself.”
“Agreed,” Wesley said. “But I do think we should find out what’s going on. I doubt anything would have tampered so seriously with her memories and sent her to us only for amusement’s sake.”
“I think it’s just to hurt us,” Buffy said. “Just to get under our skin. Maybe distract us before something important. I mean, think about it. She tells Angel that he went retro-evil to scare him. She tells Miss Calendar and me that Giles didn’t die, so we have to miss him all over again.” Her voice was trembling as she continued. “And that’s why she tells me that Willow and Xander didn’t die — so I have to miss them again too –“
Angel put one hand on Buffy’s shoulder; she did not acknowledge the touch, but her trembling diminished.
Wesley ventured, “Not all of her stories were meant to placate us. The bit about Faith becoming twisted and evil, betraying us to the Mayor — what could that serve?”
Buffy shook her head. “Just reminding us that Faith’s dead. That those bastards in the Initiative killed her. Hey — the Initiative. You think they might’ve done this to Cordelia?”
“If the Initative could alter memories, they wouldn’t bother with Cordelia. They’d go straight for us.” Angel seemed to hesitate for a moment, then added, “I think we should do what Cordelia says.”
“What?” Buffy said. staring at her lover. “You’re just gonna drop everything and go to Los Angeles? Wouldn’t that be exactly what this Naiura chick wanted? If this is a setup, then walking right into it doesn’t seem like our Plan A.”
“I don’t think we have to follow through on all of what Cordelia wants to do,” Angel said. “But I do think we have to get her to talk to us. Whatever it is Naiura made her believe in — that’s got to be important, right?”
“I see,” Wesley said. He met Angel’s eyes — something he rarely did — and genuinely considered what Angel had said, something he did even more rarely. “Yes. By not challenging Cordelia’s delusions, we make it easier for her to talk to us about them.”
“I’ve got another idea,” Buffy said. “Let’s challenge Cordelia’s delusions a little harder. She wants you guys to pick up and take off to LA? Okay, well, then, she can explain what the hell’s going on. And just why she doesn’t like ‘this reality’ to start with. I mean, I know why I don’t like it, but she’s a star and everything. So what’s her damage?”
“There’s more to it, I think,” Angel said. “Last night — she was rambling, kind of. And she said something that about a — a lover, I think — somebody I think she lost.”
“If she had a psychotic break after getting dumped, too bad,” Buffy said. Wesley noted the harshness in her tone. He understood that Buffy did not intend to be cruel about Cordelia, but she had a deep terror of being alone. More alone, Wesley thought, remembering Willow and Xander. “Hey, Wesley, maybe it’s you. You guys were making eyes at each other back during senior year — and don’t even try to deny it, because it was obvious in a 40-foot-high-billboard kind of way. Maybe in her reality, you two had a hot-and-heavy affair, and now the reason she’s all freaked out is that you don’t even remember it.”
Wesley could feel himself blushing, knew Jenny could see it, felt even more embarrassed, and so blushed all the deeper. He managed to say, “I don’t — I mean, I doubt — that’s not the, ah, vibe I’m picking up from her.”
Buffy frowned. “You pick up vibes?”
Angel said, “This is just a weird thing for a demon to do. Why alter someone’s memories if you don’t have something to gain from the alteration? Whatever messed with Cordelia’s head — it had a purpose. And it obviously has some power. I’d rather go looking for it before it comes looking for us.”
“We have stuff to do here, remember?” Buffy said. “Looking up all the weirdo stuff that’s been buried in Sunnydale? Which is a lot.”
“I could help with that,” Jenny offered. “Buffy, I really think something’s up with Cordelia. In high school — I think she was fond of Rupert. You all were. But there wasn’t anything special there. But when she was telling me that he didn’t die — that he was still alive — ” Jenny shook her head, and Wesley wished that he could do as Angel had done. That he could reach out and comfort the woman he loved. “I felt like there was more she wanted to say. So much more that she felt. There’s even more to her story than she’s told us. This isn’t just a knock on the head. This is something real.”
Buffy did not look any happier. “So Cordelia drops the vicious act for a day, and we all assume something supernatural has to be involved? Wait, that kinda made sense. But it’s still not a reason for my boyfriend and my Watcher to abandon me.”
“It’s a two-hour drive, Buffy,” Angel said. His voice was — not sharp, exactly, but it was the closest Wesley had ever heard Angel come to snapping at her. “It’s not exactly abandonment. If we leave at sundown, we’ll be back before dawn. One night won’t kill you.”
Buffy sighed, glanced over at Wesley. “So both of you actually think this is a good idea?”
Wesley looked back at Angel. And for the first time ever, Wesley was sure he knew what Angel was thinking.
We had a mission, Wesley thought. Cordelia and Angel and I? It’s quite impossible, and it doesn’t make any sense, but — it would’ve been nice. To have a mission, a reason. Something that didn’t belong to people you helped or people near you — something that was yours, alone. Maybe Angel was as taken with the idea as Wesley was himself.
Even though it wasn’t true, he had the irresistible urge to hear more about it.
Wesley said, “Yes. I think we both do.”
***
Riley hurried through the corridors — tunnels, really, lined in claustrophobia-inducing sheet metal — grateful for a chance to get back into the open air, cold or no. He had almost made it to his post — was even thinking the words “home free” — when he heard her voice. “You almost missed the changeover, Finn. Again.”
He turned to face Walsh, who had her hands in the pockets of her white coat. Her face was set in the official detachment that, he’d learned the hard way, could conceal a number of emotions that were neither detached nor official. “I show up on schedule to take on my duty, ma’am. Showing up earlier would be an inefficient use of time.”
“Ah,” Walsh said. His defiance seemed to have amused her. “And whiling away the hours with a research subject — that’s efficient.”
Research subject. “Faith cooperates more now that she understands. Doesn’t she?”
“She cooperates more,” Walsh agreed. Her voice echoed slightly in the corridor, flat and tinny against the metal. “But I hope she doesn’t understand too much.”
“For her to understand too much, I would have had to tell her too much,” Riley said. “And it’s your job to keep me from knowing too much. You do it well, ma’am.”
Walsh laughed out loud. “It’s a pity you didn’t serve in the days when they taught fencing, Finn. You’d have been good.” She gestured toward the post. “Go. Scoot.”
She liked Riley, a fact Riley didn’t find very comforting. He turned and went toward the south exit, his guard post for the day, turning down the earflaps on his hat and tugging on his gloves.
He silently thanked whatever might be listening — something in which he had less and less belief these days — that there was no precipitation today, no wind. Riley looked out on the broad, unbroken expanse of white from the snowfall of the night before; the horizon was almost lost against the pale sky.
Riley stared into that invisible horizon as he thought — as he did more and more often these days — about Faith. The slayer.
One of the slayers, he corrected himself. He had yet to capture the other — an embarrassment, considering that both he and Walsh had briefly known her and failed to realize her true identity. But also a relief, given what he now knew.
Slayers were not monsters. They were not less than human, or even other than human. Just humans who had the ability to do some good, if others would let them.
For two years now, Faith had only done what little good she could do as a research subject. If anyone needed to know, there were now cold, hard facts about how much pressure per square inch a slayer could exert, how miles per hour a slayer could run, how hard a slayer could punch. Riley worked his jaw, ruefully remembering a less-scientific but quite effective test Faith had made of this herself.
But Riley had learned other facts too, less cold, less hard. How much a human being could long to be free. How the need for companionship could override the most well-founded anger and doubt. How some people could be strong and brave enough to fight against their chains, for weeks and months and years, without ever giving in.
He wished they’d discovered how to recreate that strength. To give it to someone. Because he could only imagine what that might be like.
Abruptly, Riley realized that something was approaching the exit — something or someone, a shape in a long white cloak that was almost lost in the snow. Today his guard duty appeared to be more than a formality. “Halt!” he said. “Who goes there?”
The shape took another couple of steps before stopping, then pulled off its hood. The female smiled, her teeth bright against her silvery, scaled skin. She was as thin and pale as a sliver of ice, as much a part of the winter around them as the snow.
“My name is Naiura,” she said. “Tell Adam that he has a visitor, who has come to call, and to share good tidings.”
***
“I don’t like this,” Buffy said for the umpteenth time. For the umpteenth time, nobody listened to her.
Wesley was loading bags as though he, Cordy and Angel were setting out on a five-month world tour instead of a drive to Los Angeles; Buffy would not have been at all surprised to see him taking along pith helmets and a butterfly net. This was pretty typical Wesley-overcompensation behavior.
What was not typical was the way Angel was behaving. He seemed — excited wasn’t the word, but — eager, maybe. “You’re rarin’ to go,” she said, stepping uneasily through the tire-tread grooves of snow and ice in the parking lot.
Angel glanced back at her; in the twilight, it was hard to read his eyes. “It’s interesting,” he said. “Why would this demon give her a totally different set of memories. What purpose would that serve? It’s — I don’t know — like a mystery novel.”
Buffy felt a fleck of ice against her cheek, scowled up at the low clouds that were apparently about to begin sleeting. “I didn’t realize you liked those. Mysteries.” Weird, to realize that after six years she wouldn’t know something that mundane about Angel. Then again, she and Angel didn’t have a lot of time for the mundane. Angel just shrugged.
“There, now,” Wesley said, sounding insufferably pleased with himself as he studied the back of the SUV. “We have a wide array of weaponry, basic medical supplies, a change of clothing –“
“You’re worse than Ginger from Gilligan’s Island,” Buffy sighed. “Taking along evening gowns and a seven-year supply of hair spray for a three-hour tour.”
Wesley smiled slightly at the joke, and Buffy took a deep breath, trying to fight down her panic. She wanted to grab Angel, hell, to grab Wesley, and say, Don’t leave, you can’t leave, Willow and Xander left me, and I wasn’t there to protect them, and I lost them forever, and if I lose anyone else, I’ll — I’ll —
Buffy shivered, but if Angel noticed it, he only thought it was the cold.
Jenny made her way down the school’s back steps, clutching a brightly patterned scarf over her head. “Man, if you guys thought Cordelia was acting weird around you –“
“What’s she doing now?” Buffy rolled her eyes.
“It’s not what she’s doing. More what she’s not. That girl does not want to so much as look at me if she doesn’t have to.” Jenny shrugged. “She ended up with a B+ in my class, so I’m not getting what the problem is here.”
“Is she changed and ready?” Wesley said. “Mustn’t run any later than necessary. Chop chop.”
Jenny nodded. “Fortunately, we pretty much wear the same size. Though I suspect my sweater might be a bit stretched out in front.”
“Why would — oh. But you — I mean — where is Miss Chase?” Buffy had to smile at the sight of Wesley turning so brightly red that she could see it in the dark.
“Coming,” Cordelia said as she came out. She had Buffy’s silver anorak on, with the plum-colored collar of Jenny’s turtleneck peeping out. Cordelia glanced around the parking lot, taking in Sunnydale High, the all-but-deserted roads, the snowy earth, the ice-frosted trees. Buffy had the distinct impression that Cordelia never wanted to see any of it again, and Buffy didn’t blame her.
Wesley motioned toward the shotgun seat, which Cordelia took without another word. He clambered into the back, saying to Jenny, “Now, if anything should seem amiss, anything at all, my cell phone will be on –“
“I’ll take care of her,” Buffy said.
“Be sure to fill my dish with water,” Jenny said. “And walkies twice a day.”
“I — I never meant to suggest that you couldn’t — that you weren’t capable –“
“We’re fine, Wes,” Jenny said. “Just go.”
Next to Buffy, Angel stood — close enough for them to hug, not so close as to suggest that he was about to. She fought off another moment of irrational terror — don’t leave me, don’t leave me, bad things happen when people leave me, Angel, don’t go —
“Drive carefully,” she said.
“I will.” Angel hesitated for a moment, as if wanting to say more, then kissed her quickly on the mouth. His lips were closed and dry.
Buffy turned around and headed back inside. She didn’t hear Jenny following her; no doubt she was watching as the SUV roared to life and headed away, out of Sunnydale and out of sight.
***
If Angelus were released — no. Impossible. It couldn’t happen. Not even gypsies would be so cruel — to him, perhaps, but not to those around him. And through perfect happiness? Why happiness? And had he ever known perfect happiness in his existence? There had been days — and nights — when he was first in love with Buffy, yes; they’d seemed like perfection, or as close to it as any man would ever come.
But perfection would have to last, wouldn’t it.
Then again, perhaps perfect happiness had something to do with the mission Cordelia spoke of. His mission. Something of his own.
Something he had been given, had been granted, because something up there thought he deserved it —
The sleet prickling against the windshield began to be mixed with spatters of rain, and Angel moved to shift the windshield wipers into faster speed. The simple motion broke his reverie, and he shook his head slightly, surprised at how deeply he’d been caught up in his imaginings of this other life Cordelia had been made to believe in.
A sideways glance revealed that Cordelia was balled up in her seat, parka still tucked around her despite the SUV’s heater blowing at full blast. Even in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, Angel could see how profoundly troubled her expression was. He tried to imagine her confusion and fear, and once again he felt a wave of protectiveness toward her. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.
Cordelia bit her lip. “You don’t know how far from all right we are.”
Wesley, who’d been fidgeting in the back seat, took the opportunity to say, “What are the principal differences you see, Cordelia? Knowing what the demon thought it most important to confuse you about — well, that could help us narrow down –“
“I’m not confused,” Cordelia said. “Not about what reality’s supposed to be, anyway. I realize you guys don’t remember what I remember, but I’m right about this. Just give me this chance, and I can prove it to you.”
“Prove it to us?” Angel frowned. “How?”
Cordelia opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of it and sighed. “If I told you, you’d really think I was nuts. Just promise to give it a try when we get there, okay?”
Angel turned back to Wesley, who nodded and gestured for Angel to look at the road. Carefully, Wesley ventured, “Well, all the same, can’t you tell us more about this lost reality? If nothing else, I admit I’m rather curious.”
“So am I,” Angel said. A thought hit him, made his gut twist and his lips curl. “For instance, if I was supposed to have some sacred mission, why did I turn into Angelus?” he asked, trying hard to bank down his cynicism, at least enough to keep it out of his voice. “If I were doing this important work for — whatever it would be –“
“The Powers That Be,” Cordelia supplied. She sounded as though she’d said it many times before – as though she weren’t telling Angel as much as reminding him.
“Well, why would they let someone with a mission go evil again? Why would they let something like that happen?”
“I don’t know why they’d let it happen,” Cordelia said. “But you’ve got the order mixed up. The mission came after the whole Angelus thing.”
“After?” Wesley stuck his head between them. “If Angel had lost his soul, why would the, ah, Powers ever entrust him with anything?”
“They wouldn’t.” Angel wondered just how hard Cordelia had been hit in the head.
“Angel got his soul back,” Cordelia said. Whatever web of lies she’d been fed, it was certainly intricate. “Willow did it — I helped a little, Oz too, but Willow did the magic stuff. They had to find the original curse again, I think. But Angelus was out for almost six months. Six very long months, let me tell you.” Her eyes lit on Angel as she said, “You killed a bunch of kids in my class. Left them where Buffy would find them, stuff like that. Nearly killed Xander one time. Tackled me in a graveyard another time. You killed –” she hesitated, then said, “You killed a lot of people.”
Angel could well imagine it. But the Naiura demon had obviously forgotten to give Cordelia the reactions to go with the false memories. If he had done the things she said he’d done — of which he knew he was easily capable — she could not be sitting here, now, calm and content to be in his presence. She could never have looked on him with anything but horror and hatred.
Wesley, obviously thinking much the same thing, “But, when Willow cursed Angel with his soul once more, you all simply — forgave and forgot?”
Cordelia was silent for a while before she shook her head. “It wasn’t that easy. Angelus had done this thing — I never got the full story, so bear with me — this thing where he awakened some evil demon called Acathla.”
Acathla. The demon Acathla. Come to destroy the world, sleeping and waiting for its chance. Two centuries ago, Angelus had sworn his blood in fealty to a dark spirit in the hopes of finding it. The dark spirit hadn’t come through — at least, he thought it hadn’t, but maybe it was only taking its time —
She knows about Acathla, he thought. She’s heard of Acathla. How could she know about that?
Wesley apparently had no knowledge of Acathla. “And this demon did — what, precisely?”
“Nothing, because Angelus’ blood woke him up — but Angel’s blood could put him down again. Buffy had to stab Angel to stop Acathla. And Angel got sucked into hell.”
The SUV was quiet for a very long time. Finally, Cordelia ventured, in a wavery voice, “You did get out, you know. And after that — that was when the whole mission thing happened. You got out of hell for a reason. For good reasons.”
She knew about Acathla. Buffy had sent him to hell. She knew about Acathla, and what purpose could it serve to make her believe a story about Acathla?
Angel felt a jolt of something that was not pleasant enough to be excitement, but not painful either. “Why did I become evil? When did I know perfect happiness?”
“When you and Buffy had sex,” Cordelia said matter-of-factly. Now that she could talk about the memories she considered real, she seemed much more confident and at ease — despite the subject. “The first time. The only time. Which is, by the way, when my version of reality and yours part company.”
“Oh, my.” Angel could smell Wesley’s blush from the back seat. “Good heavens. That’s rather, ah, personal –“
“Not when half the town gets offed because of it,” Cordelia said. “We all knew. Not much getting around it.”
Angel remembered that first night — the rain and the thunder, the fear of the Judge, their terror at their own potential separation. He remembered sliding the claddagh ring on her finger, feeling that ring as a sliver of coolness against his back as Buffy embraced his naked body, as they’d made love gently, tenderly, for her first time. How precious it had all seemed. How right. And now it only seemed so — distant.
“The only time?” Wesley said trepidatiously.
“Well, yeah,” Cordelia said. “I mean, if having sex with someone you love turns you into an evil murderer, you don’t have sex with anybody you love ever again. People you don’t love, sure.” She actually snorted. “Darla, for instance –“
“Darla’s dust,” Angel said abruptly, grateful to find another hole in this strange web of untruths. “I staked her long before anything happened with me and Buffy.”
“Turns out you’re not the only one who can get out of hell.”
“I would never sleep with Darla again,” Angel said, knowing down to his bones that this was true. “I never loved her. I grew to hate her, everything she represented.”
Cordelia sighed. “To your face, I gave you way more hell about this,” she said. “But since you’re not remembering the facts, and I now know how rough that is, I’ll let you off the hook. You were kinda having a breakdown when it happened; you weren’t yourself, exactly. It doesn’t make it okay — not by a long shot — but at least some good came out of it.”
“What do you mean?” Wesley said.
“Connor,” she said. Her voice was softer now. “Your son. Yours and Darla’s.”
Absurd. “Vampires can’t have children,” Angel said curtly.
“He’s quite right,” Wesley said. “Dead bodies, however animated by demonic forces, are incapable of engendering life.”
“I know it’s not supposed to be real,” Cordelia said. “It seemed impossible to us at the time. It really did. But when you actually have 8 pounds, 4 ounces of screaming newborn on your hands, you become a believer, and fast.”
A child. A son. Life, made from his unlife. Innocence, created from his evil. Angel did not believe it — this, above all, he did not deserve and could not have. This above all was proof that Cordelia’s visions of this other world were nothing but a demon’s tricks or the haze of injury.
But for one moment, he did not see the dark, rainy road in front of them, did not feel the rubbery surface of the steering wheel in his hands. He imagined holding a child, small and warm and alive. Imagined knowing that this child was his. It seemed to him that, all in a rush, he could envision this life Cordelia described — friendship and fatherhood and the knowledge that he was on this earth, not because of the perversity of fate and the indestructibility of his unnatural body, but because he was needed. Because he was good.
It could not be real, and Angel felt a rush of hot, unreasoning anger at Cordelia — no, he reminded himself, at whatever had deceived her — for even giving him a glimpse of this world so far beyond his reach.
Wesley, clearly attempting to be tactful, said, “Well, your memories certainly don’t lack for interest.”
“You can stop patronizing me any time now.” Cordelia wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand; she had been crying. Angel realized that talking about the child — the child who had never been — had profoundly upset her for some reason.
Acathla. She knew about Acathla —
A child. A mission. It could not be.
“I’m glad this isn’t real,” Angel said. “Buffy wouldn’t like the no-sex rule.” The attempt at a joke, like most of his attempts, fell flat; Cordelia shrank down in her seat, as if his words had only made it harder to go on.
But she continued: “Buffy didn’t like it. And neither did you. And that’s why — well, one of the reasons why — you guys broke up.”
“We would never break up,” Angel said, the words snapping out of him whip-fast, requiring no pause, no thought. “Buffy and I are meant to be together. It’s destiny. My real destiny.”
“Destiny’s never what you think it is,” Cordelia shot back. “Not yours, not mine, not anybody’s.”
“I know that Buffy’s the only person I could ever love,” Angel said by rote.
“That’s not true.” Cordelia was deadly earnest now, staring at him intently, as if willing him to understand something. To understand —
Angel raised his eyebrows. “You?”
“Me,” Cordelia said, not flattered by his disbelief. “I loved you. I mean — I love you. And I’m pretty sure you love me too.” The softness was back in her eyes, her voice. “This is so not the way I saw this conversation going.”
It was so strange to be told that by someone who wasn’t Buffy. And, really, to be told that at all — Buffy hadn’t said it to him in a very long time — “You don’t even know me,” Angel said.
“I do,” Cordelia said. “I do know you. I know you better than anybody, except maybe Darla, and maybe even better than her. Buffy — she doesn’t know half of what you are. Or what you can be, anyway.”
“My word,” Wesley said. Angel paid him no attention, and there was no sign Cordelia had even heard.
“So you’re claiming that we were in love. That I fell out of love with Buffy and in love with you.”
“It was a lot more complicated than that, but that’s kinda the TV Guide-blurb version.” Cordelia thumped her head against the back of her seat. “I was just in total denial about it, because we were best friends for so long –” The idea of being Cordelia’s best friend was almost as alien to Angel as the idea of being in love with her. “But finally, just when I realized it all, and I was coming to tell you — Angel, we were going to meet up at the beach, and your voice on the phone when I asked you to be there — I know you love me. I know you do. I know it. But that’s when the Powers snatched me away, and tried to recruit me for — okay, not going there, because it sounds even crazier. Anyway, that’s when things got screwed up.”
“Wait,” Angel said. “Just wait.” He felt his entire body tensing, his teeth clenching, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that the metal frame creaked slightly in protest. “You’re telling me — I’m supposed to believe — that we all had this great, wonderful life together, and I had a mission from, the whatever, the Powers, and I had a reason for my miserable existence to continue, and I had friends, and I had a child, a son, and it all went to hell because I fell in love with you?”
“That’s not why!” Cordelia shouted. She was furious at him, at his disbelief, and if Angel had been amused before he was exasperated now. “You know, if I didn’t love you, and if I didn’t understand that you’re in a real different place, you would be in some serious trouble.” “According to you, you just wiped out a good life I had and replaced it with this one,” Angel said. “If I didn’t understand that you’re just deluded — if I thought what you’d done was real –“
“Angel,” Wesley said, his voice a warning. “Calm yourself. It’s not as though any of this were true.”
The warning trailed off into silence. Cordelia buried her face in her hands — maybe to cry, maybe just to hide herself away. Wesley settled uneasily back into his seat. Angel stared at the road, white lines in black night, a path that extended no further than the headlights shone.
