CHAPTER 10
Vision.
Blood baths.
Divine intervention.
Lions and tigers and bears: Oh my! Cordelia mentally chided herself. She could have been great. She could have been grand. She could have been – an actress.
With a sigh she glared at the lump on HER couch. Instead of being one with stardom she was sitting in a dark house in the middle of a perfectly good sunny day staring at the back of a dead man while everyone tried to figure out why the powers that be had picked her.
Her! As if she was the best candidate they could have found. Well that was just fine with her. If they could find a replacement, she’d be up and gone to LA and Buffy the Whiner slayer could do her little good deed and help the damned helpless. Cordelia Chase was SO not with the super hero gig.
“Staring me into nothingness isn’t going to make it go away.”
Leaning her head against the wall where she’d been sitting in the corner since Giles had left, the blood still staining her shirt; Cordelia closed her eyes. “What is?”
“Nothing is.”
She glared back at him, now taking in the full expanse of his chest and face as he lay there on his side, one arm propped up under his head, watching her with a superior glint in his eyes.
It was as if he knew everything she had trouble grasping. “You’re taking this well.”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Forever is for me not you. You’re just the seer.”
She frowned at the off-handed way he said seer. “JUST the seer?”
His lazy mouth drifted up in a sneer. “Yeah. There’s going to be a new one every five decades or so. From what I know of soul pacts, the life span of champion’s sidekicks isn’t more than four or five years anyway.”
Cordelia knew he was trying to get a rise out of her, because all night she’d sat there refusing to talk to anyone. She’d just glared accusingly at him.
She knew he was baiting for a reaction, but she couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice. “You make it sound like I was hoping for empathy from a heartless killer.”
“I am heartless. I don’t feel. Not like you do anyway. If I don’t get my way, I take it. No game. No rules. So you know who’s still going to be here when this is over.”
“So the world’s just one big playground for you…”
“Fuck yeah.”
“What am I supposed to be? Your toy?”
For a moment he didn’t say anything. Then he lay back down on his back, eyes fixed up on the ceiling before he spoke. “No Chase, you’re the soul I never had.”
Cordelia’s anger morphed into abject shock and an odd knot wound itself into her chest.
Glaring at the confusing myriad of emotional connotations to his admission, she glared down between her bent knees, arms propped up on them as she tried to make sense of what her head was trying to tell her, but she was tired.
Tired and lost and lonely. Even the company of the demon was starting to look good.
Just then the door slid open just enough for Giles to squeeze through and he blinked in the darkness of the living room, the stream of light arching through the room, sliding over the partially hidden brunette.
He scanned the room for the vampire, only to find him prone and reclining on the couch, eyes closed in sleep. With a sigh he closed the door and walked to the little lamp on his desk and turned it on.
“You didn’t sleep?”
Cordelia didn’t look up, merely went on examining the wooden flooring where she sat. Counting the swirls in the teak. Crazily, thinking of the cracks Angelus had been counting.
Then she closed her eyes. Relating to the demon was one thing, become it was something entirely different. “Not tired.”
“How could you not be? You’ve had a rough night Cordelia. Go to bed, I’ll watch him.”
The young woman snorted. “Are you freaking kidding me Librarian man? You think I’m here because I’m afraid he’d run away. I WISH he’d run away. You know for once it would give me an excuse to give all of this – up. Whatever THIS is.”
Then she blinked at him. “You were gone all night. Did you find a way to cure it?”
Giles dropped into his desk chair and looked at the bundled young woman in the corner between his books. “It’s not a disease Cordelia.”
“Might as well be, and just when things were starting to get better. I finally have a game in two days. How would I look all seer-ed out.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I hope you’re laughing you good for nothing-”
“Cordelia!”
She threw up her hands and crossed them stubbornly over her chest, her face set in a grumpy line.
Only Giles would think of divine insensibilities right now. “What did you find out?”
“Willow did a little research.”
“Good old witch.” Cordelia snorted then lifted her eyes to meet the watchers. “By research you mean magic.” It wasn’t a question.
“Real big on the ethics of it all aren’t we Giles?” Then she sighed. “But then I’m sidekick to the Scourge of Europe. Like I can complain. So what did little miss magic have to say?”
Giles chose to chalk up her biting lip to the still open wound of losing the man she loved and being tied to one that would never love her. He knew she blamed the world, but most of all she blamed herself. She was just a girl.
He couldn’t help see the little girl in her while she sat there trying to appear as hard as stone and as dark as the night where she’d sat clutching the little dead child, crying like she’d given her birth.
“Nothing much different from what he said I’m afraid. He’s been chosen as the Champion, although, I cannot for the life of me understand why they’d pick him. He is hardly eligible.”
“Back to me. Why me?”
“Because you showed something towards their champion no one has ever shown before.”
She looked up into his old eyes etched with boding irony. “What?”
“You showed loyalty and perseverance. You sealed the deal with the devil Cordelia. You; not him. You didn’t let him die.”
Cordelia thought she saw Angelus’ head snap sideways for an instant to stare at her, but she’d been too busy watching the trepidation dawning in the watcher’s eyes.
“So this is my fault.” A weak laugh tore from her throat. “Great.” Eyes prickling with helpless tears.
Then she felt warm hands close around her shoulders as Giles squatted down in front of her. She lifted her head to tell him off and make some snide comment, but at the sincere concern in his eyes she paused and let him speak.
“None of this is your fault Cordelia. Everything happens for a reason. True, I never would have picked Angelus as purpose for you, but his being here is reason enough for me. I will not lie when I tell you that I wanted you to stay. Stay where there are people who know you. I wanted you to be more than just a bitter little child trying to salvage her pride and thinking life owed her something. It is you Cordelia that owes life now. Life has given you what you asked for. A chance to gloat.”
His mouth drifted up into a sad little line. “You’re the one they chose. Not my slayer. Not my witch. And not the man who unwittingly broke your heart.”
“I told you not to get attached.” She wagged a finger at him and stood, the weight of his words weighing her down, keeping her steadily on her feet. “I told you I was likable.”
Then for the first time Cordelia Chase looked at the watcher with an expression that made him want to pull the girl into his arms and squeeze away her pain. “I’m scared.”
Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder. “That’s good.” At her confused frown he smiled.
“It’s a sign that you’re still alive.”
***
Giles watched the young woman trudge upstairs to his room. He’d offered her the bed just this one night after cajoling and exhausted as she was, plus bribed with the prospect of soaking in his bathtub for an hour, she finally left to retire.
Running a weary hand through his hair, Rupert Giles looked at the still demon on his couch. The vampire on a leash.
“Great lecture.”
The watcher’s gaze narrowed into angry slits. “Would you rather I’d have told her like it is? That you of all things are the other half of her soul?”
The vampire swung his legs down, elbows bracing on his set apart knees as he grinned at the old man malevolently, eyes gleaming yellow in the darkness of the heavy curtains.
“Won’t the slayer just piss herself when she finds out ultimate happiness isn’t what killed ol’ soulful.”
Giles could only hope the slayer took it as calmly as Cordelia had.
