They were sitting in the Fiumicino Airport in Rome, waiting for their flight. It had taken a day to sort everything out – a day in which Cordelia had sort of… Floated in and out of astral-consciousness for a while.
Buffy had talked with Dawn, said that Angel was in trouble but not much else and loaned the airfare from Giles who was currently in England heading up the new-wave of the Watcher’s Council.
He’d remained tight-lipped on the Angel front but from the little Cordelia understood from Buffy? He’d known about Angel’s career choice far longer than Buffy had and that had put Slay-Gal in a shitty, shitty mood.
Cordelia had tried being nice. She’d even defended Giles, seeing as how he was the one remaining member of the Scooby Gang that hadn’t hated her at one point or another, but Buffy was pissed.
More than that, she was hurt because this, apparently, was not something for her to be kept out of the loop on. In fact? This was very much her loop, she’d told Cordelia, because maybe she could’ve come to Angel earlier and–
“And done what?” Cordelia had asked, maybe a little rankled at the fact that Buffy thought she could get through to Angel in an instant and wasn’t that the point, here? “Poked him with a sword? Sent him to hell in a fire-weaved handbasket with that Alfalfa guy?”
Buffy had folded her arms, glared at her, and become uber-aware of the fact that the people around her were trying not to look because clearly, she was crazy. “That was Acathla, Tact-Girl, and that’s not even a little funny.”
“You think I’m in this for the funny? He’s not gonna get out of his contract with Wolfram and Hart just ‘cause you go running in all stakes-a-blazin’…” Not, of course, that she knew how to get him out of said contract… She was just gonna work on that when she got to it.
A bell sounded overhead and the stiff, informal voice told them that Buffy’s plane was beginning to board rows A-through-D.
“I’m F,” said Buffy, glancing first at Cordelia then the crowd that had steadily amassed around them. “And people are totally looking at me like I’m crazy.”
“Well you are talking to yourself,” Cordelia pointed out, knowing nobody else could see her except her–Well, intended, she guessed.
She’d discovered she could astral project herself pretty much by accident when, overwhelmed by the most depressing coma-visit ever, she’d tried to make herself wake up.
Instead of waking up, she’d shunted herself out of her body and right into a pervy janitor who’d installed cameras in the women’s bathrooms of the hospital she was in.
Creeped out entirely by that thought, she hadn’t tried again until a week and a half later when Angel was sitting beside her, his hand wrapped tightly around hers.
She’d tried to force herself out of her coma and into Angel’s mind but–Something was blocking her.
That same something, she feared soon after, was blocking Angel’s thoughts. Not only Angel’s, though. Wes, Gunn, Fred, Lorne… Every one of them was like a closed book where other, lesser mortals happened to be open.
She couldn’t figure it out and she was starting to worry that by the time she did, she’d be too late.
Angel kept talking about working from the belly of the beast, trying to spin her some everything’s-fine-company-line about doing good when Cordelia knew for a damn fact that he was struggling to keep his head above water.
She sighed, trying not to focus on that, when she noticed some Italian stallion making eyes at Buffy.
Crazy Buffy who, she’d pointed out two minutes ago, was talking to herself.
“What is it about you?” She demanded after he’d left, not at all oblivious to the fact that Buffy hadn’t even glanced in his direction. “I get the superhero thing. And hell, if I even remotely swung that way I wouldn’t kick you out of bed,” she mused, “but it’s like every guy and his dog falls all over himself to get with you.”
Buffy snorted at that. “Sure. And then they get up close and realise what a giant freak I am.”
Cordelia actually found herself laughing. “So with you on that. Vision-brain? Not exactly bringing the men-folk rushing my way, y’know?”
“Vision-brain?” Buffy arched an eyebrow, looking entirely puzzled and just like that? Cordelia was starting to feel like Giles and his ‘One Girl in All The World’ schpiel.
“Long story short? I got visions. Of people that needed saving. Pretty much almost killed me until I got a little demon in me…”
She almost laughed again at the look on Little Ms. Likes to Slay’s face. “That isn’t as pervy as it sounds,” she clarified, though she’d forget the fact that she’d been knocked up with demon spawn not once but twice and both times very much against her will.
Her mood soured a little at that thought. “The Powers made me part-demon so I could cope with the visions. Only… It didn’t work out like I’d planned.”
Like anyone had planned, really. She didn’t figure Angel had relished the thought of what the thing inside her had made her do with his son, though it wasn’t like he talked about it or anything.
The nauseous feeling bubbled up in her throat and she wondered at the fact that she could still feel anything when she was without a body.
“Cordelia?”
She’d zoned out, she guessed… Not even close to spanking her inner moppet about everything that’d gone on last year.
“Sorry,” she murmured, plastering a smile on her face. Buffy was waiting. “You say something?”
“I just–” Buffy paused, “I guess things changed a lot after high school, huh?”
“Understatement,” Cordelia smiled faintly, thinking her life had changed drastically from what she thought it would be. “Hell, you died.”
“And came back,” Buffy returned the tiny smile. “And craterized our hometown.”
Cordelia blinked, surprised. Of all the things Angel had told her during her coma, that wasn’t one of them. “Huh?”
She spent the next ten minutes with her emotions ranging from fairly impressed to fairly freaked out. Buffy had defeated The First and unleashed a whole bunch of slayers on the world. Her entire hometown – which she always thought she’d go back to someday – was lying at the bottom of a crater.
“Wow,” she murmured, feeling goosebumps crawl up her non-existent arms.
“Multiply that by a thousand and then you have where I am now,” Buffy admitted, “I still don’t think I’m past that yet.”
“Well, I think that pretty much covers the life-changing event you don’t get over in the blink of an eye,” she told her. “Why Rome?” Cordelia asked suddenly. “I mean, of all the places you could’ve picked…”
Buffy shrugged, “I don’t know. I was the Queen of the Unofficial Zipcode for a while. Dawn and I travelled but… She needed roots, y’know? And then there was school…”
“There are schools in America,” Cordelia pointed out, not unkindly. “We actually went to one on a Hellmouth and we survived. Mostly.” Not without a few thousand bumps and bruises and dead classmates along the way but it was a small price to pay for getting out of her giant-snake-demon attending graduation mostly unscathed.
“We tried Cleveland for a while but… It was like we’d traded one small town for another,” said Buffy carefully. “I figured our change needed to be… Bigger,” she settled on finally.
“So you moved, what, a whole continent away?” Cordelia shook her head. That seemed like something pretty huge to be running away from. “Big change… Was it far enough?”
Chiamando volo 781. Tutti i passeggeri per 781.
Buffy’s gaze dropped, though Cordelia didn’t miss the look of thank God, on her face at not having to answer that question.
“That’s us,” she told Cordelia, hoisting her bag up her shoulder. “We should probably…” She let the rest of her question trail off and starting walking towards her boarding gate.
***