Title: Waiting In Vain
Author: Angelalias (Andrea)
Posted: 01-29-2002
Email: denis.hebert5@sympatico.ca Andrea
Feedback: Love it, and shamelessly admit it.
Disclaimer: Don't own any of these characters...I wish.
Summary: Angel watches a helpless Cordelia in her last hours, as she waits for something...

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She was waiting.

I could see it every time she opened her eyes, hear it every time she spoke, feel it every time she didn’t.

It wasn’t meant to be that way.

It never had been.

Last night, they referred to her as a perfect lock. Perfect in its lack of a key. Perfect in the way its key was one only she possessed. You never truly saw her, heard her, touched her, knew her. You only saw her when she would reveal herself to you. You only heard her when she let her true words be spoken. You only touched her when she reached out first.

You only knew her if she let you.

Yes, they referred to her as a lock.

They, who now stood around her, after four years.

She was back. Back where it all began. Back where it all would end.

She looked at me with those penetrating eyes, as she’d done so many times before. When she let you, you could see her in those eyes. The real her. Vibrant. Spontaneous. Witty. Extremely stubborn.

Lonely sometimes. Afraid perhaps.

Vulnerable. Only when she let you.

I’ve broken many locks before. We all have. Each and every one of us. We’ve never had problems with locks. Forced some, broken many. Even hers. But not now. Not this time around.

She won’t let us, with the exception of moments like this one.

“They’re not coming, are they?” she asked in a bare whisper as she rested in a pretend-bed that had been brought into Giles’ shop two nights before.

“I left them a message…” I hear Willow’s voice faintly in the background.

My eyes drop. I know she’s resting her tired eyes on me. Waiting.

She’s always waiting.

But I can’t. Because I know she’ll be looking at me with those eyes. Those calm – much too calm – penetrating eyes. The windows of a soul I cannot save. She won’t let me.

“It’s okay…” she speaks, looking away for a moment, lost in her own thoughts. “I’m not waiting.”

I know she’s waiting. I know she’s been waiting for years. I know she’s waited her whole life.

Her voice was hoarse, sometimes barely audible, as if engulfed by a truckload of pain. Exhaustion.

Hidden fears maybe, but she never lets me see that. She speaks calmly, truthfully, but somehow more carefully, as though she’s quickly reaching the end of her own personal dictionary. I know she doesn’t mind the crowd parked at her bedside. I know it’s comforting to her to a point where she doesn’t complain about it.

Sometimes I do, for her.

I’m not sure they know she’s waiting. They all think she’s fighting. They, who never saw her much as a fighter in the first place.

The air is thicker tonight and even though she insisted on the less light possible because of her headaches, I can still trace every line on her face. All those pale lines. So pale.

“I know what you’re doing.” She says softly.

She always does. She loves it when I do that. She feels secure. She doesn’t mind me watching her like that. I see her stretch her neck slowly and tilt her head to her right. I turn to see what has caught her attention, but it’s nothing grand or explicit. It’s the window. She’s staring out the window into the great Sunnydale autumn sky.

Does she like autumn?

I don’t know. I never asked. She never mentioned.

She looks at me again, with those eyes. She’s found her key once again. Funny, she doesn’t lose it as much now as she used to. I can see her. The girl behind the façade.

“It’s okay… Everything’s going to be okay…even without them.” She says, moving her hand unhurriedly so that I can take it.

How can she say that? She doesn’t mean that. I want to scream that everything’s not okay, but like all the others staring at her from a distance, I don’t.

Everything is not fine.

She knows I could save her, but she won’t let me. How can she think the soul of a vampire is more important than her own? How can she make such a decision, when I don’t even care about the soul? I don’t. Not if she doesn’t live.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

I should be saving her. Damn the soul, damn the powers, damn me. But not her.

“You mean to tell me that Cordelia – OUR Cordelia, OUR queen C – is choosing you over herself?!?” Buffy had let slip, on the night of our arrival.

Such bitterness. Such disbelief in her voice. Such misguided preconception of the woman I watched lying on her death bed. She had never seen Cordelia. Not the real Cordy.

It was never meant to be that was at all. Yet, there she was.

Still waiting.

Why does she wait so much? Why such self-inflicted pain? Why torture herself like that?

I see her lift her eyes as she looks across the room. I don’t need to ask, I know what runs through her mind. Her own words. Her own stunts. Her own insults. Her eyes pan from one face to the other in heartbreaking slow-motion. I’m not sure how to read her, but I’m not sure she does either. I see the small tear in her eye, masked by a brave smile, as she looks at the faces, almost reminiscently.

Willow.

Wesley.

Xander.

Fred.

Gunn.

Buffy…

Does she regret?

She doesn’t regret, just remembers.

My heart leaps, and so does my body, when she begins to shake and scream in pain. I can feel her whole body tremble as I try to hold her down onto the bed. Tears run down her face. I can see them. Her agonizing cry resounds in my head and I want to stop this excruciating pain.

I want her to stop inflicting it on herself.

I want her to stop waiting, even if it kills me.

I know some of the others took a step forward. I also know they held back.

“Angel…”

That voice. I need to swallow the lump that gravitates in my throat before I can say anything. So weak. So soft. So breaking, that voice of hers.

I finally look at her and I see the dry lips, the weary tearful eyes… I hear the slow pounding of her heart as if it’s resigned itself to near-failure.

She was holding my hand so tightly.

“I’m here.”

I know my voice is heavy with emotion but I don’t care.

“You always are.” She manages a smile that I know will stay in my head longer than the guilt. “You’re always here with me…”

But they aren’t.

And she waits.

As if on cue, I hear the rest of them leave. They leave the room. Out of respect? Out of fear? Because they see her now. The real her. Are they scared? I don’t know, and I don’t care.

Cordelia takes my arm and pulls on it, lifting herself up. She can’t stand the weight of her own body. I know it and so does she.

Her eyes are piercing mine.

“There are so many things,” she swallows with difficulty. “So many things I want to do….places I want to go…”

“Tell me. I’ll take you there. I’ll do anything.” My voice is barely audible but I know she heard.

“Dance with me.” She whispers, hands trembling, hair tucked behind her ears, as she intensely looks at me.

I don’t dance. She knows that.

Her eyes say that she knows.

There’s something in her eyes. Calmness. I know she won’t ask again. I know she won’t say please. She won’t beg.

And I won’t refuse.

I take her arm and wrap it around my neck to help her up. She can barely stand so she leans against me. With one hand, she takes mine; with the other, she grabs my shirt, as if it were her lifeline.

If only…

She buries her face on my shoulder and I feel her shiver momentarily.

“There’s no music.”

“I don’t care. I don’t need any.” She whispers.

We never did. Silence always worked fine.

Our dance. This is our dance. I feel her, so helpless in my arms, and I know some of them are standing in the doorway, watching us.

They know. They’ve known for a while now.

So have we.

Unspoken emotions, discovered long ago but never brought up with words. We didn’t need to.

But we knew. We looked at each other and we always knew – as well as they.

We knew it.

We didn’t need to say it.

I feel her fist tighten around my shirt and her breathing becoming uneven.

She was still waiting. Even in my arms, she’s waiting.

I could feel her breath on my face as her heart trembled loud enough so I could hear.

I’ not sure how long we’ve been standing there like that. I’ll never know.

I felt her tug at my shirt as her body fell limply to the ground. I caught her in my arms as she began to gasp for air.

Vision.

Another.

A last.

“Angel…” she gasped, staring into my eyes.

Fear. For the first time, fear showed through her eyes. I could see her fight the tears. She grabbed my shirt even tighter in a desperate plea, which lasted a second.

I can’t let her die. She doesn’t want to die. I can see it. She’s scared.

Under her stare, my face begin to change. I know. I put on my game face, ready to save her from this any way I can. No matter what hell I put her through.

She doesn’t flinch though. She just looks at me, into my yellow eyes even as I growl in inner pain. I see her hand weakly reach up to my face and she tenderly caresses my cheek. So calmly. Reassuringly.

She’s not so afraid. It passed. I can see it now. She’s trying to breathe and having more and more difficulty doing so, yet she still touches my face with her fingers. Soothingly. She’s talking to me silently.

I wouldn’t be saving her. She doesn’t need my saving. Not this time around.

The touch of her hand make me turn back to my human self as a tear rolls down my face.

I lean closer, trying to hear what she is trying to say through her tearful eyes and her last breath.

“Don’t tell them…” she gasps for air painfully. “that I waited.”

Her eyes fight to stay open and my dead heart breaks.

“Cordelia….Cordy!” I find myself begging like a human.

Like a human.

I bring her close and I hear her whisper.

“Please…”

Why protect them? Why save them the pain?? They deserve to know she waited!

They deserve the pain!

I cradle her into my arms and I hear the last pounding of her young heart against my chest. Her eyes rest on me for an instant and then close, hands still resting on my chest solemnly.

I pull her to myself and burry my face into that perfect spot between her neck and her shoulder.

“Angel…” I hear Buffy’s tear-filled voice from the doorway, where she had been standing all along, with the others, as emotionally shaken.

I look up, still holding Cordy’s lifeless body in my arms, and I see them. Finally.

But they decided to care too late. I cared. Cordy knew that. She should not have needed them, but she did.

Everything is quiet.

Calm.

Painless, except for that hole in my chest.

I close my eyes and hold her tighter, hearing the footsteps approach.

Hearing their tears.

I want them to cry.

I want them to hurt.

I want to hurt them. So badly.

I feel what’s left of warmth from Cordy’s skin against my cold cheeks and I know I won’t.

They stand in the doorway, silently crying.

Mr. And Mrs. Chase.

I won’t hurt them.

I won’t tell them…

I won’t tell them how she waited.