Title: All She Has
Author: Kika
Posted: 11-01-2002
Rating: PG
Email: kika32@lycos.co.uk
Content: C/A
Summary: Cordy struggles to remember her past and it's left to Angel to help her.
Spoilers: Up to episode 4 of S4.
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: Sure, if anyone wants it.
Notes: For the sake of this story, it’s would be best to believe that Cordy did not leave with Connor in episode 4. Thus, she’s still at the hotel.
Feedback: Would be appreciated, particularly since this style is rather different to how I normally write.
Dedication: For Ando, Christie and Elizabeth.
She sits directly next to the man on the soft bed, in the room that has come to be hers. It’s in disarray right now, the items scattered about the place in some chaotic and disorderly fashion. All the possessions she had accumulated throughout her life thrown about. It doesn’t feel like home, but then, she doesn’t know what is. She doesn’t even know exactly what he is either, what to describe him as. A man? A vampire? A vampire with a soul, no less. Maybe just - Angel? Whoever he is, she feels drawn to him. As if there’s something familiar about him, something in all the emptiness. Just like a smell - a smell you recognise but you cannot place. She finds herself sniffing the air, hoping for a clue. Her action attempts to draw out a lost memory but it is without any success.
Maybe it’s just a physical attraction that she feels, nothing more, as she shifts her body ever closer to his. She feels a need to kiss him. He leans forward, his lips brushing against hers and she immediately responds, her mouth now moving against his. She knows how to kiss, somehow. At least she can recall what one is supposed to be like. But she doesn’t remember doing it before; the memory of even her first kiss has been taken away from her. But the act comes instinctively – she just knows how to do it. She can feel her stomach turning in response, a fluttering of butterflies within. Just like a nervous teenager. It's something that she’s sure is supposed to happen when you're younger. But now, she doesn’t even know if all kisses feel like this.
If maybe this feeling is happening because it's with him?
She doesn’t know.
But she wants to. And it feels like it’s eating her up inside. The struggle she faces to remember her very existence. Wondering how life used to be. When they break away, she asks about what had happened between them and he merely smiles, a non-committal response that tells her nothing about them. Nothing about what had come to pass. Nothing so much as a hint as to what might come to be.
But, in his defence, he has told her. He’s told her many times before. Just not about them. And still she finds herself asking, again and again, in the hope she’ll remember. From the first moment they met, back in some town called Sunnydale, to how they finally came to work together. How they were before she went away. Her family. Her friends. Whatever he can tell her about her life. He’s giving her his memories instead and she’s grateful for that.
She tries to piece her life back together from the parts he knows.
She finds herself staring at the pile of photograph albums, the pictures strewn across a table, hoping that something, anything, will come up trumps. Something that will finally allow her to remember her past. But it doesn't bring any recollection. It never does. It's as if it's not her - whoever she may actually be. Cordelia Chase. Even the name sounds unfamiliar. A High School Cheerleader. Wannabe actress. Vision girl. Semi demon. It reads like a scary résumé of her life, which really freaks her out. And she knows not one single version of this person - this woman she is supposed to be. But this is her. Or so, she’s told anyway.
But she really doesn’t know.
There’s a calming influence to the person sitting beside her. Something that, despite the initial lies he told, makes her feel as though she is now in safe hands. They sit, night after night, as she attempts to draw out some memories. Pick out the pieces in the puzzle that is her life. It may be a futile exercise but she has to try. She needs to. Because right now, she still feels like a little child lost in the woods – alone, afraid and confused. Just an empty shell, the insides stripped away. Nothing except the case left to attemot to fill.
He says he doesn’t mind sitting with her. He’s extremely grateful that she has returned - to him. Even if she doesn’t know how, or why, she came home. He has no idea either. But it doesn’t matter. Not really. She’s back and that’s the important thing. He’s not going to question why right now.
She learns as much about him as she does about herself. The time she had apparently put cinnamon in his blood. He just stared at her in response, wondering just what planet she’d been shipped in from. Or the time, not all that long ago, when Connor was taken away and she had sat with him. Just to be there with him. Just to listen. He told her he was never one for talking about his feelings but, with her, he could just open up. He’d never had that before. She wondered if she would be that person again. She wanted to be that person again.
Whoever that person may be.
When she looks at him she sees something in his eyes. Underneath the joy there’s something different. Something new. But she doesn’t know exactly what it is. Or what it means. The memories of how he once felt, even the memories as to how he could be feeling, is kept hidden away with the rest. So, she asks, is something wrong? There’s no point in beating around the bush. She’s pretty sure that whoever she is, she’s a person who’ll say it like it is. That’s her impression of who she may be, anyway.
His reaction is delayed, unsure. She worries what this means. He tells her he is happy, happy that she returned. But hidden underneath those feelings? There’s sadness - for a lot of things. For her pain. Her confusion. But there’s also sorrow for what they had, for what they might have been. But he doesn’t tell her this. It’s yet another thing she doesn’t remember. Another thing she cannot understand. And he doesn’t want to make things any harder right now.
So, he doesn’t tell her that he loves her. That she loves him. Or at least, the pre-amnesia version loved him.
And she doesn’t even know that they did.
Her memories are locked in a box. And she’s waiting for the key so she can once again let them free. So she can once again have her memories.
End