Title: Cordelia's Gift (The Dark Version)
Author: Lilly Rose
Posted: 02-10-2004
Email: e_jones78@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Category: Angst, AU
Content: A//C
Summary: Merry Christmas from an alternative Season Five; what will Cordelia give Angel for Christmas?
Spoilers:
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: Anywhere it wants to go, as long as my name/e-mail address stays attached.
Notes: A million apologies to to this wonderful group. I could give you millions of reasons reasons why this fic is so late. Instead I'll only give you one. One reason this fic is so late is because there exist two treatments of this story: light and dark. Both demanded to be written, and that took much time. This is the dark version; the fluff if forthcoming. Sufficed to say, I am sorry and such tardiness will not occur again.
Feedback: Yes please.
Thanks/Dedication: For Jen, who said "Good, you're done- back to James and Wendy *now*." Wench.
Secret Santa Fic for: Mrs O-TownEven in the depths of Hell, Winifred Burkle was determined to celebrate Christmas.
The entirety of Wolfram and Hart was decorated to her exact specifications. When she asked Angel for permission to decorate, the only stricture he placed on her was leave his office untouched. A command she'd taken as a request and promptly ignored. Last Wednesday he'd returned from a meeting to find an overabundant poinsettia in a ghastly red-and-white striped planter taking up half his desk space. Other cluster of poinsettias sat at tasteful intervals throughout his office. He'd thrown each plant out, only to have each plant returned to him- with reinforcements.
Fred would not be thwarted. After all, hers was the wispy, off-key voice singing in the hall. She'd just gotten off the elevator; his sensitive hearing detected her footsteps starting down the hall. They carried the sound of purpose, and he knew what she wanted from him. She'd come to try to talk him into putting in an appearance at the company Christmas party that currently raged downstairs.
He vetoed the same request the day before yesterday. She'd looked at him as if he'd spoken ancient Greek. He knew that he couldn't make her understand his refusal. She, like the others, had fallen victim to the depravity of Wolfram and Hart. The perversions needed to change a holiday of happiness and light into an occasion fit for demons and lawyers didn't bother her. She was prepared to host the orgy as if it were a normal company function.
Her footsteps stopped outside his door. Now he could hear what she hummed. The tune was familiar to him, the words coming from a memory.
"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch..."
"Cordelia, tell me why we're watching this cartoon again?"
She has the baby in her lap. His son gums a smile in the direction of his father's voice. Cordelia, however, looks at him as if he asks why the sky is blue.
"Because Connor likes it," she explains as though speaking to another, slightly older child. As if in agreement, his son lets loose with a low burble. A smile he can't stop -even if wants to stop- comes across his face.
"I guess it's okay then."
A sound pulled him back from the warmth of the memory. Fred began knocking on his door. Angel sat inhumanly still in front of the windows that let in the light but never let in the heat, and waited her out.
To Fred's credit she stayed for a full ten minutes. After five of those minutes passed the knocking ceased. It was replaced by her soft, wheedling voice coming through the door. She told him she knew he was in pain, they were all in pain, but that his own pain was no reason to shut out the people who cared about him. Before Wolfram and Hart and this whole mess, he might have believed her. Now, he knew that any pain she felt was nothing compared to his. For Wesley, Fred, and Gunn the shared past was a patchwork of memory and magic. They grieved because the spell erasing the past told them they should grieve.
Fred awaited his reply; he said nothing. When she spoke again, her voice held a deliberate accusatory tone. She told him she thought that they were a family, the four of them, and families supported each other no matter what else happened. Once, he had viewed these four people as his family- but that time was long past. Relationships soured, mistakes were made, friends were lost- and he was back to where he'd started.
Alone.
He heard Fred sigh on the other side of the door. She left without another word. Her footsteps walked away down the hall, slower now, and her song faded out behind her.
"You're a monster,
Mr. Grinch..."
"The Grinch again?" he asks, and looks around for his son. The baby is a sleep in his carrier seat beside the couch, yet the cartoon is still playing.
Cordelia gives him her best "you caught me" look."All right, all right," she confesses. "I'm the one that really likes the Grinch. Me. It's like this morality tale for the masses. The idea that anyone can change, no matter how nasty they were before? That's a powerful message." She smiles at him, the smile tipped with the slightest touch of regret. "I can identify with that, you know?"
That Christmas he gave her a first edition of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. She loved it, insisting on keeping it in the top drawer of her desk all year round. With the move to Wolfram and Hart , the book also relocated. Angel slid his own top desk drawer open and carefully removed the book. He set it down next to the only other thing on the desk's immaculate surface, a small glass vial.
Angel looked down on the worn cover. A message of the hope of change, he remembered her saying. Then as now, it seemed appropriate that the book belonged to her. If anyone was a testament to the power of change, it was Cordelia Chase. When they first met in Sunnydale, Angel thought Cordelia was like hundreds of teenage girls he'd seen before:vain, frivolous, and entertaining in small doses. He watched her pass into his life and back out again with little regret. Then they met again in Los Angeles- and he barely recognized the young woman she'd become. Stripped of her family, friends, and fortune, Cordelia Chase had no choice but to find the truth of who she was and what she could truly be. That initial trial by fire was only the beginning; with a wondering sense of rightness, Angel watched her change day by day into the woman he loved.
Yet he wasn't prepared for the final change. Two days after Thanksgiving, the coma holding her gave way. Angel was with her when it let her go. The change was so sudden and simple that Wesley or one of the others would have missed it completely. Yet even before the machines blared out the truth, Angel knew. One moment her body was a living vessel waiting to be filled; the next, a collection of dead or dying cells.
Angel pushed back in his chair, forcing physical action to break him out of unwanted memory. In the process he knocked the book off the desk and onto the floor. Cursing, he bent over to pick it up. Well read, the book laid open to a favorite page. Perhaps it was Cordelia's favorite passage. Perhaps the favorite of the people or person to own the book before her. Either way really didn't matter to him. Angel set the book on the desk and looked down at the illustration.
In faded color, the illustration of the Grinch's expanded heart.
As if she were in the room with him Angel felt Cordelia watching him. The expression on her face seemed to say, Don't make me state the obvious . Angel wasn't one to argue with the dead, but he almost doubted her. Unlike the Grinch, his heart would never grow three sizes on any day. His heart did not beat, and the heart that had beat for his now belonged to a little girl in Florida.
Because even in death, Cordelia was helping the hopeless. Thanks to someone she'd never met, a woman in Minnesota had a new liver. One kidney went to a man in Kentucky who'd been on a waiting list for over a year; the other went to a mother of three in Pennsylvania. The list went on- Angel knew the contents by heart He'd overseen the execution of Cordelia's last request with a single-minded determination that kept the Wolfram and Hart vultures at bay. As she wanted, the gift of life went to those who needed it most.
A frown creased his mouth. Well, he'd almost succeeded. Even the most vigilant protector can be caught short in his grief. Wolfram and Hart managed to procure enough of her to fill a dark green vial. The last bit of Cordelia he had: her blood, enough for one quick swallow of bittersweet forgetfulness.
A gift, the words Merry Christmas from a grateful staff written in a perfect copper plate script on the label. He knew the unwritten meaning behind this supposed gift of gratitude. Give in , the card should have read. One can never escape their true nature.
Their perception of his true nature, Angel knew, was simple. He was a selfish bastard. He had only to look into himself to see where they may have found this idea. In his heart and mind a base desire festered unchecked. He did not want to give Cordelia up to death. He would give everything for her return, even what wasn't his to give. If it meant taking back the good her death brought into the world, he would take it all back.
Thus, the gift. Angel also knew that from these people, a gift was never simply a gift. This was an opening offer. Wolfram and Hart had the resources to work his will. All he had to do was admit to his selfishness, then ask to have her back. Angel was as certain of this as if Eve had walked right through the door and told him so herself. Angel held the vial up to the light. For a moment he lost himself in the possibilities it held for him.
Then he threw the vial at a wall.
An easy, safe way out of his predicament? That was not the final gift of the woman he loved.
Long ago, Cordelia gave him other gifts that far outweighed her forced offerring. Cordelia believed in him. Angel knew that not even death itself could end that belief. As for the other gift? He carried it with him from the day they met again in Los Angeles. The same gift that her body's resources had given to others: the gift of hope.
Hope was a powerful weapon, even for a selfish bastard like him. One that hundreds of different people used in hundreds of different ways every day. Angel would use it to fight the darkness within and without.
Cordelia had died, but the hope she'd placed within him set her in his heart and his mind forever. In her memory, he would not allow himself to backslide again. In her memory, he would make things right. In her memory, he would make certain that her death had meaning.
He wasn't giving up. That was his final gift to her in return.
"Thank you for the gift."
Cordelia stands in the snow, the book still clutched in her hands. Smiling, she leans into him and hugs him soundly.
"Merry Christmas Angel," she whispers before she pulls away.
"Merry Christmas Cordelia," he whispered back to the memory. He only hoped that wherever she might be, Cordelia Chase heard him.
End.