Title: Catharsis
Author: Natauni
Posted: 02-01-01
Rating: R
Email:
Content:
Summary: What you see is rarely all there is
Spoilers:
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution:
Notes:
Feedback:Part 6: Dreams ~
In which we learn the sandman doesn't always bring fluffy sheep and bunnies.When I was eight...maybe nine years old, I was in a car accident with my Nanny, two of my cousins and my Grandfather on my mother's side. We were coming home from a long weekend designed to give the parents a holiday as well. We got hit head on by a garbage truck with defective breaks. The impact was so hard, it flipped us over and slammed us into two other vehicles. The car looked like a crumpled cardboard box by the time that it finally stopped moving.
There were five of us in that car before the accident. I was the only survivor.
I don't remember much of what happened before or during the actual crash: just the emotions I had been feeling right before we were struck. I remember being angry - so angry, because it was supposed to be my turn to ride in the front seat. We took turns, you see, and Jessie had gotten hers when we drove down to the park that morning. The rules were simple: youngest to oldest. The seven year old had gotten her turn and now it was supposed to be -mine- ... only Chance had skinned his knee on the pavement coming out of Disney Land, so they said he didn't have to bend it - which meant no back seat.
Which meant I was stuck in the middle. Again. Jessie got carsick easy, so she had to sit by one of the windows.
It wasn't fair! I was irate - enraged at the time. I remember Grandpa tried to cheer me up. He even let me hold his pocket watch - the one I normally loved so much, in an effort to make me smile. I refused to be consoled, though. In my childish mind there was no justice. I stubbornly glared down at my shoes.
And then they hit us. The car flipped twice end over end. I heard my Nanny scream in shock, and I hit my head.
That day, for the first time in my life, fair was officially over.
A few moments after impact, my right foot was broken in three places. The result was more agony then I've ever experienced prior to that date. It was dark if I remember right, though I must have been nearly hysterical at the time. Of course, the atmosphere didn't exactly do much to improve my state of mind: the car alarm was squealing at the top of its lungs, and the smoke and fire around the car was so thick I could barely see. I couldn't hear. I couldn't breath. I was scared out of my wits - I was seeing demons. And these weren't the souled kind.
I would have died that cold autumn night, if it weren't for the intercession of an angel.
"Close you eyes, Little One. That's right...I've got you." I don't know how Grandpa managed to get me out of my seat when both of us were upside down, but somehow he did, and as he dragged us out of the shattered window and across the pavement to the other side of the highway, I remember the smell of his shirt. It was tangy and acidic - the smell of blood. His chest was a mass of charred material and half burned flesh. And yet he kept going.
I didn't recognize the stench of death at the time. I know it now.
The car went up about a minute and a half after he got us out. He never had a chance to go back for any of the others.
"Close you eyes, little one. Just close your eyes and hold me tight." Grandpa must have said that to me a thousand times in the minutes that it took the police and the ambulances to reach us. He had me cradled against his shoulder - face practically forced into the space between his chin and his shoulder as we rocked back and forth. "Take it easy love, I've got you. Grandpa's got you - it'll be okay." Over and over again like a mantra, he just kept saying it. Even as his heart gave out from the strain, he refused to let me go.
He bled out there on the street covering my head. He didn't want me aware enough to hear the screams of my nanny who was still alive: burning to death in the car.
Don't look. Don't take any notice. How many times in our lives do we get told, or tell someone else, to just refuse to see something: to be too apathetic or too busy or too shortsighted or even too distracted to care? It's easier not to look, you know - simpler and far less costly than the act of actually getting involved. Not looking is sometimes the only thing that holds us on the side of pain verses the side of insanity. My Grandfather -died- trying to protect my eyes from the truth before I was ready to face it.
If I had only understood what a -gift- that was at the time, I would have thanked him for it more before he died.
'Don't look.' It doesn't work that way for me anymore. I -have- to look. I am the only one who -can- look. The visions that I have - the nightmares I see, are the only hope that the people in them will ever have. I have to -choose- to keep my eyes open. To take the images and turn them into a chance to stop the crash before it happens. Oh okay, maybe I was never really given the option not to, but you know what I mean. It's still my responsibility.
I see the evil. I see it ahead of everyone else. Like my Grandfather I try and pull as many people out of the car as possible. It's all I can do, even if it's never enough. The problem is, unlike Grandpa, I don't get the priviledge of dying afterwards. It keeps on going.
I saw today, and tomorrow, when I wake up I will still have to see again. It's never over, this perpetual accident. And I doubt, because of my experiences thus far, that it ever really will be.
"Seer Girl." I wonder if anyone will ever know how much I've come to hate that name. It's worse than being called the 'bitch' or 'Queen Cordy' or any of the other thousand and one labels I've had to wear over the years. I'm the 'Seer belonging to the Warrior' now. Otherwise known as the one with the special inlet to redemption. Redemption huh? Strange delivery. Day after day I loan out my head to any manner of filth and perversion. All in the hope - the desperate -hope,- that we'll be able to save one more person who can't save themselves. That we'll end the screaming desolation in their heads, so I can try and bury it under the 'resolved' graveyard in my own memory.
"Close you eyes Baby." Grandpa I'm sorry - your little princess grew up and opened her eyes.
I see now, what you were trying to protect me from.
Because the moment I did, I discovered there was no one left to hold me.
Part 7: Sound ~
In which Angel proves to be a good analogist, but a generally ineffective alarm clock.I ought to know by now to be more wary of the silence.
I mean when, since the very beginning of this state that I call an existence, has stillness ever been a portent of anything but trouble for me? When I was a child, I refused to ever live in the quiet: afraid that if I did, the monsters that lived under my bed would no doubt know that I was afraid and come and get me. As I got older, I by nature got louder - more boisterous. As they would say, Liam was the last one to turn down a party. Heck, he'd make one up if he had to - just so long as there was trouble to create and decent beer that hadn't been drunk yet.
The boy never stopped talking, they said. And they were pretty much right.
I lived in auditory chaos. Oh the reasons changed as I grew older...but it's still the truth. I couldn't stand the stillness. It drove me wild. I feared the potential of having to actually face up to myself. Silence was the herald of truth. And truth and I had long ago parted company.
That's probably putting it all into a nutshell. For me, there was nothing to keep me from facing reality like a roomful of distraction. When I was surrounded by sound, I could forget things. I lived in perpetual chaos so I could 'not know.' Not know that I was afraid. Not know that I was lonely. I could even not know that my father was never pleased with me. I could deny that that fact hurt me. That it drove me to be worse. That it made me even louder.
I spent the first twenty or so years of my life living in the noise, and then I became Angelus, and I lost myself in the laughter and the wonderful screaming.
Oh yes. I won't lie. It was wonderful. Those who think that I don't in some ways envy Angelus are dead wrong. I do envy him. Mind you I also hate him. No, I more than hate him...I loathe him. I react to him as a child responds to a monster - rejecting him instinctually with every fiber of decency that is in me. That doesn't change the facts though. The bitter truth that he accomplished something I've never managed. Nobody says a virus that kills thousands is something to admire...but it's something to respect.
You have to acknowledge the sheer capacity, and so I envied Angelus for so many years. I wanted to believe what he'd convinced himself of so easily: that I had nothing to fear in the silence. That it was empty.
But I do fear the silence, even if the nature of that fear has changed over time. I don't react to it in terror anymore, as I used to. Heck I won't even go as far as to say I avoid it. No, the truth is silence and I have become the adversaries who cannot seem to break formation. We sit opposite each other and glare into the void between us, each knowing we could never quite out due the other. I've come to know my enemy and I've come to respect it. Why in the heck do you think I'm prone to brood as much as I do?
There is more there than just an unhealthily large addiction to penance, you know...
Silence may have killed me, but it also rewrote my life again.
I lived alone for nearly one hundred years. Funny, that a mere slip of a gypsy girl somehow managed to do what no amount of mortal hatred or loved had ever accomplished. I met myself after I was cursed, truly -met myself.- Liam met Angel in that silence - they duked it out.
In the end the boy became the man. It's how I got to where I am here today.
I know silence. And I know noise. I know the fine line between filling space in desperation and because it's right to. If there's anything I've come to appreciate from all this guilt I carry around, it's that I know myself better than most people could ever say.
That's why I'm so shocked tonight...sitting here. Wondering how, once again my whole world just got dumped on its backside.
Because I've just realized that I haven't been in silence, even if I may have thought that I was. I haven't been alone for two years now. Despite the fact I didn't truly recognize it as such, sound and activity burst back into my life. I just didn't realize that it was happening because it came in such a different form than I was used to.
Music. That was what she was. What she is. Hell, what she has been from the day I first found her here in LA. Her appearance was unexpected, that much is for certain. I'll even be honest enough to say it was unwanted in many ways: a sharp reminder of everything I was trying to leave behind. She was painful - a complex set of notes that you couldn't bring yourself to like and yet you couldn't quite bring yourself to turn off either. She's the song you play again the first time to prove to yourself you hated it. And the one you play a second time because you didn't understand why you didn't hate it - why you kept feeling the pull.
She wound her presence - her melody so completely into my life, that by the time I realized I was actually in trouble, it was already to late.
I fell in love with Jazz in much the same way, you know. Purposefully accidental. She's been nothing but constant since the day she entered my life. At first it was the question of responsibility: did I owe her something because I actually knew her name? Because I realized what kind of poverty she was in? Because she had the outright gall to lie in my -face- that evening at the party, rather than allow me to think she was anything less than in complete control of her life.
Cordelia Chase has more crescendo in her than anyone else I've ever encountered. She can be on her very last measure, but damn it all, she's going to go out with a bang.
She was alone - so alone, when I first found her. More alone I think than even she recognized. Cordelia's a kindred spirit, you know - she always has been. She's just like Liam used to be. So much like him, in fact, that I nearly choke on it sometimes, because they have such different lives and yet they're so much the same animal.
What do I mean. I'm talking about the power of self perception. Liam could drink his way through anything and still tell you he was on top of the world. That he was king and conqueror.
And Cordelia? Well Cordelia could sell her body to give her spirit one more day to live, and defend it to the end of the earth.
Oh yes. I knew what she was doing that night when I burst in and saved her. We've never -talked- about it outright, perhaps because I don't dare take the chance of shaming her with the fact, but that doesn't mean I don't know it. Cordelia Chase is a survivor: she's possibly known less real, steadfast love in her life than I have, and that's left her with the cut-throat mind of a truth teller.
She has the heart of a lion. The talons of a hawk. And a singular moral code.
I've never asked her what she was doing at the house of a near stranger. I know. It makes me want to rip every male in this city to shreds, but it's still the truth and one that haunts me when I let myself dwell on it. I didn't hire her because I didn't think she'd be able to survive on her own. I hired her because I knew she -would- survive if she had to, and I couldn't abide the knowledge of how.
Her purity is something she would probably laugh at, if mentioned. But I guard it because I have so little left of my own. What you don't have becomes infinitely precious.
So she's become my sound. She is the rhythm that became part of my subconscious before it became part of my mind. She is the lyric I never intentionally learned, but one-day found I could recite word for word. I got used to her. I became accustomed to the way she banished the brooding as an excuse to not enjoy the symphony. I started listening - not just filling up the background, but also truly deciphering the ups and downs, the unique ripples of the orchestra.
She taught me the difference between noise and music. One is purposeless...distracting. One makes you unable to think, while the other brings a kind of clarity.
I've learned to understand her because of that. I've learned that she doesn't talk so much because she likes the sound of her own voice, but because so few people pay attention, and she hopes that if she says it often and loud enough, maybe someone will finally get it. She took Angel out of his self-imposed exile from the screaming and the laughter. She pulled the wool I'd forced in my ears out, and turned up the volume until I could barely stand it.
She laughed and she sang, and she lived...lived in sound for both of us.
Because of her, I learned to fear the silence again.
And that's the real truth. I lied earlier. Or maybe I just deluded myself. Sitting next to her now, watching her twist in her dreams - silent, locked up, I don't have the privilege of thinking this is normal any longer. I'm -not- good with quiet. Not anymore. It's not right. Not like it used to be. I've changed because of her. Things are different. The closest comparison I have to the situation is the difference between only hearing incorrectly: not being able to distinguish sounds, and the ability to suddenly hear everything perfectly after you've spent your entire life not knowing you were deaf.
I don't want to not hear anything.
This has to be fixed. There is no other option.
Cordelia, listen to me. You have to wake up. You -have- to be in there. You're scaring me to life and back to death again, and that's just a little to melodramatic for either one of us tonight. I don't have the energy.
Wake up Cordelia. Do you hear me? Wake up!
You can't possibly end what has scarcely begun yet.
Part 8: Prophets ~
In which Spike makes a bizarre appearance, and proves no less enlightening than usual.If there's anything I've learned about forfeit and gaining - about giving up something you can't afford to lose or fighting for it, it's that sometimes it pays to be a little bit...well, -drastic.-
I mean just look at me now: bare feet. Dressed in sweat pants and nothing else so I can focus on her and not have to worry about a bunch of my own clothes to get out of when we're finished. The water for tea is already boiling on the stove, along with enough fresh towels and blankets warmed in the oven to ward of the worst case of hypothermia. Most people would tell you that it's suicide to take an unconscious woman into an ice cold shower. They're right. The only defense I have is that I'm going to be the one holding her both during and after this is over. No one can call me naïve.
I know exactly what I'm doing. In fact, I think this particular maneuver is somewhere under the 'tough love' guide book, chapter number six. Crisis reference guide...
Yes. I'm talking about an actual subsection. Right next to the part about keeping fresh supplies of blood and holy water.
Classic intervention. I'm doing it because there just isn't any other choice. -Any- other choice. She isn't waking up - and that's not even the worst of the problem. I've tried everything: loud music, sitting her up, wash-clothes of all different temperatures. Hell I even went as far as to haul her out of bed and drag her across her bedroom floor like a parent trying to encourage their baby's learning to walk. All of it got me nowhere. Yup. Nowhere. I've talked to her. I've yelled at her. I've shaken her. I've even tried reaching out a bit through our bond-link, if you want to believe it. Yes, our long denied -bond link.- Still nothing is working.
What we've got is full retreat mode: Cordelia Chase is locked in some kind of self-imposed coma.
And I don't do comas. I don't do medical crises of any kind, for that matter. We covered this fact quite clearly not long after the old office blew up: she is not allowed to do this again. She can yell at me and she can ignore me and she can even try and walk away from me assuming she knows she's gonna have to fight me all the way, but she doesn't get to leave me sitting here helpless with no clue of what to do. Not like this. Little Miss 'We're all Fine' is scaring the death out of me and I'm either going to wake her up within the next fifteen minutes or I'm checking her into the nearest ER.
She has to choices: wake up now or wake up -now.- And judging by the bottle of prescription sleeping pills on her bedside table, either way, the two of us are going to have to have a serious talk when this is over.
A talk. What ludicrous way of saying that we're in shreds, and that it's time she acknowledged it. What a totally meaningless way of indicating that my best friend and me haven't really existed in each other's worlds for the past -two and a half months.-
Two and a half months. This has been building for weeks - it has to have been. I mean, even before the now infamous 'firing fiasco,' I wasn't really there in any meaningful sense. I haven't been here. Not if this is happening. Not if she's downing her drugs from back when she was on the Neuro-Psych Unit, and I didn't notice...
Cordelia Chase is taking sleeping medication?! This is like a sign of the Apocalypse.
I may not know everything about Delia, but I -know- she hates prescription drugs.
No really. She does. Funny that a woman who pops Tylenol and Excedrin Migraine so often is so downright hostile toward the idea of anything stronger, but the fact remains that she is. She loathes pills. Absolutely hates them: and narcotics in particular. She hates them so much that when she first came home from the hospital after the incident with Vocah, I thought for sure she was going to kill herself with her self-created insomnia. She kept refusing her Codeine and her sedatives - kept taking only half a dose or no dose at all, even in spite of the agonizing neurological burnout she was still suffering. The girl had bruises all over her body from when they'd originally tried to restrain her - she could barely see straight. The blood vessels in her eyes had bled out in at least two separate places from the combined terror and strain of what she'd been seeing, and yet she kept refusing the stuff that could put her out of her misery, even temporarily. She just lay there and took it.
We nearly came to blows over the matter on the second day. I was ready to force her mouth open and drop the stuff down the back of her throat.
Pain Tolerances. I used to think I knew what they were, until I started to get to know her. I know pain after all - both from causing it and from living with at a whole variety of different level's and frequencies. Suffering is pretty much all the same, you know: a sapping of your strength that does more that keep you from getting uncomfortable - it make you start forgetting what comfortable really is. When you hurt you're pretty much in the same boat as everyone else who hurts - unable to be in any kind of stable state but rather constantly rocking back and forth between agony and relief in an ever constant cycle of up and downs. Yes, after awhile your pain itself can max out - you can start relabeling the boundaries between tolerable and intolerable, but the constant rocking back and forth remains universal - you have and you lose, until at last you simply find you don't care anymore. You reach the numb stage.
And then you get a chance to see just how bad that pain really is. It's amazing really, how you can one day realize the pain you see as acceptable in yourself on a daily basis is outright intolerable when you have to watch it in somebody else.
She's changed. She's changed so much. If there's anything else I can take out of this whole set of experiences, it's that Cordelia Chase is not the same girl I knew in Sunnydale. Hell, she's not even the same woman I thought I knew as I watched her emerge in LA over the past few years. I don't know why that fact surprises me: I mean I know better than just about anyone how we can set up walls...about the power of wearing faces.
I don't think Cordelia Chase has ever once been in public without a mask before now. Having it off these past days has been a revelation both good and bad. It's hard to see how well manipulated you've been.
She is a stranger living dressed up as a brother. We don't know her all that well - her behavior lately and our responses to it have proven that much. It is really sad when you consider that me and Wes and Gunn - though Wes and me in particular - have probably spent more time with her than anyone else thus far. She's been by our side every single day: making the coffee, griping about being underpaid. She wears the coat of spoiled little girl very well. It keeps you from realizing behind the personality there lays a sharp mind. And less naiveté than fiercely clung to innocence.
The Sunnydale Bitch of the popular club is actually this city's closet thing to a prophet. Heaven forbid you ever try and say that to her face, though.
Her mouth is her weapon. Not because she uses sarcasm to push people off, but because she knows how much of a dichotomy she is, and she takes advantage of it. Cordelia's power isn't just in her insight; it's in her delivery. Nobody who takes her at face value ever expects the kind of truth that she so frequently sends rolling out of her mouth. She's like Spike in that sense: my other hidden revealer. Like him, she has a kind of emotional tuning fork to the world that never shuts off, even when you think it has. She's always observing - always noting. She defines on instincts that which the rest of us cannot even touch, and she does it without blinking.
She hides it though. Just like Spike always has. No, like -William- has since the day he was turned - though he keeps every out of his space, so they never catch on to the fact that's his life is an act, albeit an act he often greatly enjoys.
And she's his double. Cordelia is his emotional twin. She's the same in heart and tie and empathy...she's my second chance. Cordelia is more than just my friend or my path to redemption, or a woman I can not help but love - she's my one hope of not repeating my own idiotic mistakes. Of growing up.
She is William the boy in a totally different package, and unlike the first time, I will not screw this precious relationship up again.
Abandonment. That's my greatest fallacy. Cordelia and Spike's too, yes - but from the opposite end of the spectrum. I was picked, not the other way around. By both of my prophets. Many people ask wonder why I accepted Spike: why I took on the role of Sire and trained him instead of letting him fall to the side like all of Dru's other toys. They don't understand why Angelus committed to something both he and now I both appear so constantly frustrated over. Why I didn't kill him after I got my soul back rather than see him continue killing. They don't -understand- it.
Spike is a mystery I don't think I can ever put words to. They don't realize it's a mixture of father love and grace I can feel every time I speak or hear his name. Or the regret that comes with understanding. With knowing the costs.
I do regret Spike - more than I've ever regretted any of my Childer. Because of what he is. I regret that I had to lose him to know him.
He hates me. Oh yes, I know there's a part of him that probably also loves me too - that's the blood talking and the anger and Dru and the years and years and years of wondering where I'd gone after I got my soul back, all clambering together in a demon built for fidelity and forced to give up on the souled idiot who gave up on him. He and I are bound in some ways that will never be broken, joined in ways I can't say I will ever lose - but those ties will always hurt, because it proves how poorly I ever understood anything. Because I just didn't get it.
The irony of Spike is that demon or soul he is often a force of pure truth. And whether he liked it or not, in the end that truth laid its claim on him.
I will never give up on Spike. He is and always will be my childe. Yet we will never be friends - never be family. We may some day be allies or at least have a respect that can exist within the same perimeter, but not anytime soon. Instead, we will go on in this roll I've forced us both into - apart. Oh yes, if push came to shove we would probably both fight for the same side as an amalgamation of what we could have been, and die for the sake of one another - the blood is undeniable, no matter the distance. He will never trust me though. I'll never be allowed in again: not like Angelus once was. Not like Angel might have been if he hadn't run away, if he'd taken the demon with the gift.
I've been cast back out to the rest of the world. He'll make his way alone. That's my greatest failure. That I didn't just lose my first prophet, but that I didn't know he was one. Now Spike is in Sunnydale: oddly tied to the light I always wished I'd been able to bring him to, and I'll never, -never- be able to share it. He's lost to me.
I won't let that happen with Cordelia. Period.
I. Simply. Will. Not. Let. It.
I will learn from my mistakes. I will learn because there is no other option: because failing once was unforgivable, and failing twice is beyond unforgivable, it just downright unrepentant. I will learn because I don't have the excuse of shock anymore, and because, unlike with Spike, there's a chance I can fix what I broke in my ignorance. And because, also unlike Spike, she still needs me. There's a chance I can get back in - unlike Spike she hasn't yet learned to cope alone. -She still needs me. -
That's a gift I won't give up. I can't give up.
So I go back to war, and this time, even if my weapons are only an ice cold shower, and myself I'm making sure that we -win.-
Part 9: Tremors ~
In which Angel learns how not to wake a woman up.I'm going to kill him for this.
First though, I'm gonna need a minute or two more to stop throwing up.
Don't ask me how I got here. I really don't know. I don't remember getting into the bathroom. Heck I don't remember even getting into this -nightgown,- which is soaked, by the way. Just lovely: pure silk and saving nearly three months in order to get it on special at a local Boutique - eating never-ending lunches of cream cheese, bologna or peanut butter and it comes to this. I'm reduced to a rumpled, freezing mass of me on my bathroom floor, puking out my guts into the toilet.
Yeah, I'm gonna kill him for this. Once I regain the strength to stand.
"Delia. Delia -breathe!-" His voice is full of regret and worry. I can feel the water dripping out of his own hair and down over my neck as he continues to brace me - one hand laid firmly against my forehead and the other supporting my rolling stomach.
He's shaking as he holds me, just like I am.
Vampires aren't supposed to be capable of getting cold.
Tears. It's funny how sometimes the one thing you can't control is your tears. They just come and you can't do anything but let them. It's like they're the part of you that will acknowledge reality when the rest of you is completely accepting of the comfort of the lie. I don't like reality - in fact I'm quite happy ignoring it as often as possible. It's because of that I don't cry very often. Doing so is a secession of power I've never been able to tolerate. I don't cry when I hurt and I don't cry when I'm happy.
I'm crying now though. It's involuntary when I start throwing up.
And am I throwing up. Violently. The tremors and the resulting waterworks have been streaming ever since I woke up - maybe before then, even. I can't tell you whether it's because of shock, exhaustion, anger or a mixture of all of the above. I just know I'm -cold.- So cold. Numb in my fingers. Numb in my toes and in my head and in my stomach. My belly feels like a big mass of lead that's slowly expanding over and over: trying to work it's way back out of my throat. There's just no way for it all to force itself to the surface though.
This is the second reason I hate sedatives so much. If they don't make me foggy or psychotic, I just throw them back up.
Angel is still behind me. I feel him shift a little - helping me wrap my arms around the toilet bowl as he gets back to his feet. "I'll be back. It'll be okay just stay here, I'll be right back and we'll get you warm." He makes the promise and flees the room. I don't know what he's doing: how he knew what was wrong? Maybe I have been speaking aloud. Well either that or I'm simply thinking so loudly that anyone near me could pick up on it, but regardless he's suddenly up and gone, while I continue to lean over the porcelain and re-acquaint myself with the contents of my supper and prescription strength Unisom. And oh the disadvantages of eating. I hate chicken noodle soup - have I ever mentioned that? Probably cause I ate way too much of it in the last few weeks. Hey what can I say: it's cheap. It's easy. It's gentle on my stomach.
And I very rarely throw up from it. We've already covered that I -hate- throwing up, haven't we?
* * *
Dumb. I was so, so dumb doing this. No beyond dumb: I was -idiotic,- in the 'stake me' kind of sense. Her whole body jerks against me again and I wince to think what would have happened if her head had struck the bowl again without my hand to provide buffering. As it is, I more than deserve the resulting pain I take in her place. -Look- at what I've done to her. -Look- at her. What in hell was I thinking? Dragging an unconscious woman into an ice cold shower as if she were me and the most a big change in temperature would do was tick her off? Was I totally out of my mind? You were trying to wake her up- Angel...not give her a coronary!
This hasn't been one of my brighter days. No, this hasn't been on of my brighter unlives.
She screamed the moment the water hit her. Well okay, maybe not screamed so much as wailed pathetically, suddenly coming awake. Her eyes were wide as she jerked against me - forcing her way up through Satan knows how many miles of dreams only to find herself nearly drowning under the deluge from the showerhead. Awareness came in an instant - head turning, body struggling as she pushed against my chest.
I would have been relieved if that movement hadn't been followed by a sudden hand to her mouth. She lost her lunch all over the both of us before I could even set her on her feet.
She threw up: violently smacking her head against the shower wall in the midst of her convulsions. I tried to wrap her in a bear hug after that - wanting to keep her from injuring herself any farther before I managed to change the water to warm and rinse us both off, but she still fought my grasp, gasping and squirming and struggling until I finally released her. Her actions after that were lightening fast: before I could fully comprehend her motives she was grasping for purchase against the slippery tiles and then the door and then the door handle as she practically threw herself out of the stall and onto the floor in front of the toilet. She flipped back the toilet seat with another whimper, and the convulsive heaves started all over again.
Note to self. Shock someone out of a deep enough sleep - particularly a drug induced one, and there's another possibility for a result beyond them getting cold or pissed off. I forget that when you shock-wake someone with cold water like I did, you have to worry about more than just a sudden drop in body temperature. There's the threat of aspiration. Basically if you wake anyone out of deep enough REM cycle while they've still got food in their stomach, and they'll probably proceed to regurgitate everything up to and including their intestines.
Cordelia was doing a fine job of reminding me of this fact.
Hyperventilation. Hyperthermia. Not to mention choking to death on your own sputum. I don't know exactly how far in she was - definetely deep enough I had to take this kind of extreme measure to wake her, but regardless her body is not appreciating the return trip very much. My first reaction once I got out from under the water was to brace her - to keep her in a relatively upright position and whisper soothing words to try and bring her subconscious back in line with the rest of her body. Breathe Cordelia. Breathe that's right in and out, another breath. Take the occasional gasp of oxygen in between spewing and collapsing. Aspiration is a bad thing...breathe carefully. If you have to throw up get all that garbadge out, do it. You'll feel so much better when it's over.
Wake up a little more Cordelia. I'll apologize when you're cognizant enough to refuse to forgive me. For now just breathe in for me again.
I'm sorry Cor, I'm so unbelievably -sorry.-
"Coooolllllllld." The word is the first thing to actually slip out of her mouth as her form trembles against me. It takes a moment for the meaning to sink in and then I'm forcing myself to leave her alone in the bathroom long enough to go get the stuff I left warming in the oven. Quickly Angel, quickly. She's shaking so hard. I think her stomach's finally run out of things to bring back up, though. Smalls graces are still appreciated. Now back to the bathroom. Blankets, Angel. Get the blankets. Get her dry and wrapped up. It only takes a moment to make what passes for a Cordelia sized burrito blanket, and then I'm lifting her into my arms, and we're moving into the bedroom
You're an idiot Angel. A son of a bitch.
But at least it worked. She's really, truly awake.
* * *
Warmth. Wakefulness. Warm cotton and soft fleece. My world is finally starting to make some rational sense. Heat. He was gone for a moment but now he's back again and there's heat - blessed, burning, wonderful -heat- wrapping itself around my body as he first rolls me up in something and then lifts me off the floor. He's mumbling as he shifts me against his chest. "It'll be okay Cordy...just hold one. I'm sorry Delia." We're moving and it's making me sick again. Thankfully this time, though, there's nothing left to come up. So I close my eyes and beg the room from spinning.
"Almost there Delia."
He's lying me back down against the sheets of my bed. I'd move and say something appropriately scathing at this point, but I can't seem to move my head. I think I'll just breathe awhile.
* * *
Hair. Dry pants, then her hair then her clothes. At this point, methodical movement is the only thing that's gonna keep me from just stripping off my own wet things and collapsing into bed beside her. And forget any kind of raunchy sexual implication connected to that thought. I'm not looking to get laid. I'm just downright -exhausted.- Right now, I'd like nothing more than to follow her back into that beloved unconscious of her, but considering how much work I just went through to get her up I have to keep moving. There will be no collapsing. She'd really kill me if she woke up naturally in a few hours to find us in bed naked...
Sleeps gotten me into too much trouble lately, as it is, thank you very much.
So start with her hair. The large blanket currently swathing the majority of her body is warm enough to distract her from the dampness of the nightclothes she's wearing, but her hair is still drenched and it's got to get taken care of first or everything else I put her in is just gonna get soaked again. I reach for one of the towels on the chair. She's still as limp as a rag-doll, so getting her upright after I've laid her down requires me to literally crawl into bed behind her and prop her up with one hand around her waist while the other takes a towel to her mass of curls. I can feel her stiffen at the shift in position - and she's starting to regain enough control of her own self to push away from me again. Easy Delia. Just keep on breathing. I'm almost done here, and the drug's definitely wearing off - she's starting to look irritable.
Her shivering is getting less and less. Good. That means she's better. She's actually waking up.
* * *
Awake. Okay now I'm awake. Awake and cold and wet and pissed off as -HELL.- What's he doing in my Apartment? And what's with the shower? Has he somehow picked up Chinese water torture when I wasn't aware of it? And while we're on the subject why is he almost naked?!?
"What in hell did you think you were doing?!"
It's official now; I'm going to kill him.
Part 10: Breaking Ground ~
In which mountains battle molehills.I don't think it would be wise at this moment to tell her how awful she looks.
She's mad enough as it is, after all. Somewhere in the vicinity of 'a flock of wet hens' would probably be pretty accurate. Her face is unnaturally pale and her hair is a ragged mass of spikeys in every direction. I wonder what led to this slow and gradual massacre of the one thing she was most physically proud of about herself: Cordelia's always put such stock in her hair - I heard her tell her mirror one morning that it was the one part of her -not- quite stereotypically classical, and she used to spend so much money on the fancier shampoos and stuff. Back when she seemed to care about her own appearance...and not just because she was petty, I could always count on her to take too long in the bathroom. Part of me liked it.
She has always been a beautiful woman. We -needed- that beauty amidst all the darkness we were surrounded in.
She's different now, though. Emotionally adorable rather than gorgeous. It's just one more thing about her I'm slowly refiguring out as I inch in closer bit by bit, cautiously, lest she somehow sense my intent and slam the door shut. When did she become this urchin in front of me - the one whose heart I notice before her looks? She used to take such pride in her appearance; even if a bit to the extreme at times, and I was actually a little relieved by the behavior. A part of me liked her vanity. It made her seem like the girl she should have been. It made me believe she was still young - undiluted, innocent in some ways if not necessarily in her sexuality anymore. She used to be such a flirt. Such a giggler. Her behavior was occasionally still that of a near little girl and I relaxed every time that I saw it because it meant I hadn't spoiled her life completely...that she was still growing up.
Tonight, though, I don't see that society-raised beauty queen who used a pretty smile and a generously developing bust-line to hide a tender heart. I see a tired, worn and life weary woman.
"Will you stop staring at me?!" The demand would be a little more effective if she weren't still chattering through her teeth as she said it. She's awake now - wide awake, and no doubt furious both at my intrusion and my methods of waking her up a few minutes ago. She's also alive though. And by that I mean the furious, heart racing, deep breathing kind of alive I haven't seen from her since I came back to the Agency. This Cordelia is reacting - not carefully or deliberately or with thought but just -reacting- to the world around her. And I'm more than happy to be her whipping boy. As long as it gets me some thing other than the statue I've been working with lately.
"Dennis called me. Said there was an emergency." I choose my words carefully. She may be all but naked under those blankets right now, but something inside me warns that won't necessarily keep her from attempting to rip my head off.
"And so you felt the need to storm into my apartment uninvited and then try and drown me under -FREEZING COLD- water?" There's a slight tinge of hysteria under that bitter sarcasm. "I think I need to review acceptable human behavior with you boys once I manage to get these clothes off." She jerks her head slightly and then rises to her feet, dragging the blanket as she moves toward her dresser. "You need to look up the word 'alarm clock' in the dictionary, Mister. And on that note, kindly get the hell out of my room so I can change."
"No." So much for any kind of gentle handling of this situation. The speed at which she spins around and -stares- at me is matched exactly by the intensity of my fists clenching at my sides. It's not an unreasonable request, after all. I did just put her through what could be called the most singularly rude awakening of her life, and yes she is probably more than a little anxious to get into dry clothes before those blankets cool and leave her clothes sticking to her skin, but then I'm not reacting on logic right now...I'm reacting on instinct. It's something I need to trust more lately...especially when dealing with her.
I will not leave this room tonight, because if I do she gets the chance to build her walls back up before she comes into the living room. And if that happens, the entire evening will end up a bust.
She's still staring at me. Shock, antipathy, anger and apathy all warring across the same face as her mouth opens and closes several times. That's right Delia, gape at me. Open and close you mouth like a fish and shift back and forth from foot to foot, but by The Powers -feel something.-
"Angel, you have exactly ten seconds to get you bloodless butt out of my apartment, or I will have Dennis carry you out by the scruff of you neck."
Ah yes. Good girl. Fight me. -Fight me.- We haven't have a good, loud toss off of wills in far to long and involuntarily I find my lips curving in a small smile as an effortless reply slides through my lips. "Wouldn't count on it Cordy. He's the one who called me remember?" I find myself reaching for the bottle of pills still lying on her bedside table. "We haven't had a good chat in awhile. I've been lax. So want to tell me when you started popping these?"
More gaping followed by an actual snarl in the back of her throat as she drops the towel and reaches for a clean sweatshirt from the top of the stack, then a clean pair of underwear. "I'm going back to bed Angel. Stay, go, I don't care. But it's gonna be a busy day tomorrow. You've already cost me enough sleep tonight as it is."
"We're not going to work tomorrow." So she doesn't want to talk about it huh? Too bad for her. "Wesley and I already decided the whole group of us could use a few days vacation. Sort some things out and all that." I deliberately place myself between her and her bed. "Hiding behind the Sandman, Cordelia? Not the smartest thing.... I can tell you that from personal experience."
"I am not sleeping my life away!" She's turning toward the living room. Does she honestly think she's gonna beat me on the way to the couch?
"No, you're just drugging it into submission." I shake the bottle. "What happens when you're out, hmm? What then?"
"I'm not a fucking drug addict!" Oh the power and purity of sheer rage. Now she is going after the bottle - snatching it from my hands and all but throwing it across the living room. It makes a satisfying clang as it knocks over one of her fake plants. "I've had -two,- okay? Two freakin' little pills to try and get me through the night. Is that too much to ask after all the garbage I've put up with lately?! I didn't ask for the moon, just one blasted peaceful night!"
Relief. I hadn't really bothered to look at the number of pills still in the bottle before this conversation started but the tone and indignance on her face, mixed with the literal fact I could smell she was telling the truth took one major worry away. Now it is time to tone down a little, and I forcibly instruct my body to relax as I move out of her way and sit "Don't try another two, Cordelia. You scared me spitless. I couldn't wake you up. Do you have -any idea- how close I came to dragging your butt to the nearest ER?"
Her face gets a little pale and she sinks to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees as she brings them up to her chest. "I'm just so -tired- okay? You. Me. This. The visions keep getting stronger and stronger. All I wanted was a little peace...a night without the nightmares... was that so terrible?
How come you didn't know she was having nightmares, hmm big-shot? "Delia it took me nearly three hours to finally wake you. Do you hear me? -Three Hours.-"
Now that is shock on her face. Shock, disbelief and just a trace of fear as her eyes move toward the clock. It's not really all that late for us...not on the Vampire hours we've all kept on more than one occasion, but the simple fact that anyone has been in her home....that I've been in her home...that long without her knowledge is enough to shake her up. I almost regret the new wariness I see in her eyes as she curls in slightly tighter, but if it'll keep us from another incident like the one we just had, I'll forgive myself for it. Eventually. I watch her shudder and finally can't keep my distance any longer. Instead I carefully move to lift her yet again, this time carrying her to the couch and setting her down gently before retrieving another blanket from the oven and draping it carefully over her.
"Angel what's happening to me?" The words are muffled. Her nose is practically buried, just like the rest of her, in her self-perpetuating cocoon. "I used to be able to handle this. I -was- handling this. I'm stronger than this so why can't I..."
"Cordelia you're only human."
And you're so very, very incredibly young.
"Hold me?" The words catch me by surprise. I don't think Cordelia or I have ever asked something like that of one another before. Which is odd because we've touched casually all the time. Maybe it's because of the visions: when I'm constantly trying to prevent her from falling or hurting herself during her spells, and when she's constantly patching me up afterwards because of the inevitable run in with one nasty or another, you sort of just take for granted that you're allowed to touch. It wouldn't be us if she wasn't patting me on the knee or arm. I'm used to her being closer than most people ever get within my inner space, well not unless it's sexual.
We haven't touched though, really since the night I fired them.
Wrapping her in my arms now, though, I finally see why.
It's when we both come apart.
Continue on...