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 11: Breakfast ~
In which Cordelia enacts some blackmail, and Angel bemoans the status of his seers kitchen cupboards.He held me in his arms until just before the sun came up.
That's as simple an explanation as you're going to get. We didn't talk much...didn't make any noise at all. Instead we settled for sound: soft sighs and an occasional muffled grunt as one or both of us felt the need to shift position. We stayed on the couch - me on his lap, his hand occasionally stroking my hair, my own head against his left shoulder as we both sat staring out the window at the lightening horizon. And we were well. Comforted. The blanket I'd been wrapped in wasn't really big enough to cover both of us, but it didn't matter. I wasn't cold anymore.
We didn't say anything. I tried my best not to fall back asleep.
We simply sat. And I listened to his life-beat.
Yeah. Life-beat. It sounds a little corny, I know, but I don't know how else to describe it. I can't very well say 'heartbeat' - that's the one thing he doesn't have. Angel's dead after all. Huh. Dead. It funny to say but simple to explain, and yet at the same time while his body is not really with us, the rest of him is. He has a kind of inner pulse you start to detect, if you hang around him long enough. And an energy I've come to associate with him in the same way I'd register life in anything else. It's just a presence. A knowledge of him. Maybe it's a vampire vibe or this 'link' he's hinted at between us on occasion. I don't really know.
Tonight, though, that unspoken feeling...that 'sense' nearly dominated everything else, and I worshiped its affect.
You don't always have to talk. That's something so many people in life don't get about pain. That it doesn't require dissection - that it doesn't need to be analyzed or exorcised or even shared really...not before you're ready. Yes, Angel and I have some serious rebuilding to do. Tonight though, I just need to know we can do so. I need to let it sink in.
"We really should get you some breakfast." When he finally speaks it comes out as a low rumble against my ear. I lift my head slightly to see his face and he gives me one of those little smiles of his as he runs his hand through my hair yet again. "Food will get the drugs out of your system faster, and once we know they are you can finally take that nap you've been fighting the last few hours. Besides..." There's just a small amount of scolding in his voice as he finally shifts me out of his lap and onto the cushion next to him, "You could stand to gain about ten pounds, kiddo. When did you decide to lose so much weight without telling me?"
I frown at his raised eyebrow. I'm not that thin. I've lost five or six pounds tops. Okay maybe more like twelve or thirteen: my stomach hasn't been all that supportive of me lately. It's still not enough to have him sniping about, though. I try my best to look offended. "Who you calling an kid, hmm dead old guy? And I'll pass on the food for now, I think. I've done enough throwing up for the day, thank you very much."
"Ah come on." When did the man get so good at 'cajoling?' He's obviously been around me too long. His hand is reaching for mine and I'm being pulled to my feet. "Food. Foooooood. Sustenance. Eggs and toast for you ...coffee I might be convinced to share if you clean your whole plate. And then a nice hot shower and a warm bed... clean pajamas...."
"Speaking on which. You owe me a new pair mister. That was a favorite set you managed to waterlog."
"I'll take you shopping this afternoon if you eat your lunch too." Okay who is this vampire and what have they done with my best friend? Did Angel really just volunteer to take me to the 'mall' this afternoon? To the MALL?! "You really are guilting out over the shower incident, aren't you?" I cross my arms over my chest. "I still think you're over-reacting."
His voice gave no quarter, though his face was pained. "Cordelia you look like your preparing to audition for the part of a walking skeleton... You're pale and washed out and your hair is..."
"Enough already...enough!" Alright now that's just getting outright rude. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that you get farther with honey than with vinegar..."
His expression doesn't change a bit as he tilts his head. "Cordelia this is my version of honey. Now come on and eat, before I feel the need to tie you to a chair and force feed you."
Oh boy. Kinky. Okay not really, but I'm tired and he's right - I am hungry - and those two things together are combining to make my mind go in less than appropriate directions at the moment. The choice is whether to simply give up and let him have his way or play out stubborn a little longer until I see if I can get anything else out of him before I agree to eat.
Which do you suppose I'm going to go for? "A new set of PJs and a manicure and facial." I may not be nearly as selfish and spoiled anymore but I'm allowed to be occasionally petty.
"Done." The long-suffering expression on his face tells me how comfortingly easily we fall back into old patterns. "Now do you want them scrambled with fruit or should I just make an omelet."
"Your pick." I turn and head back to my bedroom as I speak. "I'm gonna take my shower first though."
* * *
She just bribed me into going to the mall with her. I am such a whipped man. Or maybe I'm not...she is going to eat after all, which was the over-all objective. It's probably worth it having to watch her tear through a Macy's in a single afternoon if it means I'm not gonna have to shove food constantly in her face the next few days. Not to mention if we do go I can no doubt ply her into stopping long enough for me to get shakes and pretzels or something...which again I will just pester her with until she eats at least half of herself.
Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to convince your opponent that they're the one actually winning.
She's so light. I don't think that really registered up until after the shower - I was too worried before that about what was causing her condition in the first place, but once she was awake and relatively okay the rest of those details I'd sort of overlooked start creeping back into focus. Not the least was the fact I could haul her around like some kind of doll. The girl doesn't weigh anything anymore. She's always watched her weight, but goodness sakes, this is bordering on ridiculous.
She obviously hasn't been eating. I've been rubbing off on her too much. Difference is, she can't go several days in a row skipping meals.
I don't eat nearly as much as the rest of them. Okay I can mind you - as far as the blood thirst goes I could drink several gallons a day and be nothing less that fat, happy and healthy. Blood for me is like casserole and fillet mignon all rolled up in one: it's the be all and end all of my sustenance and while I can eat other foods for the taste and texture and moisture I don't really have to eat to eat more than once every couple of days. Well unless I'm healing or hurt of course...
Mostly though, I take as much as I need. Nothing more. She's apparently adopting the same theory. Rather ineffectively.
Food. Calories. Carbohydrates, proteins and high fructose sugars all line up and dancing in a neat little row. Wesley asked me once how in hell I'd become such an adept cook if I didn't need to eat in the first place. I told him it's because I like to cook. And I do. I like the veritable tablet of flavors and choices human cuisine can offer. Some people think just because I don't need the nutritional value of food that I don't taste it either but that's not true. Vampires' taste buds certainly don't react as strongly as humans - which is why I'm a secret lover of so many bitter or spicy dishes, but what we lack in sense we make up for in subtly. I have a better sense of distinction and smell than any human ever will.
And believe me that effects the way you perceive your food. I make an omelet a lot of people would kill for.
Cordelia can't cook. Okay, yes she can...I lived with her going on three months before we finally moved our headquarters to the hotel and in that time I watched her make enough things to know she can whip up a pretty darn good kettle of soup or sandwich if she's got the hunger for it. The girl is the queen of the crock pot - though if you ever tell her I told you that I'll kill you. It's just the whole on-stove 'fry it,' 'grill it' 'bake it in the oven' thing that she turns into a disaster. Unfailingly.
The woman didn't even keep eggs in her refrigerator on a regular basis until I move in. The expiration date on the first box I ever fried was two months old.
Wesley was the one who noticed it. Two hours after they'd eaten.
So she can't cook. Forgive her that for the million and one other things she is capable of. I know I have. I mean yeah there were times when the eviler side of me felt this sick need to point out to her that is possible to live on something more then Ramen noodles, frozen dinners and pizza, but every time I was about to do so I'd end up accidentally opening the drawer above the sink - the one with all the first aid stuff.
Don't ask me where she got half the stuff she's got up there. I don't want to know where she gets her tongs and hypodermics.
Balance. That's always been the oddness that is Cordelia. She's this continually shifting mass of absurdities and dichotomies that I can never and will never figure out. Do you have any idea how many things she's got inside of that head of hers that even I can't quite get my brain around? She does calculus when she's bored. No - I'm not kidding, I've seen the girl doing sketch outs of our offices and her apartment trying to figure out the best way to maximize the ground space with the furniture we've got. And the logic puzzles she goes after like some kind of raptor - twists of common sense and boundaries that leave me scratching my head. I've even tried one or two myself in the evenings when she's forgotten one at the office. They scared the hell out of me.
Do you know she speaks fluent French? I didn't until I watched her compose an entire letter to a source we were trying to enquirer after over seas. Why in the heck is this woman not in college?
I can't let myself think too much about that one. I won't be able to live with the answer.
She is the most annoying, confounding, bull headed person I have ever had the privilege of meeting. The face of a classic painting, the body of the greatest lush in the world - and she knows it. She whines and cajoles and manipulates like some kind of perfect artist. She runs the office without as much as breaking a sweat... and she's a self-taught expert at both first aid and demon research. She pays half the wages in the Tylenol Corporation with her headaches. And she can't keep her own darn kitchen stocked.
There is nothing, nothing in her refrigerator or cupboards except yogurt and chicken soup.
I guess we're going back to my place for breakfast.
Part 12
When I came into the hotel kitchen, Cordelia was trying to ram congealed oatmeal down the front of Angel's shirt.
It would have been an odd picture. No, it was an odd picture, and I'll admit to being more than just a little bit 'put off' by it. After all, in the time I've been working with Angel Investigations I've seen a lot of things: slime demons, vampires brought back from hell, green skinned empathy demons who run Karaoke bars and of course the most unforgettable of all, Angel in a bright pink motorcycle helmet.
This was different, though. It seemed almost...I don't know... normal? Given the last few weeks I wasn't ready for normal. It set my inner alarms off. Disparity may be part and parcel of my world around here and yet for some reason the pseudo ordinariness of the scene was what determined to rise up and leave me standing there speechless...
They were acting like preschoolers. Less than a day and a half ago they were barely even speaking to one another and yet now, out of the blue, they were eating breakfast together. And they were acting like children. I've obviously missed something: and no doubt I'll have to demand an explanation for it sooner or later.
I don't like being out of the loop. It invariably always leads to some kind of trouble, and trouble was something we'd had more than enough of enough as of late. Their behavior certainly couldn’t be passed over as normal, though, that much was for certain. They were acting like I'd remembered them to be before Darla, and I wanted to know why. No, they were acting like more than I remembered them to be before Darla. I wanted to know what had happened. I run a very orderly little inner universe and I needed explanation as to why I was watching a grown man - okay a grown VAMPIRE, who has always held his masculine honor over just about everything else in his life get his butt kicked. In an impromptu food-fight.
I wanted to know if this was actually something I was supposed to be happy about or if we'd just discovered a much larger, much more complicated problem.
A food fight. They were having a food fight. Cordelia was perched atop Angel's chest like a reigning champion. And they were both giggling. Laughing hysterically. It was apparently sheer catharsis on both their parts and it scared the bloody hell out of me. Angel doesn't laugh like that. Well okay, maybe he has on occasion when really relieved or really drunk, but I've certainly never had the opportunity to see it this close up. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen this much open faced joy from Cordelia either. Maybe it's their shared destiny: when you're seeing darkness and fighting despair constantly it becomes easy to sort of be swallowed in it. To become a bit morose. It’s the old input output philosophy.
They weren't acting morose when I found them. They looked like a regular couple.
I knew I was scared from that moment on.
Cordelia will be twenty-one in about four more months. She's about at least seventy five pounds lighter than Angel, and a good three or four inches shorter. She was also definitely winning their struggle when I came in. Angel was trying to keep his hands around hers: I assume she was acting in rebuttal for the syrup she had dripping off her face, but the large globs of white cereal she had in her hands were nonetheless dangling right over his nose, and unless he wanted to be eating them or wearing them, he would have to find a better tactic then the one he was using at the time.
He unwisely tried a threat. "Do it and I swear I'll with-hold your next pay check until after Nordstrom's next thirteen hour sale."
She laughed in response and opened her hands, bringing them down and rubbing the food all over his face. "Weak, Mr. Threatening. Very, very, very weak."
She beat him. Thoroughly. Now Angel's got oatmeal in his hair, and despite anything he might say otherwise, he's not doing a very good job ignoring it. Yes, he did resist the automatic urge to run for the nearest shower quite admirably, and as soon as Cordelia got up off of him he managed to stand with a singular kind of dignity only he can pull off. A large part of Angel's presence has nothing to do with his actual appearance: it has to do with his bearing. His greatest ability is his knack for transmitting a message without saying a word and right now that message seems to be something along the lines of 'say anything at all that could be construed as an insult Wesley, and I'll rip out your toenails.' He's trying to look dangerous, but that's very hard considering that the washcloth he used to wipe his face didn't get all the goop off. The wanker looks ridiculous. He looks like he's younger than me.
His ego is warring with his pride. He's dying for a shower but he hasn't budged from his spot across from Cordelia at the table. He's still glaring at her.
And as for her? She's glaring right back. They're just sitting there in a battle of wills over her last three bites of egg.
"They're gross." Okay as far as a rebuttal went that sounded really childish, and judging by his expression, he knows it.
His jaw is set as he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. "Cordelia it was two eggs. You can damn well manage to eat two eggs. This is not a 12 ounce steak, damn it, now chew."
I still waffle. "They're cold now. Cold eggs are disgusting..."
He raises an eyebrow. "You should have though of that before you decided to get moody and dump a cup of orange juice all over me. Now eat them unless you want me to make you another whole batch. You can just eat two more entire- eggs in that case."
Okay who died and made him god? Last I check I still controlled my life, right? A small amount of righteous indignance rises up in me as I set my fork to the side. "Our deal was for two eggs and one piece of toast and then sleep and shopping. Instead you made disgusting oatmeal - which I refused to eat on principal, pancakes, of which I managed two, and then you made that damn fruit salad and a bunch of sausages too. I think we're even."
He smiles that smug little smile of his and continues pointing at my plate. "We would have been if you hadn't griped about it the entire time. Now eat."
All right, that's it. I scowl and deliberately rise from the table. It's time to re-assert a little authority over my own person here. Just exactly who does he think he's bullying hmmm?! Mr. High and Mighty needs to get his reality check cashed. Yes, maybe I did get a little irritated and accidentally spill my juice on him when he kept shoving more food onto my plate, but his attack with the syrup was deliberate and now he's got to go all macho and caveman because he lost? Because his hair's all messed up? Tell someone who cares Angel. Don't start a war if you're not prepared for the consequences, oh testosterone laden 'Grr Guy.'
You know, if I didn't know better I'd think he's actually enjoying messing with my head...
By the Powers, this is fun.
I think I've just discovered my new favorite sport. Irritating Cordelia Chase. Just look at her: covered head to toe in the milk she didn't manage to get to first and of course a good eight and a half ounces of maple syrup she was stupid enough to draw my attention to. She's really got a head full of steam at the moment, and I'm loving every second of it. Come to think of it I've been having the time of my life ever since she walked into this kitchen thirty minutes ago. Getting her to the hotel wasn't hard - though I have a feeling the twenty minute lecture I gave her on the state of her pantry isn't gonna accomplish nearly as much as detouring to the grocery store on the way home from the mall today. She's looking better but I'm not oblivious to the way her stomach's making all kinds of funny noises, and the manner in which she's grimacing every time she takes a bite.
If this situation doesn't improve after at least three more Angel-enforced meals, I'm dragging her butt down to the local ER.
For now though, I'll settle for ticking her off.
Cordelia thrives on conflict. Okay maybe not on fighting necessarily: she doesn't like genuine hostility toward anyone, but her natural stake is one of confrontation. She's a smart ass. A smart mouth. She's at her best when she's riding someone's butt and if riding mine is gonna put some color back in her cheeks, well I'll keep on annoying her.
You should have seen the look on her face when she came down to the kitchen from the main office. You have no idea how much I've missed that expression.
Of course Wesley looks about ten feet away from a coronary. The more merciful part of me knows that at some point I'm going to have to pull him aside and explain at least part of what happened last night. For one thing, if I intend to keep as close an eye on her as I'd like to in the next few days, I'm going to need his help, and for another...well the man has had about as much emotional spasticity as he can stand for the present. He must think he's walked into the twilight zone. Heck a small part of me thinks that I have. I just took part in a food fight. We're acting perfectly juvenile.
He's been watching the building confrontation between me and Cordelia from the opposite end of the kitchen. What does he think we're gonna do - make the building explode?
Oh bloody hell is she getting steamed.- And if I don't miss my guess, all of it on Angel's part is deliberate. His manner, his tone is all meant to accomplish exactly that. I'd be laughing myself spitless over this if I were a little less wise, but I really value my intestines where they are at the moment, thank you very much. So I'll settle for keeping a relatively safe distance.
He's handling her in that way only he's ever been capable of. And she's eating. Albeit grudgingly, but she's eating.
Thank the Lord, I guess this means I can finally stop worrying.
Cordelia needed her best friend back. If there's anything I came to realize in the weeks both before and after Angel was gone, it was that fact. Angel and Cordelia may seem to have the oddest partnership in the world but it works. Works in the way that she keeps him normal and he keeps her uncrazy. He can get things out of her: force her to cope with issues I couldn't manage to touch if I tried a million times over every day. And she returns the favor by constantly dragging him out of his own self imposed exile long enough to criticize her filing, whine about her messing with his blood, and of course understand her sense of humor.
Mind you part of their repertoire is this constant mock-battle they're engaging in, but you know, I believe he thinks it's actually rather fun.
And only Angel could find an armed grenade amusing. A more skeptical part of me wonders if that isn't the Angelus part of Angel that exists outside the demon. He tries to hide it, but he's got a quite wicked sense of humor he keeps a leash on, and I halfway wonder if the reason Cordelia and he get along so well is because she's a match for that inner voice of his. Maybe part of the reason she can usually reach him when others can't is because she's an equal to Angelus in will. He found out the hard way he might be able to beat her in body, but breaking anything else is a whole lot more challenging than he'd expected, and he's both drawn to and comforted by that fact. It makes their relationship a kind of even ground he doesn't find often.
Mind you he's also crazy. Her right eyebrow's twitching. Honestly Angel, I'm glad she's back as well but do you want to blow another building up? A little distraction is definitely in order: and the sooner the better. I fall back to the best way to catch both their attentions. "Angel I believe I found that demon you asked me to do some more in depth research on the other day. You know. Big. Scary. Links to the magics. Long tail and even more rancid smelling than the infamous slime demon."
I here a plate clatter loudly into the sink, and then Cordelia speaks. "That wasn't just a demon Wesley that was a demon with a succubous spirit attached, and Angel didn't ask you to look it up. I did."
That’s one way to completely end a conversation.
She may not be able to avoid the subject forever, but that doesn't mean she's not going to try.
It's funny how after awhile you stop seeing people for what they do and start seeing them for what they don't do instead. Call it instinct or something. Or maybe you can call it death of self-delusion. It all winds around to the same principal: when you spend enough time with a person and pay attention really pay attention,- you start to distinguish what of their manner is mask and what is real. Some people are quiet in public but talkative in private. Others always have a quip ready but are lacking in depth; their inner life is about as dead as I am. Some people babble constantly, yet rarely leave themselves out in the open. Getting into their heads is the real challenge - they don't want to give up their secrets. And there's no reasoning with them.
Cordelia, for the most part is a member of the last group. Have you ever heard that old saying about getting a bone away from a bulldog? I know she's hiding something at the moment, but she's not going to tell me what it is yet.
Secrets worry me. Cordelia with secrets is outright terrifying. Just look at the last few weeks: they've amply demonstrated my point here.
Six stores. We've been in the mall for nearly an hour and a half and in that time she's managed to drag me into not one, but six different stores. All the while saying absolutely nothing of any actual value. I'm at least two hundred and twenty years older her senior, not to mention I'm supposedly her employer, and yet in the last fifty minutes I've been relegated not only to carrying two overstuffed bags, but to holding her purse, rejecting her offers of a fashion 'makeover,' springing for a new tape deck for the office to use, and warding off at least six separate college aged men with my now famous 'glare of death...' Much to her dismay.
Tell me, when exactly did I become this woman's husband?
I didn't even get a decent tax cut out of the deal.
Penance really sucks you know that? It's bad enough that I actually rationalized myself into taking her to the mall, but to actually be the one who suggested it...?! To be so swamped by the need for normalcy again that I instigated the trip myself makes me wonder about my own penchant for self torture. I mean, at least if I hadn't promised this excursion I would have been able to corner her in the hotel. Do you have ANY idea how impossible it is to have a frank discussion about demons in a public setting?
She's in her element here - both mentally and physically. She's parading around as Queen and reigning dictator of her domain. She's not saying anything or even thinking anything she doesn't choose to. And me?
I've been reduced to a towel boy.
She's not talking, despite the fact I have been politer, kinder and more long suffering than I have ever been in my life. I bought her not only a new pair of pajamas to replace the ones I ruined, but also a vest I saw her looking at on one of the display tables. And what did I get for my troubles: for my kind offer of a new coat since she's had the one she's wearing for the last two winters? A scathing review of my own lack of originality while picking out dusters. The ungrateful little witch didn't even bother to eat half of the smoothie I bought for her. I can feel is sweating its way to clear liquid through the sides of the cup as I follow her down the stairwell.
I'll tell you this: I hate the mall. And if she doesn't start talking to me soon, I'm gonna start to forget I'm supposed to be a nice vampire...
"Will you please stop with the Big Brother from hell routine." She flops down next to the pretzel stand to scowl up at me accusingly. I look at it then at her before she shakes her head and says, "Don't even think it. I told you I'm full. You know maybe some of us would like to have a life..." She starts meticulously examining her new manicure at the last words.
I growl low in my throat. All right Cordelia I'm giving you exactly one more minute. And then I'm gonna do something rash. I'm gonna remember I'm a testosterone laden Neanderthal. "Will you please tell me what you were talking to Wesley about?"
I see - barely see - the tightening of her jaw as she digs for something in her purse. "Three perfectly good guys, you've managed to run off. Maybe unlike others who will remain unnamed, ANGEL, I'd like have some fun occasionally."
She pulls out her lipstick and blush compact. I will not strangle her. Powers why did I actually have to go and fire her? In doing so I managed to completely demolish my most effective threat. Not that she ever would have admitted to being beneath me in the first place....
Okay that's it. I give her my best 'done' look. No, it's not a bit more effective than it's ever been with her, but it certainly makes me feel better. It's a re-establishment of power. "You have exactly ten minutes to tell me what you're hiding, or I swear I will carry you out of here..." I hoarsely whisper that promise.
She actually took me seriously for a moment: I could see it in her eyes.
Unfortunately the ground I gained was rather negated only seconds later when she got hit with the vision.
Part 13: Molehills ~
In which Angel discovers secrets that AREN'T.It's not the things you don't do that you find yourself regretting. No, it's the one hundred and one idiotic things you did instead that end up coming back to haunt you.
You know what I mean, right? You've got to. All of us can dig up at least one moment like that in our lives. Time's full of those 'duhh' intersections - a moment or several connected moments where the road in front of us diverged or detoured for just a little while and in that instant we had a choice to go right instead of left. To be a part of something finite or something eternal. The truth is, though, it's not lost possibility that makes their memories hurt so much, it's the crappy 'no re-do rule.' We could forgive our own naiveté and shortsightedness easily enough if we could also avoid the fact that we were so totally stupid. That we bought trinkets with rubies.
The burn of missed opportunities and broken promises isn't the sense of failure, it's that gut-wrenching realization you can't have the moment back.
There are no exchanges. No refunds. Not in this store.
Blood. That's the first and dominating smell filling my nostrils as I fly out of the front seat of Angel's car and up the stairs to the apartment on the third story. Behind me I can hear Angel following - most likely calling my name. He's probably scared spitless at the moment. I could tell he was earlier as he followed me out of the food court to his car, completely lost as to what caused me to bolt out of his arms with a strangled yell and flee toward the parking lot. I really ought to feel a little sorry for the poor guy, I suppose. He was getting totally maxed out in the mall between the obligatory public exposure and my refusal to tell him why it was I was suddenly so interested in Succubus Demons, but the truth is I wasn't ready to talk and I'm sorry but if I'm not ready to say anything I'm not going to.
I may be a lot of things but I'm not invulnerable. I've already managed to land myself in one horrifyingly big sloppy puddle of emotional goo within the last twenty-four hours and I didn't want to engage in a repeat performance. Especially not over this topic of all things. He wouldn't understand this. I can't talk about it yet.
Is it too much to ask the Universe for just a couple hours to try and restore some protective fences?
Apparently so. I knew from the moment I got through the front door that she was already dead.
Blood. Blood all over the living room carpet. I'm always amazed how much of a mess the stuff can make. You'd think that it'd take gallons of fluid to do the kind of damage waiting for us, but four or five pints does a completely effective job of permanently saturating a inexpensive shag rug. The smell that comes with it is everywhere - in the air, in the mist from the air conditioner. It's in my mouth and in my nostrils as I kneel beside her to check for a pulse I know isn't there.
This girl knew how to slash her wrists - she's not even bleeding out anymore.
She's gone. Dead. Finito. Past the last marker on the mortal highway. Not that I should be surprised: I think a part of me knew I was just going to be identifying the body even as we pulled out of the mall. Behind me I can hear Angel making his way across the room as he realizes he won’t need an invitation. I'm sure he thought I'd turned into some kind of lunatic from my behavior earlier - I don't even know what he's gonna make of this.
The bloods getting all over me now. Funny how quickly that happens. I suppose if I'd seen this a few years or months ago it might have made me vomit. It still might later. Once it sinks in.
I'm definitely glad I didn't let Angel bully me into anymore food at the mall, being nauseous again is bad enough.
Jaime. Her name was Jaime and her shoes were a truly awful bright pink. Funny that I remember that fact so clearly considering I only saw her for a few hours before we left the E.R. I don't remember much of anything else - we never went back to visit and when I called to see how she was they had no forwarding number. A small part of me was relieved really. I don't like to think about that night, you see - don't like to remember the sense of agony and failure that started with the onset of the vision and hasn't completely ended since. I want to blot it all out in the same way I don't allow myself to dwell long on David's condition these days, but I can still see her there amid the trash in that alley. I can see her. I can feel her. I remember the terror and can sense him on top of her just as surely as if he'd been on top of me - even though it was over, that bastard was done, before we could even get there.
We never caught him, you know: though we tried to. Gun managed to take a good chunk out of one of his arm, but he was just too quick - too strong. And we had to get her to the hospital - she would have bled to death if we hadn't. And then the thing just up and disappeared.
That's what the research has been about, you see. Not that I can explain it. I don't even know why I was bothering, considering I certainly couldn't fight him on my own, but I still had to do something.
They wouldn't understand that, though. How am I supposed to tell Angel or Wesley or anyone that I wanted a way to defend myself against another rape that never actually happened?
I should have called her. I should have visited. Oh God, tell me why does this type of stuff keep having to happen?
She's dead. The woman Cordelia's kneeling in front of is dead, and yet for some reason I'm far less worried over that than I am for the woman currently brushing her eyes shut painfully gently.
Where’s the phone I need to call the police. Kate will deal with the technical aspect of all of this.
I knew she was dead: I could hear the lack of a heartbeat and smell the beginnings of the chemical change that triggered rigor-mortis from the second I entered the apartment, but that didn't negate the absolute look of horror or defeat that crossed over Cordelia's face as she sank down next the body and checked for a pulse. "Oh Jaime." The words are an agonized whisper as she buries her face against the crook of her arm before reaching up to push a lock of the woman’s face. I wonder if she has any idea how hard she's shaking at the moment - how hard she was shaking before. That was unlike any other vision I’ve ever seen: she didn’t even register her usual headache. She just led me here.
This woman we've been sent to save is utterly passed our assistance.
Cordelia, though, is totally coming apart.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I wasn't fast enough. I didn't stop him." The rational, processing part of my brain manages to move my body forward far enough to wrap my arms around her from behind and lift her up off the floor. Out. I've got to get her out of here. Yesterday. Care for the living not the dead: the saying is old but practical and at this moment it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard.
"Come on Cordelia. I'm calling Kate - she can handle this. If you knew the victim you can have Kate come and see you back at the apartment, but we're getting out of here now." I don't think she's hearing me very well at the moment, but she's incapable of fighting as pass through the main doors and make my way down the stairs.
Dammit who is this?! What is this?! What the Hell's going on here?!
Part 14: Unjust ~
In which Angel rages at life, and Cordelia rages at Angel.He dragged her out of here this morning in the closest thing to a decent mindset that I've seen her display in weeks. Now not eight full hours later he brought her back again looking like this.
Did I mention how much I hate this vampire recently?
"Dennis get us a blanket and start the tea brewing." The words are out of his mouth before he even kicks the door closed behind them. Under different circumstances, I probably would have whacked him back up against the wall for that kind of comment just to remind him he's not talking to one of his damned lackies, but the sight of the woman...the absolutely drooping woman he's carrying over to the couch manages to cut off any other kind of response I might have otherwise offered. Cordelia looks awful. No, she looked awful this morning: tired an weary and totally emotionally filleted. Now she looks beyond awful. She looks flattened. She looks like she just laid down on the ground and let someone run her over with a steam roller.
"Now Dennis." Angel's commands me again, softly, as he eases her down, reaching to the foot of the sofa for a pillow.
"I'm telling you we shouldn't have left her there like that." Cordelia's words are so soft I can barely make them out as she allows her escort to settle her down into the couch cushions. She sounds so despondent, so frusterated as she tries to push herself upright. She's not going anywhere though. "Maybe she's dead, Angel, but I still knew her and she didn't deserve to be left alone again...I should have waited for the police to come. We should have waited."
"Cordelia your headache is still so bad you can barely walk straight, and you threw up again. It was here, the hotel or the ER." Angel's tone is sympathetic, but firm as he helps her shrug her coat and lays it with his own over the coffee table. "I was not going to leave you sitting alone in a room with a corpse for an undetermined amount of time. You're twenty damn years old." He sighs at the look of disbelief she's giving him. "Look, I called Kate before we left - gave her the name and address and told her what happened. She said she would need to stop by later for a statement but it was obviously a suicide - no one can dispute that, and I wasn't going to stick around any longer the necessary when there was nothing else we could do. You didn't need to see that. You don't need to dwell. Now lie back down while I go call Wes and Gunn."
'Didn't need to see that.' I wonder if it would be possible for a ghost to laugh and cry simultaneously when it has neither vocal chords nor tear glands. Is it just me, or is Angel the one in denial right now? I may not be able to speak, or actually see anything, but that doesn't mean I can't tell you exactly what's on my roommate's face at the moment: hard earned reality.
If Angel wanted to try and shield Cordelia from the harsh realities of life he might very well tried a few...I don't know...years before now.
That fact certainly hasn't escaped Cordelia. Now that Angel's removed himself from her personal space she's forcing herself to a sitting position. "I told you I wanted to stay. She died alone. She shouldn't have been left that way again" There's equal parts anger, exhaustion and hysteria in Cordelia's tone as she pushes herself up from the couch and makes her way into the kitchen.
"Cordelia the discussion is over." He calls from the bedroom where he's trying to locate her phone. "You're going to stay on that couch. We'll talk some more once the other gets here."
Tea. She's going for the tea, or so I assume, and I pull out her favorite mug as well as the honey while she put the kettle on the burner. Where's the orange spice...she likes the chamomile at bedtime but the orange spice reminds her of the way her grandmother used to smell. It's best when she needs some soothing.
"I told you to stay on the couch." He's standing in the doorway.
"Go to hell Angel. Go pour yourself some blood or something."
The statement would have sounded a whole lot more convincing if she wasn't practically falling over on her feet.
* * *
Suicide.
I damn well hate suicide. I damn well hate suicide when it happens and my best friend has to see it. And why in the hell did she get off the damn couch! I told her to stay put!
I'm taking the mug from her hand and lifting her before she manges to land herself on the floor again.
Would someone please give me a score-card here, before I completely lose my mind!
"I want to go back." If she says that one more time I'm going to gag her - and damn the consequences. Does she have any idea how insane she looks? How insane she sounds... How much she's scaring me? What in the hell are the Powers that Be trying to do here?! She's twenty years old! She's not supposed to see this kind of stuff at her age. She's not supposed to have to take this.
She's a fucking baby! By all that's decent just stop it already!
Emotions. I've had a lot of them lately - ranging from every end of the spectrum up to and including depression, confusion, exhaustion, hope and irritation. They've been out of control. They're threatening to make me wacko. I thought I knew what in the heck I was doing and how to bring this back under control but I just can't, and I'm ready to kill something!
This has to stop! Dammit! What do I have to do to make this stop!
Unfair. Unjust. Unrightous. Uacceptable. This entire situation as of late has just been so completely and totally unfair. And not just to me - to all of us. It's funny really: a few weeks ago when the Darla fiasco was at it's worst and I was stomping around LA with the host I was steaming over how unjustly the whole world seemed to be behaving. I was in the middle of a full-scale sulk over the general imbalance of decency and propriety. I was whining about being used...and about no one understanding.
Funny, how sometimes you wind up bitching about the things you claim no one else can get, when in truth you're barely getting them yourself.
Unfair. Life royally sucks, sometimes. That's nothing new, you know. If life didn't suck then I wouldn't be spending the greater part of my time running around seeking redemption by helping a bunch of other people who's life's are at least equally messed up as mine. I mean in this job I've seen everything....absolutely everything.
And yet I somehow managed to not see what was practically hanging off the end of my nose...
This has to stop, before she outright self-destructs.
Twenty years old. She's only twenty blasted baby years old! Maybe it's because she's such a damn determined survivor or maybe it's because she seems to cope so well with things no one else possibly could, but I don't think I've realized before this afternoon how complacent I was getting about the kind of things Cordelia's getting exposed to. I blame it on the visions - it's rather hard to lecture her on keeping safe when all too often I'm asking her to point me straight into danger. Or when she's routinely patching up my own gaping wounds and trying to get the blood out of both our wardrobes. It just started seeming so normal.
It's not normal. Not any of it. And it's so far beyond not healthy I can't begin to even explain it.
Death. Despair. Who decided to put the world on top of her shoulders when I can't even balance this city on top of mine?! Okay I suppose that all of us have to face it at one point or another - and Cordelia certainly had a crash course in the nature of grief after we lost Doyle like we did. Still, there's reasonable life sucks and there's grossly unfair. It was bad enough it had to happen the way it did the first time around - that a girl barely out of her teens had to watch a man die just instants after admitting her loved her. That I was the only one she had to grieve the memory with - when I could barely do so myself.
To see death again. To see it this way. Well that's just outright obscene.
Harps in heaven. Drifting off to sleep and waking up in perfect rest and perfect beauty. These are the kind of stories and hopes we feed the young when they lose for the first time. Those are the kind of assurance we try and give to explain something we don't understand. To hide the real truth.
The real truth is that sometimes nothing in this life makes any sense.
I think that rape or death both separately fit the bill, isn't both at once a little extreme?
She saw that woman raped. And then she saw her die. I didn't know about the first and I still don't understand the second entirely, but I know it's true because she babbled about it nearly the entire time she was in the apartment, and she didn't even realize she was doing it. She saw this woman raped. Why in heck didn't I know this? I guarantee as soon as Wesley and Gunn get here I will get some answers. I don't care if we have to go over every single hour that past while I was gone, they're telling me everything. There will be no more surprises in this, do you understand?!
They're going to stop fucking with my family. With the people I love... She's a woman-child who's supposed to find her way into adulthood, not have it dumped over her head like a cosmic chamber pot. This has got to stop! Do you hear me?
I signed on for this job as a way of trying to end some of the agony in this world. Not as a way to check my best friend into life-long therapy.
Continue on...