Title: A Disturbing Little Snippet
Author: Natauni
Posted: 3/5/01
Rated: PG for minimal language and disturbing idea....
Disclaimer: As always, all standard diclaimers apply.
Notes: I thought I'd share so we can all be wigged out. this has no real spoilers for upcoming eps, persay, but it plays with a rumor I've wondered about many times. Not sure yet if it's going anywhere. What do you all think?
Only one of them has any clue yet as to how much this pilgrimage will end up costing all of them.
I'm rather glad of that fact, actually. It's a hard truth to swallow, but it's probably better that way.
The cab ride to her neighborhood has gotten to be a familiar one recently. I don't even need to give the cabbies directions anymore - they've gotten as used to driving me as I have to calling them, so I can spend the time between my bar and her place trying to steady myself and prepare to be of some use: to provide acceptable answers - or to at least try to. She never bothers to let me in her door when I arrive but she never locks it either...
Tonight she's on the floor of her living room when I find her and drag her to her bed and then go to get the whiskey I've taken to stocking under her kitchen sink. It's not comfort as much as numbness, but the alcohol at least she's still willing to accept.
"Baby-cakes you know this is really several months past old now" She groans at my scolding at then does what she has always done best - ignore me. The fever is worse tonight than it has been for the past several times and I frown as I come back in and help her strip off her heavy outer jacket before I lower her back to the pillow again. "Do you want your pills or are you out again?" My answer is the empty bottle I find in the bottom drawer of her nightstand. "Tell me you at least have been taking your Coumadin..." That's more important than the anti-depressants.
Her silence is the answer I didn't want to hear. Dammit girl you're nearly twenty years old now, what part of 'life threatening stroke' are you failing to understand, here? I'm not explaining this to your soon to be new employee/ex employer.
"He's back you know." There's a twisted kind of laughter in her voice as she finally speaks. Funny - how lately she's finally started talking to me instead of simply ignoring my presence when I come here to pick her up off her floor. The first time I ever showed up at her apartment on a night like this she tried to throw me out, but fortunately for me she was also in so much pain she couldn't manage to fight me. Especially when I pushed my shiny green butt through her door and told her to tell me where she was keeping her prescriptions, or I was going to call Angel.
It was an effective methodology the first three times. Of course less than two weeks after that he fired them and that particular threat lost its punch.
By that point though, she had given up fighting.
"I know he is, Lambkin." I sit down on the bed and hand her a glass of watered juice, helping her to drink about half of it before she leans back against her pillows again and closes her eyes. I gently stroke a strand of her bangs back off her forehead, and frown at the way she flinches slightly from my touch. "He's out of the woods for good now this time - I promise you. Things are going to get better. Just you wait."
"Things are going to be like they always have been and always will be," is her only half-cynical reply. She looks so utterly resigned and a part of me just wants to wail. "Cordelia you are going to have to tell them. You're running out of time here… and the stakes are getting steeper." And this secret is beyond its healthy shelf life. The adjustment period is over,
Her laugh is as far beyond old as it is beyond defeated. "My time isn't nearly up, it's over. They'll get that memo along with everyone else." Meantime she was just going to keep it all locked it. And I was holding the confidentiality key.
Dammit, when did things get so far out of my grasp? I tackle attitude problems, not irreversible neurological breakdown. Not cancer of the soul.
We're running out of time here people. In case you haven't picked up on this PTB, I could use a little -help- at the moment.
End.