Title: Split Screen Sadness
Author: speedometer87
Posted: 11-09-2004
Email: speedometer87@hotmail.com
Rating: G
Category:
Content: C/A
Summary: Angel takes Connor to see someone important.
Spoilers: post-NFA, so spoilers for the series
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution:
Notes: This took me about five minutes to write. The idea just struck me at work today. Then I stole the title from John Mayer. I am truly pathetic.
Feedback: Appreciated!
Thanks/Dedication:Two weeks after the big fight, Angel goes out with his son.
The cemetery is dark and solemn, untouched by LA’s city lights and sounds. Angel leads Connor through tombstones and past mausoleums, until finally, he reaches the one he is looking for.
The tombstone is simple but elegant, with her name and date scrawled in archaic type across the front. Angel runs his hand over the name—unusual yet eloquent, exactly like she was. He really had never met anyone like her.
Connor stands behind him, watching. His clothes are incongruous—a denim jacket and tennis shoes—but his eyes are dark and sad and so very fitting. The air that hangs between them is heavy with grief.
“Cordy died two months ago,” Angel says finally. “She just… she never woke up.”
Connor hovers closer, dropping into a squat beside Angel and carefully reading the inscriptions. “I think I already knew,” he murmurs, tracing the letters as Angel had only moments before. “I just—I knew, when I came to Wolfram and Hart. She wasn’t there. You didn’t talk about her. She had been such a big part of your life—um, I guess that’s what you call it—but then, she was just gone.”
“Yeah.” Angel leans forward and carefully adjusts the array of fresh flowers spread at the base of the tombstone, making a mental note to buy another arrangement. “But she was hard to talk about with you anyway. Kind of an awkward spot between us.” He ignores the fact that she is just the one of many other awkward spots.
Connor makes a soft, boyish sound that Angel thinks is laughter. “Yeah, there’s that too.”
They sit in silence, both of them shuffling through their respective memories, imagining a laugh or a smile or a kiss. The night birds twitter and call around them; the moonlight filters through the trees, spreading across the ground like silver latticework.
Angel grieves for her still, and probably will forever. But she had said, “I’ll be seeing you,” and he knows in his heart that this is true. That even if the rest of the world is only one huge lie, her words will still be true—he will see her again, at some time or another.
Warmth grows and spreads in his chest, the same kind of anxious joy he felt when she called him and told him to meet her at the bluffs, like time couldn’t pass fast enough because he wanted to be with her so badly.
Connor’s words break his thoughts. “I know this probably won’t help,” he says, “but I know the—the woman that I knew, she wasn’t Cordelia. She wasn’t the one that—that you loved.” He fiddles with the hem of his shirt, tugging and twisting one of the unraveling strings. “But I wish I knew her. I wish I knew what she was like.”
Angel wishes that too, probably more than Connor can imagine. “Cordy made me keep fighting. She made me into something bearable, something I could stand to live with.” Suddenly his eyes are misting over—he hasn’t cried for her in weeks, didn’t plan on it tonight. “I miss her all the time,” he whispers.
“Could you tell me about her?” Connor asks unexpectedly.
Angel runs his hand across his eyes, stands shakily to his feet. Connor follows after him. “Yeah, I can,” he says, drawing in a deep breath. “How about over dinner—sound good?”
Connor grins and nudges him with his elbow. “You don’t eat.”
Cordelia is gone, and will be for a long time. But Angel isn’t getting any older, and he has witnessed miracles—is, in fact, walking beside one at the moment. So he isn’t worrying about Cordelia, because he realizes that wherever she is, she is safe and happy and probably getting the best manicure of her life.
Angel loves her and knows, with more certainty than he has ever felt, that he will see her again.
“I used to say I didn’t eat too,” Angel says, making his way toward the car, Connor walking along beside him. “Then one morning, she made me the best waffles…”
Ends.