Chapter 3
Cordelia put the last weapon back into the cabinet. “There,” she said to Wesley. She motioned to Angel’s closed door. “You were wrong--he doesn’t forget to brood when Buffy’s concerned! It’s not fair. Just when we got rid of Darla, she shows up again.”
“You don’t really mean that, Cordelia.”
Cordelia sighed. “No, this isn’t about Buffy.”
Gunn interjected. “Cordy? If you’re done playing with the swords--” she huffed at him, “--can you go check and see if Fred’s okay up there in her room?”
“You want me to spy on--” Cordelia met Gunn’s eyes and grinned. “Say no more.”
Fred was nowhere in sight, but Fred’s handwriting was all over every wall. Cordelia had said once that Fred’s conversation made her sound downright linear. If the girl’s spoken words were like that, well, then the neat script decorating every wall made Fred’s dialogue sound as mundane as a fast food order. There were words Cordelia couldn’t pronounce or spell, physics formulas mixed with alchemy and arrows pointing to stick figure drawings, and long run-on sentences where each word managed to connect to its predecessor while still making no sense.
Cordelia shook her head and thought about wallpaper. Not that replacing this would be much of an extra cost considering what their battles did to the empty hotel rooms...
The writing was compelling. Weird, but compelling, or perhaps compelling because of its weirdness?
The dark Warrior --Angel, she noted with a roll of her eyes; if he were more of a Warrior he’d have the courage to tell her what had happened out there with Buffy!-- can have everything but love. Love is everything, except being a stronger warrior. A warrior’s heart exists by itself, alone, fights and dies alone. Why must it be so?
A long-ago voice forced its way into Cordelia’s head. “It's not all about fighting and gadgets and such. It's about reaching out to people. Showing them that there's love and hope still left in this world.” Eloquent...a little off and overdramatic, but eloquent.
There was a stick figure drawing of a princess on the doorframe nearby. It had Cordelia’s face! A stick figure slave girl clung to it, supporting it as little black scratch whirls went around its head.
It's like choosing a cloak over a meal--it is the cost to the things the princess endures. Less hurt, less cold, but where would the princess go to get warm?
What had this girl been through, Cordelia wondered in growing horror.
Once the girl stayed six nights in the rain because the ones in power forgot they had told her she had to finish stacking every little bit of wood scattered on the floor of the forest.
Her hands blistered like a maid's on a bow, but the moving objects out in the rain weren't things she could shoot. If they danced in the rain, did that mean they were the same as the slaves?
"Hello?"
"Fred! I'm sorry, I was..."
"Well, of course you were curious; I know I can't see something written without reading it. It's...I have to go." Fred vanished into the bathroom and reappeared with a scrub bucket and brush. She furiously applied the brush to the walls.
Cordelia snatched the brush out of Fred's hand. The momentary juxtaposition of present-day Fred cleaning her walls with the Pylean slave girl clad in rags scrubbing an alien step, had been just too heart-wrenching. "I was the one snooping. You didn't do anything wrong," said Cordelia. "Your writing is--well--" she searched for anything she could say before Fred could reclaim the brush. "I saw your room; you want to see my apartment?" She grabbed Fred's arm. "Come on. Get what you need, and we'll have a girls' night."
"That sounds like fun, but I'll need my arm."
"Oh, right." Cordelia released her.
There was that smile. "You really want to hang out with me, and that's really incredible, and I'll be just a moment."
Between the writing on the walls and the weird night with Angel, Cordelia did not want to let Fred out of her sight, but she managed both to let Fred go and to avoid reading any more walls while the Fred stuffed a toothbrush and a change of clothes into a duffle bag. The older girl was ready in a tenth of the time it would have taken Cordelia to prepare for an audition.
Chapter 5
"Angel back yet?" Cordelia asked Wesley as the two came back down the stairs into the hotel lobby.
"Yeah, he came in with a dripping demon head and a glorious battle story, and then he vanished into his office," said Wesley.
"So typical. Any other guy would either celebrate, or..." Cordelia remembered Buffy, "go out and get drunk, but our Angel--"
Fred said, "Does it affect vampires? Alcohol? I mean, food doesn't affect them, so wouldn't alcohol just...?"
That earned a laugh from Cordelia. "Actually, Fred, I don't know. We had a vampire in Sunnydale, thought he was the epitome of Big Bad, and so far he's been drinking something every time I've seen him. He kidnapped Willow and Xander once. His driving looked all right, at least all right for Spike, although all I saw was the back end of the car and the empty beer bottles."
"That's our Cordelia. Give her long enough, she'll get to the point. The point being this time, that vampires may or may not be able to get drunk--"
"Mr. It-took-me-twenty-minutes-to-describe-why-my-ass-is-not-pansy?"
Wesley looked pained. "I believe I was drunk at the time. Were you planning to go home any time soon, Cordelia?"
"That's what I came down here to tell you. I'm borrowing Fred. Just for some female bonding. And pizza." She added that last just to see Fred's face light--although she was hungry too as she thought of it.
"That's a good idea. Gunn will drop you off; I'm going to--"
"Crash at your desk on the off chance that Brood Boy will come out and tell you what happened earlier today?"
"Stay on duty in case you have a vision."
"So you can help with the violence and maybe earn your new reputation as street fighter Wesley?"
"Go home, Cordelia."
Cordelia warned Gunn and Fred about Dennis while they were in the truck. Gunn just looked uncomfortable, but Fred held out her hand in the door of the apartment and said brightly, "Hi! I--I don't know how to introduce myself to someone who's--you know, former--but hi. I'm Fred!"
Dennis snatched a hat off one of Cordelia's shelves and tipped it to Fred. She gave a delighted laugh. Gunn waved--then said goodnight and vanished.
"He's just not much with the supernatural," said Cordelia. "Doesn't know what he's missing." She ushered Fred to the couch, and a few moments later, two cups of steaming tea were borne to them in midair, prepared exactly the way Cordelia liked them. "See?"
"Thanks," Fred said, giggling and trying to find out which direction to talk in.
Curled up on the couch with empty tea mugs and pizza on its way, Cordelia Chase and Winnifred Burkle launched into some serious girl talk. Cordelia hadn't wanted to even bring up Pylea, but she found that Fred was even more reluctant to discuss her life before she was lost, although she was talkative enough about the present.
"Time is such a funny thing. It turns into stories, you know, and stories turn into equations. And equations turn to--you went to senior prom with Wesley???"
Cordelia yelped and snatched the Sunnydale High yearbook out of Fred's hands. Not before Fred had seen the photo of the Class Protector with her dark, mysterious boyfriend. "Yeah, that's Buffy," Cordelia said, but Fred would not be distracted from Cordy’s part in the Sunnydale prom, so Cordelia told her the entire story, segueing naturally into the beginning of Angel Investigations. Fred was a good audience. She interrupted only in the right places, and when Cordelia got to the part about appointing herself to save Gunn from himself, Fred said, "He's all chivalrous and fighting the battle he couldn't save his sister from his enemies...uh, was I rambling again?"
"Love makes you do stuff like that," Cordelia said with a giggle. Off Fred's almost-reply, she added, "He already likes you. Just be nice, and he'll ask you out."
"Really?"
"You're forgiven because you're new and you haven't been hanging around me for years. I'm Cordelia. I don't think. I know."
Fred laughed, and that conversation turned into a highly edited version of Cordelia's love life. It was cut short just before the Doyle parts, by the arrival of a ham and pineapple pizza. Cordelia had finished two slices and Fred was almost through the rest when the vision hit.
The fire throughout Cordelia's body localized into two sets of hands, one invisible, holding her in place on the cushions. "Thanks," she said, breathing hard. "Dennis, would you get me the--" the telephone receiver dropped into her hand--"phone?"
Wesley answered on the fifth ring.
"If Angel knew you were asleep, why didn't he get it?"
"Hi, Cordelia. What did you see?"
"I'm fine, thanks for asking. Three vampires are about to do their thing in a club. Uh, you need specifics." She recited an address. "It will happen at--" she rewound the images, looking for a clock through the smoke, "about two a.m., so you still have over an hour. Maybe you could get there and stake them before anyone even finds out anything is wrong?"
"We're on it. You can stay put, actually; Angel and I ought to be able to handle three vampires."
"Thanks. I was going to."
"Anything else?"
"Do you think you could get our own handsome, brooding vampire to just stay at the bar and maybe enjoy himself once the battle's done?"
"I doubt it, but I'll ask him."
He hung up. Cordelia slowly put the phone down. Of all of them, Wesley wasn't likely to entice Angel to stay out in the world. No one had truly been able to do that since...
"Are you okay?" said Fred.
Cordelia rubbed her forehead, hoping the other girl would mistake her memory distress for a vision headache. "It'll pass in a second."
"You never told me why you get visions."
"That's actually a funny story." Cordelia willed herself to laugh. "See, they were a gift, and they were given to me by mistake, and I said if they were mine I'd try to return them, so I did try. But I couldn't, give them to anyone else, I mean, and I ended up guiding...Angel...just by default." She willed herself to laugh again. "Angel even fired me once, and I'm all, 'you can't fire me, I'm vision girl...'"
Fred wasn't buying Cordelia's brave act, that much was plain from her face. For someone who spent five years in a cave and talked in nonlinear run-on sentences, she was awfully perceptive!
Not that Cordelia even knew why this particular subject bothered her so much. She tried again, "In high school I was taking this silly career test, and I said I'd help my fellow man as long as he wasn't dirty or smelly or anything gross. Then I wondered why I was even lonely...it was like people were so busy agreeing with me they didn't hear a word I said. Neither of those things are true anymore. The first because of the visions--it‘s like I help other people because it‘s so painful for them, and for me now too, that I can‘t stand it if I don‘t. The second is because...well, I‘m hardly popular anymore...but I don’t think anyone on our beloved team really cares what anyone else thinks."
“I’m beginning to see that.” The eyes looking back at her were so guileless and so wounded all at the same time.
Cordelia suddenly had to wipe her eyes. She was less embarrassed than she thought she'd be. “You‘re waiting for me to tell you who gave me these visions. Yeah. One of the original members of Angel Investigations. Definitely not much for the telling other people what they want to know. Irish guy named Doyle. Worst dresser I’ve ever seen, drank way too much--not that it's a bad thing that he got Angel to actually go out--another one of those guys seeking atonement. I never knew what for." To the question in Fred's eyes, Cordelia added, "He was really sweet. Maybe one of these days I could show you what he looked like. He did this commercial for the agency right before he died, and the videotape is somewhere at the hotel."
"He was Angel's friend?"
"And mine."
Somehow Fred had found the yearbook picture of Angel and Buffy again. They really did make a cute couple: polar opposites leaning on each other, the closest thing to a smile that Angel had in his everyday repertoire gracing his face. "That's not fair; if he can't have love, why did his friend have to die?"
"Friendship is another face of love, Fred. It's different than romance, but you can draw just as much strength from it." She added softly, "Just as much pain sometimes, too."
"Was Doyle your friend? Or your romance? Were you in love?"
She was silent for a long moment. Then she thought about telling Fred that it was time to go to sleep. Then she decided that she'd been honest thus far; might as well finish the story. "I was getting ready to love him. If he had lived, even one more day..."
"Buffy is alive."
"Yes..."
"So why can't your Doyle be alive too?"
"What?"
"If Buffy is alive through some mystical thing or because someone loved her, well..."
Cordelia stared at Fred. "It just might...but I have to call Willow...hold on." The girls stood, and Dennis immediately made up the couch. "This might actually...but, Fred. Don't breathe a word of this to Angel. He never talks about Doyle. When Buffy died, that didn't hurt him so badly as you might think, because he lost the strength from her presence when he first came to L.A. Right after that happened, when his best friend died, the brood-boy-king-of-pain shutters went down and haven't come back up."
"I get it.”
Cordelia had to close her eyes against another memory. Was the tremendous headache because she hadn’t yet taken anything against the pain of the vision, or because of the images that had nothing to do with mystical communication? Starting to squabble with Wes as per their usual habit, and suddenly hearing Angel rebuke them with “Cordelia! Doyle!”
It hurts. No, it, really...
“Okay, goodnight, Cordelia."
"Sweet dreams, Fred."
Cordelia never saw Fred curl up on the couch, and she never remembered how she got into her own room, still holding the framed photograph she'd taken from Fred with the yearbook. She, Angel, and Wesley graced the picture taken at the launch of the current Angel Investigations. They all looked so young. Except Angel. He looked exactly the same. Even his eyes were no less haunted then. Cordelia picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hi, Willow. Did I wake you up? It's my turn for the late night phone tag, so good. Listen, wasn't Buffy really dead? You actually pulled off that kind of magic? Wow... Okay, the reason I'm calling is that I want to know if you can do the spell again. You need a what? An urn of who?" A resurrected human girl crouched in a cage somewhere in the Wolfram and Hart office. "I can steal-- no, it’s okay, the person I want to steal from is our mortal enemy anyway. Okay, borrow, if it makes you feel better. We'll put it back. So. We have supplies. You're on your way? Why this sudden...never mind. Are you bringing Giles? Again, none of my business why not. I'll see you? No--don't come to the hotel; do you know where my apartment is? I'll explain. I just don't want to upset anyone who's still kind of in denial. I'm not keeping secrets. Yeah, I figured you would understand. Thanks, Willow. I owe you. Bye."
