Angel Fanfic: Burn (Part 2)
Angel Fanfic: Burn (Part 2)
Drowning her miseries just didn't have the same charm it used to. After a few more slugs of vodka from her backup bottle, Justine went to work. First, weapons; her life depended on them. She oiled guns, checked and oiled the crossbows, sharpened swords and daggers and wooden stakes.
Maybe tonight she'd hunt. Killing leeches was still the most fun to be had, and the fact that she was wounded and only half-capable made it that much more of a challenge. Justine loved a challenge. Maybe that was why she'd fallen so hard for Daniel Holtz. It wasn't his physical presence; the blue-eyed Brit who'd just left had a hell of a lot more to offer that way. No, Holtz had- intensity. A kind of focused narrow-beam ferocity that she not only respected but adored.
She'd thought that being alone gave them something in common, but she'd been wrong. Holtz was never alone. The ghosts of his family were always with him, driving him past his limits, demanding justice; the specter of Angel was always out in front of him, dragging him on. She was just another face in his crowd.
She'd loved him anyway. That Brit bastard had been right about that. He'd been right that Holtz never loved her, too.
She locked and loaded the crossbow in one fluid motion, whirled, and put a bolt four inches into a straw target twenty feet away. Through the heart. Always through the heart.
"Might as well come out," she said, and fired the second bolt right on top of the first. "What's the matter, Wesley? Forget your wallet?"
"Not exactly," he said. He stepped out from behind the target. Good timing; she was currently between ammunition. "I think you should come outside for a minute."
"Any particular reason?"
"The building is on fire."
He sounded calm enough about it, but she caught the tension underneath. She paused in the act of reloading.
"You're shitting me."
He shrugged. "Believe what you want. That's all I had to tell you."
He turned to go. She cursed under her breath and sniffed the air. Hard to tell if there was any smoke; her nose was broken - again - and she'd been swallowing blood all damn day. No point in taking the chance, though; she unzipped the gym bag and loaded in weapons, shouldered it on the side that hurt less, and followed Wesley to the fastest exit.
By the time she was outside, she could not only smell the smoke, she was choking on it. While she hunched over, racked with bloody coughs, she heard the scream of sirens.
The Brit was already to the corner. She hustled after him, trying not to limp too openly on her strained knee and knowing already that it would be swollen to balloon size before long.
"Hey!" she yelled. "Did you set the goddamn fire?"
He kept walking. She put on a burst of speed and managed to pull even with him.
"Did you?" she insisted. He cast her one of those looks, bored and British and belligerent. They rounded the corner, ducking away from a police car that screamed by, and in the cooler dimness of the alley she sucked in rattling breaths and wished she could sit down for just a minute. Or a thousand.
He must have thought she really cared about his answer, because he gave her an honest reply for once. "No, I didn't set the fire, although I wish I'd thought of it; that pesthole deserves to be scorched to the ground."
"Glad you think so," said a new voice from the shadows. She looked up, saw Wesley do the same. There were eyes in the darkness. Glowing eyes. The gleam of fangs. "We didn't like it much, either."
Vamps. A lot of 'em. And they weren't unarmed - she saw clubs and pipes and knives. No guns. That was such a small relief it wasn't even worth feeling it. For the first time she felt a flicker of doubt about her abilities; maybe it wasn't such a good time to be attempting to fight. Even this gorgeous dweeb could probably kick her ass at the moment without breaking a sweat. The fact that she'd let him do it last night made that more than a little funny, in an ironic kind of way.
"Ah," Wesley breathed. "Molotov cocktails."
"We like the classics," the leader said. "Lucky us, we get to practice a few more. On you two."
"I don't suppose these are friends of yours," Wesley said toward Justine, conversationally. He put on a good show of boredom, but his voice was half an octave higher than before. She shrugged the bag off her shoulder and let it fall to the pavement, edged it over between them. Lucky that she'd left it unzipped in her haste to get out of the warehouse.
"We've met," grated the lead leech. He came closer, and she recognized his particular twisted face. She and Holtz's crew had practiced on him with holy water. He'd been quite the little screamer. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you made it out, bitch."
"Me too," she said, and looked at Wesley. "Any brilliant ideas?"
Three vamps between them and the safety of sunlight. Three in front.
"I've narrowed it to fight or flight," he said.
"Well halle-fucking-lujah. Finally, I get to kill something."
And then it was a melee. She ducked a swing from the leader's lead pipe and rammed her shoulder into him, sent him toppling into one of his buddies. Wesley darted the other way, to the open gym bag.
He grabbed a stake and pitched it to her on the fly; she caught it mid-air, aimed and thrust with all the hate in her heart. Dust exploded into her mouth, but she closed her eyes in time. She was already moving to the next victim before the leader's lead pipe clattered to the pavement. Damn, this felt good.
Daniel was gone, but she could still kill things for him.
"Down!" Wesley yelled, but she was at a bad angle, just finishing a dusting and taking the weight on her bad knee. He hit her hard from the side and slammed her out of the way as something sharp hissed past her head. Axe. She hated axes. The force of the vamp's swing carried him off balance and into a wall hard enough to stun him stupid.
Wesley was still on top of her, and he raised his head. Something crazy in Wesley's eyes. Something she liked.
"Well?" she asked. "Are we going to make love all day, or -- "
He rolled off, scrambled back to the weapons bag and ducked another swing from a vamp armed with a club. He tossed her a crossbow and scooped up a hand-and-a-half broadsword. His first swing caught the club-wielder across the throat, and the separated head and body dissolved into bitter haze.
She put a bolt through the next vamp then whirled to put one through the vamp with the axe, who was coming back for more. Two more dusted. She looked around and saw Wesley was battling the last one. He had skills, she admitted. And she liked the way he moved. Nice lines. She found herself watching his ass more than his lunges.
"A little help?" he yelled. She limped over to the weapons bag and looked over the choices. Chose the second crossbow and took her time making sure the bolts were firmly seated. "Sometime this year?"
He backed away as the vamp lunged, then tripped over a discarded beer bottle and landed in a messy heap.
The vamp was on him like a wolf, snarling and going for his throat.
Justine hesitated for a long, luxurious second, and then lined up and fired.
The leech exploded. Wesley choked on the dust. He rolled up to his feet, and leaned on the sword for support, singed and sweaty and trembling.
"Too much excitement for ya?" Justine purred. She swaggered over to him, aches and wounds drowned in the adrenaline flood. "Poor baby. Widdle Wesley can't take it."
She thought -- she hoped -- he would come after her. He looked at her with those impossibly blue eyes for a long few seconds, then offered her the sword, hilt-first.
"Yours," he said neutrally. She took it. "I knew someone else like you once. Her name was Faith. Pain, sex, fighting, dying -- it was all the same to her."
"Oh, and it's not to you?" she mocked. She'd seen the light in his eyes.
"No," he said. "I fight for things. You're fighting for nothing."
"Come on. Deep down inside, you get off on it. Just like me."
He tried to move past her. She put the edge of the sword to his throat and shoved him against the wall, stared into his eyes, looked for that spark.
"You bastard, don't you dare dismiss me," she whispered. "I cut your throat once, and I can do it again."
But he didn't react. After a long, long pause, she lowered the sword down to her side.
Wesley leaned forward and kissed her. Not a desperate after-fight, let's-fuck kiss, a gentle meeting of lips. Almost chaste.
"Learn to get off on that," he said. His voice rasped low in his throat, like a cat's purr. "It may save your life someday."
She stood there helpless and watched him go. When she was sure he couldn't see, she put shaking fingers to her lips and tried to stop the tingle.
###
When Cordelia got home, Groo was gone. There was a message blinking on the answering machine; Phantom Dennis, after considerately levitating her shopping bags back to the bedroom, left her alone to listen to it. She almost didn't need to. She knew what Groo was going to say. I'm going back to Pylea, this is all wrong, you don't really love me ....
But what Groo said, when she pressed the replay button, was "My princess, I am sorry, but Charles says he needs help in - with -- things. So I am going. Out. To fight. I will be back - " Groo was a terrible liar. She could hear Gunn coaching him in the background. "Tomorrow."
In other words, Gunn had ended up getting an earful of Groo's troubles, and they were going out to bond. Or drink, which was the same thing in guy-land.
She really didn't mind - that was probably guiltworthy, but there it was. If there had ever been a night when a quiet hot bath and some quality Queen C time had been a must-have...
A ghostly hand touched her shoulder. She smiled and said, "It's okay, Dennis. Really. It wasn't - it wasn't going to work out long-term. Because he's, you know ... sweet."
Dennis lifted a half-empty box of chocolates.
"No, I'm not sweet, but thanks for the lie."
She thought about a lot of things while she did homey, comforting jobs like cooking spaghetti and choosing the appropriate cheap red wine; mostly, she thought about Angel, and what to do about him. Go back to work, she supposed. Try to see it through. Hope he pulled out of the dive straight into hell before he took them all there with him.
A plate of pasta and two glasses of wine later, she picked up the phone and dialed the Hyperion. She didn't know what she was going to say, except that there was something to say, there had to be. When she heard his voice, she'd know. Right? I'm buzzed, she realized, but that was kind of a plus; it cut down the shakes and the terror at the thought of facing him again, even on the phone. Her muscles, which were finally feeling warm and loose and relaxed, tensed up just a bit when the rings began to sound on the other end.
Her own perky voice picked up on answering machine. "Hi, you've reached Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless ...." Boy, it was time to change the tape. Maybe we'll try to help the hopeless when we're done feeling sorry for ourselves. Yeesh.
She was trying to think what message to leave when she heard a knock at the door. She jumped and fumbled the phone back into the cradle, suddenly sure he was standing there, dark and broody and back to himself, with that half-smile ready to warm up her heart. "I'll get it!" she called to Dennis, who sometimes like to play butler. She swung the door open ...
And saw Wesley outside.
"Wow," she blurted. Not the same Wesley from before, not even the same Wesley from earlier this morning. This Wesley had on blue jeans and a dark shirt and a leather jacket that made him look dangerous. Or maybe it was the shadow still in his eyes. Shouldn't have had the wine, nope. "You're out. And you look better."
"I feel better," he said, and put his hands in his pockets as if he didn't know what to do with them. Awkward silence. He cleared his throat. "I hope I didn't come at a bad time. I just wanted to - check -- did Angel - "
"Hurt me? No sticks, no stones, lots of words, some of them were harsh." She ran out of things to say, and moved back away from the door so he could come in. He didn't catch the hint. "Um, you want to talk?"
He smiled slightly "Truthfully, the last thing I want to do right now is talk to you."
She felt a surge of blind pain. "Oh," she murmured. "Oh, sorry." So that was how it was going to be. Somehow, she didn't think she could take Wesley's dismissal, not after Angel's cruelty. "Okay then. I understand." She started to swing the door shut.
"No!" Wesley blurted, and held out a hand as if he wanted to grab back what he'd said. "No, I meant - I meant all I want to do is - not talk. There are other things I'd rather be doing with our mouths." She felt her heart stutter and start to pound. He sucked in a breath as if he'd surprised himself. "And I said that out loud, didn't I? Dear God, Cordelia, what have we done?"
"Pretty much everything at least once," she said. "Which is kind of a record for one night."
"Don't. Don't tease. I know it can't be - we can't be - but I just - " He was stammering. He hadn't stammered last night, but then, not a lot of conversation beyond oh, God yes and faster. "I'm making a bollocks of this."
"No, I'd say you're doing pretty well if you're trying to convince me to rip your clothes off."
He didn't laugh, and he waited too long for her to pass it off as a joke.
"Wes?" She felt a lurch of pain again.
He pulled in a shuddering breath she could feel all the way down inside, in places his tongue and lips and other body parts had been, far too recently to forget.
"I would love for that to be true," he said. "But you see, it's just that I'm not Angel."
It felt like the air had been sucked out of her lungs. "No, Wes - " God, what could she say?
"No kind lies. Not now. I think both us needed ... comfort ... last night, and some relief from the loneliness. But the next time, you'll be thinking about him, and I- " He sounded stronger now. "I'd want you to be thinking of me."
He was so right it was scary. "Please come in. We'll talk -"
"No." He even took a step back. He sounded so definite, but there was so much pain in his eyes. "Don't ask me again, Cordelia. This is hard enough as it is."
She struggled for something that wouldn't be a lie. "Oh ... God ... I'm so sorry. I wish -" It wasn't fair. None of this was fair. It just - overwhelmed her. "Jesus! Why the hell can't I be in love with you? A nice, normal, hunky guy with a sexy accent and eyes to die for? Why does it have to be the crazed bloodsucking fiend? What's that about? You know, I used to be normal. Somewhat. For Sunnydale. I at least got the hots for guys who breathed!"
Wesley gave her a heartbreaking smile. "I think there might have been a compliment buried in there. As far as me being either nice or normal, I believe you might have been in Sunnydale a little too long to have a good perspective."
"But hunky," she said. "And don't even argue about the accent and the eyes."
Another silence. This one somehow wasn't awkward, it was full of - well - love. She stepped outside and held out her hands. He took them and after a few seconds of looking into each others' eyes she moved into his arms. He folded around her, warm and solid and somehow more there than he had been before.
"It isn't that you saved my life," he whispered. His words warmed the skin of her neck where his lips touched. "It's that you saved my soul, Cordelia. Truly."
She closed her eyes and let herself relax against him, just - be. "I love you," she said.
"For the rest of my life, I'll work to deserve that," he said, and too soon, let her go. "I'm leaving town for a while. I'll call when I get back."
He wasn't going to do anything stupid, was he? She couldn't tell, couldn't read him at all suddenly. "That's probably good," she said slowly. "Let things cool down. But - come back. Please. And -- call me, if you need - anything."
"Short of what I'd like to have?" His smile was only a little bitter. "Take care."
The kiss have gave her was gentle and sweet and final. She watched him as he went down the hall and finally, when he was gone, regretfully closed the door.
###
Downstairs, Wesley walked out into the dark and headed for the lot where he’d left his car. He felt lighter now, though sadder. It had to be said. Perhaps, but did he have to say it tonight? Would it have been so terrible to go inside and live in Cordelia’s world just a little longer?
Yes, he told himself. Because it would have been a lie. He no longer lived in that world, and it was unfair of him to complicate it.
That didn’t help the heartache, but with all his experience of wounds he expected he could manage.
The parking lot was uphill, and it faced Cordelia’s windows; he’d chosen it deliberately so that he could see her from a distance, and he could see her now as she walked through the living room. I should have told her to draw the blinds. He was glad he hadn’t.
And for the life of him, somehow, he couldn’t get in his car and leave. Not yet.
He settled down on the hood of his car and lifted his face to the cool night breeze, closed his eyes, and sighed.
I’m going back, aren’t I?
Perhaps he’d just think about it. For a while.
###
Cordelia checked herself in the mirror, for no better reason that it was there and she was in a pampering mood, and decided it was time for the long tea-rose bubble bath with Vitamin E skin treatment. It wouldn’t do anything for the dark circles under her eyes, but at least it would make her feel better. Then, she promised herself, a movie. Nothing romantic. She couldn’t go there, not now. Maybe one more glass of wine, just to make sure she could sleep without dreaming about Angel, vamped out.
She was taking her silk floral robe down from the hanger when she heard another knock at the door. Everything came to a stop. She stood there, frozen, the weight of silk heavy and warm in her hands, and thought, I shouldn't. He shouldn't. We shouldn't.
It was going to hurt him if she turned him away, but dammit, Wesley's instincts were right, they couldn't just -- just keep giving in to this just because they were both lonely and shocked and sad. It wasn't right for him, or her, or (another hot flash of guilt) for Groo, either.
She put the robe on the bed and went back to open the door, and even when she was clicking the deadbolt back she didn't know exactly what she was going to say or -- God help her -- what she was going to do, either. The need to be touched had exploded on contact with alcohol. Bad combo.
"Wesley -- " she said, and then the dark-haired man in the leather coat turned and it wasn't Wesley at all.
It was Angel.
The impact of her heart hitting her chest almost dropped her; it was followed by a burning tingle of … more shock. Oh my God, I called him Wesley. Yeah, that would help things.
He didn't seem to have caught it, because he smiled. Not one of those calculated, slick, Angelus smiles; this was warm and human, exactly the smile she had been aching to see. In spite of the tentative smile, or maybe because of it, he looked awkward, wounded, and brutally aware of the risk he was taking.
"You probably don't want to see me," he said. "But I -- I had to tell you how sorry I am."
"Angel," she finally blurted. Mouth catching up with mind. Funny, it was usually the other way around. "I -- are you -- "
"Okay?" The smile turned bitter. "No, not really. But I've been doing a lot of thinking and ... well, here."
He held something out to her. It was a single red rose, perfect crimson.
"I’m sorry," he said. His eyes were dark and human and shadowed. "Please forgive me, Cordy."
The burning tingle wasn’t shock. It was something else completely. She swallowed hard and looked at him, looked hard. She couldn't just - assume -- dammit, this was Angel, the original bad boy in sheep's clothing. And he had every twisted reason in the world right now to want to hurt her.
"Okay, this is awkward," he said, and lowered the rose. "Sorry. Maybe I should come back -- "
"No!" She was doing a lot of blurting. "No, I'm sorry, it's just that -- "
"I gave you a scare," he finished, and nodded. "I know. I was just -- drowning. Everything was so cold, and there wasn't anything I could -- I needed you to be my life preserver. I know that isn't fair, you have your own life, I can't expect you to ..."
Yes, you can, she thought, but didn't say it. She would have given anything to have Angel put his arms around her and hold her and let go of all his poisonous grief. Drowning. It was a good word. They'd both been drowning up there in that quiet, sad little room.
She realized she was blocking the door. He hadn't tried to come in. She took a deep breath and stepped back to give him room to pass.
"You're sure?" he asked. "Cordy, I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. You know that."
"Shut up and get in," she said. She was nervous. When she was nervous, she reverted to old Cordelia, tact-disabled -- the one who couldn't be hurt by something as trivial as heartbreak. He obeyed and went three polite steps into the living room, then waited for her to close the door and turn to face him. She put her hand on the deadbolt, then took it off. Better not cut off the escape route. Except, of course, that there wasn't any escape. Not really. Not if she was wrong.
He was looking down at his shoes, shifting just a little, back and forth. An awkward, big-boned boy. "So, do you want the rose, or -- "
It was something to do with her hands. "Sure."
Stepping closer to him made it more real, somehow; she could smell the warm, earthy smell of his leather coat, the faint cool hint of his skin. She reached out for the rose, and he surrendered it carefully. "Watch out," he said. "Thorns."
It really was beautiful - perfect -- petals like velvet skin, and with that rich, dark smell it couldn't have come out of a flower shop.
"It’s from the garden. The Hyperion's garden," he said, too quickly; it sounded like he was talking to fill the silence, and that made her feel steadier. Nervous Angel was a lot better than crazed stalker Angel. "I thought - I hoped you’d like it."
"It's beautiful," she said. "Thanks."
She looked up and met his eyes, and felt herself go still all over. This morning when he’d looked at her there’d been hunger and anger, but that wasn’t what was in him now. This was - well, she wasn't altogether sure what it was, but at least it was different.
"When I lost Connor I got lost, too," he said. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"Yeah, well, you did," she said. She turned the rose in her fingers, careful of the wicked curved daggers on the stem. The warm, sensual smell teased at her; she put it to her nose and breathed it in, more for something to do than for any real enjoyment. "So. Where are we?"
"Where do you want us to be?" he asked.
He got her attention, all of it. Did he really mean --
No. He couldn't mean that. "Friends," she said, finally. Until she trusted him again. Until she really knew this wasn't some temporary relapse to the side of good, until it proved itself real and lasting. "Partners. Warrior and Seer, right?"
"Right," he whispered. He looked anywhere but right at her, walked around the room, touching things lightly with his fingertips like a blind man building up a picture of her life. He touched a framed picture from high school -- all of them together, the Scoobies, with Giles looking stern and professor-like in the back. Buffy was in that picture. Cordelia wondered what Buffy would do now. Stake him, probably. Or fall into his arms. Not much in the way of middle ground between the two of them.
She wondered how exactly she was any different.
"I don't smell him," Angel said. For a second she thought he was talking to the picture, but no, he was talking to her. Indirectly. As if he didn't want to look at her.
"Huh?"
"Wesley." He ran a long, pale finger down the leaves of Arthur, her big green English Ivy. "He hasn't been in here."
"No."
"I thought - "
Okay, now she was insulted. "Yeah, I get the picture. You can go off and celebrate Demon SexFest 2001 with Darla, kick the rest of us to the curb whenever you get your dark midmorning of the soul, but I can't even comfort a friend. Not to even mention what a nun I've been the past three years." She glared at him. "Now. Go ahead, shoot off some nasty little jibe and break my heart and get it over with. 'Cause I'm over this already."
He started to answer, and stopped. That was when she knew, because Angelus never hesitated; he always knew the most perfectly awful thing to say. He really was Angel. Only Angel.
She felt that conviction bloom inside of her, driving out the chill that had been freezing her solid all day.
This is happening. It's really happening. And I almost sent him away.
"I should go," he said. Choked, really. She went to him and put her arms around him, and he was hard and cold and trembling. All that power, fighting itself. She felt her heart break when his arms went around her, because he was so careful that he barely dared to touch her at all. "It's okay. Really."
"No, it's not." So much despair in his voice, as much as she'd heard in Wesley's last night, damn that bastard Holtz, she wished she'd killed him, Angel had, anybody had. She felt an explosion of rage as clean and pure as anything she'd ever felt in her life. The hell with civilization and manners and rules, if he'd been in front of her she would have skinned him alive with her fingernails for what he'd done to them. "You have idea how not okay it is."
He pushed her back just a little, and his hands - cold, icy hands - reached up to cup her face.
"I can't lose you," he said. "You know that, don’t you?"
"Shhh," she whispered, and tried to pour her own warmth into him. He was always cool to the touch, but now it was like touching an ice sculpture. "When was the last time you ate?"
"Don't know. Too long. I should go, it’s probably not safe."
"Yeah, I'm all about the safety. Which is why I didn't put that stinky disinviting spell on my apartment, you'll notice." She managed to smile. "Not to worry. If you go all Hellboy on me, I've got a stake with your name on it." Which was a lie, and they both knew it. "Sit down."
She backed him up to the couch, stripped off his duster and tossed it toward a chair. Dennis snagged it and carried it off to the closet. Angel didn't fight her, but he didn't help her, either.
"Here, hold this," she said, and handed him the rose. "I'll be back. Dennis, don't let him leave."
She didn't wait to see if he obeyed, she just assumed. In the kitchen, she took out the emergency blood supply and microwaved; the smell of warm blood made her queasy, but she controlled that and carried the steaming mug back to him. He was still sitting where she’d left him, holding that beautiful rose; his eyes were closed, and he was smelling the fragrance.
"Here," she said, and sat down next to him. "Try this."
Once he'd sipped, something shifted in his dark eyes and he tipped the mug and swallowed until it was dry.
"You have a blood moustache," Cordelia said. "Which I can't believe I just said. Wait." She grabbed a tissue and wiped his face clean. It was something to do instead of looking in his eyes, which she couldn’t really do at the moment. Not enough control of herself.
"I'm not in love with Wesley," she said. "He understands that. I need you to understand it, too."
There was a little more color in his face. He was still holding the mug in one hand, the rose in the other. She ought to get up and get a vase for that, but she didn’t want to move away from him.
"It looked like love this morning," Angel said. At least he was back to teasing. She made a rude noise.
"Looked like the morning after a night of fabulous sex, is what it looked like, and yeah, that's what it was. But don't tell me you've never just let yourself loose because that was all that held back the darkness. And don't go all double-standard on me, either."
He swallowed, probably still tasting the blood. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him then, and was surprised the thought didn't inspire skin-crawl. In fact, it made her skin feel a little too tight.
"Wesley's not to blame for this, Angel. He hurts just as much as you do."
"In my saner moments I know that," he said, and tried for a smile. "I'm sorry for what I said. Earlier. I was - "
"Crazed, yeah, I got that. But that's under control, right?"
"Totally under control."
She took his hands in hers. They were flushed with a little more warmth now. "So. You got to have the awkward conversation this morning, now it's my turn. You were jealous."
"Was not." It wasn't really indignant, more of an opportunity to play. She jumped on it.
"Were too. Big time."
His dark eyes flashed to her face. "Maybe a little."
"Well, come on, give it up. Why?"
"Because - " he stopped. "I’ll tell you later."
"Because I'm your Seer?"
"Later." His fingers closed around hers, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. Her heart did a funny hiccup, then raced faster. God, his touch was feather-soft ... hands that could break bone and snap steel, and yet could cradle a newborn baby. His sense of control was so -- sexy. "Not now."
Some instinct told her not to let it go. "We'll take this up after I nuke you a second helping."
She went back to the kitchen for another round. Dennis obligingly flipped on the overheads for her. She rinsed Angel's mug out, poured in the syrupy cool stuff, set it in the microwave and considered the control panel. It had been pretty hot last time, and she didn't want it to get clotted. Maybe she should use the defrost setting. Three more minutes, but Angel could probably use the time to get himself together. She sure could.
She punched in the numbers and closed her eyes and thought about - well, nothing, really. For the first time in her life, she wasn't operating on expectations. She didn't know what was going to be waiting for her when she came back out. Maybe he'd be gone. Maybe he'd be distant and polite. Maybe he'd - be something else.
But at least she knew needed her.
A hand touched her shoulder gently. She leaned back and felt arms slide around her waist. "Thanks, Dennis, it's okay," she murmured, and turned her head slightly to smile.
Not Dennis. Angel. He could move like a ghost when he wanted to, and in his current black-shirt, black-pants phase, he looked like one, too. No color to him at all.
When Angel hugged her -- which was not all that often -- it had always been the male-friend-hug, that slightly awkward, I'm-not-pressing-up-against-you hug. This was ... different, close and intimate; the tension was still there, but transformed. He wasn't holding himself back.
Neither of them moved for a few seconds, and then she slowly leaned against him, into his strength. His arms tightened and pulled her closer. She knew his body -- she'd stripped him down for nursing often enough, no secrets between them on that score. But still, this was different. She closed her eyes and just felt him, felt his softness and strength like velvet-covered marble. Her skin temperature was going up, blood flowing faster. He had to be able to sense that.
"Don't turn around," he said. "It's easier to say this if you're not looking at me."
"Yeah?" she whispered. Her throat felt dry, her lips damp. Where his hands pressed around her waist, she felt like she might spontaneously combust. "Okay. Sure." Brilliant. But her brain wasn't exactly in the loop.
He bent and put his head down so that his cool cheek was against her hot one. Oh, God, it felt good, like shade in the desert. She shivered.
He murmured, "You're sure you want to hear this?" and she could feel the vibration of his voice against her skin, feel the phantom brush of his lips.
One of his hands left its place at her waist and moved up, stroking gently along the curve of her cheek. She shuddered and felt herself liquefying inside. All of a sudden she was deeply, agonizingly aware of where he was soft, where he was hard, how his body pressed towards hers.
"Yes," she whispered. Not sure if she was answering his verbal question, or the one in his fingertips.
"It was the smell of you, coming from his bed. Lush, like a garden of roses in full bloom. You have no idea how delicious that smell is. I smell it on you now, because he was here, he left you wanting him - "
He breathed in the scent of her skin, and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning. Oh God. He wasn't doing anything but holding her, not even moving his hands, but she could barely stand up for wanting him. She let herself press back against him, felt him sway a little and push forward with his hips. She moved a little, side to side, she was dying for the friction, dying to feel that hardness in his crotch grow and grow.
Was she really going to do this?
She put her hands on his and guided them down, over the swell of her hips. A human man would have breathed in her ear; she would have felt his heartbeat rise. Angel was utterly silent, like a ghost. Like Dennis. The palms of his hands stopped over her womb, his fingers pressing down on her pubis.
She managed to whisper, "It wasn't Wesley."
If felt as if she'd crossed some line, but she couldn't look back now. Didn't want to look back. She felt his hands move on their own, exploring her through the thin layers of cloth. Her knees turned to rubber; she grabbed his arms for support. "Oh. Oh God."
"Don't turn around," he said. All she could feel was Angel's hands, pulling up her short skirt in slow, caressing motions. She moved her hips back against him, felt him press in return, God, this was --
His hand curved down and cupped her pubis and her mind sizzled and melted. Nothing but the thin nylon panty - already drenched - separating her from his touch.
And then he moved his hand away, and hooked his fingers in the waistband on either side and eased the elastic down her legs. The cool air made her shiver; she'd never felt so exposed, so completely naked.
She spread her feet enough to let the panties slide down on their own, and felt Angel's lips touch her neck, gentle little touches with only the slightest trace of heat, and then his fingers were back, sliding down over her mound and into satin folds.
She couldn't have stopped herself if the world was ending. She pressed back against his fingers, gasping, losing herself in the sensation of fire and ice. She put an arm around his neck to hold herself steady, to save herself from drowning in it, from falling to the floor and dying of pleasure.
"Angel - "
She felt his fingers slide into her, and this time it was a cry, not a gasp ... it was a plea for mercy. She wasn't sure who was doing the moving, but she couldn't have kept her hips still for any price, the sensation of his fingers was too much, too intense, too real. His left hand moved up her body, under her shirt, under her bra, and the feeling of his fingers brushing her nipple made her almost collapse.
His hips were moving too, dancing with hers, she could feel the solid steel of his erection and she wanted - wanted to -
She couldn't think what she wanted anymore. She just wanted. The sounds she was making were like whimpers, barely audible, and she could feel Angel's hands trembling. "Please," she whispered.
"Please what?" Three fingers inside her now, his thumb caressing her clit. "Please do this?"
He drove in deeper, and she moaned now.
"Tell me you'll stay with me," he said. "Tell me now. Now. Now."
"Oh God ..."
"Tell me, Cordelia."
"Oh God! Yes!"
"Say it."
"I'll - stay - " And there it was, a molten eruption locking every muscle in her body, her heart pounding; she could feel the silken muscles in her vagina clenched around his hand, trapping it there, God, the sweet frenzy of it made her want to keep his fingers in her for the rest of her life, and just when she thought she couldn't climb higher his thumb moved and pressed and she came again, harder, shuddering, crying out.
And then, at that instant she was most vulnerable, most his, she felt his whole body shift. It wasn't much, wasn't anything, really, but it woke something screaming inside of her.
He moved her hair and smelled her neck. She could feel that triumph radiating out of him. Cold, evil, corrupted triumph.
No.
She felt the barest scrape of teeth as the smell of hot blood washed over them. The microwave dinged.
NO! She tried to scream it, tried to wrench herself away from him, but it was too late, she'd crossed the line, she'd made the choice.
"So beautiful," he whispered, and before she could draw breath he buried his teeth in her neck, brutal, primal. She screamed but his hand was across her mouth to hold it in. Spider. A spider, nesting in the heart of the rose. Oh God, no, please -
She felt her blood spraying out into his mouth, pumping and pouring as if it was as eager to go into him as her body had been thirty seconds ago, and her mind screamed through a thousand images, Buffy’s stricken face, Xander, Giles, her mother, Connor, Angel, Wesley, Wesley -
And then The Powers That Be sent her a Vision that hit both of them with the force of an exploding bomb. She and Angelus drowned in blood, so much blood, rivers of it flowing crimson over her hands ...
Angel, laughing. Dipping his hands in it, painting her naked skin with it, the taste of it so rich and coppery and delicious in her mouth. She licked it from his fingers, drank it from his cupped hands.
She ruled with him, they ran like a two-wolf pack through the darkness, the joy of the night beat in her like the heart that no longer could.
The two of them in Sunnydale, she and Angelus. She ran down Xander and pinned him under her and peeled the skin from his face, one strip at a time while he screamed, until the smell of his blood made her forget everything and drink him dry.
Willow, Angel's plaything until she died.
Giles.
Buffy dying so terribly that even vampires turned away from the sight.
A blur of bodies, blood, sex as she and Angelus fed and mated and ruled this dark, dark world.
Spike tried to fight them and died in the sunlight, staked out for the morning rays.
Gunn. Fred.
And then Wesley, terrified and brave and oh so very sweet on her tongue as she and Angel ripped him apart and drank.
A child like Connor in her arms, her teeth descending with that sweet, hot stab of the demon emerging.
"No," Angelus said, and took the child from her arms. Cradled him like the child they had once held between them in love. "Allow me." That evil, dark, thrilling smile warmed her.
The Powers had never spoken to her, but they spoke now, and it wasn't words, it wasn't images, it was like being trapped inside a huge ringing bell, being the bell, shivering in waves, in meaning.
Without words, she understood that she was facing the future. She and Angelus, soulmates, walking in darkness. Perverting all the gifts they'd been granted. Perverting love and strength into the ultimate power to destroy.
The pressure of it was overwhelming. She knew that even her demon-reinforced strength was about to fail and the terrible force of this would shatter like glass.
And then her soul rang with one more metallic blow, and what shivered through her was knowledge. Who she was. What she had to do. What had to be done to stop this awful future.
She came out of it screaming, her throat raw with the force of it, and fell face down on the floor as Angel went to his knees and toppled to his side.
She crawled away from him and huddled in the corner, pulled her knees up to chest and buried her screams in her hands while hot tears burned like acid down her cheeks. Invisible hands wrapped around her and held her -- Dennis, trying to protect her. But nothing could protect her now. Nothing.
Angel was still thrashing, silently screaming, his fangs glittering like razors; his face pulsed as if the demon was trying to claw its way out of him. He was trying to get to her, but his body was in convulsions. She understood intuitively that the deafening voice of The Powers had disabled him; it wouldn't kill, but it would slow him down. For a few moments.
Time to escape, if she chose, but all that would buy her would be moments. It wouldn't stop what was coming.
He threw out a hand toward her. His nails scratched gouges in the linoleum. She pulled herself into a tighter ball and tried to stop herself from shaking, from screaming, from remembering. The Powers were still inside of her like a storm of golden light, showing her the rich, blazing strength they'd given her as a shield against the visions. It had saved her life, but it was meant for more.
It was meant for him.
The hardest thing she had ever done was to reach out and grab Angelus' sharp-taloned, demonic hand. His eyes flashed open, beast yellow, ready to hurt and hate.
I can't! But she could. It was who she was, and The Powers knew that.
She poured love into him, hot as burning metal. Her power. Her gift. Her curse.
Waves of it crested in them both, trapped and drowned them, and her whole body shuddered and spasmed in a pleasure so extreme it made the orgasm Angelus had given her seem like a distant memory. He'd perverted pleasure.
She'd perfected it.
Angel cried out, and his eyes weren't yellow now, they were gold, bright gold, full of her. It spilled out of him in a hot gold flood, stars spinning from his core, glittering and flashing and vanishing like fireflies into the dark. Endless, shaking, hurtful love, love stronger than pain, stronger than Angelus.
It was the shining, uncompromising love of the eternal made flesh, and humans weren't made to endure it for more than seconds.
It felt like an age to Cordelia.
When it finally stopped it was quiet, so awfully quiet. Cordelia heard herself making small, human, whimpering sounds. Angel was only inches away, and his eyes were dark and human and brimming over with --
The crash of the front door kicking in seemed far, far away. She was caught in Angel's eyes. She pulled free of Dennis' restraining arms and reached out --
Something grabbed her, not Dennis, not Angel, warm human arms that grabbed her and dragged her out of the kitchen. They wrapped around her and held her in a fierce, desperate embrace.
"Oh God, oh my God ... " Wesley kept repeating it, like a chant, as he stripped off his shirt and wadded it up to press it against her neck. What was wrong with her neck? She looked past his pale, stricken expression to focus on Angel, who lay there still as a corpse. "Can you hear me? Cordelia?"
It was such a long way to come to say, "Yes," but it was worth it. She saw the stark terror in his eyes melt into relief.
And then the relief transformed to something else as cold and inhumanly angry as anything she'd ever seen in Angelus.
He put her hand up to hold the makeshift bandage in place, and pulled a stake from his coat. He turned to where Angel lay on the scarred kitchen floor.
"No!" she screamed, and used raw animal strength to lunge forward. She fell on top of Angel like a mother protecting her child and waited for Wesley to drive the stake through both their hearts. Angel's open eyes glittered with tears. She watched him focus on her face and saw the agony in him, the desperation, the overwhelming guilt, and she knew he wanted the mercy of that stake but she couldn't let it happen. She felt raw inside, stripped empty.
The Powers had poured that love out of the core of her, and she had nothing left to give.
"Move," Wesley whispered. Rage in the word dripped on her like acid. "Cordelia, move. Don't you dare protect him now."
She turned her head and looked at him. "I won't let you kill him," she said, and her voice was clear and absolutely steady.
He took a step back from her, and she wondered what it was he saw in her face.
"You're insane," he said. "He's done something to you. Don't do this." She knew it was a warning as much as a plea, and she felt her heart break for him, but she had nothing left in her to give. Wesley's wound went too deep, bled too fiercely.
She said, very simply, "I love him. And I'm in love with him."
It went through him like a blunt, bloody knife, and she saw the light in him turn to ash. I'm so sorry, she wanted to say, but there wasn't enough sorrow in the world to fill the emptiness inside him now. And she was empty, too. Nothing left.
He let out a sound as primitive as the rage in his eyes, and lifted the stake over her. She closed her eyes.
She waited for the end, but it didn't come.
When she raised her head to look, he was gone.
"Cordy," Angel whispered. His voice sounded wounded and desperate. She moved off of him and hauled him up to lean against her, both of them still sitting on the cold, blood-spattered floor, and held him. He was completely limp. Only his eyes held any life at all, and that life was suffering.
"Shhh," she murmured, and held him in her arms and rocked him.
"I saw it. I saw it all."
"I know." She put her hand on his cold, cold face.
"What I did -- what we did -- " His voice just faded away. It was a long way back from where Angelus had taken him. But he would heal.
They would heal.
"I'm here," she whispered, and put her burning cheek against his cold one. "I'll stay. I won't leave you."
She'd said that to Angelus, but that had been about the flesh.
This was about the spirit.
###
Wesley didn't remember walking out. Didn't remember anything until he was standing at his car, staring down at the door and his hand on the handle, and then he thought with a flash of sheer horror, I left her there with him.
But the horror passed, and there was nothing to take its place.
Someone was watching him in the dark. He looked up and saw Justine leaning against the lamppost a few feet away. If anything she looked worse than before; the bruises had had time to settle in and darken, and she looked sickly yellow in the glow of the sodium light. Her knee was swollen, ballooning against the fabric of her blue jeans. He couldn't imagine how she had managed to walk on it at all.
Funny. He didn't really care.
"Did you kill them?" she asked.
"No," he replied.
"I would have." Her voice was quiet and steady and not quite the same as it had been. No taunting in it now. Maybe she recognized total desperation when she saw it, she'd seen it often enough in her own mirror.
He was drowning in burning waves of rage and betrayal and self-pity, and there was nothing to grab onto. Nothing but Justine, who was a rusted, barbed anchor to carry him straight to the bottom.
"Go away," he said tonelessly.
"Can't walk."
"You walked here."
"Cab," she said. "Followed your car. Not that it matters."
He looked up and saw her staring at him with bright, strange eyes. Was it pity? He didn't want her pity.
What he wanted ... he stopped himself from even thinking it.
"Do you think I'm your new messiah, Justine? I'm not. I'm just another one in a parade of men who find you entirely repulsive." Which he did not, entirely, mean. There was something about her that woke an uncomfortable response in him. She was like Faith, fey and fragile and doomed. "Go home."
She shrugged. "Don't have one."
"Then go to a shelter. I'm not interested."
"I'm not looking for a date," she said. "I need somebody to watch my back while I hunt."
Tempting. So very darkly tempting.
"There's a nest of leeches in the Valley. Word is that they're preying on the local kids. Don't tell me you don't want to drive a stake into a vampire's heart right about now."
She was so eerily accurate it made him want to hit her.
He fished keys from his pocket and unlocked the car, driver's side only. He started the car, stared into space for a few seconds, and saw that Justine was still there in his peripheral vision. Not moving. Just - waiting.
He unlocked the car doors with a flick of the power switch. She opened the back door and tossed in her weapons bag, then slid into the passenger seat.
The stake he'd carried for Angel he laid aside, on the console, within easy reach. Her eyes flicked to it, then to him. The sharp wood could kill a human heart as effectively as a vampire's. He wondered, in an academic way, which of them would pick it up first.
"Where?" he asked.
She smiled tightly. "Just drive. We'll find them."
He put the car in gear and said, "There is no we, Justine."
Justine shrugged and turned to look out the car window at the lights in Cordelia's apartment. "You know, I'm going to kill that bastard someday."
Wesley thought of Cordelia's face, alight with joy as she moved her hips against Angel's hand. All he had to do was touch her and she exploded. Angel had almost killed her, and she'd still chosen him. Still wanted him.
He heard the dull leaden weight in his voice when he asked, "Is this the part where I'm supposed to care?"
She smiled out at the night, and they drove, two enemies together, into the dark.
.... Story arc continues in "The Dead Church" ...
Drowning her miseries just didn't have the same charm it used to. After a few more slugs of vodka from her backup bottle, Justine went to work. First, weapons; her life depended on them. She oiled guns, checked and oiled the crossbows, sharpened swords and daggers and wooden stakes.
Maybe tonight she'd hunt. Killing leeches was still the most fun to be had, and the fact that she was wounded and only half-capable made it that much more of a challenge. Justine loved a challenge. Maybe that was why she'd fallen so hard for Daniel Holtz. It wasn't his physical presence; the blue-eyed Brit who'd just left had a hell of a lot more to offer that way. No, Holtz had- intensity. A kind of focused narrow-beam ferocity that she not only respected but adored.
She'd thought that being alone gave them something in common, but she'd been wrong. Holtz was never alone. The ghosts of his family were always with him, driving him past his limits, demanding justice; the specter of Angel was always out in front of him, dragging him on. She was just another face in his crowd.
She'd loved him anyway. That Brit bastard had been right about that. He'd been right that Holtz never loved her, too.
She locked and loaded the crossbow in one fluid motion, whirled, and put a bolt four inches into a straw target twenty feet away. Through the heart. Always through the heart.
"Might as well come out," she said, and fired the second bolt right on top of the first. "What's the matter, Wesley? Forget your wallet?"
"Not exactly," he said. He stepped out from behind the target. Good timing; she was currently between ammunition. "I think you should come outside for a minute."
"Any particular reason?"
"The building is on fire."
He sounded calm enough about it, but she caught the tension underneath. She paused in the act of reloading.
"You're shitting me."
He shrugged. "Believe what you want. That's all I had to tell you."
He turned to go. She cursed under her breath and sniffed the air. Hard to tell if there was any smoke; her nose was broken - again - and she'd been swallowing blood all damn day. No point in taking the chance, though; she unzipped the gym bag and loaded in weapons, shouldered it on the side that hurt less, and followed Wesley to the fastest exit.
By the time she was outside, she could not only smell the smoke, she was choking on it. While she hunched over, racked with bloody coughs, she heard the scream of sirens.
The Brit was already to the corner. She hustled after him, trying not to limp too openly on her strained knee and knowing already that it would be swollen to balloon size before long.
"Hey!" she yelled. "Did you set the goddamn fire?"
He kept walking. She put on a burst of speed and managed to pull even with him.
"Did you?" she insisted. He cast her one of those looks, bored and British and belligerent. They rounded the corner, ducking away from a police car that screamed by, and in the cooler dimness of the alley she sucked in rattling breaths and wished she could sit down for just a minute. Or a thousand.
He must have thought she really cared about his answer, because he gave her an honest reply for once. "No, I didn't set the fire, although I wish I'd thought of it; that pesthole deserves to be scorched to the ground."
"Glad you think so," said a new voice from the shadows. She looked up, saw Wesley do the same. There were eyes in the darkness. Glowing eyes. The gleam of fangs. "We didn't like it much, either."
Vamps. A lot of 'em. And they weren't unarmed - she saw clubs and pipes and knives. No guns. That was such a small relief it wasn't even worth feeling it. For the first time she felt a flicker of doubt about her abilities; maybe it wasn't such a good time to be attempting to fight. Even this gorgeous dweeb could probably kick her ass at the moment without breaking a sweat. The fact that she'd let him do it last night made that more than a little funny, in an ironic kind of way.
"Ah," Wesley breathed. "Molotov cocktails."
"We like the classics," the leader said. "Lucky us, we get to practice a few more. On you two."
"I don't suppose these are friends of yours," Wesley said toward Justine, conversationally. He put on a good show of boredom, but his voice was half an octave higher than before. She shrugged the bag off her shoulder and let it fall to the pavement, edged it over between them. Lucky that she'd left it unzipped in her haste to get out of the warehouse.
"We've met," grated the lead leech. He came closer, and she recognized his particular twisted face. She and Holtz's crew had practiced on him with holy water. He'd been quite the little screamer. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you made it out, bitch."
"Me too," she said, and looked at Wesley. "Any brilliant ideas?"
Three vamps between them and the safety of sunlight. Three in front.
"I've narrowed it to fight or flight," he said.
"Well halle-fucking-lujah. Finally, I get to kill something."
And then it was a melee. She ducked a swing from the leader's lead pipe and rammed her shoulder into him, sent him toppling into one of his buddies. Wesley darted the other way, to the open gym bag.
He grabbed a stake and pitched it to her on the fly; she caught it mid-air, aimed and thrust with all the hate in her heart. Dust exploded into her mouth, but she closed her eyes in time. She was already moving to the next victim before the leader's lead pipe clattered to the pavement. Damn, this felt good.
Daniel was gone, but she could still kill things for him.
"Down!" Wesley yelled, but she was at a bad angle, just finishing a dusting and taking the weight on her bad knee. He hit her hard from the side and slammed her out of the way as something sharp hissed past her head. Axe. She hated axes. The force of the vamp's swing carried him off balance and into a wall hard enough to stun him stupid.
Wesley was still on top of her, and he raised his head. Something crazy in Wesley's eyes. Something she liked.
"Well?" she asked. "Are we going to make love all day, or -- "
He rolled off, scrambled back to the weapons bag and ducked another swing from a vamp armed with a club. He tossed her a crossbow and scooped up a hand-and-a-half broadsword. His first swing caught the club-wielder across the throat, and the separated head and body dissolved into bitter haze.
She put a bolt through the next vamp then whirled to put one through the vamp with the axe, who was coming back for more. Two more dusted. She looked around and saw Wesley was battling the last one. He had skills, she admitted. And she liked the way he moved. Nice lines. She found herself watching his ass more than his lunges.
"A little help?" he yelled. She limped over to the weapons bag and looked over the choices. Chose the second crossbow and took her time making sure the bolts were firmly seated. "Sometime this year?"
He backed away as the vamp lunged, then tripped over a discarded beer bottle and landed in a messy heap.
The vamp was on him like a wolf, snarling and going for his throat.
Justine hesitated for a long, luxurious second, and then lined up and fired.
The leech exploded. Wesley choked on the dust. He rolled up to his feet, and leaned on the sword for support, singed and sweaty and trembling.
"Too much excitement for ya?" Justine purred. She swaggered over to him, aches and wounds drowned in the adrenaline flood. "Poor baby. Widdle Wesley can't take it."
She thought -- she hoped -- he would come after her. He looked at her with those impossibly blue eyes for a long few seconds, then offered her the sword, hilt-first.
"Yours," he said neutrally. She took it. "I knew someone else like you once. Her name was Faith. Pain, sex, fighting, dying -- it was all the same to her."
"Oh, and it's not to you?" she mocked. She'd seen the light in his eyes.
"No," he said. "I fight for things. You're fighting for nothing."
"Come on. Deep down inside, you get off on it. Just like me."
He tried to move past her. She put the edge of the sword to his throat and shoved him against the wall, stared into his eyes, looked for that spark.
"You bastard, don't you dare dismiss me," she whispered. "I cut your throat once, and I can do it again."
But he didn't react. After a long, long pause, she lowered the sword down to her side.
Wesley leaned forward and kissed her. Not a desperate after-fight, let's-fuck kiss, a gentle meeting of lips. Almost chaste.
"Learn to get off on that," he said. His voice rasped low in his throat, like a cat's purr. "It may save your life someday."
She stood there helpless and watched him go. When she was sure he couldn't see, she put shaking fingers to her lips and tried to stop the tingle.
###
When Cordelia got home, Groo was gone. There was a message blinking on the answering machine; Phantom Dennis, after considerately levitating her shopping bags back to the bedroom, left her alone to listen to it. She almost didn't need to. She knew what Groo was going to say. I'm going back to Pylea, this is all wrong, you don't really love me ....
But what Groo said, when she pressed the replay button, was "My princess, I am sorry, but Charles says he needs help in - with -- things. So I am going. Out. To fight. I will be back - " Groo was a terrible liar. She could hear Gunn coaching him in the background. "Tomorrow."
In other words, Gunn had ended up getting an earful of Groo's troubles, and they were going out to bond. Or drink, which was the same thing in guy-land.
She really didn't mind - that was probably guiltworthy, but there it was. If there had ever been a night when a quiet hot bath and some quality Queen C time had been a must-have...
A ghostly hand touched her shoulder. She smiled and said, "It's okay, Dennis. Really. It wasn't - it wasn't going to work out long-term. Because he's, you know ... sweet."
Dennis lifted a half-empty box of chocolates.
"No, I'm not sweet, but thanks for the lie."
She thought about a lot of things while she did homey, comforting jobs like cooking spaghetti and choosing the appropriate cheap red wine; mostly, she thought about Angel, and what to do about him. Go back to work, she supposed. Try to see it through. Hope he pulled out of the dive straight into hell before he took them all there with him.
A plate of pasta and two glasses of wine later, she picked up the phone and dialed the Hyperion. She didn't know what she was going to say, except that there was something to say, there had to be. When she heard his voice, she'd know. Right? I'm buzzed, she realized, but that was kind of a plus; it cut down the shakes and the terror at the thought of facing him again, even on the phone. Her muscles, which were finally feeling warm and loose and relaxed, tensed up just a bit when the rings began to sound on the other end.
Her own perky voice picked up on answering machine. "Hi, you've reached Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless ...." Boy, it was time to change the tape. Maybe we'll try to help the hopeless when we're done feeling sorry for ourselves. Yeesh.
She was trying to think what message to leave when she heard a knock at the door. She jumped and fumbled the phone back into the cradle, suddenly sure he was standing there, dark and broody and back to himself, with that half-smile ready to warm up her heart. "I'll get it!" she called to Dennis, who sometimes like to play butler. She swung the door open ...
And saw Wesley outside.
"Wow," she blurted. Not the same Wesley from before, not even the same Wesley from earlier this morning. This Wesley had on blue jeans and a dark shirt and a leather jacket that made him look dangerous. Or maybe it was the shadow still in his eyes. Shouldn't have had the wine, nope. "You're out. And you look better."
"I feel better," he said, and put his hands in his pockets as if he didn't know what to do with them. Awkward silence. He cleared his throat. "I hope I didn't come at a bad time. I just wanted to - check -- did Angel - "
"Hurt me? No sticks, no stones, lots of words, some of them were harsh." She ran out of things to say, and moved back away from the door so he could come in. He didn't catch the hint. "Um, you want to talk?"
He smiled slightly "Truthfully, the last thing I want to do right now is talk to you."
She felt a surge of blind pain. "Oh," she murmured. "Oh, sorry." So that was how it was going to be. Somehow, she didn't think she could take Wesley's dismissal, not after Angel's cruelty. "Okay then. I understand." She started to swing the door shut.
"No!" Wesley blurted, and held out a hand as if he wanted to grab back what he'd said. "No, I meant - I meant all I want to do is - not talk. There are other things I'd rather be doing with our mouths." She felt her heart stutter and start to pound. He sucked in a breath as if he'd surprised himself. "And I said that out loud, didn't I? Dear God, Cordelia, what have we done?"
"Pretty much everything at least once," she said. "Which is kind of a record for one night."
"Don't. Don't tease. I know it can't be - we can't be - but I just - " He was stammering. He hadn't stammered last night, but then, not a lot of conversation beyond oh, God yes and faster. "I'm making a bollocks of this."
"No, I'd say you're doing pretty well if you're trying to convince me to rip your clothes off."
He didn't laugh, and he waited too long for her to pass it off as a joke.
"Wes?" She felt a lurch of pain again.
He pulled in a shuddering breath she could feel all the way down inside, in places his tongue and lips and other body parts had been, far too recently to forget.
"I would love for that to be true," he said. "But you see, it's just that I'm not Angel."
It felt like the air had been sucked out of her lungs. "No, Wes - " God, what could she say?
"No kind lies. Not now. I think both us needed ... comfort ... last night, and some relief from the loneliness. But the next time, you'll be thinking about him, and I- " He sounded stronger now. "I'd want you to be thinking of me."
He was so right it was scary. "Please come in. We'll talk -"
"No." He even took a step back. He sounded so definite, but there was so much pain in his eyes. "Don't ask me again, Cordelia. This is hard enough as it is."
She struggled for something that wouldn't be a lie. "Oh ... God ... I'm so sorry. I wish -" It wasn't fair. None of this was fair. It just - overwhelmed her. "Jesus! Why the hell can't I be in love with you? A nice, normal, hunky guy with a sexy accent and eyes to die for? Why does it have to be the crazed bloodsucking fiend? What's that about? You know, I used to be normal. Somewhat. For Sunnydale. I at least got the hots for guys who breathed!"
Wesley gave her a heartbreaking smile. "I think there might have been a compliment buried in there. As far as me being either nice or normal, I believe you might have been in Sunnydale a little too long to have a good perspective."
"But hunky," she said. "And don't even argue about the accent and the eyes."
Another silence. This one somehow wasn't awkward, it was full of - well - love. She stepped outside and held out her hands. He took them and after a few seconds of looking into each others' eyes she moved into his arms. He folded around her, warm and solid and somehow more there than he had been before.
"It isn't that you saved my life," he whispered. His words warmed the skin of her neck where his lips touched. "It's that you saved my soul, Cordelia. Truly."
She closed her eyes and let herself relax against him, just - be. "I love you," she said.
"For the rest of my life, I'll work to deserve that," he said, and too soon, let her go. "I'm leaving town for a while. I'll call when I get back."
He wasn't going to do anything stupid, was he? She couldn't tell, couldn't read him at all suddenly. "That's probably good," she said slowly. "Let things cool down. But - come back. Please. And -- call me, if you need - anything."
"Short of what I'd like to have?" His smile was only a little bitter. "Take care."
The kiss have gave her was gentle and sweet and final. She watched him as he went down the hall and finally, when he was gone, regretfully closed the door.
###
Downstairs, Wesley walked out into the dark and headed for the lot where he’d left his car. He felt lighter now, though sadder. It had to be said. Perhaps, but did he have to say it tonight? Would it have been so terrible to go inside and live in Cordelia’s world just a little longer?
Yes, he told himself. Because it would have been a lie. He no longer lived in that world, and it was unfair of him to complicate it.
That didn’t help the heartache, but with all his experience of wounds he expected he could manage.
The parking lot was uphill, and it faced Cordelia’s windows; he’d chosen it deliberately so that he could see her from a distance, and he could see her now as she walked through the living room. I should have told her to draw the blinds. He was glad he hadn’t.
And for the life of him, somehow, he couldn’t get in his car and leave. Not yet.
He settled down on the hood of his car and lifted his face to the cool night breeze, closed his eyes, and sighed.
I’m going back, aren’t I?
Perhaps he’d just think about it. For a while.
###
Cordelia checked herself in the mirror, for no better reason that it was there and she was in a pampering mood, and decided it was time for the long tea-rose bubble bath with Vitamin E skin treatment. It wouldn’t do anything for the dark circles under her eyes, but at least it would make her feel better. Then, she promised herself, a movie. Nothing romantic. She couldn’t go there, not now. Maybe one more glass of wine, just to make sure she could sleep without dreaming about Angel, vamped out.
She was taking her silk floral robe down from the hanger when she heard another knock at the door. Everything came to a stop. She stood there, frozen, the weight of silk heavy and warm in her hands, and thought, I shouldn't. He shouldn't. We shouldn't.
It was going to hurt him if she turned him away, but dammit, Wesley's instincts were right, they couldn't just -- just keep giving in to this just because they were both lonely and shocked and sad. It wasn't right for him, or her, or (another hot flash of guilt) for Groo, either.
She put the robe on the bed and went back to open the door, and even when she was clicking the deadbolt back she didn't know exactly what she was going to say or -- God help her -- what she was going to do, either. The need to be touched had exploded on contact with alcohol. Bad combo.
"Wesley -- " she said, and then the dark-haired man in the leather coat turned and it wasn't Wesley at all.
It was Angel.
The impact of her heart hitting her chest almost dropped her; it was followed by a burning tingle of … more shock. Oh my God, I called him Wesley. Yeah, that would help things.
He didn't seem to have caught it, because he smiled. Not one of those calculated, slick, Angelus smiles; this was warm and human, exactly the smile she had been aching to see. In spite of the tentative smile, or maybe because of it, he looked awkward, wounded, and brutally aware of the risk he was taking.
"You probably don't want to see me," he said. "But I -- I had to tell you how sorry I am."
"Angel," she finally blurted. Mouth catching up with mind. Funny, it was usually the other way around. "I -- are you -- "
"Okay?" The smile turned bitter. "No, not really. But I've been doing a lot of thinking and ... well, here."
He held something out to her. It was a single red rose, perfect crimson.
"I’m sorry," he said. His eyes were dark and human and shadowed. "Please forgive me, Cordy."
The burning tingle wasn’t shock. It was something else completely. She swallowed hard and looked at him, looked hard. She couldn't just - assume -- dammit, this was Angel, the original bad boy in sheep's clothing. And he had every twisted reason in the world right now to want to hurt her.
"Okay, this is awkward," he said, and lowered the rose. "Sorry. Maybe I should come back -- "
"No!" She was doing a lot of blurting. "No, I'm sorry, it's just that -- "
"I gave you a scare," he finished, and nodded. "I know. I was just -- drowning. Everything was so cold, and there wasn't anything I could -- I needed you to be my life preserver. I know that isn't fair, you have your own life, I can't expect you to ..."
Yes, you can, she thought, but didn't say it. She would have given anything to have Angel put his arms around her and hold her and let go of all his poisonous grief. Drowning. It was a good word. They'd both been drowning up there in that quiet, sad little room.
She realized she was blocking the door. He hadn't tried to come in. She took a deep breath and stepped back to give him room to pass.
"You're sure?" he asked. "Cordy, I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. You know that."
"Shut up and get in," she said. She was nervous. When she was nervous, she reverted to old Cordelia, tact-disabled -- the one who couldn't be hurt by something as trivial as heartbreak. He obeyed and went three polite steps into the living room, then waited for her to close the door and turn to face him. She put her hand on the deadbolt, then took it off. Better not cut off the escape route. Except, of course, that there wasn't any escape. Not really. Not if she was wrong.
He was looking down at his shoes, shifting just a little, back and forth. An awkward, big-boned boy. "So, do you want the rose, or -- "
It was something to do with her hands. "Sure."
Stepping closer to him made it more real, somehow; she could smell the warm, earthy smell of his leather coat, the faint cool hint of his skin. She reached out for the rose, and he surrendered it carefully. "Watch out," he said. "Thorns."
It really was beautiful - perfect -- petals like velvet skin, and with that rich, dark smell it couldn't have come out of a flower shop.
"It’s from the garden. The Hyperion's garden," he said, too quickly; it sounded like he was talking to fill the silence, and that made her feel steadier. Nervous Angel was a lot better than crazed stalker Angel. "I thought - I hoped you’d like it."
"It's beautiful," she said. "Thanks."
She looked up and met his eyes, and felt herself go still all over. This morning when he’d looked at her there’d been hunger and anger, but that wasn’t what was in him now. This was - well, she wasn't altogether sure what it was, but at least it was different.
"When I lost Connor I got lost, too," he said. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"Yeah, well, you did," she said. She turned the rose in her fingers, careful of the wicked curved daggers on the stem. The warm, sensual smell teased at her; she put it to her nose and breathed it in, more for something to do than for any real enjoyment. "So. Where are we?"
"Where do you want us to be?" he asked.
He got her attention, all of it. Did he really mean --
No. He couldn't mean that. "Friends," she said, finally. Until she trusted him again. Until she really knew this wasn't some temporary relapse to the side of good, until it proved itself real and lasting. "Partners. Warrior and Seer, right?"
"Right," he whispered. He looked anywhere but right at her, walked around the room, touching things lightly with his fingertips like a blind man building up a picture of her life. He touched a framed picture from high school -- all of them together, the Scoobies, with Giles looking stern and professor-like in the back. Buffy was in that picture. Cordelia wondered what Buffy would do now. Stake him, probably. Or fall into his arms. Not much in the way of middle ground between the two of them.
She wondered how exactly she was any different.
"I don't smell him," Angel said. For a second she thought he was talking to the picture, but no, he was talking to her. Indirectly. As if he didn't want to look at her.
"Huh?"
"Wesley." He ran a long, pale finger down the leaves of Arthur, her big green English Ivy. "He hasn't been in here."
"No."
"I thought - "
Okay, now she was insulted. "Yeah, I get the picture. You can go off and celebrate Demon SexFest 2001 with Darla, kick the rest of us to the curb whenever you get your dark midmorning of the soul, but I can't even comfort a friend. Not to even mention what a nun I've been the past three years." She glared at him. "Now. Go ahead, shoot off some nasty little jibe and break my heart and get it over with. 'Cause I'm over this already."
He started to answer, and stopped. That was when she knew, because Angelus never hesitated; he always knew the most perfectly awful thing to say. He really was Angel. Only Angel.
She felt that conviction bloom inside of her, driving out the chill that had been freezing her solid all day.
This is happening. It's really happening. And I almost sent him away.
"I should go," he said. Choked, really. She went to him and put her arms around him, and he was hard and cold and trembling. All that power, fighting itself. She felt her heart break when his arms went around her, because he was so careful that he barely dared to touch her at all. "It's okay. Really."
"No, it's not." So much despair in his voice, as much as she'd heard in Wesley's last night, damn that bastard Holtz, she wished she'd killed him, Angel had, anybody had. She felt an explosion of rage as clean and pure as anything she'd ever felt in her life. The hell with civilization and manners and rules, if he'd been in front of her she would have skinned him alive with her fingernails for what he'd done to them. "You have idea how not okay it is."
He pushed her back just a little, and his hands - cold, icy hands - reached up to cup her face.
"I can't lose you," he said. "You know that, don’t you?"
"Shhh," she whispered, and tried to pour her own warmth into him. He was always cool to the touch, but now it was like touching an ice sculpture. "When was the last time you ate?"
"Don't know. Too long. I should go, it’s probably not safe."
"Yeah, I'm all about the safety. Which is why I didn't put that stinky disinviting spell on my apartment, you'll notice." She managed to smile. "Not to worry. If you go all Hellboy on me, I've got a stake with your name on it." Which was a lie, and they both knew it. "Sit down."
She backed him up to the couch, stripped off his duster and tossed it toward a chair. Dennis snagged it and carried it off to the closet. Angel didn't fight her, but he didn't help her, either.
"Here, hold this," she said, and handed him the rose. "I'll be back. Dennis, don't let him leave."
She didn't wait to see if he obeyed, she just assumed. In the kitchen, she took out the emergency blood supply and microwaved; the smell of warm blood made her queasy, but she controlled that and carried the steaming mug back to him. He was still sitting where she’d left him, holding that beautiful rose; his eyes were closed, and he was smelling the fragrance.
"Here," she said, and sat down next to him. "Try this."
Once he'd sipped, something shifted in his dark eyes and he tipped the mug and swallowed until it was dry.
"You have a blood moustache," Cordelia said. "Which I can't believe I just said. Wait." She grabbed a tissue and wiped his face clean. It was something to do instead of looking in his eyes, which she couldn’t really do at the moment. Not enough control of herself.
"I'm not in love with Wesley," she said. "He understands that. I need you to understand it, too."
There was a little more color in his face. He was still holding the mug in one hand, the rose in the other. She ought to get up and get a vase for that, but she didn’t want to move away from him.
"It looked like love this morning," Angel said. At least he was back to teasing. She made a rude noise.
"Looked like the morning after a night of fabulous sex, is what it looked like, and yeah, that's what it was. But don't tell me you've never just let yourself loose because that was all that held back the darkness. And don't go all double-standard on me, either."
He swallowed, probably still tasting the blood. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him then, and was surprised the thought didn't inspire skin-crawl. In fact, it made her skin feel a little too tight.
"Wesley's not to blame for this, Angel. He hurts just as much as you do."
"In my saner moments I know that," he said, and tried for a smile. "I'm sorry for what I said. Earlier. I was - "
"Crazed, yeah, I got that. But that's under control, right?"
"Totally under control."
She took his hands in hers. They were flushed with a little more warmth now. "So. You got to have the awkward conversation this morning, now it's my turn. You were jealous."
"Was not." It wasn't really indignant, more of an opportunity to play. She jumped on it.
"Were too. Big time."
His dark eyes flashed to her face. "Maybe a little."
"Well, come on, give it up. Why?"
"Because - " he stopped. "I’ll tell you later."
"Because I'm your Seer?"
"Later." His fingers closed around hers, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. Her heart did a funny hiccup, then raced faster. God, his touch was feather-soft ... hands that could break bone and snap steel, and yet could cradle a newborn baby. His sense of control was so -- sexy. "Not now."
Some instinct told her not to let it go. "We'll take this up after I nuke you a second helping."
She went back to the kitchen for another round. Dennis obligingly flipped on the overheads for her. She rinsed Angel's mug out, poured in the syrupy cool stuff, set it in the microwave and considered the control panel. It had been pretty hot last time, and she didn't want it to get clotted. Maybe she should use the defrost setting. Three more minutes, but Angel could probably use the time to get himself together. She sure could.
She punched in the numbers and closed her eyes and thought about - well, nothing, really. For the first time in her life, she wasn't operating on expectations. She didn't know what was going to be waiting for her when she came back out. Maybe he'd be gone. Maybe he'd be distant and polite. Maybe he'd - be something else.
But at least she knew needed her.
A hand touched her shoulder gently. She leaned back and felt arms slide around her waist. "Thanks, Dennis, it's okay," she murmured, and turned her head slightly to smile.
Not Dennis. Angel. He could move like a ghost when he wanted to, and in his current black-shirt, black-pants phase, he looked like one, too. No color to him at all.
When Angel hugged her -- which was not all that often -- it had always been the male-friend-hug, that slightly awkward, I'm-not-pressing-up-against-you hug. This was ... different, close and intimate; the tension was still there, but transformed. He wasn't holding himself back.
Neither of them moved for a few seconds, and then she slowly leaned against him, into his strength. His arms tightened and pulled her closer. She knew his body -- she'd stripped him down for nursing often enough, no secrets between them on that score. But still, this was different. She closed her eyes and just felt him, felt his softness and strength like velvet-covered marble. Her skin temperature was going up, blood flowing faster. He had to be able to sense that.
"Don't turn around," he said. "It's easier to say this if you're not looking at me."
"Yeah?" she whispered. Her throat felt dry, her lips damp. Where his hands pressed around her waist, she felt like she might spontaneously combust. "Okay. Sure." Brilliant. But her brain wasn't exactly in the loop.
He bent and put his head down so that his cool cheek was against her hot one. Oh, God, it felt good, like shade in the desert. She shivered.
He murmured, "You're sure you want to hear this?" and she could feel the vibration of his voice against her skin, feel the phantom brush of his lips.
One of his hands left its place at her waist and moved up, stroking gently along the curve of her cheek. She shuddered and felt herself liquefying inside. All of a sudden she was deeply, agonizingly aware of where he was soft, where he was hard, how his body pressed towards hers.
"Yes," she whispered. Not sure if she was answering his verbal question, or the one in his fingertips.
"It was the smell of you, coming from his bed. Lush, like a garden of roses in full bloom. You have no idea how delicious that smell is. I smell it on you now, because he was here, he left you wanting him - "
He breathed in the scent of her skin, and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning. Oh God. He wasn't doing anything but holding her, not even moving his hands, but she could barely stand up for wanting him. She let herself press back against him, felt him sway a little and push forward with his hips. She moved a little, side to side, she was dying for the friction, dying to feel that hardness in his crotch grow and grow.
Was she really going to do this?
She put her hands on his and guided them down, over the swell of her hips. A human man would have breathed in her ear; she would have felt his heartbeat rise. Angel was utterly silent, like a ghost. Like Dennis. The palms of his hands stopped over her womb, his fingers pressing down on her pubis.
She managed to whisper, "It wasn't Wesley."
If felt as if she'd crossed some line, but she couldn't look back now. Didn't want to look back. She felt his hands move on their own, exploring her through the thin layers of cloth. Her knees turned to rubber; she grabbed his arms for support. "Oh. Oh God."
"Don't turn around," he said. All she could feel was Angel's hands, pulling up her short skirt in slow, caressing motions. She moved her hips back against him, felt him press in return, God, this was --
His hand curved down and cupped her pubis and her mind sizzled and melted. Nothing but the thin nylon panty - already drenched - separating her from his touch.
And then he moved his hand away, and hooked his fingers in the waistband on either side and eased the elastic down her legs. The cool air made her shiver; she'd never felt so exposed, so completely naked.
She spread her feet enough to let the panties slide down on their own, and felt Angel's lips touch her neck, gentle little touches with only the slightest trace of heat, and then his fingers were back, sliding down over her mound and into satin folds.
She couldn't have stopped herself if the world was ending. She pressed back against his fingers, gasping, losing herself in the sensation of fire and ice. She put an arm around his neck to hold herself steady, to save herself from drowning in it, from falling to the floor and dying of pleasure.
"Angel - "
She felt his fingers slide into her, and this time it was a cry, not a gasp ... it was a plea for mercy. She wasn't sure who was doing the moving, but she couldn't have kept her hips still for any price, the sensation of his fingers was too much, too intense, too real. His left hand moved up her body, under her shirt, under her bra, and the feeling of his fingers brushing her nipple made her almost collapse.
His hips were moving too, dancing with hers, she could feel the solid steel of his erection and she wanted - wanted to -
She couldn't think what she wanted anymore. She just wanted. The sounds she was making were like whimpers, barely audible, and she could feel Angel's hands trembling. "Please," she whispered.
"Please what?" Three fingers inside her now, his thumb caressing her clit. "Please do this?"
He drove in deeper, and she moaned now.
"Tell me you'll stay with me," he said. "Tell me now. Now. Now."
"Oh God ..."
"Tell me, Cordelia."
"Oh God! Yes!"
"Say it."
"I'll - stay - " And there it was, a molten eruption locking every muscle in her body, her heart pounding; she could feel the silken muscles in her vagina clenched around his hand, trapping it there, God, the sweet frenzy of it made her want to keep his fingers in her for the rest of her life, and just when she thought she couldn't climb higher his thumb moved and pressed and she came again, harder, shuddering, crying out.
And then, at that instant she was most vulnerable, most his, she felt his whole body shift. It wasn't much, wasn't anything, really, but it woke something screaming inside of her.
He moved her hair and smelled her neck. She could feel that triumph radiating out of him. Cold, evil, corrupted triumph.
No.
She felt the barest scrape of teeth as the smell of hot blood washed over them. The microwave dinged.
NO! She tried to scream it, tried to wrench herself away from him, but it was too late, she'd crossed the line, she'd made the choice.
"So beautiful," he whispered, and before she could draw breath he buried his teeth in her neck, brutal, primal. She screamed but his hand was across her mouth to hold it in. Spider. A spider, nesting in the heart of the rose. Oh God, no, please -
She felt her blood spraying out into his mouth, pumping and pouring as if it was as eager to go into him as her body had been thirty seconds ago, and her mind screamed through a thousand images, Buffy’s stricken face, Xander, Giles, her mother, Connor, Angel, Wesley, Wesley -
And then The Powers That Be sent her a Vision that hit both of them with the force of an exploding bomb. She and Angelus drowned in blood, so much blood, rivers of it flowing crimson over her hands ...
Angel, laughing. Dipping his hands in it, painting her naked skin with it, the taste of it so rich and coppery and delicious in her mouth. She licked it from his fingers, drank it from his cupped hands.
She ruled with him, they ran like a two-wolf pack through the darkness, the joy of the night beat in her like the heart that no longer could.
The two of them in Sunnydale, she and Angelus. She ran down Xander and pinned him under her and peeled the skin from his face, one strip at a time while he screamed, until the smell of his blood made her forget everything and drink him dry.
Willow, Angel's plaything until she died.
Giles.
Buffy dying so terribly that even vampires turned away from the sight.
A blur of bodies, blood, sex as she and Angelus fed and mated and ruled this dark, dark world.
Spike tried to fight them and died in the sunlight, staked out for the morning rays.
Gunn. Fred.
And then Wesley, terrified and brave and oh so very sweet on her tongue as she and Angel ripped him apart and drank.
A child like Connor in her arms, her teeth descending with that sweet, hot stab of the demon emerging.
"No," Angelus said, and took the child from her arms. Cradled him like the child they had once held between them in love. "Allow me." That evil, dark, thrilling smile warmed her.
The Powers had never spoken to her, but they spoke now, and it wasn't words, it wasn't images, it was like being trapped inside a huge ringing bell, being the bell, shivering in waves, in meaning.
Without words, she understood that she was facing the future. She and Angelus, soulmates, walking in darkness. Perverting all the gifts they'd been granted. Perverting love and strength into the ultimate power to destroy.
The pressure of it was overwhelming. She knew that even her demon-reinforced strength was about to fail and the terrible force of this would shatter like glass.
And then her soul rang with one more metallic blow, and what shivered through her was knowledge. Who she was. What she had to do. What had to be done to stop this awful future.
She came out of it screaming, her throat raw with the force of it, and fell face down on the floor as Angel went to his knees and toppled to his side.
She crawled away from him and huddled in the corner, pulled her knees up to chest and buried her screams in her hands while hot tears burned like acid down her cheeks. Invisible hands wrapped around her and held her -- Dennis, trying to protect her. But nothing could protect her now. Nothing.
Angel was still thrashing, silently screaming, his fangs glittering like razors; his face pulsed as if the demon was trying to claw its way out of him. He was trying to get to her, but his body was in convulsions. She understood intuitively that the deafening voice of The Powers had disabled him; it wouldn't kill, but it would slow him down. For a few moments.
Time to escape, if she chose, but all that would buy her would be moments. It wouldn't stop what was coming.
He threw out a hand toward her. His nails scratched gouges in the linoleum. She pulled herself into a tighter ball and tried to stop herself from shaking, from screaming, from remembering. The Powers were still inside of her like a storm of golden light, showing her the rich, blazing strength they'd given her as a shield against the visions. It had saved her life, but it was meant for more.
It was meant for him.
The hardest thing she had ever done was to reach out and grab Angelus' sharp-taloned, demonic hand. His eyes flashed open, beast yellow, ready to hurt and hate.
I can't! But she could. It was who she was, and The Powers knew that.
She poured love into him, hot as burning metal. Her power. Her gift. Her curse.
Waves of it crested in them both, trapped and drowned them, and her whole body shuddered and spasmed in a pleasure so extreme it made the orgasm Angelus had given her seem like a distant memory. He'd perverted pleasure.
She'd perfected it.
Angel cried out, and his eyes weren't yellow now, they were gold, bright gold, full of her. It spilled out of him in a hot gold flood, stars spinning from his core, glittering and flashing and vanishing like fireflies into the dark. Endless, shaking, hurtful love, love stronger than pain, stronger than Angelus.
It was the shining, uncompromising love of the eternal made flesh, and humans weren't made to endure it for more than seconds.
It felt like an age to Cordelia.
When it finally stopped it was quiet, so awfully quiet. Cordelia heard herself making small, human, whimpering sounds. Angel was only inches away, and his eyes were dark and human and brimming over with --
The crash of the front door kicking in seemed far, far away. She was caught in Angel's eyes. She pulled free of Dennis' restraining arms and reached out --
Something grabbed her, not Dennis, not Angel, warm human arms that grabbed her and dragged her out of the kitchen. They wrapped around her and held her in a fierce, desperate embrace.
"Oh God, oh my God ... " Wesley kept repeating it, like a chant, as he stripped off his shirt and wadded it up to press it against her neck. What was wrong with her neck? She looked past his pale, stricken expression to focus on Angel, who lay there still as a corpse. "Can you hear me? Cordelia?"
It was such a long way to come to say, "Yes," but it was worth it. She saw the stark terror in his eyes melt into relief.
And then the relief transformed to something else as cold and inhumanly angry as anything she'd ever seen in Angelus.
He put her hand up to hold the makeshift bandage in place, and pulled a stake from his coat. He turned to where Angel lay on the scarred kitchen floor.
"No!" she screamed, and used raw animal strength to lunge forward. She fell on top of Angel like a mother protecting her child and waited for Wesley to drive the stake through both their hearts. Angel's open eyes glittered with tears. She watched him focus on her face and saw the agony in him, the desperation, the overwhelming guilt, and she knew he wanted the mercy of that stake but she couldn't let it happen. She felt raw inside, stripped empty.
The Powers had poured that love out of the core of her, and she had nothing left to give.
"Move," Wesley whispered. Rage in the word dripped on her like acid. "Cordelia, move. Don't you dare protect him now."
She turned her head and looked at him. "I won't let you kill him," she said, and her voice was clear and absolutely steady.
He took a step back from her, and she wondered what it was he saw in her face.
"You're insane," he said. "He's done something to you. Don't do this." She knew it was a warning as much as a plea, and she felt her heart break for him, but she had nothing left in her to give. Wesley's wound went too deep, bled too fiercely.
She said, very simply, "I love him. And I'm in love with him."
It went through him like a blunt, bloody knife, and she saw the light in him turn to ash. I'm so sorry, she wanted to say, but there wasn't enough sorrow in the world to fill the emptiness inside him now. And she was empty, too. Nothing left.
He let out a sound as primitive as the rage in his eyes, and lifted the stake over her. She closed her eyes.
She waited for the end, but it didn't come.
When she raised her head to look, he was gone.
"Cordy," Angel whispered. His voice sounded wounded and desperate. She moved off of him and hauled him up to lean against her, both of them still sitting on the cold, blood-spattered floor, and held him. He was completely limp. Only his eyes held any life at all, and that life was suffering.
"Shhh," she murmured, and held him in her arms and rocked him.
"I saw it. I saw it all."
"I know." She put her hand on his cold, cold face.
"What I did -- what we did -- " His voice just faded away. It was a long way back from where Angelus had taken him. But he would heal.
They would heal.
"I'm here," she whispered, and put her burning cheek against his cold one. "I'll stay. I won't leave you."
She'd said that to Angelus, but that had been about the flesh.
This was about the spirit.
###
Wesley didn't remember walking out. Didn't remember anything until he was standing at his car, staring down at the door and his hand on the handle, and then he thought with a flash of sheer horror, I left her there with him.
But the horror passed, and there was nothing to take its place.
Someone was watching him in the dark. He looked up and saw Justine leaning against the lamppost a few feet away. If anything she looked worse than before; the bruises had had time to settle in and darken, and she looked sickly yellow in the glow of the sodium light. Her knee was swollen, ballooning against the fabric of her blue jeans. He couldn't imagine how she had managed to walk on it at all.
Funny. He didn't really care.
"Did you kill them?" she asked.
"No," he replied.
"I would have." Her voice was quiet and steady and not quite the same as it had been. No taunting in it now. Maybe she recognized total desperation when she saw it, she'd seen it often enough in her own mirror.
He was drowning in burning waves of rage and betrayal and self-pity, and there was nothing to grab onto. Nothing but Justine, who was a rusted, barbed anchor to carry him straight to the bottom.
"Go away," he said tonelessly.
"Can't walk."
"You walked here."
"Cab," she said. "Followed your car. Not that it matters."
He looked up and saw her staring at him with bright, strange eyes. Was it pity? He didn't want her pity.
What he wanted ... he stopped himself from even thinking it.
"Do you think I'm your new messiah, Justine? I'm not. I'm just another one in a parade of men who find you entirely repulsive." Which he did not, entirely, mean. There was something about her that woke an uncomfortable response in him. She was like Faith, fey and fragile and doomed. "Go home."
She shrugged. "Don't have one."
"Then go to a shelter. I'm not interested."
"I'm not looking for a date," she said. "I need somebody to watch my back while I hunt."
Tempting. So very darkly tempting.
"There's a nest of leeches in the Valley. Word is that they're preying on the local kids. Don't tell me you don't want to drive a stake into a vampire's heart right about now."
She was so eerily accurate it made him want to hit her.
He fished keys from his pocket and unlocked the car, driver's side only. He started the car, stared into space for a few seconds, and saw that Justine was still there in his peripheral vision. Not moving. Just - waiting.
He unlocked the car doors with a flick of the power switch. She opened the back door and tossed in her weapons bag, then slid into the passenger seat.
The stake he'd carried for Angel he laid aside, on the console, within easy reach. Her eyes flicked to it, then to him. The sharp wood could kill a human heart as effectively as a vampire's. He wondered, in an academic way, which of them would pick it up first.
"Where?" he asked.
She smiled tightly. "Just drive. We'll find them."
He put the car in gear and said, "There is no we, Justine."
Justine shrugged and turned to look out the car window at the lights in Cordelia's apartment. "You know, I'm going to kill that bastard someday."
Wesley thought of Cordelia's face, alight with joy as she moved her hips against Angel's hand. All he had to do was touch her and she exploded. Angel had almost killed her, and she'd still chosen him. Still wanted him.
He heard the dull leaden weight in his voice when he asked, "Is this the part where I'm supposed to care?"
She smiled out at the night, and they drove, two enemies together, into the dark.
.... Story arc continues in "The Dead Church" ...