Three Sories
Title: Three Stories
By: Psychofilly
Ratings: Pgish one and all
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and have no plans to sell my fanfic on Amazon.
Summary: Three separate short fics written in the last month or so. It may be all in my head, but I realized they are loosely connected, so I thought I'd post them here. Wesley, Angel and Cordy all get their turn.
A/N This post originally just contained the last story, but after they had all been written, I realized they were really a tryptich. So I've posted them together.
Fic One: Wesley Watches
They are stationed on opposite sides of the lobby. Hiding, if he's honest, a tactical retreat if his pride has a say.
He watches Angel watch Cordelia. She, for her part, cleans with an intensity that is alarming and she reacts like a rabid dragon whenever someone approaches, so they leave her to it. The ferocity with which she attacks the counter makes him wonder what it ever did to her. Maybe it got in her way during one of her vision fits.
As a matter of fact, he does remember her sporting a bruise on her cheek a few weeks back. Knowing their Cordy she played it off for sympathy and a discount in every store and coffee house between here and her apartment. Which is completely unfair and yet, also probably true.
Angel hovers from thirty feet away and each shuffle and shift pulls at that invisible thread between them, because invariably she tenses, and if he could see her face, he knows there would be a frown. It's becoming almost as much of a trademark as her wide, traffic stopping smile.
Some days he wonders how much of Angel's attention is genuine care, or a sick leftover thrill of seeing a human being in pain. Sometimes when he holds her during a vision his eyes yellow and the shape of his face subtly shifts... no ridges, but if he checked under the bonnet, so to speak, he's positive he'd find elongated canines.
She's beginning to trust him again, and every day Wesley catches himself with a warning on the tip of his tongue. Angel is a beast, a monster, a cold blooded and merciless killer- their friend and more importantly, Cordelia's knight errant.
Cordelia needs Angel. She needs him to hold her after each vision, to promise her it will be okay, and to kill for her. That's the only thing that brings her smile back any more and though Angel doesn't realize it, she's conditioning him to crave the cycle. Vision, pain, touching, killing- cut off the head and you win a smile, a compliment, a little pellet of sunshine and happiness and hope in reward. Pavlov would be so proud.
He's sure that it can't go on this way for much longer. Gunn can sense it. Time has made him much more relaxed around Angel, but he still holds himself at a distance. Sometimes Gunn, always sharper than his outward appearance implies, corners him in the office and asks about the curse but Wesley thinks that Cordelia is far too shrewed to go down that path.
Wesley often pulls Cordelia to the side and asks her about her health. Each question is met with a smooth evasion. She's fine, except when she's not. She doesn't pretend that the visions don't hurt her, but she steadfastly refuses to admit that the pain has grown progressively more debilitating. He's all for a good stiff upper lip, but she's becoming ridiculous about it.
One day something on the scale of Vocah will happen-- or worse. He wonders what Angel will do when his world of action/reward is rudely ripped away. He's not one hundred percent sure that Angel has the strength of character to fight without it.
At the rate she's been deteriorating, he has a feeling he'll have an answer sooner rather than later. He's been hitting the books, burning the midnight oil, and drinking copious amounts of tea. None of it makes the confusing tangle of prophecies in the Scrolls of Aberjian any less obscure.
She has a broom now, and she slides her chair out of the way and attacks the dust bunnies with the same gusto that he's seen in Angel when he tears the spine out of a Feyarl demon. Angel glides closer, offering a nervous, tentative smile-- still unsure if he'll get the dragon or the lady.
She huffs her bangs out of her face and gives him the hairy eyeball. Angel retreats, but not so far as before. She didn't throw anything this time. A small victory.
It should be funny, cluing in to the slow awkward waltz that all four of them have been dancing for months now... except for the part where it isn't funny at all.
Fic Two: Angel Remembers
He still owns the Hyperion.
Angel toes a small pebble off the concrete of the walkway. He listens to the quiet burble of the fountain behind him.
"Were we in love?"
Her voice still echoes in his head, even now, over a year later.
"God yes," he wants to answer. He wishes they could do over that day, that spell. He would tell her that it didn't matter if she never knew who she was. He knew, and he loved her. Maybe without the memories the cancerous infant inside of her would have stayed dormant.
Maybe a lot of things....
Now all he has of her is a small marble stone in a quiet courtyard planted in a riot of night-blooming flowers. Everything except Jasmine. The smell of it still makes him sick and he can't imagine that it wouldn't have the same effect on her.
"Doyle Pissed me off so righteously going out like that, but he knew. He knew what he had to do. Didn't compromise. Used his last breath to make sure you'd keep fighting. I get that now."
He sits down on a bench beside the grave, looks up towards the dark lobby and remembers. She had told him, after Doyle died and her eyes nearly ended up in a glass jar. How the demon Barney had pointed out to her that Doyle had given Cordelia the most valuable thing he had. His visions as his gift. After experiencing one, he now understands why Cordelia had been less than impressed.
"I got the message." He runs his fingers along the a stray vine that's trying to creep over the side of the bench. The gardeners and maids he hired to keep the place up do good work, but there is no substitute for occupation. No substitute for love and care. "I have a plan." He smiles a little. "It's dangerous and it's stupid and I can't help but think you should be here beside us- me. Beside me."
Despair envelops him, and for a moment he's back in the box, tons of ocean overhead. The temperature around him plummets, goosebumps breaking out all over his skin. He takes a deep breath, gasping when warmth brushes over his lips and he tastes rich berries on his tongue.
"I'm right by your side. Always."
Angel jumps to his feet, nearly stumbling as he looks left and right. "Cordelia!"
Don't make it hard, Angel. I'm just on a different road... and this is my off-ramp. The Powers That Be owed me one, and I didn't waste it. I got my guy back on track.
She wasn't in the courtyard and yet--
"I get it, you know." He touches his chest, then his temple. "Heart and soul, Cordelia, but I could use your sword arm too."
His lips press together, holding in his disappointment when she doesn't appear to him. He turnes in a slow circle, and sees nothing but dark windows, dark earth, dark sky. It occurs to him that he should donate the building. Someone like Anne could use the space and Cordy would like it. The wind ruffles through his hair. Heart and soul, he thinks again.
"You save me every day, Cordelia Chase."
Fic Three: Cordelia still has regrets
"Do you think we ever lived up to our potential?"
"No." Cordelia stated flatly, just restraining herself from impatience. After all, she did have a couple of months on Wesley in the figuring things out department and she was feeling generous.
"On the wacky cosmic scale of fate, I should have died back in high-school, and you?" She chuckled. "You should have died so many times it's not even funny." She finished her margarita, licking the last of the salt off the rim, her lips smacking in satisfaction. "We were never actually destined to do very much, so I'd have to say we blew by our potential a loooong time ago."
"Really?"
She took off her glasses to better stare disbelievingly at Wesley, already ticking off a list of things she was going to get him to do now that they were here. The first item on the list would definitely be a shower, then better wardrobe, and the third thing would be to get him to loosen up.
He still held tightly to an air of prim civility that made her want to shake him until he lost the stiff upper lip and prissy-bitch attitude. Instead she smiled and set her empty drink down and grabbed the bottle of oil sitting next to it. "At least we made our lives mean something in the end. Wolfram and Hart are probably wishing they had never messed with us right about now."
"Probably," Wesley said, still sounding uncertain. "If the stunt we pulled was enough to even warrant their attention."
"Believe me," Cordelia handed him the oil and leaned forward, flipping her long hair over her shoulder so he could rub it on her back. Their eyes caught and held for a beat. "It rattled some cages."
"Why are we here again?"
"Because we're dead?" The duh was implied and she could practically feel his eyes rolling behind her back.
"I understand that." He huffed, but his hands were strong and warm on her shoulders "But why here, why the beach, why-"
All he had to do was use his big overactive brain and he'd find the answers were already there. "It's heaven, Wes. After what we've been through? We've got the sun, the sand, the water.... no demons, no more fighting." She frowned when his hands stilled, hovering over her shoulderblades like aborted wings. Something was bothering him still.
"Yes." Wes carefully closed the top and leaned back in his lounge chair. "But isn't this *your* heaven, so why am I here?"
She slipped her sunglasses on and smiled. "It wouldn't be heaven without you, now would it?"
A blush flamed red up Wesley's neck and ears. He ducked his head, but his grin was from ear to shining red ear, which really was all the reply she needed. They sat heavy lidded and quiet, letting the sun bake them for a while.
Guilt didn't get left behind here, and she was hit with a heavy dose of it when she realized that might have been the nicest thing she'd ever said to Wesley, especially towards the end when silence had stretched between them as wide and vast as the ocean, all of them stranded on islands dotting shark infested waters of lies, prophecies, sex and betrayal.
"It'll be dark soon. I bet if we hit the streets, we'll find a really nice pub just like your favorite, with fish and chips and darts and whatever else it is that makes a pub all good and publy."
She held her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare as she scanned the beach. After a few minutes she spotted a tall black man slowly heading their way. She tapped Wesley's arm and pointed, waving to Gunn when he got a little closer. Wesley sat up straighter and did a double take, his expression incredulous.
Gunn stopped and looked at Wes for a long moment, Like Wes, his soul had been ferried across the vast blue nothing and spit inexplicably back on familiar ground. A girls voice called his name from across the beach, a homecoming of a different sort... Gunn chucked Cordy a duce, a gesture so totally *him* that it hurt.
Cordy noticed Wesley's face fall as he watched Gunn embrace a dark haired girl. Another couple walked up to Gunn and after a moment, they all fell into each others arms laughing and crying.
"You know what?" She sat up, gathering her things and stuffing them into the big beach bag next to her chair. "I could use a shower, and you really need to change." She stood and held out her hand, giving Wes a tug and handing him her bag when he had his balance. It wasn't heavy. Seashells, sunscreen and a novel she'd never had time to read while alive. There was no need for her to carry weapons any more, at least not until she was ready for what lie beyond the city. "Then well go find that pub and have a nice dinner, just the two of us."
"The two?" Wes dutifully followed her as she headed back to their bungalow. "But Gunn, he..."
The wistfulness in Wesley's voice made Cordelia smile. She decided to get them a pair of shirts with BFF emblazoned across the front-- possibly in pink. It would be ridiculous and embarrasing, but she'd bully until they wore them and she knew that secretly, they'd love the attention. "He'll find us when he's ready," Cordy said reassuringly as she linked her arm with his. After all, Wes was so freshly dead that there was blood still crusted to newly healed skin. "He *will* find us, Wesley. There's no need to hurry."
Wes patted her hand, the stiffness easing out of his body in one long contented sigh. "I like the sound of that."
"Knew ya would"
By: Psychofilly
Ratings: Pgish one and all
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and have no plans to sell my fanfic on Amazon.
Summary: Three separate short fics written in the last month or so. It may be all in my head, but I realized they are loosely connected, so I thought I'd post them here. Wesley, Angel and Cordy all get their turn.
A/N This post originally just contained the last story, but after they had all been written, I realized they were really a tryptich. So I've posted them together.
Fic One: Wesley Watches
They are stationed on opposite sides of the lobby. Hiding, if he's honest, a tactical retreat if his pride has a say.
He watches Angel watch Cordelia. She, for her part, cleans with an intensity that is alarming and she reacts like a rabid dragon whenever someone approaches, so they leave her to it. The ferocity with which she attacks the counter makes him wonder what it ever did to her. Maybe it got in her way during one of her vision fits.
As a matter of fact, he does remember her sporting a bruise on her cheek a few weeks back. Knowing their Cordy she played it off for sympathy and a discount in every store and coffee house between here and her apartment. Which is completely unfair and yet, also probably true.
Angel hovers from thirty feet away and each shuffle and shift pulls at that invisible thread between them, because invariably she tenses, and if he could see her face, he knows there would be a frown. It's becoming almost as much of a trademark as her wide, traffic stopping smile.
Some days he wonders how much of Angel's attention is genuine care, or a sick leftover thrill of seeing a human being in pain. Sometimes when he holds her during a vision his eyes yellow and the shape of his face subtly shifts... no ridges, but if he checked under the bonnet, so to speak, he's positive he'd find elongated canines.
She's beginning to trust him again, and every day Wesley catches himself with a warning on the tip of his tongue. Angel is a beast, a monster, a cold blooded and merciless killer- their friend and more importantly, Cordelia's knight errant.
Cordelia needs Angel. She needs him to hold her after each vision, to promise her it will be okay, and to kill for her. That's the only thing that brings her smile back any more and though Angel doesn't realize it, she's conditioning him to crave the cycle. Vision, pain, touching, killing- cut off the head and you win a smile, a compliment, a little pellet of sunshine and happiness and hope in reward. Pavlov would be so proud.
He's sure that it can't go on this way for much longer. Gunn can sense it. Time has made him much more relaxed around Angel, but he still holds himself at a distance. Sometimes Gunn, always sharper than his outward appearance implies, corners him in the office and asks about the curse but Wesley thinks that Cordelia is far too shrewed to go down that path.
Wesley often pulls Cordelia to the side and asks her about her health. Each question is met with a smooth evasion. She's fine, except when she's not. She doesn't pretend that the visions don't hurt her, but she steadfastly refuses to admit that the pain has grown progressively more debilitating. He's all for a good stiff upper lip, but she's becoming ridiculous about it.
One day something on the scale of Vocah will happen-- or worse. He wonders what Angel will do when his world of action/reward is rudely ripped away. He's not one hundred percent sure that Angel has the strength of character to fight without it.
At the rate she's been deteriorating, he has a feeling he'll have an answer sooner rather than later. He's been hitting the books, burning the midnight oil, and drinking copious amounts of tea. None of it makes the confusing tangle of prophecies in the Scrolls of Aberjian any less obscure.
She has a broom now, and she slides her chair out of the way and attacks the dust bunnies with the same gusto that he's seen in Angel when he tears the spine out of a Feyarl demon. Angel glides closer, offering a nervous, tentative smile-- still unsure if he'll get the dragon or the lady.
She huffs her bangs out of her face and gives him the hairy eyeball. Angel retreats, but not so far as before. She didn't throw anything this time. A small victory.
It should be funny, cluing in to the slow awkward waltz that all four of them have been dancing for months now... except for the part where it isn't funny at all.
Fic Two: Angel Remembers
He still owns the Hyperion.
Angel toes a small pebble off the concrete of the walkway. He listens to the quiet burble of the fountain behind him.
"Were we in love?"
Her voice still echoes in his head, even now, over a year later.
"God yes," he wants to answer. He wishes they could do over that day, that spell. He would tell her that it didn't matter if she never knew who she was. He knew, and he loved her. Maybe without the memories the cancerous infant inside of her would have stayed dormant.
Maybe a lot of things....
Now all he has of her is a small marble stone in a quiet courtyard planted in a riot of night-blooming flowers. Everything except Jasmine. The smell of it still makes him sick and he can't imagine that it wouldn't have the same effect on her.
"Doyle Pissed me off so righteously going out like that, but he knew. He knew what he had to do. Didn't compromise. Used his last breath to make sure you'd keep fighting. I get that now."
He sits down on a bench beside the grave, looks up towards the dark lobby and remembers. She had told him, after Doyle died and her eyes nearly ended up in a glass jar. How the demon Barney had pointed out to her that Doyle had given Cordelia the most valuable thing he had. His visions as his gift. After experiencing one, he now understands why Cordelia had been less than impressed.
"I got the message." He runs his fingers along the a stray vine that's trying to creep over the side of the bench. The gardeners and maids he hired to keep the place up do good work, but there is no substitute for occupation. No substitute for love and care. "I have a plan." He smiles a little. "It's dangerous and it's stupid and I can't help but think you should be here beside us- me. Beside me."
Despair envelops him, and for a moment he's back in the box, tons of ocean overhead. The temperature around him plummets, goosebumps breaking out all over his skin. He takes a deep breath, gasping when warmth brushes over his lips and he tastes rich berries on his tongue.
"I'm right by your side. Always."
Angel jumps to his feet, nearly stumbling as he looks left and right. "Cordelia!"
Don't make it hard, Angel. I'm just on a different road... and this is my off-ramp. The Powers That Be owed me one, and I didn't waste it. I got my guy back on track.
She wasn't in the courtyard and yet--
"I get it, you know." He touches his chest, then his temple. "Heart and soul, Cordelia, but I could use your sword arm too."
His lips press together, holding in his disappointment when she doesn't appear to him. He turnes in a slow circle, and sees nothing but dark windows, dark earth, dark sky. It occurs to him that he should donate the building. Someone like Anne could use the space and Cordy would like it. The wind ruffles through his hair. Heart and soul, he thinks again.
"You save me every day, Cordelia Chase."
Fic Three: Cordelia still has regrets
"Do you think we ever lived up to our potential?"
"No." Cordelia stated flatly, just restraining herself from impatience. After all, she did have a couple of months on Wesley in the figuring things out department and she was feeling generous.
"On the wacky cosmic scale of fate, I should have died back in high-school, and you?" She chuckled. "You should have died so many times it's not even funny." She finished her margarita, licking the last of the salt off the rim, her lips smacking in satisfaction. "We were never actually destined to do very much, so I'd have to say we blew by our potential a loooong time ago."
"Really?"
She took off her glasses to better stare disbelievingly at Wesley, already ticking off a list of things she was going to get him to do now that they were here. The first item on the list would definitely be a shower, then better wardrobe, and the third thing would be to get him to loosen up.
He still held tightly to an air of prim civility that made her want to shake him until he lost the stiff upper lip and prissy-bitch attitude. Instead she smiled and set her empty drink down and grabbed the bottle of oil sitting next to it. "At least we made our lives mean something in the end. Wolfram and Hart are probably wishing they had never messed with us right about now."
"Probably," Wesley said, still sounding uncertain. "If the stunt we pulled was enough to even warrant their attention."
"Believe me," Cordelia handed him the oil and leaned forward, flipping her long hair over her shoulder so he could rub it on her back. Their eyes caught and held for a beat. "It rattled some cages."
"Why are we here again?"
"Because we're dead?" The duh was implied and she could practically feel his eyes rolling behind her back.
"I understand that." He huffed, but his hands were strong and warm on her shoulders "But why here, why the beach, why-"
All he had to do was use his big overactive brain and he'd find the answers were already there. "It's heaven, Wes. After what we've been through? We've got the sun, the sand, the water.... no demons, no more fighting." She frowned when his hands stilled, hovering over her shoulderblades like aborted wings. Something was bothering him still.
"Yes." Wes carefully closed the top and leaned back in his lounge chair. "But isn't this *your* heaven, so why am I here?"
She slipped her sunglasses on and smiled. "It wouldn't be heaven without you, now would it?"
A blush flamed red up Wesley's neck and ears. He ducked his head, but his grin was from ear to shining red ear, which really was all the reply she needed. They sat heavy lidded and quiet, letting the sun bake them for a while.
Guilt didn't get left behind here, and she was hit with a heavy dose of it when she realized that might have been the nicest thing she'd ever said to Wesley, especially towards the end when silence had stretched between them as wide and vast as the ocean, all of them stranded on islands dotting shark infested waters of lies, prophecies, sex and betrayal.
"It'll be dark soon. I bet if we hit the streets, we'll find a really nice pub just like your favorite, with fish and chips and darts and whatever else it is that makes a pub all good and publy."
She held her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare as she scanned the beach. After a few minutes she spotted a tall black man slowly heading their way. She tapped Wesley's arm and pointed, waving to Gunn when he got a little closer. Wesley sat up straighter and did a double take, his expression incredulous.
Gunn stopped and looked at Wes for a long moment, Like Wes, his soul had been ferried across the vast blue nothing and spit inexplicably back on familiar ground. A girls voice called his name from across the beach, a homecoming of a different sort... Gunn chucked Cordy a duce, a gesture so totally *him* that it hurt.
Cordy noticed Wesley's face fall as he watched Gunn embrace a dark haired girl. Another couple walked up to Gunn and after a moment, they all fell into each others arms laughing and crying.
"You know what?" She sat up, gathering her things and stuffing them into the big beach bag next to her chair. "I could use a shower, and you really need to change." She stood and held out her hand, giving Wes a tug and handing him her bag when he had his balance. It wasn't heavy. Seashells, sunscreen and a novel she'd never had time to read while alive. There was no need for her to carry weapons any more, at least not until she was ready for what lie beyond the city. "Then well go find that pub and have a nice dinner, just the two of us."
"The two?" Wes dutifully followed her as she headed back to their bungalow. "But Gunn, he..."
The wistfulness in Wesley's voice made Cordelia smile. She decided to get them a pair of shirts with BFF emblazoned across the front-- possibly in pink. It would be ridiculous and embarrasing, but she'd bully until they wore them and she knew that secretly, they'd love the attention. "He'll find us when he's ready," Cordy said reassuringly as she linked her arm with his. After all, Wes was so freshly dead that there was blood still crusted to newly healed skin. "He *will* find us, Wesley. There's no need to hurry."
Wes patted her hand, the stiffness easing out of his body in one long contented sigh. "I like the sound of that."
"Knew ya would"