BtVS songfic: Like Glass

Jun 25, 2005 02:14


Title: Like Glass
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don’t own anybody and I don’t own the song (Mediaeval Baebes’ “Glass Window”).
Summary: A songfic with Angel’s thoughts on Cordelia and Buffy.
Distribution: If you want it, take it, just tell me you’re doing it.
Spoilers: Umm. A teensy one for the current season. If you haven’t seen it I doubt I’m giving anything away anyhow.
Notes: See? I’m not dead! Also, the song is off the Mediaeval Baebes’ album “The Rose”, if you’re wondering. Also also, I felt like trying to be a little sympathetic to Angel’s (hem) affection for Cordelia so she isn’t portrayed as totally evil.
Notes2: I was also informed that the fourteenth amendment of the US constitution states that as long as both parents are both American citizens the kids are too, even if they’re born elsewhere. So, that means I will have that inaccuracy hanging over my head forever in relation to “The Skate.” Forgive me (since I have no intention of working around that for a bleedin’ fanfic)?
Feedback: Comments? Questions? Complaints? Send it to scwlc@yahoo.ca

Fred had recently developed a taste for some pseudo mediaeval group of women singers and that meant that everyone had to listen to them all the time of late. It was only fair after all, since they had heard Lorne’s show tunes constantly in the weeks since the demon had returned as apologies for something to do with something called ‘Fluffy’. Angel had decided not to ask. Before the whole mess with Darla and Connor it had been Cordelia’s pop music, Wesley’s attempts to appreciate British punk, Gunn’s Geek rock, and everyone’s decision but Angel’s, that Angel *must* want to listen to Celtic wave because he was from Ireland.

So they were listening to Fred’s album. She had enthusiastically read the liner notes about how this was a 16th century poem. He really didn’t care. All the vampire knew was that he disliked the recorder as an instrument and that the uneasy harmonies were making him as uncomfortable as he had once been attempting the cheerful behaviour now second nature to him.

//Through the glass window shines the sun//

He shifted uncomfortably in his close proximity to the sunlight, wishing absently that he could go to bed and sleep the day through the way he used to. This being awake during the day still made him uncomfortable. Sure Cordelia told him it was important that he learn to spend time doing things in places and times that ‘normal’ people did but he always felt discombobulated by the daylight. It was making him itch.

//Through the glass window shines the sun//
//And I so young//

As the singers continued singing wordlessly he smiled remembering the times he had been young. Living in Ireland under his parents roof. His smile slowly began to slip away. His daily ration of abuse, the way his father targeted him as a wastrel and a layabout because he loved to draw and wanted to be an artist. The memories of reading of far away places and seeing them in his mind’s eye, shining but untouchable. That same feeling of bright and beautiful lands hovering just out of reach haunted him as he strove to reach them.

//Through the glass window shines the sun//

When he was human though, he hadn’t known what a wonder it was to live where he did. The pure unsullied land and water, the crisp clear air, the way everything had just seemed so real then in a way this city of smog and grime, noise and a hundred smells that grated on him with their unnaturalness. Everything here felt just a little off. As though he should be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else. Not something different, just . . . else.

Even he knew that thought was a tad insane. He frowned, glancing at Cordelia who sat bathed in sunlight, her blonde hair gleaming gently and he smiled. She was beautiful, golden and shining, his light in the darkness. She looked up and smiled back at him and Angel felt his breath catch. Well, it would have caught if he did breathe. Although, now that he was thinking of it, he did pretend to breathe to make people a little more comfortable and even panted with exertion when he didn’t have to. A small semblance of humanity but one that often meant the difference between being caught by a vampire hunter and not.

So his breath should have caught in the involuntary reflex action. It didn’t then . . . He was definitely thinking too much. Cordelia was his golden glowing light, even if the dark streaks where her natural brunette showed through the dye were a tad off-putting. Buffy, after all, had never let her dye job look that bad. Certainly she’d never looked like she had a yellowed miniature zebra on her head.

He had to focus on something else.

//Through the glass window shines the sun//

Were they ever going to sing anything else? His eyes longingly followed Gunn and Lorne out into the sunshine in the courtyard.

//How should I, how should I//
//How should I love?//

The mention of love brought him back to Cordelia. He’d never thought he would move on after Buffy, never thought he would meet someone as wonderful as Cordelia. He could only guess why he’d never noticed how wonderful she was. It had taken Fred pointing out to him that Cordelia was perfect for him that he had realised how wonderful his seer was. Fred, who hadn’t even really been around people for so long, it was amazing that she could see how perfect for each other he and Cordelia were. Especially when no one else had.

Of course she had her faults, who didn’t? She could be selfish it was true. One had to overlook the way she manipulated people for her own gain. After all, if it weren’t for Cordelia he wouldn’t be where he was now. Owner of a hotel, it was a little (okay a lot) dilapidated, but that was okay. He had a detective agency. Well, he didn’t actually. He worked for the people who were once his employees. Only he was the one who did the majority of the decision-making, fighting, paying of bills, and his name was on all the business cards Cordelia had printed up back when he still had an apartment to himself. Now he had a hotel suite that was apparently open to all and sundry at any hour of the day or night.

And, okay, so Cordelia was a little bit too determined to make him human. She never let him just bite open the blood bags anymore when he got some of the slightly gone over stuff from the hospital, he had to drink out of a mug. So he had to take her shopping, and carry her bags. He’d been told that boyfriends were supposed to do things like that. Cordelia had said so.

Actually, it was kind of funny now that he thought of it. He had gone shopping with Buffy and never hated it. And Buffy had talked almost as much as Cordelia did. But then, she had been talking about her day at school and her mother and the demons they’d fought the night before. Cordelia didn’t seem to talk about anything but clothes. When she asked his opinion she simply ignored it. He remembered being intimately involved in picking out Buffy’s clothes when she asked him to be. When he said something she had taken it into account.

Why was he thinking so much of Buffy all of a sudden anyhow?

//How should I, how should I//
//How should I love?//

He recalled the near-worship he had felt for Buffy at times. The friendship and the way they could say anything to each other. She had told she loved him without question or qualification. It was more than could be said for Cordelia who got upset with him if he stayed vamped out for too long after a fight.

The more he thought of it, the more he realised that he was comparing the two girls and their similarities. Angel started and glanced up, but Fred was still humming as she looked through the musty tome before her, and Cordelia’s blonde head was lolling back against the couch cushions. He looked at her hard for a moment and wondered why she had dyed her hair. The cutting he could understand, demon muck was easier to get out of short than long hair, but the colour didn’t look right. It made her look . . . unfinished.

In fact, she seemed to be ever so slightly less than Buffy in every way he could think of. Where Buffy was unconditional in her affection, Cordelia’s only went so far as the person in question agreed with her without question. On Buffy the blonde made her like a ray of light, on Cordelia it was gilding over cheap plaster at Coney Island.

//Silver is white//

Cordelia was like silver. A precious metal, smooth and shining, beautiful when cared for properly. Easily blackened and tarnished when not. He always had to remember to be careful with her. Funny, He’d never had to be quite so careful with Buffy. But then, he always wanted to be. Cordelia made him sometimes want to sling her into a chaos demon’s nest.

She was like silver in another way too. Silver was precious, to be sure, but it was hardly the most precious metal in existence. She could be replaced, and frequently there were others who could have done what she did better. He still missed Doyle’s less dramatic way of passing on his visions with no small longing. He missed having backup in a fight that he didn’t have to worry about. Sure his friends, even Fred and Cordelia, could take care of themselves, but with Doyle he’d never had to keep a constant eye over one shoulder on the fight behind him.

//Red is the gold//

Buffy was golden. He closed his eyes as he recalled to mind the first moment he saw her. The way his doubts about the demon beside him melting as he was shown something so perfect, so wondrous that nothing evil could possibly sully it. She was like gold that way. Beautiful no matter where you put it and what you did with it, valuable as an ornament and as an item in itself. Just as gold could be used for jewellry and microchips so could Buffy be both beautiful and useful.

But her usefulness wasn’t nearly as clean as a computer chip. What she did went beyond useful. She was an indispensable warrior for the side of Good, her golden beauty so frequently soaked in the multicoloured blood of the demons she fought. He knew that she still had nightmares of the blood on her hands from when she had tried to kill Faith, and the gruesome horrors she failed to prevent and stop haunted her constantly. Her true self, so often drowning in the seas of blood in her life, still glowed through.

Still that damned repetitive, irritating song continued.

//The robes, they lay in fold//
//They lay in fold//

What the hell did that mean? He glanced up, noticed everyone but Fred looking at him quizzically as though they expected him to know what it meant. He frowned and shrugged. They went back to work except Cordelia who smiled and waved flirtatiously. Angel pretended he hadn’t noticed. He silently admitted that perhaps he was a little over the top in believing he loved Cordelia that much. He’d never wanted to pretend he hadn’t noticed Buffy. Even when he was irritated or angry with her he still wanted her near. Half the time he wished Cordelia was in Siberia.

//How should I, how should I//
//How should I love?//

The question reared its ugly head again, and Angel had to admit he was going to have to reevaluate his relationship. How did he love her? He loved Cordelia as someone who provided him with companionship on long lonely days and nights. He loved her as someone who pushed him to things he needed to do. She made him keep up with humanity again, something he had done only rarely since he first regained his soul. She comforted him sometimes.

But not always.

//How should I, how should I//
//How should I love?//

Sometimes she would attack him for things he had done. She never forgave him those events either. He loved her dearly, but in a choice between one friend or another she had only as much chance as anyone else. To love her, not as a friend, but as a man loves a woman, he could never place her first in his heart. Never was a long time, especially to an immortal, but it was true. As long as Buffy lived she would come first in his thoughts, and for a long time after.

And how did he love Buffy? He loved her with all the depth and breadth of the ocean, and to the heights of the mountains. He heard Cordelia and Gunn begin to quietly joke about Fred’s CD and shook himself out of his poetic reverie. Too much Browning. Still, he couldn’t help but wax poetic about his soulmate. It was something he never did with Cordelia. Then again, in comparison with Buffy, Cordy was a music video to Buffy’s Shakespeare.

//Through the glass window//

Cordelia held him at arm’s length , forcing him to watch her life through a barrier. She allowed him to watch but no more. When she deigned to come to him was the only time it melted away. Even then the knowledge that she would leave hung over them. It had never been so with Buffy. No matter what his slayer did she always let him fully in. She had confided in him and had always tried to involve him with her and her friends.

But Buffy was now more unattainable than Cordelia. The unadulterated love and acceptance, beauty and sensuality, understanding and compassion that Buffy did not share with the seer were the very things which made her both his other half and his downfall. He could only love her from a distance and watch her life as it sped past him. He would lose his soul if he were to be with her.

//How should I love?//

Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. How could he love Cordelia as long as his heart belonged to Buffy? He didn’t love her as he did Buffy, neither as much nor in the same way. He couldn’t give Buffy what she deserved either. She deserved a whole man, not a eunuch. He could only love one from afar, the other not nearly enough. The torment of separation touched everything he loved.

//Through the glass window//

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