Title: Girlfriend In A Coma
Author: Phaedra's Love
Fandom: BtVS/Ats
Pairing: Cordelia/Faith
Disclaimer: Cordelia and Faith do not belong to me. All that you see here belongs to Joss.
Cordelia feels closer to Faith than she's ever felt before. It's so strange it's nearly perplexing, distracting. Faith is so still, so pale that it makes Cordelia's heart swell in her chest. Faith had always been pale but the sickly alabaster shade of her skin against the pressed white sheets makes Cordelia's stomach turn.
Somewhere in her brain she associates Faith with queasiness. The rush of adrenaline through her veins, the tingle in her toes, the warmth spreading across her tan skin. Faith is like thunder and lightning wrapped up in a pair of leather pants and a smarmy smirk. She swept into everyone's life like a hurricane, and left a path of destruction ten miles long before settling quietly into nothingness.
Except Cordelia knows the truth. This isn't the aftermath. It isn't the end.
It's just the eye of the storm.
She creeps in closer, sitting down next to the pale still girl in the hospital bed and threads her fingers through the small hand lying lifelessly on the bed. If she clenches her hand too hard she's afraid she'll snap and break every single bone in Faith's hand. It's the perplexing part. All of this thunder and lightning with no electricity left to run, Cordelia finally has the upper hand and she doesn't want it.
Cordelia feels closer to Faith than she's ever felt before, which to be fair she figures is a strange thought pattern regarding someone who's touched all of her. And not in the blindly groping way she once let Xander Harris paw her in the backseat of her car. Where Xander had been warm and clumsy, Faith had been like fire and deft. Xander had been tentative where Faith was demanding, forcing Cordelia to yield over and over again.
Faith is everything she's ever been raised to hate in the world, wrong side of the tracks didn't even begin to cover it. It still didn't change things. Facts were facts and from the minute Faith sauntered into town Cordelia wanted her. She wanted a taste of the inky grey that Faith fastidiously maneuvered in.
"I lost everything." Her voice sounds unnatural but she presses on through the lump in her throat. "I guess Daddy's been cheating the IRS for a few years...or decades and they pretty much frown on that. They hauled him off to prison last week, today the collectors came and took everything we own."
She's not sure why considering the diagnosis, but she expects to hear the sound of that familiar rugged low laughter. Expects to hear Faith suddenly wake up if only to tell her that she's glad the Princess finally got what was coming to her.
But Faith doesn't move and Cordelia can't help but let a shroud of disappointment, of complete and utter finality push it's way past the layer of hope that surrounds her.
"So I got accepted to all of these colleges and I can't afford to go." Cordelia laughs a little at the irony, before letting a thin veneer of seriousness settle back over her. "I can't even afford UC Sunnydale."
She stops and frowns, let's her warm eyes sweep over the pale form in front of her. An irrational wave of anger blazes over her, and even though it's not an altogether unfamiliar feeling she's daunted by it. There's no reaction. Literally. No matter how far Faith falls, Cordelia can always provoke a reaction out of her. It's the foundation their relationship has been built on from day one. One pushes, the other pulls and then they reverse. But now there's nothing in the sterile room but a blanket of silence and cold fluorescent lights.
"I just thought you should know that evil Mayor guy you sold out to work for is dead."
She presses her lips into a thin line, very nearly surprised by her own angry outburst. It's not as if she expects Faith to suddenly jump out of bed and slam a knife into her gut, but somewhere she almost longs for it. Because something, anything was better than this nothing.
The anger dissipates all too quickly and there's nothing but more silence filling up the room. But Cordelia wants to be angry, silently begging for it. Faith betrayed all of them, including her. Turned her back on all of them to go work for Mayor Wilkins, decided killing everyone would be a good idea and why?
To get back at Buffy.
Buffy Summers is just another ghost silently sitting between the two of them, never saying anything but only casting dower judgement with one look in her eyes. It should have been the glue, the tie that binds them together but instead it only forced them farther apart.
And somewhere Cordelia hates herself, because she knows it wasn't just Buffy who pushed Faith over the edge. Faith wanted things from Cordelia that she hadn't been ready to give, and why? Because of a reputation? A fat bank account and indifferent parents? Because of a station in life that dictated she was better than Faith? At first Cordelia thought it was just another step in the push and the pull, another move in the constant game until Faith was so lost Cordelia knew she'd never be able to pull her back.
In one single swipe, one final audit everything was gone. Every lie she'd told herself to help her sleep at night was yanked out from underneath her and the only thing left was a pale wisp, a ghost of a girl who'd once made her blood boil with heat. She finally understands Faith. Cordelia understands what it's like to have nothing.
"I didn't mean for things to be like this." She whispers, her fingers tightening around Faith's. Tears brim to the edge of her eyes, a part of her she'd never let Faith see before.
The problem is Faith doesn't see anything anymore. Not her. Not anything.
In some ways she thinks it's a relief. With the Mayor dead, Buffy victorious and not a single visitor in sight Cordelia almost wishes that Faith would keep dreaming forever. The doctors say that she will, but Cordelia knows the truth. Faith is strong. It's only the eye of the storm.
"I just came here because I had to tell you I'm leaving. I'm going to L.A. I can't stay in Sunnydale after all of this and...I think I have a real shot at being an actress."
Another beat and Faith is still as Cordelia holds her breath. Her silence is unspoken approval and Cordelia's not sure if it's a cop-out or the end of something that should have been brilliant but fizzled into static.
"I'm sorry."
It's barely a whisper but it's enough, and suddenly Cordelia is motivated. She needs to leave and not just the hospital, but the town. Her days in California's Hellmouth are numbered and if she doesn't leave now she's afraid she never will.
She wants to press a kiss into the fleshy cold palm but instead lays Faith's hand gently on the bed before heading straight for the door. At the threshold she pauses and contemplates one last look back.
There's no time for looking back in moving on so instead she only moves forward.
By the time Faith comes back it's already too late. Shown to a small room in a law firm that had once offered to pay her off to kill Angel. She's not even ready to speculate about Angel's new position in the world because she's been completely focused on one thing since she stepped off the plane in L.A. Finding Cordelia.
She can still feel the cold presence of Angel behind her, but it's not his lack of body heat that gives him away. It's the distinct feeling of regret in the air, just another cold comfort in the air. She wants to begrudge him that, the way he always seems to swoop in and steal her girls from her. But that's the most impertinant fact about being Faith. She owns nothing.
Besides, she's long past the days of seeing flashing blaring red everytime Angel moves in what she perceives to be her territory. Now the failure, the cross to bear, the weight can be distributed evenly among the two of them.
It's too rationalized, too completely thought out and Faith has never been a very rational person. She sees facts, she moves on emotion, she jumps without looking.
And that's what Cordelia Chase was. Jumping without looking. Want. Take. Have. Once upon a time Faith had seen a bitchy girl in a cute cheerleading uniform with a perky rack and decided it was what she wanted. So she took. And took.
That was practically a lifetime ago, but not everyone had spent a few of their best years behind bars. Faith isn't stupid, she knows how much Cordelia changed during those years and she wishes she could say it was for the better.
She waits patiently until Angel withdraws, heading back upstairs to do more evil paperwork or whatever it is that he does for Wolfram and Hart. It could be sacrificing virgins to Satan for all Faith cares at the moment. Because the only thing she can see is Cordelia laying silently in her bed.
A few tentative steps closer and Faith's not sure if she should sit down next to her or not. The itch in her shoes wants to propel her into a constant pace at the foot of Cordelia's bed but she forces herself to a standstill. Staring down at the girl who used to drive her half wild.
"Angel did some spell, ya know. Some whack deal with Wolfram and Hart to make everybody forget about Connor. Guess it only works on L.A. though cause I remembered him."
She regrets the outburst immediately, the familiar anger that had once driven her straight off the edge. The desperation that had driven Cordelia away from her in the first place.
The anger fades but the regret never does. So many things she wishes desperately that she could have done differently. Cordelia never came to visit her once in prison. Not once. She doesn't harbor any grudges considering the elbow to the face Cordelia took right before Faith was incarcerated but she thinks about all of the time she missed.
She'll never understand how she could have gone away knowing Cordelia was playing Gidget secretary to Angel and come back out to find her snuggled up with Angel's son.
It wasn't just the snuggling that bothered her. It wasn't as if Faith hadn't expected Cordelia to move on after everything that had been said and done. It was everything from the cold reception at the door to the soft roundening stomach. The indication that things were never going to be the same again.
Finally Faith forces herself to sit in the hard plastic chair at Cordelia's bedside. She thinks about holding her hand but can already hear the nasty snip of Cordelia's voice in her head. She can still Cordelia's fingers slipping into Connor's hand as Faith stood at the doorway next to Wes. So instead she crosses her arms over her chest and leans back with a frown.
"Never meant for things to be like this." She mutters under her breath. "I just thought...thought you were done with me. Thought you didn't want me around. I never should've left you."
And just as if nothing had changed Cordelia became inconsequential in conjunction with the idea that Buffy needed help a few counties away in Sunnydale. After spending days fighting to the near death with Angelus the idea of sticking it out in L.A. to try and figure things out with Cordelia seemed close to torturous. Instead she fled as fast as he could towards Sunnydale. Because even dealing with the constant swirl of angst revolving around Buffy seemed easier.
Cordelia had always hated that. The minute Buffy came to call and Faith would be doing everything but somersaults to get the blonde slayer's attention. She'd never tried that hard with Cordelia and Cordelia knew it.
She left, and refused to look back understanding only that Cordelia had finally washed her hands. It had never occured to her for even a moment that something was fundamentally wrong with the girl she used to know so well. It wasn't until one solitary night curled up on a drafty twin bed that a gnawing feeling began to eat a hole through her heart like a cancer. Waking up from a nightmare where nothing was as it seemed.
A nightmare where she had turned her back on something that should have meant more. At the time she understood that it wasn't a nightmare, that she'd lived through it but this time it was different. This time it wasn't Faith who had fallen, but Cordelia. An abundance of evidence right in front of her face and Faith had chosen once again to ignore it.
"I should have saved you." Her voice cracks with the weight of all of the things she knows she could have had in the world but never tried hard enough to get. "Never meant for things to be like this."
She stands up suddenly, feeling stagnant and vicious. The urge to pace takes hold of her again and she has to clench her teeth so hard her jaw nearly breaks to keep herself in place. Dark eyes sweep the length of her the girl who's window she used to climb into every night so long ago. She looks the same, older but the same. Any minute now she expects Cordelia to come to life and demand that she stop crying for her. That she doesn't have the right to even be here.
"One day I'm gonna make things right with us." She whispers. "Promise."
And as she leaves she recounts the diagnosis in her head. There's no making things right because only slayers wake up from comas.
She's less certain whether the beautiful lie was meant for herself or for Cordelia.