Title: Whitewash
Author: Lady Shalott
Email: G
Category: Season five reflection
Content: C/S friendship
Summary: A woman is trapped in a whitewashed prison.
Spoilers: Unless you didn't know that Cordy was in a coma and Spike crossed over from BTVS.
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss
Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: FSB, of course; others only need to ask.
Notes: Very short ficlet to jump start my muse. I know I still owe some people chapter four of Taken Back.
Feedback: Is loved more than Karl Urban.

She despised her prison. Every day she paced this floor, inside these four walls cursing her life and the chain of events that led her here. Every day it was the same. No one came, only her "guards" who held her in this place with white gloves and syringes.

She often looked at the still body in the bed.

That had been her, once. In a time long ago when she had family; loved ones to watch out for her. Now, she was alone and the girl on the bed was dying. No one came.

Gunn didn't come. Why would he? The nurses here gossiped, and a comatose patient wouldn't tell. Cordelia knew all about his "brain" upgrade and how he was the new legal whiz kid at Wolfram and Hart. It hurt her to think that all these years he had believed they didn't know what truly was up there. Like the nurse said, doctors couldn't create matter. They could only work with what was already present. Gunn had it in him all along. Wolfram and Hart only allowed him to access it.

Fred didn't come. She was busy, very busy with what was apparently some top-secret experiment. Cordelia never did find out what the experiment was, but a nurse had made sure to tell her when it was complete. Still Fred did not come.

Wesley didn't come. It made Cordy ache inside. He was her brother, her comrade-at-arms, yet his time was spent doing what he loved most. Research. Sometimes Cordelia cried with missing Wesley.

The other didn't come. Cordelia never cried for him. He had put her in this prison and left her here to rot. Sometimes she screamed at him in rage, wishing he could hear her. She begged him, for the love of all that they had experienced don't let her remain forever in this cell of whitewashed walls. He never came. The nurses didn't talk about him much.

One day someone came. It was a being Cordelia had never expected to see again in her life, much less in her prison. The harsh fluorescents didn't do much for his skin tone, but then who could say different? Cordelia watched in amazement as he sat down beside the bed and began speaking to her.

"'Lo Cheerleader. Imagine my surprise when Fred tells me you are down here pulling a sleeping beauty". Spike looked at her drawn face and bony collar. "'Cept it looks less like sleeping beauty and more like Tales from the Crypt".

"Hey!" Cordelia exclaimed, indignant. "Think what you would look like if you only had a liquid diet". She paused, looking at him. "Forget I said that".

Spike sighed. "Why'd they do this to you, pet? Even when I didn't 'ave a soul, I took care of mine".

Cordelia sat gingerly in the chair across from him. "You think I don't ask myself that every day? Man, that bleach must've seeped right into your brain cells."

Spike leaned forward, and took Cordelia's limp hand. "Now, I know we weren't friends back in the day but I've been trying out the 'ole 'elping the 'elpless gig and I know a victim when I see one". He leaned closer to her, and Cordy had to strain forward in her seat to hear him. "I promise, pet, you won't go on forgotten any more".

He left after a few minutes more of silence and again Cordelia was thrust into despair. She waited for an eternity of white walls and white gloves to begin once more. But he came again. And again. He brought flowers, and talked to her. Such simple things, these, things that her other friends should have done. They didn't. Spike did.

Suddenly her whitewashed path to redemption didn't seem so bleak.