A/N: Hello, everyone! This story is based on a tumblr prompt in which Cordelia leaves the coven after Misty's death and eventually takes on the persona of Hypodermic Sally, unaware that Misty has returned from Hell and is continually searching for her. This will be a multi-chapter fic! Please heed the warnings noted in the summary. Thank you! (✿◠‿◠)
Once upon a time, Cordelia had a job, and a home. She had hope, and a future. She had someone.
You'd think that to conjure up such illuminating memories in her place so void of light would be an effortless task, and you would be right. Which is precisely why she sits with a needle poised above her favorite (and expediently, the most convenient) vein, a silk sash for a makeshift tourniquet wrapped tightly around her upper arm.
Why waste such precious reminiscence, especially in her broken state? Why barricade the thoughts with a wall of hazy euphoria and fraught languor when tangible happiness brushes past her fingertips so nonchalantly? Because she ruined it. She took her opportunity and inadvertently crushed it beneath knuckles white with anxiety and cowardice.
But she can't afford to think about that now, as a warm wave of numbness washes over her. She can't move. She can't breathe. She loves it.
Just like she loved her.
Suddenly, the tides grow hostile, and she is pulled from her blissful spot on the surface to the depths of the ocean. All she can see is her: her soulful gazes and bright eyes and vivacious grins and flushed cheeks and ivory skin and wild blond hair—
"Follow my voice."
"We are all here waiting for you."
"Sequere lucem, venite ad me."
She opens her eyes with a start and, in a flurry of anger and despair, picks up the nearest possible object and beams it at the opposing wall, tilting her head back and letting out a cry that quickly shifts into a sob. Her shoulders shake as she weeps, tears rolling down her made-up face and landing on the floor with soft plops.
She lost everything when she lost her. Her very being had crumbled to dust alongside her love.
She rests her head on her knees and does not stop crying.
At four months, the police stop looking. At seven, Zoe and Queenie follow suit. It has been two years, nine months, three weeks, and four days, but Misty's search continues to soldier on.
It is on the anniversary of her disappearance, however, that Misty's resolve begins to crack. She thinks that perhaps she was foolish not to heed the others' warnings that she was wasting her time on a dead woman. That Cordelia Goode really had run off and killed herself out of guilt and shame.
It is all her fault. She flinches at the pain of regret that stabs her chest; she should have contacted the Coven the moment that she awoke, alive, in her swamp shack. But she hadn't. She had waited out of the fear that her surroundings were some kind of cruel trick, a game that Papa Legba was playing with her. And when the realization that she had indeed been granted back her life finally dawned on her, it was two weeks too late.
She crumples to the floor and hugs her knees to her chest, soaking her floral skirt with tears that refuse to cease falling for the entire night.