When he first heard the voices, he thought they must be his own. He could not be sure, since he could not remember what his own voice sounded like. Although perhaps this should have been a distressing realization, it was not. He did not seem able to feel anything, even on the emotional level. On the physical level, he felt absolutely nothing. It was as if there was nothing to be felt. The voices were his only link to the outside world, for he had soon become aware that they were not speaking his thoughts. Even the voices came and went sporadically, as if he were drifting in and out…of what? A few of the voices were familiar, but there was one voice in particular that came more frequently than the rest. He began to anticipate it, often waiting impatiently for the silence to be broken. There was something special about this voice. Sometimes it seemed he could almost feel it: the flow of air, the vibrations, the variations in tone and pitch. Once, it occurred to him that he loved the voice. He did not know why; he could not remember what it meant to love. He only knew that he felt a sense of belonging when he heard it speak, and a sense of elation when he heard it laugh. The screams were something else entirely.
"What is taking you so long?"
"Sorry, sorry...I can't find anything in these drawers."
"Now is not the time to be making snide comments on my organizational skills," Cordelia growled. She was sitting on the couch with her knees pressed into her body and her arms holding her head in a vice-like grip. "And Angel can always find them."
"Well, Angel's not here now," said Wesley. "And I'm doing the best I can."
"I'm beginning to see why Doyle was at the pub so much," Cordelia muttered between clenched teeth.
"Found it!" Wesley emerged triumphantly from behind Cordelia's desk, flourishing a bottle of extra-strength pain medication.
Cordelia looked up. "Oh…nice…it's doing me so much good from over there."
"Sorry," Wesley said again, opening the bottle as he hurried over to the couch. He shook two pills into his hand and extended them towards Cordelia, then looked over his shoulder, trying to locate the glass of water he knew was around somewhere.
"Two? Yeah, right," she said, snatching the bottle and counting out six pills, which she swallowed without the aid of the water.
"Look now…." Wesley said, then "Oh, I say…."
Cordelia raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"What I mean is…don't you ever worry about becoming addicted to these things? Or overdosing?"
"Tell you what," replied Cordelia, slowly easing herself down onto the couch. "When you feel as if someone has taken a jackhammer to your parietal lobe twice in one day, then we'll talk." She grabbed a pillow and held it over her face.
Wesley nodded as sympathetically as he could, then waited expectantly, a pad of paper and a pencil in his hands.
"Some kind of rush of demons," Cordelia said, her voice muffled.
"What kind?" asked Wesley, licking the tip of his pencil and holding it poised over the pad of paper.
"I said 'some kind of rush of demons,'" she repeated, taking the pillow off of her face.
"No, I heard you the first time; I was just asking for clarification."
Cordelia sat up. "You know, I could use some of that myself. But it was just a bunch of demons…it was like watching a series of mug shots being flashed onto the screen of some…demon-hunter Power Point presentation."
Wesley did his best not to look confused and failed. "Um…perhaps the best way to go about this would be for you to describe the demons to me, and then we can better go about our research."
"There were a bunch of vampires," said Cordelia. "I do remember that much." She stopped.
"What?"
"Some of them looked like they were in a lot of pain," Cordelia said. "You don't think this could be dangerous for Angel, do you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Wesley. "Everything is dangerous for Angel. And it's never stopped him before."
The door to the office swung open to reveal Angel, cleaning blood off of a knife with a large handkerchief.
"You see?" said Wesley, then turned to Angel. "Easy job, I take it?"
"Kaba demon," said Angel. "Just charge them the simple extermination rate, Cordel…." He trailed off as he looked at Cordelia for the first time since he got in. "What happened?"
"Rush o' demons on the way," she summarized.
"Details?"
"Not as such, but I'm working on it."
"Huh. Okay. Keep me posted. I'll be in the basement if you need me," said Angel.
"He certainly is a calm fellow," Wesley said as Angel descended in the elevator.
Angel was reading in a leather armchair, his feet propped up on the mahogany coffee table in front of him. Cordelia's entrance was quiet, but not quiet enough to elude detection. He had had over two hundred years to develop his senses, and he had made good use of them. He looked up from his book. "Hi," he said, then waited. Two hundred years had cultivated the gift of small talk out of Angel.
"Hey," Cordelia responded, unusually subdued. She sat down in the chair opposite Angel. "Reading, huh?"
"It's a thing I do," replied Angel.
"A lot," she said.
"One of the advantages of living forever," said Angel, "is that you get to put a dent in your reading list." He closed his book and put it on the end table on his right, then folded his arms in a casual way. "What's up?"
"What do you mean?"
"Come on, Cordelia. I know you didn't come down here to discuss classical literature."
Cordelia smiled. "I described the demons I could remember to Wesley, and he's looking them up right now and trying to find connections."
Angel nodded. "Good. I'll come up to take a look myself." He rose from his chair and headed to the elevator, stopping when he realized that Cordelia wasn't following. "You coming?" he asked.
"Actually," she began, then paused. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about. Well, warn you about. I don't know..."
He leaned back against the wall and waited. Cordelia never went silent for long. Give her time, and she'd say what was on her mind. Usually, it didn't take too….
"Okay, so in this vision," began Cordelia, "there were a bunch of vampires."
Angel nodded encouragement.
"And they were in pain. Lots of pain."
Again, he nodded.
"Well?" she asked impatiently. "Isn't that at all upsetting for you?"
"You saw me?"
"Not exactly…well, no."
"Then I don't see a problem. We want other vampires to be in pain, right? I mean, we do kill them."
"With stakes!" said Cordelia. "Stakes…and cross-bows…and…and other pointy things! Not with mysterious vision-level evil!"
Angel moved back to his armchair and sat down, leaning forward towards Cordelia. "What aren't you telling me?" he asked.
She looked up slowly. "It wasn't so much something that was actually in the vision as the feeling that came with the vision. And not just the jackhammer feeling, this time. I got a very strong sense that this thing would hit a lot closer to home than most of our cases do."
"Did you foresee a death?" asked Angel, concerned.
"No," said Cordelia. "I don't know what it meant; I can't even pin down the exact sensation."
"Then I don't see that we have anything more to be worried about than usual," said Angel. "We'll be careful, of course, as always…."
"As support units go, my family pretty much sucked," interrupted Cordelia. "And let's face it, I haven't been too big on making deep social connections myself. Then I come to L.A. to make my own place in the world…and I fall into family almost by accident." She reached out for Angel's hand, and he squeezed hers reassuringly. "I don't want to lose that," she said. "Especially since…."
"Since we haven't been immune to loss," finished Angel, thinking of Doyle.
"Yeah," whispered Cordelia. "Something like that."
"We are a family," said Angel, "and I'm not about to let that go without a fight. But you understand that I can't just sit back and do nothing with the kind of threat that you saw in the vision coming at us."
"I know," said Cordelia. "I just thought you should know. You know."
"I think I do," said Angel, with a smile. His smiles had become less rare over the last year. With Cordelia, he had found that he could either spend his days in a constant state of annoyance, or he could try to understand her. Working together had brought them closer, and now he appreciated her for what she was and didn't spend so much time worrying over what she wasn't. Angel had experienced the passion of a lover, but he was finding that the friendship of a sister was more calming. Perhaps it was even more valuable.