As soon as Cordelia walked back into the Hyperion after lunch, Angel rushed her, grabbing hold of her arms as if to assure himself she was there as he began talking in a rush that even Cordelia's battered memory could tell her was strange for him. "Cordy? Where were you? I was panicking not knowing where you were, especially since it's the middle of the day, so I couldn't go looking for you, and…"

Cordelia pulled back from Angel, breaking the hold he'd had on her arms. "Geez, Angel, chill. I went to lunch with Anne. I left a note on the desk."

Angel went over to the desk and picked up a piece of paper, reading it with a sheepish expression. "Oh. I didn't see that." He looked up at the blonde woman now standing beside Cordelia. "And hi, Anne. I didn't see you either."

"Hi," Anne replied, keeping her distance from Angel. Her body language made it clear she still didn't trust him, and Angel couldn't begrudge her that. Were he in her place, he'd probably feel the same way, given their history.

"I wasn't even gone that long, you know," Cordelia said. "Not long enough to panic."

"I know, but…" Angel sighed. He lowered his voice, glancing quickly over at Anne before he spoke, keenly aware he wasn't alone with Cordy. "I lost you once. I keep expecting you to disappear again."

Cordelia softened as her hand reached out to cup Angel's cheek. "I won't."

"You can't know that. The Powers, they…"

"I do, Angel," Cordelia told him softly. "I'm here now."

Anne shifted uncomfortably as the tone between the two brunettes seemed to change and she felt as if she were intruding on a moment. Cordelia had told her at lunch that she and Angel weren't a couple and never truly had been, but the chemistry between them was obvious.

"I should be getting back to the shelter," Anne said, taking another step away from the other two. "Lunch was nice, Cordy. It's good to see you doing better."

Cordelia's hand dropped away from Angel as she turned to look at Anne. "Oh, okay. We need to get together again sometime. Call me?"

"Of course," Anne replied with a smile. "I'll talk to you later."

After she'd said her good-byes with Anne, Cordelia turned her attention back to Angel, a silence falling over the Hyperion. Finally, Cordelia spoke, asking him a question she wasn't sure she really wanted to know the answer to.

"Did I disappear once?"

Angel looked at her sharply. "What?"

"You said you keep expecting me to 'disappear again.' Did…did I just disappear before? Angel, what happened to me? Why wasn't I with you anymore?"

"What's the last thing you can really remember?" Angel asked her, his hands crossed over his chest.

"God, I don't know. Everything's pretty jumbled. Let me think." She sat down on the round couch in the middle of the lobby, her chin resting in her hands. For several minutes, she was silent, her brow creased in concentration.

"I…I remember calling you," she said slowly, trying to pull the memories to the surface. "Groo…Groo had left. He told me he couldn't be with me if I was in love with you, and first I said that was crazy because I wasn't, but then I realized I was. So I called you, and I was going to tell you at the Bluffs, only I…I never made it? Everything after that is hazy, and some of it just isn't there. I think that was a couple of years ago, but what should be there isn't. It's not like the fog over my other memories, it's…" Cordelia dropped her hands and looked at Angel with a frightened expression on her face. "There's nothing there at all. It's like I just…stopped existing. Where was I? Was I here?"

"I'm not sure," Angel replied as he came and sat down beside her. "Do you remember Jasmine?"

Cordelia frowned in confusion. "Jasmine? The princess in Aladdin?"

"The what?" Angel asked, his own expression mirroring Cordelia's now. "No, the hellgod. She showed up about a year ago, tried to take over the world. Ringing any bells at all?"

"No. I told you, there's nothing from the past couple of years at all. What happened?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" Angel asked. "It was pretty intense."

"Angel, if it was some part of my life that I'm not missing, I need to know," Cordelia insisted. "There hasn't been a lot in my life—at least since I met you—that couldn't be classified as 'intense.'"

"I know, but this is worse." At Cordelia's response of a quirked eyebrow, Angel sighed. "Okay, fine. But don't say I didn't warn you. What you remember, about calling me and asking you to meet you at the Bluffs, that happened. And no, you didn't make it. Only neither did I, but that's a story for another time. You had this demon guide…"

"Skip," Cordelia interjected. "I remember Skip. I met him…on my birthday. When my head was about to explode. He made me part demon." As she remembered her semi-demon status, Cordelia wondered if that was why she was able to fight the way she had been, but decided to file it away to contemplate later. "And…and that night!" Her eyes widened, the other pieces of what had happened coming back to her. "I met him that night. He froze everything and then told me I was supposed to be a Higher Being. I told him I didn't want to go because I wanted to see you first, but he said I had to leave, and I did. I remember that. There was a bright light, and I rose up into the sky, and then…nothing. There's nothing after that, not until the night Anne found me."

"Skip was working for the hellgod we called Jasmine," Angel explained. "Honestly, a lot of it still makes no sense to me, but from what I gathered, he chose you to carry Jasmine back to this plane. You were gone for the summer, and I was able to locate you in the Higher Realms, but you came back suddenly. I never knew how. Only when you did come back, well, you had amnesia."

Cordelia's eyebrow quirked. "I'm noticing a theme."

"Yeah, me, too, which had me a little worried," Angel admitted. "Only you seem different now. For one thing, you remembered everything except personal details about your life then. And your memories didn't come back on their own. Lorne did a spell. It didn't exactly go as planned, but in the end, you had your memories back."

"So why aren't I remembering any of this now?" Cordelia asked. "Why is that time missing from my memory completely?"

"I'm not sure it was you. From what I gathered from Skip, Jasmine had taken you over. It was your body, but you weren't in control. Maybe your consciousness was completely buried by hers. You did people, er…things." Angel coughed, wishing he could bury one memory of his own in particular. "You did things that I don't think you ever would've done."

"Bad things?" Cordelia asked, her eyes wide with horror.

"Yeah. You, it, her, whatever stole my soul and let Angelus loose for one thing. There were some other things, too."

Cordelia flinched, then looked down. "I…wow…"

"Hey, I don't think it was you, Cordy," Angel said softly, his hand moving to rest gently on Cordelia's leg. "Even Skip said you weren't really 'driving.' Jasmine or whoever exactly was in you when you came down from wherever you really were was in control. If none of that stuff is even in your memory, then, I really don't think it was you. It was just your body, not your mind."

"Yeah, but my body is still me, Angel. To think about someone wearing my skin running around and hurting people, I just…" Cordelia trailed off as he eyes grew wide. "Wait, you said I made you lose your soul? We didn't…"

"No!" Angel said quickly. "We never…" He coughed. "Well, not really. This shaman was actually who took my soul, and he created an elaborate hallucination where I thought we did, but we didn't really."

"So you just had fake sex with me?" Cordelia asked.

"Yeah, but it wasn't real. I mean, really, it's not any different than any of the times I've dreamt…" Angel trailed off as he realized what he'd just admitted to.

Cordelia blushed a looked down. "We can move along from this topic."

"Yeah, I'm liking that idea."

"So this Jasmine took over my body, and then what? You said that was a year ago. Did I run off and you haven't seen me since?"

"No," Angel replied, shaking his head. "Jasmine used you to give birth to herself—and yeah, before you ask, that really is as freaky as it sounds. After that, you fell into a coma, and you stayed there until a few months ago. You were in the hospital, and I got a call one day saying you were awake. I brought you back, we spent a day together, and then you told me you had to go because your path was different from mine. After that…" Angel had to stop for a moment, the memory still hard for him, even now that he had Cordelia sitting beside him. "The hospital called and told me you were dead."

Cordelia was silent for several moments before she finally said, "Okay, I don't remember the last two years because I had my body hijacked by a hellgod, then fell into a coma, and then died?"

"To sum it all up, yeah."

She let out a deep breath. "Wow. Maybe not having those memories really is for the best."

"Cordy, what happened the night Anne found you? She said she you were in an alley somewhere around Wolfram and Hart, but I don't know what…"

Suddenly, Cordelia's eyes grew wide. "Wolfram and Hart! Angel, that's where I was when I woke up! I was too out of it to realize it then, but looking back, that's where I was. Did the building collapse that night?"

"Yeah, it did," Angel said. "I, um, sort of pissed the Senior Partners off."

"I woke up in this lab there," Cordelia said. "I was in like…a refrigerator thing?"

"I think I might know what you're talking about," Angel said, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he pictured Cordelia in that sort of situation. "When Lindsey got his evil hand, we tracked down a place Wolfram and Hart used for body part storage. They had a secret lab where they kept people in some sort of stasis and farmed their body parts to use in other people."

A look of pure disgust crossed Cordelia's face. "Is that why they kept me? To sell my body parts. Or maybe my eyes… They were after my eyes that one time because of the whole seer thing." She shivered.

"I wish I could give you an answer, but I can't. I didn't know anything about a lab set up for anything like that, so I really don't know what was going on."

"Why would you know anything about a lab Wolfram and Hart set up?" Cordelia asked. "It's not like they sent us regular memos about their dastardly plans."

"Well, that's sort of the thing," Angel said with a sheepish look. "This past year, I was the C.E.O."

Cordelia gaped. "What? You…they're evil, Angel!"

"I know, but after everything went down with Jasmine, they made me an offer. They told me they were leaving Los Angeles and conceding the territory to me, and I could use facilities and manpower."

"And you just agreed to that? Are you a complete idiot?"

"There were factors, Cordelia," Angel tried to explain with a heavy sigh. "And it was a good offer. I was in charge, and I could use their own system against them."

"But obviously you weren't! Angel, if Wolfram and Hart was involved, they were tricking you. They had me sedated in a fridge, so you weren't as in charge as you thought you were. They were playing you—they made you part of them."

"No, they didn't," Angel insisted. "I bested them in the end, Cordy. I was able to take down the Circle of the Black Thorn, a group comprised of the most powerful of the evil. I was able to do something good."

"That's how Wes, Gunn, and Fred died, isn't it? It happened after you started working for Wolfram and Hart."

"They agreed to go in, too. We all knew the risks."

"And you let them take them!" Cordelia yelled as she pushed Angel's hand off her leg and got to her feet. "I can't believe… You're supposed to be a Champion, Angel! Champions don't make deals with evil, no matter what the costs!"

"Cordelia, wait…" Angel said, reaching out for her. "There was so much going on. Just let me explain."

"I can't…" Cordelia replied, backing away as tears formed in her eyes. "I don't know…" She stopped in mid-sentence, then turned and fled the hotel, disappearing into the sunlight where Angel couldn't follow.


Sorry I didn't update last week. I just got a promotion at work, and I haven't had much time to write. I'll try to update when I can, and hopefully, I can still keep it fairly regular.

Please review!