Fair
Season 3 of BtVS, sometime after Lovers Walk.
Joss owns them.
Sometimes Cordelia can still feel it.
That jagged, rusty pipe protruding from her gut (it slid right through her, like a knife through butter). She can still remember the agonizing pain when the paramedics lifted her body from the invading object (she also remembers this hurt more than the initial injury, and wonders how on earth that could be considered fair).
She remembers seeing him in her arms, his lips on hers. She doesn't want to, but the memory is permanently etched into her mind (like that tattoo she'd always tried to hide from her mother).
She remembers the flowers he brought to her hospital room (they were beautiful, but since then she's grown to hate all things floral), and she remembers telling him to go. In that moment she no longer wondered or questioned her feelings because in that moment she knew. She was in love with Xander Harris. And somehow watching him leave hurt more than finding him with her in the first place.
Again she finds herself wondering how this is far (and realizes that life never really is).
