Cordelia woke up. She didn't know how much time had passed. She grabbed the sink again, and hauled herself back up to the dreaded mirror.
She still looked terrible, but her nose was straight, thank god.
Her next plan was to get cleaned up. Easier said than done. First she tried to take off her tank top, but her blood had dried to it, and when she pulled it pulled the congealed blood around her many cuts, which hurt. She decided to just rip it off piece by piece, it was in tatters anyway, so she could focus on each cut separately, slowly pulling the fabric away from her skin.
Her jeans were the same, but she decided not to rip those, denim was tougher than cotton. She closed her eyes, and just took them off as fast as possible. She then took off her bra and underwear, and crawled into the tub.
She sat on the bottom, and turned on the water. When the water was at the right temperature, hot, she turned on the shower.
When the warm water hit her many lacerations she screamed, but after a few minutes it was not as bad.
At first she just sat there, letting the water run all over her body. Then she grabbed her soap and cleaned the dirt and blood off her face, then chest and stomach, arms, legs, and finally her gross hand. That hurt.
She shampooed her hair four times, and conditioned it three. At first she couldn't even get her fingers through her hair, but now it was back to its long dark and beautiful self.
The water that went down the drain at first was completely black, but now after a half hour, it was clear. She was clean. She sat there for another fifteen minutes, just enjoying the sensation of the warm water rushing over her naked body.
After turning off the water she crawled out of the tub, and hauled herself up to the mirror again.
There was a message written in lipstick now.
She wasn't surprised. Faith, or whoever was with her, loved to show off how they could sneak in and out of the same room as Cordelia without her even noticing.
Good. She was going to kill whoever had take Dawn. She doubted it was Faith, because she wasn't in such good shape when she last saw her, so it must have been her girlfriend.
The message said "3 days. Midnight. Apple Street Cemetery. If you look for us before, she dies."
Seemed like they were giving her time to heal. 'Their mistake' she thought.
Cordelia, with a sense of purpose now, crawled into Dawn's room. The cuts she could reach she stitched as best she could, which wasn't very good, then bandaged them up, along with the ones on her back that she couldn't stitch. 'I must look like a mummy.' She thought.
Next she made her slow but sure way to her bedroom. She crawled to the side of her bed, and reached in under. After a few minutes of trial and error of taking out things, she got what she wanted, and threw it on the bed.
She wanted to get dressed, but she wanted to do this first. She crawled/pulled herself onto her bed, and opened the long skinny box.
She took out a long samurai sword in a ornate sheath. She had had this for years, but no one knew about it. Not even Dawn. The reason she didn't use it was because she was afraid she'd lose it, she told herself, which was likely. But the real reason she had never used it was that this sword scared the shit out of her.
It had had a Japanese name that she had heard once, but it was a name Cordelia couldn't pronounce, so she promptly forgot it.
She had renamed it. Bambi.
She was afraid of the sword, so she had wanted to name it something that couldn't possibly be scary, and the Disney movie was the first thing that had come to her mind.
She took it out of its sheath, and admired the black hilt that seemed to almost fit itself to the users hand, then the long red blade. It was sharp. Too sharp. Magically sharp. It was also too hot to touch. So hot that if you held a rope against it, the rope would burst into flames within a minute.
She had acquired it quite randomly when she killed an ancient evil Japanese warrior/wizard by a lucky fluke. That was a long time ago though. Her luck wasn't so good anymore.
But luck or no luck she was going to get Dawn back or die trying.