Okay do you know what pisses me off, someone doesn't like the story and leaves a shitty review, if you don't like it don't read it, and at least have the goddamn balls to leave an IM so I can explain things to them. Well er rant over.
2 more chapters before the erm, I'm not sure if Climax is the right word to use. This story is DARK, SEXUAL and NOT for the kiddies. Which, is why I bumped up the rating before.
I decided to do the Wish after its original time in the timeline, because I thought, he'd made such a difference in this timeline that it made sense. Cordellia and Harmony had a better life and were on better terms with the group, so no one would be making statements like 'I wish Buffy hadn't come to Sunnydale'.
I'll leave the reason for Buffy upsetting Cordellia as a blank, make up your own minds on that one (smirks)
Twice Lucky
Divergence
Chapter 10: The Wish part 1
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"You know what, I wish Buffy hadn't come to Sunnydale, and I wish Xander wasn't so damn nice all the time!"
'GRANTED' – The girl Anya who had been so insistent on asking her what she wished for suddenly went all freaky, her skin was different, demon different.
She blinked, stared around slack jawed and sighed.
"Great…"
Cordellia was if anything, perceptive. She may not be liked, may have to be insulting to stay on top, and was down right blunt, sure, but the one thing people couldn't fault her was her keen eye. And this keen eye had spotted mistakes with the area that she was now standing in, for a start there were no people, Sunnydale High looked in ruins, the windows were all smashed, the doors were broken, some of them hanging off their balances.
The weeds had taken control and were climbing up the walls and the grass was messy, she couldn't but help think that the neat freak Snyder would have a fit if he saw this place.
She stopped, turned around and stared, her dress wasn't as glamorous as she would've liked, due to her daddy's problem of evading the tax man, as the saying went, the tax man cometh and boy did he. He took everything.
Cordellia started moving towards the school and got the suspicion that she was being followed, she couldn't pin it down but knew that it was there. She walked through the corridors of school, she wished she'd worn something a little hardier to school, but then how was she going to know that some freaky demon was going to make her wish come true?
Her footsteps echoed eerily around the corridors, windows were smashed and glass lay on the ground which crunched every time she stepped on it. She looked in the rooms and her only companions seemed to be dust balls and pigeons, who hooted happily.
She sighed and headed towards the canteen and once again saw nothing but a thin layer of dust, the windows long since broken and sun shine, shining in and mocking her.
She sighed, shouldered her bag and decided to head outside, there was nothing here. Instead she made her way outside into the street, which was in a similar state of despair.
Great big cowboy dust balls blew across the street as the wind whistled down, pigeons could be heard if she stood and listened silently. She couldn't hear, or see any sign of human inhabitation, nothing for what appeared to be a long time.
She checked out some of the houses down her own street, looked in dirty and wrecked cars, she dry heaved when she saw a burned out skeleton. The car itself was upside down, and the remains were still strapped into the seat, its hands melted to the steering wheel. It had been the fact that its jaw was wedged open with what looked like a metal stake, trapped in an eternal scream that made her think about throwing up.
She wiped her mouth, she still felt the sick on her lips and grimaced, it was a good thing she always carried a bottle of water around with her, she put it to her lips and took a sip. Cordellia spat it out on the floor after swirling it around. She sighed again, this was going to make for a long day.
Most of it was spent searching through empty houses, looking through rooms that people had long since dropped and ran like hell, everything was still there. It didn't surprise her to find dishes still on the tables with mouldy food on them.
She grimaced when she saw them and almost emptied her stomach again. She decided on a long term plan, when she heard something…a creak.
Cordellia pulled out the vampire spray that Xander and the group had provided for and pointed it at the area that the noise had come from.
Only to find nothing…
She was getting jittery.
Perhaps it was the fact that there was no one about at all? Or maybe, she didn't know, she was tired and wanted nothing more than for reality to reassert itself.
Yeaaah. No such luck, with a smirk, she went into the kitchen and held a hanky to her nose, the smell in there was just as bad. But, she needed food like now, so the only simple option was checking out the fridge, and hit paydirt. The light flickered on, but again all the food had mould on it. Fortunately, there was a bottle of coke, which she pulled out. She closed the door and checked the cupboards and found cans of just about everything.
The decided on the living room that while dusty, at least didn't smell, she got a can opener, several cans of food and a fork which she washed in the sink.
As she sat down, she thought about the events of her recent life.
She had a group of friends, real friends, not those sheep that followed her around trying to copy her sense of style and fashion. No these were real friends, people who actually cared for her well being, one of those being, yes although she hated saying it, Xander Harris.
What was with that? Now that she had time to think, to really think about it, everything seemed to fit into place. He knew something that she didn't, something powerful, dark and down right scary, and something that he had been manoeuvring them all to forget, moving chess pieces around a board in such frenzy that no one had time to think about it. From a purely tactical view point it made sense.
She looked around the house, and found a pillow and duvet to sleep in on the floor as she couldn't bring herself to sleep in someone else's bed as it just felt wrong. She curled up in a corner of a room, a child's room by the looks of it and fell into a troubled sleep, wondering what the hell went wrong with the world.
… … … … … … … … … … … … …
The next morning was bright and sunny, the birds were singing as the sun rose up and there was a gentle morning breeze. She would've thought everything had turned back to normal, were it not for the fact that she was curled up on the floor in the blankets and duvet.
Today she would explore.
She got up and looked in the woman's cupboard for shoes and once again hit paydirt and with smirk started rummaging, they truly had left everything in a hurry. She pulled out a pair of shoes and tried them on, perfect.
It must be her lucky day…
She tried on a jumper and swapped it for her top, it felt better, she then grabbed a small coat and put it on. She then went and freshened up in the bathroom. What was this? Everyone had left yet there was still electricity and running water?
Madness…
It took most of the morning to make it to the town shopping centre, where she searched through the mall as quietly as possible and looked for any weapons, eventually she found a gun and sword shop, but it was mostly empty. She found long knife and put it in her belt. Cordellia then left the mall and checked out the other shops, again she saw nothing, no sign of human activity, demon, vampire or otherwise, there was simply nothing.
"You know, walking around in the open like this is a sure fire way of getting caught," Cordellia jumped out of her skin and whirled around to see the brown, white faced vampire otherwise known as Angel standing with a very large smirk.
"Angel?" She stepped forward, but something about him set of her warning signals, she smirked as well, wondering idly if she was a slayer and if it was how they felt when they sensed danger.
"Nope," he shook his head, "haven't gone by that name in years," his faced morphed and became more feral, "Angelus, pleased to meet you."
"W, what?"
"What, we got a communication problem here?" Angel said in a mocking tone, she got it, he really was evil. Oh God, what had happened.
It happened then, all at once. There was a loud bang and something hit the floor, a canister of some sort and smoke started billowing out of it. She felt hands grasping her and pulling her away, she found herself with a bag over her head and being guided quickly.
"RIPPER."
She knew he was talking about someone, the demon who wanted her blood, or to take her to his leader or whatever they did, she didn't want to think about it.
"Bloody hell Angelus," Giles, she knew that voice. All she could see was darkness, but she could hear everything.
The two were standing off against each other in the street, on the pathway, Giles had on him a long pointed weapon that looked like a long staff with a closed flower head. It was anything but pretty, the Watcher activated the weapon and the end opened up with a burst of golden energy.
Angelus smirked and held his hand up and wiggled his fingers. "Think you can hurt me old man, your loosing your touch."
"Nah, just fed up with your endless babble," Giles smirked, aimed carefully and fired. The blob of red of hot energy stuck Angelus in a blow that completely sheared his hand off, the hand with the ring that was. The vampire stood there gaping at the stump without really comprehending what was happening. Giles's smile grew bigger as the vampire suddenly clicked he was smoking.
"Oh… Fuc…"
He never finished as the next bolt of energy slammed into his face, melted his skin and hit his brain, the vampire burst into red-hot fiery dust.
Giles swivelled around and nodded at Riley Finn, the military man who had provided the very useful weapons, "let's get out of here before more bloody backup arrives."
The blond haired man nodded sharply, grabbed the whimpering woman and turned to make their way to the base.
The hood was taken off and Cordellia quickly raised her arm to block out the light, she flinched when a hand touched her arm and tried to bat it away.
"Easy sugar," the accent was recognisable as Texan.
She stopped fighting, realising there was kindness in the females voice. She let her eyes adjust and slowly lowered her arm and looked at the woman standing in front of her. She was a small, mousy, with long brown hair, and sad brown eye's, and she had a quiet intelligence about her.
"Howdy," she smiled broader and handed over a bottle of water.
"Where am I?"
"Y'all are in the resistance HQ."
"Yes quite," she looked up and saw a grim faced Giles placing the long nasty looking weapon on the table, the young hot looking guy had a military air about him.
Cordellia wasn't tied to a chair and for that she was grateful. "What, what happened?"
Giles looked surprised, looked over at Finn who was now leaning against a wall and shrugged his shoulders. "What do you mean, what happened?"
"It's all different…"
"Different?"
"Where's Buffy?"
The Watchers face notably hardened, "Miss Summers is quite dead, killed by Faith."
"Oh." Cordellia was terrified now and looked it, "What about Xander?"
Finn flinched at that name being mentioned.
"You mean Yinko?"
"Who?" Giles looked at the mousy haired woman, obviously startled.
"You mean you don't know?"
She shook her head and tears started flowing now, freely down her cheeks, she was scared to hell and simply wanted to go home. She cried as she told them every thing that had happened in the life before this, right up to the point that she had met Anya, and then made that wish, arriving here and the days she'd spent searching the streets for any signs of life. Finding Angel, and now the resistance.
Giles was very quiet as he soaked up the information.
He nodded quietly. "It appears that you've been on the bad end of a vengeance demon, you see Mister Harris came back in time to right certain mistakes that we made in the previous timeline, from what I can gather everything was running fine, right up till Ethan, at Xander's beckoning, cast the Halloween spell."
"What happened?"
Giles looked down for a moment, before continuing. "The Shadows influence was too strong, and Yinko crawled its way up and seeded itself into Xander's soul, he then went around gathering his harem and eliminating his enemies, it was already too late before any of us realised what had happened. People started to panic and Buffy confronted him."
Giles stopped and looked sad, "We never saw her again."
"Mah names Winifred Burkle, but y'all can call me Fred." Fred saind in way of introduction, the Texan smiled again, she was quite pretty.
Cordellia nodded tiredly, sadly, this is what she had wished.
"I wish there was some way to undo this…"
She waited a heartbeat before knowing it wasn't going to happen.
"Worth a try."
… … … … … … … … … … … … …
Yinko was pissed…
Spike stood there in his chambers and watched in fascination as he threw a right paddy. The man picked up a chair and with a speed that if he hadn't known better, wouldn't have thought off, threw it against the wall. It shattered into thousands of tiny bits.
His bitches, who were all in varying degrees of nakedness cowered away from their Master. Yinko, let out a holler that was loud and angry. He then turned on Spike with his icy cold stare.
"I told you, TOLD you, to make sure Angelus succeeded, you were there to be his fucking backup." Spike took a drag of his cigarette and studied the man for a second.
"I know you did mate, but I thought I'd improvise."
The longhaired youth shook his head angrily, his long dark and lanky hair looked greasy and oiled. It was clean, he knew it was, Xander had a thing for cleanliness that was boarding obsessive compulsive. He reminded Spike of the Mayor, before Xander blew the man to kingdom come.'
"I don't pay you to fucking think Spike…"
Spike bit down on his cig hard and growled, he assessed his options here. He knew that 'Yinko' couldn't read his thoughts, so he had time to create a plan of action that would get his neck out of the pile of shit that was growing. He could make a run for it, but that little bitch Willow who was tied to a leash at the base of Xanders chair would hit him with a fireball before he even made it out of the door.
"I know, but Angelus was expendable…"
"I'm the one who decides whose expendable," Xander snarled at the bleached white haired vampire. Spike sighed and decided to get to the point.
"I know where their HQ is…"
Yinko blinked in surprise. For some reason he had never been able to penetrate Giles's mind and access the information he needed, the man was either too far away or had some form of blocking it. Something that was more powerful than his own mind.
This was excellent, this made up for the loss of Angelus, this would help him attack the base, get Cordellia back and learn what she knew and then pass her onto his slaves for training. Yinko smiled, an evil little smile that sent a shiver down Spike's spine.
"Spike you've done well." He paused a second, "We attack at dusk."