OK This is the third part in the Lost Without Hope series.
Disclaimer: i own nothing, i only like to play with them and they all belong to Joss and Davids imagination, oh yeah and the people they belong to!
Summary: What not to do when your car breaks down, it'll teach ya to charge your cell phone up before making a journey in the dark!! Cryptic as usual. OK Cordelia has been found and rescued by Angel three months after she was kidnapped. Now the team at AI must learn to cope with the after effects when minds are already frayed. The only people that can save Angel and Cordelia are each other but they have to get passed guilt, blame and silence to do that. Buffy comes to town to help Angel out but she has a bigger part to play and may not like the out come. Like they say, the truth hurts just too much.
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Three Weeks After Part Two Finished:
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Cordelia woke up again with the bulky figure beside her, holding on to her hand for dear life. She had been waking up like this for three weeks. She liked in the light that it was something real to remind her this wasn't a dream, but she felt closed in, unable to find herself again so she reclined back into her own slightly withdrawn world. She shied away from any contact with Angel, for fear of him disappearing again and partly because her head blamed him for her kidnap but her heart knew it wasn't true. Her heart was the only thing that stopped her from breaking down into the crumbled mess she was before only worse after all she no longer lived with hope so something had to be keeping her in this reality. But being there wasn't enough anymore, she wanted the old Cordelia Chase back or the Cordelia Chase that existed and celebrated when Angel received his permanent soul as a reward for his redemption seeking that he had continued for a year. That Cordelia Chase was buried deep inside of her screaming to be let out again. She wriggled her hand free of Angels, stretching it free of the cramps from Angels tight grasp. He slept peacefully beside her, well he should be, it was daytime. She picked herself off the bed and wandered through the apartment that had become her home. Dennis had been uprooted there two weeks ago as an attempt at helping to settle Cordelia a little more. She felt the coolness of her silk night robe around her shoulder.
"Thanks Dennis." She muttered walking through to the kitchen.
She found Buffy sitting at the kitchen table, sipping at a mug of coffee. A green mug slowly floated it's way
over to Cordelia and tapped down softly in front of her.
"Thanks Dennis." She said, yawning away the nights sleep.
"Cordelia don't you think that you should get out of apartment for a while? You've been back for
nearly four weeks now and you haven't been outside once. Your pale, and withdrawn. God if the Scooby gang could see you now, the former May Queen, tan junkie, all pale and almost as pale as Angel they would never believe me." Buffy stopped her vent on Cordelia as she heard Angel rustling in his bedroom.
Angel sulked into the kitchen as Dennis pored another mug in the direction of Angel this time full of blood. He had never felt comfortable vamping and drink blood in front of Buffy, no matter how comfortable he was with Cordelia. Instead he went into the only private place in the whole apartment, the bathroom. He came back through, mug in hand, licking the rest of the blood off his redrawn teeth.
"So Buffy what are you going top do today?"
"Me and Cordelia are going to the...park then we are going to do some shopping later on. Then we might go to the pier. You know things what normal people do."
Cordelia sensed an argument about to erupt and as usual it was about her. She picked up her mug and went into the bathroom again and began to get washed and showered. Angel had long since stopped bathing her when he realised she didn't like it and she was strong enough to hold herself up in the shower. She turned the dial up to the hottest setting as she now done and let the roasting hot droplets sear over her, her body screaming out for her to stop.
Meanwhile in the kitchen:
Buffy stood to match Angels now defensive pose.
"Angel, get a grip. She has been back here for four weeks and you haven't once left her side longer than two minutes. You let me and Wesley take up your slack of patrolling, which we don't mind doing, but you have to give her space." Buffy shouted at the stubborn Vampire.
"She. Is. Not. Leaving. This. Apartment. Now which part of that didn't you understand. She isn't
ready to go out and be with other people. She needs to be looked after. What if she has a vision or they try to kidnap her again."
"God Angel, you act like she's your property." Buffy retorted back at him. "I'm the Slayer remember I can kick people ass if they try to touch Cordelia and are you going to mody cuddle her all of her life. She needs other PEOPLE."
"She belongs to me!" Angel yelled in Buffys face, vamping out of a second before returning to normal, just in time to feel the hard, deafening slap of Buffy hand across his face.
"Cordelia doesn't belong to you or anyone."
Buffy stormed towards the bathroom as Cordelia came out dressed in dark blue jeans and a white three
quarter length jumper. She walked over to Angel and saw the red hand print and the blue bruise already
forming on his face.
"So she slapped you huh." Cordelia stated before returning to the bedroom to put on some make-up.
Angel reeled from the shock of having Buffy slap him again, the reason behind the slap, he had staked a claim on Cordelia knowing that she was a free spirit, also that Cordelia was wearing something else other than his baggy shirt and jogging pants. He could see the old Cordelia he loved slowly coming out of the shell of the woman that he had seen for the last few weeks.
Cordelia emerged from the bedroom wearing a shimmer of eye shadow and a dark lipstick that emphasised Cordelias paleness. She sat down in the living room and her favourite denim jacket floated towards her courtesy of Dennis. Buffy breezed out of the bathroom 10 minutes late, fully dressed. She was wearing fawn Capri pants, a white top and a handkerchief held back her loose blonde hair. She was all set for a girls day out.
"Right we're borrowing your car, be back before dark and um...trust me."
Buffy grabbed the convertible keys from the sideboard and stormed out of the door. Cordelia followed Buffy willingly, like she wanted an excuse to escape, not looking back at the now placid Vampire.
Buffy drove like a maniac through the LA, used to the streets of Sunnydale, she got lost very quickly so
Cordelia took over. She drove them to Griffith Park in the city centre. They walked through the lush green
landscape in almost silence except for the occasional, "You OK?" answered by a mumbled. "Yeah." They both sat on a bench and sunned themselves in the late summer sun, Cordelia wearing sunglasses because her eyes clamped shut as soon as she stepped outside of the office.
"Cordelia you can't keep this up. Your hurting everybody around you including Wesley and yourself. Maybe that's what you want, to punish all he people you feel let you down when you went missing."
"No, I don't want to hurt Wesley, I don't even want to hurt Angel but I can't help it. After what
they did to me in that lab I don't trust people or Vampires anymore."
"What did they do to you at the lab Cordelia?"
"Buffy I...." Cordelia hesitated. "They kidnapped me one night. The heap of junk I call a car broke
down and I tried to call Angel to come and get me but the battery on my cell phone ran out before I could tell him where I was and he was out patrolling. They covered my face with something and the last thing I remember was a guy saying, "Well Done, the boss will be happy." I woke up in a cage with chains on my wrists. They said 'SEER 12,000 REMOVED.' When I looked around me there were demons in chains all around me, pacing their cages day in, day out. I waited for a few days until a doctor in a white coat showed up and gave me an injection to knock me out. I woke up again strapped to a clinical bed by metal restraints and hooked up to an IV. I to struggle, to get away, but I couldn't. I really wanted to but I couldn't."
"I know Cordelia. There was nothing you could have done."
"They filled me up with chemicals to remove my 'gift' but I held onto them for dear life. It was my
last reminder of Doyle and if I lost my purpose, what was keeping my at Angel Investigations? When they
couldn't remove the visions, they decided to try and induce them instead. I was their new project."
"God, Cordelia, I never knew, does Angel? I mean it might help him understand a bit better. He's
breaking apart. I've never seen him like this before." Buffy said thoughtfully
"I have. It was when we first met up. He rescued me from a big evil Vamp. He was like a lost puppy, he didn't know how to function without you. He would still and stare at his silver ring for hours. You were the biggest part of his life and now he had to try and cope without you after living with you for three years. When Doyle died he realised that he had to move on, leave his Sunnydale memories behind. He blamed himself over Doyles death, for not warning us in time, and he brooded but we were both grieving. I had realised what I really felt for Doyle and before he died, he kissed me goodbye and passed on his visions."
Buffy could tell she was off the subject but she let her vent all that was bottled up in a hope that it might
bring her out of her reclusive shell.
"We both grieved together, sharing the pain of losing a friend. I still found Angel brooding about you or Doyle but I used to drag him out of it by taking him, unwillingly, to a club to dance."
Cordelia giggled at the memory of when she saw Angel first dance at a party she threw. She suddenly snapped back to telling Buffy what had happened in the lab in her distant monotone voice.
"They tried all sorts of chemicals to try and make my visions appear but they didn't work. I used to scream out in pain, my veins aching as the chemicals coursed through my blood stream. I tried to struggle but it was hopeless. In the end I stopped caring, caring made me weak and I couldn't be weak or they would break and kill me. Instead I would look up and stare at the ceiling and count the white tiles above me. Do you know that there were 110 tiles on that ceiling. It sounds insane but it kept me going. Then the next to go was my hope. After all what is the point of hope if wasn't going to get me anywhere? So instead of counting tiles I started to live in memories, warmed by their fleeting fire. Then I escaped into dreams about what I wished would happen. they would always end up in strong arms but the doctors would come and take me away. At last they found out how to control the visions and put me up for auction at the LA Plaza. Wolfram and Hart were going to buy me because of my link to Angel. They thought they could use me to bring back Angelus, after all they know about his fascination with me."
Buffy sat there in shock. She couldn't believe that Cordelia had been through that. In Sunnydale she had only seen the bitchy ex-May Queen that had too much money and who's butt she had to save all the time. This Cordelia had come to LA, after her parents had lost all their money to the IRS, in a bid to find fame and
fortune and even more attention but nearly ended up as a Vampire snack. Then she had lost someone she really cared for, as well as trying to cope with the onslaught of visions. Buffy could sympathise, she had to deal with moving house, being told about her Chosen ability and then all of a sudden being thrown into a world of evil, prophecies and witchcraft. There was on big difference, Buffy didn't have choice where as Cordelia continued to have the visions for Angels sake. A pang of jealousy ran through Buffy before she decided that she knew Cordelia Chase too well and that the Cordelia Chase she knew was the same bitchy back-stabbing ex-cheerleader she would always be. A leopard never changes it's spots.
"What do you mean 'to get to Angelus?'" Buffy asked surprised at the mention of Angels alter ego.
"Oh Angelus escaped a few months ago thanks to a has been actress that Angel took a fancy to. She drugged him with Bliss Pills and bang...Angelus was released. We drugged him into a coma after Wesley knocked him out. We chained him to the bed and left Angel there, once he had woken up as Angel again, to think about the consequences of his actions. Lindsey found out at Wolfram and Hart 'Cos he was Rachel's lawyer. They vowed then to release Angelus again. I guess I was just another part of that plan."
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Part Four coming soon! Tell me, what do ya think?
Disclaimer: i own nothing, i only like to play with them and they all belong to Joss and Davids imagination, oh yeah and the people they belong to!
Summary: What not to do when your car breaks down, it'll teach ya to charge your cell phone up before making a journey in the dark!! Cryptic as usual. OK Cordelia has been found and rescued by Angel three months after she was kidnapped. Now the team at AI must learn to cope with the after effects when minds are already frayed. The only people that can save Angel and Cordelia are each other but they have to get passed guilt, blame and silence to do that. Buffy comes to town to help Angel out but she has a bigger part to play and may not like the out come. Like they say, the truth hurts just too much.
*********************************************************************************************************************************
Three Weeks After Part Two Finished:
----------------------------------------------------
Cordelia woke up again with the bulky figure beside her, holding on to her hand for dear life. She had been waking up like this for three weeks. She liked in the light that it was something real to remind her this wasn't a dream, but she felt closed in, unable to find herself again so she reclined back into her own slightly withdrawn world. She shied away from any contact with Angel, for fear of him disappearing again and partly because her head blamed him for her kidnap but her heart knew it wasn't true. Her heart was the only thing that stopped her from breaking down into the crumbled mess she was before only worse after all she no longer lived with hope so something had to be keeping her in this reality. But being there wasn't enough anymore, she wanted the old Cordelia Chase back or the Cordelia Chase that existed and celebrated when Angel received his permanent soul as a reward for his redemption seeking that he had continued for a year. That Cordelia Chase was buried deep inside of her screaming to be let out again. She wriggled her hand free of Angels, stretching it free of the cramps from Angels tight grasp. He slept peacefully beside her, well he should be, it was daytime. She picked herself off the bed and wandered through the apartment that had become her home. Dennis had been uprooted there two weeks ago as an attempt at helping to settle Cordelia a little more. She felt the coolness of her silk night robe around her shoulder.
"Thanks Dennis." She muttered walking through to the kitchen.
She found Buffy sitting at the kitchen table, sipping at a mug of coffee. A green mug slowly floated it's way
over to Cordelia and tapped down softly in front of her.
"Thanks Dennis." She said, yawning away the nights sleep.
"Cordelia don't you think that you should get out of apartment for a while? You've been back for
nearly four weeks now and you haven't been outside once. Your pale, and withdrawn. God if the Scooby gang could see you now, the former May Queen, tan junkie, all pale and almost as pale as Angel they would never believe me." Buffy stopped her vent on Cordelia as she heard Angel rustling in his bedroom.
Angel sulked into the kitchen as Dennis pored another mug in the direction of Angel this time full of blood. He had never felt comfortable vamping and drink blood in front of Buffy, no matter how comfortable he was with Cordelia. Instead he went into the only private place in the whole apartment, the bathroom. He came back through, mug in hand, licking the rest of the blood off his redrawn teeth.
"So Buffy what are you going top do today?"
"Me and Cordelia are going to the...park then we are going to do some shopping later on. Then we might go to the pier. You know things what normal people do."
Cordelia sensed an argument about to erupt and as usual it was about her. She picked up her mug and went into the bathroom again and began to get washed and showered. Angel had long since stopped bathing her when he realised she didn't like it and she was strong enough to hold herself up in the shower. She turned the dial up to the hottest setting as she now done and let the roasting hot droplets sear over her, her body screaming out for her to stop.
Meanwhile in the kitchen:
Buffy stood to match Angels now defensive pose.
"Angel, get a grip. She has been back here for four weeks and you haven't once left her side longer than two minutes. You let me and Wesley take up your slack of patrolling, which we don't mind doing, but you have to give her space." Buffy shouted at the stubborn Vampire.
"She. Is. Not. Leaving. This. Apartment. Now which part of that didn't you understand. She isn't
ready to go out and be with other people. She needs to be looked after. What if she has a vision or they try to kidnap her again."
"God Angel, you act like she's your property." Buffy retorted back at him. "I'm the Slayer remember I can kick people ass if they try to touch Cordelia and are you going to mody cuddle her all of her life. She needs other PEOPLE."
"She belongs to me!" Angel yelled in Buffys face, vamping out of a second before returning to normal, just in time to feel the hard, deafening slap of Buffy hand across his face.
"Cordelia doesn't belong to you or anyone."
Buffy stormed towards the bathroom as Cordelia came out dressed in dark blue jeans and a white three
quarter length jumper. She walked over to Angel and saw the red hand print and the blue bruise already
forming on his face.
"So she slapped you huh." Cordelia stated before returning to the bedroom to put on some make-up.
Angel reeled from the shock of having Buffy slap him again, the reason behind the slap, he had staked a claim on Cordelia knowing that she was a free spirit, also that Cordelia was wearing something else other than his baggy shirt and jogging pants. He could see the old Cordelia he loved slowly coming out of the shell of the woman that he had seen for the last few weeks.
Cordelia emerged from the bedroom wearing a shimmer of eye shadow and a dark lipstick that emphasised Cordelias paleness. She sat down in the living room and her favourite denim jacket floated towards her courtesy of Dennis. Buffy breezed out of the bathroom 10 minutes late, fully dressed. She was wearing fawn Capri pants, a white top and a handkerchief held back her loose blonde hair. She was all set for a girls day out.
"Right we're borrowing your car, be back before dark and um...trust me."
Buffy grabbed the convertible keys from the sideboard and stormed out of the door. Cordelia followed Buffy willingly, like she wanted an excuse to escape, not looking back at the now placid Vampire.
Buffy drove like a maniac through the LA, used to the streets of Sunnydale, she got lost very quickly so
Cordelia took over. She drove them to Griffith Park in the city centre. They walked through the lush green
landscape in almost silence except for the occasional, "You OK?" answered by a mumbled. "Yeah." They both sat on a bench and sunned themselves in the late summer sun, Cordelia wearing sunglasses because her eyes clamped shut as soon as she stepped outside of the office.
"Cordelia you can't keep this up. Your hurting everybody around you including Wesley and yourself. Maybe that's what you want, to punish all he people you feel let you down when you went missing."
"No, I don't want to hurt Wesley, I don't even want to hurt Angel but I can't help it. After what
they did to me in that lab I don't trust people or Vampires anymore."
"What did they do to you at the lab Cordelia?"
"Buffy I...." Cordelia hesitated. "They kidnapped me one night. The heap of junk I call a car broke
down and I tried to call Angel to come and get me but the battery on my cell phone ran out before I could tell him where I was and he was out patrolling. They covered my face with something and the last thing I remember was a guy saying, "Well Done, the boss will be happy." I woke up in a cage with chains on my wrists. They said 'SEER 12,000 REMOVED.' When I looked around me there were demons in chains all around me, pacing their cages day in, day out. I waited for a few days until a doctor in a white coat showed up and gave me an injection to knock me out. I woke up again strapped to a clinical bed by metal restraints and hooked up to an IV. I to struggle, to get away, but I couldn't. I really wanted to but I couldn't."
"I know Cordelia. There was nothing you could have done."
"They filled me up with chemicals to remove my 'gift' but I held onto them for dear life. It was my
last reminder of Doyle and if I lost my purpose, what was keeping my at Angel Investigations? When they
couldn't remove the visions, they decided to try and induce them instead. I was their new project."
"God, Cordelia, I never knew, does Angel? I mean it might help him understand a bit better. He's
breaking apart. I've never seen him like this before." Buffy said thoughtfully
"I have. It was when we first met up. He rescued me from a big evil Vamp. He was like a lost puppy, he didn't know how to function without you. He would still and stare at his silver ring for hours. You were the biggest part of his life and now he had to try and cope without you after living with you for three years. When Doyle died he realised that he had to move on, leave his Sunnydale memories behind. He blamed himself over Doyles death, for not warning us in time, and he brooded but we were both grieving. I had realised what I really felt for Doyle and before he died, he kissed me goodbye and passed on his visions."
Buffy could tell she was off the subject but she let her vent all that was bottled up in a hope that it might
bring her out of her reclusive shell.
"We both grieved together, sharing the pain of losing a friend. I still found Angel brooding about you or Doyle but I used to drag him out of it by taking him, unwillingly, to a club to dance."
Cordelia giggled at the memory of when she saw Angel first dance at a party she threw. She suddenly snapped back to telling Buffy what had happened in the lab in her distant monotone voice.
"They tried all sorts of chemicals to try and make my visions appear but they didn't work. I used to scream out in pain, my veins aching as the chemicals coursed through my blood stream. I tried to struggle but it was hopeless. In the end I stopped caring, caring made me weak and I couldn't be weak or they would break and kill me. Instead I would look up and stare at the ceiling and count the white tiles above me. Do you know that there were 110 tiles on that ceiling. It sounds insane but it kept me going. Then the next to go was my hope. After all what is the point of hope if wasn't going to get me anywhere? So instead of counting tiles I started to live in memories, warmed by their fleeting fire. Then I escaped into dreams about what I wished would happen. they would always end up in strong arms but the doctors would come and take me away. At last they found out how to control the visions and put me up for auction at the LA Plaza. Wolfram and Hart were going to buy me because of my link to Angel. They thought they could use me to bring back Angelus, after all they know about his fascination with me."
Buffy sat there in shock. She couldn't believe that Cordelia had been through that. In Sunnydale she had only seen the bitchy ex-May Queen that had too much money and who's butt she had to save all the time. This Cordelia had come to LA, after her parents had lost all their money to the IRS, in a bid to find fame and
fortune and even more attention but nearly ended up as a Vampire snack. Then she had lost someone she really cared for, as well as trying to cope with the onslaught of visions. Buffy could sympathise, she had to deal with moving house, being told about her Chosen ability and then all of a sudden being thrown into a world of evil, prophecies and witchcraft. There was on big difference, Buffy didn't have choice where as Cordelia continued to have the visions for Angels sake. A pang of jealousy ran through Buffy before she decided that she knew Cordelia Chase too well and that the Cordelia Chase she knew was the same bitchy back-stabbing ex-cheerleader she would always be. A leopard never changes it's spots.
"What do you mean 'to get to Angelus?'" Buffy asked surprised at the mention of Angels alter ego.
"Oh Angelus escaped a few months ago thanks to a has been actress that Angel took a fancy to. She drugged him with Bliss Pills and bang...Angelus was released. We drugged him into a coma after Wesley knocked him out. We chained him to the bed and left Angel there, once he had woken up as Angel again, to think about the consequences of his actions. Lindsey found out at Wolfram and Hart 'Cos he was Rachel's lawyer. They vowed then to release Angelus again. I guess I was just another part of that plan."
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Part Four coming soon! Tell me, what do ya think?