The elderly lady slowly sipped the tea the reporter handed her, trying to decide how best to continue her tale rilla Normal rilla 2 3 2001-11-12T21:30:00Z 2001-11-12T21:30:00Z 2 1102 6287 home 52 12 7720 9.2720

The elderly lady slowly sipped the tea the reporter handed her, trying to decide how best to continue her tale.

"Did he love her?  This Cordelia?" Mr. Bruin prompted.  "Did the vampire with a soul fall in love with a human?"

She smiled sadly.  "Of course he loved her, they were dependant upon one another.  She provided him with the fuel to overcome his curse and he gave her a home and family when she had nothing.  They were very dear friends, and like friends, they often hurt each other more than they did anyone else.  But was he in love with his seer?  That's a question best left for later.  He did love a vampire slayer once though…"

"Excuse me, Madam, but did I hear you correctly?  He loved a vampire slayer?"

She sighed and looked again toward the window and the faded sunset beyond the frosty panes of age-rippled glass.  How long it had been since she had last heard Buffy's name spoken aloud?  More than thirty years if it had been a day.  There had never been any love loss between the two of them, but it didn't seem to make any difference when it came to memories and the feeling of loss.  She missed them all: the Angel Investigations team, the Scoobies, even the more frequently met demons, every last one of them.  She was the sole survivor, the last possessor of the truth.

"Yes.  She died young, as slayers tend to do, although not as young as she might have… She was unusual; she maintained her personality and railed against the Watcher's Council as every turn.  In the end, she prevailed, more or less, we lost her to a drunk driver, not a demon or vampire, just one of humanity's own special breed of monster.  But Angel loved her, without a doubt."

She was silent for a long moment, her thoughts returning to another time and place where shocked and grief stricken friends had gathered to mourn Buffy's loss.  No one had quite known how to react to such a drastic and wholly unexpected turn of events.  How do you accept that someone who saved the world from demons and vampires was dead because one fool decided he was sober enough to drive himself home from the bar?

Shaking the morose thoughts from her head, she stretched a hand up to pat a snowy white lock of hair back into place.  "The vampire slayer, however, is an altogether different story.  You wanted to hear about Angel.  Cordelia's visions brought with them progressively worse side effects, probably due to her fully human state…"

~~~

The pale glow of the moon still poured across the gleaming tile of the floor when Angel set a dish of eggs in front of Cordelia and shoved his own microwaved mug of nourishment across the table to the facing chair.  Circling the table and claiming the chair, he rested his arms on the surface and leaned against them, studying Cordelia closely.  "Better?"

Smiling at the wafting scent of her midnight snack, she nodded.  "I'm fine."

"You've stopped complaining."

"Huh?"  Angel's comment stopped Cordelia's first fork-full of food from reaching her mouth, and she turned a questioning eye on her friend.  "I don't follow."

"When Doyle first passed the visions on to you… you used to complain about how bad they were."

"Yeah?"  She eased the steaming eggs into her mouth, trying to savor the first food she'd eaten since the gritty bran muffin she'd scarfed down early that morning.

"You don't complain anymore."  Angel took a sip from his mug, running his tongue across his upper lip thoughtfully.  "They're getting worse, and you don't have a demon half to protect you."

"Well, not technically… but I do have a vampire to protect me," she beamed at him, choosing to devour as much of the food as she could before either another vision accosted her with its full spectrum of experiences for the senses or Angel's decidedly morose topic of conversation managed to make her even more ill with the worry of what the future might hold for her.

"You know what I mean…"

"I know, but right now I just wanna eat.  I know it's not the smart thing to do, I should be trying to find out what the PTB are up to with all these intense scratch and sniff visions, but I'm starving.  I'll worry about it after."  Expressive brown eyes gazed at him in a silent plea to let her have that much of a respite, as her fork speared another cluster of cooked egg.  "Please?  Besides, Wesley wanted you for something earlier.  That's why he came in while you and Gunn were out taking care of the bad guys."

Looking across the lobby to where Gunn and Wesley were sitting, talking softly, Angel sighed.  "He should have been here earlier, I don't like leaving you alone like that."

"Uh huh, look, Mister Broody, I am a grown-up you know.  I can cross the street by myself and everything…" She watched the dark shadow that slowly eased its way across her friend's expression.  "Even when I'm dealing with vision backlash.  Besides, if he'd been here, you know as well as I do that he would have gone with you and Gunn."

Knowing full well that Cordelia was right, Angel let the supposed transgression slide.  He gave her another long hard look before rising and crossing to the opposite corner of the room.

The relief that washed over her with Angel's departure from the table, allowed Cordelia to drop the fork she'd been clutching in a white-knuckled fist and she sagged back against her chair.  Her head still pounded from the daylong headache and all she wanted to do was drill a few holes in her skull to relieve the pressure that had been building there ever since the onset of the vision.  If she wanted to keep up the pretense that she was fine, she needed to keep up the inane chatter, and that was getting progressively more difficult to do.  A few more bites of food and she could beg off and flee to the relative safety of her apartment and the pampering nature of Dennis.  She could do that… not a problem.

From across the lobby, Angel kept his eyes rained on Cordelia even as Wesley explained why he had missed being at the hotel at the time of Cordelia's vision.  Something wasn't quite right about how she was sitting, she was too stiff and awkward for someone who was no longer in imminent pain, then again, she was exhausted, perhaps that was the cause of her odd position.

"So as I was saying," Wesley continued, unaware that he had never entirely claimed the vampire's attention, "they had some very interesting alternate translations of several ancient scrolls at the shop, and I became quite friendly with the storekeeper.  He has a lead on a scroll of Transientranl that he's quite anxious to procure…"

"English!  Man, can't we have the Reader's Digest version, I'm beat."

"It's another version of the Prophecy of Aberjian," Wesley stated, complying with the younger man's request and turning his full attention to Angel, noting the man's apparent lack of interest.

"You lost me, man," Gunn stated simply, stretching his legs out in front of him.

"The Prophecy of Aberjian tells about the vampire with a soul," Wesley explained, following Angel's gaze to the distant table.

"Oh, that one."  Closing his eyes again, Gunn rested his head against the cushioned chair back.

"Angel?"  Wondering if he was listening to anything he had said, Wesley leaned forward and waved a hand in front of the other man's face

"Cordelia?"  Angel was standing and across the room before Cordelia slid the rest of the way to the floor.  "Cordy!"  He caught her limp body in his arms, confusion radiating from his eyes.  Gently patting her cheek with one hand, he tried to rouse her to no effect.  It was then that he noticed her elevated temperature and ashen complexion.

to be continued…