~Cordelia~

I'd had all of these plans for my life. When I was sixteen, I thought I
would get married to someone rich and handsome and fascinating. When I was
seventeen, I was sure it would be Xander. When I was twenty, I fell in love
with Wesley and saw myself battling evil with him for the rest of my life,
and when we broke up under surprisingly friendly circumstances, I was still
sure I would never fall in love again. And then I moved back to Sunnydale
and it seemed like I was back to one of my original plans. Live with Xander,
marry Xander, have kids with Xander and then lose all of the pregnancy weight
before the baby was two days old. I actually expected that.

But I guess things don't always go the way you expect. I should have figured
that out. Maybe if I had expected *this*, what I would be getting was the
happy life. I didn't think that I would be waiting for either myself or one
of my friends to die before we were thirty. I thought things had finally
settled down in my life. I thought that this would be the time where I was
waiting for all of the good stuff to finally come. I thought this time would
bring in the things we've earned. The happiness. The relaxation.

The lack of visions.

But instead of that, I find myself terrified. No one's talking about it, but
I'm pretty sure they all feel the same way, deep inside. I look into
Xander's eyes and he has this panic when he looks back, or when he glances at
Willow. Or even Buffy, like there's something *he* can do to protect *her.*

Instead we all just sat around for the rest of the night after Giles'
revelation, talking like it would be our last night on Earth. Which it could
have been, I guess. The later it got, the quieter we all got until I
realized that I was the only one left awake. And as the sun rose, even I was
starting to fall asleep.

And that's when it happened.

Pain shot through my skull.

I saw a dark cemetery where the mist was rising off the ground like souls
trying to escape from their graves. I saw the army of vampires. I saw
blood... Oh my God, so much blood. And a circle lit by candles with an
overhanging crescent moon above.

I moaned softly as the images disappeared and the pain in my head evaporated.
I moaned out of pain that filled my soul like buckets of ice water being
splashed onto my subconscious. I wanted to have not seen what I just had.

I thought they were gone, the visions.

And then I was crying, and I didn't know how to stop. Xander opened his eyes
quickly, sitting up in the chair we were crunched into, and searched my eyes.
Without asking-- I don't know how he knew-- his fingers found my temples and
he began rubbing away the remnants of the headache I got.

"I don't want this to be happening," I whimpered under his soothing touch.

He nodded silently and started wiping away the tears streaking down my face.
His voice was calm and comforting. "What is it?"

"Vision," I murmured.

"A vision? You haven't had a vision in...?"

"Three years," I murmured through my tears. "There was so much blood,
Xander. Oh God... It hurts. I saw it. I saw it."

"Cordelia." He pressed his mouth to mine gently, quieting me. "Who did you
see? Who was it?"

"I... I don't know. I just saw blood. So much blood, spilling all over the
place. I saw some sort of spell going on. I saw vampires." My voice was
shaky; I seemed to be having trouble breathing. "Oh, God."

"No." Xander held my face in his hands, forcing me to meet his eyes. "No.
We'll find a way around it. How many times have we beaten an ancient
prophecy before? Twenty? Thirty? Whatever happens, we'll beat it. It'll
be all right." He took me in his arms tightly, smoothing back my hair.

I tried to be brave, but it didn't seem like there was a whole lot of brave
left in me. "What about Giles? Shouldn't we wake him, tell him? Everyone?"

"We'll tell them in the morning." His voice was grainy, and he hugged me
closer. "Just sleep now."

"Yes," I said, taking a deep breath. Sleep, escape from those images,
sounded like perfect Heaven at that moment. "Yes, sleep."

"Cordy?"

"Hmm?"

"I love you."
* * * * * * *

When I woke up in the morning, I was surprisingly refreshed. I looked
around, seeing that everyone was still asleep. Well, except for Giles.
Apparently he had made it his personal duty to cover the rest of us up.
Buffy and Angel had retreated to Giles's bedroom, where they could close the
curtains and rest up and Willow and Oz were curled together on Giles's couch.


Giles opened the curtains with a flourish when he noticed me staring at him.
He quietly made his way over to my side, stepping over the books and papers
that lay strewn across the floor. "Coffee?"

I yawned, gently extracting myself from Xander's tight embrace. "Please.
Lots of sugar."

He nodded and went to the kitchen to pour me some. I followed and sat down
on one of the stools on front of his counter. This was the hardest part.
Knowing that I had to say something but not knowing how to say it. He handed
me the coffee and I looked at him seriously over the rim of the cup as I took
a long swallow.

He saw me staring and took a step back, removing his glasses. "What is it?"

"I had a vision last night," I sighed. I didn't know what to say next, so I
fell silent.

"Cordelia." His firm voice made me look back up at him and meet his eyes.
Suddenly I was comfortable again, and I realized that Giles's eyes were a
place of security for me. One of the only things in the last decade of my
life that had always been steady and constant. I wanted to fall asleep and
rest inside of his gaze. He looked back at me seriously. "Tell me."

And then I was talking, laying out all of what I saw. I barely recognized my
voice as I spoke, barely felt the words leave my mouth. I felt no fear or
grief, no anxiety over what was to come. All that was left was his gaze,
simple and clear, encouraging me to go on.

When I had finished outlining what had been in my vision, Giles paused. "A
crescent moon?"

"Yes."

"Waxing or waning?"

"I usually don't remember details like that from my visions," I said
apologetically. "I just know that I saw a reflection of the moon."

"Reflection?"

"Yeah..." I said, startled at that small insight. "In the middle of the
circle of candles was a bowl of water."

He nodded thoughtfully and then looked at me with a smile. "I think you just
may have helped us very much indeed."

"Really? More happiness than doom?"

"Considerably. You may have pointed us in the direction of the spell that
was happening-- I'm assuming that's what you saw. And if we can find that,
we may know more about what's going to happen," he explained. That glazed,
excited look that we all loved sparked in his eyes.

And then, like a puff of smoke, my headache was completely gone. I smiled,
surprised. Usually they lasted like a dull hammering in my brain for days
after I had a vision.

"We should wake everyone up then, right?"

Giles hesitated for a moment and then shook his head. "We can let them sleep
for a while yet." He looked over the room with a fond smile.

It was then that I realized why we all loved him. It wasn't because he was
smarter than us, or just because we all saw him as sort of a father figure in
our unpredictable lives. It wasn't because of the big things he did every
day to keep us alive. It was because of the small things, like letting us
sleep when he knew we needed it, the small things that he allowed us because
he cared for us so much. The subtle things that he did all of the time to
show us how much, even if he never spoke his feelings out loud.

I loved him dearly in that moment, loved him so much that my heart ached.
Such a small thing, letting them sleep. Such a telling thing about who he
was. Such a huge emotion behind everything that he did.

"Thanks, Giles," I murmured without thinking.

His cheeks reddened slightly. "They'll need the rest, I suppose," he
muttered, as though trying to shrug off the feelings behind the thanks.

But as he turned back to pour me another cup of coffee, he couldn't hide his
smile.