Wesley gazed out the window, the brilliantly painted sunset lost to his unseeing eyes. He couldn't seem to bend his thoughts around their current predicament. Rather, he couldn't think about it without his thoughts introducing all too personal Billy-influenced flashes to the mix.
He had despised himself for attacking Fred, regardless of the supernatural influence that had brought about such an action. Truth be told, he despised himself for it still. But even with the experience Billy had left him with, he couldn't bring himself to understand why some men felt compelled to hurt women. Or why anyone would lay a finger on Cordelia.
Wesley continued to stand at the window even as dusk blanketed the city and hung heavy shadows throughout the lobby, drawing Fred from her upstairs room to seek less solitary accommodations. She descended the stairs slowly, casting shy glances around the seemingly empty room. She paused once she saw Wesley, not wanting to disturb him.
He looked incredibly sad and lonely standing so still in the darkened room. He reminded her of statues she had once seen on a school field trip. The children had all been bustled into the museum and out of the statuary garden when the skies opened and began pelting them with icy rain. Fred remembered looking back at the statues as she was ushered into the dry auditorium and feeling sad that they too couldn't come in out of the rain. Wesley reminded her of those statues, cold and alone and utterly helpless.
Not wanting to disturb him, but unwilling to leave him alone, Fred eased herself down onto the bottom step, her hands folded on her knees and supporting her chin as she waited for Wesley to notice her. She suddenly wished she had brought one of her markers downstairs with her but brushed the thought aside. It was bad enough that she had covered the walls in her bedroom with writing; Angel didn't need her brand of decorative touches in the Hyperion's lobby as well her own private quarters.
Angel saw Wesley and Fred as soon as he stepped out of the basement. Taking in their sloped shoulders and heavy expressions, he paused long enough to note the difficultly they were all having with Cordelia's attack. Then he mentally berated himself for not realizing the toll it would take beforehand. They were a family of sorts, at least they had formed the closest thing most of them had to a family. Of course it would be difficult for them all, not only Cordelia, to deal with.
Quietly, he continued toward the door behind which Cordelia was hiding. She had refused to leave the room ever since he had bundled her into it after leaving the hospital. Her refusal to leave hadn't bothered him nearly as much as her adamant denial when it came to allowing people to enter her sanctuary. She wouldn't grant anyone entrance save for Angel, not even Wesley who had been the one to discover her situation in the first place. It had to have been difficult for the ex-watcher to stand outside the door, knowing the full extent of his friend's injuries but unable to see her again to assure himself of her health and well-being.
Cordelia wasn't the only one in the hotel who was hurting.
~~~
Two days time had seen little change.
Cordelia hadn't so much as poked her nose out of the room, nor had she willingly allowed any of those concerned to enter. Everyone but Angel was left to their own fears as to her situation. Even when Kate had stopped by, the detective was left staring at the solid wooden door.
"Cordelia." Angel's voice hung gently in the air of the dark bedroom as he slipped past the door in the early twilight. She hadn't turned on the lamps but he knew she was awake. He could hear her quickened heartbeat, her sudden indrawn breath. "It's just me, Angel," he assured her.
There was a movement in the dark shade that was the bed, the rustling of sheets and a slight sniffle. No other sound or motion occurred as Angel stood near the door, debating how to broach the delicate issue that warred in his head.
He was quickly becoming even more worried than he had been to begin with. If Cordelia didn't start at least letting her friends in to see her soon, he would have to resort to drastic measures. He'd already called Lorne into their realm of concern by asking him to see if Cordelia would at least talk to him. The restaurateur was distressed to hear of Cordy's predicament even without being told the specifics and had agreed to see what he might be able to do with the seer.
Angel was growing even more concerned about the possible repercussions of Cordelia receiving a vision while she was still under so much distress. The visions were painful and taxing enough with their suffering innocents and feelings of hopelessness, she didn't need anything else to distress her own personal suffering. The longer her recovery took, the more likely it was that she would get a vision.
"Are you just going to stand there and brood?"
The sound of her voice startled him. He could almost see the half smile he knew would be on her lips after such a statement. "I thought I might."
"Well," her voice was slightly hesitant as she spoke, "I thought I might go into the lobby for a little while, you know, make sure my desk is still in one piece."
Her voice was harsh and raspy and Angel jumped at the consideration that she was making an effort to ease back into anything having to do with their insane lifestyle. "That's great! Um, Wes and Fred are out there..."
"Sheesh, Angel, slave driver much?" Cordelia slowly crossed into the pool of moonlight cast by the drawn blinds, making a point to try to sound more like her normal, un-traumatized self. "You know, it's common office procedure to occasionally allow your co-workers to go home when business hours are over," she paused in both speaking and walking. "But then again, you're not the boss anymore, are you?" She took a deep cleansing breath and motioned to her clothes. "How do I look?" she asked hesitantly, not fully wanting to hear his response, but needing to make some effort at normalcy.
If she allowed herself to remain hidden away from everyone, she had realized, the man who had attacked her would win and she couldn't allow that. She wasn't a quitter, she just had to convince her emotions of that.
Angel studied her, from her lusterless hair to her bare toes that curled against the cool floor. The clothes must have been among some she often left at the hotel for emergencies or just to get the smell of demon entrails off her body after a night of seek and destroy: jeans and a blouse, modest in the extreme but comfortable. He smiled broadly. "You look terrific."
"Uh huh. You wouldn't just be saying because you want me to go out there, would you?"
"Would I ever lie to you, Cordy?" Angel winced as soon as the words left his mouth. He had lied to her plenty of times.
"Not when it really matters. At least not any more. Right?" She looked up into his face, seeing the emotions that danced in his eyes.
"Right."
The movement at the door drew Fred's attention and she nearly toppled off the desk she was perched on when she realized who it was. "Cordelia, wow, you look great."
Wesley spun from the papers he was reading at Fred's exclamation, seeing with his own eyes the woman who stood next to Angel. "Cordelia, how are you feeling?"
She smiled in thanks to Fred and turned her attention to Wesley. "Like I was run over by a whole heard of Drokken, or possibly spent some time in one of the hell dimensions... but it's getting better."
"Is there anything you require? Anything you need at all?" He stepped away from the desk and slowly approached his friend.
Cordelia looked into his face, seeing the guilt and worry that was eating away at his conscience. "Yeah, there is something."
"What is it?"
"I need you and Angel and Fred," she turned her head slightly to glance at the other woman, "and Gunn, where ever he is…"
"Right behind you," Gunn said, his entrance having gone unnoticed.
"I need you, all of you," she concluded simply. "That's it." She flashed a small smile, a mere shadow of her ordinary radiance but a sure sign of the beginnings of recovery.
"Always," Angel murmured softly, his voice barely more than a purr in the frozen atmosphere of the lobby.
"I mean," Cordelia hurried to add, "I may still go hide in the bedroom for a while every now and again, but I'll always come back out eventually."
Fred watched her, listening closely to her words. Hide in the bedroom. Wasn't that what she had done when they'd brought her back from Pylea? She'd hidden away in there for months before Angel had been able to entice her to venture out. But even under the current circumstances, she couldn't picture Cordelia as a hider. Cordy faced things head on, she tackled anything in her path… Maybe that's how things had gone wrong that night she had slipped out of the hotel to return to her own home. Maybe it wasn't always such a good idea to tackle the opposition without backup.
"Well, you know I've got your back, girl," Gunn grinned.
Cordelia offered him a small smile. "It's just going to take me a little while to get back in the swing of—" Her words were cut short as she grabbed her head and crumpled into Angel's ready arms.
Unable to do anything, they just stood and watched Angel clutch Cordelia as she rode out the worst of the vision. He held her steady, offering a stable foundation for her to cling to in the torrential wash of her experience.
Fred edged a step or two back from the spectacle, muttering, "So much for taking it slow…"
Catching her comment, Angel spared the worried woman a quick glance before returning his full concern to the seer who writhed in his arms. He waited for the worst of it to pass, watching her closely.
Cordelia forced her paralyzed lungs to drag in great draughts of air, the very realness of the vision still swimming furiously in her foremost thoughts. She pushed it back enough that she might be able to control her trembles, desperately trying to convince herself that she had survived visions before, it was just like riding a bike—once you'd learned how to do it, you never forgot how.
"There's… there's a demon," she gasped, "big, fuzzy, blue…" She paused trying to understand the images that had sped through her brain. "Attacking tourists under the Santa Monica pier… Japanese tourists, lots of cameras."
Wesley and Gunn started toward the weapons closet, pausing when Angel didn't join them.
Angel didn't want to leave Cordelia again. Leaving her had been their mistake the last time. He looked down at her face as she brushed the tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands. "Cordelia?" His voice was more of a sigh than a vocalization.
"G…go," she stammered at last, pushing the demand out of her throat with every ounce of energy she had left. "I have Fred… stay here 'til you come back." Her head was throbbing in time with the racing pulse in her neck. She would stay at the Hyperion, tucked into the farthest corner of her current room, as far from the outside world as possible.
Angel, Wesley, and Gunn all turned to look at Fred who looked no more ready to handle a crisis than Cordelia. She stood against the bottom step of the stairway, looking as if she were about to bolt upstairs to the safety of her own room. Caught very like a deer in headlights.
"Fred?" Wesley called, "are you alright?"
Shaking herself out of her stupor, Fred nodded and moved away from the stairs. "Yes, we'll be okay. I'll stay downstairs with Cordelia."
"Angel," Cordelia said, her mind refusing to let go of the image of mauled and bloody tourists spread out in the pounding surf, "go. They'll be under the Ferris wheel."
The men turned and walked through the lobby, their steps solid against the tile although each one cast a fleeting glance back over his shoulder at the pair of women huddled on the floor.
~to be completed in one more chapter…