[Disclaimer: I do not own what Joss Whedon created...much as I'd like to own Spike]

Author's Note:

I have no idea where this came from.

It doesn't fit with my other stories, it's just a little stand-alone piece. As I said, I don't know where it came from, but I just wrote it. The bit mentioned about Spike mumbling about a weekend? I am going to write that story. Just not yet. It's another little one-chapter thing.

Let Go

by Adele Elisabeth

Let go. Something Angel just can't do.

Cordelia Callista Chase

- All you ever wanted was less than you deserved -

- For all the words I never said -

- my sunshine -

Her coffin was encased in stone, in the center of a white marble crypt. It had cost the earth, but Angel had willingly paid it. Others chipped in. Even Spike.

An angel was carved on the door, and Cordelia's own image was carved on her stone confinement. It looked so real...

It wasn't fair, the way she died. She deserved...better? He didn't know. It was so stupid. There were no demons, no vampires, no bumpy noises in the night.

Wesley and Gunn had been snarking at each other all morning, and it irritated her. She snapped at them, and announced she was taking a walk. Somewhere in there was a well-crafted barb at the warring pair.

Of all the things to kill her, it was a speed demon. Xander had said that, covering genuine grief with false humor.

A hit and run.

Angel could remember the way she lay there, confusion in her beautiful, beautiful eyes. She was dying and there was no magic cure, no incantation they could chant and she'd be back on her feet.

Nothing they could do.

Nothing he could do.

She died in his arms.

Angel stood next to the marble one hand resting on the cold, lifeless stone image of his princess. His queen.

"I never got the chance to tell you this," he began, a sort of broken grief marring his voice. "But I love you. No, Cordy, I don't mean as in my best friend. I mean as in romantic love. I couldn't tell you when it started, or how, or why, and to tell you the truth, I don't want to know. I just know that I love you. You were my sunshine." He sighed, with unneeded breath, and steadied himself. "Spike came to your funeral. Said it was the least he could do. Mumbled something about a weekend, said you were 'something else, that's for damn sure'. Left you white roses.

"The Scoobies came, Willow cried. Dawn did too, remember when we visited Sunnydale? She remembered you. Said if you were an ice bitch, she wanted to be one too. That's a direct quote, Cordy. Buffy even came, but she didn't seem very comfortable. Paid her last respects, didn't stay. I thought it might mean something to you that she actually came.

"Giles said you were one of his own. I didn't understand, but he elaborated. The Scoobies. Maybe you weren't a Scooby, but Giles thought of you as one of his children just as much as he did the Scoobies. I got the distinct impression he blames me for dragging you back into the 'underworld' of demonic forces. You were the only one who could really escape it, and I guess he thought you should have had the chance to lead a normal life. I think so too.

"Xander said it was my fault for letting you get killed like that, you could see he was cut up about your dying. Anya told him he was being a prick, and then he cried. Actually a lot of us cried then. It was a very 'unmanly display of pent up emotion'. Anya said that. Of course, she went on to say that it was really cute.

"Willow said she almost didn't believe you really were gone. She said you were...a fact of life. Sometimes a good fact, sometimes a bad fact, but a fact of life." Angel chuckled. "She said you used to be a necessary evil, but that now? If they don't let you into heaven she's going to come up there and give the PTB a piece of her mind.

"Wesley cried. There was none of that half-hearted 'macho-ness' that you always hated in men trying not to show emotion, he was just really upset and letting it out. You'd be proud."

Angel's voice broke then, and so did he, crumpling to the ground like a broken doll. "I won't say it, Cordy. I can't. If I say it, then it'll be real, and I can't deal with that. I can't. I just...I can't. You can't be gone. I'm going to wake up and you'll be wanting to know what stupid dream weirded me out this time. It's not real. It can't be."

The night passed. During it, sometimes Angel spoke, other times he was silent, his grief more than mere words could express.

Day came, and she was still gone.

Years later. Many, many years.

Decades had passed. Cordelia's crypt was no longer bright and new, but old. It held beauty that aged well, and an air of distinguished grief surrounded it.

"'All you ever wanted was less than you deserved'," Annette Wyndam-Price read on the door to the crypt. She looked up at her father. "Daddy?"

Wesley looked down at his precocious eight year old. It was something they did together, sometimes. Reading epitaphs, coming up with stories about the people who lay there, wondering at what the words on the graves might have meant.

But this one was personal. The aging Englishman swallowed, closing his eyes briefly. He'd tell her a story, yes, but this story...this story was true. Tragic, but true.

Sitting down on the grass in front of the crypt, Wesley began.

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman named Cordelia Chase."

***

Author's Note:

Well...that didn't come out quite as I'd intended. But still, not bad.