Part Six
"'Cause maybe you're gonna be the one that saves me."
-Oasis, "Wonderwall"
Cordelia awoke with the smell of corn lingering in her nostrils and the twang of a guitar flirting with the edges of her mind. 'You come see me, Cordelia Chase. Bring that double-talking friend of yours, too. Seems to me that he could do with a bit of straightening out. Just ask anyone around these parts for Mother Abigail and they'll point you at me. One hundred and seven years old-"
"And she still makes her own biscuit," Cordelia finished in a sleepy mutter. She propped herself up on her elbows, mewling as bruised muscles protested the thoughtless treatment. A ringing noise echoed through the house, jangling and discordant. Cordelia preferred the guitar.
Angel reached past her and rummaged beneath a pile of research tomes until he liberated the phone. The ringing noise became much louder.
"Whoops." Cordelia rubbed at her cheeks, which felt like plastic. "I swear I was only resting only my eyes."
"They looked like they needed it." Angel pressed the 'talk' button and brought the phone up to his ear. "Hello? Giles? Good to hear from you. Cordelia and I have hit a wall here, and it's getting worse. Has anyone in Sunnydale-?" If there had been any blood circulating through Angel's face, then Cordelia would have been witness to it draining away. Angel's expression went blank and he sat down on the couch like a puppet tossed away by a bored, careless child. Cordelia pulled her feet out of the way just in time, scattering books to the floor. The spine of an exquisite fifteenth century diary cracked as it struck the floor, but neither person in the room so much as glanced down. Cordelia's eyes were fixed onto Angel's face, and she saw death written there.
"I see," Angel was saying. His tone, slow and overly controlled in the way he adopted when he was on the verge of bad guy induced violence, coupled with the clenching and unclenching of his fists, said that he did not see at all. The stillness on his face Cordelia want to scooch back. "I'll bee there as soon as I can." Angel terminated the call and rose from the couch like a sleepwalker.
"What?" Cordelia tried to scramble up from the amongst the couch cushions, yelped in pain, and settled for a slower, even less dignified ascent. "Angel, where are you going?" When he didn't look at her, Cordelia lunged forward and grabbed at the sleeve of his shirt. He shook the fabric out of her grasp as if she were not even there. "Angel!"
Angel didn't stop moving, but he did at least glance her way. "It's Buffy," he said. Short, clipped, macho. Cordelia could only imagine what emotions were running beneath the surface. "She has the virus." Cordelia gasped so hard that she felt dizzy. "Giles doesn't think that she has long. I have to go to her." Cordelia was once again relegated to the status of mayfly as Angel turned towards the bedroom, where he had been keeping a few things until he could find another place of his own.
"Go to her?" Cordelia wanted to shout, but Wesley was sleeping peacefully for the first time that night, so she settled for a stalk and a hiss instead. One part of her, small and mean and just loud enough so that it could not be easily ignored, swore that Angel was counting on this. "Hey, in case you haven't noticed, we have an apocalypse of our own to be dealing with here, and so far we're not batting the greatest average in the stopping it game."
Angel turned long enough to give her an incredulous look. "It's Buffy," he said, as if that should answer every objection.
In its own twisted, codependent way Cordelia supposed that it did. Destiny, tortured love, right, all that bodice ripping stuff, but… "What about me and Wesley? And, while we're at it, the world? Aren't we supposed to matter, too?"
The blankness dropped off Angel's face like a party mask at midnight. With the frightening stranger gone, it was the Angel that Cordelia had come to know and care for over the past year that stepped close and cradled her face between his palms. The energy that sparked from his skin to hers was a long stone's throw away from brotherly. "Hey," Angel said, his voice pitched low. "I am not running out on you guys. I'll see if Giles has any ideas about what's going on, pick up some books that we don't have. I'll do what I need to do," Angel's breath hitched for the barest of seconds, "and then I'll come back. I promise."
Cordelia's gaze ticked towards Wesley, and she knew that she and Angel were sharing a thought. Buffy may not be long for this world, but Wesley's chance weren't looking like the winning horse, either.
"Tomorrow night," Angel said. "I won't be any later than that."
"I'm going to hold you to that." Cordelia's tone tried for light and came to a rest somewhere around 'boulder'.
Angel's mouth twitched into a maybe-smile. He leaned forward and kissed Cordelia near chastely, the barest flicker of his lips against hers before he pulled away. They were cooler and firmer than Cordelia expected, a long way from being unpleasant. She felt her jaw drop.
"I'll be back," Angel promised again.
"Okay." Cordelia struggled to find something self-assured and witty to say, but all of her thoughts seemed to have bled away into Angel's mouth. She watched in silence as Angel gathered his things into a bag, touched Wesley's forehead with the same gentleness with which he had cradled Cordelia's face, and left. Several minutes went by before Cordelia realized that she had forgotten to say goodbye.
Wesley died later that night.
---
Cordelia sat on the couch with her knees pulled as close to her chest as she could manage before agony set in, her eyes closed and the phone pressed against her ear tightly enough to cut grooves into her skin. The steady beep-beep-beep of the busy signal had long since descended into a background noise keeping her tethered to the real world by a thread. Dennis' anxious hovering penetrated not at all.
"We're sorry, all circuits are currently in use…beep-beep-beep…we're sorry…"
'I should just hang up.' The thought struggled through treacle to blossom across the surface of her mind. 'No one's going to answer.' Cordelia wondered if there was anyone left alive who could.
'There's a dead man in your bedroom.' Sly thought that slunk through the back door of Cordelia's consciousness, piercing her haze. Cordelia threw it out whenever she caught it, telling herself that this was absolutely the last time that it was permitted entry, and then settled back to await its inevitable return.
"…beep-beep-beep…"
'He's probably gone stiff by now.'
"Fuck!" The word exploded out of Cordelia's lungs like mustard gas, deadliest poison that she had to expel from her system or risk it tainting every thing. She hurled the phone against the far wall hard enough to make bits of electronics rain down on the carpet. Dennis' suffocating presence vanished, frightened, as Cordelia covered her face with her hands.
Her sobs lasted for longer than fifteen minutes, smearing snot and tears across her face and sending her ribs into a protesting cacophony. Cordelia didn't try to halt them, and when she finally wound down she felt, not better, but sharper. "There's a dead man in my bedroom," Cordelia said aloud, testing the words. They hung in the air. "His name was Wesley Wyndham-Price, and he was my friend." Cordelia took one deep breath, then another, staring at what was left of her phone. How long had she been trying to call 911? The clock said it was nearly ten in the morning. Hours, then. "I'm probably going to have to bury him."
Getting to the toilet meant crossing through the bedroom, where-
-the corpse-
-Wesley lay staring peacefully at the ceiling-
-as peacefully as a person could look with their skin swollen like that, oh God, how painful was it to choke to death?
Cordelia vomited into the kitchen trash can instead. Dennis gave her a damp washcloth when she was done. Cordelia took it gratefully and wiped the tears and mucus from her face before she rose to do a more proper job. She was spitting a mouthful of water down the kitchen drain when the doorbell rang.
Cordelia froze mid-rinse. She could feel Dennis hovering around her shoulders and knew that if he had eyes they would be locking gazes in identical caricatures of shock. "Everyone that I know is dead," Cordelia whispered, not knowing why the prospect of a new face was seizing her so. Dennis rattled the coffee cups and otherwise did a spectacular job of not making himself useful.
The person on her porch grew impatient and switched from ringing the doorbell to beating on the door with their fist, boom-boom-boom, in the exact same tempo as the busy signal. Cordelia clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle either a giggle or a scream and nearly retched again. So the person wasn't going to go away if Cordelia ignored them. Cordelia pulled a steak knife from the knife rack, cradling its weight in her palm with an assurance that would have made Buffy proud, and walked to the door. Cordelia raised the knife into a strike position before she opened the door to let in sunlight and the sounds of the day.
The sun shone directly into Cordelia's eyes as the door swung open, dazzling her, and prevented her from recognizing the figure before her. This probably worked in Lindsey's favor, as he saw the knife before Cordelia saw him and had time to take the necessary steps to put himself out of range. "Cordelia?" he asked.
"Lindsey?" Cordelia's eyes adjusted to the rush of light and she lowered the blade. A little. "What are you doing here?"
If she hadn't been taking lessons from Angel in contemptuous and surly, then Lindsey would swear himself to a life of piety. "Looking for Angel," he said. Always best to keep it simple.
"He's not here," Cordelia said. The way her fingers tightened around the handle of the blade as she spoke made Lindsey feel as if a few feet of distance between them were not enough; several miles might not be enough.
The carefully neutral expression that Lindsey had worn when Cordelia opened the door dissolved into shock. Cordelia's lips twitched and she was glad that she didn't have anything left in her to throw up. "What do you mean, he's not here?" Lindsey demanded.
"I mean," Cordelia enunciated as she would to a mentally deficient child, "that he's gone. As in, somewhere else. Much like you would be right now if we lived in a perfect world." A low ringing sounded through her head and her fingers twined tighter around the knife's handle.
Lindsey winced suddenly and rubbed at his temple, dropping his eyes down to Cordelia's welcome mat. Before Cordelia could ask for explanation or, the more likely option behind Door Number Two, unleash a scathing comment just to see if it would piss him off, the veneer was back, shiny and brittle and about as human as the polish on Cordelia's nails. "Well, I need his help."
Cordelia stared. Her jaw did an interesting little dance before it decided to stay a part of her face rather than making friends with the floor. One, she could throw the knife at him and hope that it hit something painful. Two, she could gather her new personal growth around her and hear him out. A voice somewhere in the middle, still trapped with the cooling meat in the bedroom, suggested that she burst into tears again and be done with it.
Cordelia slammed the door in Lindsey's face and decided to call it a draw.
Great for the morale, not so much for the common sense. Cordelia lowered the knife and turned away from the door, trusting in basic decency to rebuff Lindsey in the face of such obvious refusal. She should have known that that would be giving him too much credit.
Lindsey entered the apartment without bothering to knock again. Cordelia whirled on him. "In case you haven't noticed, the world has a slight case of going to hell in a hand basket out there."
"I've noticed," Cordelia said, her tone stiff. "That's why I want you out in it." Lindsey made a sour face and Cordelia thought she felt better.
"Look, I brought your paper in for you," Lindsey said, holding out the LA Times as if it were the twenty-first century's answer to the olive branch. "There's an article on the front page that you probably want to look at. It pertains to the current situation."
The absurdity of a world in which one of her best friends could die in her bedroom without even the benefit of an ambulance, yet the morning paper could still arrive on time, caused both giggles and bile to crawl up Cordelia's throat. She snorted, pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Lindsey took a small step backwards, male apprehension of approaching hysterics registering like a neon sign across his face. Cordelia waited until she was certain that she was not going to be sick across her own shoes, realized that she was still holding the steak knife, and allowed Dennis to pluck it from her fingers. Lindsey's eyes widened for the barest of seconds, but he said nothing. Probably had a few ghosts of the evil rather than Casper variety on his client list.
Thoughts of clients led to a sharp reminder of who Lindsey was and what he stood for. Cordelia folded her arms beneath her breasts, lowering her chin and glaring. "I'm not interested in whatever new con you've come up with," she said. "There's the door. I think you already know how the rest of the saying goes."
"Or you'll call the police?" Lindsey offered up the smile of a wolf that has tasted lamb's blood, ensuring that Cordelia would not forget who he worked for again. She wondered if it was too late to have Dennis bring back the knife. "Stick your head out the door. Law and order is becoming a thing of the past."
"I've been in the hospital," Cordelia gritted. "Not a lot of time to catch the evening news."
"Look at that. We have something in common." Lindsey melted a few steps closer and Cordelia was even more sorry that she had given up the knife. For the first time she noticed the bandage that ended Lindsey's right wrist and the way that he kept it tucked against his side, as if in fear of further injury.
Cordelia's pointed stare halted Lindsey faster than the knife would have. "That's where the similarities end." Frost could have risen from her words. "See this?" Cordelia held out her injured wrist, still wrapped in the Ace bandage. "I was in a car accident because I had a vision while I was driving. A vision that was supposed to let me help people, if that's not too foreign a concept. You, on the other hand," Cordelia laid a malicious stress on the word and watched Lindsey's eyes narrow, "got yours while trying to kill me. I'd say that makes us very different."
Something flickered across Lindsey's face, there and gone again too quickly for Cordelia to quantify before it was overtaken by storm clouds. "Right," he said, a suggestion of bared teeth entering his voice as well as his eyes. "You and Angel, your white hats, ya'll-" Cordelia blinked. "-are all saints, nobly standing your ground against us sinners. Never mind that once upon a time ol' Angel could make every vampire in Europe wet himself by the very mention of his name. And you." Lindsey curled his lip in a way that destroyed his face, rendered it into something cold and nearly feral. "Yeah, I know all about you."
"And we all decided to change. What's your excuse?"
"Must be an elite club." Lindsey was already turning away, heaving the duffel bag off his shoulder and setting it down beside the couch. He surveyed the room with a proprietary air that made Cordelia's blood switch from a simmer into a full boil. "When is Angel going to be back?"
"Soon. Can't say he'll be all that happy to see you. I'm always up for entertainment, though, especially when there's nothing good on TV." Cordelia glanced towards the bedroom, wondering how long it would take to get rid of Lindsey; more importantly, how much longer after that before she could muster the strength to do what needed to be done. Lindsey followed her gaze and a look of triumph transformed his face.
"Not here?" he asked, shouldering past her.
"No!" Cordelia cried, grabbing for Lindsey's arm and missing. She hadn't been able to enter the room since she had discovered Wesley dead in it, hadn't been able to do much of anything other than cradle the phone to her ear and wait with stupid faith for civilization to begin putting itself back together again. If Lindsey opened the door then it would have to be real, no pixie dust panacea, and Cordelia didn't think that she could-
"Don't," she said again, and hated herself. Lindsey ignored her.
A violent shudder wracked Lindsey's body as his hand encountered the knob, as if gale-force winds were shoving him back. Cordelia loved Dennis more than she had loved anyone else in her life. Lindsey pressed his fingers to his temple, shivered, and pushed through. The darkness beyond the doorway consumed him like a lost soul. Cordelia pressed her fingers to her mouth and closed her eyes.
She didn't hear Lindsey again for several minutes.
He shut the door behind him with a gentleness that he hadn't so much as hinted at before. If it was possible for a person to express contrition through their very aura, then Lindsey needed no words for his regret; Cordelia didn't need to open her eyes. She felt Dennis settle around her shoulders like a cloak and knew that he had followed Lindsey into the room to ensure that the sanctity of Wesley's body was preserved. "Thank you," Cordelia whispered. The presence about her shoulders tightened in Dennis' non-corporeal version of a hug.
Cordelia opened her eyes to see Lindsey looking embarrassed and genuinely upset, two emotions that she never expecting to see caressing his face with any kind of sincerity. "I'm sorry," Lindsey said. "If I had known I wouldn't have-"
"Come here?" As long as the acid supply to her tongue was still working Cordelia could pretend that she held the reins to her own sanity. "Feel free to correct that at any time."
"Spoken ill of the dead," Lindsey finished.
Cordelia blinked, turned her face away to hide the glitter-sharp sting of tears. "So you know that Angel really is gone," she said in a low voice. "Think you can manage to show yourself out, or would you like all the other rooms for painful personal matters?"
The contrition again. Cordelia really wished he could stop doing that; it was messing with her head. "I-" Lindsey stumbled into the word, ran a frustrated hand through his hair, tried again. "Funny thing. You guys were basically my Plan Z on this. If Angel's not here then I don't know what else to do."
Cordelia raised her head, telling herself that the time for crying was sometime other than when Satan's favorite son was standing right in front of her. "Plan Z?"
Lindsey jerked his head in the direction of the front door. Cordelia could hear someone laying on their car horn. "For fixing that. All of the resources I've been able to find at Wolfram and Hart are tapped out, everyone who hasn't called in sick with Captain Trips is showing symptoms-"
"You aren't," Cordelia interjected quietly.
Lindsey cut himself off to look at her, an appraisal written into his eyes that made Cordelia feel like an uncooperative witness. "Neither are you," he said. "Imagine that. Anyway, I figured that if anyone would have up to date information on why the world wants to end this week, it would be you guys." The shrewd expression did not fade as Lindsey took in the piles of books scattered about the living room. "Though it doesn't seem as though you're having much luck."
"I don't think it's supernatural." As soon as the words were out of Cordelia's mouth she wished that she could take them back, stuff them away in her head again so that they could chase each other in fruitless circles. Supernatural nastiness was something they had a chance of stopping. "There's not so much as a footnote in anything we've looked through here, but crack open a history book. Chock full of plaguey goodness."
"So there's nothing you can do."
"You catch on quick." Cordelia rubbed at her aching eyes and wished that she had some aspirin and a nice, dark place in which to lie down and forget for a while. "There's nothing for you here. You can be on your merry way, sacrifice a few goats to some dark lord, and hope it gets you a primo spot in hell."
The smile didn't enter Lindsey's eyes as he said, "Very little of modern law deals with goat sacrifice. Bad for public relations." Cordelia was still trying to figure out if that had been sarcastic when Lindsey gestured towards the bedroom with his wounded arm, before he tucked it back against his side, as if he were afraid of her stare. "Look, you're going to have to move Wes-the body before too much longer." Lindsey nodded towards the shattered remains of the phone. "And I'm guessin' that means you've already tried to call 911."
Cordelia took her hand away from her eyes. "Stress must have driven one of us crazy. You can't possibly mean what I think you meant."
"It's the middle of June," Lindsey said, not unkindly. "You still have electricity and air-conditioning keeping things cool, but there's no guarantee of how long that will last. You can't leave a body in your bedroom."
"And what am I supposed to do?" Cordelia's voice became shrill. "Dump him in the street?" Lindsey looked at her steadily until Cordelia made a disgusted noise that did little to keep the encroaching hysteria at bay. "You're sick."
"They're dumping bodies in the ocean."
"Who's 'they'?"
"Military. City officials." Lindsey jerked his head towards the newspaper. "In garbage barges." Lindsey tried to smirk and failed. There were dark circles beneath his eyes and an unhealthy waxen look to his skin that all the arrogance in the world could not mask. "Trying to cover up the problem even as it kills them. Good old human nature, huh?"
"Not everyone is like that," Cordelia felt required to point out. "Most people are worth saving."
Lindsey almost flinched, turning it into a sneer at the last possible second. A muscle in his jaw ticked and he looked off for a moment. "Point remains," he said in a low voice, his voice threaded through and through with tension and more than a suggestion of anger, "you can't leave a body to rot in here all summer, not unless you want to make yourself sick, too." Lindsey waited a beat before he added, "It doesn't mean that you loved him any less."
Cordelia could have dealt with sarcasm far better than Lindsey's stuttering attempts at sympathy. She turned away. "He's not a dead goldfish," Cordelia said. Her tone was laced with acid. "And I'm not going to treat him like one." She started to walk away, made it two steps before something drew her to a halt again. "You can stay until Angel gets back," she said. "Whether he hears you out or kills you on the spot, I don't care any more after that."
Lindsey nodded, very serious. "Thank you."
Cordelia snorted and stalked into the kitchen.
Angel didn't come back that night. Cordelia paced until dawn, then threw one of Wesley's books against the dent left by the phone and burst into a tirade of profanity and angry sobs wound together so tightly as to be indistinguishable. Lindsey watched from the couch but made no move to get up and comfort her. Cordelia was grateful for it.
They moved Wesley's body the next morning.
Lindsey disappeared as soon as the sun peaked enough over the horizon to discourage any vampires that might be growing concerned about their dwindling food supply and returned mid-morning at the wheel of a battered red truck. Cordelia didn't know how he managed to drive it without two good hands. She told herself that she didn't care.
Lindsey entered the bedroom first to deal with the body and Cordelia made no move to stop him. The last time that she had seen Wesley's body it had been pliant and warm, practically still breathing. The thought of handling his corpse as it was stiff and bloated and inescapably Idead/I made Cordelia's scant breakfast roil in her stomach. She waited by the door.
Dennis followed Lindsey into the bedroom, presumably to ensure that Lindsey treated Wesley's body with the respect that it deserved. A miasma of ectoplasmic displeasure was left hanging in the air behind him. He didn't like Lindsey being there and was taking every opportunity to ensure that Cordelia and, more importantly, Lindsey knew it.
Bedclothes could be heard rustling for several minutes before Lindsey called out, "All right." His voice was strained.
"I can do this." Cordelia opened her eyes, pushed her hair back from her clammy temples, and stepped inside.
Lindsey had taken the most expedient course of action and wrapped Wesley in the bed sheets for a shroud, obscuring his face. Her closest friend in the world reduced to so much meat in a sack. Cordelia felt the laughter bubbling up in her throat, hot and acidic like the time she had had too much to drink at the frat party that was never to be spoken of again, as she thought of how the employees at Bed, Bath, and Beyond would react if they knew their pricey sheets were being used to hold a corpse. Lindsey didn't look particularly shocked or horrified when the laugh escaped Cordelia's mouth and hung in the air like a burp at a dinner party, and somehow that made it worse.
"Are you going to be able to help with this?" he asked her in a low voice, as if speaking too loudly might offend the dead.
"Yes," Cordelia whispered back, wishing that Lindsey would stop acting so human. It was throwing her off.
Lindsey sucked in a deep breath, nodding, and echoed Cordelia's words as he looked at the bed. "We can do this."
Moving Wesley proved to be one of the easiest and one of the hardest things that Cordelia had ever done. Lindsey stunned her by behaving as the gentleman and taking Wesley's shoulders, hissing as he slid his injured arm beneath the groove of Wesley's neck. Cordelia took several deep breaths before she was able to work herself up to taking Wesley's legs, cringing away so that as little of the sheet was touching her skin as possible. They felt like the legs of the mannequins that Cordelia had been charged with setting up during her brief stint as dress saleswoman, and that was what Cordelia tried to convince herself that they were. It help enough that she was able to bend her knees and hoist at Lindsey's nod. 'I'm so sorry,' she thought in Wesley's direction, wherever he was now.
A grunt escaped Lindsey's lips and he staggered back as they lifted, his face paling to the color of unbleached paper and his lips compressing into a line so thin as to be invisible. "I'm fine," Lindsey responded to the curious (it was not, she told herself, concerned) lift of Cordelia's eyebrow.
The crab-walked the body to the curb, heaving simultaneous gasps of relief as they levered it into the bed of Lindsey's truck. Cordelia rubbed at the hard pebbles of gooseflesh that had risen on her upper arms and wondered if they would ever go down again. Lindsey had managed nearly twice the breakfast that Cordelia had; he looked as though he were regretting it.
Lindsey tried to speak, halted as his gorge rose visibly. After a few seconds he tried again. "That wasn't so bad." He cradled his right arm beneath his opposite armpit as he spoke, but not before Cordelia saw the flush of new crimson.
Cordelia shot Lindsey a look of deepest poison and, unbelievably, he smiled. Cordelia's palm itched to, begging her to smack Lindsey across the face. Only a vague, terrifying sense of civilization slipping away by the minute and the need to hang on to what was left as long as possible stopped her. "Let's just get this over with." She shoved past Lindsey and into the truck's passenger seat. Lindsey was still wearing the faint, infuriating smile as he slid into the driver's seat and, after a bit of fumbling, managed to fit the keys into the ignition.
The answer to how Lindsey managed to drive a standard shift while injured and in possession of only one hand was simple: he was the worst driver that Cordelia had ever seen. Deep read roses first blossomed and then became a field across the bandages on Lindsey's wrist as he laid it across the gearshift, slamming it forward and back with nearly double the force that was actually necessary. Cordelia winced with every change in gears.
"I can drive," she offered after the first block.
"I don't need help," Lindsey's voice was chipped from the same ice that made up his eyes. Cordelia didn't offer again. Privately, she thought it was a good thing that the streets were mostly empty.
Lindsey spun the truck around a corner hard enough to make a driver's ed teacher despair; a thump came from the back. Cordelia tasted bile in her throat. "This is wrong."
Lindsey laughed for the first time in her hearing, and the sound which cavorted through the interior of the truck was worse than any sneer, about as human as the laughter of a robot or a madman. Cordelia could smell the blood from his arm. "Darlin', the whole world has gone wrong," Lindsey said. "Or hadn't you noticed?"
"Don't call me 'darling'," Cordelia snapped. The smile that touched Lindsey's mouth was like the edge of a knife. "Just drive the damned truck."
"I live to serve." There was a snarl to Lindsey's voice that hadn't been there over the past day. Cordelia set her mouth into a thin line and glared out the window.
There was a park near Cordelia's apartment complex, with trees that dangled their branches over the walking paths and offered the perfect blend of sunlight and shade. Wesley had never been there that Cordelia knew of, but it seemed like the kind of place that he would like. She wanted to bury him beneath one of the trees themselves, until Lindsey pointed out gently that the roots would make it too difficult to dig a deep enough grave. His face remained blank and courteous, the perfect courtroom expression, and Cordelia imagined that it would remain that way even if he were proposing murder. They chose a place that was away from the roots, but would still be beneath the shade. "He bitched about sunburn all the time," Cordelia said, tears shining in her eyes. Her mouth trembled.
Cordelia dug the grave itself, using a shovel from the back of Lindsey's truck. Her wrist turned it into agony and Lindsey offered to help, only to be driven away with a pointed inquiry of how he planned to do it with no wrist at all. Lindsey kept a quiet distance after that, on the pretext of making sure that she wasn't disturbed. Cordelia wanted the job kept to herself, anyway, as a gift that only she could give Wesley even when she couldn't give him anything else. She dug until dirt coated her skin like pancake makeup, marked clean only when sweat drove curling little paths through it, and most of her ponytail had escaped into a wild cloud about her face. Her wrist and ribs promised that there would be hell to pay later.
The grave was inches over three feet deep when Cordelia's body declared that it would take no more and she had to retreat, sniffling and clutching her arm to her chest. Lindsey came back and they levered Wesley's body into the whole together, smears of deep crimson standing like exclamation points against the white of the shroud. "I'm sorry, Wesley," Cordelia whispered, a sub vocal litany that only she could understand. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Lindsey filled in the grave, being able to turn shovels full of loose dirt with one hand far more easily than he could dig new ones. Cordelia watched the first shovel of dirt fall, then walked away to sit down on the grass, fold her arms across the tops of her knees, and cry. Lindsey was long done by the time she had finished.
She took the keys away from him for the drive home, declaring that he had come close to killing them often enough for one day. Lindsey didn't argue.
Without Wesley's fate weighing on her mind, Cordelia had time to appreciate the rot that was overtaking the city, block by block, on the way back that she hadn't before. The caustic tang of smoke coated the air, overlaying a sweeter reek that Cordelia's unconscious mind recognized even if her conscious one did not, and made her want to stand under a shower until the skin was worn off her body. A police siren wailed in the distance, whoop-whoop-whoop, without ever changing location. Cordelia didn't want to think about what that might mean. And laid over if all was the ghost-town emptiness of the streets, so desolate that it hardly seemed real.
They didn't speak again for the entire drive back. Cordelia took the opportunity to sneak glances Lindsey's way, noting the pasty tone of his skin and the convulsive up-and-down of his Adam's apple. His eyes were closed and he winced every time the sunlight struck the closed lids, as if the very presence of something not touched by shadows hurt him. The bandage around his wrist was a bloody mess that left smears of crimson wherever it touched. She wondered what he was thinking.
Cordelia braked the truck in front of her complex and cut the engine. For several seconds the only sound was that of it ticking as it cooled. "Thank you for helping me with Wesley," she cut the silence with, surprised by how easy it was to get the words out. "He deserved better, but you were right. There weren't any other options." Cordelia stared out the windshield. "It was better than letting the military dump him into the ocean." There was something deeply skewed about a world in which she could discuss such a choice in the first place.
"You're…welcome."
Cordelia pulled the keys out of the ignition and handed them back to Lindsey. "I'm grateful. Now get your stuff out of my apartment and don't come back." She pushed the door open and climbed down from the cab without another glance towards him.
Silence reigned for nearly a full minute before Lindsey exploded out of his side of the truck, which Cordelia attributed to shock. "Wait a minute here. I save your ass and you think you can dismiss me?" His voice had lowered into a growl, turning him back into the lawyer stupid and arrogant enough to think that he could stare down an enraged vampire and walk away unscathed.
"That's exactly what I think." Cordelia was still tugging her apartment keys from her pocket when Lindsey was in her face, moving faster and more quietly than Cordelia had thought him capable of. Lindsey was only an inch or so taller than Cordelia, so that she was staring directly into his furious, iceberg eyes.
"We had a deal," Lindsey gritted. "Not to mention that if it weren't for me you would still have a body rotting in your bedroom."
Mention of Wesley made Cordelia's lips pull back from her teeth. "Deal's off. Yesterday was a very bad day for me. I'm amazed that you were the only crappy decision that I made. This morning has put the whole tried-to-kill me business back into Technicolor perspective."
Lindsey shrugged. "That was business. Certainly not pleasure." The nonchalant tone with which he said it did nothing to help his case.
"I see." Cordelia's eyes glittered. "I wouldn't want you to waste your time following around a failed business transaction."
"We need each other," Lindsey said, his voice returning to a cool impartiality, as if they were discussing dinner plans. "Simple as that. As long as two remains safer than one, then we have reason to stay on each other's good sides."
Cordelia glared until the blood pounded in her head and the world swayed in and out of focus. The fact that Lindsey was right did little to soothe her. "If you're still here when Angel gets back, he'll kill you."
"He's had his opportunities before and he's yet to make good on them. Anyway, that's a chance I'm willing to take." An explosion sounded several blocks away, making the glass in the windows rattle. "That sounded like a gas station going up." Lindsey's eyes were hooded, giving nothing back other than Cordelia's own reflection.
Cordelia tilted her head and flashed Lindsey a smile to match his very wickedest. "Angel may be one to pass up opportunities, but I'm not. One wrong move." She unlocked the front door and stepped inside, leaving it open so that Lindsey could stand on the porch or enter as he wished.
"You're quite the hostess." Lindsey stumbled as he walked inside, catching himself on the doorframe with his injured arm and swearing explosively. The princess paused in her haughty stalking away gig long enough to look over her shoulder and inquire, "Don't you have medication for that?"
"Had to leave it." Lindsey straightened, counting beneath his breath until the world stood still again. Twelve seconds. Not good.
For about half a second Cordelia looked as if she might care. "There's aspirin above the bathroom sink." She sniffed at the reddish stain that Lindsey had left on the doorframe, turned, and stomped into the kitchen.
"Thanks for the help," Lindsey muttered to her retreating back. The presence of Cordelia's pet ghost hung heavy around him, clinging like a layer of slime across his skin. "Relax, Casper," Lindsey snapped. "I'm not going to steal the silver." The ghost didn't vanish entirely, but it did pull back so that Lindsey didn't feel as though he were sucking ectoplasm down his throat with every breath. "Thank you." Casper pulled back altogether. A ghost with manners. Wonders and miracles.
As it turned out, Cordelia didn't have one bottle of aspirin in her bathroom cabinet. She had three. Lindsey pulled down the one marked 'Extra Strength', frowning a the remaining two. It would appear that Angel's seer was experiencing more pain from her visions than the firm had realized. Interesting.
Pulling a bottle of aspirin down from a shelf with one hand proved to be far easier than opening it. Lindsey pinned the bottle to his chest with his bad arm, struggled against the cap with his good one. He may as well have been a toddler arguing against a child proof cap for all of the good that it did him. Meanwhile, the nerves in his wrist felt as though they were being ground into a bowl of broken glass. Lindsey swore and only just restrained himself from hurling the bottle into the sink. It was too bad that Angel wasn't here to see him now. That would have been the icing on an extremely bitter cake.
"Fuck you," Lindsey whispered, closing his eyes and seeing Angel's sanctimonious face, hearing heavy, disembodied promised murmured into his ear in a hotel room that had been made for secrets. "You don't get to beat me."
A draft of cool air wafted across Lindsey's face before he felt the aspirin bottle being tugged from his hands. Lindsey opened his eyes to see it floating in mid-air before him, the cap turning of its own accord. "Yeah, thanks," Lindsey muttered as the bottle was returned to him, trying and failing in his attempt at sincere gratitude. He dry-swallowed four pills in quick succession, wincing at their acrid taste.
"You all right?" a feminine lilt from behind him asked. Lindsey turned.
"Oh. You."
A line appeared between Cordelia's eyebrows. "Who else would it be?"
"I didn't recognize your voice when it wasn't either crying or yelling."
The line deepened. "I'm going to pretend that was the pain talking." Cordelia stalked forward, placing a first aid kit nearly as large as a suitcase onto the counter. "Move over. You're in the light." Lindsey stared at her until she sighed. "You're bleeding all over my apartment. It's gross. Now, give me your wrist."
"Look, I can-" Lindsey began.
"Change a complicated set of bandages one-handed? Please. I'll bet Dennis had to open the aspirin bottle for you." Lindsey didn't answer. "It's not a big deal, okay? I've patched Angel up dozens of times after he's gotten the crap beaten out of him from doing the hero thing. Your manhood is safe."
"I am Inot/I worried about my manhood." There were better ways he could have phrased that. Lindsey pinched at the bridge of this nose. "I prefer to deal with it myself."
Cordelia lifted her head and gave him a frank, measuring look. Lindsey thought he preferred it when she was spitting fire and brimstone into his face. "I'm only going to say this once," she said, taking his wrist and undoing the bandage in a few brief, efficient movements, "but you're right." Lindsey was too stunned to pull away. "When you said that two were safer than one. I need you. That means you also need me, and we're not going to be any good to one another if you bleed to death or get an infection or something." Cordelia's face blanched as she got her first lengthy look at Angel's handiwork. Lindsey didn't need to look down. He had long since memorized the gruesome riot of half-healed flesh.
Lindsey stared towards the wall, a muscle jumping in his jaw. "Pity, then."
"Practicality, you bonehead," Cordelia corrected, snapping the kit open. Something very close to amusement danced in her voice and, when Lindsey glanced towards her, her eyes. It complimented her, and Lindsey felt a brief sorrow that he was not in the position to see it more often.
Even with the brace restricting her range of motion, Cordelia rebandaged Lindsey's wrist with an expert's ease, her touch so light that he scarcely felt it. Lindsey wondered how often she had bandaged Angel's wounds from the same kit. It was not a thought that comforted.
"That'll do for tonight," Cordelia said at last. "I'll need to borrow your truck in the morning to get more supplies."
"That's fine." Lindsey examined his wrist like it was a recurring nightmare that he would rather forget. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Cordelia packed everything into its proper place again and snapped the lid closed. As she reached the bathroom doorway, she paused. "I like you better like this."
"Bleeding?"
"Human." Cordelia left, taking Dennis' presence with her.
Lindsey watched her go before he turned to view his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He recognized the face that stared back at him the way some people would recognize a Halloween mask, one they tried to throw away but always wound up taking back again.
---
Sweet strumming a guitar, a sound so pure and good that it made Lindsey's ears ache in anticipated loss just to hear it. Lindsey's hand twitched by his side in memory of the movements required to make such music. His Iright/I hand. Lindsey held it up before his face, staring in awe at whole fingers and unblemished, peach-colored skin.
"Impossible," Lindsey whispered, and prayed that he was wrong. He looked around.
He was standing in a field of corn days away from being ready for harvest. It bobbed against Lindsey's shoulders in sleepy waves whenever a breeze passed through it and stretched as far as he could see. Lindsey filled his lungs with as much of the rich, sweet smell as they could hold. It wasn't quite the same as the wheat that he had grown up with, but the proximity to so many living, growing things brought back a pang of homesickness the likes of which he had not felt for years, shocking in its intensity. Lindsey let his fingers trail against the corn's silken heads, settling them all to nodding, and a smile touched his lips.
After a brief pause, the guitar's owner began playing again, and the melody drew Lindsey along as surely as if he had been an amiable puppy on a leash. Lindsey allowed himself to be led with a smile on his face. His granddaddy had been able to pull magic from the notes like that. Old timer's skill, he had called it. "It's no good while it's still green," he had told Lindsey when he was a child, handing him the guitar and allowing him to blink at the strings. "You got to let it sweeten with time."
The corn broke at long last, revealing a clearing with a log cabin, a porch, and the oldest woman that Lindsey had ever seen. She looked like a doll carved from the surface of a walnut, wrinkled and wise and kind. The old woman hummed to herself as she sat in her rocking chair, gnarled old fingers picking out a tune so sweet and graceful that it made Lindsey want to weep. She stopped when she saw Lindsey, setting the guitar down beside her chair and smoothing out her skirts. "Well, now, well, now." When she smiled, Lindsey saw that there wasn't a tooth left in her head. "You should've called out, boy, 'stead of jes letting me ignore you."
"Play on if you want," Lindsey said, sounding more shy than he had since his first school dance. "It's a beautiful sound."
The woman chuckled and Lindsey thought he saw a blush creeping up her leathery cheeks. "Jes a little twanging," she said. "These old fingers don't move like they used to. But, my, don't it feel nice to create music?"
Lindsey's smile was bittersweet. He stared down at his hand, flexing his fingers and curling it into a fist until the tendons popped. "I'm dreaming."
The old woman nodded her head. "I imagine so. But you can't dream forever, boy. Sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up and go about makin' some hard choices. When you get to that point, you come and see me. I imagine the two of us could have one interesting conversation. Abby Freemantle, at Hemingford Home. Just ask anyone around Polk County way for Mother Abigail and they'll get you pointed in the right direction." Mother Abigail was going to say more, but something made her suck in her breath sharply and stare at a point beyond Lindsey's shoulder. The kindly grandmother was gone, leaving something like a human vulture behind. "Weasels in the corn!" she exclaimed, reedy voice quavering with outrage. "On my land!"
The dusky-sweet smell of the corn turned sour and foul, and a chill rose in the air. Lindsey know, using the same terrible certainty which had let him know that there were monsters under the bed when he was a child and let him know now that hell would greet him when he died, that what he would see if he turned around would drive him insane. Fear seized up his insides in a vice. "Don't try to claim what isn't yours, old woman." The voice wasn't deep or rough like those of the demons that Lindsey had dealt with. Instead it was high and shrill…like a weasel's.
Mother Abigail drew back her lips and bared her gums at the specter behind Lindsey, the personification of every wicked witch in every fairy tale ever told. To Lindsey she said sharply, "Don't call him 'Master' if you can't stand to look him in the face, boy."
"Yes…'boy'." The voice sounded terribly amused, and Lindsey was sure that he was going to die. "Look me in the face." A hand came down on Lindsey's shoulder and a dry, wheezing sound exploded from Lindsey's throat. The hand was far too soft to belong to anything alive. He knew just as surely as he knew that there was blood pounding through his veins that it was Ihis/I hand, his real one, and that it had been claimed by a monster. The dead man's hand spun him around-
The scream lodged in Lindsey's throat, strangling him. He shuddered as he swallowed the sound, opening up his lungs for a deep gasp of air. The smell of corn and death lingered, inescapably intertwined, in his nose. Lindsey shuddered again, drawing his wounded arm close to his chest.
A few feet away, Cordelia twisted and moaned as she slept on the couch. Neither one of them had wanted the bedroom. Cordelia's pretty face was taut, and she made warding-off gestures with her hands hooked into claws. Sweat had slicked her t-shirt to her body. She wasn't wearing a bra, and Lindsey did the gentlemanly thing by averting his eyes.
Cordelia cringed back from her imaginary menacer, letting out a cry so loud that Lindsey wondered how she managed to sleep through it. The shout dwindled away into a choking whimper. Lindsey could imagine what she was dreaming of, and he knew that the kind thing to do would be to wake her up.
"If I worship you," Lindsey murmured. He stayed where he was.