CHAPTER 8: PAINFUL MEMORIES

warning : Flashback city approaching...

Cordelia had excused herself from the lobby as soon as she could, and went to lie down in one of the hotel's many rooms. Now she lay there, sobs wracking her body, tears streaming down her face. She hadn't wanted the others to see her upset, hadn't wanted to break down in front of Buffy and Xander and the others. It was partly because she didn't want to lose face. But mostly, she didn't want Angel to worry about her. She knew there was more than enough to be worried about, without adding her to the mix.

She would just lie there, in the dark, until she felt strong enough to face everyone again. Only problem was, she didn't know how long that would take. She felt such a hole inside of her, an emptiness. The world had changed. People she had loved were gone. Now she was back, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it.

On top of that loss, she felt a sickness, rising from her stomach and through her entire body. The memories of everything Jasmine had done when she inhabited her body flooded her mind. She could remember everything, been forced to watch as she tore the people she loved apart, manipulated them and broke their hearts.

'Were we in love?'

'We were…'

Her voice. Her words. But a lie. An ugly lie to set the wheels in motion that would pit father against son. And the cruel words that had followed, the explanation…

'I remember seeing you… your past… when you were Angelus.'

'I never tried to hide who I was or what I've done. You already knew,' he replied. That was true, but still the guilt and shame were present in his voice. She knew, but most of the time, he wished she didn't.

'Knowing's different than living it,' she had cruelly replied. 'When I was up there, I could look back and see everything you ever did as Angelus. More than see. I felt it. Not just their fear and pain. I felt you and how much you enjoyed making them suffer.'

The thought of those words brought fresh tears to her eyes now. True, she knew. She knew it all. But it hadn't mattered. She knew he was a different person back then. And letting him believe otherwise… letting him think that she couldn't love him because of his past… That she could move on, to find solace in the arms of his son…

She remembered standing next to Connor, in the attic of the Natural History Museum, the night the rain of fire had come to LA. Well, not remembered as in actually being there, but she had watched it all from her lofty vantage point, unable to do a damn thing to stop the imposter seduce Connor, the boy she had thought of as her own son.

'What's happening?' Connor had asked her.

'I don't know.'

'It's him, isn't it? It's that thing,' Connor asked, referring to the Beast and blaming himself.

'We don't know that,' she, the imposter, had replied.

'I should've tried harder. I should've stopped it.'

The fake Cordelia shook her head. 'It was too strong. This isn't your fault.'

The boy didn't believe her. 'What if it is? What if that thing is… it chose the place where I was born. Is that why it's here… because of me?'

The thought of the fear in his voice, nearly two years ago, still made Cordelia's heart constrict.

'No,' the imposter had insisted.

Connor shook his head. 'I was never supposed to happen. The child of two vampires. What if…'

'Connor, it's not you.'

'You don't know that.'

'Yes, I do. In my heart,' she touched his face then, brushing his hair away. 'It's not you, baby. It's not you. Not you.'

Using the hand she had used to brush hair from his face, she pulled Connor's face closer and kissed him first tenderly, then passionately on the lips. When the kiss ended, Connor was stunned.

'Why… why did you…?'

'Because I don't think it matters anymore. I know how you feel about me, Connor. When I think about what you've…' she touched his face tenderly once more. 'You never had a childhood, or a family or friends or anything that's real, and if this is the end, I want you to have something that is.'

She put his hand on her waist and they embraced, kissing each other passionately.

Cordelia's blood ran cold with the memory… and with the memories all the other times Connor had been manipulated by her face. She heard the voice, her own voice, gently convincing Connor to kill his own father,

'You have to kill your father. You have to. Now. Before anything else goes wrong. You know I have fought harder than anyone to save Angel's life but there comes a time when you have to weigh risk versus reward … killing Angelus now is the only way to guarantee our family's safety… We're special, Connor.'

A gentle tapping on the door brought her out of her thoughts and made her hand dart to her face to try and brush her tears away. If anyone saw her now, they'd know she'd been crying. Thinking fast, she decided to feign sleep until whoever it was went away.

'Cordy?' Angel asked softly, coming into the room behind her. 'Hey… Are you sleeping?'

When Cordelia didn't move or say a word, Angel assumed that she was fast asleep and started to close the door. Before it had shut the whole way, he thought he heard something very like a sob – soft, muffled, but definitely a sob. Slowly edging back into the room, he moved towards the bed.

'Cordy?'

Still she didn't answer. She screwed up her eyes against the tide of tears that were attempting to break her dam. She didn't want him to see her like this.

Something told Angel not to go the whole way round the bed to confront Cordelia. Instead, he sat on the other side of the bed, allowing her to keep her back to him. She would talk to him when she was ready and, knowing the level of Cordy's stubbornness, not a moment before.

Having him that close to her was torture. Part of her wanted to seek comfort in his arms. The other part of her felt shame at the actions of her past, whether or not they were in her control. She tried to focus on a more positive memory, one that might sooth the pain she felt inside.

'Boy, I really do fall for the dumb ones. You know how you're always trying to save, oh, every single person in the world? Did it ever occur to you, you were one of them?' she had told him several months before, when the Powers had let her come back briefly.

'No, it never did,' Angel replied truthfully.

'Well, you made the list, gorgeous. And you needed some help.'

'And you were the one that helped me.'

'I did my part,' she replied, sitting at his side.

'Lindsey wasted a lot of energy trying to make me doubt myself. I know it's not even close to over, but I do feel like I can do this. Wolfram & Hart, whatever's coming, I feel like we can beat it.'

'I know,' she had told him.

'You do?'

'I always did. I... I just needed you to know it, too.'

'So all that stuff about the deals with the devil...'

Cordelia nodded. 'Was God's honest truth.' She looked at him. 'But you're bigger than that. You'll win this in the end.' At that, she had stood up and moved away from him, to conceal the tears that now formed in her eyes. 'I, uh... just wish I could be there to see it.'

'What do you mean? You're not...'

She turned back to face him. 'I can't stay. This isn't me anymore. You can say good-bye to the gang for me, explain everything once you understand.'

'That's gonna be never,' he told her as he walked towards her. 'I need you here.'

She could make no effort to hide her tears now. 'Don't make it hard, Angel. I'm just on a different road... and this is my off-ramp. The Powers That Be owed me one, and I didn't waste it. I got my guy back on track.'

'Cordy, there's just…'

'We take what we can get, champ, and we do our best with it,' she told him as she touched his face gently. 'I'll be seeing you.'

She smiled through her tears, and turned to walk out of the office. At the last moment she stopped, turned around and walked quickly towards Angel.

'Oh, what the hell. One for the road?' she told him as she kissed him passionately, letting him know how much she truly had loved him… And transferring her visions to him as her parting gift.

They remained like that for a long time, Angel sitting patiently whileCordy allowed the tears to flow freely down her face, no longer able to control them. Every now and then, a soft sob escaped her throat, despite her best efforts to stop it.

After a while, Angel couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't stand seeing Cordelia in so much pain.

'You remember one of the last things you said to me in Wolfram & Hart?' he asked her quietly, as if he had read her mind. 'You said that you'd got me back on track. That you knew I'd win this in the end… And that you wished you could be here to see it…'

He reached out, placing his hand on her quivering shoulder.

'Well, you're going to be here to see it now, Cordy,' he told her. 'We're going to do this. Together. And everything else… anything else that's bothering you. We'll figure out. Together.'

His words toppled the last of Cordelia's defenses. Sobbing aloud now, she turned and buried her face in his shoulder, her tears staining his shirt, clinging to him like a frightened child. He reached around her with both his arms, holding her tightly to him, whispering words of comfort into her hair.

'Hey, it's okay, Cordy. It's going to be okay,' he told her, not really knowing if it would be. He felt so hopeless in the face of her despair. She had seemed fine – her old self – right from the moment they brought her back. Had that all been an act, or had something happened to bring this on?

After several minutes of raw, desperate sobbing, Cordelia's crying slowed. The tears kept coming, but her breathing had calmed considerably. From the depths of his shoulder, Angel heard her say, 'I'm sorry.'

'You don't have anything to be sorry for.'

She drew her face away from his body and looked at him, her eyes red and swollen. 'I didn't want you to see my like this.'

'Cordy, talk to me,' he gentle asked. 'What's wrong? Are you… are you sorry we brought you back.'

'No,' she insisted immediately. 'That's not… I just…' She paused, finding it difficult to find the words. 'I wanted to come back. That's been the plan for a while now… I just didn't expect to feel so… overwhelmed.'

'It's only natural,' Angel replied.

'So much has changed… I just can't believe…' she stopped and sat up, looking at Angel sadly. 'I can't believe they're gone.'

Angel lowered his head slightly, nodding. He knew that Cordelia was the only one in the building who could appreciate the magnitude of their loss. Almost their entire family was gone now.

'And, all the people… I've been keeping my own company on a cloud for the best part of two years, and coming down to a hotel full of teenage girls… not the most soothing experience.' She looked away from him, the third thing that was bothering her was the most difficult to express. 'And then there was seeing you again… and Connor.'

Angel said nothing, just waited to see what she would say.

'After everything I did to you… both.'

'You didn't do anything, Cordy,' he insisted, placing his hand under her chin and turning her face to look at him. 'That wasn't you.'

'Maybe not, but…' she took a breath, 'it was still my fault. I chose to become a higher power. I gave Jasmine the opportunity to take over my body and…'

'You couldn't have known what would happen,' he told her firmly. 'I'm not going to let you blame yourself for anything that happened with Jasmine. She fooled us all.'

'Angel,' Cordelia almost smiled at his bossy tone, 'don't fool yourself into thinking that you can just order me not to feel guilty. We both know a little something about atonement and past guilt. It's… it's something I'm going to have to work through.'

Angel gave her a small smile. 'We'll then, we can just work through it together.'

Finally, Cordy smiled back at him. It was like a breath of cool clean air to Angel's unused lungs, and if his heart had been beating, he was certain that its pulse would have sped up. He wiped away the last of the tears on her face. She reached up and touched his hand.

'I guess I just need my purpose back. And to do that… well, you have something of mine…' She whispered as she closed the gap between them, kissing him softly. A faint blue glow passed between them as she drew away once more.

'Wow. That was…' Angel whispered. Then the realization dawned. 'You just took your visions back, didn't you?'

'Uhuh,' she smiled. 'Not that the method of transaction wasn't an added bonus.'

Angel looked confused. 'If I've had them all this time, why did I only get that one vision?'

'About the Circle of the Black Thorn? Because I sent that one to you. But the visions were never meant to be yours, Angel. And, with everything going on in the past few months, you didn't need the distraction. You were just looking after them for me. And thank you for that,' she said as she touched his face lightly. 'Now, we should probably get back down to command central.'

She got up off the bed and moved to the door, holding out her hand to Angel to hurry him up. Quick as a flash he was at her side, taking her hand and pulling her towards him.

'They can wait a few more minutes,' he told her, as he drew her into another, deeper kiss.

Cordy felt herself melt into him. His kisses were a soothing balm to her soul, making her body come alive again in his arms. The spark of who she was, the passion, the vibrancy of her former life, took shape within her once more. The sadness was still there, but the emptiness less so.

She had missed him so much. It had killed her, sitting up in the higher realm, watching him moving on with that girl Nina. But, however much it had hurt her to see him with her; Cordelia knew he didn't love the she-wolf.

Buffy, however, was a different matter.

'What was the deal with the glowy thing?' Xander asked the group. Most of the slayers had gone upstairs for some rest, others were on patrol with Faith. Buffy and Dawn, Willow and Kennedy, Giles and Xander were now the only remaining people in the lobby.

'I don't know,' Buffy replied, just as puzzled. 'Willow?'

'No one mentioned it to me,' the flame-haired witch replied with a shrug. She looked at Giles.

'I'm as in the dark as the rest of you,' the Watcher replied. 'Wesley's journals gave no mention of that. Levitation. Painless, vivid visions. But he wrote nothing over such a powerful side-effect to Cordelia becoming part-demon.'

'And that was a lot of power,' Dawn remarked. 'She took out ten vamps without lifting a finger.'

'Must be why she's one of the three chosen warriors for good,' Kennedy commented, having been brought up to speed by Willow. 'Girl's packing some serious mojo.'

Buffy was miffed by the comment. More than once she had wondered why it was Cordelia, and not her, that was part of the prophecy. 'I still can't believe that Cordy's a …' she started, the disbelief mingled with disdain.

'Higher Power?' Cordelia asked, as she and Angel walked down the stairs, hand in hand. 'Or Part-demon?'

'Well, I'd always suspected it,' Buffy shot back, more annoyed than she'd like at the sight of Angel and Cordelia holding hands. 'The demon part, that is…'

'Ha ha,' Cordy replied dryly. 'Are we going to start this crap now, Buffy? Cuz if so, let's get it over with. We've got more important things. Dark things are coming…'

'I'm not starting anything,' Buffy replied. 'And I know what's coming. I've been here the whole time, planning and…'

'While I've, what? Been taking a cat nap?' Cordelia snapped. 'Sitting on a cloud having my nails done?'

'Wouldn't surprise me…' Buffy said under her breath.

'Buffy,' Angel warned. 'Enough.'

'No, Angel,' Cordy told him. 'If little Miss Likes-to-Slay has something to say, I'd like to hear it. What's the problem, Buffy? The fact that I'm in the prophecy or the fact that Angel's standing at my side and not yours?'

Bullseye. Direct hit. Buffy's face reddened with barely suppressed fury.

'You know, Cordy, I thought that death would have mellowed you out a little,' Buffy said angrily. 'Softened your bitchier side.'

'Why? It didn't do anything for you,' Cordelia snapped back.

Both women glared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing. Everyone else just looked on in confusion.

'Okay, that got that out of our system…' Cordelia started to say. Suddenly, she was levitating inches of the ground in the midst of a vision. 'Angel?'

'What is it, Cordy?' he asked the Seer. 'What do you see?'

'West Hollywood. A bar - Il Taverna. You'd better take Connor and Buffy,' she told him, coming back down to earth and looking directly at him. 'An old friend is in trouble.'

To Be Continued... That well known face from the past I promised several chapters ago will finally make an appearance... And the forces of good make ready for war...