Footnote for non-SFU watchers: the character of Celeste was played by Michelle "Dawn" Trachtenberg

VII. The Wake

When he had not been trying to believe in the reality of Cordelia's death, Wesley had been afraid it would fall to him to deal with Mr. and Mrs. Chase once they had arrived from what appeared to be not that much of a destitute retirement in Florida. After all, he would not be able to gainsay Fred if she asked him for his help in this.

As it turned out, his help was not necessary. For this reason alone he felt gratitude towards Harmony for having invited Buffy Summers. If he was honest with himself, Wesley had never liked Buffy very much. In Sunnydale, she had frustrated and intimidated him with her youthful dismissal and scorn for everything he tried to be, and his increasingly desperate attempts to make her accept him as her Watcher had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth whenever he thought of the time. Later, she had become one of the two women with the power to take away all reason from Angel, and he could not even classify her as evil. Hearing she would come to Cordelia's funeral had made the prospect that much worse, especially since he anticipated childish behaviour from Spike as well. But Spike hadn't been seen or heard from since the Lindsey affair. With any luck, he would not return until the funeral was over and the Sunnydale expatriates had left again. Wesley had given up hoping he would be gone altogether.

Be that as it may, his feelings towards Buffy changed somewhat when she promised to chaperone the Chase couple and was as good as her word when Mrs. Chase discovered her in the lobby of the Hyperion where all the out of towners would stay.

"It's Buffy Summers!" Cordelia's mother exclaimed, apparantly grateful to finally spot a familiar face. "Why, I remember how Cordelia resigned from the race for Homecoming Queen to make you feel better about your inevitable loss. How have you been, Buffy?"

"Travelling," Buffy said, and actually stayed with Mrs. Chase and her husband until the limousines arrived. When Mrs. Chase changed her mind about the dress she was wearing at the last minute and raced upstairs, Wesley felt obliged to thank the Slayer. She shrugged.

"I had practice with Xander's parents at his wed – well, at his not-wedding. And that way, they're not bothering him."

Xander Harris, who had come with Buffy after meeting her en route from Africa at the airport in Rome, looked very changed from the boy Wesley remembered. One of his eyes appeared to be artificial, and he had gained weight, but the change went deeper than that, or maybe the sadness did. Before Harmony had brought it up, Wesley had almost forgotten that Xander had been Cordelia's boyfriend once. He had been aware that something of the sort had been going on in Sunnydale shortly before his arrival there; the boy's jealousy had been obvious and the only hostility he had not minded. Still, it had not been something he ever considered in regards to Cordelia, having assumed that her Sunnydale past was something she would rather forget, much as it had been for himself.

But she had kept her High School Year-book, Wesley suddenly thought, and all those photos. And she had been so eager and welcoming when Harmony had first shown up.

Harmony had been prevented from picking anyone up at the airport or elsewhere by the promise she would be at both the wake and the funeral. She had sniffed and declared: "As if I'd want to go anywhere near the Slayer anyway. I'm not a pervert like some people here." She'd meet them with Angel at the Fisher Funeral Home, brought by a special Wolfram and Hart limousine, and Wesley sincerely hoped the Chases would survive the experience.

It was easier to think about all of this than to think about Cordelia, and to wonder whether the reason why her death had been so surprising to him, who tended to expect the worst, was because it felt like he had said goodbye to her a long time ago, not just last week. It had been like the delivery of news that one believed had already arrived eons ago. He tried to think of any significant conversations with Cordelia in the year before she fell into her coma, or any ones that contained the lighthearted bickering that once had been their daily bread to nourish them through monster fights and apocalypses. But there was nothing. Nothing after the ballet evening, and he could not understand it. There was no reason why he and Cordelia should have become estranged before her possession that he could think of. It was a puzzle Wesley could not solve, and so he rather contemplated Buffy's sister Dawn, who had come with her but mostly kept at Xander's side while Buffy distracted Cordelia's parents. Intellectually, he knew he had never met Dawn before, and that she had not been born to human parents at all. But he still had the memories of a girl which opened the door of the Summers house to him during the occasion when Buffy had been overwhelmed by telepathy, looking anxious and disdainful at the same time. He still recalled Faith taking Dawn hostage at the Mayor's orders, even though he knew it had never happened. The divergence of realities was something that kept him occupied for a while, until Dawn, who rode in the same limousine as Xander and himself, turned towards him and said: "Wow, you haven't change a bit, Wesley. Stalker much?"

For a second, he did not know what she was talking about. Then he realized he had been staring at her silently this entire time and recalled how his awkward flirtation with Cordelia must have looked to everyone else. He felt impossibly embarassed. Unexpectedly, he was saved by Xander who asked:

"So, how did that start? The coma? Head wound or something like that?"

"A mystical pregnancy," Wesley explained, feeling the odd comfort questions of his expertise provided. "A fallen power possessed her and gave birth to itself."

I'm sorry, she had said, apologizing for killing Lilah, and Wesley wondered whether it was Lilah's death that had left him with that odd sensation of estrangement from Cordelia, even though he knew, of course, that she had not been to blame, not really.

"I hope someone kicked its fallen backside and ripped it into pieces afterwards," Xander said fiercely.

"Quite," Wesley said a bit helplessly. He wanted to add what had happened, but for a second, it escaped him. Then he remembered again. Angel. It had been Angel who had killed Jasmine.

"I can't imagine her like that," Xander continued, looking through the window of the passenger door as the limousine turned into the road that led to the funeral home. "Just lying there, silent. She was – she was always so…"

"Yes," Wesley said, not wanting to hear it again, and the awkward silence returned for another moment. Then the limousine stopped, and even before Dawn opened the door, they could hear the reverberations of Lorne's voice and a piano. It seemed Lorne had taken Angel's idea of an Irish wake and interpreted it as a license to sing U2 songs, at the moment The Ground Beneath Her Feet, as a way of welcoming the other mourners.

"None of you asked for a singing demon, right?" Dawn asked, sounding worried, exchanging a glance with Xander. "Like, through a talisman or something?"

"Lorne does not require talismans," Wesley said a bit bemused, but that did not seem to help, so he added: "He was a dear friend of Cordelia's, and Angel asked him to organize the wake together with the funeral directors."

Looking for them, he found Mr. Diaz and Mr. Fisher at the door, welcoming the guests. Mr. Fisher looked less irritated and more confused, which Wesley could not blame him for. There was a third man with them, around thirty, rather good looking and, like them, somberly attired, but as soon as he spotted Wesley, Dawn and Xander, he grew very pale, turned around, and promptly vanished downstairs.

"Shit," said Mr. Fisher, rather unceremoniously, and followed, which left Mr. Diaz alone with the business of welcoming the mourners. Passing through the parlour to the room which had been reserved for them, Wesley heard Dawn mutter:

"At least nobody started dancing yet."

Hearing Lorne belch out more Bono lyrics from inside the room with the coffin, Wesley, who had never attended an Irish wake but had heard dire tales in his youth, wondered whether this was just a temporary reprieve.

"David," Nate said, determined not to let his brother regress to locking himself up in the basement again and catching up with him before David reached the bottom of the stairs, "come on. You almost did it. Those guys may be nuts, but you're safe here, okay? None of them wants to pull any kind of crap, and even if they did, we…"

"It's not that," David said to his surprise. Both of his fists were clenched, and there were red angry spots on his cheek.

"Then what…"

"I can't believe she's here. That she came here. This is my home and she just…"

"She who?" Nate asked, honestly confused.

"Celeste," David hissed, and sounded like he pronounced the vilest name on earth. Nate, who had been absenting himself from both business and family for much of the year, needed a while before he dimly recalled Keith had just returned from his job as bodyguard of teen pop idol Celeste. He needed a while longer to recall what the hell Celeste looked like, given that his musical tastes did not include her, and then it finally clicked. That coltish girl, the brunette. Yes, come to think about it, she did look like…

"Come on, David, do you really think that's Celeste?" Recalling what Rico had said about these people knowing David Nabbit, who had indeed arrived a while ago, it wasn't completely out of the question, Nate had to admit. "Anyway, why is that such a big deal? Because she fired Keith? He's still with that agency, right?"

"She fucked him," David said. "Or he fucked her. I don't know. But they did. Fuck."

Then he sat down on the stairs, looking profoundly miserable. Nate didn't quite know what to say. It did occur to him that this was already the longest conversation he had had with David in a while, and definitely the first time David had told him something confidential in a longer while.

"Shit," he said again, sat down next to David, and wondered why the hell it was so easy to get into the not talking routine in their family and so hard to get out of it again. Just the other day, he had told Brenda he didn't know who was more fucked up, her family or his, and she had laughed and said: "David hasn't tried to kill you yet, and I think your mother won't ever do it in front of you, so I win."

Yet freaking Billy was doing well these days, one heard, not just out of an instution but having a regular job. Teaching. Whereas David, who had never harmed anyone, had basically locked himself up these recent months. Life was a bitch of epic proportions.

"Look," Nate said, "I know too well how that feels like to give you any Hallmark speeches. But if I were you, I'd still go upstairs and show her she's nothing to you. Just a silly little girl." Suddenly, an idea hit him. Later, he blamed it on thinking about Brenda and her brother, because it was just the kind of crazy stunt either of them would pull. But it definitely sounded better to him than going back to the bodies. "No, really. Know what you should do?"

After he had finished explaining, David looked at him as if he was insane, and didn't say anything.

"Or you could let her gloat while you're brooding here," Nate said, hoping the challenge would do it.

"You're…"

"Sure I am. I'm also right."

David didn't react, so Nate stood up. He hesitated, then he put his right hand on David's shoulder, briefly. Briefly, he felt David reach up and touch it.

"See you upstairs," Nate said.

"…and that is why Cordelia Chase was my role model and always will be," Harmony concluded, standing in front of the guests, next to Lorne, who played the piano. "Except for her taste in men, obviously. I mean, no way would I ever date a loser like Xander Harris! Okay, so I dated Spike and got treated like dirt, but he's so hot even Buffy couldn't keep her mits off him, right, Buffy? Plus then Cordelia had this gooey-eyed thing going on with Angel, and hey, dating Angel is just the worst thing ever. Either he goes nutso after you boink him, or he doesn't and then it's totally humiliating. So why bother? But other than that, she ruled. So, Cordy, this one is for you."

She nodded towards Lorne.

"Are you sure, honey?" he asked, and she pouted.

"What, Elton John isn't good enough for you? He was totally good enough for Princess Diana!"

"As you wish," Lorne said, sighed, and started to play Candle in the Wind. After Harmony started with "Goodbye, Sunnydale's Rose", Xander tuned out. In other circumstances, he might have come up with a crack about the fact Angel ended up with Harmony as a secretary and some green guy with horns as a – whatever that one did; after being assured he didn't get people to burn inside out, Xander didn't care. As it was, he was trying to figure out why the news that Cordelia was dead, via email from "Fisher & Diaz, Dignified Service Since 1941" had hit him the way it had done. It wasn't like he had spent the years since their breakup pining for Cordelia. The last time he had heard from her had been via a post card from Mexico which had been co-signed by someone named Groo, whoever that had been, about two years ago. The last time she had heard from him, if she had before that coma happened, had been when he had sent her a post card from London where they had gone after Sunnydale had become rubble and before they had all split up. He had never phoned or made any attempt to find out whether it had arrived.

But after reading the email in an internet café, he had sat very still, and had felt tears burning in his non-existent eye. Figured. Phantom tears, phantom pain for a phantom girl who had been lost years ago. He hadn't cried for Anya that day she died. Hearing Andrew tell his story, he had known that if he cried, if he did, it would all become real. So Xander had done what had served him ever since he figured out making jokes about his father's drunken fights with his mother would show anyone else that it didn't hurt, not a bit, not a bit.

Anya had never had a funeral. He wondered who would have come, if there had been a body to bury. Halfrek was dead, and the other people who had attended what should have been the happiest day of her life might not have cared anymore because she had died a human. He knew nobody of his family would have shown up, and stole a glance at Mr. and Mrs Chase, who had puffy red eyes and were currently looking as if they were trying to hide behind Buffy's tiny body before Harmony had finished her song and could come over to say hello.

Maybe what made him decide he had to come was if he never saw Cordy again, just as he had not seen Anya after they had split up in the High School he helped build, he would never stop wondering whether she truly was dead, whether it hadn't all been a misunderstanding, whether she wouldn't show up one day and tell him she had been alive all this time.

Or undead, he thought, watching Harmony finish, and thinking of Jesse, thinking of the Cordettes, remembering watching those heartless, beautiful princesses glide by in school every day with his pal, his friend who would become the first person he ever lost to death. Or that.

Man, I hate those bitches. God, I wish I could make out with them.

Jesse had crushed on Cordelia when Xander had still been treasurer of the We-Hate-Cordelia-Chase-Club. Undead Jesse, staked Jesse. One of them should stake Harmony before all of this was over. When had they stopped staking soulless vampires? But he already knew he wouldn't, and that Buffy wouldn't, either. That was different, he had told her when they had fought about Anya and she had reminded him of Angel, and he still could hear her reply. It is always different.

Before he knew what he was doing, he rose and passed Harmony on his way to the front. He still had no idea what he was going to say, only that he wouldn't sing. He hadn't sung since that duet with Anya in Sunnydale, and he couldn't bear to think of doing it now. When he arrived next to the open coffin and saw her lying there, he almost forgot to breathe.

"That dress," Xander whispered, not caring who heard him, or didn't. "Why is she wearing this dress?"

There she was, her beautiful long hair cut short, but otherwise looking like she had done on the day of the Prom, in the silver dress he had bought for her upon finding out her parents had lost their money, the dress she had never asked about and he had never admitted to.

"It was among dresses in her wardrobe and I didn't recall her ever wearing it, compadre," Lorne said from his place at the piano. "So I figured it was new. She would have wanted to be buried in something stylish and dazzling and new, and it suits her so well."

"I know," Xander said, and then he didn't say anything any more. He couldn't. He felt the weight of the glass eye more heavily than ever, and then he cried for her. For make-out sessions in the closet and behind library shelves, for the way she had taken his hand in front of all her friends after dressing Harmony down and walked away with him, for her laughter when she had sat on his lap during lunchbreak, for the lightning quick way she found a retort for each of his quips and cracks. For her telling him she'd stay with him even if he was a fish, and for a rebar that had nearly killed one girl he knew too late he'd loved, and had brought another to Sunnydale he'd loved too late. For both of them, and when Buffy and Dawn rose and came to him, his remaining eye, furiously blinking, wondered for a moment whether all his suspicions were true, and they were still alive. Anya and Cordy both.

"Come on," Buffy whispered.

"She kept it. She kept it all these years," Xander wanted to say, pointing out the dress to her, but for some reason he, who never was at a loss of words, not when faced with the direst peril, couldn't get another syllable out. So he took what he had bought at the airport instead, and put it around Cordelia's neck. A trinket, just a trinket. Something you buy in High School for your girlfriend, even if she's rich enough to afford a lot of genuine jewelry of her own. A small silver heart. When he didn't flinch at touching her utterly cold, utterly hard skin, he understood.

We're doing morgue time at the Scooby Gang.

It was Cordelia, it was Anya, it was Jesse and Larry and gorgeous, intimidating Ms Calendar and warm, generous Mrs. Summers. Perhaps it was even Xander Harris, that very young boy who had thought, on a long ago Valentine's Day, that getting dumped by the girl you just discovered you might have more than hormonal feelings for was the worst thing which could happen to you. He felt the grief consume him as Buffy and Dawn guided him back, and wondered whether the fact that this was supposed to be an Irish wake meant he could take the beer currently offered by another Sunnydale expatriate, Willy, who apparently had moved to Los Angeles after the Hellmouth closed shop. By the time someone named Gunn had taken the stand, he stopped wondering and started to drink.

Gunn said something like "when I first met her, I thought she was some skinny spoiled white girl" which to Xander's mind proved he must have been blind, because no way Cordy was skinny, and went on to describe how she saved his butt "in her own way, every minute every day". Then he told Lorne to play "Were Are the Champions", and said, "this one's for you, Cor", Lorne obliged, and to Xander's surprise good old Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, the stiff Brosnan-knock off who had shamelessly let high school girls drool over him, joined with Gunn in a truly horrendous rendition of the Queen song. At least now he wasn't the only one crying anymore.

A flash of red caught his eye, and for a heartbeat Xander thought Willow had finally made it after all, but then he recalled she was taking care of some Brazilian Slayer whose family had reacted to her new powers by calling a priest for exorcism, a girl who had, according to Will, taken very long to trust anyone again and couldn't be left alone when she had just started to open up. No, the red hair was long, far longer than Willow had ever worn hers, and belonged to a girl Xander didn't know who had a camera in her hand and was taking pictures. She had very pale skin, and he wondered whether she was a vampire, but Buffy didn't seem to mind her when they crossed paths. Out of habit, Xander looked around for Deadboy, and found him watching Gunn and Wesley from across the room but not joining them in their song. Thank God. Now Angel singing, that was a truly scary prospect.

Xander contemplated whether or not he should go over and thank the guy for killing that thing which had put Cordelia into a coma and cost her her life, or whether he still wouldn't get out anything but croaks, when the door opened and the third of the funeral directors, the one who had backed away when Dawn, Wesley and he had entered the house, showed up. Xander blinked as the man strode to the front, walking like some Western hero. When the guy shot a glare at Dawn, Xander suddenly lost the choked up feeling in his throat and moved in front of her. Nobody messed with his girls if he could help it.

But then the man turned towards Lorne and said something in a low voice Xander didn't catch. The green demon looked something between stunned and amused, but shrugged and started to play.

"I did not know Cordelia Chase," the funeral director said. "But during these last days, I have come to feel almost as if I did. So I would like to dedicate a song to her, too, one which I hope represents a part of her." Again he looked at Dawn. "And other things."

He cleared his throat, and, with Lorne now hammering into the keys at a rapid pace, started with "I'm too sexy for my shirt…"

For a solid minute, the entire assembly, standing or sitting, drinking or, like the Chases, clinging to each other, gaped at him in silence while they listened. The red haired girl actually stood there with her mouth open. Then she took up her camera again, and Harmony, whispering, "wow, that's so Cordy and me," started to join in with the song. By the time the guy was finished, more than half of the guests had followed suit.

"David," said the funeral director with the stubble, applauding from the back of the room, "you rock."

"Not a bad voice," Lorne said. "Let me guess. Choir practice?"

"Yes," the madman said, and for some reason gave Dawn another look before marching towards the exit again, where Mr. Stubble received him with a clap on his back. Buffy was already moving towards the coffin to tell a story about Cordy and some spatula when Dawn, utterly bewildered, turned to Xander and asked:

"What was that all about?"