2. Between the conversation with Angel and the discovery of the Glyphs
"Glyphs, you say?" Wesley said curiously after he and Cordelia had exercised all the small talk they could take. They were sitting in his office, he at his desk and she on a comfy sofa in the far corner of the room. She drew the symbols she'd seen as she explained. "Were they Egyptian? Greek?"
"Yes, Wesley, because I can recognize the origin of a symbol just by seeing a vague picture of it in a coma-vision," she replied playfully. Wesley smiled back.
"I'm sorry. I'm so used to everyone knowing more than I do around here, asking that sort of question becomes habit," he admitted. Cordelia smiled dimly in reply and kept drawing. "You still don't understand, do you?" Wesley asked after a few moments.
"No, I don't," she said angrily. "I don't get why Angel agreed to it, since this company has been trying to manipulate him from the get-go and now he seems to be opening the door for them to do whatever they want with him. I kinda get why Gunn did it, and Lorne... they got something out of it, they're in their element here. But overall, I'm most confused about you and Fred. I mean, you two are the smartest people I've ever met. Fred spent five years in a hell dimension, and now she's working for the company who probably helped send her there. You knew Lilah for long enough to have known at least a few of the inner workings of the company before you were even offered the position. Of all the people who would have known what they were getting into, you five would have been it, and yet I wake up from a coma and know from the get-go what a huge mistake it was accepting this job."
Wesley nodded and smiled as she finished. "As ever, it's not quite that simple," he said quietly.
"So I've heard, and I've also heard that you think you can 'change the system', but this is Wolfram and Hart. You guys get that, right? Huge, multi-dimensional power figure that no one knows anything about except how evil it is? There's no way you can fight them this way, especially not when they're paying you an incredible six-figure salary."
"Seven, actually," Wesley muttered.
Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Okay, now I'm understanding a bit more of the 'why'."
Wesley chuckled as he wandered over to the sofa and sat beside Cordelia. "It wasn't just a matter of changing the system. The resources we have access to as a team tends to dictate how much good we can do. With Angel Investigations, we had very few resources at our disposal. We dealt good on a small scale accordingly; eliminating vampire nests, the occasional poltergeist in the attic. Here, we were able to stop a man from setting off a bomb, embedded in his son, while he was at school, in our first week."
"Uh-huh," Cordelia said skeptically. "And where is this man now?"
Wesley hesitated. He was walking the streets, a free man. "Let's not get caught up in the details," he said hastily, standing with Cordelia's completed sketches in hand. "Hmm. These look like some kind of rune. I'll have my team research them, we'll see if we can't find out what they mean." He began to leave the room.
Cordelia's mind was reeling. She was stunned at how ignorant they all were at how corrupted they'd become, even during their short time here. From the moment she'd stepped into the building, she'd known she wouldn't be able to stay. It was time for a change. "Wesley," she called after him.
"Yes?" he asked, jogging back into the room and regarding Cordelia pleasantly.
She hesitated. She couldn't say anything yet; she just wasn't quite ready. She put a slight smile on her face in spite of what was going on inside her head. Who said acting wasn't for her? "Forget your team. Let's you and I crack the books ourselves, like we used to."
Wesley thought for only a second before cracking a wide grin. "What a wonderful idea," he said, striding back over to his desk and piling the volumes into some semblance of order.