Bear with me on this chapter...a ton of angst, set mid-season two of Angel but with a definite Jenny/Giles slant
Cordelia sighs as she goes over the accounts. Gunn has gone out and Wesley's keeping her company by going over his books, trying to drum up business for them. They're all doing what they can to distract themselves from the inevitable. And Cordelia is pissed they have to.
She's pissed at Angel for letting himself get drawn into Darla's and Wolfram and Hart's trap.
He's supposed to be stronger than this. Cordelia remembers him being stronger than this.
She wants him to remember everything that happened before now rather than play the guilt card later. This isn't like what happened with Buffy; he had no idea that would happen or that being with her would trigger his moment of true happiness. That wasn't his choice.
What's happening now is.
She's made her feelings quite clear on the matter. She hates running back to Sunnydale for help, yet she's starting to think she might have to reach out to Willow or Xander to drag Buffy up here to knock some sense into Angel. Or at least distract him from Darla.
She shoves the file into the filing cabinet and pushes it shut with more force than necessary. On the other side of the room, Wesley's head pops up from his book the shuttering sound.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"I'm just pissed off," Cordelia says tiredly. She runs a hand through her hair. The vizions are kicking her ass and she only has them because of Angel.
"You can still talk about it, might be good to vent," Wesley suggests kindly.
She gives him a soft smile.
Wesley and Gunn backed her up on this. They don't want Angelus rearing his ugly head, but she can tell they don't entirely get it. They haven't met Angelus. Wesley can read up on him all he likes, it's nothing compared to the real deal.
She moves over to his desk, pulling up a chair.
"We need to figure out what to do if Angel loses his soul, it's not enough to have this disconnect when he can find us."
"You said there was a spell so we can reverse the invitation for your apartment," Wesley frowns. She figuratively bites her tongue.
"We'll be doing that, for sure." Dennis is also a fail-safe for her with that little issue; Angelus can't stop a ghost from flinging stakes through the air. "But I'm not talking about that, we need to be prepared because it'll go bad in like zero to sixty. You weren't in Sunnydale the first time this happened, you didn't live it."
Wesley considers her for a moment before slipping a bookmark into the open book to hold his place and closing it. "What was it like?"
"He barely touched Buffy, not physically anyway," Cordelia starts. "He got to her by trying to hurt Willow and actually torturing Giles."
"I read the entries in Giles's diary about techniques Angelus used to torture him," he tells her thoughtfully.
"I'm not talking about the physical torture, Giles lived through that." She looks down at her hands. "I'm talking about what he did before he kidnapped Giles."
"I don't remember reading anything about…" Wesley trails off.
"Yeah, I didn't think anybody would write anything like this down," Cordelia chuckles uncomfortably as it comes back to her. "You know how Willow performed the ritual to return Angel's soul?"
She waits for him to nod before continuing. "Well, people tend to think she's the reason he has his soul, they kind of gloss over the fact that we wouldn't have the curse for her to perform if it wasn't for Miss Calendar."
"Miss Calendar? She was the teacher who Angelus killed at the school," Wesley confirms. "Giles wrote about the murder."
There's something in the way he says it that Cordelia knows, just knows, that Giles left out the details. She needs to fill him in; if they're going to face Angelus, she won't let Wesley go into it blind.
"It turned out Miss Calendar was a descendant of the clan who originally cursed Angel," she explains. "Buffy got pissed at her, but I think she just wanted someone to blame because she couldn't deal. From what I heard, Miss Calendar had no idea what would happen until it was too late."
Wesley sighs but remains silent.
"Anyway, Miss Calendar said the original texts were lost," Cordelia continues quietly. She curls and uncurls her fingers to disperse the anxiety she feels building with her story. "But she wanted to make things right so she went looking and found them, translated them somehow. Willow found the disk she saved them a couple of months after she died."
"Angelus killed her," Wesley swallows thickly.
"And left her body in Gile's bed."
Wesley's entire body pauses, looking at her in silent askance to confirm what she said. She nods, feeling the bile churn in her stomach as she thinks back to being in Giles' apartment that night. Remembers the catch in Xander's voice when he called her. Remembers going to the police station with Xander so Giles wasn't alone. Remembers driving Buffy to the factory only to see the flames and fleeing vampires. Buffy told her to get to a safe distance while she got Giles.
"Giles and Miss Calendar were dating before everything went to hell." There's a bitter taste in her mouth. "They were head over-heels-kind of vibes, you know?"
Wesley's eyes close briefly.
She can't bring herself to say they were in love not when she'd never heard either of them say it. Yeah, she played up the shallow, fashionable, cool persona she had back then. That didn't mean she was blinkered by what was going on around her. She saw Buffy freeze Miss Calendar out. She saw how much it hurt Giles to do the same. It wasn't her place to get involved in such a fucked up situation given how tenuous her relationship with Xander was at the time, that was a glass house ready to shatter around her.
"Angelus tortured Giles for hours," she says, almost reiterating to herself by saying the words out loud. "Giles survived that because Angelus had already taken so much from him."
"I never knew that Giles lost someone he loved," Wesley says quietly, clearly getting a better understanding of his fellow Watcher.
"Yeah," Cordelia breathes in. "Angel has his soul because of Miss Calendar." Breathes out. "She died trying to return his soul and now he's giving it away."