Spoilers: Buffy season 4. Angel season 1.
Feedback: Yes, Yes, and YES! Please!
Author’s Notes: I had issues with ‘Expecting’. Cordy growth is always
appreciated but MUST it always be done at the expense of victimizing the
character? Hope ya’ll enjoy. Thank Misty for the beta reading and both
her and Kim for listening to my rants. Lord knows they deserve it.
First thing she had done was take a shower. A long, hot scalding shower with lots of soap and lots of water and lots of scrubbing. She had to get rid of that slime. And that smell. And the unbearable, overpowering feeling of dirtiness. The slime and smell she had managed to wash away, but she couldn’t shake the dirtiness, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been soiled in some way. In a way she couldn’t get rid of no matter how much soap she used or how long and hard she scrubbed.
Next she had attacked her bed. The sheets, pillows, even the bedspread were ripped off and thrown in a bag and tossed in the dumpster out back, along with the overalls and shirt and nightgown. Waste of money be damned, there was no way she sleeping on those sheets ever again. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever sleep in that bed again. For now the couch was where she would sleep. If she slept at all tonight.
Then when there was nothing else to clean or throw away she had found herself sitting on her couch, holding the cordless phone in her hands and doing absolutely nothing with it, except stare at it.
Just stare at it.
She wanted to dial his number, to hear his voice, to tell him everything, and have him tell her that she had imagined it, that she must’ve just drank too much the night before or read too many books while researching demons and just dreamed it. She wanted it to be a dream. She wanted it to be just a nightmare.
God, she wanted it all to have just never happened.
If she had just held off with Wilson, if she had just used her head instead of once again following her heart and letting it lead her to yet more avoidable angst…
But she hadn’t. It hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been a harmless nightmare.
She had the sonogram picture to prove it.
She threw the phone onto the couch next to her and grabbed the tv remote from off the table. Turning on the television, she grabbed her blanket and wrapped it around her, curling up on the couch in a tight little ball. Her eyes focused on the screen and she willed the sounds and images to push out the images and sounds in her head.
Of course it didn’t work. Of course instead of some talk show host’s long-winded monologue making her forget what she was so desperately trying to push aside, her mind set to work on mulling over the last day. Picking it apart piece by piece and trying to make sense of it all. To understand, why, or rather how something like this could happen. How a human being could be so evil as to allow an even greater evil to prey on a woman in such a horrible, appalling way, using her and manipulating her to breed more evil.
It boggled her mind. Even as jaded as she was about people in general, she had always counted on basic human decency. People in the end acting with respect for one another. Or maybe her problem was that she was naïve enough to think that nothing as bad as what happened to her in the past day could ever happen to her, not after everything she had been through. But then again she had lived on the Hellmouth. She had seen the evil that existed in the world. She had seen it jump by leaps and bounds since she moved to L.A. Why should she have been surprised that there was no end to how evil Evil could really be? Her eyes had been opened long before now as to how bad things could really be.
Or so she had thought.
She hugged her knees closer to her chest and closed her eyes, fighting back yet more tears. As if crying would somehow make her feel better. It hadn’t in the past, why would it now? Would she be able to cry away the shame and humiliation? Would she be able to cry away the frustrating emotions that were eating away at her, consuming her, making her wish she could just close her eyes and never wake up again?
How could she have been so stupid? How could she have allowed herself to be taken in by him? How could she have trusted him? Hadn’t she learned anything at all after everything she had been through? Hadn’t she learned about trusting the wrong people? Hadn’t she learned that people, in general, weren’t what they appeared to be? What appeared to be one thing, could just as easily be another?
She wiped her face and opened her eyes to look down at the phone. Shaking her head after a moment, she quickly looked away and took a deep breath.
If she told him yet another one of her mistakes, complained about yet one more thing about her pitiful life…she knew he wouldn’t judge her, she wasn’t worried about that. She was just….how could he not be disappointed in her, how could he not look at her differently after he found out? She had stupidly slept with some bastard, letting her libido overrule her mind, and look what had happened? She felt ruined in some way, tainted. She no longer felt like herself, she felt changed.
If she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror-how would HE see her?
Besides, running to him was becoming a habit, a bad habit. Needing him too much…in the end it was only a bad thing. She was doing to him what she had accused Buffy of doing-using him and taking him for granted. It wasn’t fair to him to keep depending on him so much.
She had to learn to deal with things on her own.
Suddenly a gnawing ache began in the pit of her stomach and she closed her eyes again, doing all could to not retch at the images that flashed through her mind.
She had felt them inside her. God, she had felt them move around inside her and heard them talking to her and calling to her.
Asking her to protect them.
Asking her to love them.
And she had. Dammit, a part of her had. A part of her had hoped that her…those babies could be saved. That somehow Wesley and Angel would find a way to save them. Even though they were demons, even though they hadn’t been made from an act of love, but an act of greed and betrayal, even though they hadn’t been made from her.
They were inside her. They were a part of her and she had wanted them to live. Even if it meant… that she would die instead.
They were hers, they were hers and she had to protect them. She was their mother and she had to protect them. She had wanted to protect them.
And then…oh God….then they had died.
And she had heard them screaming as they died.
She had felt them in pain as they died.
It had been pain that she had never felt before and hoped to God she would never feel again-
Feeling them being taken away from her, knowing the babies were gone. Her babies.
She had failed them. She had failed to protect them. Her babies.
No. NO. Not her babies. NOT hers.
And then, after they were gone, after they were…it finally hit. What had happened to her, what they had done to her, what they were going to do to her.
She hoped Wilson and his bastards friends rotted in Hell. Along with their revered demon god.
Tears of anger and frustration burned her eyes and she quickly wiped them away with the back of her hand. NOTHING made sense anymore-She didn’t know, she just didn’t know anything! She didn’t know if she deserved what happened to her or not, she didn’t know why this happened to her, she didn’t know why she had this heavy sense of guilt and attachment for demon babies that were never hers, that had wanted to kill her. She didn’t know why she didn’t get a vision to warn her or why after everything in her life did the hard knocks just come one after the other for her? Xander, almost dying, her parents’ problems and not being able to go to college, L.A. being practically a bust except for Angel and Doyle-
She let out a ragged sob. Doyle. Doyle dying, leaving her with his damn visions. Leaving her with his gift that was more of a curse than a treasure. It hadn’t helped her. It hadn’t helped those other women who were no doubt trying to deal with what happened to them, to understand something that defied understanding.
This gift was supposed to help her save others, help her be Angel’s link to the powers that be in protecting the innocent and helpless from evil.
But it hadn’t protected her. Why didn’t it protect her?
You’re a survivor Cordy. You’ve managed before, you’ll manage again.
She laughed to herself. How many times could she just manage it? How many more times could she see the evil attack others, attack her and the people she cared about and be able to handle it? How many times would it take for her to be beaten down before she finally just stayed down and said ‘Ya know what world? You got me’? She had picked herself up so many times before, telling herself that she could do it, she’d show everybody that she could manage, that she could deal.
She was tough. She was a bitch. SHE was Cordelia Chase.
But you can only roll with the punches so many times before something finally hits you that you just couldn’t get up from. She had thought losing Xander was it, but it hadn’t been, as painful as all that was. She had thought her parents getting caught by the IRS was it, but she had pulled through that too. But then Doyle died, and then she got the visions, and now…
Bam, bam, bam. One after the other.
She was tired. She was sick of getting up just to have to fight AGAIN.
What was going to be thrown at her next? What more could happen to her besides something just coming along and putting her out of her misery? Something finally just knocking her clean out of this sick game someone had the gall to call life?
She honestly didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to imagine what else could happen to her that could be worse than what had happened to her today.
She couldn’t see an end coming to this feeling. This crushing heaviness that just made her want to close the curtains and never leave her apartment. Never get up from this couch ever again.
She was so tired.
She didn’t want to fight anymore. There didn’t seem to be any point.
It was all wearing her down. It was winning.
She snatched up the phone and was dialing before she even knew what she was doing.
She wanted her friend, she needed her friend. She needed to talk to him, hear his voice, just hear his voice and know somebody cared, that somebody was safe for her.
She needed to talk to him, to have him chase these thoughts out of her head, thoughts that were scaring her, thoughts that she couldn’t handle on her own.
She needed her friend.
It was almost three in the morning and he was probably asleep. Or out. She rubbed her forehead with her palm and bit her lip. What the hell would she say to him? How would he react, what would he think, what would he say-
“Hullo?” She looked up and froze, his voice startling her speechless. She heard him sigh and move around at the other end. “Hullo is someone there? Ethan if this is you calling-“
“Ethan?” she blurted out. “Why would Ethan be calling you?”
“Oh, Cordelia, I’m sorry I-you wouldn’t believe the day that I’ve had,” he sighed harshly.
“What happened?” she quickly asked, sitting up in her seat. She didn’t want to talk, not just yet. Listening to him, letting him talk was all she could handle.
He let out a bitter laugh. “Something that was my own fault. I stupidly trusted Ethan for more than a split second, and he taught me once again why he and I parted ways-he’s a bloody rat bastard.”
“What did he do now?” She rubbed her eyes wearily.
“Slipped something into my drink that resulted in my being transformed into a demon. A damn demon.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her palm to her forehead. “A what? A demon? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. No lasting scars, other than the one Buffy gave me from stabbing me-“
“Buffy stabbed you?” she sat up. “What the hell-“
“Cordelia, calm down, it’s okay. It was a misunderstanding. She thought that I had killed myself. That is the demon had killed me.”
Cordelia let out a slow breath and shook her head. “That’s still-“ she caught herself and sat back on the couch. “Well did you get Ethan? And kick his ass? Or did he somehow get away again?”
“No. Actually he was arrested. By the Initiative.”
“They can do that?”
“Apparently so. They are a government outfit and have the authority to arrest people for breaking the law. Or so they say. In any case I suspect he’s regretting having ever come back to Sunnydale. His little stunt didn’t give him as much fun as he thought and he got arrested for his trouble.”
“Well at least he’s out of your hair once and for all. And he left no permanent damage. Let the Initiative or whoever handle him.”
“I gladly would.”
She bit the inside of her cheek and waited a beat. She knew that tone.
“You gladly would but-“
“There’s just something about this Initiative that I’m very wary of. Especially the woman in charge of it, Maggie Walsh.”
“Why?”
“Well something Ethan said-“
“Dammit, Giles didn’t you just say that trusting him was a mistake?” she snapped.
She felt him pause at the other end. “Yes, but something he said actually made sense. There has been something off about Sunnydale, even more off than usual, and its been that way for some time. Then this Initiative appears with some type or surreptitious agenda, one that involves the hunting and study of demons.”
“It’s like we’re surrounded by evil,” she muttered rubbing her forehead roughly.
“What?” she heard him ask at the other end.
“Nothing,” she cleared her throat. “What are you thinking? About the Initiative?”
“That there is something about to happen and the Initiative is at the center of it. Or the cause of it. But I haven’t a clue as to what it could be.” She heard him groan and move around again.
“What is it?” she asked quietly.
“Still recovering from my brief transformation. I was this huge thing of a demon and was banging into things left and right. I nearly destroyed my apartment in getting up this morning,” he grimaced again. “Imagine my surprise when I awoke this morning to find myself transformed into a hideous monster. I nearly had a heart attack.”
“I know the feeling,” she said quietly. “But you’re okay now, right? This won’t happen again?”
“No I won’t transform again. The potion’s effects have worn off. Lucky for me it was after Buffy had stabbed me-.”
“ I cannot believe she did that,” she said suddenly. “ I mean Buffy couldn’t tell that you were you? After knowing you for almost four years?”
“Cordelia I was hardly recognizable to anyone, even myself,” he sighed. “It was quite unnerving.”
She paused at the tone in his voice. “How do you mean?”
He was quiet for a moment. “When I was transformed into that demon, I WAS a demon. I had the body and the mind of a demon. I had this…. compunction to act in the most abominable ways.”
“Well,” she started. “I doubt you let it go too far-“
“Yes, I did.”
“Giles,” she started. “I think I know you pretty well. You would never allow yourself-“
“But that’s just it Cordelia. I did. I allowed myself to be set-up by Ethan, I allowed him to do this to me, and then I allowed myself to give in to temptation.” He paused again. “I felt that evil inside me, I felt the urge to give in and destroy. It was so tempting and at times irresistible…and…I remember actually accosting that Walsh woman on the street with the sole purpose in frightening her. And then later when Buffy was fighting me, I felt my control just dissipate and allowed myself to become what I’ve spent my life fighting. For a brief time….I was…not good.”
“NO,” she jumped up from the sofa, suddenly filled with anger. “You are not evil Giles. You never have been and you could never could be-“
“Cordelia, look you don’t understand-“
“Yes, I do. What happened to you was not your fault and what you did as a demon you had no control over. You were under the influence of some black magic that Ethan put on you. ETHAN did this. This is all his fault.”
“He may have given me the drug, but what I did as that demon I am at least partly responsible for. I had control over how I acted. The evil that I felt…the urges to give in…some of that was from me. Some of that darkness came from me. If I wasn’t susceptible to it, then it wouldn’t have been so easy for me to give in.”
She began pacing around the room. “Giles none of us are faultless, pure little angels who’ve never made mistakes or done bad things. Doing bad things does not mean that you are a bad person. A bad person doesn’t have remorse for what they’ve done, they don’t even THINK about the pain suffering they’ve caused others or care about the victims they leave in their wake. Ethan is a prime example. He drugged you and didn’t give a flip about what happened to you afterwards. He didn’t care if you were somehow hurt or killed or felt guilt and anger for the things that HE set you up to do. BASTARDS like him are evil. BASTARDS like him should be the ones to suffer the consequences of their actions and NOT their victims.”
She stopped suddenly, her outburst leaving her drained. Realizing that she had started crying again she sniffed and wiped her face again, and quickly went back to the couch to sit down.
“You are not evil Giles. And what happened to you wasn’t your fault. Evil just…preys on anything it can-even the good guys. Even the ones that should know better. We’re all the prey of evil. You know that better than anyone. It attacks whoever or whatever it can to further its own purposes. Or simply because it can.”
He was silent at the other end and she took the time to gather herself, to think about what she had just said and realized it applied to her as well. To make herself believe it.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked suddenly. “Do you understand that this is exactly what it wants? It wants you to doubt yourself, to doubt what you are, so that it can win. Giles, you are its enemy. You are one of the good guys, no matter what it tries to make you think, you ARE a good guy and that will never change. One thing I know, or wholeheartedly believe is that even if you were to lose your way, even if evil were to tempt you, you’d find your way back in the end.”
Again he remained silent for a moment before answering. “You’ re pretty insightful for someone so young.”
She let out a weak laugh. “Yeah well with all the shit I ‘ve seen it’s been unavoidable.”
“Nice to have my own personal cheerleader, too.”
“It’s high time you got one. And if there is one thing in this damn world I’m good at its…being a cheerleader.” She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Did I at least cheer you up?”
“You not only cheered me up, you drove your point successfully home.”
“Good,” she simply said.
She felt him hesitate at the other end. “Cordelia, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing I want to get into right now,” she said quietly.
“Cordelia-“
“I just couldn’t sleep,” she said as she picked up the remote control and began flipping channels.
“Why?”
“Long, extremely bad day. Now that it’s over I can’t sleep. I decided to call you up and bug you for a while. Unfortunately your day wasn’t so hot either- but you survived it and are still standing.”
“So are you,” he said seriously. “Remember that.”
She nodded dutifully into the phone. “I’m gonna let you go now. You’ve had a long day and need your sleep-“
“What are you going to do?”
“Just watch tv. I’m sure it’ll put me to sleep in a jiff. What with all the old reruns of “Home Improvement” on-.
“Cordelia. Stop. Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
She shook her head and smiled sadly to herself. “No. I mean…not over the phone.”
“That bad,” he said quietly.
“Worse,” she laughed tearfully. “ It’s like …it’s like I’m having a really bad nightmare and I haven’t jerked awake yet. I haven’t bolted up in bed, screaming at the top of my lungs only to realize that none of it ever happened.” She swallowed heavily.
“Cordelia whatever it is, whatever’s happened, everything will work out. You’ll get through it.”
“I’ve told myself that, Giles. I have. So many times have I told myself that. After Xander, after the hospital, after my parents, after Doyle- do you know how many times I’ve told myself that?” She grabbed a pillow on the couch and hugged it to her.
“When can I start telling myself something else like ‘Great Job, Cordy!’ or ‘You’re so lucky Cordy’ or ‘You’re back on top Cordy?’ It feels like for every step forward I try to take, I get knocked two steps back right flat on my ass.”
“Keep in mind that you’ve been down before Cordelia. You DID move on after Xander. You DID take it upon yourself to move away from Sunnydale and strike out on your own without the help of any of your friends and do a damn good job of taking care of yourself. You have been down before and you have been able to keep going.”
She shook her head into the phone. “I know I have Giles. I know I’ve put on the happy face and plowed forward, but ….I don’t know how to move past this. I’ve never…..I don’t even know how or where to start.”
“Cordelia, what happened? Please tell me so I can somehow be of help to you.”
“Giles, there isn’t anything more you could do for me than what you’re doing right now. You’re helping me the best way you can and that’s by you being my friend.”
“I feel I could be doing more.”
She shook her head. “No. You couldn’t. What’s done is done and there’s no changing it. I just have to deal as always.” She sighed.
“Don’t stay in the dark place where you are, Cordelia. Don’t let it box you in.”
She pressed her lips together.“Why not stay Giles? It’s becoming a familiar place.”
“Because I don’t want to lose you Cordelia. I don’t want to lose my friend.”
“I don’t…”
He cut her off again, his voice insistent. “You’ve been through too much to let this stop you. Don’t let whatever this is stop you.”
“You make it sound so simple ‘Just keep going Cordelia’.”
“No, its not. Nothing worth fighting for is ever simple. But the alternative, you rolling over and playing dead, is not a choice that I’m going to allow you to make.”
Try as she might not to, she couldn’t help but cry yet again. She rubbed her eyes harshly trying to keep them at bay, but they still came. Tears of gratefulness. And of hope.
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
She sniffed quickly. “Um…Nothing. I’m taking some time off from everything.”
“Think you’d feel like a visit? I need some help in picking out a new car.”
“New car?”
“Another result of my bad day-Spike wrecked my car.”
“The Citreon is dead, long live the Citreon,” she laughed.
“So what do you say? You , me, the want ads. I’ll even throw in a home cooked meal.” A small smile actually came to her lips. “ You might as well say yes because I’m going to come up anyway.”
She threw up her hands. “Okay. I guess. Don’t you have-“
“I’ll be there around early afternoon.”
“Okay, okay,” she quickly said. “Well, um, I should go now. I’ve kept you up way too late as it is-“
“Well it’s not like I was sleeping all that soundly in the first place,” he answered. “Do you think you’d be able to sleep?”
“I dunno. I’ll try,” she said.
“Do you want to go to sleep?”
She thought a moment. “Not really. Not yet anyway.”
“Okay, then. What’s on the television?”
“Giles you don’t have to stay up with me-“
“I know. You’re staying up with me. Do you have any idea how many times tonight I ‘ve had the same nightmare of spewing acidic mucous at Buffy and Willow and the others? It was really quite disturbing to see their faces melting off into puddles of slime.”
“Did you happen to hit Anya or Xander in your dream?”
“I do believe I did. At least a few times.”
“Well, see. You being a demon wasn’t all bad-”
“Flip to channel 21.”
She picked up the remote control and pressed the button. “Notting Hill,” she laughed. “Trading one nightmare for another huh?”
“I thought you liked this movie?”
“I do. Modern day fairy tale of a tempestuous American movie star falling in love with a cute, sweet, mild mannered Englishman and living happily ever after despite the odds? Every girl’s fantasy,” she finished quietly
“Yours will be realized one day. It will happen for you.”
She laughed. “What about you? Have you achieved your secret wish yet?”
“I really haven’t thought about it.”
She frowned slightly. “You don’t have a secret fantasy of living happily ever after with your dream woman? Getting married, having kids, leaving Sunnydale behind?”
“It’s not that I haven’t thought about it Cordelia, the opportunity just hasn’t presented itself to me at the appropriate time.”
She shook her head and pulled at a strand of hair. “Look Giles, don’t take this the wrong way, but…do you really want to look back on your life one day to see that it had all been about Buffy? About looking out for her and helping her when you have a life as well? The opportunities are there- if you want them. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they’ll always be there and that you’ll still have time, because in the world we live in… things change quickly.”
She silently looked at the television screen, waiting for him to say something, feeling that maybe she had gone too far.
“I’ll keep what you’ve said in mind,” he finally said. “And I do understand what it is you are trying to say.”
She relaxed again and pulled her blanket up tightly around her. Holding the phone against her ear, she settled herself as comfortably as she could on the couch and let her tired eyes focus back on the television.
After several minutes of silence, a thought came to her.
“Giles?” she suddenly spoke up.
“Mmm, yes.”
What words could ever express to him how much… She shook her head. There weren’t any.
“Thank you,” was all she could say.
She felt him smile at the other end. “As always, Cordelia, you’re quite welcome.”