InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Save the Last Dance for Me"

angel (tookastand) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2010-05-08 17:40:00

Entry tags:

!closed, angel, cordelia chase

WHO: Angel & Cordelia Chase
WHERE: Outside the library.
WHEN: Night.
RATING: PG-ish?
STATUS: In progress...

The last time he'd leapt from a building and found himself somewhere else, it had been just after the Senior Partners had dropped Los Angeles into hell and he'd been baselined into a human who had been unable to land with the grace of a vampire...or land at all, really. He'd fallen and broken several things, so when he found himself hurtling towards the tile floor of the library, he'd assumed the worst and dropped the sword he'd been clutching that he'd pulled out of the hands of a demon he'd killed with it's own weapon not a moment ago, and put his hands out— But, he landed. On his feet. Nothing broken. And after a moment of concentrating, listening and feeling...no heartbeat, either.

He was still a vampire.

"Oh, thank God," Angel declared, leaning back on his heels and huffing in relief. He did not want to go through all that again...but, still being a vampire didn't explain where he was.

Or why there were suits of armor now charging him.

Angel reached for the sword and jumped to his feet. "Who sent you?" He demanded of them. "Was it the Lord of Burbank? Sherman Oaks? Look, I'm getting a little tired of killing their assassins and I'm sure you guys are tired of me offing you all the same, so why don't you do us both a favor and turn around and go tell your Lords that they can k—"

He didn't get the chance to finish that as one of the guards rushed him and somehow managed to take the sword away from him. Angel struggled, he fought— even got away from them at one point, but eventually found himself hurled outside onto the stone steps, his sword and an object he didn't recognize soon following. And while he scrambled to his feet and made a mad dash for the doors, they slammed shut before he could reach them and did not yield to his attempts at opening them.

"Damn it!" He swore, kicking the door in frustration. Angel whirled around with a snarl and snatched up the sword, then the device they'd thrown out at him that he could've sworn he hadn't had on him. It was some sort of cell phone? No, one of those palm pilot things. Was it Connor's or Kate's? Certainly wasn't his.

...or, maybe it was for him, given that it was telling him, directly and by name, that he'd been assigned a room and had funds at his disposal already in a bank account. What? If this was some sort of holding dimension—

If Angel was capable of breathing, still, his breath would've caught in his throat at what button mashing had shown him. ...Cordelia? But that...that was impossible. She was gone. And just what was Illyria doing, she was somewhere (with Spike or Gunn, he wasn't sure, everyone had gone their separate ways after the time reset), but he didn't like it.

Hopefully this thing worked like a computer, for his time at Wolfram & Hart had taught him how to use technology a little better. Little being the key word here.

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_visiongirl
2010-05-10 02:42 pm UTC (link)

Cordelia was such a mishmash of emotions that she wasn't even sure which one was currently in the lead. There was anger, confusion, fear, and sorrow, all combined into one and making it incredibly difficult for her to think clearly and make logical, rational decisions at the moment. Not that she thought anyone could blame her for that. She was supposed to be dead. She had done her part, she'd gotten Angel back on track, and now she was supposed to be heading up to that big designer clothing store in the sky.

Only, she wasn't. Instead she was stuck in a city that looked like any average city you might find anywhere else. If you ignored the fact that you didn't ask to be there, you couldn't leave, and apparently weren't even on Earth anymore. That, she decided, was going to take some getting used to. As was whatever that... thing was, that had taken over Fred's body.

Personally, Cordelia didn't care what Illyria said. Fred couldn't be gone. She just couldn't. It was a possession, or something. They just had to find a way to reverse it and Fred would be back to her normal, babbling, non-blue, self. She absolutely refused to believe that there wasn't something that could be done. However, for the time being, she had to admit that she didn't know enough to even start spouting off ideas.

Which was, in part, why she was going to see Angel. Not that she needed a reason to see him. He was Angel, after all. He was her Champion, her guy, the man - well, vampire - that she loved. She would do anything for him, up to and including staying quiet and letting him explain about Illyria. She didn't have to like it but, for him, she would do it.

Making her way down the street, back to the library, she spotted him easily enough. Oh, he still had an unparalleled ability to blend into the shadows, but after all this time Cordelia had gotten pretty used to pinpointing him. She sometimes missed her mark but not usually. And this time, he wasn't really trying to hide, which made since considering he knew she was coming. So by the time she had made her way up the walkway leading to the library, her gaze had already locked with his and her lips were curved upward into a smile.

God she'd missed him. Technically she'd seen him not long before showing up here, but it still felt like much, much longer. A fact made obvious when, without any preamble or even a spoken greeting, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

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tookastand
2010-05-10 04:45 pm UTC (link)

If she hadn't hugged him, he would've taken it upon himself to do so. To him, she was gone— long gone without any chance of getting her back in a way that he'd ever be truly happy with. He was content, yes, with the knowledge that she was watching over him from wherever it was the plane of The Powers That Be was located, found himself grinning and shaking his head in semi-wry amusement when a warm breeze would assault him without fail every single time he started to think pessimistically and knowing it was her way of telling him to snap out of it in the only way she was able to do so now-a-days; but selfishly, it wasn't enough.

Angel was okay with thinking selfishly these days, for it helped fill in the gaps left by the guilt that was no longer burdening him in the deleterious ways that it had in the hundred plus years prior to his time in hell. He'd finally got what he wanted, was finally redeemed for his past as Angelus, but he had no clue as to what to do with his redemption now that he had it. (Especially with the knowledge of what he would potentially become if the Senior Partners' interpretation of the shanshu prophecy was correct. Wes seemed to have believed it and that scared him and he hoped to God that it turned out to be about Spike and not him. Let Spike be the one who gets to become human if it stopped Angel from becoming the kind of human he was supposedly destined to be.) He had reopened the investigations agency with Kate, but they had so many problems in making that work, thanks to all the people who recognized him from the battle with the Demon Lords. People called in needing 'saving' and they showed up to to a photo op or, even worse, a hoard of fan girls and the screening process Kate was working on just wasn't cutting it and in a way, all that directionless and inability to work around fame was making him feel even more lost than before.

Being in her embrace, holding her to him and breathing in her scent (that smell that was uniquely her had been absent from the apparition that had visited him in hell when he was dying) was soothing and made that confusion and aimlessness seep out of his person,if only for a little while. Angel would happily take a little while, for beggars couldn't be choosers when it came to stolen moments with those who were supposed to be gone forever.

"Cordy."

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_visiongirl
2010-05-11 01:32 am UTC (link)

The sound of her voice made her eyes sting with tears she wasn't going to let fall. She hadn't thought she'd ever hear him say her name again. Hadn't thought she'd ever see him again, or at least not for a very, very long time. She had no way of knowing, of course, of what was to come. Of her eventual status as a higher power. Of her watching over her loved ones from another plane of existence. All she knew was that one minute she'd been slipping away from the land of the living and a coma from which she'd never truly recovered, and the next she was here.

Holding onto him for perhaps a moment longer than was strictly necessary, Cordelia finally pulled away once she had herself a bit more composed. The tears that had been in her eyes were gone, a bright smile was upon her face, and she took a step back so she could peer up at him. "So either I've missed a lot, or you took a class on modern technology. Managing a PDA without making the entire network implode or something? I have to say, I'm impressed."

Her questions about Illyria, her issues with this whole set-up, all of it was put on hold for the time being. They'd get to it all. They always did. But for now, she was simply content to reunite with her Champion and, for a brief moment, let things feel as they once had before fate had stepped in and messed it all up.

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angel ( c/p from googledoc )

tookastand
2010-05-13 05:46 pm UTC (link)

"Harmony," he answered smoothly when she drew back from him and he nearly protested the absence of that intimacy the hug had given them along with it, but reigned that in. That could come later, once all the hows and the whys and the whats and the whos were covered. Business first, pleasure later. Angel knew better than to put himself first, even if he wanted to. "One too many accidental calls to the voodoo division and the people up in human sacrifices turned into a weekend of her shouting at me and dumping blood out a very high window until I got it right."

That had been a very awkward pair of days, being mostly alone in the office with just Harmony for company. He hadn't understood half her babble or the terminology she chose to use, her references went right over his head...and in a way, he'd found it all endearing. She'd reminded him so much of the person Cordelia had been before she'd been given the visions and he'd tolerated Harmony for that, selfishly basked in the remnants of a person they both had been close to and had lost, though only one of them had truly felt the sting of that loss. Harmony had betrayed him; he'd expected it and out of respect for what Harmony had unknowingly done for him, he'd let her go unscathed.

Maybe that had been a bad decision. Too late to take it back now.

"I know this isn't the best of circumstances, but Cordy, I— It's really good to see you again."

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cordelia ( c/p from googledoc )

tookastand
2010-05-13 05:46 pm UTC (link)

Harmony. Harmony had taught him how to use technology? After all of the failed attempts from both herself and Doyle, way back in the day, and all of her tries that had garnered such little success in the years following Doyle's demise, and Harmony had managed it? If Cordelia was a jealous person, she would be positively green at the moment. However she wasn't typically jealous, especially when it came to someone whom she knew would never truly mesh right with Angel. It wasn't Harmony's fault, really. She was just... well, she was evil. And Angel wasn't. It was funny how things like that tended to keep people apart.

So rather than be stung by the realization, Cordelia instead found herself grinning. The mental image he'd painted was far too amusing. She really could see it happening that way, too. Then her grin shifted from amused to caring, her eyes sparkling with emotions she had yet to really put into words. She'd come close, during her last encounter with him, but she'd stopped herself because by that point it had simply been too late. Her time had been up.

Only, apparently it wasn't. It was a strange thought, to think she had this second chance with Angel. A chance that neither of them really should have, she knew, and yet here it was all the same. But instead of commenting on all of that, or saying any of the hundreds of things she'd wanted to say when she'd astrally projected herself out of her comatose body to put him back on track again, she simply arched a brow and gave a soft snort of amusement.

"Wow," she said in a teasing tone, "you really are the master of understatements, aren't you? Just 'really good'? I don't even get a great? Possibly a fabulous?" She kept smiling to show she was joking, although she doubted Angel would think otherwise. Yes, she could still verbally eviscerate someone when she wanted to, but for the most part she was all bark and very little bite anymore. Too many things had happened for her to simply remain the way she'd once been, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing by any means.

"So," she tacked on after a second, "you know how to use a PDA. Is there anything else I should know? I mean, aside for who in the hell the blue-chick is and why you're acting like you're almost afraid of her?"

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angel ( c/p from googledoc )

tookastand
2010-05-13 05:47 pm UTC (link)

"You're a vision of hotliness," he found himself saying, smoothly with the subtle hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, echoing the words she had said to himself and Wesley when she'd supposedly awoken from her coma. He realized now that the woman who Cordelia had identified as Miss One Foot In The Grave had actually been her and she'd hid her body behind a curtain so that they wouldn't catch on to her astral projection rouse. Part of him wished he had so that he could've called her out on it and got it over with like ripping a band-aid off. The other part, however, wouldn't change a thing about how she'd gone out. She'd eased him into it, given him what he needed instead of what he wanted.

Just like Doyle, she'd used her last breath to make sure he'd keep fighting and he had and that vision, that gift she'd left him with had set everything into motion and put him in the position he was in now: redeemed. (Nevermind his inability to figure out what to do in the absence of all that guilt.)

Her questions did well to melt that small smile right off his face and he exchanged it for a look that was more serious, more business-like. Work first, play later.

"I am afraid of her," Angel admitted. He had no reason to lie to her— no secrets, after all. "Though, to be fair, I'm pretty sure Illyria's more afraid of herself than we are of her."

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cordelia ( c/p from googledoc )

tookastand
2010-05-13 05:49 pm UTC (link)

Okay. Whatever she had been expecting Angel to say, that had not been it. He was afraid of her? Really? Since when was Angel afraid of anyone? Clearly, things had changed a whole lot more than she'd thought, since her passing. Which she had expected, she supposed, but not like this. Not if that change meant the loss of more of her friends, and creators running around in their skin. They were the good guys. They had lost enough, what with her and Doyle. Losing Fred... that wasn't supposed to happen. Fred was the one member of the group that deserved better than all of them put together.

"Right," she drew the word out slowly, "you want to maybe elaborate on that? Because from where I'm standing, she's a thing that killed one of my best friends. Not someone we need to make with the extending of understanding and trying to help her find herself. Or, you know, fearing. It's not like we haven't faced Big Bads before." Especially since finding herself meant accepting that Fred was gone, which wasn't something Cordelia was sure she could do all that easily.

She knew, if Angel told her that she had no choice, that Fred was gone for good, she'd have to deal. She had been in this game long enough to know how it was played. But for these last few minutes before he possibly said as much, she held onto the faint hope that he was just stringing this Illyria along, playing the song and dance until they could find a way to get Fred back. Yes, Cordelia knew that likely wasn't true or he would've said as much by now, but she could still hope. Pragmatic but optimistic in a way that only she could pull off.

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angel ( c/p from googledoc )

tookastand
2010-05-13 05:50 pm UTC (link)

Angel had been so torn up, so furious over what happened to Fred. It hadn't been fair. He'd lost Cordelia and Fred was the one he'd saved from Pylea, the one he always managed to save. She hadn't known it, or maybe she had, but she'd restored his faith in his ability to do right by being there for him to save. And he'd failed her. He and Spike had tried and even though he'd had the opportunity to cast Illyria out of her body, it would've killed so many people in the process and he knew that Fred would've been angry with him over that, would've given him that sort of disappointed look that made him want to sit in some dark, secluded place where no-one could see him and the cloud of shame hanging over his head. The price had been too high, one life at the sacrifice of many. He hadn't been able to do it.

"She did and then she didn't," he starts to explain, moving to sit back down on the steps next to the sword he'd taken out of that assassin's hands. "Illyria... She's an Old One. One of the original demons who walked the Earth in the times before humans. They left our dimension long ago, but before then, they were killing one another and Illyria orchestrated her return before she was taken down. She was preordained to return to California, but she didn't chose Fred for this, Knox did— a scientist, someone who worked under Fred at Wolfram & Hart. The Senior Partners, the firm, they had nothing to do with it. It was Knox, it was...destiny." The edge that rolled off that word showed how much Angel disliked it. He hated that word now-a-days.

"Knox called it an honor." He scoffed and shook his head. His voice is quieter now and he's surprised not to hear himself stumbling over words. "She came into contact with Illyria's sarcophagus after Knox had it delivered to Wolfram & Hart. Her essence infected Fred, hollowed her out. When Fred died, Illyria took over her body."

Angel had been looking at the ground, but he lifted his gaze up to meet Cordelia's, then. "She's not Fred. Fred is gone. Believe me, if there was a way to bring Fred back, we would've already done it, but there isn't. Fred is no more. All that's left is Fred's shell and what stayed behind of her memories. Illyria...wants to be Fred. Sometimes she convinces herself that she is, but she isn't. There's nothing human about her and she hates herself for it."

He lifted a hand and scrubbed at his face, feeling very tired all of a sudden. "Something happened and Illyria was tricked, spurred into using her abilities to try and collapse time. She almost succeeded. The version of her that's here is from before that, though, but she's still unstable. Provoking her is the last thing we want as I'm not sure even Wesley could stop her as he's the only person she'll listen to, here."

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