who. cordelia and angel what. after her talk with wes, cordelia goes to see angel. when. a little bit after her talk with wes. where. angel's place status. complete ( done over aim )
Cordelia: It had never snowed in Southern California save for one time. Besides that, the only snow she'd ever had the chance of seeing came from the obnoxiously expensive ski trips that her parents would take her on. Now, as black boots navigated their way through downtown Cleveland, the snow alternated between falling in lazy swirls and heavy gusts. There was no watch on her wrist to tell her what time it was but it was long past dark, the light coming from varying sources of headlights and street lamps. It might have been a pleasant scene - one that she would have enjoyed - if she was not busy thinking about other things. When she'd gotten news of Buffy's deal to bring Angel back ( information was simple to come by when you'd been a higher being .. whatever that really meant ) Cordelia had been torn between jumping for joy and weeping all at once. Having Angel back was nothing short of miraculous and it upped them one more good guy. But in a year and a half, Buffy would take his place in hell. Even Cordelia had to muse at just how incredible fucked up this entire situation was. As a matter of fact, that's all she'd been doing since she'd been brought back. Acclimating wasn't as easy as she'd thought it would be. Still, this had been her decision. And even in the midst of the trials that she had no solution for - she didn't regret coming back. Sighing, her breath materializing in front of her face, Cordelia brushed some of the snow out of her dark hair. The entire walk to Angel's apartment, she'd contemplated turning around and going back to her motel room. The only person that knew she was back was Wesley, and he'd only found out hours before. Then again, no one could blame for Cordelia for having to take some time to adjust to merely being here. Not only that, but it would've been suicidal to run and tell Angelus the good news of her return. Wouldn't that have been funny? Beg the Powers to let her come and help only to die at the hands of the same person she'd done the begging for? It wasn't until she was standing in front of the apartment she'd seen countless times from her place .. she wanted to say above, but Cordelia thought that sounded trite even in her own mind. A deep breath filled her lungs, the bitter cold stinging her throat and making said lungs ache before she lifted her hand and knocked on the door.
Angel: Waking had been almost as bad for him as it was before - a start of pure disoriented shock, a flash of mingled nausea and agony. Luckily he rarely slept. Not lately, anyway. Not with Buffy in the hospital and Justice - well, he hadn't the faintest clue where she was. And that was okay. But in between dying and living again, there had been a soaring moment of freedom. He almost believed it had been worth it, just for that timeless instant - okay, months - of unfettered release; something large and gaping and ugly replacing what had once been ordinary, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always complete. It didn't change the fact that every time Angel closed himself off, he saw oceans of sickening green eyes and death in glorious, technicolor sprays of blood. The real world was a negative exposure, he thought bitterly, like lunacy gave him a passport to all regions of the world and mind that he hadn't before dared to tread. And that was what overpowered everything: sheer, mindless fear that rose like bile in the back of his throat, twisted his stomach and made him weak and nauseated. It took more effort than he would have liked to pry himself off the couch - at least he hadn't fallen off of it this time - and the first thing he did was strip the black velvet curtains from the living room's obscenely large window. Angel looked out into the shadows slowly forming and sensed the lightening on the horizon, the dusky indigo imaginings of the day's end as snowfall draped like tinsel across the glass surface of his eyes. He turned away to shrug on the sweater he'd left hanging on the back of a chair, struck as he'd been more often lately by the apartment's impersonal emptiness. The furniture itself was growing more removed, less familiar; how that could be, he wasn't sure. There seemed no reason to turn on the light and inspect the progress of the phenomenon. It was all wood and backdrop. The props for an ennui of small hours, his showers and shaves, a meal or two, his occasional sleep. Angel had no idea why he was even still here, musing that insecurity in between generous self-loathing - the horribly certainty that he did feel, as deeply as any living soul - and complicated plots to commit suicide. Shoulders hunched, he was a bit surprised when a knock caught his attention. As far as he knew the only people aware of his return were Buffy and Justice, so when he cast open the door it was a bit of a shock. A pressure in his chest overrode speech; he imagined his voice coming out choked, broken. He couldn't think of anything worse than that, than opening another space in the armor. "Cordelia?" Her name stretched thin to breaking, almost unrecognizable, the crack in it another fissure that went deep, hints of scarring far below the surface. There was a silence that stretched, interspersed only with the shuffles of Angel's thoughts - ill-conceived though they seemed to be - a sort of muted happiness and wary confusion.
Cordelia: There'd been a chance before to set Angel back on the right path. The intricate details of her last day on Earth ( even if technically it was spent in a hospital bed and not in Wolfram and Hart ) were fuzzy and blurred like the pastels of a water color. Despite that, Cordelia could remember hugging the gang, holding them all for the last time. She remembered talking with Angel, telling him that the only thing they could do was take what they could get. And she remembered a kiss, one of goodbyes and missed opportunities that fate never meant for them to take. Even beyond that, the faint remembrance of telling Angel to take the call - the one that declared her time of death - and then leaving. At least then she'd known what to do and say to make things better. Or if nothing else, how to attempt to set things back on track. Now she hadn't the slightest clue. All she knew was that she was back and she would try. It seemed to take an eternity for the door to open and by the time the sound of a lock turning caught her attention she was sure that frostbite had settled in her fingers. ( Okay, so maybe the melodramatic streak hadn't quite faded with death. ) Even so, Cordelia made a note to get some warmer clothes when she had the chance. And the cash. One bad thing about the Powers? They were stingy bastards and hadn't exactly given her much to live off of. The two hundred dollars that had been in her pants pocket when she'd woken up was about zapped even despite the fact she was staying in the cheapest motel one could get aside from a cardboard box. Once the door was opened, revealing him - her dearest of friends the world had ever graced her with - Cordelia was left nearly as shocked as Angel. He looked terrible, the dark circles under his eyes a testament to the fact that he hadn't slept since God knows when. Who could blame him? "Cordelia?" The voice that came from pale lips was not the one she remembered but was stretched thin as paper. She only gave the gentlest of smiles before motioning to the snow that blanketed the ground below her. "You gonna invite me in or are you going to wait until I get frostbite and die?" A beat, then. "Again." It was hard to speak around the sudden pressure in her throat but somehow she managed. Even more astonishingly, the gentle beginnings of a smile stayed on her lips. It had been years - three, to be exact - since she'd been able to speak with Angel face to face. God knows she'd yelled at him enough times from her 'place in the sky.' Just as many times as she'd called him an idiot, she'd wanted to be able to wrap her arms around him and tell him that things would eventually work out for the better. Now that was a possibility and all she could do was stand there like an idiot.
Angel: Angel looked down at Cordelia again for a second, and for that single, brief moment in time, suspended between one heartbeat and another, there was a longing, a depth of desire so strong that it almost took his non-breath away. The raw emotion reached out and snagged something within him, connecting, as if a thin, silvery invisible thread suddenly sprang into shining existence and bound them together. And then he blinked, and it was gone, so quickly that he was certain he'd imagined it. There were places Angel simply didn't go to anymore, and remembering Cordelia was one of those places. Even if the universe had a penchant for fucking with his head. "Cor--" Just for a moment, Angel's throat closed up, reluctance knocking insistently on the inside of his skull. Wanting out. Wanting, just once, to find a voice. The need beat slowly and heavily through him now, like cathedral bells, like a forced march. Of course, that was the trouble. It was never exactly the right moment to fall apart, and so Angel just . . didn't. Hadn't. Had deferred his own personal hell of emotion indefinitely, would keep deferring it out of habit, out of pride, out of necessity. The brunette's question hung there - three seconds, ten - and the overwhelming awfulness of the whole thing broke over him like a sound barrier. Eyes turning away - his only defense against his own transparency - Angel gazed over the streets, white upon grey. The world was sharply delineated, as if he were seeing everything in the moment after a camera flash, a layer of faded light across darkness. A moment never actually sustained, except for him. Vision hurt. He needed to get the hell out of here sooner rather than later. All he ended up doing was ushering aside the door and backtracking his way inside. "I'm sorry . . I just . . This is really you?" Angel lightened his gaze and mustered a shaky half smile and, to ease his stimulated thoughts of Not-Cordelia, redirected his attention once more to the unresolved issues of whether or not this was the woman he expressly remembered. He regretted, for a moment, his moodiness, his readiness to succumb to tension and perpetuate it - the final fraudulent layers of uncertainty were rudely whisked away when he decided he simply didn't care. Seeing her was enough. Angel would take it all over this bleak confusion his mind grappled with, yesterday, today and tomorrow. The vampire silently processed Cordelia's emotions as they rippled in the depths of her eyes. Bleakly, he waited, craving his own resolution while despising his need. He was never much one for exposition; reflection and action made far more sense to him than explanation. "How?"
Cordelia: They stood there long enough that Cordelia was able to begin to doubt if he would let her in. Boy, wouldn't that be a kick in the ass? The world around them had taken on a chilled, underwater slowness and even the snowflakes seemed to slow in their heavy descent to earth. Everything was grey and white like they'd stepped into some old movie. He tried to speak but he didn't have to. They might have lost three years but there were certain aspects of a friendship as strong as theirs that not even death could cheapen with it's cold tendrils of decay and mourning. He was still Angel no matter what hardships he'd gone through and she was still Cordelia Chase. Hadn't someone once said that in the end, we are who we are? Finally, Angel stepped back into the apartment and opened the door further so that she was able to step inside, thankful for the change of temperature. She was even more thankful for the half-smile that tugged at Angel's bleak expression, his eyes lightening enough that Cordelia was able to see the change there. "It's really me. No cheap, made-in-China version here." His inability to believe it was more than understandable. Miraculously 'waking' up from a coma had been one thing. Coming back to life from the dead - honest to goodness in the ground dead - was something else entirely. Then he asked the million dollar question of the evening. "How?" Both dark brows piqued slightly. "I told the Powers I wanted to come back." There was a pause as she gathered the words she wanted to say, the ones that would make sense. "I told them that it wasn't worth being a higher power if all I got to do was sit around and watch my friends suffer. Besides, I figured you needed somebody that knows you to come down here and kick your ass back on track. That's what I'm good for, right?" The room around her was a skeleton, as if no one actually lived here. The only sign of life was the fireplace where embers still burned across the room. Finally, Cordelia stepped forward, some of the space between the two of them with two steps. There was no hesitance there, only some sense of eagerness and maybe even hope. "Will you hug me already? It's not everyday that you get an early Christmas present as cool as your best friend back from the dead, mister."
Angel: Angel gave no credence to his wavering protestations of mistrust. Vertigo seized him - it wasn't so much any problem with heights as the delicate state of his senses that did it - feeling sore and weak, though the latter was nothing new. He couldn't really remember the last time he'd felt steady, no ache deep in his gut or living inside his skull, no tremor in his fingers or in his knees. It made him feel buttoned down, starched beyond recognition. Kind of like her explanation, which was neither here nor there. "Just like that? . . When you left, I wanted--" Angel’s tongue flickered smoothly over his dry lips. He had sorely missed her presence. "There were so many things I wanted to tell you." He rolled his gaze away again - could peripherally see the tight, attentive set of her head - and returned to brooding, obviously chewing over recent events with a mind to digest them. He was listening, all taut nerves, aching for reassurance. Angel felt a knife of renewed, impersonal dislike for their last encounter. How he'd gotten her back only to lose her again, a recurring theme he was sure he should've gotten used to by now. "I just. ." Voice ragged, the repressed sores had surfaced. He had gone off on a tangent and exposed a personal grievance. But then Angel shook his head, the stoicism mellowing into pain in his eyes. It was an intimate, inquisitive look, his cynicism momentarily shelved in the face of sudden heartbreak and unspeakable joy. Before he knew what he'd done he had his arms wound tightly around her. The warmth from the hug filtered through the thin fabric to his cool, leaden chest. Warmth, such as he sought in his dreams. The gentle heat that he would ultimately drain, blood drops quivering; sipping tenderly at her lingering, pulsing life in the excitement of his nurturing embrace. Angelus’ dreams, not his own. Not the he that was forever entwined with Angelus. Not the he who yearned for Cordelia's warmth. "God, I missed you." And Angel seriously didn't know if he could, didn't know if he pissed him off - the idea that hindsight could tell you anything meaningful at all because he was supposed to be burning for all eternity. Angel still hadn't collected all the memories he'd lost, everything he'd done - everything Angelus had done - over the last few months. That torturous reminiscence still carried faint, pleading whispers, the sensuous ambrosia of death and terror-spiced blood, stirring him on to finish what he had started. It would all be so easy. Angel felt the dawning shame crawl over his skin and, as he pushed away the day-dream, he pushed the real Cordelia gently away from his body, the backs of his knuckles brushed fondly over the satin softness of her check. She certainly felt real enough. "I'm sorry."
Cordelia: Angel's pain was her own. That's how it had always worked. Any time he would grieve, she would grieve right there with him. When he'd lost Connor, he had done nothing but laid in bed for days upon days and she'd sat by his bedside reading. On the rare occasion that he'd drifted to sleep, she'd watched him like a mother might her ill child, each groan and whimper taken into account and felt as if it were her own son that had been stolen. He'd wanted to die and she'd wanted to die right there with him. The hardest part of having her body violated by the thing that been in the driver's seat for her last weeks ( awake ) on earth was watching the relationship between Cordelia and Angel dwindle and crumble like sand in a too-tight fist. The memory of watching Angel's sword raise above her head, ready to take out the parasite that wore her skin would be one she'd remember until the end of time. Not that she blamed him. It was just one of the more unpleasant memories she carried with her from those oh so glorious weeks. Cordelia had gained an appreciation for Angel in those weeks. She suddenly was able to imagine what it was like to be forced to watch as something other than yourself wore your skin and spoke with your voice but wasn't you and there was nothing you could do. She'd been a mere audience member for the performance, unable to decide when to make the scene cut or pause. Then finally, Angel's arms were around her and she breathed a sigh of relief against his shoulder, dark eyes closing behind even darker lashes. As much as Angel had missed Cordelia, she'd missed him twice that much. Being a higher being wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. She should have learned that the first time. At least this time she got to come back with her memory intact. "I missed you too, Champ." The embrace ended too soon, but Cordelia kept her hands on his arms, not quite ready to pull away entirely. The apology that came from the vampire only brought on a curious look, a crease of her brows. "Why?" Right hand lifted to settle over Angel's hand that brushed against the curve of her cheek. "Hey," The very beginnings of a warm smile played across the fullness of her lips. "Didn't I talk to you about the brooding once upon a time?"
Angel: It took Angel a second to sort it out, separating uneasiness from panic - lines and creases, scrawling tells - but his expression was puzzled and dark, like horrified was just a little way down the tracks. He hadn't realized before how much they felt alike. A weight pulled his shoulders into a subtle slump as he finally raised tired, dismayed eyes to meet her and eventually pulled free, reluctantly, from their quasi embrace. And then he nearly laughed, the last of the anger draining out of him, leaving him with limbs full of liquefied bone and no inclination to do anything more than just quietly drift as he was, thought or movement meriting neither effort nor enthusiasm. He didn't respond for long seconds, not in movement, and not in words, and this conversation of silences was making the vampire's skin itch and shiver. Maybe he was hallucinating. It wouldn't be the first time. "Everyone wants to be inside my head, Cordy, as if it's the most fascinating place in the universe." Angel's head dropped involuntarily, his attention focused nowhere in particular - because right now that was the only place he could focus, the only part (or lack thereof) of Cordelia he could look at without . . Without saying or doing something he'd regret. Cold with shock and yet hot with a strange feeling of exposure, Angel kept very still - massive and blocky, thousands of shadows coalescing into an angry face and muscled bulk. He had no energy. Boneless, with a sick sensation clawing at his chest and a brain full of static that chewed at any thoughts he tried to form and buzzed in his ears. Emotionally, the same strings started to stretch, started to heal. "Being your friend, letting me be your friend is . . wonderful, but I don't want you to forget what I am, Cordy." The words were quiet, said with little inflection, but Angel could feel the unrestrained tension that was lurking just beneath their surface. "I'm glad you're back - really, I am. But you shouldn't be here. With me."
Cordelia: This was already better than the meeting with Wesley. For one, Angel seemed relieved to see her. That alone was a step up from when she'd arrived at the former Watcher's apartment. If Angel hadn't wanted her here, Cordelia didn't know what she would have done. They were the only reasons she'd even come back. The Powers had told her that if she did, there'd be no going back to where she'd been before and that was okay. But the fear of not being wanted was ever present, nitpicking at the back of her brain until it was near constant. Angel's voice was agonized, a man ( Angel had never been anything but a man in Cordelia's eyes. She didn't see a vampire. ) that had seen too much horror for even him to handle. Lips sported the best reassuring grin that she could muster after he spoke. "Well, it is pretty interesting up there, I'd imagine." It was hard to remember a time when things were just good for them - for everyone. Still, Cordelia could remember bright spots throughout the pervasive darkness. She could remember bickering with Wesley, calling him a pansy ass after having one ( or six ) too many drinks. She could remember holding Connor while Angel tried his best to get the tiny baby to stop crying and would always resort to making faces that Angel would've never made before. It seemed as if as time drug on, the less and less those moments came along. In return, she'd learned to hold and cherish every single one. When he spoke again, Cordelia only shook her head the slightest bit in defiance."I've never forgotten what you are, Angel. I think maybe you have, though." Reassuring smile turned almost sad, but the hope was there in her almond-shaped hazel eyes. "I know you don't feel like it now, but you're still a champion. And don't argue with me, okay? I saw everything you did - and I'm not talking about Angelus. But it doesn't change the fact that you're good." A beat, and it was her turn to press the palm of her hand against the curve of Angel's cool cheek. "Besides, it's here or that shitty hotel room." Corner of her lips quirked upwards lightly, enough so that the expression was bright once again. "You going to kick me out?"
Angel: He vaguely heard the excuses and apologies manufactured - and afterwards, in the quiet, Cordelia's steady, soft voice. It wasn't that he was ungrateful to have ended up where he had. Live long enough, and the concept of a literal hell got shaky for just about everyone - more so when you'd actually been there - but it was a relief to have opened his eyes on Cordelia after his disastrous encounter with Justice - after Hell itself. Now he had returned, somehow; now everything had swung back in balance or some surreal semblance of the same. So unreal. Such a sharp knife between the halves of his life (un-life, rather) - and it was like that, stuff of substance screaming at the cut, deep dark terrifying gash where he was afraid to look as things were splitting, coming apart, carving a crevice into something he'd always thought of as relatively intact. And of course, the smart thing, the sane thing to do would be to just call off this ridiculous farce altogether. Retire from the playing field, forfeit the game, and just get the fuck out the door and try to retrace his steps back to when he'd entered the fucking Twilight Zone. This way, this option, this life was closed to him now. Nothing left of it but ruin. His rage at that lit him up from one end to the other. Just get out. Out. Get out. He only straightened his shoulders, trying not to sway. Cordelia's Voice of Atonement. He'd expected that, too. "I'm sorry, Cordy," and they were both sorry, there was sorrow enough and to spare as the air leached to grey around him, and he turned his eyes back upward with a flick of fractured brown. There were lines of tension on his cheeks, dry now but still perfectly tangible, everything there pulled tight. Angel had always wondered what it was, what kind of sad, misguided, but everlasting hope made Cordelia do that, made her invest such blind faith - such misplaced trust - in him when he had none himself. "You're more than welcome to stay." Angel reached out with one hand, one hand only, and touched the corona around Cordelia's head. Warmth sank into his fingers. "I just--can't believe it's really you."