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Tweak says, "Accept Change"

Cordelia Chase keeps getting better (queen_cordelia) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2013-08-17 18:18:00

Entry tags:

angel, cordelia chase

Who: Cordelia Chase and Angel
What: Catching up and filling Angel in about Lawrence.
Where: Picking Angel up from a coffee shop and heading back to the complex.
When: Shortly after his arrival.
Rating: Low, probably?
Status: In progress/closed.

It had been a hell of a week. First the Seal had nabbed Buffy -- again. And as much good as Buffy being around would do in the apocalypse (a lot), the impact on Dawn hadn't been great. Again. Then Dean had announced that someone had been killed, by some kind of demon thing that they'd yet to find. And now Angel was here.

She'd been missing him more than usual lately. The last couple of times he'd been around, they hadn't talked much. She hadn't been able to shake the feeling that he was angry or upset with her, and she had no idea why that might be. So she'd done the thing she'd promised herself she wouldn't do: she'd watched the shows. Both of them. All the way through. And it had left her feeling overwhelmed, alone, and more than a little lost. She hadn't told anyone she'd watched them, not even Wesley or Dawn. She didn't know if they had or not, but she didn't ask. The fact that they weren't treating her differently spoke volumes to her. Sure, on the show when she'd come back -- just before she'd died -- Wesley hadn't been upset with her. But here she was still scared to ask if he knew the things she'd done. The terrible things that had happened because of her.

Pushing all of those thoughts away, she crossed the street to the coffee shop that Angel had mentioned and drew in a deep breath before pulling open the door. She wasn't sure exactly when he was from, but he knew she was in a coma and he didn't know she'd died. So that narrowed it down at least. She glanced around, spotting him at a table in the back and holding her breath for a moment. She just hoped this version of Angel wasn't upset with her -- though he hadn't seemed like he was on the boards. That would be a big plus.

She smiled as she made her way to his table. "Hey."

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broodypants
2013-08-18 02:51 pm UTC (link)

This wasn't the craziest thing that had ever happened to Angel. He'd driven through portals before and ended up in entirely different worlds, where the sun had no effect on him and demons lived in a feudal society with humans as their slaves and vamping out turned him into a mindless monster. Compared to that, ending up in Kansas was pretty tame.

Or at least, it had seemed tame at first. Until a barista at a coffee shop told him to check into a message board on his PDA, and he discovered that all the crazy shit was just happening under the surface. Like, for starters, Cordelia being there and not back home in a coma. And Buffy being there, but having arrived from over four years ago so her last memory of Angel was breaking up with him. And Connor being there from the damn future, where he apparently remembered Angel and had possibly killed Sahjhan and helped take down Wolfram & Hart? It was more than Angel could wrap his brain around, and he wished he could be everywhere at once, because he really needed to see all of these people to make sure it wasn't just some crazy trick being played on him.

But he didn't know how to get to any of them, anyway, so he just sat there and waited for Cordelia to come to him. He'd guzzled down two large coffees with added shots of espresso -- at least the cash in his wallet still worked here -- and was just about to start in on the third one when she got there, so between the caffeine and the anxiety about his loved ones... he was just a little jittery.

She was about halfway to his table when he picked her scent out of the crowd of unfamiliar-smelling strangers around them in the coffee shop, and he jumped up in slightly nervous but mostly excited anticipation. "Cordy!" As soon as she reached him, he leaned in to hug her; he wasn't usually big on hugs, but the last time he'd seen her, she'd been unconscious in a hospital bed, so that merited some affection. Plus there was the caffeine. "You are a sight for sore eyes," he told her, giving her another squeeze before pulling away to get a better look at her.

That was when he noticed that something was off. She didn't look like she had in the coma, or even before the coma. It was the hair, mostly, but also just something about the way she carried herself. Familiar, just not recent. And if Buffy could be from the past -- if he could be from Connor's past -- he frowned a little. "We're not from the same time, are we?"

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queen_cordelia
2013-08-18 03:18 pm UTC (link)

She was a little caught off guard by the hug, but she didn't hesitate to wrap her arms around him in return. It had been awhile since she'd last had an Angel-hug. She couldn't help but smile. Okay he definitely didn't seem upset with her. That helped soothe her nerves a lot. When he pulled away to look at her and paid her that compliment her eyes lit up. "You too," she said sincerely. She'd been missing him lately -- a lot.

And as per usual, he caught on quickly. "Yeah. Time is weird here. It pulls people from all different times and places and makes everything weird for everyone." Like for instance, Buffy being from just after graduation and Angel being from her future. "The last thing I remember was training with you after the whole thing with Billy." She arched her eyebrows, watching to see his reaction to that. It had obviously been awhile since that had happened for him.

After a moment, she pulled a necklace out of her pocket, holding it out to him. "You're gonna need this. It's an..." She glanced around then lowered her voice. "Anti-demon charm. Demons can possess people here, even people like you." She didn't dare say the word vampire in public. "Apparently these are charmed so that doesn't happen if you're wearing it." She indicated the one she was wearing around her neck, hidden under her shirt. The things were kind of tacky looking, but they worked so she wasn't going to complain. She'd rather not be possessed. Again.

Ever.

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broodypants
2013-08-20 05:53 pm UTC (link)

"Billy? That's the last thing you remember?" Angel's frown slid into an expression of concern, his eyebrows arching. She'd missed a lot -- Darla hadn't even arrived yet, pregnant with Connor, for her -- but the most important was that she hadn't become part-demon yet. Which meant that unless she'd found some kind of cure here, she was dying. Her visions were killing her. Maybe she knew it already, maybe she didn't, but given how long she'd kept her migraine medications a secret from him, she definitely knew something was going wrong.

He'd been about to start inspecting her head (as if vampire vision would somehow allow him to see inside it) when she presented him with the necklace. It took him a second to pull out of his thoughts and catch up with what she was saying; for a second there, he'd been really confused by her choice of gift. "Oh. Thanks." He slipped the cord over his head, letting the pendant fall inside the collar of his dress shirt. Demon possession. Great. He was sort of hoping their days of worrying about possessions -- demonic or godly or otherwise -- were over, but apparently not. Did Cordelia even know about Jasmine? Connor could have told her, although that would've been pretty awkward for the kid so Angel sort of hoped he hadn't.

"So, um. I'm not sure how much you've heard about the future, but I'm from 2003. And... if you don't know about it, you're probably gonna want an explanation on the Wolfram & Hart thing..." Which he was not looking forward to giving -- somehow he suspected she wouldn't approve, especially if she didn't know about Connor -- but at least he could tell her he was fairly certain they succeeded in taking down the law firm eventually? Based on what he'd gathered from Connor's story, anyway. Maybe that would help.

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queen_cordelia
2013-08-20 08:31 pm UTC (link)

"That's the last thing I remember," she confirmed with a slight nod. She watched the worry flicker over his face and was glad that she'd momentarily distracted him from what he was probably thinking about. She knew him way too well.

"No problem. Here to help." She flashed him a smile and sat down at the table, motioning for him to do the same. She flagged down the waiter and ordered a latte. It was her drink of choice lately and she still had money on her gift card to the cafe. It might have been a favorite place of hers in Lawrence. "If you want, we can make the anti-demon possession more permanent and get matching tattoos." She was only sort of kidding. She'd been considering the tattoo for a couple weeks now. She tended to run into trouble, and why tempt fate?

She watched him closely, listening to him as he spoke. She knew all about it of course. She'd had the conversation with him in the episode of his show in which she'd died. So she already knew what he was going to say. "You don't have to explain, Angel. I get it," she said quietly. "You were protecting Connor."

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broodypants
2013-08-27 05:21 pm UTC (link)

When she sat down at the table, Angel glanced at it like he'd totally forgotten it existed, like he'd forgotten the entire coffee shop existed. Which he almost had. Cordelia was the center of his universe at the moment. He had just gotten her back from a mystical coma that he'd been losing hope she'd ever wake up from, and now he found out she was from an earlier time and basically had a ticking bomb in her head, one that could send her into another coma or far worse. What was he supposed to do with that? Skip wasn't here to save her (if you could call setting a conspiracy to bring Jasmine into the world "saving her"). He'd have to find something.

Settling into his chair, Angel ordered his fourth black-eye coffee from the waiter then downed the one he'd started just before Cordy got there as he listened to her explain the anti-possession tattoos. "Definitely. Let's get 'em as soon as possible." If she was at all joking, he either didn't pick up on it or purposefully ignored it. Because Cordelia getting possessed again was the absolute last thing he wanted, and a demon taking over the body of their home dimension's strongest surviving vampire wasn't too high on the list either.

And okay, so maybe the idea of matching tattoos appealed to him in a less pragmatic sense too. A permanent link between them. Hey, he hadn't seen her conscious in months. He was allowed to be a little sentimental.

"Oh. You do know." He was relieved that he didn't have to fumble through the explanation about Wolfram & Hart, but if she knew about that, what else did she know? Everything that would happen to her? He wanted so badly to protect her from that burden. "Thank you for understanding," he said, his voice soft and sincere but also a little sad. Because it was impossible to think about Connor without feeling like a disappointment, especially knowing what he did now. Could he protect anyone he loved? "So... how much did he tell you?" He assumed her knowledge came from Connor, because there was nobody else around that could've told her about that.

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queen_cordelia
2013-08-30 06:49 am UTC (link)

She watched him with a raised eyebrow. He was acting a little jittery, and she couldn't help but wonder exactly how many cups of coffee he'd already had. She was both surprised and amused that he'd agreed to the tattoos so easily. Of course she knew he already had one. She doubted another one would really bother him at all. She was relatively sure they could be kept small anyway -- more for her sake than his. She had a pretty high pain tolerance these days but needles weren't exactly her favorite thing either.

Maybe they could give her something to knock her out first. Probably not, but it was a nice thought.

"Yeah, I know," she agreed, nodding and reaching out to touch his hand. She paused at his question. "Um...well? Nothing, actually. We're sort of famous here." She didn't quite manage a smile this time. "And by that, I mean the people in this world think we're fictional characters from a couple of TV shows that were popular a few years ago." And that was usually the hardest part for people to process. She shrugged a little. "After I got used to that bit of information, I sorta...watched the shows."

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