Cordy ficathon entry
Title: Visiting Evil
Author: Elisabeth
Rating: PG for language.
Summary: AU after "Tomorrow." Having turned down her chance to become a higher being, Cordelia turns to an old "friend" for help finding Angel.
A/N: Written for lafemmedarla for the Cordy ficathon. She asked for Cordy/Lindsey shippiness with "something black, something sweet." I didn't see the shippiness, but there are black and sweet things in the fic. Thanks to sj for the beta.
Disclaimer: Not only are the characters not mine, but I borrowed four lines of dialogue between Skip and Cordy from the Angel episode "Tomorrow."
She drove all afternoon to find him, long and smooth down the California coast into Baja, stopping only to get a couple of tacos and ogle a cute trucker.
A month before, she would have told anyone who suggested she might someday be happy to see Lindsey McDonald that they were crazy, and probably added something gratuitous about short Texans with delusions of competence.
But then she set a date to tell Angel she loved him, and ended up turning down an offer to become a goddess. And that could change a lot of things.
****
She was standing beside her Jeep on the cliffs overlooking the ocean when Skip explained the offer. "It's ridiculous. I'm just a...somewhat normal girl who has visions... and glows... and occasionally blows things up with her crazy new power … I'm a higher being" she said.
"Yes," Skip answered.
"And when you say I've outgrown this level... it sort of implies..."
"You're moving on to a new one."
Cordy paused. She felt the warmth coming from above, the absolute love she would receive as a higher being, and she began to levitate into the night sky.
And then she opened her eyes. "No way, Skippy. Let me down."
"No one has ever turned down a chance to be a higher being before, Miss Chase. Respectfully-" Skip began.
Cordy held up a hand. "Respectfully nothing. I'm barely 21. I have really cool powers I'm still figuring out how to use, people to help, a vampire's confused suddenly-teenage son to straighten out, and I still need to work on the marrying Keanu Reeves part of my life plan. I don't see higher being-ing fitting in."
Skip sighed. "It is your choice, Miss Chase. But boy, am I going to get in trouble with the powers upstairs." He waved his hand downward, and Cordy felt herself return to earth. "You sure you aren't interested?," he asked.
Cordy shook her head. "Nope. Check back in forty years when I'm all wrinkly, maybe then I'll be ready for the immortality gig." She thought for a second and added, "But even then, a nice face lift and a cabana boy might still be a better idea."
Skip harrumphed. "All right. But man, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when the time comes for the powers that be to judge you," he said, and vanished.
"I'll worry about that when I have to," she said, and got back in her car to wait for Angel. A few hours later and assuming Angel had been drawn into yet another Connor crisis, she drove back to the Hyperion, muttering about the propensity of certain demon spawn to ruin important life events.
Three weeks later, leads in LA had run dry. Wesley still wasn't taking her calls. She went to visit him once, but left the apartment building when he came in with Lilah Morgan draped against him. They all but dry-humped against the wall of mailboxes as Cordy looked for a discreet way out and a barf bag.
Last resort: She decided to try and track down Lindsey. It only took two hours in front of her laptop to find out that the social security number he had used to get Darla's apartment had been used by someone calling himself Jason Del Torro to rent a house in Poblano, a dust-farming town just below the Mexican border.
"No phone," she told Gunn. "I'll go take a look myself, okay?"
"You sure you wanna do this alone?" he asked. "I could bring some of my boys, make sure everything is cool."
"Nah," Cordy said. "Without W&H behind him, Lindsey couldn't take out Fred." She grabbed her keys and left, ignoring Fred's soft "Hey!"
Which was how she ended up with the late afternoon sun beating down on her, parked in the dirt in front of a tiny trailer with a clothesline in the back and a banged-up pickup truck out front.
She knocked on the door. On her fifth knock, he answered it.
His hair had grown out again, and it was pulled back in a loose ponytail. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of loose black chinos and incongruous red flip-flops.
If she hadn't been pretty sure he was evil, Cordy would have melted.
"To what do I owe this pleasure?," Lindsey asked, halfway bowing his head.
"Well, let's see," she said, counting things off on her fingers. "In the last six months, Darla gave birth to a child who absolutely should not exist-"
Lindsey gulped.
"Don't worry, it's not yours. She and Angel got groiny, blah blah blah prophecy. May I go on?," she said.
"First - is Darla okay?"
"She's dead. I mean, dust-dead. Again. For now. But anyhow, so two vampires made a baby; Wes spazzed and let the baby be kidnapped by Angel's worst enemy; I got superpowers; the baby grew up in a hell dimension and come back with a hard-on to kill Angel; Angel has disappeared; and, just for a little extra fun, the night Angel disappeared, this demon came to me and said it's time for me to become a higher being." Cordy looked straight at Lindsey. "I don't believe in coincidences, Lindsey. Someone's trying to get Angel and me both out of the picture, and I think you know who."
He shook his head again, looking a little sick at the news about Darla. "I swear to you, Cordelia, my ties with Wolfram & Hart ended over a year ago. Maybe Lilah Morgan could help?"
"Lilah is screwing Wesley. Or possibly vice versa. I don't wanna know," Cordy said. "Either way, neither one of them gives a rat's ass - if Wesley was even talking to us, which he isn't."
He stared at her for a second, then opened the door with his shoe. "Go ahead and come in if you want." She followed him into the tiny room, sat primly on a fraying green couch. "Lilah and Wesley, huh? Wonder what she's in that for," he said, picking a faded blue t-shirt up off the floor and jerking it over his head.
"I wondered the same thing about him," she said. "Do you have anything to drink? I came a really long way, and if I'm going to have to turn around and tell them I didn't find anything, I'd rather not die of dehydration."
"I have Coke. Regular, not Diet. Want a glass?"
She nodded, and he disappeared into the kitchen, coming out with two Flintstones jelly glasses of soda and a half-full package of Oreos.
"I don't know anything about Darla having a kid or the rest of what you told me," Lindsey said. "But I know W&H. You want to go through it again, and I'll see if I can figure out who might be behind it?"
Sipping her Coke, she told the whole sorry saga. He listened, occasionally nodding and taking careful notes on a legal pad he had pulled out from under the couch. "You can take the boy out of the evil law firm…," Cordy thought.
She finished. "So that's it?," he said. "No demons or curses you forgot to mention?"
"Wasn't that enough?," she said, licking the cream out of an Oreo. "So, you got any ideas what we're dealing with?"
Lindsey tapped the pen against his lower lip thoughtfully. "I don't think it's W&H. Or not the lawyers, anyhow."
"But Wolfram & Hart is the center of all evil in L.A. No way are your - sorry, their - hands clean on this," Cordy said.
"I don't think the firm is clean on this either," Lindsey said. "But I would have known about it if Darla's pregnancy had been part of her plan. And the whole Holtz thing … there's no way we would have risked that. First, there's too long of a lead time - he had 200 years to lose interest. Second, the boy could have died, or time in that dimension could have moved *too* fast. Then he would have been too old to fight by the time he got back. There's no way they'd trust this to human lawyers."
"They who?"
"The Senior Partners," Lindsey said. "I think you call them the Powers That Be."
"Hold up a sec," Cordy said. "You're saying the Powers - the ones who stuck me with these visions and gave me demon strength to handle them - are also the Senior Partners who keep you in the evil-doing biz?"
"As near as I can figure," Lindsey nodded. "Good and evil are two signs of the same coin, and all that."
"Then what the hell are we fighting for?" Cordy flopped backwards, her head collapsing into the top of the couch.
Lindsey flopped back beside her. "Damn if I know. That's half of why I quit the whole gig," he said.
"So, if this is all the Powers' will, what can we do? Do we just have to twiddle our thumbs until the Powers decide they want new toys and let Angel come home?," Cordy said, outraged.
"You could … but the Partners help those who help themselves," Lindsey said, sitting up straighter to squint at the notepad. "You mentioned that Connor's kidnapper was killed a few days before Angel disappeared. How has he reacted to the absence of both of his father figures?"
Cordy snorted. "The Destroyer? He barely talks to any of us. A good day is when he hides in his room and reads, instead of going to the basement and skinning rats alive."
"So he hasn't expressed any concern over Angel, even any desire for revenge?"
Cordy shook her head. "He said 'good riddance' and that was about it. You don't think-"
"I think he probably knows exactly where Angel is," Lindsey said calmly. "And if he won't tell you … the visions could be a useful tool, if you understand."
She nodded. "Check. Fake a vision to make Connor feel guilty and spill the beans. Any other ideas?"
Lindsey rose from the couch. "Just to watch your back. It might not be W&H, but someone is fucking with all of you. And they are not nice."
"If I need help again-" she said.
He shook his head, interrupting her. "I won't be here. If you could find me, W&H probably has surveillance cameras pointed at this place, and I'd rather stay under their radar. I'll check in with you in a couple months."
"Okay. Um, you're still manipulative and probably evil and way creepy, but … thanks, Linds," she said, walking to the door.
"Goodbye, Cordelia," he said, latching the door after she walked through.
She waved as she pulled back onto the highway.
~finis~
The master list of stories is here.
Author: Elisabeth
Rating: PG for language.
Summary: AU after "Tomorrow." Having turned down her chance to become a higher being, Cordelia turns to an old "friend" for help finding Angel.
A/N: Written for lafemmedarla for the Cordy ficathon. She asked for Cordy/Lindsey shippiness with "something black, something sweet." I didn't see the shippiness, but there are black and sweet things in the fic. Thanks to sj for the beta.
Disclaimer: Not only are the characters not mine, but I borrowed four lines of dialogue between Skip and Cordy from the Angel episode "Tomorrow."
She drove all afternoon to find him, long and smooth down the California coast into Baja, stopping only to get a couple of tacos and ogle a cute trucker.
A month before, she would have told anyone who suggested she might someday be happy to see Lindsey McDonald that they were crazy, and probably added something gratuitous about short Texans with delusions of competence.
But then she set a date to tell Angel she loved him, and ended up turning down an offer to become a goddess. And that could change a lot of things.
****
She was standing beside her Jeep on the cliffs overlooking the ocean when Skip explained the offer. "It's ridiculous. I'm just a...somewhat normal girl who has visions... and glows... and occasionally blows things up with her crazy new power … I'm a higher being" she said.
"Yes," Skip answered.
"And when you say I've outgrown this level... it sort of implies..."
"You're moving on to a new one."
Cordy paused. She felt the warmth coming from above, the absolute love she would receive as a higher being, and she began to levitate into the night sky.
And then she opened her eyes. "No way, Skippy. Let me down."
"No one has ever turned down a chance to be a higher being before, Miss Chase. Respectfully-" Skip began.
Cordy held up a hand. "Respectfully nothing. I'm barely 21. I have really cool powers I'm still figuring out how to use, people to help, a vampire's confused suddenly-teenage son to straighten out, and I still need to work on the marrying Keanu Reeves part of my life plan. I don't see higher being-ing fitting in."
Skip sighed. "It is your choice, Miss Chase. But boy, am I going to get in trouble with the powers upstairs." He waved his hand downward, and Cordy felt herself return to earth. "You sure you aren't interested?," he asked.
Cordy shook her head. "Nope. Check back in forty years when I'm all wrinkly, maybe then I'll be ready for the immortality gig." She thought for a second and added, "But even then, a nice face lift and a cabana boy might still be a better idea."
Skip harrumphed. "All right. But man, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when the time comes for the powers that be to judge you," he said, and vanished.
"I'll worry about that when I have to," she said, and got back in her car to wait for Angel. A few hours later and assuming Angel had been drawn into yet another Connor crisis, she drove back to the Hyperion, muttering about the propensity of certain demon spawn to ruin important life events.
Three weeks later, leads in LA had run dry. Wesley still wasn't taking her calls. She went to visit him once, but left the apartment building when he came in with Lilah Morgan draped against him. They all but dry-humped against the wall of mailboxes as Cordy looked for a discreet way out and a barf bag.
Last resort: She decided to try and track down Lindsey. It only took two hours in front of her laptop to find out that the social security number he had used to get Darla's apartment had been used by someone calling himself Jason Del Torro to rent a house in Poblano, a dust-farming town just below the Mexican border.
"No phone," she told Gunn. "I'll go take a look myself, okay?"
"You sure you wanna do this alone?" he asked. "I could bring some of my boys, make sure everything is cool."
"Nah," Cordy said. "Without W&H behind him, Lindsey couldn't take out Fred." She grabbed her keys and left, ignoring Fred's soft "Hey!"
Which was how she ended up with the late afternoon sun beating down on her, parked in the dirt in front of a tiny trailer with a clothesline in the back and a banged-up pickup truck out front.
She knocked on the door. On her fifth knock, he answered it.
His hair had grown out again, and it was pulled back in a loose ponytail. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of loose black chinos and incongruous red flip-flops.
If she hadn't been pretty sure he was evil, Cordy would have melted.
"To what do I owe this pleasure?," Lindsey asked, halfway bowing his head.
"Well, let's see," she said, counting things off on her fingers. "In the last six months, Darla gave birth to a child who absolutely should not exist-"
Lindsey gulped.
"Don't worry, it's not yours. She and Angel got groiny, blah blah blah prophecy. May I go on?," she said.
"First - is Darla okay?"
"She's dead. I mean, dust-dead. Again. For now. But anyhow, so two vampires made a baby; Wes spazzed and let the baby be kidnapped by Angel's worst enemy; I got superpowers; the baby grew up in a hell dimension and come back with a hard-on to kill Angel; Angel has disappeared; and, just for a little extra fun, the night Angel disappeared, this demon came to me and said it's time for me to become a higher being." Cordy looked straight at Lindsey. "I don't believe in coincidences, Lindsey. Someone's trying to get Angel and me both out of the picture, and I think you know who."
He shook his head again, looking a little sick at the news about Darla. "I swear to you, Cordelia, my ties with Wolfram & Hart ended over a year ago. Maybe Lilah Morgan could help?"
"Lilah is screwing Wesley. Or possibly vice versa. I don't wanna know," Cordy said. "Either way, neither one of them gives a rat's ass - if Wesley was even talking to us, which he isn't."
He stared at her for a second, then opened the door with his shoe. "Go ahead and come in if you want." She followed him into the tiny room, sat primly on a fraying green couch. "Lilah and Wesley, huh? Wonder what she's in that for," he said, picking a faded blue t-shirt up off the floor and jerking it over his head.
"I wondered the same thing about him," she said. "Do you have anything to drink? I came a really long way, and if I'm going to have to turn around and tell them I didn't find anything, I'd rather not die of dehydration."
"I have Coke. Regular, not Diet. Want a glass?"
She nodded, and he disappeared into the kitchen, coming out with two Flintstones jelly glasses of soda and a half-full package of Oreos.
"I don't know anything about Darla having a kid or the rest of what you told me," Lindsey said. "But I know W&H. You want to go through it again, and I'll see if I can figure out who might be behind it?"
Sipping her Coke, she told the whole sorry saga. He listened, occasionally nodding and taking careful notes on a legal pad he had pulled out from under the couch. "You can take the boy out of the evil law firm…," Cordy thought.
She finished. "So that's it?," he said. "No demons or curses you forgot to mention?"
"Wasn't that enough?," she said, licking the cream out of an Oreo. "So, you got any ideas what we're dealing with?"
Lindsey tapped the pen against his lower lip thoughtfully. "I don't think it's W&H. Or not the lawyers, anyhow."
"But Wolfram & Hart is the center of all evil in L.A. No way are your - sorry, their - hands clean on this," Cordy said.
"I don't think the firm is clean on this either," Lindsey said. "But I would have known about it if Darla's pregnancy had been part of her plan. And the whole Holtz thing … there's no way we would have risked that. First, there's too long of a lead time - he had 200 years to lose interest. Second, the boy could have died, or time in that dimension could have moved *too* fast. Then he would have been too old to fight by the time he got back. There's no way they'd trust this to human lawyers."
"They who?"
"The Senior Partners," Lindsey said. "I think you call them the Powers That Be."
"Hold up a sec," Cordy said. "You're saying the Powers - the ones who stuck me with these visions and gave me demon strength to handle them - are also the Senior Partners who keep you in the evil-doing biz?"
"As near as I can figure," Lindsey nodded. "Good and evil are two signs of the same coin, and all that."
"Then what the hell are we fighting for?" Cordy flopped backwards, her head collapsing into the top of the couch.
Lindsey flopped back beside her. "Damn if I know. That's half of why I quit the whole gig," he said.
"So, if this is all the Powers' will, what can we do? Do we just have to twiddle our thumbs until the Powers decide they want new toys and let Angel come home?," Cordy said, outraged.
"You could … but the Partners help those who help themselves," Lindsey said, sitting up straighter to squint at the notepad. "You mentioned that Connor's kidnapper was killed a few days before Angel disappeared. How has he reacted to the absence of both of his father figures?"
Cordy snorted. "The Destroyer? He barely talks to any of us. A good day is when he hides in his room and reads, instead of going to the basement and skinning rats alive."
"So he hasn't expressed any concern over Angel, even any desire for revenge?"
Cordy shook her head. "He said 'good riddance' and that was about it. You don't think-"
"I think he probably knows exactly where Angel is," Lindsey said calmly. "And if he won't tell you … the visions could be a useful tool, if you understand."
She nodded. "Check. Fake a vision to make Connor feel guilty and spill the beans. Any other ideas?"
Lindsey rose from the couch. "Just to watch your back. It might not be W&H, but someone is fucking with all of you. And they are not nice."
"If I need help again-" she said.
He shook his head, interrupting her. "I won't be here. If you could find me, W&H probably has surveillance cameras pointed at this place, and I'd rather stay under their radar. I'll check in with you in a couple months."
"Okay. Um, you're still manipulative and probably evil and way creepy, but … thanks, Linds," she said, walking to the door.
"Goodbye, Cordelia," he said, latching the door after she walked through.
She waved as she pulled back onto the highway.
~finis~
The master list of stories is here.