(no subject)
There’s a second or two after I open my eyes the next morning in which I’m fantastically, blindingly happy and don’t have the slightest clue why. It’s a nice change from waking up to a head full of worries, that’s for certain.
I’m pretty sure that Wes murmured something about ‘dishes’ and ‘please’ when he kissed me goodbye, off to drive the girls to school. And since I’d really like to avoid the usual argument (“It’s a very nice dishwasher that you insisted we purchase, Lindsey. But if the dishes remain on the counter…”), I set to work rinsing the plates as quietly as I can, letting Cordelia rest. I’m not really sure how much sleep you would want, fresh out of a coma, but I’ll err on the side of caution.
I can still hardly believe that this is happening. Sure, it’s not unheard of for someone in a coma to wake up again. Stranger things have happened. But the odds of someone in a mystically-enforced coma waking up just when things are beginning to look a little grim? Now that is worthy of some serious attention.
On the flip side, we can’t let ourselves read too much into it either. Life doesn’t hand you something this good without some sort of trouble in return.
Loading the dishes into the machine and hunting for the soap, I let my mind wander. ‘Trouble’, these days, has been going by the name Charles Gunn. I keep running up against him, no matter how innocuous the cases I take, and he’s been using every dirty, borderline-legal, slimeball tactic that he can throw at me. Worse yet, I’m very familiar with those particular dirty, borderline-legal, slimeball tactics. Namely because they’re mine. Somebody has hooked that boy up with my old files and it’s making life more than a little difficult for me. If I start losing cases, the as-yet-unnamed Wyndam-Pryce & McDonald agency could be in serious financial trouble before it even gets on its feet.
Lost in my thoughts and the white-noise hum of the dishwasher setting to work, I don’t even notice Cordelia until she’s in the kitchen. “Hey, you’re up!” Because excess enthusiasm is always a good cover when you’ve been startled. Beautiful. There's a small part of me still worrying that I'll say the wrong thing and completely screw this up for all of us, that she'll disapprove of me and Wes we will come to his senses... but that worry is getting smaller every minute that she's here.
“Hope the girls didn’t keep you up too late. Wesley actually just went to drop them off at school, but we could drive over and meet him at the office, if you want. I could give you the nickel tour?” Alicia’s voice is loud and clear in my head and I have to grin. “We call it that because that's about all we’ve made so far,” I add in a stage-whisper.
[Tag Cordelia]