Fic: Iokaste [Angel, Rated R]
This is a piece I've been working on since the end of August. What was done to Cordelia Chase can never be undone, but it's my hope that, in some small way, I can give her back her voice. This story wasn't fun to write, and I'd like to thank anythingbutgrey, whose input has been instrumental to this difficult process and who has been the best beta reader I could ever hope for.
Iokaste
by eleusis_walks
Fandom: Angel
Rating: R. The events of Angel Season Four include rape, among other elements some readers may find disturbing. This is your trigger warning.
Spoilers: Up through 5.12 "You're Welcome".
Summary: In the most horrific year of her life, Cordelia struggles to maintain clarity.
The way ascension fills her up, slick and heavy, is what she'll always remember most. Something great and powerful and warm slides inside her, and it's better than anything she's ever felt. Better than the best meal she's ever eaten. Better than sex. Just better. She doesn't even notice the people below on Earth for weeks; she's too busy having the best metaphysical orgasm of her life.
But after a while, the sweetness fades. The spots hazing her vision clear. She takes a deep breath and looks down from the heavens, and sees Angel at the bottom of the sea. Watches his lungs fill with water, watches him gasp and gulp and suffer and try to endure, and suddenly she knows she has made the wrong choice. None of it feels good anymore, but that sense of physical completion -- of being filled to the brim, overstuffed, almost overflowing with something -- won't go away. It makes her nauseous and impatient.
Casting her eye down toward the water swallowing up Angel as he swallows it in kind, she tries to go to him, tries to animate herself, tries to shift her presence into some kind of arrow and fire herself to where he lies. No matter how hard she tries, there's nothing tangible up here. Nothing at all but the swollen bloat of the power stuffed inside her.
**
Once she's back in the mortal sphere, even in the fog of amnesia Cordelia -- for they tell her that this is her name -- knows that there is something special about Angel. She doesn't know why; she doesn't know how they met or how they came to feel for each other this way, but she knows. Every time she looks at the broad curve of his back, she knows that she's fantasized about marking him there with her teeth, about losing herself in the sweep of flexing muscle and smooth, cool skin. Every time he looks at her the way he does -- aching with his need -- she feels her knees lock and release with her heartbeat.
She knows her feelings for Angel run deep, but she doesn't trust herself with him right now. She doesn't want to make a mistake that Cordelia -- the woman she used to be, before she forgot -- would regret. Deep down in her gut, she can feel that this relationship used to be everything she ever wanted. Knows that her world feels incomplete when he's not in it; that someday, when she knows herself again, they might rebuild what's been lost.
There is something in her that draws her to him, but her steps feel heavy, more sluggish than they ought to be. She isn't sure why.
**
When they sit in the circle around the bottle, mystic incense roiling into her nostrils, Cordelia remembers and suddenly knows.
Oh, God. Something brought me back. It's inside me; it's clawing its way out.
It's agony and horror all at once, like something vile is leaking out of her pores. "No!" She staggers through the haze, drunk on magic, sweating out ichor, trying to stop it. One high-heeled shoe smashes the spinning bottle, but it's far too late. When the fog clears, when the spell is over, Cordelia tries to open her mouth and nothing happens. When the voice speaks to her, when it tells her to be quiet, to behave herself, all she can do is scream. Scream and scream and scream, but no sound comes out of the mouth that used to be her mouth.
When Angel asks if they were in love, she wants to say "We are," but the Other spits a barb of bitter past tense from between her lips, and Cordelia tries to shriek from within her own skull I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE and then the Other turns her body away from him and her screams become incoherent wails like the ships Angel used to hear from the bottom of the sea, like she's a keening mourner at a king's funeral, but she can't stop won't stop until she's back at Connor's loft and she just can't scream any more. As the Other settles her body into bed, Cordelia hears its honey-sweet voice again.
Good girl. Rest now.
**
Suspended in the air, throat crushed in the grip of the Beast, Cordelia honestly believes she is going to die. The rocky fingers dig into her flesh, leaving scalded bruises on her skin. Her airways are cut off. And yet somehow, in this moment of abject terror -- this moment at which she dangles on the precipice of life and death -- she is relieved. Maybe it's a mercy, she thinks. For though she may die, at least the Other will go with her.
Then she feels it. The voice humming through her nervous system like a sonic frequency. Don't hurt her too much. Just make it look real enough for the boy to take interest.
The Beast nods. Cordelia numbs.
**
Fire rains from the heavens, streaking through the air outside the apartment window, and Cordelia doesn't blame Connor for any of this. She loves him; she really does, as if he were her own child. She remembers holding him as a baby, cradling him in her arms as though she could protect him from the untold trials that would inevitably come with being the prophesied child of two vampires.
When he holds her now, when he presses himself flush against her body, she is repulsed, but not angry with him. He can't remember the then, the mother she once was to him, and she can't protest the now. He'll never think of her as his mother because he has no context. He doesn't know what they used to be. Better for him not to know: if he really understood what was happening, he would go mad; if he finds out later, it will destroy him. The thing inside her moves her hand to stroke his hair. In this moment the Other has broken her, but there is still hope for her son, and a good parent puts her child first. So while she silently cries out as if burned when he enters her, she does not blame him.
She blames this creature with no name, this voice from on high that has opened her up, climbed into her chest and torn out her heart.
**
The next morning she tries as hard as she can to take control, to tell Connor what has happened, to get help. All she can manage to do is manipulate her facial muscles into a pained reflection of the canyon opening in the pit of her stomach. The Other takes advantage of this; knows that Cordelia can't speak, so speaks for her. The Other wants Connor to feel ashamed, confused. Wants to make him hers.
Cordelia feels like her arms are tied, like she's gagged face-down in the dirt while something works her from the inside. Her skin thrums with the power the Other wields, her body electrified with light like hard steel. Connor's sweat has dried on her body, and within her the Other pushes outward, slavering, hungering, trying to lick all of it off her flesh. Every time she moves it isn't her moving, isn't her brain calling parts to action. It's a queasy feeling, a sticky-thick molasses feeling, like something coating her chest cavity and seeping out, quaking and thrusting itself through her limbs. Even if she could close her eyes, it would do no good. You can't quite shut something out when it's already inside.
After their return to the hotel, all she does is cry out. Harshly, hoarsely, as though the louder she screams in her own head the more likely it is that someone out there will notice. By the time Angel, Gunn, Wesley and Fred leave for Wolfram & Hart, her muscles are aching from the strain and the frustration. Deep down inside herself, she takes a step backward. Feels like a tiny person sitting tied to a chair in the giant, moving skyscraper that is her body. Draws her miniature knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, trying to move, hoping and praying that this ride will stop and she can get out. But they never reach the station, and the immense body-train just keeps chugging along. She wants to scratch off her skin and crawl out the wounds. All she can do is wait, and so she does. Stares out her big, hollow window-eyes until the cavalry returns from the battlefield, Connor in tow.
A few minutes later, when Angel kicks her and Connor out of the hotel, she's glad. Every moment she spends with him, listening to the Other speak in her voice, berating him, challenging him, is too awful for her to bear. She wants to kiss him and tell him she loves him. She wants to slap him for not realizing that this thing with her face, working her like a marionette, is not her. Of all the indignities she has suffered in these horrible weeks, that is perhaps the one that galls her most of all. But he's shocked and enraged, and the Other does a good impression of her speech patterns, and she cannot stay angry at him for long. But she also cannot look at him.
**
Manny's skull cracks like an egg, colored shell falling apart on Easter morning after an interminable mass. The Other has stripped her body bare, and now it is drenched in the blood of the totem. A sticky axe lies discarded, and the orb of the Ra-Tet glistens with moisture in her hand.
Cordelia watches her bloodstained fingers turn the orb about. In its surface she can see her face, twisted in a smirk of triumph not her own. She feels a bit of triumph herself, though: You'll never get away with this.
And why is that?
Angel is a vampire, moron. He'll smell the blood all over me.
Oh, sweet Cordelia. This is where your mortal understanding proves its limitations. I am the Devourer, child. My hunger is infinite.
A pale green light shimmers under her skin, illuminating her naked flesh. With a quiet slurping sound, the thing inside her -- the Other, the Devourer? The Devourer, now, for this is the only name Cordelia knows to call it -- drinks deep until all the crimson fluid has been pulled inside her body. Their body. Nary a trace left for Angel to scent. Cordelia wants to put her face in her hands, but she can't. They're not her hands anymore.
**
The Devourer is a hedonist. She eats and eats and eats, and Cordelia can feel their body swelling and filling out in a way it never has before. On top of all the indignities she has suffered, she has little time to resent weight gain, but when they look in the mirror it's just adding insult to injury.
But it's not just food the Devourer craves. The first time Cordelia recognizes the hunger in the Beast's eyes, realizes what the Devourer intends to do, a chasm opens in her chest, formed by the echoing resonance of her silent screams. No no nononono NO NO no NOOO nooo until a rocky hand slips under her top and roughly handles her left breast. She's too repulsed to make any more sound, even in her own head, and so she just tries to block it out.
Tries to go somewhere else. Some far-off place where--
She and Angel are teaching Connor how to play checkers. He's four now, and he's growing quickly for his age; not superhumanly quickly, just quickly. The teacher at the preschool, Mrs. Gibbs, thinks that he's going to be reading on an advanced level very soon. She tells Mr. and Mrs. Angel about how well their son shares with the other children, and Cordelia beams with pride. She and Angel have accomplished many things together, but raising this child is one of the proudest achievements of her young life.
"Connor," she says, laughing. "You can't be a king yet. You have to make it to the other side of the board, first."
Connor gives her a confused, child's look, and then smiles. The smile twists, and as he leans forward he ages thirteen years in an instant. "I crossed that board a long time ago, Mommy," he hisses, and Cordelia comes hyperventilating back to reality.
The Beast is finished. He kisses her hand and bows his head. "Thank you for rewarding me, my Master." Cordelia is suddenly conscious of her nudity, and of the gravel-harsh scratches in her skin where his body has been against hers.
The Devourer, smug in carnal satisfaction, is distracted enough to let her cry.
**
Cordelia knows that bringing Angelus back into the world is the most unbelievable mistake they could make, and she rattles the bars of her flesh-cage trying to get out and talk some sense into them. The others don't understand; how could they? They've never met Angelus. When Wesley suggests it, standing under the night-dark day-sky, all she wants to do is explain. Wants to tell him he's a fool. Cordelia knows Angelus. Cordelia remembers the rose petals scattered all over Giles's apartment.
Why are you doing this? What's in it for you? she asks the Devourer, after twenty minutes of trying to force out a sentence.
This is all for the greater good, Cordelia. They must be kept busy. It isn't time yet.
Time for what?
My birth, of course.
Cordelia feels a twisting in their lower stomach, and of course. She's spent so much time detaching from this body, trying to forget that once it was hers, that she wasn't paying attention to the flutterings in her belly. Bile rises in their throat, and the Devourer swallows it back down.
**
Sometimes Cordelia thinks she's just gone mad. That there isn't a Devourer at all, that she just came back wrong. That she really is this terrible thing. That what she thinks of as her 'real self', trapped behind bars in her own mind, is just the last tattered remnants of human conscience. On a conscious level, she knows that she could never do these things, but it's getting harder and harder to figure out where she ends and the parasite begins.
It's in the way the Devourer talks to them. To her friends, none of whom suspect. The Devourer knows her voice, and can say things in precisely the Cordelia way. And somewhere, under all the haranguing and all the cold betrayal of everything Angel ever trusted, this new Cordelia still loves him. The Devourer talks to him like only a lover could, and when Angel looks at them Cordelia feels their heart racing, feels the sweat on the back of their neck as the Devourer grows aroused. The Devourer feeds on Cordelia's love and channels it, works it into a frenzy and propels it back into their shared mind. When they look at him, they are like one being united in longing. That's what scares Cordelia the most.
When the Devourer makes her bargain with Angelus -- information for the pleasures of their body -- Cordelia wants to die. Not like this. The Devourer has taken so much from her already; she is a puppet in celestial hands, pulled this way and that way at the whim of an uncaring deity. This body has been used and abused over and over again, and over the last month and a half Cordelia has slowly come to accept that dirty feeling as her status quo.
But this, this love -- this is the one thing that Cordelia can never get back if it is lost. Angel's body can't be part of this morass of pain. She can take the Beast's gritty skin against hers, can even stand the searing touch of the boy she diapered, but for Angel-as-Angelus to be yet another violator would be too much to bear. Cordelia is strong, but there are limits.
Don't be afraid, Cordelia. I have no intention of honoring this bargain with the vampire.
The calm suffuses her immediately, and she's disgusted with herself for being so easy to placate. More than anything she resents the fact that the Devourer can feel her relief. She can't hide anything from this monster -- her jailor, her rapist, her growing child.
Well. It's nice to know that you care about my feelings.
In the end, perhaps sarcasm is the one defense she has left.
**
Angelus makes good on their deal. The Svear, ancient priestesses of a benevolent force: they have the power to banish the Beast from this dimension. He tells the team all he knows, and then licks his lips as he looks at Cordelia.
The Devourer is smug. So trusting. Even without his soul.
You like that, don't you?
Like what, Cordelia?
Being trusted. Taking advantage of that trust.
Faith, my dear. I love the faithful.
**
Her thighs still ache where the Beast's volcanic hands burned and tore at her skin. Connor looks at her with a hunger that breaks her heart, that makes her want to brush the hair out of his face and explain the world to him. When she's trying to sleep, all she can see behind lidded eyes is her fingernails clawing at Manjet's brain, tearing away grey matter to reveal the orb beneath.
But Cordelia is resilient. She has suffered under the Devourer's control, and she has despaired, but she has always managed to hold on to herself. She has always managed to protest, to speak her mind inside their shared head when the Devourer does terrible things.
But this, the Svear. This is different.
The mother is first. She tries to chant a protection spell, but her human sorcery pales before the might of a god. The Devourer thumbs the stone knife that her Beast has carved from his own body, memorizing the grooves in the blade before stabbing it directly into the woman's forehead, and Cordelia gasps at the sound of ripping flesh.
It is the women of the Svear who have the power. After the mother falls, her adult daughters are child's play. The men are mere mortals, and cannot even defend themselves except with feeble human muscle. They fall like wheat before the thresher. Cordelia watches the massacre with eyes wide open. This is just another trial of hundreds. She can force herself to tolerate this, even when the Devourer leans down to lave their tongue against the deep puncture on the father's chest. Sticky human in their mouth, lips and teeth tugging at the ripped, ruined flesh.
Then the little boy rounds the corner. His eyes go so very wide. The innocence of a child, stolen in a moment. Cordelia feels like she's falling a million stories. Down, down, down to the streets below, to dash against the asphalt.
Please.
Please what, Cordelia?
Please. Don't hurt the children.
There can be no survivors.
You're a monster.
I'm a pragmatist. There was a time when you prided yourself on such things.
Not like this. Never like this! Listen to me. That little boy doesn't even have magic. He's a mortal child. He poses no threat to you.
Angel's merry band of detectives will be here soon, Cordelia. It would hardly do for them to find a witness who could describe you.
Then take him away from here. Please! Just don't kill him. He's just a kid. Please, do this for me, and I won't protest anymore. I'll be quiet.
For a moment, the Devourer seems to consider this. Cordelia's resistance has undoubtedly been irritating to her. Within their body, Cordelia waits for an answer.
The boy falls to the ground, carotid artery severed.
Cordelia goes somewhere else. Somewhere far away from here, somewhere she can--
It's Connor's birthday. He's seven years old. Fred and Gunn's daughter, a slender little beauty named Alonna, is four. Sometimes she and Fred joke about Alonna and Connor getting married when they grow up, and Angel and Gunn look at each other uneasily. Friendship is one thing, but becoming family is something else. Gunn takes family very seriously.
Connor is very good with Alonna. He's a compassionate soul, much like his mother -- his adoptive mother, not his birth mother -- and he takes care of Alonna like an older brother would. One day she falls and skins her knee while they're playing outside, and Connor runs into the hotel to get the Angel Investigations First Aid kit. By the time Cordelia and Fred get back from meeting with a client, Alonna is fine. A perfect bandage has been tied around her knee; Lorne, on babysitting duty, tells them Connor did it himself. Cordelia beams.
Some weeks later, Cordelia is tidying up Connor's room when she hears the door click shut. Turning, she sees her son smiling at her. "Hey you," she says, grinning that wide smile of hers.
"Hi mom," Connor replies, and it makes Cordelia's heart soar to hear him call her by that name. He toddles over to sit on the bed. For a while, he just looks at her.
"Do you want something to eat, sweetie?" Cordelia asks. It isn't lunchtime yet, but he might want a snack.
Connor -- suddenly so big, so much older -- lays his hand on her inner thigh. He grins at her, eyes burning with Quor'toth. "I'd make a meal out of you any time." He squeezes, fingers leaving rapid-forming bruises on her skin, and she closes her eyes.
She opens them again to find herself standing alongside her friends, about to enter the Svear home. She knows what's inside that house, but she can't warn them.
**
Cordelia has always respected Lilah Morgan. Certainly she has never liked Lilah Morgan, and in fact she has long loathed the older woman for the time Lilah put her through hell to aid a client. When she looks at Lilah now, the sensations come back to her. She never knew a woman could do that to another woman.
But when they communed in their shared helplessness, when she saw Lilah's face purpled with bruises, as Billy Blim fell dead to the asphalt, they formed an understanding. And frankly, with all Cordelia has experienced this year, some slashes and boils and burns are small potatoes. Never has she been more helpless than she is now.
Lilah has conviction, and Cordelia can respect that, even if they are on opposite sides of the war.
Everyone the Devourer has killed while wearing Cordelia like a gown has been a stranger; the Svear family, Manjet: none of them were people Cordelia ever knew before. And while the slaughter of the Svear children is the most horrific thing Cordelia has ever experienced, it is when the bone-knife plunges into Lilah's throat that she truly feels as though she's lost herself.
Cordelia has never been a pacifist. War is messy, and people get hurt. Sometimes you need to kill to save the world. Still, there's a way of doing these things, and this isn't it. This isn't a fair fight; Lilah never even had time to react. There's a guttural wheeze as she struggles to breathe, as she tries to use her ruined vocal cords and express her surprise, and Cordelia wants to hold the other woman and tell her she's sorry. She may hate Lilah, but she knows Lilah deserves better than this.
As the Devourer looks over Lilah's dying form, Cordelia hears her own voice gloating. "Why do you think I let him out, you stupid bitch?" And Cordelia used to love that word, used to wear it as a badge of honor, used to protect herself with it. It's never sounded so ugly before.
**
The first thing Cordelia honestly feels after watching Lilah die is the jagged, harsh burn of a crossbow bolt pulled from their thigh. The pain is invigorating; it reminds her that she is still here, still staring out from behind these eyes -- seer's eyes, do I have a bid? -- that feel so detached from her own flesh.
Their stomach grows more distended with each passing hour, and Cordelia scrapes and clambers up her skyscraper-body. Digs imagined fingers into her insides, tries to climb up and out of her mouth in a shout of freedom. This body has become not only a prison, but a death chamber. She's been in this situation before, been pregnant with demon seed, and knows how this sort of thing turns out if it's not aborted: she's not going to survive this birth. Whatever the Devourer truly is, whatever creature of the higher planes has taken root in Cordelia's body, it isn't human. Cordelia can feel its tendrils writhing in their shared womb, can feel the unnatural press of alien cartilage against the inside of their gut. She has never hated anything as much as she hates her daughter.
Connor helps her into one of the hotel beds, and that, at least, brings her some small comfort. Her little boy, while damaged in his transition to manhood, has retained the drive to protect those he cares about. She's glad for that. But when the Devourer reveals its swollen form to him -- runs his hand over their stomach so that he might feel his child moving -- Cordelia knows that this will destroy him in the end. She weeps as quietly as she can; she does not want the Devourer to know. And perhaps the Devourer does not hear, because it is more concerned with drawing Connor into their embrace and planting feverish kisses on his mouth.
**
While the Devourer sits cross-legged, ordering Angelus around with a booming voice, all Cordelia can do is watch the Muo-Ping. She can't help herself; the idea that the teeming white mist in that jar is Angel's soul is unbelievable to her. Part of her wants to just pop it open, tip her head back, and drink deep. Suck him down until he's part of her, until they can never be apart again.
It's easy to get lost; the Devourer grows more and more by the day, and every new tendril sliding through her body makes it harder for her to think. Her brain is just another part of this common body, and the Devourer takes up more space every day. Through the fog of half-understood sights and sounds, she sees Willow and her heart leaps; hope in its box, trapped by Pandora. Willow is the most powerful mystic Cordelia has ever met; surely Willow will be able to tell. Be able to look into Cordelia's eyes and know, through some magic sight, that there is something riding her from the inside. That this isn't Cordelia at all. But Willow sees nothing.
It's too late, the Devourer says, casually. At this stage in my gestation I cannot be detected by any mere human magics.
Cordelia says nothing. What is there to say? This was her very last chance. She watches Willow's bright red hair disappear into the hallway, and she's not sure whether it's her or the Devourer that hurls the knife.
**
Like anyone raised Catholic, Cordelia grew up with stories of God's love. She remembers thumbing through a textbook in CCD, still so young, pondering her confirmation name in the list of saints. Remembers how much she liked the feel of rosary beads; she started collecting them when she was nine, and brought the whole bunch to Los Angeles with her when she ran from that crumbling fairytale lie of a house.
It's been many years since Cordelia prayed, but she always thought, in some far-off corner of her brain, that the saints might protect her. She wishes she had known then what she knows now; that achieving sainthood isn't some beautiful mystic marriage with a gentle Christ. That when you stare into the face of God, She stares back. That She splays your thighs, pushes Her way inside you, and never lets you go again.
**
There have been many good days in Cordelia's life. She remembers her excitement when she first laid eyes on the little palomino pony she named Keanu. Relishes memories of the day she won the May Queen election; high school feels so long ago, now. Recalls falling asleep next to Angel on the wide bed, their baby -- his baby -- tucked snugly between them. Still feels the gentle touch of Angel's lips just above her navel; another possession, that, but not one she'd ever protest. There have been many days over the years that filled Cordelia with pure joy, with the sort of happiness that could pull out Angel's soul.
But this is the best thing that has ever happened to her.
Angel's face is hard. "This thing isn't Cordelia."
For the first time since she left the higher planes, Cordelia feels safe. Feels like all of this might end. Like her hands might be hers again, like Angel could kiss the grit and blood off her skin. For one pure, shining moment, she feels like this ordeal might be over. And then Connor drops down from the ceiling, all spidery limbs and raging heart pouring out through his eyes, and he beats Angel Investigations into submission before dragging her away.
**
Cordelia doesn't know what she wants. If Connor figures out that this has all been yet another lie in a life full of deception, she knows it will break him. She doesn't think anything will be able to put him together again. Though she wants more than anything to break free, to control this body again, to go to Angel and live as they once did, she was a child of selfish parents, and she refuses to be like them, refuses to prioritize her happiness over Connor's sanity. What kind of mother would she be if she did that?
So when Darla comes, she just stares. Sees the ghost just moments after the Devourer does, suddenly remembering that Connor has a mother. It's been over a year since Darla collapsed into dust, leaving a squalling infant behind in the rain to live and suffer and grow up bitter, and in that time Cordelia has scarcely thought of her. And now Darla stands before them in pristine white.
This is the way it has to be. This is the only way to salvage anything. Connor needs this false Cordelia because he needs something true, needs something real that he can believe in. Finding out she is a lie will shatter him unless there is some other truth. Darla can be that truth. Connor has never known either of his mothers, but perhaps if he got to know the one he's never had sex with, he'd have a little more stability in his life. If Darla gives him a truth to hold onto, maybe Cordelia can break free without destroying this boy.
When Connor rebukes Darla, when he chooses the Devourer, when he drags the sobbing virgin to her death, Cordelia knows it's all over for both of them.
**
Angel stands over her, sword held high. "I'm so sorry." His eyes, limned with tears, tell her everything she needs to know. That he loves her; that he will always love her.
Do it. Please.
Her eyes close for the last time.
**
Lilah has always respected Cordelia Chase. Certainly she has never liked Cordelia Chase, and in fact she has long loathed the woman for her inane devotion to higher causes that Lilah knows are lies. Hoping and praying for benevolence from on high doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and the woman in this hospital bed is fine proof of that.
Sitting at the bedside, Lilah watches Cordelia sleep. She knows full well that the Senior Partners have no intention of letting her ever wake up. Thinks that's too bad, on some level; even if they're on opposite sides, Lilah thinks a world with Cordelia in it is probably a better one. The girl is misguided, but she has potential.
Rising, she procures her cellphone and places a call. "It's me. Can we get someone in here to take care of Ms. Chase? Give her a haircut, at least; she looks awful." Before she leaves, she sets a box on the dresser by the bed. If Cordelia ever does wake up, she'll need a new pair of Boraccis.
**
"You know, I went stag to my prom," Cordelia says, fixing Connor’s boutonnière. She tries to remember the man she danced with that night, but try as she might she can't think of his name. Walter? Wilfred? Thinking about it too much makes her head hurt, so she lets the memory go.
Her son looks at her, surprised but smirking a little. "I thought you were the most popular girl in school," he says, a teasing lilt to his voice. "Don't tell me you made that up."
"Things change," Cordelia says, fixing his cuff-links. "I mean your father was there with your Aunt Buffy, after all."
Connor shakes his head. "I still can't believe that was ever a thing. It seems so weird to me, knowing them now."
"Trust me, it was weird at the time. Though it made sense, in its own way. A kind of mopey, more-tragic-than-thou sort of sense, but sense." Cordelia licks a fingertip and smooths Connor's bangs, then takes a step back. "There," she says. Turning him toward the mirror, she gives him a toothy grin. "Look at you so grown up!"
"Mom," he groans, rolling his eyes.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Cordelia says, laughing. "But it's true. I remember when you were, like, the size of a football. Now you're a big strapping man."
"It happens," Connor says, with a wry smile. Cordelia shivers and doesn't know why.
"That it does," she says, after a moment. She glances at the wall clock. "When are you picking up Alonna?"
**
Connor Reilly loves his girlfriend. Really, he does. Tracy is everything he's ever liked about girls wrapped up into one person: smart, funny, passionate, and beautiful. He can even tolerate her veganism, because it's an example of the political savvy so rare in people their age. He isn't giving up his hamburgers anytime soon, but he respects her for believing so strongly in a cause.
Connor loves Tracy, but in his dreams there's always someone else. A face framed by hair much thicker than Tracy's auburn waves. She's older than him; her bosom is full like a woman's, not a girl's, and when she holds him he feels like he's at home. When he wakes up it's in a cool sweat, with the metal tang of blood in his mouth and the phantom scent of her in the air, like smoke over floral perfume.
One day he's visiting a friend in the hospital -- Bobby is a good skateboarder, but not a great one -- when he feels a shiver run down his spine. He glances over his shoulder at the door he just passed, but doesn't open it.
**
Cordelia looks into the mirror with a little frown. Her demon half slows her aging, but she's definitely starting to get some crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. With a husband who never ages, a lady has cause for concern. Still, if Angel minds the fact that she's moved quietly into her forties, he never says a thing.
His big hand ghosts around her stomach, lips pressing against the back of her neck, and a lovely chill runs up her spine. "Boo," he says, smiling a little against her skin.
"I knew you were there," Cordelia scoffs, leaning against him while still looking into a mirror that shows only her own face. She grins, closing her eyes a moment, and opens them when she feels a chain slip around her neck. Platinum about her throat, and Angel fixes the clasp. "Happy Anniversary," he says.
"Oh, Angel! It's beautiful. Thank you." She turns her head to kiss him. When they part, she shakes her head a little. "Twenty years. Man. I think we deserve some kind of medal."
"Well, once the universe stopped conspiring against us at every damn turn, it got a lot easier." Angel turns her around to face him, eyes lidded just a little. "I love you, Cordy. You're a way better woman than I deserve."
She laughs brightly, and pokes him in the sternum. "You got that right, bucko," she replies with a grin.
**
Angel doesn't know if he can do this anymore. The minutiae of every day -- that he can handle. The job is hard, commands a lot of his attention -- Wolfram & Hart isn't some fly-by-night operation -- but he can get it done. Can stomach watching the shades of his friends walk around ignorant, never knowing what he stole from them. Can suffer through Eve's crinkly-eyed smirk and limp jibes.
It's the nights that give him trouble. When he lies awake in the silk sheets they bought him and looks at the ceiling, wondering what Connor is doing. Knowing that Cordelia is lying in a bed less comfortable than this one, sucked dry by the Powers and left for dead. His chest tightens; he feels like he's gasping for air and can't breathe, and for a man who hasn't needed to breathe in centuries that is a bizarre and jarring sensation.
He realized soon after he took Lilah's deal that Cordy is never waking up. The Senior Partners will never allow it. He hates himself more and more with every passing day since he made that sudden and obvious connection. All he can do is rationalize; think about how much Cordy -- the real Cordy -- loved Connor, and hope that she would understand the choice he's made to save his son.
Perhaps she would. But he can never justify it to himself, not totally, and the longer he goes without her voice in his ears the more he knows this job will be the death of him. No, not the death. Something worse than that. The slow slide toward ennui. He's lost the mission, because he can barely remember a time when the mission wasn't embodied in her.
**
Cordelia has her kleenex ready. Stories always say this is the proudest day of a parent's life, and she certainly feels a swell of pride. Twining her hand with Angel's, she rests her head on his shoulder. "I guess we did an okay job," she says, with a grin.
Angel chuckles, despite himself. "I guess we did."
Doing her best to keep it together, Cordy glances over at Fred and Gunn. Gunn is already crying like a wuss, every now and then saying something that sounds vaguely like, "My baby girl." She's about to crack a joke at his expense when the woman in white sits down beside her. For a moment, Cordelia is agog; no guests are supposed to wear white at a wedding, hello! Moreover, this pew is totally reserved for the parents of the bride and groom.
"Cordelia," Darla says, tilting her head in greeting.
Speechless, Cordelia tries to take in the other woman's presence. "I... what? How are you..." Her brow furrows with confusion. "You're dead."
"I wouldn't want to miss this," the blonde says, with a sad little smile. "But I'm afraid you'll have to."
"What are you talking about? Don't give me riddles, just tell me what you're doing here. I haven't seen you since..." She can't remember the last time she saw Darla, but she remembers the white outfit the other woman is wearing. And suddenly, little bits and pieces start to swim back into her vision. A dank warehouse, a sobbing girl. Cordelia freezes, mouth hard.
"This isn't real, Cordelia. Some part of you knows that." Darla touches her knee, gently, and Cordelia slaps it away.
"How dare you come here and tell me about my life? How dare you? We're happy. We've done just fine without you. I've been Connor's mother his whole life." She doesn't know why she's so angry; none of this makes sense, and nobody else seems to have noticed that she's screaming at a dead woman.
Darla looks up at Connor for a moment, standing at the altar in his tuxedo. She gives him a wistful smile, and turns back to Cordelia. "You have. And I want to thank you for that. I could never have been that for him, and I'm glad he had you. But this is a shadow, an echo of what might have been. Like me."
Cordelia opens her mouth to protest, and Darla shushes her. The blonde presses two fingers to her forehead, and she feels the familiar sensation of a vision surging into her head. Angel at a desk, surrounded by paperwork. Black symbols painted on a wall and etched into flesh. A host of demons gathered around a table, faces covered by ornate masks.
When it ends, she starts to cry. "I can't. I can't leave them," she says. "Everything I've ever wanted is here."
"You've spent a lifetime here, Cordelia. As Connor's mother and Angel's wife, the way you deserved to be. And now it's time to let this chimera go." Darla brushes a stray lock of hair -- black with a silver streak -- out of Cordelia's eyes. "You're the only one who can."
"How can you ask me to do this?" Cordelia demands, voice breaking. "How can you expect me to give this all up?"
"Because that's who you are, Cordelia Chase. The world needs you." Darla smiles, ruefully. "Angel needs you."
Cordelia takes a moment. She rises from the pew and looks around, cataloguing the frozen forms of all her loved ones; family and friends like statues. The violinist stands poised to begin the wedding march. She looks down to where Darla is still seated. "This is the last test," she says, with resignation.
"I'll stay with them," Darla says. She smiles, her eyes pleading. "Go. Save him."
Cordelia closes her eyes.
**
She opens them again with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in a hospital bed. When she tries to lift a hand, and it works, the tears of relief won't stop coming. Her body is hers again, really and truly, and she stretches and bends just to prove to herself that she's real.
The feeling of grotesque fullness is gone, replaced with a strange but all-suffusing warmth. Cordelia doesn't know what it is, can't recall anything but half-remembered flashes of dream, but this coma, somehow, has made her stronger. Opening her mouth for the first time in over a year, she murmurs a single word.
"Angel."
She leaps out of bed, stretching and grinning, and it's not until she turns and looks at the bed that she realizes.
As she watches her own sleeping face, sallow and bloodless, struggle to gasp out rattling, hissing breaths, she understands that this is as much an end as it is a beginning. But somehow...
Somehow, she knows that everything is going to be all right.
Iokaste
by eleusis_walks
Fandom: Angel
Rating: R. The events of Angel Season Four include rape, among other elements some readers may find disturbing. This is your trigger warning.
Spoilers: Up through 5.12 "You're Welcome".
Summary: In the most horrific year of her life, Cordelia struggles to maintain clarity.
The way ascension fills her up, slick and heavy, is what she'll always remember most. Something great and powerful and warm slides inside her, and it's better than anything she's ever felt. Better than the best meal she's ever eaten. Better than sex. Just better. She doesn't even notice the people below on Earth for weeks; she's too busy having the best metaphysical orgasm of her life.
But after a while, the sweetness fades. The spots hazing her vision clear. She takes a deep breath and looks down from the heavens, and sees Angel at the bottom of the sea. Watches his lungs fill with water, watches him gasp and gulp and suffer and try to endure, and suddenly she knows she has made the wrong choice. None of it feels good anymore, but that sense of physical completion -- of being filled to the brim, overstuffed, almost overflowing with something -- won't go away. It makes her nauseous and impatient.
Casting her eye down toward the water swallowing up Angel as he swallows it in kind, she tries to go to him, tries to animate herself, tries to shift her presence into some kind of arrow and fire herself to where he lies. No matter how hard she tries, there's nothing tangible up here. Nothing at all but the swollen bloat of the power stuffed inside her.
**
Once she's back in the mortal sphere, even in the fog of amnesia Cordelia -- for they tell her that this is her name -- knows that there is something special about Angel. She doesn't know why; she doesn't know how they met or how they came to feel for each other this way, but she knows. Every time she looks at the broad curve of his back, she knows that she's fantasized about marking him there with her teeth, about losing herself in the sweep of flexing muscle and smooth, cool skin. Every time he looks at her the way he does -- aching with his need -- she feels her knees lock and release with her heartbeat.
She knows her feelings for Angel run deep, but she doesn't trust herself with him right now. She doesn't want to make a mistake that Cordelia -- the woman she used to be, before she forgot -- would regret. Deep down in her gut, she can feel that this relationship used to be everything she ever wanted. Knows that her world feels incomplete when he's not in it; that someday, when she knows herself again, they might rebuild what's been lost.
There is something in her that draws her to him, but her steps feel heavy, more sluggish than they ought to be. She isn't sure why.
**
When they sit in the circle around the bottle, mystic incense roiling into her nostrils, Cordelia remembers and suddenly knows.
Oh, God. Something brought me back. It's inside me; it's clawing its way out.
It's agony and horror all at once, like something vile is leaking out of her pores. "No!" She staggers through the haze, drunk on magic, sweating out ichor, trying to stop it. One high-heeled shoe smashes the spinning bottle, but it's far too late. When the fog clears, when the spell is over, Cordelia tries to open her mouth and nothing happens. When the voice speaks to her, when it tells her to be quiet, to behave herself, all she can do is scream. Scream and scream and scream, but no sound comes out of the mouth that used to be her mouth.
When Angel asks if they were in love, she wants to say "We are," but the Other spits a barb of bitter past tense from between her lips, and Cordelia tries to shriek from within her own skull I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE and then the Other turns her body away from him and her screams become incoherent wails like the ships Angel used to hear from the bottom of the sea, like she's a keening mourner at a king's funeral, but she can't stop won't stop until she's back at Connor's loft and she just can't scream any more. As the Other settles her body into bed, Cordelia hears its honey-sweet voice again.
Good girl. Rest now.
**
Suspended in the air, throat crushed in the grip of the Beast, Cordelia honestly believes she is going to die. The rocky fingers dig into her flesh, leaving scalded bruises on her skin. Her airways are cut off. And yet somehow, in this moment of abject terror -- this moment at which she dangles on the precipice of life and death -- she is relieved. Maybe it's a mercy, she thinks. For though she may die, at least the Other will go with her.
Then she feels it. The voice humming through her nervous system like a sonic frequency. Don't hurt her too much. Just make it look real enough for the boy to take interest.
The Beast nods. Cordelia numbs.
**
Fire rains from the heavens, streaking through the air outside the apartment window, and Cordelia doesn't blame Connor for any of this. She loves him; she really does, as if he were her own child. She remembers holding him as a baby, cradling him in her arms as though she could protect him from the untold trials that would inevitably come with being the prophesied child of two vampires.
When he holds her now, when he presses himself flush against her body, she is repulsed, but not angry with him. He can't remember the then, the mother she once was to him, and she can't protest the now. He'll never think of her as his mother because he has no context. He doesn't know what they used to be. Better for him not to know: if he really understood what was happening, he would go mad; if he finds out later, it will destroy him. The thing inside her moves her hand to stroke his hair. In this moment the Other has broken her, but there is still hope for her son, and a good parent puts her child first. So while she silently cries out as if burned when he enters her, she does not blame him.
She blames this creature with no name, this voice from on high that has opened her up, climbed into her chest and torn out her heart.
**
The next morning she tries as hard as she can to take control, to tell Connor what has happened, to get help. All she can manage to do is manipulate her facial muscles into a pained reflection of the canyon opening in the pit of her stomach. The Other takes advantage of this; knows that Cordelia can't speak, so speaks for her. The Other wants Connor to feel ashamed, confused. Wants to make him hers.
Cordelia feels like her arms are tied, like she's gagged face-down in the dirt while something works her from the inside. Her skin thrums with the power the Other wields, her body electrified with light like hard steel. Connor's sweat has dried on her body, and within her the Other pushes outward, slavering, hungering, trying to lick all of it off her flesh. Every time she moves it isn't her moving, isn't her brain calling parts to action. It's a queasy feeling, a sticky-thick molasses feeling, like something coating her chest cavity and seeping out, quaking and thrusting itself through her limbs. Even if she could close her eyes, it would do no good. You can't quite shut something out when it's already inside.
After their return to the hotel, all she does is cry out. Harshly, hoarsely, as though the louder she screams in her own head the more likely it is that someone out there will notice. By the time Angel, Gunn, Wesley and Fred leave for Wolfram & Hart, her muscles are aching from the strain and the frustration. Deep down inside herself, she takes a step backward. Feels like a tiny person sitting tied to a chair in the giant, moving skyscraper that is her body. Draws her miniature knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, trying to move, hoping and praying that this ride will stop and she can get out. But they never reach the station, and the immense body-train just keeps chugging along. She wants to scratch off her skin and crawl out the wounds. All she can do is wait, and so she does. Stares out her big, hollow window-eyes until the cavalry returns from the battlefield, Connor in tow.
A few minutes later, when Angel kicks her and Connor out of the hotel, she's glad. Every moment she spends with him, listening to the Other speak in her voice, berating him, challenging him, is too awful for her to bear. She wants to kiss him and tell him she loves him. She wants to slap him for not realizing that this thing with her face, working her like a marionette, is not her. Of all the indignities she has suffered in these horrible weeks, that is perhaps the one that galls her most of all. But he's shocked and enraged, and the Other does a good impression of her speech patterns, and she cannot stay angry at him for long. But she also cannot look at him.
**
Manny's skull cracks like an egg, colored shell falling apart on Easter morning after an interminable mass. The Other has stripped her body bare, and now it is drenched in the blood of the totem. A sticky axe lies discarded, and the orb of the Ra-Tet glistens with moisture in her hand.
Cordelia watches her bloodstained fingers turn the orb about. In its surface she can see her face, twisted in a smirk of triumph not her own. She feels a bit of triumph herself, though: You'll never get away with this.
And why is that?
Angel is a vampire, moron. He'll smell the blood all over me.
Oh, sweet Cordelia. This is where your mortal understanding proves its limitations. I am the Devourer, child. My hunger is infinite.
A pale green light shimmers under her skin, illuminating her naked flesh. With a quiet slurping sound, the thing inside her -- the Other, the Devourer? The Devourer, now, for this is the only name Cordelia knows to call it -- drinks deep until all the crimson fluid has been pulled inside her body. Their body. Nary a trace left for Angel to scent. Cordelia wants to put her face in her hands, but she can't. They're not her hands anymore.
**
The Devourer is a hedonist. She eats and eats and eats, and Cordelia can feel their body swelling and filling out in a way it never has before. On top of all the indignities she has suffered, she has little time to resent weight gain, but when they look in the mirror it's just adding insult to injury.
But it's not just food the Devourer craves. The first time Cordelia recognizes the hunger in the Beast's eyes, realizes what the Devourer intends to do, a chasm opens in her chest, formed by the echoing resonance of her silent screams. No no nononono NO NO no NOOO nooo until a rocky hand slips under her top and roughly handles her left breast. She's too repulsed to make any more sound, even in her own head, and so she just tries to block it out.
Tries to go somewhere else. Some far-off place where--
She and Angel are teaching Connor how to play checkers. He's four now, and he's growing quickly for his age; not superhumanly quickly, just quickly. The teacher at the preschool, Mrs. Gibbs, thinks that he's going to be reading on an advanced level very soon. She tells Mr. and Mrs. Angel about how well their son shares with the other children, and Cordelia beams with pride. She and Angel have accomplished many things together, but raising this child is one of the proudest achievements of her young life.
"Connor," she says, laughing. "You can't be a king yet. You have to make it to the other side of the board, first."
Connor gives her a confused, child's look, and then smiles. The smile twists, and as he leans forward he ages thirteen years in an instant. "I crossed that board a long time ago, Mommy," he hisses, and Cordelia comes hyperventilating back to reality.
The Beast is finished. He kisses her hand and bows his head. "Thank you for rewarding me, my Master." Cordelia is suddenly conscious of her nudity, and of the gravel-harsh scratches in her skin where his body has been against hers.
The Devourer, smug in carnal satisfaction, is distracted enough to let her cry.
**
Cordelia knows that bringing Angelus back into the world is the most unbelievable mistake they could make, and she rattles the bars of her flesh-cage trying to get out and talk some sense into them. The others don't understand; how could they? They've never met Angelus. When Wesley suggests it, standing under the night-dark day-sky, all she wants to do is explain. Wants to tell him he's a fool. Cordelia knows Angelus. Cordelia remembers the rose petals scattered all over Giles's apartment.
Why are you doing this? What's in it for you? she asks the Devourer, after twenty minutes of trying to force out a sentence.
This is all for the greater good, Cordelia. They must be kept busy. It isn't time yet.
Time for what?
My birth, of course.
Cordelia feels a twisting in their lower stomach, and of course. She's spent so much time detaching from this body, trying to forget that once it was hers, that she wasn't paying attention to the flutterings in her belly. Bile rises in their throat, and the Devourer swallows it back down.
**
Sometimes Cordelia thinks she's just gone mad. That there isn't a Devourer at all, that she just came back wrong. That she really is this terrible thing. That what she thinks of as her 'real self', trapped behind bars in her own mind, is just the last tattered remnants of human conscience. On a conscious level, she knows that she could never do these things, but it's getting harder and harder to figure out where she ends and the parasite begins.
It's in the way the Devourer talks to them. To her friends, none of whom suspect. The Devourer knows her voice, and can say things in precisely the Cordelia way. And somewhere, under all the haranguing and all the cold betrayal of everything Angel ever trusted, this new Cordelia still loves him. The Devourer talks to him like only a lover could, and when Angel looks at them Cordelia feels their heart racing, feels the sweat on the back of their neck as the Devourer grows aroused. The Devourer feeds on Cordelia's love and channels it, works it into a frenzy and propels it back into their shared mind. When they look at him, they are like one being united in longing. That's what scares Cordelia the most.
When the Devourer makes her bargain with Angelus -- information for the pleasures of their body -- Cordelia wants to die. Not like this. The Devourer has taken so much from her already; she is a puppet in celestial hands, pulled this way and that way at the whim of an uncaring deity. This body has been used and abused over and over again, and over the last month and a half Cordelia has slowly come to accept that dirty feeling as her status quo.
But this, this love -- this is the one thing that Cordelia can never get back if it is lost. Angel's body can't be part of this morass of pain. She can take the Beast's gritty skin against hers, can even stand the searing touch of the boy she diapered, but for Angel-as-Angelus to be yet another violator would be too much to bear. Cordelia is strong, but there are limits.
Don't be afraid, Cordelia. I have no intention of honoring this bargain with the vampire.
The calm suffuses her immediately, and she's disgusted with herself for being so easy to placate. More than anything she resents the fact that the Devourer can feel her relief. She can't hide anything from this monster -- her jailor, her rapist, her growing child.
Well. It's nice to know that you care about my feelings.
In the end, perhaps sarcasm is the one defense she has left.
**
Angelus makes good on their deal. The Svear, ancient priestesses of a benevolent force: they have the power to banish the Beast from this dimension. He tells the team all he knows, and then licks his lips as he looks at Cordelia.
The Devourer is smug. So trusting. Even without his soul.
You like that, don't you?
Like what, Cordelia?
Being trusted. Taking advantage of that trust.
Faith, my dear. I love the faithful.
**
Her thighs still ache where the Beast's volcanic hands burned and tore at her skin. Connor looks at her with a hunger that breaks her heart, that makes her want to brush the hair out of his face and explain the world to him. When she's trying to sleep, all she can see behind lidded eyes is her fingernails clawing at Manjet's brain, tearing away grey matter to reveal the orb beneath.
But Cordelia is resilient. She has suffered under the Devourer's control, and she has despaired, but she has always managed to hold on to herself. She has always managed to protest, to speak her mind inside their shared head when the Devourer does terrible things.
But this, the Svear. This is different.
The mother is first. She tries to chant a protection spell, but her human sorcery pales before the might of a god. The Devourer thumbs the stone knife that her Beast has carved from his own body, memorizing the grooves in the blade before stabbing it directly into the woman's forehead, and Cordelia gasps at the sound of ripping flesh.
It is the women of the Svear who have the power. After the mother falls, her adult daughters are child's play. The men are mere mortals, and cannot even defend themselves except with feeble human muscle. They fall like wheat before the thresher. Cordelia watches the massacre with eyes wide open. This is just another trial of hundreds. She can force herself to tolerate this, even when the Devourer leans down to lave their tongue against the deep puncture on the father's chest. Sticky human in their mouth, lips and teeth tugging at the ripped, ruined flesh.
Then the little boy rounds the corner. His eyes go so very wide. The innocence of a child, stolen in a moment. Cordelia feels like she's falling a million stories. Down, down, down to the streets below, to dash against the asphalt.
Please.
Please what, Cordelia?
Please. Don't hurt the children.
There can be no survivors.
You're a monster.
I'm a pragmatist. There was a time when you prided yourself on such things.
Not like this. Never like this! Listen to me. That little boy doesn't even have magic. He's a mortal child. He poses no threat to you.
Angel's merry band of detectives will be here soon, Cordelia. It would hardly do for them to find a witness who could describe you.
Then take him away from here. Please! Just don't kill him. He's just a kid. Please, do this for me, and I won't protest anymore. I'll be quiet.
For a moment, the Devourer seems to consider this. Cordelia's resistance has undoubtedly been irritating to her. Within their body, Cordelia waits for an answer.
The boy falls to the ground, carotid artery severed.
Cordelia goes somewhere else. Somewhere far away from here, somewhere she can--
It's Connor's birthday. He's seven years old. Fred and Gunn's daughter, a slender little beauty named Alonna, is four. Sometimes she and Fred joke about Alonna and Connor getting married when they grow up, and Angel and Gunn look at each other uneasily. Friendship is one thing, but becoming family is something else. Gunn takes family very seriously.
Connor is very good with Alonna. He's a compassionate soul, much like his mother -- his adoptive mother, not his birth mother -- and he takes care of Alonna like an older brother would. One day she falls and skins her knee while they're playing outside, and Connor runs into the hotel to get the Angel Investigations First Aid kit. By the time Cordelia and Fred get back from meeting with a client, Alonna is fine. A perfect bandage has been tied around her knee; Lorne, on babysitting duty, tells them Connor did it himself. Cordelia beams.
Some weeks later, Cordelia is tidying up Connor's room when she hears the door click shut. Turning, she sees her son smiling at her. "Hey you," she says, grinning that wide smile of hers.
"Hi mom," Connor replies, and it makes Cordelia's heart soar to hear him call her by that name. He toddles over to sit on the bed. For a while, he just looks at her.
"Do you want something to eat, sweetie?" Cordelia asks. It isn't lunchtime yet, but he might want a snack.
Connor -- suddenly so big, so much older -- lays his hand on her inner thigh. He grins at her, eyes burning with Quor'toth. "I'd make a meal out of you any time." He squeezes, fingers leaving rapid-forming bruises on her skin, and she closes her eyes.
She opens them again to find herself standing alongside her friends, about to enter the Svear home. She knows what's inside that house, but she can't warn them.
**
Cordelia has always respected Lilah Morgan. Certainly she has never liked Lilah Morgan, and in fact she has long loathed the older woman for the time Lilah put her through hell to aid a client. When she looks at Lilah now, the sensations come back to her. She never knew a woman could do that to another woman.
But when they communed in their shared helplessness, when she saw Lilah's face purpled with bruises, as Billy Blim fell dead to the asphalt, they formed an understanding. And frankly, with all Cordelia has experienced this year, some slashes and boils and burns are small potatoes. Never has she been more helpless than she is now.
Lilah has conviction, and Cordelia can respect that, even if they are on opposite sides of the war.
Everyone the Devourer has killed while wearing Cordelia like a gown has been a stranger; the Svear family, Manjet: none of them were people Cordelia ever knew before. And while the slaughter of the Svear children is the most horrific thing Cordelia has ever experienced, it is when the bone-knife plunges into Lilah's throat that she truly feels as though she's lost herself.
Cordelia has never been a pacifist. War is messy, and people get hurt. Sometimes you need to kill to save the world. Still, there's a way of doing these things, and this isn't it. This isn't a fair fight; Lilah never even had time to react. There's a guttural wheeze as she struggles to breathe, as she tries to use her ruined vocal cords and express her surprise, and Cordelia wants to hold the other woman and tell her she's sorry. She may hate Lilah, but she knows Lilah deserves better than this.
As the Devourer looks over Lilah's dying form, Cordelia hears her own voice gloating. "Why do you think I let him out, you stupid bitch?" And Cordelia used to love that word, used to wear it as a badge of honor, used to protect herself with it. It's never sounded so ugly before.
**
The first thing Cordelia honestly feels after watching Lilah die is the jagged, harsh burn of a crossbow bolt pulled from their thigh. The pain is invigorating; it reminds her that she is still here, still staring out from behind these eyes -- seer's eyes, do I have a bid? -- that feel so detached from her own flesh.
Their stomach grows more distended with each passing hour, and Cordelia scrapes and clambers up her skyscraper-body. Digs imagined fingers into her insides, tries to climb up and out of her mouth in a shout of freedom. This body has become not only a prison, but a death chamber. She's been in this situation before, been pregnant with demon seed, and knows how this sort of thing turns out if it's not aborted: she's not going to survive this birth. Whatever the Devourer truly is, whatever creature of the higher planes has taken root in Cordelia's body, it isn't human. Cordelia can feel its tendrils writhing in their shared womb, can feel the unnatural press of alien cartilage against the inside of their gut. She has never hated anything as much as she hates her daughter.
Connor helps her into one of the hotel beds, and that, at least, brings her some small comfort. Her little boy, while damaged in his transition to manhood, has retained the drive to protect those he cares about. She's glad for that. But when the Devourer reveals its swollen form to him -- runs his hand over their stomach so that he might feel his child moving -- Cordelia knows that this will destroy him in the end. She weeps as quietly as she can; she does not want the Devourer to know. And perhaps the Devourer does not hear, because it is more concerned with drawing Connor into their embrace and planting feverish kisses on his mouth.
**
While the Devourer sits cross-legged, ordering Angelus around with a booming voice, all Cordelia can do is watch the Muo-Ping. She can't help herself; the idea that the teeming white mist in that jar is Angel's soul is unbelievable to her. Part of her wants to just pop it open, tip her head back, and drink deep. Suck him down until he's part of her, until they can never be apart again.
It's easy to get lost; the Devourer grows more and more by the day, and every new tendril sliding through her body makes it harder for her to think. Her brain is just another part of this common body, and the Devourer takes up more space every day. Through the fog of half-understood sights and sounds, she sees Willow and her heart leaps; hope in its box, trapped by Pandora. Willow is the most powerful mystic Cordelia has ever met; surely Willow will be able to tell. Be able to look into Cordelia's eyes and know, through some magic sight, that there is something riding her from the inside. That this isn't Cordelia at all. But Willow sees nothing.
It's too late, the Devourer says, casually. At this stage in my gestation I cannot be detected by any mere human magics.
Cordelia says nothing. What is there to say? This was her very last chance. She watches Willow's bright red hair disappear into the hallway, and she's not sure whether it's her or the Devourer that hurls the knife.
**
Like anyone raised Catholic, Cordelia grew up with stories of God's love. She remembers thumbing through a textbook in CCD, still so young, pondering her confirmation name in the list of saints. Remembers how much she liked the feel of rosary beads; she started collecting them when she was nine, and brought the whole bunch to Los Angeles with her when she ran from that crumbling fairytale lie of a house.
It's been many years since Cordelia prayed, but she always thought, in some far-off corner of her brain, that the saints might protect her. She wishes she had known then what she knows now; that achieving sainthood isn't some beautiful mystic marriage with a gentle Christ. That when you stare into the face of God, She stares back. That She splays your thighs, pushes Her way inside you, and never lets you go again.
**
There have been many good days in Cordelia's life. She remembers her excitement when she first laid eyes on the little palomino pony she named Keanu. Relishes memories of the day she won the May Queen election; high school feels so long ago, now. Recalls falling asleep next to Angel on the wide bed, their baby -- his baby -- tucked snugly between them. Still feels the gentle touch of Angel's lips just above her navel; another possession, that, but not one she'd ever protest. There have been many days over the years that filled Cordelia with pure joy, with the sort of happiness that could pull out Angel's soul.
But this is the best thing that has ever happened to her.
Angel's face is hard. "This thing isn't Cordelia."
For the first time since she left the higher planes, Cordelia feels safe. Feels like all of this might end. Like her hands might be hers again, like Angel could kiss the grit and blood off her skin. For one pure, shining moment, she feels like this ordeal might be over. And then Connor drops down from the ceiling, all spidery limbs and raging heart pouring out through his eyes, and he beats Angel Investigations into submission before dragging her away.
**
Cordelia doesn't know what she wants. If Connor figures out that this has all been yet another lie in a life full of deception, she knows it will break him. She doesn't think anything will be able to put him together again. Though she wants more than anything to break free, to control this body again, to go to Angel and live as they once did, she was a child of selfish parents, and she refuses to be like them, refuses to prioritize her happiness over Connor's sanity. What kind of mother would she be if she did that?
So when Darla comes, she just stares. Sees the ghost just moments after the Devourer does, suddenly remembering that Connor has a mother. It's been over a year since Darla collapsed into dust, leaving a squalling infant behind in the rain to live and suffer and grow up bitter, and in that time Cordelia has scarcely thought of her. And now Darla stands before them in pristine white.
This is the way it has to be. This is the only way to salvage anything. Connor needs this false Cordelia because he needs something true, needs something real that he can believe in. Finding out she is a lie will shatter him unless there is some other truth. Darla can be that truth. Connor has never known either of his mothers, but perhaps if he got to know the one he's never had sex with, he'd have a little more stability in his life. If Darla gives him a truth to hold onto, maybe Cordelia can break free without destroying this boy.
When Connor rebukes Darla, when he chooses the Devourer, when he drags the sobbing virgin to her death, Cordelia knows it's all over for both of them.
**
Angel stands over her, sword held high. "I'm so sorry." His eyes, limned with tears, tell her everything she needs to know. That he loves her; that he will always love her.
Do it. Please.
Her eyes close for the last time.
**
Lilah has always respected Cordelia Chase. Certainly she has never liked Cordelia Chase, and in fact she has long loathed the woman for her inane devotion to higher causes that Lilah knows are lies. Hoping and praying for benevolence from on high doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and the woman in this hospital bed is fine proof of that.
Sitting at the bedside, Lilah watches Cordelia sleep. She knows full well that the Senior Partners have no intention of letting her ever wake up. Thinks that's too bad, on some level; even if they're on opposite sides, Lilah thinks a world with Cordelia in it is probably a better one. The girl is misguided, but she has potential.
Rising, she procures her cellphone and places a call. "It's me. Can we get someone in here to take care of Ms. Chase? Give her a haircut, at least; she looks awful." Before she leaves, she sets a box on the dresser by the bed. If Cordelia ever does wake up, she'll need a new pair of Boraccis.
**
"You know, I went stag to my prom," Cordelia says, fixing Connor’s boutonnière. She tries to remember the man she danced with that night, but try as she might she can't think of his name. Walter? Wilfred? Thinking about it too much makes her head hurt, so she lets the memory go.
Her son looks at her, surprised but smirking a little. "I thought you were the most popular girl in school," he says, a teasing lilt to his voice. "Don't tell me you made that up."
"Things change," Cordelia says, fixing his cuff-links. "I mean your father was there with your Aunt Buffy, after all."
Connor shakes his head. "I still can't believe that was ever a thing. It seems so weird to me, knowing them now."
"Trust me, it was weird at the time. Though it made sense, in its own way. A kind of mopey, more-tragic-than-thou sort of sense, but sense." Cordelia licks a fingertip and smooths Connor's bangs, then takes a step back. "There," she says. Turning him toward the mirror, she gives him a toothy grin. "Look at you so grown up!"
"Mom," he groans, rolling his eyes.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Cordelia says, laughing. "But it's true. I remember when you were, like, the size of a football. Now you're a big strapping man."
"It happens," Connor says, with a wry smile. Cordelia shivers and doesn't know why.
"That it does," she says, after a moment. She glances at the wall clock. "When are you picking up Alonna?"
**
Connor Reilly loves his girlfriend. Really, he does. Tracy is everything he's ever liked about girls wrapped up into one person: smart, funny, passionate, and beautiful. He can even tolerate her veganism, because it's an example of the political savvy so rare in people their age. He isn't giving up his hamburgers anytime soon, but he respects her for believing so strongly in a cause.
Connor loves Tracy, but in his dreams there's always someone else. A face framed by hair much thicker than Tracy's auburn waves. She's older than him; her bosom is full like a woman's, not a girl's, and when she holds him he feels like he's at home. When he wakes up it's in a cool sweat, with the metal tang of blood in his mouth and the phantom scent of her in the air, like smoke over floral perfume.
One day he's visiting a friend in the hospital -- Bobby is a good skateboarder, but not a great one -- when he feels a shiver run down his spine. He glances over his shoulder at the door he just passed, but doesn't open it.
**
Cordelia looks into the mirror with a little frown. Her demon half slows her aging, but she's definitely starting to get some crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. With a husband who never ages, a lady has cause for concern. Still, if Angel minds the fact that she's moved quietly into her forties, he never says a thing.
His big hand ghosts around her stomach, lips pressing against the back of her neck, and a lovely chill runs up her spine. "Boo," he says, smiling a little against her skin.
"I knew you were there," Cordelia scoffs, leaning against him while still looking into a mirror that shows only her own face. She grins, closing her eyes a moment, and opens them when she feels a chain slip around her neck. Platinum about her throat, and Angel fixes the clasp. "Happy Anniversary," he says.
"Oh, Angel! It's beautiful. Thank you." She turns her head to kiss him. When they part, she shakes her head a little. "Twenty years. Man. I think we deserve some kind of medal."
"Well, once the universe stopped conspiring against us at every damn turn, it got a lot easier." Angel turns her around to face him, eyes lidded just a little. "I love you, Cordy. You're a way better woman than I deserve."
She laughs brightly, and pokes him in the sternum. "You got that right, bucko," she replies with a grin.
**
Angel doesn't know if he can do this anymore. The minutiae of every day -- that he can handle. The job is hard, commands a lot of his attention -- Wolfram & Hart isn't some fly-by-night operation -- but he can get it done. Can stomach watching the shades of his friends walk around ignorant, never knowing what he stole from them. Can suffer through Eve's crinkly-eyed smirk and limp jibes.
It's the nights that give him trouble. When he lies awake in the silk sheets they bought him and looks at the ceiling, wondering what Connor is doing. Knowing that Cordelia is lying in a bed less comfortable than this one, sucked dry by the Powers and left for dead. His chest tightens; he feels like he's gasping for air and can't breathe, and for a man who hasn't needed to breathe in centuries that is a bizarre and jarring sensation.
He realized soon after he took Lilah's deal that Cordy is never waking up. The Senior Partners will never allow it. He hates himself more and more with every passing day since he made that sudden and obvious connection. All he can do is rationalize; think about how much Cordy -- the real Cordy -- loved Connor, and hope that she would understand the choice he's made to save his son.
Perhaps she would. But he can never justify it to himself, not totally, and the longer he goes without her voice in his ears the more he knows this job will be the death of him. No, not the death. Something worse than that. The slow slide toward ennui. He's lost the mission, because he can barely remember a time when the mission wasn't embodied in her.
**
Cordelia has her kleenex ready. Stories always say this is the proudest day of a parent's life, and she certainly feels a swell of pride. Twining her hand with Angel's, she rests her head on his shoulder. "I guess we did an okay job," she says, with a grin.
Angel chuckles, despite himself. "I guess we did."
Doing her best to keep it together, Cordy glances over at Fred and Gunn. Gunn is already crying like a wuss, every now and then saying something that sounds vaguely like, "My baby girl." She's about to crack a joke at his expense when the woman in white sits down beside her. For a moment, Cordelia is agog; no guests are supposed to wear white at a wedding, hello! Moreover, this pew is totally reserved for the parents of the bride and groom.
"Cordelia," Darla says, tilting her head in greeting.
Speechless, Cordelia tries to take in the other woman's presence. "I... what? How are you..." Her brow furrows with confusion. "You're dead."
"I wouldn't want to miss this," the blonde says, with a sad little smile. "But I'm afraid you'll have to."
"What are you talking about? Don't give me riddles, just tell me what you're doing here. I haven't seen you since..." She can't remember the last time she saw Darla, but she remembers the white outfit the other woman is wearing. And suddenly, little bits and pieces start to swim back into her vision. A dank warehouse, a sobbing girl. Cordelia freezes, mouth hard.
"This isn't real, Cordelia. Some part of you knows that." Darla touches her knee, gently, and Cordelia slaps it away.
"How dare you come here and tell me about my life? How dare you? We're happy. We've done just fine without you. I've been Connor's mother his whole life." She doesn't know why she's so angry; none of this makes sense, and nobody else seems to have noticed that she's screaming at a dead woman.
Darla looks up at Connor for a moment, standing at the altar in his tuxedo. She gives him a wistful smile, and turns back to Cordelia. "You have. And I want to thank you for that. I could never have been that for him, and I'm glad he had you. But this is a shadow, an echo of what might have been. Like me."
Cordelia opens her mouth to protest, and Darla shushes her. The blonde presses two fingers to her forehead, and she feels the familiar sensation of a vision surging into her head. Angel at a desk, surrounded by paperwork. Black symbols painted on a wall and etched into flesh. A host of demons gathered around a table, faces covered by ornate masks.
When it ends, she starts to cry. "I can't. I can't leave them," she says. "Everything I've ever wanted is here."
"You've spent a lifetime here, Cordelia. As Connor's mother and Angel's wife, the way you deserved to be. And now it's time to let this chimera go." Darla brushes a stray lock of hair -- black with a silver streak -- out of Cordelia's eyes. "You're the only one who can."
"How can you ask me to do this?" Cordelia demands, voice breaking. "How can you expect me to give this all up?"
"Because that's who you are, Cordelia Chase. The world needs you." Darla smiles, ruefully. "Angel needs you."
Cordelia takes a moment. She rises from the pew and looks around, cataloguing the frozen forms of all her loved ones; family and friends like statues. The violinist stands poised to begin the wedding march. She looks down to where Darla is still seated. "This is the last test," she says, with resignation.
"I'll stay with them," Darla says. She smiles, her eyes pleading. "Go. Save him."
Cordelia closes her eyes.
**
She opens them again with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in a hospital bed. When she tries to lift a hand, and it works, the tears of relief won't stop coming. Her body is hers again, really and truly, and she stretches and bends just to prove to herself that she's real.
The feeling of grotesque fullness is gone, replaced with a strange but all-suffusing warmth. Cordelia doesn't know what it is, can't recall anything but half-remembered flashes of dream, but this coma, somehow, has made her stronger. Opening her mouth for the first time in over a year, she murmurs a single word.
"Angel."
She leaps out of bed, stretching and grinning, and it's not until she turns and looks at the bed that she realizes.
As she watches her own sleeping face, sallow and bloodless, struggle to gasp out rattling, hissing breaths, she understands that this is as much an end as it is a beginning. But somehow...
Somehow, she knows that everything is going to be all right.