---

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part VIII

Neither of Sam’s pupils was blown, so Cordelia allowed herself to hope there was no concussion. A disabling strike to the head always posed the danger of brain damage, but there had been no time for fastidiousness; throwing the sai to strike with butt rather than point was as gentle as Cordelia had been able to manage. As Sam was helped to her feet, she looked around and said, “I don’t want to jinx it by saying this out loud, but I couldn’t help noticing that we’re still alive.”

“Most of us,” Cordelia noted, with a sharp glance at Lynn, who just shrugged.

“No loss,” Sam said. “But I’m serious. Am I the only one who cares that we’re alive?”

“She drew his power into herself,” Kari said. “She is master now. Over all this domain.” She looked to Cordelia. “Over us, if she wishes.”

“Okay, first of all, no,” Cordelia said. “Second, hell, no. That’s not what this was about.”

“Not hearing any arguments from me,” Lynn said cheerily. “So, do we have champagne around here?”

“It is not a time for levity,” Kari said. “She has freed us, but at a cost.”

“Her?” Lynn said, with a contemptuous nod toward Mandy’s body. “Piss on her. And I’m not just saying that ’cause I’m the one shanked her. Anybody here who didn’t want to do the same?”

“That was not my meaning,” Kari reproved. “But it is so that she carried a terrible weight of karma.” To Cordelia she said, “The strictures that He placed on me are gone, and I see much that was long closed to me. I would have given you stronger warning, had I known. I am deeply sorry.”

“Warning about what? About her?” Lynn wouldn’t be suppressed. “Tell me more about that bad karma she was carrying.”

Was her insistence a counter-reaction to what she had done? Cordelia had just performed her own first killing, and was still adjusting, however necessary the act had been; maybe Lynn was more rattled than she wanted anyone to see. As if aware of the same possibility, Kari said to Lynn, “I knew from the first that her soul was scarred, but I did not see the true depths. She carried the echoes of her past here with her … She was on a plane, a passenger liner, and then she was not, and the plane exploded. It was not even her true target; she murdered hundreds, merely to cover her trail. That is what you killed.”

Lynn blinked. “Whoa. Really? Well, good on me.”

Great, Cordelia thought. Evil, dead lesbian. Cliché much?

“Are you going to send us home?” Sam asked. The others looked to her, and she continued, “If you took all his power, then you should be able to do what He could do. So, can you send us back to where we belong?”

“I’m pretty sure I can,” Cordelia said; that, too, had been a gamble. “But I don’t exactly know how. It may take awhile to work out that part of it.”

“In this I can help you.” That from Kari, and Cordelia felt a surge of relief. “I was here for many years, longer even than she —” A nod to Lynn. “— and I learned more than He ever knew I knew.”

“Good,” Sam said. “That’s good. So you two get together, iron out the kinks, and there we are. Next stop, Earth.”

“Right,” Lynn said, with a derisive laugh. “Good luck on that.”

Cordelia was beginning to feel overwhelmed; this was, she realized, the first time in months she had been required (or even able, usually) to talk with more than one person at a time. To Lynn she said, “Do you know something we don’t?”

Lynn’s smile had a mocking edge. “Just that there are a hell of a lot of different Earths, and I wouldn’t lay great odds that we’re all from the same one. Maybe not even any two of us.”

“That poses less difficulty than you might think,” Kari said, intervening with firm authority. “It is so, He reached across time, as well as into the past, to draw in the riches and supplies and individuals He desired for his service. But in the world of my home, the principles of crosstime travel are not unknown. All that is, carries a link to the reality where it originated. With his power, she can follow that link back to its source.”

“Good, then,” Sam said. “Let’s do that.”

“I’m sorry,” Cordelia broke in. “Can we talk somewhere else? Maybe I’m being picky here, but we’re standing in a room with two dead bodies. People we killed ourselves. I’m having trouble acting casual about that.”

They left Roxeim’s chamber, and moved toward the training area where she and Lynn had fought so often. On the way, she found the opportunity to quietly tell Kari, “I’m sorry about your garden.”

“That is of no moment,” Kari said. “I have no more need of it.” She smiled suddenly. “I am free, after so long … ‘You are death and deliverance.’ I spoke more truly than I could then understand.”

Cordelia did not return the smile. “Yay, me.”

When they reached the training room, they stood facing one another; there were no chairs, she and Lynn had always been either on their feet or on the floor. “So,” Cordelia said. “I’m supposed to tune in on everybody and trace your lifeline back to the point where you got snatched up. How’s that work, exactly?”

“Time has a curious nature here,” Kari said. “You have seen that we heal quickly; however, we age not at all. Yet time does continue to flow, in a sense. He could delve into the past, as I said, of many different realities, but the future was closed to him, except as it unfolded in its own due course. His forward reach could go no farther than what is ‘the present’ outside this sphere. You were drawn from the year of 1999. She —” Kari indicated Sam. “— came here from 2001. He had hoped to have you prepared for a time in 2003; but now, outside, it is 2004.”

“You’re not serious,” Cordelia said. “You’re telling me I’ve spent five years in limbo? No way; a year, tops.”

Kari smiled, as if at some private amusement. “You would be, I think, correct. Though He retrieved you from 1999, the time then in the outer realities would have been spring of 2003, so you have been here just less than a year. If you will seek within yourself, you should be able to sense the means of following our lines back to where we began; a different issue, though no more difficult, is the matter of returning us to our original time. And … there is more, besides.”

“Always a catch,” Lynn observed. “Okay, Moonbeam, lay it on us, we’re all big girls.”

“We are not the first He brought here for profit or amusement,” Kari said. “I have seen others — as have you —” (this to Lynn) “— and I do not doubt that there were many before them. His power over those He held here was deep and broad, and that power still applies to us.” To Cordelia she said, “You have choices to make, or to offer us. You can return each of us to her own reality, or to some other. You can place us in the time from which we came, or in another. And you can allow us to keep the memory of our time here, or remove it from us. This is yours to decide.”

“Hold on,” Sam said. “She can do that? Put us back where we came from, when we came from, and us not even remember it? Wipe it away like it never happened?”

Cordelia looked inside herself, felt the new energy there, stretched her senses to cover the others. “She’s right,” she told them. “It’s actually pretty simple. I wouldn’t do anything like that, not unless you wanted me to, but I definitely know how.”

“I’m in,” Sam said promptly. “I don’t want to take back any of the things that happened to me here. Beam me back, Scotty, and no thanks for the memories.”

“I, too, would return where I was, when I was, as I was,” Kari said. “My experiences here have … marked me, in ways that I do not wish to carry.” She looked to Cordelia. “I regret that I will forget you as well, but you have grown past need of what I can offer. Better that I allow what transpired here, to remain here.”

“Well, don’t anybody look at me,” Lynn said. “What, land back in the Ozarks in 1981? I don’t think so. Sure, I could clean up on Microsoft and Chrysler stock, but then I’d have to wait twenty years for DVDs to come back around. As for memories, I’ve taken some hard bumps but it all went to making me me. I don’t throw that away.”

“Okay, then,” Cordelia said. “Glad we cleared that up.” She turned back to Sam. “You would be the easiest, I can tell. Your time is close to this one, and your world … it wants you back. And I won’t have to clear your memory, you lose that unless I tell it not to. We could do it right now.”

Sam gave her an open-palmed shrug. “So do it.”

Cordelia reached out to touch Sam’s forehead, where the handle of the sai had struck. “You might wait a day or so, let that heal a bit —”

“I had bruises when I came here,” Sam said, shaking it away. “Commando training is rough, nobody’ll care about one more. Just send me home.” Something must have shown in Cordelia’s eyes, because Sam’s expression softened. “Look, every morning I got up and put on my cheery-face, and every day I wondered if He’d call me in for his regular dose of droit du seigneur, and every night I thought about getting in the bathtub and opening up my wrists. I’m ready to be gone from this place, ready to have all that scrubbed out of my head. It’s not personal.”

“I understand,” Cordelia said. “How were you dressed when he brought you here?”

Sam glanced down at what she was wearing. “Something like this. I don’t really remember, but this should be close enough.”

“Okay, then.” Cordelia felt herself, felt Sam, let the power move between them. “This’ll just take a second —”

“I’m sorry I freaked out over the kiss,” Sam said abruptly. “I apologize for that.”

“You weren’t anywhere near as freaked as you should have been,” Cordelia answered her. “I apologize for using you as a lab mouse.”

“You kissed her?” Lynn asked.

“It’s there,” Cordelia said to Sam. “All you have to do is say the word.”

“Thanks,” Sam said. “For everything.” Then: “Hit it.”

“Goodbye.” Blink. Gone.

Lynn shook her head. “I can’t believe you kissed her.”

Cordelia sighed with exasperation. “Sorry I didn’t get video for you. Look, can we have a minute here?”

“Sure,” Lynn said. “I’ll be right over there. Don’t mind me.”

When she had withdrawn, Cordelia and Kari faced each other. Kari was first to speak. “What you took from him, you will relinquish that if you leave this — your — domain. The other, however, the faint heritage He awoke from within you … that will be with you always. I did not know, then, but still I feel shame that I helped him lead you to such a thing.”

“Let’s not start comparing notes on shame,” Cordelia said. She closed her eyes briefly. “First there was what he was doing to you, to all of you, while I was building up my muscles and feeling all put-upon. Now there’s this.” She ran a fingertip across her lips. “I used to help fight vampires. Now I’m like a vampire myself. Talk about karma.”

“It is that, perhaps, but not in the way you mean.” Kari’s words were gentle. “In at least two realities that I can see, other versions of you drew power from a kiss, and each became a champion. For your sisters, it was a single incident; in you, this ability was strengthened, but that was not your doing. Nor, I think, is it your destiny.”

“You don’t know,” Cordelia said. “How it feels, how much I like it, how much it wants to get out. It loves to drink power, and life along with it. Too much is never enough, and that’s what I am now.”

“It is part of you,” Kari said. “It is not all of you. You are the one who chooses, and I do not fear your choice.”

“You don’t know,” Cordelia repeated.

“I trust,” Kari said, and stepped close to her.

Cordelia saw it coming this time, she could have backed away; but she wanted this, needed to believe. The kiss was slow and soft, and the force inside her leapt up eagerly. She held it in its place, let it move but not take hold, and it subsided a little sulkily, and the kiss remained simply a kiss.

“That was … kind of nice, actually,” Cordelia said when the other woman pulled away at last.

“It can be that, without having to be more.” Kari smiled. “You see? You will need to remain watchful, but you need not be always fearful.”

“Thanks for that,” Cordelia said. “But … it was just to help me, right? I mean, you’re strictly into guys?”

Again the hint of amusement, as if Kari knew some joke hidden from Cordelia. “One,” she said. “One ‘guy’.”

They had no need to say more. Cordelia let Roxeim’s power reach out again, and Kari felt it and nodded assent, and a moment later she, too, was gone.

In the new silence, Lynn’s voice came clearly. “And then there was one.”

Cordelia looked around. “Sorry. Forgot you were there.”

“Yeah, I could see you were kinda preoccupied.” Lynn hobbled over to join her, still favoring the wounded leg. “So what’s it gonna be? Gushing gratitude? Deathmatch? Or is it my turn to get macked on?”

“Try ‘D, None of the above’.” Cordelia studied her with cool eyes. “I don’t gush. I’ve already filled today’s quota for girl-girl action. And we both know there’s no way you could fight me now. I was just wondering about a few things.”

“Uh-huh. Such as?”

“Such as, why did you kill Mandy?”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time. You had the boss-man on the ropes, Mandy was about to yank off another shot, and I didn’t want to take a chance on what damage she might do.” She raised a challenging eyebrow. “Maybe I was afraid she’d kill you. Maybe I was afraid she’d kill him. Maybe I just figured, what the hell, I never liked the bitch anyway. What d’you think?”

“I never know what to make of you,” Cordelia said. “You could be the most honest person here … but I know, ’cause I patented it, that being an up-front bitch doesn’t mean there’s nothing else going on behind the attitude.”

Lynn gave her a hard-edged grin. “So? You got a point?”

“I don’t know.” Cordelia shook her head. “I understood the others, but I can’t get a grip on you. Right now, I see three basic possibilities, and two of them don’t make you look very good.” She counted them off. “You were under his thumb like the rest of us. You were a prisoner, but you collaborated with him. Or the two of you were in it together. So, which is it?”

“Problem with that is, you got no evidence points one way or the other.” Lynn gave a little laugh. “And, like you said, I could be making up whatever I tell you. There’s one thing you might want to think about, though.”

“I’m listening.”

“The whole collaborator deal is a sliding scale. Every one of us here handled things the best way we could; so where’s the line between playing along, and selling out? If any of the rest of us coulda pulled off your little palace coup, you might be facing some hard questions yourself right now. Special clothes. Special training. Cozy little dinners with Mister Big. You’d look pretty guilty.”

“I played the hand I was dealt, worked with whatever I had.” Cordelia studied Lynn narrowly. “You’re saying that’s what you did?”

“I’m saying if you wanta understand me, check in the mirror.”

Cordelia snorted at that. “Right, because I look like Urban-Blight Xena.”

“See, that’s what I thought.” Lynn laughed. “You were every girl I ever hated in high school, and I got a total charge out of beating you to the floor every single day. Except you kept coming back for more; took your lumps, worked what I taught you, never backed down, never whined … some crying at first, the occasional scream, but you just wouldn’t quit.” Lynn favored her with the lopsided smile she had shown the first time Cordelia landed a blow in sparring. “We may be from different sides of the tracks, Princess, but you’ve got the same grit that’s all I ever had. So there you are.”

Cordelia thought about it, sighed. “I’ll never know for sure, will I?”

The answer was another shrug. “Sucks to be you.”

“Okay, I give up,” Cordelia said. “But I still want to know one thing: what did you do, when you woke up naked out on the prairie?”

“Ah. Right, that. I could see I wasn’t in Kansas, so I decided to play the goddess-fallen-from-the-sky routine; stood up and started giving ’em orders. They weren’t impressed, it works a lot better if you actually speak the language. They went to slap me down, I dropped a couple of ’em, and that got them to wondering. After they talked it over for awhile, they pointed toward their village and led the way, treating me respectfully in case I had some juice they didn’t know about. I walked maybe five miles on rough ground, barefoot — hell, barefoot to the neck — head up and haughty, never showed how much it was hurting.” Lynn’s smile was reminiscent and not a bit nice. “That was the start, and I worked it from there. After that … well, it took some time, and it was ninety percent bluff, but I wound up running the tribe.”

“And Roxeim pulled you from there?” Cordelia asked.

“He didn’t, actually.” Lynn looked embarrassed. “I shoulda just lied about this, ’cause the truth’s gonna sound like something I’m making up. See, after awhile I found out I could feel the thin spots between worlds, even push my way through ’em. By then I wasn’t having fun with the Sherit anymore — winter on the plains is no damn joke without central heat — so I set off looking for home. A few more years down the road, I landed in this place by accident: fell through the cracks, couldn’t get back ’cause there was nowhere to get back from — we’re kinda outside the shipping lanes here — so I struck up the best arrangement I could with the Big Cheese.”

“Arrangement?” Cordelia asked. “What kind of arrangement?”

“I got to live,” Lynn said crisply. “Meanwhile, I helped him plan and push along his special project, and worked hard at being his dream girl between the sheets.”

“O-o-kay,” Cordelia said. “And — right after eww — can I ask how this isn’t the collaborating I was talking about, a little while back?”

“How about the part where, whenever He was romping with me, He wasn’t bothering anybody else?” Lynn spoke evenly, but her expression was defiant. “Plus, I’m the one convinced him He’d have a better chance at talking you over to his side if He left you out of his bedroom rotation.”

“And once again with the eww.” Cordelia shook her head. “So I guess I’m supposed to feel grateful to you for that?”

Lynn planted her fists on her hips and said, “Feel whatever you want. You did what you had to to survive, and plotted to break loose. I did the same thing. You got there first. Deal with it.”

There was a lot Cordelia wanted to say to that, but she didn’t know how: how to put it into words, or how to say it without sounding preachy. Because Lynn had been right, it was hard to mark the division between compliance and complicity …

No, not that hard. The difference came when it hurt others, when you gained your advantage by preying on someone else. There was no way of knowing whether Lynn had ever done that, but Cordelia drew satisfaction from the knowledge that she never had, and never would.

“Okay,” Cordelia said. “If giving yourself some leeway to operate meant boinking the boss, I guess that was your choice to make, however barfsome it might be. But if I ever find out it went past that, we’ll be having a different kind of conversation.” She looked to the other woman. “For now, though, I’m just terminally tired of this whole scene. All right, let’s see about getting you home.”

*                *               *

To her consternation, she couldn’t get a reading on Lynn. The other woman was vexed, but didn’t seem surprised. “I was afraid of something like that,” she said. “I passed through a lotta different Earths before I landed here, and that was almost twenty years ago. I guess my trail’s gone cold.”

“We’ll think of something,” Cordelia said. “If you want, I can take you with me when I go back; there are some people I know who might be able to put together a seeking spell, give you a better idea which direction to look —”

“Hold up there,” Lynn said. “Backtrack a second. You can leave? you’re not stuck here, the way He was?”

“Hmm? Oh, sure.” Cordelia nodded positively. “I don’t know what was the deal with him, exactly, but I can tell: I’m not tied here any stronger than you are.”

Lynn said nothing to that. After a few minutes of thought, she commented, “You know, that might make sense of some things I wondered about. Our late host’s story didn’t always add up, and He was too full of himself to work very hard at keeping it straight. Tell me, what happens to this place when you leave?”

“Oh, it’s gone,” Cordelia said. “It’ll collapse right in on itself without an over-mind to maintain it. But what does it matter, once we’re out?”

“It mattered to him,” Lynn insisted. “Think about it: He had whatever loot He could reach, total power over anybody He brought here … not to mention immortality, He didn’t go into details but I think He may have been here since da Vinci was the hot young thing in all the galleries. What if He did figure out how to leave, but didn’t want to give this up? What if this demon gal we were priming you to snatch was just gonna be a placeholder, so He could take a little walkabout every now and then, blow off some steam, and then tuck back here where He was the next thing to God? You gotta admit, that’d be a hell of a setup.”

“And why exactly am I supposed to care about any of this?” Cordelia wanted to know.

Lynn shrugged. “I don’t know. You could do the same thing, maybe.”

“As if.” Cordelia sniffed at the thought. “I want people to worship me because I’m so wonderful, not because I’m some backwater tinpot faux-goddess. And if I cared about immortality, I could have waited outside the Bronze every night till some pulseless wonder put the moves on me. Besides, what’s in it for you if I become the next She-who-must-be-obeyed?”

“Nothing.” Lynn was studying her with another of those odd smiles. “I just wondered, maybe ’cause I wonder what I’d do with the same choice.” She grinned suddenly. “I probably shoulda thought about it before flapping my mouth; if you’d got tempted, you mighta decided it’d be a good idea to keep me here, too. Glad you’re incorruptible. So, what kinda goodies should we take with us when we make the hop?”

Cordelia considered, assessing what she could feel with Roxeim’s power. “I’m thinking, nothing,” she said. “There are all kinds of links running through the stuff he collected here. I don’t understand exactly how it works, and I’m not sure about the backlash we’ll get when this place pops. You especially need to be careful, your source-line is snarled enough already.”

“Nothing?” Lynn protested. “We have to jump empty-handed? That’s a rip.”

“Worse than naked in a wasteland?” Cordelia pointed out. “Our clothes are safe, they’re mostly tied to us, so it’ll be an improvement on your first trip offworld. Give me a minute to change into something practical, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Empty-handed,” Lynn groused as Cordelia started to her rooms for what should be the last time. “Not even a little sack of diamonds. Friggin’ spoilsport …”

Lynn was waiting when Cordelia returned ten minutes later; she had bandaged the wounds inflicted by the sai, but was otherwise as Cordelia had left her. “So, we’re set?” Lynn said.

“No little extras stowed away,” Cordelia warned. “I’m serious, I’ll be able to tell, and even if you slip something by me, it could do icky things to your innards.”

“Don’t worry, I’m clean.” Lynn’s expression was sour, but she spoke resignedly. “Just get us out of here before I start crying.”

Cordelia closed her eyes, extended her senses …

She looked to Lynn. “Small problem,” she announced.

“Shit! Now what?”

“I can’t focus on myself to follow my source-line back to its base,” Cordelia explained. “It’s like putting on makeup without a mirror; you can do it, but it takes practice, and I haven’t had any.”

“Fine,” Lynn said. “Just take us anywhere that isn’t here, I’m not particular.”

“Please,” Cordelia scoffed. “I want my life back. You expect me to leap blind? I am so not going to be the Sam Beckett of the hot-babe set.”

“Right, welcome to what I’ve been living since Jimmy Carter left the White House.” Lynn thought for a moment. “Did our glorious patron ever show you something from a little chest, wrapped in cloth, looked kinda like Aztec art?”

“I think I know the one you mean,” Cordelia said. “And if we’re talking about the same item, I know where we should be able to find it.”

“Good deal. Okay, gimme a minute, I’m trying to remember.” Lynn frowned. “Something He said once … Yeah, that’s right, I’m sure of it; that doodad comes from the same place He was planning to send you. So if we dig it out —”

“I can follow its source-line back to where I belong.” Cordelia smiled. “Good thinking.”

“Let’s don’t count any chickens yet,” Lynn said. “But if this works the way you say it will, we should be locked on course.”

It did.

They were.

Sort of.
 

|    Next Part     |    Previous Part    |    Chapter Index     |